Vulcanic Delights
Choose Your Path Carefully
Divergent Ways, All Doomed
Vul-Kar Is Angry
How the Hell Did He Manage to Escape
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
Tuesday, December 11, 2018
We Want Trump
Solution Timetable
Master Detective 2017 6 points
Private Eye 2018 5 points
Flatfoot 2020 4 points
Of no surprise to the loyal tough guy detectives of game kings, my predictions have once again missed the mark. I allowed no scoring for solving the case in 2019 which, although time yet remains in 2018, is looking pretty good to wrap this one up.
Now any fan of courtroom drama can tell you that the case for the prosecution, no matter how strong, may always, in the eyes of the jury, suffer transformation into a case for the defense. The facts in evidence here may yet be enough to crush a teary confession from the defendant, Errol Stanley Gardner style. Testimony to this point is still heavily reliant on spooks and perjurers. Nevertheless, only the willfully blind can fail to see the writing on the wall. However, if the evidence remains so tantalizing redacted from whence do we hear the crescendo of noir orchestration that is signalling the denouement?
In this flatfoot's estimation there are two exhibits for the people to consider.
Exhibit A. The Republican Party has already obtained everything from its bargain with Trump that it could reasonably expect. It has the tax cuts that are so dear to its heart with the accompanying final round of "who wants to be a billionaire" safely tucked away in tax havens for the rainy days to come. It also has two freshly minted hirelings on the Supreme Court for a majority that it is confident will shield the relations of production in the days ahead. With such victories it is no wonder so many of its ranks were content to retire from the battlefield in the last election to bask in the acclaim of the masses and collect their fitting recompense.
So what more can the party which has no governing platform of its own expect from the television personality it has proclaimed emperor? Although his mass following now constitutes the only numbers they can reliably count, that will not prevent them from seeking salvation in a ritual sacrifice to appease the disappointed on Wall St. and in Youngstown.
Exhibit B.
It's not difficult to hear the political tone of this. Whether the "president of the rich" will ultimately succeed where he is currently stumbling it is delusional to interpret the situation in France as an affirmation of the "emperor of the rich" and yet delusion is the order of the day, (Trump retweets apparently false claim of Paris protesters chanting). Missteps and lies in the service of right wing policies can and are overlooked and understood. But in this case Trump is summoning a devil he knows nothing about which no one is his crumbling circle of supporters will be prepared to welcome.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you to find the defendant guilty of being both unnecessary and a danger to his class.
And might I add:
And on a closing note:
The party as we have known it must disappear. It will disappear. It is disappearing. It will disappear as the state will disappear. The whole labouring population becomes the state. That is the disappearance of the state. It can have no other meaning. It withers away by expanding to such a degree that it is transformed into its opposite. And the party does the same. The state withers away and the party withers away. But for the proletariat the most important, the primary thing is the withering away of the party. For if the party does not wither away, the state never will. - Notes on Dialectics - C.L.R. James
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
Monday, November 26, 2018
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
Contribute to the Defeat
Ready for takeoff
Final duel
Ace
Cogs & Commissars
All Hail Computin!
Those who stand for the “neither-victory-nor-defeat” slogan are in fact on the side of the bourgeoisie and the opportunists, for they do not believe in the possibility of international revolutionary action by the working class against their own governments, and do not wish to help develop such action, which, though undoubtedly difficult, is the only task worthy of a proletarian, the only socialist task. It is the proletariat in the most backward of the belligerent Great Powers which, through the medium of their party, have had to adopt—especially in view of the shameful treachery of the German and French Social-Democrats— revolutionary tactics that are quite unfeasible unless they “contribute to the defeat” of their own government, but which alone lead to a European revolution, to the permanent peace of socialism, to the liberation of humanity from the horrors, misery, savagery and brutality now prevailing. - Lenin - The Defeat of One's Own Government in the Imperialist War, July 26, 1915
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Saturday, November 10, 2018
The Very Latest Craze!
