Grace Achieved Through Brutal Contingency

The red-team approach makes sense in the military and in consumer and technology companies, where assumptions about enemy strategy or a competitor’s plans are rooted in unknowable human choices. --Governor Whitman

Early on in my libertarian flirtation, I challenged Austin Petersen in what I hoped was friendly jostling, and he followed me back, then cautioned me on a gaffe which I did not have to make. If I explain this it will come out a bit droll, but nevertheless: I thought I could recycle a political bone out of Bush v Gore, due to a factoid from a Christine Todd Whitman opinion piece that bugged me some odd eighteen years ago, the percentage she cited. Al Gore lost his home state of Tennessee by 6 points, and had he actually carried his home state, the electoral college and the popular vote would have aligned in 2k. It baffled me that the Vice President didn’t carry his base. A local told me they thought Austin was from Tennessee, and I tagged him in error, thinking out loud on Twitter, something none of us should ever do. I explained to him that my synapses were fumbling for a story. I now know he is in quest of Missouri voters. As I’ve warned, droll, and my gratitude that he put me on his feed would have led to a rapid deflection, as he chastised that a block would ensue for off topic tags. I confused him without meaning to do so, and have come to respect him since then. But he and I are nearly polar opposites. He has the promise of his ambition. I have the scars of the welfare state. He is a social liberal. I’m not, wavering as I am, high risk invalid, with a natural inclination to purse my lips in disapproval. This would contrast sharply with his political smile, and, not that I want to shock the left, but I can see what they see: libertarians are about the alchemy of turning flax into gold. Cryptocurrency busts and the Apple fetish in Steve Jobs lifetime has the glint and weakness of chrome to it, but the left also blinds itself to the brutal truths libertarians like Austin aren’t fearful to point out. Healthcare is no more a right than unicorns are part of the equestrian family. Paul Krugman’s brain would explode if he actually applied himself to Maximus and public housing, since he sees all this as not enough expenditure. Having lived and fought and broken myself on it most of my life, throwing money at it doesn’t oxidize bureaucracy with a healthy metabolism. Some ambitious lawyer needs to sue over Maximus's centralization. It is probably an anti-trust issue.

I cannot tackle the decomposing carcass this evening, but the Commonwealth is in serious trouble with its astringent Medicaid allocations. It was always bad, but hell apparently has a guest suite in the Wolf residence. Libertarians are weak on healthcare for good reason. In rationed form, it is an aggregate enforced by public policy, like everyone getting vaccinated, these days, even that has resistance.

Earlier tonight, Adam Kokesh pulled a Petersen, and put me in his feed. And that was also an astonishment. I follow him because establishment media players know the potential for anarchy generates page views, and if my tongue in cheek column about his Liberty On The Rocks invite ran as news in Google once, I can do that again, presuming the immigrants don't hand me a malpractice claim on a platter. If everyone in PA knows Maximus is rot, I had a professional tell me that, and that Liberty Resources is a bad joke, I don't see why they don't fix it. The Olmstead Act, in context, is meaningless. Trump did not compile this deadwood. I am not entirely on board with Trump's hostility to healthy eco-systems, but I also never was a rave EPA enthusiast either.

Viva Zurita!

Thank you Mr Woods. This of all days was just what I needed to here. Dec 5th diagnosed with Stage IV Mantle Cell Lymphoma. It is in all my lymph nodes spleen bone marrow and blood seems hopeless bu I believe in miracles

