#tim barrus FB

[timbarrus]

Take notes. Appalachia is not cheap. Nevertheless, the endemic poverty of Appalachia is so fundamental, so ingrained, so intransigent, that even I cannot articulate what a waste of lives, resources, no vision that can make it better. Families with dirt floors. No hope. America is done. Suicide rates for Appalachia are more than 20 per 1k. It just shot up. Please do not move here. There is nowhere to put you. Hurricane Helene came at us with a #5 when it hit (with virtually no warning). We were not prepared. New people here will be a disaster. But we realize what is coming, and we do not want you here at all. You will be a huge problem. More that a few families are existing in their cars. Nowhere to live. We are all very bitter. Pitching tents in the cold. No water for a month. Some of us are bathing in the river. People are living in their cars. Do. Not. Move. Here. It's treachery. Democrat or republican. Frankly, we do not care. Building back here will take a decade. Go move somewhere else. Democrat or republican. It doesn't matter here. You will be in our way. Go home. We will not put a piece of chocolate on your upper middle class pillow. The rich just move away. Wherever they go, they will still be rich. Wherever we go, we will still be excluded. There is no housing for us anywhere. It's political, yes. Our republican congress guy was videotaped having sex with another guy. We endure. We hurt. We are disconnected. From your culture. The electoral college is the real pornography.

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Take notes. I was a teacher to adolescents with HIV. All of them arrived with a long list of medications. Every school district creates rules like a nurse has to administer all meds, and if students are caught taking their own meds, they were expelled. No drugs. Was a fundamental paradigm mainly because we have no idea what to do with sexually active adolescents, some addicted to opiates, and this was not where anything ends. It's the beginning. Methadone. The idea that people can use antiretrovirals and nothing else is a fantasy. It's going to be a cocktail. These are not the fun drugs. It's a soup of chemicals. All of them toxic. Suicide ideation connected these kids. There are reasons why some kids cannot handle medications at home. Abuse would be one. Your mother's boyfriend said you have to be punished by god. If you were gay, you were already being punished by god. It is now a life of punishment. Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors were drugs the entire classroom was on, and these were kids, too, who just needed to talk. So talk we did. I Am Going To Kill Myself came up as a topic. Meds were next. After that, there was a lot of rage over the image that HIV clinics project of themselves versus armed cops walking hallways. When these kids see a cop, they leave. Some kids had twenty different medications. The mom's boyfriend throws all the meds down the toilet. They came to school drained. SRIs took too long. Sometimes suicide ideation became just suicide.

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Take notes. I am a radical. Not a democrat. Not a republican. There are no independents. They employ the same political and cultural infrastructure -- how things work -- that the rest of us are compelled to use. Climate: Not a word. It's the Trump go to for climate change, a hoax. Americans are in denial. Why. Not a word about that. Save the American Dream. The American Dream is flat-out vanished. Is America is a corpse because it has a fetish for illusion. The American people still believe in the goodness of Gotham. Hollywood's Gotham is urban decay on steroids. Not one word about how Hollywood's cultural prostitution, carved from graves for advanced rot. Criminals rise to power. The word criminal is not to be found. There are metaphors for the word rapist. There are metaphors for the word crook. There are metaphors for the word deviant. You will not find the word deviant here because the republican (small d) party cannot bring itself to believe it's leader (ownership culture) is aberrational. Even the bad word sex is an economic negotiation. Or it's rape. You get to pick one. Not both. They take a deviant, and they normalize him as a leader who struggled. Another idea they avoid is based on the word individual. Individual is Americana. This is about the rise of Trump. And what did I learn. The word nothing has a metaphor, too. Vacuum. They are telling us America loves Trump. Genuflect. Now, the truth. Scratching heads. Suddenly, perplexed. More questions. No answers.

