The Fool and the Shill

Searching the scrap heap of disposable humans for a vice-president somebody came up with Mike Pence, a cunning choice. He had to be able to get through a lot of appearances and a handful of debates without embarrassingly damaging the ticket. He had to look composed and authoritative but not authoritarian. Fundamentalists and Catholics had to be reassured they could vote, in good conscience, for a hideous schmuck. Mission accomplished. 

Miraculously, Pence did all of this. He's a Catholic converted to evangelical Christianity. He has the gravitas of someone chronically constipated and no ethical grounding at all, adopting his morality wholesale from certified evangelical nutcases. But I assume no one was shrewd enough to foresee that he might help keep Donald Trump in office because he's possibly even scarier. What a way to live. The land of opportunity is now the land of opportunism. 

The Last Days of USA

I think it's over. It's all coming to an end now. The actual existence of a society isn't the sum of its parts, some seemingly corporeal or physical thing, it's its soul or personality conveyed in comparing its self-image and ideals with its actual behaviors. 

Does it enhance the lives of its citizens? Does it allocate resources fairly? Does it operate by its own stated principles as embodied in its laws and founding documents? We do none of these things. Our government has been compromised and bought.

America is a farce or parody of itself, an "independent" nation dependent on resources and labor from everywhere and a "free" people living in compulsion and constraint. Worthy citizens struggle while others live in splendor for doing nothing. 

Why Not Be Improvident

If a society as a whole fails to care for the welfare of its citizens what use is it? And if it deliberately damages their welfare, favoring some groups over others, it has lost its right to continue on as it is. 

Why should I try to be responsible, productive and decent when I'm forced to support a system that screws me? Why should I comply while politicians undo my best efforts and deprive me of my rights?

A sane society ensures some level of justice and motivates its citizens to live responsibly and well. It rewards citizens for living the way they should or at least doesn't reward those who only serve themselves.

Shameful

I really miss The West Wing. Another White House drama would be great, perhaps something resembling Shameless but starring all the Trumps and Trumpists holding the executive branch hostage.

Not To Be Improvident

I have to live my life in real time. It's the only way I know how. The problem is not to be improvident. My answer has been to make it all happen automatically--to structure things so that all the bills get paid routinely and money is similarly put away so I can retire. 

But if seat belts can be required by law, a limitation on personal freedom having nothing to do with someone else's safety, why can't we look out for the long-term security of everyone in other ways? There's no insurance industry or effective lobbying for that, that's why. 

We can't only do the things the corporations want and let individuals be helped or hurt as they will. We should structure things so the culture as a whole isn't improvident, making certain of the welfare of everyone. Higher levels of social organization require it.

Resisting Normalization

I've always thought that bat shit-crazy was not good but I'm adapting to life in the guano-sphere. Therein the dilemma. It feels like a concession, a retreat and a failure. But how do you live otherwise? I wake up in excellent circumstances. 

My life is decidedly not-bad but the forces of evil are everywhere and I feel implicated. There should be monks on fire in the streets and there are none. Everything seems more normal than it should and I'm a part of the normalization.

Certain Kinds of Minds

There are people whose minds tend to abstraction. They can't help it. They are born pencil-pushers and technicians. Or they were. Now they're the masters of the universe. 

Bill Gates is one, all technical brilliance and sociopathic, compensatory drive. They are drawn to the perfection of "the forms," regions of purity and immortality. Sorry, boys.

Immortality is not ours to take. By analogy to the realms of perfection life ought to add up like a double-entry system or economy. It does but not always in likable ways.

Everything born dies, in the long haul. So, they focus on a smaller picture and shorter haul. They focus on themselves. They are islands and sometimes they buy one to prove it. 

Civilization is about extending family feeling around, recognizing that it ultimately benefits everyone. The lords of technology aren't interested or they're too busy to care. 

Christianity is about extending family feeling around. The "Brotherhood of Man" is for real. We are supposed to extend family feeling to everybody, granting gradations. 

Only people who understand this should be in positions of authority. Tech guys are drawn to analysis and myopia though many conquer it, leaving perfectionism at the work-door.  

These days many arrogant sociopaths seem to be most successful. Trump is their man. He has to represent something and he is an absolute black hole of selfishness.

Once a Sane Calvinist

Once in a while I encounter an apparently sane Calvinist and try to get a grasp of it. There's a lot to overcome. Calvinists have been trying to scratch their way out of the left-brain hole they jumped into ever since they jumped into it. Many have set up stalls peddling hope pills in its bunker-like depths and await the end of life with patience and varying admixtures of despair. Escape is unthinkable.

The bottom line, I believe, is that irrepressibly sane people will find a way to be sane in spite of whatever layer of incomprehensible rubbish and bullshit they're buried under. Most of my exposure has been to the Calvinism of the Confederacy and that is uniquely sick. Being uniquely sick it has fled to Freudian depths of defensiveness, seldom expressing itself in anything as healthy as sublimation.

So I have my own hole to scratch myself out of to give Calvinism a fair shake. Does it have to be so fatalistic? I think it is sick and should be banned and obliterated but that isn't going to happen. And it would only turn the true believers loose like those well-armed members of the Ba'ath party the Bushies ignorantly unemployed in Iraq. I guess it sounded like a good idea at the time. "Ba'ath is bad." 

The then leaders of the free world operated at exactly this level of sophistication. I must be better. "Calvinism is not bad." Congregationalists made something reasonably endurable out of it in New England. In the Midwest many others did, leaning into the wind of man's depravity and living more honest, disciplined and accountable lives with this spiritual budget constraint to contend with. But were they happy?

In this Christmas Season I have to ask why. Why turn life into a depressing, nonsensical farce and then live it as a burden? Isn't the incarnation enough for us? There is no gulf between God and Man requiring an emotional arc of conversion or leap of faith, just a lot of distance. We are in His image. Creation is His accomplishment. Lighten up, God is saying. Don't be so fucking vain. Celebrate life. It's a gift. 

A strange-ass gift, I'll allow. I think original sin is the taking-of-life-for-granted. Eve lost perspective. Eve, you selfish nut, get over the apple. Ignore the snake. Tend to your man. You're the luckiest person in the world or second at worst. You lose what you take for granted, is the message. And, oh, are we taking a lot for granted these days and tempting fate with Trump, the scum-sucker.

I still think the Calvinist doctrines of determinism are responsible for this mess but I'll try to be more accepting. Meanwhile: flack-jackets and helmets on; heads down. Somehow we all ended up in the Calvinist bunker of arbitrary salvation, insurmountable injustice and an incomprehensible fatalism. It assumes that whatever happens, including Trump, has to be, by definition, the will of God. 

Understanding Ken

Barbie and Ken are our royal couple--our President and First Lady--plastic nobodies and role-players defined by the stuff you stick on them, toys designed to entertain and flatter their owners but without reality and unable to act autonomously. 

How do you understand Ken? Firstly, apart from not being real, he doesn't have a dick. That would be too graphic and threatening and his owners are sensitive about it. The only mojo they have is money. Secondly, he can be placed in amusing situations. 

What happens will be determined by the owners' imaginations. Obviously, it's a game. If Ken gets in a car wreck, destroys the economy or nukes the world you start over. That's what they think. He's real to them, but only as an avatar or projection. 

We are the ones who aren't real. Somehow we got sucked into this and our lives don't matter anymore. It's an inversion. Real lives mean nothing and the fantasy is everything. Maybe, however, they are animated. Then they would be Boris and Natasha.

