Aquarian Weekly
6/8/22
 
Reality Check
 

James Campion
 
 
INFLATION TRAIN = POLITICAL PAIN
 
 
I have been clear here for decades that I am not an economy writer. I have no fucking idea what drives national or global economics. Except for a very small group of humans I know (I’m looking at you, my bro-in-law, Thomas), this is the default for most of us. Especially in a hardcore capitalist construct, the most important thing that effects our ability to stay alive – food, home, utilities, stuff – is one big mystery. One thing that is not a mystery, and should be understood by the voting public, is how the economy affects politicians in power. Sure, it is only part of the story of political success, but when something as dramatic as the current state of national and global inflation is right now, it becomes the whole story.

On a national level, the Democrats hold power in Washington D.C. Many of these members of the U.S. Congress and the Senate, particularly our president, who has been around for 200 years and in politics for a cool century of so, should realize that with these outrageous prices on household items and especially gas, because, ya know, we go to war over gas prices around here, that the stank of all this is on them. The nuances of a recovery from the disasters of 2020, solid job reports, and a robust economic recovery in the technical is meaningless. The mere fact that things are just as bad in almost every industrialized nation on planet earth right now matters little. 

Again, we don’t know how any of this really works. 

To wit: Both strictly private-sector based economic theory and government-manipulated economic theories have both been debunked over the centuries. Many, many times. To disastrous results. Yet even people we pay to figure this shit out have zero idea what the hell just happened. Did I hear that several members of the Fed and economic advisors to our government admit they did not see this coming? Shit, the Wall Street Journal, the running Bible on capitalism just ran an op-ed that they are shocked. 

But one thing we absolutely know right now is that something has gone awry. No one should be paying over eleven dollars for a jar of marinara sauce. And it would seem for Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his party’s chances of staying in power, high prices and confusion on how it gets there means big trouble.

None of this matters as much as the pocketbook. Never did. Never will.

Forget the fact that the whole Biden presidency has been mostly a bust. His approval ratings are in the tank. He cannot get anything through a legislature he owns, and he appears to be out of it most of the time. I am glad he beat the last guy, who is a psycho lunatic anti-Democratic weirdo TV asshole. But at some point, we must come to grips that even though we needed the white old guy to convince the winy, racist, backwards states to boot that bleating thug, he has sucked ass at this. And, again, I am not necessarily putting the complete blame for the largest inflation numbers in four decades on the president, but this is how things work. And Joe knows this. If he doesn’t, then we have larger issues with this president that will have to be dealt with in another more agonizing column.

Look, first-term mid-terms are ugly anyway. But this is shaping up to be a slaughterhouse in November. And no one should be surprised by this. Granted, there are massive issues on the table right now that could ameliorate the carnage – starting with thrice-daily mass shootings and the striking down of Roe v Wade, which will put 51-percent of the electorate in bodily servitude to the federal government. But if eggs and gas and stuff are still ridiculously expensive, then you can be assured that people – even women – will bag freedom and the life and limb of grade-school kids to change the narrative.

And, of course, since we know nothing about the economy, it will likely not change. Republicans, who should absolutely run on how crazy this inflation has been now for nearly a year, routinely tell us it is the private sector that decides these things not the government. But, as they run to be in said government, they will chuck this concept to lay the blame at the feet of the party in power instead. And again, I agree whole heartedly with this tactic. It is just disingenuous. But who cares about that shit? No one knows what that word means. Especially in D.C. 

All is fair in a love and war. The basic premise of the 2022 mid-terms right now lies in the generic ballot polls. Republicans currently lead this by 2.2 percent. Considering that polling has been rather generous to Democrats over the past six election cycles, this ain’t a good sign for them. Biden, for instance, had a soldi ten-point advantage over Donald J. Trump in 2020, and only won by three percent. If anything, Biden, should have been wondering what the fuck happened that November. In a normal year, a 2.2 percent lead for Democrats would be a dire warning sign for them. This number, combined with Biden’s dismal 40-percent approval rating, is a recipe for ass-whup.

