This Week in Alt-Right Neo-Nazi Hate Speech That Needs To Be Banned

Trigger warning activated! Our biweekly recap of everything that irked, irritated and aggravated SJWs is back with a vengeance! Read it and weep, NAZIS AND FASCISTS AND RACIST SNOWFLAKES! THE INTERNET IS IN AMERICA IS NOW UNDER THE CONTROL OF SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIORS!

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My Five Favorite Things About Taylor Swift's "Look What You Made Me Do" Music Video (in GIF form!)

Dissecting and deconstructing the latest music video from the undisputed Queen of Pop ... in fully animated pictorial form!

By: Jimbo X
JimboXAmerican@gmail.com
@JimboX

August 27, 2017 - a date that will live in eternal infamy. For those of you somehow out of the loop, that was when Taylor Swift debuted the spooky, cryptic video for "Look What You Made Me Do," the first single off her upcoming album Reputation. And to say that it was a watershed moment for contemporary pop culture is a gross understatement. I mean, shit, when was the last time you remember the unveiling of a music video being such a big deal? You'd have to go back to 1991 when Michael Jackson debuted the video for "Black or White" - you know, the one where Macaulay Culkin is the kid and George Wendt's his dad and there's that entire six minute breakdown where MJ bashes a car with a crowbar and keeps grabbing his balls before turning into a panther, for some reason - on Fox to find a music video reveal as heavily hyped as Swift's latest. And needless to say, it did not disappoint. 

The media frenzy started a couple of days before MTV's annual Video Music Awards (i.e., literally the only time all year the station actually plays music videos) when Tay Tay released a typographical, animated video on the YouTubes that just featured the song's lyrics laid over a bunch of crappy looking Clip Art montages. Naturally, it broke page view records and every radio station in the country was spinning the damn song on the hour. But what really made this one something culturally transcendent was the mystery surrounding the meaning and intent of the lyrics. Within minutes of the preview video going live scores of people were already online trying to decrypt the song like it was The Da Vinci Code or something. Was it a thinly veiled jab at arch rival Katy Perry? An oblique "fuck you" to Kanye West and the Kardashians? Some sort of Illuminati mind control claptrap tied to PizzaGate? EVERYBODY had their own theory on what "Look What You Made Me Do" was really about (complete with some wayward individuals accusing the laconic chorus of ripping off Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy," when anyone with a working set of cochleas can yell you it's clearly ripping off 2 Live Crew's "Me So Horny" instead) and it made even the most jaded and apathetic media consumer at least somewhat curious as to what the full music video would reveal. In short, it was one of the most brilliant marketing ploys the music industry has pulled in a LONG time. This was no longer just another video being released; it had become a bona fide transcendent cultural experience, like the Mayweather/McGregor boxing bout or Starbucks' limited time only Unicorn Frapuccino.

To be fair, I haven't really been following all the Taylor drama over the last year or so, but one 20-minute dissertation from my GF filled me in on all the details of the whole "phone-gate" controversy with Kim K and Kanye - a pivotal piece of intel that makes the conclusion of the video (in which multiple incarnations of Taylor bicker back and forth about all the other Taylors being fake, manipulative and shallow) so much cattier and sassier. While there's a lot of stuff to digest and over-analyze, there were five things about the music video for "Look What You Made Me Do" that I found particularly interesting, and as a public service to the denizens of Internet-land, I've decided to isolate 'em in easily redistributable animated GIF form for more pageviews  - I mean, to give you a better comprehension of the audiovisual subtleties of the short-form film ...

Zombie Taylor!

And just like that, my opinion on necrophilia did a total 180...

Right off the bat the video hits a high note, with the sudden emergence of Taylor Swift's "reputation" crawling out of the grave in full Evil Dead makeup. It's a really deft directorial decision and gets about as far away from the goofy, wholesomeness of "Shake It Off" as they could have without stocking the video with ACTUAL Faces of Death footage and the whole thing is just tremendous pro wrestling booking 101. You want to recast yourself as something dark, ominous, edgy and pointedly threatening? Shit, you might as well go all in and transform yourself from something that looks like this to something that resembles the goddamn Castle Freak. We're barely 20 seconds in and we just KNOW this new incarnation of Taylor ain't taking shit from nobody no more; WWE executives, take note - THIS is how you frame the initial setup for an effective heel turn in the post-Facebook era. And yes, I will just come out and say it - even as a desiccated, reanimated corpse with black ooze foaming out of her mouth, I'd still tap it.

The Diamond Bath!

Yeah, it looks all fun and hedonistic - up until the first gemstone gets stuck in your cooter.

Well, if you need a good visual metaphor for opulent indulgence, I guess taking a page out of Scrooge McDuck's playbook and literally bathing in precious jewels is a pretty good way to get the point across. I like how her appearance here kinda' sorta harks back to the video for "Blank Space," making for a nice touch of continuity. She just looks so psycho bitchy and seductive at the same time, like you KNOW she'd kill you mid-coitus like Doogie Howser at the end of Gone Girl, but damn it, you'd beckon her sultry siren song regardless. Also, I dig how her makeup toes a 50/50 line between classic and trashy. I mean, just look at those razor sharp, blood red finger nails - those things aren't for showing off at ritzy galas, they're for manually milking prostates behind dumpsters and we all know it. Then there's that brief clip at the very end of the sequence, where she takes a bite into a big diamond necklace, which you just know had to taste pretty gross. I don't care HOW many times they wash that shit, there ain't no way you're getting the smell of African dirt miner off those things; I really hope Tay Tay is up to date on her shots after pulling such a biologically perilous stunt.