The Upholders

I don't expect conservatives not to be defensive. That wouldn't be fair. It's natural for them, as upholders of traditions, to resist change and default to defensiveness.

But it's fair to ask, defensive about what? All I expect is that they be discriminating. What I ask is that conservatives uphold and defend something connected to reality.

If they say "freedom" and "patriotism" and "democracy" and "individualism" it should at least resemble those things and not their opposites. That's called "reality."

Mississippi, D. C.

Haley Barbour, a beefy Mississippian, apart from his stint as governor, has been a hell of a lobbyist for the forces of evil. Through Barbour it's possible to track how privilege and money have come to rule in Washington and how marginally accountable politicians and a once-professional class of civil servants who deployed their skills there have been thwarted and replaced in influence by a horde of scum-sucking, money-grubbing cretins. 

Famously cynical, lobbyists cut deals that determine everything, frustrating democratic processes and thereby the supposed actual government. Mississippi, as it existed before the Civil War and desegregation, has been recreated in Washington where the pickings are so good there's no need to oppress anybody. Why bother when an entire class of soul-selling shills are living so well on our money they are effectively segregated anyway.

Power exists there in a parallel world just as it did in the failure of Reconstruction when the real government in places like Mississippi had nothing to do with formal, democratic norms. Voting rights meant nothing. Freedom meant nothing. Constitutional protections meant nothing. Real power resided in an insulated clique of Barbour-esque white men. Average, white Mississippians cared only about not having to live intimately with blacks. 

Welcome to Washington, a parallel universe of privilege having nothing to do with democracy or constitutionally guaranteed anything. That is, welcome to Mississippi.

Donnie, We Hardly Knew Ye

I had no idea what Trump was like when he emerged as a national political figure. I don't reside in New York or watch reality TV. I couldn't care less about people with money, having no thought about their innate excellence or authority. 

It was reasonable to assume that in the business world of Trump there was some sanity and accountability. Little did we know. Little did I know, I should say. Still, I doubt that anyone understood how incapable he would be as a president. 

Comprehending his incompetence is hard even while seeing it happen, it's so extreme. And it surprises you the next time, the primal awe of it having abated. I thought Trump was more a doofus than a destroyer--a fish out of water--but, no.

He blows clear through the distinction. One can only bear witness. He's an annihilator by accident, empowered to heights of crassness and ineptitude by his status. Trump-realization is experiential--like pain, grief or the shock of a loss. 

Somewhere, someone--a king or some dignitary?--must have decreed: go forth and find the most feckless, immoral, degraded person in the land. Make him your leader. Is this a joke or what? If so, when does it end? Please, God, soon.

On the Racism of Trump

In my opinion racism is treating anyone according to anything other than standards of behavior. It's an active thing as opposed to stereotyping. Trump is a stereotyper, apart from being an asshole.

Interpersonally I doubt that Trump is a racist. If he has the inclination it is outweighed by his myopic egotism, I think, and limitless self-centeredness. He only cares about everyone sucking up to him.

He is the center of all things to himself. He judges people in an unbiased way in relation to a sick standard--whether they make him feel important or not or if they advance his interests in some way. 

He is innocent in the same way as an animal--still capable, if not culpable, of doing immense harm. An animal is about what he is. He's the last person in the world appropriate for a role of responsibility.

My Email to Heather Cox Richardson

Thank you for another excellent article on the Republican destruction of the New Deal, tying it into the Southern Strategy. I have a theory. Did you see the movie Songcatcher, with Janet McTeer and Aidan Quinn? It's true, that they found more primitive versions of the old songs in the American mountains than existed where they had originated. I think the same thing is true of the hideous doctrines of Calvinism (the Five Points) which seem to deny human freedom and reassure scum like Roy Moore that their salvation can't be compromised by misdeeds once they accept Jesus into their hearts, God help us. 

Anyway, if people are predestined for salvation or not, why not an entire race or gender or nationality? So, the extreme Calvinist doctrines got all enmeshed with the racism and exceptionalism of the Old South and were even more insidiously passed on as unconscious elements of the great lie of the Lost Cause. The Calvinist model for a society is a prison or plantation, people having existed in perfection and unity with God before birth and heading back there, if they're lucky, together with Roy at the end-times. Calvinists hate creation, believing God to have perversely imprisoned people in the shithole of earthly existence. Life isn't to be celebrated, respected or enjoyed it's to be endured.

They are dualists of the spirit and the flesh. Women are unconsciously perceived as being closer to nature, as are black people, so they are despised and feared. It is very sick stuff. In spite of it all, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas. 

JamesMFlanagan

Q. E. D

The moral decisions of the righteous always seem to make themselves. Literalists like to think they can avoid personal responsibility. Literalists twisted the Bible into a recipe book for white supremacists and greedy, predatory monsters. 

Now we have a class of politicians, oligarchs and social activists doing the same thing for our Constitution. This is serious shit. We are probably in for a bumpy ride, with the future of our society at risk and possibly the fate of civilization.

Making America Great (Depression) Again

I knew the Republicans were up to something. The last recession only wet their appetites. Nothing clears the head and purges the system like a full-blown depression.The new tax plan is all about that, setting the stage for a financial version of musical chairs, calamity-style. Some people will arbitrarily make a killing. Others will be killed, some (of us) literally. 

We aren't even in the room but will suffer enormously. The common cloth of mankind has been collateralized and marginalized. It was widely written about after the last collapse they caused, incited by indiscriminate deregulation and markets unbalanced by over-capitalization. Risks and losses were socialized. Profits were pocketed and privatized.

This is the Republican version of socialism. Everything moves upwards from the mouths of the poor to the portfolios of the rich. Anyway, Merry Christmas. Be sure to keep Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell in your prayers. They simply can't live comfortably outside of the presence of exploitation and despair. And wrecking an economy the size of ours is hard.

Walking in a Winner Wonderland

The idea of America was always, imperfectly, inclusion but a subset of citizens has claimed the dream only for themselves. They exploit old racial and cultural divisions to achieve their ends, understanding the resentments and skilled in innuendo, rationalization, and the tactics of jealosy and fear. 

Compare the condition of our schools with the immaculate lawns, pristine homes and gleaming cars in the gated communities. As a society we make such choices. But no "as a society" exists for the exclusionary elite. They declare themselves to be unreservedly deserving and the "winners."

No reward is too great, never mind that the bounty is a social product of which everyone should get a share. Take a walk in a winner wonderland--a gated community or affluent enclave. Average schools can only dream of the resources displayed there. Average citizens can't even dream.

Somebody Must Get Stoned

The Overton Window describes the moving of the range of acceptable standards of political discussion and therefore implementation of policies. A Republican discovery, the window has moved only to the right and is out in the tail of a distribution the mean of which now looks, as a result, like a resurgence of Goldwater Republicanism and Pat Buchanan's platform. 

I am determined to fight and resist this frightening, seemingly inexorable rightward trend. With the passing of the awful Republican tax bill it's only reasonable and fair to consider public stoning for politicians discovered to have violated their oaths of office and flouted democratic norms for personal benefit, thus resulting in the deaths of fellow citizens.

Kill and be killed, that's what I say.

Reason Aside

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Diet for a Destroyed Planet

Trump's intake of Diet Cokes and Big Macs is a problem of national security. In body and mind he is a biochemical catastrophe and a walking waste dump.

No reasonable person can argue that Trump cares about anyone but himself. If a crisis occurs he will be unable to think straight, his mind swimming in toxins.

