The celebrity machines on the march of progress. How do the people who feed this beast live with themselves. The machine is ruthless. We are the culture of ruthlessness. It has permeated every cellular structure of society. There are only two issues. What is the truth, and what is identity. I would argue that truth has left the barn and the raw spinning hatred of identity has been tracking the truth machines. The truth machines and the identity machines (one is often the other), are concomitant oddities, where Hollywood and Silicon Valley merge into an incestual relationship based upon the Adventures of the Greed Family Tree. I wrote that thing, too. Why. Why. Why do we dote on these sad homo sapiens sapiens -- pretense. We love them because they know how to pretend.
We want to pretend we own the mansion. We want to pretend we drive those cars. We want to pretend that everything will be okay. Then, your brain kicks in. The best drugs are in your brain already. Who knew.
The call me the Pretend Writer. If they are looking for a reaction, I just don't have one. Here's my bottom line: You are who you say you are. It's radical. It even has the pretense of offense. I believe everything on Instagram. The cultural fetish of the phone camera. What imagination. Which always tells the unfolding narrative not unlike celebrity bling goes digital and buys a pool. Pop culture's job is Never Over. Never over. Those Big Broadway show ads that lit my head up. Politics. It's what we've got. End of narrative. I clutch my pearls, faint dead away. The idea of truth did not just go down the rabbit hole, it is the rabbit hole. It will turn on you with literary illusions. The Meat Grinder has become AI. There is no hope. There is no money. Nothing is real. And I am Marie of Romania.
ICE has arrived in Appalachia. This morning, I walked over to the migrant camp. I walked up and down that old dirt road. People smiled and they waved. Women were hanging dripping clothes on overburdened clotheslines. I speak Spanish. I wave back. Gossiping was mainly about how well their kids are doing and next year their kid was going to play high school football. And so it goes on and on just like this not unlike the lives and families of the people who hate them. Americans are pretty promiscuous when it comes to hate. They hate everything. What in the world. Is wrong with you. The ICEman Commeth. The kids are in the gully so they can whistle that ICE has arrived. Why did I walk over there. Because gunshots. Last night. Could be heard. Who did they kill. A dog. Every state has an anti-doxing law. The litmus test is a number. Look for patterns. Get this: ICE terrorists have to buy their own shoes. Look at their feet. Cheap running shoes mainly. This brings up the issue of what kind of support they really have. The Taliban do the same thing. There is no money for boots. Cheap running shoes. Open your eyes and look around you. Outrage loves Americans. And vice versa. "Who is to say that citizens aren't next?" I am here to tell you that this is a war against the Americans. This country does not belong to ICE. They are the deviants. I phone three people every time I go to the post office. I want ICE punished. I find them lame. I guess we will all be put in car trunks. -- TIM BARRUS
A beach party on a glacier. I cannot express my extraordinary disappointment with the New York Times. It is irresponsible and beneath contempt. You people do not get how the rich strangle you to acquire what they want. They want to squeeze the glacier dry. Just to say they did. Even the telephone line is in a (parenthesis). How dare I speak about the rich. I should expect this kind of cultural rampage from the NYT. I would like to escape things like hunger. We could take our vacations as volunteers at Head Start. We could swim to Alaska. 32K a night. 32K is more than I make in over two years. It is beyond cynical to publish a piece about how great it is to be rich. I want a tourist tariff of 237,983,223,194%. You do not have the right to murder everything you see. It doesn't belong to you. It's an economics essay. It is not a travel essay. It is an advertisement of a truly demented lifestyle. These are the absolute worst homo sapiens to unleash into into any environment whatsoever. Just call it Celebrity Drunk Tank. The New York Times will not allow any of these opinions to see the light of day. A travel article is for fun. Stay home and eat your money. No dissent tolerated in travelville. Teach literacy in a migrant camp. I am not kidding. We should have one state where the happy travel ghouls can feed the travel fetish. To remind you that even in the wilderness, you don't mean spit to the aristocracy. Class and Cast. If the NYT Travel Folks get anymore cheezy. Run.