Tea Snakes!

Yeah, they probably should've spent a little less money on the wardrobe budget and just a wee bit more on the snake CGI ...

Don't ever say Taylor can't act. Her mannerisms in this video are fucking Lillian Gish-like, conveying so much emotion (primarily, cerebral ill intent) with just the slightest of facial twinges. With her leggy red dress and hair pulled back behind her ears she almost seems to radiate a semblance of coyness, perhaps even submissiveness. But like that one serial killer from that old ass HBO special that used to squeeze-spray poison into people's faces, that reserved demeanor belies absolutely sociopathic rage. It's just so incredibly subtle, but you can tell she's thinking downright evil thoughts. And what better way to make that blunt as a sledgehammer than by putting her on a royal throne, covered in snakes that feed her tea and start jiving whenever she punctuates her sentences with exclamation marks? Yes, it is incredibly on the nose, but you know what? Sometimes, you just gotta say "fuck you, subtlety, fuck you right in the ass," and I, for one, am glad Tay Tay and company took the very low road on this one.

An Homage to The Silence of the Lambs? 

In the original video, I hear she ate Katy Perry's liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

With everybody on the Internet analyzing and interpreting the video for hidden messages and clues into Taylor's psyche, I'm really surprised no one has picked up on this possible allusion yet. So there's this part in the video where Tay-Tay is inside what appears to be a giant golden birdcage. It seems innocuous enough, but at the very end of the clip we get the quick zoom-in above. Does this particular sight remind you of anything? Watching Swift nom-nom on champagne and lobster inside a circular panopticon while flanked by seven armed guards, I can't help but be reminded of the sequence in The Silence of the Lambs where Hannibal Lector has din-din inside a similarly shaped cell, also surrounded by police personnel. Does this mean there's a deleted scene somewhere where Taylor bites off a dude's tongue, pepper sprays another dude and wears his chewed off face to facilitate a getaway? My, we can only hope.

Be Still My Heart - GOTH TAY-TAY!

Sorry - I'm too busy fapping to come up with a pithy caption.

All guys have their specific aesthetic quirks regarding the female form (read: unapologetic fetishes) and my stylistic weakness has always been goth chicks. So imagine my sheer jubilance when halfway through the video Tay-Tay abandoned the bright red lips and flowing evening gowns for first-suicide-attempt black lipstick, clinically-depressed-high-schooler onyx nail polish and full body fishnet stockings! Even better, her gyrations and kinda-sorta Aquanet-overkill coif are eerily, eerily similar to the interpretive dance moves and ozone-depleting hairdo of Angela in the first Night of the Demons movie. Unfortunately, it looks like they cut out the part where she chewed off a fat dude's tongue or sucked face with a blonde bimbo wearing too much pink lipstick - but hey, she has to leave something for the next single, don't she?

I don't care if she's wearing lipstick made out of AIDS blood - I'd still snog her.

Of course, there a lot of other highlights from the video that are probably worth symbolically examining, but I'll let you draw your own illusions to what Taylor really means when she positions herself in front of a giant, crucifix-like "T" and starts kicking earlier iterations of herself into the hypothetical abyss, or the real message behind the part where the paparazzi snap photos of her behind the wheel of a crashed car while she's holding a Grammy and looking suspiciously like Katy Perry. Those thinly veiled messianic delusions and fuck yous to competing pop princesses aside, I think "Look What You Made Me Do" is just a flatout tremendous video and the perfect pop cultural burnt offering to officially kickoff the Halloween season. I absolutely LOVE how Taylor is embracing the heel role in the video - personally, I haven't seen someone do such a fanciful job of playing up their pseudo-megalomania since Hulk Hogan joined the N.W.O. back at Bash at the Beach '96.

Indeed, there is a very weird totalitarian vibe I get from the video, almost as if Tay Tay is channeling her inner Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S. Seeing as how Swift is the kind of gal who likes to shitpost on 4Chan and hang out with dudes who wear swastikas on their shirts, it wouldn't surprise me one iota if she was secretly a total nihilist or maybe even a proponent of The Dark Enlightenment (do note that she was pretty much the only major female singer who DIDN'T spend all of last fall deriding Trump and figuratively fellating Clinton on the campaign trail ... how interesting.) Don't let her (relatively) desexualized, family-friendly appearance fool you, her pop songs are anything but lighthearted "take thats" to her romantic rivals - indeed, they are actually Iliads dedicated to her own cerebral barbarism. In a way, I almost feel as if Taylor is secretly embarking upon the plot of God Bless America in real life, only instead of shooting up the live finale of American Idol herself, she's slowly but surely molding an entire generation of 14-year-old girls to utterly despise liberal pop culture icons like Katy Perry and Kim K. Like Ah-nold in Pumping Iron, she's an absolute master of psychological warfare; shit, just by standing next to Lena Dunham in a posed photo, she literally makes her (possible) ideological rivals look like literal retards. Like The Joker in The Dark Knight, maybe the past ten years have been carefully plotted out as part of some impossibly grandiose scheme to decimate the pop music landscape, and this darker, edgier Tay-Tay is just the first metamorphosis before she turns into a full fledged anarchic powerhouse. From some jailbait country cutie that wore too much lipgloss and always said thank you to a red-lipped crossover pop-tart to a futuristic militarized music video vixen in fetish gear to a vindictive mass media empress, there's really nowhere else she can go that doesn't involve overthrowing entire conglomerates or throwing genre adversaries out of helicopters.

