A Voter’s Priority

So, some number of Americans survived Election Day. Well done. I bet that some will even survive the coming month of exhaustive media analysis, Republican legal complaints and lawsuits, not to mention evangelical numbnuts praying in front of election offices.

And as the votes get tallied, as the Biden campaign seems to be rushing ahead on the back of mail-in ballots, and as the Republican base can’t fathom the late surge in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, or even Georgia, the US may be turning the page on a very dark chapter of its short life span.

That is assuming, of course, that the gung-ho supremacist groups that the Orange Administration has been courting, like the Boogaloo Boys or the Proud Boys, because apparently it’s always “boys” with this chuckle-fucks, don’t up-end the prototype democracy with a dash of civil insurrection. Which is still a big assumption.

But on the back of this relief and disappointment of an election, one factor has cropped up as particularly interesting to me. Most polls just straight assumed that the Orange Hydra would be swiftly and unceremoniously punted out of office at the polls. It turns out though that most swing states were an awfully tight race. In some of them, the difference is but a few thousand, even a few hundred votes. After the Covid-travesty, the tens of thousands of lies, the “good people on both sides” overt support of racism, the Orange monster still held onto a lot of confidence among US voters. Which should, but certainly won’t, prompt the Democratic Party to do some serious soul-searching. How is it that their neoliberal politics and policies could just barely win by the skin of its teeth against a compulsive liar, a sycophant, a criminal, an authoritarian, a demagogue, a cognitively impaired chauvinistic pig?

It seems, according to some pundits, to stem from the fact that to the average US voter, none of those travesties are their biggest concerns. Because to the average voter, a global pandemic that kills some and leaves others potentially permanently brain damaged isn’t the biggest problem of their lives. Galvanized racism, sexism, and lgbtq-phobia isn’t their greatest concern. A destabilized world order, a trade war with China, and the squandering of diplomatic reputation isn’t their greatest concerns. Even the failing environment, causing storms, draughts, and continent-spanning wildfires isn’t their single most urgent concern. No, what turns out is the absolutely most important issue during an election for oh so many US citizens turns out to be the state of their personal wallets. Their own private bank accounts. Their income security. All other concerns are distant seconds, even the viability of the planet and their country as a habitat.

I think that says a lot about the condition of the nation state of the US. It is a society that is so desperately dependent on an income, on jobs and private assets, that not even a global plague can compete. That the US is so engorged in haywire capitalism that the average voter doesn’t give a shit how despicable you are as a leader, so long as you promise them a pay cheque…

Must be nice, non? Must be nice to have turned your citizenry into such desperate pawns that you can do whatever you want to them, treat them however callously as you wish, lie and cheat and steal from them, so long as they believe you can provide them with an income. Must be nice to have taught them that the only decent, the only truly “American” way to live is to slaver and beg for a slip of money at the end of a month or week of hard labour. It must be nice to lord over such an Objectivist utopia. Because as it turns out, if you’ve imprinted that notion hard enough into the mind of the average voter, you won’t have to supply any other services as a government. You don’t need to make sure that everyone’s fed, that everyone has a roof over their heads, or that everyone can get medical care if they need it. Give them a pay cheque, even minimum wage, and their desperation for another slip of credit will make them blind to anything else.

Perhaps this is why the projected nightmare of socialism haunts the mind of the “True American” as it does. The vilified notion of the “Handout” stalks among the downtrodden, threatening to turn the able-bodied worker into a beggar. Pay no mind to the fact that you’re just as much a beggar under the ultra-capitalist boot of the “American Dream”. Pay no mind to the fact that paying taxes can earn you subsidised healthcare just as well as you can “earn” it by remortgaging your house. Or by pawning off your kidney to afford a new liver for your husband, which has failed over the course of decades of eating corporate garbage food originally intended to keep livestock stupid and pliant.

No wonder “socialism” is so demonized in the US discourse. Even though public healthcare, education, housing, are all “socialist” ideas that have been adopted by otherwise capitalist governments and societies across the globe. But not in the US. Never in the US. Because if you undermined the desperation of the US voter, perhaps their leaders wouldn’t be able to lie, cheat, steal, grab a woman by the pussy, or fondle pre-pubescent children the way that they do. Perhaps, if the average voter didn’t have to fear for their life and well being, constantly worry that their inherently unhealthy lifestyle might send them into crushing medical debt, or slave away at the plant, or stress out over their private business endeavour, then they might notice such abhorrent behaviour. Maybe they’d even take umbrage with it? And maybe, just maybe, the pliant and gullible masses would start making demands of their government.

But of course, that’s not the reality of the United States of America. For so long as the average voter is more concerned with the state of their private finances, none of the details will bother them. Raging wildfires, unrelenting storms, pandemic plagues, senile and insane leaders, none of it will come close to the very private concern of the wallet.

