Yes, it’s been too long, but I’ve been hard at work writing something that resembles a book. On the side, I’ve been trying very hard to figure out whether mimicry is the right postcolonial solution. Might have been for a moment there, or perhaps when executed in a way that does manage to subvert, but there seems to be a big-time mimicry fad going on right now and its institutionalization just doesn’t seem to be helping at all, except maybe helping elect Hillary as President. You know I was just rhyming the other day,

Blackened the cast of

Musical costume drama

Ambivalent mimick-ing

Like I was Homi Bhabha

Perhaps this can be pitched to Disney. Meanwhile, not much else to do out here except the fact we’re out for presidents to represent us, in the form of dollah bills, or whatever bitcoins can go into the cups of the blessed of the subways. I can think of a hundred things I did this week that didn’t make any money, and just a few things that did. As usual the ones that didn’t felt better.

Yet More on Puerto Rico Debt Crisis

Here’s one of them, anyway: I appeared on a radio show on KALW about the Puerto Rico Debt Crisis with David Deyen, who did a great piece for The American Prospect a few months back.

It was a lot of fun, but there’s one thing I should mention. We failed to discuss the looming financial control board, which would erode Puerto Rican autonomy even further and hark back to the early days of the colony when there were US-appointed military governors and an 11-member Executive Council appointed by the governor and only five of the members were required to be Puerto Rican.

Zoe Saldaña’s Prosthetic Nina Simone

This issue is really blowing up, isn’t it? I’ve been a big proponent of Afro-Latinx-ness and the idea that many Latinxs are capable of inhabiting the African-American experience to a considerable extent. Yet this particular instance is definitely troubling, when you consider that Zoe Saldaña (who doesn’t seem to wanna use the tilda for whatever reason) used a skin-darkening agent and a prosthetic nose to play Nina Simone in an upcoming biopic. Watching the trailer kind of made me uncomfortable.

And wow, this notyourmule thing, the hashtag responding to some noise about who is more oppressed than who. Talk about divide and conquer. We shouldn’t be devolving into separate clamoring groups with competing grievances. Also saying Latinxs should not get caught up in being the third brown wheel, particularly when by saying brown one means not black. Don’t understand the separation, One Love, yo. I did think that Chris Rock joke with the Asian kids was mad uncool. Actually the whole monologue was so dysfunctional I turned it off.

Trump Conspiracy Theorizing

I admit I was one of those who wish they didn’t have to talk about Trump, even though I wrote a fairly extensive post about him last year, focusing on the connections between his strategy and that of openly racist pro-welfare state European parties. But although I hate conspiracy theories, after Thursday’s debate, some crazy things started to click for me and I wrote them all down. I was partially inspired by the revelations that appeared on a few sites about his coziness with the media.

Then there was the strange revelations and  explanations of things Trump supposedly said to The New York Times.  And finally this, re-tweeted by our old pal Edward Snowden, of something Hitler said to the Times in 1922:

So, what follows then is a work-in-progress of a Conspiracy Theory that could liven up your next party in honor of the full moon, or the spring equinox:

I Don’t Believe This Is an Accident

If the current hemming and hawing coming out of CPAC is to be believed, the Republican base is “shocked” about the growing inevitability of Donald Trump’s nomination as their party’s candidate for President. But I’m not buying it.

The reason I’m not buying it is that Thursday’s debate on Fox News Network was all about ratings. It was a Passion Play that was ostensibly designed to crucify Trump but only wound up making him more resilient because it killed the idea of truth and facts.

I may be giving Roger Ailes too much credit, but if his goal was to destroy the idea that political debates should be based on arguing facts and legitimate political positions this debate totally accomplished that. Ailes and Fox News were so smugly confident about this triumph of the absurd that they had Chris Wallace and Megyn Kelly produce the most convincing graphic display of factual evidence that Trump was a blithering nonsensical idiot, knowing full well that the viewing audience would not care, and they didn’t. Trump won by saying his hands, therefore his dick was big, and calling Rubio a little man while hardly acknowledging Cruz.

By the way have you noticed that Cruz and Rubio are Hispanic, even though Hispanics don’t think so? Was it an accident that Trump’s main competition consisted of two Hispanics, who are not recognized as such by Hispanics, but are recognized as such by the openly racist hard core of Trump (and Republican) support?

What Fox and Ailes have accomplished is creating a space for a candidate to triumph openly exhibiting racist and fascist behavior, which is what they have wanted all along. This idea that the Republicans object is a farce! This is what they want! The normalization of anti-politics and prime-time thuggery!

[Don’t believe any of this, by the way]