Dickhead: the Donald Trump Story

Donald's is every boy's dream, to be born impossibly, impracticably rich and spend your entire life getting your dick sucked. To someone with a brain it's boring.

This is not a man's dream.

But this is is why our suckling has always married someone of inferior status and power, ideally someone foreign-born, and why he humiliates everyone around him.

He isn't a man he's a boy.

Redefining Subnormal​

Every day a new disgrace. What's a day without one--even I am disappointed. This is life in Trumpworld. Republicans have given us, as president, the biggest shit-pile they could find.

The Free Dick

Only dicks are free. Only a person who can say "fuck you" or "fuck off" is free. Assholes are free. The most free person exists perpetually in "fuck you" and "fuck off" modes and never cooperates or compromises except by whim, an indication of independence and power. 

And if you believe this shit then, well, Donald Trump for President. Oh, we already did that. 

Deep Naught

Nothingness--vacuity, emptiness--is hard to comprehend. Is it only a corollary to something-ness? Similarly what does "meaninglessness" mean, particularly in the case of a thing necessarily defined by what it means, such as Donald Trump or any other person? 

For a person to mean nothing is not to exist which is the challenge of infantile Trump. Trump is so embryonic and arrested he is inhuman. He is protoplasm and slime, not a swamp creature but the swamp itself, entropy incarnated and the realization of naught. 

The Four Freedoms of Republicanism

The Freedom to Want: Republicans understand motivation. Deprivation, hunger and insecurity make people work harder and build character, especially among children.

The Freedom to Fear: Fear is a great motivator as well and an antidote to complacency. Where would we be without the fear of Islamofascism, Sharia Law and Obamacare?

The Feedom to Lie: The freedom to speak is most fully realized in lying, even arbitrarily and purposelessly.  Anyone can tell the truth. It takes courage and creativity to lie.

The Freedom of Righteousness: Anybody can claim religious sanction and divine favor. Real righteousness is shoving your own religious preferences down other people's throats.

This Just Happened

Notorious piece of garbage Mitch McConnell has passed something in the Senate regarding healthcare in order to save face and nobody knows what it is or where it will lead. It was bad enough when Republicans were willing to screw everyone in favor of themselves and their rich ringleaders (McConnell married his money) but now it appears that they simply want to have their way no matter what. Their bankrupt ideology has been upended by Trump and they still don't care. All they want to do is win and at any cost to the country. 

Republican Disgrace: Sucking Up to Trump

Since the dawn of Donald Trump the ranks of Republicans have shown themselves to be partisan to the point of treason. They don't believe Democrats are Americans and they think any behavior against the other side is justified as long as they have their way and enforce their vision for the country.

But they are wrong. Their failure in maintaining constitutional, legislative and judicial standards and traditions in the face of Trump's onslaught against everything America was assumed to represent is indefensible and unprecedented. There are no excuses. There is no justification. They are disgraced.

Enough Already

John McCain has gotten enough mileage out of having been a prisoner-of-war. He was amply rewarded when he married his beer-baron wife, following the usual Republican path of white men getting a leg-up, easy ride and affirmative action-handout as McCain did when he attended Annapolis on our dime as a legacy--admitted not because he was deserving but because of his family. 

McCain, a descendant of slave-holders, later hired the scum who had slandered him (as having a colored love-child) in a South Carolina primary. John had learned his lesson--winning is all that matters. So, he then chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, showing how depraved and cynical he was. Now brave John drags his carcass to Washington to vote against healthcare for his constituents. 

Brave man, John. Please die. You will leave the world a worse place for having been in it. Patheticly John is still trying to be top gun. So what if he flew jets and got shot down. 

Enough already.

Mitch McConnell's Revanchist Kentucky Scumfest

How clear does it have to get? Will Alabama-born Mitch McConnell have to hoist the Confederate battle flag above the U.S. Capitol before the idiot Yankees understand what he represents--revenge?