Must be nice…

/Sebastian Lindberg 10/11-2020

The TikTok Takeover

So, Microsoft wants to buy the new golden child of social media; TikTok. Right as the Orange House is threatening to ban the service for US users. Right as TikTok’s owner, Chinese ByteDance wants to flee the imperial dominion of the “People’s” Reoublic of China for a London HQ. TikTok, and ByteDance with it, having been accused of gobbling up big data for the exclusive use of the Chinese Imperial propaganda machine. A national security concern, the Orange House calls it…

There’s a lot to unpack there. A lot of very murky water…

So, for anyone that’s older than 25, what the fuck is TikTok and why the fuck should we care? Well, it’s the new hotness. What all the kids’re into these days, along with sniffing glue and setting fire to tire swings. What the hell do I know. It’s a social media short video app. If you’ve seen Sarah Cooper‘s spot-on Trump-impersonations, you’ve seen a TikTok video and influencer/comedian at their best. It’s the international version of Chinese “Douyin”, owned and operated by the Chinese software company ByteDance. It’s a big hit with the kids, enjoying a 2 billion global downloads benchmark, having absolutely exploded in Q1 2020.

Sounds like a big hit, so what’s the problem? Well, as with everything Chinese, there’re rumours, reports, and grapevine prattle that TikTok is collecting massive amounts of user data, even outside the app itself, and sending it to the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS for short). Just like what the American NSA has been doing for near on 20 years now. It seems common knowledge among industry giants and international businessmen that if you ever do business with Chinese companies, you should expect a decent chunk of industrial espionage. It’s just part of the cost of doing business with the country, and getting into its 1.4 billion people market.

So, yeah, it stands to reason that TikTok, just like any social media, is using your patronage to let governments manipulate and control you. That’s just how social media operates. Regardless if it’s Chinese or American social media.

So what does Microsoft want with your funny vids dispensary? Supposedly, according to public media reports, it’s the ad revenue they’re after. Microsoft has been lagging behind IT giants such as Facebook and Google in recent years, and haven’t quite been able to compete with their own platforms and efforts to insinuate themselves in the social media frenzy. In 2016, Microsoft bought professional social network LinkedIn in a risky bid to get into the racket. Now, the old beast seems poised to snatch up TikTok as well (with the vague posturing and support of the Trump family, for whatever reason they’re involved).

But the economic analysis we hear of such an aquisition from mainstream media only concerns itself with the ad revenue side of making money off of social media. And fair dinkum, that’s the main source of revenue that social media has been open with. But no one seems interested in the other side of the business. The potientially much, much, MUCH, bigger business of Big Data. Big Data to shape and mold countries and demographics to control elections, opinions, and the general zeitgeist.

Seems weird? It is. But it is happening. We saw it with the Brexit election, and Cambridge Analytica’s involvement therein. We saw it in the 2016 US general election. And it is surely used and utilized world wide. It turns out that Big Data, the massive amount of statistics that social media platforms seem uniquely positioned to collect from us, may be the true Orwellian way to predictably control large demographics that suffer from the misconcieved impression that they live in a democracy.

And Microsoft is bidding big on getting into that game. For it is not ad revenue that makes social media big business. It is personal data that makes it big business. And Microsoft must be gagging to become a big player again.

So what? Google and Facebook are already thinly veiled extensions of the US political establishment, poised and active in trying to shape world demographics to benefit US interests. What’s the difference, whether China or another American interest sources our lives for their political benefit? None too big, truth be told. US and China both are authoritarian bullies, monsters and imperialists that vie for world domination. But it is curious, that no matter how many talk about a possible merger, about TikTok’s and ByteDance’s efforts to westernize and escape suspicion of Chinese espionage, about Microsoft’s social media initiative, we hear nothing about the pink elephant in the room: Big Data. And what Satya Nadella and his executive officers might do with comparative influence of right-wing Zuckerberg or US State Department co-pilot Sundar Pichai, we can only curiously guess at. But one bet that seems reasonable is that he’ll avail Microsoft’s growing social media data reserves to the highest bidder, as opposed to China’s singular greed. And frankly, I can’t tell which is worse…

/Sebastian Lindberg 4/8-2020

The Wheel

“Why do we need to learn about this stuff?”, the child whines. “It happened two thousand years ago! It’s not relevant any more…”

“History is so boring”, the young parent declares. “It’s just a bunch of kings and queens and dates!”

Have you ever noticed that people seem to be, by and large, incapable of inserting their lives in a historical context? Their lives chug on, their hair turns greyer, and they reminisce about their younger days, when things were either better or worse than they are now. But the moment you ask them to include days prior to their fondest childhood memories into their accounts, things turn academic. Abstract. A footnote in an anthropological tome of non-repute rather than events that actually occurred. History is demoted to just plain stories.

