Life Lesson from Donald Trump 4

I have been listening to Alison Gill's reading of the lovely Jack Smith's revised filing in the light of the Supreme Court's ruling that the president of the USA is legally immune for official acts, on the Jack podcast. I have been howling with laughter every time she does her impression of the orange freak but nonetheless it's provided me with yet another life lesson from him.

This is that if you are going to pretend that you're concerned about, say, election interference you should act as if you are and not just go looking for it where it would affect you personally. Smith's case would be a lot weaker if he couldn't keep pointing out that Trump wasn't looking for actual electoral problems because he only looked for it where Republicans lost.

Besides, every time Smith calls tRump 'the defendant' I want to hump his leg even more.

Obviously you shouldn't take legal advice from someone pretending to be a dog on the internet, but I believe this reflects a legal principle whose name I can't remember, that you should at least behave in accordance with the position you are claiming. Until recently an example of this in UK law was in adverse possession, where if you squatted a property for long enough and the owner made no effort to get you out, after a certain length of time the property belonged to you. Whereas if you'd done that and in court the owner proved they'd been making endless efforts to get you out, you wouldn't be granted adverse possession.

Essentially in one case the owner is acting like he doesn't mind you having the property and in the other the owner is acting like he doesn't want you to have it. To translate this in Trump terms, he's saying the election wasn't secure but is acting as if he's just looking to win regardless of what he has to do.

This also reflects a magical principle often called 'acting in accord': you put your intent out there and it behoves you to act as if that's what is happening. If you act in a way different to the intent you have put out you're messing it up and it won't happen.

Luckily Donald tRump is obviously not a magician otherwise his hair and skin would look different. 😱

Crying Wolf Too Often

Surely we are all familiar with the story of the boy who kept crying 'Wolf!' when there wasn't one with the result that eventually nobody believed him and then one day there was an actual wolf. Of course everyone ignored his cries that there was a wolf with predictable results.

I realize that I have been thinking quite a lot over the past couple of years of how, like falsely saying there's a wolf, many of the principles of our society are not strategies intended for long term use and in fact cry wolf. I've referred to the way capitalism negates itself when carried to its natural conclusion, for example. Specifically the mythology of capitalism is that it encourages competition and anyone can get in on the act if they want. And so we have endless copies of the same businesses making the same products. But it also includes its downfall, because if there is actual competition there is nothing to stop the consumer choosing where to shop and putting some of the businesses out of business.

And so this is why the competition aspect easily flips into a monopoly (Amazon, anyone?) before progressing into fascism and force. The choice supposedly built into capitalism is an illusion, or rather a lie.

Perhaps the best example of this is the UK's privatised water companies, where in fact nobody gets any choice and can't not use them.

The theme of entities lying is built into religious and spiritual traditions across the board. For example Christians call their Satan the father of lies. And this idea of an untrue threat or promise can be found in hero myths.

It's most present to us moderns in social media, which is perhaps the best example of why lying and building systems on illusions doesn't work. You would have to be incredibly naive in 2024 not to be at least aware that accounts on social media may not be telling the truth and may not even be real people. It's so prevalent that I don't think there can be anyone unaware that media and social media manipulates things now. The almost laughably bad AI has also added to this.

This is exactly the same phenomenon as the boy crying wolf: you just can't keep on lying because people notice.

In this General Election year there's a lot of scare mongering going on about how the Tories are going to use disinformation in their campaign. I honestly can't understand why: beyond the +/- 25% who are so stupid, bigoted or blinded that they would vote for them anyway, in Britain the words Tory and liar are now synonymous. And this purely because of their prolific lies. 

The reality is that lying does not gain any cause or business a huge following alone (of course motivation is always more complex than I'm painting it here because I'm focusing on fibbing, monopolies and the way our institutions are not built on sustainable foundations).

The moral of the story is that sometimes if a situation feels like it can't be changed the thing to do is just let it progress as it is. Our overlords are not geniuses and it's very unlikely they'll have thought out the consequences of their actions.

And then have a good laugh at them. This is very important because it's an important banishing ritual in chaos magic.

Another Triumph

Two years ago I wrote about the effectiveness of The Review Spell. It's a magnificently powerful spell, and as I wrote then has a great effect in encouraging people who know something is wrong but aren't sure what.

