We have entered a postmodern nightmare, lies have become “refreshing”, untruths are not to be taken “literally”, “even if it’s true it’s not”, “there’s no such thing” as facts, although, there are “alternative facts”. These are all statements made by followers of Trump, by his apologists. Ironically it is the Right, the reactionaries who have wrapped themselves around the warm comforting arms of Relativism, the relativism they once derided and accused the academic Left of wallowing in. We have entered the world of Jean Baudrillard’s simulacrum, the world of reality TV, of a game show host president, of WWE style campaign rallies, an alternate reality of alternative facts, where the simulation is not just a copy of the real, it has become the real. We have entered a Marxian reality, not of Karl, but of Groucho.

A word to all who believe that the Bible is the word of God, there is no prohibition against abortion in the Bible, the Bible says absolutely nothing about abortion, not one word, so, if the Bible is the word of God, then did he just forget? Anti-abortionists claim that the sixth commandment, fifth if you’re Catholic, covers abortion but there are hundreds of enumerated prohibitions applied to other commandments, yet no mention of abortion when it comes the sixth, and most importantly, that is a theological rationale to what is a secular matter. No matter how much “they” wish it so the Constitution does not establish a theocracy, it purposefully avoids any mention of a god. Anti-abortionism is patriarchy couched in religious gibberish. It’s not about banning abortion per se, it’s about controlling a woman’s reproductive power, regardless of the stated rationale.

Hollywood sells bourgeois ideology and markets capitalist hegemony. This notion of a liberal Hollywood is a myth created by right-wing reactionaries in order to make them seem the victim of what they imagine as a vast “Radical Left” conspiracy to undermine their dearly held reactionary and philistine believes. They’re angry over what they perceive as liberal control of Hollywood, of academia, of the media, of the “deep state”.

All art is ‘political’, whether overt or not, knowingly or unknowingly. What one chooses to “express” and how one chooses to “express” it is an expression of one’s worldview, one’s ideology. Robert Zemeckis’, the most insidiously reactionary director in Hollywood, “Forrest Gump” is a morality play about ’50s American ‘values’, Forrest, versus the ’60s Hippie Jenny who, even though she eventually sees the error of her ways and repents, she ultimately pays the price of her unwholesome un-American values. And then there’s “Back to the Future” where at the end a suburban White boy bestows upon Chuck Berry a “new sound”, albeit a somewhat sanitized Black R&B guitar riff.

Tucker Carlson et al. have been peddling a sanitized, less antisemitic version of the “great replacement” theory which substitutes Democrats for Jews. This replacement theory claims that Democrats, the “Radical Left,” the godless, anti-family, demonic pedophiles, want to replace white Christian Americans with “more obedient,” less law-abiding immigrants who will vote Democratic. They claim that immigration reform, tied to voting reform, is a “power grab” orchestrated by the Democratic Party to manufacture more Democratic voters.

A crucial factor of the Buffalo Christofascist terrorist attack that is not being addressed, the by politicians or by the media, is the anti-leftist foundation behind the attack. All of the terrorists’ “manifestos”, from Christchurch to El Paso to Buffalo cite Anders Behring Breivik as an inspiration for their attack. Breivik is the Norwegian anti-leftist, anti-socialist, anti-feminist terrorist who massacred 77 of his white Norwegian countryman at a Workers’ Youth League summer camp in 2011. So, why did he kill 77 white, mostly teenage, Norwegians… because they were socialists, he targeted white teenage socialists. This is not meant to ignore or belittle the racial, ethnic, and antisemitic motivation of the Buffalo, Christchurch, El Paso, and Tree of Life synagogue terrorists but it is easier and less complicated for the media to portray the terrorists as racist and not have to explain, or deal with, the more complex foundational anti-leftist motivation.

The Trumpists have become Lysenkoists, ideology has trumped science. How else does one explain their callousness towards watching their own people die, Stalin would be proud. They deny science not because they’re anti-science per se, they deny the science that doesn’t conform to their wordlview.

The press, the pundits, and I suspect some of you reading this blame Facebook for all the fake news, the conspiracy theories, the disinformation, the “alternative facts”. Facebook certainly has a lot to answer for, their recommendation algorithms are designed to lead the unsuspecting down a path of ever increasing fear and rage, to entice them into unleashing their “monsters from the Id”. But none of those falsehoods, those lies would work if they didn’t have a willing, gullible, persuadable audience, an audience that wants, that needs their ideologically motivated worldview reaffirmed. This is how propaganda works, it relies on people being undiscerning, on them being intellectually lazy, on them being gullible simpleminded ignoramuses.

For years I’ve wondered
when did science become a “liberal” thing,
and then it dawned on me, it always has been.

Here’s my take on global warming denialism. Just as the Theory of Evolution is a refutation of the Biblical creation (“The contest between evolution and Christianity is a duel to the death. If evolution wins, Christianity goes.” William Jennings Bryan), man-made global warming is a refutation of the “all knowing” Capitalist markets. I realize that the basis for denialism is multifaceted involving Biblical Dominion (Genesis 1:26-28) and capital accumulation (market competition), but there is a more foundational, more existential factor that motivates this reactionary conspiracy-theory laden denialism. And that is, if the Capitalist marketplace works as its disciples say it does then it would have corrected for the threat on its own. So, to accept that Capitalism is destroying the planet one has to acknowledge that capitalist markets do not self-regulate, that the imagined “invisible hand” does not guide the markets for the benefit of society.

Why did the anti-contraceptive, anti-abortion movement suddenly crop up in the 19th century? Could it have been the sudden need for factory workers, the sudden need for a cheap and plentiful labor force?