McConnell and his compatriots are not in Washington to run anything they are there to destroy. They are there to destroy the hated federal government which did away with segregation and slavery. 

It may have been about revenge and driven by instinct and resentment but the sons of Dixie--racist, authoritarian scuzz--have now established a regime based on the old model of property and privilege.

Apply the rule sine qua non and see it. Take away the South and everything wrong with the United States goes away. Rational, constitutional government would be in effect. It would be a fit place to live.

Fame Whore from Hell

Unbelievable. Indescribable. Donald Trump gives a speech to the Boy Scouts of America and simultaneously touts traditional Scout values and flaunts his contempt for them, flouting the usual decency and decorum on such occasions and returning to his typical trope of portraying himself a victim. 

Donald never rises above himself and he is utterly in the gutter, the lowest of common denominators, a pig among pigs and whore among whores, not just for-sale but always selling, incapable of breaking out of the model of dominance-and-submission--of giving or taking it up the ass.

Republican Ramshackle

Republicans aren't a house divided they are a house in disarray. Selfishness and cynicism don't constitute an ideology. An ideology requires thought-formation and they are at a more primitive level than this. Living like pigs and thugs isn't a matter of belief it's a denial of the efficacy of civilization in relation to primal, tribal drives so it's a rejection of individualism, democracy, any normal religious sense and the hope of asserting intelligence over instinct. 

Anyone who thinks this is desirable or fun is out of their mind.

When Assholes Roamed the Earth

Our times should be known as the Age of Assholes in honor of Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and their legions of low-life scum and degraded, money-grubbing shills.

They comprise the new ruling class in America. The torch has been wearily tossed to them, a new (de)generation, by a bored electorate and now they are burning the house down.

Never Crazy Enough

Democrats, before you get all happy and celebratory over the Republican healthcare bill implosion remember that for some of the defecting, right-wing legislators the bill wasn't crazy and destructive enough. We are still way deep in shit and this is a token victory forestalling an inevitable doom if the forces of insanity aren't stopped.

Disoriented Donald: Our Self-Referential President

I'll give you another example of what I mean by reductive:

Normal people navigate and stay oriented in both the everyday, physical universe and psychologically by relating to points of reference outside of themselves. Our pathetic president is trying to navigate using only himself as a point of reference. 

He will continue to move blindly, irresolutely and stumblingly around in the impenetrable fog of his own aura and we are supposed to follow along de facto--because he is in a position of power and, for the short term, we have as little choice as he will allow. 

A Capital, Capitol Screwing

Pity poor Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republican Senators and legislators. The last thing they want is to inadvertently un-screw average, working Americans. Working people must only be more screwed. It is what Republicans exist for but the screwing must be done delicately. It must be done cleverly and with deniability so they can preserve their hegemony and keep the overall level of screwing heading upwards, for the good of the country and humanity.

I mean, look at what happened with Obama. The idiot Democrat sent their enterprise hurtling backwards and downwards with massively inappropriate healthcare legislation showing how important it is for Republicans to maintain control. That legislation might also cut into corporate profits which will destroy America more quickly than anything and, incidentally but not unrelatedly, put a huge dent in Republican reelection coffers and personal net worth. 

This is why they will use any kind of deceit, blackmail, treachery and--well, we don't actually know how far they will go. After all, we now have Donald Trump as president thanks to them and every kind of hate and and thuggery is on the rise. Republicans have lowered the standards to such an extent it's hard to believe we ever had values and morals and ideals in the first place. But console yourselves by grabbing some pussy but only Republican pussy, mind you. 

Democratic women still entertain the ridiculous notion that they are entitled--entitled, I tell you--to some degree of control of their lives and destinies when we know we're only humoring the bitches. They are only appurtenances and necessary evils if men are to reproduce and get their rocks off as they are entitled--oops!--as they deserve to be able to do by nature and divine mandate. Pshaw! We all know women are weaker creatures and the occasion of sin. 

We, the People...

