End Rapism

 That bank was just asking to be robbed. It was filled with all that money, and they let people in the doors like they could be close to it and all but never touch it. And get this: sometimes they made arrangements for some people to get money out that wasn't even theirs. They just had to "promise" to pay it back. 

If this was the defense put on by the defense for someone accused of robbing a bank, they would be laughed right out of court and into a cell. 

And yet, here we are in the early part of the twenty-first century still blaming women for getting raped. According to a report from the Brennan Center for Justice, nearly eighty percent of rapes and sexual assaults never get reported. 

Why?

Twenty percent, according to a Department of Justice report, worry about retaliation. Not just from their attacker, but from society at large. Thirteen percent said they did not expect the police would not do anything to help. Eight percent said they didn’t think the rape or sexual assault was important enough to report.

"Oh sure," say the idjits with an X and a Y chromosome, "They just hung around until that guy got famous, or was looking for a seat on the Supreme Court and then start whining about how they 'didn't want it.' They all want it."

It may sound as if I have mischaracterized the bulk of the male population, but if that sort of rhetoric wasn't so readily available in our society, I wouldn't be able to launch into it so easily. Thanks to a college student from the 1990s. we even have a term that "justifies" this mindset: incel. Originally intended to describe people experiencing social awkwardness and late-blooming romantic relationships, by the dawn of the twenty-first century, the meaning shifted away from a general support space and transformed into a distinct online subculture. This community hardened into a male supremacist and misogynistic movement.

Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured others near UC Santa Barbara, leaving behind a manifesto and video blaming women. His example was followed by others, including Alex Minassian who used a rented van to run down innocent victims, fueled by the rage of the so-called "manosphere."

Freshly convicted rapist Russell Brand cozied up to these folks right up until the time came for him to face his accusers in court. How many others might have come forward if there wasn't such a stigma placed on women who report crimes against them? One imagines that there would have been dozens more. 

The current resident of the gold-flecked ruins of the White House has dozens of sexual assault claims currently against him, and has been convicted as an adjudicated rapist. Two of the sitting Supreme Court Justices have dodged sexual harassment and assault allegations on their path to being the ultimate justice in our country. 

How many more? I don't know, but isn't it about time that we found out? 

How Many?

 There was a trending question posed recently: Name a movie you have seen more than six times. 

A movie?

I'm sorry, a shorter list might be movies that I have watched less than six times. The other list of note would probably be movies that I have not seen. There are quite a few of those.

But I worked in a video store for several years. I watched a lot of movies during that time. 

I was also right on the cusp of being a film major when I was in college. 

More movies. 

My mother gave me the gift of a home where movies were a way of life. The apocryphal tale of her getting me out of bed to come in and watch King Kong is only the tip of the cinematic iceberg of my life. Mom introduced me to MGM musicals, screwball comedies and more. She had her own romance with movies, having grown up reading movie magazines from cover to cover and taking every opportunity to sit in a darkened theater, long before cable TV and VCRs made home video a lifestyle. 

When I was a freshman in college, my friend Darren and I made a habit of walking down Nevada Avenue on any given evening to see what was playing at the local cinema. This was back in the days when theaters would hold on to movies for several weeks at a time, allowing us to see An American Werewolf in London a handful of times after we had our fill of Escape From New York. 

And once I had access to a VHS copy of both of those movies, I continued to wear those out. And started to collect movies on tape. Then eventually I moved on to Laserdisc, and finally collected a bookshelf full of DVDs to supplement my somewhat intense and rabid film-watching on TV aided by the addition of cable channels. 

How many times have I seen Caddyshack? Roadhouse? The Philadelphia Story? 

More than six. Silence of the Lambs? The Adventures Of Robin Hood? Fantasia? 

I think I need a new meme. 

Worse To Worser

 They are calling it "doubling down." 

When the largest turnover in fifty years took place last week in the midterms, with MAGAts of all shapes and sizes sent packing under the defiant banner that suggested that making America great would be done on our terms, thank you very much, the convicted felon flinched. 

But just for a moment. 

Before the week was over, he tossed long-time associate Susan Wiles overboard and promoted Stephen "Not Steve" Miller to Chief of Staff. To suggest that this was on-brand for the adjudicated rapist would be a gross understatement. Rather than make room for anything resembling humility, he fired one of the few remaining women in his administration. 

As chief architect of most of the draconian measures of the Second Trumpreich, Stabschef Miller won't need a lot of time to find his footing in the dark recesses of the sewers from whence his work springs. The mere suggestion that mass deportations and the war in Iran might wind down with the voice of the people still ringing in his pointy little ears would be laughable. 

