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.