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Geopolítica e Política

Lusa - Lusística - Mundial

Geopolítica e Política

Lusa - Lusística - Mundial

Decadence

Joe Biden, Donald Trump and Dmitry Orlov

12.09.23 | Álvaro Aragão Athayde

Old Wonder Woman

Superheroes Decadence, by Donald Soffritti

 

 

The US Presidential Comedy

The US Presidential Comedy pic.jpg

Dmitry Orlov • August 13, 2023 at 12:40

I have long maintained that the US is not a democracy and that it doesn’t matter who is president; the US is getting flushed down the same golden toilet regardless. More recently, I have been raising the question of whether there is even going to be an event worthy of being called a “national election” in the US in 2024, seeing as the outcome of the last one hinged on the blatantly falsified, fraudulent results in just one state (Georgia, as the case may be) accounting for an infinitesimally small percentage of the popular vote. The late, great Vladimir Zhirinovsky, fearless leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, who had been prescient about a great many things, had stated, with his characteristic bombast, that there won’t be a national election in 2024 in the United States because there will no longer be a United States.

As with most predictions, the timing may turn out to be rather inexact, but the trend toward national decay, degeneracy and dissolution is unmistakable. Still, in spite of the pervasive stench of corruption and deceit, I believe that some elements of the US national election circus should be salvaged and immortalized in the form of comedy. The proper subgenre for it, I believe, is Commedia dell’Arte, in which a fixed cast of characters, well-known to the audience, improvise based on a fixed thematic framework as the audience boos and cheers them. These improvised skits can be delivered at county fairs, trailer park festivals and roadside attractions throughout the former United States, to keep the memory of the late, great America alive in people’s minds.

Here, then, is the Commedia dell’Arte called “US Presidential Election”.

THE SET
The comedy is acted out in the ORAL OFFICE, the Oval Office having been so renamed in honor of the former President Clinton and his eager consort Monica Lewinsky. It is set up with an executive desk, sofas, a coffee table, flags, paintings, statuettes and various other bits of bric-à-brac and memorabilia americana.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
HUNTER: the reining president. So that the audience is informed of his status, he always makes a grand entrance together with the UNDERAGE UKRAINIAN PROSTITUTES who march proudly onto the stage, form a chorus line and, marching in place, sing:

Hail to the chief
We have chosen for the nation!
Hail to the chief!
We salute him one and all!
Hail to the chief
As we pledge cooperation
In proud fulfillment
Of a great noble call!

HUNTER waves to the audience, sits down behind the presidential desk and proceeds to lounge about the ORAL OFFICE in his underwear, feet up on the presidential desk, drinking booze and smoking crack. His utterances are random and incoherent, the only consistently intelligible phrases being “Where’s the money?” and “Give me my money!” addressed to no one in particular. His antics include getting up, getting the spins and falling down with the SECRET SERVICE rushing to his aid and helping him back to his seat; staggering drunkenly about the stage with a lascivious grin while groping and feigning sex with the UNDERAGE UKRAINIAN PROSTITUTES and periodically getting the fantods and rushing about the stage in a daze shouting “Spiders everywhere! Don’t you see them?” or plaintively calling for his mommy (“Mommy! Why don’t you love me?”) with one or the other of the UNDERAGE UKRAINIAN PROSTITUTES rushing to his side to comfort him. The variations are endless.

KAMALA: the reigning vice-presidentress, as indicated by a beauty pageant contestant ribbon over her shoulder, labeled “THE VEEP”. As the only one sober enough, she is entrusted with the NUCLEAR FOOTBALL, which is an actual football stickered with radiation symbols. She sometimes delivers philosophical-sounding but utterly imbecilic little speeches, which she inevitably screws up badly, then cackles madly at her own mistake, sometimes dropping the NUCLEAR FOOTBALL, which causes a blinding flash of light, a firecracker to go off off-stage and everyone on stage to drop dead momentarily. Her typical speeches, delivered with great pathos and gravitas, are: “You know, time, it always moves BACKWARDS, not forwards… I mean, it moves FORWARDS, yeah… Hyuck-hyuck-hyuck!” or “You know, spacetime, it is NOT continuous… I mean, it IS continuous, yeah… Hyuck-hyuck-hyuck!” She also shouts out what seem like campaign slogans, of sorts, such as “We must open all the borders, now!” or “Mandatory abortions for all, now!” or “Everybody must change your sex, now!” Once in a while, she shouts out “I am the first woman-president… I mean VICE-president… yeah… Hyuck-hyuck-hyuck!!

