Kurt Pankau Dot Com

🐀 Despite All My Rage... My wife has a sticker on her car that reads: "More rights for others doesn't mean fewer rights for you. It's not pie." It's one of those things that is so glaringly obvious that you shouldn't have to say it. And yet... we live in a country where sizeable portion of the population is voting for an "anti-woke" agenda, even if it will hurt them economically and infringe on their own rights--and potentially end democracy in America. How can people vote against their own self-interest like that? Are they that  motivated by racism, sexism, and homophobia? And the answer is no... but also yes... but also no. (But also yes.) The motivation isn't overtly about those things--although let's be very  clear that these people are  being racist, sexist, and homophobic, whether they're willing to acknowledge it or not. But what's actually motivating them is something more sinister, but also more understandable. It's abou...

🇺🇸 All of Which Are American Dreams... The Crime:  Crippled America The Guilty Party: Donald Trump Overview: He certainly did Why I Hate It... This book was originally published as promo material in advance of the 2016 election. It was almost immediately re-issued under a different title,  Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America . I listened to the audiobook when it was new and the review I wrote at the time is reproduced below. I think the review stands, so I haven't altered it except for minor grammatical tweaks. My feelings have changed slightly, given the context of history, but I'll save those thoughts for afterwards. So without further ado... 90% of this books is exactly what you'd expect: a laundry list of conservative talking points. They're a bit more polished than his stump speeches, but no less simplistic or condescending. The running themes are familiar. Everyone is an idiot except Donald J. Trump. People think you need experience and a nuanced view o...

🧝🏿 ... For Mortal Men Doomed to Die... Author's note: One thing I don't engage with at all in this essay is the notion of representation, not because it isn't important, but more because a lot of people more qualified than I am have already weighed in. Instead, I'm sticking to things that I am more familiar with: storytelling tools and white self-identity. So there's been no shortage of hubbub lately around color-blind casting in epic fantasy prestige television. People are getting awfully upset that there are black Targaryans, or black elves and dwarves in The Rings of Power . They claim that Tolkien intended The Silmarillion , the lore of which is the basis for The Rings of Power , as an ancient history of England, and that to put non-white people in it does not accurately reflect a time before widespread travel would allow for intercontinental race-mixing. And why would the Noldor or the Eldar or the proto-Hobbits be non-white? And others have pointed out that,...

21 people are dead that didn't need to be. My children go through active shooter drills at their elementary schools. Because people like you love guns more than humans. You fucking asshole. I'm so tired of all of this. ]{p

⛪ Back On My Bullshit... So it looks like Missouri is, amongst other states, about to legally outlaw abortion. If you follow me on Twitter, you've no doubt seen me retweeting a lot of women and journalists sharing their thoughts about the consequences and fallout of this decision. It's not that I don't have opinions, it's just that it didn't really feel like it was my moment to speak, so I elected to use my platform to amplify others. That said, this here website is my personal blog, so it's a place tailor-made for my opinions, so I'm going to give them now, but rather than retread what a bunch of better-informed-than-me people have already said, I'm going to talk shit about religion, something that I feel amply qualified to do. Oh, that reminds me: this is one of those posts that's going to be hyper-critical of Christianity, so if that's not your particular bottle of vodka--or if you're my mom--maybe give this one a pass. KTHXBYE So, a few y...

🐦 Well, Shit... There's a lot of ink spilled--and yet to be spilled--about Elon Musk's sensational and highly publicized attempt to purchase Twitter and what that means. He wants to bring it back to its roots as a platform for free speech, etc, meanwhile Leftist Twitter has been shitting its collective pants and threatening to move to Canada. A number of new social media platforms have sprung up to collect Twitter's refugees, and a few that previously existed are getting a bunch of new acolytes and their servers are crashing. (Bee-Tee-Dubs, you can friend me on counter.social  at @kurtpankau) Amidst a lot of this are a few points that are getting lost that I want to call attention to. So, in no particular order, here's why I'm pissed about this mess and, oh yeah, shit's going to get political and sweary in this post, so with that in mind... "Free Speech" is a Dogwhistle Y'all know that, right? Speech is roughly as free as it has ever been. We'...