Pulpit Time: BFTW 8/29/25

I try not to bring up the sorry state of the American experiment on here. I don’t want to indulge the self-aggrandizing “if we don’t perform dinner theater in Houston on 9/14/01, then the terrorists win” impulse, which bubbles up whenever Rome is burning and fiddling is your labor of love. But I don’t want anyone confused on where I stand politically, what with the fond recollection of Louis XIV (not that one, the less dignified one) and the Spotify stuff. I guesss this BFTW is more Blogging For The Weekend than Blurbing For The Weekend, but that’s my privilege when doing pro bono Dave Barry homage. (To paraphrase Joe Pesci in JFK, “all I ever wanted to be…was a video store manager with a column in the local arts weekly. But then they frikkin’ digitized the economy!”)

So many “political” debates can be boiled down to whether you believe in human rights for all, or whether you’ve accepted an “us or them” paradigm that dignifies allowing poverty, genocide, cruelty, totalitarianism, xenophobia, hate, or even just debating whether those things are afoot and to what degree. If you ever find yourself in the weeds with someone, arguing about institutional failure, governmental complicity, the definition of war, and what collateral damage is acceptable, just ask them if they believe that all human life should be respected (and let’s focus on the born, for now. Once we’re nice to everybody here, then we can think of the zygotes). If they don’t agree, then that’s the issue, and there’s no reason to discuss the specifics of the inhumanity they’re fine with. If they agree on principle, but feel those in power have to make tough choices, note that you’re not being paid that Oppenheimer moolah, and Rotisserie League Diplomacy isn’t your hobby. Our job is to tell those in power the values we want represented in our society, and demand policies that live up to them. How they can possibly pull that off amidst the compromises of late capitalism is on them, as they want the job. 

Of course, in America, “Rotisserie League Diplomacy” is about the only diplomacy left. Since given back the keys to the country, a variety of felonies including sedition unpunished, the current administration has behaved like a problem child realizing the adults refuse to engage, scanning their bedroom for carpet they’ve yet to rip, pets still breathing, and paint they’ve yet to marker. The hypothetical honcho is primarily focused on score-settling, swaying in the garden and other dying mob-boss fantasies (especially now that staying out of jail seems easy). Only the most craven of con-men and kooks remain to kiss the ring, free to indulge their fantasies of societal control. The criminality, hypocrisy, idiocy and absurdity of it all is almost impossible to tally. To call out any specific act can’t help but seem arbitrary; they aren’t denying the charges, they believe no one has the right to charge them.

The judicial branch isn’t much for enforcing the law even when they aren’t poisoned by right-wing think-thank cronyism. The legislative branch is too afraid of the rabble below and the demagogue above to suggest there’s anything more important to a society than bipartisan fantasies of capitalism as freedom. All they debate is just how much you should kick the downtrodden, and just how much we need working roads. Every crime committed by those on top is a “distraction” that needs ignoring, rather than a symptom of how malignant this untreated tumor is.  And what we’re supposed to focus on instead is unclear, other than paying our bills. That and donating our money to the politicians proud to ignore “distractions.’

If, whether due to my metaphor mania or your sweet, sweet, innocence, you have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s a good article laying out that fascist rule is not a threat in America, but here. It’s one of the better I’ve read, as most just want points for spotting societal collapse first. Author Chris Armitage acknowledges that the situation is unprecedented in numerous ways, and therefore historical comparison can only get us so far. It even suggests what steps could occur to combat the state of things. This isn’t just “when you realize we’re fucked, remember I called it.“

There are promising political figures on the state and local levels who don’t avoid acknowledging the morality of liberalism and the inherent value of humanity. Hopefully they’ll thrive and survive. But the national Democratic Party remains a gerontocracy of career insider traders, too corrupt or too spooked by the ghost of Reaganism to accept that a little bit of hate won’t win over the truly hateful, and only alienates voters under 50 who weren’t around for Reaganism, and aren’t eternally grateful for the neoliberal response to it.

(These cowards and crooks running the coffers for the party may be less cowardly and crooked than the GOP, but that distinction is only worth making when you’ve got a general ballot in front of you, and it’s a coward/crook-off. Someone’s gotta steer the ship, but most days of their term we should be telling them where to go, or else. Again, they asked for the job.)

The vehement defense of shiftless technocrat Gavin Newsom (who’s a little too good at “parodying” a callous demagogue, and wasn't kidding about wanting Kimberly Guilfoyle or Steve Bannon’s respect) suggests some voters are still hoping for a kaiju battle to resolve things. But I believe us little people will have to take matters into our own hands. Too many Americans are disgusted by what’s happening, and hungry for a way to express a vote of no confidence. Even if you’re a self-styled entrepreneur who’s told yourself that xenophobia and racism are eggs that must be broken to make a capitalist omelette of America, the ongoing tariff lunacy, and a Health Department that’s anti-medicine, suggests this administration is psychotically breaking eggs for its own sake. They’re not even aiming at the pan. 

