Maybe it’s time I came clean, perhaps you are tired of me telling you that I am lying, and that everything is lies. I’ll start out by telling you something (it’s a lie, by the way). I have discovered during this lock down that I am a 'bottom.' It’s necessary to have a revelation about one’s sexuality during a lock down, to come to a conclusion to bring back to the post lock down sexual world -- when people are actively able to be slutty once again. Something to look forward to. If you don’t know what a 'bottom' is, then look it up -- it's the opposite of ‘bottomless’ (see: Shakespeare) which is what I was before, posing as an airy, profound dominant, an authoritarian who did not reveal his secrets because he was in power. Now I am (by revealing my dirty bedroom secrets) without any power at all (except the power to refuse to be penetrated). Why am I telling you all this? Because it’s necessary for me as a rhetor (which just means truth-teller/poet) that you know that I am unworthy. It is necessary in fact that I denigrate myself, so that you know that the source of whatever information you are getting is possibly flawed, because I am flawed. In other words you have have every right to be suspicious of my point of view. And I might stop here (but I won’t) because that is the point of this whole ‘lies’ business — to say 'all facts are lies' is necessary, because nothing is worse than to think the opposite, that is, to think that there is a truth -- anywhere -- that can be found, promulgated, emblazoned on a Trump Hat or Antifa Mask. There is no truth, period. I discovered this last night, when I discovered I had a bottom. A friend of mine is a conspiracy theorist. Everyone should have a conspiracy theorist as friend; the world is rife with them now, and they are good people — at least as good as anyone else, shall we say? Just as flawed? I realized my friend was a conspiracy theorist when he began defending QAnon, which to me is a bridge too far, i.e. it's indefensible. But he, nevertheless, disagreed with me. Then he told me that the WHO — The World Health Organisation -- had recently revealed their COVID-19 tests are inaccurate because ‘the cycle threshold is so high that it detects any miniscule viral load.’ (What this means -- and I have definitely heard this from scientists before -- is that the PCR test use to detect ‘cases’ of COVID-19 is so sensitive that it only tells you if you have even the tiniest bit of the virus in your system, which ultimately means nothing because if you have that little COVID-19 in your system, you won’t get sick, or make anyone else sick.) Anyway, the revelation came not with that news but with trying to confirm this on google. No such luck. This information is not available on the search engine that I have been using for so many thousands of years. My conspiracy-theorist friend said — ‘Just go to duckduckgo.’ I went to duckduckgo (ironically you can reach duckduckgo by putting it into the google search engine) and sure enough said ‘information’ about PCR tests just stares you in the face. And I immediately understood that this is what is wrong with the world. It’s no good cnsoring Facebook (Facebook is an evil thing, I know) or Trump’s Tweets. That’s small bananas in the big bad world of the internet. The problem is that, essentially, (are you ready) there are no newspapers anymore. And if that sounds like too small a way to solve a big problem, well 'perhaps you're right' (which is a euphemism for: ‘you are wrong’). Look at it this way; alternative facts are available everywhere on the internet and they are enabled by capitalism. In other words, the digital world is no longer a vast, bottomless source of information. It too, has a bottom. That bottom is money. In order to make money, you offer the public any lies you can sell, because that’s all any ’fact’ is, a lie. But inevitably, you must frame it as the truth. And therein lies the rub. There is no context for anything you read on the web, there is no self-denigrating rhetor like me, telling you he is submissive in bed and that he might be lying. You are getting the foundationalist creed, the cold hard facts. Thus you feel enabled to go out and kill people in the name of those facts; and God help anyone who challenges you. Now The New York Times made money on the basis of the fact that the 'information' it disseminated was trustworthy -- not on the basis that that 'information' got a lot of 'likes.' They were not perfect by any means, but The New York Times motto was ‘all the news that’s fit to print’ a humble admission of fallibility -- but more than that, you could sue them, you could take them to court for libel or lies. (I'm speaking of The New York Times in the past sense because I'm worried that at any moment it may perish, i.e. I'm doing it to make a point!) You could also read another newspapers, of various editorial quality (like The National Enquirer) but the point is that though a newspaper frames its news as ‘fact,’ newspapers are not infallible, they definitely have a bottom. And you could screw that bottom, or screw with it. And this is the essence of a democracy; and the essence of the world (okay, you’re getting it here and now, but remember, it’s a lie) we all have something to say, something to offer, flawed as we are, but it is up to each of us to listen and decide -- is it a good lie or a bad lie? In other words, does it make sense? Or, does it seem in some way to match with what we consider to be reality? Is it kind? Is it gentle? Is it nevertheless ruthless in its consistency and it’s power? In other words you, dear reader, listener, audience -- you decide what is truth and what is not, but it is therefore necessary that you think (I know, a tough one) and analyze, and vote, and that you educate yourself. And once you have decided on a truth, knowing full well that it is a lie, be ready for another truth to replace it. I love Wittgenstein, not only because he was a tortured faggot who nevertheless continued to love men in the face of a rich and oppressive family who would not have him do so, but because he admitted he was wrong. My ‘facts’ are fudgy on this but let’s just say that Wittgenstein wrote one book in the 20s (I think) and then he wrote a book in the 1930s (I think) retracting it all-- saying "Sorry, I got it wrong before.' This is the way knowledge works, and this is the only way the world may continue, i.e. the key that will ensure that it will not end. And oh, by the way, Wittgenstein did also not believe there are foundationalist truths, and he believed that art was a beautiful lie. I rest my case, as I rest my body, right now, on my bottom, which as you can see, in recent days, has become invaluable to me.
