Objectification

The North Carolina State Legislature, famous for its toilet fixation, has taken the next step in ensuring continuing embarassment and decline, regressively taxing labor under the subheading of "sales and use" as though it isn't already taxed in other ways. 

This is the corollary to declaring corporations to be persons, declaring people to be objects and things to be sold and exploited, completing the detestable dehumanization of our workforce and returning workers to retrograde and antebellum status.

Concise and Clever

Is there a concise and clever way to encompass America's visible failure, as typified by the rise of Trump? A New Yorker cartoon, maybe, or a meme or a skit or a video clip?

Trump the Brute

Having learned of Trump's youthful love of confrontation and violence I know now that he is a brute. But he is a bankrolled brute, one who is too big to fail, notwithstanding that he almost failed anyway and was saved, repeatedly, by his family. What goes on in what they call his "mind," that primitive place where ambition and aggression run everything? 

It's the ethos of financialization and extraction and the harvesting of capital. Every failure is no reflection on him and circumstantial and not representative but the successes are owned and interpreted as indications of excellence and superiority. So, with Trump, he's a failure, given what he was given, but he sees himself as shrewd and as a victorious warrior. 

He thinks he's competing and that he's a winner, his consistent showboating and bragging revealing his sensitivity about this. I've known real winners, people who started with nothing, and not all but many of them are quick to acknowledge their luck. If they are emotionally healthy they know how much they owe to circumstances and opportunity.

But not Trump. The sad, blithering, bullying asshole has to believe he did it all himself and that he's the greatest. I can't believe this mobile mound of shit is actually running for president and that millions of angry, deluded, disgraced, racist Americans will vote for him. Whatever the outcome we deserve to fail but I fear that it will be left to our children. 

Trump Pollution

It's Halloween in Chapel Hill and as much as I love the season everything is tainted now and polluted by Trump. His loathsome presence is always in the background and sometimes in our faces. To my amazement my native state, Ohio, is about to shit itself for the world to see by voting for Trump and formerly notoriously backward North Carolina may escape that humiliation and dishonor--we will see.

It's Morning in the Movie Version of America

In reality it's darkness at noon.

Dork Democracy

I realized in reading opinion articles by Thomas Edsall in the NYT that I'm surprised at how good they are, probably because there is so little good opinion writing and because he looks like a dork. 

But I look like a dork, I think, and I would surely sink like a stone if I tried to get into a position of authority and influence based on how I appear. I'm weak on composure but I have some skills.

Dorky looking people deserve to be heard. They may be the kinds of people who run things well because they aren't flaming narcissists like Trump and as conceited and self serving and brutish.

I bet Hillary is a dorkess but she's so smart she's compensated her way out of it. Bless you, Hillary. May you win this election and the next. I want a leader as wise and articulate as Thomas Edsall.

A Neocon by Any Other Name

The latest great, desperate brainwave from right-wing think-tank world is that Republicans can forestall the appointment of Supreme Court justices forever or at least as long as Hillary is president. 

This unbiased opinion will, of course, be reversed at the advent of another Republican executive, a neo-neocon or whatever they call themselves now to try to avoid responsibility for the last go-round.

They should give us more time to recover from the messes of that last episode, notably the Iraq war and the 2008 economic calamity, but they are impatient to reinvent our democracy as something else.

Whatever they have in mind, it isn't democracy and I wish the lying, heartless bastards would own it. Regards, Ilya Shapiro, who came up with this pronouncement. I smell a Wolfowitz in the woodpile.

The neocons are alive and well and into another, younger generation of no-accountability policy prescriptions and war-mongering bullshit. Just remember how well it worked out the last time.

Talisman Trump

Sadly, Donald Trump is in some ways representative of America. He was born rich. We were born rich. He has gotten away with being an idiot and a boor. We are often idiots and boors. 

He only cares about himself and sees other people in relation to their usefulness to him. They have no value independently of him. We treat other countries and peoples similarly. 

We see ourselves in relation to a fantasy, as does Trump. There will be consequences in the future but maybe only for our heirs and descendants. We have never had real repercussions. 

