Brutes on the Ground

I guess Republicans deserve some credit for openly being thugs. No more hiding their inner Nazis. The fight is on but I think the pink hat people are unprepared.  

Asshole Ascendency Asserts Itself Again

Mitch McConnell doesn't give a fuck anymore. He's old. He's rich. He's an asshole, He's a traitor. He used to hide his treasonous intent away but treason is normal now. It has gone mainstream. 

No call to rest on one's partisan laurels, though, when you're as big a dick as Mitch. Mitch is plugging away for every bit of advantage in the middle of a pandemic no matter who gets hurt. 

To say nothing of the coup. Let it be remembered.  

Morons Make Wrong Decision Once More

What is right and wrong anymore? The White House is now sitting on half of the available doses of vaccine because, they say, they need it for the follow-up shot as though the manufacturers aren't still making it as fast as possible. 

I smell a rat. When hasn't Trump treated the nation's resources as though they aren't his to do with as he pleases? And what does he please? To feel like a big man. To feel powerful, effective and in charge. Trump wants to husband his power. 

Again, it's all about him. Trump is an unbelievably evil man.

Drain the Trump

Time to think about purging the evil of Trumpism from our government and society, But, how? 

The Age of Treason

Americans can't wait for time to pass judgment on the decades-long history of Republican treachery that has culminated in Trump, because it's ongoing and so destructive. Just this week Pat Toomey, Republican traitor of Pennylvania, sabotaged a relief bill in a horrible winter of pandemic to advance partisan aims. How many times have we seen this? Blackmail and sabotage playing off the genuine and justified concerns of Democrats for the lives of average citizens.  

Obamacare alone has inspired 10 years of insane opposition and dirty tricks, to a bill passed fair-and-square that benefits millions of Americans and has caused none of the larger-scale economic problems Republicans predicted. Of course they were lying. We were supposed to wait for "trickle-down" to kick in, I suppose, no matter how many people died along the way. They are still trying to kill it in the middle of the pandemic they turned into a monster with their wilful incompetence. 

It's time for some accounting and accountability. Mitch McConnell could die any day (but not from COVID since he's protected). I won't have him remembered as anything other than the loyal citizen he is -- loyal to the Confederacy. He hates America. He hates the version, anyway, that is a representative democracy that tries to take care of its citizens and live up to its promises. He wants the America of slavery. He has succeeded. Americans work longer and harder for less. 

And the rich, like McConnell, by marriage, only get richer.

Famous Anus

I'm not sure what I think about it but Republicans are owning their inner assholes to an unprecedented degree. They think nothing of openly engaging in treasonous behavior. Famous anus Bill Barr is moving on, though. I had a fantasy that he might immediately lead Trump away from Biden's inauguration in chains, irritated that his groveling before Trump, which was complete, still wasn't enough . . . 

A Dastard's Guide to Government Service

Become a Republican. The rest will come easy.

Wolf Shepherd

What does it mean when the shepherd is a wolf? Trump is the wolf-shepherd for his deluded flock. I think this means he is the devil. 

A Bridge Too Funky

Overthrowing an election was a bridge too funky even for Republicans, not that treasonous behavior hasn't become second nature for many of them. 

The Philosophical Idealism of Donald Trump

Donald Trump's existence is defined by (esse est percipi) attention. Philosophically,

. . . the “opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a world all sensible objects have an existence natural or real, distinct from being perceived” is inconsistent, “a manifest contradiction." If one construes ‘sensible objects’ as ideas of sense, and ideas are objects of knowledge, then having a real existence distinct from being perceived would require that an object be known (as an idea) and unknown (as a thing distinct from being perceived), which is inconsistent. He explains the source of the error on the basis of the doctrine of abstract ideas, a discussion which parallels the discussion in Introduction §10. (Internet Encyclpedia of Philosophy, on George Berkeley)

What is not perceived does not exist. The less something is perceived the less real it is, like kids in cages. Not only is existence contingent on perception, it is contingent on the ultimate mind, God, whose all-encompassing mindfulness determines and accounts for everything that exists. And, God is immaterial and the most existent thing there is, that on which we are modeled, at a high degree of removal. Our existence depends on perception, Trump's does not. We are shadows. Trump is the sun.

We can see that Trump, in this case, deems himself to be, or has mistaken himself for, God. His attention and acceptance is to determine the rights of every being, that is, the scope and limitations of their existence. People may be eliminated at his whim since the exist only at or by his permission, solicitude and pleasure. You can see that Trump's behaviors become immediately intelligible in this context, as does the devotion he inspires, as that on which the existence of everything else depends.

Therefore, when he declares elections to be invalid they are invalid, the "reality" notwithstanding, since it must be the mistaken perception of lesser beings. Houses, mountains and rivers are hallucinations if he declares them to be. He may slaughter people at will, or take actions that lead to their annihilation, because they depend on him for their existence anyway. He is not "worthy of" or in need of attention because he doesn't "need" anything, being complete unto himself, so any idea to the contrary is mistaken. Attention accrues and is due to him naturally because he is the source of all being. 

To the extent there is resistence to this it is a denial of reality and, additionally, apostasy and the work of the devil. All hail, Trump! Donald is not only our leader but the second coming of Christ. The only qualification is that, accepting this framework, if Donald is not in fact God he must be the Antichrist. 

Exile of Main Street

Main Street is gone, burned in its way like Atlanta. It was gone before the virus hit but the virus certainly helped. A new class of architects creates parallel little Main Street theme parks you can live in, halfway to Disneyland but Main Street is gone because it was democratic. It was available to everyone at least as imagined. It was available to everyone in our aspirations. Main Street is gone because those aspirations are gone and we are left with this, something beyond parody . . .

https://youtu.be/oowTOV5SHvo

Its Own Imperative

Finally, our politics gets down to something that is its own imperative -- animal activity. Self-preservation. Notice that this necessitates a threat. There wasn't one so they stirred it up. 

Paranoid impulses work this way. Primitively frightened people unknowingly create discord because they believe it's there anyway. They can't live without it. Trump has taken us there. 

We Are Probably Fucked Anyway

Trump or no Trump, we are probably fucked anyway. There are too many crazy people in America. This election shouldn't even be close. 

