Month: November 2020

by William Skink

Re-acquainting myself with downtown Missoula has been an interesting process, considering I was one of those people who moved outside of city limits precisely to get FURTHER AWAY from the urban core of Zootown.

My reasons for wanting distance from urban Missoula weren’t your typical reasons, unless having letters sent to your home from a schizophrenic woman who thinks you are her son is typical.

It’s a sad transformation the more I think about, especially when I juxtapose it with all the great memories of enjoying downtown during the good old college days of the early aughts.

I strolled around Missoula last Saturday night at 10pm, the new curfew for watering holes. It was eerie how quiet the streets were.

On Monday of this week I was walking around, seeing what I could see, when I heard a disturbance near the intersection of Broadway and Higgins. As I got closer I could see that Missoula’s friendly Pakistani jewelry peddler was caught up in a verbal altercation with a middle-aged woman. Both parties were angry and hurling obscenities at each other.

Since I knew both parties I just stood and watched to see what other bystanders might do. There was only two other people around, and they just walked away. The woman finally turned around in the middle of the street, then locked eyes on me.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, since it had probably been at least 6 or 7 years since I had interacted with her. I certainly didn’t expect her to quickly down shift from yelling about cocks and Madeline Albright to speaking to me in an almost normal and casual way, but that’s what happened.

Not only did she recognize me, but she asked if I was still writing. I said I was. She kind of nodded, looked me up and down, then went back onto the disjointed tracks her brain chemistry keeps her running on like a caged hamster.

I crossed the street and chatted with the other party to this disturbance about his part. He said every day she comes by and says awful, obscene stuff, and he is tired of it. When I mentioned mental illness he dismissed it, saying “No, they just use that as an excuse.”

Once upon a time it was my job to navigate these petty street conflicts in order to protect shoppers and tourists from the consequences of late-stage capitalism and its indifference to the proliferating pathologies of mental anguish it creates.

Not anymore, I reminded myself, and bid the Pakistani a more peaceful morning in ZOOM TOWN.

by William Skink

One of the things that gets politicians into trouble is a seeming reluctance to follow the dictates they want to impose on the rest of us. For example, if you are a pro-lockdown Democrat who wants Thanksgiving cancelled, then you probably shouldn’t try doing a big dinner for new members of Congress.

There is a handy phrase that encapsulates this political hypocrisy, and it’s this: RULES FOR THEE, NOT FOR ME.

One Democratic politician in Missoula who reflects this lack of ethos is Ellie Hill. Today I would like to take a trip down memory lane to inform readers how this individual landed in Missoula and started her political career.

I had a front row seat to the launching of Hill’s political career because I was lead staff at the Poverello Center while she was the Executive Director. My co-workers and I at the time were distraught that the difficult work we were doing was being put on the back-burner while our director was running for political office.

Now, I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know much about the law as it pertains to how one should conduct a political campaign, but I’m pretty sure it’s not ok to use a cell phone paid for by the homeless shelter that employs you to coordinate your campaign.

Ellie Hill came to Missoula from Boise, Idaho, where she was working at the District Attorney’s office. There were rumors at the time that Hill made a power grab that blew up in her face, so she moved to a town where she could start fresh.

It didn’t take long for Hill to grab the spotlight. Before she even spent ONE DAY in office, the Missoulian was gushing about this rising political star:

Ellie Boldman Hill’s first day in public office won’t come for another three months, but the representative-elect from Missoula is in Washington, D.C., this week – where she’ll be feted as one of the most notable rising stars among America’s young politicos.

Hill, the recently elected state legislator for House District 94 who spends her days running Missoula’s Poverello Center, has been named to Time magazine’s list of “40 Under 40 Political Rising Stars.” Hill will receive recognition at a banquet Thursday night on Capitol Hill, and will be profiled in a forthcoming issue of the magazine.

In the ten years since Ellie Hill was first elected, Democrats in Montana have done progressively WORSE and WORSE each election cycle, which makes it a little ironic that Ellie Hill seems to be leading the charge in Montana against the consequences of unfettered Republican control over government. Here is Hill trying to raise the alarm about what Democrat minority status could mean this session:

“We’re serving in an unprecedented minority,” Hill said on Monday. “I served under two governor’s and they were both Democrats, and that was really our stop gap. Our understanding is that the majority party has had their legislative staff pull every veto from Brian Schweitzer and Steve Bullock over the last 16 years, and have prepared bill drafts for all of those vetoes.”

Montana Democrats are going to be using their FEAR THE REPUBLICANS schtick because that will keep the focus on BAD BAD CONSERVATIVES instead of engaging in any self-reflection about WHY Democrats in Montana are in an “unprecedented minority”.

I voted for Cooney this cycle because I do agree, in principle, that Montanans benefit from a balanced government, and having the veto check of a Democrat in the Governor’s office HAS kept the nutty fringe of Republican politics in check.

But Democrats blew it, like they’ve been blowing it for years in Montana. Instead of acting like petulant children, blaming everyone but themselves, I just wish they would grow the fuck up and take a little accountability for their failures.