“This new shift in politics, it completely up-ends everything that’s right”, the amateur pundit orates. “It didn’t used to be this way! Democracy is decaying! The sky is falling! Bwaaah!”

… “Time is flat circle”, a deranged Matthew McConaughey mutters to himself in an interrogation cabinet. And though commentators love to make fun of the quasi-metaphysical drivel that spews forth from his gob, it is none-the-less true. Events repeat. Time, as far as humanity is concerned, is cyclical.

Example: The 90’s came by, after the roaring excess of the 80’s, and hit a bit of a bump. But at the end of the decade, the western world kept enjoying it’s consumeristic surplus. Then the housing bubble shattered, and the world came crashing down into an ever deeper economic hole. The growth-centric economy just wasn’t sustainable. The centre couldn’t hold. And in these leaner times, with discontent populations in the western hemisphere who have been promised excess and freedom from commercials and political promises, begin to see through the lies. And up comes populism. Catering to the dumbest common denominators among the population. Demagogues catering to racism and nationalism, fear and frustration. Nowadays you can’t throw a rock through a political ensemble without hitting a racist or isolationist. And with one authoritarian faking an election to win himself a life-time-term in office, another authoritarian clenching his iron fist across south-eastern Asia, and another would-be-authoritarian bungling up his American nation into a civil war, we can begrudgingly conclude that the world is fucked. Again.

For it is nothing new. You can switch some names around and I could just as well have described Europe at the beginning of the 20^th century. Economic growth, fuelled by decades of exploiting foreign territory, finally bursts. Overindulged people find that their stolen privilege has run its course. Discontent, chaos, war, sickness, and the rise of populism and nationalism.

Or why not go back further? To the founding of western civilization, the backbone from which every western authoritarian has since found their inspiration; Rome. A deified political framework, progressively hollowed out by corruption, populism, authoritarianism, and with an economic framework that just wasn’t sustainable. And a collapse, like few others, that still sends geopolitical ripples through the world to this day. Or why not skip back another 2000 years, to the late bronze age collapse, which from what we can tell, shares with us many of the same old trademarks associated with a collapse of the dignity of society.

Time is a flat circle. This is how it always has been. Hard times create strong people. Strong people create good times. Good times create weak people. Weak people create hard times. The cyclical nature of man, ever repeating. The travesty of the Orange House is nothing new. Authoritarianism in Russia is nothing new. Imperial domination in China is nothing new. Not in essence. It is just the wheel ever turning.

But is this inevitable? Is this wheel just simply the way of things? Well, I like to think that it isn’t. There are key factors that bind us to this wheel. Factors that we have power over. For if we, as a species, were able to recognize our place on the wheel, recognize the repetition of history, then we could know. We could see the path ahead of us. And we, in our unbridled power and new-found wisdom, would have all the tools and precognition available to us to divert our path. To break the wheel. To deliver ourselves from these ravages of history.

But will we though? Seems highly unlikely that we’re going to this time around. We’ve already fallen into many of the same old pitfalls that history tries its fucking hardest to teach us to avoid. For as long as young and old alike do not see the inherent lessons to be harnessed from ages past, for as long as “history is boring” or “irrelevant”, we shan’t escape the wheel.

But there’s always next time! I just hope that there’ll be a next time…

/Sebastian Lindberg 7/7-2020

Just let them have more Kool-Aid

Quarantine’s rough on everyone. Jobs are lost, people are getting the jitters staying at home, and mental health is even harder to maintain when you’re locked up inside than it was before. But Social Distancing seems to be working to slow the spread, even if it’s not nearly enough for some health care services around the world.

It’s sometimes difficult to imagine how things could get worse. Unless you’re living in the Fragmented States of America. Then, over the weekend, it got real easy to imagine how things could get worse, as the most belligerent parts of the nation brought guns to a epidemiological fight.

All across the US, people took to their cars and their MAGA shirts and hats to close down their cities and towns in an effort to protest and threaten their leaders to cease the shut-down in effect. Some even brought their obscene automatic rifles on display on the steps of civic buildings, chanting that not even a global pandemic and international health crisis would stand in the way of their corn-syrup-soaked privileges. In Denver, Colorado, it even went so far that the already beleaguered health worker professionals had to leave their posts to perform a silent counter-protest; blocking the Trump-fanatics in their rage-filled, slow-moving cavalcades.

Nurses and doctors who labour day and night to stem the tide had to go on strike to take a stand against the most putrid people of the Republic. That is absolutely staggering.

“Give me Liberty or give me Covid-19”, one plaque in Olympia, Washington, said. “Freedom or Death”, another one cried.

