Under What Circumstances?

Under what circumstances does Trump's destruction of the country make sense? It makes sense if it's the culmination of a Republican movement that was already in place. It makes sense if the two parts of the Republican coalition, rich, laissez-faire capitalists and disaffected, mostly evangelical white southerners, both want it. It makes sense by having happened. 

Both those groups want to see the country destroyed in some way. Evangelicals wanted crazily restrictive social changes. Outlaw abortion. Racist everything dressed for deniability. Rampant privatization. Their hopes and expectations changed as their grievances were validated over the years. They were fed vague promises that their revanchist dreams would be fulfilled. 

Rich, laissez-faire capitalists had been using them for their votes and stoking their anger but not giving them the crazy shit. They began to take it. Then the big change. The rich began to warm to the apocalyptic crowd. Not the crowd, really. They didn't want rednecks, Proud Boys and bikers showing up at their houses for cocktails, but there was 'disaster capitalism.'

'Creative destruction' was floating around in their realm of opportunistic, money-making ideas. And they want more money. 

They warmed up to catastrophism on the heels of the Great Recession they created and came out of not only unscathed but generally enriched. Enter Trump, an amazing criminal who had to have complete separation from any context of accountability. The average super-rich person might have wanted that, nobody telling them what to do or even making them pay taxes.

Way beyond it, they ended up part of a criminal enterprise to subvert the legal authority and power of the U.S. government. Maybe passively. Average, highly affluent people I'm talking about here. We now have a unified political movement that has seized control of everything solely for purposes of destruction. They had been selectively changing laws in their favor. 

It became impossible to hold them accountable even when they did, sometimes flagrantly, violate the law. Instances come to mind. Democrats fought back with pool noodles. They have tried, and I'll grant it's hard to fight sociopaths, but when you keep getting beat and the system is failing and people are dying at some point you have to question your tactics. But, no. 

Identity politics, the same old shit. Which I support as necessary to a degree as a matter of policy, but if you keep losing leading with it as a political thing YOU FUCKING STOP. Win the election, enact the policies. Where are we now? We are fucked. We have lost to an unbelievable degree. And we had better get our heads out of our asses. The other side is playing to win at any cost.

They want the government functionally obliterated. To go to heaven or to stay out of jail. Some for both. 

America's Fart Health

America's fart health has been deemed excellent after a checkup involving a general assessment of frequency, potency and gross emissions. Also employed was an EAG, and Electrical Ass-o-Gram, to see if the internal, fart-producing components were in good shape. All was well and splendid.

The testing was initiated by reports of extraordinary activity. America was found to be in a fantastic state of anal gaseous generation. Those on the receiving end, the millions and millions of people being farted at and shit upon, were not happy at this news, that America was simply doing what came naturally.

Americans, it was seen, have become the biggest pigs in world history. 

And they have committed themselves to that path no matter what. Venezuelan oil is an example. You want it, you take it, because America is special and the rules don't apply to you. Iran has proved a tougher nut. Americans were high on their own farts when it came to that. And Iran is farting back. 

I love how you hate me.

Democrats are hating on Republicans, a natural outcome of abuse that further empowers the abusers. Republicans welcome it. It means their tactics are working. Not that condemnation doesn't have its place, as a unifying force providing focus among the abused and as defining the nature of the resistance.

But it must translate into understanding and then action. Hate can't be helped faced with such injustice. Let's make it into a positive force. Let's make it count. 

Trump's Reversed New Testament: Tribalism Returns

So, the Old Testament was tribal but it made the king subject to the law. It established the supremacy of the law, which came from God. The New Testament extended it to all of humanity, initiating Christianity as a religion that was about behaviors, adherence to laws and standards and not belonging or tribal membership, universally and among all of humanity.

Universality was a natural and needed development and evolution, implied by the character of the law as natural law. Republicans reverted to tribalism, asserting that behaviors didn't matter, that laws were illegitimate constraints on human freedom, and fuck you. Now they're demanding and asserting universal tribalism, as perverse and self-contradictory as it sounds. 

