One-Trick Operation on a Downslope

Donald Trump is a one-trick operation. He was all aggression and expansion at a time when, on average, it played out well in New York City. America is already on the downslope of that. If he doesn't adjust it might get ugly, and now not just for him.

The Donald-Centric Universe

Donald Trump feels like a turning point and I don't know for what. Roosevelt mastered radio politics and was bigger than the medium. Kennedy, ditto for television. Trump may have mastered something, maybe social-media or virtual-reality politics, getting a positive response because he was careless and seemed bigger than the new thing and adept.

Whatever, but he is bigger than his britches. We haven't elected a capitalist hero but an avatar and icon of selfishness and excess. And we have devalued ourselves and asserted our own, relative worthlessness and Trump knows this and is acting with a sense of impunity and he isn't even president yet. I think we've been fired as citizens and don't know it yet. 

What a View

Donald Trump is the dog and we are the tail. We are stuck with this because it's his view and we elected him. All this guarantees us is four years as an appendage and as spectators with a great view of his ass.

Seven Year Itch

I can't reconcile myself to the idea that Americans actually wanted Trump so I think it must be a desire for change and an unconscious attempt to balance things out--to follow a fat pope with a skinny one, as the Italians say. Well, we have certainly accomplished that. Also, the Republican establishment, through aggression and marketing acumen, fully exploits the uncertainty of the unknowable, what might have resulted if things had been otherwise.

My expectation is that the country would have been much safer and better off without Bush and worse without Obama but I can't prove it, and that's not allowing for the right-wing attempt to nullify Obama's presidency and deny his citizenship, his religious observance and even his humanity. Republican politicians not only disallow that Democrats are their worthy partners in running the country but deny them their rights as citizens whenever possible.

Anyway, assuming Trump's election is at least partly the result of an electoral glitch and an itch popping up near the end of a two-term president's tenure--somewhere in the seventh year, perhaps--I want to know if Donald gets his thrills from having the breeze from the New York City subway grates blow up his trousers in the summertime, aerating his endowment, or in what other ways, since the babe in this family isn't Melania or Ivanka, it's Donald.

No Joy

One part of the faulty indoctrination we've received in the American myth is to expect polarity and simplicity--that good and evil won't be intertwined, for example, and that we are good and that evil will arise looking like Charles Manson and that we will see it instantly and kick its ass. But deceit is inherent in evil and, though there's been an evolution, Donald Trump is as close as we will probably get to a vision of evil arising fully-formed and easily-recognizable.

Trump is the evil arising from us, the embodiment of all of our innate American weaknesses in heroic aspect, meaning out-sized and exaggerated. If Trump's life is one big avoidance of facing the reality of himself, that he is pathetic, the same is true of us and if we can continue to deny the truth about ourselves we are to the world what Trump is to America, an enormous, offensive, unsustainable celebration of the joys of selfishness and irresponsible living. 

He may represent the last opportunity we have to confront our failings before we succumb to them, though I thought this about Bush and we came out on the other side of that, nominally intact, an indication of the resiliency of our system. It may also be that we are already doomed no matter what we do, that it is a national identity crisis coming to fruition and that we have to get right down in the ditch and then be reborn as something entirely different.

If that's the case then it's reassuring that "entirely different" may look more like the best of what we were and less like Trump but it's sad that there's so little joy in our carelessness. If an orgy of consumption really made us happy it would redeem some of the waste, but our puritanical roots keep us always from either owning our shit or enjoying the debauch. I don't see any joy in Trump or us but only compulsion and an insatiable need and unfillable void. 

Trump Mass

The Trumps went to Midnight Mass and got cheered. If Henry VIII were around they would probably be cheering beheadings at that church. Good show, those Episcopalians. Don't ever let your principles put you out or get in the way of a good time.

