Depravity Software

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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.

Better Call Paul

Paul Ryan knows his place--as a toady, a functionary and a fixer. He intends to be a midwife at the birth of the new conservative order which happens only to be the oldest model of human incorporation ever, a society built on inequality, exploitation and injustice.

Eventually the subjugated masses will rise up and attack their oppressors or opt for the Anglo-racist, puritanical example of moderated, legislated and arbitrary social stratification rooted in cynicism and despair. Hooray, everybody loses, the wished-for fate of Ryanism.

It's time to call Paul. The birth is imminent. 

Trump Soldiers On

The tendency with Trump is to get bogged down in the daily display of depravity, thereby losing sight of the larger implications of his wickedness. With the latest gaff involving a call to the mother of a deceased soldier the larger context is that soldiers are losers, fools and lackeys in the Trumpian metaphysics of greed. 

For true Trumpists any kind of self-sacrificing or seemingly principled behavior is pathetic and a refuge for those who can't cut it in a competitive world, never mind that most of Trump's backers are crooks and inherited their money or were advantaged from the start. Or, they are delusional, fatalistic religious fanatics.

The Love That Dare Not...

I love the government. Disregarding all of our horrible activities abroad the government has, at home, tried to wrest freedom away from its hoarders and the oppressing forces of poverty, racism, greed and intolerance. The government tried to guarantee that average citizens would have reasonable means of subsistence, to which they are entitled, and the autonomy of their lives and bodies. 

The money-men want to see a new age of economic oppression and the religious fanatics want to see the secular systems of laws and traditions again under the thumb of irrational, superstitious, idolatrous believers in "Christian" government, ignoring the individualistic imperatives of both our civil and religious convictions. In other words, they want to send us all to hell, either side of the grave.

No Happy Ending

America's happy ending is going up in smoke, wasted by Republican greed, dishonesty and incompetence. It will be the great American tragedy--the loss of our freedom. 

In Jesus's Name, Amen!

Evangelical Christianity has created a government in its image and the end-times are upon us. Amen and Hallelujah! Deprive children and the poor and elderly especially of food and the care needed to keep them alive--in Jesus's name. Amen! 

Destroy creation and plunder the planet out of existence--praise Jesus and Amen! Muslims and other heathen may be killed at will, ideally by drones and other cowardly means, while the people of God suck down resources like there is no tomorrow. Amen!

It's in the news, there is no tomorrow! You can quote them on that! God wants his people to live like pigs. It's in the Bible--the prosperity gospel--and they will sweep you away with their mighty sword if you resist. Amen! Hallelujah! And, fuck you!

Trump Shits Himself Again

Trump signs executive orders with the aplomb and pride of a little boy's only supposedly creative activity: "Look at what I did!" He exhibits a self-satisfied smile, assuming an accomplishment while laying out another huge turd.

"Good boy, Donald!" He just shit all over everything again. Someone, clean up the mess. 

Et Tutu, Brutus?

Wait, there's an image emerging from my subconscious, repeatedly forming and fading, a new archetype of inappropriateness and horror: pale and pudgy, Donald Trump in a diaper-tutu, otherwise unclothed and drooly, nervously active and impatient or pouty and pensive because the world isn't shaping or conforming itself instantly to his will. He's a vain, frustrated fop and a baby, having known only one authentic outcome in his life and angry at anything else--Donald must get his way and be fed and indulged.

No one and nothing else matters. Though, it's prejudicial and unfair to talk as if he's a card-carrying grownup because he isn't. He's an immature, un-evolved, parasitic little monster and brute, living a fantasy and an illusion--a larval drama of insatiable oral craving so severe it preempts or negates his humanity. He's a one-man asylum of arrestedness and a belching bambino squirming and pawing at the recalcitrant tit of cosmic largesse, assuming a false and unearned status as something other than the maggot he is.

Funny, I Don't Feel Like Vermin

Looking at the earth from space it would be time to conclude that human beings are vermin. We will reproduce ourselves out of existence and into oblivion. We kill our own and we live in self-created filth, a spreading malignancy and horror. Hooray for us. The end is near. 

Venality Fair

Venality is so assumed in human behavior and especially politics it only makes sense to go with the flow and begin to distinguish between its benign and malignant forms, the expectation of corruption being self-fulfilling. Benign venality would acknowledge the intensely social nature of human beings and seek to be selfish on behalf of the human macrocosm and for the longer term. 

Malignant venality would ignore the social aspects and see the seeking of individual advancement by any means--venality by its nature assuming no absolute, underlying morality--as a de facto morality because if its inevitability. It is therefore closely related to cynicism and usually effected through casuistry and moral relativism while making a show and claim of decency and necessity. 

Republicanism immediately comes to mind as an example of the malignant form, the entire thrust of its actual platform being to screw the very people it pretends to represent and support, hoping only to remain undiscovered long enough to corrupt and ruin the entire system beyond repair. That point now approaches quickly, as the seeds of cynicism, despair and confusion sprout everywhere. 