He will act only out of primal instincts for his own survival and even irrationally at that, his personality poisoned by bad food, self-centeredness and insecurity. 

Under the rule of Trump the world could deteriorate irreversibly and all we can do is watch. It's unrealistic to think we can stop it. We are helpless.

A Tree Grows in Trump's Ass

Trump's ass is a crack to be avoided at all costs. I recommend we plant a tree there to make use of the space--an Ailanthus, or "Tree of Heaven." These are known to flourish in Brooklyn, once Trump's habitat, in harsh and difficult conditions.

American Graffiti

The graffiti is us now. Our lives have no intrinsic value. We are ephemera. Incidentalism is the rage in Trump-world. We are too powerless to justify the effort of individual destruction. We are incidental by edict and so suitably devalued and anonymously disposable.

It's presumptuous but there it is. Self evident truths and inalienable rights were tawdry fads humoring those too inert and inept to win--the losers, reviled and better aided into oblivion. Maybe the country could once afford to carry their weight but it can't any longer.

Which Circle of Hell

Which circle of hell are we in now with Trump? An outer ring, I don't doubt, not wanting to over-dramatize, but the centripetal forces are intense and the fires are warming my feet and tanning my butt. It's hard to sit around with the feelings of impending destruction.

COD

Conservative Obfuscation Disorder (COD) is on the rise. Normal, self-correcting mechanisms were thought to be in place but apparently have failed, presumably because of interference, exogenous variables, militancy and energy subsidies in the form of money.

The gold standard and case study is George W. Bush. It's hard to imagine how he could have screwed up the job worse if he tried. One supposition is that he did try or was manipulated into doing so. In any event the catastrophic outcomes speak for themselves.

No mea culpa was offered. Again it was assumed that this was only a tactic because the scale and severity of the fuck-up were so incredible. Now it appears, with the advent of Trump, that the awareness was not present. There was an actual break with reality.

Incompetent farmers' crops fail. Businesses collapse under misdirection. Conservatives go on and there is no accounting. They remain rich and retire or move on to better jobs. This seems to have created a disorder of unreality. They believe there is no accountability.

Enforcement is not the issue. There is no justice. There are no consequences. But nature is the model. In nature there are consequences. Their consequences await them. Meanwhile they might be recognized by their obliviousness to accountability and its mechanisms. 

They aren't lying in the usual sense. That requires reference to reality. They live obfuscated lives, protected from reality by their peers and deep pockets. It can't go on. Nature will collect on the debt. There will be an accounting, possibly at the expense of others.

Non-conservatives--even many of their fellow citizens--are currently outside of their model and not factored in. Until those entities are brought into the paradigm the problem will probably remain. In the case of American citizens their omission is technically illegal.

Trials of the Ubermensch

Think of what it is like. They are parachuted into life like any of us, another mouth to be fed, and evolve slowly into self-awareness. Somewhere in there a reactive suspicion of superiority emerges and its corollary, contempt. Insecurity in life is mastered only as a familial and social function. Their adjustment to the broader social world is unavoidably hierarchical and competitive, not cooperative, as an assumption. The matrix of superiority, contempt and insecurity plays out however it does, in a marginally healthy way or not. The constructs of competition and contempt (for the "losers") are unquestioned.

Apply to this all the variations of individual lives. Mitch McConnell inherits, through group identification, the unfathomable grudge of the defeated slave states. Multiply that by the thousands. Their hatred is focused on the agency of their humiliation or its nearest descendent, the federal government. Donald Trump is born so wealthy he can never be reassured of his own worth. He has to be rescued by his family and, later, beg the bankers for help. The psychological dissonance is unconquerable. Every interaction and innocent event is a battle now, needing to be couched in terms of competition and won, then gloated over and added to a list of glorious victories. John McCain, a legacy boy at a service academy, must be top gun to quell his feelings of inferiority, in compensation. He is nearly last in his class and survives a war and imprisonment. He returns and lands a beer-baron wife. George Bush fails at everything he does but is oblivious or convinced otherwise. He leaves the country, after his presidency, a shell of itself, its identity shattered. 

I never thought the United States would go down the road of self destruction. Where was the psychological injury? We had never lost a war and were fortunate beyond reason. Then I relocated to the South. Somebody lost a war. Somebody has a grudge and was humiliated. This is our story now. Add to the South the people with lesser tribal grudges and those with personal psychological injuries and you are on the road to hell, as we are now.

The New Abnormal

Good governance isn't even on the table anymore, an amazing testament to the dominance and determination of Republicans.

What a gig they've got. They control everything by any means and still blame the Democrats instantly for anything that goes wrong.

They continue to castigate the government for its incompetence and inefficiency when its only problem is that it's run by them.

Frozen Drool

With the cold weather lately I'm concerned about our elected representatives in Washington slipping and falling on all of the frozen drool. Be careful, boys! Republicans are salivating their way through to a tax bill spelling the final victory for wealthy Americans in the quest for unrestricted control of the country.

Christmastime in Washington

Hate fills the air like a snowstorm. It's like black snow if you can picture that. Make no mistake, the Republican tax bill will kill American citizens just as the failed attempts at healthcare reform, but in a more indirect way.

Deprivation and Taxes

Keep in mind that Paul Ryan entered politics out of college. Prominent Republicans are always on the lookout for promising recruits. Stephen Miller was another such prodigy, a young man whose heart was filled with arrogance and hate from childhood. He was drafted by Jeff Sessions after establishing his hate "cred" and he works at the White House as a professional political hack. 

Groomed and coddled, they are protected from the harsh reality and uncertainty of real work. Cushy jobs and safe seats await them. Competition, which they praise in principle, is beneath them. They skip right to the unlimited security of dark money and sucking off the government they despise, indistinct sources of support. Similarly to Miller, Paul Ryan stood out for his arrogance and contempt. 

No other qualifications are required. He was destined for a role in the implementation of the Republican new world order of cruelty. Now in middle age, Ryan's only dream has been to screw his fellow citizens out of their livelihoods, which has been his livelihood, working for the government he is determined to undermine and dismantle. The monstrous Republican tax plan is the fulfilling of this dream.

We watch now, nearly helpless to prevent it, as our lives as citizens in a rational, mostly humane, somewhat representative democracy come to an end. And Paul Ryan, who has expertise in nothing but politics, will see it through. He is in the tradition of Lee Atwater, Newt, Karl Rove, Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist--opportunists, savants and sages in the promulgation of despair. 

Joy to the World

The kind, compassionate, caring face of the good Christian, Roy Moore, will plague us no more. The persecutory mania he represents, however, is flourishing all around us this Christmas season. 

Washington Republicans are on the attack, indulging the insatiable beasts of greed and the desire for dominion. Their reward is in this world. I pray for them there is no afterlife involving justice. 

They will not fare well there.

Here, There and Everywhere...

To recreate the dream of love--the dream of civilization--we must know how far we have fallen. Everywhere, now, there is fear, hatred and greed. Let us recreate the dream of love. Love must be strong.

MerryXmas

War isn't over. We don't want it. 

Have a good year, in spite of the fear.

War isn't over. We don't want it.

Roy Moore Will Win

I can't believe the idiot Yankees still think they can shame the states of the Deep South into behaving. They have no shame. And the last thing they will stand for is to have vain, self-righteous, impractical northerners dictating their politics or anything else. Any effort in that direction will have the opposite effect. We must wait until the racists die out or enough decent people move in to offset the horror. Remember, this is Alabama, not America.

