Listen to a reading of “The Fistbump Heard Round The World”:

Two powerful leaders met beneath the hot Jeddah sun to discuss oil and killing and friendship.

One of the leaders rules a tyrannical regime which funds terrorists, murders journalists, suppresses civil rights and commits war crimes. The other, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, is no better.

They greeted not with the traditional handshake, nor with a stern finger wag from the American for the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, but with the most epic fistbump in the history of civilization.

Since the invention of the fistbump there have been none so pure, so affectionate, so expressive of perfect union and harmony. Observers said they thought they heard angels singing.

Where their two fists connected, their souls merged. Their eyes locked with an intimacy poets and lovers have spent their whole lives trying to capture. Their dick chakras burned with the intensity of a thousand stars.

“This is who we are,” the fistbump roared to the heavens. “This is who we have always been. Our sacred bond presides over an empire that is fueled by oil and blood, and we rule as one in holy communion with the great kings of old. Nothing shall ever come between us: not bone saw nor mass beheading nor strained lip service to human rights values on the presidential campaign trail.”

Time froze as the two joined fists in genocidal matrimony, flashing coy grins at each other upon a mountain of Yemeni corpses and the tortured bones of Syria. Their faces turned to skulls. Doves with red-stained feathers filled the sky.

And the Marxists of the world say “If only we could one day capture that kind of class solidarity.”

And the wives of the world say “If only he would one day look at me like that.”

And the arms manufacturers of the world say “Hoo hoo yeah buddy boy this is gonna be great let’s go snort coke off a Tomahawk missile.”

And the hidden saints say “Something’s gotta give here.”

And the world rotates on the axis of those two joined fists into ecocide and atrocity and Google Hollywood McDystopia.

And the imperial juggernaut marches on, and the Earth spins off into the blackness, and we all hold hands and look to providence as we plunge into an increasingly strange Unknown.

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35 responses to “The Fistbump Heard Round The World”

  1. Caitlin: “dick chakras”! I almost woofed my tea all over my keyboard reading that this a.m. Thanks! Another “short, sharp jab” at the powers that be! I’m a new reader and enjoy your prose (and poetry). Keep up the good work!
    Don

    1. “Short, sharp Jab?th” huh? I would call that a haymaker from left field and it landed perfectly on jaws of both gangsters.

  2. Shunned anti-neo-liberal economists Michael Hudson and Steve Keen interivewed but Steve Grumbine.
    http://thesaker.is/michael-hudson-podcast-with-michael-hudson-steve-keen-steve-grumbine/
    Good stuff. Always good to see MMT (public banking for the common good) featured in a discussion, for the simple reason that if humans can’t get their banking “problems” solved, they will go extinct.
    Exponential debt driven growth on a finite little planet. Could there be a dumber idea, if you were a species that wanted to stick around for awhile?
    That’s a rhetorical.

  3. Similar sentiments expressed.

  4. Emperor Xi is in Uyghurland, oppressing the people there with warm smiles, parade waves, and fulfilled promises.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uLpYCz4Erc
    So clever is Mein Emperor!
    So my prediction is, that when we move on to the China phase of Operation New World Order, China will crush us on the propaganda front, simply by overwhelming YouTube with videos of how advanced their country is.
    – Are they a century ahead of us over there? No, not quite. At least one more successful 5 year plan will be required, I think, to move fully 100 years ahead of the West. –
    Now, what can we do about this? Outside of nukes, propaganda is all we got, so my other related prediction was, that when the nonsense begins, we will be forced to shut down YouTube.
    Immediately. I mean, what else can we do?
    But how do you shut down YouTube (and other social media) without appearing to be helpless before the whole wide world in the only arena, that of propagada and false narratives, where you claim to reign supreme.
    What else, you false flag it!
    Lmao … Jimmy Dore is on to something. He smells a rat. He doesn’t know where it is or exactly what is up to but something ain’t sitting right with him. He is also aware that a nuclear blast in the middle of New York City will lead to a little bit more trouble than NBC News is letting on in this piece.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaqRwagoCow
    That’s right. The next false flag on my country’s agenda will be an high altitude nuclear detonation (EMP) that shuts down the internet – and a lot of other stuff. It’s also a two bird killer, as it will allow US leadership to blame the attack on whomever they want.
    Who would they blame? I don’t know, take your pick. China, Russia, the Kingdom, all three and more? Could it backfire? Hell yeah it could backfire. It could lead to death of all things. But since when have such trival concerns stopped anyone in Washington from formulating and then boldly implementing admittedly bizarre but grandios plans?
    That’s a rhetorical.
    Well, that’s my new conspiracy theory for the day. I hope you like it. I was inspired by poem, and by Jimmy Dore, who probably doesn’t know what a nuclear EMP-burst is, but he does seem to have a very good sense of what it would do.
    Note: 198 million Americans dead within a year should a single high altitude nuke burst over St. Louis, according to the latest Congressional study on the subject.
    As far as false flags go, it would be tricky one to work to your advantage, that’s for sure.