I have been using this on the hopeless management company of this building for some time (not everything I do appears here). I have to say, apart from the obvious reviews from employees' friends, their reviews are terrible, and include words like fraud and criminal. I left a review commenting that people can get them back by claiming compensation from the ombudsman scheme that they have to belong to by law, and this review got ten likes very quickly.

Then this weekend they wrote letters addressed to the leaseholders about revised fire safety precautions following a risk assessment. Now, normally they write by post to the leaseholders because they're not all resident: this is what they do when they demand the service charge to make sure the leaseholders get them.

Instead what they did with these letters addressed to the leaseholders was scatter them on the floor outside the flats like pizza menus. They were therefore making sure not all the leaseholders would see them. And this is about fucking fire safety.

So I took pictures of the letters on the floor and posted them on their Google review with a dramatic caption to say they were for the Health and Safety Executive if there's a Grenfell here so they would know they hadn't communicated the revised fire precautions.

Guess what, a week later I got two more copies of the letter in the post, one to the resident and one to the leaseholder. 

And it's not even like they can reply to my review because I'll point out they still haven't replied to the complaint I sent them in January. But of course I have a separate plan for that. Once you're cursed by the Hound your life just becomes more and more difficult.

Happiness is Rebellion

Let's start with a tale Snopes says is an urban legend:

Lunching with English friends at the time of her husband's retirement, Madame de Gaulle was asked what she was looking forward to in the years ahead. "A penis," she replied without hesitation. The embarrassed silence that followed was finally broken by the former president. "My dear," he murmured, "I think the English don't pronounce the word quite like that. It's 'appiness.'"

We all know one of them, one of those annoyingly superior people who know best and act as if the world is their oyster. I'm not talking about becoming quite one of them, but about the attitude. They're ok and always will be. In the UK they tend to shop in Waitrose.

We have many of them in the government and nobody else's views impinge on them in any way.

What if we take the attitude and rebel by being happy? In a stressful, conflicted world it would be natural to be depressed and stressed beyond belief. I'm also not talking about minimising any of the shit that's going on in the world.

I'm talking about doing things that make us happy as a rebellion against the nonsense. An act of self care in the face of everything, if you like. A way of changing the script slightly.

Because when you make small changes they tend to have knock on effects elsewhere, like all magical acts.

It is also my firm conviction that the world is increasingly dividing into two factions. In true Hound fashion I call the factions the people who are cunts, and the ones who aren't cunts. The cunts want everyone except themselves to be miserable, and the non-cunts want everyone to be happy. This means that being happy, making sure you can be happy by doing things which make you happy, is actually an act of rebellion against the people who want everyone else to be miserable.

And this isn't just a positive behaviour. It is actually witchcraft. If you think about the bit in the Gospel of the Witches about the feast, it says, you will dance, sing, feast, make music and love, all in my praise... and this will continue until every last one of the oppressors is dead.

That sounds very much like the sort of thing I'm getting at. Like sticking your fingers up. And strangely enough I have a soundtrack for this!

Finally if you'd like something quieter I've just recently discovered there are people (all men, apparently) who are made happy by racing washing machines! AND they even get people in the comments requesting particular cycles. 😂

Sense of Place: Made in Birmingham (Again)

This is Jess Phillips, Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley constituency. I fucking love this woman AND she voted against the whip for a ceasefire and resigned her shadow cabinet role in protest.

You just *know* she's thinking 'set of cunts', don't you? This is why people either like or loathe Birmingham: it reflects back what you give out yourself and most people can't take that.

Incidentally I see Labour and the Tories are reported to be closer in polls than they were. I really hope that continues because a Lab/Con coalition government with a Lib Dem/Green coalition opposition would be hysterical.

Fox News Tarot Reading

I am absolutely howling that a) Focks News had a tarot reader on at all when most of its viewers are 'Christians'* and b) what happened when they did.

*Speaking as a witch, of course I'm well acquainted with Jesus and can tell you right now from him he has very very few followers indeed.

George Santos

Content warning: mental health, abuse

I am strangely fascinated by expelled Congressman and compulsive liar George Santos. How can anyone go through life just fibbing left, right and centre, and expect not to be caught out? It's wild.

