Are We “Great Again” Yet?

A status report on Trump’s hokum indicates the promises that his business acumen would translate (abracadabra!) into an American revival (hocus-pocus) are already failed and flaming wreckage. By hook or (gong!) crook, his time on this particular stage (trap door) must end.

Privilege for Everyone

I know I rail, spit and spout about privilege. For me, though, privilege doesn't need to be exclusive. I love privilege. 

I want everyone to have it. There's some Christmas spirit for you! What I reject is exclusion. Call it the "Santa Prescription."

Find fault with that, I dare you. Conservatives are surging up from their La-Z-Boys, anyway, their faces reddening in anger. 

"We can't afford it!" Oh, yes we can. It's them we can't afford. 

Huge Hissy Fight

Wow. American conservatives, representing dignity, restraint, cultural continuity, reverence for ritual and decorum, and fine tailoring in the face of the casual revival, are having a huge hissy fight. The founders and poobahs of the recently defunct Weekly Standard, who deemed Sarah Palin a great "second" for an aging potential president, are in it with Trump and Steve King, the current standard bearers for Republican intellectual attainment and responsible, sober, professional and competent representative government.

I won't relate the actual verbiage (you can find it online) but it is a real testament to America’s ruling class and their behavioral ideals in its rhetorical finesse. To an outsider, it's confusing because the Weekly Standard boys seem to me to have encouraged voters to support their brand of imbecility forever and even after it failed in practice. How can they complain when the same voters shift to a new brand of boneheadedness? It's enough to make you wonder if the ”principles” they carry on about incessantly aren't just a lot of hooey and a smokescreen for an enormous power grab. But, what do I know.

Hate, Actually

I worry there isn't enough hate to go around in the world, keeping it in balance and promoting human welfare. It was Judas, after all, who gave Christ the opportunity to realize His destiny. Without evil, there is no goodness. Goodness wouldn't mean anything without evil. It wouldn't exist without evil. 

Praise God, all I have to do is turn on the nightly news and there is an abundance of evil on view, enough to keep us all in anticipation of the kind of transformative experience Christ encountered on the cross. Yes, if we are fortunate enough, we might even die, from want of healthcare or whatever, ending our suspense.

Persecution and enmity are everywhere in the air this Christmas season. Nativism, bigotry and nationalism thrive and flourish. Innocent people, seeking asylum like Mary and Joseph, are spat upon—rejoice, be grateful, and sing songs and hymns of praise to the Lord. We may all see Him soon, the way it is going.

Extraordinary Rendering

I think the Khashoggi murder involved a mistranslation. The Saudis were very familiar with the American practice of "extraordinary rendition," having helped and participated to an unknown degree. It's an odd, legalistic use of the word "rendition" involving the Bush administration's habit of employing euphemisms and obscure terms to rebrand their crimes as acceptable practices. 

Consider this: the US and others talk about Islam as though it is a monolithic thing, assuming or asserting that the actions of fringe elements reflect on the entire religion. Similarly, Arab and Islamic cultures might look on certain western, Christian cultures, including Nazi Germany, as representative of European, Christian values. Viewing us the way we view them turns us into Nazis and possible terrorists.

The Saudis no doubt inferred from their observations of American and western practices that it was absolutely fine, acceptable and de rigueur to kill people, cut them up into pieces and possibly "render" them by boiling or immersing them in acids--a simple misunderstanding. How should the Saudis know that the standards we carry on about don't apply to us? It is admittedly very confusing.

From Russia With Predictable Intent

Shocking! The Russians are meddling in our democracy. 

Let's begin by noting that this is a given, that countries will try to bring other countries in line with what they perceive to be their interests, however unwisely, short-sightedly and inconsistently with their professed values and intentions--except for America!

America would never do that.

Then let's note that the Russians didn't storm those virtual walls and reduce them to rubble with vast expenditures of money and unusually aggressive tactics. Republicans did that for them, firstly undoing safeguards that were there to ensure the airwaves, public property, were used responsibly. Then Republicans refused to regulate new kinds of businesses, like Facebook. They always refuse to do anything at the expense of corporate profits. 