Players enact the roles of either the suffragettes, represented by 21 green markers, or police constables, represented by 21 dark blue markers. The suffragettes’ object is to occupy the House of Commons with six markers while defending their home base of the Albert Hall against the police, whose object is, likewise, to occupy Albert Hall while defending the House of Commons.
Saturday, November 3, 2018
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Monday, October 22, 2018
Friday, October 19, 2018
Wednesday, October 17, 2018
Turn Me Loose
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Dr. Ben Carson told an audience of conservative activists on Friday that the sexual assault allegations facing President Donald Trump's nominee to the Supreme Court are part of a plot by socialists to take over America that dates back more than a century.
"If you really understand the big picture of what's going on, then what's going on with Kavanaugh will make perfectly good sense to you," Carson said at the annual Values Voter Summit in Washington. "There've been people in this country for a very long time, going all the way back to the Fabians, people who've wanted to fundamentally change this country."
Trump HUD Secretary Ben Carson claims Kavanaugh allegations are part of a centuries old socialist plot
I haven't been able to discover the origins of Dr. Carson's “big picture” and I confess I haven't looked very hard. I understand the Fabian Society is a not unfamiliar character in right-wing fabulation and I also see that the Society has disavowed any role in the recent fight over Kavanaugh (Crying Wolf ). But I do think we can see more in this than just another odd story about our odd Secretary of HUD.
I'm first struck by the idealism of the declaration.
"They don't like what America is and what it represents, and they want to change us to another system. In order to do that, there are three things they must control: the education system, the media, and the courts. The first two of those they have," Carson said. "The other they thought they had, but it was snatched out from under their noses in November of 2016."
American politics are being driven by a conspiracy of thought in the hands of a few. Technically there is not even a party line here since the Fabians eschew any “resolution of a political character expressing an opinion or calling for action”. It is the simple idea of socialism which is afoot.
It isn't surprising to find a substantial weight of ideals at a Values Voters Summit or in Republican conversations in general. Without attempting to nail the philosophical underpinnings of the right I can still sketch the vocation of the ideologues with Dr. Carson serving as my example. The system they want to protect doesn't require any particular faith. Its credo can be expressed as an algorithm whose standard of truth is its speed of execution. The beliefs of its owners are likewise pared to a minimum.
But there are still stipends for those, like Dr. Carson, who will speak to audiences with the leisure and the thirst for authenticated artifacts of conservatism. And these days, these days of Trump, no rally of the faithful is complete without a denunciation of socialism.
The Republican Party has, since its days in the wilderness during the New Deal, never forgotten its class enemy. In that sense it has always had a clarity which has cemented it to the right and provided a lesson for the left. But the specter it raises, like the values it claims to defend, is idealist to the core. True, the word socialism has made an appearance in the Democratic Party. It may even seem there is a Fabian Society afoot there although far more common is the new party line, “I'm not a socialist, I'm a democrat”.
The relationship between socialism and the Democrats is a topic for another time. And I don't think I need to defend the Democrats against Dr. Carson's “slander”. What I want to point out is that he and the GOP in general are digging in for what they perceive as a war of ideas when what is happening is a class struggle.
The Fabian Society was founded in 1884 and exists to this day. It has played a role in the British Labour Party. But if the GOP believes they are the threat to America they will be surprised. Similarly, the hard right of the USA, which I don't imply should be distinguished from the GOP, is blaming the resistance to Kavanaugh on the Jews. These are fables to feed their mass supporters so they can separate themselves from those outside the party with whom they share a class position and ally themselves with those with whom they do not.
Socialism is not the Fabian Society. It was not invented by Karl Marx in the British Library and it is not the intellectual property of a party or an international. It has a rich theoretical tradition but an even longer history of practical, granular struggle. It has elements that have survived the triumph of capitalism but it has been built by the practices of those who provide life to capital in the global reaches of production.
