Part I: a writer’s thoughts about this red-white-and-blue fascism-thingie and the Democrats who enable it.

Riffing off of:
• The New Einsatzgruppen wants to talk fatherhood. Oh, boy!
• The bad news: talking politics ruins friendships with your fellow white people.

From my childhood years forward, a certain type of white person has skeezed me out.

Dead-eyed and dense, they give off this insipid but judgmental vibe. The chips on their shoulders have always been obvious.

In modern times, many of these bros—and a disturbing amount of the women—look like they have spent hours in front of a mirror perfecting their Steve Jobs-like glares.

This is the United States. And these folks are well aware that their white skin provides them with the power to make everyone else jump. Whenever they get to use their “speak to the manager” voices, this mindset feels more in control of its surroundings.

Only here’s the thing to remember: the people I’m talking about, if one of them walked up right now and said hello, they wouldn’t strike you as all that conservative. They proudly voted for Obama and Hillary. They are not fans of Tucker Carlson Tonight.

While these white Democrats may not watch Tucker Carlson’s show, they can be just as weaselly, micro-aggressive, and narrow-minded as the Tucker Carlsons of the country. The racist American patriarchy is their friend, too.

Metaphorically, their views of the world track with the Senate Filibuster, a parliamentary device that allows a minority to squash initiatives that help the majority, using not much more than mouthfuls of babbling bullshit and entitlement. Laziness and bitterness drive it.

Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema voted to uphold the filibuster. And the Joe Manchins and Kyrsten Sinemas in the USA do everything they can to uphold a status quo that benefits rich white Americans at the expense of everyone else.

In the business world, the Joe Manchins and Kyrsten Sinemas have a knack for playing corporate politics and conniving employees into working for less than they are worth. They weave together systemic inequality, toxic positivity, and good-old-fashioned fearmongering to get ahead.

When any conversation, business or otherwise, starts to veer towards a more intelligent train of thought, the Joe Manchins and Kyrsten Sinemas automatically adopt an obtuse stance and dumb themselves down, just to frustrate everyone else. They suck the oxygen out of the room while wearing vapid little smiles.

Why are some rich Democrats so concerned about the environment? Because they want the Earth’s condition to be as pristine as possible after the wealthy Neoliberals and rich Right-wingers wipe out the majority of the world’s population. (If you think I sound cuckoo-bananas, read this article, Survival of the Richest, by Douglas Rushkopf. Sneak peek: “…Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival.”)

Minus the armbands, they have much in common with their Right-leaning, openly-racist brethren. Liberal or conservative, more than a few upper-class whites believe that they are society’s brake. And this role is sacred.

They think of themselves as more worldly and cultured than their conservative rich friends—and these people are all friends, make no mistake. They feel big-minded, like they’re honoring every viewpoint, when they give white nationalism the benefit of the doubt.

As I said earlier, these folks have skeezed me out my whole life. But I never saw their ugliest, most-threatened sides until I released Fearkiller (Volume 1) in September of 2012.

The Joe Manchins and Kyrsten Sinemas do not read a lot of fiction. A fact which makes them proud. If anything, they read HEY LOOK AT ME I AM SUCCESSFUL BE LIKE ME!!! books. To them, diverting any type of focus away from their empire-building means running the risk of losing some of their gold coins.

When the middle-class Fox News viewer learns that I write, they tend to shrug it off. Like the majority of non-readers, they respond with a smile and a nod, then we find a new subject to talk about. They don’t care. The Joe Manchins and Kyrsten Sinemas do care about my writing. Only…they don’t read. The fact that I care enough about something that I devote so much to it without consulting them, that is what makes them care, but not in a good way.

I was alive for forty years before I got to learn that upper-middle-class white Democrats had this book-burning personality quirk.

In other words, I got to live obliviously—an overprivileged, straight, white male who could assume that equality and the United States of America went together like Donald Trump and STDs.

Don’t get me wrong, I never believed that the USA was equal. But I guess I never thought too heavily about the problems that Neoliberalism exploits for profit. Being an unknown writer in the United States who is just trying to do his thing, Neoliberals and Wall Street Democrats have given me more Nazi-nonsense than the blue-collar MAGA folks ever have.

Big-minded souls who are curious about the world rawk. They so, so rawk. The Joe Manchins and Kyrsten Sinemas so, so do NOT rawk. Their narrow-mindedness rivals their Right-wing counterparts’ narrow-mindedness.

Actually, it’s more like this: upper-middle-class whites who do not read, whether they are left or right, they make an unknown writer feel super-legit when they get their armbands in a twist. It’s strange to see their demeanor change so suddenly. The high-earnin’ high-rollers, the way some of them assume my writing might contain the potential to give people ideas that would upend the dominant paradigm—

Awwwwww….golly-shucks, high-earnin’ high-rollerz. You Wall Street Warriors think my writing might be subversive enough to turn the world inside-out— even though you haven’t read it, you think that? Awwwww…quit makin’ me blush.

Unfortunately for the nobody writer, these folks aren’t book consumers and I got bills to pay. Such is life.

Money-loving white people in the USA hate art because art naturally outshines money. And, Democrat or Republican, the sense of vanity fueling this crowd matters more to them than, say…a free society where humans can live their lives in peace.

Or a planet Earth for future generations. (Again, read Mr. Rushkopf’s piece, the link above.)

With all of that said, I need to also expand on an earlier point: even though the blue-collar MAGA-hatted do not immediately peg me as a target for their racist hatred, it would be irresponsible of me if I failed to remind everyone who is reading this that many of the MAGA-hatted do pose a threat to people who do not fit the straight, white, male mold.

Stories about the rise in hate crimes in the USA horrify me. They should horrify you.

They make me aware of the fact that this country is failing the legacies of so many great Americans who devoted their lives to pushing us towards becoming the country that lived up to the words in our official documents.

Give me your tired, your poor, your weak—remember that?

Skin color and gender and religion and sexual orientation—the United States of America should be a safe place. True, it never was. But that is what the future is for.

People like Eric Trump, Steve Bannon, and JD Vance have cooked up a vanilla-white combination of racial hatred, wealth worship, and fascism. And the Joe Manchins and Kyrsten Sinemas of the country quietly slipped them some cash to help purchase the ingredients.

#wealthtax #taxtherich #corporatetax

Riffing off of other posts:
• Allow me this moment of tinfoil-hattedness.
• Operation Week Off
• America will so rock at this fascism thing.
• Swiftboating, seventeen years later.
• The Donald Trump Tax.
• Open letter to a selfie of my drunk-ass self, taken on August 11th, 2001.

I write fiction and have two dark comedies available, Fearkiller (Volume 1) and Notes from Trillionaire Island: Fearkiller (Volume 2), as well as Revolutionizer Alpha, the first book in a sci-fi series. I also wrote a story about God. It was weird, but then I decided to make the story and its sequel free. And all of the sudden, it didn’t seem as weird. Writing about God is much less weird when you write about God without charging money for it. 
Here’s my professional site, my trade. 
Follow me on Medium.