If Red represented Taylor's transition from country to pop and 1989 represented her ascension from pop novice to pop queenpin, the next logical step is that Reputation will represent her full-blown immersion into cult of personality politics. In that, the music video for "Look What You Made Me Do" could indeed foretell a major, MAJOR shift in the causa sui of Swift's career.

While other pop stars want to be bigger than Madonna, Tay-Tay wants to be bigger than Mussolini. And hey - if her critics are going to call her an "obnoxious Nazi Barbie," what better way to get 'em back than by transforming herself into an actual fascist? Forget bubblegum pop - if the darker, more sinister tone of "Look What You Made Me Do" is any indication as to what the rest of Reputation resembles, methinks Tay-Tay's about to drop the world's first Buchenwald pop album. Hey, don't say I didn't warn you, either - I KNEW that girl was trouble when she walked in.

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I'm a Democrat, But I'm Voting for Donald Trump

An argument in defense of the Republican presidential front-runner. 

By: Jimbo X

JimboXAmerican@gmail.com

@Jimbo__X

Although I abhor the longstanding, absurdly reductionist U.S. political binary with a fiery passion, if I absolutely HAD to place myself somewhere on the false-dichotomy axis, I'd probably land somewhere on the liberal side of the spectrum.

I am adamantly pro-choice. I believe in stricter gun-control measures. I believe homosexuals deserve all of the same civic rights as heterosexuals. I believe the federal government has an obligation, as does the public as taxpayers, to help out the less fortunate and advance as many citizens into middle-class self-sustainability as possible - if not for the "rightness" of the cause, then because of the blunt economic fact that the more people we have working and supporting themselves, the better off we all are as a peoples. Hell, I even supported the Affordable Care Act, and to a large degree, still do. 

Of course, I also support the death penalty, oppose drug legalization and think affirmative action is a big old steaming pile of bull hockey. So, yeah, I'm not really welcome anywhere, right, left or whatever exists in-between.

Nonetheless, I believe in America. No matter how "uncool" it is, I thank the god-I-don't-actually-believe-in every morning that I was born and raised in the United States, the single freest country that has ever existed (and probably ever will.) Yes, I acknowledge it has flaws - a lot of them, actually - but by and large, I wholeheartedly believe America is far and away the best place on Earth to live in, and it's not even close.

And what made America great, you might be wondering? A sense of solidarity. From WWII onward, we believed in a common American identity, that ours was an exceptional way of life. Our religion, race or ethnicity didn't matter(*) - we were all part of the same team, the same collective workforce that found thrift, sacrifice, honesty and selflessness to be cardinal values above all others. We cared about our families, we cared about our communities and we cared about our companies - we all knew that the success of one meant the success of all, and we all did our part to pull our respective weight.

(*)What's this, you say, about the plight of the African-American community, to contest my assertions? Well, before you call the P.C. police to put me away for life for unspeakable thoughtcrimes, just remember that up until the 1970s, the proportion of African-Americans in the U.S. labor force was higher than the proportion of Caucasian laborers, while the rate of black business ownership was actually higher before desegregation than after it.  Indeed, one could argue that the proliferation of "War on Poverty" entitlement programs - in tandem with the virtual meltdown of the African-American nuclear family - all but negated whatever economic benefits may have arose from the passage of the the Civil Rights Act and continues to put black Americans at a financial disadvantage today. 

Yes, there has always been poverty and racism and sexism and wealth inequity. There always will be in a state that embraces freedom, in one that allows people to make their own choices - regardless of their asininity - just as long as they are also willing to live with the consequences. Still, as long as you have the commitment to work your ass off, stay true to your morals and you make an honest, concentrated effort to succeed, you can. I grew up in a single-wide trailer in the crystal meth country, and thanks to the power of higher education, a desire to not live in poverty the rest of my life and some generous college-assistance programs (ironically enough, funded entirely by other poor people), I was able to climb out of my squalid, lower-class purgatory and enter that much-fabled "middle class" everybody keeps yammering on and on about. Granted, it may not be as romantic as the tale of the Sri Lankan dirt farmer who came to the U.S. on a leaky boat and sold rutabagas off the back of a truck to finance his PhD, but I suppose I am nonetheless proof enough that the American Dream - in some semblance, anyway - is still alive and kicking. 

Now, this collective effort I speak of is NOT the same thing as classical socialism. Americans have never been a peoples who demand the government take care of the things they ought to be taking care of themselves. Rather, the unstated social contract that has taken the U.S. this far has been the shared national ideal that as long as we're willing to pay upfront for the necessary infrastructure and services - roads to drive on and rivers that aren't filled with poison and having people with bazookas and tanks and shit around to protect us from the barbarian hordes domestic and abroad - that means John and Joan Q. Government have to stay out of our business. Once we are able to carry our own load, the onus is upon us. It's our individual responsibility to support ourselves and our loved ones, to raise our children with the beliefs we want them to have and to spend our money and get into debt however we please. Just as long as we are paying the appropriate taxes, refraining from fraudulent commercial practices and not intentionally doing things we know could kill people, the Feds have no right to meddle in our affairs.

