How to set yourself on fire and play politics without really winning

An incomplete history of self-immolation

You know that search history crazy.

Jokes for the living, prayers for the dead

Longtime readers know I spend a lot of time dunking on people who burn to death. Not just any people who burn to death. I’m thinking internationally newsworthy ones like Aaron Bushnell and Debrina Kawam. Not because they deserved to burn to death but because it’s so insane and horrific that it’s the best access point I’ve got for conversation. In “We need to talk about Elon,” I write, “As the homeless women of New York have been teaching us, fire desecrates the body, and Jews are both against being homeless and being on fire.” In “Hot Manopausal Summer,” “Middle-aged men are on fire this summer, and I don’t mean protesting Israel on the steps of the Rayburn Building.” There are more but I will leave them to be found like Easter eggs in the Ancient Problemz lore and library.

Maybe I’m a jerk but while people hate assholes, my data show they have a certain tolerance for them that is conspicuously missing if you are a complete bummer of a person, something that will get you easily ostracized. So while saying nothing would be the best approach, I defend saying what-you-can’t-say since at least I’m not banished from places I’d like to be and I can still shoot my mouth off with aplomb. This verbal tic of mine, referencing the cremated, is also somewhat counterintuitive given that I do actually have a little depth to my character and find the following passage to be one of my favorite openings in a book. From I am not Jackson Pollock,

In 1965 thirty-four thousand Vietnamese dies in Vietnam, and “What’s New Pussycat?” became a hit song. In 1965, Malcolm X was murdered in New York and Timothy Leary coined the phrase “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” In 1965 four-thousand people were arrested in Watts, and the miniskirt was given its name. In 1965 Norman Morrison, a Quaker, immolated himself on the steps of the Pentagon, and this is what he did.

Whether the tone is comedic or severe, I guess the only inference you can draw is that I’m fascinated by the idea of setting yourself on fire. Spectacular in the true sense: Lighting yourself on fire serves the twin purposes of spectacle and irrevocability. As an aside, I have personally put out three fires in my life, one of which danced across my sister’s stomach, but that is a story for another time.

The reason I bring up burning to death is to talk specifically about self-immolation. Yes, the hot trend taking the nation.

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Aaron Bushnell and Norman Morrison

On February 25th, 2024 Aaron Bushnell set out to precipitate an end to the war in Gaza and an end to what he saw as an apartheid state. Not by fighting, not by getting in between Gazans and bombs or blockades. Although a member of the United States Air Force, he didn’t kit up and head to the action. Although he would burn to death, he wasn’t rescuing Gazans from flaming buildings or getting caught in Israeli fire. No, through taking his own life, Likud and Hamas were both supposed to go, You know what? This fighting stuff, it’s a little dumb. Let’s just eat falafel and make babies now. Instead of exerting his will, we learn from an article in the New York Times titled “U.S. Airman’s Winding Path Ended in Self-Immolation to Protest Israel”:

Dressed in his U.S. Air Force uniform, Aaron Bushnell walked up to the Israeli embassy in Washington one afternoon this week and calmly described his intention to “engage in an extreme act of protest” against Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.

He proceeded to pour a flammable liquid over his buzz-cut head, pulled his camouflage cap tightly over his forehead and lit himself on fire. “Free Palestine!” he shouted several times before collapsing onto the cement.

Back to John Haskell on Norman Morrison,

He sat cross-legged on the hard cement, not like the Buddha, although like the Buddha he wanted to send a message to the world. To ease its pain. He wanted to let whatever it was inside of him come out, and then change it, and by changing that he was hoping everything else would change. He lifted the gasoline can and poured the gas onto his shoulders and his legs. His close absorbed the liquid and became heavy with wetness. The last of the can he sprinkled lightly on his head. He kept the matchbook in his closed fist and now he took it and pulled out a wooden match. He lit it. The wind was blowing and he tried to protect the flame, be he couldn’t seem to get a grip, literally, on the matchbook—his hands were wet with gas—and the match went out. He tried lighting several matches and it wasn’t until the fifth match, and even then the flame was tentative. But that was enough. He’d prepared himself to be a human torch and that’s what he became. When the match touched his chest all the anger and hopelessness that was inside of him burst into the heavy air.

What Bushnell did was hard. It was not ironic. Yet, in his sincere desire to bring about an end to an unjust war and territorial occupation, he became at least as emblematic of impotence as he did of struggle, martyrdom, freedom for Palestinians. Most of the fighting has stopped for now, owing largely to bully tactics from Donald Trump, who would never kill himself, and a lot less to martyrdom and its adherents. Let it be said that, in the struggle between Aaron Bushnell and Luigi Mangione, nine out of ten Americans prefer Mangione and the Soul of America is undefeated.

So, I *am* the comms people

Setting yourself on fire is hard but it doesn’t yield positive results

I recently had a guest on my show who, like all anons, is only mostly anonymous. While it is not too difficult for the layperson to track down her info, I will not participate in any such effort since it’s mostly gross and nothing good ever comes from it. Having said that, there are details about our interaction which are quite pertinent to the message at hand and I feel far more comfortable sharing them while keeping her name out of it rather than in it.