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Take notes. I had to make a judgement call. I got my family out of North America. My decision was based in what the New York Times take is. In all the talk about vibes, the publication has one, too. It's dark. It's fearful. It's nervous. If it wasn't, something would be very wrong. Pollsters are beginning to look like stunned deer in headlights. One question dominates journalism. How Bad Is It Going To Be. What I hear in the voices of these conversations is a reckoning with defeat. Is there anyone at the New York Times who thinks he won't go after journalists. Journalists often feel immune to what to what is happening around them as they are there to cover it. A calm before the storm. No one has ever talked about a dynamic that is inherently stalking Trump. There is a psychotic link between suicide and homicide. It is not uncivil to say that because it is simply fact whether it is polite society or not. Trump is not stable. I have always seen him as being suicidal. Homicidal ideation is as toxic as suicidal ideation. He dreams of executions, and no one is pushing back because we cannot bring ourselves to believe it. Believe it. Ideation can swing like a pendulum back and forth. Them or me. Them or me. There is no us. There is no Other. There is no there there. The internal and the external is a contest between pitbulls in a cage. One of those caged dogs will win. And then both dogs will die. America is not immune. Trump is a junkyard dog. Let's fight. We remain transfixed.

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Take notes. There is no god.

There is no Jesus. There is no heaven. There are no wing rentals for Victoria’s Secret Angels. There are no angels. There are no gates. There is no sane theology. There never was a virgin Mary. Jesus did not walk on water. When Ross writes the word religion, he means Catholicism. He means some form of institutional oversight. The gravitas of vacuum. Be very careful about doors being opened to you. Ross glosses over the whole Boys Being Raped thing. Like it happened but let’s get out of here. Ross cannot see that the relationship between the institution and its behavior is an interiority eager to disguise itself yet again and again. Ross is being provocative. But to what end. The end is called authority. They are worshipping jurisdiction. Our lives are juxtaposed by an authority whose purpose is regimentation. Let us away to stories and legends and myths and illusion. That’s really blood you were drinking and it was not grape juice from Ralph’s. High theatre. Performance art. Kings and princes were created by homo sapiens. It’s not exactly hard to prove. Show me. Don’t tell me. You have no proof that there is a god to subjugate anyone. The greatest fraud in human history. It’s a great story. But it is not real. I am frequently lectured to about faith, and if I cannot find mine, there has to be something bad inside me to get me to ask such questions like what is reality. Maybe I am a witch. I am not a witch.

I am a steadfast heretic.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/opinion/trump-republican-party-cabinet.html#permid=138199476 Take notes. Some of us have descended into brooding, (I have). Then, I slap myself. I have to stop "doing" anxiety, and start asking better questions. I see it differently than most Americans. I am not allowed to say: Civil War. People write to me, and in no uncertain terms, I am being screamed at to put my advocacy for a Civil War away unless. Unless what. I am no advocate of anything. People tell me it's coming. I tell them, it's already here. No one wants to talk about class and caste. No one. This comment will never see the light of day. Therefore, I go for what is true. Not what is civil. I do not care about civility. This is the era of Donald Trump. Trump means one thing: fight. Fight to the death. This is about survival. I put my kids on a flight out of this psycho country. It is not about civility or recipes. American culture has decided to look at the ground and carry on. While you are carrying on, another big box of fun things has people contemplating what they can do. I do not know any of these people. I'm innocent. This is Appalachia. My friends and neighbors trace their roots to the Scottish Highlands in Western Scotland, 1652. Another civil war. They moved here. With their legends, myths, stories, music, food, sheep. We are all migrants. A hurricane took our homes. No one from authority has arrived to help us. Rebuilding begins with an updated version of the bomb shelter. You will not be able to see them. They're in the woods. Where we have always lived.