Seeing how I am writing this in the first full week of June, there is only five months for this economy to be something that won’t crush the party in power. That won’t happen. Roe v Wade is going bye-bye, and that might shift the balance of power in states where voters want to protect it. The number as of this morning for pro-choice is 68-percent of Americans. That counts for something. Sure. And if this summer is going to get bloodier – at least schools are out in a few weeks, so there will be less children to gun down – the gun issue will certainly hurt Republicans. But, again, none of this matters as much as the pocketbook. Never did. Never will. The American Revolution. The Civil War. Civil Rights. All of this was about money. 

That much we do know.      

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Aquarian Weekly
6/1/22
 
Reality Check
 
James Campion
 
 KILL U.S.A.
Running Out of Shit To Write About This… So, You Get This
 
I have a book coming out on the day this hits the cybersphere. Sorry, but I’m privileged to plug it here. Shit, I’ve been doing this for a long time, and my managing editor, Debra Kate Schafer is the coolest and she recently conducted an interview with me for the book and supports my work, and hell, it’s titled, Take a Sad Song – The Emotional Currency of Hey Jude. Of course, I would hope everyone gets it and reads it and enjoys it, And I am damn proud to include the voices of so many talented and smart people in it. But mostly the book’s release reminds me daily of how down and confused and scared we all were in 2020 during the quarantine when I wrote it. It was my pandemic project. And while I discovered much about song, the Beatles, Paul McCartney, the times, and everything in between – what always comes back to me from the experts and artists who lent their insights to it, is that while it seems easy to have empathy and care about our fellow humans on the surface, it really isn’t. It is hard. Very hard. Personal interest. Personal sovereignty. Personal ambitions will overwhelm any desire for the greater good. 

This is why we tend to eliminate people who espouse empathy as a general philosophy of life – Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, ya know.

Na Na Na… Na Na Na Na… Na Na Na Na… Hey Jude.

Okay, so enough of that nonsense. But it’s not nonsense. No. Because if it was then I wouldn’t AGAIN feel the need – against all the instinct in my bones – to comment on the Texas school shooting this week or to continue to wonder what our fascination is with guns, violence, racism, personal angst, vengeance, grievance, victimhood and everything in between. Humans, I mean. Not Americans per se. I have been quite clear here from the very first column I wrote for this paper, that America is the great human experiment. We are given a unique opportunity in the annals of civilization to lift ourselves up, but we rarely if ever do. 

I think it seems obvious to write that no one wants grammar school children to be massacred. Maybe the odd person with similar aspirations as the young man who decided to kill his grandmother, post if on Facebook, and minutes later – as blithely as one might mention taking a pop down to the market for a gallon of milk – proclaim that he planned to murder kids in a school, and then enact it. But beyond these damaged beings, there cannot be enough people that think this is okay.

Then I see this the very moment I sat down to write this on the CNN web site – “The shooting is the latest entry in the long history of gun violence in the United States. Before Tuesday, there had been at least 39 shootings in K-12 schools, colleges and universities in 2022, resulting in at least 10 deaths and 51 injuries.

Okay…what?

It is very difficult to balance that we are not kill-crazies in a country where kill-crazy has become almost a daily occurrence, like rain and farting.

There have been 39 school shootings in 2022? The year is only half over. Thirty-nine. The last time I wrote something like this, probably last year, and the year before that, and the one where I just wrote “blah blah blah” for a thousand words, some people argued that maybe the stats were off or that some could not be considered “school shootings” because they happened in the parking lot or the guy’s gun didn’t fire or something. But, I mean, 39?? In six months?

So, it is very difficult to balance that we are not kill-crazies in a country where kill-crazy has become almost a daily occurrence, like rain and farting. 

