Der Parkbank Pinkler Kapitel XXXX: Endstation Sucht

That time everyone conspired to make what I do dangerous.    —I.T. Them

 

XXXX.

 

Ein rot erfrorenes Gesicht ihnen gegenüber spricht irgendwie nicht nicht aus ihrer Seele, gleichlaufend völlig fremd und ganz bekannt also. Allerdings ist es ein totes rotes Gesicht auf lebendigem Körper. Der atmet zumindest. Direkt vor ihrer eigenen Augen können sie Spüren in Form vom leicht beschlagenen Busfenster wahrnehmen. Sie nehmen es für wahr, erkennen das Gesicht aber nur als Gesicht an sich.

 

Nicht ganz zufällig fühlt sich das eigene Gesicht an wie Gummi, wie bei der Betäubung der orthopädischen Behandlung. Ist es so kalt da im Bus? Das Gesicht im Fenster wirkt permanent rotgeschwollen und die Wirkung einer solchen Behandlung wäre längst verflogen.

 

Was da im Kopf herumspukt, haben sie sicher eine Ahnung.

 

Es ist zwar kalt im Bus, aber wärmer als im Wartehäuschen, oder selbst dahinten in der naheliegenden, scheinbar liebevoll und hübsch hergerichteten Festung, auch gehüllt von Kopf bis Fuß in dicken Decken, wobei nur das kleinste Dreieck von diesem rotgefrorenen Gesicht auffällt. Trotz alledem ist es kalt genug im Bus für sehbarer Atem.

 

Was noch im Fenster vom herbstdunklen Bus zu sehen ist, ist die Seele der Technik, wenn nicht gerade die Seelen von Menschen. Mobil und kleinbeleuchtet überall sind andere Gesichter gespiegelt im Fester. Sie erscheinen auch nicht allzu lebendig zu sein. Also sie agieren offenbar freiwillig, dafür ein fester Funke fehlend.

 

Und da haben wir eine Mehrheit. So hat sich diese Technik durchgesetzt, durch die Stimmen von seelenlosen Augen. Die Technikpolitik lautet, „Damit können Sie soviel machen!“ bis du ohne sie garnicht machen kannst. Von wegen Demokratie. Die kleine Parteien fliegen...

 

„...raus.“

__

     

       xxxix. << -- >> Kapitel ??

D'you lie forth?

Congrats, if...

...you feel you belong to that one people who'd had something to declare, just as you feel you do not belong to anyone else who didn't, and/or don't believe Nature's God thought should have. It was the times.

...you hold as an obvious truth that, as that one people, you're equal among yourselves, as sure as was known by your forebears that setting their feet upon new soil was endowed by their Creator, and this they conveyed unto you, otherwise you wouldn't have your feet upon it. It is the times.

...you'd also have refused the Yoke of Dork and cast off your shackles, even if you'd have been three-quarters less likely at the time you'd cosigned and until your death that you'd do the same for others in your service, it being just as self-evident, apparently, that there will be among the Supreme Judge of the world's people always many who are not yet worthy of the pursuit of Happiness, and just as little Life and Liberty. It was and is the times. 

...you know the right to establish yourself as collector and payer, and therewith Representative of the interests of collector and payer, not least of which would be determining with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence how your collection should be dispensed.

...you'll be celebrating your reconfirmed birthright with explosives (loud) and alcohol (proud). Be responsible and vigilant: Savages might use them against you.

in conderation of too tiny shoo droppings...

There's a viewpoint that believes there's a rent-seeking corporate model that leaves no stone unturned. I cite as evidence to the contrary my existence under a heavy stone. At least I think it's heavy. Either it's too heavy to lift or best left unturned in order to keep the likes of me in their place.

 

In the interest of exposition, I first cite evidence of the existence of the aforementioned model in the form of an apple and a window:

 

Consumers be hungry. To eat a window is to know the pane of existence. Those consumers who have recognized the pane for the pain it is have chosen to eat each day (and all day) the proverbial fruit that grows from the labor of people they must think (at least somewhere deep in their underawareness in order for their awareness to live with whatever is left of it) are nary but trolls toiling happily for the fruits of their labor, roots and grubworms, and that they otherwise feel no pain and suffer no uncertainty. Am I certain this is not the case?

 

The proprietor of this daily and day long fruit owns the apple and the seed. And so does this Johnny Appleseed wield a quasi solitary influence over his laborers and consumers, the latter of which occasionally enough express a feeling of being coerced while demonstrating their loyalty to their marketplace master. For many have otherwise known the pain of regularly renewed shard consumption.

 

Johnny Appleseed leaves no stone unturned in seeking profit, as if down to the final minted nickel, "There's five cents left in his pocket!" 

 

He has his contrivers continually re-engineer both apple and seed so that just in time for the quarterly greet-ups he can announce that his consumers will be needing a lip and tooth and belly and bowel enhancement to keep up with the marvels of modern digestibles.

 

Leaving aside the technological elephant you didn't used to need to eat, let alone feel compelled by its eye candy conveying quality you can't look away from, I return to my original point that it's not always done this way and cite as an example my subscribed-to enabler of this form of communication:

 

He/She/It/They started, as the tale often goes, as the upstart eager to jump into the market. Let's call them Malice.

 

Malice built a loyal following doling out data rates and rock bottom prices, only to cash in and cash out when someone with global level naming rights, let's call them GoTo, swallowed them like the snack you get before the pilot says you're getting ready to land.

 

It would be normal as a customer in this scenario to expect to get screwed. There is no way in hell my something-nine ninety-nine per monthly ransom would not be going up. Yet here it is, decades accrued, and not a nickel more.

 

Sure, over the years that followed I'd been strangled occasionally, followed uncannily by a robocop offering me a cigarette before the strangler returns, i.e. respite from future threat, but even that dissipated.

 

Don't get me wrong. I don't mean to suggest I am being rewarded for my loyalty. Alternative reasoning would consider a business school approach whereby all newcomers pay an ever more punitive price for membership, and the oldies are left alone, lest they be lost to someone they know they can't quite swallow. Yet.

 

In other words, somehow they haven't managed to monopolize the market à la the democratic apple in the republic of windows, where the fruit functions as resistance to anything better and its host pummels what's left into asphalt paste.

 

My guess is there are few enough of my variety to make the tiniest bump on a chart that charts bumps in behemoth boardrooms. Because for a giant that large, the stone would be so easy to turn.  

Vibing in (20 26)

Who or what you vibing with? Tell me what you feel you believe. For vibes rake plausibility into a pile of virtue.

 

So usher in them vibes, make the word plausible sound like a bell. Slow clap that plausible. Ring in the new vibes. Gather up what you'd sensed about the old, douse it with accelerant, and show Heaven what you're made of!