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Take notes. Tilda Swinton gives the New York Times an edge. An edge they frequently cover up with the contradiction between the fact that no one even knows what art is, and the fact that outreach as art for the sake of art even finds its tiny way to advertising. Let's not upset the horses. Tilda Swinton reminds me that if she wanted, she would ride those horses like Lady Godiva, everything or nothing. I'm autistic, and I am always dazzled by this woman, and what did it all mean. "We Need To Talk about Kevin was physically stunning as we witnessed a terrified and masked woman in way over her head with a child more than a little challenging. Challenging as a word is ephemeral as a talk about Kevin grinds into we need to find what is going on in this kid's head. The whole film is a head trip. Art was the only option, and as an actor, she knew it. Tilda Swinton is riveting. Writing. Acting. Modeling. She turns all of these things into art itself. Other writers like Swinton struggle for years to find that voice. Art transcends. Even as the bad guy, she transcends. She isn't standing there for a portrait. What can I do to not just stand here. My arms. My arms. Tilda is the camera. The New York Times offers us art as an aside. Marginalization is not art. A big box of fun things. Yet Swinton moves fluidly through it, challenging portraiture in her arms. But catch the eyes because she's immediately your art teacher and seduction. She doesn't play seduction. She is seduction.

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Take notes. Baring witness is important. I do not know why. But the idea that you can talk armed soldiers out of using Rape as a weapon of war is patently absurd and beneath contempt. Who do you think will be shot in the face next. You. Will be shot in the face next. Baring witness is stupid. These are criminals. Imprison them. Or don't imprison them. Use force. Not tired little words like: "Talking about sexual violence is difficult." No shit. The talking part is ephemeral. The gun part gets it done. Throw them in prison, and then rape them. And then, rape them again. Make it a daily event. Invite the community to watch them being raped. There's a plan. Trump rapes. Trump rapes. Trump rapes. It's war. It's a civil war. It's here. It will be ugly. As ugly as that fat drug-addled RAPIST. Whose special fetish is raping women. Feed them cow shit and nothing else. Cut off their heads. Cut off their balls. Cut off their cocks and take video so that video could be played in villages. That. Is bearing witness. Baring witness is not academic. It isn't always nice. It's dark. It's war. You are surrounded by fire, screaming, guns and guns, all the animals are dead. This article is lame. NYT published it because the Red Cross gives NYT agency and institutional certification. The New York Times does not interview African victims. They do not interview men who rape. I want to hear from them. I have questions before they are beheaded and set on fire. Fuck'em. Fight back.

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Take notes. Google is the black plague. I have articulated and written that for the past twenty years, Wikipedia must have a financial stake in the arrangement with the algorithm. Google manages to place Wikipedia first. They subvert the algorithm that they made in the first place. Wikipedia cherry picks. Google drives the cherry picking. Especially with SEO, and their subjects get defined by people who have no idea whatsoever what they are talking about. What would drive Wikipedia into cherry picking. I once had the misfortune of watching Google work. Their video I saw produced by Google, was about a scenario where a few video staff members (with equipment) fawned over their supervisor's Rolex watch. That was it. That was the video. A group fawning over a watch someone bought for 25K which is a pornography.

Kevin Rose just loves his little watch. Turn Google into something that has meaning like pawing over a watch and presenting that as a product Google fools around with. What a waste. I find them intimidating and mean. I deleted Google from everything. I loath saying this but Bing seems to have no financial arrangement with Wikipedia. Bing has never characterized me as a set of lies that people thought that I abused publishing. Wikipedia has a field day riding on the back of Google, the enforcer. Publishing abuses itself. Are Google and Wikipedia so connected that one is the other and the other is the other. Google is the King for everybody except me. They are not welcome in my house.

