Antony Sammeroff, co-host of the Scottish Liberty Podcast, argues that the idea of a Universal Basic Income is a very bad one, and for reasons you may not have thought of. Listen to Antony’s interview with Tom Woods here. Download the book here.
Elections, Power, and the DSA: The Failure of the Left in Power 1
A left-anarchist discusses the limitations of social democracy. Listen here.
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The discussion itself was very good, although I found the intro monologue to be something of a turn off in the sense that it sounded like a barrage of buzzwords and catchphrases (kind of like reciting the Apostles’ Creed in church). The point the guy being interviewed seemed to be making was “We should use grassroots direct action rather than electoral politics to A) get more free ice cream days and B ) oppose things leftists don’t like.” For instance, at one point he actually praises Nixon for creating the EPA and OSHA (“More centralized state bureaucracies! Yay! Vivia de Anarchia!”). He seems to be mostly regurgitating what David Graeber called “small ‘a’ anarchism” or “social movement anarchism.” In fact, he sounds a lot like what my anarchist friends and I would have been talking about 25-30 years ago.
I don’t think his point of view is “wrong” in the same sense that I don’t necessarily think Alexander Reid Ross’ “anarcho-MSNBC” perspective is “wrong” in the sense that it’s fine to have an anarchist tendency that’s merely about opposing Trump, the “far right” or official enemies of the US like Russia or Syria like Reid-Ross’ crowd, and it’s not “wrong” to have anarchist tendencies that are just about “social movement left-activism” like these “DSA anarchists” or whatever they are. But I view anarchist philosophy and politics as much bigger than all that.
Trump’s Backdoor Power Play to Rein In the Fed 1
By Stefan Gleason, Money Metals Exchange
“Just run the presses – print money.”
That’s what President Donald Trump supposedly instructed his former chief economic adviser Gary Cohn to do in response to the budget deficit. The quote appears in Bob Woodward’s controversial book Fear: Trump in the White House.
Trump disputes many of the anecdotes Woodward assembled. But regardless of whether the President used those exact words, they do reflect an “easy money” philosophy that he has expressed many times before.
Trump Likes Low Rates, Loose Money
President Trump has described himself as a “low interest rate person.”
This past summer, Trump launched a very public attack on the Federal Reserve’s rate hiking campaign. He wants it to stop because it’s making the dollar “too strong” and threatening to undercut his tax cut fiscal stimulus.
There’s only so much dollar strength the U.S. economy and U.S. debt and equity markets can take. President Trump is keenly aware of the risks.
A Fed rate hike next week is a given at this point.
The Establishment Hates a Sloppy Imperialist 1
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Regardless of how you feel about the son of a bitch (or his apparently abortion-shy bitch mother), it’s becoming pretty hard to ignore the fact that the establishment, personified by both major parties, the legacy media, and the so called intelligence community, fucking hates President Donald J. Trump. With the New York Times latest revelation of an inter-administration resistance and Bob Woodword’s latest tabloid airport flyswatter, the movement to remove or contain our red-headed stepchild of an Electoral College despot has never been more vibrant. This puts me in a pretty weird position, not just because I’ve devoted my life to bitch slapping bigots like the Donald and upsetting the fanged mandarins of the establishment who so oppose him but because I find it strange that these fellow swamp critters despise each other so damn much.
Some of this is obviously theater. Donald Trump ran a successful campaign largely on trashing the Fourth Estate that Middle-America has come to despise for their impressive track record of fooling them into unwinnable wars and shitty trade deals. And the Fourth Estate made this campaign possible with their round the clock coverage of the free-wheeling MAGA circus. Every time the press attacks Trump he gets to play the role of the anti-establishment victim that his fans identify with. And every time Trump makes some vaguely fascist empty threat against the mass media they get to play the role of the embattled crusaders for truth. In both cases, Trump sees his approval numbers go up and the press sees their ratings go up with them. It’s a mutually abusive, codependent relationship straight out of a Dr. Phil rerun.
More…
Keith Preston: US government complicit in Saudi crimes in Yemen Reply
Press TV. Listen here.
