Two Stories From Hell

One is kind of funny, the other not so much.

You see, my friends, I have been to Hell and back. When I say it’s hotter (or colder) than Hell I know whereof I speak, I can even show you the current temperature.

Mayor of Hell, Michigan declares heterosexuality illegal, impeached immediately
by Gabriel Bell, Salon
Thursday, Aug 31, 2017

Hell, Michigan is without a mayor today as the small, unincorporated town’s former chief official, Elijah Daniel, found himself impeached after issuing a proclamation declaring heterosexuality illegal.

Daniel, a satirist and author of a comedic erotic fiction starring the character of President Donald J. Trump, took official office yesterday. There are no elections for mayoral office in the unincorporated town that lies roughly halfway between Jackson, Michigan and Detroit. Rather, Daniel was able to temporarily assume office by giving town organizers a small fee.

“I was looking for a town willing to make me mayor,” Daniel told HuffPost. “They’ll do it in Hell for $100, so I caught a red-eye to Michigan and got sworn in.” Handily done.

It was almost immediately after his inauguration, however, that problems arose. Daniel took it upon himself to declare via social media that heterosexuality and practicing heterosexuals were banned from the burg, in a move that was clearly satirical, perhaps meant in jest and fully unenforceable.

The entire text of the proclamation — which suggests that heterosexuals living in Hell would have to pay an “$84,000 precautionary procreation deposit,” offers “heterosexual reparative therapy” demands that all non-conforming heterosexuals wear a scarlet “H” and cargo shorts to daily, and mandates straight-shaming ceremonies — is available.

As Daniel told HuffPost “My ban is a copy-and-paste of Trump’s Muslim ban, but with heterosexuals instead.” Indeed, some aspects of the proclamation, and certainly its spirit, closely mirror the president’s controversial and still only partially implemented March executive order that briefly limited immigrants and visitors from seven Muslim-majority nations from entering the United States. Much like Trump’s executive order, Daniel’s proclamation is logistically unenforceable and, by all appearances, directly unconstitutional.

The move quickly precipitated Daniel’s impeachment. From his swearing in to his removal from office, Daniel served less than three hours.

As he told HuffPost, it was of little concern to him. “That’s actually not a problem,” he told the publication. “Everyone who becomes mayor there gets impeached. Most of the people who visit are same-sex couples who want to be married in Hell.”

Indeed, Hell commonly issues fully honorary, practically useless mayoral certificates for a small price, only to impeach those who buy it almost immediately.

I am but half troll. Richard is a Yooper.

This story is too true to be funny.

The World Is Going To Hell Because
by Ian Welsh
2017 August 26

You get the behaviour you reward.

Politicians in the US, with the Iraq war and the vote to have it, committed the exact same war crime most Nazis were hung for: aggressive war.

They, including the most responsible politician, George W Bush, were not punished for it, indeed, Bush was reelected and so were most of the others.

In 2008 there was a vast financial crisis, caused by bankers and Wall Street brokers and so on—financial executives. It included a vast amount of fraud, aided and abetted by ratings agencies, financial regulators and central banks.

No one was held responsible and sent to jail. They were bailed out and allowed to keep their illicit profits, and the same games that caused the crisis were reinstituted alongside vast money printing targeted at the class of people who caused the crisis.

The people who caused the financial crisis, as a class, in other words, were rewarded for that they did.

We have an ongoing problem, due to turn into a worldwide catastrophe causing over a billion human deaths and so many non-human deaths it will show up clearly in the geological record. It is called climate change.

Oil companies knew that climate change was real, based on their own research, back in the 80s. Not only did they not make that research public, they spent large amounts of money to fund propaganda saying that what they knew was true wasn’t.

Put more simply, for their personal financial gain, major corporate executives did their best to make sure that information known to be true that might help stop a billion or more deaths, was not acted on.

They have not been punished for that, but indeed, retired wealthy and happy.

If people who knowingly do very very bad things, that cause the death and suffering of millions of people in wars, economic downturns and forseeable environmental catastrophes, are not only not punished but rewarded, then more of the same behaviour will occur.

Obama, during his term in office, increased drone murders significantly and destroyed Libya, in a war of aggression (the same war crime that Nazis were hung for, and Obama also should be in a war crimes dock along with every other Western leader involved in Libya). He was then re-elected.

None of this stuff should be hard to understand. If leaders who do monstrous things are not only not punished, but rewarded for doing those things, leaders will do even more monstrous things, since they have been shown that is what is rewarded.

Welcome to a world tottering towards hell, because that is what too many people want, as measured by what they reward.

That Hell is not just in Michigan.