The media is a business. The universities are also business. If you believe they have been turned then you are an idealist whose world is closing in. And if you believe that securing a fifth conservative seat on the Supreme Court has ensured the preservation of that world then you have blinded yourself by a refusal to see.
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Monday, September 24, 2018
Vaporize politicians! Zap skinheads!
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| GayBlade manual cover, 1992, image credit Ryan Best |
GayBlade was a role-playing game developed by Ryan Best in 1992. According to the manual: “GayBlade takes players into an ancient and dark dungeon on a terrifying Quest—to rescue Empress Nelda from the disgusting right-wing creatures inhabiting the dungeon. Fortunately, the rescue party is made up of heroic Drag Queens, Queers, Lesbians, and others who will stop at nothing to get their beloved Empress back to luxurious Castle GayKeep. But can they succeed when so many others have failed before them?”
When the game starts, players in table-top RPG fashion, roll to create a team of characters (Jones,1993). Each type of character has a different ability set encouraging players to create a balanced coalition team. “Armor” in the game includes leather jackets, aprons, tiaras, and condoms, and “weapons” include purses, mace, press-on nails and blo-driers. Enemies in the game include TV evangelists, young republicans, rednecks, homophonic cops, etc., as well as some STIs. The evil forces are led by Lord Nanahcub (or Buchanan backwards) (Nissenbaum 1993). The castle includes 1300 rooms, 13 levels, and 100 bad guys (USA Today, 1993). Much of the coverage of the game asserted it was the “first” LGBTQ game, however this is because its creator and journalists covering the game were unaware of Caper in the Castro.
We stumbled across this game during our archival research into early 1980s and 1990s gay and lesbian newspapers, looking hard for any additional LGBTQ specific games. This otherwise undocumented piece of LGBTQ digital game history was actually widely covered at the time of its original release. According to creator Ryan Best it achieved a large amount of press coverage (particularly for an indie queer game in 1993): “It took me by surprise how much press coverage GayBlade received. My phone was ringing day and night with calls for interviews,” Best said. “Coverage included National Public Radio, USA Today, dozens of national and international GLBT newspapers, Der Spiegel magazine, and I was interviewed by Howard Stern on his radio show.”
We were able to find some of these articles including coverage from the Bay Area Reporter, Village Voice, The Advocate, USA Today, The Boston Globe, and UPI Newstrack.
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| Article about GayBlade from the Village Voice, July 13 1993, page 46, |
Friday, September 14, 2018
Fear of The Angry Red Planet
The anonymous op-ed in the Times as well as Woodward's book (which I have not read but am proceeding from his summaries on talk shows) emphasize the peril to the actual American empire of Trump's ignorance. As any thoughtful imperialist will tell you an empire is a complicated matter and not child's play. A president is not required to come into office with a comprehensive mastery of the subject but he or she must have a verifiable grasp of the state of their knowledge and their ignorance.
In this White House the imperialists whose asides from the stage have provided a relentless commentary, from the beginning, to the soliloquies of their commander-in-chief have, none of them, anything like the credentials normally required for their roles in the management of the actual empire. But they all can take an inflated measure of their own worth by comparison to the president. And it appears that they have.
The disastrous record of the previous Republican administration has left that party's reserve of certified strategists depleted. Had another candidate won its nomination they would have needed to promote most of the roster from the farm leagues. But Trump, running against everything since MacArthur, was left to pick among the misfits and the reckless climbers.
So the emperor knows nothing and the palace is both disloyal and out of their depth. How have we arrived here?
We should start by acknowledging that the empire as it actually exists is in crisis. America's colonial strategy has never moved beyond the one it used to destroy the population and occupy the lands of North America. What success it had in the 20th century was by outspending all rivals and the economic history of the 21st century demonstrates the radically diminishing returns on that.