Not content with being tribal assholes, they want worldwide tribalist assholedom, decency must be eradicated everywhere, being an insult to their worldview. No law, no standards, life is shit. 

Into this steps Donald Trump who is recognized as the King of the Losers and someone with the magical touch. Everything he touches turns to shit, a gilt turd still being a turd. Democrats think an awakening is possible on the right. It really isn't, as a matter of principle. They want everything to be shit. They will have to be swimming in shit for a change of heart to occur. 

Maybe not even then, by which time it is too late anyway. This is the new compact with God being proposed. We'll see what God has to say, assuming God exists. Meanwhile it's life in the sty. 

He's a Soul Man

Donald Trump doesn't have a living soul, an adjunct of which is having a conscience, but he's a soul man. Freed from the constraints of being normal and giving a shit about anything, Trump taps into the animal nature that remains, all that there is of him, to appeal to the animal nature in everyone.

The animal aspect can be dis-integrated from intelligence and decency, Trump's call of the wild.

Don't answer it. Whatever we are, and I don't claim to know, we are more or less than animals if only in our power. More, if we accept the responsibilities of our station. We are worse and less than animals if we fail and refuse, a rogue and unworthy component of creation, inhabiting the land of MAGA.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Sharia Law

Sarah Sanders' ridiculous, idiotic worry about the nonexistent threat of the implementation of Sharia Law in America shows us her own degraded, inbred Arkansas agenda, the imposition of Christian Nationalism or religious law in place of the secular legal system. She sees Sharia Law as the competition.  

Both represent the desire for fascist, autocratic, tyrannical religious government. 

This means the destruction of the United States, a secular nation that enables and encourages religious freedom. The morons are pulling it off because destruction is easy. Okay, they're good at it. Tearing everything down is their only talent and all they're capable of. They are the original Nazis. 

The Nazis took their inspiration from southern conservatives. They got their racism from them. And the brutal, inhumane, exploitative laissez-faire economic doctrines of American conservatives trashed the world economy and put the Nazis in power. They're the ticket if you want your life to be shit.

For this purpose they hired Donald Trump, a piece of shit that puts the world to shame. 

Shame Is a Bitch

MAGA is getting rid of its massive reservoir of dishonor by destroying the context that contains it. The shame of their racism, their corruption, the Civil War, segregation, desegregation, fucking country music and NASCAR and the entire pathetic, shit culture of whining, self-pity, false bravado, sin and decay.

They are such fantastically fucked-up and unworthy degenerates the one way out is to destroy all decency and standards, burning everything to the ground. They'll get us all killed to unload their disgrace. 

Making a Run at Unconstrained Evil

For the record, Trump and his gang are going for the full unconstrained evil thing. Those are the stakes. Impunity. Immunity. They can do whatever the fuck they want to anybody. They'll not only do it to make a point they'll go beyond that. Overreach, to establish their dominance, as with the ICE shit. They are not fucking around, but they're a mess so there should be opportunities to stop them. And Democrats are totally unprepared. 

Fuck Y'all

The Republican movement in two words, 'fuck y'all.' Southern white people never signed on to the American state thing, formally. They went along on their own terms. Slavery, then apartheid. 

Desegregation was the last insult. The war was on, again. This time they won. Dishonorably, as always, because the cause is racism and injustice. States' rights is up for argument, as far as I'm concerned. 

I don't care. Democrats who think what they say means anything or that they stand for anything but some brutal, insane fundamentalist shit are wrong. They want to destroy you. 'Fuck you' is all of it. 

The World Is Burning

The world is burning and Republicans are thrilled. Their plan is working. Their desires fulfilled. They came to destroy, so everything is going great. They are celebrating and cheering it on. 

Straight from the Pit of Hell to Your House

That's the thing, people don't expect a vampire to show up in their Sound of Music movie and chomp on the necks of the kids, so they can't take it in when it happens. But it has. America's rich are parasites and vampires. Trump and company are sucking the blood out of everything. 

America Declares Moral Bankruptcy

Every day the Trump insanity goes on America is declaring its moral bankruptcy to the world. They've reacted and are waiting to see if we pull out of it. They haven't foreclosed yet but they will. 