Okay then. Sure. These bible-humping, Trump-totting, ignoble ignoramuses can have it. It is just a shame that the Wuhan Virus isn’t lethal enough to plausibly make a dent in their numbers. Or discriminating enough to target these gaps in the gene pool. If people want to make themselves a part of the problem, then let them. I’m liberal enough to see the philosophical virtue in letting people put themselves at whatever risk they want. You can’t force people to not become part of the problem. All you can do in such circumstance is to also treat them as part of the problem…

Deny people health care if they won’t follow quarantine protocol. The US has already proven that it has no inherent problem with letting people die on the doorsteps of hospitals, and that its health care administrations are woefully unprepared to meet this challenge. I am sure that the insurance industry would just absolutely love to void a whole lot of flimsy insurance claims because the claimants have disobeyed the stay-home ordinances of many states. Cordon these cretin off from all the horrified masses that prefer not to subject their health services to back-breaking pressure. With any luck, the stress of having broken their contract with their government will send these profanely armed death-cultists and Rapture-chanters into a mindless frenzy and kill each other off.

You think I’m being too harsh? What we have here is a sizeable minority of the population that have turned ignorance and indignant rage into a revered virtue. Galvanized by a criminal and unconscionable president. These creatures are a threat to every single other being that comes close to them. As if their evangelical fanaticism wasn’t bad enough. As if their armaments and love for The Gun wasn’t bad enough. As if their rage and stupidity weren’t bad enough. Now they are on the verge of taking up arms against their elected leaders just because they want to make themselves carriers of a potentially lethal, nation-breaking virus…

Is it really I who am too harsh when I think that a vast majority of the US population would be better off without them? Am I the one being too harsh when I think the world would be better off without them? I am humanist and liberal enough to see the ethical problem of just smothering them like the political wild-fires that they are, but here we have a circumstance where they want to expose themselves and their loved ones to a decimation. To me, it seems like a problem that comes with its own solution.

Sure, the virus isn’t all that lethal. But its lethality increases with obesity, nicotine use, underlying health concerns, and when official health guidelines get ignored. Maybe Lady Luck and her a-romantic companion Statistical Probability would be on our side this time.

Of course, we would never be that lucky. No excommunication is going to happen. If they have to, I bet Jared Kushner and the Orange House would even use their “own federal medical reserves” to save a good portion of their precious base. No, with so many military grade guns in so many belligerent and angry hands, with white supremacist support from an orange despot and his converted political establishment, with a soft-core plague running rampant and supply shortages abound, with overworked government staff and idle hands among an insanely armed population, odds are instead high of insurrection. Civil war. Just like what the Orange Hydra has insinuated calls for from his ivory throne. Just like all the great Empires of Earth’s days passed, so do the Discordant States of America seem to be fated. In fire and blood, and not a clean sweep.

Either way, all us international onlookers can do is to by proxy experience all the shame that the ruling minority of the US seem completely alien to feel on their own, and to keep face-palming our way through the new millennium.

/Sebastian Lindberg 20/4-2020

The O-word

The Cradle of Western Democracy is roiling. Again. While the GOP has deflated into a personality-cult dedicated to the glory of Trump like a second coming, the game show-esque proceedings of the presidential race is left wholly to the Democratic side of the party line.

And it’s bringing out all the dirty laundry of the ailing opposition. Exposing all the warts and fungi and all.

A month ago, the billionaire and former mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, came under snap fire by being branded an “oligarch” on national television by one of Bernie Sanders’ surrogates, a former senator from Ohio. At which point to the television network panicked and pulled out all hands on deck to refute the claim. They tried comparing Bloomberg’s fortunes (estimated by Forbes to $55 billion, the ninth largest privately amassed fortune in the world) to that of Bernie himself (estimated to approximately $2 million). Whether they ignored the fact that Bloomberg is incomprehensibly more wealthy, by a factor of 27´500, than his rival out of ignorance or malice, I don’t know. Then they argued that the term “oligarch” is a loaded term, perhaps sort of like the n-word for the wealthy elite.

It was obvious that former Ohio Senator Nina Hudson Turner had struck a nerve.

Because, truth is, America isn’t a democracy. It’s an oligarchy.

Yeah, I get it. We’ve only used that word in reference to Russian business moguls. Oil barons and arms dealers with their sticky fingers dug into the inner workings of the Kremlin. A sentence in which you can easily switch out “Kremlin” for the “White House” and be just as truthful, if you’re inclined toward intellectual honesty.

Don’t believe me? Righty-o. Let’s go for the low hanging fruit to begin with, shall we. The Republicans won’t even ask their voters, their constituency, who they’d rather have as president. The default, the definitive answer for them is the wannabe-monarch that applauds abolished term limits; the Orange Hydra himself, Donald J. Trump. ‘Nough said.

