By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley “Ooh, that smell Can’t you smell that smell? Ooh, that smell The smell of death surrounds you” ‘Ooh That Smell’ by Lynyrd Skynyrd I may be a hedonistic, post-left, genderfuck, heathen but I’m also a fiercely localist, […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley After spending the last year killing pretty much everybody else in the Middle East, Israel and their less than silent partners back in Washington finally zeroed in on their ‘big bad’ in Tehran this June. All of this […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley 2025 has been a hard year to be Queer in this necrotic empire but it has been a downright horrific year to be a Queer kid and tragically, in many ways, it has never been harder to be […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley If you’ve read more than a few of my rants, then you are probably already painfully aware that I am a Queer person and that I take this identity pretty seriously, some of you may even be forgiven […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley The Genocide Convention defines genocide as an intentional effort to completely or partially destroy a group based on its nationality, ethnicity or religion. Merriam-Webster defines genocide as the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley Everywhere you turn lately somebody seems to be talking about the importance of mental health; online adds, television commercials, celebrities, politicians and a lot of other shit that generally makes me want to shake cocktails with the stuff […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley In case you haven’t noticed, the world is a pretty fucked up place right now and America kind of has everything to do with it. From the rapid advance of climate carnage to the blatant mass starvation of […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley Ana Maria was a nine-year-old girl from a little town called Chiclayo, Peru in 2007 when the Catholic Church robbed her of her childhood. She didn’t even see it coming. A beloved friar known popularly as Father Lute […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley The Trump Administration really seems to have a thing for genocide, and I don’t believe this statement to be hyperbolic even if it is a tad theatrical. Whether they’re launching nationwide dragnets to preserve the racial purity of […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley Another Pope has dropped dead, only this time it’s the left who seems to be all busted up over it. Don’t get me wrong, I guess I get it. On the surface, Francis did seem like a pretty […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley The reign of Richard Nixon was a heavy chapter in the history of the American Empire. The entire world seemed to be on the brink of explosion and Babylon was far from an exception to the rule. The […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley I’ve often mocked the hyperbole trafficked by the Trump alarmists in the mainstream media, but even I can’t deny that the first few months of Donald Trump’s second run in the White House have been terrifying and the […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley Something very strange has happened to American colonialism. Somewhere between the shock-and-awe of Dubya’s New American Century and the explosive verbal dysentery of Orange-Sphincter-Bad, Uncle Sam’s mask of sanity got cracked. Naturally, the neocons and neolibs will blame […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley It’s a debate that has been raging between left and right libertarians for Kali knows how long; that age old question of just how libertarian are borders? Naturally, being a Situationist-cum-Agorist, the answer seems pretty fucking obvious to […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley The winds of March are roaring and everywhere you look peace is in the air, or at least that’s the impression you might get from eyeballing the latest headlines. Every other day it seems like another batch of […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley Speaking from the precarious perspective of an obnoxiously androgynous genderqueer person both online and in the very rural real world, I’m not exactly a stranger to bigotry. Aside from the fact that getting called a monster in the […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley White supremacy remains a very potent weapon for the powerful in this country and I don’t think that the far left should stand alone in confronting it. Many of my more libertarian readers tend to cringe at such […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley It was the imperial bitch fest heard round the world. Two of Babylon’s finest Frankenstein monsters dueling it out on live tv over a mythic peace deal that neither creature seemed to prioritize over their respective egos. In […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley Before I begin my latest act of contrarian journalistic blasphemy, I feel morally obligated to observe the basic fact that Donald J. Trump is a completely grotesque piece of human filth. Unspoken ethical obligations aside, I do know […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley There is a mad beast loose in the White House again; a lecherous, creamsicle colored, publicity whore, scantily clad in peeling bronzer and a shrill shock of combed over ginger squirrel pelt. A nasty, petulant brat trapped inside […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley Dr. Martin Luther King had a dream, and it sounded pretty fucking sweet on the radio. Even a bitter post-everything anarchist like me gets a little choked up listening to the good doctor’s Sermon on the Mount at […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley (TRIGGER WARNING: The following story includes detailed descriptions of childhood sexual abuse.) Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Nicholas, or at least that is what her parents named her. She wasn’t exactly sure just […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley Well, it’s official dearest motherfuckers, according to the President of the United States I don’t fucking exist and neither does anyone else who falls outside of that country club rapist’s definition of male and female. I had my […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley This may or may not be the literal Armageddon but just peeking through the shades I can tell you that it’s looking pretty goddamn apocalyptic to me. As I write this acidic screed, the only square mile of […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley Some sharp white dude with a nifty haircut once observed that those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable. Then some other white dude with a nifty haircut blew his brains all over Dealey Plaza with […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley In case you haven’t noticed, dearest motherfuckers, my mental health is kind of a hot mess. OCD, ADHD, CPTSD, OSDID, all