setsuled

In addition to Trump getting voted into office again, there were a few smaller stories that caused me to despair for humanity a bit. Many young American voters are now unable to sign their names, causing "chaos" with mail-in ballots. It's funny, in Japan, people are trying to phase out the hanko, the traditional stamp used as a personal sign on documents, in favour of written signatures. Maybe the U.S. should switch to hanko. Eventually perhaps the pantomime of digital signatures will be done away with as various algorithms assign to happily accepting users a lifetime of work and consumer habits.

The other story that made an impression on me was the unprecedented turnout of Amish voters for Trump. The Amish, a religious community in Pennsylvania dedicated to living without modern technology, as long been a quaint, bemusing presence in the U.S. But they're not so cute when the reason they're voting for Trump is that they feel the government was overreaching by investigating illnesses related to milk production at an Amish farm. Hey, I love traditions. But everyone getting sick from bad milk doesn't sound like a good one to me. Fucking idiots. And I'd bet good money Trump isn't going to do shit about this issue.

So Donald Trump's interview with Joe Rogan went up on YouTube yesterday, as I write, and has 22 million views, 1.3 million likes and no dislikes. The Howard Stern interview with Kamala Harris went up two weeks ago, has 1.6 million views and likes and dislikes are disabled. That last detail is crucial and key to one's popularity over the other--one at least gives the impression of honesty, of a willingness to take public opinion head on, while the other would put up a barrier.

That's the impression. Is it the truth? I find it hard to believe out of 22 million people, not one would dislike Trump. But maybe they'd think of it as a vote against Rogan. The view count could be bots. I don't really think so. Rogan is wildly popular, Stern really isn't at this point. The true test between the two candidates won't come unless Harris sits down with Rogan. I think she ought to at this point and probably won't. The biggest problem the left faces, and Joe Rogan astutely points this out in the Trump interview, is that everyone can see they're trying to manipulate the truth all the time. Rogan could be in Russia's pocket, he didn't really challenge Trump on his relationship with Putin at all. I don't think Rogan is in Putin's pocket, though.

The Rogan/Trump interview is simply easier to listen to. Rogan always comes off as friendly and reasonable and he has a way of bringing up contrary points without seeming resentful or combative. He did confront Trump on his persistent denial of election results and I don't think Trump realised how foolish he came off because of how diplomatically Rogan constructed the segment.

Trump is relaxed and interesting in the interview but to the unbiased listener I don't think he came off well, at least not as a presidential candidate. He rambles frequently--which Rogan charitably calls "weaving", and Trump, with his fragile ego, eagerly accepts the term. And Trump shows himself frequently unable to recall the names of people important to the stories he tells or points he's trying to make. Sometimes he meanders so much he becomes nonsensical and his continually stressing the importance of being friendly with Putin or Kim Jong Un doesn't come off as tactful but every bit as guileless as Harris accuses him of being.

If Harris loses this race, I think it'll be entirely on the lack of transparency. We really do need a candidate outside of the machine Rogan talks about but Trump is simply not suited to be president. He's too simple-minded. But I sure hope Harris accepts Rogan's invitation to do his show.

He might have zero military experience, he could've dodged every draft for every war in American history. Thanks to his quick media savvy, Donald Trump has cemented his image as warrior martyr president.

Trump really has had some incredible luck with his campaign, though mostly it's had to do with misguided strategy on the Left. The insistence on going with the safe choice of sitting president Joe Biden as candidate has backfired. Continued, elaborate P.R. wars against Trump have only served to make the Left look dishonest. It's all played so perfectly to creating a beleaguered martyr narrative for Trump, I'd be tempted to call it a conspiracy, though part of the Left's aggressive P.R. war has been to repeatedly label conspiracy theorists as unhinged nutcases. Every time I see one of those memes I get a sick feeling that I'm seeing evidence of a conspiracy.

Of course, Hillary Clinton coined the term "vast right wing conspiracy". Is it really so crazy to think people occasionally get together and plan the things they do? I mean, I'm all for spontaneity, but come on.