 

——

 

 

My Own Private Irony 

The first order of business is to recognize that this thing called projection is the result of all I perceive being that which dictates foremost what I think and believe and the assumption that others see what I see and therefore plausibly believe what I believe.

 

The subordinated order at hand is the perception of others' agency, and not least why my focus is on the one or other among so many, which determines expectation.

 

As a fan who recognized how overweening an attitude of supremacy fans can exude, it was dependent upon our sharing a chosen space, as opposed to their being in my space or my wandering into theirs. And this was at a time where the amount of attention would seem to be dominated by "others" and stacked against "us", until I realised mine was just a lesser level beneficiary of the same favor.

 

Not unlike as regards the religious, the question is why do they come across as so toxic? Are they really invading my space, or am I wandering into theirs looking for conflict? Is it really that hard to ignore those fandoms? Are they, like, drive-by firing at me or bombing my buildings or trying to indoctrinate the children - or is it rather that I seek out that which I find most perplexing because I also have a chip on my shoulder? That's the origin of the term fan. You'd find that thing within every fandom proportional to your finding overrated the thing of which they're fans.

——

 

Have I got an anecdote for you. And for you and you and you. For my anecdote remains anecdotal until its collated with others into a representative sample. No one's story alone is statistically significant. Until it is.

Be wary as well of someone's citing a study; it's only anecdotal until their story checks out.

Cool story, bro. Gotta link?

My anecdote? It's all vibes until a hard object smacks you in the face. Maybe until then. You could take the feeling in your head caused by the object's smack for just more vibes. The good vibrations knell of cognitive dissonance means you can choose avoidance, willful ignorance, or dissociation without having to choose anything at all.

Words are funny little things. And runny. The messy semantics of this language I seem to be using at the moment can spill out into a globalized formation of already appropriated anglicisms for the sake of vibe sniffing to one's tolerance in any language of one's choosing, again without having to choose.

I am thinking about the word "woke" and how anti-woke is woke on the other side of the bed. Anecdotally, encountering an overweight black woman working at the DMV who moves more slowly than you'd like automatically means some svelte white woman was discriminated against in the filling of that position. Someone just knows it's true because everywhere they look there's a black person working. Stay anti-woke!

I use this example not simply for the origin of "woke", but because the number of times my assumptions about someone's politics was challenged, it so frequently hinged upon their fixation that black people were being unfairly advantaged by way of things like affirmative action.

 

Affirmative action is to DEI what political correctness is to woke.

 

Anyway, in lieu of an actual anecdote that you should know by now is not coming, suffice it to say that American politics is not just determined by the most obvious binary, but is woven to its core with racial animosity. It's liminal, unless it's not.  

 

——

 

 

In preemptive self-referential service to- and in the interest of clarity, "what it means" (see below) means either, what they should say, or what truth can be gleaned from what they say by way of the curtailment and delimitation of what they say.

 

Who's "they"? I dunno. Maybe me. Maybe you. Somebody.

 

See this entry. Preemptive condolences. On that note, I begin where I left off, whereby any interpretative utterance should include "as far as I know" despite eventual superfluity, contradiction, or irony:

 

what they say = what it means

most of something = maybe a majority

9 times out of 10 = probably a majority

99% of something = gotta be a majority

99.999% = I'm talking to hear myself

People forget that... = Consider that...

People tend to forget... = Consider...
People don't realize... = I realize...

it's ironic... = it might be interesting...

Nobody is saying... = I disagree with...

kind of [+ verb] = [verb].

 

 

——

 

 

pop quiz

At what point does unilateral execution of executive authority, dressed in board-speak and cloaked in trade secrecy,  go from being an inconvenient consideration to unworthy of explosive disputation?

 

When should schlepping shlubs off the street and into untold cages stop being a kosher rule of law thing and be seen as simply something scary?

 

When do people of a political persuasion, when faced with the fallibility of their heroes, throw up their hands and say, "Eff it all, they're all corrupt!" without mentioning any names?

 

Answer: When the vibes are all wrong.

 

__ 

 

 

And speaking of the sundry and variable tools in the kit of manufacturing vibes of consent, it shouldn't be a mind-numbing notion that Chomsky's in a class of controlled opposition. 

 

Not that being "in the Epstein files" is de facto that, but as Ohtarzie pointed out all those years ago, he plausibly wouldn't know it if he was compromised.

 

Or, at least the professor's default intellectual consciousness is thinking himself beyond the taint. Whether or not he has a clear conscience, i.e. all the way down, is your guess.

 

Don't forget mob rules – that sadomasochistic way of scratching each others' backs.

 

Gock got sore when I suggested I'd already considered an unspoken idea he had begun to explain: that Don Dumps In His Pants would be the beneficiary of the kompromat implied in activities of the Epstein character. This would explain to some degree how, in spite of the widespread mockery he receives from pundits in the press, he manages to get what he wants from so many he was supposed to have gotten schooled by. 

 

In fairness, Gock's irritation, I assume, was not because he wanted to be the smarter guy in the room (or only that I was interrupting his train of thought) but because the casual projection based on widespread experience would indicate one thinks oneself is erudite enough just by being aware of the blackmail aspect of the operation and leave it at that.

 

For what rings plausible to the Epstein obsessed among the Dump Resisters is apparently the president's terrified of it being revealed how he does what with his naughty bits and to whom. As if. Chalk one up to the effectiveness of the algorithm. Preaching to the choir was never so easy.

 

What doesn't fit the vibes of gleefully owning your enemies on-line (an up-vibe form of doom scrolling) is the fact that it's all transactional, and at a certain level no one is immune.

 

The people in the photos wouldn't be there if there wasn't anything in it for them. And Epstein having them there benefitted him or his clients in any number of ways.

 

Of course being in a photo with him doesn't make you a sexual predator, but his posing in a photo with you serves a purpose either way. His or their potential peccadilloes is either extracurricular, or, as unfair as it seems, a distraction.

 

Still, even if you got the ultimate kompromat, as soon as you out your ostensible opposition, you've lost your leverage. That's the point of being in the big club Carlin talked about. You can't be a beneficiary if you're ratting out your benefactor. Winning some and losing some is win-win. Or better than whatever the alternative is. Plausibly.

 

——

 

 

Truth Lies In Middle
Somewhere Over to Nowhere

it outlines the space

 

it defines the place

the truth lies in the middle

of all they do say

 

all the lost marbles

doled globally that-a-way
to-ward the lobby

in plain light of day
there's only one tendency

for the truth does lie

casting nothing left

but dashed center-directions
pressed moderately

 

rubes' oligarchy
grabbed and gagged in the east wing 

re-released and based

 

it's not at the ends

where the horseshoe converges

it's in the middle*

 

*Gock told me that

 

 

 __

 

 

Happy New Year, everybody!

Let's make 20 26 a thing.. .

