Strange Days Indeed

The Beatle Killer forces are really loose now. Consider that John Hinkley was born-again and bought the trumped-up line that Lennon had challenged the supremacy of his Lord.

And where does this shit come from? The same wellspring of fear and hate-marketing that empowers the American right-wing resurgence: fundamentalists and evangelical idiots.

Yes, Master

I don't want to make too much of it, but Trump is Darth Vader or some kind of dark lord. I've heard that in journalism the rule is to personalize a big story and universalize a small one.

It makes sense to try to provide a perspective at both the empathetic, or personal, and abstract levels. Trump blows through this with appeals to emotion and identification but we'll bring him back to ground. Identification, after all, is not understanding. The Star Wars model might help us to figure out Trump's rise, a stunning democratic malfunction.

I mean, who votes for Vader? 

At a personal level Trump is Vaderesque. Anyone not identified with him is a loser and fair game for obliteration. It's a no-tolerance zone and very binary. The world is divided into two parts, Donald and the losers. In order not to be a loser you have to be in harmony with him and subservient. This is epic grandiosity. Those in harmony can share in his power and glory.

At a universal, abstract level Trump is every villain seeking world domination, an imperative and an insatiable need. Vader seems to be an arch villain but he's a henchman. In reality he's taking it up the ass upstairs. What about Trump? I think he is an aboriginally psychotic entity. His demons are within him. His grandiosity is confoundingly immense and revealing.

Trump appears to be the dog and the rest of us the tail, in his mind. If he were to fail as a president it wouldn't bother him. We would be another casino that didn't make it. So what. And he is a birther in multiple ways. Racists and birthers believe that they are better by dispensation out of the womb, fuck-all. Behavior doesn't matter. They are superior by birth.

This means that Trump is a galactic garbage-fart. We are incapable of seeing it because he is one of us. We have identified too often and easily with the heroes in our stories and we are blind to the villains and demons among us because that kind of evil is alien by definition. Oh, but it isn't. And Trump wants us to bet on him. Really, to bet ourselves on him.

Let's not go there.

If it doesn't work out he will blame someone else and walk away. At a personal level Trump is easy to understand. He's a big baby wanting the tit that never goes away, so he's aggressive out of dependency. He hasn't a conscience at all. He's a Vader-baby, a hideous little HoHo with breathing problems. Anyhow, lacking a conscience is not inconsequential.

A conscience is a terrible thing not to have and adults are supposed to have one. Now, just in case he should win, repeat after me: "Yes, Master." We'll want to be on his good side. I don't want no Darth chasing my ass around. Yes, Master. Yes, Master...

No, That's Not a Toy. Oh, He Broke It. He Says He's Broken Things Before

How do you declare a country bankrupt? Can he have a do-over? Little Donnie doesn't understand. Call it a Mulligan! Maybe he will understand that. Our boy has been a little insulated. It was nothing but a guarantee of the good life from birth. So forgive him if he leaves some messes behind. He is very forward-looking, in a way. Someone else always cleans up the mess.

(from the chapter "what to do when the birds come home to roost and they're vultures and they projectile vomit half-digested guts all over everything, including you" in "A Hitchhiker's Guide to Trumplandia")

Very Aryan

Trumplandia is a very Aryan place--have you noticed?--and a land roiling with discontent. What do all of these white people have to be angry about? Oh, I know, they have been shafted.

Their trust has been abused and they have a grudge. Abused by whom? Donald and his class and kind? Well, yes, kind of. There was some inevitability to the decline of Aryan Middle America.

But it didn't have to play out the way it did and to that extent it's innovative Republican shafting. And so with characteristic brazenness and cunning Republicans exploit the mess they have made. 

It isn't fair to blame Trump--the man's just riding a wave. Then, again, why not? Why the fuck not? Blame is his game anyway. He's casting aspersions and shit. Let's fry his ass with accusations.

Trump Thwart

Democrats and other caring Americans are going to have to understand that there is the possibility of a Trump presidency because the problems are systemic. The system is really screwed up. Luckily there are precedents in place for what to do, under the heading of "nullification."

Republicans have been practicing nullification openly and in earnest for at least two decades, since the arrival of the Gingrich-Republican Operation in Nullification, or GROIN, in Washington in 1994. Their idea was to refuse to comply with anything they didn't like. Presidential election?