And they especially don't have the authority - morally or legally - to tell us how we ought to think and feel about things. 

Up until fairly recently, that had been the adage of the Democratic Party. Perhaps no one embodied the quintessence of American social liberalism better than John F. Kennedy, whose immortal aphorism "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" perfectly encapsulated the ingrained Democratic reverence for individual responsibility. 

But my, how the Democratic Party - and America itself - has lost its way. 

Today, the modern liberal spits on the notion of "American exceptionalism." Instead of rallying behind the rights of the individual and celebrating our common bond - that being the desire to take care of ourselves and our own, sans obstruction from the government - they've become unabashed promoters of Balkanization, encouraging individuals to self-segregate into political enclaves that only care about their own superficial common causes. Democrats have embraced this weird quasi-Marxist doctrine besieging people to demand economic reparations because of historical misgivings - by and large, more perceived than actual - instead of imploring individuals to take control of their own lives and pursue their own paths to economic independence. 

But just when it looked like the Democrats (who, by this point, have transmogrified from the party of Kennedy  into unabashed European-lite socialists) were about to win the War Against Self-Sufficiency ... here comes a new challenger. 

Because a guy promoting tighter border security is clearly a greater civic threat than people who want to murder a politician for something he never said. 

Republicans and Democrats alike absolutely despise Donald Trump, which is usually a good sign somebody is doing something right. To ensure he falters in his Oval Office ambitions, detractors on the left and the right have no qualms labeling him a racist, bigot, Nazi sympathizer or Klansman - even when evidence to support such libelous claims are 100 percent non-existent. Here's just a sampling of the "news" articles populating the Web the morning of Super Tuesday - you know, before the reality TV star and multi-billionaire real estate mogul won a paltry seven out of 11 state primaries: 

• Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz DEMAND the New York Times hand over an off-the-record recording that allegedly reveals Trump saying his anti-immigration stance is bullshit. 
• Trump's security guards are just choke slamming photographers left and right (uh, just never mind the photographer was caught on camera swearing at the Secret Service agent - constituting assault - kicked him - constituting battery - and tried to jump past a security guard - constituting trespass - before he got Rock Bottomed.) 
• Wow golly gee, there sure are a lot of white nationalists out there who support Trump, so by association, he must be a Nazi, right? 
• Did you know that Trump spoke out AGAINST NAFTA back in 1993? (Which actually legitimizes his presidential platform, no?)
• Donald Trump DIDN'T think the Great Recession was going to happen! Take that, guy who isn't able to predict the fucking future!
• Lord have mercy, Trump is PERSONALLY ordering his Gestapo thugs to eject black students from his rallies! (just, uh, overlook the fact Trump never ordered anybody to throw anybody out, the guards in question were actually from the local police department, and the ejected students purportedly chanted profanities and attempted to enter unauthorized areas at the rally before getting the boot.)
• Oh, the humanity! Trump supporters were seen pushing and shoving and potentially poking a black woman large enough to qualify as a UFC Heavyweight at a rally, who was so traumatized she smiled the entire time, flipped people off, casually clicked her iPhone as she was being escorted away and even slapped a few guards on the way out! According to a white guy pretending to be black - who apparently can tell someone is a member of white nationalist organizations merely by looking at their face - this is a national travesty, and further indication that everything tangentially linked to Trump is pretty much the same thing as the KKK. 

Indeed, the masses are plum freaking out over the surprising popularity of the populist candidate, with wishy-washy millennial drama queens unable to mount a compelling argument against the Republican front-runner other than the same old invocation of Godwin's law and other hysterical hyperbole. So stretched to come up with a rebuttal to Trump's anti-illegal immigration and pro-national security policies other than screaming "racist" over and over against like stark-raving mad Puritans convinced their livestock had been bewitched by the neighbors, bespectacled British gaylord John Oliver - whom I refer to as a "gaylord" not because of suspected homosexual tendencies but because his humor and personality are about as bland and flavorless as a giant, triplewall corrugated cardboard box - spent 22 minutes direly attempting to convince the American electorate that Trump isn't to be trusted because his ancestral last name was once spelled Drumpf. 

My goodness, look at all that voluntary wealth-redistribution going on!

So, uh, what is it bout Trump that arouses so much liberal antipathy? Is it because he wants to construct a wall to combat illegal immigration, which the regressive left falsely equates with anti-Hispanic sentiments? Is it because he wants to beef up national security, and scrutinize foreigners a little harder before they enter the country? Or is it simply because he connects with America's working-class, non-college-educated (indoctrinated?) whites, that strange, alien subculture that for some inexplicable reason, is immune to the incontestable multiculturalism uber alles, globalization-is-great-for-everybody dogma? 