I can't think of three other journalists I would rather listen to. These three cut through issues boom, boom, boom. Thank you. A cogent conversation. Now is the time for the Normals to remember. The TV was darkened to bible black images of the dead being thrown into the backs of big trucks. Dystopia makes the skin crawl up and down America's spine. What people like me are supposed to do is drink better bleach. I did not know about the Demon Press. I had to read that one twice times ten. I have been called many things. A writer. But to call me a demon sends me laughing underneath my desk. That was worth the whole conversation. I am a demon. They're right. Writers put spells on Republicans. Eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog. Macbeth attacks another war in the bog. Journalists are food for thought. I love watching David French's eyes dart about. Michelle's arms waving is cool. I am a fan. I'm with French all the way to god. What I value are his insights into Evangelicalism's Prism. I am in awe of Jamelle Bouie. He is now more real to me. This man is brilliant. He so gets it. This is how it works. And this is how nothing works. These conversations are getting better. Double, double, toil and trouble. Fire burn and cauldron bubble. Why are the dems in a world of trouble. Turning to democrats is uncivil. Dystopia is resistance. All stories have a path. We have now eaten the dragon and his steaming wrath. Eating dragons does not undo us. -- tim barrus
NarcoState. SlaveryState. FailedState. TheocracyState. NaziState. HumiliationState. SadismState. BibleState. Entrenched PovertyState. Choose one, and you will be right. $1.39 allotted per meal per MinorState. HatredState. PunishmentState, Environmental MessState. N0 safety NetState. Healthcare TerrorismState. LawlessState. IllnessState. ExecutionState. PollutionState. The DisasterState. TheFacebookState. XState. InstaState. FoneState. The TheftState. Big Bags of our MoneyState. The HopelessState. The DepressionState. The SuicideState. The boys kill ThemselvesState. The little GunState. The big GunState. The ridiculous GunsState. The heart AttackState. The StrokeState. The PrisonState. The HeatIsHotState. The RichState. The IndifferantState. ICE MurderState. TortureState. KidnappingState. The grabbing PeopleState. The children in CagesState. The fetish for dominance. ViolenceState. The hungry KidsState. The ControlState. The PatriarchalState. We don't CareState. The comment ModerationState where no one feels they can talk freely, or write freely, or challenge ideas that are no longer ViableState. BlacklistState. The RevengeState. The AbuseState. The CriminalState. The ForfeitureState. No JusticeState. Kill the PoorState. You are who we say you AreState. No ScienceState. The RhetoricState. Bunch of LiesState. ChastizementState. We will crush You-State. ExterminationState. This is who you really are. This is where you live. You created the EvilState, and then you laughed.
I grew up born-and-bred to work the assembly line at Oldsmobile. We did not attend college. No idea what university was. That is where the rich kids went. Whoever they were. We kinda made them up. So we could blame them for the poverty of our lives. I blame them, too. Our class went to Vietnam. To kill people. To shoot babies. You do not want to hear that. You put your educated hands over your ears, eyes, and all your wounds. We were not born to run. We were born to lose. Everything. You never hear our voices. Higher Education keeps us out. What I want to know -- it's the focus of all my work -- is why. Why don't we matter. What we see is a certain amount of pleasure on the part of a culture of Gatekeepers. This paper is one. Where they get to kick us out (not always successfully) we invent new ways to connect shooting guns with beer cans. I would argue that patriotism is a scam. I would argue that teaching literacy is a scam. We need more of it. In fact, we have yet to come to terms with a reality where math and its fellow creatures should not be taught until age twelve because -- look at the data -- the humanoid brain loses its way until you hit adolescence. But literacy is different and there is nothing in this chummy conversation that remains an idea that transcends status. Status wins. And. The fear begins. Faster. Harder. Get that job or you, too, will be in that factory they don't talk about. Your culture is on suicide watch. Higher Education will not save you.
I am almost stunned this was published in the New York Times. Thank you. It is informative and has a voice to die for. Parades of ghosts. Authority is coming for you. No one will remember. Because it's time. They're coming for you. Yes, they're coming for you. Who is safe. Where is El Salvador and who has disappeared inside of it. Answer: We don't care and we are busy making videos of old rock stars shooting beer cans. All the dinosaurs from another time. What I miss the most about Act Up is the militancy. It had its own walloping imagination. And grief. HIV meds are made in China. What could possibly go wrong. Do we really need a lot of names on some wall of the folks who are about to die for a tariff king. We remember because we were there. Larry Kramer was riveting. Sex itself was a political act. It was a zillion years ago. Political act is not a term people remember. There will be a lot of it when those good men are not allowed to be parents, or keep their children. It is now a legal paradigm. Authority is kidnapping kids in classrooms and taking them away. You are not immune. The American dream does not mean you, and it never did. I do not care if you are a suit. That dream, too, was a masking of the hatred that has boiled over. Tolerance takes a huge hit. Authority can take anything they want. I wrote the book Genocide to throw spitballs at the notion that it can never happen here and not to us. I reckon I got to light out for the territories. I been there before.