In fact one of the reasons I'm so fascinated is that it happens I do know somebody like that who embroiders his history, and who has the exact same thing that you literally can't get a straight answer from him. When I met this person the people over us were sufficiently bothered that they asked him for his CV, which seems straightforward enough. I happen to know that it was a) fictional, b) voluminous and c) barking mad.

And that's the problem, that despite my background in mental health these two men make no sense to me. Typically psychotic beliefs just develop over time but don't change as these guys' stories do. Do they believe the fibs they tell? I can't believe that if someone was acutely mentally unwell enough not to be able to hold their own personality together, they would be able to function in life to, say, get up in the morning or carry on their normal activities. Nothing here makes sense.

I think there's a difference between my acquaintance (who luckily has an unusual name as well as a mania for publishing his lives on the internet so I can keep track of his changing story) doesn't profit by doing this. George Santos has apparently made significant profits from his lies, but my friend has never been well off and has had quite a disjointed life because of the need to keep moving on to a new fantasy when people catch up with him. In common with Santos my friend has also gone by a couple of different names, changing by deed poll, probably to match different identities. As a result the rest of his family currently have a completely different name to him. 🤦 He also has a history of saying he has various illnesses he didn't actually have.

It's also interesting to me that Santos has now started revealing things about the people who voted for his expulsion. The responsible thing, of course, would have been to reveal them using the appropriate channels anyway, since he knew them anyway. Revealing them as retribution feels like he was okay with everyone being corrupt as long as he was safe.

Time to draw some tarot cards! I'm expecting them to be all over the place which they nearly always are with people who are a bit psychopathic.

First it must be said that when shuffling the cards for this kind of reading I tend to take the ones that draw themselves to my attention, usually by sticking out or leaping out. In this case initially no cards stuck out of the deck, but then quite a lot did, and I picked the ones that felt prominent. This feels like his life and personality are very wide-ranging and he has loads of stuff going on, and obviously doesn't want to reveal everything. Frankly he may not be able to hold all his life together in his mind's eye, and may even see his life as a series of snap shots: I suspect this is something he has in common with my friend, who tends to talk about one fantasy at a time. 

First we have the King of Wands, which doesn't surprise me in the slightest. This king is Fire of Fire, the motive power behind the will. He represents the spark which starts things and is utterly unpredictable.

Next we have Justice, a Major Arcana card representing equilibrium or balance. I was expecting the cards to be all over the shop but nobody could put the word balance in the same sentence as Santos.

Then we have 8 of Pentacles, which the Golden Dawn called the Lord of Prudence, another word nobody could mention in connection with him: an indication that when faced with someone as fluid as George Santos the tarot tends to revert to snapshots of aspects of the person's life and personality. Interestingly this is an accurate reflection of what both my friend and George Santos do: tell one fantasy at a time and don't reference the others they've told. In this of course, if they actually are consciously lying and don't believe their story in the there and then, they are spectacularly bad liars. Lying, surely, requires an ability to make your lie hang consistently with the rest of your story and they don't even try. It's possible, of course, that they think everyone does this, and that there is no such thing as truth, everyone telling the story that suits them at the time. If this is the case, the roots of doing this will certainly reach all the way back to childhood: not necessarily abuse but some very inconsistent and incapable parenting, probably in quite a desperate situation. Normally the 8 of Pentacles has a significant reference to work or study and is sometimes called the apprentice card. It is seen as a positive sign that you aren't where you're aiming for yet, but you can get there. Ironically it has a more negative connotation that you're focussing on the small things and not paying attention to the whole picture: those snap shots again.

Next is The Emperor, another Major Arcana card which I wouldn't expect to be around George Santos, but I must remember that this reading has been triggered by my wondering at the fictional nature of his public persona! The Emperor represents the setting down of battle in exchange for rule of law: it's very stable and settled. The Hebrew letter attributed to it indicates a vision into the inner world which nurtures this stability.

Finally we have Strength, yet another Major which is the only one I would have expected to be here! It represents the subduing of nature or animal impulses. Again this may sound odd, but it's the first indicator we've had that animal instincts and impulses even exist in him, and they must surely be present for someone to lie his way into the US Congress.

Perhaps putting this together it's not as contradictory as it seemed to start with. We have an ability to make things happen, even if it is completely unpredictable, leading to an (attempted?) balance or equilibrium. This is spurred on by Santos's ability to work at things, although his tendency to focus on the snapshot in time and inability or unwillingness to look at the whole thing, is what messes this up for him. The Emperor and Strength (and the other cards indicating stability or equilibrium) I think also indicate his self perception or what he wants to happen: it ain't gonna happen but this is the tarot reading of someone who's barmy.