    1. Should be a real adventure for the garrisons left in the roughly 900 American bases around the world. Bastards become dogfood for the locals after they run out of bullets. Doctor Lector will eat well. Everyone not able to go “Morlock” gets eaten, freezes to death or dies of radiation sickness or cancer. No cis front hole reproduces anything but teratogenic monsters, which become the only fresh meat to break the constant diet of all those half-rotten frozen dead bodies. The national pastime becomes finding inhabited bomb shelters, digging them up and eating the occupants. Some things will never change, as you are what you eat. Those creatures still carrying some recognisable sequences of human DNA in their vastly mutated genomes will prove to the neocons and their ilk that it was indeed all worth it. The embrace of war as the answer will never go out of fashion. Will turn out that the script to Mad Max was actually volume two in the “Future History of the Human Race,” after Orwell’s first installment called “1984.”

      1. “The national pastime becomes finding inhabited bomb shelters, digging them up and eating the occupants.”
        Too funny. If that’s the case and Strangelove is correct, we’ll be eating mostly young, healthy women that have been selected for bunker life based on breeding characteristics. Yum, yum!
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf9iTZ433zs
        My YouTube feed is full of China stuff, and it should be, my Algo is doing what I am demanding of it (thanks Algo!) Most of it is China walkers and drivers and ex-pat vlogs, that have been at for years. And I wouldn’t exactly call it propaganda, in fact, far from it, as the walker/drivers and the ex-pats especially go out of their way, at least from time to time, to show you the poorer and seedier sides of China.
        For balance? To give you a feel for how far China has come? I dont’ know. Something. But it is never in your face, like, look at this motherfucking place, it is so far beyond what your nation is capable of I feel sorry for you.
        But recently, I’ve getting some new stuff that is straight up state propaganda and it’s not quite so … humble. The old, whoops, so sorry, we stumbled by accident on this magic formula and that’s why we have hundreds of cities that wouldn’t look out of place in a Jetsons’ episode.
        This is stuff is a little more aggressive. A couple of examples. Brand new channels that I believe are part of the preparation.
        https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmH3Ys9kZ0NqYF_9mAShOJg/videos
        https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWk20Ox5L6F4Dd1OiOFxuSg/videos
        Is it China saying, fuck you, bring it on? The Federation may have lost their way on the propaganda front, but we haven’t. The truth is, we are the all-time masters, and it is also to our great advantage that the reality of our relative positions means our propaganda will slap yours silly.
        And then knock it out for good should we deem it necessary.

  5. Michael Bliss Avatar
    Michael Bliss

    Firstbump was apparently a (late) respone to Putin / MBS fistbump that was Putin’s response to Kashogi hacking up and flushing down the drain….

  6. Lincoln, like Catilin, was compelled to look to providence, knowing humans alone were not up to the daunting challenges, the impossible tasks, which had to be undertaken for the survival of a nation, in Lincoln’s case, for the survival of our species, in Caitlin’s. When will the left again openly, humbly, look to providence, seeking the assistance of a benevolent higher power, however imagined or conceived? How far would Gandhi’s and MLK’s movements have gone without a sustaining, empowering element of the transcendent? Even communism, IMHO, at its apex, drew upon a secularized version of such an element–a sacred ideal in but not of this world. Didn’t Che as much say so?

    1. We’ve been let down before. Over three million children die from malnutrition every year. How ’bout the TV preachers stop complaining about libruls and vaccines and do something to merit the respect they want from us?

    2. Ted Christian Avatar
      Ted Christian

      The higher power of communism was Lenin and Mao, I’ve seen their tombs. It’s called a cult of personality.