Politically, at home, the actual empire has required a fantasy empire to rally enough of the working class to give it broad support and to staff its legions. While the Obama administration pursued an assortment of wars and the patching of financial markets the Republicans were free to sell fantasy to their mass audience. And no one excelled at salesmanship like Trump. Through a strategy no more complex than protecting his right flank he swept the remains of the GOP from the field. He knows that the actual empire that his staff is so intent on bringing him around on is a much harder sell than the one in the imagination of his rally audiences. And he knows that the Republican party is an empty husk without it.
The impersonality of financial abstraction escapes any attempt at conscious political transformation, so that people who have lost control of their life hang on dearly to a sense of illusory belonging. The nation, religious faith, and ethnicity provide protection from insecurity and loneliness, and serve as tools to attack competitors. ... Aggressive belonging is their only form of cohesion. Franco “Bifo” Beradi – AndThis “aggressive belonging”, which Bifo diagnoses in our digital era is, in the American homeland, much older than the internet and fundamental to Trump's performance. However deranged the particular impulses which his advisers feel compelled to protect us from it is this underlying drive which is his bond with his audience and the very substance of their ideology.
Thursday, September 6, 2018
Saturday, September 1, 2018
Thursday, August 30, 2018
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Spies and Spies Alone
"Knowledge of the spirit-world is to be obtained by divination; information in natural science may be sought by inductive reasoning; the laws of the universe can be verified by mathematical calculation: but the dispositions of an enemy are ascertainable through spies and spies alone." Mei Yao-ch`en
"Excuse me, can you help me? I'm a spy." Genesis of the Daleks
Sunday, August 5, 2018
Friday, August 3, 2018
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
It Wasn't the Butler.
Mr. Rhee, The Game of Mystery. Answer: Nobody killed Aunt Cora who had the good sense to sit this one out.
The butler did not do it. How much more can a tough guy detective taken of be?
It was the Artist (left), absolutely transparent suspect. He confessed immediately. A feather in the cap for Master Detective, Mr. Rhee (right).
Thursday, July 26, 2018
This Unrealistic Mentality
VP: I’ve told you already, I believe that if you think that you are the only world power, trying to impose on the whole nation the idea of their exclusiveness, you then create this unrealistic mentality in society which in turn requires an adequate foreign policy which is expected by society. And the country’s leadership is obliged to follow this logic of imperialism. And in practice this might go contrary to the interests of the American people. That’s my understanding of how things stand, because in the end it leads to problems, to deficiencies in the system. And it demonstrates that it cannot be in control of everything—that’s impossible. But let’s talk about that later.
OS: Okay, thank you.
Vladimir Putin, interviewed by Oliver Stone
An American conspiratorial deep state would serve as a defense of the existing social order against a working class capture of any part of the state. In the past it has not even needed to be deep, perhaps covert, but usually just exercising its normal functions. A liberal cabal to defend the sorry remnants of the Republican Party and the Democratic candidate against Trump would be the purest of comedies. He is lying about this. He invented the rigged system trope before catching wind of the witch hunt. The lie is the bond between himself and his audience.
But the absence of a threat from a deep state does not mean he is free from peril. As we see played out daily, partisan electoral victories are fleeting. Each leaves an accretion in the state. With time, luck, and political skill the layers can become more significant but the greater structure is designed to respond to partisan forces while serving the dominant relations of production. In this sense the state is deep and it is capable of acting in secret but, as a whole, it is beyond the grasp of either party. Not that they don't try.
Trump's exposure is from the state's strong inclination to reject incursions of purely private interest. At all times the public interest suffers an array of private insults. These are occasional and they can also be systemic but recognition and resistance, effective or not, inheres in the system, often unexpectedly. The normal shadow of the state is the public corporation and an assortment of private institutions. These exchange personnel and policy and are well recognized as the official form of corruption. But their size and diffusion provide for an open competition of greed that is widely deplored and accepted.
Privately held capital lacks this natural sympathy with the state. Economic and political crisis have weakened the dominant social forms and given an opening to wealth of a more primitive type. With his ascension Trump has captured unprecedented power and made possible unheard of levels of corruption. The public treasury is unprotected and the conduct of imperial affairs falls under suspicion.
