ISIS

The past two weeks has witnessed the stupidest things to be written about Iraq since the lead up to the 2003 invasion. "ISIS is taking over!" "Al Qaeda is coming!" "What's a Shi'ite!" Every single story has gotten everything exactly wrong.

It's painful, especially since there's no other news. No one really cares that Cantor's gone except whoever got to be John Bohner's new bitch. I wasn't paying attention because Congress voted away its own powers in the Bush years. Instead, I've been following every hoot and cry over Iraq, getting a very nasty reminder about the provincial ignorance and credulousness of the American people.

Let's establish the basics first - just what is ISIS? About ten thousand Sunnis calling themselves "Islamic State in Iraq and Syria." They've gone through a couple leaders and a couple similar names, jihadi groups being very flexible about geography. Kind of like the First International back in the Nineteenth Century, which was never all that international. ISIS has so far managed the "Iraq and Syria" part, but only due to porous borders and a sectarian culture no one inside the Beltway will admit exists in the Middle East.

It's horrifying and darkly funny, the way all the Very Serious People talk about Iraq like the Sunni-Shia rivalry doesn't exist. Like this is all because Maliki is weak - I'd never say that to Saddam's former hitman myself - or it's all because of the American president you hate the most. Or it's al Qaeda because al Qaeda al Qaeda al Qaeda.

That's really what's driving all the stupid. Americans in 2014 give even less of a damn about Iraqis than did Americans in 2004, they're all just scared ISIS is gonna somehow start flying planes into skyscrapers if we don't smack 'em down right now. This is what I mean when I say Americans are credulous - ISIS honcho Abd Bakir al-Baghdadi talks a whole lot about setting up a caliphate and making war on New York City, but what exactly are his logistic capabilities?

Keep in mind, this is the same outfit that couldn't knock off Assad a year ago. That's right, the jihadis who've got McCain's panties in a bunch today are the same jihadis he wanted to back last year, when they were talking big about an Islamic state in just Syria while never moving beyond Aleppo. If they couldn't take down the minority of Alawites on the coast, how are they gonna take down the Shi'ite majority of Iraq? Especially when said majority definitely has the backing of Iran?

International terrorism takes two things ISIS doesn't exactly have an abundance of - money and operatives who can blend in with the decadent target culture long enough to get into position. How many of those ten thousand irregulars speak English? How many are even literate in their own language? Jihad doesn't exactly attract the best and brightest, the 9/11 highjakers being a collection of upper middle-class boys with more theology than brains. On the ground guerrilla outfits like ISIS recruit more from peasant and working class stock, low on formal education but dedicated to fightin' and dyin' for the 'hood.

And no more than that. You never heard of Ulster loyalists crashing trucks of semtex into the Oireachtas in Dublin. Why would they need to when there's the more pressing matter of the Catholics three blocks over? That's the rough, sectarian reality no one cares to address. Maybe because they're dumb, maybe because it's not a sexy enough angle for the Beltway media, maybe some mutant mix of both. I don't know and I don't care - point is, ISIS can field a lot of guys to secure majority Sunni towns like Mosul and Aleppo but find themselves short of recruits when it comes to hitting places without any supportive network of cousins. That's why Maliki is as safe as Assad and it's why, for all his bluster, Abu Bakir won't be pulling off another 9/11 unless he does it all by himself.

Which would be easy to see if you first accept that Iraqis, Sunni and Shia alike, have their own local politics and agendas that come first. If the past two weeks have taught me anything, it's that the ruling class and their tame press can't accept that. Won't, in fact, as it violates the American exceptionalism subscribed to by even the most latte-sucking of liberals. This sectarian turf war is entirely because America Did X or America Didn't Do Y and now America Must Do Z or else Bad Stuff. Exactly what that Bad Stuff is depends on who you ask - either Iraq will fall apart or AQ suicide commandos will teleport into Ohio. Both ideas are equally impossible but they play into the solipsism that clouds any understanding of the world, assigning American cultural narratives which are completely alien to the situations in question, which will resolve themselves no matter who Obama bombs.

