"Maduro won the presidency,
The problems began
All evils fell on Venezuela
Don't be fooled by supposed progress
Because you will be skinny,
They will gain weight"
Prieto Gang

I've been a fan of this group since I started booking The Poor Man's Nick Cave Tour in 2018. They were one of my early Spanish teachers. I have been scouring my articles for a graphic I made of the text at the end of their song "Caracas Loca," but I can't find it. Watch the video and translate it for yourself. "Misery is only for the poor of heart," is one of the lines, if memory serves. 

Nothing is quite as humbling as taking a lesson in gratitude from a guy who lives in the slums of Caracas.

I'm looking at you, Zohran Mamdani voter.

I have been saying for a long time that there is a sure-fire way to absolutely guarantee that you will be wrong about something. My method for achieving total wrongness is foolproof.

If you want to be absolutely sure, with 100% certainty, that you will be wrong about something, never consider the possibility that you're wrong.

Do that, and you will be wrong about something, eventually. Maybe something small at first, working your way up to the more grandiose delusions, and then, who knows. If you stick with the program of never once considering the possibility that you're wrong, you might one day achieve the lofty, unbreathable status of being wrong about absolutely everything.

There will be no way to avoid it.

Did Donald Trump just do the world a favor, or is he crossing a line? Was the fishing helicopter expedition into Venezuela last night a necessary act, or a criminal one? Does the prefab outrage of the woke ring hollow because they have genuinely lost any pretense to moral authority they may have feigned 20 years ago under Bush, or is their loss subjective? Does their moral authority still exist, because they say so? Who are the Soul Sicarios? Donald Trump? Maduro?

Mamdani?

As someone who marched through Hollywood with 100,000 anti-war protestors after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I say, 

Bravo. Excellent job, to everyone involved. Incredible work.

Bravo.

Zelle: [email protected]

p.s. I normally close the comments on my articles because I need neither the aggravation nor the encouragement. I prefer using this platform for artistic ideas, and no artist has any use for the opinions of others. But since this article is different, in the spirit of what a liberal used to be OVER 20 YEARS AGO, for the benefit of people who subscribed for poems and songs and don't care about or know what to do with these unfortunate, inevitable topics, feel free to tell me I'm right or wrong in whatever terms are suitable to a discussion between human beings, and not ideologues. Any rightness or wisdom I have has come at the price of much wrongness and stupidity. Any pretenses to rightness I make are rigorously tested, and continue to be. I am on a learning curve just like everybody else. Which doesn't mean you're going to reason me out of things that can't be reasoned into, or get me to apply copious quantities of imagination and doublethink when common sense will suffice.

So please, feel free. Oh and by the way, the Zelle/PayPal/CashApp links aren't there for aesthetic purposes. While the crypto tips are nice, and while it's possible I will figure out how to actually use them in the real world (or any world) someday, showing your appreciation for my work in one of the more traditional formats would be greatly and truly appreciated.

Thank you.

p.p.s. I'm not sure, but I think the young girl in the first video of the article Flow That Burns is the daughter of one of the guys in The Prieto Gang. If you want to improve your Spanish, the songs in that article are a good place to start.

Thanks for listening.