My "alt-right" Co-Worker

No. He's not a Nazi, or a white supremacist. First of all, he's Filipino. And, while he might be dismayed to find out what Steve Bannon really thinks of him when the chips are down, "Breitbart" (which he reads regularly) has a big enough tent that it features the gay, partly Jewish, Greek (and utterly vile scum-bag) Milo Yiannopoulis as one of their star editors. (Which is not to say that the "grassroots" of "Breitbart" wouldn't kill Milo along with my co-worker if given their druthers.)

When I first got transferred to his section of the factory I had a lot on my mind and wasn't in the mood to be sociable with anyone. Bizarrely, without having known me more than a couple of days, he asked if I wanted to date his cousin. (He's 56, I'm 50. I'm assuming that his cousin is also in late middle age, which is not a good age to be single in. So, her choices are probably fairly limited, but it was still bizarre.) I said no. Truthfully I'm not interested in a relationship. He also made intimations of having a drink after work. But by then I'd heard enough of his other views and, combined with my long-term bad mood, I chose not to take him up on the offer.

We ended up in the same strip-plaza restaurant for lunch once and sat with each other. Out of nowhere he told me that while he had guns back home in the Philippines, he couldn't get one in Canada, but if he'd had one he would have killed his ex-wife. I was flabbergasted. I mumbled something about how I tend to want to harm myself when my relationships go sour, but chalk one up for Canada's gun laws 'eh? He'd be in prison now and his children would hate him. (Obviously his ex-wife would be dead, but that might not have bothered him.)

A big part of our relationship is that I don't really know what I'm doing with this piece of machinery I'm operating and I need his help on a regular basis. So I'm not going to debate/argue with him about politics. But all our conversations ended up somehow into a chance to showcase his right-wing views. And he seems to get frustrated and angry quickly. I don't want to give him ammunition. Early on, I only asked him if he'd heard of the pipeline protest at Standing Rock. I wondered if the mainstream media was even reporting on it. Indeed he had. I was treated to a lengthy statement about how the First Nations (not his term) simply had to get with the program and forget about all their claims and nature and all that other shit. (Of course, none of that has anything to do with the markedly different treatment of the desires of the people of Bismarck South Dakota to not have the pipeline so close to their drinking water and those of the people of Standing Rock to not have the pipeline so close to their own drinking water supplies.)

I didn't get into it with him. I just repeated that I was wondering if he'd even heard about the stand-off.

So, it's been a couple of months or so. And I notice that the guy is fairly lonely. I'm thinking that more people don't want to end up having to listen to long-winded, right-wing tirades. (Especially about topics they might be blissfully ignorant about.) So, one day I was reading CounterPunch and there was a long article about the struggle for Mosul. It sounds horrible. Like a mini-Stalingrad. But I figured it being a manly topic (war) and dealing with attacking the terrorists where they live, that he and I could have some mutual agreement. Bringing up the topic I was treated to him telling me that they should just flatten the place. Bomb it to obliteration. Too bad about the civilians. Including the children. They'd probably grow up to be terrorists too. You can't reason with such people. Their religion makes them fanatics. They're all the same. Which is why it's so foolish for white liberals to say "let everyone in" when it comes to refugees. Why, did I know that Denmark is now 45% Muslim? [That struck me as implausible.] They've brought Sharia Law to Denmark. That's what they do. White people don't have big families. Because we're selfish and narcissistic. But Muslims do. They have 4-5 kids, minimum, and they abuse all those liberal multiculturalism values to establish their rights and they fucking just take over. Pretty soon, nobody has any rights. White people don't notice because we're all into "personal growth" and "personal development."

It wasn't until I saw one of these nut-bars standing right before me that I appreciated the murderous, fanatical bigotry that leads some of them to commit atrocities like the Quebec City mosque shooting. And then this guy's devotion to "Breitbart" (despite not being a Caucasian) made more sense. His contempt for white liberals and/or privileged white individualism became explicable. He's a salt-of-the-earth Filipino. He works hard and he has to know what's-what. He can neither afford to financially, or mentally, stick his head in the ground and dream about yoga classes, or the brotherhood of all mankind, or about degenerate liberal nonsense like sharing one's wives with Black men. He recognizes better than people like me the danger that Western Civilization faces from Islamic Fundamentalist Jihad. (Responding to his murderously bigoted drivel I only joked that the Muslims would have a fight on their hands if they took away my right to have bacon on my pizza.)

