I am watching some Fox News post mortems on Election 2025. I see where New Jersey’s Republican gubernatorial candidate lost “despite a late endorsement from Donald Trump” — an issue with cause and effect relations there.  Moving on this clip, we have the discussion on the election of New York’s New mayor and the ominous take-away. “You need to talk to your kids about Socialism, because if you don’t, someone else will. “

Wanting to imagine how to approach the issue of Socialism “to the kids” as it has gone in the history of American electoral politics, I look to the Wikipedia entry on Victor Berger, but falter at the line — “helped establish the so-called Sewer Socialism movement“. This is puzzling to me in that I had thought that term “sewer socialism” was a pejorative used from people to Berger’s (and the three Milwaukee mayors) left who eschew electoral politics — deeming them all-out and reformist liberals who come up against actual power dynamics and limitations of the office and so end up doing nothing much more that wrestling the sewer system away from private profit making concerns. But maybe Berger And the others took it as a badge of honor on his way to winning an electorate. I would be curious on how the Fox News pundits wanting to “talk to your kids about Socialism” pivot about the issues of Victor Berger in the broader context of American electoral politics as well as if he offered anything substantive. I suffer the problem that I don’t have any central point to make and would be skipping off on different tangents — all a bit of a mess, ain’t it?

I watch this “short” on YouTube that I assume is along the lines of, oh, Jimmy Kimmel’s “Show Us Your Hellhole” — or even just mocking protesters at the ICE facility. It is an oh so scary visage, “what’s really going on in Portland”. And I suppose the guy who put this up — trying to counter-act the media frame of the wacky frog and etc protests, missed the lessons of Aisles or Atwater on campaign commercials, where he thanked the network news “Reagan campaign ad versus reality” producer for showing that gaudy commercial again, no one is paying any mind to the audio laying out damming statistics. Once I look at the comments and gander the man’s youtube work, I see he is a Trumpist “exposing” the criminality of these “antifa” frog costumed jerks, his sneering “Hi Antifa” to the chicken costumed guy a genuine sneer. And I have to watch to see what lawlessness he is even claiming, taken as second nature from the yah saying comments. Even here I have to watch a longer video from a “local activist with a YouTube channel” to grasp the forced perspective — along the lines of — The city is allowing Chicken Man to direct traffic, complicit in letting them yell at good ICE functionaries before they enter this building.

Another short pops into view, it is a doozy in messaging terms. “MAGA Destroys Antifa in Fist Fight in Portland”. Royal Rumble this, agitators spoiling for an eruption, a weird coda of incredulity washes past, inconsistent storylines blurring, an expression of raw power and no framework. Nah nah nah — we lift weights, you don’t. Again — so many of these declared “antifa” are wearing inflatable costumes, so they are kind of at a disadvantage when the bullies come in from out of town.

I am rooting for the Dodgers to sweep, or at least win in five. I think I have a pretty good reason or two to do so. A bandwagoner and homer for the Seattle Mariners, identifying them as a pretty pathetic franchise with its sad history and smattering of big stars and two years — 1995 where they are the big and up and coming team and wait until next year — a next year that never happens as instead poor pitching in particularly the bullpen upends them in 1996 and 1997. Then comes 2001 and a record tying season — and one where in anyone’s recollection of this year in baseball they don’t even get to be posited as also-runs — only three teams figure, the World Championship Diamondbacks, the Yabkees, and the Moneyball revolution of Oakland Athletics.

So. Having lost in seven to the Toronto Blue Jays, I go sour grapes, under the true Aesopean definition. Yeah, don’t get the grapes but they’d’ve been sour anyway. Yeah, don’t get into the World Series, but would gotten crushed anyway. The bonus reason is so I return to the sense of nihilism — the problem of baseball… Wow, the team that has the great payroll and pluck up a collection of he biggest generational superstars wins it all very easily, you don’t say and who cares? Like, even here in the case of The much mocked Mets I can point out the mismanaged money spree got them a floor — equivalent of the third most successful season for the Mariners of the last two decades.