There is another imbalance here, though. In a reading of only five cards he's got the disproportionate number of three of the less numerous Major Arcana. These represent the greater powers in life, the sort of things we can't always control. To get that number suggests he really isn't in control at all. I get the distinct impression of someone who's feeling out of control, trying to control his life but doesn't have the ability to do it in a way which doesn't involve fibbing and so self sabotaging. I think he's one of these people who've had (not necessarily through anyone's fault) an upbringing which hasn't given him the ability to function in society or have sensible coping strategies. If you like the problem is one of poverty rather than violence. This poverty of agency is reflected in only one 'pip' card, the ones which represent actions or events we can control. He's also unfortunate enough to get the apprentice card, reflecting a need to learn how to carry himself. He's also unfortunate to get as his sole Court Card (representing people or personality characteristics) one of the most fiery and unpredictable.

This guy's a trainwreck of inability to live and unstable will and instincts, fighting with his desire for stability and equilibrium. 

It's entirely possible he just didn't understand that standing for Congress would expose him to a level of scrutiny that would reveal the way he carries on his life. But as a final question I have to ask tarot what on earth possessed him to stand for Congress when what has actually happened could well eventuate? He gets one of the barmiest answers you could wish for: the 8 of Cups, Lord of Abandoned Success. This is usually seen as a positive card, the uneven arrangement of the cups suggesting that the success the person is abandoning was somehow wrong and they're reaching for something better or higher. It's possible he has a poisonous combination of poverty of ability and ruthless ambition, or he may have seen Congress as something he deserved or the rule represented by the Emperor. 

But we know his failure to hold his story together was always going to screw the ambition up. This may sound rather uncharacteristic of the fiery Hound, but I'm feeling rather sorry for him in a way I wasn't at the start of this reading. Still wouldn't lend him a fiver and expect to get it back, though.

Next is Jeremy C..., sorry, Hunt

 Of course you all knew that Jeremy Hunt, currently Chancellor of the Exchequer, was looking to be cursed, didn't you.

Jeremy Richard Streynsham Hunt*, you are cursed and nothing you do prospers.

*Another stupid bloody name although not as bad as Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

I commented in a previous post in this series that an important ritual in chaos magic is banishing things by laughing at them and you can help this curse along by watching this video of broadcasters referring to Mr... Hhhhhunt by his correct name.

And if you'd like to be entertained there's this from some years ago by my favourite journalist, Jonathan Pie:

I'm not Cursing my Own MP

... although that's largely because she (Shabhana Mahmood, Labour, Birmingham Ladywood) cursed herself by abstaining in the ceasefire vote as she was whipped, and as reported in the Birmingham Dispatch has rightly drawn significant backlash for this. She even put out a mealy mouthed statement about the rules of war reflecting the statement from Starmer that started the row. I'm therefore not feeling the need to intervene at this point.

It's helped by the fact that this constituency is one of the ones with the biggest Moslem populations in the country. You will see from the handy graphic that the reality does not represent the completely Islamic Birmingham that the gammons fantasize about.

I am delighted to say that there have been protests and plans are being made to take her out at the next election:

Protest: We went along to the protest in Alum Rock to speak with residents. The demo was peaceful with a lot of families and children present. Some very impassioned speeches were made, many of which called on constituents to use their vote to remove Mahmood from her seat. We spoke to a young woman called Maleeha Khan who said:

There are innocent children dying. Everyday we're seeing kids losing their parents, losing every family member that they have and yet our voices are not doing anything. And people that we've voted to represent us are failing to do so. We will no longer vote for these people if they don't represent our views.

Mohammed Jahangir, 55, a researcher in Engineering at the University of Birmingham lives in Harborne — Gill’s constituency — but came to the nearest protest he could find. He referenced the UK position on the Russia-Ukraine conflict and said: “We want the UK Government to send the same message that oppression of this type shouldn't be happening.”

