Graceland by Paul Simon:

I thought that readers might play these songs as they read the Dark Side but this one has such a touching narrative, you might want to pay attention to the whole thing first. Classic Americana.

Woke is tangled. There was an incident in Melbourne where four police officers on the side of a freeway were accidentally killed by a doped-up Indian truck driver. The man they’d pulled over, also off his tits, then took video and taunted the dying cops. Being a white guy, he became the main story.

One of the cops was a regular at a prominent gay bar. This being the current year, it was no secret and the bar put on blue lights to remember him. Then the Woker-than-thou complained this was inappropriate because of Aboriginal deaths in police custody.

On the Outside by Sheryl Crow:

I find 90s music terribly depressing these days because of what has happened since.

Wow:

Go to the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) website sometime if you’d like a glimpse of what an unvarnished conversation about a country’s national interest might look like. In a short essay posted to the site, the ADL explains why the state of Israel should not allow more Arabs to become citizens with voting rights . . .

The New York Times is exposing corporate Enemies of the People of Colour who failed to sign the statement against Georgia’s new voting rules.

The US is not pulling out of Afghanistan – the conflict is being privatized and troops will still be there secretly under the CIA et al.

On the tempests of misery:

Americans are too skinny.

Most American women want to stay home with the kids and many resent their hubbies for lacking the means to make it happen.

Ben Franklin’s son was on the side of the King and spent the war in a Connecticut jail.

The US admits that the F-35 died in the arse:

This is a very good article about how corona hysteria took over the world:

The truth may be that the coronavirus did not blink into existence in Wuhan one year ago. Rather, it had been incubating in the psyche of modern societies for years. The ease with which populations not only acquiesced to governmental restrictions but also wilfully demanded more of them is proof that we had already accepted the premise of the coronavirus lockdowns into our hearts long ago. It is worth noting that almost all the trends and changes that the coronavirus has seemingly unleashed are simply an acceleration of what was preexisting: Atomization, a retreat from the physical world into the digital, a neurotic collective hysteria in the face of death without a spiritual framework, the expectation that the government will provide, a pseudo-religious belief in experts and scientific redemption, and the hyper-politicization of communal activity.

The fact is the physical world has lost its grip over the modern imagination. Going out to earn a living is an almost archaic activity when we are inching towards states so all-encompassing that they will provide a universal basic income driven by fiat money printing. The rise of Bitcoin is a reaction to the feeling that our economies are a giant fiction, running up debts that are never intended to be repaid, presided over by a handful of oligarchs with more wealth than we could ever even imagine. Under these conditions, heading outside and into the office seems terribly outmoded. Likewise, in the digital age, sex has been relegated to a solo activity as pornography supplants procreation for the OnlyFans generation. In the West, there are fewer and fewer communal anchors as pubs and churches close. All of this contributes to the feeling that there is nothing out there in the world of any value, and so the loss of the freedom to go outside and to associate for many has been more an inconvenience than a matter of life and death.

From Audacious Epigone, Black is Beautiful (just ask them):