Understand that it’s fucking Mordor.

It’s totally evil.

It really is.

Entertain for a moment the idea that the NFL might actually be nothing more than a flashy delivery system for gambling. The games are just accessories created to facilitate the exchange of a mind-bending amount of money. It’s impossible to calculate how much cash– both legally and illegally– is bet on the NFL each year, but it’s hundreds of billions of dollars. It might be a trillion. The NFL, and the owners of each of the the 32 teams that comprise the league, make pornographic amounts of money– so much so that even the pathologically greedy Donald Trump wanted in on the action back in the 80’s.

Working beneath these overlords are the players. About 70% of them are black, and the average length of a career is about 3 1/2 years. It is a brutal, collision-based sport, but beyond the mechanical failure of knees, hips and such, there is CTE, a brain disease that virtually every football player seems to acquire due to the concussive nature of the sport. And because the NFL is evil, they withheld this information from the players even as symptoms set in and raged amongst them.

Essentially, what the NFL does is hire people to engage in combat while America bets on who the winner will be.

It’s the bread and circuses we’re fed.

The game itself is about martial precision rather than athletic improvisation. The players are armoured and anonymous, strategically deployed by the technocrats on the sidelines, and whatever exuberance or individuality they bring to the game is swiftly crushed. When celebrating and dancing after a touchdown became a thing, the league outlawed it. It was considered “disrespectful,” ( but not in the same way that calling a team The Redskins might be “disrespectful”) which put another way means it was considered too black. In effect, they took an African-American product, subordinated it to the tastes of a conservative white audience, and profited obscenely from it.

Colin Kaepernick, a talented black quarterback, ( It was not that long ago that a black quarterback in the NFL was unheard of, the belief being that they didn’t have the “faculties” to perform the job) began the practice of taking a knee during the national anthem as a protest against against racial injustice.

He was subsequently black-balled from the league, even though his talents should have been in high demand. In his absence, others players stepped up to continue the practice, all of which came to a head when Trump started calling for the sons of bitches to be fired. This cynical and amoral manipulation of existing divisions in the nation forced the players and owners to respond.

Siding with those who are against racial injustice and for freedom of expression seems like a pretty obvious choice. I mean, this is a no-brainer, right? History is unfolding in such a way that it’s forcing people to make a choice, whether they want to or not, and many players took the knee. And the photographs–all so familiar, inevitable and urgent– were deeply moving. They gave me chills, and for a moment it was easy to believe that things might finally be changing for the good.

But then again, this movement was taking place largely within the pitiless machine that is the NFL, and so many sought a middle road that they hoped wouldn’t interrupt any revenue streams. The Dallas Cowboys, led by their owner, took a knee before the anthem, and then standing, locked arms as a team during the anthem.

It was a muddle of a message, one that managed to suggest the players had some sort of solidarity with ownership instead of a grievance with institutional racism, but that was the point. It was supposed to mean all things to all people. Ultimately, they co-opted the symbolism of Kaepernick’s protest to support the idea of “protest” without actually joining the protest. It was nothing more than damage control, a gesture as empty of meaning as a Pepsi commercial, and one more thing the NFL can add to it’s wall of shame.

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1. America, founded on the principle of freedom to worship, has always been a post-truth, multiple-reality landscape.

2. Trump did not usher in this new era of darkness but simply illuminated it.
3. America has always been full of contradicting beliefs, none of which are rooted in facts.

4. We don’t make decision based on facts, and are in no way demonstrably rational in our actions.
5. We have always been starring in our movies, but with each individual taking orders from a different director whose a plan and reality unconnected to our own.
6. For instance, some people think the a woman’s body is so dangerous it must be shrouded in public.