I have no idea why guns are so important to people. I do not own one. But this also doesn’t mean they are not – for whatever reason the gun people have for owning, shooting, collecting them – legit for it. That’s on them. I love Tom Waits. And not just the brilliant songs. His singing too. People think that’s weird. So, I don’t care if people dig guns, and I have never been anti-gun or went nuts for sensible gun laws. I think, like drugs, the guns are not necessarily the problem, people are the problem. And people will get guns like they get drugs. And for the record, people will get abortions. Lots of abortions after that becomes illegal. But, then again, we do have traffic lights and seatbelts. So, we always factor people being shitty into our laws.

I don’t know. I guess this is all to say that I have less to say about this latest horror show in Texas, other than perhaps one should be expected to be shot at in Texas. They have more guns per-capita than any state. It’s in their state crest. They thump their chests about cowboys and guns all the time. To say the least, Texas is gun centric. And the only reason to have a gun is to kill a mammal. It’s a kill machine. There is no other use for guns. Unlike Tom Waits, who has many elements – you can dance to some of his stuff, enjoy gin with it, even annoy your friends. But a gun is less for picking your teeth or cutting your grass or hitting a baseball. It’s a kill machine for fast and effective killing. That’s it. So, if you live in a state that celebrates this and part of its very communal identity is a kill machine, and if you send your kids to school there, maybe you should expect the odd shooting? Just sayin’. If you think about it, it’s a miracle there isn’t more of these shootings there. Maybe there will be more. Maybe today.

I guess what still irks me is that we accept this pretty much as normal. And that is a weird comment on us. Weirder than Tom Waits’ voice or my plugging my book about a song that shines with comfort and unity to then pivot and write about how we apparently dig children dying in schools when deep-down I cannot fathom this. But what other conclusion can one come to?

We have always been the kill capitol of the planet. This is what defines us. Not Judeo-Christian morals or constitutionality or rights or exceptionalism. Killing. Our national anthem is about killing. There’s lots and lots of killing. Sanctioned and not. Crazies with guns and knives and bombs. Crazies bashing their way into the Capitol or burning down a Wendy’s to protest violence. Cops are crazy. People killing. Kill. Kill. Kill.

Got nothing particularly smarmy or pithy to add to this. It’s just what’s on my mind the morning I pound this out on the old keyboard device. Killing. This is our main export to the world. We, I guess, like it, love it, embrace it. It’s part of us. The great human experiment. My thoughts have not changed on this, and I doubt they ever will. The evidence is way too strong to support my findings.

Not sure we can take this sad song and make it anything

Or maybe we can.

No?

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Aquarian Weekly
5/11/22
 
Reality Check
 
James Campion
  
UH-OH
Preparing for Women to Become Government Property
 

Fans of my decade-plus pounding of these keys for Marriage Equality and years of calling for the expunging of Donald J. Trump from anything resembling the White House will get a huge kick out of the next few months. Because although I have touched on the issue of Roe v Wade and equal rights for women before around here, and most recently this past December, things got real this past week when some enterprising American hero leaked what can only be described as the most heinous judicial attack on the personal liberty of the taxpaying citizenry yet. Get ready. This will be a continuing topic. When 51.1 percent of the populace have their bodies become the property of the U.S. government, it’s worth getting obsessed about.

None of this is surprising. This had been coming for some time, but really a deadlock certainty once the new “conservative judges” (we’ll get to that semantic clusterfuck later) took their places. No one with half a brain thought that when all three – Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh – interviewed for the gig and claimed that Roe v Wade was “settled law” it was remotely true. The man who appointed them, the aforementioned Trump, put out a litmus test that only “Pro Life” (a euphemism for allowing the government to fuck with a woman’s bodily functions) would be his picks. This was why Republicans held their noses to vote for this dink. Therefore, this is the entire point of them even being on the Court. It’s not like they were any good. The last guy was a drunk, and not even a good drunk, one that leans into you and smells bad and tells you about how he could have played centerfield for the Red Sox and then tries to grope your date.  

