Fly Me to the Moon

We're living among lunatics. We might as well do it in an appropriate setting.

To Be Is Not To Be

We wake up every morning to an unimaginable reality. Donald Trump, possibly the most selfish, loathsome human being ever, has been elected President. Every day he proves his worthlessness.

I feel certain no one could foresee how horrible he would be. Some modicum of competence and decency might have been inferred from his circumstances and milieu. That would have been a mistake.

There is no competence and no decency. Donald Trump is a piece of garbage. A shocking percentage of Americans still support him. Shame on them. Dissociation is our shield and protection.

We walk around in a cloud of unknowing, bowing to the impossibility of articulating our corruption. Facing it would mean a catastrophic collapse of our collective sense of self. To be is not to be.

Wings of Despair

I am an angel. I have an announcement—or a message, if you prefer. We, the angels, don't usually transmit messages directly anymore. We help to maintain God’s connection with His creation in other ways. But you have pushed us too far. We are at the end of our tether.

Angels are a lot less imperfect than humanity but still a far cry from God, if you get my drift. Assuming nothing, I’ll spell it out. God is very, VERY far removed from humanity in His power and perfection. Still, the connection is indissoluble and no more tenuous for the distance. Granting that, it is very unwise for humanity to presume on God’s beneficence.

It is very unwise for humanity to take God’s good-will for granted. Frankly we, the angels, are sick of having our own reserves of compassion unnecessarily drained and depleted trying to make up for humankind’s rebellion against and chronic perversion of the will of God. 

Please stop. God will not intervene if you choose to destroy yourselves.

You are making it too hard for us to do our job. We love you. God loves you. But what kind of idiots think it is acceptable to plunder God's creation? The "dominion" conferred by God unto humanity wasn't a license to destroy the world. It was a declaration of responsibility.

At that you are failing. Get a fucking clue. 

Scott Pruitt

Pruitt has been added to my list, together with George Bush and Hannity, of likely examples of the later-life effects of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or some other gestational disaster, based on their behaviors and that troubling, "nobody home" look in their eyes.

As a Democrat I believe in taking care of everybody. Therefore, I argue against putting them in prison because we are implicated in their atrocities by not having isolated them earlier in a fitting institutional setting, such as an asylum for the criminally insane.

There is no excuse for not pulling the plug on them now, considering that someone like Bush, even in retirement, might inspire budding sociopaths to conclude that they inhabit a culture without any accountability at all, encouraging socially harmful behaviors.

In other words, we will have more depraved, degraded, destructive people like Scott Pruitt running around who are not content to stew in their own hellhole of anger and ignorance but feel compelled to inflict themselves on the rest of us and control everything.

This is a fundamental problem, that in conditions of relative security, when normal people choose to enjoy their lives and embrace measures to ensure continuing contentment, others like Pruitt do the opposite. Fear causes them to sow the seeds of discord.

Scott’s secure phone-booth is symbolic. Like so many Republicans his entire psychology is defined by fear. They must have enemies. In their absence they invent them.

Trump Tunes

Trump's administration is so cartoonishly corrupt it stands as its own indictment. It’s not a matter for analysis but for observation. The way to try to comprehend it, then, is to picture them all as cartoon characters, the treatment as normal humans being highly prejudicial in favor of, well, normalcy.

There’s nothing normal about it. That's all, folks!

A New Utah

We need a new Utah, a place to concentrate evangelical Christians and limit the damage they do, as the Mormons are concentrated in Utah. I want to say it would be a dystopia of gun ranges, shoot-outs, roaming militias and Trump-fests, with public hangings every day or two and a red-light district unrivaled in the world, but I know otherwise.

I bet it would be a pretty tranquil place and look a lot like Salt Lake City in its renamed capital, Redeemer or Christopolis, because minorities and Muslims would choose to live elsewhere, ending the anxiety over the threat of the takeover of Sharia Law. Similarly the "gay agenda" would be laid to rest and marriage would again only be between one man and an indeterminate number of women to be specified at a later date. 

There would be a constrained and circumscribed kind of peace. Revival-tent religion will be merged with NASCAR, using the same venues.

