License to Lie

We can see now how well the Trumpian political brand, bullshit, melds with the new Republicanism, trending for decades to a lack of candor, transparency. legitimacy and competence. So much of it has to do with permission, working mostly subliminally.

Be the worst you can be. Trump and his political faction represent the sanction to hate, to lie, to steal, to insult and disenfranchise fellow citizens, and to uproot and annihilate the shredded American ethos of decency. Remember, we used to stand for something.

Shun Someone Today

My favored treatment for Sarah Sanders would be the ducking stool, plunging her into the Potomac on a charge of being excessively argumentative. Shunning is much too easy on her. However, in these tough times when "conservatives" have an alternative universe of lies to flee to I'll take a solid shun, to which Sanders was subjected recently.

In a more fair world her children would be snatched from her and detained out-of-state. Sanders and her political movement have been conditioned to assume there are never any consequences. There weren't even in the case of the criminal Bush regime which killed hundreds of thousands of people. I know, first we must have justice for Hillary.

What are war crimes in comparison with using a private email server in the service of one's country? Not that Bush and his crew didn't do more of that than Hillary, of course. This is the fundamental, racist, illegal and unconstitutional precept of the modern Republican Party, that there are arbitrarily different standards for different groups of people.

I Think We're Alone Now

America isn't isolationist it's isolated. Who wants anything to do with a bully? We assume whatever we are it is the best and better than everyone else.

We are the chosen people. Self-chosen, that is, a nation notable now only as the assholes of the world, an island of sociopathic greed and cruelty.

Winding Down

I have been deciding to wind down my life a little early, not that I have any plans or desire to die. Neither have I previously had the intention to withdraw from work or any of my other activities but I think I will now, because, why bother? The old pursuits seem pointless. For so many of us there is the awareness that we have been taking too much for granted thinking we lived in a sane, rational, somewhat fair, humane and sustainable democracy.

All of that is gone with the wind and burned to ashes. Not only have we failed to live up to our image of ourselves, it is so extreme it's not possible to believe we were ever the people we thought we were. We have lost our past, present and future, like a romance that ends so badly it discredits what you thought you once had. Even the good memories are tainted. Trump and his supporters have ended the illusion. The American romance is over.

An American Madman

Look at the most recent pictures of Trump. This is the face of a madman, those jowls slurring words in their smack of orange and spewing incoherence menacingly at the behest of a hostile, seething, malicious brain.

Soul Sacrifice: a Tragedy in Two Acts

Act One: Southern Baptists sell themselves to Satan to maintain an apartheid, terrorist rule in the American South with religious sanction.

Act Two: Republicans, using the Southern Strategy, mortgage their souls to these evangelical agents of doom for power and political success.   

In the end the Devil collects the debt. Payment is made in souls. America declines into a predatory and misanthropic political and cultural wasteland.

This is the story of the lost souls of America, resulting in the moral, ethical and spiritual destruction of the society. Many innocent lives were lost.

Many lives were ruined. All for nothing.

What's My Lie?

Swirling around the drain in their vortex, I want to make a case for better quality lies.

Republicans have gotten lazy and careless. Individual, lying creativity is perishing in the corporatization of deceit. They corporatize everything. Why not the prevailing social movement of our times: indirection, obfuscation, denial, distortion and duplicity?

Why bother being original when you have already won? With that in mind and the trend in reality entertainment up to the level of the White House, I recommend initiating a new game show to recognize and reward individual excellence in lying, What's My Lie?

How to Feel Sick

Want to feel sick? Recall and review all the pain inflicted on the country by Republicans in the last 20 years and think how unjustified it has been at the polls. More Americans voted against George Bush than for him in 2000. More Americans voted against Trump.

Decent people, in this situation, would have acknowledged the necessity of trying to reflect that negative mandate and shown some respect for the electorate. Instead these scumbag “winners” have shown nothing but contempt and opportunism.

Worse yet the Bushies, apart from botching their response to 9/11 in relation to national security and preparedness, used the tragedy to aggressively put through partisan measures having nothing to do with security, such as catastrophic tax cuts and deregulation.

And now we have Trump and his obsessive recklessness. They have to keep the insanity at fever-pitch for fear Americans will have a moment of clarity and see how they have been betrayed and screwed, finally rejecting the abomination.