I told you so. It's a deviant. You wanted it. You still want it. Personally. Subjectively. Maybe it's just me, probably just dementia, usually, I hide it. In my inner soulless soul, I feel in my bones It's Not Human. It's an it. Usually, when I say that, I get bounced into the street again. For going off-script when I take the Asperger mask off. In this, we are told: "When the Cameras are turned off." I am a professional photographer who is fed food by selling art photographs. I am here to tell you: The Cameras Are Never Off. We need outrage machines in every classroom. Outrage machines in drunk tanks. Outrage machines on every corner of DC. I will take the photographs. The Spectacle of the clown car crashing is so yesterday. The goons are back again or is that Organized Crime if you can fake it fine.
Government as a mask itself is a Hot Gas Nation State. Meanwhile it's getting hotter faster hotter faster, here in Appalachia, the cameras are always off. People are hiding out all over the place. Not that I would know. My opinions are interior dialogues. Illiterate Citizen Evisceration (ICE). I want to know names. The names and addresses of the Treasonous It People's Compliance Police, did you write a bad word today. I did. I confess. It was a typo. How about the Theatre of No. Where actors pop up in public and where the criminals who rule us are turned into an audience. Go after them zinging razorblade satire (you will not find it here), and let them seethe. It's what they do.
Tim Barrus: New York Times Opinion
I, too, view smartphones with some disdain and suspicion. I worked in special education for forty years. One of my students had no arms. He had flippers. They had no function. This was during the era when inclusion was all the rage in SPED. No school district is going to pay for the kind of tech that Steven Hawking had (and deserved to have). Today, we are not so sure about inclusion. Some lawsuits you want to just go away. Every time a school district turns the lights on in the morning, there's another lawsuit. Tech is not going to go away. That young boy with flippers now has access to technology (artificial arms) that have improved his life faster than anyone could have imagined. He can do some stuff better than I can. Do not play Grand Theft Auto with him. You will lose. The smartphone does not engage him because of its shape. All this stuff costs money. The kids we are most worried about are children on the spectrums of the middle class that still think they are masters of their fate. Who cares. The kids who don't have phones are overwhelmingly poor. We do not care about them. I know their parents, and those parents are afraid. That there could be an accident, or a live shooter, and they all know the number of children who disappear (they must be the bad children) is real. FBI Numbers: 26,000 American children disappear (hold on) every month. Different reasons. Same result. Forbid phones? Walking to school is a minefield. Parents are freaked out enough. Shame on us.
I'm sorry. You've been had. I said you would be had, and then, you couldn't buy enough. A Narco-State. A Police-State. A Hysterical-State. Of numbing incredulity. Does America even know what is real. "I will not be arrested." This tells me you have never been arrested. You are immune from the possibility. I am here to tell you that all of those cultural assumptions you still think are real, were never real. The aristocracy has convinced you that you are powerless. They are right. You are powerless. The Kool Aid is pretty strong. The truth is that Americans are not sure if they believe in anything. What is it they stand for. We have more incarcerated people sitting in prisons than all the other Nation-States of the entire planet combined. What's real, is the Kool Aid. The slogans. The high school ideas. The parades. The assassinations. The pounding of the fists upon the table. With nothing to back it up but symbolisms that work (soothes the people) to keep that capitalist boot ground into the neck. History has spoken. The dragonnades of blood in a mist of them. The Dragonnades was a policy implemented by Louis XIV in 1681 to force French Protestants known as Huguenots to convert to Catholicism. The billeting of dragoons of the French Royal Army in Huguenot households, with the soldiers being given permission to rape anyone they wanted. Soldiers employed as part of this public policy were referred to as "missionary dragoons.” Public arrests as symbolism works until it doesn't
I am not confused. The first thing government is responsible for -- is where to put the dead. A lot of what Ross writes is all mixed up with Catholicism. He's not being honest about the extent to which The Church's influence is everything. The Church is a relic from another time, another people, filled with a history of religious wars and rules concocted by an aristocracy of old men in blood red dressing gowns and flamboyant robes, my pretties. And they get the last say. Via Catholicism's rhetoric that always turns into the first stone to throw. How is it news that old men in blood red dressing gowns and flamboyant robes all get to drink from the same golden cup. Of course, they are morally above us. Institutional morality reflects a vacuum. There is no god. I make up stories for a living. The life of Christ was a humdinger of a story. People find solace in the face of death. I am glad for them, but I do not want to become one of them. I've had my life. I did not follow the rules while living, so tell me exactly what silly rule am I breaking in having nothing to lose while dying. It is laughable to me that The State forbids me to take control of my own death. I wish them luck on that. I want to go out with a bottle of crystal clear corn hootch. I will die like I lived. I have my own terms and the thought that the State can dictate everything it wants and get it, is pure bugabuga. There is no dignity to living. Ever. Life is a disappointment. We are here to service the rich.