The administration of US President Donald Trump’s unconditional support for Saudi Arabia despite the kingdom’s many crimes in Yemen makes Washington a complicit in the onslaught, says an American analyst.
Keith Preston, director of the Attackthesystem.org, made the remarks during an interview with Press TV about the White House’s continued backing of the Saudi-led military aggression against Yemen despite international outrage.
Earlier this week, as the months-long offensive by the Saudis and their regional allies to capture Yemen’s important port city of al-Hudaydah continued, Saudi commanders announced Wednesday that they had been able to block two key supply routes into the city, The Washington Post reported.
That was bad news for millions of people in Yemen who are struggling with hunger and deadly cholera outbreaks, as the city acts as a gateway for 70 percent of food and medicine supplies sent to the conflict-ridden country.
This is while the Saudi-led coalition has had the port city under aerial and maritime blockade since the beginning of the war in March 2015.
Despite all this, however, the Trump administration certified to Congress on Tuesday that the Saudis and their allies were “making every effort to reduce the risk of civilian casualties.”
The official notice was required for the Pentagon to be allowed to continue delivering weapons and intelligence to Riyadh despite the international view that civilians have now become the main target of the war.
“The American government is completely complicit in this in the sense that the American government, who is not only the world’s primary backer of the Saudi regime in terms of money, weapons and diplomatic support, but the United States has actually given the green light to Saudi Arabia and the UAE for the war in Yemen,” Preston told Press TV.
Referring to reports that US military forces are working closely with their American peers on the battlefront, the analyst said the cooperation was part of an Israeli-American plan to “undermine the influence of Iran in the region and by extension nations that are aligned with Iran.”
“This is a humanitarian catastrophe and the United States has escalated the humanitarian issue by attempting to restrict aid to Yemen as well,” he said, calling the situation in Yemen as one of the “most serious human rights problems in the world today.”
Kick the Puppy Episode 5 1
Keith & R.J. on the news of the week
Topics include:
Crooked cop pimps, border patrol serial killer, off-duty female cop shooter, U.S. Brazilian-like economy is booming, pot shop clerk fights off robbers with a bong, British MP wants to “fight hate,” former boxer Oscar De La Hoya wants to be president of the United States, successful psychopaths, self-mutilation, the future of electoral politics, the permanent power elite, Las Vegas professor shoots himself in the arm to protest Trump, self-immolation, Congress sneaking through $38B to Israel, Trump and Israel, secession talk in California, death count in Puerto Rico, “one million water bottles” in Puerto Rico, never trust a government during an emergency evacuation, author of “how to murder your husband” charged with murdering her husband, transgender group says gulags were very compassionate institutions, Tim Allen is “kind of an anarchist,” Anne Hathaway is kind of dead inside.
Invasive Laws Create Anarchy and Tyranny at the Same Time Reply
The late American paleoconservative columnist Samuel T. Francis on the phenomenon of “anarcho-tyranny”, a useful term for describing much of the systematic legalist bullshit plaguing the West today, particularly the U.K. and mainland Europe.
~MRDA~
By Samuel Francis
If, as Bill Clinton tells us, the “era of Big Government is over,” somebody needs to tell the state of Maryland (not to mention Bill Clinton). Earlier this month the Maryland legislature had itself a small orgy of swelling the powers of the state government, and apparently it helped give Mr. Clinton some ideas of his own (orgies seem to have that effect on him).
Just before the end of this year’s legislative session, the Maryland lawmakers passed several new laws that (a) allow policemen to stop drivers for not wearing seat belts, (b) authorize hidden cameras at red lights to take secret photographs of the license plates of cars that run the lights, (c) ban loud car stereos on state roads, (d) forbid minors from buying butane lighters because they might inhale the gas, and (e) require drivers whose windshield wipers are running to keep their headlights on. The lawmakers seem to have missed outlawing cooking breakfast in your underwear, but of course there’s always another session next year.