So, maybe the “pieces” are in place for a World Series appearance over the next two years where the circumstances have them have a shot in one. Like, I am not terribly interested in the equivalent of the 1996 Sonics team, a team that if you could you would want to pluck over to 1995. Or maybe this is the equivalent of the 2017 Jacksonville Jaguars — flukish high point for a franchise and now back to sports irrelevance. I will join in progress in the last week’s of the season and see.

So. Yeah. Dodgers, yah! Not like I am even watching.

I watched the Superman movie, which was kind of as good and meaningful as a Superman movie could be.  And I don’t think that’s damming with faint praise.  (To refer Alan Moore on the appeal of Superman — you have Krypto the Superdog, and he wears a mask.)  And I think there was one superhero and special effects laden fight sequence which I cannot narrative follow — no clue what everyone is supposed to be limited to or has what great ability — close your eyes and wait two minutes, I guess.  Looking at it in the cultural zietgiest, I remember hearing ponderances of the superheroes at the time of the Heath Ledger as Joker Barman movie (having watched it for a second time, not since it was released, I don’t think much of that one now) — that Superman comes off flat in current times, we are too cynical for this depiction of a pile of goofy altruisms.  And somewhere after a bunch of dark depictions of a Superman breathing his words as heavily as Batman, the Joker movie which gets a pile of “story for our times” and alluded to as some character study of the Trump age (but which I squint at asking “Doesn’t everyone remember ‘Falling Down’?) — (I never saw The Joker, incidemtally, but all the commentary I saw seemed just a rehash of that for the 1993 Falling Down.)  I actually don’t know how extensive the right wing “Superman so woke!” commentary i , being that I stare at a liberal ecgo chamber ready with pithy lines for sources they are at the ready to seek out.  I was actually a little on guard for on the nose tie-ins.  But if you want to do “Orange Man Bad”, Lex Luther is not really the characterization.  And in this realm, a Putinish figure invading a Ukrainiish country is kind of a stock plot in history — if you want to read this into this, go nuts.  Likewise the rest.  Somewhere in the zietgiest you land on the immigrant fantasy from the eve of ww2 trying to bring light to the world as opposed to the warmed over pulp vigilante stalking the night — surprise twist from 2008 to now.

Meanwhile Disney / Marvel has its slate of movies which look as uninteresting as ever.

It is that place where the right wing conspiracy mongerers lose the script, or are too myopic and self-interested to proceed with the script. Remember that line about the black helicopters? Yeah. Here they are now. Flying about the city. And it is indeed the Feds. Because the President has declared war, or has a conception of war, or wants to enforce power. And he is able to cite visuals from five years back of a Quarantined and George Floyd protest era — no great truck with them, though I guess amusing to watch them scuffle forward to duplicate the stupid “police free city-state zone” of Seattle’s Capitol Hill — and more so some weird street scuffles before that between some weird trolls of Vancouver and … Indeed, there they, antifa — vegan shake dealing antifa.

Conservative journalist Andy Ngo pushed back early Friday morning by claiming the costumes in Portland “serve the function of masking the violent extremism to make the direct action appear like a family-friendly gathering on camera, and to whitewash the past ultraviolence.”

“Conservative journalist” does some heavy lifting. He knows of the ultra-violence. When last I thought of that guy, he was showing up on Fox News with a neck brace and talking of “quick drying cement” that the vegan shake thrown at him was masking.

The other place where your Alex Joneses fall away from their line — we get ourselves some new Reichstag Fires. Or apparently not. We have to enforce standards and law and order after Charlie Kirk’s shooting. In a prior era, before a political figure had glad-handed him, Jones might piece in a lightly non-partisan bit in Andover contradictory and partisan conspiracy on this. But now? — nah.