My Search for Prescience

Certain book titles pop up in my head--I wonder why the ones which do--and Smiling Through the Apocalypse recurs these days, a collection of articles from Esquire from the 1960's. It must resonate with my enforced participation in the spectacle of Trumpism and all-irresponsible impending government, but I know that Trump may somehow end up looking good through the luck of Reagan and the laundering of Fox News. Anything is possible but accountability is unlikely. 

After all, even following the multiple calamities of the Bush years, Iraq and Katrina and economic collapse, each showcasing Republican malfeasance and incompetence, we soldier on as though there is any doubt whatsoever about who caused what, so I am looking now for prescience in past journalistic writings. The current stuff is too prejudiced by the onslaught of Republican unreason, a typhoon and tidal wave of ill-will and bias preventing any normal digesting of events.

Yet again--and this goes back to Jimmy Carter and Paul Volcker's hard medicine--a Republican may benefit from the Democrats playing grownup and trying to run the country well in spite of right-wing sabotage, foot-dragging and intransigence. If I were to characterize it I would say that I'm looking for what it was that we were taking for granted--intelligence and inclusion and decency, maybe. I'll let you know what I discover, the essential question being what the fuck has happened to us.

Now to try to find that book...

Some time later: Not only did I find Smiling Through the Apocalypse but I read the editor Harold Hayes's introduction and I already have an opinion which I will share with you and refuse to delete or alter in order to hold my own feet to the fire and require accountability from myself. The difference I see is respect, on many levels. I recall reading somewhere of someone who worked on relationships and he said he could tell instantly in a restaurant which couples were doomed. 

If he could see contempt the relationship was already over and everything else was a formality. Americans now not only have contempt for one another it is personal. The kind of contempt I remember--and still support--was for behaviors, which are circumstantial and changeable, however deeply rooted. The new contempt has nothing to do with behaviors--rather with identity, conformity, adherence to certain opinions and other arbitrary and accidental things--and it is therefore racist. 

So we are locked in a relationship with crazy people, effectively addicts and compulsives--everything else is a formality. There is no Union, to begin with. The disrespect extends to everything else except money and power, as I see it. There is no respect for the institutions and traditions of our country, the latter especially since it is more between-the-lines and easily reinterpreted and subverted, not that the denial of scientific consensus​ has been a particular problem.

Respect is learned at the foot of the hill of one's selfhood, of having a sense of individuality, of place, of authenticity, personal integrity, responsibility and security. The hang-up, I suspect, is with authenticity, the baby-boomers having been raised in the homes of greatest-generation parents and feeling that they will never measure up, so they reject the entire frame of reference and assert themselves simply by existing in the brave, ugly new world they inadvertently create. 

There's nothing positive about it, being a byproduct of Oedipal outrage, narcissism and a sense of smallness, giving it a paranoid aspect. Once you start blowing things up where do you stop? As with George W. Bush the destruction is an end in itself, the only way he can find a place within a context rid of his father's shadow, by standing in the ruins of daddy's civilization, not an "end" in that it's irrational and unsustainable and futile. It's nihilism, the antimatter of intelligibility.

Harold Hayes represents a rational, intelligible, integrated system of higher standards but--and this is the matter for my reading of the articles--did anyone see it? Did anyone diagnose and comprehend it, that the sixties cliche of rebellion and non-conformity was operating within the system as a corrective but that the right-wing crazies, who identified with authority and came up short, would overreact and destroy the order they wrongly saw as threatened by sixties culture?

To be continued... 

Or, maybe not. This post is getting too long, probably under the influence of those articles from Esquire, so I will end it here and take it up later, I hope, in another entry. To the enemies of Trumpism: Hang in there. Despair gets us nowhere, but attack when you can. Yes, they are the enemy and we are the good guys and victory is possible. If there is accountability, out there somewhere, it is on our side and if not we were always screwed anyway.

Over the River and Through the 'Hood

My friend Daniel Chavis is lead singer in a band called The Veldt and my go-to and guy-on-the-ground when it comes to the ongoing and insidious shafting of black people in America. American blacks are a unique group, a caste and class invented by white people and burdened with all the incidental evil of white consumer culture and forced into service to act as a repository for everything earthy and rooted in reality and whatever else makes white America feel unexceptional, banal and uneasy.