Subscription Service

rhymin' pun is meant

to be in hock step:
| alms ending and bomb spending |

Let's check the markets.

so low loki

Wayee, no wayee, what wont for a quay:

When one's whence's wherewithal

Whiches twixt top of the stump

And a set of steak knives

Or a twist toward the end of the butt

To lead an opposition in retirement,

Siphoning sinecure sans silhouettes

Whose consecration culls views few choose

Soever superior to plucked popular opinion

To have been begotten by the head

Yet not made by the same; that's what hurts,

For frets on networks leave marks

Of the schlepped away of flesh and blood

Libel led mockery of plodding existence

Liquified Natural Gasback Fundi

Advertising does not define our perception of reality, it just sells enough bits and pieces of it to partially shape a landscape of choices, which affords certain brands of consumers the right to claim that their choices are more limited than they'll admit is true at the same time they're buying enough of what is being hawked to dictate more the delimitation of choice than the advertising itself. The eventual unavailability of alternatives is a self-made delusion nurtured into full-fledged reality.

The only outright successful advertising campaign is the long-con that has people buying in to the advertising industry by the billions. This is not to say that the advertising they offer never works for those paying for it; it just works without fail for the industry itself.

—6 January 2014

That'd be a few months post Euromaidan. Three paragraphs later it boils down to this being, ultimately, about the creation of an environment, i.e. an industry-friendly one. Whose industry? Good question. The long-term rams of being hammered by hangover inducing, malignancy curating, fear fomenting, fossil fueling, and, everybody's fave, ultra- processed stomach stuffing makes meaningful public discussion... what was the question?

 

The advertiser'd tell you it's ours. They're not wrong. With apologies to those of you not us, we're buying it (even if our private payment app doesn't say we're paying for it), as in, like, lapping it up while being lapped up. Soaking in it, foremost psychologically, unless your head's already under.

 

Naturally by "us" I mean "not them". But since they say they're us too, and they manage to pay one dollar to privatize any of ours vs. the eight to twelve figures that come out of the politico managed monetary fund whenever it's the other way round,  then whatevs they're selling back to us we don't even know enough to make a stink about, of their odorless, colorless liquefaction, is more justified than this awful text.

 

The manufacture of consent, insofar as it indicates the post-production of public opinion through selective censorship & propaganda, has resulted in the perpetuation of plausible consent, a cultural aspect not defined by whether or not the prospective consumer of media believe what's put forth, but by the expectation that others believe it. As such, it maintains the appearance of consent. In other words, consent is not necessary, only the plausibility of it.

—25 May 2015

 

 

Nevertheless, necessarily, at some point, because at some point somewhere somebody had to have wondered whether the steady growth of the plausibility of others' consent had by longer term diminishing dissonance become one's own, before they forgot they wondered such a thing, probably at the point of payment notification, now synchronized for easier than ever oversight (pun intended).

 

The intro to that text from 2015 started with an appetiser on plausible denial with a Cold War era sample because, as an x-er, I was just ripe enough, plausibly, to pick my own perspective on the b.s. being served up as freedom loving good versus evil empire enabling bad. Along the way to four decades later the freedom's freighted from allegorical apple pie to literal fried potatoes not literally French for emphasis,  to, most prominently as far as I can see, the amalgamation of a domestic and foreign threat just balmy enough to make plausible the denial it has anything to do with business as usual.

Now, the advertising advocates - they'll tell you that proven ad strategies are being employed to influence every aspect of our lives; and the stats geeks will interpret the results and tell you who you are; and although most won't believe this definition about themselves, they'll believe the definition about everyone else.

That, in this context, superfluous seeming insert is meant to recontextualize what is plausibly thunk to be thought by this new-fangled enemy. I don't mean to fall into the same guys who fallacy, which could cite the idea, as plausible as anything, that the reactionaries of then are the same of today, with the ironic twist of their having abandoned some key point of their ideological inheritance (here touted as a good thing), but that is plausibly thunk.

 

What is thought by any enemy, however, and however convoluted, begets in adaptable measure the need to adopt a most opposite position, the most plausible of which, conveniently enough, comes packaged as one available option. That this option will continue to follow, cafeteria style, that which they were hired to oppose (eventually over the Overton cliff) is not necessary knowledge as long as those to be opposed are tilting against some other bluff.

 

I don't know what anyone plausibly believes, but imagine generations of a few plausibly exclusive sets of believers unwittingly assuming they had has shaped an environment, superficially oppositional, that, in spite of all the apparent turbulence, is homeostatic for us who benefit from not questioning the cost of certain processes. Luckily, the processes are included in featured ads, certain details depending. It's our business it's none of our business. How bad could it be?

Apeerances

Joking aside, 'corrupt intent' entails an attempt to corrupt the decision-making of an as-if otherwise impartial process, whereas Oliver's offer is made to get the appearance of an already walking & talking conflict of interest, in the person of Justice Thomas, to recuse himself of any and all such future appearances, which in and of themselves continue to corrupt the evidential integrity of the process. In other words, it's an anti-bribe.

dint like whither

didn't live with us a bike was stowed in a boot rip you tay shun leaves

Hit or Miss

The quintessential underpinning of propaganda is a truth by arrangement of associations. During a tour of the Joint Security Area of the Korean DMZ in 1986, the respective allocations of land just to the north and south of the line were referred to by the American military guide as the "village of propaganda" and the "village of freedom". The arrangement of associations is already clear before you hear those names. You'd have to be pretty cheeky under such tense circumstances to point out the irony associated with naming such names.

 

Standing there in a main vein of the Cold War amid so many contradictions managed to make a Strangelove moment out of the, then, race to exponentialize mutually assured destruction by the presidential administration of which I was a meaningful representative only by association: The amusement of the moment made me wish I could project precious bodily fluids onto the negotiating table that straddled the line between truth and lies standing there in front of me.

 

Fast forward to a new age of apparent avuncular incoherence. If you have not followed American politics, you might not know anything about the polar shift that's taken place. In the period mentioned above, a sort of "reds under the bed" doom mongering was extended for decades by Republicans to associate with Soviet Russia anyone who'd oppose their belligerent set of military and fiscal ideology, and accuse eyes that roll at such innuendo as rolling with the program of communist totalitarianism.

 

Today there's an accusation used by Democrats to associate people skeptical of their policies with doing the work of the Russian president. If you're a "both parties do it" kind of person, you might not think this is significant, and it remains true that its bipartisanship that matters most when it comes to the things that will screw the most people over, but a snapshot of what most people consider plausible is meaningful to the messengers of statecraft, which is why there's a steady flow of carrot and stick implications to believing or disbelieving official narratives. You can remain untainted by association if you keep your doubts to yourself. To question official narratives is to agree to be shamed.

 

Between the US State Department's claim a couple of week's ago and today, the official narrative has indeed shaped up to be a partially plausible. What began as a series of allegations regarding a Russian plan to invade Ukraine, having been expanded to include the assertion that US intelligence has proof of a Russian plan to use a false flag scenario to justify the invasion, now has the US saying that their frequent updates, which recently included a specific date, are meant to serve the additional purpose of preventing their near certain predictions from happening at all.