Without denying the horrors already underway, we’re dealing with cosplay totalitarians who’ve yet to really be challenged. Fascist rule usually requires balancing populist, capitalist and military interests, and the men around the fading game show host are uniformly terrible at actually making anyone happy. But with the military inert (for better or worse), and the capitalists enjoying such an extreme wealth disparity they aren’t actually feeling any pain, it’s going to be up to the rabble to make their disgust felt. The United States is too big for us to grab pitchforks and march down the highway to DC, so my best guess is we’re heading for a general strike.

Who knows when that will happen, though. Though I don’t think everyone got the message, the point of The Big Short (book and movie) was that recognizing the inevitably of collapse isn’t the same as knowing when it will happen. The global economy is dependent on the faith of those involved, rather than considered logic. Paul Krugman can warn of the “Wile E. Coyote moment,” when the blinkered finally look down and see the canyon below. But Trump, soon followed by lesser, emboldened nightmares like Kevin Spacey and Eric Adams, has shown that few will actually make you look down once you’ve got power. Those without faith in "the system" can actually fuck themselves up by underestimating faith's currency, spending decades with gold in the sock drawer, only for heart disease to arrive before the end of the banking industry.

So what do you do if you’ve realized the folly of faith and the folly of fatalism? For that answer, I’ve looked to Killing Joke. The opening song on the British post-punk quarter’s debut album, released before I’d outgrown diapers, is a “Requiem” for western society. “When the meaningful words/ when they cease to function/ when there's nothing to say/ when will it start worrying you?” It’s the kind of song critics will say is “still relevant,” because it would take a bonafide apocalypse or an outbreak of utopian optimism for it not to be. By 1982, with a new single celebrating going “back to square one/ another empire backfire,” 3/4s of the group shipped off to Iceland to wait this civilization thing out. And they’re still there today, holding hands in a bunker, surrounded by pentagrams.

I’m kidding. They came back to England less than a year later, got a new bassist, and enjoyed their first Top 20 UK hit in 1984. You can look at my Killing Joke: 21st Century Masters post for more praise of their music, as I’m skipping ahead to 2015’s Pylon. Though I’m sad Geordie Walker’s death in 2023 means it’s most likely their final album, Pylon is a fantastic blast that is no less damning of society’s failings than when they started, while acknowledging the inability to truly predict what’s coming.

As the lyrics on Pylon reveal, Jaz Coleman was singing “the media gives the thumbs up to the Gaza slaughter” years before most bands even considered it. There’s references to ecological disaster, “new cold war,” and “another twat in the number 10 flat, dancing to the tune of Goldman Sachs.” There’s also talk about mandatory vaccinations and steel bars melting too fast, so I’m not suggesting you let Coleman do all your research for you. (I even googled his name and “antisemitism” to make sure his anti-globalism hasn’t curdled to that sad extreme.) The point is, decades after the debut, Killing Joke were still doomsaying the empire as well as anybody. 

What changed, and what I find heartening, is the Joke’s unabashed commitment to human joy and camaraderie in the face of everything. In between "War On Freedom” and a song that begins “Eighty-five people own half the world” is “Big Buzz,” possibly the most euphoric song I’ve ever heard by four men over fifty, and certainly the most euphoric that never mentions God or sex. Jaz is simply overcome with gratitude for the human experience, celebrating that Killing Joke is “still laughing after all these years.” 

Smiling faces of those who always care
All the good people they’re always there
Follow your dream and you’ll go far
Every man and woman is a star

Killing Joke wrote that. Yelled that. Whammed away at their instruments behind that (Walker’s arpeggios on the bridge! So good!). The firebrands who once told confused kids debating military service “don’t stand for it/ or carry the gun/ the choice is yours!” before calling a priest a “rrrrrapist!” on one of the best B-sides ever. Time and experience made clear needless death wouldn’t be so infuriating if life wasn’t so precious. So why shouldn’t they cheer the latter with the same passion they attack the former? What’s the point of giving it up early?

I don’t think Killing Joke planned for Pylon to be their last album, as they performed and released singles in the years after. But they couldn’t have asked for a better Last Song On Their Last Album than “Into The Unknown.” There’s no way the band that started with a “Requiem” saw themselves still singing it thirty-five years later. Instead of being exasperated by the experience, it became a humbling, liberating reminder that there might be a “sun behind the sun,” and a value to the hope and love every person deserves to experience. And the song smokes, too. Brutally.

Here’s a 2024 interview with Coleman, currently living in Argentina (Europe has too many memories of Geordie! Sniff!), if you need even more proselytizing. If there’s something you’d prefer I stick to, or you just want to tell me I’m smart, feel free to do so at anthonyisright at gmail dot com.