The sick American myth of exceptionalism and worldly and otherworldly superiority is still pervasive and increasingly absurd as we demonstrate to the rest of humanity how stupid and fucked-up we are, partly by our defensiveness. Anyway, Merry Christmas, Daniel. Thank you for helping to keep me in touch with this unfortunate situation. Daniel is taking care of his grandmother this Christmas. She's old as shit but still feisty and characteristically enduring, as black people must be in a white man's America.

Merry Christmas, Donald

It's Christmas and I want to say something kind of nice about Donald Trump: he isn't vapid. 

Degeneration

We are about to have an openly degenerate president--certainly a crook, probably a rapist but not yet a murderer. Oh, but those drones--the weapon of choice of cowards. He will love them and the feeling of power and impunity of the whole role of POTUS. We know that he has nothing resembling a conscience. But how far down will the country go with him?

Yo' Mamacare

Donald Trump and Paul Ryan's first foray into legislative cooperation is expected to be the longed-for and long awaited replacement of Obamacare with their cost-saving, streamlined and highly effective alternative, Yo' Mamacare.

They will hire 30 or 40 experienced, out-of-work customer service professionals of the surly and thick-skinned variety, thereby reducing unemployment, and obliterate the entire existing Obamacare infrastructure and lay off all those foot-dragging administrators and workers who have been mercilessly sucking off the nanny-state. Any American in need of health insurance or with other concerns, such as heart attacks, strokes or gunshot wounds, can dial 1-800-yo'mama during normal business hours and be connected with one of those newly-hired operators or placed on hold.

Callers will be reassured with utterances and exclamations of "yo' mama" for as long as they want and referred to the nearest emergency room and encouraged to get off their fat and lazy asses and get help and then return to work as quickly as possible and quit sucking off the government. Ryan and Trump will retain their own excellent existing health insurance in order to avoid any conflicts of interest though they say they wish they could sign up or at least call, since there's no real plan to sign up for, but they know the service will be great and beautiful and the envy of the world.

Oh Come Let Us Abhor Him

Why? Because he thinks he's Jesus.

You're a Piss-Ant, Donald Trump

The image of Trump's hideous, scowling visage, now hard to avoid, tests one's vocabulary and comprehension in its horribleness. None of the terms that technically apply to him, like piss-ant, can capture, contain or encompass the expansive awfulness of Trump. All we can do is to continue to accurately and rationally and unemotionally describe the biggest piece of shit in the history of the world. Oh, I guess that was kind of emotional and vituperative.

Anti-Trump Elixir

All I want for Christmas is some anti-Trump elixir. It's out of character for me to wish ill on anyone but, come to think of it, there's a whole list of people now I'd just as soon see dead. If someone has to have cancer of the prostate, scrotum or rectum, heavily metastasized, why can't it be Trump and Paul Ryan and Jeff Sessions and some of these other pernicious, loathsome, fear-mongering, attack-dog monstrosities. I wish I believed there was a hell for them to rot in and that they would be there soon, with their consciousness and individuality intact enough for them to reflect on their assholedom and what pieces of shit they were for their entire lives and the harm they did.

That's how I feel. And, so, how are you this holiday season? Merry Christmas to you.

A Foggy Day in Washington

My weather report for Washington is fog for the next four years, a fog of unreason and of a war on the true American values of fair-play, intelligence and decency.

He's a Winner

We have been so conditioned to think that good guys win we automatically think that winners are good guys, even in the case of Trump. He's so obviously not a good guy but we want to make him out to be worthy to save our own hurt feelings. Really, we need to resist him in every way possible.