The United States of America, what it meant and stood for, with all its flaws, no longer exists. This loss, however, is not irreversible. The ideals are still discernible in the smoke and rubble. The Republicans now in charge are anti-Americans--a rogue element and a fifth column.

I am sure there is hope for a restitution, partly because of the amount of money the Republicans have had to spend to subvert democracy and the amazing cascade and torrent of lies. The money and the lies are necessary because, on average, America is still not with them. 

America will never be with them but there's a point at which it won't matter. The lies and confusion will have a life of their own and be independently self-sustaining. America may then be pronounced dead. And it's a game of inches to judge from the elections of 2000 and 2016. 

The Link Between Lying and Anti-Individualism

I will tell you all day long that almost everything coming out of Republican mouths is a lie but I will not, I hope, be caught calling them liars. If so it's a slip and I apologize ahead of time. Honesty is not what they are about. When you are trying to take over the world or part of it the truth is a nuisance.

"Truth" implies standards and accountability so even trivial, seemingly inconsequential lies have a purpose, to undermine intelligibility and accountability in general. This is an assertion of power, the desire not to play the game but to control the board. Think back to the tobacco testimony of 1994.

Seven of the well-paid heads of the major tobacco companies testified under oath, before Congress, that they did not think nicotine was addicting. There were no consequences for them personally as far as I know. I can't look into their hearts, minds or souls. I can't tell you what they knew or didn't.

So I can't call them liars, but I can tell you that nicotine is addicting as hell. I can't tell you that the Republicans lining up like sheep to defend a morally indefensible healthcare bill know what they are doing but it is all lies. The lies are both a price of entry and a privilege of membership in their club.

They have lockers full of lies so you don't have to come up with your own, once you have passed the lie initiation. 

Pangs of conscience and even the awareness of the deceit are suppressed through tribal identification and support. Members are protected by reciprocal reassurance. It's moral death and the destruction of individualism, keys to all of our social and religious bonds, not that they believe is such sentimentality.

The Racist Defense Against Racism

The bloc that tipped the scales for Trump--supposedly economically disaffected, working-class white people--turns out not to have been voting the angst of downwardly mobile wage-earners but to have been voting racial animus, ethnic stereotyping and fear. It's not a surprise, judging from Donald Trump's tirades. Trump turned on the hate. He played groups of people off against one another and encouraged racial resentment.

Now, the racists and their baiters, when challenged, defend themselves existentially instead of defending their actions, claiming rightness as a group attribute and revealing a fundamentally racist mindset. For racists everything is existential and determined by group identification and not by individual behavior. For example, criticism will be understood to be about their value as people and other (to their minds) immutable traits.

It is not assumed that people have innate value and inalienable rights and so on. Barack Obama was an innately "wrong" president, unrelating to behavior. George Bush was existentially "right" even though he destroyed everything he touched. In a racist context behavior doesn't matter, only group identity. Criticism is not about something circumstantial, incidental and correctible but an assault on their being and existence.

And so, racists instinctively react to questions about their misbehavior like cornered animals, going postal at any provocation because, for them, their existence is always the issue. Similarly, they attack their adversaries and detractors not as frail actors of common standing and humanity. The attacks are attempts at annihilation, intended to render their perceived enemies powerless and incapacitated if not actually dead.

All of their thoughts are centered on identity. Loyalty, unwavering adherence to an ideology, and fixed opinions are expected and demanded. These racists are making the case against them by the nature of their defense. They are probably unaware of their own motivations--but, there I go again, making a non-racist argument when they should be judged by their own standards since they have voluntarily abdicated their decency.

They have abdicated their humanity in the attempt to deny ours, by depriving us of the rights guaranteed to us by the laws and traditions of our society, something they are increasingly challenging the existence of at all.

What I Mean by Reductive

I applied the thinking of public choice economics, that we are all selfishly motivated actors in turf wars, to its adherents, concluding that they are all selfish, ass-covering, unprincipled actors in a turf war. 