Then let's note that the Russians are doing exactly what Fox News has been doing openly for years--undermining elections, promulgating lies and sowing the seeds of division, animosity and polarization. Americans have supported that. Americans reward that.

Don't blame Russia. They didn't accomplish anything in notably forceful, evil ways. They didn't spend huge amounts of money by NSA standards. We gave our security away. And they are lightweights at destroying our democracy in comparison with Fox News. 

Oh, Glorious Day! Die, Americans!

Again Americans are threatened with the loss of their health insurance, and thereby affordable, appropriate healthcare--and by Texas Republicans, of all people! These jihadis, a judge and an attorney general, are thrilled to declare the ACA unconstitutional, the AG tweeting excitedly in glorious victory.

Death to America!

The judge, appointed by Bush, is another hideous hack, true believer and incompetent with the usual array of Republican fixations and obsessions but it all comes down to cutting taxes on the rich and screwing everyone else. It is so extreme they would rather put a match to the money than spend it on average citizens.

This they did very effectively in the Middle East, where trillions have gone up in smoke. They begrudge lesser people everything--jobs, voting rights and even life itself. Out of respect and decency, I ask only that they kill us without the gloating and celebration. Is it so much to ask? We are still citizens, after all.

All About Eve

I believe the greatest flaw of humanity might be taking things for granted. That's what Eve did in the Garden of Eden. She lost perspective and got obsessed with the one thing she was told she couldn't have. The moral is if you take things for granted you lose them forever.

Fast forward to now. Americans, the luckiest people in the history of humanity, compulsively drill holes in their own boat and wonder why it sinks as a crew of pirates, mutineers and traitors--Republicans--navigate us off a cliff, drunk on greed. We take a lot for granted.

We will lose it forever, and all for nothing.

Broke It

Last night I made a point of trying to fall asleep in a peaceful state instead of worrying myself sick about the Republican destruction of America and their attempts to spread greed and irresponsible living around the world. 

It worked! I fell asleep quickly, slept well and had interesting dreams of the days when lunatics and assholes didn't run everything. But then I woke up, sad as hell, remembering the mess we're in. You can't win with these people.

The Liar in Winter

Things are looking bad for Trump and Trump, a vain man, is looking bad--old, haggard, stooped and spent. His eyes are vacant and his jaws seem ready to unhinge and fly away with him, Donald dangling below like flying monkey-prey. He strikes out and struggles to maintain his power. 

His world is ending. Hairy, hoary, bloated and boastful, Donald still thinks only of himself. He tries to keep control out of habit and instinct, maybe fearing his successor will be a tyrant as well or expose him as a loser, exacting justice for his crimes. Republicans fear justice more than anything.

Kanye for Chief of Staff

Trump should promote racial diversity in his administration and make Kanye his Chief of Staff. Already the executive branch is a reality show and guaranteed the good ratings any respectable trainwreck gets. Forget about running the country--a hopeless aim with Donald as president. 

Opt for a better spectacle. We'll get a better spectacle with Kanye. Kim will certainly stir things up and maybe have a rivalry with Melania. It should be entertaining as hell and Americans only seem to care about not being bored. To hell with living responsibly. To hell with the future.

Oh, My God! The Emails!

Republicans have bankrupted the government, nearly destroyed the world economy, started endless, cowardly wars in the service of commerce killing over a million people, eviscerated the American middle class and reduced farmers to fodder. Still, Hillary Clinton's emails make them crazy with a zeal for investigations and prosecutions.

John Kelly Heads for the Door

There's no way to make a dignified exit spattered and covered with the effluvia of Donald Trump's intestines but let's watch John Kelly try. Like Pence his constipated countenance seems to mask or reveal an attempt to make up for their master's excesses. 

Trump, however, is such a regenerative shit-bomb there is no escaping unsullied and for this association his underlings will be remembered forever. They were Trump's hacks and lackeys. Give them a twelve-step program but, for God's sake, get them out of there. 

Antics Roadshow

We have to begin with the obvious, that Donald Trump isn't even trying to do his job and should be fired. I, however, think Trump is especially egregious when he is away from Washington, the further the more so. 