Washington Babylon

Where is our muse? Where is the person who will expose the undeniable and obvious truth: that Washington, the U.S. Capital, has become an unrivaled den of iniquity and a pit of despair? The residents of Sodom and Gomorrah were rubes and amateurs. 

Though, I'm sure their hearts were in it. They only lacked the resources to do it up right. They had no private airplanes, no expense accounts and insider trading, and no off-shore banks and resorts. Civilization has progressed since those primitive times.

Citizens of Sodom couldn't hold a candle to our crooks. 

A Middle Class Tax Cut on the Rich

What may seem like ambiguity, lying, double-talk, evasion and equivocation is actually not, the White House said today in defense of its new tax bill representing the combined wisdom of the houses of Congress. It is a "Middle Class Tax Cut on the Rich." President Donald never intended to cut taxes on less affluent people--he meant that the Middle Class, what's left of it, was to provide for a tax cut by voting for him.

They are paying for it. It is the Middle Class's tax cut in that sense. Sorry about the mixup. They enabled it by voting for Donald and are funding it, as he had always had in mind. His wealthy friends are really furious with him because they aren't getting more of a break. He is exhibiting extraordinary resolve in resisting their demands. Give him some credit. These people, like Donald, are used to getting their way.

Dear Sarah

In the spirit of the day I have owned my sexism and realized I am holding back, because she is a woman, on calling Sarah Huckabee Sanders a lying sack of shit. I was thus dishonest, patronizing, and demeaning to her. She is fully skilled at demeaning herself. 

Honest, open, sincere relations between the sexes are essential if we are to advance as a society. Sarah, you screaming whore and degraded, evangelical scum, may you rot in hell. Thank you, respectfully, and say "hello" to Donald for me.

Standing By Her Man

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is standing by her man, lying her Christian ass off for Trump. "Faith" they call it--the ability and proclivity to believe anything no matter the evidence. This is a beautiful thing, with beautiful beliefs, but with Sanders it's just degrading.

Bush and his cronies all walked away unscathed. They are probably richer for their efforts. We paid the price. Trump can't be stopped soon enough to prevent another catastrophe, I don't think. Let's hold them accountable this time, later on, with public humiliation.

Whatever happened to "the stocks"? I think Sanders and her people believe in that shit--corporal punishment and being shamed in the town square. Alrighty, let's give their puritanical asses their own kind of treatment. It's better than they deserve. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stocks?wprov=sfti1

Santa Claus, Go Straight to the Gated Community

Orrin, you and your fellow Republicans don't want to see Santa Claus waste toys on sickly, undeserving, underclass children in the inner city, do you? They're going to have crap lives anyway because we can't afford to care for them. Mormon Tabernacle Choir, sing it!

   Santa Claus, go straight to the gated community...

I prefer this version:

https://youtu.be/cz48PR__uSo

Now I Understand

Everything has a context. Clearly Roy Moore erected his monolith of the Ten Commandments not out of concern for public morals but to try to curb his own libidinous drives. Now I feel a certain sympathy for him. No, that's not right. I feel a certain compassion. Maybe not, but I understand--that he's an unrepentent, self-righteous, self-important piece of trash. He can't possibly have learned anything yet because he hasn't learned humility.

A Response to Ron Collins on Medium

Ron, your hatred of the liberal bogeyman is fully out in the open now but relax and be reassured--your side has been utterly victorious. No such thing as a viable liberal politics exists in America today. The overlords and backers of the Republican Party have seen to that. Enjoy their hegemony and if you don't like any of it blame them, not us. 

You see, I am a proud progressive, an inheritor of the true traditions of America--moderation, inclusion, respect and rationality. America has historically been as divided as any of the countries derided by us for their religious and tribal insanity such as Iraq, Yugoslavia (once) and Northern Ireland but we can't see it because it's OUR baggage. 

A third of the country, the American South, was a terrorist substate for most of our existence, a haven for bigots, braggarts, losers, degenerates and bullies. Even after having had their balls handed to them in dramatic fashion in the Civil War, during which much of the decent genetic material was removed from the white population leaving us with the likes of Jeff Sessions, they did not give up and remained a racist refuge into the 1960s. 

With desegregation the real, final battle for the conscience of America began. Republicans, whose party was always the repository of privilege, sold their souls for votes using the Southern Strategy. The results are observable, rife and revealing. Their success has been complete. We have had one Yankee president since Kennedy, Barack Obama. Every other intervening president has been either a Republican--and, therefore, since desegregation, an honorary Southerner--or an actual Southerner: Johnson, Carter and Clinton. 

The racist South, having held the country hostage forever, has taken control and founded a new country on their terms, the supremacy of property and privilege. Injustice is deeply entrenched. Deprivation is endemic. Sit back, Ron, and feel the love. Scumbags, thugs and greedy assholes are in charge. We wage illegitimate wars, screw working people, torture and bomb anyone we want, and imprison our own citizens like a banana republic. 

Your President openly defends racists. The middle class is disappearing. Hypocrites occupy the moral high ground. I allow you your victory but, please--out of respect for the people who did in fact fight and die for an ideal and not some hideous, tribal, racist ideology--when you finally get the constitutional convention your oligarchic leaders desire, rename the country The Confederate States of America or Boca Raton or whatever you want. 

The United States of America is dead. It exists no more, our ersatz Camelot, in the age of Trump and his army and coalition of self-serving pigs and racist sociopaths.

Calling All Malls

Roy Moore is coming to Washington. Experts in psychology agree that the relocation to this den of Republican vice might trigger a reversion to his stalking of young girls. I mean, how many guys do you know who have been banned from a mall? All malls must be notified and remain on high alert. Stop Roy! Our children deserve protection. 

An Exercise in Excellence in Lying

Republicanism has degenerated into an exercise in obfuscation--believers trying to lie creatively and persuasively enough to get their way. Humoring these citizens while hoping it will end hasn't worked. Those who thought the disorder might be self-limiting or temporary were wrong. The evidence is clear. They will never stop unless challenged and exposed.

Washington Fleece-Fest

The fleece-fest continues in the nation's Capitol this holiday season. Not only will the working man's hero, Donald Trump, fail to veto the latest shearing and stripping he's helping it through a Republican Congress ambivalently on board because it isn't screwing people enough. But a "victory" must be had. We should be thankful it isn't a slaughter.

Merry Christmas, Suckers!

Comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted--insulting the losers who have to work for a living--Republicans wish you the holidays you deserve, largesse to the rich and further deprivation for the needy. Suckers! Watch Trump's blue collar voters take it up the ass this Christmas. 

A Lump of Coal

Hey, all I got from Santa in the way of a tax break was a lump of coal!

I Predict

1. The tax cuts of the Republicans will produce intolerable deficits.

      Reasoning: they always have.

2. Republicans will then try to cripple Social Security and Medicare.

      Reasoning: they always have.

Good Christian Men, Rejoice!

The Senate has passed a tax bill containing impressive cuts for the rich while throwing a bone to lesser beings, giving the world an opportunity, as they await their Savior, to watch Donald Trump gloat his way through the holidays. Good Christian Men, Rejoice! Greed, your real lord, is now honored among us above all else. Throw a bone to Jesus, too.

No man can serve two masters: for either he

will hate the one, and love the other; or else

he will hold to the one, and despise the other.

Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Matthew 6:24

God Rest Ye Merry, Assholes

I am soliciting for carolers to entertain Congress with renditions of this song.

