Wednesday, November 29, 2017
Negation Aspiration vol. 79
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Sunday, November 26, 2017
Monday, November 20, 2017
Wednesday, November 15, 2017
Saturday, November 11, 2017
Friday, November 10, 2017
Thursday, November 9, 2017
Wednesday, November 8, 2017
U.S.A! U.S.A.! vol 114 / Negation Aspiration vol. 77: Trump at 365 (Year of the Horde)
25 years ago all i wanted was innumerable comic book movies all year round.
15 years ago all i wanted was for deranged cynicism and profuse mistrust to be the societal norm.
now, i want all of that to go the fuck home cause they're drunk and annoying and won't shut the fuck up about how awesome they are and they won't stop trying to grab my dick and steal my wallet and they get all warped and depressed when i point out their flaws and they tell me "well fuck you you never understood us to begin with" and you know what i'm starting to think "yeah maybe i never did".
we're a populous rapidly racing to outdo the ugliness of our supposed rivals. invariably combative for no reason other than to bukkake-spray kerosene on the already wild grease fires of political and cultural discourses. there is no winning and losing, only retreat and surrender, to wear so many bleeding hearts upon a closet of over-sized worn-thin sleeves that you start to resemble a Hellraiser victim or to costume genuine displacement with so many layered layers of meta-sincere post-irony (or meta-ironic post-sincerity) that even Mike Patton would be like "hey man be serious for a minute aight".
how boring and lame is all of this?
i'm gonna use some mallrock to sum it up:
Behold a new Christ
Behold the same old horde
Gather at the altering
New beginning, new word
And the word was death
And the word was without light
The new beatitude:
"Good luck, you're on your own"
Blessed are the fornicates
May we bend down to be their whores
Blessed are the rich
May we labor, deliver them more
Blessed are the envious
Bless the slothful, the wrathful, the vain
Blessed are the gluttonous
May they feast us to famine and war
What of the pious, the pure of heart, the peaceful?
What of the meek, the mourning, and the merciful?
All doomed
What of the righteous?
What of the charitable?
What of the truthful, the dutiful, the decent?
Doomed are the poor
Doomed are the peaceful
Doomed are the meek
Doomed are the merciful
For the word is now death
And the word is now without light
The new beatitude:
"Fuck the doomed, you're on your own"
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
U.S.A.! U.S.A.! VOL. 113
Trump did not create this anxiety nor this division. References to the civil war and the Klan illustrate for just how long white America has been riven by its sense of moral purpose and material privilege. What is new is that Trump has emboldened the bigots and channelled their thinking in a fashion not seen in modern times. A president who draws a moral equivalent between neo-Nazis and anti-fascist protesters, who baits black athletes and black journalists, brands Mexicans rapists and Muslims terrorists.
One of those to whom he has given confidence is Richard Spencer, the intellectually unimpressive, historically illiterate huckster who rallied the far right in Charlottesville. Spencer, who wants to create an “ethno-state” for white people, claims to have coined the term “alt-right” – a sanitised word for the extreme right. In July last year, Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, boasted that his website Breitbart News was a “platform for the alt-right”.
When I encountered Spencer at Montgomery Bell park, he emerged carrying a glass of what smelled like bourbon and an entourage of adoring bigots soon surrounded me in the car park. More odious troll than eloquent polemicist, he claimed, among other things, that Africans had benefited from white supremacy and that, despite having been banned from 26 European countries, Europe would always be more his home than mine. “If Africans had never existed, world history would be almost exactly the same as it is today,” he claimed. “Because we are the genius that drives it.” Like a vulture preying on the anxiety, and with few alternatives on offer – as much as people cited Trump as the problem, few offered Democrats as the solution – he felt confident.
“People are now aware of the term ‘alt-right’ … I don’t think Trump shares the ideal of the ethno-state … But he wouldn’t have run the campaign that he ran if he didn’t feel some sense of loss, that America has lost something,” he said.
He felt he was gaining influence. This was one of the few accurate things he actually said. And by far the most chilling.