Credit this to cowardice. Donald gets nervous and acts up even more when out of a comforting, secure, womb-like environment, ideally owned by him. He's a strange kind of control freak. It explains his penchant for attacking anyone at a pin-drop.

Fear-aggression, it is called, and Donald is full of it. Try that on for comfort, America. Your president is the worst person you could have chosen for the job. Ask yourselves, why? Why the fuck would we put this hopeless goon in charge?

Trump acts as though he's escaped from parental supervision when he's off somewhere. Daddy will ride to the rescue when he screws up. Who's going to ride in now? We all are, cleaning up another Republican catastrophe.

Trump is Toast

Donald is going down, one way or another. Make ready the lifeboats. I doubt that Donald's pride will allow him to abandon ship without scuttling something. Bigger will be better, to show the world what a nice dick he has after all. That's all that matters. 

You Could Be a Roux

Like a lot of people I've been thinking more about death lately--both my own and death in general--because of the influence of Donald Trump. I'm trying to get comfortable with the idea of cremation but it seems awfully arid to me and dehydrating--not my style.

I'm more of a cream sauce kind of guy. Maybe I could be made into that somehow. Or a roux. No, I think I will opt for natural burial, like a Trappist monk, with a pine box, a hole in the ground and nothing more. These are strange thoughts but Donald will do that to you. 

Perverse Mueller Outcome

We all know Donald Trump declares bankruptcy when he's in too deep and heads for the hills reinventing himself along the way. He could do that now and blame it on the Democrats for insidiously interfering with his presidency, returning to his life of private crime. But then he loses his immunity from prosecution.

Perversely, I think Mueller might keep Trump in office. Trump needs the protection. 

Rogue Species Threatens Planet

A rogue species, Homo Sapiens, is threatening the Earth with imminent destruction. When asked about this the titular head and representative of the world’s most powerful political entity, the United States of America, said “fuck you” and called the interviewer a “flaming loser” and threatened her with investigation and prosecution by the Department of Justice and other entities assumed to be under his control.

The representative then commented on her ass and tits and asked her to accompany him to a hotel owned by him and bragged about his greatness and immense wealth. When further pressed about planetary annihilation he said he would be dead anyway and that his heirs and family would have enough money to save themselves and who gave a shit about a bunch of bugs, beasts, birds and poor people anyway.

Dying is for Losers

Donald Trump, always the center of his own attention, paid his disrespects to former president Bush (41) at his funeral, scowling his way through it and failing to utter the Apostle's Creed. He forgets how Bush helped him by raising up the Atwaterites and assorted College Republicans in preparation for the end-times in our country.

No Atwater, no Newt Gingrich. No abhorrent slimefest and national dissolution. No moral bankruptcy. No endless wars. No Great Recession. No government insolvency. No outrageous polarization and bureaucratic meltdown. Deprofessionalizing everything is a Republican trademark. It frees up the free market for enhanced exploitation. 

Without the Bushes there would be no President Donald Trump. Honor your roots, Don-Boy. The Bushes, with their arrogance, exaltation of obliviousness and win-at-all-costs political tactics paved the way for your hideous candidacy and rule of incompetence and ruin. Bushes embraced their depravity and mass murdering with some decorum.

Where's your decorum, Donald? Don't worry, there's no problem being a self-centered, self-serving schmuck and flaming dirigible of incompetence while appearing gracious. For that pioneering insight we credit Reagan and the Bushes, fuming their way into into the hearts of hordes of budding American sociopaths, a precedent for Donald.

What Child is This?

Watch Donald Trump walk off the stage... Yes, it happened again somewhere, our impetuous, impulsive, pretender president failing to meet the most minimal standards of propriety, decency and respect. At what age is he arrested? 

A contest should be held for the best answer to that. There are layers of it, I believe, but nothing exceeding, overcoming or surpassing adolescence. Is he regressing? We keep asking unanswerable questions about Trump in our fear and frustration. 

Some genius chose Pence as Trump's running mate and evangelical sidekick, ensuring a horrific end to fantasies of removing Trump from office and, I hope, the unincarcerated share of the population. HE belongs in jail, not those he threatens.