Just like the incoherent, rambling garbage that comes from fellow "alt-right" ("white nationalist on paper") Davis Aurini, this guy sees himself on the front-line of a cultural war. He sees liberals as being blind to the danger and even enabling the danger with their imbecilic values of "social justice" and "multiculturalism" and "human rights." That's why they're all so angry at liberals and Muslims. They stew in their conspiracy theories and they build their fantasies in exquisite detail. (Like Davis Aurini; who simply piles groundless assertion upon groundless assertion, until he can say stupid things like "anyone with an ounce of sanity is voting for Donald Trump.")

They believe this shit. They live this shit. They've worked themselves up into a state where they actually call out loud for bombing children to death. And then they go and shoot-up mosques.

So, the thing is, I'm needing this guy's assistance less and less as I become more proficient at my job. Should I confront him? I hesitate because we're a small team on this shift. It could end up creating an extremely stressful situation. ("Productivity is down because [thwap] and Ernesto are fighting over politics again. Fire one or both of them.") More likely the problem will be cognitive dissonance. As the years go by, I see this effecting people more and more. My faith in rational, fact-based discussion weakens when I read progressives saying stupid shit like "Barack Obama was a progressive" or "Trump avoiding nuclear war with Russia is bad, but threatening nuclear war with China is also bad." I can see only too plainly that trying to reason with this guy would be a complete waste of time.

More and more, I think I'll just write for myself and pursue my cartooning and to hell with everything and everyone else.

The LibroCons & Their Billionaire Pals

So, it seems Justin Trudeau took a helicopter to get to a billionaire's private island for some R n' R.(He's bushed from breaking all those promises with his bare hands.)

In the House of Commons, interim Snake-Pit of Closet-Cases n' Criminals Party leader Rona Ambrose waxed indignantly. That is until it was found out she was yachting with a different billionaire somewhere in the tropical sun.

Palin' around with billionaires. Both of 'em.

Speaks volumes about our whole society. Doesn't it?

Atrocity Stories From Syria

I've mentioned Diane Purkiss's The English Civil War: A People's History before. I remember being struck by the way she described massacres of defeated soldiers and ordinary civilians by both sides and how propagandists from each side would write self-righteous, self-pitying dirges about the evils of their enemy.

War tends to do that.

You shouldn't buy Gordon Corrigan's The Second World War: A Military History, because 1) It's more a history of the British army in that war, with a disproportionate focus on the fighting in Burma, and 2) He makes bitchy comments and sweeping claims without following them up. He says the failure of Operation Market Garden was the fault of one of Bernard Montgomery's toadies, but he never mentioned the man once in his section about it the battle and he never explains his statement subsequently. He says that some people criticized Stalin for moving his armies westward into Poland without having built defences for them if they were attacked, but blithely comments it wouldn't have mattered one way or the other. With no explanation. 3) He's a disagreeable militarist, sexist boor, who says that soldiers should have the fear of being shot for cowardice, and says that a lot of the poor London women who were sheltered in rural communities were dirty sluts.

But his candid writing was helpful in at least one part: Writing about the rape of Nanking, Corrigan states:

All armies do go off the rails from time to time. Soldiers are aggressive and trained to be so and are a lot less squeamish about blood and slaughter than their civilian counterparts. During the Peninsular War the British Army frequently and regularly misbehaved in captured cities, but this rarely lasted more than a couple of days before exhaustion and the provost restored order. Rape is not uncommon after a period of intense fear and danger. In Nanking however what happened was far worse than a temporary loss of control.

So, what I take from that is that everyone is capable of committing atrocities and many often do. In a battle between the armies of a torturing dictatorship and jihaadist mercenaries, there's no doubt that they have. It's also true that both sides will condemn the outrages of their enemy and embellish things if need be.

These are reasons for wars to be avoided by the way.

If you want to know what I think about Syria's agonies, you can read this.

Canadians Held Hostage

"I live in a riding where a lot of people are so ignorant and/or racist and/or stupid and/or whatever that the Conservative Party of Canada candidate might win. I'd rather vote NDP/Green/Liberal but the likeliest candidate to defeat the Conservative fuckwad is the Liberal/NDP candidate. Once again, thanks to our antiquated electoral system, I'm voting AGAINST something instead of FOR something."