There hasn't been the chance because we were born so fortunate we could get away with being dumb and Trump is the talisman of that, its embodiment and protective charm.

Trump makes us feel that our irresponsibility and indecency can go on forever. He is as successful as he is indecent but It was only enabled by the luck of the inheritance. 

From the Editor(s) of this Blog

It is our belief that Donald Trump is the most unsuitable candidate to ever run for president. We unendorse him. Vote for anyone else especially Hillary Clinton. Vote against anyone who has consorted with or funded or endorsed him. Make him go away soon and forever.

Shun and ostracize his children, business partners, bankers and associates. Renounce all of his works, brands and buildings. Unfriend, force-quit and delete him. Turn him off, unplug him and throw him away. He contains harmful compounds and cannot be recycled.

The Vulgarian

The new, New York Times article on Trump, based on interviews turned over to but not conducted by them, is the most informative and telling thing I've seen. Trump is a pig and an outlier, his entire life a sham of brazenness and the belittling of other people, an act incorporating a false facade of power and self-sufficiency masking inner and appropriate feelings of worthlessness.

But Trump doesn't concern me. I see him for the nonentity and fraud that he is. Troublingly, though, the Republican electoral machine has belched him into political prominence and it reveals how rotten we are as a country and how incapable we are of being true stewards of our now fading democracy. We are the unworthy heirs and Trump is our populist vulgarian, the very worst of us.

Duck, Donald!

It would be hard to argue that Donald Trump likes to keep a low profile but he does know how to duck.

Whenever, that is, he's accused of anything other than being great, such as being a serial masher and a lout.

Incoming!--Duck, Donald, Duck! The accusations are streaming in because he is a serial masher and a lout.

Crown of Creation

I still start my shampoo in the middle of the top of my head and there's no hair there.

Question Authoritarianism

If you hooked people up to a machine measuring emotional reactions to words "authoritarianism" would probably show strong, negative associations. However, it only means farming-out your autonomy and it feels good, like a return to the innocence and freedom of childhood.

In childhood we farm everything out to our parents or it is done for us until the age of reason. But, for grownups, authoritarianism is selling your soul. Adults are supposed to be responsible as individuals, in our traditions as Christians and democrats, to the extent that we are either of these. 

Authoritarianism should not only be questioned it should be instinctively resisted.

Well and Truly Screwed

No matter what happens with Donald I think that we are truly screwed. There are assumptions underlying democracy--a reasonably intelligent and educated electorate, a properly functioning press and so on. We are failing to meet these standards.

Chartered Sociopathy

America is now a country not of individuals but of corporations and their dupes, henchmen, hacks and shills. We are a country on our knees before the gods of greed and the associated lesser deities of personal promotion. Evangelical Christians are most representative of this, with their reciprocal entitlements of blessedness before and after death. 

They think they know the mind of God and that their salvation is assured. It doesn't matter what they do and so they judge everyone else from their superior position, a position like that of the corporations, a moral vacuum of selfishness, self-justification and lawlessness. It's a declaration and assertion that we are nothing more than animals.

Half-Ass Demagogue

With most other countries that have gone self-destructively crazy there are signs of trauma in the chain of causality, usually economic and social disintegration due to something, but what's our excuse? The only hyperinflation is Donald Trump himself and the only civil war is his lost battle for self-control. 

Yes, we have our problems, but nothing to justify the rise of Trump. And he's a half-ass demagogue at that--a faux tyrant and ersatz evildoer. Donald even sucks at being a villain so it's hard to hate him but the stuff he represents well deserves our condemnation so it makes sense to condemn him anyway.

Rubberneckers

Trump shows that we are so in love with spectacle we have taken to staging train wrecks.

Disconnected

The thing that will stick with me about Trump, when the threat is neutralized and he can mercifully recede from my consciousness, is how disconnected he is. I remember being that way as an adolescent boy but Trump has never grown out of it.

Trump Crosses the Rubicon

Trump is willing to use his resources, his potent verbosity and its ability to incite insurrection, against the state. He will do anything to win and, at the same time, he doesn't care because it's a game to him.