on top of LGBT and just a dash of BDSM for flavor. It seems like every year […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley I have been writing this annual post celebrating a handful of people who have achieved the impossible and miraculously failed to suck over the last twelve months for almost a decade now and I have little intention of […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley I haven’t exactly kept my fraught history with organized Christianity a secret. In fact, in keeping with my weird tradition of publishing my numerous neuroses, it’s kind of become a major part of my public persona, the jagged […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley I’ve been closely following the labyrinthine chaos in the Levant for most of my adult life now and I honestly didn’t see this latest twist coming, at least not this fast and certainly not this soon. After surviving […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley I realize that I’ve said this before but there really is no more room left for interpretation. Israel is engaged in a concerted effort to annihilate the Palestinian people, an American financed and facilitated genocide playing out in […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley I have spent the better part of my life as a bomb-throwing, dyed in the wool, radical leftist and there was a time when I would have gladly laid down my own life for that cause, probably because […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley Kamala lost for a lot of reasons. Having the vibrant personality of a power-hungry high school principal in a cheesy 80s movie and playing second banana to a poorly reanimated racist come to mind. Cackling like an animatronic […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley There are few things more heartbreaking in this world than watching someone you love in an abusive relationship. Sadly, I’ve seen it firsthand, up close and personal, and it’s harder to sit through than a train crash. To […]
By Nicky Reid Secretary of State- Jello BiafraSecretary of Defense- Cactus Jack (Bang! Bang!)Attorney General- Mumia Abu JamalSecretary of the Treasury- Ron PaulSecretary of the Interior- Wendell BerrySecretary of Agriculture- Willie NelsonDirectory of National Intelligence- Chelsea ManningUN Ambassador- Julian AssangeSecretary of National Security- Cody WilsonSecretary of Labor- Bob […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley How could this happen? Again? On what planet, in what parallel universe does it make any logical sense for Donald J. Trump, the ghastliest beast to ever stalk the West Wing, to return to power in a veritable […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley In case you haven’t noticed dearest motherfuckers, I’m pretty goddamn weird and I seem to be getting weirder by the hour. This isn’t a flex; every time I think I’ve got my proverbial shit figured out I seem […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley I write this screed during the waning hours of an election season that has made me thirst for the taste of a blue steel shotgun barrel like a newborn craves mother’s milk. I hate all of you people […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley To say that my childhood was less than idyllic would probably be an understatement. Growing up stuck between genders in a dreary small-town Catholic school would have been harsh enough if the priests would only keep their fucking […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley I am a lifelong antiwar activist and a diehard horror movie buff. A lot of people seem to find those two facts to be a contradiction, and I guess on the surface I can comprehend their confusion. Showing […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley Victory comes quick to cowards with superior firepower, but that victory is almost always short lived. You would think that Israel, or any other proxy student of western colonialism, would have learned this lesson by now but here […]
Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley I despised Donald Trump long before he became a lumpy soapbox for self-congratulating neoliberals to virtue signal on. In fact, I hated that miserable cunt back when he was still financing the campaigns of said self-congratulating neoliberals. Long before […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley Once upon a time there was this place called Afghanistan, a mysterious, mountainous and magical land of endless poppy fields and warlords with beards thick enough to stop bullets. A place where white men feared to tread, and […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley Israel is fucking crazy, and they have nukes. I honestly don’t have a more tactful way to start this diatribe, I am legitimately terrified, and you should be too. While the world teeters perilously close to the brink […]
By Nick Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley America is an imperial slaughterhouse and every four years that bloody kill room floor hosts a jingle-brained three-ring-circus that the men with hammers call a presidential election season. A ghastly, multibillion dollar display of buggery, cuckery, pomp and […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley If you were foolish enough to take sociopaths at their word, you could be forgiven for believing that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are the world’s most violent pacifists. Both of these repugnant candidates for Godfather of Babylon […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley America is deeply engaged in two simultaneous and rapidly expanding proxy wars that could both very easily end in a nuclear third world war… I want you to sit down with that sentence for a couple of minutes […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley I come from a part of the country where people have become accustomed to getting played by elitist outsiders with name brand suitcases packed full of empty promises. Somewhere between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, where the Rust Belt fades […]
Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley Ask half the country and they’ll tell you without reservation that former and quite possibly future president, Donald Trump, should be tried for high crimes and misdemeanors. Ask the other half of the country and they’ll argue just as […]
By Nick Reid aka Comrader Hermit Exile in Happy Valley America is supposed to be the greatest democracy on earth, right? I know this because we have at least fifty goddamn holidays a year shouting it at us from the night sky in burning lights. Still, I feel […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley It all began with a brazen and reckless pre-dawn raid in the desert wilds of Yemen. Seal Team 6 hit the ground shooting on the dusty streets of Yakla after lighting the village up with Reaper drones. The […]
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic by Chalmers Johnson
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