On the other side, because let us not forget that there are two constitutional sides to a political argument in American politics (never more, rarely less), we have the Democrats. Currently the oh so holy saviours, crusaders against authoritarianism and despotism, whom anyone disliking the Orange Hydra are honour-bound to support. Although, if you take a look at their record, they are just about as spoiled as the Republicans. With deep ties to the corporate conglomerates of America. Generational dependencies to the same billion dollar forces that fear the rise of “radicalism” in the Democratic Party: A senator from Vermont who has spoken a language of systemic reform for his whole career. And finally, the people have started to listen. Finally, this Senator’s calls for public healthcare, free education, and sustainable living conditions for everyone (considered radical concepts in America; considered bare minimum government services in the EU) are resonating with a very wide margin of American voters. Which is scaring the shit out of the Financial Vampires of America. And thus, is scaring the living britches out of the Democratic Party establishment. Fear great enough to make them turn over every rock they can find to sabotage their party colleague ahead of the election.

But if Bernie has the public, what can they do, you might ask? Well, the public vote doesn’t matter. Even as high up as the presidential election itself, the majority support doesn’t matter. Not with gerrymandering and voter registration suppression, and the fact that the public favourite isn’t necessarily the “winner”. Not by a long shot. And even more so in the nominee election.

You see, the person who wins the votes in this primary race is simply allowed to fill chairs at the Democratic National Congress (which is held in July). Supposedly, those people that Sanders and Bloomberg and Biden and Warren place at the convention will vote in accordance to their patron. But that’s not necessarily true. It is very much allowed to influence or bribe the chosen people so that they flip their vote. I want to make this absolutely clear: It doesn’t matter who wins the Primary if there’re large enough wallets being thrown around before July 13^th. Like, for example, wallets like those of Mayor Bloomberg, dwarfing the wallet of Sanders by a factor of 27´500.

To quote what some poor bastard once said; it is not how the vote is cast, but how the vote is counted. And nowhere is that more true than in America, the great Cradle of modern Democracy.

And this is exactly what an oligarchy is. The rule of the few. The rule of the wealthy. The subjugation of the poor. To any other western democracy, the American system is a joke. A horror story. A painted travesty that dresses up in all the tapestries of people’s rule, but that has forgotten that you actually have to let the majority have a say in matters of state.

Michael Bloomberg is an oligarch, just like Nina Turner claims, yes. Indisputably so, to anyone that hasn’t drunk the Kool-Aid. He got that way because he resides in an oligarchy. In the United States of Corporate America. And there aren’t enough stars and bars or fairytale stage dressing to hide that fact.

Yes, there’s a wind blowing in the US. Sanders has been blowing hard for decades. But he’s getting friends. Like the internet darling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib. A wind is blowing, and things may be changing. But there are some very well-funded storm shutters installed in American politics. Funded by the pharmaceuticals-, the arms-, the insurance-, the investment banking-, the coal-, the oil-, and a legion of other industries. And it is going to have to blow pretty fucking hard to untangle all those deep pockets from the American government.

Because that’s what an entrenched oligarchy is; very fucking hard to get rid of.

/Sebastian Lindberg 2/3-2020

Putin’s Pedigree

Late last week, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin popped his smug face onto the world news circuit to claim that he did not want his country to fall back into the habit of having leaders-for-life. This, only days after Putin’s protégé Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev suddenly left his job as right-hand-man, and Puppet-Master Putin declared that he was looking to revise the Russian constitution to dole out the unified power of the Presidential mandate to parliament and others^[tm].

Which lead me to the realisation that I haven’t really turned my attention to Power Play Putin in a dog’s age. A lapse which I am only too glad to rectify.

So Putin doesn’t want leaders-for-life? He doesn’t want Monarchs, Premiers, or Despots to rule his beloved Mother Russia? So he says. But let’s take a look at Putin’s pedigree, shall we?

It is no secret that our boy used to be a secret agent. Back in the dying days of the Soviet Empire, Putin put in years as a covert agent in East Germany. But despite his background, according to his own statements, he bears Communism no good will, and quickly chose the side of thinly veiled oligarchy over the tyranny of a socialist state when the Wall started crumbling.

Over the course of the next ten years, he advanced quickly through the rickety ranks of Russia’s new Republic. From an aide at the mayor’s office in St. Petersburg to the Head of the KGB-successor FSB in just nine short years, Putin’s astronomic rise seems a singular feat that could only be accomplished by a seasoned skulldugger in the remnants of a fallen empire. Every year, the man jumped from prestigious appointment to more prestigious appointments. For example; in ’96, Putin was in charge of siphoning out Soviet assets to the highest bidder, making him one of the fathers of the Russian oligarchy. And at the very end of Yeltsin’s days, the drunk and ailing President of the new Russian Federation short-listed Putin as his intended successor.