He's never known real consequences and it's not our job to help him grow up. But the armies of unreason are another thing. Trump has shown them how far crazy they can go and still carry on. That's a serious problem.

Downwind

Trump is setting fires behind him but he's downwind of them and moving backwards. Good luck with that, Donald.

Suckabit Ethernet

I'm on the wrong side of the digital divide and it's awful. The communications companies are abandoning large swathes of Americans because they can. This is what you get when the government doesn't work for everyone. Soon, I bet, it won't work for anyone.

Will Donald Go Postal?

The last debate is this evening. Trump's attitude seems to be that if he can't win nobody gets to win. Maybe he will blow things up. What an amazing humiliation for us and we brought it on ourselves. I said before (Trump for Resident) that I would allow him to stay in the country, at most.

I rescind that. Trump is not acting residential. He doesn't play well. Trump is antisocial and will deprive anyone of their rights on a whim so I now recommend deportation and that his citizenship be revoked or suspended and that most of his assets be seized. He would do as much to anyone. 

Four-Burner Breakfast

What a wonderful time of the year: cool weather and beautiful tree-leaves and harvests and holidays and hearty breakfasts with fried potatoes and onions and peppers and eggs and sometimes sausages. I love to have all four burners going for breakfast. There are no soulless breakfasts at my house.

Charms for the Uneasy Life

Trump and his backers are reverse talismans and inverted alchemists. They bring bad fortune with them and turn gold into tin.

Why Can't We Behave?

My God, so little was expected of us and we are still failing. We inherited strong democratic institutions and enormous capital and impressive infrastructure.

All we had to do was preserve it and we can't even do that. It reminds me of the idea that in order to appreciate something you have to get there yourself.

I've always thought that people could be educated into that appreciation but maybe not. Trump calls everything into question because he embodies our failure.

Make Them Pay

I have just read something about resegregation in the schools and it makes me sick. There should be an impact fee on those choosing private schools, equivalent to the tuition, to ensure that the public schools are well-enough funded.

Voting Bloc-heads

The white men of America are about to declare that Donald Trump should be president. The idiots deserve to be ostracized and embargoed and shunned.

They should be recognized as a protected class of throwbacks and anachronisms and museum-pieces but deprived of their vote to protect us from them.

That is, to protect us from me.

Sullen Admirers

Even among those I know who loathe everything he stands for Trump has sullen admirers. He's a true American character but I wouldn't call him quaint. He's the American id personified. Many families have harmless eccentrics and oddballs and lovable rogues.

But they shouldn't be running things. That's the sadness associated with Trump, sadness for the loss of ourselves, that he has no business in a political role and it's nobody's failure but ours. There's nothing harmless about Trump. He has no conscience at all.

Trump Homer, Frank Trump

Trump has always been cartoonish but now, my God, he is a cartoon. And the hair is too perfect. Trump is Homer--the incompetent, buffoon daddy--but becoming less lovable by the minute.

He's more like a financial version of Frank, the drunken father in Shameless, unable to care for himself and destructive to those around him. His kids try to keep him from total self-annihilation. 

Clean Install

I think we need a clean install of something. We've completely forgotten what we stand for.

Walk Away

If Donald Trump wins and bankrupts the country he will walk away. It's his means and method--to get other people implicated in his schemes as insurers. He keeps any proceeds and we get the losses.

The Stolid South

In appearance the South is impassive and conservative, enduring and laconic. Don't you believe it. It's a structurally militant place, catastrophically and unconsciously ruled by the legacy of slavery, which is laundered and unrecognizably reconstituted in religious and political institutions. 

And these are nice people. That's why it is so confusing. I see it all the time. Many of the Southerners I know have been interpersonally won over by the Hispanics. And why not? The Hispanics are the most American people among us: open-hearted, hard-working and grateful for everything. 

But try to understand the idea of unconsciously driven behaviors, that there might be underlying motivations controlling your actions entirely below the threshold of awareness. Normally it's easier to see this in other people and then, if it isn't too frightening, it's applied to yourself. 