Syllogism from Hell

   Justice is the whim and will of God

   The will of God is arbitrary and unknowable

   Justice is arbitrary and unknowable

In the world-view of the Calvinist/Republican political movement injustice is justice, life is impossible and unintelligible and whatever happens happens. However cruel and unjust, life must be embraced and accepted as it is because it is assumed to be God's will.

Moreover, since good works are anathema and ineffective in the service of salvation, someone who is obviously favored by God through worldly success without any evidence of being decent and deserving is on a higher plane than an apparently deserving person. 

An awful person's behavior surely hasn't been spoiled and compromised by trying to leverage a way into heaven through self-serving, futile decency. Welcome to Hell. According to this outlook working to make life good and humane is sacrilege and an insult to God.

Dreaming of a White Supremacy Christmas

Trump's amusing retweets don't mean anything in one way. Donald loves to piss people off and he's good at it. Still, our society has to process this and Donald hasn't been forced to sit in a corner as he should.

Why? Because there are assholes among us, more than we thought, and they love a little hate. Why? Because there are racists among us, possibly an immoral majority, and they love a swipe at the vulnerable.

Why? Because we are lazy and morally morose. No indignation is enough to balance out the new hate. Action is required and we aren't up to it. I'm not up to it. Writing is as active as I get. It isn't nearly enough. 

Nightly News Trauma

Greater lies are always needed to sustain the white citizens' councils of the Republican Party as their politics and policies get further from reality. A new tax plan is offered, an obvious Trojan Horse, containing table scraps for average wage earners and enough bounty for the rich to lock-in their control of our government forever.

In cases like this the point of no return is only apparent when it is too late. It might have been crossed already. The country is so rich the defeated masses are only disadvantaged and too drunk on consumer goods to care enough to act appropriately by riding the lying politicians out of town on a rail, preferably tarred and feathered.

The nightly news is too traumatic to watch. 

Republican after Republican lies about a tax bill that every reasonably unbiased observer agrees is a disaster for working people, but stock markets soar. Somebody is happy. American baby-boomers, the most catastrophically greedy, selfish, irresponsible group in the history of mankind, plot to mortgage the welfare of future generations. 

Spellbound

You have to wonder, after nearly 40 years of disconfirming evidence, what the trick is with tax cuts. Reagan cut taxes, raised defense spending, caused soaring deficits and bankrupted the State. People with lesser incomes began to be left behind and the profits of the wealthy started to soar unimaginably, proving the fantasy of rising tide and supply side.

Yet every Republican since has sought the same and their gullible, lower-class share of the electorate acquiesces, fooled or hypnotized into submission. Their faces are defensive or vacant. Perhaps muttering "yes, master" they dutifully do as beckoned. Under Trump, their "populist" president, the same thing is happening. Mesmerized, they fall in line.

These idiotic white people voted themselves down the river, into servitude.

Unenlightened Times

The real heritage of America is The Enlightenment. It's a tradition of rationality, moderation and inclusion. It's based on individualism, progressivism, practicality, personal responsibility, openness, optimism, compromise and the acceptance and welcoming of dissent. Our real heritage is the opposite of everything Republicans stand for. 

Christmas, Time in Hell

Christmas at the White House is suitably Trumpian this year--gaudy, ostentatious and tasteless--with an ice palace theme befitting its queen, Melania. Hearts are frozen hard among the hangers-on, elves serving the new administration of doom. 

Nothing has been done by them but to push to benefit the rich and hurt everyone else--not that this is new, of course. Trump, surprised by his own win, turned to the "think tanks" of Republican horror who supplied him with bogus ideas and political hacks.

No doubt they will gather around and watch It's a Wonderful Life and mock George Bailey, a selfless and impractical man. He is not a true entrepreneur and the movie is sentimental tripe to Republicans. They might be far along by next Christmas.

The rich might be locked into their hegemony forever. Republicans, too, have their dreams.

Universal Suffering

Roy Moore and others like him are known, by the Calvinist doctrine of the Perseverence of the Saints, to be higher beings whose earthly presence is an accident and an interruption in their beatific existence. Their feet barely touch the ground and they await with impatience their heavenly destiny. 

Misdeeds by such superior entities are trivial blemishes on their divinity. Ignore their errors and consider instead your own inescapable course by comparison, that the rest of us are fated for destruction and "intended" by God, from birth and before, for disenfranchisement from holiness and salvation.

Practical, political disenfranchisement is nothing in this scheme but part of the sad, illusory escapade of mortality so don't worry about it. Misery was always our determined end. Roy, Jeff Sessions and their companions among the elect are committed to ensuring our misery. It's God's will and our due.

The Happy Harpy from Potomac Bend

Speaking of contempt, how much worse (better) can it get than sending Callista Gingrich to the Vatican as the representative of the most powerful country on earth? As an efficient act of bilateral degradation and debasement, it's genius. The Pope is probably appalled. Donald was elected with the help of Catholics, however. Aren't they proud now? Her adultery isn't disqualifying in my opinion. It's that she slept with Newt at all.

Show of Contempt

Only by viewing Trump's administration as a sweeping show of contempt can you see its logic and coherence. The contempt results from a ruse by the rich to weaken and destroy the federal government, the only thing standing between them and total social control. Finally their "opponents" will be effectively disempowered. Average citizens rely on the government to guarantee their rights. Rights are for rich people, it turns out, in the view of the rich.

Manson Family Values

Charlie Manson was a product of Appalachian neglect and abuse and a fan of manipulation--a charismatic, narcissistic leader obsessed with race. He asked his followers to obey his wishes and submit to him and secondarily to his idiotic and patently delusional beliefs. 

This is Republicanism, a cult which crushes individualism, requires obedience and adherence to irrational doctrines and instigates murder by remote control, looking on as the killing and chaos unfold. Manson expected personal loyalty above all, as does our president. 

Blackened Friday

America's annual consumption orgy, known as Black Friday, is today and the mask is off. Whatever innocence remained to the American Dream as represented by the opportunity to improve one's life it is gone, reduced to shameful exercises in indulgence without a hint of social and ethical awareness. 

Trump has seen to the last shreds of the pretense that America stands for anything. We have come to rest at the lowest of common demominators, scrambling for control of resources. America no longer represents hope, optimism, enthusiasm, generosity and real dreams but only cynicism and compulsion. 

What a Turkey

On Thanksgiving a person should feel thankful and peaceful and forgiving. In that spirit I want to say to Donald Trump, our dolt of a president, I forgive you. You are obviously too stupid to do your job. It's not your fault. I blame the idiots who elected you. 

Republicans and Collectivization

I have made the point before that Republicans are commies because they believe in the transcendence and inevitability of the class struggle and are simply trying to win. Also I noted that Republicans are proving Marx right by causing untenable concentrations of capital which will lead to a fatal, inevitable economic meltdown as foreshadowed in 2008.

 

A further aspect of Republican totalitarian perfidy is the consolidation (collectivization) of everything they can get their hands on through the economically unjustified corporatization of formerly decentralized industries and occupations. These corporations are now, more efficiently since Citizens United and the advent of Trump, the de facto government.

Parallels with other totalitarian regimes are all around. Choose your favorites. When I was a child family farms were still viable, if not prospering. Groceries and department stores were multifarious and the owners lived in the community. Similarly with pharmacies and many other businesses of every kind. Republicans blindly favored consolidation and scale.

