THE ENEMY!: Trump and publishing

Sunday 10/11/26

The other day, Trump made some post wherever he makes his posts, stammering like the mentally ill, deranged toddler that he is that AI is now called Super Intelligence and anyone who doesn't go along will be considered an ENEMY of the state or however he put it.

His phraseology is always that of the crazy child. It doesn't track as English. As sane person English. For instance: "...as opposed to the highly accepted new and more accurate term..." Highly accepted. Do you understand what a moron you have to be to speak/write like that? Highly accepted? Those words don't go together. That's not how it works. "Widely accepted." You can do that. (Whether you're lying or not.) But "highly accepted" isn't a thing. I mean, is there "lowly accepted"? If you were talking to someone, and they said to you, "Well, it's lowly accepted," you'd think, What the fuck is wrong with you?

Trump--and actually much of what happens right now--reads like something that wouldn't cut it in George Orwell's 1984 because it'd be too cartoonish. Would weaken the book by cheapening it. Make it less serious. But here we are. 1984: The Outtakes.

So what do you think immediately started happening after Trump's post? The billionaires began calling AI by the term of Super Intelligence. They had their marching orders, and these people, who are just so low, so pathetic, and I mean lower than shit on shoes, like they're trying to out-shit shit that you stepped in, marched. Squelch, squelch, squelch.

It's uncannily similar to publishing. The marching order: Tommy Orange is a genius. He's very important. He's a great writer. Everybody got it?

And then most of them--all the "important" ones, that is, the "elites"--do what the likes of those billionaires do with Trump. Otherwise, one is an ENEMY of their twisted toddler state where it's all about lies, lies to self, ego, pettiness, tyranny. The latter isn't principally about money. Money helps in being a tyrant. It's a great tool for tyrants. But tyranny comes from within; or, rather, it stems from an attempt to fill a void within. There can be tyranny at the Starbucks with the store manager. Tyranny at the home owner's association. Tyranny in publishing. Tyranny in government.

It's about pathetic people. Soulless people. Empty people. People who are just one big gaping hole. This is how they try and fill the hole that is them. Donald Trump, John Freeman, Pete Hegseth, Ann Hulbert. This is how it works. People who know, on some level, just how stupid they are. That they're a fraud. That they don't have what they have--and have never gotten anything in life--on account of their talent, their hard work, their legitimacy, anything good, anything they offer the world, anything special or unique to them.

They know it's all bullshit. That they are bullshit. These people who are so bad at knowing anything for what it is nonetheless know their own illegitimacy. It's that kind of gnawing knowledge. The knowledge that finds a way to eat away at your ignorance, no matter how big a buffer of it that you've built up to protect you from the truth.

David Remnick knows. You think any of these people would want anyone around who they know is smarter than they are, never mind much smarter? Think that would sit okay with them? That they're secure enough in themselves that it's cool to employ, award, tout someone on a different level than theirs, whom they have to look up at?

You think someone would be willing to step forward, amongst this crowd, is capable of stepping forward, and saying, "No, that's wrong, I'm not going to go along to get along, I'm my own person, I have a conscience, I care about right and wrong and the truth, and we should all care about writing and readers and the impact we can make, enough is enough, what are we doing here"?

Is there anything more comical than that notion? Could ever imagine your typical publishing person working that way? They're just gonna go along lest they're an ENEMY of their diseased state. They'll tell you they're one of the good ones, these people who are among the biggest racists in this country, too, who love to use people for their skin color--we'll get into Jason Arday's agent and publisher in a future entry on here--when it's useful to them, no matter if within that skin is an absolute and obvious moron, an immoral, ruthless, conniving moron, telling one giant and obvious moronic lie after another, with these people knowing that's an absolute moron, a twisted and bad person, telling one giant moronic lie after another, the whole thing a scam, a grift, but thinking, "Cha-ching! Look at his color! Look how I can present this! Look how we can cash in with skin! Think of the clout! The prestige! The awards! I got me a good Black here, time to ride this Black!!!! Ye-Haw!!!! Come on, Blackie!!!! Everybody look at my Brilliant Black!!!!! Say it!!!! Say it!!!! Say he's brilliant!!!!! Or else!!!!!" and then they do.

As racist as it gets.

As they say to someone else, "Thanks, but this isn't quite right for me because..." and then add whatever the fuck they feel like, however made it up it is, but as though they're this expert issuing an expert's opinion, without there needing to be any basis whatsoever in reality as they do what they do for the true reasons they do it.

That's publishing.

There is next to nothing that is real here. Merit doesn't enter into it. And I'm only leaving the door ever-so-slightly ajar with the qualification ("next to nothing") for that lone person or two or five who might read this and otherwise say, "Fuck him! I'm on the up and up" and be telling the truth because I don't need to make an enemy out of them and I'm not going to assume they would read this and say, "I see his points, they're valid, but I'm not like that, being an exception, so I don't take this personally and I don't hate him, I realize he doesn't mean me, maybe we should know each other and try and do something about this together."

These people aren't better than Trump. If anything, they're more hypocritical. More full of shit. Which is quite the accomplishment.

I'll bring this up again. Why don't we revisit that first prose off with George Saunders from these pages back on January 26 of last year.