But the narrative that's accumulated around Trump almost seems better than human beings could plan and execute. For all the rhetoric about the violent Right, it's the Right who keep getting shot. There was Ashli Babbett, the unarmed woman shot and killed in the January 6th riot (yeah, I know she had a pocket knife). Now Trump himself has been injured and one of his supporters killed.

Last week, there was another story about a shooting in the U.S.--all charges were dropped against Alec Baldwin for his part in firing the gun that killed a cinematographer and injured a director during rehearsal for a movie in 2021. The case was dismissed because the prosecution had withheld evidence. The prosecutor at fault, Kate Morrissey, was asked on the stand if she had referred to Baldwin as an "arrogant prick" and a "cocksucker". She denied this, saying that she appreciated his politics and his work on Saturday Night Live. I imagine she was referring to Baldwin's famous run on the sketch comedy show playing Donald Trump. Well, at least she didn't shoot him.

President Biden said the attempted assassination of Trump was not representative of who were are as a people. I'm not sure about that. Of course, I live in a country, Japan, where a former Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, was successfully assassinated two years ago at a train station just forty-five minutes north of me by train. I would say that when open, intelligent, critical debate has been broadly devalued and discouraged, it might have something to do with the fact that violence and manipulation are seen as increasingly valid alternatives.

I wouldn't say I am Not a Dog on a Chain, Morrissey's new album, is his best though, oddly, looking over the lyrics to-day, I'm liking it better than I did listening to it. An essential part of Morrissey's music has always been a rumination on his own unattractiveness coexisting with unrequited longing. The paradox for much of his career has been that, as much as he sings about how unappealing he is, he's always had legions of fans wanting to fuck him. Now that many of his fans (though far less than certain media outlets insist) have been coaxed away by the increasingly clique-ish pressures of Internet politics, in a sense, Morrissey's message agrees with his reality for the first time. To some extent, I think the politics is the pretext for the inevitable abandonment of an aging star by its fandom, something Morrissey cannily presaged in his lyrics many times, going all the way back to The Smiths' "Rubber Ring". The final track on I am Not a Dog on a Chain, "My Hurling Days Are Done", finds its singer alone as usual only now, as he draws closer to the end of his life, he finds the additional sorrow of having no-one to share his experiences with:

But now my hurling days are done
And there is no one to tell and there's nowhere to run

I don't think Morrissey's had a really strong album since 2009's Years of Refusal largely because his expressions of need for physical love have become increasingly awkward--yet, I suspect this is a deliberate point. I'm often reminded of one of my favourite lyrics from "Seasick, Yet Still Docked", a song from his 1992 album Your Arsenal:

My love is as sharp as a needle in your eye
You must be such a fool to pass me by

In these two lines he shows how his apparent great need is exactly what makes him so repellent. So on I am Not a Dog on a Chain we have "Darling, I Hug a Pillow" with this supremely awkward chorus:

Why can't you give me some physical love?
Why can't you give me some physical love?
Everything else is in place, except physical love

Oou, la la. This is sure to woo a Cyberman. The song also involves, as the title suggests, the singer hugging a pillow in futile effort to subdue his loneliness. I wonder if Morrissey is referencing or is aware of the body pillows popular in Asian countries typically featuring prints of popular anime characters.



Otaku culture is certainly an appropriate subject for Morrissey especially as we have moved into an era where people are far less conflicted about the instinctive disdain they feel for unattractive men.

Given Morrissey's controversial political stances from the past few years, such as supporting For Britain, one would expect more pointedly political lyrics. For Britain, called "far right" by its detractors, is really more liberal given its position on civil and animal rights--the "far right" comes in only for its stance on Muslim immigrants to Britain (it's against) and general isolationism. I'm not intellectually lazy enough to say that cautioning against Islamic values entering British law is inherently Islamophobic but I don't agree with Morrissey's support of the group. Another annoying thing about modern Internet politics is the persistent need to remind people that just because I like someone's music doesn't mean I like everything about them. I've known there were things I didn't like about Morrissey as a person for decades, ever since I heard how he insulted Tori Amos back stage at a show--when she complimented his music, he'd replied saying essentially, how would you know what good music is? I'm a long time fan of Tori Amos though, it's true, her creative spark seems to have been extinguished for a very long time, it's still not a very nice thing to say to her. But, then, I like Richard Wagner, who was an anti-Semite. I like artists for their art, which is the only thing I can truly know about them. WHICH SHOULD BE FUCKING OBVIOUS.