Then Yeltsin relinquished his presidency. Health reasons, you see. And in steps our fully fledged “President” Putin. Ready, waiting, and more than willing to fill the shoes of the man that tried to drag a screaming husk of a cluster of nation states into the modern day.

It is impossible for me to list the atrocities and scandals that have been whispered and published following meme–tastic Putin’s ascension. He’s had dissidents assassinated on foreign soil, he’s revitalized the Russian practise of imprisoning political opponents, he’s been antagonising armed conflict in the Soviet Empire’s old haunting grounds, he’s made Russia one of the most dangerous places in the world to work as a journalist, he’s galvanised homo-, trans- and pretty much every other kind of phobe as a platform of fear and control. He’s won every election he’s personally been in with approval ratings of between 53% (at his initial inauguration in 2000) and 71%, making him the most long-standing popular leader in a “democracy” to date. And when the Constitution finally told him to fuck off out of office, he installed his dependable puppet Medvedev as a place-holder-president for a term before going right back in.

Putin isn’t just a political figure in modern Russia. He’s not technically even a democratic leader, considering that no international independent election observer has ever cleared his elections free from tampering. But calling him a simple dictator, a despot, isn’t fair. To degrade him as such would be to unfairly glorify dictators everywhere.

Putin isn’t just a dictator. Putin is an institution. A corrupt Russian institution, who has been accumulating power for some thirty years. Perhaps the most successful politician since Napoleon (despite the growing public resentment towards him). Putin has fashioned himself as a new-age Tsar.

So, back to the assertion at hand: Putin says he doesn’t want leaders-for-life back in Russia. The Communists kept keeping their leaders long past their expiration date, and previously the nation was a host to monarchs and emperors. And Putin says he doesn’t want to go back to that, despite the fact that he’s sending some of that presidential power into a public office for out-going presidents. Seemingly so that he himself shall be able to keep holding onto to power long after he’s finally given up on holding his electoral office.

Is he telling the truth? Well, that’s hard to know with the man. In public, he’s both been known to brazenly deny involvement in the many atrocities attributed to his administration. But then again, there are several occasions on which he seems frightfully unfazed with the accusations levied at him. Almost as if he knows full well that he, unlike Orange Hydras elsewhere, actually could just shoot someone on the street in broad daylight and never worry for a second about repercussions. Almost, one might say, as if he’s already done so.

It’s highly possibly that Tsar Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin doesn’t want to rule the largest nation on earth for his entire life. Maybe he just wants to rule for as long as he damned well feels like it.

/Sebastian Lindberg 21/1-2020

A Brand of Admission

You know what sucks? Being wrong. Doing a bad. Making a mistake. It doesn’t matter what the scope of your mistake is. It always, ever, sucks. Whether it’s being wrong about some little factual thing in a discussion of varying relevance. Or acting out of order with your close ones, leaving hurt feelings and sullen silence in your wake. Or even if you’ve gone so far as to bring down a whole air plane filled with people, regardless if it’s filled with 176 or 298 souls.

And admitting it, that you done fucked up, is even worse.

Why is that though? Why is it so much more fucking terrible to admit your mistakes than it is to actually make them? Everyone fucks up every once in a while. We’ve all done it. Maybe not pushed a button or trigger and ended hundreds of peoples’ lives in a flash of ignited jet fuel. That’s a sin exclusive to just a few sorry sods out there. But just about regardless of the severity of our fumble, that otherwise seems to be such a universal unifier, it is so very very very difficult to cop to it. In many cases, our aversion to own our mistakes takes on such stupendous dimensions that it, for some gods awful reason, seems like a better idea to keep digging the hole we’re in rather than try to climb out of it.

Just a casual look into the Orange Wellspring of Stupidity that used to be known as the White House easily illustrates the point, if although in mind-boggling extremes. How a man, by the loosest definition of the word possible, can keep making mistake after mistake without ever acknowledging a single one of them, and yet retain his position of solidifying power and withering prestige.

A “man” that seems, to his final death rattle, refuse that he ever, ever ever ever, made a single itty bitty mistake. A “man” for whom failure seems to be more abhorrent than fashioning himself into a cult symbol for the most deranged and dangerous people in America. A “man” that just won’t. Stop. Digging.

I wonder why that is. Who or what ever instilled in us the idea that our mistakes define us to such a dire extent that they will completely condemn our character, our identity, if faced. Have churches, schools, parents, political paradigms, profit oriented economical structures, performance anxiety, and philosophers really managed to beat into us so thoroughly that we’re only ever as good as our worst mistake. That success somehow ever comes in the miraculous absence of failure. Despite the very measurable fact that the greatest heroes and role models of any age often stand on a veritable carnage of failures and fumbles to reach their historic heights.