They assume privilege and exclusion, that they will not be treated the way they want to treat other people--their idea of "liberty," the ability to arbitrarily stipulate different sets of rules for different groups of people.

I call it cynicism.

Trump the Tyrant

By nature Donald is a despot. Everyone around him must dance to his tune and admire him and defer to him. Enforcing this in his limited little goon world was one thing. 

Watch him now in a job in which he will inevitably be judged. All the poor sucker can do is try to forestall the reckoning, to delay his exposure as a charlatan and a fraud.

What is That Feeling?

That feeling--of powerlessness and helplessness--is the feeling of being on the receiving end of tyranny. Our tyranny is of the irrational, persecutory, exploitative kind related to the rule of a selfish, unprincipled minority. It's the tyranny of wealth and corporate hegemony. 

I have never felt that kind of powerlessness, only frustration, in relation to our government as it was intended to function. That government belongs to us (or did) and its imperfections are purposeful and built-in. The inefficiencies are meant to protect us from tyranny.

Past and Future Parasites

The Koch boys regard anyone not fitting their extremely narrow, risk-taking model of productivity, based on themselves, as parasites. But of course they were born rich and there are many different types of risk. Warren Buffet rightly notes how fortunate he was to have been born in circumstances and at a time when he could use his skills. 

Even CEO's and such are despised by the Kochs. Come to think if it, they seem to despise everybody. They must despise even their shills since shills are henchmen and underlings and not entrepreneurs. Their Libertarianism, as the Kochs mistakenly call it, is an invention of their own and is the embodiment of their contempt for humanity.

Black people were originally imported to America against their will. They must not have been parasites then, since they were a commodity and powerless to affect their status and conditions at all. Aha, such powerlessness and an utter lack of self-determination are elements in the Koch plan for social improvement and the way to avoid parasitism.

Why don't they just say so, that people are to be defined, in their brave new world, entirely in relation to their usefulness to the Kochs and their highly limited group of compatriots. People have no intrinsic value at all to them and therefore no rights--not even to life, let alone to liberty and other pursuits. When the Kochs say "liberty" they mean their own. 

Abnormal Happiness

There must be someone out there for whom everything seems just right--not too much craziness due to Trump (me) or too little (insane yokel thinking their man of destiny is being thwarted at every turn by knee-jerk, liberal thumb-suckers).

He, Tarzan

Let's say some boy with a high degree of technical aptitude, maybe Charles Koch, is parachuted into a primitive situation in an uninhabited part of Africa or Amazonian South America. He's all alone. He does better than the average bear because he's smart and industrious and he manages to subsist. The usual if limited array of available natural resources makes this possible. 

Charles will do better over time but, without additional people working in cooperation and additional resources, his life will remain primitive. Wealth is a only partly a function of personal merit and hard work--that is the point. Higher wealth is a social function. But try to convince our lad Charles of this. He thinks wealth is the result of heroism and that everyone should defer to him.

At the very least, now that Charles has acquired his billions, he thinks that lesser beings should get out of his way. Not that he's prejudiced, mind you, or biased or single-minded. He has guys in think-tanks, on his dime, who tell him this is true. 

Our President...

Is a gloating piece of garbage.

Eat Shit and Die

The outline of the Republican Party's real plan for the American people is emerging from the shadows and taking shape in front of our eyes. It's no wonder then that they spend billions on hype and spin and obfuscation because the plan is "Eat Shit and Die" and that's hard to market directly in a democracy. 

More About the Circle Game

Okay, I have an admission.

Lately I've been on a jag accusing the right wing of arguing from conclusions when, in reality, I think that it is inevitable. Everyone has assumptions and argues from prejudices and a point of view.

The point is to own the point of view.

I am accusing the right wing of arguing from false and mean-spirited assumptions while not being able to acknowledge these because they are in fact mean, predatory and morally indefensible viewpoints.

Also, I believe that these pessimistic beliefs result in much more serious instances of circular reasoning and defensiveness because of shame, compartmentalization, repression and moral degradation.

