Keeping your brain from melting and running out your ears is getting harder and harder

Yesterday’s and today’s New York Times headlines alone were enough to cause the formation of a dangerous slippery condition on the floors of Column HQ here in Eastern Pennsylvania.

Recep Yayyip Erdogan won the runoff election in Turkey.  Here’s a guy whose responsibility for deaths from collapsed buildings during Turkey’s recent earthquake is comparable to Donald Trump’s handling of the first year of the COVID pandemic...and yet he won.  If this isn’t a fifty-foot red flag waving to warn us what might happen next November, nothing is. 

As the vote in the House of Representatives on the debt ceiling deal got one step closer today, the usual chorus of political uglies in the Republican party is screaming about everything from communism running rampant in Washington D.C. to a take-over of both the White House and the office of the Speaker of the House by Satan himself.  Rare has been the story during this entirely made-up crisis that has mentioned the obvious solution to the problem of potentially exceeding the so-called debt ceiling:  if you’re a government that is spending more money than the taxes you are collecting to cover your bills, then raise taxes.  Don’t bother waiting for this nugget of basic economic wisdom to appear anytime soon.

Artificial Intelligence may lead to the extinction of the human race say “industry leaders” currently in the business of attempting to make AI ubiquitous, according to the Times.  Applied to the onset of flooding after a massive storm hits Houston, say, this is a little bit like FEMA handing out teacups to use for bailing, or down pillows to use as sandbags.  The tech executives running the companies developing AI systems are predicting that the technology could become “powerful enough that it could create societal-scale disruptions within a few years,” not to mention presenting problems comparable to what the world has had to endure from pandemics and the threat of nuclear warfare. 

Don’t look for these “industry leaders” to do anything about it, however.  The Times reports that they are “in the unusual position of arguing that a technology they are building – and, in many cases, are furiously racing to build faster than their competitors – poses grave risks and should be regulated more tightly.”  You believe that one, and I’ve got a pair of tin cups to sell you that you can hang from your ears to catch that ooze that’s staining your shirt collar.

According to a recent story in Rolling Stone that if you want to maintain any semblance of sanity you should avoid at all costs, Reverend Hyung-Jin “Sean” Moon, leader of a Pennsylvania church called The Rod of Iron that worships the AR-15 rifle as a sacrament from God, has decided to become a MAGA rapper.  Okay, I didn’t know there was such a thing as a MAGA rapper, either, but there we have it.  Moon, the son of Reverend Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, has been making rap videos and posting them on YouTube under his MAGA-rap name, King Bullethead.  The videos are part of a trend in right-wing rap that celebrates far-right ideological positions and, of course, Donald Trump.

Here is an excerpt from a recent video posted by King Bullethead, in which he raps about how the LGBTQ community is brainwashing children into becoming gay:

“Did you hear about this group called LGTBQ

You may have heard them in your school or even your church pew

They are telling our kids they can switch to any gender

Taking hormones slicing organs like they’re playing Fruit Ninja 

They got no shlong, ding dong, hot dog, johnny eggplant emoji

They got no thang swinging between their legs and making them horny

Conservative women knows that only God can make ‘em man and women

Love Jesus, family, guns, USA they be lovin’

Located in Newfoundland, PA, the new Moonie cult believes that Jesus Christ himself has blessed the manufacture of AR-15 rifles.  Moon and his brother have built a factory to make the deadly weapons under the name Kahr Arms, and recently acquired property near – you guessed it -- Waco, Texas, and an entire mountain somewhere in Tennessee.

Here’s a photograph of King Bullethead.

Photo: Washington Post/Getty Images

Those mountains in the background are not far from where I am writing this.  The Rod of Iron Church holds something called a “Freedom Festival” nearby. This is how far we’ve fallen: Trump pals Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka have spoken to the crowd gathered to hear all about the sacred AR-15 and listen to MAGA-rapping from King Bullethead himself.

I’m going to crawl under the covers of my bed now.