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Take notes. Caleb is a lucky guy. Curiosity drives us to a film set where people actually live. With all that stuff. Caleb has a voice. That is what a camera is, a voice. That is what a video is, a voice. The spaces that reflect us are accumulated voices. My own voice talks to spaces. Horses. No whispering. Homo sapiens have been living in horse stables since day one. My roommates were Arabians. I owned two changes of clothes, a sleeping bag, a camera, and a toothbrush. One book (mine). One dirt bike. I moved into a stables. I got to talk to the horses. This is going to sound silly. But horses laugh. I slept and worked in the hay loft. The guy that owned the place was a voracious reader. I had just published a novel about two brothers. His own brother had died a year earlier. And he was having a hard time with it. I had been complaining, I could not find the room I need to write because my writing involves getting up and walking in circles and yelling at walls. I'm autistic. The horses never seemed to mind. And I had a captive audience whose opinions on things, were the same as mine. Duh. Caleb found his calling. Most folks never do. The issue of privacy alone can get complicated. To see the personal behind the door. Oh, I own one of those. I like Caleb's socks. The leaves are not swept away on the outside deck. The towel on the oven door could be the opening of a book. I wonder who plays the guitar. Where's the laundry. It's the bike that really got me. I want that awesome bike.

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Take notes. After I put my kids on the flight out of America, and all the crying had slightly ebbed, I had to sit in the airport for about an hour because I could not get up. I knew I had done the right thing. America is just not a place to raise kids. Life is giving them whip lash. This piece has little to do with keeping your papers organized. It's insulting that Americans would even think that. It's denial, folks. You do not know how to raise children, and you are leaving them with a toxic planet. Because you do not care. I am autistic and do not understand many of the rules I follow every day. I avoid the police because they will kill me as they are so easily threatened. I have never had so much as a parking ticket. America will not help in protecting my children. If we are going to slide into a civil war, and I think we are doing exactly that, I don't want my children anywhere near the Great American War Machine that focuses on identity. Our public policy is a pornography. Doing away with the Department of Education, or hobbling it, is a great plan to keep the marginalized in their place. Will there still be schools. Or indoctrination centers. The America you fear is coming at you like a trainwreck. I want my kids off the tracks, off the grids, I have already taught them how to fight. I want them educated. I want them to know how hatred runs the world of men. I want them to be able to recognize the power of authority, and to always sit where you can see the door.

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Take notes. We all want to know, is it worth it. This question haunts us as the Internet becomes a utility. The tech oligarchs are not keen on the idea. One of the things FDR did, was bringing electricity to rural America. The people who got electricity last, knew they received electricity last. They could drive into town and see everyone had it but you. The Internet came last to rural America. Let's see what we can do with this and throw the bums out. It didn't work, so now they have focused on -- not kicking people out -- but in who can replace them with the proper messaging. One brick at a time. Journalists, gatekeepers, and opinion folks are flailing around with Let's Normalize Him when in their troubled guts they know he's laughing at you while he has his babycakes revenge of the entitled. They already own all the money. What more do they want. Do they really need the crumbs. Klein and Applebaum are playing a game where the intelligentsia cannot admit that they dropped the ball. They seem to think that the civil war will be a soft landing because it will have to be at least partially constructed by (who else) the intelligentsia. They articulate how surprisingly ordinary the opposition is. They go from We Will Never Ever -- to -- We Might in less than one tenth of a second for the pause. Pretty quickly. What choice do we have. We can't all move to Vancouver. I got my kids out while I could. You cannot talk the talk if you are unwilling to walk the walk.

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Take notes. When you add up all the actuarial elements for a homo sapiens who is overweight, the numbers do not lie. The chances that a 78-year-old male will not be with us is ten percent. The story doesn't end there. The chances that a 78-year-old overweight male with a long history of mental health issues featuring a deep psychosis, grandiosity hallucinations, and has lost their ability to recognize what is real, and what is not real, and the generalized paranoia of dementia leaves us with a human being who has to be taken care of, not the other way around. The numbers have the homo sapiens of a 78-year-old in a timeline that indicates he has a 32.7 percentage chance of leaving us grieving when he goes. From ten percent to 32.7 percent. Adding in the actuarial numbers for political assassination, and the fact that two attempts (failed) indicates we are living in Vegas, and Vegas does not like the odds. Good times. At 32.7 percent, no insurance company will want to touch you, but you can be charged rates in 6 figures for the insurance. Government is run by the feeble and the elderly. The odds are good that Vance will be the new king. Musk has numbers far worse. His life is punctuated with exposure to toxic chemicals whose effects range from lead poisoning to cancer to impotence. You can't do actuarial charting without data. These guys control the data you can get on their health. The fetish for control is not an element that gets added but it drives the great machine.