After Portland had become boring and moved off of being “cool”, and then moved into and then out of a pretty rough patch, the President has made Portland cool again.  He is at war with us — seemingly the one white city in a list of other cities with large black populations he is at war with.  Funny thing now — simply existing in a physical space has become a revolutionary act.  Hard to figure what to do with that.

And The problem with nodding at “rough spot” is it would give at least some credence of justification that if a situation were that — then answer: national guard, military. And welcome to a two front propaganda war. Like, there is more warrant for civil disobediance at the ice facilities now than six years ago — but what we are down to is just public opinion supported dozen or so keeping the vigil demonstrators shouting slogans at the feds there.

I am reminded of a sickening sensation of having to play that game in trying to put myself in parts of the electorate’s imagination on Kamala city centric “we’re detroit!” ” we’re philly! ” ads.  Yeah, as meth and then fety sweep through rural America, they seem to have a different idea on it there versus it here (and Detroit and Philly). 

Another thing is gritting my teeth at a distinctly “America Fuck Yeah!” undertones on some commercial I see in a baseball game – – trying to place it against, oh, post 9/11 into War on Terror “Madison avenue takes the pulse of the public and sells back to us” manner.  Curious this has not quite popped up on what limited ads I have seen in football — at this point broader public for that after all as against the stuck in the ways and holding baseball audience? Or it is probably just one car ad and I missed it in football.

“The guy we need, the guy I hope the Democrats put up next time, is that Department of Transportation head during Biden — uh– what’s his name? Buttigieg! Pete Buttigieg. Hopefully the Democrats have him running because what this country needs as president is a manager, and he is good as we get there. Now who should the Republicans put up? I think the best Republican for after Trump is — because they will need to by-pass Vance — he’s not going anywhere. No. The best option for the Republicans is — oh, I think Marjorie Taylor Greene. Very telegenic. Buttigieg versus Marjorie Taylor Greene. That will make a great race.”

“I fear reprisals and counter-reprisals we are maybe about to see with Charlie Kirk’s death. Because you know, my son — young conservative. He is on about it. Because I don’t feel it but him, he dash his guy their guy. And we are getting so much blather. From both sides. Now you know who’s good at highlighting who is horrible all around the political map on this? Bill O’Reilly!”

Shame that I have actually lost the point in place I am going to be hearing this train of conversation, losing one more facet of incomprehension on the political moment. Like, I would hope you could somehow hold him to Buttigieg vote, even as he takes various positions on, oh, college loan forgiveness and gets knived as a less than masculine commie by…

I came around somewhat on Allan Lichtman, who was running around on many a media outlet with his “keys to the White House” presidential forecast — because watching his by-weekly streams he did out in the equivocation of “I am not all-knowing, I could be wrong.”. The problems of “the map is not the terrain” And more subjectivity than he wants to admit (what is a “foreign policy failure?”. Republicans were selling the Afghanistan withdraw as such, even though it is mostly just the case that you can see why President Trump scheduled it for the after the election. ) And within this I spotted one aside that I wanted to tack back on it it came to a Trump win, “something may be different and have changed than with every election since 1860.  If it is, I think I know what it may be — and I will get there if it happens.”. The tone goes at odds with this weird pile of YouTube clickbait images I was seeing for ” How Trump destroyed leftist’s career” (Never mind his fame of the moment came from predicting Trump winning in 2016).  (Incidentally, he predicted Gore winning in 2000, and sticks by that as accurate).  And “Lichtman Loses It” — though his election night feed showed nothing much off kilter — but it is where everyone gets “DESTROYED” or “Evisorated!!!!”.  His answer on why his “keys” failed and what “is different” — a broken scattershot news media and this is the first instance where the incumbent party trashed their incumbent president.  I do have an idea that if he were defining his terms from the perspective of after this presidential election and looking back at all the rest as opposed to right after Reagan, he might have a different definition for “Charisma” — understandably, Trump does not qualify ala broadly popular Reagan or Kennedy or Roosevelts — but if examining what it is that propels votes to him absent specifics in policy or politics, the thing they share along with war hero Eisenhower — is that they gobble up all the attention and exhaust the ability for an opponent to get a word in edgewise – – you have to think these things through on the particulars of causes and effects.