7. Others that their Lord would be angry if they were so vain as to wear a button.

8. Still, more people believed that you wouldn’t get into heaven unless you are wearing a pair of Nike Decades.

9. One religion’s followers wear special underwear, carrying with them a certainty that their heavenly reward will be to live on planet Kolob making “spirit babies.”
10. Atheists, who have not been around very long cosmologically speaking, believe they’ve understood enough of the limitless universe and its timeless expanse, as to proclaim that no higher power exists.
11. These are not fringe groups.
12. Each one of these commitments is rock solid and unshakable, a central post in that person’s life. Yet none of them are based in any way on “facts.”
13. We were founded in a post-truth era.
14. Since Trump’s election, people have been talking about “fake news” and the difference between “good” and “bad” news.
15. The irony is that the media has always been a part of the economy.
16. It is a commodity that we buy, like popcorn.
17. As long as media serves a corporate entity, it does not serve the people.
18. And the less reliable media, the media that doesn’t have a paywall or registration, is a quicker more appealing option.
19. Getting news is not the problem, there are limitless options, sifting it is.
20. This means it’s easier for the wealthy/elites, who have more time and can pay for services, to be more rigorously informed than the rest of the people.
21. This further divides the inequality that is starting to define the nation.
22. We are ridiculous and we know nothing.

***********************************************
1. The Dakota Access Pipeline was halted.

2. I was happy to hear this, although the truth is I really don’t know very much about it.
3. In my mind, I was on the side of Tribal Elders and Water.
4. That was how I wanted to be identified.

5. Our politics signify how we want to be identified, our tribal affiliation, more than they represent our reasoned policy positions.
6. Few people break from the orthodoxy of their tribe.
7. There were more than 4,000 veterans at Standing Rock supporting the “Water Protectors”
8. And so the police had to face not just the moral authority of the protesters and native elders, but also thousands of vets, of people just like them.
9. There was a Go Fund Me page that raised over a million dollars for this group.
10. I have no idea if this group was instrumental in getting the pipeline halted, but they had to change the dynamic greatly.
11. I would suggest this become the future of civil disobedience.
12. Crowd source militia groups to protect you as you protest.
13. Be it in Standing Rock, Ferguson, Wall Street or elsewhere.

14. Make the arms of authority confront themselves when they confront you.

15. No nation churns out angry, marginalized veterans like the USA.

It’s a bad movie, a very bad movie, and bad in a way that only a movie made in 1985 can be bad. If you’ll recall, Rocky ends up in Russia to fight Ivan Drago, the invincible Soviet super villain played by Dolph Lundgren.

Various dramatic things happen and Rocky wins, as he does pretty much every second movie. What’s striking about it, beyond how awful, cliched and child-like it is, is how vivid and oppressive the American propaganda is.

America has never been particularly subtle about propaganda, and this movie is no exception. It’s an Us Vs. Them proposition, the Soviets are all passionless robots and functionaries living under a cruel and despotic regime, and the Americans, well, they have heart, man, they’re real!

About five years after this movie was made the Soviet Union collapsed beneath it’s own rotting weight. This meant that The Cold War was over, and once again all that was good and free and just and true had won. However Operation Desert Storm, in which the US invaded Iraq, immediately commenced, and ever since, the Middle East (in one form or another) has been the enemy of the West.

After seeing Rocky IV, it struck me that America was always at war, it was as if they HAD to be at war, as if it was a necessary and functioning part of the system. “The Military Industrial Complex,” as it is conspiratorially called, is a huge business in the US, accounting for hundreds of billions dollars. It is a primary economic driver, one from which so much else flows, and it surely looks like it now exists as an essential part of the economy than some subordinate wing of government used to defend abstract principles like justice.

Recently, on December the 2nd there was another mass shooting in the United States, this time in San Bernardino. It was the 355th of the year.

As the news broke, politicians assigned some assistant take to their Twitter accounts and Tweet out their feelings. The event, immediately politicized, had one flavour of politician crying out for gun control, while the other flavour of politician offered “thoughts and prayers.” It turns out that the “thoughts and prayer” crowd had all accepted donations from the NRA.

https://twitter.com/igorvolsky

Granted, this is no scientific study, but it seems to confirm something that we already knew.