— KathyB👠 (@BrandensteinKat) December 13, 2017

I am not back as a working writer yet, let alone journalist. I am in somewhat of a holding pattern: Am I dying or not? If Mike and I don't slay each other in mutual hostility toward rationed health services, can I restore my former lateral transfer functions or not? I can still take a piss in the ladies urinal designed for a vulva, but I am inhibited about fecal defecation in disposal briefs, and this inhibition is wreaking digestive havoc. Bed pans are just as problematic for these poor infantile immigrants who feed off me and tend to me badly. Libertarians can take a moral lesson from the fact that in my own squalor I was still thriving. Nine weeks into a power chair breakdown, streamtolled by domestication under Presbyterian hypocrisy, I have chest pains, continual bronchial congestion in my lung, all this from forced dependency, overlong stays in a generic, and bad, hospital bed, and black women who disposed of my personal effects yet once again. How often do you think objects that form part of your identity can be discarded, as if you were so much less than human, by one fucking rental agent, and none other, from the age of 23? Any circumstance can trigger dying unexpectedly. A number of us may have been struck by the story of the Texan contractor so rapidly stricken simply through the process of being a recovery optimist. The city of Philadelphia took 31 years to waste me into a despairing old woman, who, for all her brain power, allowed contradictory impulses and desperately broken trusts to do her in. The old white women from the Visiting Nurses Association trying to keep me afloat amount to little more than a vague exercise in incompetence. It offers one insight into both male misogyny and execution squads. I am sure most libertarians would consider cleanliness valuable, and it is not that I don't. I simply valued my independence more, and stayed clear of pressure sores, until now, and rashes. Sure, no one wants to kill me because I'm a spastic quadriplegic, but forced compliance causing my death? I am just one ever so slightly less anonymous life who related well to Adam's preaching skills when he turned prostate cancer into a parable about the collective majority and individual opposition on twitter. It was well done, and remains my only insight into libertarian philosophy and good grooming. I retweeted the above bit of moral poignancy from Woods' traffic, like anyone, trying to lift the embattled soul's spirit, but I'd never let it get that far, never would. Holding pattern. Save and publish, hang on? Recover? That is a very deep vortex.

Absorbed Maximale

"I knew what it meant. He knew what it meant."-- a eulogy

Michael Almereyla does more than draw the viewer’s attention to what acting approximates in the 2017 Majorie Prime. One of his major themes is the price of the burdens we carry, encased in a rather skeptical presentation of what we leave behind in the residuals of virtual reality. Senility and suicide present themselves here beyond being an issue of sociological concern. Both as a condition, (dementia) and a destructive act overriding survival (corresponding suicides) Almereyla presents a family stifled and suffocating on itself. Geena Davis, never entirely impressive as the Vitamin D American girl caught in a vortex through association, in her A list days, (The Fly, Thelma and Louise), has mastered the projection of a crabby 60 year old who knows the runaway train is coming, and sends out her warning signals with a certain degree of fatalism. As it is present in the pilot of The Exorcist in her solicitation of the priest, it is present in Majorie Prime in subtler fashion, only in this world Geena’s character is a troubled mother with an equally problematic mother daughter relationship. Tim Robbins, as he does in Code 46, carries the onus of being surly and frustrated vanilla, filling in all these melancholy lacunae until it’s his turn to linger. Hamm has to project being a lifelike composite of a husband we never knew, and almost as Spielberg does in his mawkish afterword in A.I., Michael leaves us with an open ended question about empathetic software mimicking the ghost of the human spirit. We aren’t informed as to whether or not the primes are voluntary, but each character goes through the motions, rebellious resignation in tow. These moral obligations around virtual memory already resonate here and now: Google has rules about what happens if payments for the domain lag, everyone has an opinion about the erasure of Gawker as a distinctive, now archival, media voice, questions swirling about how Peter Thiel defines his libertarian beliefs against a worrisome, and mighty, plutocratic streak. Neither longevity nor voluntarily taking one’s own life appear palatable in Almereyla’s, and by extension, Robert Redford’s vision. To qualify a previous post, I realize the aging potentate of Barefoot in the Park is probably not micro-managing Sundance Studios, but I read cues in this project easily attributable to what we know about Redford’s public person. The column he wrote after Newman’s death stayed with me, in a particularly masculine no nonsense manner.

If we look at where we are headed, through Almereyla's lens and other dystopian minded thinkers, libertarian outcry, if not defeated outright, is always compromised. Kokesh, the boy soldier idealist, envisions a free market utopia, but still plays cowboys and indians with an apparently zealous authority. Harassing stoners, intimidating militant quadriplegics comes easy; mass murder not so much. Nick Gillespie doesn't know where the total lack of boundary and freedom collide; (little did I realize Nick and I have far too much in common) Austin Petersen is aiming for a synthesis so the establishment can satiate his political ambition. How do we all fit under the same tent? More importantly, personal liberty is elusive, as an empirical matter. I need not remind my viewers that I gave notice hours before my power chair's demise, and if it is in any way binding, I'm still here, constricted. For every Fee contributor celebrating market dynamism, there are 15 to 20 Americans like me and my parental generation shackled to a rather troubled medical entitlement system. I heard Adam chant, "the state will fall," like a Baptist hymn. Eventually, the way things are going, it must, as our ability to enact in a concerted effort to change our paradigms, this is limited. On the small scale, however, government processes are already overwhelmed, not to remind you of Flint Michigan, or San Diego's homeless. I have lived five minutes to midnight for a very long time. There is only so much our inner resources can spare.