Juvenile detention. Reform school. Walk off the national stage, big boy! We'll take care of Pence, with our Democratic Congress. Impeach his ass. Fire his ass and hold his ass to the fire. Besiege him with gays, heathen, immigrants and apostates.

Normalcy? Who aspires to that these days? A rebirth of our nation is needed, this Christmas season, starting by expelling all the money lenders and smarmy-mouthed hypocrites, parading their self-righteousness, from the temple of democracy.

In the Spirit of Donald Trump...

I blame Trump for the death of Anthony Bourdain. For me, Bourdain represented the love of authenticity. Trump represents the ascendency of sham everything--celebrating shit. 

As American culture penetrates to every corner authenticity is threatened with extinction. I don't think Bourdain could take it. Trump is the elevation and reverence of garbage.

Fuck Trump. Screw Trump and banish Trump. Drive Trump into exile and bury him on a golf course when he dies, stuck under a sand trap and entombed in tartan and gaudy plaid. 

Golfing is Donald's virtual thing, an aimless romp in an artificial environment of a lunar level of unreality. I'll take Bourdain. May he rest in peace and Trump be forever reviled.

The New Usual

Republicans in Wisconsin are employing an old and favored tactic of their party, sabotage, in a new way pioneered in North Carolina—salting the fields of democracy. Elections, fair play and the will of the people no longer matter.

China Syndrome

Donald Trump is trying to put the blame for the sinking American middle class on China or anyone but the real culprits, Republican politicians and their wealthy patrons who have, for forty years, done everything to screw working people and enrich themselves.

Americans can fix this by undoing evil Republican legislation and deregulation, beginning with Trump's own tax cuts. Rich people like Trump don't like to be told what to do. They don't want to be responsible for anything. But it's their fault. Don't blame China.

George H. W. Bush and the Roots of Sociopathic Rule

To understand Bush “41” watch the movie Boogie Man. There you will see how Lee Atwater got Bush elected. You will see the link between evangelical Christians and American old-money mobilized. You will see how those groups are united in the assumptions of privilege—one by believing in their innate, unmerited salvation, the other their inborn superiority and excellence. They were arbitrarily, irrevocably and unjustifiably endowed.

By this they are instilled with a lack of circumspection and conscience. How they behave doesn’t matter, the issue having been decided definitively by higher authority. Evangelicals can't imagine that they are wrong in their beliefs. God tells them they are right. Blue bloods like the Bushes also can't imagine that they aren’t infinitely deserving, existentially correct and incapable of materially significant error, by fate and cultural conditioning.

Not that this is ever consciously doubted or questioned. That’s the point. It leads to Trump, in whom the quality of action is so severed from reality behaving horribly is a good thing. Trump’s depravity and incompetence are signs. He was in some way chosen. He has never soiled his hands with work but his soul was blackened with corruption from birth. Let’s remember the real role George H. W. Bush played in the destruction of America.

And that, before we even begin to consider his son.

Gateway to Hate

Trump and the Republican Party, his opportunistically chosen vehicle of ambition, are now the gateway to hate for millions of Americans. Their message rings out this holiday season: hate has a home here.

Trump Presidency Gas Bags Its Way to Calamity

Donald Trump’s blimped-out administration is going all Hindenburg. Oh, the humanity!

The Man with the Bag

Trump is playing "Bad Santa" this holiday season, persecuting people right and left. His bag of gifts includes cruelty at the border, continuing sabotage of Obamacare and slinging insults at everyone. Merry Christmas, America. Behold what you have become in the era of Trump, the opposite of everything Christmas represents. And fuck you, Donald Trump, and the evil, racist sleigh you rode in on.

Sariah Law

Sariah Law, as proclaimed and promulgated by Sarah Sanders, is authoritarian and ordained by God and his chosen ministers of righteousness, led by Donald Trump. It can't be argued against, challenged or constrained. 

To all the poor wretches out there who don't understand this, especially the lying, fake-news idiots in the White House press pool, just shut up. This is not about the truth but authority. Accountability is off the table.