That, in a nut-shell, is how sane Canadian voters (or at least "not deplorable Canadian voters") are held hostage by First-Past-The-Post. And that's what we'll all still be subjected to by Justin Trudeau's blatant betrayal of a much stated election promise.

The Liberals have a huge majority. They could have done anything they wanted. What's more, if they'd imposed their Preferential Ballot as our new system, supposedly they wouldn't have to fear any backlash for their "arrogance" in having done so.

Some will blame the powerless minority parties for demanding a referendum or for doing some other thing that somehow sabotaged the Liberals' dreams of rescuing us from our plight. But re-read the words "powerless minority parties" again and think about how completely stupid that notion is. Justin himself is blaming Canadians for not all being united as one behind one version of electoral reform. However, when looking back on the Liberals' antics from the very beginning of this farce, we can see that they were never serious about electoral reform. They might have been partially serious while on the campaign trail. The start of that election saw them in one of those periods when anger and disgust against them saw them reduced to far fewer seats than their popular support indicated they would have.

But once in power with a massive majority, they remembered why they like First-Past-The-Post so much. And so, at least from election night onwards, electoral reform was dead. They just had to come up with some plausible way to kill it while seeming to try to bring it about. In the end, it was not plausible. It was an insult to our collective intelligence.

I'll conclude by talking about how liberals create monsters. Now that he's put electoral reform behind him, Trudeau can engage in the wholesale give-away of public assets to the private sector that his whole "infrastructure bank" is designed for. He'll strip the federal government of its assets, enrich the wealthiest, allow the real economy to stagnate, toss crumbs to the poor to ameliorate the worst sufferings (paid for with deficit spending because LibroCons have slashed government revenues and eliminated assets). And while he's doing this, Trudeau will continue to indulge himself with soaring rhetoric about equality and justice and inclusivity that (together with ignoring the material well-being of the majority of the population) makes the stupidest, mentally ugliest 25% of the population seethe with rage. Just like the Ontario McGuinty-Wynne Liberals, he'll engage in super-corruption combined with social values bullshit that only serves to discredit those values among the ignorant and the stupid. And then, thanks to his betrayal of us on electoral reform, the vile Conservatives sweep back to power.

In the end though, this see-saw between Bad and Worse is in the best interests of Canadian capitalism. So it'll stay that way. Because there are some things more important than narrow partisan interests.

Edited to add:

Personally, I'd even like the preferential ballot/instant run-off system over the piece-of-shit system we have now. I'd vote NDP and Green would be my second choice. Once people realize that a different electoral system isn't traumatic, future governments could change it more easily if need be.

Don't Call Mosque Shooter "Deplorable"

It hurts the fee-feez of other Deplorables. Or, it forces "Deplorable Commanders" like Ezra Levant to have to type out words to the effect that however much they might be stirring up murderous bigotry with their wholesale smearing of all Muslims as terrorist death-culters, and how their refusal to condemn and banish all of those nut-bar fans of theirs who post murderous fantasies in the comments sections of their blogs, the LAST thing that they want to see is the murders of innocent people.

One of the only honest things that Hillary Clinton said after she stole the Democratic Party nomination for president was that Trump's followers were a "basket of deplorables." When called on this, instead of repudiating that statement, she should have refined it. The most outspoken Trump supporters are all homophobes, Islamophobes, misogynists and general racists. It's their whole fucking debased world-view. It's their whole hateful attitudes.

It's like this: They hate Black people because they believe that they are violent, lazy, greedy, sub-human parasites. And I hate the Deplorables only because they have such hideous, murderous bigotry festering inside their puny brains. I don't want to take away their legal, political, civil or general human rights. I don't want to deport them back to wherever it is they came from, because human stupidity is universal. I want society to change so that they are not pandered to by wealthy con-artists. I want our culture to change. I want our culture to be elevated so that the least stupid of the deplorables has the sense to be embarrassed enough about their hateful views so as to shut the fuck up and stay shut-up. And I want the culture to be elevated so that garbage like Islamophobia isn't blasted before their vile, hateful, tiny brains in such quantities that some of these individuals do what just happened in Quebec City.