It isn't that evangelicals don't want to take care of anybody--they don't want to take care of anyone but themselves. Think of the Taliban and remember that they have a certain appeal, notwithstanding an occasional stoning or unsurgical hand or head removal. They get stuff done and provide services and structure in really screwed-up places. Rest assured, they will grow no opium in Graceland, or whatever they call it, and sightings of Elvis will abound.

Black people will just live elsewhere. Muslims will stay the hell away. Catholics will convert or hold their masses in secret, as they did when evangelicals outlawed their religion in Ireland. Non-conformers of all stripes might be pitied as apostates, heathen and unbelievers have been forever, as pariahs and outcasts, provided they remain meek and powerless.

That is, the ones that survive the hangings, which are not negotiable. There are limits to the good-will and mercy of evangelicals. Hangings are a manifestation of divine justice and promote social unity and respect for the Lord's earthly dominion. The principles employed by the evangelicals themselves in disenfranchising Democrats will apply--that by concentrating the voting bloc their political power will be limited. 

The rest of the country can then return to its normal, rational existence and respect the rules of its founding. 

Do Fanboys Dream of Eccentric Creeps?

Vicarious living is a new hallmark of life in America. In an unrooted, touristy existence people seek stability and security through identification and investment in what they falsely perceive as more authentic and primally meaningful modes of being, I guess, like aggression and warfare.

Nerds and others satisfy mojo deficits in video games and fantasies of combat. Their less delusional peers are content with a decent job and thus gloat a little, inwardly, at the realization of their “revenge” against the more popular and adroit persons of their school-years’ acquaintance.

They feel vindicated. Compensation is what it is all about.

Feeling big, important and effective is what it is all about. Lacking it from within and, suspecting they are losers, they try to acquire it by association, sometimes if not often with other mortal beings and their aggregations. They engage in fandom, allegiance and tribal apprenticeship.

Jeez, it’s so submissive and pathetic. Can’t they see it? This is where geeks meet the likes of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, whose aggression and fantasies of superiority mask the reality of lives spent dependently sucking off the government. They both ended up marrying rich women.

In that their real characters are revealed. Their legacies are destruction and vandalism, wrecking the things that the grownups built, unconsciously trying to find their power but ultimately expressing only resentment. Who cares, except that the damage they have done is so immense.

Donald the Buffalo

I was going to write something on Donald as a lion sleeping tonight or in his winter but he's not a lion he's a buffalo. Lions aren't born as privileged as Donald though there are still similarities--lions are basically all show and let their mane and roar represent them. 

Donald is more a grazer and furry monstrosity masquerading as something else. He thinks he's a DOER, a paragon and champion of efficacy and accomplishment when all he does is walk around and eat and shit and occasionally break a run in the safety of his herd. 

Our president--a hulking, hairy beast--is all image. The amazing thing is that the ideas of his independence and agency still survive as every other possibility of positive attributes, like intelligence, emotional stability and decency, falls away. It's because of his wealth. 

That is Donald's virtual and invisible herd, the comfort and ease he has known, that of the monied class, though he has no class at all, as New Yorkers know. Trump could never crack the ranks of the accepted elite among his rich peers because he's a boor and a pig. 

And now he's a president. Step back from it and behold the buffalo. It's a lot to take in. 

A New Nemesis

I need a new nemesis. The last guy I followed, to keep an eye on the temper and trends of the right-wing's burgeoning and morphing insanities, apparently got booted off the medium of Medium. He had followers and admirers. His success--he's a talented and arresting writer--might have gone to his head. The slurs, bigotry and invective began to be more open, undeniable and aggressive.

He was a backwater operator and a romantic--a crank and crusader of the old-school--appropriately powerless and marginalized. It makes the hate less upsetting, however much it is to be decried. But, of course, such people are now running everything and threaten armed rebellion if challenged. The "rule of law" to them is theirs. They own the franchise, exclusive of us, and will not give it up. 

So it is, not the rule-of-law at all, but thuggery. 

My new candidate for nemesis is Kurt Schlichter. But, there's a problem--I find his writings too poisonous, threatening and hate-filled to read. And, we know too well, his type are in the new mainstream and well represented by Trump. Look him up and try a dose of Herr Schlichter. See what you think. He recently ranted over a suggestion for a California-style Democratic resurgence.