Dancing Queen

Donald is the dancing queen, grooving-out in front of us all, ever the center of attention and craving praise. 

Cue it, ABBA. Shake it, Donald. It's forever Friday night at Donald's house. Rich people make their own rules.

True Shit

Blink. Just blink. Don't think. Look at what we are now, the land of Donald Trump.

Sinful Nature

Ivanka Trump and the White House have announced a line of aromatics, essences, colognes, perfumes, incenses, room deodorizers and vapes designed to help Americans get over their problems of despair at witnessing the dissolution of our society, the loss of its traditions and principles and the descent into madness. The line is called Sinful Nature.

An array of products has been engineered to produce feelings and attitudes of calm and compliance in the face of threats and instability. Ivanka has lived with this all her life, watching her father stumble from one misguided impulse to another, oblivious to the effect it has on his family. She has found that olfactory therapy helps her to survive. 

Visit the White House website for further information and to make purchases. The products have been tested on prisoners and detainees and, while not guaranteed to be safe, have helped participants in these trials withstand mental and physical abuse with greater serenity and grace. Their hideous cries were reduced to whimpers and groans.

Also, it made it easier for those applying the screws to continue with their work. Screaming and shrieks of anguish can hamper the most committed and hardened technician. They can't have that happening among the enforcers, a few of whom have been unreasonably affected recently by children weeping incessantly after being ripped from their parents. 

CALM DOWN, everyone. Enjoy an essence or a vape. It's probably not going to be okay but there's nothing you can do about it. All proceeds will be funneled through the Trump family's charity. Wait, that is being investigated. In any case, revenues are allocated to help build that beautiful, incredible, great and amazing WALL we have all been waiting for. 

Trump’s Asshole

Previously I have felt it wouldn't be fair, in an administration so rife with corruption, ill-will and incompetence, to choose a champion jerk but I think we have a winner in Trump-world, Stephen Miller. Steve Bannon is well gone and Jeff Sessions, I think, is his own asshole, so there you have it.

Miller's quiet presence has asserted itself in the unspeakable, deliberately confrontational, sadistic and viciously inhumane separation of children from their illegal-immigrant parents, who are fleeing problems mostly of OUR unowned responsibility. We have ruined any chance their countries had at functional government with our limitless demand for illegal drugs and in other, interfering ways. 

Stephen, congratulations. You are Trump’s asshole. Relish the experience. This is an honor that will go with you to your grave, may that be sooner rather than later, you unforgivable, reeking pile of garbage.

Republicans and Self-Fulfilling Expectations

People end up creating the world they believe in. You have to hope that most are rooted enough in reality to help create a world that makes sense. Not so with Republicans, of course, whose denial of reality is only the beginning. Their substitute is so sick and cynical it encourages a world of brutality and exploitation.

There are MANY examples of this but seeing a terrified two-year-old crying in horror as her mother is frisked by ICE agents I couldn't blame anyone, identifying with or pitying the child or the mother, for hating America and everything it stands for. Similarly, George Bush reassured Muslims of their worst fears about America. 

But, behold. There are Muslims as greedy, fucked-up and cynical as the Bushes and their successors, the Trumpists, who are outdoing even the the Bush crowd in their viciousness and greed. The Saudis and some other Arabs are coming around to this apocalyptic way of doing business. Fuck everyone else. Fuck the future. 

Grab everything you can and try to screw any potential rivals or justice-seekers into a permanent state of impotence. It's the American way, man. 

Behold the Blitz

At some point you have to step back and regard Republican corruption with awe. They say that's what happened to people who lived through the London blitz--that many of them lost all fear, became immersed in their powerlessness and passivity, and marveled at the display of mindless destruction.

False Witness

There are at least two kinds of false witness, deliberately misreporting something someone has seen and reporting about something someone has not seen. In the case of Jeff Sessions, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and others citing biblical authority for persecuting children I think it is safe to say they have never truly glimpsed the transformation of the love of Christ in their hearts and minds.

I can't condemn them personally, only their behaviors. But they have, in effect, condemned themselves. For the other kind of false witness turn on the TV and tune it to Fox News. There, day after day, events are miscast in a consistent and systematic way, tearing down feelings of trust in individuals and institutions to the benefit of those seeking, always, more money and power.