I'd like a world where someone like Nick Kouvalis could just get a job somewhere, or decide on his own initiative that there's no place in the world for a hate-baiting huckster like him so he'll quietly drink himself to death.

Okay, my critics ...

So, a couple of weeks ago (or something) I left a comment at Montreal Simon's place. It was another post going after Trump for saying good things about Vladimir Putin and piling on to the whole unproven (and probably non-existent) Russian hacking of the US 2016 federal election. I was rather harsh in my assessment:

While it's entirely possible that Putin himself masterminded this nefarious hack which helped corrupt mass-murderer Hillary Clinton to lose to corrupt rapist Donald Trump, ... I have to beg you Simon, to please pull your head out of your ass and stop parroting Democratic hacks who treat these ALLEGATIONS as proven facts.

Stop doing your small part to re-ignite a useless Cold War.

The leaders in Washington DC and Moscow are ALL scum-bags. It matters little who is in power. You debase yourself with this nonsense.

Simon and I have since made up. Which is good, because I actually don't like fighting with allies. But my comment inspired some criticisms that I found remarkable. Here's the first one from persons unknown:

 Oh look it's another Both Sides™ moron. Let me guess, Trudeau=Harper as well?

"Both Sides." That was a Phil Collins' album. In the Irvine Welsh novel Filthy, the crooked Edinburgh cop says that "Both Sides" refers to Collins' fucking his wife's pussy and asshole. But I digress. "Both Sides Do It" AKA "Both-Siderism" is also the main pet peeve of stupid Democrat chump or evil Democrat hack "Driftglass." This is the phenomenon in US mainstream political culture wherein it is claimed that both the Democratic Party USA and the Republican Party USA are moral and intellectual equals. This phenomenon has the effect of increasing the vile Repugnican's moral stature while decreasing that of the Democrats.

So, for example, the Republicans can petulantly threaten to shut-down the government if Obama doesn't give the super-rich another tax-cut and they can stymie almost every initiative he comes up with, and the Democrats will, meanwhile, seek compromise and "grand bargains" with the Republicans, and the Sunday news talk-shows and major newspaper columnists will blame both parties for the partisan rancour and gridlock. The Republicans can indulge in brazen homophobia and get caught on tape claiming that they're targeting African-Americans with their voter suppression laws, but if a Democrat somewhere complains that die-hard Republicans are low-information voters, then its BOTH SIDES who are creating the culture of division that is harming the republic.

In this instance I agree with Driftglass. The Republicans are repugnant. They'll bash homosexuals and then they'll cover-up when one of their own is found to be a not-so-closeted one who is trying to seduce teenage Congressional pages. Their spokesperson Ann Coulter can gleefully call for the murder of her political opponents, but if Michael Moore angrily criticizes someone, then it just goes to show that BOTH SIDES are equally angry and dangerous.

But going beyond all of that surface stuff, when it comes to the interests of ordinary US-Americans, how different are the Democrats and the Republicans? BOTH SIDES support the surveillance state. BOTH SIDES serve Wall Street with slavish devotion. BOTH SIDES were united in bringing "regime change" and all the death and devastation that entailed, to the Middle East. BOTH SIDES have sided against organized labour. BOTH SIDES have conspired to keep public health-care for all (as opposed to cheaper health insurance for most) off the table.

I once described US politics as professional wrestling. It's all sham contests but they keep people's interest by having the Republicans as the cartoonish villains or "heels" and the Democrats are the "good guys" or "faces." Some US-Americans self-identify with the "heels," ... they hate "social-justice warriors" and Blacks and gays and they believe that Christ is being insulted by the lesbian secularist big-government, blah, blah, blah. Other US-Americans self-identify with the "faces" and bawl and whine when their heroes get a folding chair smacked into their heads while the referee is looking the other way. But more and more US-Americans have decided that the contests between the Democrats and the Republicans are insults to their intelligence and tune the whole charade out. So that, despite all the pissing and moaning from people like "Driftglass," mass-murder in foreign policy and corruption and corporate control is bad no matter WHICH SIDE does it.

Which is why when offered the choice between mass-murdering Wall Street shill Hillary Clinton and obnoxious, corrupt, racist, misogynist, boorish reality-tv celebrity/real-estate developer, sexual predator scum-bag Donald Trump, I reject both. As did many other US-Americans.

