Breakfast

To get here -

to get to not-normal-agreement, that is,

to get here -

to get to a suffocating absence of dissent, among a group that would otherwise express variations of uniformity of minds or mindedness, that is,

to get here -

to get to indiscriminate conformity, is

not to get to universality or unity.

Breakfast

At the same time that what's real is actually material and tangible and invariable - not only is not everybody's reality 'material' and 'tangible' - not everybody's reality is 'invariable'.

Let's make believe for a minute,

so we can see what we cannot...

Brad

Brad doesn't sit at a table for breakfast. What would be the point, anyway? The counter is civilized enough for the single solitary rock that is his daily portion.

As he moves his gravel from left to right, letting it roll across his tongue, he seethes. A rock for breakfast! What kind of dream? What kind of promise? What kind of bullsh_t is this kind of prosperity?

At work, he adopts the glassy personality of a drone. Why bother being anything else? It's only a matter of time before he's 'reduced' because another another another faceless 'efficiency officer' de-prioritizes his goddamn dignity. An app calculates his productivity stats. and chirps. to advise him of evidence-based tips! to be a stand-out! Seriously. What the

f_____ck.

Donny

Donny couldn't ask for more. an embroidered linen napkin. a glittering polished knife and a glittering polished fork. a stupidly luxurious cut of filet melting onto his tongue. Such breakfast is an indescribable pleasure.

As he gazes through the brilliantly clear panes of glass that overlook a breathtaking blue beyond, he is overcome with fervid feeling. A steak for breakfast! This kind of prosperity is everything!

His smile is wide. his step is light. As he passes by drones and drones and drones en masse to their places of employment. as he passes by floors and floors. as he passes by offices. Until he is softly enveloped in the plush cocoon that is his refuge of productivity. A melodic voice chimes like a reverie. It could be his lovely assistant. or his digital aide. It would hardly matter! It always! gushes with good news! like an irrepressible geyser. Incredible.

Life!

Brad

Brad doesn't know another life. But he suspects that what he doesn't know is the secret to something more. And he's not alone. he's not alone. he's not alone.

There is something. and there. and there is more. and more. and unbelievably! miraculously! the truth! His whole life and the truth: there. Lurking at the fringes of frustration. If only he'd felt its hot breath like his own heartbeat sooner. known it earlier. because

then. he'd've been something. he'd've been something more than nothing, swallowing hope whole, because the lies told him to. he'd've been free.

and alive.

with blood dripping from his incisors.

Donny

Donny sometimes pinches himself. Not because he doesn't deserve everything. every dollar every quarter every dime every penny. No. no. no.

Donny sometimes pinches himself because nobody'd ever told him how absurdly random the plan would be. how a right instead of a left. a yes instead of a no. would write a yellow brick road into existence. for him. for him. for him.

Nobody'd ever told him how it'd feel. to obsessively mine blind corners. shadows. portents. for an axe. for him. for him. for him. because the plan

follows its own rules. keeps its own guidance. and dammit! takes! 

with no more warning than it gives. gives. gives.

If not to secure the future against every imagined specter that would hiss and cackle and erupt into nightmares writ in flames, what is any of it for? if not to see, crowned and glorious and bulletproof, that

he rises.

and grains of sand do not.

Brad

The key to transformation, as they say, is to open your eyes. break the fog. banish the sluggard scripts that shackle you to a demeaning reality that is not real. not real. not real. because the truth is something you dive into like a child on a cliff, repudiating mortality.

this is running with a pack.

this is chasing lemons with shots of vinegar and laughing.

Brad doesn't sit at a table for breakfast. He paces. Grinding a piece of gravel between his molars. At work, he cloaks a swelling appetite behind a restless smoke of coiled obscurity. Because

he is feral.

he is predatory. 

Pay attention, as the say, for snakes will strike because they are ready

weapons.

Donny

There are limits to power, wealth, influence. ha ha ha. But there are no limits to more tomorrow than yesterday. and more tomorrow. and more. 

Donny walks the labyrinth of his mind like a rose of machination will reveal its innermost secret in the wake of his resolute tread. petal by petal. heel by heel. yes. yes. yes! Though nameless foes demand his defeat like fractious animals, he is the hunter!

Donny's smile is authentic-adjacent behind spectacularly false veneers. When he is finally without ceremony, ensconced in his unapologetically hermetic sanctuary from pathetic mindless blobs provoked into ungrateful clucking,

he boils over like a simmering tantrum hitting its banal crescendo.

How dare! he spits. he splutters. How dare! he rattles with vibrating fury. How dare he be denied a thing!

Fin

Brad and Donny are not 'universal'. nor do they represent any kind of 'unity'. But in their world, they are and they do. Because their world 'exists' - not because their reality is what's real - but because their reality is what they make believe. And who's to say - make believe is not

the truth in disguise.

Epilogue

There is a rigid. hard-line. fiction about loyalty. Likewise, faith. 