One of those to whom he has given confidence is Richard Spencer, the intellectually unimpressive, historically illiterate huckster who rallied the far right in Charlottesville. Spencer, who wants to create an “ethno-state” for white people, claims to have coined the term “alt-right” – a sanitised word for the extreme right. In July last year, Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, boasted that his website Breitbart News was a “platform for the alt-right”.
When I encountered Spencer at Montgomery Bell park, he emerged carrying a glass of what smelled like bourbon and an entourage of adoring bigots soon surrounded me in the car park. More odious troll than eloquent polemicist, he claimed, among other things, that Africans had benefited from white supremacy and that, despite having been banned from 26 European countries, Europe would always be more his home than mine. “If Africans had never existed, world history would be almost exactly the same as it is today,” he claimed. “Because we are the genius that drives it.” Like a vulture preying on the anxiety, and with few alternatives on offer – as much as people cited Trump as the problem, few offered Democrats as the solution – he felt confident.
“People are now aware of the term ‘alt-right’ … I don’t think Trump shares the ideal of the ethno-state … But he wouldn’t have run the campaign that he ran if he didn’t feel some sense of loss, that America has lost something,” he said.
He felt he was gaining influence. This was one of the few accurate things he actually said. And by far the most chilling.
My travels in white America – a land of anxiety, division and pockets of pain
Negation Aspiration vol. 76
What do we think society is? A relationship between people, perhaps, especially one characterised by a mutual interest in each other's well-being. Less abstractly, something manifested in institutions such as schools, hospitals, churches – the things that enable people, in general, to live lives that matter to them. It's the thing that – in favour of individuals and their families – Margaret Thatcher tried to deny.
But this is not necessarily what society is. Society isn't a relationship, mediated through institutions. Society is a thing – a living thing. Specifically, society as we know it is a vast sea monster. The English Civil War-era political theorist Thomas Hobbes called this monster the Leviathan. Tentacled, oozing, always hungry – the Leviathan holds us together not out of any higher, finer sentiments, but simply because it needs to extract value from us in order to grow. If we are to believe Hobbes, then in the earliest years of humanity our leaders signed a contract with this Leviathan, binding our wills to it in exchange for security – a sort of primal protection racket. And since then we have remained its servants: half-choked, sick things unable to realise our true nature beyond the monster's grasp.
But this is not necessarily what society is. Society isn't a relationship, mediated through institutions. Society is a thing – a living thing. Specifically, society as we know it is a vast sea monster. The English Civil War-era political theorist Thomas Hobbes called this monster the Leviathan. Tentacled, oozing, always hungry – the Leviathan holds us together not out of any higher, finer sentiments, but simply because it needs to extract value from us in order to grow. If we are to believe Hobbes, then in the earliest years of humanity our leaders signed a contract with this Leviathan, binding our wills to it in exchange for security – a sort of primal protection racket. And since then we have remained its servants: half-choked, sick things unable to realise our true nature beyond the monster's grasp.
Monday, November 6, 2017
Negation Aspiration vol. 75
Something is wrong on the internet
I’m James Bridle. I’m a writer and artist concerned with technology and culture. I usually write on my own blog, but frankly I don’t want what I’m talking about here anywhere near my own site. Please be advised: this essay describes disturbing things and links to disturbing graphic and video content. You don’t have to read it, and are advised to take caution exploring further.
Likewise, the case of the “Keep Calm and Rape A Lot” tshirts (along with the “Keep Calm and Knife Her” and “Keep Calm and Hit Her” ones) is depressing and distressing but comprehensible. Nobody set out to create these shirts: they just paired an unchecked list of verbs and pronouns with an online image generator. It’s quite possible that none of these shirts ever physically existed, were ever purchased or worn, and thus that no harm was done. Once again though, the people creating this content failed to notice, and neither did the distributor. They literally had no idea what they were doing.
This video, BURIED ALIVE Outdoor Playground Finger Family Song Nursery Rhymes Animation Education Learning Video, contains all of the elements we’ve covered above, and takes them to another level. Familiar characters, nursery tropes, keyword salad, full automation, violence, and the very stuff of kids’ worst dreams. And of course there are vast, vast numbers of these videos. Channel after channel after channel of similar content, churned out at the rate of hundreds of new videos every week. Industrialised nightmare production.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