Sure, Trump's proposed $25 billion Great Wall of Mexico is a little outlandish, but it's still more economically viable than Bernie Sanders' federal-budget-doubling universal health care proposal. And of course, if we're going to criticize Trump for building a wall for security reasons, the logic follows we also ought to be criticizing Russia, Israel, China, Spain, Hong Kong, Korea, Saudi Arabia, and about two dozen African nations for doing the same goddamn thing. Along those same lines, Trump's call to temporarily halt Muslim immigration to the U.S. following the lethal San Bernardino massacre is hardly unprecedented. Lest we forget, Nobel Peace Prize recipient Jimmy Carter once banned Iranians from entering the country, and the motherfucking poster child for "Being Liberal" metaphorically wiped his paraplegic ass with the Bill of Rights and sent hundreds of thousands of totally innocent Japanese, Italian and German Americans into internment camps during World War II. And really, what's so bad about temporarily bringing a halt to foreign traffic in the instance of a national emergency and creating more stringent vetting processes to weed out people who want to publicly gang rape and jack off in kiddie pools from legitimate asylum seekers? Prepare to get shouted down and name-called a "racist" or "xenophobe" if you state any of that, though, to the anti-Trump throng, who still have no idea that Constitutional rights are only afforded to people who are actual U.S. citizens. 

As would any intolerant peoples who refuse to accept that others may have belief systems and ways of life different from their own, liberals continue to rail against Trump and his supporters, labeling his campaign as some sort of "white nationalism" resurgence. While it is true that a majority - but most certainly not all - of Trump's staunchest supporters are on the mayonnaise lite side of the melanin scale, he's hardly running a whiter campaign than socialist super hero Bernie Sanders, who hails from a state where the the general population is 96 percent honky. Could it be that maybe - just maybe - America's long-ignored, working class, non-urban populace is flocking to Trump because his economic principles benefit them and not because they want to live action role play The Turner Diaries?

Millions of hardworking lower middle class families have been hit hard by rising health care insurance premiums. Trump said he wants to eliminate Obamacare and give people tax credits for voluntarily paying for coverage. 

That helps them financially.

Trump wants to lower taxes to 10 percent for individuals earning less than $50,000 a year, and if you make less than $25,000 a year - or you are married and bring in less than $50,000 a year - you won't pay any federal taxes whatsoever. 

That helps them financially. 

Trump said he's going to reduce the trade deficit and incentivize U.S. companies to bring offshore manufacturing back to the U.S., with heavy tax penalties on corporations who choose to ship American jobs abroad.

That helps them financially.

We tend to forget that non-college educated people represent 68 percent of the U.S. These are the people who really make America work - the people who fix telephone poles and pour gravel on the highway and sling hash browns and squirt pesticides for a living. In our academic-elitist society, we also tend to forget that many of these people also have high-paying jobs and have even started their own successful businesses. Their financial, political and social agendas are altogether different from the interests of all of us smarmy, bachelor's degree holdin' know-it-alls. They don't give a shit about microaggressions or gender-fluid pronouns or third wave feminism. They are too busy just scraping by, doing all they can to take care of their spouses and their children without going bankrupt and having to depend on social services the rest of their lives. 

These people don't want the federal government and other taxpayers supporting them. Instead, they want the economic playing field leveled so that they actually have a shot at self-sufficiency. All of the alleged race-baiting and anti-immigrant rancor you keep hearing the lunk-heads at MSNBC and The Huffington Post screaming about masks the fact that many rural, working-class people have indeed had their economic sustainability torn asunder by NAFTA and, adding insult to injury, an influx of mass immigrant competition in the labor force. You move all the jobs out of the country, automate everything, jack up the living wage, and make poor whites, blacks and Hispanics battle for scant housing and employment, and you wonder why racial tensions are so high? Don't blame the Confederate flag or David Duke for whatever ethnocentric animosities may belie the Trump fanbase - instead, blame it on lopsided free trade agreements and corporate outsourcing. 

Rather than the crude, prejudiced, negro-hating crackers they are hideously stereotyped as by the media, Trump supporters - by and large - tend to be people with a clear idea of what awaits them. Last November, Nobel Prize winning economist Angus Deaton published a report finding that middle-aged, non-college-educated whites were dying off at a rate surpassing the death toll of sexually active, homosexual young men at the height of the AIDS crisis. The catalyst? A major upswing in drug overdoses, alcohol poisonings and suicide - which, wouldn't you know it, runs parallel with the unemployment statistics for the very same demographic. 

As globalization marches full speed ahead, the working class American knows his days are numbered. With no manufacturing jobs available stateside, all he can do is pray and hope that the feeble service industries and whatever low-skill technical jobs are out there don't get displaced - either in the form of legal or illegal migrant labor or technology that makes them mechanically obsolete. 

With economics policies as is, the working class white knows he's on the path to complete economic ruin. If things keep going as is, they know their children will be unable to support themselves, to even be able to get on the same clumsy social footing they achieved. For them, Trump's neo-neo-conservative economic platform is literally the only thing that's going to keep them financially sustainable as laborers. While Trump detractors are bitching and moaning about "white privilege" and "heterocentrism" and "transphobia," Trump's supporters are fighting for their very survival. 

Now, is Trump really going to do all the stuff he said he's going to do? Well, considering the G.O.P. hates his guts and liberals want him crucified on a giant brown dildo, it doesn't seem likely he'll get much done with Congress. But as outlandish and hilariously baseless as his promises may be, if he manages to keep half of them - hell, even a quarter of them - they're going to keep the working class family chugging along. 

Not only is Trump the only candidate promoting economic nationalism, he's probably the first candidate to float the idea in more than half a century. Indeed, you can almost pinpoint the moment the U.S. economy - complete with its strong labor unions and high employment rates and high quality of life even for working class Americans - went off the rails: 1973, when Richard Nixon formerly ended the American School of Economics system. You know, that same protectionist ideology that only resulted in the U.S. becoming the greatest economic empire in history. 