If only he were capable. 

As my mother was prone to point out a just about any historical juncture, things can still get worse. Even as the confetti is being swept from the floors of Democratic headquarters across this great land of ours, the next two months loom as a terrible challenge for Chief of the Minions Miller to exact as much chaos as possible before the Blue Tsunami is sworn in. ICE raids, air strikes, and fatuous attempts at interior decorating will only ramp up until January. Executive Orders to leap over the checks and balances put in place to keep evil twits from making things worse instead of better will no doubt be the standard, with the current members of Congress looking at their retirement plans and hoping they won't be called to testify once 2027 opens up on a Brand New Day. 

But that's still a long time from now. Stephen Miller, like the rodent that he is, can fit through holes as small as a quarter. If only we could keep him busy with Star Wars memes until January. 

Not A Fan

 The Cybertruck, that obtuse polygon of bad engineering, will soon be part of the automotive graveyard. Right along with the Ford Pinto, the AMC Pacer, and the Edsel. Mister Mush announced that, “Tesla will be winding down production of the Cybertruck at Gigafactory Texas around the middle of next year to make room for increased Cybercab production.” Pintos used to blow up when they were hit on the back fender. The Pacer was extraordinarily heavy, due to all the glass in its notorious fishbowl design, causing it to get poor gas mileage and acted as a greenhouse for those trapped inside. The Edsel? After spending more than two hundred fifty million dollars and ten years of research, the design flaws and failure to meet the high expectations of folks in the fifties lining up to buy that vertical grill. 

Does any of that sound like Cybertruck to you? 

Poor design? Check. 

Bad promotion? Check. 

Explosions? Well, yes. 

So the company Mister Mush bought and has been driving not so much into the future but into the ground will now shift its focus from stainless steel deathtraps to self-driving taxis for anyone willing to take the chance on a ride. 

Okay, in the interest of full transparency, I confess that once upon a time I was rooting for this very stable genius to bring to America the electric car it had been wishing for all these years. I believed that this same nutjob might lead us all back into space, and our continued existence on this or any other planet might be shaped by the technologies brought to us by the son of the owner of an emerald mine. 

I was wrong. Some of this optimism may have sprung from the fact that I owned and loved my "people's car," a Volkswagen Super Beetle that I tried not to connect to its origins in Nazi Germany. I should also note that I came very close to having a Volkswagen Super Beetle that exploded. Mine only caught fire. But I kept on loving that car until it finally gave up the ghost and I landed in a Honda Accord which, to be fair, looked a little like an AMC Pacer. 

But returning to the case at hand, Mister Mush will now attempt to retain his trillionaire status in the state where he fled to from California, only for the politics to catch up to him there as well. 

Did I mention? Not a fan. 

Nerdspeak

 I own a poster for a movie called Revenge of the Jedi. 

That is what the movie was called before kinder, gentler voices in George Lucas' head suggested that "revenge" was a dish best served cold and everyone knows how much the Jedi enjoy a hot meal, so the voices and George decided to rename it Return of the Jedi. The nerdy voice inside my own head feels compelled to remind you all that I also own that poster, and that eventually George got around to making his Revenge picture, this time it was the Sith who did the revenging. It's what Sith are known for. That, and their snappy black wardrobe. 

All of which is a prelude to discuss, initially, this right wing outburst about how Anakin Skywalker nee Darth Vader was a young man who was turned away from his calling by  older generations and institutions they believe have denied young men opportunities and recognition. Elongated Mush, writing from his mother's basement, posted a picture of "what they stole from us," which was an imagined alternate ending in which Anakin and Padme had "triumphed" and become the emperor and empress of the galaxy, decked out in the appropriate goth drag, surrounded by stormtroopers. At their feet, two young children who might once have grown up to Luke and Leia, the saviors of the old Republic. 

It takes some pretty twisted beans to wrangle that outcome out of the Star Wars saga, but no one would suggest that Elno, or Katie Miller for that matter, would be able to untangle the subtleties of the message presented in the "prequels," but let me try and run that down for those of you out of the nerdy loop (from a fellow nerd on Reddit): "Childhood trauma left him susceptible to fear, particularly of losing loved ones. Palpatine expertly manipulated these fears, corrupting Anakin's values with promises of power. Torn between Jedi ideals and his own desires, Anakin ultimately succumbed to the dark side, his transformation to Vader complete when he chose power over principles in a misguided attempt to save those he loved."

