Israel Daramola says Steve Bannon’s name in the Don Cannon voice.
[Ed.- The country seems to be disintegrating at a remarkable pace. Every day brings a fresh deluge of horror. In Alternative Facts, Israel Daramola pauses for a second to look back and take stock of the previous week to ten days. There’s danger in retreating into a shell and letting it wash over you; it’s important to catalogue each new, impossible wrong.]
If you’ve ever read about borderline personality disorders, one of the things you quickly learn is that people with this disease have a habit of completely distorting their reality in order to make themselves feel safer. They take obvious lies and deny it to such extreme measures that it’s you (the recipient of these lies) who starts to feel like the crazy one. I have thought about this a lot in the past doozy of a week. Trump’s immigration ban caused chaos at airports all across America mostly due to the fact they pushed the agenda ahead without any governmental approval and with no heads up given to airport employees –presumably to “catch those dastardly possible terrorists by surprise” I guess.
Usually presidents try to subtly destroy the rights of people but we’re talking about a guy who puts his name on buildings in big gold letters here. Of course this whole ordeal was going to be loud and blatant and it inspired people all over the country to go to the airport on purpose in protest. As far as actions go, the airport protests is one of those examples of people coming together to actually get something tangible done. The ACLU fought the ruling in court and won. Our former acting Attorney General went against the cheeseball in chief and the people did not back down even when their representatives stayed quiet. In the midst of disorder, this was something beautiful. So naturally, our politicians spent rest of the week pretending nothing happened and it was all fine.
This gets me to the beginning of this post. Between the firing of Sally Yates for doing her job to the GOP changing the rules in order to vote in Trump’s cabinet without the help of Democrats (which holy shit!You can do that??) to Milo Yiannazipolis being boycotted by UC Berkeley, there were a lot of instances in which people tried to make you (the rational person) seem crazy by being rational and believing in things that are true. When GOP senators call out Dems for being childish and idiotic for doing the exact things they did to Obama for 8 years with such conviction, you take a moment to wonder if you just imagined the last almost decade of life. When Sally Yates gets fired for doing the thing she was expected to do when she was confirmed and everyone pretends it’s fine, you question whether you actually saw what you saw. When people on the internet obsessed with “hearing both sides” claim that it’s actually just as fascist to protest a neo-Nazi having a platform you start to wonder if maybe you’re the crazy one. For the record, the right to free speech is not the same as the right to a paid platform and while you’re silencing dissent to hear the voices of hate, it is actually just as much my first amendment right to tell you to shut the fuck up as it is yours to say nice things about Hitler or Stalin or whoever.
All these things are the steps that we are taking towards normalization. We are normalizing the Trump era and as a result, worst of all, we are normalizing guys like Steve Bannon with this “gotta hear both sides”, “give it a chance,” spineless bullshit. People have been ripped from their families and held against their will from entering the country even with their green cards. This is not ok and to normalize it is not good. If nothing else, Trump has the potential to finally snap us out of our hypnotized dazes and call out this government not just on the things it will do but it has always done. We didn’t get to this point on accident: we have been on the brink for a long time and we finally got the guy who will push us over it with no qualms. There is no more “maybe tomorrows” and anyone still defending or saying “give it a chance” is either your enemy or knows they are not affected and have no empathy for anyone not them. They are not worth listening to. Go to your mirror each morning and remind yourself: this is not normal and get yourself emotionally ready for the fight ahead.
And now the week’s news:
Steve Bannon has been being outspoken about our future wars with both China and Islamic terrorism. Frankly, Bannon seems to think we should go to war with everyone. So it’s not particularly surprising that Trump seems to be antagonistic towards, well, almost every country. Besides news that China seems to be in pre-preparation for war, Trump has gone after Germany, Japan, Mexico again and Australia. Yup that’s right, Australia. Who the fuck picks a fight with Australia besides Bart Simpson? And this is all good for the actual most powerful man in the country, Bannon, an anthropomorphic sausage link who is also in the National Security Council by the way. A position that’s reserved for military and intelligence advisors, Bannon got the gig and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Director of National Intelligence aren’t allowed in the room except for “when necessary.”