The Libertarian Fraud

Let's start today with a bit of an allegory.

You're Poot the Peasant. The King has a war on his hands and needs soldiers, but he can't just go out and press gang folks because this is a very modern kingdom. They at least pretend to respect the rights of the peasantry, so he offers "the King's shilling," a shiny gold coin you can spend on getting platsered, which as a peasant is your only joy in life. So you figure why not? Beats pushing a plow all day for the abbot who eats all the cheese.

You join the Grand Army and get marched off to the border lands where the war is going on with the Orcs, who are considered primitive and don't have shiny new swords and crossbows like you. However, they know the lay of the land and aren't afraid to die, giving them the initiative. You and your fellow foot sloggers hunker down in a camp where you mostly repel guerrilla raids from those swarthy barbarians and try to make nice when their women and children come around - who are likely the spies of the enemy but you're a decent guy, so you're not about to put their heads up on spikes like you do with their sons and husbands.

It's a grind, physically and mentally. It takes it's toll and you start going for walks outside the camp to clear your head. Until one night, the Orcs grab you while you're out walking and carry you off to their caves. They spend years beating you, starving you, locking you in a cage - basically treating you the way an emotionally troubled child treats the family dog - until finally the King negotiates your release and you get to come home!

Where the Privy Council demands your head on the chopping block for reasons that have nothing to do with you.

See what I did there?

Congratulations, you've just role-played the life of Bowe Bergdahl! A man who would've just been another US Army grunt in the grotesque sideshow of Afghanistan had he not gone and gotten himself POWed, only to get released at a time when partisan hate trumps every other impulse in the American people.

Bergdahl, who's greatest crime against the nation was apparently going on walkabout, has been the target of some of the nastiest Republican attacks outside a campaign season. No sooner was he out of Taliban hands then every senator with an R in parentheses was complaining about how he wasn't worth the five starved goat-fuckers we released from Gitmo. Chris Wallace, channeling the NKVD, even floated the possibility that he be executed for treason or desertion. And this official hate has trickled all the way down to the grassroots, who spent last week sending Bergdahl's family so many death threats the FBI had to get involved.

But what really stands out is the noticeable silence from such high profile libertarians as Rand Paul. Aside from a lame crack about how we should be trading Dems instead of Talibs, the nominal Liberty 2016 candidate hasn't had much to say on the rights of an American. It's a ready-made issue - if Bergdahl deserted then he didn't want to die for the State and those five Talibs released form Gitmo are five less human beings being tortured by the Big Government. Why wouldn't a principled libertarian like Rand Paul jump all over that?

Maybe because he doesn't believe a word of that freedom stuff. Maybe none of them do - not Paul senior, not the Koch brothers, and especially not any of the talking heads who celebrated the "resistance" of that racist hick in Nevada. The libertarian angle is just "Hope and Change" for bitter white guys, a campaign gimmick to get enough rubes voting for them in November so they can stick to business as usual. A promise of low taxes and freedom from government overreach plays real well with the peasants in Peoria.

The only libertarians who live by those principles are small-time terrorists like Jerad and Amanda Miller, who only ever hurt other plebs. After planting a Tea Party flag on the two cops they murdered, they couldn't get their revolution any further than one gun owner in a nearby Wal-Mart. They really believed all that anti-government noise, they killed and died for it, and it didn't make any kind of difference.

Because at the end of the day, libertarianism is nothing but a confidence game the ruling class plays on prols. China Mieville said it best in his takedown of the laughable seasteading movement:

"Libertarianism... is a theory of those who find it hard to avoid their taxes, who are too small, incompetent or insufficiently connected to win Iraq-reconstruction contracts, or otherwise chow at the state trough. In its maundering about a mythical ideal-type capitalism, libertarianism betrays its fear of actually existing capitalism, at which it cannot quite succeed. It is a philosophy of capitalist inadequacy."