Trump and the Cherry Tree

When little Donnie Trump was six years old he received a hatchet as a gift and maimed a cherry tree on his father's property. His father enquired: "Donnie, did you maim my cherry tree?" Donnie responded "No, father. That is fake news put out by angry Democrats." His father was bursting with pride as Donnie further explained that all the witnesses had signed non-disclosure agreements and had been threatened as well. Lawyers were issuing denials and destroying evidence of hatchets ever having been in his possession. 

Now, we know this is a fable concocted by Parson Huckabee and circulated by his daughter, Sarah, to illustrate a point: once your "chosen" status is guaranteed by wealth and worldly success it doesn't matter what you do. You are going to heaven anyway. Similarly, the good works of the social justice warriors will never earn them arbitrarily unmerited salvation so they are fair game and may be reviled and persecuted with all the other heathen. They are doomed, recipients of an unavoidable, unintelligible and cruel destiny. 

The moral is that there is no justice in this life. Only apostates and unbelievers seek it in their folly. In fact it is an insult to God and an attempt to circumvent his will to think that earthly existence has any meaning since it is all fated and predetermined anyway. We are animals in a holding pen awaiting slaughter. If we act like animals it is as it should be. The strong may dominate and abuse the weak. Innocent people may be killed. It is all by God's design. Nothing matters. This is the root of the evangelical rule of despair.

Life is a cruel joke. Self-serving, greedy and cynical people understand this. Others are losers and idiots. Trump has noted them as such, seeing through to the truth. Evangelicals revere Trump for this. The real truth exists apart from reason. It is revealed to believers alone, in the literal interpretation of sacred writings and emotional events in revival tents under the authority of those chosen by God for his ministry, like Jimmy Swaggart. Human reason is heretical, a tool of weak minds. Spiritual truth resides in lies.

Eyes on Trump

Trump thinks he was elected to do whatever he wants--to be our boss. In actuality he is supposed to work for us. I suggest we put cameras on our president, both pointing at him and one attached to his MAGA hat or combover. Let the people see how their employee spends his days.

Surely this will be enlightening, more like a wildlife study than anything else, a look into a person with all the sophistication, intelligence, and organizational and planning capabilities of a hedgehog, but less cute. "Let Trump be Trump" said some of his backers. I want to see what that means. 

That is our right. We are his employers. Geofencing and curfews might also impose some discipline and accountability on his improvisational presidency. The boy needs supervision and only we, collectively, can provide it. Trump-cam is sure to be a hit, generating funds to help maintain him.

He is very expensive to care for, continuing to suck down resources as recklessly as always. Now he is wasting our money at will. We will want to put a cap on that. It is time to corral Trump, perhaps with the aid of robotics and drones. John Kelly couldn't do it. I'm not saying it will be easy.

But it must be done. Trump is a child. He needs to be curtailed and contained.

Raiders of the Lost Can of Worms

Donald Trump isn’t compelled to plumb the depths of himself because he finds himself most interesting. It's worse than that. It will happen because he’s the only thing that exists to him. The rest of us aren’t even imaginings. 

We have no hint of existence. This is the man to whom the American people entrusted their nuclear arsenal and military might. For Donald there was no real surprise. He’s the last resort and destiny has placed him there.

His rise wasn't only the inevitable result of his greatness. He was always alone at the top but it took a while for the physics of it to play out as the inert, valueless matter, meaning us and the rest of humanity, sunk to the bottom.

There it belongs, leaving him free to breath the rarified air of divinity in a place reflecting his unprecedented and incomprehensible fineness and superiority. Never before has there been such a specimen of humanity.

Never again will there be. Trump is seeing to that. Increasingly the world is Donald Trump turned inside out, a morass of filth and can of worms for the ages. The world must end with him for the drama of it all to make sense. 

He wills it so. He is the ark, covenant and end-point of creation. He thinks so. Try to tell him otherwise. And good luck with that. On the scales of life Donald outweighs the rest of creation. That's his assessment of things.

Mercilessly Ugly and Irresponsible

I don’t think there’s any way to capture, in words, what’s going on in our society these days. It is too primal and insidious. We kind of have to dance around it, selecting some area for an impressionistic description and abandoning attempts at verbal containment. Right now I’m resisting the impulse to try to characterize it.