Crime and Punishment

Insider trading is Trump's latest favorite activity. His administration runs on corruption. Then they punish us. Our existence is a threat to them. Standards are a threat to them, so they must be eradicated and fear instilled everywhere. No one can be left who dares challenge them. 

Mad King Donald

We've got a king, Mad King Donald. And his reign of terror. Democrats gave us 'all we have to fear is fear.' Mad King Donald and his spineless supporters give us 'all we have is fear.' 

Democrats, remember where we came from. A fair shake for everyone. Fight for it. We were great then. Good, in any case. Republicans want to destroy it, America's heart and decency. 

Homie That Trashed Spain Suddenly a Fan

Trump, the homie that's been trashing Spain and most recently threatened to cut off all trade, suddenly found his inner fan while wishing Franco were back and they were a dictatorship. Then he could play ball in his preferred way, mano a mano with a fellow autocrat. He wants a dictatorship for everyone. No other form of government makes sense to him. 

Trump Dishonors Dead Soldiers

Donald Trump is dishonoring dead soldiers by claiming he's retaliating on their behalf, of some such shit. Let's get it straight. Trump never does anything for anyone but himself. The whole war is his. The fucked up economy is his. The ICE murders are his. The hundreds of thousands of deaths caused by what he did to USAID is his. Explosive diarrhea is his. Measles is his. The desecration and destruction of our national monuments is his. Attacking renewable energy is his. Creating a Supreme Court supermajority of political hacks is his. And that isn't all that's his, the miserable, psycho piece of garbage.

Headline USA: Trump Mistakes Personal Shit for Reality

Trump, never one to step outside himself, mistakes his personal shit for reality. He attacks Iran for nothing, because of his feelings of inadequacy and the grandiosity arising in denial and compensation, and relatedly his terrific need to belittle everyone sometimes with aggression and violence. 

And because it's his whim, which absolutely fucking sacrosanct. This is no way to run anything. The predictable result is a catastrophic mess which drives him further into fantasy so he screws up more and on and on. He's spiraling into massive personal failure and taking the country with him. 

 

Trump's personal shit is now reality.

Real Freedom Is Never Having to Admit You're Out of Your Minds

Republicans have a niche market, where the crazies live. When they say free they mean me, meaning them. Someone else pays the bills, someone else cleans house, and someone else feeds them, clothes them and wipes their filthy asses. 

No wonder Trump is their idol. Trump says you never have to grow up, that you can live like pigs and the world will still be there to exploit and enjoy, fuck the future and everyone else. Freedom to them is the opportunity to live irresponsibly. 

https://www.salon.com/2014/03/02/baby_boomer_humors_big_lie_ghostbusters_and_caddyshack_really_liberated_reagan_and_wall_street/

The Eternal Frame

A few titles from the Rich Person's Book Club I unearthed ...

1. How to Profit from the Death of DEI

2. Annihilating the Middle Class: the Money in Misery

3. Who Needs Workers We Got Bots

4. The Apocalypse as a Business Opportunity

5. Jesus is on Our Side: Social Darwinism for Believers

6. Memoirs of a Maker

7. Building a Bunker: Guide for the Compleat Idiot

8. The Imitation of the Antichrist

9. Making Money off Musk: Never Mind the Murder

10. Raising a Rich Kid to Win: A Motivational Guide 

11. The Whole Earth Epilogue

FedEx is a Fucking Mess

Rational regulation gives us companies that work. Profitable, responsible, good jobs, long-term success. Laissez-faire gives us plunder. Short-term profits and companies that are shit. 

FedEx is a southern company. An entrepreneurial company. FedEx runs on the plantation model. Screw the workers. Screw the customers, as much as possible. Take the money and run. 

Brigade de Trump

Trump is fortifying Washington. He won't leave. He's building his führerbunker. The Donnie Doctrine emerges from the ashes. Attack everybody. Steal everything. Make them come for you. 

He's going to fight it out. Little Donnie is going down with the ship. He'll take all of us and everything he can with him. Only that will give him the denouement he deserves, a big-ass final episode. 