Not a problem! You can impeach a president for non-impeachable offenses uncovered in an illegal investigation-turned-persecution-turned-prosecution. Laws are held hostage. Budgets are blackballed. Nominees neglected. Stuff pigeonholed. The precedents are there and justify anything. 

There are no limits. Let the exercise in imagination begin! Anything to thwart Trump. It's all fair game. 

Trump Meme

Trump's appeal must be his essential non-existence. He's a shell and a shadow and a vehicle and a shapeless, improvisational thing. His unreality is an expression of social desire. He's a meme machine, an actual projection, without independence or substance.

 

My surmise is that this blurring of reality and unreality is about religious sensibility and abstraction, about placing non-materiality or non-existence on a higher plane. Trump is what people want him to be and want themselves to be, numbed and unfeeling.

It's entertainment as a religion. People want immersion and escape, the loss of consciousness through distraction and amusement, a death wish. Trump is an ejection seat or theme park ride. The medium is the message. And we have amused ourselves to death.

Truther Consequences

The most primitive assumption of modern Republicanism is privilege, that there are different standards for different people and groups of people. Clinton gets impeached but their boy's innumerable crimes are unacknowledged and unpunished and wished away. 

Privilege is also the link in the coalition of bluebloods and rednecks, the Brahmins and the bigots. America's old wealth quickly resorted to the usual ploy: their position was justified by innate goodness and superiority, not education or application or luck.

Whiteness is the innate goodness of the rednecks and God's sanction. They have mostly failed in the persecution of their latest surrogate for slaves, the homos, but the homos are still going to hell. God's ways are inscrutable in the elevation or condemnation of His work.

And it's inscrutable as well in His arbitrarily chosen people so we may as well all live like animals. But, wait, that would mean that the darkies could rise up and kill the white people, which would only prove that the darkies were the chosen ones all along. Go figure.

Look at the circular insanity of this. Is it any wonder their lust for power and money and arsenals of assault weapons and shit. They intend to live like criminals, with the restraints of "civilization" applied only to their adversaries. They are bullies and thugs.

The Bush family is the wormhole here, the point of passage between the dimensionally disparate worlds of parlor games and dog fights. Junior is the embodiment, the original blueblooded redneck and an incompetent and screwup saved from accountability.

LieCloud

Hypothetically, if I were to be on O'Reilly's show some day, after he discovered my interesting opinions, I would tell him that almost everything he says is a lie. He would probably rise up in his chair like a threatened animal and ask if I was calling him a liar.

To which I would say "no, Bill, I'm calling you a piece of garbage." I would explain that I can't see into his soul. He may not know he's lying. He may have sold out to the devil. I wish this didn't sound so outlandish. It happens too easily and often and imperceptibly. 

A French philosopher thought that we are so overwhelmingly free it results in despair. Think of how reassuring it is to be part of a group with a positive identity and common purpose, to give up on the individual struggle and your freedom and be the agent of another's will.

Who would the "another" be? Roger Ailes? And who is his "another?" No, it's impersonal. That must be why people postulated the devil, a docking point on the dark star, the lie-place. So it's impossible to see and resist the right-wing insanity from normal, terrestrial grounds.

O'Reilly's virtual place is groupthink, a version from hell, and to fight it you have to latch onto the life-star, to give your heart over to God. Now, I am not a believer, but I think I understand what "God" represents: sanity, justice, accountability, intelligibility and so on.

Archetypal forces of evil are always and everywhere around and have to be resisted from that same, mythological level but from the countervailing side. First it's necessary to see the extent of the evil, then that it's impersonal and that it can be condemned impersonally. 

The dark elements of dominance and submission come from a subhuman level. The good forces must draw strength from the life-place of individuality and free will and the belief that we can't only be animals. We are unavoidably either better or worse.

This is the point of the stories of the true religious traditions, the mix of opportunity and responsibility and the need to see the limits of the responsibility, to comprehend and embrace and even celebrate the impermanence and evanescence of life. We are ephemeral.

We are ephemeral and can't live rightly without understanding the terms of our existence and the folly of self-importance. Self-importance, though natural enough, is always a delusion and a dream. So, big Bill, sit your ass down and take it like a man. Liar!