The Religious Right (not particularly conservative) was allowed into American politics in the 1980s, because Ronald Reagan mistook them for lobbyists, and because, well, you know, Reagan. And it’s been a fun ride ever since. They hijacked what was merely a fiscally conservative, warmongering racist organization and decided to go all-in on the culture wars tearing the mantle of conservatism from the likes of William F. Buckley and George Will and handing them over to southern charlatans like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

Falwell and Robertson were part of a long line of religious loons that have been trying to tell us what to do, how to act, how to dress, what art we can consume and how guilty we should feel unless we give them money for Jesus since the dawn of civilization. But we had an awakening here in the early part of the twentieth century and it made them nervous. And until the 1980s things were moving along nicely away from government-controlled human behavior rat science to a reluctant form of enlightenment. We called this period the 1960s and 70s, during which the idea that women should have control over their bodies became law. But even the 1980s would not kowtow to the medieval idea of enslaving women – nor did the 90s or the first two decades of this century.

Then this week a leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion on the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case challenging the constitutionality of a fifteen-week abortion ban in Mississippi emerged. In it, Alito becomes another justice ignoring the progress of rights in this country to myopically return the nation to the dark ages. “Until the latter part of the 20th century,” he writes in an enviably spectacular stupor reserved for the victims of blunt head trauma, “…there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. Zero. None.”

Alito, in essence, is granting the government the right someday to force abortions like in China.

And before 1865, owning humans was legal. There was no constitutional right to obtain freedom for Africans stolen from their homeland to do our bidding for free. Zero. None.

Alito, who also voted against and wrote a bigoted screed against marriage equality seven years ago, evokes the word “abortion” here because he misunderstands the concept of the Fourteenth Amendment that grants protection to every citizen, even ones with vaginas, against “any state to deprive its citizens of life, liberty, or property.” The fundamental disconnect between abortion and property=body is at the heart of this. Alito, in essence, is granting the government the right someday to force abortions like in China.

Alito’s goofy “zero-none” nonsense is brilliantly framed from a woman’s perspective in a piece in the latest New Yorker that every American, male or female, who gives a shit about personal liberty should read. Titled “What’s Missing From Alito’s Decision to Revoke the Right to Abortion”, author/journalist Jessica Winter writes, “Alito is entirely correct that, in 1973, the Supreme Court was somewhat out of step with its time in codifying women’s rights. When Roe was decided, a married woman in the United States needed her husband’s permission to get a credit card, something that did not change until 1974. No state outlawed marital rape until 1975. No man was found liable for sexual harassment until 1977. Pregnancy was a fireable offense until 1978. Alito does not itemize forms of gender-based subjugation that persisted after Roe, many of which might be persuasively argued as ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.’”

Ouch.

And all of it true.

This is why Religious Right Republicans – you can’t call these fascists conservatives anymore, it’s silly – are up in arms about Critical Race Theory. The truth is painful. The truth is messy. But, as the man says, the truth will set you free. Or at least set women free. But the truth is going bye-bye.

Granted, I am writing this from a comfortable seat of freedom from judicial tyranny here in New Jersey, where my wife and daughter reside. We have strengthened our right to exist free of government enslavement. This column merely points out that the threat to the Fourteenth Amendment for women’s rights against “any state to deprive its citizens of life, liberty, or property” is wrong and should not exist in a purportedly “free” country. However, currently thirteen states are challenging this amendment by banning abortion after fifteen weeks, which may seem fairly reasonable to government-control freaks who are obsessed with its complete sovereignty over the bodily functions of its citizens, but all of those states have “trigger-laws” that kick in once this glaringly apparent Supreme Court ruling comes down, which grants state governments the complete power over the innards of over half of its public.