Turd Weight

Trump is being flown all over at incredible expense. He recently flew two jumbo jets to Europe because, I guess, it takes that to encompass his magnificence. Whereas, I think he's about 250 lbs of shit, an eighth of a ton. Then it occurred to me there's no succinct, concise way of expressing a unit of Trump.

He is kind of a thing, just a big whatever, and between a pound and a ton I don't think there's anything. Maybe a kilo, but still a lot of space without a denomination so I propose, in honor of Trump, that 250 lbs be termed a 'turd weight' and became an official unit of measure. I've kept his name off not to offend. 

My Liberal Awakening

I was about 12. My father worked at Logistics Command at WPAFB. There was a cassette tape circulating there, of all places, he brought home that criticized our involvement in Vietnam, based on cultural knowledge. I don't remember specifics, but it argued we had no idea what the fuck we were doing. Dad had concluded, I believe, that Dayton might be the Siberia of the Air Force. Step on the wrong toes in Washington and there you go. The base, in any case, was impressive.

He said they got some brilliant people. He wondered what they were doing there. I thought there might be a hierarchy of Siberias. Anyway, I was an instinctively conservative kid but I wasn't stupid. The info in the cassette made me mad. And made me a lifelong liberal though I was a preservationist, interested in the old ways and cultural continuity. So, a weird mix. I would have identified as a Democrat because of Kennedy. I stayed a Latin Mass sort of preservationist but never bought the broad brush. 

Not after the cassette. I wanted to look deeper. I mistrusted positions backed by enthusiasm and emotional appeal. I hated unloading, putting your baggage on someone else and lighting them on fire. It infuriates me. I don't know where that came from. Again, I was 12. My rust-belt city was beginning to fail. The Catholic Church threw out Gregorian Chant for the most insipid guitar music ever. I remember arguing in grade school the National Guardsmen at Kent State needed to be considered, that they couldn't be that different from the students. Something went horribly wrong.

I felt incredibly alone. Maybe every kid does, I don't know, in their individual way. I disliked Nixon. More confusion. I couldn't understand how he got elected, but when he got caught I said we needed to own our role in it. We elected the fucker. Who did we think it reflected on? He won, a real landslide. A super-humongous, incredible, never-before-seen or to-be-repeated landslide by a certain standard. But, no, we needed to feel better about ourselves by making a bonfire out of Nixon. 

So I'm dying these days. Unloading is the new America. Bonfires worldwide. We were always vain, in an innocent, rah-rah, everybody-look-how-great-we-are way. Now it's horrible. Worst unloading I've ever seen. Calvinist, witch-hunt shit. Life-hating shit. Kill the messenger, his entire family, and blow his country to bits shit. Did somebody hurt our feelings? Awwww. We hurt our own feelings. We sensed an end to an imagined, idealized America and threw a tantrum not wanting to grow up. 

We're stuck in a frat house phase. Another thing, I evolved an attitude about the south. Confusion, bordering on bigotry. To my Catholic sensibilities something was off. I didn't like how southerners, like Lyndon Johnson, presented. I saw the preachers on TV, when that started, and thought, this is religion? As ever enthusiasm put me off. Unloading, self-righteousness and a lack of balance concerned me. And, in this puritanical context, their women went to church looking like prostitutes. 

Confusing! I ended up in the south. My assessment has been solidified. I understand now why the women dress that way and the makeup. I read books, by southern women. It's an expression of white male power. Of privilege. They don't work in the fields! You want to be as obviously, pretentiously far from that as possible. I wonder why. Somebody was happily working there on their behalf, we're told, and being treated very well. That's unloading at a structural level. Ask black people.

The whole country is the Confederacy. Read about the Confederacy. Notice the fixation on ownership. Property. Listen to black people. They're the experts. And stand in awe of the injustice. If it's a byproduct of something larger, like authoritarianism, or religious fundamentalism, or a hatred of creation that encompasses everything, the bigotry being a product of that because women and minorities are archetypally perceived as being closer to nature, then fine. But the interface, for us, is injustice. Horrific injustice, and it's the leading edge of the thing. 