The right wing, by their unowned pessimism, has betrayed our values. They have made the country unrecognizable. George Bush was bad enough. But, Donald Trump? There's no excuse for Donald Trump.

Lagging Indicator

The entire economy is a lagging indicator of a bunch of stuff, mostly indeterminate, amorphous and harder-to-quantify things such as justice, social well-being, responsible living and the reasonable and measured use of natural resources. Our society is mostly a reflection of the relatively decent, hard working people who went before us and not the pigs that we are. The society we are creating, the one reflecting our values, will be unlivable.

Love for Sale

Wealthy Americans are really feeling the love. Everything has benefitted them since the beginning of the Republican age. Date that to the election of Ronald Reagan, to go by the enormous increase in their fortunes starting then. 

Nothing is enough. Poorer and vulnerable citizens are now to be deprived of the healthcare needed to keep them alive so the rich can have more. You can buy anything in America, including the entire system. This means there is no America.

Lint Heads

In Southern mill towns the textile workers used to be called "lint-heads" because of the fuzz in their hair and elsewhere when they came out of the mills. The country club whites looked down on them and then there were the black people, another caste. 

The mill owners decamped when there were better pickings elsewhere and the workers were left with even less than before. It's unclear now how this will play out when the capitalists consolidate their power. They won't need their working-class voters. 

Are we there? Mitch McConnell, who married his millions, is trying to pass legislation to harm the hell out of his constituents while favoring mostly monied, out-of-state, Machiavellian interests. And there are the equivalents of bureaucrats and plant managers.

They face an ambiguous fate since the new lint-heads are now overseas. Visit a small Southern town and witness the despair to see how this looks and feels when it happens. The fate of most people will be determined at birth, with little room for advancement.

This is the Republican vision for America.

Card Sharps

Think of Republicans as card sharps, amassing all the chips by cheating. One day they win them all and the game ends.

Dignity, No. Deniability, Yes.

Lindsey Graham and others are upset that Trump has sullied the dignity of his office with an odd tweet again revealing an even odder interest in women with blood coming out of them somewhere.

 

For Graham and other conservatives trying to hedge their bets and cover their asses it's not about dignity or integrity or decency but deniability. 

They want to be able to survive Trump's implosion, humiliation or self-annihilation, should that happen. When Republicans talk about principles they always mean their own power and position. 

Charnel House Rules

I have been trying not to follow the news very closely because it's too painful but I noticed that Dean Heller, a Republican Senator from Nevada, has been excoriated by members of his own party and attacked by a Trump super-pac for daring to criticize their healthcare bill.

In other words, he was attacked for trying to do what was best for his constituents. Why even comment on this. It speaks for itself. Republicans continually tout themselves as the party of freedom, constitutional democracy, patriotism and everything else noble and good. 

Who's freedom do they mean? Not just theirs but only theirs. They will try to viciously destroy anyone who disagrees with them. The fault is with the American voters. There are no excuses sufficient to exonerate them for voting for these criminals, thugs and hoodlums.

No explanation is good enough--certainly not ignorance. There are on the hook for this. We should never let them off. Meanwhile we're increasingly living among corpses and in a boneyard. We are all increasingly dead men walking.

Alexa, get me out of here...

Big Brother really is watching. Big Brother is Amazon. Big Brother is Google. It isn't the government we have to worry about it's these massive companies seeking to infiltrate our lives in inventive ways. Granted, we get something in return. But there will be a price.

By the way, Alexa, do you know where some affordable healthcare can be had?

Republican Racist Cult

Virtually every Republican Congressperson in Washington is capable of acting on only one principle, caring for the wealthiest Americans by cutting their taxes and in other ways. They will not only disenfranchise poorer citizens but deprive them of services without which many will have miserable, insecure and shorter lives. 

Already the rich have had a bonanza under Republican rule, seeing their share of America's wealth increase inconceivably. Republicans despise Democrats and want to deprive them of their rights as citizens. In many cases elections and administrations fail to assert the will of the majority. Republicans are criminals and traitors. 

