Karen Kares

A Demonology of Hot Takes Archive Post #1

The following is an old post from my old Wordpress blog, A Demonology of Hot Takes, which does not exist anymore. It was published on June 30, 2020.

Somebody gave MoveOn.org my phone number. Yeah, the MoveOn.org, the bien-pensant progressive noise box that arose during the Lewinsky scandal and hasn’t gone away because nothing in DC ever does. Probably, somebody wanting to do their part in the Great Virtue Signalling and Statue Smashing who was too tweaked out on salvia and white guilt to give the canvasser their number correctly. I’d love it if it was some rightie shitlord who happened to have my cell number as a fake, but that’s just too much like a novel to believe.

Anyway, last week I got a text from MoveOn thanking me for signing up for a thing. I deleted the text and went back to not giving a fuck about whatever MoveOn does, which has been pretty much my default since the 90’s. Their name was relevant for the liminal period between Uncle Bill’s Cigar-Flavoring/Blue Dress-Decorating service and the 9-11 Was Awful, But Fuck George Bush So Hard halcyon days of 2003. Now they’re mad about whatever they’re told to be mad about. Just like everyone else.

Today I got this:

Hi Shirley, it’s Karen, a MoveOn volunteer. This weekend, hundreds of thousands of people, from small towns to big cities, are taking to the streets to commemorate Juneteenth with the Movement for Black Lives by loudly proclaiming that #BlackLivesMatter & continue the momentum for change. There are events in Washington, DC, June 19-21. Find an event here: https://blahblahfuckingblah.com/?source=WOKE. Can you join?

Yep, her fucking name is Karen. A literal meme is @ing me out of the blue as I eat my tuna and pickles on a Thursday afternoon. Shirley, she can’t be serious?

I had tuna and pickles to eat, so I was terse:

Sorry, you have the wrong number z

I blame the punctuation “z” on how much I was enjoying my lunch. Or maybe I hadn’t put my new reading glasses on. Regardless, I thought it indicative of how open I was to her message, such as it was.

But Karen felt otherwise:

Sorry about that! Our Mistake. I have removed you from our list. But it takes us all working together to build a more inclusive, progressive future– so if you are interested in joining MoveOn’s text message alert network, you can join here: https://muhinclusiveprogress.com/signup/signup . Here’s the link to all the Juneteenth events happening nationwide: https://blahblahsamefuckinglinkasthelastmessage.com/!source=STAYWOKEBROKEANDBESPOKE

Has anyone else noticed how much revolutionary progressives talk exactly like corporate drones? It’s all buzzwords and value-adds and “let’s come together for the big win”. It’s like dealing with a vacuum salesman who shows up at your door even though there’s a sign in the cul-de-sac that says NO SOLICITING in red letters with a skull and a crossbones and the impaled head of the Orkin man not three feet away (How the fuck did the wasps get in my grill, Pete? Now I have to buy a new grill). No matter what you say, they will not hear you. They are sincere and determined and they are gonna by-golly sell you a vacuum until you sic the hounds on them. They don’t hear “no”, they don’t hear “I already have a vacuum’, or ”you smell like essential oils and bleach”. You’re nothing to them but a number and an address and an opportunity to display the rhetorical devices they picked up in training.

I don’t want a vacuum-cleaner, Karen. Your organization lost any ability to sell me on anything when it decided to protect a serial predator from the comeuppance he deserved because he had the right letter after his name and was paid up with the right multinational congolmerates. You can Always Be Closing until the planet collapses into the Red Giant version of the sun, and I won’t care, because I believe that “inclusion” and “progress” are real things about as much as I believe that T-Mobile’s 5G network will cost less and work better.

You’re a tool for the oligarchs, Karen. We both know you didn’t even write those texts (do you even exist, Karen? Are you a bot with a name some Zoomer programmer thought was too hilarious to pass up?). You sit on a throne of lies, and underneath those lies are smashed storefronts. Go die in the fire you’re pouring gasoline on.

And stop calling me Shirley.