But in terms of politics, mostly I am Not a Dog on a Chain paints with a very broad brush, with songs like "Knockabout World", which seems to be about the general pettiness of the media without taking any particular side or stance. "The Truth about Ruth" seems to be an oddly banal song about transgenderism--then as I looked at the lyrics to-day I started to think this is another one where what seemed a flaw is kind of the point. The song concludes:

Ruth is John
Ruth is John
And sooner or later
We are all calmed down.

"Ruth is John", the chorus, is a plodding chant, as though the point of this is, "We'd all hoped there'd be something more exciting about being trans."

The reason the pointed awkwardness of the lyrics is a little hard to catch is that there's nothing remotely awkward about Morrissey's voice or the music arrangement. Maybe this stuff made more sense in the 80s and 90s when The Smiths and Morrissey's early solo work deliberately paired insightful, credible lyrical portraits of youthful awkwardness with strange, experimental music and vocals. The strongest track on I am Not a Dog on a Chain is a smooth duet with Thelma Houston with enigmatic lyrics, "Bobby, Don't You Think They Know?"

When I first saw this I thought it was photoshopped. But it's real. High def cameras and his own surprisingly good handwriting are Trump's enemies. One of the sickening things about him is just what a cheap imitation he seems to be, just how thin and obvious his facade is. Look at the 45 on his shirt cuff. Because he's the 45th president. It's like the "M" on Mario's hat. It goes with the power ties that are taped instead of clipped. He's like a parody, like a personification of cheap "how to succeed in business" tips from a self help book from the 80s. And here he is holding a listening session with children, parents, and administrators whose lives were impacted by gun violence at schools. Everything about him, from his apparent lack of interest in the meeting to his vague ideas about opening more mental institutions to put potential killers in seems to herald the complete lack of change that will result in policy from this shooting.

In a way, Trump is a more fitting president than Obama. It was hard to rail against Obama for the lack of change on gun laws, he always gave the impression he really understood and deeply cared about the issue. Trump is a perfect figurehead for all of the greed and apathy that has stymied any productive change since Columbine. It's easier to focus one's anger now that the person in office reflects what the institution accomplishes.

The full listening session can be seen here. A lot of sites and articles edit out the students and parents that agree with Trump's ideas. One parent in particular speaks passionately for the idea of arming teachers while one of the students speaks passionately against it. One parent of a victim of the Sandy Hook shooting points out that guns in the hands of teachers aren't much of a deterrent for shooters who figure they're on a suicide mission anyway. I haven't heard of any school shooters escaping harm or capture.

Another parent of a Sandy Hook victim points out how solutions involving putting more guns in schools are focused on dealing with the problem after it's manifested instead of preventing it. Even Trump's vague idea of creating more mental institutions seems like it's suggested in the spirit of putting dangerous people away and forgetting about them like garbage in a landfill. He doesn't just seem like he doesn't understand the issue, he seems angry at the idea that he should understand it.

He does seem more fired up to-day as he responded to the revived crowd chant of "Lock her up!", referring to Hillary Clinton, with "Everything that's turning out — now, it's amazing. It's come full circle. Wow, have they committed a lot of atrocities?" There is not one part of that statement where I can see any connexion with reality. Who are "they"? How has it come "full circle"? And "atrocities"? Is he using that word, a week after a massacre, to refer to a political party now in the minority? Maybe he got his notes mixed up.

I realised recently the sensei America needs right now is Zetsubou Sensei (Zetsubou meaning "despair"). Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei (さよなら絶望先生) was a manga that ran from 2005 to 2012 which was turned into an anime series with three seasons, airing from 2007 to 2010. The anime never saw an official release in the U.S. possibly because it was never a very mainstream success in Japan and its humour may have been deemed too reliant on Japanese politics and media. But watching the first episode again to-day, with its focus on the madness inherent in aggressively imposed interpretation, I can't think of anything that more accurately reflects the American psyche.