ADHD Wasted Space

That's the problem with being the man, you never know what you left behind.-- Ice T

I barely know Adam. I did not give him a donation for his self-styled polemic on Freedom, and under my various forms of classification, sticking the cornbread veteran in a room with Debra Horne keeps the estuaries of the Mississippi slithering along. The half witted caramel brick bat and the ex-soldier may not be from the same swamp where Okies use catfish as sexual enhancement accessories, but they both speak the same language, and in trying to flee the holocaust of my life under oh so lovely creatures as these minorities, so illustrious in the fine examples they are on the evils of inbreeding, I am appealing to yet another variation of Southern rube, whose libertarian beliefs are more ecumenical than is decent for anyone's taste. In desperation, I asked the man who waltzed off with an Alford plea if he had any space in that compound of his, and do not expect a response, but I asked, and he and I spoke all of what? 30 seconds? I made no money on my column about his speaking engagement I posted on Medium, but it may be one of the last vestiges of professional writing I have to display, and, to be honest, I have softened my attitude, share some kindred spirit with his raw defiance, and here we are. Black women have the power to threaten me with a straight jacket for bellowing in fury after what I've had to eat and absorb under their employer's management for 33 years, and I am bucking on the Internet, which will blithely ignore me, regardless of how the ball bounces: Tuesday I may have no power; Wednesday, I may be locked out, and the receptionist, Lahnisha-- something like that-- black women have this peculiar suffix fixation-- has been retaliating against me since 2015, jeopardizing my safety, long before I let anyone have it, but consider: she is terrified of me and yet Friday, I inadvertently opened the door to spot shop, and she handed me the burning bridge rebuttal notices. If I'm lucky, maybe polyps will block up my hole with speed sufficient enough to make moral scruples irrelevant. Yes, even sympathizers who would like to help cannot, or else you're a potential kidnapper waiting to prey on my nativity, and be thankful I am not just another overkill murder in Oakland California.

Jesus fucking Christ. I got lucky, that, in the season finale, Salvation's tech company giant, of Tanz Industries, the ever wiry Cabrera, disclosed he had Huntington's. So my instincts were on the money to play with the series components, even as the plot grows multi-layered, and I was scooped by Danielle's survival. It is interesting to note, as well, that Iwan Rheon, Inhumans's Maximus, is disabled because he deteriorated into being a mere human being, one who had only his mind to manipulate the coup that he did. This is a kid's show, playing dress up for prime time, but it is light enough, with themes that matter on the level of a liberetto, to enjoy without having to study too hard. Television is growing up, nonetheless, Kira Sedgwick's valley tangles, mature as they are, fail to persuade me, since I am a driveby shooting, once removed.

A Libertarian Will Pull Up Your Woolens

"I don't hate anyone." Mike Baduchio, political operative-- (sic)

