Robby Soave’s Panic Attack includes the provocative (?) suggestion…

Whatever legitimate grievances the GamerGaters had were more than cancelled out by their obnoxious and abusive behavior, but they found a powerful 

And, then, as you see here, we go into a history of Milo Y’s swerving from mocking and belittling gamers on twitter to his role “uncovering the pc group conspiracy” …

A hedging — the initial issues at stake for “gamergate” blurred as irrelevant to discussing Milo Y as opportunistic, and the second act as trolling and cyber-bullying / stalking.  Michael Malice slides away from denouncements completely, and goes on all in…

The story of Gamergate has been told ad infinitum.  As briefly as possible, it started with allegations from her boyfriend that…

As a whole, Michael Malice’s book — The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics — is pleasingly contradictory on assessing the left and right movements of American politics at large.  (The top marginal tax rate of the Eisenhower administration would be balked at by a President Bernie Sanders; a swift government take over of the steel industry by Truman as well; the oh-so-middle-of the-road Eisenhower immigration policy known then as “Operation Wetback” was suggested by Candidate Trump and bristled at; don’t make me laugh on LGBT rights…)  In this section,it’s maddening.  On one hand, the “Progressives” win utterly — on the other hand, they don’t know what they’re up against in choosing to fight these trolls…

Can both sides end up getting what they want from the issue and denouement?  One, some representation and variety and critical space, the other… grievances and trolling action?

We get to a good job with explaining it in terms of “entry-ism” — you’re a dude who likes pretending to blow things up in “first person shoot” mode — and if there has to be a female hero doing the action, make the boobs big and wearing a chain mail bikini.  Naturally, as women enter, they might be interested in something… else.  (And spurring into the mainstream of the subculture attacks on the Princess of Super Mario or the gender dynamics of Zelda.)  It all upsets the small subculture they have created for themselves.

Oddly, the retrograde gamers who p end up wanting Roger Ebert to be right when he once insisted, to seas of scorn, that video games are defacto can’t be art.  Not that they want that… though Malice does end up suggesting that in following with how a fat drag queen became the model for the the sea villain in Disney’s Little Mermaid or madames and prostitutes of the nineteenth century popularized the fashion color red… these the despised outcasts form the cutting edge of the next mainstream bourgois culture…

Anyway, it’s all as against any commentary I’ll generally get… oh, you know… the second toxic behavior not really undermining so much as affirming the gist of the story.

Mark Sanford, William Weld, and Joe Walsh.

Why three?  Did Mark Sanford look over at Joe Walsh and groan a “not him”?

I see in the New York Times coverage that there is “no room on the right”, and I suppose we’re living in a world where Rush Limbaugh responds to a caller complaining about the deficit with a “no one cares about the deficit”, so right is as right does,

— and in a sense no Republican President cared about the deficit since Eisenhower, who we all consider a moderate — even though Trump took a page from him in proposing immigration policies…

Sanford and Walsh in particular running, I suppose, to stand athwart history and define the terms of “right”.  Weld runs against boorishness.  (Or, all three run against boorishness, though Walsh’s past tweets expose a problem in that arena, and Sanford — well, his extra-marital affair was pretty sober, really.)

I suppose if Weld’s continuing at all with his Libertarian Party foreign policy, he’d be running to expose Trump’s isolationist as fraudulent, while your Walsh wants to do damage on Trump basic Bush era neo-connism.

With the rules from the RNC not allowing much room, it’ll be interesting to see who comes in fourth.  Like, here’s who came in fourth in the Democratic Primary race of 1996.  Will they do better than Fred Hudson?

Anyone going to do as well as Harold Stassen in 1984?

An explanation for a piece of agit prop somewhere else in the world, directed at US President Trump.

“Like all populists, the statue has two faces,” Mr. Schlegl added.  “One is humane and nice, the other is that of a vampire.”

This strikes me as rote, an instant gnabbing of stock commentary whether or not it fits the situation.  Say what you will about Trump, and parse out his two (or more faces) — not one of them is a forged smile at you.

Reading Brett Easton Ellis’s not terribly deep but interesting enough “Declaration of Indifference” regarding the election of President Trump, White.  Giving him some ugly company — I noted the book when I saw Milo Yiannopolis’s (sp?) book (one of those things an extension of his brand such that you can’t imagine being published without his mug on the cover) — and the “If You Like” Recommended to “White by Brett Easton Ellis”.  Two gay jackasses, I suppose, is the theory.

It’s actually there that Brett Easton Ellis has the most to say — a tad tired of the “magical gay elf” trope in movies like Moonlight.  Here he’s kind of playing the identity politics game as much as anyone:  he wants to see more gay jackasses represented in Hollywood productions and arts and entertainments.  The book is at its best when moving over his various twitter controversies.

So we get a whiff of neo-conservatism as he fends against the “Resistance” of his upper class Los Angeles Hollywood environment, wondering why the heck his community gave the key to the city to a (heterosexual) porn star who broke a nda.  I understand much of the fatigue of the moment.  But he’s disingenuous — shocked by the New Yorker asking him about political commentary as though he wouldn’t expect it, and so complaining it to the Los Angeles Times.