 

I say this is plausible because it had already occurred to me before they made it explicit. It's important to distinguish that this does not mean the alleged intelligence is the plausible part, just that it is plausible that someone might accuse someone else of planning something in order to preempt it. This has the added benefit of rendering the accuser benevolent in their accusations, whether they are true or not.

 

The arrangement of associations here are both big and small. Big, meaning a big country with historical DNA-like associations: bloody revolution, collectivization of private property, evil empire, totalitarian state of oligarchs with a murderous ruler at the helm. Less associated with it is that in between it became one in a long line of states that were the object of clever US election meddling, which may or may not be why they'd want to meddle in those of the US. Most plausible is that given the resources, meddlers are gonna meddle.

 

There used to be, and may still be, a doctrine, or policy, that said it's best not to assassinate other countries' leaders lest you justify the assassination of your own. When you are a nation with spies worthy of a franchise of cinematic cash cows that may or may not serve equally well as vehicular propaganda, it's plausible you'd officially sanction such a policy while running afoul of it behind the scenes. Only for freedom, mind you.

 

I bring up assassination because of one of its most immediate associations: JFK. The narrative behind the narrative of the Warren Commission was that Lee Harvey Oswald was acting as an agent of the Soviet Union. The purpose of the Warren Commission was to put this to rest so as to avoid an international incident. This low-key accuses the commies, but insists upon a lone gunman. If and when "all the files are released", you can bet it'll be the commies what did it. I imagine a time when everyone agrees that it was a murder planned and coordinated by the CIA to counter a planned detente with the Soviets, whereby the only disagreement will be whether or not it was a good thing.

Back to the present and the small arrangement of associations. In the above linked video of the ex-spook US State Department guy alleging evidence of a future false flag, the journalist likens the spokesperson's claim to "Alex Jones" type stuff, which is his way of associating the narrative with the promulgation of unfounded and outlandish conspiracy theory. The spokesman responds by suggesting the journalist is more comfortable as an apologist for the president of Russia. This is not stuff you can't make up, but stuff being made up all the time.

You could also make an association between the current war of words and the Cuban Missile crisis. Except, if you're a westerner, this'd make you an apologist at best and a traitor on Twitter until further notice. It's fair if your point is that the parallels are paltry compared to the differences. It's plausible that Ukraine today, as with Cuba during the crisis, represents a border state attempting to further associate with a traditional adversary. The US is a dominant military force. It's not absurd to liken the potential of NATO nukes so near the Russian border to the presence of those, then, in Cuba, as long as you lead with the fact that NATO and US nukes are good and Russian nukes are bad.

 

Other differences between then and now are that the Soviet Union hadn't in the years leading to the crisis demanded that its allies not import US energy resources or face sanctions. If you thought about it long enough, you might wonder how Germany and the EU could have for so long allowed themselves to associate with a pipeline of enormous time and production cost, only to attempt to disassociate themselves from it when it was so close to coming online. It's the little coincidences in life that make it interesting.

It's interesting that there are people who know false flags so well that, in exposing one planned by the enemy, they would risk reminder of a guilt by historical association. All so they can save the world for freedom. That's double-plus good. Like, when referencing troops or military exercises or espionage, a contextual association would be enough. You wouldn't have to choose between deploy & amass, train & intimidate, neutralize & assassinate, but somehow it would come naturally anyway.

Imagine the international intrigue if there were an arbiter of all things USA from another part of the globe whose alliance would give all of the Gulf of Mexico to Mexico. If you don't believe a promise to keep NATO west of the Elbe was given, you might imagine there's an ongoing adherence to treaties with indigenous people. I got your bridge right here.

 

Of course we're good and they're bad. That's always the case. Your arrangement hinges on who you associate with. If you don't see yourself associating with anyone in this scenario, it can't be easy to make sense of it, but as soon as you associate with one or the other, it all becomes clear.

 

So in the moments ahead rife with accusations and counter-accusations of provoking aggression or the breach of ceasefire (which's already buried what the Ukrainian President had to say), it'll be simply by dint of the arrangement of associations that you'll know who and what to believe. Feel good about your inborn arrangement, or suffer the shame of your uncertainty.

Look don't look.

There are these systemic phenomena that highlight or hush historical significance and/or default to follies over felonies in the interpretation of trustworthiness of state actors.

Somewhere in here I've got an entry wherein I puked a polemic, parodying the way authorities dictate to the public the most innocent interpretation of impropriety whenever someone important gets caught kneeling at the wrong altar. It went something like,
 
"We regret these unfortunate events and would like to clearly express that we at no time engaged in any illegal behavior whatsoever."
 
"Yes, it would appear the entire scope of things might have been misunderstood. We're taking a serious look at potential points of failure within the relevant agencies."
 
"Now you guys are just pointing fingers. We've said all there is to say on the matter. It's time to move on."
 
If you do not know the reference point of the above satire, there's a good chance the press have done a solid job by way of one or both aforementioned systemic phenomena. To take a local example, the reporting on what is referred to as the Wirecard scandal settled the "who knew what when" cliché part of its work so quickly that the former Chancellor's name doesn't even appear anywhere in the English Wikipedia article about it. For indeed that org's design enables self-appointed gatekeeping with a goalpost badmintoning interpretation of what constitutes a reliable source.
 
The politics that wrangle at places like Wikipedia and Snopes is not another story altogether, but nevertheless appear here as an unfortunate byproduct. Briefly, to get everything you need to know from those resources, you'd need to peruse all language versions for the links to all their sourced material, consider what follows regarding the function of their brands, and somehow effectively determine whether any of it bears out or eliminates reasonable suspicion. Think critical theory rabbit holing.
 
Traditionally here I have cited the respective media brands primarily in how they bolster the case for a certain brand of politics. With respect to the playing up or down of things, however, there's also the effect a brand has on the views of those who oppose that brand. If you consider, for example, the psychological and emotional effect Murdoch media and the Springer press have on their active rivals, you can observe how those rivals are made dubious about things that could be in their interest not to be so dubious of and, ultimately, how both consumers and non-consumers of certain media messaging are kept ignorant.
 
In short, not only might someone distrust anything coming from media they distrust, but even to the extent that they do not necessarily kill the message along with the messenger, if their preferred source of news does not engage with the same subject matter, then it's more likely they'll simply question the motivation of the source they don't like and move the topic off their radar if they haven't already placed it in the expanding fake news folder of their unconsciousness.

In the US they have a political setup that functions in the same binary fashion, in that they have a two party system. Not that I want to make too much of that, for in every country I've resided you could argue there are two political parties that hold the majority of power. Still, the dynamic at work in the explicitly binary version in America comports cleanly with what I'm talking about.