That would the abandonment of rationality and reason 'be' 'rational' and 'reasonable' and 'normal'. Because this is what loyalty demands. what faith means.

Never mind the reality of the wrongness of clear-eyed repudiation of rationality and reason 'being' 'rational' and 'reasonable' and 'normal'. Never mind the insane dictatorial throughline of narratives that measure loyalty. that define faith. as absurdly as fantasies. 

Because how wrong you are willing to be should not be a measure of how loyally loyally loyal you are. Likewise, bearing false witness should not be a measure of how faithfully faithfully faithful you are.

That this is the rigid. hard-line. lunacy that justifies a terrible 'loyalty'. a dishonest 'faith'. begs the question: what is it all for? and: at what cost?

Because if it's all for the truth - then the truth cannot be the cost.

M

How to Screw Courage

Don't you absolutely treasure when people tell you their gambling with real people living real lives in the real world is a game they play to score points against real people living real lives in the real world? 

Because point scoring is as demure as game playing is as demure as brinkmanship masquerading as outrageous ploys for specious and sophistic puffery and deification?

#gamblinglife

How to Screw Courage

People pretend that selling your soul is a last act. That a first step is the only purportedly 'difficult' one. That every act after is neither here nor there. A painless slide into ease. 

*

But selling your soul is not an excising of conscience. It is a rational decision to position yourself above everyone. It is a ruthless justification that insists on positioning your interests ahead of everything. Because anything less would not be

'right'.

*

It assumes that morality is an imaginary obstruction. A costumed affectation that is 'put on' and 'set aside' like an alien-armor-suit of make-believe-invulnerability. A baptism of 'magic dust' from the props department of an amateur theater.

*

Principles, dear captain obvious, interfere and impede, do they not? Like runaway forces of nature, they wreck what is undeniably precious,

legacies of greed.

*

People pretend that selling your soul is a very smart feat of genius. That a life arcing towards the attaining and the amassing of a lot in the hands of a few is

fair. 

That this is what it means to earn, that this is what it means to be deserving of generously lined silk pockets, that this what it means to receive what you are due, 

dammit.

*

But it is not work to allocate wealth or assign power or disavow aid, to enrich the wealthy or empower the powerful or deny the beset. It is not toil. It is not labor. It is not sacrifice. It is neither blood nor sweat nor tears.

It is a calculated decision to position yourself above everyone. It is a callous justification that insists on positioning your interests ahead of everything. Because anything less, to be brutally honest, would not be

'just'.

*

It assumes that 'equality under the law' is toothless by purposeful design: 

when it is working as intended, it is pacifying fools and idiots with spit slinging and gnat swarming; when it is working as commanded, it is codifying patronage, partiality, prejudice.

*

Indeed:

as an axe, 'the law' falls on enemies and scum and parasites; as a shield, 'the law' protects the wealthy and the powerful. What a providential hymn

to live and die by.

*

People pretend that selling your soul is a show of gallant strength. 

That appeasing, that abject groveling before, that surrendering and submitting to tryhard tyrants, czars, emperors, caudillos, kings, on their terms of course, is how to be principled, how to be powerful, how to be peaceful.

*

However, when no despotic tryhard would ever in a million lifetimes stand for a cessation of literal or figurative war without demanding the exacting of retribution and spoils as an imperative condition of peaceful accord: 

this is not a triumphant illustration of bullies holding 'all the cards' gloriously proclaiming their literal or figurative armistice shall be bought and paid for with souls graciously sold to slake the unrepentantly insatiable pleasure of an opportunistic tryhard;

this is a sham of conscience, an unmitigated corruption of law and order, a perversion of alliances secured by assurances of mutualism that smugly dictates the price of nothing beyond existence itself shall be

gratefully demure spinelessness.

*

As if a 'f_ck you' to the backbone estate for not screwing their courage to the sticking place is how prayers are answered, how promises are kept, how people are saved

from self-respect.

More

When point scoring and game playing and brinkmanship masquerading as outrageous ploys for specious and sophistic puffery and deification 

is sanctioned in the name of morality policing, is excused in the name of scorn and indifference, is condoned in the name of partisan loyalty -

this does not 'cancel' the reality of real people living real lives in the real world like a scripted show in the 'nonfiction' category or 'rewrite' the reality of real people living real lives in the real world like a bestselling novel that is not 'truer than fiction'.

*

In other words, reality can neither be 'cancelled' nor 'rewritten' on the basis of

because a lie is sanctioned, because a lie is excused, because a lie is condoned.

*

Which to say, all the tools in the world can applaud being tools in the world until all the hot air in the world is used up by fabulous effort and still,

all the tools in the world will remain nothing more than tools.

That tools profess and proclaim otherwise, can neither 'cancel' nor 'rewrite'

reality itself.