The citizens of Maryland will no doubt be thrilled to learn that law enforcement in their state has now so mastered violent crime that the cops have little else to do but round up non-seat-belt wearers and butane-sniffers. As a matter of fact, Maryland’s Prince George’s County has just announced that rapes and homicides increased in the first three months of 1997. Nevertheless, you can be certain that no one will be raped or murdered without wearing a seat belt.
The new Maryland laws are rather perfect instances of what I have previously called “anarcho-tyranny” – a form of government that seems to be unknown in history until recently. Anarcho-tyranny is a combination of the worst features of anarchy and tyranny at the same time.
Under anarchy, crime is permitted and criminals are not apprehended or punished. Under tyranny, innocent citizens are punished. Most societies in the past have succumbed to either one or the other, but never as far as I know to both at once.
Alex Jones continues to grow amid extermination attempt 1
Extermination Update 09/12/18 – Infowars continues to grow among all age groups of weird people, especially those with anti-mainstream views who would never fall victim to a marketing society that pushes products and dreams on fears that exploit easily influenced weird people. Unlike everyone else under capitalism, Jones’ fans are big on careful examination and educated research by people who are always willing to question the party line of a specific product’s marketing department and fan club. More…
9/11 Was the Consequence of Imperialism, Not Conspiracies 5
I don’t really buy into any of the views that claim 9/11 was an inside job carried out by the Bush administration, or by foreign governments like England, Israel, or Saudi Arabia.
Kick the Puppy Episode 4 1
Keith & R.J. cover the news of the week
Topics include:
North America’s first sex doll brothel, animal brothels, the incel movement, other strange sexual disorders, transgendered prisoners, transgendered athletes, Spencer Sunshine’s lists, mass murderer gives speech about cyberbullying, Trump says he fell asleep during mass murderer’s speech, the anonymous op-ed in the New York Times, open sword carry legal in Texas, most weapons bans really are ridiculous, Infowars banned from Twitter, Marco Rubio hallway confrontation with Alex Jones, Alex Jones is mainstream, whorephobic Senator Kamala Harris is kind of a whore, mentally ill daycare provider hanged toddler, Rainbow Bright care facilities trafficked workers, article about Anarchism appears in Teen Vogue Magazine, Antifa’s black clad dress code, the Nazi Party’s SS uniforms, 15-year-old Swedish girl is cutting class to fight climate change, how high school kids can attack the system, China in Africa, China in China, Indian Americans run half of US motels, tribal access to 0-interest capital, American cutthroat culture.
US senator claims Britain’s MI6 is planning a fake chemical weapons attack on Syria Reply
By Laura Vozella
The Independent
Fresh off a sitdown with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Virginia state senator Richard Black turned up on Arab TV last week making an extraordinary claim about one of the US’ closest allies.
Mr Black said Britain’s MI6 intelligence service was planning a chemical weapons attack on the Syrian people, which it would then blame on Mr Assad.
“Around four weeks ago, we knew that British intelligence was working towards a chemical attack in order to blame the Syrian government, to hold Syria responsible,” Mr Black said on Al Mayadeen, an Arab news channel based in Beirut.
Mr Black said later that he meant the British were planning not to carry out an attack themselves, but to either direct rebels to do so or stage a phoney attack, with actors posing as victims.
“From what I can tell, they have been planning a fake attack, not a genuine one, but one where they actually move people out of a town and they have trained people to portray victims of a gas attack,” Mr Black said in an interview with The Washington Post. “And the plan is to use the White Helmets who have always been involved in these notorious deceptions, to portray an attack.”
Mr Black also said some chemical attacks previously reported to have occurred in Syria were British fakes, pulled off with help from volunteer first responders known as “White Helmets”.
“From what I can tell, they have been planning a fake attack, not a genuine one, but one where they actually move people out of a town and they have trained people to portray victims of a gas attack,” Mr Black said in an interview with The Washington Post. “And the plan is to use the White Helmets who have always been involved in these notorious deceptions, to portray an attack.”