I always thought the fundamental conflict between the series' two central protagonists was genius. There are two principle layers to it--on the most superficial layer, Itoshiki-Sensei (Hiroshi Kamiya) is a high school teacher who interprets everything in the most negative way possible and his student, Kafuka (Ai Nonaka), named after Franz Kafka, interprets everything in the most positive way possible. Itoshiki is always trying to commit suicide and Kafuka is always coming up with reasons why there's still hope and life is worth living. But the first scene of the first episode quickly establishes the sinister second layer--Kafuka's rationalisations are so paper thin that they only serve to underline the negative reality. Her choosing to interpret her parents' attempts to hang themselves as attempts to make themselves grow taller only serves to compel the mind to contemplate suicide as the end point of the puzzle Kafuka's madness presents. Kafuka's positive interpretations act as a sort of funnel drawing the mind to a deeper despair.



Itoshiki's negative interpretations are often similarly ridiculous. He talks to the school councillor about his belief that his credit card info is being stolen every time he swipes his subway card, he talks about how the symbol on a baseball cap resembles the kanji for "hair" making it sad that the man wearing the hat is bald. He tells the councillor he feels better after talking about these things. Whenever Kafuka's attempts to save his life inevitably threaten his life worse than his actual suicide attempt, he always says, "What if I had died?" His compulsions to view things negatively are so patently irrational there's no rational solution to them on their own terms--the reality is that they're a form of catharsis for him. He subverts a typical assignment where a teacher asks the students to list a series of hopes for the future by asking them to list only goals they despair of accomplishing. By hitting the negative potential pre-emptively, he can mitigate some of the pain. But the flaw in this technique is highlighted by how Kafuka serves as his foil.



As fiction in the U.S. becomes increasingly focused on alternate interpretations and what these interpretations suggest about the interpretor, Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei is well ahead of us. Now that the U.S. has a cruel, post-modernist joke occupying the office of president, madness has become the reality so it's become mad to adhere to prior forms of realism. We can try to find solutions by setting up large, negative interpretations, conduct witch hunts with no foreseeable rational solutions under the delusion that by keeping busy we're making a form of progress. Or we can subscribe to superstitions, like Kafuka interprets a hikikomori (shut-in) student as being a Zashiki Warashi, a household spirit, because a psychological condition like that of the hikikomori couldn't possibly exist within Kafuka's social circle.



Just as Trump can deny global warming by talking about extremely cold temperatures despite scientists having said that climate change could result in colder winters. It's not that people don't have the capacity to understand the more complicated reality behind the name "global warming", it's that Trump and others rely on the superficiality of words themselves to create the perceived reality. A version of reality so paper thin it only highlights how bad things really are.



There are many flavours of madness and so Itoshiki sensei has an entire classroom of students, each with his or her own method of altering reality. Chiri (Marina Inoue) demands strict, measurable reality so when she's decided to slice a cake to evenly divide it among classmates she loses herself in increasingly complex computations as more students enter the room. Meru (various voice actresses) is typically too shy to speak but frequently spreads abusive e-mails and online comments. Each student in his or her way tries the limits of Itoshiki's negative outlook. Sometimes the humour on the show falls flat but for the most part it's become more and more insightful as time has gone by.

I've only been to Las Vegas once, to visit the now closed Star Trek Experience. The former attraction, in one of the most dreamlike cities in the United States, no longer drew crowds to celebrate the optimistic future depicted on Star Trek and, indeed, as Adam Savage pointed out at Comic Con this year, that dream is starting to seem not only naive but cruel.

But despite the fact that I watched the decidedly more pessimistic version of the old dream last night, Star Trek: Discovery, it's not Star Trek I thought of when I woke up to find the deadliest shooting in modern history had just occurred in Las Vegas. Images of Las Vegas had been on my screen weekly throughout the summer on Twin Peaks, one of the most prominent episodes of which, episode eleven, featured a commentary on gun violence alongside images of the Las Vegas strip.