*

That this strategy is the game plan of a 'party', an 'ideology', a 'system of belief', a 'policy', etc., speaks not to a trustworthy position that 'keeps it real' or 'truths' -

but to a relentlessly self-interested willingness and wherewithal to deny reality and defy the truth. For no self-respecting tryhard would ever in a million lifetimes stand for the backbone estate.

#thef_ckyouestate

M

Here and Now and Then and After

Singularly wrongful and especially cutthroat ambition on thrones, dripped in the emperor's new regalia, ruling as co-divinities alongside justful and truthful immortals,

has never been real and is still anathema to what is right.

Here and Now and Then and After

What comes this way? This self-righteous self-superior self-satisfied, ignoble and transactional, wildly hallucinatory and torturously anti-reasoned way?

Not good things, 

that is for damn sure.

*

I am not surprised that 'this way' is not without its cheerleaders. Notwithstanding, 'this way' not only satisfies millionaires and billionaires, capitalists and oligarchs, titans and magnates, 'this way' is taken by rank and file administrators, lawyers, operators, just like that. 

*

You see, where there is self-righteous self-superior self-satisfied will, there is 'this way'. Whether 'this way' amounts to real action that effects, say, efficiency or lives up to, say, promises, is moot. Because the wheelhouse of a surrogate or pharisaical mouthpiece is unapologetic nescience. Not plays on a playing field.

Such that cheerleaders who passionately hoot and holler every 'success' and 'triumph' of 'this way', are hardly arbiters of greatness achieved, right here.

*

You see, where ignoble and transactional incentives comfort millionaires and billionaires, capitalists and oligarchs, titans and magnates, there is 'this way'. Whether 'this way' spares a sole penny for thoughts about employees or customers or trade deficits or economic realities, is neither here nor there. Because plausibly principled props are not only not bona fide, they're espoused like the better part of valor is pleasure.

In a fictional narrative where a tyranny of the bottom line is 'killing it', being defended, protected, and safe-guarded from any defiance of a manifestly destined right to unbridled unregulated unlimited wealth and power, is the constitutional privilege of predatory, militant, and exploitative convictions.

Never mind how.

*

You see, where rank and file administrators and lawyers and operators indulge wildly hallucinatory and torturously anti-reasoned positions, there is 'this way'. Whether 'this way' is jubilantly welcomed by acolytes or by no one, it plainly resembles Saw more than it resembles a gauzy unfocused shrovetide carnival to fete a goldentide of free and fair democracies.

As if fiats that burn to the ground and abolish and feed to wood chippers and wreck public interests and the common good and representative government and the public are 24 karat gold diktats that chainsaw abuse, right now.

*

I am not surprised that 'this way' is welcomed by winners who risibly repute themselves 'the majority', who theatrically style themselves 'the people', who incongruously nominate themselves to serve neither the majority nor the people.

As if singularly wrongful and especially cutthroat ambition on thrones, dripped in the emperor's new regalia, ruling as co-divinities alongside justful and truthful immortals is not only what is apodictic, but also 'the way'

then,

good things come,

after,

that is for damn sure.

More

Needless to say,

performative umbrageous vigilance to do with justifying how 'waste' or 'fraud' or 'abuse' is being eliminated, right here and right now, is about theatrics and 'selling it' and virality and 'memes'.

Because 

the point is not about found 'waste' or 'fraud' or 'abuse', so much as 'named' public interests and the common good and representative government and the public, that are 'shamed' as definitive 'evidence' and categorical 'proof' of an agenda that steadfastly opposes vesting in democracies and republics, an apodictic law of Ate.

Because

neither a literal nor figurative chainsaw nor singular executive order nor literal nor figurative wood chipper nor especial deciding opinion is about 'defending' free and fair democracies or 'saving' our republic.

*

Because

public interests and the common good and representative government and the public

are the 'enemies' of this self-righteous self-superior self-satisfied, ignoble and transactional, wildly hallucinatory and torturously anti-reasoned way; the 'enemies' of cheerleaders, millionaires and billionaires, capitalists and oligarchs, titans and magnates, rank and file administrators, lawyers, operators; the 'enemies' of winners and co-divinities;

whose manifestly destined right to unbridled unregulated unlimited wealth and power has never been real and is still anathema to what is right.

*

Such that

so-called 'broad endorsements' of such nonsense, reported 'groundswells of support' for such nonsense, and 'widespread sharing' of such nonsense

reflects neither an 'uprising' of a 'common sense super majority' nor a 'mandate' from an 'overwhelmingly illiberal electorate', so much as 

an amplifying of self-righteous self-superior self-satisfied, ignoble and transactional, wildly hallucinatory and torturously anti-reasoned cheerleading, 

pretending to 'speak truth to power'.

*

For you see,

I see

pretender kings parading the emperor's new drip, saber-rattling the emperor's new regalia; false idols promising to throne integrity, while crowning liars who troll the truth; ogrish servants of Ate being neither meek lamps of God nor civil servants who represent the will of 'the people';

no? 

M