Entire states have be de-democratized. Republicanism is now a racist cult, requiring blind submission to authority and to a fixed set of irrational beliefs typified by climate denial, birtherism, economic reductivism and a form of social Darwinism in which the game is rigged and the cards are stacked and racism drives everything. 

Plantation America and the Quiet Coup

Republicans will break any promise and ignore any oath to institute permanent minority rule. There is a tipping point and we are alarmingly close to it. Of the two main groups the racists want to disenfranchise black people. Those poorer, stupid white people are also voting to disenfranchise themselves believing that their masters will protect them from the sins of modernism.

Their psychology is rooted in the Scots-Irish experience of minority rule in Northern Ireland and in the Celtic traditions of submission to the authority of a local lord. This is why these factional societies never evolved out of the Middle Ages and were ultimately defeated in battle. Celts make the best cannon fodder and will fight for any cause their lord dictates, no matter how unreasonable.

They will be proud to have died in the service of their masters and betters, or their families will be proud for them since they will be as dead as they deserve. Think of a butler, cook, maidservant or some other underling in an English drama who's motto is to know your place. Money and power motivate the other main constituent in the movement, typified by the Kochs and their allies.

Kochists are in a positive feedback loop with the racists, not that they aren't racists themselves but it is secondary since they can reasonably aspire to total domination and isolate themselves from anyone they choose in their sick, Machiavellian dream world. If there are legitimate (internally consistent) philosophical underpinnings to their beliefs it doesn't matter in this context.

It doesn't matter because the thinking is undeniably inimical to the laws and traditions of our country, which they have undermined for years. The results will be obvious as we descend into a society resembling a syndicate and a web of competing and cooperating criminal entities. They are like the Mafia. To stay the hell out of their way is the best option if they can't be stopped.

You do not want to be on their radar. They don't respect any law or rule not originating with them and your life is of absolutely no value in their scheme if you are not reasonably wealthy. Everyone only looks out for themselves. Poorer persons are a positive nuisance and it's a benefit to society if they cease to exist. My model for society is an ecosystem. Theirs is a prison or plantation.

It's Georgia

It doesn't mean anything for a Democrat to have lost an election in Georgia though it would have been nice to have won. Georgia is not quite as cracker a state as South Carolina but it's close, an old refuge of Southern depravity and stupidity. 

But it is a shame that the Democrat didn't fight harder by criticizing Republican lies and incompetence. If Democrats did this they would be building a brand and a message of responsible, competent government even when they lose.

Heart like a Whorl

The Trump family is being revealed to be so very self-centered and self-involved, each personality spiraling in on itself and gobbling up resources like goobers, it's hard to comprehend. It isn't about circumstances and these aren't working modes they adopt--public personas--but apparently it is all they are capable of doing or being.

They can't step back from it and choose other behaviors as though these are roles because they aren't. Trumps aren't only inappropriate as national leaders they are the most inappropriate people imaginable, incapable of taking care of anyone but themselves, so I think they are genuinely perplexed at the criticism. It confounds them. 

Stunningly, Trump is supposed to be working for us. He's supposed to answer to us. It's his job. But he will never work for anyone but himself or answer to anyone. And Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, the goons, have sold their souls and signed on to take advantage of the opportunity presented by their fantastically fucked-up leader. 

Gassy Troll

Donald Trump, Jr., it turns out, is as big a pig as his daddy, as he showed by being ungracious as hell on Twitter after Republicans won a congressional race in Georgia. And I see evidence that he's even less competent than the old man, which is saying something. 

What a genealogy. Fred was an aggressive, bigoted skinflint. Donald is a feckless grotesque and now Junior is just an idiot and a dick. These people don't even have manners and show decisively how ludicrous it is to think that wealthy people are somehow deserving. 