Risky Business

I don't think it's possible to comprehend the problem represented by Trump as it's occurring but we have an example of what a buffoon and ignoramus can do for you at just enough distance to begin to see it clearly. George W. Bush was a catastrophe for the country and we think we got away with it but the seeds of destruction are still sprouting, partly in the election of Trump. Looking back at Bush's performance is hard because, like 9/11 or the shuttle disaster, it's too painful. 

We have wanted a corrective, tempting fate with Bush and Trump and other such idiots and playing brinkmanship with national decline and failure in a search for reassurance caused by perversity, insecurity and immaturity, assuming it will be a hand-slap or an ambiguously sexy spanking, but the forces of justice and accountability of the universe might skip right to mortal measures. In any case, playing around with such risk other than from necessity is really foolish. 

In a rational world risk is a means to an end, not an end in itself--a reluctant tactic and not an objective. When it is an objective it's a function of hidden, irrational, psychological needs, false ideation and delusional thinking. All of it relates to a desire for the numbness and the release of death or other sadistic or masochistic impulses. Emotionally healthy people don't want to die or suffer or see it happen to others and can handle the simple, social responsibilities of life.

The Scam

Modern Republicanism is a hoax and a scam. Tax cuts for the rich are bad for everyone. They don't create jobs and they destabilize the economy and destroy the middle class. 

Say "Yes, Master" or You Will be Punished

The Trump nut is a hard one to crack but even his supporters would have to agree, on a good day, that he thinks he is above or outside of the law. I think those who voted for him did so believing that he is on their side in his lawlessness, that he is our ass-kicker and that he will defend our interests the way he has his own, aggressively and without conscience.

In other words, we deliberately elected an asshole. "He's our asshole" you might argue and I wouldn't disagree, but asshole tactics only work for the stronger entity. We are the strongest entity around but it could change and we have implicitly declared open season on ourselves. If any country of people has ever been lucky as hell it is us and we are acting like animals. 

Whatever, but Donald Trump has been hired and is representative of us and I think it goes back to fear and pessimism and regression to an earlier evolutionary state of warring lords and clans such as our own Angles and Saxons and maybe a few Jutes. Weren't we supposed to have outgrown this? So much for moral progress and the ethical evolution of mankind.

It sickens me that we are such pigs but we are all along for the ride now, barnacles on a pirated ship of state or, for his supporters, warts or whatever on Donald's ass. There's dignity for you. Donald and the Kochs and their ilk are above the law and the working class is screwed and black people can be abused and shot and killed anytime and without recourse.

Welcome to the new America of Trump and a bunch of rich dicks who care only about themselves, and many thanks to the un-rich idiots who voted for this, in their inconceivable ignorance, and have sent us all to hell. 

quia quod stultum est Dei sapientius est hominibus

We now see that any supposedly principled objections Republicans had to Donald Trump were based on the assumption that he would lose the election. Even they knew that he deserved this but, behold, he is now their anointed one and the agent of God and all things good, circular reasoning being a hallmark of modern Republicanism. Whatever happens it is the will of God. Somebody should check with God on this.

Going Downton

The American infatuation with Downton Abbey is telling and timely since we are becoming a class culture and undergoing the infantilization of our electorate and the abandoning of the responsibilities of a democracy, namely not voting authoritarian nuts into high office who got into their position by accident of parentage and the application of money. It fits perfectly with the increasing reality of inherited wealth and reduced social mobility. 

And, wait and see, the disparities are going to skyrocket as anyone who has done the math knows--and that was before yet another election debacle of a victorious moron with monarchical tendencies vowing more tax cuts for the rich. But are we only unwilling at this time to assume the duties of our democracy or incapable? I don't know, but the election of Donald Trump, a truly loathsome and inappropriate guy, argues for incapacity.

They're Getting Hosed in Spanish Harlem

There will be hard days ahead for historically ethnic neighborhoods in good locations, with pressure for gentrification and the increasing impoverization of the natives. In other words, nothing new but with an all-tycoon administration in Washington it's sure to get worse. 