A Politically Incorrect Guide To Not Being a Dick 1
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Land
Political correctness is a fucking bust. It may have started with the best of intentions but so was the Russian Revolution and both ended in bourgeois tyranny. Political correctness has been more or less the law of the zeitgeist since the early Eighties when the radical feminists teamed up with the puritanical Reaganites to poop the raucous party of the Seventies, after the CIA unleashed AIDS to kill all the fun faggots (I’m only half-kidding). And in the proceeding decades the PC revolution has achieved absolutely nothing. Black and brown people are still poor as dirt. Women and femmes are still roundly violated on a daily basis. And the prison state has never been stronger.
The only thing political correctness really achieved was making it easier for bigots to hide behind the facade of good manners. Based on policy alone, the Clintonian Democrats clearly despise brown and queer people as much as those knuckle-draggers in the alt-right, they just know how to cover their ass with careful newspeak like “super-predators” and empty gestures to people who disgusted them three weeks ago when they weren’t politically viable. Personally, I’ll take an open bigot like David Duke over some squishy closet-basher like Alec Baldwin any day of the week. At least that silicone supremacist will call me faggot to my face.
So the current backlash against the malign influence of political correctness in not only totally natural, it’s also totally necessary. But that doesn’t mean you have to be a fucking dick. The reality is that marginalized individuals such as myself do have plenty of reasons to be pissed off and straight white cis-folk could strongly benefit from learning why and realizing that their mainstream cache does afford them some privileges that the rest of us don’t have. I’m willing to bet that most of you can enter a public restroom without having to seriously consider the possibility that somebody might set you on fire for having the wrong genitalia. But nothing gets solved without conversation, so I’ve decided to put together a few suggestions on how to be politically incorrect without being a total dick.
Anarchy: What It Is and Why Pop Culture Loves It 3
Hilariously, an article about anarchism appears in teen vogue magazine. It’s actually a pretty good article so far it goes. My one criticism is that it only focused on the leftist-activist version of anarchism, and not the wider range of anarchist thought. But nothing’s perfect.
By Kim Kelly
Teen Vogue
Writer Kim Kelly is an anarchist based in New York City and an organizer with the Metropolitan Anarchist Coordinating Council (MACC).
In a pop-cultural sense, at least, the idea of anarchy has been characterized by either a middle-fingers-up, no-parents-no-rules punk attitude, or a panicky, more conservative outlook used by national and state sources to represent violent chaos and disorder. Today, we can see an extremely serious, radical leftist political philosophy on T-shirts at Hot Topic.
So what is anarchism? What do those people raising black flags and circling A’s really want? Here’s what you need to know:
What is anarchism?
Anarchism is a radical, revolutionary leftist political philosophy that advocates for the abolition of government, hierarchy, and all other unequal systems of power. It seeks to replace what its proponents view as inherently oppressive institutions — like a capitalist society or the prison industrial complex — with nonhierarchical, horizontal structures powered by voluntary associations between people. Anarchists organize around a key set of principles, including horizontalism, mutual aid, autonomy, solidarity, direct action, and direct democracy, a form of democracy in which the people make decisions themselves via consensus (as opposed to representative democracy, of which the United States government is an example).
Attack the System Starts New Current Affairs Centered Podcast Reply
Keith Preston, one of the most prominent intellectuals in the dissident right and the chief editor of Attack the System, has launched a new podcast focused on news stories from a dissident right and anarchist perspective.
The podcast, which is titled “Kick the Puppy” features Preston and associate Ryan Jacob discussing and analyzing recent news stories.
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| Preston addressing one of Richard Spencer’s NPI conferences before the Alt-Right became retarded. |
In an exclusive interview with Trad News, Preston explained that the podcast would be a major departure from his earlier, intellectually heavyweight podcasts which used to appear regularly at Attack the System.
“It’s going to be a much more ‘low brow’ podcast than the previous ones, which were more academic and ideological,” Preston explained to our reporter.
“This podcast is intended to be an outreach project beyond the usual fringe political circles. I call it ‘anarcho-tabloidism’ in the sense that it’s intended to reach a much larger, more mainstream audience by simplifying the content, and blending in a lot ‘news of the ridiculous’ content that appeals to general audiences.”