This evening I actually made it to my first Libertarian Party meeting in winter, this due to prior knowledge that I could ramp it up onto the Irish Pub's portico, and I met my first local libertarian politician, Ken Krawchuk, a bit of a ne'er do well with a grizzled  out of Montgomery County, running for Guvenor against the seemingly insipid Tom Wolf.. He has run for the governorship several times, Mr. Krawchuk, and told me to write about meeting him, his tutorial on canvassing, being a wedge issue bitch in general-- not that he told me to write that, but I can be as disillusioned with libertarian political chapters as anything else, always a distant fourth rail in the American primary system. I met new people, old people, all my white boys, promising energetic turks, the geeks, the pot bellied stoners, the disruptive quadriplegic barking orders, spending money she wasn't prepared to,  birthday gift not cleared yet due to bowel and holiday, meeting Molly and Mitch, the servers, and Mike, Krawchuk's handler. I broached Milo, and was respected enough to be asked about the state legislature. Was astonished to be asked. I did not say Brian K Sims should be torched, but would have liked to. Instead: "the state legislature is corrupt, on both sides of the aisle."  And emoted strong feelings about the demise of Kahleen Kane. I called her Harris and Ken corrected me, only small notches of my 17 year distress escaping. I did not bring up my life threatening self-evacuation that is scaring me so much my problem might solve itself with a mid-July stress death, putting my life in jeopardy to do this as it was. On a full charge, the dilapidated Jazzy barely made my 23rd to Market to 20th and Walnut trisect and back the same way. The Quantum balks at the cold, which should be worse this time of year, but I live in the chair, and this is not the reliable P-200. I'm obviously wearing the battery down with constant use, and have another mental hand of cards to play, as this machine is only giving me three and a half hours run time, at best, with the short. I wanted to press Krawchuk. Kindly colorful figure he may be, why keep doing it, being the wedge bitch, the thorn? But I've made this click my family: Kokesh, Miller-Miller, Stiles, and poor Craig. Libertarianism, local, national, this is my psychiatry, and doing some libertarian stories, even getting a scoop, (possibly) this may be part of my final act. I was going to be stark, and as hollow as a snub-nosed cartridge, but I am too empty of feeling, so drained I cannot summon the will for the caustic erosion, ignoring, for example, that there was an African American stud in the mist, as well. We are diverse. I am simply the only spaz, the dowager, being asked permission by the kindly stout wife of the operative if she could pull up my socks. She did,. My mother must be turning in her grave, that this is the solution I've given myself to, as if these fractious individualists would sacrifice themselves to rescue me from Center City Niggerland. Don't feed me shit about freedom of mind. I've lived a fucking holocaust, with interludes, without a scintilla of hope to possess something so vital as private property. Will still bobbing, with all these hooks, baited as a catfish.

Death Knell of the Knell

If anything killed my appreciation of the digital  medium, it's Facebook. Much like Yabberz, I don't like it, though most of my feed is my family behaving like the American Catholic class. I understand it is like anything else, account links and feed, but it's rather killed the internet for me, all tacky, flashy, bread and circuses. I prefer Twitter, though we all have to resist that to some degree. Yet I am uneasy, because there is spillover, and not just the Chicago attack. People do horrendous things, thinking what, that they'll get a following for engaging in victimization?
Craig Brittain and I make an unlikely alliance. I followed him first, primarily because Uber models intrigue me, and anything I might apply to make independent living less static is worth paying attention to. He complained this afternoon about leftist troll accounts, and I waded in without need of reference, without backing down either, and he kindly gave me permission to explore opportunities with him, so I sent him a LinkedIn connection request. I'm not partial to LinkedIn either, but it is necessary for me to maintain a presence there, even if I find work-- but I am unsure indicting Twitter's administrators to crack down on bogus accounts solves our freewheeling problems with  the online wild west. I myself am getting slightly over my head with libertarian factionalism, addressing Adam in the familiar as though he's remember the hard bitten wheelchair woman in her skirts, but that's neither here nor there. He proselytizes well for those who adore him; my alienated dissonance is of another timbre, however. Disaffection probably means I need some breathing space. 

Back In The Highlife

It used to seem to me
That my life went by too fast-- Steve Wynwood

The most effective censors aren't necessarily powerful boys who allegedly parade their victories wearing Hulk Hogan costumes. My mother's side of the family has corralled me on Facebook, my eldest niece only a partial, if tender, anodyne, and I have even less love today for social media, my chest pounding at three am, I was ready to tweet "fuck you" or "fuck off" to some new franchise authors, which would have gone over splendidly. It is not their fault I am more piecemeal, less sustained, than a novelist, and they are only doing what market forces compel them to do, and if I am solicited to read and review, well, I've been able to do that, whether or not I wish to continue in that vein. I spoiled my New Years take out, dropping part of it, so even with small disruptions, I pay the price, and perhaps it was for the best, as I am slowly cleaning up under the table. Let it go. 
I know, but only desired to enjoy my meal, over a tolerable broadcast channel. Found out just this afternoon I sold a poem. Or, had one accepted, for a byline, and it would possibly be detrimental, or unwise, to convey more than that, but this is a piece with history, taken to a public library workshop, where the facilitator pressed me a little harder than the rest of her group: my skill level was too advanced; I snubbed them, rolled out, "I am not coming back," I emailed her, and revised, and revised, over time, on my own, forgetting what her issue was, no, vaguely remember, the juxtaposition of classical with urban, and here we are. I have published enough work for at least three books by now, and what have I been doing? Sparring with nigger nannies in life or death battles.

