Tag: fascism

Adventures in barbershopping

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics4 Comments

The boy’s hair is getting into his eyes, and we have been threatening him with a haircut for a few weeks now, but higher-priority things keep getting in the way. This morning, as my wife is leaving to take the Great Old One to the vet for a check-up, she asks me if I can get his hair cut. Yes! I can do that, and for once we do not have ten thousand other things that need to be done today.

I call the place we’ve been using. Someone answers the phone.

“Hi, do you have appointments available this afternoon?” I ask.

“We’re open until three,” the person on the other side says.

That is … not what I asked, and something about her tone gets directly on a nerve for some reason. A moment or two of slightly confused but pointed questions reveals that yes, they’re more or less free all afternoon and I can pick whatever time I want, and I make an appointment for noon.

The correct response here, by the way, is something along the lines of “We’ve got open spots all afternoon, what time would you like to come in?” I feel like this isn’t a complicated interaction, y’know? Probably happens a few times a day, at least? I asked about appointments. If you’re wide open, say that. Don’t get snotty with me and tell me your hours as if they weren’t right there on the website I used to find your phone number.

We’ve been using this place for a while, because they’re nearby, reasonably priced, and kid-friendly. There has always been a bit of Jesusiness about the place, but it’s never been too terribly overwhelming; they sell shirts and the shirts have a Bible verse on them for some reason along with the logo of the barbershop. That’s been about it. I live in fucking Indiana; I’m used to it.

Today when I got there their front door had been redone to include the two images in the above picture, and, well, welcome to the Don’t Want None Won’t Be None zone, folks. If I were to deliberately design a logo for American Christofascism I could not do much better than a cross with a thin blue line graphic imposed on it. My rule for when I allow my politics to influence decisions that shouldn’t be political (like where should I get my kid’s hair cut once every two or three months) is that if you make sure I know where you stand, I’m going to judge you accordingly, and if you don’t, I’m not going to go looking for trouble. And these folks have now officially crossed a (thin, blue) line that makes it perfectly clear that my business isn’t wanted there, and they’re going to get what they want from here on out.

Now, note here that 1) I have never had any problem with any of the employees, and I’m not even certain who actually owns the place; and 2) I am perfectly willing to let this rule apply to me; I wear my politics on my sleeve around here and anyone who is, say, unwilling to buy my books because of that is absolutely encouraged to make that decision. Everyone is welcome to not spend their money on my work for whatever reason they like, regardless of what I might think of the reason. I don’t actually get to have a say here! It’s your money!

And, well, when it’s my money, if you’re gonna make sure I get greeted with Jesus and Blue Lives Matter before I walk into your place of business, well, I’m gonna keep on walking. Sorrynotsorry, I guess.

One way or another

On By Luther M. SilerIn PoliticsLeave a comment

…nevertheless, we persist.

giphyI had a stunningly easy day at work today, to the point where I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and it never really did.  No drama, no nonsense, I had time to get shit done, which blows my mind– that never happens– and now I have tomorrow off.

My wife has to work and my son has school.  So I’m at home, by myself, on Election Day, trying my good Goddamnedest to keep myself distracted.  If there was some sort of drug I could take that could guarantee I could just wake up Wednesday morning and have the carnage already dealt with, I’d already have taken it.

I mean, I could make predictions, but I was literally the wrongest I’ve ever been about anything two years ago, so I’ve got no room left for optimism right now.  I also think I’m probably not capable of being surprised, but the world has a way of proving me wrong about that too.  I considered finding something, anything to volunteer for tomorrow, but to a certain extent I question my own ability to keep my shit together in scenarios where people are talking politics around me, and if I go volunteer for something it’s gonna be kinda difficult to avoid politics.   Better for my mental health to spend the entire day stuck in 1899 robbing caravans and hunting bears.  I gotta stay the hell off Twitter until at least 7 or 8:00; I will fail utterly in this goal.

More tomorrow, I suppose, if the world doesn’t end.