I listened to the “pod save America” “exit”/”autopsy” interview with two managers of the Harris campaign, and trying to digest meaning from it I may listen over it again. I have never listened to this one before — am familiar with its existence — only so much “dead center of the Democratic Party talk” I want to bother with. Overall in the weird electioneering a number of moments where I was thinking “I don’t think this is effective but I hope it is” (the “women winking at each other in the voting booth passing off their domineering husbands” “no one needs to know” ads which in terms of personal identities — you are putting people’s marriages on trial here) and things that depress me But no one else (noted the laste election eve campaign event in Philly. Ricky Martin was on stage. Opra came by. Mock Trump and his b-list celebrity has been but we are back in the same boat of micro-targeting no longer a -listers, whoever a-listers are these days.)

Looking over I see the next episode and something bothersome to possibly only me. The descriptor has “the hard questions about where the Democratic Party needs to go from here, the liberal media landscape, what the Harris campaign told us about why they lost, and yes, a jobs program for incels.”. Incel. Do words have any meaning anymore, because I have a feeling this in neither capturing either the narrow definitions first tossed out in a hyper-online subculture, maybe expanded to a still reasonably narrow definition of the literal oxymoron “involuntary celibate”. Here it seems to wash away into “non college educated man” broadly speaking, and taking in all assumptions of a broad sexual frustration. I suppose since the term “woke” had shifted some definition and then collapsed by broad use — and is now useless, the word “incel” might as well go the same route.

The deep breath analysis rejiggers previous stock analysis. When 3 out of a hundred voters walk across the aisle from Biden as against Trump over to Trump as against Harris, it is the sign that everything has gone haywire after all. And indeed, it kind of has. My bottom line is always going to be that — America now … joins… the list of countries… that have… popularly elected a leader… who was part of a failed coup attempt. What else is going to be the outcome beyond …

The humiliation is the point. The Republicans came back from a secret vote to cast their lot for Senate leader with the Senator who will gladly swerve off of Trump if he could happen to come the way at a minimal cost over the one who pledges total fealty. But the first chance of showing something… anything… for a historically mostly easy process of confirmation … no clear sign Thune wants to sidestep Trump’s desired “recess appointments” — the road to the rubber stamp role.

Okay, great, a new thinking goes. The Democrats have the soft power of celebrities and music stars. But. The Republicans have the streamers and podcasters. A batch of sub Joe Rogans along with Joe Rogan hisownself. Trump did that 20 something who sniffs the seats of interviews he considers Alpha-males. The best Harris had was the now more sedate Howard Stern and that show with a sexual euphemism name. In the social media sphere, eight years ago everyone was aghast at Russian incursions Facebook spaces. Today — who owns Twitter?

So the game recycles. Back to soft power. Cultural headspace. A manufactured counter-culture is Cooper than the culture, after all.

I do slide around some commentary by an apolitical podcaster/streamer that I listen to — an affected cynicism with his look see on goofy aggrieved liberals. He betrays his online-ness with his mockings. “Yeah, I know. Harris was ‘brat’, but … She wasn’t very interesting at all.” I forgot she was ever “brat”, and barely knew that in the first place. It was pretty easy to ignore. To him, the only thing Harris came out for was marijuana decriminalization, a last second issue tossed in a last minute campaign with two flaws in this complaint – – one: who cares how she came to it? Two: no, it is not all of her proposal and platform. I suppose there is a piecemeal element to Harris’s proposals, but I am not a fan of revolution. I’m a way, I guess the cynical apolitical podcaster showed the challenges to a run against a hothead, saying “Being ‘Trump is Bad’ is not enough.” Anything you say will end up sounding to an assortment of the 5 per cent needing to make the choice as though that is the message.