Bowe Bergdahl is getting slandered by a bunch of disingenuous hucksters playing off the low self-esteem of middle class suckers. The Taliban looks pretty good in comparison.

The Hologram is Bleeding

If there's one thing reactionaries love more than getting up in other people's business, it's blaming a tragedy on something new that they don't understand.

Take the stabbing in Wisconsin. Two little idiots slashed up a third because they thought it would endear them to Web 2.0's perennial bogeyman:

"[Suspect Anissa E. Weier] told police that Slender Man is the 'leader' of Creepypasta, and in the hierarchy of that world, one must kill to show dedication. Weier said that [fellow suspect Morgan E. Geyser] told her they should become 'proxies' of Slender Man — a paranormal figure known for his ability to create tendrils from his fingers and back — and kill their friend to prove themselves worthy of him. Weier said she was surprised by Geyser's suggestion, but also excited to prove skeptics wrong and show that Slender Man really did exist."

You can replace every instance of "Slender Man" in that natter with "The Easter Bunny" and it makes just as much sense. This is an entirely artificial urban legend with its origins in a Something Awful photoshop contest from 2009. This is an easy history to track down and that any news source is reporting anything different is just because journalistic integrity died long ago.

The fake that started it all.

It's much better - as in it gets way more page views - to hype up a non-threat like Slender Man and the Creepypasta Wiki. Then you get all sorts of moral outrage from people who honestly worry that there's not enough God in the Constitution. And with a brilliant work of horror like Slender Man, who's noodley appendages strike something deep in the primate brain, is just unnerving enough to get every muddling middle-brow clamoring for the digital equivalent of book burnings.

However this is not to say media and deviant behavior are entirely unrelated. That would be a good topic of conversation in the wake of this crime as, since there's no corpse for a change, we might actually get somewhere. Like how these two girls legitimately believed stabbing someone to death would win them otherworldly favors from a series of JPEGs. That kind of magical thinking will lead to catastrophe no matter what you attach it to and it's epidemic in pelagic America, a flat hellscape where nothing ever happens despite a loudly enforced popular mythology that everyone is special and of consequence.

That Americans live in a bland nothingness while dreaming of the Homeric life is the great unspoken truth of our time. It drives everything from our jingoistic foreign policy to our retarded market economics, so it should come as no surprise that two All-American losers should concoct a power fantasy out of internet fiction. That they were "inspired" by Slender Man is as relevant to the debate as if they were inspired by raptureready.com.

Not that any such discussion will happen in the national media. It's just gonna be a few weeks of "Look what the kids are into now!" before the next mass shooting happens.

Fiction Friday: Free Novella!

"I think the Egyptians were on to something. Because if that sun goes out..."~James Kroger (1922-2005)

Just a reminder that you can find a free and full novella right here on the blag!

The Absolute End of The World, Part I

The Absolute End of The World, Part II

The Absolute End of The World, Part III

And if you like what you see, why not show support by purchasing these fine products from Amazon and Smashwords?

Culturally Normative Behavior

There's something you learn about in psychology called norms. Like other things you learn in psychology, it's both depressing and darkly funny - basically, a norm is any behavior or belief that is so socially acceptable as to be expected. Norms are different than mores - socially expected morality - but like mores have little to do with actual morality. Murder, kidnapping, and medieval chauvinism are the norm in Northern Nigeria just as much as loudly praising God at Applebees is the norm in Albermarle County.

Few films illustrate this horror as well as Hanecke's The White Ribbon. Set in a bucolic German village at the turn of the century, it follows the everyday concerns and foibles of a broad cross-section of society. And how terribly brutal they all are.

Like the Pastor who has his son's hands tied to the bed frame every night, to prevent "impure touching." Or the kindly Doctor who socially and sexually humiliates his loyal housekeeper. Or the Baron who is as clownishly corrupt and inept as every privileged man ever. Hanecke spends a long time on each of these characters, and their victims, giving the viewer a full picture of these men in all their gigantic littleness.