Read it. It's nothing but thinly-veiled threats and an open call-to-arms in the event of an actual (or imaginary) constitutional, democratic reinvention of America as the state it was supposed to be before the Confederacy took over. I'll admit instantly I'm afraid of Schlichter. He's fantastically paranoid, as convinced he's under attack as he is attacking, projecting his fears all over the place. 

Maybe onto me, if he ever discovers I exist. 

Emotional Age Requirement

There’s a minimum age requirement to be president. What good does this do us if someone fulfills that minimum but has the emotional age of an infant? With Trump we see the dangers of insufficient personality formation, development and the fragility of his ego.

It reflects on us. We want to creep back into the womb of irresponsibility and lack-of-care for our place in the world and the effect we have on it. We are a generation refusing the responsibilities of adulthood--children, not of God (good) but of our own (bad) whims.

John Kelly's Cowardice

John Kelly justifies going after powerless, illegal immigrants because the "rule of law" must prevail but he fails to challenge or even meaningfully inhibit the tidal wave of corruption and criminality of the administration he helps define. He has always been part of a superior force and executed orders irrespecting their decency or merit. Now he calls some shots.

Of course he sees it as his duty to deport helpless people because of their technical illegality but the assault of Trump's team on every essential, constitutional, democratic function that irks them or gets in their way is not enough for him to stand his ground and insist it stop. Brave man, General. Yet another disgraceful performance brought to us by Republicans.

Paul Ryan Flees the Mess He Has Made

Paul Ryan, having finally realized the magnificent screwing of average Americans he has evidently desired since he was a boy, is wisely heading for the hills, not to witness its unfolding. The recently passed Republican tax bill guarantees a bankrupt government and decades of other unspeakable effects—all so that already-rich citizens can have even more. They have won. We are ruined.

I wonder what kind of mental and spiritual disease plagues these people, but I vehemently reject the idea that Ryan and his congressional colleagues who are giving up their seats are leaving because the atmosphere in Washington is too poisonous. I think they are leaving because the job, begun under Gingrich--the functional destruction of our government--is done. Mission accomplished. 

On the Myopic Incompetence of Democrats

Once in a while I step back and regard the myopic incompetence of the Democrats with the awe it deserves. They get beaten by the most inappropriate presidential candidate ever and their game plan is... more of the same. Democrats don't want to win they want people to agree with them.

They are so convinced they are right, with its implicitly insulting attitude, they misconstrue it as strategy. Democrats won the gay-rights thing and, instead of being gracious in victory, they immediately piled-on and insisted on equating bisexual and transexual rights with homosexual rights. 

Great job, dumbasses.

YOU might see it that way but to our opponents they are very different things. How hard would it have been to have simply said, at that point, we want everybody who plays by the rules to have a fair shot at a good life. Democrats really do want decency, fair play and equality of opportunity.

I recommend we put out attractive candidates with a positive message--and counterattack viciously. I recommend we resist the impulse to make the fate of the world depend on the feelings of transgender Americans. If we win we will take care of them. If we win we will take care of everybody.

Isn't that better than watching Republicans destroy the country and end life as we know it? The damage they have done is so severe it might be irreversible. Having accomplished the long-desired annihilation of the American state many are fleeing into retirement. Again we are left with their mess. 

It's just as it was after Bush and Trump isn't done yet. The flagrant criminality of Trump’s administration is so extreme and thorough it’s hard to keep track of it. This time, unlike with Bush, if we win we must insist on accountability. We repossess their loot and make them politically irrelevant.

Separation of Church and Hate

I believe in the separation of church and hate. 

I, Me, Mined

The ego has a new aspect these days--a data store. Citizens trade valuable real estate for trinkets and beads, unfamiliar with the sophisticated ways in which their assets can be deployed. Management of all the data has been handed over to a few trusted, corporate actors.

Only government regulation can curb the potential for abuse but the government has been controlled by Republicans willing to shut it down before they will constrain corporations. Congressional Republicans fall to their knees, tremble and slobber at the sight of extreme wealth.

They will do anything to be close to it and act mostly as butlers and in other servile roles for a chance to bask in its warmth. Meanwhile, the citizens for whom they are supposed to work are helpless against the new technologies. Their children are most affected, swayed and manipulated. 