I cannot retreat back to literary zine culture and sit there licking my wounds while my artery plague tortures me. If I wanted to pass muster to join Jeffrey Tucker's cache of freedom thinkers and failed because I did not allow myself to percolate, it was a lesson learned. He cannot pay anyway, not now, and as I respect Freeman, I do what I can for it. Get up and skin my damn knees and keep taking the egg. I persist in the belief in my own acumen, even if it makes me loathe, well people, yes, but communal sensibility, and on excruciating days, low pressure isotherms sucking in your ankle fluids, telling you sister was right about heart disease, then let the day be bad. Let it go.

What my underlying argument with Marie's preservation instinct comes down to is a debate about mercy. I buy Clint Eastwood's argument about kill shots, as opposed to what both Marie and my father are doing, for brother and spouse, respectively. My Uncle Joe is suffering. He has dementia, a deadly bacterial infection, and now, diabetes is taking his vision. If that was my situation, I'd put a Glock in the hands of Adam Kokesh, and say "pull the damn trigger you Southern fried poke!" I would not mind a grave in a magic mushroom compound, and what disability activists would never tell you is this: Quadriplegia is suffering. We cannot go jogging, clear our heads, or ride a bike, and too many of you rely on the state to solve our problems. Back to my straightening up, letting the day be bad. 

Listening to Beyonce is not my currency

"It is easy to kill; harder to be loved!"-- not the Michel Lonsdale  of Jackal

Why I log on and then drive to the kitchen for a hot coffee at the end of the month is one of those things, an inefficiency of poverty overwhelmed, restraining myself from writing a rather graphic notice to Trudy Richardson, building manager, threatening her safety, not her life. I am attempting to hold off just a week or two more before I crash any last hope on my head. I put Sanchez's Freeman article in my file not as a compliment, but as a store away to argue with later, as I basically disagree with most of it, having read it all before. Bullet points from the Left:

• genocide is politically generated
• resurgent nationalism leads to suspicion of foreign nationals (how many Chinese Americans are covert agents, we wonder)
• war is an invention of modernity (right)

I myself have argued for sympathy for Fascists, nor am I the only secret admirer of Mussolini. Porn stars drop his name to stir the paparazzi, but I am not facetious this morning, sadly. I am a murderer of intent, not of fact, as long as I would not draw it out, and obey my code, a dehumanized survivor who believes that dehumanizing is a necessary psychoanalytic mechanism, and slightly fascinated with Hoover's legacy in aftermath, I did a little digging into the Seberg Cointelpro case. There are a slew of urls on it, and maybe this is worth my time, a little investigating. I do distinctly remember that Hoover had been retired by 79, the year of Seberg's ruled suicide. But what I'd ask the conspiracy minded is what would federal agents have to gain by putting her under that level of duress? She was not the first mediocre actress to push the political spectrum to extremes. Law enforcement makes us all expendable at the street level, particularly black males, but the truly powerful fear soldiers like Kokesh more. Military men like him know the system and speak simply, spitting in chunks. As I am manufactured, I'm more deadly, capable of playing a long game.

I am not the least interested in assassinating figureheads, be it de Gaulle or Obama. I want to upend entire regulatory processes and then some. I am also slightly disenchanted with Fee's appreciation of my little donation. I told Jeffrey Tucker I believe in patronage even if I can no longer afford it, and 15 dollars is a pittance to publications fighting for survival. I don't know if I'll try with Jeffrey again. I failed to hold up my end, and as it stands, I'm tapped, not sure I have any ability to capture the attention of kids in their twenties, but I may, and suspect he and I share similar attributes when it comes to shirking accolades. 