Roger Dodger

Roger Ailes has lost, I guess. He will no longer be the head of Fox News. What does losing look like, in his world? Not so bad.

He is inconceivably wealthy. He got there while (by) wrecking a country. Thanks, Ronald Reagan, for repealing the Fairness Doctrine. 

After all, who needs fairness where there is bountiful cash and faith and freedom. It was fascist radio that spawned Fox News.

That leads to Trump. Will he falter? It doesn't matter. It's bad enough that he has gotten so far. The little monster is on the loose.

Il Duce is here. Hang the Hispanics! Deport the infidels! Screw the workers! Deregulate! Cut taxes! Everything will be better, they say. 

Is it better yet? We're still waiting, after decades of Supply Side and Rising Tide. Roger, tell us. Where, exactly, is it rising? 

No, not in your pants, dumbass. Take your pills. And creep off somewhere into obscurity, you silly, sorry prick.

Robust

I have been struggling to find a word to rate the level of racism and xenophobia and general paranoia at the Republican National Convention and have settled on "robust" but it may have to be revised upwards later. I'll keep you posted.

Play Group

Picture Donald Trump in a huge diaper, looking like a New Year's baby. There's a way in which the guys Republicans deem presidential are failproof because of their families. They're too blessed at birth to fail.

But this doesn't capture the innocent, childlike sociopathy of them. Trump and Romney and Bush and McCain are all developmentally arrested so early they shit themselves with impunity and are oblivious to the mess.

It isn't so easy when you're the shat-upon. Ask some Iraqis. Ask some of the business victims of Mitt and Herr Donald's libidinous drives to make more millions. McCain later hired the guy who smeared him silly in South Carolina.

The guy, I mean, who came up with the colored love-baby accusation against him. This isn't about regression or a race to the bottom. These boys never left the a pre-conscience stage of development. They didn't need to.

There was always someone to clean up after them. I think Americans elect them out of envy. Americans want a return to childhood innocence themselves. They want to get rid of the responsibilities of being grownups. 

Other People's Morality

One of the most annoying things about Fundamentalists and the Religious Right is their obsession with other people's morality. I have my hands full with my own. 

I can think of two possible explanations: that they are already perfect or that they are so corrupt and uncomfortable in their imperfection they can only stand to look outwards.

I think it's the latter. You be the judge. Their, the biblical, standard, I believe, is that you tell the tree from the fruit. Look at the fruit: brutality, backwardness and no accountability.

An American Hermann

I know it's bad to compare people to Hitler so I'm going for Göring. Donald Trump reminds me so much of Hermann. He has the same, flush-faced bravado and takes enormous pleasure in himself and loves to show off and parade around in triumph.

Mar-a-Lago doubles as a home and as a business version of a hunting lodge, with the spoils all around. Both men have a "you would do this too if you could" aspect to them. Harrumph! I'll have them know that I wouldn't, posthumously in the one instance. 

Sorry, Hermann. Are you there? He would love the unabashed self-promotion of Herr Donald and the way he struts his stuff. It will be that way until it all falls apart. But Trump would never have the courage or decency to kill himself. He would fester away.

"Realism" and the Triumph of the Will

You would think that "realism" as a political outlook or philosophy would be grounded in reality but it's not. Actually it's code language and cloaking for cynicism, preemption and the imposition of the will of one person or group on another. 

Since "paranoia" has bad connotations the Kissinger/Cheney school of thought has always marketed their thuggery in laundered terms, with the self-justification of necessity. Now, upon its utter failure, they have whitewashed the results.

And it has been partly rebranded as "neo-liberalism" and other things, fleeing responsibility for the catastrophic effects of its earlier implementation. The real underpinnings of the philosophy are rooted in delusion and personality flaws.

As such the dark origins of it, in whatever guise, are again self-justifying and circular. The whole thing is nothing but a tail-chasing club but not in a Roger Ailes kind of way. The former "realists" are trying to find their own asses, not someone else's.

The Accidental Eugenicist

Our boy Donald appears to be a eugenicist. His verbal output is heedless and Homeric, an epic spew of exaggeration and invention, so it's probably possible to attribute anything to him but in the sea of particulars there are recurring elements relating to a half-coherent, emotional outlook.