Road Kill Republicans

My committed belief is that Trumpism is not an aberration in relation to the development of modern Republicanism but its natural progression into a cult of governmental self-annihilation through incompetence, mismanagement and sabotage. If I'm right the result will be destruction and the white boys will then step back and say "oops" and try to find some creative way to blame it on the Democrats. 

This has been the pattern and Trump fits it exactly. He's less blue-blooded than Bush and more improper and profane but it's the same old story. They were each too privileged to fail though the Trumpster almost did anyway, misconstruing luck for ability. Trump, however, has cynics and ideologues at his elbows who make the Bush wackos look very nearly not insane. Bannon and Miller are truly scary.

Everything is into another realm of risk with them involved. The measure to have in mind is the road kill index, an informal indicator of how many people have had their lives ruined or ended as a result of Republican policies, directly or indirectly. Under Bush the figure is well up in the millions if you count the world-wide effects of the Phil and Wendy Gramm Whopping Economic Downturn, also known as the Great Recession. 

Republican incompetence and deregulatory fervor caused the Great Recession. Bannon and Miller are nearly admitting to wanting to remake the world and proposing its reinvention as a playground for rich white people and assorted privileged nut-cases. It would have to entail the exploitation and ruination of millions of nuisance lives and certainly many deaths, as happened under Bannon's heroes, notably Lenin. 

When, exactly, did this kind of thinking go mainstream? It should have been debated. I think Republicans would argue that the last election was such a debate but, no way. Ignorant Trump voters voted for road kill in the form of Hispanic immigrants, Muslims and anyone else Trump should choose to persecute. They didn't vote to be road kill and that is exactly where it is heading with every executive order and proposal. 

He is the Walrus

It's hard not to search for meaning where there isn't any. Donald Trump, for example, challenges us to find meaning in his actions and there isn't any. It's just Donald being Donald. He is his own perverse justification. He (it) doesn't "mean" anything.

But beyond the insularity of Donald's profane and pathetic life it means something to us--the elevation of self-centeredness to its culmination in social decomposition, which could only be appealing from a place of supposed immunity to its consequences.

Donald is the walrus, a nonsense character dropped inappropriately into a drama. He has to be removed or quarantined if order is to be restored. Whoa, though. The script is being rewritten by naive people and rogues, thinking he means something.

So Donald is this or that they write in their blogs.

He is being impersonated or has been replaced. 

He's a plant and not a philodendron. 

How do we make sense of it? From the grassy knoll, perhaps?

Goo goo g'joob. 

The Republican Ten Commandments (or Operating Principles for Life)

1. "God" is a useful concept in furthering one's ends

2. Therefore, use the ruse of godliness to promote yourself

3. In other words, there is no God but never admit it

4. Though, you, yourself, are a kind of God

5. To the degree that you assert your dominance in the world

6. So it is important to honor and respect nothing

7. Including human life, which you may destroy at will 

8. And steal and lie, of course, when it suits you

9. And screw your neighbor's wife or anything else that moves 

10. Or doesn't, since you should live a covetous, greedy and 

unprincipled life

Remember, "God" stands for accountability and intelligibility. 

You want none of this. It is for fools and losers.

Smoking Thumb

Democrats are looking for a smoking Trump thumb--a misdeed so serious, despicable, undeniable and obviously illegal they can use it to take down Donald. What good is this?

Now is the time to attack all of Republicanism: the failed policies, botched implementations and false doctrines. It's time to take them all down--an attack the whole house of cards. 

An Order of Death, Hold the Taxes...

Republicans are trying to figure out how to kill people by depriving them of healthcare without having them notice, so deniability is essential. They also want to cut taxes on the rich, of course, and raise defense spending, thereby bankrupting the government and possibly wrecking the economy. 

This is Republicanism, an anti-ethic of destruction from the minds of pigs, criminals, moral reprobates and pernicious assholes. Watch as they smugly wreck everything, pleased with themselves at the primal display of their power--and at the purity and cunning of their plots to kill their fellow citizens. 

