Sitting at 2000 posts exactly, on this latter-day vairtere version of the spill. This is #2001.

To celebrate, I walked 6.2 miles today.

To celebrate, I’m going to start telling you about the produce of the Ritual now.

But …

before I do that, I’m going to get things cleaned up a little, by dumping a lot of draft posts, and footage, half-finished dross, from the last 2+ months of Splendid Isolation.

Quantity will improve. Quality may suffer.

Be advised.

Wary.

***

One more thing about politics, my lambs, before I try again to ignore it for a while.

(This isn’t the Ritual stuff, per se.)

I remember very well all the times going back eight years that you cheered madly, anytime anything bad happened to old Donald. I remember the last such time, a few months ago, when he got convicted on random bullshit and you were elated.

I have noted with a certain quiet amusement how preternaturally quiet you’ve been on the subject of that particular oligarch’s landslide victory this week.

And on Friday, when I heard the news that all the rest of the lawfare cases against him were being dropped one by one, almost sheepishly, I thought of you again, imagining what you must be feeling about that.

It raised a question in my mind.

Have you spent any spleen or bile or anguish or angst over this phenomenon of him getting off scot-free, incredibly and at last?

And if so: Why?

No, really. Deep down. What the fuck difference could it make, to your life?

Why would you burn ten times as much energy on wanting to see him punished as you ever spent on war criminals like Mr. Cheney, unarguably guilty of far, far worse crimes?

Why didn’t you go insane when President Obama decided not to prosecute The Dick, or his theoretical boss George, because their crimes, as he said, “happened in the past”.

Like all crimes invariably do.

Why are you going to burn still more angry life force when he keeps his campaign promise to pardon every single one of the January 6th “insurrectionists”?

I have a theory about why.

I think you have a very deep need to believe what you’ve been told, about this being a Nation of Laws and not men.

Even though you know, rationally, that what you’ve been told is a complete and cynical lie.

I think you crave this kind of belief being validated at every turn, because ultimately it is in your Interests to believe them, in spite of knowing they’re horseshit.

“With liberty and justice for all”, we droned as children.

As intelligent adults, we know very well that our fellow citizens get exactly as much liberty as they can jolly well afford.

And as much justice too.

The System, I am grieved but obligated to report once more, is rotten to its core, and it grinds up and spits out living breathing people, like so many appleseeds, so we can pleasure ourselves with iPhones and pretty new trucks and ice cream and flat screen TVs. For .. Success.

You know it, but you don’t want to believe it.

Believing your own lying eyes is … not in your Interests. It’s depressing as hell, not only for the obvious reasons, but also because it means that your entire American Exceptionalist worldview, from the flagwaving to the lyrics of one Francis Albert Sinatra, has to be called to answer–if you choose to quiet your mind and see things clearly.

Donald Trump, whatever his many documentable failings, is your Id talking.

He says the quiet parts out loud. Fuck yes we’re in Syria for the oil. What other reason could there be? (There is no other.)

And in Niger for the precious metals, and in Guatemala for the Chiquita-branded bananas, and on and on, wherever we can jam in another military base by the hundredweight.

He is naked stupid greed, and naked stupid greed lives well inside every one of us, too.

Yeah. Sure. People die every day. What of it? “The poor are with us always.”

” ‘ Democracy’ is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” Har.

“You, child, need to lead. Or follow. Or get the motherfucking fuck out of The Fucking Way.”

Of Progress.

Of Murica.

Of every shiny Buick that ever rolled off the line in poor dead Detroit.

Of Holy Profit, most sacred of all. Sing Hosanna, and Das Kapital.

Do I want to talk about it around the Thanksgiving table?

No I sure don’t.

But I won’t be able to stop myself from thinking about it. Then, or ever.

I’ll shut my trap and be civil for that one day. Unless I’m … provoked beyond good intentions, anyway.

And for now, I’m going to try to do the same here for a while, for reasons mandated by the process of my own belletrism.

I’ll watch my own struggle with Interest.

You can count on me for that much, always.