Tell Me More

As I’ve mentioned many times — as recently as last week — I’m writing a book, and it has taken up the bulk of my creative energy.  Well, now I can reveal the specifics.

I am writing an analysis of the 1979 film The Amityville Horror for the publishing house DieDie Books. The book will come out later this year.

As part of the writing process, I’m collecting opinions about the movie and the concept of the supernatural. I would appreciate your thoughts. You can express your opinion by taking this short survey I created on Google Docs.

The survey will take about one minute, and your opinion will be part of the book.

Thanks for your help, and I will let you know when the book is published.

The Great White North

I was unable to post last week, which always feels like a knife to the heart and a shot to the groin to me. Yeah, I don’t like missing a week.

Who is to blame for my lapsed work ethic? Well, it was those sneaky Canadians.

You see, I took a brief vacation to the Pacific Northwest, and while I was at it, I left the country for the first time in almost 20 years. My international destination was Vancouver. 

I was so busy hiking through the Canadian woods, conversing with ridiculously polite Canadians, and contemplating how much our northern neighbors love syrup (apparently, they like it a lot) that I couldn’t get to the computer.

Also, my laptop was 1,000 miles away, which is a whole other story.

So that’s my excuse.

However, I see now why so many liberals threaten to ditch America for Vancouver or Toronto. The country is beautiful, the people are friendly, and you can get just about everything there that you can get in the USA — plus even more varieties of syrup.

As one Canadian explained to me, the nation is a social democracy, which means that the government works for the people, rather than for major corporations. He then invited me to immigrate to his fair country if Trump wins the election in November.

With hope, it will not come to that. 

I do wonder, however, why so many Americans insist that we live in “the greatest nation in the world,” when that is clearly not true. I also wonder why progressives like me are pilloried for pointing out America’s shortcomings, while a certain megalomaniacal presidential candidate sees his approval rating go up every time he insists that the United States is a failing state.

Also, I wonder why so many conservatives insist that limited government is the best system, when in reality, social democracies like Canada are kicking our ass on just about every sociocultural indicator. These nations are the very antithesis of limited government, and their citizens are thriving. Related to that, if small government is so majestic, why is no other nation even remotely interested in trying it out?

I wanted to ask a Canadian about all this, but they were too busy being productive and happy and enjoying free healthcare and being polite to an absurd degree.

So I came back to America, where people chant “USA! USA!” from their trailer parks and drop dead of preventable conditions at age 39.

It’s enough to make me want to move to Vancouver.

Those Kids Today

I spent much of the last month analyzing, criticizing, and ruminating on my generation (Gen X). I came to a rather depressing conclusion, which is that too many of us — especially the white guys — are turning into baby boomers. And let’s just say that I don’t have the highest opinion of that particular demographic.

But I’m down with the younger generations. Many studies have concluded that when it comes to politics, Millennials and Gen Z are “tilting left and staying there.”

The kids give me hope for the future.

Well, they did until recently.

You see, many young voters are threatening to boycott the presidential election.

“The collective vibe is hopelessness,” says one Gen Z voter, and while I empathize with her emotional state, her solution is absurd. Refusing to vote in November is like starving to death because you can’t get your favorite toppings on a pizza.

Another young voter says, “I don’t think the presidency has too much of an effect on what happens in my day-to-day life.” That mindset is so wrong, so impossibly naïve (yeah, I used that word) that it boggles the mind.

And yet another young voter says his decision not to vote will “send a message to the Democrats,” and force “them to listen to us.”

Yes, the Democrats will certainly notice that you didn’t vote for them. Of course, they will note this from the gulag that Republicans have thrown them into, and it won’t matter anyway considering that young people will not be allowed to voteagain ever, but Democrats will definitely pay attention to your hissy fit, young man.

Listen, middle-aged Republicans are willing to vote for a lunatic they freely admit is an embarrassment, a disaster, and a direct threat to democracy. They are relentless in their pursuit of victory.

But young progressives mutter, “I’m just not in love with Biden,” and skip voting.

This is how you lose a nation. 

Taking a principled stance that will, in the long run, destroy all your principles is insanity.

At the risk of getting all “back in my day,” let me tell you how dispiriting it was to be progressive when I came of age. We voted even as we were reduced to casting a ballot for Michael Dukakis, for fuck sake. 

But let’s skip the travails of Gen X. Consider that back in the 1960s, the Freedom Riders journeyed into the Deep South during the height of segregation. They faced the billy clubs and firehoses of white supremacists. The vast majority of the Freedom Riders were in their twenties.

Let’s go even farther back. When America actually hated Nazis, we sent US soldiers to storm the beach at Normandy. The average age of those soldiers was 26.