On the face of it, the NRA and the on-going weapon crisis is utterly mysterious. Why only in America? Why haven’t they done anything to try to solve this problem? I mean, from 2004 to 2013, there were 316,000 firearm deaths in the US set against 313 deaths from terrorism, but the resources are where?

In the US, politicians and thus policy, are bought.

That’s the way the system works.

War, be it with the Communists or the Terrorists, is very profitable, as is the production and sale of guns. It’s the sort of thing that should actually be put in the Constitution, just so everybody is clear about profit, rather than freedom, being the guiding light of the nation.

Until the anti-gun lobby starts to give representatives money commiserate with what the NRA does, then we are going to have to expect these trends, and all these deaths, to continue.

For the vast majority of my life I believed in the general sincerity of our governance. I mean, I didn’t accept everything that they said, I knew that they’d obfuscate to suit their own political agendas, but on the big stuff, when push came to shove, I trusted that we were led by people who would not directly lie while looking you in the eyes.

Now, I don’t want to suggest that I believed in a rigid, black and white Cold War dichotomy.

I understood that there were nuances and that the truth was round, rather than two-sided, but I did think that Western Democracies abided by some immutable principles and were to the best of their ability, “good.”

Well, when the US government cynically lied to it’s own people about Iraq having Weapons of Mass Destruction, and then went ahead and invaded the nation, resulting in the death of perhaps one million Iraqis, all the while knowing that Saudi Arabia was actually the country that nurtured the 9/11 terrorists, my child-like faith was forever shattered.

It was simply astounding to me that something so calculated, something so evil, could take place, and take place without a revolution of protest erupting in our streets.

I now view authority with a level of skepticism that I did not before, understanding that those in power always have more to protect and gain by lying than those outside of power. And so it was that I went to see the documentary Citizenfour last week.

It’s actually more of a living historical document than it is a movie, I think, as it’s a real time presentation of Edward Snowden, over an eight-day period, as he leaked NSA documents to some journalists and the film-maker in a hotel room.

It’s a startlingly media-savvy and perhaps unprecedented way to conduct a leak, and that alone gave the movie a surreal, kind of theatrical feeling. Snowden was very consciously “presenting” himself and his motives to the world. He was, in a sense, acting and this struck me as odd.

Snowden always seemed to be suppressing a small, self-satisfied smile, as if trying to conceal his delight in being a gravitational figure that was setting a great narrative into motion, and I was astounded by how articulate he was, speaking in unbroken, virtually literary paragraphs when describing his intent and circumstances.

Isolated, without legal counsel and unsure of what was to happen to him and everybody he loved, he did not betray any anxiety, but seemed, calm, confident and even rehearsed in his manner.

Now when I see such a thing, I don’t suspect Snowden of fabricating the leaks, which essentially reveal to the public that the NSA is an omnipotent entity that has access to absolutely all our communications and actions, I suspect the NSA of fabricating Snowden. He was a CIA agent, after all, and what’s the use of a grand surveillance apparatus unless the people beneath it are conscious of it and feel its weight pressing down upon them daily?

I don’t have an opinion on the matter at this point, and there’s no way I can gather enough information to make a lucid and truly informed judgment, but my faith in our institutions is at such a low, that like a mad man in an alley, I find myself given to question everything that they prepare for my consumption, and you know, it doesn’t feel very good.

Kind of like Academy Award Winner—only in a way that brings absolutely no positive connotations.

Back in 1988, when he won the Olympic gold medal in Seoul, Korea and shattered the world record for the 100 Metre, he was an absolute hero. I was a student in Montreal at the time and my friends and I were so euphoric, so energized by his victory that we sprinted down St. Laurent screaming for joy. It was a completely spontaneous act. We simply could not prevent ourselves from running, as every elated cell in our bodies was commanding us to do this.