If Democrats had done that at a national level four years ago, maybe they wouldn’t have needed to engage in shady tactics to “win” the 2020 presidential election.

by William Skink

I get that Montana Democrats know a thing or two about death, having recently been slaughtered at the ballot box in every single state-wide race by double-digits, but does that warrant its shrill mouthpiece LARPing as reporters claiming Republicans are killing Americans and Montanans every day?

I am especially worried about all the people who handed Republicans in Montana such decisive victories. Do these people know they voted for killers who might kill them? Or are they ALSO KILLERS, rampaging across the blood-red killing fields of rural Montana, bare-faced and frothing for their Trumpifier to suck on?

In this dire situation of life and death, with death being dealt exclusively by Republicans, how are Democrats going to defend themselves? They don’t have guns, political power, or a uniform at the other end of a 911 call willing to come to their rescue.

So what are they going to do?

One idea is to solicit funds so they can hire free lance writers so they can get the word out on social media that Montana Republicans are trying to kill Montanans. I need to take some notes on how to make an eloquent money-ask like this:

If we can increase the support to our site, I plan to pay for more freelance writers who can dig into the stories that just don’t get covered. If you haven’t already, chip in a few bucks a month to our site, and we’ll put the money to good use. If you’re nervous about a monthly commitment, just donate to Patreon once and cancel right away after.

If you can’t afford to support our work–and we absolutely know times are tough for so many of you–become active about sharing our posts. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and share posts with people you think might be better informed if they read our coverage.

Wow, powerful stuff. And here I had to move MY DONATION ASK to my about page because the formatting screwed with my sidebar widget.

If I survive the efforts of Republicans to kill me, I will put any donations toward fortifying our liberal stronghold against the Republigoth hordes clamoring at our gates to murder us with their stupidity and indifference.

As we enter this DARK WINTER, may the light of Joe Biden shine like a beacon of hope and change that you can definitely this time totally believe in.

by William Skink

Are you stuck in old ways of thinking, like assuming movies are made to “entertain” you? Well, thanks to the pandemic, enjoyable diversions from reality once known as “movies” have become just another node in the tightening control grid of our lives.

Michael Bey’s upcoming movie Songbird sounds like a terrible, traumatizing experience for anyone not excited about our new LOCKDOWN world. Set just four years in the future, as a mutated strain of Covid-19, called Covid-23, ravages the land, this “movie” is the farthest thing from “entertainment” I can imagine.

And I’m not the only one thinking this. Here’s an excerpt from an early review:

In another context, Songbird does look entertaining, but it does not look like it’s opening up a valuable conversation. It looks like it exists just to add extremes and shock value to an already traumatizing collective experience we’re all still processing on a daily basis. For someone to jump two years into the future using the actual events happening now as a reference point is not creative or interesting. It’s merciless and cold. Imagine literally any other traumatizing world event doing this while we were in the thick of it. If we were in the thick of World War II, do you think we would want to see an imagined circumstance where it got worse? No, that’s why musicals and cartoons started to get super popular back then.

I will watch this movie for the same reason I watched the show Utopia. And for the same reason that I bought Klaus Schwab’s book Covid-19: The Great Reset and Boris Johnson’s Dad’s book The Virus.

I want to have this material because I’m NOT a coincidence theorist who can just write this shit off as NOT being of serious significance.

The anointed myth makers and storytellers have been very busy with their entertainment predictive programming, but since the hour is late to implement their agenda, the subtlety is totally gone. It’s very IN YOUR FACE now.

The idea of predictive programming comes form Alan Watt. Here is a quote ascribed to Watt about this phenomena:

Predictive programming is a subtle form of psychological conditioning provided by the media to acquaint the public with planned societal changes to be implemented by our leaders. If and when these changes are put through, the public will already be familiarized with them and will accept them as natural progressions, thus lessening possible public resistance and commotion.

Maybe you think this is silly and that there is nothing for the public to resist. If that is your viewpoint, you must also think politicians are honest, corporations have your best interests in mind, and no one would ever exploit a health crisis to grab more power for themselves and the powerful death cults they represent.

For those who haven’t given up–meekly accepting lockdown life until Bill Gates shows up with his smart needles–now is the time to educate yourself and prepare.

Like I have said before, this is a marathon, so act accordingly.

by William Skink

There is a new wild west emerging for content creators that is both exciting and incredibly intimidating, especially for a luddite-leaning artist like myself.

YouTube has gone on the predictable rampage of censorship I wrote about (along with many others) two years ago, when Alex Jones was de-platformed. The problem then, as it is now, is where to go? This Corbett Report “YouTube Party” is worth checking out for a conversation about alternatives.

Another fascinating phenomenon to watch is the unhinging of Hollywood, the proliferation of streaming services, and the shakeup of the business model for the “talent”. An interesting, very raw conversation about that topic is this episode of Sam Tripoli’s podcast, titled Bono And Algo The Demon Star With Christopher Knowles.

On that latter topic, I’ll be writing more next week about a book I just got in the mail, so stay tuned.