The Post-Partisan Emporium

  The Century of the Other John Michael Greer As a rule, no American election means as much as the shouting immediately afterward might lead you to think. Every four years, with a regularity that clockwork rarely matches, the supporters of the winning party pile all their daydreams of Utopia onto their candidate, while the partisans of the losing side howl that this time the jackboots and armbands will show up for certain. Then the new president is inaugurated, and something close to business as usual resumes. These have been getting plenty of use since November 5. This time, granted, the yelling is unusually loud. Some of that is an unintended byproduct of the losing side’s demonizing rhetoric during the last weeks of the campaign. Having convinced themselves (if no one else) that Donald Trump is literally Hitler, many Democrats are quaking in their shoes, sure that he must now act out the role they assigned him and throw them all into camps. Those camps have featured so relentles...

  Donald Trump’s Middle Finger Patrick Lawrence Bird in the Hand – by Mr. Fish Donald J. Trump’s second four years in the White House are shaping up to be more fun than a barrel of monkeys, as the old saying goes. I have it from several sources, who cannot be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, as the old saying at The New York Times goes, that Trump’s cabinet nominees already resemble a barrel of monkeys. And my sources have been “verified by The New York Times,” I will have you know. Let’s leave all those liberal authoritarians, still smarting from their failure to sell Americans a bottle of snake oil labeled “Joy and Good Vibes,” to their predictable freakout as Team Trump runs onto the field. It is fun to watch, but you don’t want to partake of it. Remember, empire was not on the ballot Nov. 5: There was no voting against it and there never will be so long as America runs one. Trump and his people are simply going to run the imperium differently—more crudely, m...

  Decision in November 2024 Illusion of Choice, Delusion of Triumph Back in the day, a liberal Jewish cartoonist named Herbert Block (pen name “Herblock”) gave every new president a free shave. In the case of Richard Nixon, whom he usually portrayed with a very heavy late-in-the-day beard even at dawn, this was seen at the time as giving him – editorially speaking – a fresh start. These days, I expect Herblock would at least give Donald Trump a free haircut, no matter how much he disliked his politics. For my part, I consider presidential elections to be orchestrated and I believe voting matter little in the grand scheme of things. Nonetheless, Trump deserves a measure of respect for transcending what he and his family and friends endured in recent years. I’d be willing to clean Herblock’s clippers and sweep up after he was done. Nor will I soon forget Melania Trump’s smile – I’ll bet she has a list or three. So What Did Happen? Many people are using terms like “landside,” “steamro...