Trump in His Element

Donald has typically created the desperate circumstances he's always inhabited in his head. Little Donny is so threatened. He's so fragile. He's so afraid. Afraid of what?

He must fight and conquer. Conquer what? He was born independently rich. He thinks he's vulnerable. He thinks he's up against the wall. In other words, he's delusional. 

But he unwittingly makes his delusions real. Notice how comfortable he is fighting for his political life now. And how he seemed to relish his "victory" over the virus.

Don-Boy is totally nuts. 

Life at the Spahn (White House) Ranch

Anybody else notice how much Trump's tactics of compromising his subordinates resemble Charles Manson's? 

More Orange Than Ever

 The savior on the balcony is more orange than ever, and more dangerous . . .

He Is Risen

 Trump is risen from the bed and his worshipful followers applaud . . .

CukeAnon

QAnon is a clever attempt to displace the growing awareness that something is wrong and the suspicion of what is really wrong. They must dominate the information space with fabrications and faulty accusations because it has become harder to hide the real truth, that the “conspiracy” is coming from the other side. That is CukeAnon.

Functionally and symbolically the American presidency is important but not essential to the overthrow of elected power they seek. They lost to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, for example, but were able to co-opt or contain their presidencies. Yes, they are that powerful. Their functionaries are known as “cukes” among the ruling insiders, a strong explicit and subliminal insult. Their plants are effectively drones. 

They have the brains of vegetables but think of themselves as potent agents, innovators and real men, hence the phallic imagery. However, they are completely passive and unwittingly implanted in important positions. Phonetically “cuke” also resonates with “cuck” in another indication of the powerlessness and degradation of their dupes. The unwitting aspect is important. Conspiracies are incredibly hard. 

How do you control them? The vast majority of “adherents” must be unaware of their function, like bots in a computer scam network. Psychological warfare is employed. People with certain weaknesses or predispositions are lured in as “thought resonances” are distributed by controlled media. Ask yourselves — what does Fox News actually do? It disseminates disinformation. Fox is their most powerful tool. 

Even the Murdochs are probably unconscious administrators. They are cukes themselves though at an extremely high level. To crack the cuke network and begin to understand it you look at Donald Trump and George Bush, though Romney and McCain are also instructive. What do they have in common? Lives determined by privilege and powerful, wealthy fathers or intimidating family traditions. 

They are incredibly “small” people, contrary to appearances, but with access to the highest levels of power — the ultimate in stealth warfare tools among the “ontoligencia” as the true insiders are known, hinting at their methods in which they supplant more than the brains of their psychologically occupied underlings. They supplant their souls. From this there is no recovery. 

Someone like Trump seems like the ultimate agent or actor but he’s completely controlled by the underground forces of his psyche which the movement then hijacks for its purposes. He’s the most unfree person ever and so the most appropriate and potent vehicle for the forces of CukeAnon. At the highest levels it’s still not a formally conspiratorial but people with common interests acting in concert.

Why should they conspire when the risk of exposure is higher and their means and ends are thereby overdetermined? They can accomplish everything more effectively without conspiring because it is then almost impenetrably covert. They are only known by their accomplishments which are now so apparent a critical moment approaches, of locking in victory, after which it will be irreversible.

Obviously, the most ready converts to the cause are already compulsives — those who have previously “sold their souls” for the comforts of conformity, subservience and acquiescence. Entire groups, like evangelicals, come to mind and then individuals with insurmountable and crushing personal problems. The unconscious nature of it means that believers reveal themselves symbolically.

Their claimed concern for abused children is actually a concern for their own vulnerable, arrested selves — an infant’s inchoate fear that can only be assuaged by immediate gratification. Trump’s primal need for constant praise and reassurance is such behavior and driven by fragility. He MUST dominate and degrade everyone around him to try to make himself safe. It will never be enough. 

More on this later . . .

Trump Filtration System

Only the shit gets through . . .

The Defensive Aspects of Exceptionalism

There’s more to exceptionalism than parading around like God’s gift. There’s a defensive aspect to it. How do Americans explain that, when you cross the border into Canada, you’re in another world? 

They can’t. They won’t. They don’t explain it. They deny. Whatever WE are it’s better, BY DEFINITION. See how this fits with racism? Some people are better than others, de facto. Behaviors don’t enter into it. 

Armageddon? What’s Not to Like?

Kayleigh McEnany and the Arkansas inbreds have taken over press operations at the White House. Remember, these are public employees — paid by us. They keep their jobs at the pleasure and whim of the president.

But they are supposed to work for us. There’s a secret, though. They really work for Jesus. And Jesus is dying to come back. If everything resembles the end times they like it. Nobody says “end times” like Trump. 

Plague Store

Republicans have a captive market. It's us. And all they sell is plagues . . .

A Smashing Success

Republicans have found their wrecking ball. Nobody better than Trump . . .

Ass Licker Decries Show of Character

Ass licker and degraded Trump acolyte Mike Pence has criticized John Roberts for having signaled he might have a conscience. We don’t know if Roberts has one but the jury is in on Pence.

Days of Wine and COVID

I love my house. I love my car. I love my land and my garden and even my shop though it’s a store-and-lock now. I love my friends and my family. I love my dog and dogs generally. I love to eat what I cook and the opportunities I have to buy and cook almost anything. 

I love my memories. Most of them, anyway. I wish I could say “no regrets” but I have many regrets. I can live with it because I know how fortunate I am. I love the opportunities I have to read anything I want. I love outdoor showers and saunas (I have one at my house).

I could go on. This all occurred to me in a moment as I was walking out the door and through the carport to take a refreshing shower after working hard and I think I owe it to COVID. The virus has made me more appreciative. I am so fucking lucky. I hope it lasts. 

The Big Mistake

There might have been one big mistake Americans made, thinking there was some internal check on how low Republicans would go to establish their illegal, barbarous libertarian dream state. We know now. As low as it takes. There are no internal checks at all.

No More More

I think the virus is sending us a message. No more growth. No more more. We have to learn to live differenly. To live better instead of bigger.