THE GHOST OF HUNTER’S FATHER: this is a withered-looking apparition that wanders about the stage trying to shake hands with invisible beings, periodically executing pratfalls or tripping and falling down prone, then shouting “I’m OK!”. He periodically attempts to make a speech, clenching his fists in front of himself and staring fixedly into the audience with a hollow-eyed grin, but, after an uncomfortable silence, thumping his head and proceeding to shake hands with invisible beings. He is generally ignored by everyone.

TRUMP: the perennial presidential candidate, a bombastic character who rushes into the ORAL OFFICE in the middle of each performance, dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, being ineffectually restrained by the SECRET SERVICE, and makes an impassioned campaign speech about Making America Great Again. He then tries to strangle HUNTER, calling his presidency illegitimate, and is then dragged away by the SECRET SERVICE, kicking and screaming about “draining the swamp” and about how he’ll lock them all up once he wins “tomorrow's election” while HUNTER waves his crack pipe at him and shouts “get out of my ORAL OFFICE!” TRUMP is the only one who acknowledges the existence of THE GHOST OF HUNTER’S FATHER, accusing him of stealing the election from him, but all he gets in response is a failed attempt to shake his hand sometimes followed by a pratfall.

THE UNDERAGE UKRAINIAN PROSTITUTES: these are two or more girls dressed in négligées who lounge about the ORAL OFFICE in lascivious poses, sometimes doing little cabaret acts and generally doing whatever HUNTER wants of them, such as rubbing up against him or squatting on his face. When HUNTER passes out, they hop off the stage into the audience, pick some unsuspecting male victim and attempt to pull him onto the stage, shouting, with a fake Ukrainian accent, “You be the PRRREZIDENT!”

THE SECRET SERVICE: two or more agents dressed in black suits and wearing dark sunglasses, mumbling into their thumbs and gazing about menacingly.

ZELENSKY: a miserable-looking khaki-clad man who rushes onto the stage, drops down on his knees before HUNTER and tearfully begs him for a missile that can hit Moscow or an aircraft carrier or a chemical weapons stockpile or a trillion dollars in cash. While being dragged away by THE SECRET SERVICE, he makes a lunge for KAMALA’S NUCLEAR FOOTBALL, which he fumbles and drops to the floor, causing it to go bang as described above.

NULAND: a frumpy, bug-eyed woman who wonders around the stage with a bag labeled “POISON” offering cookies from it to whoever wants one. Those who take a bite of one of her cookies start making the Hitler salute and shouting “Glory to Ukraine!” before going into convulsions and dropping dead.

FOREIGN OLIGARCHS: a random assortment of exotically dressed characters whose cameo roles consist of walking into the ORAL OFFICE to deliver flowery greetings in exotic accents along with suitcases of cash and making outlandish requests, such as “We’d like to buy Texas!” or “We’d like to buy California!” which HUNTER always grants with a dismissive wave of the hand.

end

 

Decadence, by Marian Kamensky

Decadence, by Marian Kamensky

 

 

 

Trump is soooo Trump-licious!

Trump is soooo Trump-licious!.jpg

Dmitry Orlov • August 26, 2023 at 19:58

Yesterday I forced myself to watch Tucker Carlson’s interview of Donald Trump on X (formerly Twitter). I was pleasantly surprised: it was more entertaining than painful. Trump was actually somewhat funny, especially when eviscerating Biden and Harris, and even somewhat charming. The role of a martyr, assigned to him by the hopelessly corrupt American establishment, suits him well, allowing him to mix and match his usual combativeness with the new elements of serenity and tranquility, which are new to his character and typically develop with advancing age. Speaking of advancing age, although in a few instances he repeated himself almost verbatim several times (not a good sign) he did seem together enough, unlike Washington’s various living cadavers like Biden, Pelosi or McConnell, who would best be put in a home for similar-minded people.

About the only really interesting question from the generally fawning Carlson was whether Trump thinks it likely that they (the establishment) would try to kill him. This put the martyrdom theme front and center. Trump didn’t say “Yes” — that would have been too much, verging on “This is my blood, the blood of the new testament” — but he didn’t clearly say “No” either. What he did say is that his foes are crazy and passionate enough to try. So is he now the new Lamb, ready to be sacrificed and by so doing to wash away the sins of an America gone all Sodom and Gomorrah?