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Take Notes. I have to watch what I write. What are the risks of having a voice. As a writer, every time I turn around, there are new rules. There are the NYT rules of etiquette. There are the religious rules about specific words that are not allowed. All new ideas articulated will be subject to rigorous investigation. What Americans really want to know is where can they get tickets for the executions. Americans have taken sides. Neither side has the ability to recognize the humanity of the other. If we remove their humanity, we can... Do nothing. Which is what we always do anyway. We are powerless. Keep your head down. Do what they say. Look at the ground. Never look at them in the eye. Suits have always told us everything will be fine. Obey the rules. Rule #1. Do not speak. Ever.

All these people with voices. While your neighbors are being handcuffed, pull the shades. This is America. Has anyone noticed that the price of ammunition has skyrocketed. What do these people know that we do not know. What they know is that the price of the ticket must be paid. Retribution and revenge will guide the well-meaning authorities and their helpers to only execute the bad people. Managed quietly. The Night of the Long Knives in 1932 was a Brown Shirt German purge which was supposed to strike fear into the hearts of the compliant who were already about as compliant as you could get. There are many lessons in this. There will not be another civil war. The grass would get our shoes all wet.

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Take notes. All flights (to anywhere) on November 6 are filling fast. I have already got my family out. The trick is to know when to get out of Dodge. The American people simply do not believe Trump will do what he has pledged to do. The threat to execute people he doesn't like seems to be, to most Americans, overkill. He wants you to be afraid, and we are. What will we be in 2028. If we are left standing at all. We are worried about 2025. 2028 seems so far off we refuse to examine the possibilities. Exactly how does he trash the US Constitution. How do you trash something you have vowed to protect. Do you burn it. Or do you rip it up. Question: Where are the other voices who have sworn to protect the Constitution. Why can't those voices do what they have vowed to do -- protect the Constitution. From Trump. What would that mean. Civil war. When the Confederacy was defeated in 1865, Jefferson Davis was captured, arrested for complicity in Lincoln's assassination, accused of treason, and imprisoned at Fort Monroe. Trump and Davis share analogies. A commitment to enforced institutional racism. We never really ended slavery. We just call it other names. Black prisoners working for the man (suits) do not represent an antithesis to slavery. That is slavery. Selective punishment, revenge, and it placates white people who are threatened every other minute. We have never settled the War Between the States. Fort Monroe is a museum. Bit it could still contain one old man.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/28/opinion/kamala-harris-dignity.html#permid=137174224

Take notes. Dignity in the face of screaming rage. By someone who has been burned before. This was very well written. I could never get into the whole nonviolent affect that speaks to us of calm. Calm is a problem. Anita Hill is pointing to a bigger issue. Her focus is rational and restrained. Sexism and racism are not compatible with human rights. If I were Anita Hill, I would be putting out feelers as to what flight she can pop into before Trump gets on the train toward his first day executions. It sounds downright dizzy, but we have all looked into the heart of Donald Trump and finding only an old man's venom.

The US prison system would volunteer to put on shows with hangings and beheadings. Do not think they won't. All you have to do is ask them. Small children will be required to watch, too, so they can begin indoctrination. I'm not going willingly when the big bad men from Ice arrive and batter the door down. There is risk in this scenario for them, too. Some of us don't get pushed around. Torture. Televised. Entire cities torched. The noose will be slipped on tight. Margaret Atwood had it right. What they really hate is sex. Once again, sex becomes a political act. Doing dignity does the same thing. It projects the whole idea of the word no. This is the hopeful view. My own is grounded in knowing who these people really are, and what their bottom line is among the wealthy who will win this culture war. Dignity is a great thing. But it will not stop Donald Trump.