Since we adopted the gloriously misnamed doctrine of "free trade," what's happened? The unions collapsed and died. Illegal labor went through the roof. The nation's manufacturing sector literally left the country. Corporations were able to suck trillions out of the national economy by using cheap labor abroad. The working class became the starving class, and the downtrodden were pushed out of the economic cycle altogether. 

In today's hippie-dippie academic elitist society, we've been taught since birth to believe "globalization" is the best thing since sliced bread. Our segmented, juvenile, hyper-selfish and responsibility-averse culture rejects even the notion of a shared economic identity, too busy combating invisible Klansman and non-existent neo-Nazis to even realize the same people we automatically decry as backwards hicks - and not their entitled, student-loan-saddled, faux-victimized, crybully asses -  are indeed the biggest victims of modernity.

Sorry, but I will never admonish someone for voting in line with their economic interests, regardless of whatever auxiliary political ideals or beliefs they may or may not embrace. They may not be your circumstantial reasons, but there is certainly a VERY good reason why Trump supporters should be rallying behind him - essentially, he's the only person out there who, in addition to acknowledging they exist, actually advocates for economic policies that would benefit them. 

Of course, Bill Maher and John Oliver and The Atlantic and all those other shitrags out there can't see that. Instead, they'll just trot out their smug (and ironically racist) false narrative that Trump loyalists are voting for him 'cause they just can't stand them coloreds and Meskins - and my goodness, is it ever a sight to behold when that fabricated narrative blows up in their faces. 

What Trump symbolizes is the old Friedrich List national worker ideal, a truly colorblind society united in a shared belief that as one, we are an economic engine, and that the total success of that economic engine ensures a satisfying life for everyone who is willing to work hard to support it. And in today's political environs - where the millennial motto is "gimme, government, gimme" - such a notion rings so bizarre as to be unintelligible. 

But you know what? That weird ass idea worked for almost 100 years. Again, would it be implemented if Trump becomes president? Eh, probably not, but at this point, it doesn't look like we'll ever an entry point to bringing back the concept EVER again. Globalization is about to devour America whole, and Trump represents the American School of Economics' last stand. And with so much on the line, I'll gladly take a losing fight over no fight at all. 

Longtime IIIA readers know I don't vote, and that I hate politicians - every last one of 'em - with great vim and vigor. That said, if Trump continues to demonstrate himself as the ultimate champion of American economic nationalism, I might just have to go against my own scruples and at least mull pulling the lever for old Toupee Head this November.

Alike Batman, he may not be the President we want, but by golly, he's the President this formerly great country deserves. And hell, who knows - he might even be the one who, against all conceivable odds, really does save it. 

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“The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part One” Review (2014)

Who’d thunk junior high schoolers would’ve had such a penchant for paramilitary politics?

Watching “Mockingjay,” I just had to keep asking myself what the popularity of “The Hunger Games” really means for us as a culture. To kids today, what does the dystopian hellhole of Panem actually symbolize -- is it a metaphor for the police state, or an allegory for our collective loss of privacy in the Facebook era or the still palpable auger of the Great Recession and a life shittier than those lived by their parents?

The quite literally mock heroics of Jennifer Lawrence, I believe, indicate but one thing: goodness, do American young ‘uns in the year of our lord 2014 really, really want to taste war and crushing poverty.

Whether you choose to view Suzanne Collins’ much beloved series as “Battle Royale” lite or paramilitary pandering to the “Shelby Woo” weaned masses, its undeniable that “The Hunger Games” franchise has struck a chord with Gen Y. Politcos on the left and the right both say the books and corresponding films are indicative of tweens leaning toward their ideology, but mayhap kids today ACTUALLY do want to find themselves thrust in guerilla juntas and daily life-and-death struggles the same way Miss Everdeen does?

As I’ve written before, good old fashioned wide scale warfare seems to be the best cure for the adolescent blues, and in my eyes, the success of “The Hunger Games” is all the evidence I need to support the theory. Our gilded youth are sick and tired of being coddled at home and going through the rigors of post-recession ennui; they want to form a human wall and overpower security guards and blow up dams, by golly, and all Mrs. Collins is doing is giving the peoples the celluloid fantasy they thirst for.

I haven’t seen the first “Hunger Games,” but I did see “Catching Fire.” I’m probably missing a whole lot not having seen the 2012 film (considered by some retards to portend the Sandy Hook school massacre, if you can believe it), but from the gist of the last film, I reckon I have a pretty good grasp on what’s going on heading into this third flick.

So, Katniss and Peeta were forced to compete in “The Running Man, Jr.” and after they won, they became national celebrities and marketing tools for the Capital -- the big, super evil federal overseer who puts the boot to any poverty-stricken dissidents that even think about asking for potable water. But, at the end of the last movie, Katniss is rescued by some sort of anti-government revolutionary group, led by Julianne Moore in a bad wig and Philip Seymour Hoffman, back when he was still not dead and stuff. By the way, with those eyebrows, holy shit, should he have played John Madden if they had ever made a biopic about him.

“Mockingjay,” then, picks up precisely where the last film left off. Katniss has been recruited by the resistance to become the literal face of their propaganda efforts, which basically entail her poorly reading lines in front of a green screen while a dude in a wheelchair edits it in Photoshop. Meanwhile, Peeta -- the albino love interest who’s so pale, he makes Ed Cullen look like a Puerto Rican -- is up there in the Capital, where Stanley Tucci feeds him lines in bullshit government-fabricated television interviews.