Case in point is the Benghazi brouhaha, branded here previously as "Benghazi!!!11" (i.e. with a view to the blowhard's reaction rendering the activities of unaccountable war-making into a list of things for which to cut one's own slack, if not pretend doesn't exist). I hasten to point out that, whenever convenient, blowhards will highlight follies over felonies.
 
To bring home the point about categorical rejection of things perceived as coming from the wrong side, if I fail here to cite another example that reverses from the previous paragraph the roles of the political parties and their respective brands in the press, then I will have failed to counter one of the systemic phenomena. I will appear biased against one particular party and therefore will make someone who is biased against the party biased against the first feel like there's something crucial missing from my point and simply dismiss it. Whataboutery is defined as much by an order of events and reaction to them, which will work for one of two guilty parties, but its function is probably most often in mind only, i.e. remains unstated but with perhaps greater effect. And sensing that some pot is calling some kettle black is not down to irrationality, even if shades of gray getting lost in the mix results in behavior against one's interest.
 
As I multitask in search of an example to bring this in balance, I should mention that the example mentioned above follows the function of those two parties' brands and is therefore more likely to bring about more of the same dynamic in their relationship to each other, like what eventually resulted in Bernie Sander's saying, "People are sick of hearing about your damn emails!" If you didn't know, you might think that was a criticism of the candidate rather than the opposing party railing loudly against her. Maybe it was a sneaky sideswipe, critical of both the former secretary of state's email activity and "her emails!!!!11". Certainly, being sick of it all is an understandable reaction.

Anyway, perceived performative outrage falls onto a list of responses to that which ranges from the petty and insignificant all the way up to high crimes and misdemeanors, and because it falls onto the list of performative outrage it is easy to dismiss every one. This is not a conspiracy so much as the function of those who perform outrage well whether its genuine or not and, so purposed, grab at anything that will do the trick. It is systemically driven, this relegating criminal activity to the bin of insignificance, with machines within the machine that maintain their own parts and partisans.
 
So, yeah, we're not gonna come up with an example satisfactory to Democrats of Democrats doing the same to Republican post holders, because like their rivals they'd never admit to engaging is such antics. Consider, anyway, the effect Russiagate played in bolstering support for the targets of that investigation. "Putin!!!11" is a gift that keeps on gifting. Keep in mind that one's gift is another's poison, which's never stopped the manipulators of the machinery from slow dripping it to the great addicted, no matter how absurd the risk. On the contrary; it plays so well. I type this minutes after reading of the resignation of the Inspector of the German Navy for having said Putin had earned respect (and is needed against China). He basically rendered a statement plausibly presentable as pro-Putin enough to justify his ousting from a military strategic perspective, but also from anyone hedging in paranoia of the known unknown.

 

All this grandstanding on matters serious and insignificant also clouds that thing one could also be concerned about, which the fourth estate fittingly features among their most soothing of lubricants: bipartisanship. For all the promise and reassurance or relief there is in seeing one's representatives, for so long presented as bitterly divided, reaching across proverbial gangways to get (something or another) along, the preterite of compromise will always be compromised. But the alternative is so threatening. Fear is systemic, isn't it?
 
Built into that which rules from Berlin is a system so potentially non-partisan that it sheds a kind of light onto these phenomena on both sides of the Atlantic. Whereas in the US bipartisan bills are passed with barely a blip from the press, particularly in how they pale compared to the nail-biters presented to the people's gleeful agitation, in Germany coalitions between parties for the sake of meeting a majority threshold lead to wonky press speculation every election cycle regarding the whos and with whoms, and if im/plausible how the hells. It's down to the existence of several smaller parties that neither of the two Volksparteien may ever again hold a majority alone.
 
There are advantages and disadvantages to this. Fourteen years ago I told you the former outweigh the latter. Now, I think they cancel each other out. The Venn diagram that would represent like-mindedness between social democrats in Name, ecologists in Name, and libertarians in Name should be enough to illustrate how the opposition is never really the opposition, but a performative exercise in policy making.

 

But the alternative! Anguish about the dreaded alternative is systemic because people naturally would rather get along at every point where it preserves whatever they think they got. That's the tiny conservative in everyone. What passes for empathy is sometimes a superstition that says you could get what's coming to you, which is the latency that drives Democrats who like to think well of themselves, as well as the projection from Republicans who mock them for it.

Rather than an arbitrarily determined left-right model of desired governance, which enables the ground roots rule of ignorance, fallacious categorical thinking, and dishonesty, maybe it would be instructive to look at conservatism and radicalism as polar opposites that should move toward some sensible synthesis of preserving what's needed while changing what would prevent the same. At any rate, the plausible consent of lazy branding exercises achieves only the apparent consensus of its choir.

 

When you ask the entire poll-willing public whether they think private money in public politics is worth preservation, you get a distinct result compared to the answer to a question posed about one particular political personality or party's potential conflict of interest. But if that which is systemic has so far successfully prevented the unflawed application of a theory, then it will probably only ever remain just that.

 

The systemic flaw in this electoral binary has resulted in this wave of hand-wringing and finger wagging that people won't fall in line and thereby sentence society to the going unspeakable alternative. That that thinking could exist means there is only falling in line, stepping out of line, or more actively embracing the unspeakable alternative. Coalition-building parliaments around the world preserve next to this model an applicable alternative to being considered pariahs among putatively polite peers, as someone who doesn't deserve to sleep at night for not falling in line, getting with the program, and postponing the apocalypse.

 

A German Green voter would never get the Nader or Stein treatment from SPD bookholders. For they can just join ranks and trade together in what turns out to be a profitable enterprise for whomever wields its influence. That the latest coalition is down to one former coalition party's corruption in the extreme while not managing to taint Mutti Dearest might be enough to make Teflon Ron blush from six feet down. But it's the presentation of that corruption that has managed to bury that of the new chancellor in an even deeper memory hole.

 

The urge to preserve what might be left of what one thinks one has is probably age-old and instinctive. It applies recently as it relates to many millions having used a vote for President Biden as a bulwark against incumbent disaster. And as gobsmacking as it may seem to some, an additional record number of voters came out for that disaster as savior. In a base sense it applies to both billionaires, who do whatever will increase their winnings so as not to risk the relative insecurity of things going the other direction (in this economy?!-), and me in how I don't give the homeless guy the change from my shopping every single time I see him. I could probably do that (though I haven't done the math), and billionaires could easily forgo more money (and I'll bet they're doing the math).

 

Of course, billionaires can achieve the kind of regulatory capture that renders democracy irrelevant as it relates to changing their relationship to the wider world, and hence the wider world's relationship to them. What about we wider world's relationship to each other and the extent to which the ruling class can be considered the other?