But while the content may seek to be popular or populist, surely the title of the podcast is a push in the opposite direction. Why did Preston choose such a blatantly disturbing title?
Keith Preston: Trump’s opposition include ‘inside’ members Reply
Press TV. Listen here.
US President Donald Trump has many enemies among fellow members of the Republican Party and his own administration, an American journalist and analyst says.
Keith Preston, the chief editor of AttacktheSystem, told Press TV in an interview on Thursday that Trump has many enemies, not only among media and the Democrats, but also, in his own party and his staff.
The media depicted Secretary of Defense James Mattis as one of the senior members of the Trump administration who opposed the president and called him an “idiot”.
The journalist cited a new book by renowned investigative journalist Bob Woodward in which Mattis was quoted by his unnamed co-workers as describing Trump as an “idiot’ who “acted like — and had the understanding of — ‘a fifth- or sixth-grader’.”
Following the Tuesday release of excerpts of Woodward’s book “Fear: Trump in the White House,” there were speculations that due to the insults addressed to the president, Mattis would be forced to resign from office.
Preston, who has been interviewed on numerous television, radio and internet programs, said it remained to be legally confirmed whether Mattis had truly insulted Trump.
“At this point there is no way of knowing how the situation with Mattis would play out … it’s never been confirmed that Mattis made the comment.”
Earlier this year, Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson amid reports saying the former top diplomat had described the president as a “moron”.
‘Officials working to frustrate Trump agenda’
An op-ed in the New York Times (NYT) reveals that senior members of the Trump administration are so worried about the president’s impulsive behavior that they actively make efforts to undermine his threatening agenda.
The Wednesday report entitled, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” is based on the information relayed by an anonymous source.
The anonymous source in the report claims that Trump’s own staff see him as a national threat and take it upon themselves to safeguard the republic against the president.
“We believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic,” the anonymous source said in the NYT op-ed.
“Many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”
Trump described the article as a “gutless editorial”. He said the NYT newspaper was a “dishonest” medium used for fake news dissemination
Congressmen Introduce Bill to End Taxation of Gold and Silver Reply
By J P Cortez
Washington, DC (September 7, 2018) – The battle to end taxation of constitutional money has reached the federal level as U.S. Representative Alex Mooney (R-WV) today introduced sound money legislation to remove all federal income taxation from gold and silver coins and bullion.
The Monetary Metals Tax Neutrality Act – backed by the Sound Money Defense League, Money Metals Exchange, and free-market activists – would clarify that the sale or exchange of precious metals bullion and coins are not to be included in capital gains, losses, or any other type of federal income calculation.My view, which is backed up by language in the U.S. Constitution, is that gold and silver coins are money and…are legal tender,” Mooney said in a House Financial Services Committee hearing this week. “If they’re indeed U.S. money, it seems there should be no taxes on them at all. So, why are we taxing these coins as collectables?”
Acting unilaterally, the Internal Revenue Service has placed gold and silver in the same “collectibles” category as artwork, Beanie Babies, and baseball cards, a classification that subjects the monetary metals to a discriminatorily high long-term capital gains tax rate of 28%.
Sound money activists have long pointed out it is inappropriate to apply any federal income tax, regardless of the rate, against the only kind of money named in the U.S. Constitution. And the IRS has never defended how its position squares up with current law.
Furthermore, the U.S. Mint continuously mints coins of gold, silver, platinum, and palladium and gives each of these coins a legal tender value denominated in U.S. dollars. This formal status as U.S. money further underscores the inappropriate nature of IRS income tax treatment.
A tax neutral measure, the Monetary Metals Tax Neutrality Act states that “no gain or loss shall be recognized on the sale or exchange of (1) gold, silver, platinum, or palladium coins minted and issued by the Secretary at any time or (2), refined gold or silver bullion, coins, bars, rounds, or ingots which are valued primarily based on their metal content and not their form.”
Under current IRS policy, a taxpayer who sells his precious metals may end up with a capital “gain” in terms of Federal Reserve Notes and must pay federal income taxes on this “gain.”