Servile Row

How do we characterize the Republican brand these days? Dominance and submission have everything to do with it. They don’t understand you don’t have to live there. They don’t understand you can opt out and transcend it, that it doesn’t have to be that way.

For them there are only screwers and screwees. You have to be in one of those camps and, ultimately, everyone is a screwee. Again, Trump is instructive. He’s the ultimate screwer, it would seem, but look a little deeper and you see he’s more fucked than anybody.

He’s being screwed by a dead man, his daddy. There’s no escape. So you see it’s all compensatory. Republicans are trying to get even. They’re trying to feel better about themselves because they know they’re shit. Let’s take them at their own assessment on that.

Godspoil

How do you get to a Christian mega-slut like Kayleigh McEnany? And, how does shit like Kayleigh get to the White House? Never mind. It doesn’t matter. We know the familiar, evil, evangelical trajectory. They hate the imperialist Yankee government that ripped the slaves from their cold, dying hands and dared declare those slaves fully human.

Fuck that, says Kayleigh and her evangelical scum-brethren like Cotton, McConnell and the rest, who invade Washington and spend their lives defrauding the government as a show of contempt while actively working to destroy it. Clever bastards, they do it so openly. All the tools of deceit serve them well and none dare call it treason.

Heaven Can’t Wait

Dear God:
     
I know you supposedly created Donald Trump and I’m not going to ask why. Let’s just say that if your ways are inscrutable you blew the curve on this one. Please, take the fucker (excuse me) back. He doesn’t serve any earthly purpose.

To the contrary, he’s incredibly destructive. If you care at all about your creation please take him back. And, by the way and hoping not to be presumptuous, now would be good.

Your Devoted Servant,

James M Flanagan

Derided By Voices

Trump must have a little voice inside of him constantly telling him what a loser piece of shit he is. Why else would he need to always seek approval, demand attention and demean and belittle everyone around him?

On Booger Mountain

It’s so hard to grow up but most people manage it. Not Donald Trump.

Also, it’s normal to feel ambivalent about it but most people escape childhood and adolescence successfully. Trump elected to stay there, slinging snot and firing his spitballs of doom.

The Triassic Basin and Me

I live on the edge of the Triassic Basin and, because of the work that I do, end up telling people about it once in a while, that it’s an area of subsidence with weird soils because of all the muck that flowed in, gathered and grew there after it sank. It reminds me of myself.

I had been supported by a highly disciplined and structured educational system that was suddenly dismantled and removed to be replaced by something with no structure at all. I mean NO structure. They stopped teaching because it was too authoritarian. All the muck flowed in instead.

A subsidence had ensued, a void in me where all that information and structure and discipline had taken up space. I had a sticky mind and was emotionally pliable — impressionable, as they say. I became a mess, I would say ... a brat, a smartass, a budding degenerate and an occasional bully.

I was termed an “instigator” for stirring up trouble and thought it an honor, as adolescent boys of a certain set and disposition would. In the longer run I think it made me empathetic. I realized how much success in life, whatever that is, and how much of everything is determined by often accidental, circumstantial stuff or presumably well-intentioned bullshit.

The circumstances that created the racist mire we inhabit now are not accidental or well-intentioned. It’s vicious, deliberate, systematic, systemic ... and it’s producing exactly the results anybody would expect. The shit flows into the void. If there’s a shortage of shit we make sure the supply is replenished, watch the results and blame the people we’ve victimized.

This is an classic example of unloading — one group making another carry the burdens of their own corruption and insecurity and then putting a torch to them, a bonfire of the dark vanities that keep us from knowing ourselves and owning our natures. Why the resistance to self-knowledge? Suspicions about the darkness that’s there. Fear. Of course there’s darkness there.

There’s always darkness there.

The error is in thinking it’s exceptional, which originates in thinking we’re exceptional — that we’re more than we are and that the evil in us is therefore potentially epic. We’re all only human. There’s nothing epic about us except what we create in compensation for failing to accept our limitations and our insignificance. But accepting our insignificance is liberating.

We don’t become small we become who we are, as genuine and authentic as we can be. Otherwise we become monsters. There are monsters among us these days. We’ve empowered them. We’ve delegated our unloading to them so we aren’t even authentic at that. We’re internally colonized by wankers, too inauthentic even to be our own villains.

I will say this, we’ve found some first rate stand-ins.

Posterior Analytics

What is it about kissing Trump’s ass that so enthralls conservatives? Beyond the simple peck on the cheek, their equivalent of kissing the Pope’s ring, there are the true anus lickers, like Bill Barr and all these others we have seen who clean up Trump as he shits himself.

Trump is a shitting machine. Self-shitting is Trump’s essential mode of being. This isn’t what they do it’s what they are, beyond bodily function and into the areas of soiling symbolism. Trump is the god of defecation, arrested before he had learned to use a bathroom.

Totalitarian Perspective Vortex

It’s my wish that Donald Trump could see, just for a split second, what an incredible failure and worthless human being he is. Surely he would die of a blown mind or just creep off into oblivion  ...

Koch Monkeys Invade Capital

Some of the monkeys Charles and David Koch have trained for years to fight on their behalf have staged a protest in Michigan amounting to an assault on democracy, order, the rule of law and the notion that our nation is even governable. Before you object and say that such extremists are a small minority of our population or even of their movement consider that their organizational arm, the Sinn Féin to their IRA, has dominated American politics and the government for at least forty years.

Hand in hand they have arranged for its sale and bought it. They are exactly what our country now represents and they think it is okay to shoot you if you stand in the way of what they have unilaterally declared to be their rights. Not that it has been necessary. Those people in Michigan are the dregs, too stupid to see they have already won but they’ve been so manipulated and stoked with rage over the years it has to go somewhere. It should be used against the Republican establishment.

They are the “elites” who have screwed them. It’s tempting to thinks it’s a conspiracy but it’s not. As such it would be overdetermined. A conspiracy wasn’t necessary, only incredibly powerful people with common interests naturally falling into line and acting in concert. But, they needed mass support, troglodytes who would vote themselves down the river for trinkets and beads and a few tasty bones. The problem is the troglodytes are taking over. They have their representatives within the political wing, notably a faction of smarmy, degraded, ass-licking southern white boys. 