His own greatness arises continuously, as a theme, and the ridicule-inducing awfulness of anyone who opposes him. Most fundamentally he sees himself as a winner and as the winner in a genetic lottery. He struggles to find ways to comprehend and convey his excellence, the extent of it making it hard.

But there are disturbing behavioral traits in Trumpistan, among them the insatiable need for attention and adulation corresponding to the psychological concept of compensation. Compensatory striving doesn't come from confidence and self-regard but the opposite: insecurity and feelings of worthlessness. 

These characteristics could be catastrophic in a world leader since everything would be about him, no matter how obviously not. It's possible that Trump would rise to the occasion with his personal resources in hand and realize that doing a good job earns him the esteem he so craves but it's unlikely and a poor bet.

Consider his cluelessness and immaturity in defending the tasteless trail of crap he has bequeathed to the world. His presidency would be a virtual version of that, no doubt. The pride he shows in his DNA is the sort of thing that has resulted in the murders of perceived racial inferiors in various conflicts all over the place.

It may be childlike but it's not innocent or acceptable. So the horror of some people, sensing his insecurity and essential smallness, at the prospect of a Trump presidency is justified. He may not actively promote human selective breeding but it would be reasonable in relation to his evaluation of himself and beginning with himself.

He backed into it but Trump is a believer in eugenics, in racial superiority and the accidental, in his case and presumably, results of genetic beneficence and good breeding. Trump arrived there as a byproduct and happenstance of trying to understand and assert his own exceptional nature. 

Live at Roger's

Breaking Noise: there will be no consequences to Roger Ailes for years of inappropriate behavior and muscling people around, especially women.

The "American Dream" is now syndicated and proprietary. A slob like Roger can deny others their dreams in the pursuit of his own and walk away.

There's nothing really new in this but I think it's gotten worse with the Republican hegemony. The "rule of law" is supposed to prevent or curtail it. 

What nonsense. Assholes like Roger own the system. 

How to Destroy a Democracy: A Guide for the Compleat Idiot

This task is not as hard as it seems at first but it takes time. There is only one essential tool, an idiot voting bloc. We at the Idiot's Guide have studied ignorance for years and have learned that inculcating ignorance can result in entrenched stupidity, the inability to process easily intelligible information and the determination to persist in ignorance.

An idiot voting bloc can usually be found by following the effects of early exposure to pernicious influences. In our test case, the USA, we identified Jimmy Swaggart, Oral Roberts and other fundamentalist preachers as rife sources of ignorance and traced them to our idiot voting bloc, lower-class southern white people and especially rednecks.

Once the idiot voting bloc is in hand the rest is easy, by the nature of demolition. Any old procedure will work since the idiot voting bloc has been conditioned to love ignorance and to react defensively and fearfully against intelligence. In our test case rednecks continued to vote for all kinds of destructive policies even after the effects were known.

And this was true even when the ill effects, no matter how severe, were brought to bear disproportionately against them. As far as we know it is still going on since it seemed that they would carry their ignorance to the grave, though this was only a test case and it would be good if someone could find a way to stop it before things really implode.

Roger That

So it turns out that Roger Ailes is an unbelievable pig. I can't fault him. It's the case that the electorate is at fault when they empower bad people. So who empowers Ailes? And did he keep up the lechery for decades without success? 

That would be possible. Either way I don't want to go there. What kind of a society puts such a raging piece of shit in a position of such power? And--yes, I guess we must go there--what about the women who said yes? Oh, fuck. 

I mean yuck.

"Producing Black Smoke..."

I love eBay. What a wonderful and mighty-big slice of life. You encounter the occasional idiot or attitude problem but there's a lot of honest people doing the best they can. 

I saw a listing for a smoking power tool, as stipulated. Oh, it is us. Let's put America on the leadership block. But we better be honest. We are producing smoke.

It's why we never look back and insist we've never done anything wrong, but denial catches up with you in the end. Remember desegregation? That's what denial will do for you.

We should be leading the world on every environmental front and socially progressive issue. It's our true tradition and a natural fit. Ah, but the smoke is already in our eyes...

I Have (Another) Dream

Koch-daddy was behind this contribution to American culture--the insane, Bircher butt-head. I WANT TO SEE A FULL-PAGE VERSION OF THIS IN THE NEW YORK TIMES enumerating some of the more egregious insults to democracy of his sons, headlined:

WANTED FOR TREASON: THE KOCH BROTHERS

Let's play by their rules. 