So to all the young people who claim they are too fatigued to show up in November, keep in mind that in previous generations, people your age literally fought fascists to the death.

Yeah, the least you can do is fucking vote.

Cavalcade of Chaos

Apparently, a huge percentage of the country is nostalgic for pandemics, riots, and economic collapse. 

The GOP — long a bastion of gaslighting and swift-boating — has reached a new pinnacle of triple reverse psychology by proclaiming, with straight faces all around, that Americans were better off four years ago than they are now.

That would be 2020, widely regarded as the most hellish year in modern American history.

However, Republican zealots are not alone in their assessment of the recent past. Lots of Americans misremember that horrific time as the good old days, mystifying the rest of us who wonder how any sane adult who lived through the Trump administration can say, “Let’s do all that again!”

Make no mistake — if that black-hearted neo-fascist wins the election, we can expect more than just a rerun of bigotry, fraud, incompetence, and rage. No, it will be a lot worse.

You see, the first time around, Trump “accomplished close to nothing because the people around him were either too inept to put his vision into practice or too skillful at blocking him to allow him to put his vision into practice.”

But if this jabbering sociopath gets another shot at the Oval Office, the “available supply of serious, qualified people willing to serve … has dwindled.” He will appoint lapdogs, cronies, lunatics, and losers whose only qualifications will be how much they hero-worship the orange messiah.

As such, we will get immigrant roundups, a national abortion ban, accelerated climate destruction, massive corruption, more right-wing judicial activism, the increased denigration of science, and economic calamity. And that is just on the domestic front. We’re not even getting into the Russia-Ukraine war, the Gaza war, North Korean belligerence, and China’s dominance. All that will get worse as well.

Consider that a second Trump term would mean the possible death of American democracy itself. The man is quite open about his desire to become president for life. It is not hyperbole to state that “there is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States, and it is getting shorter every day.” The presumed Republican nominee’s “threat to democratic institutions and the rule of law is not a matter of conjecture.”

His second-term policies would be based solely on revenge, cruelty, and self-aggrandizement. 

But hey, maybe eggs will cost a little less. So it will totally be worth it, right?

DEI DOA

Recently, America has endured many disasters: killer blizzards, innumerable mass shootings, governmental dysfunction, and a psychopathic bigot leading in the polls.

But conservatives have identified the culprit for all these and every other issue. They know the main bad guy vexing this nation and unleashing infinite misery upon our country. Yes, I’m talking about diversity.

You see, the Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action didn’t quite make America safe enough for white men. So now conservatives are unleashing their ire on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. These are the often half-assed attempts that institutions make to include ethnic minorities in their systems.

Conservatives see these programs as unconstitutional and immoral. I assure you that it is completely coincidental that these are among the only areas of American culture where white men are not in charge. Yup, conservatives are taking a completely principled stand… ahem.

In any case, when Boeing airplanes came apart in midair, most experts pointed to “the weakened regulations on Boeing thanks to more than $65 million in lobbying efforts.” 

But conservatives weren’t so easily hoodwinked. They shrieked that airplanes were disintegrating because that’s what happens “when you’re focused on DEI and maybe less focused on engineering and safety.” 

Now, I could point out that “this narrative has no basis in fact” and that Boeing is not “particularly diverse, either at the workforce level… or on the corporate ladder, where the overwhelming majority of executives are white men.” No matter, it must be the fault of the stray black executive or that Latino engineer who clearly didn’t belong there.

Now, commentators have pointed out that “right-wing media figures have also erroneously blamed last year’s train derailment in Ohio and the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank on DEI initiatives,” despite the fact there is zero evidence for that. In truth, many of the catastrophes occurring in America are taking place under the leadership of white guys. But it’s impolite to point that out to conservatives.

So they will continue to blame ethnic minorities and eliminate even minimal attempts to increase diversity. As a result, attacks on diversity in education and within major corporations have intensified.

For example, the University of Florida has eliminated all its DEI positions and canceled its DEI-related contracts. And the accounting firm PwC has dropped its diversity targets. 

Across the country, DEI funding and staffing are plummeting, “after a two-year boom in the wake of the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd in 2020.”

You remember that whole George Floyd thing, don’t you? It’s like Covid or the collapse of the Trump economy — something that apparently never happened.

In any case, if conservatives get their way and vanquish diversity, we will get rid of all those undeserving ethnic minorities who are messing up everything and provoking every disaster that occurs. Sure, you might argue that many studies have shown that diverse teams perform better than racially homogeneous ones and that companies that embrace diversity get better results.

But I’m sure those studies are wrong. Yeah, they were probably created by some black guy.