So, the resistance decide to take a page out of the oppressor’s book and cook up their own wartime propaganda, even hiring this blonde chick with a Trent Reznor-circa-1990 haircut and a dude without a tongue to walk around filming her in the middle of war zones while she points at rubble and makes aircraft carriers explode with one arrow. Oh, and at one point, Woody Harrelson shows up, and he’s all drunk and stuff. Or talking about wanting to be drunk and stuff, which I supposed wouldn’t be all that indistinguishable from the actual words that come out of his mouth on a daily basis.

So, the Capital decide to order an air strike on the resistance compound, but they can’t really find it, and there’s this part where Katniss’s sister tries to find a cat when the airlocks are about to close shut, and when the bombing is over, there’s a whole bunch of white roses everywhere, which I think is supposed to be symbolic and stuff.

Then, Katniss records a song that sounds a lot like a tribute to Jim Crow era lynchings, which apparently galvanizes the downtrodden into picking up their arms and sticking it to the man. Eventually, the resistance decide to storm the Capital and rescue Peeta by knocking out their power grid, and there’s this one part where Katniss and President Snow -- played by Donald Sutherland, who by some voodoo spell, is still alive -- and everybody thinks he’s going to capture the raiders, but they manage to get out alive unscathed. Except for one catch: when Peeta awakens, he’s all psychotic and stuff and he tries to strangle Katniss to death. Apparently, the feds gave him some crazy juice and subject him to the old “Clockwork Orange” treatment so now he’s been all reverse psychology-fied to hate his girlfriend and stuff.

And on that note, the movie ends, leaving the door wide ass open for “Mockingjay Part 2,” which will undoubtedly make a ton of money at the Cineplex next autumn.

All in all, I thought “Mockingjay” was a pretty decent movie, but a bit of a step down from “Catching Fire.” I thought the mock Gaullism going on was a bit much, and I strongly preferred the sillier violence of the last flick -- complete with blood storms and stinging insect attacks and whatnot -- over the blunter bullet-to-the-skull fascist mayhem on full display here.

Alas, I have a hard time chastising any movie that glorifies anti-statist furor to middle schoolers, and if given the choice between the skirts from Frozen or Katniss’ federalist-slaying ass? Yeah, I’m going to encourage my daughter to model herself after the character who has no qualms about exploding public infrastructure, thank you very much.

My Score:

Two and a half tofu dogs out of four.

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A Very ALDI Kind of Thanksgiving!

How long does $25 worth of ALDI goods last during the Thanksgiving season? As it turns out: until damn near Christmas.

For those of you unfamiliar with the ALDI chain of grocery stores, they're basically the Dollar Tree of supermarkets -- the aisles are lined with miscellaneous knockoff goods, everything is being sold at discounted prices and the people who work there are probably on some sort of work release program. It's also a business founded by Nazis, but we're probably all tired of hearing about that little chestnut by now, I'm assuming.

Even though the chain's spaghetti ingredients almost killed me last year, me and my better half decided to celebrate Thanksgiving this year by holding an all-ALDI  produce pre-Thanksgiving meal. Unfortunately, our schedules got all screwy, and we had to abandon our original plans for what, no doubt, would've been the greatest dinner since Jesus's last meal. [Sidenote: Do you ever wonder what Jesus actually ate at the Last Supper? I always meant to ask my Sunday School teacher, but after that time I asked her if Yeshua ever experienced diarrhea, I suppose it was the best if I remained mum from thereon out.]

Needless to say, I purchased a metric ton of food, easily filling up my shopping cart (which are all quarter-operated, by the way) with "Chef's Cupboard" and "Cheese Club" delicacies. Since ALDI don't believe in handing out free plastic bags, I had to take my collection of comestibles and just toss them in the back of my trunk like I was on my way to a Hooverville or something. That's really the best thing about going to ALDI, I believe; it always makes you feel quite a bit more destitute than you were the day before.

All in all, I spent a little under $25 on what was no doubt the largest assortment of groceries I have purchased...well, probably ever. With ALDI-Giving firmly on my mind, I made sure no item, no matter how trivial or minute, was left off my grocery list -- imitation butter, imitation soy milk, brown sugar (which was actually more grey looking than brown, but whatever.) Hell, I even picked up some extra aluminum foil, you know, just in case. This was going to be the feast of a lifetime, without question...or the last one of my lifetime. One or the other.

So, with the sudden cancellation of ALDI-Giving 2013, I found myself with a huge stockpile of foodstuffs. Ever the food-curious sort, I've spent the last couple of weeks trying to dream up the most interesting dishes I could with the ingredients at my disposal. Three weeks later, here are the ALDI meals that have kept me upright and carrying on, amigos and amigo-ettes:

DISH NUMBER ONE:

Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes! 

Instant mashed potatoes are pretty much the easiest thing in the world to make. You rip open a pouch, pour your potato dust in a microwave safe bowl, add some milk (or in my instance, soy milk), and a chunk or two of butter, and after about five minutes being radioactively bombarded, VOILA: a fitting, mostly flavorless meal fit for the burliest of hobos.

Shockingly, these ALDI-branded potatoes weren't that bad. In fact, I'd say they wee quite delicious, and relatively filling  considering the price point. Bachelors of the world (as well as those with Bachelor's degrees,) take note: these things might just save your life some day. Or save you a dollar or two. One or the other, really.