To-day The Onion is running the same headline it usually runs when there's a mass shooting: "‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens". The irony is sad and seemingly impossible to ignore and yet, as The Onion continues to run the headline, obviously it continues to be ignored again and again. Is it merely the machinery of bureaucracy and greed, is it the absurd grip of a childish dream, or is it some perfect combination of the two? How did this supposedly most pragmatic nation become the most deeply deluded?

We can say that shootings have gotten worse, much worse, in recent decades. Obviously (yes, it's obvious) stricter gun laws would alleviate part of the problem but there's a deeper problem. The old dream depends on the belief that the average American citizen has the wherewithal to own a gun responsibly--and the majority of gun owners don't go on killing sprees. Yet the typical argument from second amendment supporters, that looser gun laws allow for average citizens to save the day with their own guns, looks horribly naive in the obvious scenario of a sniper firing on a crowd. And even someone who opens fire without any cover is likely to deal too much damage before the fantasy average hero can act. It's a reality that's simply too plain for anyone not to see it so the perpetuation of this dream must rely on other factors, like the aforementioned greed and bureaucracy.

But the deeper problem is that so many people, many of them children, arrive at the decision to kill a lot of people. Even if they were prevented from killing people by stricter gun laws, there's a clear diminishing capacity for people to respect and love their fellow citizens. Adults are losing this and their kids aren't learning it.

I took this photo moments after the gentleman in the stripey shirt had been down on one knee proposing marriage to the woman with the "bullshit" shirt. I don't think her acceptance was bullshit. This came at the end of a Klingon fan fiction stage play starring the Stranglehold Klingons, their 24th annual performance at Comic Con, and the first one I'd seen.



I guess Paramount hasn't figured out yet how to legally alienate Trekkies in the medium of the stage play, as busily as they are suing the filmed fan fiction for being better than what they've been cynically producing themselves. That's not to say what the Stranglehold Klingons put together was a masterpiece, but these folks were clearly having fun doing what they loved, which is always nice to see. The plot involved a Klingon crew encountering a Starfleet ship from the mirror dimension. A lot, but not most, of the dialogue was delivered in Klingon. I would have liked it better if the story wasn't quite so tongue-in-cheek and there weren't so many references to the 1980 film Airplane.



But the players put a lot of personality into their characters, I particularly enjoyed a couple alien villainesses--an Orion and a Cardassian.

I wonder what the Stranglehold players think of the new Klingon designs for Star Trek: Discovery.



It kind of lacks the rough and tumble quality of any of the classic Klingons. On the Starship Smackdown panel I saw on Sunday in Room 6A, the same room where I saw the Klingon play, one of the panellists, Daren Dochterman I think it was, said the new Klingon design looked like the Lectroids from Buckaroo Banzai.



That panel also referenced Airplane a lot for some reason.

The Starship Smackdown panel was the last panel I saw for Comic Con this year, one of the last panels of the Con, which is why I unwisely left with the main crowd. I went into 6A not knowing what panel was in there, just wanting to sit down a moment and seeing there was no line for that room I was happy to get a chair and listen to whatever was going on. I didn't intend to sit through the whole panel, especially since it was scheduled for two hours, but it was so much fun I couldn't leave.



Hosted by Mark A. Altman, the panel, which has appeared at different conventions as well as previous Comic Cons, features a varying roster of industry professionals who take on the role of "shipologists", nominating different fictional starships and debating and voting on which is best, each with different fictional captains. The panel at Comic Con this year consisted of Jose Molina (writer for tv series The Tick and Agent Carter), Ashley Miller (screenwriter for the films Thor and X-Men: First Class), Kay Reindl (writer for the tv series Dead of Summer), Steven Melching (writer for Star Wars Rebels and Clone Wars), Robert Meyer Burnett (a filmmaker who has worked for Paramount as a Star Trek consultant), and Christian Gossett (artist and writer for the comic The Red Star) in addition to Dochterman (an illustrator and set-designer for films including Master and Commander and The Chronicles of Riddick).



I don't remember all the ships and captains who were nominated. The winner (spoilers) at the end of the panel was Buck Rogers captaining the Moon Bullet from Georges Melies' 1902 short A Trip to the Moon (end spoilers). The main fun was in listening to the panellists talk shit about the ships they weren't voting for. Ashley Miller ended up being particularly funny. Everyone seemed really happy to dump on the design of the Discovery from the new Star Trek series, though someone argued that the holes in the saucer everyone else was making fun of could be used to thwart attacks when the phasers of enemy ships would pass right through them.