This is heady stuff, eschatologically speaking, and probably the reason the interview has been watched over 250 million times. But what is equally interesting, to me at least, is what has been left out. To touch on just a few of these…

1. Trump spoke about how he “got along great” with Kim Jong Un. Well, that certainly hasn’t helped things, because quite recently North Korea’s defense minister General Kang Sun-nam gave a speech at the Moscow International Security Conference in which he stated that nuclear war is inevitable and that North Korea plans to win it. “Now, the question is not if a nuclear war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula, but who starts it when,” Kang warned. You could take this to be mere bluster, but it isn’t: North Korea’s position is superior to that of Washington because it can strike Washington’s forces more or less with impunity, being assured that Washington will not strike back, being justifiably afraid of pulling both Russia and China, which border North Korea (a rather small target and easy to miss) into a nuclear conflict. Trump is not unaware; he did say that North Korea has lots of nuclear bombs and that 40 thousand US servicemen stationed in South Korea could die. But what he didn’t say is what must be done to prevent that from happening: the US must stand down. Nor did Carlson ask any follow-up questions. Perhaps speaking the full truth is antithetical to running for the US presidency.

2. Trump also said that the war in the (former) Ukraine is a disaster and must be ended immediately. What he didn’t mention is what the US would have to do to end it: cut off military aid to the Ukrainian side from the US and from the rest of NATO (that’s the easy part), and then accede to the demands Russia made in November of 2021, which stipulate NATO pulling its forces back to where they were in 1997, prior to NATO’s eastward expansion, restoration of the Ukraine’s neutrality (a condition of its independence from Russia, which it has violated) and several more such conditions (that’s the harder part). Add to that the demand for full demilitarization and denazification of the former Ukrainian territory — a tall order, since that would probably involve rounding up all of the Ukrainian war criminals, including the previous and the present Ukrainian presidents and organizing an international war crimes tribunal for them and for all of their accomplices, both foreign and domestic. But then again, one doesn’t win the US presidency by admitting such things.

3. Trump accused Biden of ruining the US energy industry. That may or may not be the case, but what he failed to mention is something far more important: that the US is tapped out, drilled out and generally fracked. The US is still the world’s largest oil producer, but for how much longer? Fracking is what’s responsible for that glut of oil, and production from fracked wells is now on an undulating plateau and nearing the edge of an escarpment. What’s more, even the current glut is still not enough to satisfy absolutely inordinate US demand and the US still has to import oil. What’s going to happen when the fracking episode ends as swiftly as it began less than two decades ago? Well, please don’t expect poor old Trump to mouth the words “horse and buggy” — at least not before the election!

4. This last point dovetails nicely with two stunning bits of news out of the recent BRICS conference in Johannesburg just last week. First, the existing five BRICS members have succeeded in de-dollarizing their trade with each other to such an extent that less than a third of it involves the US dollar. Their goal is to get rid of the US dollar altogether, thus making US sanctions, or the threat thereof, completely toothless, and the ever-growing US federal debt unnecessary to invest in and very necessary to sell quickly. Second, six more nations, including Saudi Arabia and Iran, two major oil producers, are going to become BRICS members as of January 1, 2024. The new members have the same goals as the existing members: to de-dollarize their trade relationships. How is the US going to buy the oil it needs once fracking has run its course? Hint: not with dollars. And how will it manage to earn whatever currencies BRICS members will be willing to accept? Hint: it won’t. And what chance is there that such weighty matters will be voiced by anyone in the course of the 2024 US presidential campaign? Shhh!

5. Another point Trump failed to mention is that the US is bankrupt and that no US president, whether he or someone else, will be able to do anything about that. The combination of a ridiculously huge debt, now at nearly $31 trillion, much higher inflation and, consequently, much higher interest rates, means that just the interest payments on the US federal debt will soon top $1 trillion a year. Without major cuts to defense, medicare and social security, they will swallow up the entire federal budget — unless the US drastically increases its borrowing. But will there be international demand for all this new US debt? No; see point 4 above. But isn’t the Social Security Trust Fund in a “lock box”? No, that was presidential candidate Al Gore’s idea, but then the US Supreme Court elected somebody else.

It is possible to add a few more items to this list. For instance, there is the likely fiasco in Taiwan, where, if the Guomintang (國民黨 / 国民党— the nationalists in favor of reunifying with the mainland) get elected, the People’s Liberation Army will end up with all of those overpriced though somewhat obsolete weapons the US has been sending to Taiwan. Trump did mention the Chinese military bases being built on Cuba but didn’t say what he would do about it other than furrow his brow in sincere consternation.

In all, I think that Trump would make a fine next and last president of the US. His job will be to fume, harrumph, express umbrage and bemoan his country’s fate. Or maybe he will rise to the occasion, strike a majestic pose and declare with his usual pomp and bombast that America is over: that’s all, folks, Washington is permanently closed for business, constitutional authority devolves to the states, the show is over, thank you all for coming and please drive home safely.

end

 

 

Anthropozine

Decadence Comics – Decaying Forms and Abstract Comics

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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