Next, commentator "rumleyflips" doesn't so much criticize me as offer some extra analysis:

Thwap: I don't know when far right websites became pro Russia and pro-Putin ( I should have been paying more attention ) but the about turn was amazing. Some of these sites are saying what they have been paid to say while others use misinformation dispensed by services like Wiki Leaks and RT. Now unpaid trolls are along for the ride using Russian " facts " to praise Trump and curse Clinton. It's pretty one sided.

It is not just the US that is being attacked by far right Russia supported groups. Farange and his Brexit boys have close ties to the Kremlin just as Trump and his cabinet do. Far right groups in France, Greece, Holland etc. receive Russian funding and attend expenses paid conferences in Russia. Just a few years ago, Russia backed left wing groups as a way of disrupting the West . Now they have decided the best way to damage the EU, UK, US, Nato etc. is to assist and finance far right wing politicians . The most interesting and frightening thing is the choice , by Putin, of Trump as the person most likely to damage the security and economy of the US.

Okay. Let's take this apart:

I don't know when far right websites became pro Russia and pro-Putin ( I should have been paying more attention ) but the about turn was amazing.

Whereas progressives and liberals hysterically stoking anti-Russian sentiment and sounding like paranoid 1950's Cold Warriors isn't?

Some of these sites are saying what they have been paid to say while others use misinformation dispensed by services like Wiki Leaks and RT. Now unpaid trolls are along for the ride using Russian " facts " to praise Trump and curse Clinton. It's pretty one sided.

Hold on! What "disinformation" has Wiki Leaks dispensed? The DNC/Podesta emails were either hacked or (more likely) leaked. Which means they're genuine. Which means the DNC did conspire to stifle the surprisingly strong candidacy of Bernie Sanders so that entitled ego-maniac, corrupt, mass-murdering monster Hillary Clinton could go out and take her decades of baggage and massively unpopular policies to the people of the United States and promptly lose to an unstable imbecile like Donald Trump. As for RT, sometimes they show themselves to be hacks, but in so doing they're no worse than the whole stable of lying hacks and corporate servants of the US media of the major networks and newspapers like the NYT and the Washington Post. I mean, is it even a serious question whether those news providers are liars and servants of their super-rich owners and advertisers? Don't we have decades of evidence of their deceit and stupidity?

It is not just the US that is being attacked by far right Russia supported groups. Farange and his Brexit boys have close ties to the Kremlin just as Trump and his cabinet do. Far right groups in France, Greece, Holland etc. receive Russian funding and attend expenses paid conferences in Russia. Just a few years ago, Russia backed left wing groups as a way of disrupting the West . Now they have decided the best way to damage the EU, UK, US, Nato etc. is to assist and finance far right wing politicians .

Well, first of all, here I thought that most on the Left were self-propelled activists. Now I find out we've been "fellow-travelers" or "useful idiots" or even paid mercenaries of the former Soviet Union. Now it appears that far-right nativists are dupes of the Russians! British and American and French and everyone else who has seen their living standards stagnate or decline under neo-liberalist "free trade" scams aren't voting as a rejection of their arrogant elites' ruinous policies. They're merely "sheeple" under the sway of Putin.

And heavens to Betsy! Who but a monster would want to disrupt NATO??? An alliance against the now non-existent Soviet Union that has found a new lease on life as military enforcer of the United Nations (or, just an enforcer of Washington regime-change if the UN won't go along).

And if Putin is funding right-wing groups in Western Europe, it's not as if the USA doesn't fund its own subversives worldwide, including in the former Soviet republics. There's no reason to ratchet-up international tensions over such one-sided, hypocritical outrage.

Finally, someone calling himself "Mr. Perfect" lets loose with a truly bizarre tirade:

Thwap spends very little time anywhere other than his own site. He has come to hate anyone who doesn't buy into his dog whistle for revolution statements while hiding away expecting others to get run over by the machine he demands be overthrown by the rest of us. I've lost all respect for him and no longer peruse his site, it's almost reading the rantings of a want to be Pol Pot. Go away thwap, you have nothing to contribute any more.

Strange.

Thwap spends very little time anywhere other than his own site. 

This actually isn't true. For a long time after the 2015 federal election I was at other sites more than my own.  I admit to visiting less sites than I used to, but I still read and commented more at other people's blogs n' stuff than making my own original content.