Look at his writing. (Before we even compare it with the infinitely better writing--and the correct word is "infinitely"--writing that follows.) Do you think--do you seriously think--that it's possible--as in, literally possible--for someone to read that and truly believe, "Wow!!!!! What a genius that George Saunders is, no wonder he got that MacArthur, that's a totally merit-based award, plainly. What an artistic master. What an amazing writer. I could never do that. He's touched me. He's changed my life. I'll never see the world the same again. There's so much to think about here. I'll return to his work over and over, drink it in as the prose-based aqua vitae it is, learn with it, grow with it. His gift is enormous. His talent off the charts. Of course he deserved those major awards based upon his ingenious work. He deserves more. I can't wait to see what he produces next, and to revisit that which he's already so generously provided. This is the best writing in the world. That thing he does in this sentence, specifically how he..."

Now you might want to say, "You picked the worst one! Anyone can have a piece that doesn't work! Anyone can have a bad day! A bad story! Maybe they tried something that one time and it was an experiment that didn't come off and a single failed experiment isn't the same as always producing trash!"

We've been doing this for a while. I could pick anything by any of these darlings, "the elites" as determined by this system, by this Trumpian system. There is no "worst one" because they're all the worst one.

I'll put this out there again, too: you want to get in touch and send me your favorite, the example of the amazing writing by one of these people, and be all, "You can't take this one on, Fleming!" I'll use that in a prose off. We can do it with all the "best" fiction of this system.

Or, we can leave the infinitely better writing out of it and just put anything by these people front and center and say, "Actually look at this. Don't bullshit about it. Let's look at the goddamn work itself."

Which isn't done. You put it on the table, you put it out in the open, you turn on the light overhead, and you look? You truly look? You don't parrot, you don't lie your two-faced face off, you truly look?

It's game over if anyone truly looks. (And imagine if we actually quote the text as part of the would-be argument for brilliance? How would that work? "Well, when she writes 'Motorollah, Motorollah, Motorollah...'" There isn't a truth-based way to make a case for any of this as not being garbage. The only way you can make like it is, and have people go along, is with lies, threats, a cover of darkness, apathy, that they're poseurs/dabblers who are no more invested in any of this than the guy who takes War and Peace down to the cafe to be seen by the ladies as a guy who reads War and Peace and hasn't earnestly read five sentences of it, and the promise/possibility of quid pro quo, rewards for being a good water carrier, the way Elon Musk is for Donald Trump.)

But basically no one does. This system has almost nothing to do with the words that are on any of these pages. There has to be words. You can't get into the club without words on a page. It's like having your parking validated. You need the receipt. But those words can be anything. Their quality is immaterial, save if they are of superior quality. Then there's a problem, because superior quality would expose the complete absence of quality in everything else that system hypes and lies about in this world of intellectual fascism, without any applied intellect. A pretend intellectual world. And just as it can be as racist as it gets, it's as fascist as it gets, too. And these hypocrites will tell you they couldn't be bluer than Smurfs.

We can go back to Scott Stossel of The Atlantic. Here's what Stossel knows: that the writer of this entry is the best fiction writer. The best music writer. Any kind. You pick. Sports writer. Opinion/ideas writer. Literature-related writer. Film writer. I know that he knows this. I know that he knows this person is immeasurably beyond everyone else in all these areas. With everyone else having just their one area.

He did me so dirty. And he knew just how dirty he--and The Atlantic--did me. When I said, well, what do you expect here, it's not like I'm going to keep that a secret, he responded by saying that if I told the truth publicly, I would never write for The Atlantic again.

How is that not fascist? That's evil. It's also an evil level of cowardice. Scott Stossel is an outsized coward. He knows this. He doesn't need to read it from me to know it. That's someone who has an unlimited amount of guilt about what a failure they are as a human being. Because he's a different kind of evil than a David Remnick. The latter could only be evil. Was always going to be evil. Stossel had it in him at one point to be something else. And he knows how much he let himself down by what he became instead. That's where the guilt comes in. And why Stossel would read something like this, want to get angry, but wouldn't truly be able to. Another night of thinking about what you are and drinking yourself to sleep. Literally or figuratively.

There is no way anyone has ever thought any of the above ("I'm blown away by the brilliance of this fiction," etc.) regarding George Saunders. Not really. Not close to really. It isn't a possible honest thought. It's not, "Art is subjective!" or "That's your opinion, man," as idiots like to say followed by a Big Lebowski meme. It's unthinkable. No one has ever really thought it. But it was decreed by the Trump-like world of modern publishing that this was how it would be treated, how George Saunders would be officially classified, and everyone followed suit. And not one of these people, as stupid as most of them are, honestly think it at all.

They make up something that is insane, and everyone in their group, in that world, or who wants to be in it, or not thwarted by it in their relevant endeavors--that is, this is publishing, and one wishes to advance with one's published work, all the more so if that work can have a desperately needed impact to the good on the world--is expected to go along, serve the egos of those who set themselves up as masters, enable the delusions, perpetuate the lies and evil, or risk being an ENEMY, which one is also assured of being seen as and treated as such by being smarter, more talented, and any of a number of the multitude of good things that these people aren't.

ENEMY!