That would be a worthwhile film in itself but The White Ribbon has a broader, and deeper, critique in mind. Soon, the regimented village life is disrupted by a series of pranks. Childish at first but growing more and more malicious, culminating in a tortured parakeet and savagely beaten little boy. Cruelty for its own sake.

It should come as no surprise the children are behind these acts and it gets to the core theme of the film. They act out in petty brutality because that's how they've been socialized by the supposedly civilized adults. It's a sharper satire than merely pointing out the Pastor's abusive parenting or the Baron's exploitation of the villagers. It makes the point that this savagery is deeply woven into what is otherwise considered a civilized society. The parents are shocked, of course, wondering how the little ones could have turned so wicked when so much effort had gone into training them up proper.

Because to every villager, even the few descent ones, the casual brutality exacted on women and children is normal and therefore invisible. The children have learned this brutality well, just not when it is acceptable to indulge in it, which is really what makes their behavior aberrant. Soon they'll have more than enough chance to engage in socially acceptable savagery, as the first World War flares up not in spite of civilized society but because of it. Because all the rules and propriety are nothing but a thin veneer of respectability over what has always been and always will be Darwin's world.

The Silent Sane Majority

Today, we're gonna do something that never happens in American media - talk honestly about guns. I don't mean in some "What the Government doesn't want you to know!" way but in a simple acknowledgment of reality - that reality being guns are as American as drive-thru. The socialist Big Government hippies coming to confiscate your boomsticks is as much a fantasy of resentful reactionaries as trickle down economics.

In fact, that sort of paranoia does not even go hand in hand with gun ownership. Despite the joint NRA-GOP noise machine, many American gun owners are perfectly sane and thus welcoming of strict gun regulation because they respect the life-ending power of guns. I grew up in a pretty left-leaning family in northern Virginia and even my mom knows the kick of a .357 magnum. I know registered Democrats who own guns and, as I'm not invested in any imaginary culture war, I can admit this is more the rule than the exception.

To illustrate this, let's look at my friend Joe. Being a proper Virginian, he's converted his downstairs closet into a weapons locker for - at last count - two semiautomatic pistols, a .38 revolver, a Mossberg shotgun, and a H&K G3 battle rifle. That last one is a military grade weapon firing .308 rounds, the civilian equivalent of the NATO 7.62mm, and while it fires in semi auto can easily be converted to full auto. Joe loves it and as any hobbyest has blown way too much money pimping it out with rails, reflex sights, and other needless modifications.

Completely legal in Virginia.

Not for home defense. Joe is adamant about that because, as a National Guardsman, he understands ballistics. That .308 round, if fired at a home invader, will penetrate said invader and the wall and travel across the street into a neighbor's house where it will likely end in a baby's head. Joe, as a responsible gun owner, wants to avoid shooting neighbor babies at all costs and that means the G3 is exclusively for the range.

And it's fun at the range! That's one use of guns that never ever makes it into the official debate. Sending rounds down range is a kick and it's why many gun owners, like Joe, own more than a simple shotgun or Glock for home defense. In fact defense is probably last on the list of what a gun owner actually does with his or her weapons. Number one, if you're not a twit, is cleaning them regularly and storing them securely. Like Joe with his home weapons locker.

That's what really makes Joe worth mentioning here - he's a gun owner who fully appreciates the responsibility of exercising his Second Amendment rights safely. Again, the G3 isn't for home defense and an easy way to get a rant out of Joe is mention how the loudest gun nuts are claiming that's what the AR-15 is for. At his most conciliatory, he says, "Okay, you can own an assault rifle but you have to go through six weeks of training like I did so you know how use it properly!"

Because guns, whatever cultural baggage we attach to them, are instruments of death. Responsible gun ownership demands we never forget this fact. Responsible gun owners, like Joe, recoil at the sort of heavily armed free for all preached by the NRA faithful because they understand shit happens. And when shit happens with an instrument explicitly intended for ending life...