The Kowtow Club

America is now an outlier country among the developed nations and it's getting worse.

Why is this? Republican Washington is a corporate Kowtow Club, like the Bada Bing and fittingly criminal. I hear that inner-circle members enjoy the "Koch-sucker" honorific.

Republicans believe that issues of dominance and submission are inescapable, a world of screwers and the screwed. Cooperation, conciliation and real civilization are impossible.

So almost all of the Republican elected representatives make the trip to Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform on arrival and kneel in fealty. We are told that this is normal.

We are told that this is what the Founding Fathers had in mind and that it represents accountability. Right, but to whom? The accountability is supposed to be to the electorate.

NOT to a fractionally small, power-hungry cabal of rich pricks. Call me old-fashioned.

What the founders had in mind, of course, was individualism and ethical and intellectual independence, involvement and informed consent. Man, how we have failed.

Gentlemen Prefer Bonds

Let's cut the shit. How many really wealthy men do you know who don't have a woman, if that's what they want? None. Money will get you a woman.

Men don't have to worry about women they can worry about money instead. You will never be alone if you have a lot of money. Money buys everything.

It's All Too Beautiful

I feel like I'm living in Eden but an insistent itch reminds me of the unreality of it. It's the itchy-coos. I want something else. Can't there be an Eden in reality? Or a reality with aspects of Eden?

Anyhow, the itch, I've learned, is from the horrible and invasive Trump-vine and there isn't a salve for that. We must stay away from it. Maybe eradication would be good. Grab y'all some Trump-i-cide!

Amazon. It's a Jungle Out There.

I have heard from a questionable source that Amazon is using whippings and beatings on its employees at its warehouses. I'm skeptical but it's consistent with a business model which values the welfare of workers at nothing. Does anyone know?

How to Make a Minion: Credulity and the Suspension of Disbelief

Trump doesn't have followers he has minions. Followers retain some species of independence and integrity. Minions trade that in for identification.

From that they get catharsis and feelings of belonging and security. The ticket to minionism is the suspension of disbelief, a convention of theater.

It involves overcoming the awareness of the obvious unreality of the performance, mostly through immersion, I suppose, and forced credulity. 

So Trump is a performance artist. But as an artist he is schlock, a symptom of cultural decline. The question is: how much lower can we go?

How much lower can we go than Trump, that is, before we come unglued? Or are we unglued already?

The Party of Foregone Conclusions

With the financialization of everything it's easy to see the tail and the dog and what is wagging what. Increasingly financial interests represent the ends and not the means, an inversion of the logical order of things.

Similarly the people who support corporations at the expense of everything else oppose the use of common sense and reason at the outset with respect to everything else, knowing that the results will not please them.

Imagine a Republican study group concluding that tax cuts are not a good idea. It's not possible because tax cuts are an article of faith for them. They start with conclusions and work backwards. That is rationalization. 

Reasoning requires an open mind or, at least, the absence of extreme, impenetrable prejudice. In financialization there is no investment but only financial interest since the "investors" play the averages, à la ENRON. 

Consider Mitt Romney. The businesses acquired or co-oped by the capitalists are impersonal and dehumanized things. Jobs and productivity aren't relevant, only short-term financial gain. They are like the neocons in Iraq. 

They can walk away from a mistake without consequences because the system has evolved to serve only their benefit, insuring them and insulating them from repercussions, supposedly to promote risk-taking.

The opposite is the case. They hate risk and want a sure thing. It's a case of rationalization but this is the Republican way. Conclusions are determined in advance, foregone, and based only on their self-interest.

The Boy Who Would Be Bling

Donald Trump was always a political happy meal and he's losing momentum. He says he wants to supersize us but it's all about him: short term satisfaction but no sustenance.

Trump is for people who buy the "Corinthian Leather" line. There was none. Or "Axis of Evil," for that matter. It had a nice ring. Trump is for people who don't care about the truth.

No, they actually like the lie. But even aesthetics are rooted in a kind of truth so you can only have sham aesthetics without it. Enter our new national hood-ornament, Herr Donald.

He can buy all the pink marble he wants and gold-plate his gonads. It won't change anything. He's still nothing but bling, all marketing and no substance. It's his chosen thing.