Ah, but if it is too frightening it gets held-down, repressed, and so the behavior worsens as the denial festers. Denial is empowering--to the stuff that is being denied. Southerners continue to empower the legacy of slavery because they won't own it. Now it is all of our legacy as well.

Antidemocratic Voting

The whole idea of antidemocratic voting is odd and reductive until the implications are drawn, which is that some voters are voting to disenfranchise other voters and that the core and nucleus of this activity is in the South, where systematic disenfranchisement was once the normal way.

As Trump the totalitarian implodes this core is being defined more clearly and, as startling as it is that anyone will vote for this piece of wreckage, it's remarkable how many states will formally declare the most unfit candidate in history to be right for a prestigious and functionality important role.

I don't want any reconciliation after this election. The losing and loser states should be punished, reprimanded and humiliated as openly and thoroughly as possible, by the withdrawal of funds, ridicule and other means. They should be subjected to what they want to do to the rest of us. 

Let's see how they like it. Our country's idiot faction has been humored too long and is on the attack and threatening the well-being of everyone. They must be beaten and their antidemocratic inroads reversed. If they want a monarchy or dictatorship they should move somewhere else.

Evil Blowhard Buffoon

Everyone I have talked with from New York City, having had more to do with him, says that Trump is a blowhard and a buffoon. But he seems to have gone over to the dark side, at least in the last debate. I ask you, can a buffoon be evil and malevolent?

Oedipus Mex

The extremity of the Republican daddy-problem is beyond the limits of my understanding of psychology but they haven't had a candidate since Reagan who wasn't under the umbrella of paternal privilege. As these things happen, though, and as I know from my readings, it will be revealed to us as the fixations well up from the Republican collective unconscious.

What a horrifying concept. It's about a concern for who is the provider. Heirs can be insecure in their role as providers because they have the trappings but they haven't had the journey. They are "passers-on" and ersatz providers saddled with insecurity because they didn't do it themselves, whatever their accomplishments, and they may be unsure of their worth. 

Would they have made it without the inheritance? They will never know and so their sensitivity is about usurpers, false daddies, because they are these themselves. Their fear is focused, of course, on those who had the talent to make it on their own, like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who are cast as usurpers precisely because they are true providers.

Those who are seen to be competing for the largesse the inheritors jealously want for themselves are also attacked, no matter how much the inheritors already have and how hardworking, willing and deserving the innocent victims of their delusions are, like the Mexicans in the case of Donald Trump. Trump tried to make Obama into a Kenyan.

He tried to disenfranchise him, which makes Obama an honorary Mexican. This is so primal and, naturally, it is because Trump himself is his imaginary Mexican, a rapist and criminal and hanger-on and someone who has nothing to give, someone who has been on the dole his entire life and is still riding the wave of familial wealth and good fortune. 

Trump Agonistes (or, "Unshackled")

Well, folks, it's becoming clear that a mediocre outcome will not be ours and I kind of understand it. Flaming wreckage is more appealing to an attention-hog like Trump than sailing into political oblivion on the smooth waters of an unambiguous electoral thrashing, smooth in that it might have been the biggest collective "yuck" ever heard as he exited in a surfeit of slime. 

But Trump is not water he is fire and any thrashing to be witnessed will be his as he cleverly explores the range of hysterics and histrionics in search of spark and combustion, anything other than facing the empty reality of his interior life, a man so utterly oral any retention on the other end and he would explode in no time and give "shit-storm" a whole new aspect and meaning.

I wouldn't want to be within range. I hope I can unshackle "unshackled" from its association with Trump. It's a good word. But the image is compellingly ludicrous. I called to tell my brother about the event and it prevented any further discussion because he couldn't stop laughing, so some good may have come of it already, but I think there will be explosions and fire before it's over.

It's No Secret

I think Trump could do better than expected. How many white men cast a ballot they would never admit to their wives? The rationale for the secret ballot no longer applies.