Backlash: Lib Dem councillor for Aston Ayoub Khan, who stood against Mahmood for the Ladywood seat in 2010, was at the protest and made a speech. He told The Dispatch he is “confident there will be a massive turnout against Shabana Mahmood” and that “she will lose her seat”. Source

That kinda sounds a bit prophetic doesn't it? 'She will lose her seat'?

It would be especially prophetic because I would love to see that sizeable Labour majority overturned and get something else (don't worry, the right whingers in this constituency are so few and far between even if you divide the Labour vote FPTP would still be very unlikely to give us a Con member so I'm not bothered about that). She does her casework but she does exactly what she's whipped to do and in common with the rest of the Labour party no longer offers an effective opposition and it's time. A change would be overturning nearly ninety years of history and I looove to expect the impossible!

Images: religious composition table ONS, election tables Wikipedia

And Next is the Wrong in the US

And next to be cursed* is the hard right (actually wrong) in the US.

You are cursed. Your power wanes as this candle burns down and nothing you do prospers. What you want for others returns to you.

ProximaBlue I've done this as a general thing because the video you sent me isn't viewable in the UK. Happy to do specific politicians if you give me names of course.

*Although of course like the rest of humanity they are the real source of any curse.

Yet Another Curse

Although this idiot's cursed himself. Very gratified that his telling Labour MPs to vote against a ceasefire in Gaza seems to have driven a roller through the shadow cabinet and initiated a full scale rebellion. 👏

Keir Rodney Starmer you are cursed. Every death you cause returns to you and nothing you do can prosper.

Shout out to Tahir Ali (Birmingham Hall Green), Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill), Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham Perry Barr), and Jess Phillips (Birmingham Yardley) for doing the right thing. The blessing of the witch is on you.

I don't know the others but I just knew we could rely on our very own Jess Phillips: she's like the Beorma spirit distilled into one person.

And the next

...is, of course, Rishi business.

Rishi Sunak, you are cursed. Nothing you do prospers and every death you cause returns to you. Your downfall is happening now.

Magic is a Wild Thing

Sometimes my own magic surprises me with its unexpected effects.

In this case we've gone, in a few days, from the Home Secretary (may her name be forgotten and she face a lengthy prison sentence) making out that peaceful demonstrations at the Cenotaph on Armistice Day were hate marches...

To the usually hopeless constabulary managing correctly to arrest the far-right counter-protestors that turned up and not the protestors calling for a ceasefire, the media (EVEN the Daily Fail) accurately recording what actually happened and EVERYONE, even high ups in the police and army, correctly placing the blame for what happened at the door of Cruella Braverman and howling for her to be sacked.

Could it be the Establishment have finally had enough of this government?

There is some worry floating around that being sacked would help her bid to be leader of the Tóraidhe party: but it's no bother if she is. Her policies appeal to the actual far right rather than traditional Tory party members and both constituencies hate the colour of her face, so it wouldn't help them.

I think there might actually be hope for 🇬🇧 after all.

Another Curse

Stipe me they're queueing up to be cursed.

Sue-Ellen Cassiana Braverman* you are cursed. Every death you cause returns to you. Nothing you do can prosper and you are doomed.

This curse is strengthened every time anyone mentions, buys, eats, or even thinks of tofu.

And let us not forget that in chaos magic laughter is a very powerful banishing ritual and here we have a mistress of banishing:

*Stupid name.

Urban Grimoire: The Benefits of Blocking

I have written here before about the similarities of many acts we perform in social media with some of the classical magical acts. This post is inspired by my complete conversion to the satisfying act of blocking other accounts on social media.

You'll note of course that I say 'accounts' rather than 'people', and the sad fact is that many of the most annoying accounts on social media aren't people at all, they're computers pretending to be people and this is only going to get worse as Artificial Intelligence improves.

That said, judging by the conversational ability of some people I would rather communicate with AI but that's a whole different subject.

In fact sometimes I wonder whether troll accounts' relentless parroting of stupid things means the person behind them even is technically a person. You have to wonder whether the lack of empathy or conscience of these people actually means they're lacking some essential human characteristics.

Be that as it may, you don't want to deal with them and my message of hope for the world is that you don't have to.

Block them.

Go on, don't even say anything to them, just block them.