In which that wasn’t a joke

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics5 Comments

AngerIn the long run of things, this probably isn’t that big of a deal, but it’s still on my mind, so fuck it, I’m talking about it.  I work high-end retail, right?  We all know this.  So I’m working on the Fourth of July, just like a whole lot of other people.  I actually get it pretty well; normally big national holidays mean everybody has to work all day (and Wednesday is usually my half day) but we’re closing at six, so my Big Holiday Work Schedule is having to work a fairly inconsequential three and a half extra hours for the week.  I’m gonna survive.  Frankly, my birthday is the 5th and that’s always overshadowed the Fourth for me.  Call me unpatriotic if you like.

So dude calls on Wednesday to find out if whateverthefuck he ordered is in.  He’s not one of my guests– and, incidentally, my tolerance for putting up with even an iota of crap from people I’m not personally making money from has been declining precipitously lately– and I look his stuff up and find out that it’s in the store.  We had received a delivery that day; chances are it had just come in a few hours prior to the phone call.  I offer to set up his delivery.  As it turns out, the rest of this current week is full but all of next week (ie, the first week of July) is pretty much entirely open.  I tell him that and point out that we do deliver on the 4th (if we’re open, we’re open) if Wednesday works for him.

There’s a pause.

“You’re delivering on the Fourth?”

Another pause.

“You should be shot.”

…

Now, there’s really not much left to this story.  I told him everybody in the store was working that day but that I appreciated the murder threat.  He acted like he didn’t hear me.  I didn’t hang up on him or cancel his shit (although if I remembered his name, I might seriously jump in and reschedule him for, like, 2028 without telling anyone) and I sure as shit didn’t tell his entitled white Republican ass (argue with me, I dare you) to shut the fuck up and die alone and in pain like I probably ought to have.  He snarled at me that he wanted the 3rd, I scheduled it, got off the phone, and then sent this email to my regional manager:

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(I had, as you probably gleaned from context, just sent my RSM an email prior to getting that phone call.)

He wrote me back and told me he appreciated the laugh, apparently misreading the tone of my email, which was meant to be “this is fucked up, this guy is fucked up, I’m tired as hell of fucked up, and next time this won’t go as well,” not “here’s a funny anecdote about a routine thing that just happened to me.”

But yeah.  Maybe I’m taking shit too serious.  But these fuckers are getting more and more emboldened on a damn near minute-to-minute basis, and it’s just like a fucking Republican to get mad at the motherfucker who has to be at work rather than the motherfuckers who are making them come to work, and I don’t want anything to do with these entitled, violent, stupid assholes any longer.

Everything sucks and I’m trying to ignore it

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

DumpsterFire2I spent most of the day today in the car, driving from here to Fort Wayne and back (two hours each way) to get something done for work that I wouldn’t have had to do were I possessed of even a minor understanding of how geography works and the difference between west and east.  I spent yesterday mostly being exhausted into incomprehension and yet somehow still didn’t manage to get into bed until after midnight.

I have these crazy ideas that tomorrow I’ll get something useful done around the house, but I don’t think anyone nearby should hold their breath about it.  It’s supposed to be about a hundred and thirty degrees outside for the next couple of days so one thing I do know is that the lawn’s not getting mowed anytime soon.  The neighbors are just gonna have to look upon our jungle and despair; I’m not worrying about it.

One definite advantage about spending four hours in the car, he thought to himself before leaving on his road trip, is that it keeps me off Twitter and thus away from the news.  I can’t handle how fucked the world is right now and I’m trying to take a couple of days’ sabbatical from horror until I get my head back on straight.  So naturally all I did was listen to politics podcasts in the car.

I am not very good at news sabbaticals, apparently.  But I’m gonna keep trying.  If I can go three weeks without ingesting any carbs I ought to be able to ignore current events for just a few days, right?  You’d think.

Back to Dark Souls.  Anything I should be downloading or binge-watching that I don’t know about?  Tell me in comments.

