WE MUST ASSUME BASED on his silence that Graeme Bird is dead, in an institution, or in any case is beyond authorship. This was a man whose incredibly prolific commenting and blog posting in the Australian internet and beyond, through the 2000s and early 2010s, makes his present absence from the internet inexplicable except by force.
This was a man of unparalleled delusions, conspiracy, idees fixes, persistence, vulgar linguistic creativity, violent hatefulness, and a geniune literary talent, the Celine of crankhood. He inspired a small but dedicated legion of, if not admirers, then certainly entertained fans (of which I am a paid-up member), amongst whom 'Cambria, if we are to survive as a species' ranks in opening lines with Dickens and Austen. Graeme, if you are reading this, I invite you to comment, though if you do, I'll probably end up banning you.
That silence is for the best, I think. Sure, he was, as far as you can really place him in the normal political spectrum, very right wing. For all his human flaws---of which his cup overfilled---I cannot imagine Bird ever being an uncritical admirer or MAGA chud; his brand of crankhood was forever a solo, individualistic, endeavour. He was genuinely crazy, not a sucker, or as an American might put it, a goof, not a rube. The good fortune of his being absent now from the internet is that he achieved that rare glory of cranks: becoming a prophet.
Almost all of his central fixations, from funny money and tax schemes, to the perfidy of the US Federal Reserve, to the need for mass sackings, to skepticism of known facts about other planets, to the need to colonise Mars, to antisemitism so strong it was indistinguishable from magical thinking, are now no longer crankhoods, but quite simply the platform of the governing Party of the United States. Bird's central dream, the destruction of NASA, is at hand, and who could say how he might have greeted it?
It's his world now, we just live in it. MORE LATER.
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