 

It's not lost on me that every claim I make about the motivations of anyone but myself are right or wrong roundly shaped by the billions upon billions that maintain this infrastructure of projecting and reflecting presumptions. This was true when the press was paper. The algorithm has a way of making some aspect of this effect more efficient. Or maybe it's again just this little notion in my head making it impossible for me to sever the tie between the real and virtual worlds, the assumption being that, however much it doesn't reflect my own real experience with people in the real world, these opinions out of virtual space must represent something larger than my neighborhood.

 

In my real experience, animosity toward the other party has been around long enough and of such quality that I don't think it's fair to say people are more divided now than any other time in recent history. Nor do I think the entirely understandable and often justified nature of much of the animosity is because criminal state actors have got more extreme. My argument hinges on the definition of values, of course, and you could make a case for an increased brazenness of malfeasance, but if you're blatantly honest I think you'd have to consider all aspects of potential whataboutery to assess how much brazenness serves as cover for something else you would consider anything but worthy of preservation were it not for systemic phenomena that would have you rather not think about it. I'd rather not think about it.

Counteracting Corners

Hush, now, history, don't you cry, 

Mama schon laundered the lobby dry.

Since the coo has fled from angst,

Facts place the mat at a door in Minsk.

If our deal should turn green red,

Bills gonna land in Olaf's bed.

If in that bed's the blackest boy,

Lasch'll drown you in tears of joy.

Posts all around the traffic quilt,

Credit's just another name for guilt.

Taliban Claim Control of News

The word "function" can be understood to mean "purpose" and vice versa. Like, you will read about the "function of democracy" in spite of the fact that those who truly believe in democracy at the bottom of their hearts probably believe it has a purpose, which would be their purpose. Then there's the function of "any good democracy" should we have any doubt about the purposes that might come by way of the results.

But function really does just mean function whereas purpose is when intention is applied to the desired outcome of a function. More simply put, a function is a way to get there. I would think then that function trumps purpose in the cold hierarchy of computation, but is it possible to calculate the relative value of a function versus its purpose? That depends on the value, of course.

The Overton window is an elevator, not a sliding door.

It occurs to me only now that the latest twit for twat shines a light on what has become the traditional enablement of corporate power by the state, two apparently independent sectors of influence nearly indistinguishable from one another in terms of systemic economics.

 

So this latest disagreement among posers of free speech could be analogous to things the hoarding money mongers whine about, as if. That is, whenever some policy that equals a windfall to industries that donate huge portions of their money to the people who pushed for the policy, yet they act to the public as if it hurts their bottom lines.

 

The social media age has, right down to the term social media age, created a complexity for complexities' sake circumstance in which thoughtful wonks of reputed good faith can debate and legislate, or not, human and corporate agency. At the same time, this leaves an expiring breathing room for outrage at the universal untouchability of monopolistic control, which edges closer to what is "problematic".
 
For those unacquainted with the why of my reference, German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently replied to a question about Dumpster Fire's ban from Twitter, calling "problematic" private industries' taking decisions that belong to the state. That's an interesting take from the head of government that, with their Network Enforcement Act passed only a few years ago, legally obliges the operators of large social media to intervene independently if they discover obvious illegal activity on their platforms. Failure to act could result in a fine of 50 million euros.

What you might recall amidst all the yahoo about fake news is that the affected networks found unworkable the compromise to the drafted legislation that would force them to establish an intermediary body with the responsibility of differentiating between the varying levels of perceivable illegality among the content in question, deciding what should be purged and stored, within when and for how long determined by law, and of course to have to coordinate constantly with government appointees so that they can review each issue's lawfulness. The pesky bureaucracy of it all!

 

Ah, the expense of being a monopoly.

Coincidentally, social media woke up in bed with untold opposition on constitutional grounds, on multiple fronts. Not that that helped the cause. And yet the curve of their bottom lines is trending only stronger y-wardly.

 

When it comes to bagging worms, this might be a good example of why it is said that the German CDU is more in line with the Democratic Party in the US. Neither shies away from creating solutions to the wrong problems, least of all understood by their more conservative critics (ostensibly at least) except that they understand they just don't like regulations. This should not lead one to think that the allegedly lefter leaning SPD is any different. It would be more accurate to say that the US Democratic Party is closer to the current German coalition, both CDU and SPD...

 

And that is where we run out of room to talk, let alone time to quantify the countless individual social and economic positions taken together and apart once you include both American parties. The reason "left" and "right" are no longer viable terminology is that politics has evolved into levels of fascism, the symptoms of which we have successfully identified with the Dumpster Fire and his minion outgrowth brandishing the scary threat of violence.

 

The smaller symptoms we can deal with, which include everything from the brute force we can only sigh about, or sign our children up for, but don't quite fear the same, and the crony capitalism we are comfortable with, as long as the best of the press can provide a table showing how a few more of the least of us is doing better because of it. We are reminded that the largesse of the latter, if there is any, is restrained by financial responsibility, yet the former somehow remains the only part of the budget forever unfettered by austerity.

If the world's biggest influencers are too big send to their room without internet, should we feed them?

 

And this is the point, really. The little people should worry more about what little ability they have to choose not to use social media platforms before whether or not they can be banned from using them. I mean not so much the little people, say, like you and me who are aware of our weakness. I mean more the "Facebook as public utility" types, whom I suggest remove their nose from the rear of the brave new world long enough to smell anything but.

I don't much care for the proposal for the monster's crackin' new outfit.

 

Even now that Craven Piece No. 45 has had his YooToobs tied for the next 7 days for being a danger to the community, the Office of the US President enjoys unrivaled access to the consciousness of every person on the planet. Yet it takes everything for this particular manifestation to muster any semblance of composure when forced to go on "real television" to communicate directly with the world. Now imagine your average Joe Plummer forced to go cold turkey. Could you survive being cut off from Big Data?

First they came for the teller and I didn't speak out because I already found online banking more convenient. And why not? Now more than ever we can thank God, if that's His real name, for our ability to make use of our corporate benefactors' infrastructure (always the result of our blood, sweat, & taxes) and not having to touch anyone.

 

And here we are. And here I am.

 

I hate repeating myself because, being aware of this, I'll always frame it as such (as just now) in an attempt to justify the framing as a reiteration of a long-standing point. That's right, circular self-justification. It's my writing schtick. But in this case I need to repeat how I watched Walgreens pop up on every corner in Chicago, followed by the proverbial lagging economic indicator that was every space between the corners going out of business.

 

It was during this period, the roaring 90s of "it's the economy, stupid", that this reality writ small could be read in the free weekly, which came in the form of an article or two that kinda sorta lamented Scenes' (bookstore/cafe) slow suffocation and death once Starbucks opened a few doors down, on the corner of all places. It should be no surprise how it's come that Big Consumer have managed to brand themselves, sometimes aware of the irony, "What're y'gonna do?!"

Maybe this is why politicians earn sympathy. The awareness that none of us is worthy of anything but what we got.