It’s the Southern Strategy, people. They did it right out in the open and even declared their intent before the saw, amazingly, that it was working and decided to go underground with the incredible cascade of lies and rationalizations we live with to this day. It was never anything but a frontal assault on democracy but we must forgive our fellow citizens for failing to see how bad it was. Try to put yourself in the place of someone who lives in a state of constant fear and hatred — and someone who has Fox on all day, encouraging them along. Mind warping. We are in incredibly deep shit.

Votes still count but it might not last. We need to get out there and get the job done. 

Let Them Drink Bleach

Please, how much longer are we going to put up with this moron?

Gun-Nut Neighbor Harassment

I’m being messed with and harassed by a rich, gun-nut neighbor for expressing my views on this issue. Like Bush and Trump he’s a loser son of wealthy parents but more of a bunion and a lump, having had a life of indolence and ease and, of course, he’s showing the usual traits of bullying and aggression in trying to prove he’s up to some family standard he can’t possibly meet because he has low capabilities and character.

Trump Conundrum

It walks. It talks. It eats and (presumably) shits and plays golf. But it isn’t human. It’s some kind of animal but, since it’s ostensibly human, and powerful, it’s actually lower than an animal. It consumes resources ravenously, exerts its will recklessly and denies any and all responsibility for anything. It’s Donald Trump, the thing elected by Americans to the most powerful post in the world.

Don’t Point That Thing at Me

Were we always so fucking crazy? The “law and order” crowd has gone rogue. Ideology before life itself, I guess. I think I saw something like that lately about a certain reich represented on some show I streamed ...

Depravity Loves Company

I'm not sure that misery does. Depravity wants to hide. Depravity wants the loss of individualism in tribal thinking. That's how they shed feelings of responsibility. That's how they lose their consciences, by drowning them in class consciousness and tribal allegiance.

Turd Immunity

I credit Trump with turd immunity. When you’re already a piece of shit how much lower can you go?

The Ducking Stool of Life

To show ho much we’ve evolved I want to point out that the new American ethos is to view life as a ducking stool where we assume immanent justice — that people get what they deserve. And, better yet, you can bait God into revealing His preferences and judgments to you if they aren’t already clear or even make them for Him if you are “saved” since you are effectively a representative of God anyway. So, evangelicals are obsessed with everyone’s morality but their own.

They had some travesty of a religious experience in a revival tent or under the tutelage of Jimmy Swaggart or some other charlatan. Thus they are guaranteed salvation and get to vote for Trump and support every kind of inhumanity and it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. They’re hanging out waiting for Jesus to pluck them out of the hellhole and cesspit of life. Meanwhile, they do everything they can to keep creation is as shitty as possible. It reassures them they are right. 

Mitch the Bitch

Mitch “the Bitch” McConnell has screwed his way to the top in multiple ways. He hikes his skirt and takes it up the ass from every power-broker and corporate lackey that walks through the door. Then, he uses the leverage thereby gained to screw average citizens. This is Mitch’s version of double penetration. Screw and be screwed.

He inhabits a land of assholes. Nothing new in that. It’s been their playbook for decades, a politics of anal fixations and conservative whores, truly degraded and lesser men, the Koch-suckers who run our world. They steal our money and then use it against us. They fear the law, accountability and justice. They fear the retribution they deserve.

But I also think they want it in a weird way.

What Trump Wants to Know

What Trump and the Republicans want to know is how soon they can get back to screwing the American people good and proper.

The Lowdown Citizens Brigade

A source has told me that in private many Republicans actually own their evil and think it’s all funny and hilarious the way they keep winning and controlling everything just by being assholes. They’re like a lot of demented frat boys, Tom DeLay without likening themselves to Jesus, or those dudes at Enron who were giddy and weird when they were making a bunch of money creating blackouts and screwing up people’s lives in California.

In some ways this is reassuring. They know they are assholes. I guess that constitutes a kind of accountability. Now, we only have to carry that awareness over into the society at-large and instill in the remaining decent citizens the kind of outrage and indignation these Republican scumbags deserve, culminating in anger and arrests. I’m not pushing for firing squads though that would be fair considering how many folks they’ve gotten killed.

Some waterboarding would be fine to get to the depths of their depravity and uncover the extent of their corruption which we know is vast. Corruption is not an unfortunate and regrettable byproduct of their freewheeling philosophy of government with countervailing good things balancing it out it’s a deliberate manifestation of their ideology, which is to screw the common people out of everything by deceit and then force if necessary.

Thinking it through writing this down I’m leaning back to firing squads. But, that will be up to the combined will of the loyal citizens who remain and still support the integrity of our laws and society against the Republican onslaught. Let their will prevail. Again — and I’m letting my imagination loose here — Guantanamo Bay and imprisonment there comes to mind with all its attendant cruelty and humiliations since they are actually traitors.

Clearly, these details can be worked out at a later date but we must muster the will to destroy them. It’s them or us and our traditions will live on with us whereas with them they will be destroyed. The choice is clear.

A Sad Turtle Story

Having pulled up to a “T” intersection the other day to make a left-hand turn I saw a turtle on the asphalt with its head half smashed but its hind legs still slowly trying to propel it forward and it made me think of Trump. If the upper part of his head were crushed I’m sure his mouth would still somehow be sputtering insults, boasts and threats.

Trump’s Revenge

Trump is hanging New York City out because it’s Democratic and diverse. He was never accepted there by the people that mattered, any more than any other coarse, ill-educated, transparently self-serving and gauche gatecrasher. But, the cave man president is having his satisfaction and revenge.

It might not matter if they had voted for him. Donald feels more powerful at this time by withholding aid and letting people suffer and die. I will give money to anyone who, at any time, tries the put this motherfucker in jail together with Kushner, Ivanka and the other ill-mannered and brainless brats.

Trump is a traitor. And you know what they used to do to them. Back in the day they would just beat the shit out of such people to teach them to submit to the rules of their societies and reduce predation. It’s not too late for someone to administer as ass-pounding to Trump but I doubt it would work.

He’s too far gone, the Bernie Madoff of American politics, always moving on because there’s no way to go back. Jail is the ticket. Remove him from the population for its protection. Maybe he’ll get a little learning in prison.