Dismal Chantments

"Do you think you're never going to die? Well. it's not all sweet music and if you want to see real trouble take a walk through this hospital and you'll sing a love song about warts."-- Mario Puzo, The Godfather, the near last page of Chapter 22 

The local facilitator for Philadelphia's LOTR chapter has a fixation with Adam Kokesh which I do not. I hastily introduced myself to him a year before Justin Jouvenal put his paragraphs together to explain an Alford plea to the readers of The Washington Post, and can add that the authorities in Virginia wasted their time. Kokesh is something of a secular missionary, and his idolizers left me with my normative apprehension in the face of a cult following. I am not that much purchased on libertarian righteousness, and deleted the auto mail announcing Adam's appearance at a community center. I would have been more interested in meeting Tony Stiles in person, but the Black Adder and I also have some friction. Part youth against age, part my diffidence with software developers and computing, part my bitterness with liberalism and general disaffection, so I am not sure I can negotiate a reconciliation between Adder and Mr. Stiles. Adder suspects my liberalism, while liberals want to institutionalize me again as the best thing for me. Can't win, and I threw the last of my savings at Rosenbach Museum knowing that, in no way shape or form returning for their open house later this afternoon, and if you wish to see disaffection as an indictment, it isn't quite that. Scholars treat the Rosenbach with back-handed wonderment, and I am familiar enough with the museum's procedures to grasp at this bewilderment fondly, but throwing my money at them did not get me neither the connections nor the rescue from my entombment, and before Adder and I familiarized ourselves with each other, my first meeting with Liberty On the Rocks was an outcry I've long since sheathed. On to the next bizarre solution, one merging the idiotic with despair..

Honda's Gojira is a historical artifact, and has a few better shots at making the stuntman in the beast appear menacing, but I'm not in the mood. If we put a radioactive Tyrannosaurus up for bidding as secretary general of the United Nations, I doubt the global economic engine would pause to blink. Medium, though I don't know the search politics involved, promoted Truculent Fish on its news feed, perhaps due to Adam's prominence, though I haven't a clue. Kokesh simply doesn't impress me. I get the sense Tony's smarter, though he may be wary of my grafting tendencies-- but I don't know that I consider my profile page an actual published format. I've never been solicited, through Blogger, Medium, or other portal, but I suppose my key Medium pieces can go in my online essays section.

The Mercy of Adam Kokesh

In many countries, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are persecuted, attacked and killed.-- Fred Hiatt, an admirable opinion writer otherwise.

If I attempted to throw myself on the mercy of the Libertarians, just as with the the leftists, it would be to little avail. Some of you may or may not know I tweeted the indomitable Tony Stiles a direct message asking him if he could help me leave Philly to let me know, and I did not expect his largess to follow through and leap to my rescue in the shadow nation we'll call Nigerland, as I'm not sure I'm ready to risk total banishment in digital space just yet if I allow myself my true nasty colors-- for which Poets & Writers did ban me, but in my four years of running my mouth on Speakeasy, my vitriol had not coalesced into extremism in this unfortunate spastic frame. I list to my right, my right arm flexes in, and I'm peasant trash who really believed she could be a matriculated establishment player, after years of fighting the welfare state, I'm right back where I started leaving a large impersonal city campus without enough money to wash the piss out of my laundry. I became distraught with every resignation from every job I hated, and leaving the Matrix Research Institute was no exception, but the difference then, in 1996, was I knew I was fucking finished. Circumstances merely dragged things out. I started to write for money after dear lesbian bitch dead in my own heart published Leaving The Matrix Institute in a PA council on disability chapbook, and I managed to get lucky, and then surprised when mommy dropped and her insurance carrier left her children money. My younger sister wanted my cut and I said no. She and Ben joked about how long I held onto that nest egg, and now it's over. I'm on the verge of irrational flight out of one of the better 202 housing units in center city, mostly due to shame over my creativity with skid marks, my inability to get along with the wastrels in this community, the wastrels who make up the majority in this country, broken by the Roosevelt's culture of dependency. You want to come clean my apartment as an act of charity before the exterminator shows up tomorrow and my war with Trudy Richardson begins again?

No? I thought not. This fucking Jazzy is hurting me, and all I want is to run, and pray for luck, when I actually logged on to research Medicaid's health care plans. If I could I'd slide into a hole and starve to death while the beat goes on, and as yet, I endure, but probably not much longer. I wonder what Hiatt would have to say about gay activist corruption that had such a disparate impact on my well being. He'd parse it no doubt by differentiating bad acts from equal treatment. And my response?

Fuck that.