Greetings, Dearest Readers!
Thank you so much for deigning to open this festive (?) holiday email. I swear to you from the bottom of my heart that it means the world to me, even if by now you’ve already deleted this.
Words can’t express how aghast I was several days ago when I suddenly realized that I had committed to sending out these electronic blasts every two weeks, not every month. Color me deep blue sheepish.
In the hope that you can look deep into your hearts and find just an iota of forgiveness, I must impress upon you how out of my mind poleaxed by anxiety I was until the election results were finally called for Old Jolting Joe. Admittedly virtually every other person on the planet to the left of Genghis Khan who was paying attention was in the same state, but it did for difficulties concentrating on quotidian responsibilities. It was just one long repeating loop of collapsing on and then barely crawling off of the fainting couch. To distract myself from the proverbial fear and loathing I set about creating the perfect TikToc video of myself falling on that darn couch. Hey, The Great Shithead hates TikToc and Sarah Cooper uses it, so what’s not to like? Full disclosure: I do crave acceptance from the vanguard of cutting edge anti-social media attention deficit providers, so that pursuit of my fifteen seconds of fame ate up days.
Then came a weekend of elation over the election results, during which I was intermittently enraged that, unlike their fellows in New York, Chicago, and other cities, humanoids on the streets of San Francisco seemed largely blasé about the Burnt Orange Beast finally being driven from office.
But Monday morning brought the realization that all that pre-election terror of a coup (or if you’re obsessed with precision, an autogolpe) wasn’t to be discarded so easily. Of course he didn’t concede! Things soon got so nutso that wackadoodle right-wing quasi-lawyer Sidney Powell actually argued that long-dead Repug bête noire Hugo Chavez was in on alleged/fabricated voter fraud. Hence distractions from the matter at hand (the writing of this damn newsletter) continued.
Fast-forward to our current state of blessed relief over the lame duck prez’s pseudo-concession. I’m now stuck in the unenviable position of competing with Stolen Continent Day, always a formidable opponent, but I guess that’s the way it goes (to quote a line from The Queers song “Kicked Out Of The Webelos”). Breathe in, breathe out. Acceptance is the key. Or so they tell me.
It certainly was easy to accept the headline “General Services Administration Administrator Acknowledges Biden’s Win After Weeks of Delays,” was a supremely satisfying gift from heaven. My old college chum Chris texted me with glee in response to the news, with the caveat “I wonder what the next grift will be.” I replied that I’d bet a c-note Adolph Barnum keeps the delusional, self-pitying stolen election flag flying high so as to both keep the Trump Crime Family brand alive and to continue the fundraising scam. He’s got a winning formula as long as seething ignoramus honkies take the bait. As the ever-astute Gary Younge wrote recently in The Guardian, “Trump’s appeal is better understood not as a departure from the US’s racial politics, but as an intensification of it: bitter white whine in a new orange bottle.” Those 72 million voters aren’t going away any time soon.*
It feels like we just finished the interminable first act of an especially grim revisionist Western where bullets have been dodged but it’s unclear what will eventually happen vis-à-vis the band of heavily-armed psycho marauders who are now holed up in some godforsaken backwater just beyond the horizon … there I go, walking on sunshine again! Hey, at least I didn’t compare this moment in history to the opening of Dawn of the Dead.
I hope none of you have decided the arrival of this national holiday is a good reason to hit the airport given that we are in a time of pandemic spikes. I myself will be roasting vegetables in my cozy kitchenette and rereading An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States. Perhaps after dessert I will get to work on my long-awaited (you might notice a running theme here) sequel to John Wayne’s book America, Why I Love Her. To answer the obvious question, I have not yet procured authorization from Mr. Wayne’s estate but I do remain hopeful, as is my wont.
On the topic of loving USA! USA! USA!, note that only a spoilsport would honor the pinko rag Adbusters when it admonishes us to make Black Friday “Buy Nothing Day.” Retail therapy in a time of economic peril is always irresistible, as well it should be. Shopping helps boost GDP, a key measure of our success as a nation; as William S. Burroughs once intoned, “Bigger is better and biggest is best.” Our standing as the greatest country in the history of the universe will be under threat if we don’t shop, so keep that credit card handy all day Friday. And, er, since you’re thinking about what to buy, note that even though the darn COVID-19 temporarily scuttled production of Namaste, Motherfucker! #9, back issues of the magazine are still available. If for some reason you’re vaguely interested in this offer, drop me a line and I’ll send you a list of available issues and their prices. I live to serve, as the waiter said to the overbearing customer.
Wow, all that self-promotion has tuckered me out—one more indication that I was wise to resist the suggestion of a writer pal that I get on twitter. I mean I love building my brand as much as the next content provider but the whole instapundit shouting into the chattersphere thing would get a little exhausting, it seems to me. Though I’m perfectly happy to share my opinions via this delivery mechanism, so go and ahead and feel special. But please, we’re all about civility and reaching across the aisle so no death threats if you disagree.
In the end/at the end of the day/in conclusion, it is after all true that life is what you make it and no matter how ominous the soundtrack music might be, bullets have definitely been dodged. So go back to dancing in the streets, for the love of Mike. I would say for the love of Mike Muzurky but he’s a bit on the rough and tumble side for festive moments like the ones I am encouraging you to pursue.
Until exactly two weeks from now,
Ben
*As Noam Chomsky once told a Nation editor who complained about how depressing his update on Palestine was, “I’m not here to cheer you up.”
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Notes:
• Sarah Cooper:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCkWzr1o4EU
• Mike Mazurky in action:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHRDGxSL2o4
•
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/17/trump-desperate-fight-stop-minority-vote-republicans-racism
• Buy it!
https://shop.thegreenarcade.com/product/an-indigenous-peoples-history-of-the-united-states/51
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If you want to give back instead of just mindlessly eating too much:
•
http://www.honorearth.org/