It can’t be done justice. Therefore, “mercilessly ugly and irresponsible” is my glancing blow for today at all the indefinable insanity. 

The One True Church of Trump

Be not amazed. Not only will all be revealed it already has--to those with eyes to see and ears to hear. God's plan is playing out as it should. Nothing humanity can do will stop it and therefore Trump must be part of the plan, a herald and administrator for the final days, which you should welcome. 

The righteous will receive their reward and be beside God. The rest will perish like those poor fuckers in that fire which was surely a sign and intimation of the fate of unbelievers. Our Babylon is about to be destroyed as was prophesied so batten down the hatches, boys. Trump is our agent of doom.

We welcome him for that.

Your Order Has Shipped!

America People: economic meltdown, environmental catastrophe and societal collapse have shipped! These are on their way and should arrive any day. Thank you for your order. Returns are not accepted. And thanks for shopping at the Republican Warehouse of Worn-Out Ideas!

Trump and the Unknown Unknown

Donald Trump is too stupid to know how stupid he is.

House of Turds

Americans can’t even muster real villains these days. Ours are cardboard. We have offenders so arrested they’re in diapers or, in any case, not potty proficient, and then legions of ass-wipes. The ass-wipes interest me. Who chooses such a trade? And then serves transparently ludicrous pretenders?

Is it any wonder they are so sensitive about their dignity? They trail Trump around, or Bush before him, cleaning up mess after hideous mess. How dare anyone malign, challenge or insult them as they tail Master Donald with reams of two-ply, sani-wipes and powder with which to dust his white-ass ass?

Americans always were derivative--a nation of imposters, charlatans and wannabes aspiring to some kind of borrowed authenticity. Even that eludes us. It isn’t novel to suggest we are a people destined to track to and converge on a lowest common aspect. But who ever thought the lowest would be so low?

God help us--we inhabit episodes of Maury and Jerry Springer. And reruns, no less. It is so unworthy it calls into question the survival and possibility of dignity. Go now, and marvel at every lie of Sarah Sanders. Her brother is said to have once hung a dog from a tree, you know. Maury, are you there?

You Might Never Wake Up

My father's life got destroyed as we, his kids, hit adolescence and I think he just carried on as best he could assuming he and we would come out the other end of it someday and there would be a return to normalcy. There never was. We never recovered. 

That is my fear with Trump. We think it's a phase or growing-pains or not representative or temporary insanity or whatever. Having been through a situation that didn't play out well it makes me very nervous, suspicious and skeptical. We might never recover.

I Am at Peace

Not really, but I believe we help to create and influence reality by the way we think. So, what the hell, I might as well try.

Someone to Gloat Over Me . . .

Correct me if I'm wrong--isn't Donald Trump and that incredible array of crooks he's imported into the federal bureaucracy SUPPOSED TO WORK FOR US? 

As far as I can see every single person in Trump's orbit, meaning all of us, whether supporters or resisters, share a common fate in relation to him--to be dominated, disrespected and gloated over, as underlings and degraded hangers-on or defeated opponents and losers. We are all monogrammed or branded now as serfs and servants, lost lambs on the Isle of Trump, herded hopefully over assorted cliffs, sacrificed and burnt to embers in honor of the gods of greed or marched into the ocean and drowned for fun. 

The New Gelded Age

When "Trump, the Opera" comes out there will be a chorus of castrati representing the Republican white boys, many of them paid, elected representatives, who have abandoned their souls and kowtow to Trump, singing the praises of Donald--paeans--and songs of submission and fealty.

Their sopranos are aghast at criticisms of their master. They dance frantically while wailing about fake news. Tom Cotton, Trey Gowdy, Mitch McConnell, and even Lindsey "Cracker" Graham, an unreliable witness, lead the cast. They were gelded long ago, critics observe, but this is different.

The level of degradation is just so extreme.

Trumpolini and the Midterm Meltdown

How does a fascist respond to defeat? Denial. Insults. Lies. Accusations and inflammatory, divisive rhetoric.

Fascists respond to defeat with threats. Fascists isolate themselves and their followers and preach revenge.

Trump is a fascist. His followers and acolytes are fascists. The Republican Party is the American Fascist Party.