If there is one thing our political betters have mastered it's the ability to brand themselves in spite of themselves by selectively highlighting some of their positions over others. The current demagogue is no exception. He very effectively tapped into the reality that the working class had been sold out by way of bipartisan policy without having to get too specific beyond promising to get them better trade deals. The only reason this didn't sell across the board was down to his clear bias against black people.

 

Not that any of us who are only bigoted on a liminal level cannot cite his association with (or love from) one or another person who happens to be black to deny this reality. Again, politicians are masters of getting people to deny reality. I guess this is their ultimate purpose, which is the original point of the paragraph: They maneuver among realities, drawing attention to some over others, sometimes successfully only to a select audience.

The big difference now is that the media stopped playing along right about the point it became clear in 2016 who would be the nominee. The subsequent four years' press coverage laid a foundation for the eventual claim that the world was being stolen from the poor assemblage of MAGAheads.

 

The last time this happened so clearly was a brief period only after they'd managed to get the permanent war they wanted, with all the accoutrements, when it was "uncovered" what that had entailed & "confirmed" that there had been no ground beneath their footing. Dubya's Turd Blossom Inc. were a true turd in the priNtn't'fYT media, who had played as central a role to their definitely illegal by any standards project as FOX had done. Then, all that passed like corpses in the water under the Arlington Memorial Bridge. Is it passe for me to mention the ones between the Tigris and Euphrates? How about the "justified" multitudes in and around the Hindu Kush? What a difference a seamless transition makes. Or not.

 

Having refused to accept the opposite in a binary set just because it is against something that disgusts me, I've been on about what's wrong with Dem Party policy for the same amount of time. Think of it as the reverse of the "but wouldn't you want someone in office who is at least responsive to your concerns?" (leaving aside for the moment that my answer is that they are not). By focusing my effort on pointing out the corruption of the DNC (to use one convenient scapegoat), I am concentrating on arguing with someone I hope would be responsive to my concerns. This is usually met with a "Yeah, but..." Which almost justifies the effort.

 

To the object of the but: It is no less confounding to me that someone could view the available candidates and come to the conclusion that the current president is an acceptable alternative. Either then or now. Leaving aside the white supremacist angle, only by way of the aforementioned media coverage, a media that we all know is driven against our interest, can one come to understand how the largest of his base sticks with him. It's a matter of self-evidence without needing any. But regarding those who have the ability to discern, beyond the apparent trolls who will troll to the death, it's a head scratcher.

 

I am probably overestimating the discernment, and underestimating the affront this sentence is to their sensibilities. Remember, the story goes: they were emboldened in their rejection of Bubba's even worse half, not just if by selective misogyny (an analysis equally convenient) but by being dismissed as "deplorables", unworthy of redemption.

 

As if on cue, the wonks took to the press to point out that NAFTA and GLBA had been necessary reforms, in spite of any evidence. That language sound familiar? Evidence is for the weak. What they meant was that those were inevitable and as bipartisan as any legislation. But they underpinned their arguments by slagging off anyone who lost their job or house as derelict in the duty of getting with the program. Retraining and what not. Maybe not deplorable, but somewhere between unfortunate and pathetic.

 

Now, it'd be a stretch for me to say that the targets of the deplorables comment were reading this wonky apologia, or that the aspersion itself was not strictly meant as a dog whistle for those of us who fear the extreme jingoists we've known from the old days, a folk who have grown up and raised more of the same, but if we bookend that with the most recent declaration as to how special and loved they are by their leader, well, the self-denying white supremacy could amount to little more than that which adds drool to their ire. Somebody loves them.

 

Anyway, putrid actors in both the public and private spheres have managed to grift attaboys out of their "standing up" to the MAGAverse. Namely, all we good people can make common cause with the likes of those who have sold us into illegal wars and made us bust our own unions into tiny gravel, over which both will be driving their Musks until they finish building their tower.

 

Those who continue to enable His Holy MAGAdom, on the greater evil hand, have backed themselves into a corner that has become their only refuge from the idiot masses that would literally hang them if they dare otherwise. This is analogous to using the tech until it owns you. Did you not see that coming, fellas?

 

Politicians have been allowed to lie to the lowly for so long that we find the most odious symptom yet of our creeping fascist corporate state was not only able to co-opt the language of both anti-war and pro working class to help obfuscate his way to victory last time — and during his term outdo his nemesis in wealth distribution, deportation and droning, actual brag-worthy accomplishments, records broken that his nemesis predecessor (that African usurper to his American birthright) had set. His secret droning was hardly reported compared to the 24/7 coverage of his countless misdeeds.

 

But more recently he repackaged what had four years ago begun as a sly reminder of DNC malfeasance versus Bernie Sanders to suggest their outright theft of democracy in order to steal the same again, thereby "linguistically programming" his legion, which includes an unusual assortment of one issue voters, MAGAest of whom will, in spite of all their warm working class catch phrasing, maintain the view that anything that suggests a more empathic approach than their leader must amount to a communist takeover.

 

Some folks just wanna be kissed while they're being fucked. This would seem to be common among people of many political stripes. Or, more broadly, two. Maybe this will unite us.

 

Pointing this out in the wrong company makes me the asshole. Especially now is never the time.      

Twin Piques

What follows is a reading of an investigation. The reading is to make a point independent of the object of the investigation. As such, it is my hope that those for whom the object of the investigation is of zero interest will recognise the investigation itself for what it is - an interesting appreciation for an art form and a correction of a short-circuited view of the same.

 

There's a guy with a YooToob room called Twin Perfect who virtualized along my way some time back with a four hour thirty-six minute guide through his inquiry, which he gave the title Twin Peaks ACTUALLY EXPLAINED (No, Really).

 

To keep non-fans in mind in this reading of his analysis, I'll summarize his main point thus: The original television series Twin Peaks was a comment on "consumable television violence" and simultaneously an attempt to course correct the tendency toward the same. In the view of show creator David Lynch, the thirty-to-sixty minute crime drama or murder mystery had detrimental influence on its viewership cum society's ability to empathise with human subjects of darkness and light. Instead, what it offered was a concise package of one-dimensional good and evil that resolved itself "before bedtime".

 

As a fan of the show myself, I began to watch Twin Perfect's creation with the intention to stop as soon as I had determined it to be anything from bullocks to boring, and at most thought I'd view it in self-incrementalised instalments; I watched the whole thing in one sitting without even a slight loss of interest. My only criticism is a superficial one: His imitation of Lynch's voice, a mimic virtually anyone can pull off with ease, might get annoying for some. It didn't get to me.

What I believe makes his take on the entire tale most valid is not his skilful connection of dots and remarkable attention to a level of detail often missed, but the points he raises for which Lynch is actually on record, and then how all the dots he tabulates connect back to those points. In short, once one views the entire original series with the criticism of "consumable television violence" in mind, recognising the elements that underpin this meta-narrative is unavoidable.