Kay Reindl and Jose Molina seemed like they were sincerely going to walk out on the panel when Altman questioned whether the TARDIS qualified as a starship at all--Reindl, in all sincerity, seemed to construe this as sexism, though the panel ended up assigning the TARDIS with a male captain (I forget who). Reindl and Molina seemed to misunderstand Altman when he repeatedly tried to reassure them "The TARDIS is in!" and were almost at the door before apparently remembering the meanings of the English words Altman was using. Even in this nonsense panel, politics were a sensitive issue, particularly feminism. Personally, I am really happy to see so many female protagonists, but it was clear on a lot of panels I saw that people were jumping on the bandwagon because it seemed like an easy way to score points for their mediocre shows.

Also in Room 6A this year I saw two good comedy panels. I haven't seen People of Earth but the comedic talent assembled onstage piqued my interest.



Oscar Nunez, who plays a priest on the series, was particularly funny deadpanning a completely false tease about his character exploring a physical relationship. He concluded with a completely straight faced "You're in for some surprises" while his co-stars were cracking up.

Well, I think that's about all I have to say about this year's Comic Con. Unless I remember something else in which case I'll eventually write about that too, probably.

Despite he and Trump having had a "thing", James Comey didn't do Trump any favours to-day. What was the "thing" Comey quotes Trump as alluding to in one of their now infamous private conversations? Comey speculated in his testimony to-day, at the insistence of John McCain, about the "thing": "I concluded at the time, in his memory, he was searching back to our encounter at the dinner and was preparing himself to say I offered loyalty to you, you promise loyalty to me. All of a sudden, I think his memory did not happen and he pulled up short." I guess this is different from a trial where a lawyer would stand up and say, "Objection--speculative!" Speculation is fair game, it seems. It's weird how often Comey was asked to speculate, anyway.

Now, if I were to speculate about "the thing", I'd say it was Comey's announcement about investigating Clinton's e-mails shortly before election night. At the time, that was widely seen as a show of Comey's loyalty to Trump and, wouldn't you know, Clinton's e-mails were made an important part of the committee testimony to-day by Republicans who continually, awkwardly tried to steer back to the issue. Most strikingly McCain, who was so incoherent as to seem physically unwell, insisted there was a double standard simply because Comey had concluded one investigation while another was ongoing.

Of course, now it doesn't seem likely Comey was being a Trump loyalist when he made the critical announcement about the investigation of Clinton's e-mails. But everyone at the time figured he was--certainly everyone on TV. We know Trump mainly keeps himself informed on everything through cable news, much to the consternation of his National Security Advisers. So the "thing", I believe, is this narrative that Trump bought into.



For those of us who don't want the country controlled by a dimwitted creep, Comey having previously seemed to be on Trump's side may be a blessing in disguise, and I think Republicans recognise that and that's why they're trying so hard to re-write history now. Because, with these two investigations, Comey really and truly does look impartial. You can see this is what Republicans are desperately afraid of and that's why they put out the hastily assembled, bizarrely campaign-like attack ads on Comey which seem to say little more than that Comey is politically biased. And has always been biased. Well, fortunately this isn't 1984 and you can't make people forget the narrative from six months ago with a hokey piece of propaganda. At least I hope not.

The Republican loyalty to Trump is really strange at this point. There's something more to it than partisanship. With all the Republicans who came out publicly against him before the election and what, one would think, is the more attractive prospect of a Pence presidency--and the political capital to be gained from pursuing criminal charges against Trump and thereby seeming bipartisan--you'd think all the Republicans on the committee wouldn't be so lock-step. Particularly McCain who's been insulted by Trump and who has expressed words against the orange man. It makes the incoherence of his questions this morning all the more intriguing. I feel like McCain is being blackmailed somehow, if it isn't a medical issue.

Without a proper president right now, it occurred to me that the U.S. feels sort of headless. Then I thought, like The Headless Horseman--and Trump's the pumpkin.