But the capital “gain” is not necessarily a real gain. It is often a nominal gain that simply results from the inflation created by the Federal Reserve and the attendant decline in the Federal Reserve Note dollar’s purchasing power.
Under Rep. Mooney’s bill (which has already been cosponsored by two others), precious metals gains and losses would not be included in any calculations of a taxpayer’s federal taxable income.
“Inflation is a regressive tax that especially harms wage earners, savers, and retirees on a fixed income,” said Jp Cortez, policy director at the Sound Money Defense League. “We are encouraged that an increasing number of citizens, state legislators, and members of congress are taking action to address the evils of the Federal Reserve System.”
“The IRS does not let taxpayers deduct the staggering capital losses they suffer when holding Federal Reserve Notes over time,” said Stefan Gleason, president of a Money Metals Exchange, a precious metals dealer recently named “Best in the USA” by a global industry ratings group.
“So it’s grossly unfair for the IRS to assess a capital gains tax when citizens hold gold and silver to protect them from the Fed’s policy of currency devaluation.”
Rep. French Hill (R-AR) and Rep. Raul Labrador (R-ID) joined today as original cosponsors. The text of the bill can be found here.
The Sound Money Defense League is a public policy group working nationally to bring back gold and silver as America’s constitutional money.
The New Art Right: A New Reaction for 2018 Reply
A new book from Rachel Haywire. Available at Amazon.Com
The New Art Right: A New Reaction for 2018, takes us back to a time before the woeful dominion of contemporary politics – a time when art served as the impetus to drive political forces, not the vulgarity of the masses nor banal populism. It also points toward possible futures, such as transhumanism, and higher forms of humanity.
The New Art Right is not just a second edition of The New Reaction, it is the culmination and the final refinement of Haywire’s thought. The New Art Right sets itself squarely against the vulgarity of modern America, a place where both the Right and Left have devolved to into a state of perpetual squables and a race to the bottom. Haywire savages the bourgeois Left and the Right with equal disdain, often in the form of satire and sardonic wit.
The New Art Right, however, does not take us into the ‘safe’ realms of art. Instead, it leads one on a dark journey, through the underworld towards the enlightenment of Dark Bohemia. Along the wayside, Haywire attacks both the intellectual inadequacies of the feminist Left and the patriarchal Right, leaving no ‘safe spaces’ left behind.
Haywire does not draw her philosophy from within the isolation of the ivory towers of academia, her wisdom is one of the real world, and she takes inspiration from her vast experiences in music, art, and American counter-culture.
Rachel Haywire is also the author of Acidexia.
Aristocratic Aesthetic Socialism 1
By Robert Stark
By Robert Stark: Originally Published on Alt of Center
The concept of beauty throughout history has been a force for creation, inspiring mankind to reach the pinnacle of civilization. From men accomplishing great things to win over a lover, the beautiful female as a muse for the artist, religions building great temples and cathedrals to attract worshipers, kings and emperors building monuments to demonstrate their greatness, and businesses using aesthetics in architecture and advertisements to attract more consumers.
In today’s society aesthetics serves primarily as a force to manipulate people to keep them striving and conforming to the liberal capitalist system. Advertisements use aesthetics to create a vision of a product to consume; not just the product itself but an overall aesthetically pleasing scene involving beautiful women, luxurious furnishings, great architecture, natural scenery, and music to create the mood.
Aesthetics then become a mechanism to keep people enslaved to the system in hope that they can one day date or marry an attractive woman, buy aesthetically pleasing merchandise, vacation in aesthetically pleasing locals, and live in an aesthetically pleasing community.