He is correct on some scores — just what the hell was anyone supposed to think of the constant claim of Hillary Clinton as “the most qualified presidential candidate” ever? — and off in other ways:  no difference between Obama and Trump on immigration — really?  (Even granting the insanity of the “Resistance” in envisioning a more open borders than will be feasible.)

I see, spotlighted perhaps the work of the same Powells worker cross referencing Milo with Ellis, that the David Shields anti-Trump book Nobody Hates Trump More than Trump has a cover blurb from Ellis calling it the only anti-Trump book that speaks to him.  Maybe this serves as a mea culpa, or a back-tracking.    And this gets to his current problems with the culture.

In Vimi Bajaj’s essay on V.S. Naipaul in the “Writer’s Chronicle,” she argues that he was a great writer only early on, when he was compassionate, and is now no longer of interest, because he hates most of humanity; such a formulation would eliminate everything from Petronius’s “The Satyricon” (1st Century A.D.) to Michel Houellebecq’s “Submission” (2015).

Reminds me of seeing in the wake of Trump’s election a Literature professor declaring that she was now going to emphasize empathy in her syllabus selections.

The three principal NYT theater critics — Alexis Soloski, Jesse Green, and Ben Brantley — conduct a symposium on the state of American theater in the age of Trump. All are sublimely oblivious of the extent to which they each embody everything that drove five million Obama voters to Trump.

I take a gander at the NYT a and e section, particularly on the theater, here and there by happenstance, and have commented on it on this here damned blog.  Completely separate from anyone’s analysis anywhere, I note it is self-parodic…  (See here.)

Along with battling against this type of hyperbole.

Alleister Crowley said of the swastika that “Before Hitler was, I AM”, a statement misinterpreted about — by a man who was defensive of Weimar Germany’s government …

whether or not the swastika is ever going to re-established to its pre-appropriated meaning …

… as Emmett Grogan later deployed it in anonymous signatures as “primitive man“…

or maybe mutated into something else entirely?…

will have to wait that magical thousand years, I suppose.

But it’s a query which pops into my mind with relation to the mutations of Pepe the Frog — which Hong Kong protesters are using as symbol in fighting against the Chinese government… and which was originally a man-child of a frog cartoon character.

Schizophrenic, it all is.  You have Palestine — a nation (if not state) whose cause is revered by the left, and whose governing authorities deny rights to LGBTQIA+…  to be sure, in keeping with the sentiment of the populace…  which oughta pull the rug under the “Intersectional as fuck” crowd — or at least force an admission of gray and complications, but … we got the claim of the struggle within the Palestinian Struggle, and why bother with the middle class bourgeois niceties of Israel as some gay tourist magnet?

Interestingly, the New York Times ran a listing of a batch of the Democratic candidates and too Trump and the playlists for their rallies, with a note that “surprisingly” Trump’s features gays… oh, YMCA by the Village People, Elton John… weird notation… I doubt Jerry Falwell himself blinks at an Elton John song…

As we are, Benjamin Netanyahu hugs Trump to pump his right wing Israeli base — trumpeting the hardline stance and bloviating at the “Boycott / Divest” movement favored by Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar…

In the old days, I would hear the ads for the Forward… entreating it as the place to go to probe “What should American Jews think” of current events in Israel.  Differences abound, and much consternation stems from the divergence of American domestic policies and Israeli policy –  but obviously American Jews have a particularly keen interest in watching the fate.

Schizophrenia ensues.  Trump may be full of it, but not because he’s here “drawing up ancient hatreds” and feeding the Richard Spencer “Jews will not replace us” part of his base by conjuring up “dual loyalties” with the partisan attack tweeting insisting Jews shouldn’t vote for the party of the “Squad” (and BDS).  It’s a bit of a leap from Biden or Warren there, but he’s running against every politically vulnerable part of the party, right?

I hear in the distance the “This is the Portland Police.  Stay off the sidewalk.  Any attempt to obstruct law enforcement will result in your arrest”, repeat, in loop.

A giant pick up truck drives by with a giant “Trump 2020” flag.  Not an American flag, mind you –those might be taken to be Berniecrats after all and get you bashed from both sides.

Looking down as I walk over the overpass the gaggle of dudes with black bandanas in wait to put on.  After I cross the bridge, another batch of dudes — more crew cutted, if you will — walk past.  I see one with an Alex Jones t-shirt… don’t get a good look at it.

From what I hear there was a bunch of hippy dippy jumping about somewhere about the park.  This is the main crux of activity for the mass of people.  Closer to the police line you have the hardcore antifa shouting across the line, next to whatever the fas — “Proud Boys” — are proud about.

I probably get in trouble with my peers for suggesting that, whatever these are, they aren’t “nazis in the streets”, and not having as much sympathy for the antifa forces as they want to… they managed to avoid beating up a gay Asian man this time — the logic I suppose is in the polling data that shows one small cohort of political demographics with a 50-50 split on whether it’s okay to “punch someone just because they are a nazi” and what gets defined as “nazi” is that gay Asian man who says mean things about them on the Internet…

If the fas versus antifas battles resemble this one in the future, it will be a positive development.