Larger businesses have been buying influence in Washington for decades, leading to ever increasing collectivization, reducing choice, competition and sometimes overall efficiency. America produces food with extreme efficiency, narrowly viewed, for example, but fails to capture the externalities and social costs of pollution and environmental degradation.

We then throw away 40% of what we produce. These kinds of irrationalities exist throughout the system, defended, backed and encouraged by Republican ideological intransigence and aggression. Republicans also have their gulags, disproportionately incarcerating black men who resort to antisocial behavior because of deprivations created by Republicans. 

Lost Horizon

America's edenic time is at an end. It was always a reality tinged with illusion. Now it is an illusion tinged with reality. Soon it will be nothing but an illusion, existing only in the minds of men, and so separated from reality it will become lethal to its inhabitants. Say goodbye to Shangri-La. We were lucky ever to have glimpsed it.

Factual Content Warning

Conservatives, I know it worries you that your children might be damaged and corrupted by explicit factual material. I don't blame you--reality can be pretty hard core--but some of us have an unfortunate addiction to it we are unlikely to shake.

Producers of explicit factual content might be persuaded to rate and label their product to protect the minds and formation of your youngsters and teenagers. Nakedly factual subject matter could then be suitably packaged for their protection.

The Fallacy of Republicanism

Normally I am loathe to accuse anyone of being anything. I try to stick with behaviors. I don't typically accuse Republicans of being liars, for example, I accuse them of lying. If unsure I keep in mind the example of some of America's corporate elite, the CEO's of all of the major tobacco companies, each of whom testified under oath, before Congress, that they believed nicotine not to be addicting. 

That was in 1994, the year of the beginning of the remaking of the American State by the hideous Gingrich gang. I can't tell you that those CEO's are liars because I can't see into their cynical, compartmentalized, greedy psyches but I can tell you that it is untrue that nicotine isn't addicting. When people give up their individual responsibilities, however, through identification, what then? 

Republican Congressmen have lined up shamelessly to lie about healthcare, taxes and everything. What goes on in their sick souls, who knows, but these are lies as surely as any about nicotine and they are motivated to lie as were those CEO's. The nicotine lies were more directly for personal benefit, the lies about taxes and health insurance more lies of cult-like, doctrinal obedience. 

 

Isn't it fair to call people liars when they have voluntarily opted out of their individualism and degraded themselves through conformity, identification and obeisance while they falsely claim the opposite, that they are paragons of freedom and independence? I don't think so. We still can't judge people, only behaviors, even when they abdicate their individualism, consciences and humanity. 

But we can judge the movement, the evil entity of their allegiance, the virtual repository of the mortgages on their souls, the Republican Party. I therefore declare the Republican Party to be an evil organization built on ambition and greed and unfit for any socially constructive purpose. The Party is a fallacious composition incapable, on balance, of producing anything resembling goodness or truth.

Even Dotards Have Rights

By the way, I want to make it clear that, by my criticisms of Trump, I in no way deny or diminish the civil rights of dotards. Dotards have rights too. 

Trump and the Aroma of Salvation

Once and for all, evangelical Christians are not holding their noses while supporting Trump but breathing fully and deeply of the aroma and stench of his Trumpness. It is important to understand this. Otherwise the extremity of the perversion and degradation is lost, together with the full severity of the threat to civilization.

Evangelical Christians are in love with Trump because he has been so obviously chosen by God in the most extreme degree. He is both a billionaire and a piece of shit. Since Trump is so catastrophically undeserving, depraved and incompetent it's impossible that he achieved his position through his own character and efforts. 

It can only be the will of God. Trump is therefore a massive rebuke to the false doctrine of good works and evidence of the arbitrary nature of salvation. Trump was "saved" in spite of himself, a more unworthy person being unimaginable. In addition Donald reeks of the end-times, which idiotic fundamentalists candidly long for.

Who knows, evangelicals are so incomprehensibly sick they might believe Trump to be the Second Coming or its herald at some level of consciousness. After all, Trump is a law unto himself and a living repudiation of every earthly standard of decency. Turds are many and mighty among Republicans but there is only one Trump.

Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

We've arrived. Our destination is reached, our desires realized and our consciences archived. Who knew it could be so easy. All we had to do is sell our souls. They weren't worth much, it turns out. At any rate, they were had cheaply.

The Truman Show Delusion Delusion

People who think they are living in the Truman Show aren't deluded. We are living in a Truman Show. People who think they aren't living in a Truman Show are deluded. 

It isn't even a good Truman Show. I might condone it if it were a healthy, harmless, humane and attractive parallel-place but it's sickass. The producers are the super-rich.

Some day, when we outlive our usefulness, they will pull the plug, douse the fires, turn out the lights and leave. Some day, inevitably, the world is going to get real on us.

All of the lies will fall away and we'll see reality again. The "set" might still be habitable but it isn't going to be nice. Livable is what it will be at best. The producers don't care.

They aspire to be gods and they will decamp and ascend with their cash. Remember, in America wealth is inerrancy and holiness--the godless fatalism of Puritanism. 

OK Stupid

I have a surefire, money-making plan for a Republican dating service patterned on their prevailing populism and available for crowdfunding on Nonstarter. The dating site will be called OK, Stupid. 

Candidates, as prospective dates are known, are assumed to be lying about everything. Attention and interest, I suppose, will flow to those who lie most outrageously, promising impossibilities.

My behavioral studies show that the outlandishness of the overt misrepresentations, once uncovered, will not be noted or disqualify candidates from dating, ongoing relationships or anything else.

An American Responsary

I envision a day when America's Kochist elementary schools will engage in morning drills involving a teacher and student call-and-response, followed by the singing of a stirring hymn, The Poor Will Be With You Always.

Teacher: Healthcare is for those who work hard for it or are born rich and not others. They don't deserve it and we can't afford it!

   Students: Yes, we can't!

T: Security, in retirement, is for those who put away heaps of money and no one else. They don't deserve it and we can't afford it! 

   S's: Yes, we can't!

T: Police and the military are there to protect productive citizens, not criminals and scum. They don't deserve it and we can't afford it!

   S's: Yes, we can't! 

T: Elections are for people who own property, not for losers with no stake in the State. They don't deserve it and we can't afford it! 

   S's: Yes, we can't!

And so on indeterminately, depending on the endurance and creativity of the instructor. 

Donald's Asian Victory Lap

It's a little late for a victory lap but it is the anniversary of Trump's glorious win and in keeping with Asian traditions Donald is feeling the love and seeing his own greatness manifested in parades, pageantry, mouth-flapping and bravado. Evidence of his actual accomplishments is rare. This is in keeping with the ways of China and Russia. 

Stalin and Mao falsely tried to tout successes to conceal their failure even to keep people alive. They had bigger goals in mind, remaking societies, than the welfare of inconvenient hordes of citizens. Healthcare, anyone? Trump has shown only one skill, shooting off his mouth in futile attempts to distract from his feckless, chaotic and shameful rule.

Donald is a pig. He lusts for power and he's indifferent to the sufferings of the citizens supposedly in his charge. But he isn't an ideologue. He is only fixated on himself. The "idea" people are behind the scenes. Empowered by a leveraged, gerrymandered and illegitimate election, Donald is a tool. And he's an opportunist and a self-aggrandizing oaf.

However painful it isn't a bad idea to relive the horror of Donald's election on its anniversary. It either isn't what we are or we deserve whatever calamity awaits us, a potentially Maoist kind of social and economic web of lies and a rationalized descent into murderous, opaque, misrepresentative government and totalitarian, oligarchic, anti-democratic rule.