Way to go, boys. We are shadows of our past selves, vain and unrecognizable, trailing a troll into the abyss.

The Peoples Temple of Trump

More people than we know probably want to escape from the People's Temple of Trump but they are afraid--and with good reason. Even before the coming of Donald nothing but enslavement to Republican dogma had been tolerated within. Remember that John Roberts, after ruling against the overthrow of Obamacare, was threatened in various ways and verbally attacked.

Washington lives with this anxiety. James Comey gave in to it before the election, releasing info on Hillary to avoid later accusations. He surely assumed she would win, having too much faith in the voters. Republicanism is a religion and Trumpism a rogue sect of swamp slime, a cult of personality and venality. Dissent is not allowed. Believers must remain spellbound and obedient.

There is nothing irrational in fearing their wrath. Trump's only skill is in demeaning and threatening other people. He is the great belittler. The "rule of law" is nothing to him and there is no higher place to appeal. The courts are increasingly under his control. He thinks so and will tolerate no resistance to his whims. His wishes are the law. His desires are to be indulged unquestioningly.

Notice how he retreats into reassuring pastimes as his administration crumbles, playing golf and holding rallies in which he is treated adoringly when he is supposed to be running a country. This behavior presages his doom--and ours. He is running from reality and will only escape with blood on his hands. Confronted with his own inconsequence, he will exact a terrible revenge. 

The spirit of Jim Jones is alive in Trump. He must play God or everyone dies. Drink not the Kool-Aid. Watch for wavering cultists. They will slip notes to you requesting help. Never doubt the fanaticism of the true believers. They will destroy anyone and themselves before they give up. They exist for Trumpian grandiosity and the parallel reality of their morally benighted master.

The American people have made a madman and lunatic the most powerful person in the world. He controls a nuclear arsenal and commands a vast military machine. The lives of other people are meaningless. Only those who serve him have value, contingent on their continuing usefulness. Absenting real threats he still attacks constantly. God help us if he is truly threatened. 

God help us anyway.

Inherit the Whine

In our topsy-turvy world victors whine their asses off. Republicans have controlled everything for decades through strong-arm methods and deceit, creating a mess and culminating in Trump, in whom injustice and incompetence are personified. 

Ill-will compounds it at the defensive perimeter where accountability is denied. There must be no accountability because the crimes are too great. Republicans guard that door with heavy artillery and the armor of delusional aggression.

Within the walls there is wealth and hordes of degraded lackeys serving their masters. Outside the walls increasingly powerless people scavenge for scraps. Lord Donald looks out from his tower and reviles, rebukes and insults the paupers.

How dare they expect anything? How dare they meekly try to assert their rights? Donald is the one who has been wronged. His true inflated greatness is yet to be recognized. He bawls like a baby over every imagined slight and lashes out. 

He will never stop whining. The massive void and vacuum inside him can never be fixed or filled. A soul would normally reside there. Trump is a monster. Blame his supporters, the lovers of death and despair, for this ascendency.

I Had a Dream

I vaguely remember how I ended up with the kind of life I have now. It was a kind of a choice. More accurately, it was a hazy intention or "bent" actualized and playing out through opportunism and improvisation. It could have been vastly different on the surface and that intent would still be there.

As an adolescent I was an idiot, a sponge soaking up everything indiscriminately, mostly garbage. Bad luck was interpreted by me as injustice, reading meaning into something entirely arbitrary and accidental, but it caused me to start my researches, initially into Sartrean existentialism. 

Some of the early environmental writings had a huge effect on me. Small is Beautiful, by E. F. Schumacher, seemed so obviously true I couldn't imagine societal evolution occurring in any other way. Rampant corporatism would make most people miserable and so surely they would reject it, right?

Wrong! Was I ever naïve, but not about the misery. Sixties idealism, social-justice Catholicism, and encountering some Mennonites on a farm all made me want to have a simple life lower down in the economic food-chain, closer to nature and perhaps being directly, physically, elementally productive.

How hard could it be? I was living in a land awash in resources and grew up in a city with an enormous middle class. That city is now the opioid capital of the country, by the way. And for me? I have a simple and pleasant life. I am directly, physically productive. But I am plagued by the awareness of injustice.