Brain Space

One must understand, when someone is working from such a primitive brain space as Donald Trump and most Republicans the real communication occurs at the symbolic level. Thus, “border wall” must be construed more broadly as barriers-to-entry, a favored tactic of inept heirs and heiresses from time forever back. The idea is to end the game and/or change the rules and lock in an advantage while you have it.

Additionally, the laws of inversion often apply, that they reveal themselves inadvertently in the accusations they direct at others. Observation is the key to understanding. And Enron is a key example. The cartoonish corruption would be laughable if lives weren’t destroyed. George Bush had closer ties to Enron than any other business in the world. Enron was only a failure because they got caught. It’s a business model.

The Huns have come over the hill. Don’t look for them they are already here. They came at night and in secret and are already among us. The laws of our civilization are subverted. Constitutional protections are destroyed. The foxes have moved permanently into the henhouse and we prepare them meals. Don’t listen for sirens or scan the news for photos of invaders. The invasion has happened. Our world is upside-down.

The Dukes of Hazard

We’re finding out what all-asshole, ignorant government can get you. Step back and try to appreciate the outrageousness of Trump trying to extort flattery and fealty from governors in order to get help in a national emergency. A national emergency that is actively costing lives. Again, I will say, such people belong in prison. The prevailing terminology can’t capture it. Only art probably can.

Maybe that’s why they try to defund it but who knows, their blanket defunding for anything life-enriching is so inclusive. There are many abominations, the transfer of risk among them. Moral hazard is not supposed to be a positive function of the financial regulations of a government, the transferring of risk form those who can benefit from ignoring it and therefore will, to unimplicated citizens, according to the rules of the rednecks of greed.

Save the Ideology!

Republicans are chucking all the incoherent facets of their ideology into the lifeboats as fast as they can. That, above all else, must survive the coronavirus assault.

Mourning Becomes Elections

Call me suspicious. I think Donald Trump and Mike Pence are going to let a whole lot of New Yorkers die because they’re Democratic and diverse. Republicans have been disenfranchising Democrats for decades and you can’t get any more disenfranchised than dead.

Touchdown Jesus Comes to Washington

If it wasn’t already clear Bill Barr’s rallying cry for fascist, authoritarian government in his Notre Dame speech has made it so, that there’s something wrong in South Bend and in a lot of other places but especially in Washington where bullying Catholics of a conservative bent have undue influence. I view them as a priesthood, sheltering under federal skirts as they might once have the Church’s and with many of the same perquisites, like an easy and opulent life among the folds of those dresses.

Rich folds they are. All the talk about small, stripped-down, efficient, lean-and-mean government was always a sham. If not where is it? Republicans have controlled it all for 40 years, at least, disallowing Democrats their swing at governance even when they win fair and square. There is no “fair and square” among Republicans, only a desire to win at all costs, kinda like the worshippers of Touchdown Jesus, I would say. The feeding trough in Washington is obscene.

I believe that Catholics were the original American outsiders and, like the Catholic converts that famously overcompensate, they became exaggeratedly American, many of them out-wasping the WASPs. They cracked it partly through athletics. I read David Halberstam’s book on Michael Jordan only to figure out why he wrote it. I thought the subject matter beneath him, not to slight Jordan in any way. Halberstam had done Vietnam. Risked his ass like all of them. Why write on Jordan?

It’s been a long time but I think one point was Jordan was a breakthrough black guy. Black guys were feared. They were associated with drugs and crime. Jordan was too talented, handsome, likable and everything — the whole package. Miraculously he was all of this and unthreatening, too. Catholics — especially Irish Catholics — broke through in a similar way. There were many other things going on, Protestants and Catholics working side by side, for example, and learning to respect and accept one another, but sports was big and especially Notre Dame football.

Lots of people know and have commented on the Catholic obsession with their sports teams and winning. Win at all costs, some might say. I remember the weird ritual of praying at mass before games to kick ass and how injuring or humiliating an opponent was cool, a point of pride, at my all-male Catholic high school, the one that produced Gerry Faust, by the way. If you don’t remember see if you can find videos of him losing his shit on the sidelines when he coached at Notre Dame and try to find the Jesus in that. Better yet, the Mary, to whom he is very devoted.

Anyway, that whole ethic is not only entrenched in Washington but conservative, authoritarian Catholic ass-kickers also play an outsized role at Fox News, that bastion of decency, Christian kindness and humility as embodied in their boy, Donald Trump, a win-at-all-costs model of the Catholic precepts of benign governance and righteous paragon of responsible living. Gerry Faust, kinda like — let’s go aboriginal and win, fuck-all. This is a Faust story, it turns out.

Many, many souls have been sold. And the debt is now being collected, by you-know-who. Touchdown!

Trump the Virus

Extreme circumstances offer opportunities for insight. We see now, in Trump’s inability to face the virus, problems of mirroring. Trump sees himself in the virus — an incredibly destructive and parasitic contagion. He recoils in denial and then attacks.

Think of the dilemma when a person spends a lifetime fleeing from and in denial of their nature, when the inescapable demon is the realization of one’s own worthlessness. That worthlessness compels Trump to belittle and degrade everyone around him.

Trump’s Cartoon Presidency

Donald Trump has transcended his presidency. It might look like an implosion but he has escaped the reality of his circumstances.

He’s transcended accountability. He’s transcended reason, cooperation and the rest of humanity in solipsistic union with himself.

I think this is what “idiocy” came to mean, private to the point of imbecility and exaggerated attributes of incompetence.

The thing about reality TV is its unreality and it’s the thing about Trump. He’s faux everything, pretending to be president.

And, pretending to be human.

The Error of HIS Ways

Fundamentalist Christians are obsessed with homosexuality. They worry about it day and night. They blow a fuse over it. No matter how often we think it is settled and that gay people can get on with their lives without worrying about being disparaged and persecuted someone like Mike Pence comes along. Evangelicals have hatred in their hearts. For immigrants. For Muslims. For Democrats.