Another High Tech Lynching

Clarence Thomas was run through the system fairly, emerging victorious with the help of his white supporters who were thrilled to hire him to hold a lantern, mow the lawn and pick up trash at the Supreme Court. The vigilantes were on his side. Bill Clinton was deemed unfit for his role by Republicans, infuriated at his victory, not because of anything he did, apart from winning, but for what he was and what he represented, a blow to the treasonous forces of minority rule.

Clinton was the target of the vigilantes, who declared "open season" on him. Whitewater was an invention, a smoke screen and and an excuse to begin the persecution. "Investigations" expanded everywhere from there, illegally and with the benefit of heaps and mounds of Mellon cash. Hillary is in line for the same treatment, as the primary focus for Republican hatred, never mind that whatever she did it was Girl-Scout material in relation to the crimes of George W. Bush. 

The objective, of course, is to distract from a Republican president whose innate criminality and incompetence make Bush's look like nothing. God help us if we have another terror attack. We haven't yet recovered from the last episode of Republican rule. And Trump is laying the groundwork for the next recession and financial collapse, deregulating and deprofessionalizing everything. His trigger finger is itchy but the public is wary because of past adventurism.

All he needs is an excuse. Hello, Rocket Man. 

In Vitro, Veritas

Examine closely the Republican obsession with wombs. It's a Freudian field-day. How to abstract from that the many issues of mommy-lust and daddy destruction? Of repressed desires and regressive fantasies? 

Isolate Republicans in a test tube and you get all the nasty elements of the fear of life and the loathing of the self, of unowned aspects of human nature and the projection of those onto innocent people and existence itself.

Republicans continue to see their unacknowledged weakness and suspected depravity in others and in the world at-large. Watch them fester in their test-tube environment and, voilà, the evil is seen to be within. 

Just the Hacks, Ma'am.

How do you know a hack? Examples are easy to find. Choose any conservative "think tank" and consider its output. The liklihood they will conclude that tax cuts on the rich are bad social and economic policy is nothing even though it is true.

Hacks have sold their souls. Immediately it's apparent that hack-dom reaches high levels. The Supreme Court is populated by right-wing hacks, on the one side. Hacks gave us Iraq. Bush inherited people who had some knowledge and sense.

He fired them and installed idiots with appropriate opinions on the "unborn." Hacks gave us the Great Recession. They believe in deregulation as a matter of faith. Hacks are immune to feedback and reasoning. It's not about reason or reality.

It's about power. And it's one thing to have a few hacks around, another nothing but hacks.

Does He Know?

Herr Donald's latest international trip is incoherent even by his standards. Suspicion falls on the heavy footsteps of Robert Mueller. Has the Trumpster done anything illegal? I don't think he knows, but assumes he has, and with good reason.

Donald doesn't subscribe to the rule of law. Like most Republicans--blinded by greed or self-righteousness and cynicism--he isn't concerned with legality but what he can get away with. The law, morality and decency are for lesser beings. 

Watch How Republicans Handle a Dumpster Fire

The equivalency industry is heating up. I wish I had stock in it. Trump's supporters, seeing their hero hit dumpster-fire levels of incompetence already, are rolling out their Bush-era emergency kits, trying frantically to protect the party from damage. With Bush they were successful but mostly because he left the country in such an awful, flaming mess it took years just to quell the fires.

Some still smolder. The results of Trump's hideous reign await us so the best money is spent attacking and defaming Hillary and her allies. Only Donald himself can tackle Mueller and, of course, his backers know better than anyone the liklihood he will screw that up. He is a prop though not as predictable as their last one. Bush was putty. Trump is plastic but explosive. One mistake and--kaboom!

They handle him with care but not for the good of the country, protecting only themselves. Republicans are fighting their dumpster fire by starting more fires. That's how much they care about America. They scramble and hype up the Hillary-hate to direct attention away from themselves but nobody is in their class--not when it comes to malfeasance, malign governance and hypocrisy.

SALAD: The Five Points of Calvinism

1. Shithood: people are depraved, worthless turds at birth and wallow in sin

2. Arbitrary Salvation: God is arbitrary in choosing the "elect" because God is a dick

3. Limited Salvation: those not chosen are unavoidably screwed now and forever

4. Asskicking Grace: the chosen--the elect--are inevitably and permanently redeemed

5. Despair: the result, together with cruelty, of this perverted, fatalistic outlook

Remember, all ye faithful, that God is an arbitrary asshole. Therefore, those who are arbitrary assholes are closest to God's heart and are representative of the Divine Will. 

Go now, and fuck peace. Life is meant to be shit. Such is the inscrutable will of God. 

Jackass: The Sean Hannity Story

No matter how low they go in degradation relating to Trump there is still a hierarchy and room for differentiation among his underlings and supporters. Since it's an ongoing situation there is no known floor. The actors are still alive and humping lampposts for Trump but Sean Hannity would be high on anyone's list of candidates for most depraved and enslaved. 

Circumstances are worsening as Trump's incompetence becomes increasingly obvious and Hannity seems more rabid and deranged in defense of his master. He squirms and grovels in gratitude as Trump toes more closely to traditional lines of Republican treachery, trying to destroy the lives of average citizens while ensuring the increasing hegemony of the rich. 

Abolishing estate taxes is a big deal, possibly forever preventing a return to democratic norms. Denying healthcare to ordinary citizens is a big deal, but Democratic leaders live in a bureaucratic haze of impotence, failing to fight even the most clear-cut battles effectively. Hannity and his faux-media allies become more combative as they recede from reality.

Hannity is the person I most want to track, attack and destroy--an arbitrary choice, but I think we should pick him because he is the most unhinged in relation to his influence. Maybe we can expose him for what he is, a pathetic, desperate, sickass, incoherent lackey and shill. His humanity is hopelessly compromised. He is a bellowing, delusional jackass.

Real Amateurs Online

Watch as real-life amateurs bare it all and engage in acts of shameless depravity. Hidden cameras catch everything as prominent citizens, ranking bureaucrats, corporate tycoons and elected officials sell their souls for nothing, desiring only immediate gratification. Join West-Wing Webcams today! (charges payable to The Trump Organization)

Depravity Software

Convert your files from obvious lies into cunning treachery with "Republicanism," new software brought to you by the forces of evil and now fully debugged and available to average citizens after successful refinement and testing on elected officials. 

Paul Ryan's vestigial conscience surely wants to say "screw the American people sideways" which would probably cause voter consternation. With "Republicanism" installed it comes out as "doing the work of the American people" or "advancing America's interests." 

Keep yourself safe from all of the negative consequences of sincerity and the pitfalls of telling the truth. Buy "Republicanism" today!

Tie a Railroad Tie to Trump

A friend of mine's new dachshund puppy is gregarious and good-natured but he goes AWOL and off the property at unauthorized times in his enthusiasm and desire to bond with other living things in the neighborhood. An invisible fence has been ordered.

Meanwhile, a suitably sized block of wood has been added to his leash and is proving an effective deterrent to his affectionate forays. Comments arose (possibly from me) about the indignity of the restraint and it was decided the puppy was insensitive to it.

Obviously, a parallel exists with Trump. He is undisciplined and requires restraint. How much trouble might it save if Trump were tied to a railroad tie? He could drag it around and even, with some help, golf or make it onto Air Force One but it would slow him down.

No offense is intended to the dog in this. He is a vastly superior creature to Trump. 

