About This

BySlag Beginnings

Why This

The world today feels to be in a sorry and con­temptible state. In every domain of indi­vid­ual and orga­ni­za­tional inter­course it's as if peo­ple, even whole nations, have cho­sen to selec­tively for­get or, worse, ignore the lessons of the first half of the 20th Cen­tury. They have for­got­ten the scores of mil­lions killed and maimed and all the human trea­sure turned to ash. Human­ity has become indif­fer­ent, even inured, to the cost and con­se­quence of such hate-​fueled hor­ror, and every­where is turn­ing its back not only on pro­gres­sive notions of tol­er­ance, com­pro­mise, and respect, but even on com­monly revered tran­scul­tural char­ac­ter traits like courage, fair­ness, decency, integrity, faith­ful­ness, and hon­esty. Cru­elty and vio­lence have become jus­ti­fied nor­mal behav­ior, espe­cially among the so-​called con­ser­v­a­tive right of the world—even in the United States, where we claim to know bet­ter. The Cru­saders, Cos­sacks, and Brown­shirts have returned.

This all just pisses me off beyond words.

Peo­ple piss me off too, espe­cially igno­rant, arro­gant twitter/​X‑brained Amer­i­cans who think the uni­verse revolves around their use­less pudgy asses, or that their puerile, ill-​formed idiot social media drool­ings actu­ally count as informed opin­ions. Bul­lies, toad­ies, and whiney, par­a­sitic men and women also irk me no end, as do the weak intel­lects cos­play­ing intel­li­gentsia and the locusts-​plague of hyp­o­crit­i­cal reli­gion­ists of every faith ped­dling their spe­cious plat­i­tudes. Truth is, a great many peo­ple are noth­ing more than a bunch of 'unor­ga­nized grabas­tic pieces of amphibian'⁠[1] DNA end­lessly dis­tracted by the inane, the triv­ial, and the meaningless—no more actu­ally doing any­thing of value than a dog fetch­ing a stick for the fifty-​hundredth fuck­ing time. It feels good, but it's really just men­tal mas­tur­ba­tion, which given many people's sludge-​filled minds, is often ick­ier than the real thing.

Gov­ern­ments are infu­ri­at­ing too. Con­sider ours, which for the past 35+ years has behaved like a brain-​damaged zom­bie lovechild of the Iron Giant, lum­ber­ing along with­out a plan, a vision, or any coher­ent or con­sis­tent code of ethics—leaving in its trundling wake a clamor of destroyed nations, ruined lives, and angry, venge­ful people.⁠[2] Of course, no other West­ern nation (which includes Aus­tralia, Japan, and South Korea as well as Canada, Mex­ico, and all of Europe) has done any bet­ter. Still, as an Amer­i­can, I am absolutely arro­gant enough to believe we should be the role model for the bet­ter­ment of the world—the last best hope for mankind, shin­ing city on the hill, and all that, not the poster child for the four Mall-​rats of the Apoc­a­lypse: Greedy, Spoiled, Mean, & Stupid!

Pres­i­dent Rea­gan would be appalled at what we have become, at how far from his pos­i­tive vision of the future we have descended. Imag­ine his farewell speech today.⁠[3] Think how depressed and dispir­ited he would be to see what a gray-​clad, hate­ful, self-​centered place Amer­ica and the world has become, and at how dem­a­gogues, jin­go­ists, fas­cists, and xeno­phobes have per­verted and tainted every­thing we claim to care about.

Coalsmudge exists because of all that and more. It is a soap­box upon which I can air my unvar­nished opin­ions about things that infu­ri­ate me. Here, I can thumb my nose at the con­gen­i­tally self-​absorbed slugs who come out of the wood­work and from under rocks to take right­eous offense at every sup­posed insult to their oh-​so-​vaunted her­itage, ances­try, coun­try of ori­gin, reli­gion, gen­der, sacred places, white purity, or what-​the-​fuck-​everness. I can speak with­out being inter­rupted or drowned out by the never end­ing roar and rum­ble of the Illiterati.

Sim­ply, I intend to post here what­ever moves me, and I will not be cowed into stam­mer­ing silence by any­one bleat­ing pick-​a-​cause code­word polit­i­cal slo­gans or claim­ing privileged-​victim sta­tus. That's not to say I don't respect (or wouldn't like to hear) the opin­ions of good peo­ple who are intel­li­gent, car­ing, thought­ful, insight­ful, tol­er­ant, help­ful, etc., only that I will not mod­er­ate my words to pan­der to peo­ple who are none of those things, and espe­cially not to avoid their vil­i­fi­ca­tion. As I see it, the peo­ple I am likely to upset the most are the ones who should be, and that doesn't bother me even a little.

Comments

Coalsmudge is a closed forum. It is closed because I don't care to spend time man­ag­ing, mod­er­at­ing, or clean­ing up a com­ments sec­tion, which is usu­ally lit­tle more than a cesspool of invec­tive, hatred, and igno­rance pro­mul­gated by trolls, bái mù, tsuri, krian, sock­pup­pets, astro­turfers, or Trump sup­port­ers pre­tend­ing to be intel­li­gent human adults.

Like­wise, I am not open to e‑mail or other mes­sag­ing. I very much enjoy clear, con­cise, well-​informed logic bounded by rea­son, decency, and com­mon sense, but the peo­ple in this coun­try who are capa­ble of that are out­num­bered by the scores of mil­lions by slugs whose idea of debate is pre­pos­ter­ous sophistry, sopho­moric jin­go­ism, inar­tic­u­late rant­ing, and unwar­ranted ego­tism. And of course, the lat­ter group is also likely to flood an inbox with hate mail, coward's threats, or just shit-​for-​brains illogic. I can gen­er­ally han­dle evil, but I've zero tol­er­ance for stu­pid and under­e­d­u­cated peo­ple who insist "they are think­ing when they are merely rear­rang­ing their prejudices."⁠[4]

Disclaimer

Coalsmudge is solely the prod­uct of my own mind, and is not in any way affil­i­ated with nor sup­ported by any other indi­vid­ual or orga­ni­za­tion. The views and opin­ions expressed on this site may be shared by other peo­ple, but I alone am respon­si­ble for every­thing that is posted or dis­played here.

Wel­come to the Seethe.

Slag

Notes
  1. Shame­lessly lifted from one of the best scenes in Full Metal Jacket, an excel­lent film by S. Kubrick.
  2. Cer­tainly, the U.S. has done a great many good things since Reagan's day, not only in terms of dis­as­ter relief, but also across every domain of human endeavor, includ­ing HIV mit­i­ga­tion, poverty relief, refugee assis­tance, finan­cial aid, mil­i­tary sup­port, etc. It is also true that almost all of that has been done hap­haz­ardly, inci­den­tally, or ungra­ciously, and as often as not it suc­ceeded or was ben­e­fi­cial in spite of our 'best efforts' to the con­trary. What's worse, even before our mil­i­tary started mur­der­ing sinking-​boat sur­vivors in the Caribbean or school chil­dren in Iran, the U.S. had already become com­plicit in geno­cide, war crimes, and crimes against human­ity by sup­port­ing and abet­ting Israel, this century's ver­sion of Nazi Germany—all the while being stoutly declaimed by blovi­at­ing Amer­i­can Swaggart-​clones as done in the name of and with the bless­ing of Jesus Christ. Yeah. I bet He's still weeping.
  3. Pres­i­dent Reagan's 1989 Farewell Speech can be read here — It is all the more mov­ing today for our fail­ure to live up to his expectations.
  4. Part of a quote by the renowned philoso­pher & the­olo­gian William James (brother of Author Henry James).