BASED SAFETY
Tomorrow, I will be 34-years-old. Despite the 33 birthdays that preceded this one, the 34th is the first one in which I feel the inescapable sense that my youth is behind me. Success, that which eluded me for so long, certainly does quite fucking well in terms of dulling the razor’s edge of aging. Attention and accolades DO, unquestionably, make the experience of getting old a little easier than it would be otherwise. Having a book out that is selling decently enough that people are enjoying can alleviate the pain of bodily aches and world weariness that set in nearly half a decade away from my ‘20s. But success is fleeting. Success in liquid modernity hardly even feels real if I think too deeply on it. But aging is real. The realization that the most exciting and invigorating period of my life has ended is stifling. But life isn’t yet over. It evolves. The things that make me happy now (my fiancé, my dog, the friends I’ve held onto and cherish, the books that I devour and that nourish me) are different than they were a decade ago (drugs, risky sex, breaking the law, endangering myself and others). Maybe this is OK. Maybe I’m better now than I was then (after all, the silvering of my hair has imbued my handsomeness with a ruggedness that previously eluded me, perhaps getting old rules? Well, for men anyways…. HAHA JK)
Just as Simone de Beauvoir once asked if “We must burn Sade?,” DC Miller asks: “Must we Burn BAP?” It’s a fascinating piece and one that I find myself agreeing with. I enjoyed Bronze Age Mindset when I consumed it as an audio book, but couldn’t prevent myself from wondering if it was perhaps too internet-poisoned and ideologue-minded to function as great literature. “BAP is almost a parody of D’Annunzio who was already a parody of himself,” writes Miller. “He dreams of pirates, praises adventurers, engages sporadically in bloody rhetoric, and walks back from barbarically deranged positions, but to conceive this as an essentially political phenomenon is misplaced.”
Paul Gottfried theorizes Antifa and finds their tactics eerily similar to those used by the early National Socialist party in Germany. Though probably accidental, his argument slightly echoes Italian 20th Century left communist thinker Amedeo Bordiga’s, who believed that antifascism, especially at times when fascism becomes nonexistent, legitimizes the most brutal forms of capitalist exploitation and itself leans fascistic in its ideological orientation and methodology. “This anti-fascism would breathe life into that great poisonous monster,” said Bordiga. Playboy republishes its iconic 1961 interview with media theorist Marshall Mcluhan, who in it lays out clearly his methodology of exploration untethered to any preexisting theory or belief system. The reliably clear-headed Communia expertly deconstructs the “Green Deal” movement for its veiled promises to once-again redistribute untold amounts of wealth into the possession of the ruling class. Fuck the Green New Deal. It’s Bullshit.
I watched Todd Haynes’s documentary on the Velvet Underground. Twice. It’s truly excellent. Even when it gets corny (the small bits of lib pandering) or unrealized (not so much footage for post John Cale era Velvets), it’s mesmerizing and a powerful reminder of just how radical the group was. The Velvet Underground was a once in a generation band that emerged from a very specific set of conditions that saw the radical avant-garde of New York (composers like Tony Conrad, LaMonte Young and others, filmmakers like Jonas Mekas and of course Warhol, etc..) find common ground within the elegant simplicity of rock n’ roll and doo wop. This doc had a lot of ground to cover and it did. Read an interview with Todd Haynes here. In what has to be the best art and literature collaboration in recent memory, iconic transgressive author Peter Sotos and New York-based artist Lionel Maunz produce a beautiful new book being co-published by Nine Banded Books and Amphetamine Sulphate. This, dear readers, is what I mean when I say the underground is still out there. Also, I’d like to applaud this Terminal Escape blog which publishes short but intriguingly fragmented review texts on cassettes from an assortment of “Who the fuck is that?” artists in trash punk, noise, garbage garage, metal, and other genres. It reminds me of the blogosphere of the mid-’00s, a scene of independent critics that were almost as influential on me personally as were Burroughs or Mailer.
In self-promotional whore mode, you can catch my appearances on What’s Left, where Aimee, Oliver and I talk about my new book and the ideological hegemony of the culture industries, and on Wet Brain, where Walt and Honor allow me to promote my book while chronicling my years spent addicted to heroin and opioids.
CRINGE PROPAGANDA
Am I fucking reading this correctly? According to this Harvard study, the exact kind of credentialed document that libtards typically blow their loads over, the vaccines don’t even have a slightly positive impact in terms of slowing the spread of Covid-19. A. So why the fuck are we mandating vaccines when the virus, at most, can only slightly alleviate symptoms to those who are in danger of the virus? and B. How is this study not on the front page of every major news outlet? The leftists who continuously mystify this reality are liars. They are doing their job and their job is lying to us so the ruling class can maximize the exploitation of surplus value from the crisis. If you can look at this research and still advocate for vaccine mandates, please do so in the comments below.
Pedro Gonzales, the “dissident rightoid” with a penchant for vaporwave aesthetics, lends his oh so empathetic ear to people being fired over the aforementioned mandates, but his empathy means little given his crypto-advocacy for the “Based Biden” meme (you know, the guy whose admin is enforcing those mandates). The garbage libs of the progressive caucus finally vote as a bloc after years of failing to do a damn thing (even after they’d acquired more than enough power to do so). Are they getting in the fight for single payer healthcare? No. Are they pushing for higher wages? Nope. It’s climate bullshit that has them threatening to withhold their votes during the vote on the infrastructure bill. It’s always climate bullshit with these types. Green capital bankrolls these scolds. A new study finds that those who define as conservative are happier than those who define as liberal. Shocking, right? It’s almost impossible to believe that people who believe in family, community, duty, and tradition are actually happier than those who have a collective panic attack over every milquetoast Dave Chapelle trannie joke.
If you thought anarchist philosophy was bad (yeah fuck you Bakunin I said it), wait until you see the kind of art being produced by anarchist artists these days. No words for this shlock. Luke Savage makes the realization that, wait for it…. The pandemic has been very good for our most powerful capitalists. Wow, just stunning. Now, that doesn’t stop them from cheering on the most reactionary measures of the pandemic state (lockdowns, vax mandates, all things fake and gay) of course, instead, their radical, “socialist” solution is: tax. Wow. Thank god for these stunning and brave thinkers.
Ending here on Tobi Haslett’s latest George Floyd tome. He compares the Floyd movement to a bunch of revolutionary movements of the 19th and 20th Centuries (even quoting Marx on the Paris Commune LOL), never acknowledging that the Floyd riots were driven by reactionary middle class Antifa woketards who burned cities to the ground all for the implicit purpose of electing the writer of the ‘94 crime bill and Cali’s top cop. With thinkers like this…. Who needs thought?
ILLUSTRATIONS
1. by Adam Lehrer
2. by Lionel Maunz