Voter intimidation is the least of our problems. We've been gerrymandered out of our democracy. So what if some guy gets deprived of sex for a year after voting for Trump.

Let's get rid of anonymous voting. If people vote for idiots they should let their shame flags fly. And they should be appropriately discredited if their vote has bad consequences.

The Great Developer

In 1982 Donald Trump had about $200 million, after inheriting about $40 million in 1974. If he had put it into an index fund he would have half-again as much as he has now.

Though, it's impossible to know what he actually has now because he's such a liar. 

More Injustice

Some people with power are actually drawn to injustice on the assumption they can use it to preserve their position and that it will not come back against them, and it is in some ways more telling in trivial instances because they sell their decency for so little. 

They probably think no one will notice, if they have any compunction there, though shamelessness seems to be on the rise. Trump is representative of that and more obviously so because he blows the curve into the next county. But it is endemic and pervasive.

Go Low

Hillary Clinton is right about one thing. She should be wiping the floor with Donald Trump. And, then, with that insight, she still carries on with the same failed tactics.

She tries to take the country to a policy-laden campfire love-fest, a repetitive failure. Clinton needs to go lower. When the other side goes low you stomp on them.

Trump Turds

I know people who collect turds in the toilet, at least a few or for a little while, for efficient flushing and conservation of water. Smaller turds have been collecting around Trump and we have been waiting but, holy mother of Gingrich, they're leaping out of the toilet! Flush!

Good Fortune

I have had some bad luck lately, being ripped off and maligned by people I trusted. Even in this instance it wasn't malice but incompetence, with a hint of familial mental illness in the case of one person. It disrupted a profound attachment I have to some seasonal rituals, including the pepper harvest and its preservation.

But I am more aware than ever how unbelievably fortunate I am. I have been trending that way and the occasional spate of "bother," as the Brits would put it, only ends up intensifying my sense of good fortune. I am looking out now at the beautiful views at my place, a property I have been evolving for thirty years. 

I can eat whatever I want anytime, work crosswords on a tablet, take saunas and swim in a small pond, and listen to music and stream movies and shows. The hardest thing is not to take it all for granted, to be more aware that I am only passing through and that there will be a day when I would give anything for more of it.

As a kid I was imprisoned in a mess of mental illness and paternal inadequacy. So what? Nobody cares. But I think it made me as grateful as I am, which isn't enough, and I will continue to try to do better. And I will buy a lot of peppers at the farmer's market and preserve them. Thank you, Katie, for the suggestion.

Trump Farce

Democrats are so incompetent Republicans are now attacking their own candidate more effectively. And, amazingly, we have to go through this election as though it isn't a farce.

Hamburger Hawker

I haven't watched the conventions and debates or any of the political coverage. It's bad enough in print. The images are more than I can take. Until last night, that is, when I saw the town-hall smack-down. It was a mistake to watch. Trump, the hamburger-hawker, is a piece of shit beyond imagining. It will take me days to get his horrible, smirking, scowling face out of my head. 

Nest of Trumps

My dispute over the garden has probably ended. Injustice has prevailed, with the help of someone who was nominally my friend. Let's call her Noni. She took sides on the basis of her own, narcissistic impulses, doing the wrong thing in the interest of looking good. No facts were examined. No gardens were inspected. Neither side was impartially interviewed and the results compared, correlated and checked for accuracy.

Noni was involved in my last horrible garden failure. It took myself and a helper most of a day to clean up the mess. The weeds were four feet tall. Everything had to be done her way: no herbicides or bad vibes. Also no food. That's not quite fair. Early in the season there were beans and basil and other things. But the young, hippie gardeners tend to flee when the heat comes up and the weeds grow. They want the easy life. 

Has it it ever occurred to you how much worse your life is because you met someone? My life is nothing but worse for having met Noni. She is critical and self-righteous, with paranoid tendencies. I will have nothing more to do with her and it is an excellent and fortunate escape. She was in a nest of Trumps, a narcissistic little world it which reality is constantly reworked to suit the need for constant buildup and reassurance.