Say What You Mean

"Doublespeak" has a foreign ring to it, a word-aura of strangeness with nefarious undertones, but it's everywhere now. It's our national language. 

No, the Message is the Message

With the election of Barack Obama many of us hoped that the insanity of the Bush years had been repudiated and that there would be a return to responsible government but it didn't happen. The structural corruption of the system is too great to act intelligently and speak the truth from within. Oddly, we have to work from without to try to restore our government to its intended function, especially with the election of Trump, an outsider and outlier even by Republican standards and someone for whom the medium, himself, is the message.

Comrade President

Vladimir Putin appears to have recognized a thug bro' and fellow traveler in Donald Trump and tried to influence his election, I expect for amusement or just to stir the pot, as leaders of his type are prone to do, though more commonly with a minor genocide or a coup or two. 

Vlad is a regular Dennis the Menace when it comes to it. It's probably mischief in this instance, not mayhem, and considering that the CIA wrote the book who are we to object. Personalities like Putin and Trump are unlikely to sit around and watch the flowers grow.

What Makes a Sick Prick Tick?

Paul Ryan is one sick unit. What kind of person spends his entire life trying to screw his fellow citizens?

They Fought the Rock and the Rock Won

Someone on the Main Street in my town went after a huge boulder sticking up in their yard with a hydraulic hammer on a big tractor. The rock won.

How Still We See Thee Lie

The lies of the Republicans seem to be reaching a crescendo but I have thought so before and have to remind myself that they are not "lying" but offering inclusion in an alternative world in which there is no truth. They are not operating in the old arena of accountability and sense, so there is no crescendo. 

It's a doppelgänger society-within-a-society. Actually, responsible citizens are now the "within" part, a subculture of believers in justice, intelligibility and the American Way, but they suck, as a rule, at the leaping-of-tall-buildings and with Trump they have been defeated to a degree we didn't think possible.

Incensed

I have the balsam incense out for Christmas and Pandora is streaming holiday music into my house day and night and I'm so aware of how many of the songs in some way owe their existence to someone from the expanding list of embattled and persecuted groups certain un-festive persons are going after with new vigor now that we have a president-elect who makes Scrooge and Potter look like pussycats and Camp Fire Girls. 

My idea is to deprive the right-wingers of all the good things we owe to gays and blacks and Hispanics and Middle Easterners. I guess that includes Apple computers now in addition to a shit-load of songs by Johnny Mathis and Nat King Cole. Aesthetically they will be somewhere reminiscent of a cultural wasteland and I'm pissed enough to go forward with my plan to end the scam and push for raising taxes on the rich folks. 

"OH, MY GOD!" they will scream, but I'm going after their money. It's all they care about anyway--except for the suicidal religious fanatics--and it's the only thing that will get their attention. We'll burn some of their greenbacks on building infrastructure and feeding children and the poor and other insane, wasteful stuff that doesn't get you anything outside of their gated communities. I won't torch them personally but the money is fair game.

Quest for "Fired"

Arrested adolescents like Donald Trump are constantly either challenging or kowtowing to authority because it's an issue for them and they are incapable of adult independence and cooperation. Deep-down they want strength in response and to be reassured of the resiliency of authority and of the world's institutions. 

In Trump's case the pathetic grandstanding and bullying want to be countered, commanded and ultimately suppressed so that the underlying and still embryonic conscience can express itself and grow into maturity without the constraints of all the anti-social acting-out. In other words, Donald himself is dying to be fired.

Dr. Stranglelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Hair

I have run a decryption analysis on Donald Trump's tweets and learned that his head is a small, thermonuclear device, the hair hiding the detonators and much of his gray matter being displaced or compacted rendering the frontal-lobe functions all but inoperable. This explains how a person with so much inherited wealth can behave as though he is under constant threat of annihilation.

He is. In the tweets there are encoded messages with vestiges of his humanity crying out and hoping to break the grip of the bomb's programming and protocols which enslave him and cause the compulsive, nonsensical, attention-garnering behavior. It's all a cry for help. His real personality--slothful, self-indulgent and weak-willed--is imprisoned and encapsulated within the confines of the bomb-casing of his head.

