Friday, January 20, 2017

SLS_フラード


Question all reality, it's Sick Little Suicide #27, "フラード," in which we lose pride in our country, and lose our country itself, while we're at it.

What idiocy has my country committed? How sickeningly delusional are our people? This orange fraud is not the warrior of the needy, he is not the advocate of the weak, and he is not even the bearer of a believable comb over. But beyond that, you must actively delude yourself if you think he is any shade of a force for good, least of all looking out for those in pain. I get if it's a matter of hatred and that's why you'd vote for him, but it's shameful to act like it's anything more than that. It's insulting. As he clearly is incapable of supporting those who need him, his supporters thus either advocated or condoned hatred and cruel, blatant dishonesty by voting for him; there's no other avenue to voting for such a void of selflessness and character.

He is to be a public servant, he is to serve the public. Nothing indicates his willingness to submit this core tenet of his duty, voting for him serves nobody who is in need. This idiotic working class vote narrative is just outstanding in either those peoples' gullibility or their stupidity to think he has their actual interests at heart. Of course, I know the election was a choice between a rock and a turd-stained cyanide tablet, but why would the latter ever seem acceptable under any circumstances? It is simply incredible, this state we're in.


About this piece, then.

Fun Facts: I was listening to a Jake Parker video and at some point he mentioned the parable of the man who builds his house on rock vs. the guy who builds on sand, which comes from Matthew 7:24-27, and then this image flashed in my head. It felt appropriate to have the inspiration for this piece, for this topic, spring forth from a Bible verse about keeping Jesus's wisdom in mind as a lifelong anchoring device--as a moral centering, if you will--meanwhile seeing the utterly heartbreaking statistics of how most Christian voters gave in to following this clearly immoral orange.

I don't know what's more deflating: that people of faith honestly could believe that orange fraud to be good in any capacity, or that they were willing to ignore their own goodness and compassion to not only accept, but reward his behavior. I suppose the worst must be those who willingly or (let's say) "subconsciously" used our faith as a front for their ulterior motives for voting for him, which is to say, they were willing to perpetuate hatred by hiding behind the faith of love as the supposed motivator for their vote for a being that does everything short of outright denounce the faith.


I love this verse for how perfectly it applies to the situation. That orange fraud is incontrovertibly immoral, that is, someone who "hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them," meaning in a loose sense, he chooses to ignore morality, ethics, and decency. Coincidentally, for this piece, I focused on the second half of the scripture, about he who builds on sand, but if expanding to incorporate the full verse, you could just make a corresponding level picture of the White House resting steadily upon some black ba-rocks.

Easter Eggs: The quoted passage includes reference to "floods," which is of course especially symbolic of ruin as per Noah's world-totaling tale, but interestingly, when you write flood phonetically in Japanese as フラード, it gains a double meaning as the phonetic approximation of "fraud," so I tagged the sand with that along the right wing of the piece. Indeed the pockmarked sand in the illustration is the orange fraud's grotesque face, complete with his baldness peeking though the golden decoration standing in for his "hair," itself a symbol of the utter superficiality and falseness that this fraud embodies.


Further, thinking back to the golden calf Moses encountered, I included a golden bull statue here as some typically gaudy lawn decoration to symbolize that fraud's horrifying materialism and exaltation of money, but it also doubles as a marker of his obedience to money itself, with the bull playing a familiar financial symbol here as well. The bull itself is temperamental and generally characterized as thoughtless, and I placed it so it's touching what might be the orange fraud's temples, a gesture usually indicating thought. Thus his thoughts are guided by money, materialism, and most basically greed. The bull is also kissing his forehead, as if the golden idol is giving some kind of anointment or blessing to the fraud. The fraud's sandy eyes and mouth are X'd out for the evil they perpetuate.

More on the nose, perhaps, the flag is at half mast because this is no doubt a time of national mourning, not unlike a time of stately death. Our country's morality, decency, honor, prestige, legacy, and people are indeed in peril, and many literally have their lives at stake in this turn of events as they risk losing their necessary healthcare just so a gang of fools, cowards, and traitors can cheer, "WE WON!"