1000 words and such

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Briefly: This Is Who They Are

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Let’s be real: you hadn’t heard of this derplord two weeks ago, and neither had I.  And as an experiment, I’m going to be a bit of a dick and not use his name in this post– mostly to see if I can remember who the hell he is or what outrage against decent people he perpetrated when I inevitably go back to look at this post a couple of months or years from now.  I haven’t been able to independently verify this, but I’m seeing on Twitter that the vote total on Election Day was more in his favor than the early vote.  Meaning that Montanans saw this fucker assault a reporter and went “Yep, that’s the guy I want representing me.”

Remember that.  This is who they are.  This is who they have always been.  Beating up a reporter now GAINS you Republican votes.  He will not be the last one, and the next one will do it as a matter of strategy, not unchecked id.

(That said, I can’t get too het up about anybody deciding they didn’t want to vote for this dude, who sounds like a mess as a candidate also.  But at least he’s not a thug.)

And then there’s this pigfucker:

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There’s some yammering going around about how the toy medals on this idiot’s jacket are “stolen valor,” which is an accusation that has a very specific meaning: that he’s wearing military medals that he didn’t earn.  That’s not quite what’s going on.  David Duke Clarke has not claimed to be in the military and doesn’t claim to be wearing military medals.  The shit’s literally costume jewelry, for the most part, as this probably overly-literal Snopes article points out.

So, okay.  He’s not guilty of stolen valor.  But he’s for goddamn sure assuming that most people who see him in his little costume up there are going to think those are real medals and not some flair he stole from his waitress at one of those put-shit-on-the-walls restaurants.  And he’s absolutely right.  Because appearances beat out reality every single time for these fuckwits.  Truth doesn’t matter, just the appearance of it.  David Clarke wears a bunch of pretty pieces of plastic on his stupid little jacket so he must be Tough and Honorable and Real, and not a child trying to impress other children.

This is who they are.

A post in three videos, one image and zero words

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics1 Comment

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On denial

On By Luther M. SilerIn Politics9 Comments

pen-solidarity-fistI won’t say his name.  You’re never going to see it in print on this site again.  I have found a silver lining to being at work tomorrow; I will be nowhere near a television set at any point between about eight in the morning and 8:45 or so at night, and so there is absolutely no chance that I will even accidentally catch any part of the inauguration or the address itself.

Yesterday, I watched a portion of Al Franken’s gentle questioning of useless rich idiot Betsy Devos at her confirmation hearing.  I was not surprised but that didn’t keep me from being horrified.  The woman knows nothing; a college sophomore Ed major would have been embarrassed to answer those questions as poorly as she did.  Hell, I’d expect anyone who has been reading this site for more than a year to be able to do a better job just out of osmosis.  At one point this afternoon, I found myself wondering if Franken has Presidential aspirations, and then spent a moment being quietly horrified at the fact that I thought it was a halfway decent idea.

(He’ll be 69 in 2020.  Nah.)

Which of these sentences, if any, is hyperbole?  This is a genuine question.  I don’t know for sure that any of them is:

  • Tomorrow is America’s worst day since September 11, 2001.
  • Tomorrow is America’s worst day since December 7, 1941.
  • Tomorrow is America’s worst day since April 12, 1861.

I suspect that right now only the first is inarguable, and the rest hyperbolic.  I wonder how long I’ll feel that way.  Hopefully at least a few months.  We have made the biggest mistake our country has ever made.  I just hope not too many people die before we find a way to correct it.

(I also, for the record, think that there is a nonzero chance that impeachment proceedings are begun damn near immediately– by the Republicans, who we would obviously need in order to pull such a thing off.  This would effectively be a legal coup by the Republican establishment.  I cannot say that I wouldn’t welcome it.  For all that I despise Mike Pence and everything he has ever stood for, he has principles.  The shitgibbon has none.)

(Yes, that was a Hamilton reference.)