The Sunsetting of the Aggrieved: This Product is No Longer Supported

For most people--certainly for me--the stories of glorious victory are easier to take than the grudges and strivings of those wanting justice or redress. "The poor will always be with you." Okay. Screw them, then. Because, this assumes inevitable poverty, a situation in which if all the resources of the world were perfectly, evenly distributed there still wouldn't be enough to go around. 

Is it not a cry of inevitability, fatalism and despair? So, embrace inequality. Herald despair.

No, brother. Rather, since when is cynicism the province of those transformed by the love of Christ? Since when is it the Biblical message to give up? Since when is it our place to judge? It isn't, but the aggrieved have a hard case in a society as wealthy as ours. Moral deficiency and incompetence are more easily assumed than lack of opportunity, deprivation and a poor growing medium. 

But some seeds still fall on worse ground than others. Also, the idea of earthly justice flatters its promoters. 

They are the winners. Winning implies and imputes moral superiority unto them. Why the fuck not? They are running the show anyway. Why not declare victory in every realm, sphere, eminence and domain? While we're at it with the why-the-fuck's, fuck them back. Oh, what fun! And all in the name of Jesus. Back at Gethsemane, the aggrieved look on, their very existence invalidated. 

Obsolescence is theirs. Onward to the landfill. They are discarded, too weak to warrant crucifixion.

Trump's Privy Council

Men with records of bravery in battle eventually quake, collapse and succumb within the soiled and filthy confines of Trump's outhouse administration. Only those, like Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, long accustomed to the stench, can survive in it. John Kelly couldn't and is now officially degraded. 

Sarah Sanders was born in an outhouse. Jeff Sessions can't tell a turd from a titmouse. On down the list, from the cabinet southward, it's one disgraced, servile, morally repugnant slimeball after another. They lie compulsively. They'll do anything for money and they stand in line to wipe Trump's ass.

Trump Motility

A question arises in witnessing the dissolution of our democracy--the declining franchise, the treachery and the prevailing of leveraged, unrepresentative government under Trump. Was Trump primarily impelled by existing forces or is he a prodigy? Was he washed ashore by a tidal wave of perversion, a castaway commanding his flotsam, or is he a surfer riding a wave that might not have led to our destruction had it not been ridden?

Is he Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, a winner in a race already in place (somebody had to win) or a creative genius finding and exploiting dark desires previously unmined in the American psyche? Nothing is written--that is my starting point. Nothing in human affairs is determined or inevitable. Someone created this mess and the old rules of interest always apply. To whose benefit is it all occurring? To the long term benefit of no one, I think.

Hence the perversion. But, in the shorter run, the monied forces are making out. Trump is their man though they may have recoiled at first at his coarseness and lack of control. Trump was produced by a society running amok on money and rooted in a puritanical belief in immanent justice, that God's will and approval are implicit in worldly success, despite what the Bible says. Trump's "talents" are in sociopathy and aggression, not insight. 

He is less constrained by conscience than any person ever so successful in our public sphere. Such people have long achieved supreme authority in other cultures but never, I believe, in ours. They have desired it but never succeeded--not with the backing of all of the structures of power and the commanding of all of the branches of government and the coopting of a deluded electorate, as has Trump. He is the head of a criminal enterprise.

Trump won because he was willing to play dirtier than anyone else. He isn't a prodigy he's a punk. But he's a mirror on American society: the ugly, sociopathic thing we have become. Horrifyingly, Trump is us. We are a nation blinded by greed and our good fortune and defensive about its origins, insisting, like Trump, that we are endlessly deserving of an inheritance and compulsively clamoring for more. We are exceptionalist swine.

The End

Notice how Republicans continue to support Trump even though it's clear he's criminally incompetent, criminally unfit and probably a criminal. No one could have known how bad it would be. No one could have known he wouldn't rise to the responsibility but sink to unprecedented depths of disgrace. 

We know now, though, and Republicans continue to support him. It's a national emergency. America is being ruled by cranks and crooks. Everyone sits around talking about it as though it's within previous parameters or a form of entertainment or an accident and a fluke without permanent, practical effects.

They pretend it isn't representative of anything but it is what we are now--ourselves, utterly disgraced. This is the end of life as we have known it and we are in steerage or manning the engine rooms in a sinking ship. Some of the rich will get away, wealthy men and their families first. The rest of us will drown.

Marshalling Plan

The forces of evil are marshalling for their final assault on democracy and decency and the sniveling, snorting, salivating array of scum-hosts is waiting to see which of their many levers of power will yield the final result, irreversible control of the American State and the return to a highly limited franchise of supposedly superior beings. The devil rides shotgun.

Satan and Darth Vader and the quest for power--it's the oldest story ever, a compulsion entailing extreme insensitivity to the lives of other people, many of whom have voted for this in a kind of protection racket, preferring to be secure as serfs (they falsely assume) than free beings. But their lords will turn on them. More tax cuts for the elite are offered.

Old lies are frantically rolled out and defended. The leaders themselves must be astounded they can still get away with it, after so many years and so many failures. The devil is smart. Republicans sold their souls for votes in the South and Satan is coming to collect. Even they can't stop it now. The social conservatives are demanding a return. Hell awaits us.

Problems of Scale

Sometimes I apply a scalability test. For example, if the world were mostly comprised of people like me, if I do say so, it would be pretty liveable and look a lot like Scandinavia, replete with saunas, which I happen to love. 

If the world were composed of Republicans, however, it would be a pit of despair. Consider the history of England under puritanical rule, if you doubt it. If the world were comprised of a horde of Donald Trumps--well, I shudder to think.

Those hypothetical results are already being tested and becoming reality as Republican hegemony increases. Wanting for other viable enemies they begin to eat their own. Watch in horror. These are the values of true sociopaths.

Trumped Up

The pernicious effects of Trump are many. He is a pit of political protoplasm into which anything good that stumbles or errs never again sees the light of decency. One focus on Trump is focus--the resulting obsession with near-term destruction caused by Trumpian shenanigans. 

Bigger and better issues are the purview of a normal presidency, not everyday survival under threat of nuclear-level stupidity and self-sabotage. More so than any other office in the American system the presidency should employ a person with the broadest vision and competence. 

It can't be an accident that no less appropriate person than Trump could be found in this respect. The self-centeredness of Trump defies comprehension and, as a result, concerned citizens end up with an extremely narrow focus, trying only to get through another day of insanity. 

This is an amorphous, abstract and unquantifiable effect of Trump, the lack of reasonable care for the fate of the larger state and electorate and for longer periods of time. Trump has too many citizens, those who aren't counting their coins or searching the skies for Jesus, living in fear.

The Outer Limits

You might wonder, how bad can it get and when will the Republicans stop and rest on their laurels and quit making things worse? The answer is never. They won't stop until there's nothing left and the country is destroyed or in the ditch. You have to understand, that's what they want. It isn't just about money and power. They have the institutional equivalents of mental illness and addiction. They are unbelievably evil people. 

Process Trumpology

A country that wasn't stupid enough to elect Trump in the first place might also be able to see how hopelessly stupid he is and, in the process, realize what a stupendous lie it is that wealthy people are necessarily superior and deserving. No one could be less deserving than Donald Trump.

It is the secular, social and political version of predestination, a hideous doctrine which preempts human freedom and the meaning of life and the efficacy of effort and intelligence. Puritans, Calvinists and fundamentalist fanatics who believe in it hate life, liberty, reason and decency.