While we had a relatively pleasant and cordial interaction on my Blahcast, and even had exchanged DM’s regarding some of her work after the recording, I had written a note on my own timeline, having nothing to do with her, not responding to her or even thinking about her, which nonetheless must have struck a chord in her, despite the fact that she neither works for the government nor works for left-wing organizations, the two groups most frequently targeted by O’Keefe. One can only assume, it was the talk of being a boring mediocrity that resonated with her. This must be how it feels to preach about the sins of one’s congregation only to see who squirms.

At this point she began DM’ing me again as a more public back and forth ensued through Notes, in which we argued over the last 80 years of conservative activism as compared to the last few weeks of DOGE, with me arguing conservative activism has mostly been, expensive, slow, and ineffective, while many of its activists are wealthy, some even choosing to craft messaging and policy positions from Paris instead of, you know, the places where the policy will affect Americans. I’m not interested in litigating the exchange for many reasons including that I have since been blocked from her and don’t have screenshots of it. Having said that, I did happen to screengrab our private exchange before exiting it, for which I will divulge the little that is pertinent, mostly so that I may shame Conservative Inc., the old ways of doing things, and those you continue to try counterproductive methods.

Prior to insulting the fine people at Heritage for learning all of their politics from School House Rocks, with selections from its own list of impressive wins dated for our convenience:

• 1987 rolling back the welfare state

• 1996 restoring the role of religion

• 2000 defending the Constitution and reforming education

• 2005 fighting government spending

• 2007 fighting against amnesty for illegal immigrants

• 2010 leading the fight against Obamacare

—I was actually trying to be nice, not knowing what she did or who she’d worked for, but her hyper-professional, advanced degree-training was no match for my high verbal and desire to facefuck my foot.

Explaining to me how my country is so great due to all the lawsuits and legislation Heritage and similar organizations have championed.

If you are a policy person, always make sure to blame the press for not explaining all the things you’re doing for the American public and then blame the public for not being smart enough to decode them.

Throughout our exchange, I managed to say that she was perfectly nice and that I wasn’t trying to insult her—it’s just that if any of these professional conservative organizations have legit wins under their belts, their communications departments must completely suck since I am about a 120 IQ and regularly interface with people who have 7-8 figures and none of us can name these massive legal wins that end overspending and leftist culture war dogma.

Well, it turns out she does communications for a living and so happens to have worked at The Heritage Foundation specifically. While it may have been a surprise for her to find that I was not such a fan of winning imperceptible legal battles, she was likely similarly surprised due to not researching my own oeuvre which contains titles like:

• “P U S S Y I N B I O”

• “The hooker wife”

• “BAREFOOT CVNTSSA”

• “Hot Manopausal Summer”

• “Why you can’t say the R-word”

• “I’m gonna marry you, bitch”

• “Dysgenics at the zoo”

• “Would Tony Soprano take a dick pic?”

• “Majillion Dollar Extreme”

• And everyone’s favorite, “We’re all part of the gay community now”

A standoff between a Jewish woman with a master’s degree, who works in public policy and writes about antisemitism, and a Jewish man with a Substack, who podcasts about Forrest Gump and enjoys the light banter of casual antisemitism. TLDR I got lectured and then blocked because I suggested that if Heritage wanted to take credit for helping to end DEI/Affirmative Action, that maybe they had about 60 years time to do so before the invention of Chris Rufo, Richard Hanania, or Elon Musk, that at some point they might want to get a handle on mandatory discrimination for people who aren’t married to French doctors while finding time to lecture people who write about pussy that politics doesn’t work unless they are constantly inventing new legal theories to enforce preexisting laws.

Don’t conflate boring work with imperceptible results

I suppose ending a war may be less interesting than prosecuting one. While you could end one with a nuclear bomb (large, explosive, dramatic), you could just as easily end one through diplomacy, phone calls, and ink. Having said that, expecting to end the war in Gaza by eating falafel and fucking, both of which are sexy, attractive activities—is just as ridiculous as thinking that you can get a handle on crime, immigration, or the economy by holding luncheons/breakout meetings in conference rooms for Independent Women in Conservative Spaces.

My message to you is this: When you want safety, law and order, a middle class, affordable housing, education, and healthcare, no one cares about your court cases, how many nights you stayed up eating lo mein, or your platitudes about incrementalism. Nothing was stopping any conservative or Republican president from enacting the changes Trump is working at the moment but the abilities to coordinate and mobilize. It turns out Reagan could have ended Affirmative Action but instead he ran out of steam after making machine guns illegal. Thanks to Conservative Inc. and some late nights, you can be glad the WNBA is protected and everyone is hiring on merit.

Like winning a court case for Heritage, setting yourself on fire is hard and doesn’t accomplish much but at least people can name who Aaron Bushnell is and what he did. One day, your memory can also be a blessing.