We're never gonna be rid of guns in this country but we damn sure need to be smarter about them. A good way to start is for this silent majority of sane gun owners to stop being silent, to make their voices heard - "I'm a gun owner and darn it, I want more gun control! I want smart gun control! I want to keep guns out of the hands of idiots who just want a big boomstick to compensate for all their inadequacies without understanding and appreciating the grave responsibility that comes with possessing a firearm!"

Like this asshole.

Fiction Friday: Buy My Books or Go To Hell!

If you can find a way to tell Amazon about that reference, I'll personally reimburse you! Like it's free but not really!

The True Story of Jeannot (from Fiend):

We put ashore as the sun rose over the ocean. A stirring sight - even more so as it brought such annihilating heat to the two of us. I overturned the longboat in a lagoon, making a solid shade for the day. We rested in low tide, little fish swimming and wriggling through our clothes as crabs pinched at our dead flesh... We awoke looking like we'd crawled seven miles through brambles!

"How far from Cap Francois are we?" asked Anna

"Damned if we're going back there!" I snapped, pulling off my boots to drain the seawater.

"Are we to live in the jungle then? Like maroons?" She smiled. That still beautiful smile - so rare and loveless by then - turned my stomach.

Idiota... "Not a bad idea."

We didn't, of course. But we found the next best thing - a sugarcane plantation! Just one of the hundreds dotting Hispaniola, crawling all day with slaves while the planter and his family sat with their feet up in a house to make Louis XIV envious... You'd think we'd be turned away, coming as we did in the dead of night, our fine city clothes ruined by water and wilderness. But no sooner had an elderly Negress answered the door than my Anna fell into an inspired performance -

"Oh, pity on poor travelers!" she cried, throwing herself at the surprised house slave's feet. "God's grace and pity! Our carriage was overturned and looted by maroons! And if not for my brave uncle, they'd have had my virtue too!"

The Negress immediately went for her master - who was asleep, so she had to settle for the lady of the house. A sentimental old biddy who about fainted as Anna repeated her lurid tale. With more embellishment, naturally - "A dozen mad maroons! Screaming voodoo prayers to Beelzebub! My brave uncle beat them all off with a root he tore from the ground!"

Such a clever girl...

 Pray the Gay Away (from One Nation Under God):

"Attention!" a voice boomed through the building. "Visiting hour will end in ten minutes! Visiting hour end in ten minutes!"

A few of the more energetic patients made noise at this but not much.

"Oh dear, should I let you go?" his mom asked.

"Yeah," David said. "I'll see ya next... whenever."

"Okay," she seemed to hesitate.

David vaguely remembered how they supposedly briefed all visitors on words not to use. His mom must have wanted to say she loved him. Instead, she hung up her phone and gathered her coat, hurrying out the exit without a look back.

David felt some mild discomfort at that. He couldn't quite place it but something about the way she left just didn't feel right. Damn, what did they give him this time? It was a minute or so before he realized his phone had fallen to his lap. He sluggishly hung it back up on the wall and pushed himself up from the chair, a surprisingly great effort. The others soon followed, hanging up on whoever had bothered to show up and shuffling off behind David.

...All except Stephen. Not Steve, as he was always quick to point out - Stephen. He still sat there, chattering with his sister. It looked like his sister, or maybe cousin. Of all the other guys at Exodus, David thought he looked the most like a real fag. He was skinny with that feminine look to his face and a voice to match. Even the other guys avoided him, like they were all back in the real world and it was understood if you got too close to Stephen you might catch a bad case of the gay.

David couldn't avoid him too much though, seeing as they were roommates. Not that they had very much in common - Stephen's only interests were reading and theater, both things David tended to avoid. But still, if asked, David would insist Stephen wasn't such a bad guy. He was okay for conversation if you gave him long enough - he could rattle off just about every line from those Monty Python movies - and he'd never hit on David or really acted all that gay. Of course, seeing as he was here...