  7. Ted Christian Avatar
    Ted Christian

    Caitlin explodes like spiders across the stars.
    “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” -HST

  8. Not since Marc Antony and Cleopatra (if Marc Antony had been senile and Cleopatra much less fashion-conscious).

  9. “And the world rotates on the axis of those two joined fists into ecocide and atrocity and Google Hollywood McDystopia.”

    What a line – this is why I always sadly, enjoy reading your work

  10. The “fist bump” in itself symbolizes madness and the loss of reason. The fist bump was invented to prevent “spread” of a virus – a virus that, FWIW, cannot be spread by the hand shake that the experts said was a big method of transmission.

    Note that both of the men afraid of getting Covid from a handshake are not wearing masks. So I guess the virus isn’t airborne either.

    Biden to MBS: “You ordered the death of a dissident journalist.”

    MBS to Biden: “You ordered the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans by mandating dangerous non-vaccines.”

    Awkward pause. Stalemate. Biden has no cue card answer prepared for that one.

    1. Biden to MBS: “You ordered the death of a dissident journalist.”

      MBS to Biden: “You ordered the death of a dissident journalist.” (Julian Assange)

      That makes them blood brothers in the war against journalism.

      Fist pump to imagine mutual contamination is still possible, really both are already contaminated.

      1. @Bill: you nailed it. No mask, no social distancing and so no reason to do a fistbump other than an excuse for: “I despise you, you despise me. This is strictly business, so let’s use that Covid pretext not to shake hands”.
        Or as Bob Dylan puts it in Positively 4th Street:
        “You see me on the street
        You always act surprised
        You say “How are you? Good luck!”
        But you don’t mean it
        When you know as well as me
        You’d rather see me paralyzed
        Why don’t you just come out once
        And scream it?”

  11. Masterfully hilarious!

  12. Normand Drolet Avatar
    Normand Drolet

    Inspired and funny… !

  13. Her best poem of 2022

  14. “Their dick chakras burned with the intensity of a thousand stars”.
    Maybe a bit of a stretch (so to speak) as far as old Joe is concerned. It reminded me of the two old timers who’ve been meeting on a park bench for years and one day, one of them goes missing never to be seen again.
    At least until, three months later, he comes walking up to the bench like nothing has happened. The other guy cries out, “My god, I thought you were dead! Where have you been?”
    – Well, do you remember that little café we would go to once in a while for coffee and a donut? I was there by myself one day and that cute waitress waited on me. After I left, I realized I’d forgotten to leave a tip. She got so mad she called the police and told them I raped her. So here come the police into the senior citizen’s home with a warrant. They stated out loud that I was wanted for rape. Hey, at my age, that brightened my day! When I went before the judge and was asked to declare if I was guilty or not, I said guilty! He took one look at me and gave me 90 days for perjury…

  15. HUMAN RIGHTS CAITLYN

  16. The guy saluting in the background seems unimpressed.

    1. I think he has an “Excuse me. You need to get a room.” look on his face.

  17. Thanks to Existence, there is ONE thing blacker than the merger of those two souls, and that is your very special Brand of sarcasm.
    Truely in need,

    (a 62 yo. Marxist trying to figure out the secret of class solidarity)

  18. And then along came Joe, tall thin Joe, slow walkin’ Joe, slow talkin’ Joe …
    ~
    Yo, fist bump, bro…
    ~

    1. And then…..and then…..he picked up the bone saw!!!!

  19. Good stuff Caitlin! Mental image of them snorting coke off a tomahawk missile is PERFECT.
    ps somebody on thesaker, MoA, or somewhere else predicted that Biden denying having any direct meetings with MbS would end with them fistbumping in the media to show how weak the us has become. Insanely synchronistic when I come to your page and see this.
    There is a kind of spirit working through many who have been fucked up enough to see the truth. and if you have the eyes to see you can see it. Your one of them:) hope we meet on the next go around. Keep it up.

  20. Said as well as this horrible truth can be said. Sad. Sad. Sad.

  21. A fist bump seems so much more genteel than a mutual fisting.

    1. No cameras in the “executive session”.

  22. Stephen Braithwaite Avatar
    Stephen Braithwaite

    Absolutely delightful sarcasm!

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