I am a communist. This piece is a pop culture piece. Pop. Pop. Pop. South Florida is another country, another time, another life. I lived in a tree house in Key West. I could see the entire island. No glass windows. The wind came in. The storms themselves sang an unwhipped bashing of the beach below with its burn sting, and I could catch red snapper on a taut line. You could not see the treehouse from below. It all sweeps away. Love it while you've got it. All the Keys will go and so will South Florida, and your nice little condo will turn into rubble. I have survived 13 hurricanes. My last one was Helene. I lost everything. Only the hurricanes return. Helena was a level five. The rain did not fall vertically. The rain came at you horizontally. Your sliding glass door cannot sustain the powerful onslaught of horizontal rain. Building more condominiums in South Florida is a pornography. Who cares what a condo costs. It's Vegas on steroids and it looks it, too.
Constructing the entire place was hubris. Why not just stand in the middle of the highway and bring it on. Come and get me. It will. We are still cleaning up in the Blue Ridge. Tourists see one street. One block away -- rubble. Lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig. South Florida is so yesterday. Why would anyone today make an investment in something whose half-life is ephemeral. The very definition of pop culture does not beg forgiveness. The rich South American cocaine stereotype will blow all the way to Palm Beach.
I am a communist. At the same time I was struggling to listen, there was something else going on. Sarcasm. Emma is probably not aware of it. I am autistic and employ lots of masks. It's a slight sardonic spin. My eyes to the sky. A sense of satire now colors her perceptions for me. What else is she masking. Disdain. Comes with the territory. The sarcasm is not overt. More me than her. But I see the signs. She is more than a go-to talking head. She's a serious person. With an attitude. For me, it's what is behind the satire. I have read a lot of her stuff now and it's tough stuff with too much minutia. Such as how the Deviant is probably human. I beg to differ. There is no way I could ever even for a moment assume the Deviant is a homo sapiens. A bridge too far.
Emma sounds reasonable. Anyone who sounds reasonable should merit some suspicion. Does this resemble something like a foreign policy to you. It's more a grocery store receipt. Does the Deviant have a Christmas wish list. I want to survive. That is all I want. It's asking for a whole lot. Suicide rates have been increasing since the first of the year. I fully suspect the government will stop counting the lives of people who would rather be dead than alive. The group that is most at risk are boys. Their numbers are a pornography and rising. These numbers are an affront to any culture that decides it cannot afford to protect its children. The Deviant wants to protect the Deviant. The rest is history on steroids.
I am a communist. Another kind of course-correction. But I end up with questions. Why am I seeing analogies here in terms of Native American reservations. Now, another player (Interior). What would Interior look like. Why isn't the media asking what happens to the reservation when federal dollars disappear. What happens to things like breakfast programs. Why do poor kids have to pay the price of something as abstract as a tariff. Oh, we're going to have to pay a little bit more. Oh, we're going to have to pay a little bit more. Oh, we're going to have to pay a little bit more. How bad is it. The poverty rate in White People Town is 12.7 percent. The Reservation Poverty Rate is 30 percent. White People Town's medium income is 41K. Medium income on the reservation is 14K. No matter what you call the numbers, poverty is poverty and people are people. Food insecurity. Will BIA schools still be schools. What happens to unemployment on the reservation. What happens to hunger on the reservation. Why is it that whenever we go visit the lowest common denominator (capitalism), we assume we're at the bottom now. But no. We leave people out. It is what we do. We think we can grasp the enormity to what has been done to us. We grasp nothing because we are an empty people. The species is not that smart. We are governed by the paradigm of the tax credit. The tax credit is a changeling from another world called the planet Disingenuous. Code for: It can come apart at any time. So can we.