Our conservatives aren’t conservatives. The country is innately liberal. Democrats are conservatives. Republicans are insane.

Semper Lie

The Trump Corps motto. 

Real Men Don't Wear Trad

Trad is for losers. Insecure men want submission. Real men don't wear trad. 

Intellectual Ferment

Conservatism rots brains, not that conservatives can't be clever. That's different. Fermentation might enhance that.

Trumpists Are Not Reflective

They're not philosophically inclined. Or they're vampires

I, Bacterium

Americans are about to show that in the most favorable circumstances imaginable, an Eden of natural beauty and fantastic resources, people will exhibit the brains of bacteria, competing for resources to the point of collapse. 

Beyond Blanche DuBois

The truth is trite. Two plus two equals four. Not fun. Two plus two equals sixteen is interesting. Two plus two equals Blanche DuBois is more interesting. It's creative. If there's a wild woods beyond Blanche DuBois Republicans are there. 

Casino Fatale

The casino economy has unusual stakes. You can lose your life. James Bond doesn't win, the good guys die, and you can't choose not to play. They roll the dice for you. Cue the music. 

Everything Goes to Shit

You can too. 

The ICE Chronicles

My father was a chemical engineer and then an industrial engineer. He taught management from the engineering end. He talked about businesses building a capability. What do we call it when the capability is destruction? The Nazis figured it out experimentally. Then they built camps. They built ovens. 

Still a capability. Republicans are building a capability. They've skipped some steps. Consolidated it. Intent is critical. And the willingness to use violence. Those are in place. The rest is evolutionary. Shit happening, like ICE murders and incarcerations, are a prelude to doing whatever the fuck they want.

To anybody. 

Republicans Were the Beneficiaries of Political Correctness

Republicans were the beneficiaries of political correctness. They'd been working for decades to overthrow the government. Democrats were too polite to call them on it.

Meanwhile they accused Democrats of everything, almost none of it true. The stuff was true of them. They defused accountability against them with attacks on Democrats.

Cunning fuckers. Democrats made them look brilliant. Destruction is easy. Preservation is hard. Building is harder. They didn't come to save or build. They came to destroy. 

Conservative War on America

It’s terrifying. More so because it's mostly unconscious, resisting repentance and reform. Racism is so personally toxic it got institutionalized so ‘good’ people could practice it, the Bible and Constitution suffering reinterpretation in parallel. The bigots rejected both but used them for cover. A couple of generations down the road the inheritors of the tradition are so buried in lies they have no clue, like the point Zwick made to you but with the urgency of denial because the racist material they’d embraced is radioactive. 

Mad Men stepped in, the marketing revolution replacing everything productive with, essentially, lies. Republicans rejoiced. They wouldn’t have to live in the leafy shadows of Newport and Greenwich anymore as a political matter and southern voters could be had for the beads and trinkets of racist innuendo. The woke people saw this. The politics were terrible but the perception correct, that the social conservatives were coming after everything, down to the universities, the last real institutional bastion of the left. 

Hollywood was about money, always to a degree, though some fought its influence. It wasn’t their fault where the money took them. There are good lies, called art, that they had sold in the past. Anyway, the Confederacy had been conditioned and primed to succumb to lies, a torrent or trickle, and we got both, frontal assaults and subtle manipulations, the frontal assaults predominating lately. Democrats are still on their heels, or asses, knocked so off balance they can’t see what happened, forget mounting an effective defense.

Even now, when the enemy has won and the country will have to be recaptured, Democrats can’t see clearly what has happened. I feel for them but the stupor of suburbanity mostly has them in its grip. Republicans are street fighters. Democrats studied how to run a country, as Lakoff points out, or watched West Wing longingly as it aged into irrelevance. Republicans studied how to win since they had no intention of running the country anywhere but into the ground. They can’t ‘get out of their story.’ They’re enslaved to it.

War of the Worlds

Trump's regime is in a war of death against life, including the destruction of their own humanity which they hate. We're a part of nature so they want to kill that too. It's a war of the worlds. 