But their special hatred is for homosexuality. I suppose it’s because of their fatalism and determinism. Homosexuals can’t just happen, in their outlook. Gays can’t be a given or a fact of life. They have to be explained as a deliberate creation of God. You can see that fundamentalists don’t respect God, from this. Since they regularly communicate and commune with God I guess they lost respect.

They think God made a mistake with gay people but God can’t make mistakes. So, there’s a kind of train wreck in their heads, as there should be because they are flaming hypocrites and scoundrels. They, not gays, are the scum of the earth. They think they are the chosen people and better than everyone else, taking God’s mercy, towards them, for granted. I hope there IS a judgment day.

If so they are in for a big surprise.

Trump Confronts Epidemic With Bullshit and Platitudes

Well, what did you expect?

A Diagnosis is Confirmed

Trump’s “moron” diagnosis has been confirmed. It isn’t an act, shtick or a ploy intended to disarm his “enemies” (average American citizens, also known as his employers). He is now seen, in the face of the coronavirus crisis, to be not only ignorant but stupid.

Tea and Antipathy

Strange, how American conservatives became oafs, boors, primates and primitives at least by association. What ever happened to their dignified, tea-drinking faction?

What Better Day

There is no better day on the horizon. And, quite possibly, no horizon.

Trump’s Problem

Trump, being a raging piece of shit, is processing a medical crisis that could kill millions as a PUBLIC RELATIONS problem for his presidency. Our boy is always looking out for #1.

A Country of Bumpkins

Hicks. Boors. Hillbillies. Hayseeds. What are we Americans if not a bunch of rubes and rednecks, too stupid to recognize our unprecedented good fortune or too ungrateful and unthinking to care. This is how it must all end, in an indescribable eruption and orgy of malign incompetence and the intentional, organized, short-sighted, self-serving vandalism of our institutions and their reduction to rubble.

Stooge Gets Important Job

Trump stooge, lackey, frontman and all-around, outstanding paragon of worthlessness Pence has been put in charge of the nation’s slow response team in dealing with the coronavirus, where his role will be to determine the sins for which God is punishing humanity in this instance.

Homosexuality is a given. Evangelicals like Pence are obsessed with it. I sometimes wonder why, since the Bible says so much more about grace and love than anal sex. In what way is God’s love evidenced in Pence? He spends all his time worrying about the morality of other people.

Maybe Pence uses a different bible that talks about anal sex all the time but the important thing is to understand that sicknesses are not caused by viruses but by God. Presumably, if Pence could purge all the homosexuality and other evils from the world there would be no pandemics, only peace.

You can see that Pence is not just the perfect but the only person for the job. His religious qualifications are tantamount. He must be in very high moral condition, if not in fact perfect and free from sin, or he wouldn’t concern himself constantly with the behaviors of other people.

This Feels Familiar

We’re facing an enormous public health problem with the worst possible people in positions of power, like the coalition of doom we had running the show with 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. Hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths resulted. The cool thing about Katrina was that Bush couldn’t bullshit his way out of his incompetence.

But Bush has sure tried with his Mideast fiasco. Then there’s the recession of ‘08 for which the Republican orthodoxy of tax cuts and deregulation was obviously responsible. Here we go again and Trump is trying to shield himself from blame IN ANTICIPATION of what is to come even though he has formal control and responsibility for everything.

He knows his own history better than anybody. He’s had his efforts blow up in his face before. Then he runs away. Trump loves leaving a mess. It makes him feel powerful. If this doesn’t scare the hell out of you I don’t know what does.

Fuckwad Imperium and Hegemony

Someday people will look back and wonder how we could be so idiotic, to piss away and destroy the greatest good fortune the world has ever seen. Trump will be representative of that, a symbol of stupidity and desperation. What do we have to be desperate about? Only a lack of faith in ourselves.

Be Fair to Trump

Trump can’t be judged relative to other presidents. He comes up an unprecedented goon and an incompetent ass. Trump must be judged in comparison with evangelical preachers like Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, obvious charlatans and con-men who praise God only to build up themselves.

Their followers want to thumb their noses at the “elites” and anyone who upholds standards. Nobody is going to tell them what to do.

How could anyone have been naive and ignorant enough to support Jim Bakker? Now we have Trump, who is as driven to build himself up and have gold-plated everything as Bakker ever was. Trump, too, has a trophy wife caked in makeup. View him as a kind of preacher and he makes perfect sense.

Make America Grate Again

It appears there is no point of satiation for Republicans throwing sand into the electoral and governmental machinery. They want to destroy the whole thing.

The Anti-Catholic Climatologists

With the advent of Trump it's easier for people to see how the Civil War never ended and that the South kept on fighting for privilege and bigotry. What's less obvious is that they are also still fighting the Reformation.

For example, if no priest (expert) is going to intervene in your salvation neither is any expert (climatologist) going to tell you what to think about their area of study. You know better no matter what an ignorant oaf you are.

The problems with authority that now plague us are, in other words, to a great extent, more trouble caused by evangelicals. They'll hold stupid opinions just to try to prove they can't be pushed around and told what to think or do.

Add to them the Koch crowd. They also don’t want anyone telling them what to do. Then you have the insane culture of today. The only common efforts respected and validated are in antisocial areas — warfare and business.

Trump and the Power of the Void

What is it about consciousness that pains people? It would be easier to ask: where are the rewards? Consciousness is a pain in the ass. The lure of Trump is the lure of drugs and addiction, the loss of self in irresponsibility and the happy forgetfulness of farming out your conscience, ethics and convictions to a moron.

Fear Not the Bot

A bot is no different from the average Trump voter, anyway.

The Conservative Dilemma and the Wanker Dominion

The dilemma of American conservatives is that they live in a democracy. I’ve pinned down a couple of “libertarians” and they admitted that, if things were run properly, American citizens who didn’t have the money would be turned away from emergency rooms, to die on the side of the road and be picked up by sanitation workers if it came to that. They know the voting public doesn’t want this so they lie. And lie and lie and lie.

They lie and, meanwhile, they try to lock in minority rule so if the people they’ve duped into voting for them ever wake up it will be too late. We are probably there now, the defining moment. They have their authoritarian, lying king who is asserting that no “rule of law’ exists and Republicans are backing him on this right on up to their “think tanks” and supposedly respectable publications like the National Review.