DISH NUMBER TWO:

Herbes de Provence Stuffing!

First off, I have no idea what the hell "Herbes de Provence" meant. According to the Internet, that's basically nothing more than a fancy way of saying "a bunch of random dried spices mixed together, like basil and thyme." I could've checked the ingredients on the back of the box, but who has time to KNOW WHAT THE HELL IT IS YOU ARE EATING WHEN YOU COULD IN FACT BE EATING IT INSTEAD.

Well, anyway, this stuff tasted pretty bad. The stuffing itself was way too mushy, and the spices were way too subtle. All in all, the dish kinda' tasted like cardboard, and not that good Pizza Hut box kind of cardboard, that has pieces of congealed cheese still matted onto it. Recommended for the malnourished and fans of the frustratingly bland only.

DISH NUMBER THREE:

String Bean and Potato Casserole! 

The first two dishes were pretty by-the-numbers, so for ALDI meal number three, I decided to get a little inventive. Green beans and boiled potatoes are generally pretty good on their own, so why not mix 'em together with cranberry white cheese for a microwaved casserole?

...well, uh, I kinda' liked it, but as we all know by now, my tastes ain't exactly the most refined in the world either. Admittedly, the dish itself looks a bit putrid, and that first bite is a little startling, but as you continue to nom your way through, I think you'll come to appreciate the delightful intricacies of the meal nonetheless. It's like eating Ireland, if Ireland was blanketed in a thick sheet of suspiciously fruity-tasting milk curd.

Since we're at the halfway point of the menu, perhaps it's time we take a brief respite, no? Among the finer items you'll encounter at ALDI is their line of in-store colas, all of which appear to be modeled after much more famous soda brands."GT Cola" appears to be their "Coca-Cola" equivalent, and to be perfectly honest, it really isn't that bad of a beverage. The weird thing is, it's taste totally doesn't sync up with its scent at all; while the drink tastes like watered down Coke, the product itself actually smells more like wood varnish. I've never really bought into the anti-soda lobby's scare tactics before, but when something designed for human ingestion smells THAT MUCH like nail polish remover...well, perhaps my concerns aren't all that unwarranted, no?

DISH NUMBER FOUR:

Pesto Macaroni with Mozzarella Cheese! 

Macaroni and cheese is probably the ultimate comfort food, but I've never really been a fan of that pouch-protected orange dust that Kraft keeps telling us is "cheese," somehow. With that in mind, I decided to spice up this rather average boxed meal by pumping in some pesto and, a very special ingredient...

What you are looking it here is a product that, over the course of the year, has become my White Whale of sorts. Around Casa de Internet Is In America, the above-product is typically referred to as "Ingles Cheese," because a similar peppery and olive oil-enthused mozzarella chunk was marketed at the regional Ingles chains in my neck of the woods for quite some time. And then, right before I planned on purchasing a block, the damn things vanished from the international cheese section, and I've been fairly bitter ever since. Finding this eerily similar product at ALDI definitely made my heart skip a beat, and it's annexation to the macaroni dish certainly made the makeshift meal all the more exciting for me.

As an overall dish, it wasn't too bad. The combination of pouch dust and still-kinda-solid mozzarella didn't necessarily result in the best taste and texture in the world, but that cheese-on-cheese violence was nicely complimented by the ALDI-branded pesto sauce, which in my humble opinion, was actually legitimately delicious. It may not have been fine Italian cuisine, but if you ask me? This wasn't a bad little MacGyvered meal one iota.

DISH NUMBER FIVE:

Mixed Vegetables with Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing!

And now we come to the vegetables. This frozen bag of somewhat Asian-styled veggies had a pretty hard-to-ignore selling point, which was the inclusion of same savory balsamic dressing.

Which, by the way, came in the form of a frozen, vacuum-sealed packet that I may or may not have accidentally punctured in my attempt to poke holes in the bag of vegetables. I guess there's not much I can tell you about how mildly thawed carrots and string beans taste, but the dressing was downright superb -- probably, because I am 98 percent convinced that the proprietary sauce was actually Heinz 57.

DISH NUMBER SIX:

Pesto Potatoes O'Brien!

And for the grand finale? Pesto-soaked potatoes O'Brien, which was the only product I purchased that had to be legitimately cooked with fire and iron and shit instead of just being microwaved. 

Potatoes O'Brien, for the unlearned, are basically Tater Tots, only with some chunks of onion and pepper chunked in the bag. Yeah, it's basically a frozen container of glorified hash brown wedges, but since when was that a negative, exactly? The pesto, of course, added an unorthodox zing to the dish as a hell, and the overall final product wasn't half bad. Of course, I'm using my own standardized definition of what constitutes "half bad," so for most human beings out there, perhaps you should downgrade my praise to "merely edible" -- you snobby elitists. 

In case you are wondering (and you should), my upfront $25 investment in ALDI produce lasted me pretty close to a month, and I still have a ton of extra stuff left over. As quality foodstuffs go, you pretty much know what you're getting into here; the food is bland to decent, but pending you have a knack for mixing spices and proportioning out ingredients, you could probably make this stuff go a long way.

And if not, just remember these sage words of wisdom, which will probably be etched on my headstone someday: "Just put some pesto on it, and you'll probably be all right."

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