I hadn't recognised any of this meta-narrative throughout watching the original run, its reruns and then multiple viewings of the hifi stereo VHS copy I made of the original. It didn't dawn on me sitting through the prequel Fire Walk With Me twice, nor watching all eighteen hours of The Return three years ago.

 

I recognised something, but my explanation of its value was in line with the standard variety, albeit certainly more nuanced than those who short-circuited the original attempt to course correct "consumable television violence", even if I had not been aware of this in those terms at the time.

While it is true that only the considerable response of the sizeable fanbase to the network had made it possible for the second season of the original series to be broadcast in full, it was apparently also the sizeable fan interest in solving "who killed Laura Palmer" that led the same network to demand that Lynch, to paraphrase the director, "snip off the head of the golden goose". For it had been his intention to continue to explore the characters' lives rather than solve a crime, "to shed light" by way of an investigation into the darkness that affected each of those lives, including that of the dearly departed one, the proverbial golden goose. Only so might we come to appreciate what makes them all tick.

Now it is also true that the series is rife with old film and television references and tropes. Everything taken on that surface level, it's complex enough, You know, allegorical and arty and all that. That was, for sure, critical to my appreciation of it. But as Twin Perfect almost perfectly lays out, even multiple metaphors employed for the apparent sake of the story were often sly references back to the original point that television drama is one dimensional and bad, as in evil, if I may use another half of life's frequently stated dualisms. That is, when we disregard the depth of real human affect by coming to quick conclusions, the dark side has the upper hand, even if we'd have thought the good guys had come out on top.

 

So when director David Lynch did as told and presented the solution to the crime that began the series — an episode of television no small number of critics found to be at the apex of the art form — it nevertheless put an ironic end to the attempt at the art form that had allowed the culmination. Fans know what happened next. Lynch departed and the show mostly sucked until his return to end the original run, an end that had finally split the fanbase decisively into the twin camps of "brilliant" and "...but dissatisfying". Why? Because all they want is answers.

 

As Twin Perfect's investigation notes, what came next creatively was a reaction to what had happened to the production, and the carrying on of a story most of the fans would find disappointing, primarily, so his point, because it explored the life of Laura Palmer. Twin Peaks fans had no interest in the protagonist. One can disagree with that interpretation, and for sure there were points of contention that had nothing to do with the main character. Still, the prequel film flopped both commercially and critically.

 

Maybe not coincidentally, the meta-narrative is more on-the-nose in moments of Fire Walk With Me than anything else in the Twin Peaks universe, so obvious that I am embarrassed to admit I hadn't noticed it. If it weren't for the fact that zero critics took note of it, it would be unremarkable.

This meta-narrative would continue throughout the third season broadcast a few years ago and still, nobody took note. Instead, what one read about The Return was, love it or hate it, it was typical Lynch given free reign. Surrealism, don'tcha know. I'd thought the same, even if in the love camp. Moreover, I'd be unoriginal by noting that its structure followed the mobius strip layout of a timeline territory that he had been treading as far back as Lost Highway. And it's not just that I had found the frequently occurring line "Is it future, or is it past?" not to be profound at all. And it's not just that I failed to take the question seriously enough to explore, and instead received it as a faux deep thought about the mystery of existence.

What Twin Perfect points out is that these questions are not philosophical musings I fancy myself to have grown beyond — what I had considered unfortunate naive blips amidst otherwise sublime expressionistic art — but keys to how the parts connect to the original idea. Contrary to what I thought people were missing about Lynch's body of work, there are clues. They just don't make sense of the apparent story until, as Twin Perfect puts it, one finds the key, the original idea, and follows this meta-narrative to decode both.

 

I'll finish this bit with one specific example, though not necessarily the most profound: "Bob" is the name of the dark force that inhabits the Twin Peaks character who killed his own daughter. Bob also represents the darkness of consumable television violence. The father, on the other hand, represents a reality that's more difficult to digest, unless of course, you can swallow it whole before bedtime. As consumable television violence, next week Bob can move on to his next victim, thereby allowing the viewer to focus as briefly as possible on the collateral damage. Bob is both "the evil that men do" and a good enough cause to forget about it.

 

__

 

 

It's important to note how two parts of a whole can shift configurations while remaining two parts of a the same whole. One must broaden one's view of what constitutes the parts and not rely on standard definitions. An adequate inquiry into what constitutes the parts shifting of configurations reveals the excess of the whole as well as any or all of its constituent parts. This is compounded by the fact that any constituent part is a whole unto itself, depending on the object of inquiry.

 

As it relates to the many configurations of humans, no matter how bad things get for a particularly defined whole, there is a part that will insist upon another part's fault while ignoring their own contribution. To be sure, there is plenty of fault in the one part, but never does this make relativism of the fault of another part justifiable. It's understandable, depending on place and perspective, but not justifiable.

 

No matter the extreme, one should not ignore the excess standing at its shoulder. The extreme may seem so extreme that the excess is far afield. This view is also understandable. However, a closer look reveals less distance between what is extreme and what is excessive. The more extreme extreme gets over time, the more crucial it is to keep the excess in critical focus. When one gets caught up in the central importance of calling out the extreme, it gets far too easy to overlook the excess.

 

If we could remove overnight the current stream of extreme from existence, the excess would become extreme in the consequent light of day, though it is doubtful the new extreme would then recognise itself as such. The current stream of extreme cannot be removed overnight. Nor does it seem plausible that the excess will formally recognise its excess beyond a brief episode to merely acknowledge that one has acknowledged something and move on.

 

I am happy at least that last night when I recognised what amounted to yet another real-time teevee-like obsession in progress, it was my bedtime. Although the frightening episode had not been resolved, I stuck to my schedule and got a good night's sleep. I was able to observe the restoration of decorum in all its self-satisfied and self-damning flowery terminology in progress in the morning.

 

Maybe you stayed up late. Maybe you lost sleep. Maybe the satisfaction of the latest resolution is tempered this time. What could be consumed in a defined episode has a real "to be continued" quality. Naturally only more so, because this has been going on for some time. 

 

I'll finish this bit with one specific example, though not necessarily the most profound: Viewed only on its surface, mind you, if one wants to lay this at Bob's feet, it's easy. Just like the man for whom they'd storm the nobly adorned and impressively domed walls of politics, they are deficient of compassion and bent on revenge against a source of their problems they fail to correctly recognise and/or consider completely. That's going around, after all. The rest range from hurting to some degree, more or less lost and without purpose, or left with nothing to lose. Or firm in that belief. 

 

It's understandable that people would just want answers fed to them. But there really is more to it than that. To solve real problems, real questions need to be explored, which is a more difficult task but no less necessary as the drama gets more dramatic. And it will probably only get more difficult to have empathy for the characters, especially those seemingly without any themselves.