Just Grateful Reply
“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”
―Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Struggle” statue, Kalemegdan
When I was on blackout status at the treatment facility in Las Vegas, thinking I was special and therefore deserved and expected the CAs to keep an eye on my car for me, I was forced to take a loss and didn’t find out about it until it was too late. During that time I wasn’t allowed to receive any visitors for the first 45 days – except for my sponsor – an older recovering alcoholic from Texas who walks with a cane and talks about Death during breakfast; and who was diagnosed with a wicked case of malignant spinal cord tumors some years ago. Surgical strategies were successful at removing the tumors from his spine but the operation left him with permanent disabilities that wiped out any chance of walking again. The old man literally had to shit in a pan for the first 6 months and couldn’t go to sleep without going through an entire process of crawling and “transferring” into bed. After nearly 2 years of assisted shitting solutions, he was able to move one leg just enough to smash around on a cane. He continued gaining movement until he was able to shit in peace again, and then, started showering on his own. Before anyone knew it, he was somehow driving again. Then, the tumors came back. He had to go for a second surgery and although the doctors were successful at removing the tumors from his spine again the surgery took him back to the start.
All the way back to the pan.
Turning Cynicism into Optimism 1
A review of Disaster Fitness: Make Your Demons Do the Work, by Ann Sterzinger and Ann Hedonia.
![Disaster Fitness: Make Your Demons Do the Work by [Sterzinger, Ann, Hedonia, Ann]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/5173r6sMgzL.jpg)
By Keith Preston
I confess to having never been a fan of so-called “self-help” books. Mostly, these kinds of works have always struck me as having goofy titles and charlatans for authors, and nothing of any real value. Some years ago, I was involved with a company where my division head used to hand out copies of Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking, a quasi-Christian work written in 1952, for Christ’s sake (no pun intended). It was a book my supervisor seemed to think was vitally important for his staff members to read. The same guy used to hand out copies of books by Joel Osteen (WTF?). Most self-help books are based to some degree on the model that Peale made a fortune from in the mid-twentieth century. Just throw out a lot of cheery-sounding sloganeering, combined with some quasi-Christian or quasi-Buddhist or hippie New Age nonsense, plus some basic common sense ideas that everyone over the age of fifteen ought to be able to figure out anyway. Do all this while claiming to possess some special path to financial success, spiritual enlightenment, and good health, and you’ve got an instant best-seller so long as you’re willing to pay for advertising space in the National Enquirer.
Fear of Russia and the rise of the Left Birchers 1
By Caleb Maupin
In being defined merely by its opponents and fixating on a fear of Russia, a large chunk of the far-left has usurped the role held by the far-right during the Cold War.
In 1963, folk singer Bob Dylan, whose left-leaning lyrics seemed to define the liberal politics of the era, composed a song which was a mockery of the right-wing anti-Communist organization known as the John Birch Society. He wrote:
Well, I was feelin’ sad and feelin’ blue
I didn’t know what in the world I was gonna do
Them Communists they was comin’ around
They was in the air
They was on the ground
They wouldn’t gimme no peace
Who’s Afraid of Comrade Hermit? 31
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
Its recently been brought to my attention by a well respected member of the libertarian literati that my writing more or less sucks. I wont name any names, god knows I’ve burned enough fucking bridges, but suffice it to say you would know who he is if I did. This isn’t a new complaint. I’ve heard it before but the certain terms of his criticism and the fact that I actually respect the son of a bitch made its way through my armor like a spear. Unfortunately for him, the only way I know how to cope with such turmoil is through my bad writing.
His gripe was a tired old sawhorse often tossed about by white cis-gender libertarians. What it basically amounts to is that he’s uncomfortable with my “personal” style of narrative. He’s revolted by all the I, I, I’s. I this, I that, I hate war, I have feelings, and I share them with my work, and apparently I shouldn’t fucking do this. Fair enough. My writing is personal. I’m a personal person. Things like war and the state effect me deeply so I express those feelings honestly through my prose. Apparently this along with my penchant for profanity makes my work unpublishable by the big shots of libertarian online journalism. Apparently my work is too unconventional to meet their sterling standards of literary integrity.
Well fuck them. Apparently those cunty know-it-alls have never heard of New Journalism. If it was up to these self-appointed Mandarins of the fifth estate Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, and Matt Taibbi would have never been published. Apparently they skipped class the day their staunchy universities taught about Gonzo Journalism. The basic message that I’ve gotten from these people is that I’m too different. And they call themselves libertarians?