My sources in New York tell me that Trump's sexual proclivities are rumored to include asphyxiation, uncertainly of which participant, but it could undoubtedly trigger whatever fail-safe mechanisms are associated with the bomb, in anticipation of its host's demise, and cause it to detonate, providing the climax, perhaps, that Donald has always wanted, though it's now possible that the national seat of government will be destroyed as well. The threat is considered remote but real. 

What is Sin?

Some people think it's sinful to enjoy life. I think it's sinful not to.

He Can't Take a Joke

Our boy Donald is as intolerant of ridicule as he is ridiculous. He embodies exceptionalism. That SNL should lampoon him! Much better men have endured and tolerated or enjoyed it.

But not Donald. He then takes to Twitter, a world of fragments and shards of meaning and momentary and ephemeral existence--a place for poseurs and dilettantes to flee to. 

He can tweet his ass off. It won't change the truth, that he's a petty, little person--preening and overly sensitive and vain and narcissistic. I can't believe he's going to be our president.

No Better, Maybe Worse

What a disappointment. We are no better or worse than anyone else. I thought we were better but only because of circumstances--our good fortune to have escaped from imperial and colonial crap and internecine wars and to have the resource endowment of the gods. 

We were never any better, only incredibly lucky, and with Trump we may show that we're the lowest of modern developed democracies, which is where we have been trending, to outlier status in the care of our people and the environment. We may be worse than everyone else.

Walking in a Nuclear Winter Wonderland

Donald Trump makes a person think of all kinds of things...

Everything Will Be Okay!

(I don't believe it but it's still better to think that way.)

Unregrettable

Donald Trump has no regrets, not that he avoids doing anything wrong. He just never looks back. 

Scamalot

Trump is a scam. His entire presidency will be a scam. Welcome to Scamalot!

Bull in a Chinese Shop

Donald Trump dove into Chinese politics today knowing that he can do no wrong because he is--ahem--Donald Trump and his greatness is now more manifest than ever. He spoke on the phone with the leader of Taiwan, something the Chinese will see as an affront. I hope they cut his balls off. He needs to learn some respect.

We Are Off the Hook

It has long irritated me how incompetent the Democrats are at fighting back against the Republicans. They don't even have to make stuff up. Republicans have trashed everything they've touched for over 35 years, or longer. 

With the election of Trump American voters have been proven so stupid I will no longer blame the Democrats for not criticizing the Republicans more effectively. If people can elect a piece of rubbish like Trump it was hopeless anyway. 

Those voters have elected the leaders who have despised them and screwed them for decades. It's time to take them at their own appraisal of themselves, that they are in fact despicable and not worthy of having decent lives.

All About Donald

Seeing Trump in action you begin to understand all the talk about narcissism. Everything is about him. There's 300+ million Americans but all that matters is Donald. He must feel good. He must show off. He must be the center of attention. 

Watching this has no appeal. It's pretty disgusting but it sure beats pondering the potential for disaster his administration has. A whole lot of human suffering may be the result. I really think Donald is indifferent, as long as he's enjoying himself.

It's amazing that our once-great country has elected someone to its highest office for the voyeuristic and secondhand and vicarious experience of watching him get his rocks off. It's not something I care to savor but it will be hard to avoid.

Ding-Dong, Donald, Ding-Dong

Are those holiday bells, Donald, or just the doorbell? Oh, look, it's Mitt, master of only a few hundreds of millions of dollars so he's sniffing around for more. How they come, this holiday season, purportedly seeking jobs or summoned in that cause but really just wanting to be in on the scam. And the frog's legs!

American Babylon

America is shit. We are the biggest pigs ever. And now we have four years to look forward to of massive oinking noises emanating from Washington. If it's a swamp, as Donald proclaims, we've traded it in for a sty.