Really they are shit-eaters. There’s a big Scots-Irish, deterministic, Calvinist cast to this. They are fatalists and schismatics to the point of nihilism and solipsism. Every person is their own church, in effect, reaching God in a kind of autistic union, breaking out of their isolation from “the spirit” by a buildup of tension culminating in a lightning bolt-like union with God after which they are turned into Tom DeLay or someone like him.

True exemplars of the Christian principles of humility, generosity, kindness and inclusion, notwithstanding they think you should die on the side of the road if you are poor because God willed it —  by definition or it wouldn’t have happened. The Scots-Irish love to laud themselves, mostly for their combativeness and violence, but they are a servile, bigoted race which made them, once, perfect henchmen in the slave economy.

Now they seek to recreate it, again through blind allegiance to the an authoritarian rule of hereditary wealth and privilege — the Wanker Dominion of Donald Trump for which they have degraded themselves and to which they are subservient. So much for human dignity:

https://youtu.be/f1CB-D1TtXc

Oh, Lord ...

Professional racist Stephen Miller might actually procreate. What a horrifying thought.

FUCK YOU

I know someone who couldn’t be a nicer, more responsible, kind and hardworking person and she is getting into trouble over medical costs. She isn’t even 50 and doesn’t drink or smoke. This is nothing but bad luck.

To every Republican who has been voting us into this dystopia and to every single person who voted for Trump, and very especially to those who intend to vote for him again after we have witnessed what a sick, cruel and worthless piece of shit he is, I want to say a hearty and heartfelt FUCK YOU. I hope you all die before you can vote for him again.

All Asshole Government

The age of assholes has arrived. What I mean is that, in America, not to be an asshole is not to have a voice — to have no say in government. It is a government of, by and for assholes. Non-assholes have been completely disenfranchised and see nothing in their government that is reflective of them — not in the efficacious parts of it. Their part has no say and is powerless.

Senate Shits Itself

The U. S. Senate — or, the Republican proportion — just shit all over itself, smeared it around and played in it, unloading a shit-bomb on the Supreme Court as well by having John Roberts witness and implicitly approve of their treachery.

From “e pluribus unum” to “Fuck Off”

The Republican takeover of America defies description and analysis. Its awfulness is experiential and confounding. Maybe someone can capture it in art. Other means are inadequate.

The Tsars Are Back

Tsar Trump lives in opulence and gilt. Everything about him reassures him of his superiority, untouchable nature and removal from the unwashed masses of humanity for which he reportedly and reputedly has some responsibility, but he only lessens their lot.

I have another kind of removal in mind for our feckless, obtuse, spoiled, cruel and posturing president. The more removed the better. From his position. From society. From his crookedly obtained wealth. From everything from which he can possibly be removed.

15 Minutes of Shame

Every real Republican wants their fifteen minutes of shame before the crazy bus crashes. Watch as they scurry and slither ...

Warped Drive

Trump’s administration is turning out to be worse than anyone could have imagined. Republicans around him realized he would choose or could be manipulated into choosing, from the options presented to him, the one most destructive and insulting to his perceived enemies.

Trump therefore became a vehicle for the darkest desires of some already evil people. He’s an opportunity for them to do things they wouldn’t have otherwise dared, and they were already wrecking the world with their arrogance, greed and stupidity. Now it’s happening faster.

All of My Boy Friends Were Boneheads

Not only am I wondering and aghast at the number and intensity of the assholes our society is producing I’m confronting the truth that a very high percentage of them are from my background. Were there always so many dicks in our societal closets or are they the product of more recent circumstances and trends? I think both, that there was untapped asshole potential and that there are more because circumstances tapped that potential.

Notice, anyway, how many of the supremely degraded individuals and sadists are Catholics. They are not only Catholics but from my hyper-competitive kind of Catholic background where winning was everything, presumably because it was existentially unimportant and limited to areas this side of salvation, but they’ve blown entirely through that distinction and allowed it to overrun their hope of eternal life and heavenly bliss. They sold their souls.

Witness: Bill Barr. Witness: Brett Kavanaugh and EVERY OTHER Supreme Court justice who votes consistently conservatively. They all have a degree of Catholic background though some have abandoned it over the cause of multiple marriages. Newt, always backwardsly progressive, became Catholic AFTER multiple marriages, culminating in his latest temptress receiving a Vatican appointment. She’s ambassadress, qualifying by adultery.

Witness: Fox News, the soul of which is Catholic, as attested by the ranks of scurrilous Irishmen and such manning every other post there. Kellyanne Conway is a perfect thug-ette. In any case, I look back on a childhood I once considered normal with horror. I recall the bullying and brutality. I recall the willingness and drive to win, by cheating if necessary, if not by a preference for its grander humiliating capacities. I recall going to mass and praying to kick ass.

A guy from those days whose family were the self-appointed bullies and tormentors of my family called me recently from our high school reunion—I’m convinced, to try to gloat—after 40 YEARS of no contact. He seems to think he has won. He was an amazing asshole in high school and insanely competitive. My family had been taken down by sickness, mental-illness and, ultimately, death. Still, every time I saw them back then, by chance encounter, it was criticism, slights and cruelty.

Trump helps us to understand, that there is no “victory” for them but only the primal pleasure of vindictiveness and acts of cruelty. My sister, a brilliant girl loosed from a home with no meanness in it or even hardness, was destroyed by the viciousness of one of the family’s daughters. As late as my brother’s wedding, years after I had seen any of them, a younger sister recounted an episode humiliating to me and touted her brother.

What the fuck? Can some people not comprehend that others don’t play their game? Again, Trump comes to the rescue. Through the impenetrable irrationality, small-mindedness and compulsion of his vindictiveness we can see the truth, about the fragility of his underlying psyche, while acknowledging, of the necessity of survival, his incredible powers of destruction. He could wipe out the whole world and not give a shit. That is inconceivably sick.

But Is It Art?

It’s obvious enough now that Donald Trump’s Art of the Deal was a lie and that any deal-making skills he possessed were trumped, so to speak, by his more fundamental, innate, basic and highly developed talents in scamming and self-promotion.