It's interesting that Fox is doing just what the Russians have been doing in their attempts to undermine our democracy and weaken our resolve. They create increasing division, confusion and polarization.

Reason to Believe

I think the refusal of the Democrats to fight effectively for their values shows they are true believers in the resiliency and long-term stability of our system of government. The assumption is now wrong. Voters construe it as a lack of commitment and investment.

Democrats come across as inept and ideologically weak. Republicans, on the other hand, are blindly convinced of their rightness in a tribal way. Democrats, it might be too late, but there is only one choice now: ATTACK, ATTACK, ATTACK.

The Friends of Destruction

Well, guess what. The Republican Party is now the party of Donald Trump. For several decades I have been haranguing people saying they didn't understand how crazy it was, that Republicans had become revolutionaries and an army of apostates determined to reinvent the country as something unrecognizable and profane, a new thing serving only the welfare of a fraction of its citizens. That time has come.

Republican masters and organizers are grazing in the grass and the rest of us are heading for the ditch. If you think it's bad now wait until they destroy the economy again. They always do--with profligacy, with greed and its enabling deregulation and with fiscal insanity. They deliberately squander resources to keep them out of the hands of the rabble. They enrich themselves and run away. The end is here.

First in Treason

The last will be first. Suckass South Carolina is the state to watch as the leading edge of the Confederate wave. There the electorate consistently votes for the most degraded candidate, determined now by loyalty to Trump. South Carolina is at the bottom--morally bankrupt and bereft of hope--but in the new world order of Trumpism that places it at the top, as the state most willing to sell its soul and destroy the Union. 

They did this once before. Remember?

Giving It Up For Glory

Trump went to Singapore with one goal, personal glory. He gave away the store for that.

Where Assholes Dare

All-asshole government is now the norm. Policies, procedures and pronouncements are chosen and selected for insult-effect.

It is a government of baiters, trolls and bullies.

The Abbreviated End Times

The Rolling Fuckwad Abbreviated World Tour, Shower of Insults, has slunk to Singapore after disgracing itself in Canada but it's the degradation, after all, that people pay to see. Everything else is so boring. Humanity looks on, breath abated.

The titular head of the free world and another murderous little monster will drill holes in one another's heads, prospecting for ego gratification. The rules, designed to prevent calamitous collateral damage, are suspended in the name of art.

Canada, Be Careful

Canadians, you have never before seen the kind of sociopathic scum represented by Trump, Bolton and Kudlow. For the uninitiated it is hard to understand. Be careful and stand by your leader. History will remember you well. 

Short Stop

Trump's problem with Trudeau is obviously that Trudeau is taller. And he's younger and better looking and not a flaming asshole like Donald but I think the height is what gets to him. Donald is a primal child.

Luckily, he goes off now to engage a fat, shorter dictator with a Hitler mustache on top of his head. Mutual sucking-up will undoubtedly ensue. Trump only deals well with people who don't answer to anyone.

People like himself.

Which Is Harder?

Which is harder, to comprehend what a piece of shit Donald Trump is or the acquiescence and complicity of the entire Republican substate and bureaucracy to his agenda, if we can call it that, of depravity and criminal indifference to the responsibilities of his position? I can't get my head around any of it.

Crescendo of Corruption

Seeing the crescendo of corruption reached by Trump's anti-administration it’s possible to look back and view more clearly the roots of our demise in the southern strategy, through which Republicans sold their souls for political victories, initially trusting in the rightness of their absurd doctrines and keeping up a semblance of statesmanship.

Now Republicans compulsively cling to power and wantonly disgrace themselves, believing that the entire physics of accountability has been overturned. It hasn't but it is possible that they have successfully channelled the consequences of their corruption downstream onto innocent citizens of lesser means and generations of future victims.

This is how addiction works. The beasts must be fed no matter what. The economic rout of 2008 was an example, as the dust settled and income and wealth became concentrated even more. The retributive social anger and indecency of the southern contingent of Republicans is now on full view in Jeff Sessions, Scott Pruitt and others.

Sessions routinely advances the thinly rationalized persecutory agenda of the Confederacy against minorities and working people, Pruitt showing the utter decomposition of (his) humanity brought about by the corrosive effects of racism on people's souls, the initial existence of which these loathsome actors begin to call into question.