u/Certain_Thoughts

Bone-smashing. Live-streamed drug overdoses. A night on the town with the boys broadcasting some very public renditions of “Heil Hitler.”

The misogynistic, nihilistic body-mangling influencer Clavicular didn’t rise to fame solely as human spectacle, though he has mastered the form. His stardom is built on sheer madness. He is a reflection not only of the madness of our time, but of the decades of uninterrupted structural insanities that have brought us to the precipice of cultural psychosis and societal collapse. Clavicular is a prophet.

Unlike the fictional mad prophet of the airwaves, Network (1976)’s Howard Beale, Clavicular is real. Beale invited his own death by promising it on behalf of the network, which made good on the commitment with its own firing squad. Clavicular cut out the middle man. He’s pursuing self-destruction at his own hands, and reaping the full financial benefit as producer, director, and lead actor of a slow-rolling snuff film.

It is madness. Yet in the context of this moment, Clavicular’s logic is all too rational. Coming of age in a joke of an economy with ever-shrinking prospects, what else is there but the self-made grift of the influencer? In a culture where hegemonic beauty standards directly dictate personal and professional opportunities, why not maximize one’s physical appeal? On a planet where ecological chaos is not a matter of if, but of how far and how fast, what real incentive is there for a current 20-year old to live past 40?

Our society has gone mad. Far madder than we were fifty years ago at Network’s release. In the theater we were mad as hell, and we weren’t going to take it any more. Yet of course, we have taken it. The madness has metastasized. It’s come to define us – not as an outgrowth of modern life, but as its precondition. Madness used to be the short cut to getting noticed. For Beale and his executive team, insanity was a ratings bonanza. Now, as Clavicular demonstrates, it’s table stakes.

“Clavicular realized that JESTERMAXXING at the club is actually peak fun,” observed social media aggregator Jolt. “Clavicular just cracked the code: JESTERMAXXING at the club is officially the new meta. Forget the ‘mysterious guy in the corner’ trope or the ‘stiff-arm drink hold.’ We are entering the era of high-energy, zero-ego, chaotic fun. If you aren’t the reason the floor is laughing, are you even living?”

If you haven’t made a spectacle of yourself, not only are you not living – you’re not making a living. Where Jolt sees a “new meta” in the monetized performance of high-energy, chaotic jestermaxxing, Clavicular runs on the ground where Rupert Pupkin once stood.

Voters hate Israel, and they have every reason to do so.

If our support for two and a half years of genocide in Gaza wasn’t enough, the United States’ catastrophic war on Iran and Lebanon has proven to a majority of Americans – beyond a shadow of a doubt – that Israel is hurting our country and must be cut off from our support.

With Israel emerging as a cultural villain, domestic organizations that lobby on its behalf have themselves become irrevocably tainted – most prominently AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC’s emergence as a Democratic bogeyman reflects an overlapping set of outrages: the corrosive influence of oligarchic and dark money, a military-industrial state that prioritizes foreign adventures while Americans starve, and a political elite preserving the status quo through manipulation, criminalizing free speech, and the assault and deportation of the fiercest opponents of genocide.

Everyone hates AIPAC. But “AIPAC” – in the colloquial understanding – refers to much more than a single bad actor. It’s a blanket term for the Israel lobby as a whole. That group includes, but is not exclusive to: the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Federations of North America, Christians United for Israel, most synagogues and Jewish Community Centers, the Republican Jewish Coalition, the Jewish Democratic Council of America, the Democratic Majority for Israel, and of course, J Street.

Each of these organizations were born at a time when Israel enjoyed broad support. Today, the Jewish State has lost that support and it’s never coming back. As a result, every single one of these organizations has morphed into a living stereotype – and not a flattering one: they are dual loyalty incarnate. By urging Americans to support something the majority of them understand in their marrow to be indefensible, in their own way each of these members of the Israel lobby now embodies the dangerous myth of Jews subverting the national will to their own parochial interest.

That such activity is anti-American should be grounds for it to cease, fully and immediately. That it validates and energizes antisemitic hatred only compounds the argument for these organizations to either close up shop or stop advocating on Israel’s behalf. Yet they persist.

Insanity-Maxxing and the Trans King of Comedy