With no doubt, our dignity and morality as a country will be tested and tattered by the end of these next four years, so it's up to us as individuals not to forget the injustice that is being perpetrated today and to safeguard our country's dignity until a responsible adult comes to pick us from this inept babysitter.

What a waste of a beautifully chilly, rainy day today, by the way...I love the rain.

Not normal,

Reuxben

3 comments:

Plastic Glow said...

I like that quote from the bible. I've heard it lots of times. I don't really like politics that much because of the amount of dirt involved in it. I don't also want to say anything about a topic that I don't know anything about, especially elections. But hey, let's see what that guy's going to do in that position. I like how you expressed your thoughts in your art. The symbolism it represents is awesome.

Coincidentally, it's raining here. Thanks for loving the rain. Some people hate it. I don't know why. Haha

Reuxben said...

Yeah, this passage never really resonated so clearly and direly as it does now. The very foundation of government must be facts: you need at least facts, otherwise absolutely everything else falls apart as unreliable cuz you have nothing solid to build upon. It's fine to have differing opinions, rich debate makes government work, but you need a factual basis on which to have those differing opinions that aspire to help government.

That thing occupying the presidency is the antithesis of fact, and in fact, while I appreciate your willingness to see what it's going to do, it seems its press secretary is already delivering clear, demonstrable lies on its behalf to start this term off. This is a discredit to him, his boss, the news industry, and the people he would inform.

Put quite neatly:
https://twitter.com/peterwsinger/status/822980687083008000
That is, it's one thing that we can't trust them to be honest about low turnout despite widespread public, photographic evidence disproving their aggressive claims, but (perish the thought) if ever there should be a legit public crisis, these are the people we would need to be honest with us, we must be able to rely on them to tell the truth by observing/relaying facts. Without facts, there is no honesty, and thus, no trust.

So we differ in willingness to wait and see about this demonstrable fraud, cuz for me personally it has exhausted its leeway for trust after a pre-inauguration, 18-month run of constant, unrelenting dishonesty that hasn't stopped, and my baseline has become that whatever it says is more likely not true and must first meet a burden of proof to be taken otherwise. That is a horrific state to be in, where the default is Do Not Trust.

I bumped into some people at the crosswalk today, and we chatted before parting, and at no point did I have to think of these total strangers as by-default lying to me. That is how it should be. That is the bedrock foundation of why we say "innocent until proven guilty." That is human decency. But I know that thing in office is not decent, and don't know if it's entirely human.

(1/2)

Reuxben said...

This is a bizarre world now. Ordinarily I have basically 0 interest in politics, and of course don't want to bog down an art site with this sort of topic, but I feel that it has become our (meaning USers) responsibility not to be as casual as we could afford to be before, cuz it's crystal clear we simply can't trust the "adults." Just listening to the cabinet confirmation hearings; it's simply incredible. These are adult, human beings saying these things to other human beings; these aren't TV characters, this is real life and they will be responsible for the well-being of millions and millions of people each, and it's a joke. As a US citizen, I cannot in good conscience allow myself to be a party or pawn to these agents of harm.

You are in a more unique position as an outside observer to remain as disengaged as you wish (a position I took for granted), so please don't take this as any sort of pressuring or call to action for you! I'm just trying to respond thoroughly. For now, this situation remains above all our problem. I hope we get our house in order enough so we don't severely, negatively impact other countries.

To end on a more positive note, I can see the humor in it once being unimaginable that I would ever expend so much energy on politics. The comedian Bo Burnham (of all people) presented a pretty accurate representation my feelings of reluctantly caring, though:
https://twitter.com/boburnham/status/822180111008923649

Anyway, yeah, the weather said it was going to rain here in JP so I started working on a rainy piece, but then inspiration struck for this take so I switched and carried over the rain theme to match the quote. Didn't realize it was raining during the inauguration, too (didn't watch). Bummed I didn't get to take a walk in the rain as usual, though, or at least do a "happy" rain piece. Love the rain.

(2/2)

Reuxben