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

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

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.