All Your Eyes Are Belong To Us, Plus

Wealthy Democrats are deeply concerned, plus music

Reminder: I’m seeking your support to help me bug out of our dystopian hellscape, on account of I’m dependent on everything the regime hates for everything I need to live. Unlike most people in my position, I have a relatively congenial situation waiting overseas, and people who can help me with travel documents and such. What I lack is funding for the transition. Please consider subscribing if you’ve not already. Free subscriptions are always appreciated, and paid ones even more.

All Your Eyes Are Belong To Us

Shoji Ueda is among Japan’s most famous commercial and fine art photographers. When he built his museum outside Hoki, Tottori, Japan, not far from where he was born and only a few years before his death, he did so with the intention of not just displaying his own work but also of encouraging others to take pictures. Hoki residents are allowed free admission; others pay only ¥1,000, which is less than US $7 at the current exchange rate. The museum brings brings second year students from the local middle schools in to learn photography as part of their art curriculum.

Being of sound mind, Shoji recognized that his pictures would most likely be better than yours or mine. Accordingly, he designed the museum site to command views that suited his aesthetic. When you take pictures there, you have to work a bit to take your own and not his. I did not work at all to do that with the photo above, which is inside my camera but is his from top to bottom including the floating hat.

Not to say that he should be blamed for any deficiencies. I set the shutter speed and aperture and sensitivity, and framed his composition in the manner of my choosing, and processed it likewise. Some folks might say that’s the whole game, but I was looking at what he wanted me to look at in pretty much the way he wanted me to look at it. That’s fine; his photography is famous for a reason.

The garish mess that Trump has made of the White House inside and out is likewise ferociously managed to force the viewer to see what the regime wishes seen in the way they wish it seen. You may not respect the aesthetic, but neither can you do anything about it, which is part of the point. To whatever degree the joint was “the people’s house” in presidencies past, it is no longer; where other presidents use historic furniture and gifts from foreign heads of state in the oval office—Lincoln’s desk, among other prominent pieces—as a way of draping themselves in the country’s history and borrowing the authority of better presidents, Trump attempts to subordinate them. L'état, c'est the orange abomination.

Pity the poor news or documentary photographer trying to dig an original nugget out of that morass. They’re really good at what they do, even the official regime photographers, but it’s a soggy slog for sure. Unless some lucky camera-lugging soul catches a unique angle on the moment where somebody decides to start throwing hands, nothing award-winning is coming out those gilded doors.

Back in May, Vanity Fair ran a story about the state department evidently slow-walking the announcement for entrants to participate in the US exhibit at the 2026 Venice Biennale, in which participating countries display the works of a single representative artist.

The contest usually opens about 18 months before the exhibition; this year, it wasn’t announced until the Vanity Fair writer contacted the department for comment. The winning artist will be declared in September, leaving them only a few months to produce the work and arrange the shipping and display at the exhibition. And the overseer for this year’s contest is Darren Beattie, a white supremacist—most recently famous for his pronouncement that you can’t expect anything to get done except by competent white men—at present acting as the public diplomacy undersecretary at the state department.

Take Beattie’s contest overlordship in tandem with actions such as the regime’s recently-released list of deviant artworks and artists associated with the Smithsonian, and one can easily imagine what the criteria for the winning Biennale artist will look like. To ensure compliance, the regime are planning on-site inspections of the work in progress.

All very Nazi-like. These assholes are serious about their image-management program and at least until next year’s midterms, which may or may not happen but likely won’t be legitimate in any event, they will continue claim a mandate for cleansing the public square of anything that runs counter to their vision of the country. Don’t be surprised to see a US pavilion full of works by Trump courtier and favored artist Jon McNaughton representing you and me and all us good Americans in Venice.

Photographers photographing inside the Shoji Ueda Museum (credit Weldon Berger)

Wealthy Democrats are deeply concerned

Maine senator Susan Collins is known as a moderate Republican because she sometimes winces before voting to implement one or another regime atrocity, or before she casts a vote against one secure in the knowledge that her colleagues will pass it. She’s up for reelection next year and is thought to be among the country’s most vulnerable Republicans, with Democratic party officials describing her seat as ripe for the plucking.

Despite this, some of the country’s wealthiest Democrats are deeply concerned about who might replace her, and they’re lining up to harvest what may ultimately amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars for her reelection. Other Democrats are warning strenuously against the insurgent campaign by rural, working-class military veteran Graham Platner, who by dint of advocating for policies considered mainstream in every developed country but the U.S. is considered an unelectable leftist.

If he is unelectable, it will be because all the Democratic party and wealthy donor money is going to Collins and whichever deeply concerned moderate (corporate loyalist) Democrat the party lines up behind. As of this writing, the latter are trying to recruit current Maine governor Janet Mills for the job. Mills is popular within the state but has expressed some doubt about spending any significant amount of time in D.C. for any reason.

"The difference between Susan Collins and Ted Cruz,” says Platner, “is at least Ted Cruz is honest about selling us out and not giving a damn." I’ve quit all of my little $5/month donations to elected or wannabe-elected politicians in favor of saving a few bucks monthly toward the go bag, but I may have to make an exception of this guy.

Other announced and potential Democratic candidates include former Maine Center for Disease Control administrator and Biden official Nirav Shah, and former Katie Porter chief of staff Jordan Wood, who has already collected more than $1 million for his bid.

Platner’s campaign website is here.

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Music

I can’t say I’m enamored of most of this (unusually not so, in the case of Big Thief); just happened to be what I’ve been listening to. You may like some of it, though.

Big Thief, Double Infinity, “Los Angeles”

The Black Angels, Wilderness of Mirrors, “La Pared (Govt. Wall Blues)”

Eddy Current Suppression Ring, Primary Colours, “Colour Television”

Luscious Jackson, Fever In Fever Out, “Naked Eye”

Be well; take care.