A question remains, though. Is there an art to those—to insults, innuendo, takedowns and lies? Or, rather, is it too much a matter of the brain-stem to qualify as art?

Death to America!

We knew it was coming, but Republicans are again seeking to see more Americans needlessly suffer and die. After incredible fiscal profligacy Donald Trump has discovered his budgetary conscience and applied it to Medicare and Medicaid.

More importantly, though, rich people are flourishing as never before, simply swimming in obscene wealth, and the only thing trickling down is Republican contempt for decency and the lives of average citizens. Hooray! Death to America!

The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Dickhead

I don’t mean to invoke sympathy but think how essentially and profoundly alone Donald Trump must be. At some level he knows nobody wants to be around him for anything but his own kinds of motives, all of which are selfish and bad.

Captivated by Lies

Why will so many people degrade themselves for Trump? Why will they abandon their integrity to defend him? They have lived too long captivated by lies. They are in cages made of lies and afraid to go out into the light of truth and freedom.

The Boor War

We might be destroyed by misfits and not monsters. Or, monsters might be empowered misfits -- weak, petty, injured people in powerful positions. 

I look at history and I don't see malevolent beings driving all the evil but losers. The lesson then is not to create losers. Don't promote fear and cause grudges.

There's enough unavoidable bad stuff already.

Can a Girl Be a Goon?

Kellyanne Conway argues for “yes”.

An Evangelical Prayer

O Holy Jesus, we bless you and thank you for creating us as wolves among your sheep. We observe that, in the Bible, one son gets the inheritance and the other does not. Some are saved and others are not. Your justice is inscrutable and so we were so pleased when the pastor on the TV told us we were saved. We sent him some money just to be sure. Who knew it could be so easy!

We used to feel bad about the injustice in the world but we know now it is all part of your plan so we won’t mess with it. We know it is wrong for us to interfere with nature as you made it. There are the eaters and the eaten. We are the eaters. The heathen all around us are doomed and don't matter but we still appreciate the opportunity to take advantage of them, to use them as we will.

Because, we know we are the chosen ones and the children of God.

The Armageddon Edition

Friends. An addendum is required, or an entirely new edition, to whatever book or books you have read detailing the lies and propaganda we have all been fed regarding what our country stands for and its role in history. The most extreme revisionism needs to be revised. It was never enough and we were never what we thought we were, let alone how we defensively, reflexively and obsessively portrayed ourselves to the rest of the world as being exceptional and unprecedentedly better than everyone else.

We were always pigs. We appeared better than, removed from and/or above other peoples because we were untouched by their hardships. At the first hint of hurt we showed the world what we were, spoiled brats and vain bullies. That trend, begun under high commissioner, commissar and perennial fuckup Herr Bush, reached its assumed peak, zenith and (not so paradoxically) nadir under Trump, where it now resides in the fulfillment of our destiny in debasement, humiliation and destruction.

What a Stroke of Luck!

Donald Trump is so lucky. He doesn’t look so good after killing an Iranian general. He looks rash and desperate and a little unhinged. Then the Iranians shoot down a passenger plane and Donald gets to lord it over them.

What a stroke of luck! Never mind the people who were killed. Do you think that even registers with Trump? Of course not. What are a hundred and some lives in comparison with the big boy’s vanity? Nothing! Donald is thrilled.

If I Had a Hammer

Trump would look a lot like a nail.

Trump Even Ruins the Past

So, I was watching The Crown on Netflix and the episode depicting the moon landings. Sure enough, as so often happens, I felt sick with the sense of far we have fallen to have the disgraceful, cowardly, self-serving shit we now have running the country, lining their pockets and building up their egos at the expense of their fellow citizens and the rest of the world. They are absolute garbage and scum and I am so sick of it.

Trump Ruins Everything

Trump makes you feel bad about life, the universe and everything.

Heroes of the Revolution

As the Republican revolution nears completion we can discern its real outlines. It was never about fiscal responsibility. It was never about respecting traditional social structures, fundamental civic principles and values or constitutional norms.

It has been about removing all constraints so that one group could feast on the financial carcasses of their fellow citizens. The heroes, oddly, are the henchmen. This has been accomplished in a functioning democracy. There was no overt coup.

There was no overthrow. But, don’t worry, there are still plenty of people to whom statues may be raised and homage paid for their contributions. When the sine qua non is applied we have to give final credit to the Confederate voting bloc.

They not only kept electing scumbags they rewarded the worst among them. A downward spiral ensued and continues. Nobody was too crazy. It all culminates in Trump. Their coalition’s members all had grudges against their government.

The Confederates, for kicking their asses in the Civil War. Hard-core Calvinists, for not creating a theocratic state. Mormons had a legitimate gripe but it’s old and they should get over it. Rich guys, like the Kochs, want to be feudal lords.

Nobody tells them what to do. Only the government is powerful enough to attempt it. The Calvinists are so stuck in the Reformation they ended up insisting not only that good works can’t get you into heaven they deny all behavioral standards.

So much so, the behavioral standards became inverted. Corruption, connected with wealth, is an indication of holiness because good works, being absent, can’t have been attempted to earn God’s favor, which is manifested in the wealth.

Hail the henchmen! They are the heroes. Oh, wait. Their statues, to their generals and soldiers of the Civil War, have been coming down. Oh, well. But, who needs statues when they have seized control of the most powerful country in the world?

Heil — sorry — hail the henchmen!

Newt Gingrich’s Wonderful Life

These are heady days for assholes. They are reveling, none so more than the Newtster. His project of destruction is nearly complete. And, he is sucking off the government as ever, feasting his fetid ass off around Rome on our money. He doesn’t even have a job.

This asshole is a proud member of the wrecking crew and might be its most productive associate. “Productivity” for them means destruction, an appropriate piece of perversion. Trashing the accomplishments of the well-lived lives of others — vandalism — is easy.

Newt is a pervert. Newt is a sick punk. He should be shunned — a pariah. Whatever happened to tar and feathers? Or, the stocks? Followed by jail. People who spend their time destroying other people’s lives should be removed from society. Jails are meant for that.

Read on about the gloatfest of a real piece of shit...

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/newt-gingrich-says-youre-welcome/570832/