For example, from off the top of my head; George Washington, revered by millions as a revolutionary hero and founding father, who failed in nearly every battle he brought his colonial forces into, and in so winning an unwinnable war. Some accounts of the man going so far as to paint him as wearing his many mistakes and failures on his sleeves, as if they were his real accomplishments. His survivals.

So, why oh why, are we so afraid of admitting failure? Even when the greatest among us are demonstrably the ones that stand unbowed among their shattered chances, as opposed to the countless unsung lessers that are lied to have never broken a vase of opportunity in their lives?

I don’t know. I don’t get it. I, like anyone, also feel that pathetic pang of shame and anguish whensoever I’m called to be held accountable. But I don’t get it either. I don’t understand where it comes from. There’s not a single shred of evidence, in either practise or story sung, where accountability has borne worse consequences than the action itself.

We need to stop. We need to stop making excuses. Stop trying to sweep shattered vases, shot down air planes, or fish choking on plastic and dying coral reefs under the rug. We need to stop leaving our failures in darkness, left to fester and swell unattended and ignored. Even if unbridled shame is the hallmark of the human race, we need to stop. Because just as heroes are forged from openly brandished mistakes, monsters grow from the faults we keep hidden.

Because I think most of us would rather be the former than the latter.

/Sebastian Lindberg 13/1-2020

An Errant Like

A diplomatic crisis is churning between the US and Turkey. Yes, I’m well aware that they’re getting hard to keep track of, all these diplomatic meltdowns between the despots and crazies of the world, with the news that North Korea has cut its buddy-buddy relationship with the Orange House being perhaps the most prominent one this week. But as Kim has finally gotten sick of the Orange Hydra, closing off a foreign retreat for the impeachable dunce, this Turkey malarkey tickles me a lot more than some Joseon boondoggle.

You see, the US embassy in Ankara had to answer a summons from the Turkish government on Sunday, due to a tweet. No, not an Orange tweet. I’m pretty sure none of the world’s leaders are taking those serious any more. No, it was an unrelated tweet, not sent from American interests, warning that Turkish politics might have to get used to the absence of one of its nationalistic leaders, and ally to despot Erdogan. The US Turkish embassy’s twitter account got caught ‘liking’ the post. Much to the chagrin of the Turkish regime.

Yes. You read that correctly. Erdogan got miffed because a foreign national diplomatic envoy ‘liked’ something on Twitter that he didn’t like.

Maybe I didn’t put my little luddite back in my pants this morning, but what the fuck does a ‘like’ even mean? Does it bear some sort of intrinsic value that I was never briefed on? Because as far as I understood T3h Int3rn3tz, a ‘like’ didn’t mean a gawd damned thing.

For what is a ‘like’? It’s like yelling at people in traffic when you’re safely tucked away in your car. It’s a firm nod or a thumbs up to a stranger that managed to catch their dropped sandwich before it hit the ground. It’s a heartless ‘congratulations’ to an old acquaintance that breaks the news that they’re expecting their fifth child in as many years. It’s politely declining to give money to Amnesty solicitors on the street. It’s a social contract filler.

What it is not is a scalding critique of a violent and despotic regime. It’s not even strictly approval. I don’t think anyone believes, not even Erdogan himself surely, that the US embassy is happy to hear that a regime-allied political party leader is sickly.

And yet, the US embassy suffered a government summons by a prickly political establishment. A political establishment that accomplishes nothing but showing the world how vulnerable and weak they are by escalating a digital snafu into a diplomatic altercation.

So what? Who cares? Well… yeah. Who cares that the failing democracy of United States is getting slapped on the wrist by the ‘never really tried’-democratic remnants of a once-great Turkish empire. It’s not big news. But it is stupid news. Stupid news that illustrates just how bizarre our world has become. A world where something so fickle, so meaningless, so intrinsically worthless as an errant ‘like’ on Twitter can cause two nations to snap at each other.

/Sebastian Lindberg 7/10-2019

A Rocky Exodus

ASAP Rocky is home. To the great fanfare of his judicially illiterate friends and fans. Safe and sound, no worse for wear.

He’s not out of the woods yet though. At least, he shouldn’t be. For just like the Swedish prosecutor suspected when he denied Rakim Mayers parole before the trial, as soon as the penny mouthful rapper was free of Swedish custody, pending the result of the trial, he bounced. Split with his homies on a private jet back to L.A., pretty much proving the prosecutors right.

So, what now? Well, as of the time of publishing, a verdict has been promised by tomorrow (on the 14^th of August). The prosecutor has moved for six months jail time. If that verdict comes to pass, Rakim Mayers, aka. ASAP Rocky, is due to report for another stint of Swedish jail time.

Assuming that the recidivist rapper will show up. And that’s a big assumption.