Miles Gloriosus

The Republicans are shocked--I say, shocked!--to learn that Donald Trump talks about women like a deranged frat-boy even though it's been obvious forever that he's a champion, militant, gladiatorial scumbag. Donald is not only a pig but he glories in it and has a posse to glory in it as well, his entourage, to enhance the effect. 

Red Wolves

I have had an argument with a young man who grew vegetables on my property this season, in my large garden, to provide produce for subscribers to his CSA.

Last year a young, single-mother friend of mine was in charge of the garden but I knew she was over-extended and I stepped in and planted about a third of the space.

I had an amazing harvest, of tomatoes and peppers, using a method I evolved of planting in hollow concrete blocks and adding compost occasionally to the cavity.

This year I turned the garden over to an idealistic couple, including the young man, in return for a share of the produce, specifically tomatoes and peppers, which I preserve.

I got no return. Their idealism didn't extend to meeting their commitment to me, where there wasn't accountability, and the young man is not only defensive but indignant. 

And he's self-righteous, a little Donald Trump defining his own reality to suit his needs and refusing to admit that he's wrong and take responsibility. But I have witnesses.

It's important to have witnesses, but how did we get to be a society with so many people without consciences, even those on the left and advocates for ethical living?

After 9/11

After 9/11 George W. Bush should have called for an end to anonymous, international banking. Responsible people don't need numbered bank accounts.

Crooks and bad guys need them. But, no, he wouldn't and couldn't do that, of course, because he had the support of so many crooks. They put him in office.

Bandwagon from Hell

Trump's bandwagon from hell has hit so many bad notes its momentum is abating. May it die a noisy death in the middle of the road and sit there long enough for people to have a good look at the wreckage.

The Whining Women of Fox News

The whining women of Fox News haven't found their ethics. Their ambition was always greater and now suing and unloading on Roger Ailes serve their ambition more than not. The bitches have no ethics or they wouldn't have worked at Fox in the first place.

Time to Fire

The time has come for Donald Trump to fire someone. He's always been a mess and instead of hiring grownups and ethical people he's hired hacks.

Fire them all. To be fair, though, no one with a conscience bigger than their ambition would work for him, so it's time for the little big man to fire himself.

Racist Scumbags

What the neo-confederates and rebel flag-waving idiots can't see is how they dishonor their ancestors. If they were leading everyone at civil rights and justice for black people the message would be that slavery was a circumstantial, now-anachronistic thing.

So they could say that great-granddaddy wasn't malicious and a monster. But by clinging sickly to that past they argue that the racism was a matter of character and that their ancestors were racist scumbags. Maybe they weren't but their descendants certainly are.

Only the Weak are Strong

I don't trust people who cop-out on the world of temptation. It's the interplay of earthy desires and idealism that makes us human. 

An Undercurrent of Fear

If I were to have to speculate about how our extremely successful and wealthy country could choose to fail to meet the modest, minimum requirements for rational and effective self-government I would say that it's because of an undercurrent of fear and that this fear is rooted in disunity over race.

We can't behave because we are divided. White people don't identify with or accept the legitimacy and rightful existence of black people and, to a lesser extent, Hispanics, because they see them as more like themselves in their circumstances than they are and so less like them as people.

White people want to relate to black people on the basis of their own irrelevant experience, in other words. For generations blacks lived under a racist, terrorist, totalitarian, extremist religious regime, a substate of America called Dixie. And whitey wonders why black people are different.

Black people and white people are less alike circumstantially and more alike existentially than white people think. It makes sense from within black culture but white people can't go there. They don't understand what it's like to be black. They can't but there is such a thing as empathy.

And it's possible to live with an eye to justice and fair-play and decency instead of giving up. This is a problem of segregation, the lack of intimacy between racial groups, because it makes empathy and understanding impossible. It's getting worse with us as income and wealth disparity increase. 

But poorer white people are as disenfranchised as black people now and coughing-up totalitarian leaders, to their own detriment, like the sputum of Trump. It's only a sign of frustration and confusion. The ones behind it were also responsible for the terrorist substate, which they want to see reborn.