Death envying life, an existential battle, not against individuals but individuation. A drive to absorb or annihilate all they can encompass, since life is meaningless, unintelligible and shit.

Make America Ass Explode

We aren't halfway through Trump's term, it seems like forever. The world feels immensely older. Trump promised a rebirth. It's a slaughter. Now America is shitting its brains out, courtesy of Trump. 

Run, Trump, Run!

I had a thought. Maybe people had been telling Trump for years to run because he was about to get his ass handed to him in another failed venture and Trump, in his obtuseness and unsurpassed vanity, thought they meant he should run for president. It was always a mistake! 

Will Success Spoil the USA?

It already did. We scammed ourselves. 

Love Is All Around

That's why we can't see it, sometimes. We're swimming in it. It glues life together. The glue can be taken for granted, however. Eve's failing, in my opinion, in the archetypal tale. 

Eve lost perspective. Girl, get a grip. You're in the Garden of Eden, and you get obsessed with the one thing you're told you can't have! Maybe most sin is taking things for granted. 

A interesting idea. Anyway, we can focus on the good, cultivate and encourage it. But because of Eve, or whatever, we must guard against the bad. We're living in the ruins of Eden. 

Still a beautiful place. Maybe more beautiful in its imperfection. 

Rugged Institutionalization

Rugged individualism was always a canard, innocent in its place. Vanity is everywhere, in a manner or degree. At the extremes it achieves escape velocity into unreality with the most dependent, subsidized and supported class claiming supreme independence, branding themselves 'makers,' and riding off into a mirage and hallucinated sunset of productivity and personal achievement. 

We Are the Barbarians

We always were. America has some great people. Responsible, intelligent, ethically gifted citizens, the best of us, appeared representative. They never were, but when they led the country it worked. 

The barbarian elements, concentrated in the south, were bonded by a shared bigotry and a revivalist, irrationalist, charismatic religion that legitimized  authoritarianism, apartheid and brutality. 

Fantastically Degraded White Man Lindsey Graham Is Dead

Leaves no children but grotesque legacy. 

Trump the Chicken

Little Donnie Trump is the most protected man on earth and he's scared to death. Call him a chicken. 

Can Trump Win the Nobel Peace Prize by Dying?

Finally, Saddam Trump might deserve his Nobel Peace Prize. By dying. Republicans, the FATH* party, will try to carry on killing. They love killing. But there will be a huge lapse in the power of hate in the world when Trump dies. That deserves to be recognized. Hail Trump! Thank you for dying. The best thing, the only decent thing, you ever did, ridding us of you. The world is finally united, in relief.

* Fuck America To Hell

Have They Tried Burping Him?

Has anyone tried burping Trump? He's old, he's ornery, he's overweight. We have to try it. I might be mixing his emotional age in with things, since in aspects he's stuck in infancy and babies need burping or they can get cranky. Trump is cranky all the time. The reasoning is solid.  

Who, for Christ's sake, would elect such a person? That was an aside.

It's hard to imagine how this wretch became president. Anyway, he looks gaseous as hell. That's evidence. Somebody try it. Be vigorous. Smack him on the back. Strange to think such a thing might mean life or death for millions. Might already have, Trump's dyspepsia and bloating. 

He hovers and moves like the Hindenburg. Burp the shit out of him. 

Rage Against the Machinators

I don't give a shit about the machines and their capabilities. Well I do, in a positive way when they're used to do good. But fuck the people who use them for ill. And they seem to be everywhere. 

Trump Tells America to Eat Shit

MAGA says thank you, we love it, we deserve it and bless you, Sir.

The Casino Is Bankrupt. Long Live the Casino!

The problem isn't Trump, if it ever was. He's fucked it up royally, again. The American casino is bankrupt. There's no daddy to bail him out. Run, Trump, run. 

He's his own banker, courtesy of crypto. We're at that stage when Trump goes bust and weasels his way out. He grabs the money, as much as he can, and runs. 

Queens Quixote

Donald Trump, Quixote from Queens, is actually attacking windmills. Real ones and imagined. The windmills are fighting back. And they're winning.

Every Day Is Massacre Day in America

Happy Massacre Day.