I'm a boomer. The Deviant is a boomer. Give boomers the state of South Carolina. Republican boomers get New Jersey. I get California. The Deviant gets the DRC. Parachute. He will be sweeping streets, community service. My autisticness allows me to solve any random problem (like having babies) Ross dreams up. Here's the drift: Resilience has confounded writers for centuries. I'm writing a book called Resilience Is Resilient. It's better than drinking the Deviant's Kool-Aid unravelling optimal re-industrialization. The problem is what kind of a name do you give to throwing toxic sewer sludge at a wall. It sticks. When am I allowed to bring up the word: bleach. Never. Is that public policy, too. We all have to drink the laundry. Resilience is extremely unproven. Does he count the number of deviant hotel rooms he filled tonight. When I first discovered that more than a few people already knew exactly where the tender spots are, we all agreed that humor packed the biggest emotional punch from someone emotionally lost in his own mystique that we are saddled with paying for. The Deviant is the national debt. If he heads near Wall Street, they jump up to lock all the vault doors. Which remain locked for fifty years of eyes of newt and tongues of fraud have passed just to see if he's still outside banging on the windows. Quick, hide the money. This power goes right to the heart of who and what it is. The Deviant is playing the Deviant. Not too bright. He reads his own reviews.
Tim Barrus: New York Times. Well-written. Crafted. To the point. Informative. Soft landing. Solid journalism. It is focused on a complexity of power. We now have a government that is critically out of control, and we have no idea what to do about it. Cool and calm under pressure think piece. Weapons of mass destruction are aimed at us and have been aimed at us for a long time. If anyone knew what could be done, it would done. If The Deviant's machinations with the moving pieces of a very predictable economic game play of completely no imagination whatsoever becomes Code for what sticks against the wall. The wall will need a power wash. There is only one solution: We need to start begging the United Kingdom to take us back. I am dead serious. We cannot manage our money. We remain on the brink of a tribalism known as civil war even if the cultured folks who read the New York Times cannot see it usually with economic blinders on in the hope that the adult lunatic in the room will be put to eat at the children's table, and they will wash all the dishes. The Deviant never had real family. It's how deviants deviate. It's a stereotype. It's not a sexual term. It just points out that someone is different from the rest of us. I'm autistic. What do I know. We surrendered. Kids in cages. We are a police state. Techno-Narco state. Terrorist state. A state of Thieves. Give it a little time, and all the enemies you do not yet know, you will. All your values have been disemboweled whether you acknowledge it or not.
I am Tim Barrus, and I hereby revoke permission to publish comments by me regarding David Leonhardt’s interview with Senator Slotkin. If you publish it, I will sue you. During discovery, all comment moderators will receive a subpoena and they will be asked about the modus operandi of comments that are rejected and what accountability is there. Absolutely none. I hate your goddamn fucking guts. Discovery sets the stage. I am charging you with blacklisting. Even if I lose, it will get media attention. Do not send me any more of your ridiculous letters about who I am allowed to talk with because quite frankly, I will talk with whoever the fuck I want to talk with. I will, indeed, contact your employees. Eat it. The New York Times is irresponsible. I will go the legal route. I’ve been writing a book about how you have ruined this part of NYT. STOP SENDING ME LETTERS. Stop abusing me. I think the public should know about how you really operate. You do not deserve my work. Comments may be superficial. To you. You are morally reprehensible, and if you think for one minute that that you have the agency to remove my voice. You are confused. You are confused. I will send you the opening of the book. I take a hard look at comments and how you focus on certain targeted people. To reject. Comments seem to be managed by some bitter, worn out old woman. Her powerful swagger as the big boss is inappropriate. She has it out for me big time. She wants to remove my voice. Nice try, Bitch.