Bannon wants to face off against everything under the guise of American exceptionalism but really he just wants to live out some Hitler fantasies he has.
Our clown car government just announced their SCOTUS nomination and in true Trump fashion, it was a big, unnecessary pageant put on TV as though it was the fucking Bachelor. Worst of all, I’m pretty sure a big part of this was to spite Arnold Schwarzenegger, the new host of Trump’s old show The Apprentice. Yes, that’s right, despite being the FUCKING LEADER OF THE FREE WORLD, Trump is bitter that he had to let go of The Apprentice and that the ratings aren’t as good anymore. We get the country we deserve.
Anyway, Neil Gorsuch is our potential new replacement for justice Scalia. He is a GOP wet dream: a literal interpreter of the constitution who has voted against gay marriage, abortion, affirmative action and stricter gun laws to name a few things. The republicans acted like big babies and derailed what should’ve been Obama’s pick and they have been handsomely rewarded for it. Let that be a lesson for you: if you’re stubborn and a big enough asshole, you can get anything you want in this world.
In positive news, Beyoncé is pregnant. With twins. A ray of sunshine shines on a dreary world. It my depressive, nihilistic state, I have given up on the idea that there is anything left to fight for when everything is so hopeless. Then Beyoncé dropped her pregnancy photos and suddenly I am renewed. We must continue the fight for the future Carters who will lead our children and children’s children to a new dawn. This feels like the scene at the end of Children of Men when in the midst of a firestorm and destruction, everything stops to bare witness to the miracle child. Hope lives on.
In negative news, we all had to suffer through another Patriots Super Bowl. A lot has been made about Trump and his relationship with Tom Brady, Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft. As a result, this team has become associated with Trump’s America and the Falcons alternatively as a symbol of the resistors. So of course they lost. And they lost in the most Atlanta sports way possible: going up 28-3 and then blowing it by giving up 31. 31! That’s the most embarrassing shit ever. Matt Ryan went from the new messiah of Atlanta to “oh yeah that’s right. This is Matt Ryan” all in the same game.
Whatever. I never cared about the Falcons as some symbol against what the Patriots stand for (although this game was a great metaphor for our current reality in that nothing good will happen and the power structure will crush you no matter how far you go). I just really hate the Patriots. I hate Tom Brady and his shit-eating grin who wants to be pals with Donald Trump and pretend that doesn’t say anything about you as a person at all. I hate Bill Belichick and his Lord Palpatine sleeveless hoodies and his old ass face. I hate their team full of scrappy white guys that probably have all the racists who watch football salivate with joy because they get their own team of guys who “play the right way.” Fuck them. Fuck Tom Brady. Forever. Congrats on five championships though you piece of shit.
Song of the week:
Xxxtentacion’s name ended up on a lot of people’s Twitter timelines who probably wouldn’t have otherwise known him due to another debate about whether or not Drake stole someone’s flow for a new song. Look, be honest, you don’t care that much because hopefully like a sane person you try not to think about Drake at all if you can help it. Nevertheless, this feels like a good opportunity to bring up a Xxx song that I’m actually fond of. It’s not for everyone: it’s definitely in line with the rest of soundcloud’s blacklight in a leaky cellar emo rap but this particular one works for me. Maybe it’s the Sampha sample, idk.
Recommendations:
Take time for yourself this week to read something that isn’t the daily news. Listen to the new Big Sean album which is fine and innocuous enough that you don’t actually have to pay it any attention. Just completely zone out with it on. Or you can catch on The Young Pope which gets better with each episode. My man is bejeweled and talking reckless shit to a room full of priests one minute and dropping a baby the next. Why aren’t you watching this show?
Well, that’s all I got this week. Everything was a clusterfuck and ended in mostly misery and I didn’t even get to the part about Trump repealing financial constraints so his buddies at Wall Street can get back to stealing everyone’s money. HAHAHAHAHA EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE JUST FINE.