Of course, you had to be willfully blind to not realize Johnson was on steroids. Even his nickname, “Big Ben,” implicitly hinted at his usage, and his eyes were jaundiced and yellow– a clear indication his liver was over-taxed from the drugs. He looked like a bull, and his mood was always remote and defensive, happier (if that could ever be a word associated with him) in the shadows than in the spotlight.

Carl Lewis, the great American athlete and his Arch Enemy, was everything that Johnson was not. Lithe, maniacally outgoing and resembling Grace Jones, Lewis loved the spotlight and seemed to effortlessly excel at every sport he touched. He sang, sold sweatshirts and played at being a kind of corporation, a latter day Muhammad Ali (only absent the charisma), if you will, and he was everything we hated about America, and then to have somebody as quiet and unloved as Johnson, not just defeat him but crush him, seemed a titanic victory for underdogs all over the world, and it was this that sent us shouting down the street.

IN YOUR FACE, USA!!

Of course, a couple of days later it was revealed that Johnson was doping. He was stripped of his medal and ever since has been known as “disgraced sprinter Ben Johnson.” Post fall, he has been in trouble for pointing a starter’s pistol– from his Porsche– at another motorist while on the highway, was hired by Gaddafi as a football coach for his son (resulting in the son being suspended from the league for drug use), raced a horse and a stock car, headed a failed clothing line called Catch Me, chased a Romani gang who robbed him of his wallet in Rome and failed to catch them, and endorsed a sport’s drink called Cheetah Power Surge, the commercials of which player off the fact Johnson was a cheater.

It’s been this nearly-forgotten way for almost thirty years, and it must get kind of exhausting, but every once in awhile Johnson raises his head from the shadows, most recently emerging for a photo-op to lend his support to Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s unceasing and exhaustless bid for re-election. Disgrace, one would presume, and not her better angel redemption, being what brought the two men together under the Big, Confused Tent that is Ford Nation. *1

*1 It’s as if Marvel Comics was creating a super-group of villains in the Ford camp, all readying for some great apocalyptic battle to take place in a future issue.

Achieving one of the highest pollution ratings in the history of the planet last week, the city of Shanghai was almost completely enveloped by smog.

The skyline was obscured, schoolchildren were ordered to stay inside and all manner of commerce was suspended. This was a monumental, even apocalyptic kind of problem, but the government decided to use it as a rather cheerful opportunity to disseminate propaganda, pointing out that the smog was excellent for national defence as it acted as a kind of shield, discombobulating the navigational systems of enemy missiles. I present to you a short list of some of the messages the government passed along to the people in the hopes of quelling their anxiety and boosting their morale:

“Although criminals may think the smog conceals their actions from our surveillance cameras, the people of China will always do what is right!”

“Now free from the courageous bustle of industry, it is a lovely time to stroll the streets of Shanghai!”

‘It is important for the people of China to understand that the pollution we see in the air is definitely not living invisibly in the water, earth or food sources of our nation! China: United in safety!”

“The brownish, rank smog must know that the colour of Red China will never change!”

“Be indomitable in physical training to strengthen the physique, but please, not outdoors in peak smog hours!”

“The people must keep the birth rate low to defeat the smog! ”

“We are fortunate and blessed not to have a flu epidemic while the people fight smog!”

“The smog is our shield against aggressive capitalist imperialism!”

“It is good that Kanye cancelled his concert in Shanghai because of the smog for he is decadent and corrupt!”

“Like smog, the Gods of wealth can enter the home from everywhere if the worker is committed!”

“Chinese women’s volleyball, #1 the envy of the world!”

Q. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

A. To live a life free of false reports about Syria, and the constant threat of US propaganda and weaponry insulting and destroying our lives!

Q. What is your greatest fear?

A. Bombs.

Q. Which living person do you most admire?

A. I admire my brothers in the Syrian Electronic Army.

Q. What is your favourite journey?

A. It is when I journey online to hack American systems. I feel like I am visiting the nation myself and that I fight for truth and freedom. Of course, I also look forward to the Haj once I am older, have more money and less threats hanging over my head, and as strange as it may sound, I would also like to see Disneyland.