Now, if you're thinking that they're saying stupid dangerous things on the internet and someone has to challenge their nonsense because other people might be affected by it, you're just proving that you do have a conscience and empathy for other people, which it is important to remember that internet trolls don't. In fact I used to think that they should be combatted but have abandoned that idea. I think the reality in 2023 is that the world has divided between the nice people who live in reality and the idiots who don't. Yes, I know I'm being horrible, but we live in a shitty world populated by cunts and I'm not going to waste my remaining years arguing with them.

So I have changed position on this and honestly it's glorious.

I've gone from regretfully blocking the most annoying accounts occasionally to full scale block fests. While I was still on Twitter I once blocked 367 accounts in one sitting. I've even started leaving a passive aggressive ending on comments that I'll just block you if you reply stupidly. I block people because I don't like their profile picture. I block them because their dog is over groomed. I block them because I don't like their house. The slightest mention of bitcoin and you're blocked. I even block people because I've taken one of my famous dislikes to them; all these as well as the more obvious reasons that their politics, racial views and anything else about them are loathsome.

The magical act which I think this is most like is either binding (although specific to me, not stopping them harming generally, which would be more like reporting them) or one of those spells where you just fade into the background so the target doesn't notice you. It actually does have a magical power because it's not allowing the account to have access to you. I just don't think it's true when people say people only have the power over you that you allow them, because, hello, what about rape. But in social media terms it is actually possible to stop someone having access to you at the press of a button.

I've actually started setting out to block people: yes I know I'm a misanthropist but I have found that blocking a lot of people has the effect of quietening down the conversation on a lot of posts. The best way to do this is to find one of sort of posts which are like a magnet to gammons and MAGATs: usually ones of youngsters misbehaving, of poverty in the US, of people suffering some terrible misfortune, or pictures of groups such as Jews or People of Colour. I honestly don't know what sort of a cunt you have to be to make abusive comments on a video of a mentally ill person, drug addict or asylum seeker, but I know that I don't want them around me and just block them all.

The reader will of course also recognise that a power analysis of this means I'm not giving them power. It took me a long time to get this but not engaging does actually not give them what they want, and might actually make them piss off if they're a real person. And this is absolutely doing the Great Work.

I only have one exception to this which is that I make a point of insulting brexiteers, adding that I'll give them time to read it before blocking them and then block them when they get enraged. Because pointing out their error to Leave voters is a national pleasure and sport just like cricket and cheese rolling, and I have to do that and then block them.

When I started thinking about this post I was thinking that I should probably include a potential downside of blocking loads of accounts, and was thinking that I would probably identify that it would be losing an opportunity to influence the audience to an interaction. However on further reflection I think that in 2023 social media users have no excuse not to have an understanding of how disinformation is used online and will not be easily deflected from vile opinions. If at this stage you're easily influenced by anti-vaxxers, Brexiteers, Donald Trump, the Cuntservative Party and other liars, you are never going to learn except the hard way. I don't have to inflict you on me.

And treating yourself well is the ultimate act of rebellion in our society.

Let's end with Mark calling in to LBC and demonstrating why this country will never have another bloody revolution and ably demonstrating the reason laughing at things is a banishing ritual in chaos magic:

Donald Trump Yet Again

So Bojo and Dorries have both resigned as MPs now and I was particularly delighted with the campaign of trolling that highlighted how Dorries hadn't been doing her job for yonks. This is why I don't think we'll have a bloody revolution in this country: they can't be relentlessly humiliated and know they've lost if they're dead. And we do that so well, it's a national characteristic.

Meanwhile that fuckwit Trump is selling t-shirts saying Never Surrender with a picture of him surrendering for the - is it the fourth or the fifth time? - I've lost count. So let's check in with what's going on shall we.

I'm delighted that if I'd had to guess the tarot cards for his current situation these are pretty much what I would have guessed LOL.

First we have the Knight of Wands. The Knights are the getting on with it and defensive/offensive cards, and that energy is here combined with the suit of Wands. Wands are about doing things, exerting your will or influence, going out and grabbing the pussy. This is a tremendously positive card for the querent (normally).

But not if you then come to the nine of Swords, which is the summit of the troubled, quarrelsome Swords suit. Swords are about thoughts, and let's just say that you really don't want this card appearing in your reading. You will of course see that in the RWS deck there's a suggestion that all nine of your troubles are all lined up in front of you but you can't even bring yourself to look at them. This card is the summit of earthly trouble.