This statement and the ruling it precedes will effectively put all American women in the servitude of the federal government. There really is no other way of looking at this and calls into question contraception and the like. Because the ruling will not rid the nation of abortion – you can take an abortion pill for that anywhere. You don’t need a clinic or the drunk guy’s vote on the Court to get it. Abortions, just like the failed Drug War, is a pacifier for the Religious Right that will not curtail a single abortion, but it will affect women’s health care, and as stated here more than once over the years, the personal liberty of the female citizen. And this ruling will give rise to the attacks on contraception, another biggie for religious fanatics.

The one thing conservatives fear, government control, will be lasting and comprehensive once this all comes down in a month or so. To wit: Supposed conservative Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves, a Republican, recently told CBS News that with the felling of Roe v Wade, “Each of those elected representatives can make the decisions that they view best for their constituents.”

Let me qualify the horrors of this statement and apply it to amendments you dig, like the First or Second Amendment: “Each of those elected representatives can MAKE THE DECISIONS THAT THEY VIEW BEST for their constituents.”

Making decisions they “view best for you.” Remember all those wusses who wouldn’t wear a cloth over their face for a few months, they now want the government to crawl inside the body of a woman for a lifetime.

Let that sink in, conservatives. Unless you are a member of the Religious Right, let that sink in, ladies.

In the coming weeks we will cover what this means for the 2022 midterms and the rest of our lives in voting booths, which has pitted the concept of America with one party that has chosen to dismantle personal sovereignty.

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Aquarian Weekly
4/27/22
 
Reality Check
 

James Campion
 
 
RON DESANTIS IS DEFINITELY NOT A CLOSET TRANSGENDER COMMUNIST MEMBER OF THE KKK INSPIRED BY MEIN KEMPF
Dismantling Scurrilous Rumors About the Florida Governor One at a Time
 
 
It is better to cast your seed in the belly of a whore than spill it on the ground.
                                                                     – Genesis 38:8
 
The rumors are not true. In fact, I am here to defuse the furor over claims that beleaguered Florida Governor, rising Republican star for the 2024 nomination for president, was born a woman, and his anti-LGBTQ laws to attack these children at a vulnerable age is a prime example of Freudian sex-identity self-loathing. This is madness and an obvious attempt by radicals to attack his origins and dilute his influence over a dying economic state and add to his plummeting approval ratings. There is also no truth to the allegations that his using the state government to pass laws as blatant attacks on business rights for political vengeance is a prime example of his communist leanings. Nor is this nonsense that his constant parading of the term “grooming” as a systemic mind-control of the state’s youth by the gay community is lifted directly from the third chapter of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kempf, substituting Jews for Homosexuals. And just because the Republicans have voted to disenfranchise Black congressional districts to skew election results, does not cement DeSantis’s membership in the Klu Klux Klan. Come on. This craziness has to stop. Now.

I am no fan of DeSantis. He is a charlatan selling fear and the over-coddling of children for their inability to process information on their own without the help of the government. His banning of math books because it may upset white people is cancel culture run amok. Sure, he’s an opportunist who exploits whatever wind is blowing – anti-science, anti-gay, and whatever crap it takes to get elected. But who doesn’t? I get that. I have been at this a long time. I lived through Just Say No and Freedom Fries and Muslim Bans. I’m a big boy. I do not hate Ron DeSantis. Even though I think he is silly, his kind interests me. Like studying the grazing habit of the dung beetle.

If anything, I pity DeSantis. He is clearly mentally challenged, and these attacks are just a cheap form of bullying. For instance, I am appalled at these memes and repeated video clips played over and over on YouTube of his drooling. This is absolutely not a sign of stroking. Are these people doctors? No. And do they care that his administrative assistants are forced to calm his late afternoon crying jags or deflect these tall tales of his manic jacking off to Donald Trump sweating through interviews? They do not. Instead, they just take to the Internet to hammer on him. Where is the compassion? Maybe it is this low-rent treatment that has led him to act as a psycho bigot. Has The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, or pretty much any Dr. Suess (his canon does tend to drive a singular concept home) taught us nothing?