Q. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

A. Physical strength. It is more important to be strong in the heart and mind. It amazes me that girls– Amira in particular– never seem to see this truth.

Q. On what occasion do you lie?

A. To protect the secrecy of the Syrian Electronic Army.

Q. Which living person do you most despise?

A. I hate Barack Obama very much, as I do Bush 1 and Bush 2, but I truly despise Harout. He is dishonest with the girls that I know, particularly sweet Amira, and he does not care about them, only himself and wrestling. He will know the wrath of the Syrian Electronic Army!

Q. What do you dislike most about your appearance?

A. I would like to be physically bigger and stronger so that I might punch Harout and win Amira from him. I would hit him in the throat so hard he would no longer be able to eat.

Q. What is your greatest regret?

A. It is personal, but it has to do with Amira.

Q. What or who is the greatest love of your life?

A. Next question, please.

Q. What is the trait you deplore most in yourself?

A. Ha! That one is as easy to hack as The Huffington Post! I am terribly messy and you can ask any of my brothers if this is the truth! Also, I do not spend enough time with my pet.

Q. What is the trait you most deplore in others?

A. It is the hypocritical bombing of a free people.

Q. What is your greatest extravagance?

A. Sneakers. I have many pairs, perhaps 20.

Q. When and where were you happiest?

A. It was on the beach at Ras Al Bassit. Amira and I laughed and played in the waves as it rained one early evening. We were dolphins.

It’s from 1937, and in reading it I was struck by how much it had in common with communist propaganda in its certainty and fealty to a cause. Possessed with a religious optimism, the corporate soldiers marched furiously into the future, ever forward, ever reaching.  Equilibrium is stasis, and if the corporation isn’t growing, it’s failing, and so almost by definition, the appetite is infinite.

Last week an eight-story building in Bangladesh collapsed killing at least 400 people (a number that may yet rise to 1,000), most of them low-paid (25-30 cents an hour) garment workers. It was the worst accident in the history of the garment industry.

One of the companies that were manufacturing clothes in the shoddily constructed building was Joe Fresh, a very successful and popular brand here in Canada. They’re inexpensive, yet their clothes still manage to exude the downtown hipster aesthetic. As my wife says, they’re like the Ikea of clothing, offering a gentle compromise for those belonging to a fashion conscious tribe but who really can’t afford extravagantly branded proofs of their tastes.

Joe Mimran, the head of Joe Fresh, explains on the company website that this “extreme pricing” is one of their premier selling points. I don’t think it’s being overly dogmatic to say that the real cost of “extreme pricing” are tragedies like the one in Bangladesh. People, abstracted by distance and circumstance, suffer immensely so that we can wear cheap, yet cool-looking, jeans.

In this particular case, it’s been reported the factories are policed by goons who threaten the employees, mostly young women, unless they work 13- or 14- hour shifts, often seven days a week. The building that collapsed apparently had deep cracks inside of it and the workers were actually scared to go in, but nonetheless, were driven in by men wielding clubs.

Can you imagine how it must feel to be terrorized and exploited like that?  I’m not sure that I can, and I take little comfort in the argument that western industry is building a middle-class in far away lands, and that workers like those who perished in Bangladesh are better off with low paying work than nothing at all. It doesn’t ring true to me, and it’s baldly self-serving. The corporations, and the systems that they function within, are clearly taking advantage of the workers, and this is clearly wrong, regardless of the benefit you might imagine blossoming from it. Think again, on the microscopic, empathetic level, of what it must be like to work in one of these cruel sweatshops.

Our lives of whimsy, comfort and petty complaint are built upon horrible deeds.  We need to remember that, and that we enable it each day with our entitled behaviour. We all know how we feel about the Boston Marathon Bombings, but do we really know how we feel about the Rana Plaza catastrophe?