The Irish Tenor of Fox News

It's no accident that so many Irish Catholic guys are prominent at Fox News. Apart from the Catholic attachment to authority, there's compensation. Ireland was a matriarchal culture, Irish men having had their balls handed to them by various invaders and then definitively by the English. Bill O'Reilly and Hannity, for example, are desperate to assert their masculinity as bullies always will, from positions of safety and relative strength.

Megyn Kelly is demonstrating, as we speak, the power of the protective, corporate shell of Fox by flailing around outside of its confines over at NBC. Add to the Irish the southern white boys who were similarly defeated and other losers and congenital assholes and--voila!--you have the soul of the Republican Party: defensive, aggressive, violent by nature and proxy and essentially sick. Dominance and submission are always an issue.

Pathetically trying to exercise his manhood, Roger Ailes was representative, if not Irish, using his position to bully women into intimacy. O'Reilly and Trump are similar. Fox is a bubble and a fortress, ideologically divorced from reality and prone to attack spontaneously and overreact to any threat, real or imaginary. O'Reilly's "War on Christmas" is a telling, if trivial, case-in-point. Bill is reportedly a huge, oversized human being.

He never hesitated to use his stature to intimidate, as can be seen in many clips of interactions on his former show. He rises in his chair in indignation at challenges to his authority. Meanwhile they are all taking it up the ass from the political and monied interests. Hannity is somewhat different. There's a look in his eyes, said to resemble the results of fetal alcohol syndrome, of degeneracy and organic brain damage.

That "nobody home" look was also apparent in George W. Bush who proved himself, in a role of inescapable responsibility, a wastrel and reprobate. Bush was shielded from accountability, which would see him in jail after being tortured in accordance with his own beliefs in its efficacy, for getting hundreds of thousands of people needlessly killed. Fox News circumvents justice and the courts by throwing money at victims. 

Victims are bought off with millions from their deep coffers. Characteristically of cowards, these bullies are bailed out by the corporate versions of their mommies. Submission is always an area of sensitivity. They are incapable of seeing that a society can (only) function when dominance is no longer a determining factor. Fox, their own mini momma-state, runs on cowardice--distinctively Irish, bullying, blustering cowardice. 

The Emerson Corrective

I'm aware of the Emerson Collective and other high-minded organizations trying to make the world better for everyone but what sense does it make when they are working at cross-purposes with our own, supposedly elective, government? 

They should put their efforts into undoing the evil Republican assault on democracy and decency, renaming themselves the Emerson Corrective. That would do more good than anything, if the misanthropy could be stopped. 

There's no way they can win against the tidal wave of evil coming out of Washington. 

Great Dismal

Wow, the Trump swamp is a record breaker. Following the lead of Donald, their self-indulgent commander-in-chief, Tom Price, the Mnuchin munchkin and others are living high on our dime. 

Conservation of Hate

Immaterial things are conserved as well, just like matter. Southern Americans conserved racial animosity in the wake of desegegation. Cold-warriors conserved a tribal, Manichean need to have an enemy and a war. 

This is the new Republican Party, which they mostly comprise, running entirely on enmity. 

Not Personally Racist

Both Goldwater and Nixon were said to be "not personally racist" as though it's somehow better. They used their racist strategies anyway, which is worse for being cynical. The conservative "conscience" is a thing of convenience, arrogance, presumption and greed. 

They are deserving by definition. Their superiority is assumed. After decades of covert racism the overt faction, who always understood the insinuations and innuendo​, are creeping out of their caves, exposing what was always there. At least these thugs are sincere. 

Here's where it has gotten us:

Congress is besieged by Kochsuckers.
The Supreme Court is infected by hacks.
The Presidency is infested by a goon.

Being "not personally racist" isn't a good thing when racist tactics are employed. It's morally corrosive. And so now we have a system that is horrifically racist, bigoted, aggressive and cruel and nobody owns it. Our society is dissociative and in denial about what we are. 

Relatively few people are personally racist but the society is racist as hell.

Plato's Retreat

Plato's understanding of understanding was, in my view, not about power, prestige and possession but about, well, undertanding. Sure, the knowledge might be useful, but it wasn't mainly about manipulation and prediction. Aristotle, on the other hand, was the original white boy, on a quest for power. Knowledge became a thing to be acquired and owned, a source of personal and societal enhancement. 

There's a bunch of overlap. Plato used his tactics to expose and confuse his epistemological enemies. I see it as impersonal, not about him or any author or agent but about the argument itself independently of any ego-inflating effects accruing to anyone. Aristotle made big advances in areas in which there are minimal, directly practical applications but the spirit of it has undercurrents of aggression. 

I'm too rusty on this to discuss it very well but we are inheritors of the traditions of Aristotle, since the Enlightenment, and it hasn't exactly worked, not if you regard the quest for power as a faulty and futile thing and fear the nearing capability of destroying the systems that maintain us and our civilization. I count cultural suicide as a bad thing and recommend a return to the more humane ways of Plato.