This means so far we have a court card indicating going out and actioning your will, combined with another card where you've got so many troubles you can't even look. When you get those combined you're ideally placed to make even more mistakes (or commit more crimes) because you're rushing about, flailing with your wand, but there is so much going on that you're not examining it properly or thinking about it.

Finally we have the 4 of Pentacles, and it really does make me happy to see this card here. Fours (like the four legs of a table) indicate solidity and stability (or stubbornness if you take it too far) and combined with the element of Earth indicates stability of worldly goods - property, business, money.

That is, it does if it's not preceded by the last two cards and this means I think Trump is feeling the pain financially. Apparently RICO cases are horrendously expensive to defend and I think the particular trouble he's faced with is the realistic prospect that so many lawsuits will actually ruin him. I would hypothesise that he paid his bail with a bondsman on the principle that he doesn't do paying for anything and intends not to pay the bondsman.

Because obviously him also getting pursued by a bounty hunter would be the perfect next drama.

All together these cards indicate he's desperate, flailing around for solutions to the perfect legal storm and actually worried about the money now. 

You can tell, actually, because I'm a native English speaker and can't tell you what the fuck this is about, but I can promise you he couldn't define any of the words he tries to use.

Life Lesson from Donald Trump 3

He's giving us life lessons thick and fast! This one's also easy, and it is that if you find your latest in a succession of lawyers are finding it difficult to manage one of your criminal charges because the court appearances are clashing with appointments in another of your criminal charges, it's time to reconsider your life choices.

The specific one of course being if you are running to be President of the USA you stand down and publish a statement saying that you are still claiming to be innocent but don't want the presidency to be sullied by a candidate undergoing criminal trials.

...That is unless it's all about you.

Grooming

Trigger warning: this post contains descriptions of grooming and abuse.

This is about the process that abusers do to potential victims preparatory to actually abusing them, rather than any other sort of grooming. It is also about real grooming and not the imaginary grooming that right w(h)ingers see in drag, being kind to other people and social justice.

This post is heavily reliant on this page.

Grooming is the process of an abuser building a relationship with a potential victim and sometimes their wider family gaining their trust and power over the child in preparation for abuse.

So we already have several clear features: stranger danger never did really exist and it is now understood that abusers are known to their victims. They build a relationship with the family for the same reason, that if the child's family think they know, and respect and trust, the abuser, they will allow the abuser more opportunities to abuse the child and are less likely to believe the child when s/he says they've been abused.

The page I've linked above stresses that the abuser also makes the child think that what is happening is normal, and to isolate them. The example I've used above of the parents not believing their abused child features the isolation and the way the parents' thinking has also been conditioned by the abuser.

This is of course to gain trust and so grooming is invariably pleasant and kind to start off with. You are conditioned to think that the abuser couldn't possibly do something bad which of course easily crosses into blaming yourself or not trusting yourself.

The abuser then gains power by manipulation and often gifts involving tests. They are testing the victim's compliance and that they won't tell, by starting with lower level boundary violations that are unlikely to give them much trouble, and seeing what the child does. It is only after much testing and setting up the child to think it's them, that actual abuse will happen. Incidentally this is why it simply isn't true when it comes out that an organisation is simply riddled with abuse and everyone is very surprised: in reality unless everyone is lying, this means they haven't noticed all the grooming and because of the number of boundary violations necessary before abuse, there has to be all sorts of other things wrong in the organization that everyone is conveniently missing.

Because it just doesn't happen that adults who know their victims suddenly start raping them with no warning: there are always warnings.

But the knowledge of this pattern of abusive behaviour - building a relationship, gaining trust, making the victim trapped and isolated, gaining power by manipulation, making the victim think they're initiating it, then actually abusing - is a very useful knowledge to have. Not only to recognise it in children (the linked page has a list of signs a child is being groomed) but because it is handy to recognise when someone is trying to groom you in reality.

Now I'm going to be my usual inappropriate self and say that since I was a psychiatric nurse for 25 years I gained the kind of reactions and gallows humour you get from dealing with endless trauma day in and day out. It is not unusual in the profession to hear a particularly arse-licking member of staff as being 'groomed' for management, for example. I like this image because it stresses how they're being used as well as getting promotion, but this idea of grooming is definitely applicable to other circumstances than child sexual abuse.