Because why would he? Why would he go back to Sweden just to serve more time? Well, Sweden has an extradition treaty with the US. So, the US would be obligated, in accordance with that treaty, to send Rocky back.

But will they though?

Here’s a bold prediction: They won’t. The Orange Hydra has proven that he wants to use Rocky as an example, to try and cajole a few simpering votes in his favour ahead of the 2020 election. He’s proven that he doesn’t care about treaties or deals that the US has with other countries. Even that he doesn’t care much for the law at all, whether it’s American or Swedish. And the Mueller report makes it abundantly clear that the Hydra won’t shy away from inserting himself into judiciary processes.

If the Orange Hydra wants to have a say in the extradition of Rakim Mayers, well then, odds are the rapper won’t be turned over to Sweden. No matter what our extradition treaty says.

So what? Well, the US-Swedish extradition treaty has been a hot potato for years now. In Sweden on separate accounts, concerning the CIA and other US agencies picking up Swedish citizens as part of the interventionist “War on Terror”. And internationally, regarding the hotly debated extradition of Julian Assange.

But an extradition treaty, a bilateral one like what the US and Sweden has, is just a contract. Only valid for as long as both parties observe and follow it. For what happens when one of the parties ignore the signed contract? Well, they violate the contract, making obligations for either party null and void. If only the wounded party has enough brass on ’em to call the offender on it.

Here’s my bold proposition: If the US won’t ship Rakim Mayers back to Sweden to face his potential sentence (as is likely that they won’t), and Rocky won’t show up on his own (which I can’t imagine he will), then Sweden is in a sweet position to reject the extradition contract. The US would prove themselves a contract violator (again), and Sweden can step away without any fault. Sweden can make itself free of having to dance to the US extradition fiddle and further cut its obligations to a tyrannical, hegemonic, and volatile bully.

And wouldn’t just that be nice?

/Sebastian Lindberg 13/8-2019

The North Korean Exit Strategy

It is not unreasonable to state that the world’s burning. Quite literally, in fact. It is likewise not unreasonable that the G20, the twenty biggest cats on the world stage, should have a lot to talk about.

But not Trump the Orange Hydra. Oh no. Despite raging wildfires, melting polar caps, and people dropping dead from heatstroke, he decided that his time was better spent popping over to North Korea for a quick visit with his chum, Great Leader by Inheritence Kim Jong-Un.

We’re not surprised any more. None of us are chocked, right? Of course the Orange Hydra would rather do a publicity stunt rather than some actual hard work. Work that the American people aught to expect him to at least try his very large and strong hands at, once in a while. But perhaps the world should be grateful that he doesn’t get involved any more than he already does…

No, instead he committed to a landmark gesture of walking across the DMZ and into a chummy embrace with one of the most alienated national leaders in the world. And the crowds go wild. The media is in a frenzy, on both sides of the fence. He’s been called an ambassador of peace (by Fox News). He’s been called a traitor (by plenty of pundits and liberal outlets). But I think they’re all missing the Orange Hydra’s big picture here. I don’t think he’s gunning for a Nobel Peace prize. Not truthfully. Nor is he a traitor, considering that he’s never given a shit about his country’s well being.

What the Orange Hydra’s looking for now is a retirement plan.

The Mueller Report made it obvious that the Orange Hydra knows that he’s fucked. I’m not brandishing my poetic licence here either! In his own words; he’s “fucked”. He knows it. And despite so many experts questioning the Orange Hydra’s mental health, one thing has been painfully clear for the past presidential mandate. And that is that the Orange Hydra, the plump “president” Trump, is only concerned with one thing. And that’s himself.

And he knows that his days in the US are numbered.

Even if, by some second disaster of the American election system, the Orange Hydra gets re-elected, he knows that as soon as his title is removed from him, and his boy-toy Mitch McConnell and the rest of the complicit GOP, won’t protect him any more, he’ll end up in jail. Or better yet, beaten to a pulp or shot in the streets. His days in “the land of the free” and “home of the brave” have been tallied. He knows it. So, what does any half-hearted con-artist do when their gig is running up? They look for en exit strategy.

Maybe a house on the hill in the most isolated and segregated society on earth?

It wouldn’t be the first time. Back in 2013, the French actor Gerard Depardieu fled from his native nation to Russia, to crash on Putin’s couch for a bit. All to avoid paying taxes on his ludicrous wealth. At around the same time, ex-basketball star, silver screen cameo, and hair-styler extravagant Dennis Rodman ran away to North Korea to set up Kim’s own professional basketball league. And come the end of 2020, or in worst case scenario 2024 if only the world survives that long, the Orange Hydra will want to flee capture.

And what better place for him than North Korea? A nation of poverty, inequality, dictatorship, terror, zero human rights, and regime brutality. In short, a nation for his peers. I bet he’d love that.

/Sebastian Lindberg 2/7-2019