An Awkward Alliance

 Strange bedfellows indeed.

America's conservatives have thrown in with a coalition that includes Nietzscheans, libertarians, and tech accelerationists, with a scattering of angry Christians (which should be an oxymoron) thrown in.

Moreover, the movement is currently led by two of the most UNconservative individuals who could be found, namely billionaire Donald Trump and mega-billionaire Elon Musk. That is, if conservative still means, at its core A.) control of one's appetites, and B.) moral consistency.

What the two men are is not conservative. They are, instead, opportunistic salesmen, for whom nothing is more important than making the sale-- for their own personal benefit.

(photo c/o flipboard)

 

Both men, after all, have been masters at cronyistically benefitting from government largesse over the years. For most of their careers they weren't Republicans. Most of their wheeling-and-dealing was with the political party on the other side of the aisle. Trump, for his real estate projects in New York. Elon Musk, with the federal government, beginning with his relationship with Barack Obama.

(photo c/o Obama Library)

Elon, needless to say, has never had scruples about doing business with anybody. Tesla's largest and most profitable factory is in China.

(photo c/o financialounge)

Donald Trump of late has also shown a preference for dictators. . . .

Which part of the Awkward Alliance will get burned?

Guesses are welcomed.

Art Seen Through Layers of Prisms

 

ONE KEY to keeping the arts human and vital is to embrace the idea of not creating art through layers of prisms of other artworks. (Which is what A.I. does.) For instance, older movies-- of the 1920's, 30's, 40's, 50's-- have a freshness and originality to them missing in later cinema, especially from the film school crowd or certain watched-too-many-movies directors, where everything becomes an homage or recycling or reference to this "auteur" film or that one. Examples range from an alien watching a clip from a John Ford movie in "E.T." to various Coen Brothers offerings to almost every minute of a Quentin Tarantino film. 

The best art is taken from experience and from life.

The Two Forms of Censorship

 WHAT MANY don't realize is there are two kinds of censorship: the old-fashioned kind and the current version.

In the past, censorship meant removing writings and other kinds of media from any and every platform-- blocking access to every avenue of expression. While the situation was difficult, if you somehow did get your or your group's words and ideas out there, they could spread quickly and cause a sensation. This happened in 1917 during the Great War when Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik colleagues distributed their broadsides to Russian troops on the frontlines-- to an audience hungry to read alternatives and explanations. The simple printings were widely circulated.

Today, anyone can say and print anything, somewhere. Good luck getting it noticed! We are in the midst of a bombardment of Too Much Information coming at us from all sides-- a situation exacerbated by the onset of AI, which gives individuals and entities the ability to flood already-saturated markets at ten-to-100 times the previous level. Instead of new ideas or words of truth standing out against a barren landscape, they're buried beneath an avalanche of nonsense.

THE NOTION that technocratic billionaires like Elon Musk or Marc Andreessen can be censored, as they claim, or denied free speech, is ludicrous. They have gigantic megaphones, given their wealth and standing, to start with. As we see with Musk's purchase of Twitter, or his enormous monetary contribution to the Trump 2024 campaign, they retain the ability to steadily and exponentially increase the size of their speech.

We retain the right to scream like lunatics at the air, heard by nobody.

The Populist Moment

 What IS authentic populism?

Authentic populism is not on the right or the left. It involves downsizing our institutions, our culture, and our minds-- moving away from top down Big Box monopolistic thinking. Instead, returning to our roots as a people and a society. Back to our humanity. Right now we live in a fake world, experienced via electronic devices and their artificial digital worlds, created by gigantic trillion-dollar tech companies owned by a handful of hyper-rich individuals. That is today's unfortunate reality, and holds true whatever party of bought-and-paid for politicians is officially in power.

We as a people, a nation, can do way better. But it will involve recapturing the original populist American vision, which existed at least since Lincoln, and can again.

Fiction 2025

 

THE QUESTION is whether fiction-- our literature-- will ever change, or stay stuck in a rut like a car in a ditch, in the mud, tires no longer even spinning-- our literary mandarins press the accelerator but nothing happens, maybe it's broken. Or their foot presses too gently.

Literature isn't moving. It's marginalized. Trapped behind walls. The elite still attend parties-- in Brooklyn, mostly-- while going through the motions of being important, but they all sound tired. It's all been done. Their book education in a stuffy house, too large, with stuffy, usually absent parents. Big armchairs to hide in, resting on plush burgundy carpeting, with heavy green drapes covering windows to keep the world outside. So they can hide. They've been hiding their entire lives-- still are, frankly-- with books full of long corridors they can hide within. Intellectual-- the facade of intellectualism anyway-- not exciting. Don't give them anything exciting, or emotional, or political-- they've been conditioned to ignore anything of relevance in this chaotic society-- that which SHOULD be addressed by these writers and their acolytes.

Instead they're lost on a Virginia Woolf island searching for an elusive lighthouse. They're not moving, and they're not leaving.

Which leaves us: what? 

It leaves opportunity for change.

A tumultuous new year requires all-new ideas.

(Among my new is a new novella, The Loud Boys, available at Kindle, Kobo and Nook Books.

"The Loud Boys" Is Here!

 State of the art "hyper-pop" writing has arrived. The Loud Boys novella is now available at Amazon's Kindle, at Kobo-- soon, at Barnes & Noble's Nook, with a print version to follow.

Fast-paced multidimensional writing that's topical and relevant? Check it out!

Coming Soon!

 

SOON-TO-BE-RELEASED--

An exciting new novella by yours truly: The Loud Boys. All about a dangerous right-wing activist group, but much more, as a mysterious new journalist in town writes an article critical of the "Boys," which brings their wrath down upon her, but also that of the city's #1 mogul, "Fake Face," known for his ruthlessness. Which leads, ultimately, to an exciting climax.

NOT just an entertaining narrative, but a commentary on today's America, portraying the corruption of both extremist ideology and the greed for money. A depiction of the chaos of now?

Done in the innovative style of multidimensional fiction. Fast-moving while covering every view and angle, creating a unique reading experience.

CAN literature be once again relevant? The Loud Boys is an ambitious attempt to say: YES!