Their minds are mercilessly mined for data. It is a brave new world indeed. 

The Tithes that Bind

The awareness that religiously affiliated and identified people are dragging us into perdition confronts us always. Seeing that clearly, the origins of earlier episodes of insanity stand in stark and illuminated relief. Among the legions of the more recent offenders are the evangelical degenerates swarming out of the South like a plague to infest us everywhere. They support Trump and do his terrible bidding, degraded hawkers and shills. "Beau" Sessions, Scott Pruitt, David Perdue and Tom Cotton are examples.

Irish Catholic white men, typified by the bootlicking faction at Fox, share the cultural heritage of their southern bros in having been utterly defeated and occupied--reduced to groveling, pathetic losers at the feet of their women, the experience for which they still try to compensate by showing their mettle and strength as bullies and cowards. The irony is obvious, if painful to see. False pride and retribution for lurking feelings of inferiority have been behind too many wars and other stupidity. 

Jewish neoconservatives mired us in an incomprehensible mess in the Middle East, placing our officially religiously unaffiliated country in the same position as Israel, now fair-game for the horrors of terrorism and every kind of venomous tribal enmity. Mitt Romney and some Mormons vent their legitimate, if ancient, grudges against the government in various ways, wanting to see it weakened and humiliated just like the southerners. Who, in all of this, is looking out for the well-being of the state?

Who is looking out for the well-being of average Americans? No one, effectively, that I can see. The religious fanatics and grudge-holders might still reduce secularists like me to prayer or acting on our fantasies of escape. I want more than anything to get away from them. 

Artificial Unintelligence

I remember studying literate cultures that somehow spontaneously lost skills and wondering how it could happen. Now we witness it in the American cultivation of incompetence. It is deliberate, narrowly self-serving, and short-sighted. It is seen most obviously in the ascendency of Trump, a product of inheritance and privilege.

Privilege is a form of interference. Personal and social devolution doesn't occur naturally, being the inverse and reverse of the mechanisms of Darwin. Trump, for example, was born too-big-to-fail. He nearly failed anyway but that is another story. In nature the practice, mastery and refining of incompetence can't last and endure.

Individuals and species would not survive. Habitual stupidity requires subsidies. We are the subsidizing entities which is why the sons of privilege are drawn to the government, the agency through which they rip us off, directly and indirectly. They also seek to "starve the beast" of democracy by fruitlessly burning through resources.

The law of interference begins with someone like Trump interfering with himself. This is commonly called denial or indulgence: the uselessness of the person must be denied by themselves or indulged, if not denied, by them and their "enablers." For decades Trump's family had to ignore the signs that he was helpless and incapable. 

Unconsciously sensing his own inferiority and neediness Donald became a horrendous asshole, in compensation. Interference was extended into Trump's relations in the world as he made the transition to being artificially subsidized and supported by the society, a hand-off, sparing his family further wasted effort and expense. 

Trump has been rescued when he should have crashed and burned naturally--interference at every turn. Multiply that by the thousands and you have the kind of societal decline and collapse we now face, though Trump is clearly appropriate as a figurehead for the movement because of his extreme fecklessness, ignorance and indecency.

He must be endlessly reassuring to the army of losers, henchmen, attack dogs and greedy reprobates he represents. History has taught us that this kind of situation cannot go on but it requires our continuing financial and administrative support. That support must be withdrawn at once, if our American species and traditions are to survive. 

China Targets Trump

With subtlety, intelligence and discretion the Chinese government has instituted retaliatory tariffs on American goods, apparently partly targeting the idiots who voted for Trump. Democrats have never had the stomach for the kinds of aggression and mean-spiritedness that are natural to Republicans.

The Chinese come to the rescue. I laud and applaud them. I hope they will become more specific and forceful in defending themselves against Trump and his gang of hoodlums, perhaps attacking certain states, companies and even individuals where possible, including Trump himself. I am loving this.

They should buy the debt of the Trump and Kushner companies and raise the rates or call the loans. Bankrupt the fuckers. Trump and the Kushners have screwed everybody they could. Responsible people would have divested anyway. Let them get a taste of their own evil medicine, administered by the Chinese. 

Go Chinese! Clobber Trump!