He has come to hate anyone who doesn't buy into his dog whistle for revolution statements 

I have been critical of people for refusing to offer original tactics and for doing the same thing over and over again, but I don't "hate" the left anymore than I hate humanity in general. (Which I admit is quite a bit of hate, but nowhere near what Mr. Perfect imagines.)

while hiding away expecting others to get run over by the machine he demands be overthrown by the rest of us.

I'm sorry, but that's complete bullshit. Show me anywhere where I've told people they have to get their heads smashed in or I'll think they're phoney-baloneys. My aborted plan to bring down the un-elected, anti-democratic harpercon government was specifically designed to first build the movement so large that the police and etc., would not be able to bust heads.
I have not called for violence. I have not said that non-violence is the policy of cowards and wimps. I have only said, again and again, over and over, that I will not reflexively condemn violence when frustrated, oppressed groups resort to it. Sometimes it's justified I think. I think that when non-violence becomes dogmatic it becomes ridiculous and self-evidently self-defeating. Mr. Perfect has totally misinterpreted me.

I've lost all respect for him and no longer peruse his site ...

As I asked him at Simon's; how does he know what I'm doing here then??

it's almost reading the rantings of a want to be Pol Pot. 

Jesus Christ. Words fail me.

SUN Media, Kevin O'Leary, and thwap's critics

So, if you haven't already heard, I do the daily crosswords in the free dailies "Metro" (from TorStar) and "24 Hours" (from SUN Media). (The one in "24 Hours" is easy enough to do in 15 minutes. The "Metro" one I sometimes can't finish, not knowing the names of small towns across Canada, or the "stars" of Canadian television shows from the past few decades.)

I skim both papers with little interest. There's stuff here and there. "24 Hours" has a lot of empty fluff about celebrities. It's really easy to see how right-wing media creates a culture that elevates something like Donald Trump to the presidency. This constant attention on the "lifestyles of the rich and famous" drivel resonates with some people somehow. Gawd knows that these semi-fascist media types push it constantly.

So, now it seems that SUN Media has decided that former CBC "star" Kevin O'Leary is to be Canada's Donald Trump. As if Canada needs its own Donald Trump! Just yesterday, they featured him on the cover of the Toronto Sun, comparing him favourably to Kathleen Wynne. (There's "liberal vs conservative" for you. A corrupt, sleazy, arrogant corporate shill who happens to be a lesbian, against a boorish, loud-mouthed, ignoramus con-man. I won't root for either of them.)

What's the matter SUN Media? Do you miss your glory days of championing ignorant, racist, sexist, drunken, lazy, stupid, complete hypocrite, international laughing-stock Rob Ford? I mean, seriously, what is your fascination with giant, thick shit-stains? (Perhaps you see enough of yourselves in those glistening brown lines?)

Kevin O'Leary made a lot of money by selling a lot of garbage to some moron at Mattel toys. That's it. How he avoided jail time for selling that crap and then dumping Mattel stock before everyone else did is a darned good question. After that? Nothing. Apparently his picks for business ventures to fund on his tee-vee shows haven't been very good. His other business ventures have been duds. His investment fund has been a failure. And, while it's not entirely fair to point it out, it is darned good fun to watch him lose embarrassingly while playing Celebrity Jeopardy.

He blurts out a lot of simplistic right-wing crap. Just like that ranting, racist, demented codger calling reporters "lying pieces of shit" at one of stephen harper's last, doomed rallies. (It's touching that the codger showed he didn't have the slightest clue about what he said the journalists were lying about. Typical right-wing moron.)

Here's my prediction for O'Leary: I give him a 40% chance of winning the leadership. If he manages to win the leadership, he'll lose the subsequent election. He's not as big a "star" as Trump was. He's not as clearly racist as Trump is. He hasn't spent decades in the public eye with fine pieces of female eye-candy on his arm the way Trump has. (Trump trades them in for newer models every ten years or so.) And this has allowed sexist, white "alpha-male" wannabes in the USA to admire and want to emulate him. In short; O'Leary is and will be a non-entity to most Canadian voters, no matter how desperately the asshole-idiots at SUN Media try to fluff him.

I'll respond to my critics tomorrow. Time's a-wastin'.