The state manipulation of a private business concern is not communism. The state using its powers for personal gain and vengeance for a business not supporting its ideology is not communism.

I do not have to agree with someone’s politics to defend their character against mean-spirited political mudslinging. I support LGBT rights. I do not want to see any state, even a sinkhole like Florida, either run by Democrats or Republicans disenfranchise African Americans to better the chances of electoral victory. Having read Mein Kampf and found eerie similarities between most religious-based governing and its dangerous baby, patriotism disguised as state-mandated mugging, I can state with confidence that it is a stretch to take out one or two sentences in a deplorable document to prove DeSantis is a Nazi. Enough with the Nazi comparisons. As if that is ever going to happen again. Great defenders of freedom like Vladimir Putin are putting an end to fascism in Ukraine right now. We are all safer for it. He is a great hero. At least that’s what Trump and Fox News says, and why divert any belief system beyond what a game show host and a tainted news organization have to say? There is no time for that.

Or maybe Putin is a despot? Hard to tell. I’ll have to do my own research and investigation once I am done deconstructing the quasi-science of the Covid virus. I heard a good place to start is Season 26 of The Bachelor.

Can I just break the fourth wall for a moment? I just wrote that there are 26 seasons of something called The Bachelor, wherein strangers find spouses for life on a reality TV show. That is a thing that is true. It has happened and keeps happening. The National Broadcasting Company would not put this on if it didn’t make a shit-ton of money and get big ratings. A quarter century of The Bachelor. Let that sink in.

Okay, back to the satire.

While it is true that DeSantis and his Republican-controlled government is pissing on Ronald Reagan’s grave by stripping the legal right for the Disney Corporation to control land it has built on its own with its own funds, maintain its debt, infrastructure, and other amenities, freeing tax-payers and the local government of the fiduciary burden, he is doing so in the defense of the right of parents against the company’s evil anti-DeSantis ideologies. The state manipulation of a private business concern is not communism. The state using its powers for personal gain and vengeance for a business not supporting its ideology is not communism. It is hardly communism for the taxpayers to absorb the business expenses of private enterprises, thus making it state run. This is like saying that a president not agreeing to the results of an election, trying to use the awesome powers of his office to remain in charge, and then commandeering an insurrection on the federal Capitol building is fascist. Absurd.

Finally, the most outlandish of any of these fast-moving rumors is that Ron DeSantis has had sex realignment, that he was born a woman, and he is using this crusade against the LGBTQ community and, (gulp!) LGBTQ children as a front to deflect the truth. This one is easy to refute. Firstly, no respectable Trans would ever dress like him. Have you seen his suits? It’s like a 1970s Caldor blew up and landed on his back. His gait is also far-too simian to have any female origins. And while I support his right to self-identity as sacrosanct and defend his personal choices to not be defined as a threat by the government, it is beyond believable that this man has ever been anywhere near women, much less was once one.

Okay, so maybe this Roy Cohn-esque boondoggle does come with photos of the former Ronnie Dee-Lite dancing at Birds of a Feather Lesbian Lounge in Miami Florida in 2001. And, admittedly, there are intriguing resemblances to what some, not me, might judge as pre-surgery female DeSantis. But come on. I might be led to believe Marjorie Taylor Green was a man or that Lindsay Graham was thrice the grand marshal of the Mermaid Parade, but DeSantis as a woman just doesn’t wash.

In conclusion, despite actions leaning in this direction, Ron DeSantis is not a self-loathing transgender, nor is he a devout communist, influenced in any way by the writings of Adolf Hitler, nor a member of the KKK – at least not a card-carrying one. But I will be doing further research on this. The Green Bay Packers QB is helping me out.

Considering how gullibly fickle our electorate is, and his preternatural ability to tap into the whiny zeitgeist, Ron DeSantis is probably going to be our next president.

So, come on. Leave him alone

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