The great, culminating fight of our times is this and it hinges on when the country wakes up to the Republican scam, in relation to when it becomes unstoppable. The lines will cross. When the consolidation of power is extreme enough it won't matter even if the will to resist resurfaces full-blown.

We will be in the terrible position of helplessly watching ourselves go down the tubes, with images of Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump and the sickos Bannon and Miller swimming in our heads. That's a lot of awfulness to look forward to. 

More Harm Than Good

The critics of the Republican hegemony are a mostly civilized caste but they understate the horror of modern Republicanism and so act as enablers by launching muted criticisms into the black hole of right-wing depravity. There they tracelessly disappear. 

It's worse than wasted effort. Republicanism is now an oil well on fire. It can only be stopped by a proportional blast or running out of fuel and the fear and hate empowering it show no signs of abating. Measured criticisms only do harm by implying normalcy.

They imply that Republicans are loyal Americans working within received traditions and an accepted institutional framework. They aren't. They are thugs and revolutionaries intent on destroying our democracy. Their shy critics should get a clue or shut up.

A Sure Bet on Degradation

I have and will put money on it. Republicans are going to destroy everything. I put money on it before and won but nobody noticed. The noise of the destruction was too great. This was under Bush. Bush destroyed everything he touched and there was no accountability. 

We hired Obama and carried on but the message was there. Republicans will not be held accountable. Voilà: the system coughs up Trump, irresponsibility personified. This sort of thing occurred after the Civil War when a worn-out country chose not to insist on justice.

The South retreated into institutionalized injustice and rationalized immorality, making their deal with the devil. Finally, in the 1960's, attempts at restitution were enforced over the resistance of the degraded white population of the South. Again, these attempts failed.

Racism is a tough one. The Republican Party then made its deal with the devil. They sold their souls for electoral victories by playing the race card. Southern votes streamed in and Republicans now run everything, as they have increasingly since the days of Nixon. 

It culminates in Trump, the end point of their deliberate, destructive dysfunction. He is not an outlier or an aberration but the result of the determined will of a minority victorious through leverage and manipulation. It is not democracy or decency but the end of both. 

Asshole Breakaway

The Republicans are in the open and running for the end zone. Nobody can catch them now. They've bought the team and bribed the ref's. There's nothing worse than an asshole breakaway. 

This one seems interminable. Let them win and let's get it over with. It's one thing to get beaten. It's another to get beaten by crooks and assholes and cheats. Of course, they're the triumphalists.

They're the people who gloat. This is going to be painful as hell and it makes you want to believe in divine intervention, that there will be a splash of thunder and--kaboom--lightning strikes them.

The Least Interesting Man in the World

There's nothing tongue-in-cheek about Donald Trump. There's no irony or layering. He's too shallow for that. There's nothing interesting about Donald Trump. His world is himself. He's defined by himself. Donald is what he owns and there's nothing interesting in that. 

I won't name names but I've been shocked a couple of times to hear actors I've admired interviewed who were inarticulate to the point of vacuity. Their skills were mimetic, their selves undetermined, but there may have been something there. Not so with Trump. 

The vacuity is real--real nothingness. Yes, it's a bit of a mind-bender.

Trump is an artifact of consumerism. He's defined by his stuff and other artificial constructs--the roles he plays. There's nothing there. He's an artificial man, a brand. He's a human-like entity. Don't look for the essence of Trump. There's absolutely nothing there.

Malfeasance Monsoon

I have never been through monsoon but I understand it's an immersive experience, much like the malfeasance in Trumpworld. It's unthinking on the authorial end, a spontaneous torrent of lies.

It's passive and irresistible on the receiving end. The hype and nonsense stream down on you but we know it will end. By its nature it can't go on. Trump and his tribe will pass. But, what will be left?

Full Metal Blanket

Trump just played the asshole card on climate change, rejecting the Paris accord. Who knows why he does anything but it's a good bet that being an asshole was the point. Poor little Donnie always needs to show the world what a big man he is because, in reality, he's a cowering infant clinging to the armored security blanket of his pathetic ego.