It is not, as we know, "the end of the story." Eventually, the old Republic rises again to ensure that freedom and justice prevails. Luke and Leia assured that, and they didn't do it by lounging comfortably at the feet of Darthy and Padme. They suffered their own losses and chose a different path. Not one of black and red, but one of blue.

You might see where this is going. 

The Democratic wave that swept through the midterms is the Return of the Jedi. It is not a wave of Revenge. It should, however, be one of retribution. Revenge is personal, emotional, and unauthorized, whereas retribution is impersonal, structured, and morally or legally justified. That is where we find ourselves on the Star Wars timeline. I agree with those who call for restraint when it comes time to exercise justice, no matter how tempting it might be to fall to the dark side. We can achieve our goals without surrendering our moral center. 

In a world of Darth, be a Luke or Leia. 

Project

 Last weekend I enjoyed a very pleasant vicarious thrill: all of the sportsball teams for whom I had a rooting interest won their games, including my Fantasy Football team. The spectator sports planets fell into alignment for the first time in (stares at wrist) a long time. Long enough, it seems, that I had loudly pronounced that I was making a large and somewhat reasonable assertion that I was going to forego my tangential interest in games in which I played no active role and focus instead on the midterm elections.

If you have already arrived at the conclusion that I have, that my participation in the Democratic Process is not far removed from my participation in the last ten Super Bowls, allow me this: I have not shut up about this political crisis for (checks wrist again) a good long time. It could be said that the ongoing existential crisis in Washington DC has been the fuel of this blog for most of its existence. 

Once upon a time, there was a young Senator from Illinois who insisted that "we have never been a collection of red states and blue states; we are, and always will be, the United States of America." As it turns out, he was about to plunge into a reality in which that was the way that score was being kept and kept on being kept right up until this past Tuesday's results became apparent. 

Wars, cultural and otherwise have been waged over this division. Strongly worded letters have been written. Innocent victims have been shot and killed on the streets of these United States. The Constitution, that used to be the rule by which this country was driven has been twisted and circumvented to allow some of the most heinous moments in our history. 

And I would like to believe that all of that is over because that map ended up turning American Flag Blue. 

There will be a few days of reckoning. Lawsuits will most likely be filed, even in the face of what can best be described as a mandate from the people. The maniacal tyrant who has pressed his agenda on a country made of immigrants, men, women and those whose pronouns don't fall into the narrow distinctions set out by the current regime. All of us rose up, as if awakened from a deep sleep, and said, "No."

Not "no, thank you."

No.

This land is your land. This land is my land. From California to the New York Island. From the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Ontario. 

This land was made for you and me. 

Now it's time to get to work. 

Just Like That

 People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Then again, I might suggest that if you live in any sort of house, you're better off not throwing stones.

I thought about this as I remembered walking through the woods near our mountain cabin when I was a mere slip of the lad. It was the 1970s, and hippies with money were buying property up in the hills and building interesting retreats from the suburban landscape of their youth. On this particular adventure, my brothers and I stumbled across a house made of sprayed on Styrofoam. The dome was created by covering a balloon with goop and waiting until it dried. The finished walls were more than six inches thick, but a sample of a chunk we found on the ground was light as, well, Styrofoam. 

It occurred to us that if someone wanted to break into such a domicile, all you would have to do is take a sledgehammer to the side and knock your way in. Then again, we reasoned, if someone wanted to break into any house, a sledgehammer would more than likely do the trick on anybody's front door or windows. 

This reverie was brought to you by the comments of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao who was addressing the six billion dollar hack of his crypto platform: "There's no hundred percent security." Like that foam house. Or the front door of my childhood home. If someone wants in, they're going to get in. All of which makes what Mister Zhao, CZ to his friends, had to say about the future of his pretend money empire: "It's been a pretty hectic process," Zhao, better known in crypto circles as CZ, told Yahoo Finance. "But the good thing is right now the withdrawals have been restored, the systems back to normal. People are free to use the platform without any issues now. And then all user funds are covered. The users did not suffer any loss."

The FBI believes that the twenty minute raid was the work of North Korean group TraderTraitor. 

Hold on. Back up. Did CZ really just say that users "did not suffer any loss," and everything is back to normal? Where did that seemingly large chunk of "money" go? Like most banks in real life, Binance insures its users for losses like this. If Danny Ocean and his ten other pals are looking in, I'm guessing they feel like the weeks they spent planning and executing the Bellagio heist seems like an awful waste of time, comparatively. According to those in the know, the only thing the TraderTraitors needed was a Binance laptop. 

Probably a lot more efficient than a sledgehammer.