In this situation even Trump's political appointees become deep state. Jeff Sessions is as loyal and reactionary as anyone in the administration but he has refused to extend protection to Trump's private interests. The veil of secrecy which he enjoyed and depended on as a simple capitalist is exposed on the stage of global power.
He has relied on the support of his party which knows it is suspended over the abyss. But how has he held on, even solidified, his support? Although that support is political in appearance I would offer that it is more theatrical than partisan. And Trump's stage persona has everything to do with the enactment of persecution by the deep state.
His audience shares a world of uncertainty with the working majority of the American electorate. What distinguishes them is their absolute distrust of “the invading socialistic society”. His supporters, to the extent that they may be working class, are opposed to the political program of their own class. They are in flight from themselves and into the embrace of the boss.
Because this is America the entire rally pantomime must involve world affairs and key to this is the “unrealistic mentality” mentioned by Putin. Both parties must adhere to the universal status of this last standing claimant to world empire. The homeland must supply the rank and file of power as well as the treasure to sustain it. But recent decades have not been kind to the empire. Costs have risen and results have declined. Both parties lack explanations giving an opening to an antique vein in the Republican Party, America First.
Throughout the last campaign Republicans and Democrats with proper imperial credentials raised the alarm about Trump being beyond the Pale. They continue to do so and he continues to flip them off. Other nations are untrustworthy and, in the end, may simply need to be annihilated. By renouncing the cooperation which has maintained the universal claims of the American empire, Trump and his public may continue their unrealistic mentality but they have also found an unexpected ally, Russia.
Admiration for Putin extends to a third of Republicans. What ideological basis can we find for that? When the Soviet Union disassembled, the remaining Russian state lost its tattered claim to universal empire. Under Putin it has resurrected an earlier, pre-revolutionary, form of imperialism. Collapse and rebirth as a power in control of its sphere but not of everything, which is impossible. Realistic imperialism.
In Trump's telling the U.S. has undergone a similar process. Our own rebirth has been relatively painless, requiring nothing more than the election of Trump. But now that we've arrived it's a simple matter to join the ranks of Putin's 19th century empires.
The furor over Helsinki, however, demonstrates that it will not be easy. The constituency for the lost American empire remains powerful, indeed, still in power. It knows that its claim to global primacy carries, undoubtedly, a world of responsibilities but also rewards amounting to a large share of national wealth. In Trump's mind America has been cheated. His audience knows that they have been cheated. But neither he nor they will admit what they have stolen themselves. It is a conspiracy of the falsely aggrieved.
In this country we don't lack for imperial strategists. Both parties have their share and Trump has managed to scrounge his own from the leftovers. What his administration lacks is competent leadership in the execution of whatever strategy it is pursuing. It would be possible, even in the face of the Russophobe chorus, to put together some kind of understanding with the Kremlin. But Trump lacks the skill to do so and he has almost no allies in Washington for this. While he holds the White House we can expect a kind of imperial drift but removing him is unlikely to restore the status quo ante either.
Trump's bond with his audience has suffered few real shocks to this point. It is thought that Fox has protected him. But he has been unafraid to return again and again to the rally stage and work the crowd himself. There are, no doubt, some in his crowd who not only identify with him but who consciously share his class politics. But for others, and his crowd would be nothing without them, it is only his mask and his script that numb them to the contempt that is there behind the performance. Events and time are already eroding the suspension of disbelief which cloaks Trump on stage. I suspect we will find out he has less courage than more veteran and skillful performers when his audience begins to turn on him.
Monday, July 23, 2018
Wednesday, July 18, 2018
Friday, July 13, 2018
Monday, June 4, 2018
Sunday, May 13, 2018
Monday, April 23, 2018
Sunday, April 15, 2018
Sunday, April 8, 2018
Wednesday, April 4, 2018
Friday, March 30, 2018
Friday, March 23, 2018
Thursday, March 8, 2018
Thursday, March 1, 2018
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