The best example is churches, who groom and manipulate their congregants and ministers to comply and keep schtum. This is how the entire hierarchy of the RC church covered up abuse: you have to be groomed to get to covering up crime.

This may sound extreme but look at this example:

Recently, JD Great decided to fuss at people who come late, listen online, and leave early, saying they treated the worship service like an entertainment venue. However, the guy on the camera pulled back, and observers could look at JD’s big stage, which looked a lot like an entertainment venue to me!

Watch it yourself, and then I will offer additional thoughts on what he said. It appears that all the clips of the statement keep getting removed from Twitter, so I had to do a workaround. Here I present the entire service. To hear his relatively short rant, go to mark 42:20-43.09. If you want to listen to him telling about all those wonderful churches that he has planted to reach the disenfranchised, listen for about 10 minutes before his rant. Source

You get told off at school or work for being late, not at something you are attending voluntarily, particularly if you are giving them money. This actually seems to me quite high level in terms of grooming, because there's something so wrong with telling a congregation off. There must therefore have been lots of steps before this. 

I would suggest some of the ways churches groom people by getting their trust, obtaining power over them and manipulating and trapping them so they can't leave include: providing the lonely with a conditional social network they would lose if they stopped going; getting people to give 10% of their income; telling them they're sinners and they should blame themselves; setting very high standards of spiritual perfection; expecting frequent attendance; claiming to be the one true church, etc.

The effect of all these things (and others) is exactly the same as that of grooming and can only have the effect of isolating people, make them doubt and blame themselves, and make them dependent by a progressive series of expectations leading from just visiting to being completely enmeshed.

I have a theory that the reason churches often turn out to be hotbeds of abuse is that they are hotbeds of grooming and grooming is their business. Of course this happens elsewhere, but I honestly think churches are the best example of this.

Because there must be some reason, mustn't there, why whole denominations get riddled with abuse, and I think it's the grooming. You would think that people would just leave after this comes out but they don't. They act all surprised and just carry on. They even go to the church after their own child has been abused. They're acting like abuse has become normal, exactly as if they've been groomed.

Could it be happening to you?

Russia is Collapsing

I've been saving this video for the end of the invasion of Ukraine but with #russiaiscollapsing trending (fingers crossed) this is just to get the thought out into the world.

Here Ukrainian film maker Oleg Sentsov and activist Alexander Kolchenko are singing the National Anthem of Ukraine in a Russian court in 2014 after being sentenced to 10 and 20 years respectively on trumped up charges of planning terrorist attacks in Crimea. They had also been beaten for 24 hours to try to get confessions out of them.

The moral? You have to be a real fuckwit to take on a Ukrainian. You will lose.

The Youngsters Have It

Delighted that the results of the by election this week were predicted by NOBODY, but if the trend persists to the next election we'd get a government of who-knows-what-fuckers but they won't be Cuntservative.

Particularly delighted at Keir Mather MP winning the one seat I would have expected to remain Tory and overturning the Tories' massive majority of 20,000!

Predictably the right wing rags have started on him, calling him the baby of the Commons because he's the youngest MP, saying you can't trust him and he's only in it for himself. Do they seriously think we can't see projection in front of us? I'm a witch so I know a thing or two about persecution so let's look at some facts.

Mather is 25 and is therefore a grown man and eligible to vote, get married, sign contracts, be a company director, drive, and get ordained in the Church of England. Furthermore he is a British citizen and not a bankrupt or prisoner so has been eligible to stand for parliament for the last SEVEN YEARS. I swear these people are so stupid.

Of course what they're really frightened of is that he, and other youngish adults like him, are the future and they're pissed off with older people's messing up the country and the world. They're also the generation that can't afford to buy houses, have debt up to their ears and they've had enough. The youngsters are the people who will sort this shit out.

The right are frightened of the comeback from the generation they've screwed over and I'm so here for it. And in case they're thinking that this generation will change their minds once they get commitments like houses, they've ensured that that can't happen and they're doomed to bringing up families in rented flats on inadequate wages.

Apart from anything else I think we'll all agree that Keir is a dish. 🥰

The second picture is there purely as a reminder to any foreigners reading of what the candidates for election in the world's oldest flawed democracy *should* look like. From left to right: Count Binface (Independent), some Tory, Howling Laud Hope (Monster Raving Loony) and Lozzer Fox, who's a cunt.