There is nothing accidental or arbitrary about the misery being foisted on many Americans. It is deliberate and the result of deceit and a quest for unbridled power among a minority of rich, sociopathic, self-serving people. My personal dream is intact. My expectations for our society are destroyed.

Smallness is still beautiful. Find it wherever you can. Hold onto it and have it nurture you because the macrocosm is going totally to shit. 

Prepare Yourselves

Well, Americans, sit back now and watch as your country is destroyed by the hideous piece of shit Donald Trump. Whatever the reality Trump thinks his disgraceful fear-mongering and appeals to assorted forms of tribal hatred served him well in the midterms.

That means we are going to get plenty more of it. The end of life as we have known it is here. Hold on to your hats.

Election Disaster

The election results are not as they seem. The "good guys" did not win. Democrats have never been able to stop the Republican assault and they won't be able to now. 

Nobody knew what kind of president Donald Trump would be. Now we know. He is possibly the biggest piece of rubbish in human history and Americans still support him.

Americans reveal themselves to be mean, ignorant and bigoted, the equivalent of hardened criminals. They are owning their depravity. Americans are embracing hate.

Americans have rejected righteousness. They have given up on justice and decency. We are witnessing the spiraling of a society into ruin, a national fall from grace.

Republicans are an identity movement, defined only by resentment. Their stand for nothing but their own dominance. There are no principles or rational policies. 

They are lost. And they are taking us all down with them.

Bridge Over Troubled WaWa

Poor Donald wants to be a hero so he has to invent crises. He's so arrested it's like watching an infant with its play-toys mimicking adult behaviors.

There's Trump with his cap gun at the border defending the country against... helpless refugees fleeing countries destroyed by us. Go, Donald!

Be a big man! But there's no daddy to bail him out now. We will be left with the mess, just as with George Bush, a man of similar psychological makeup.

How hopelessly, pathetically screwed up these Republicans are. How defeated and complicit we are in their delusions. We live in fear of goblins and ghosts.

The thing to fear is Republicans. That's the secret and the reason for their aggression and belligerence--fear of the exposure of their incompetence.

The Rapture is Upon Us

Behold the signs. A man named Trump trumpets the "end times" with a droning appeal to hatred, persecution and fear. The damned self-select, flocking to him, choosing evil and revealing their preference for hate.

Envy stalks the land as hordes line up on the side of resentment and division, claiming this puts them on the side of God, a mortal sin and blasphemy. The devil’s lies are everywhere ascendant. Trump is triumphant. 

He gloats. He goads and insults the weak, the Children of God. Those who choose love are mocked and abused. Confusion is everywhere. Lines of moral consensus are obliterated. Anger prevails. Truth is crushed.

Yes, the end times are upon us, not as deemed and determined by God but chosen by us. The gift of free will is used to renounce human decency and dignity. We have chosen death. We have chosen destruction.

We have chosen the devil's agent, Trump. The walls are breached. The blasphemers and killers of Christ march in victory. Hope is hard to come by. If you pray please do so now. The crisis of God's creation is here.

Vote Against the Goon

How hard is that?

Assholes to Ashes

My only real hope now is that we can be reborn out of the ashes of our past selves. We have already failed and imploded and don't know it yet. As surely as our "leaders" are walking corpses and avatars of the undead America is a machine without a living soul, soon so inhuman the vultures won't even need our bodies for sustenance.

Ashes we are, desiccated beyond the point of reconstitution and rebirth. Our Camelot is brought down not in high drama and a battle with identifiable evil fighting good but in bathos, petty bullshit and meaninglessness compounding itself and growing exponentially into its own doom in a petri dish expanded to the ends of the earth. 

Assholes have brought us there, the court jesters of the apocalypse wreaking revenge for years of humiliation inflicted on themselves by themselves because of authority issues or whatever imaginary nonsense compels them, a sick internal reality now exploding into a compulsion to crush normal people and their standards of decency.

We never cared about them in the first place and they can't see it. They are still punks and pretenders. They aren't winners but louts who have made losers of us all--more so of us because they had less to lose in the first place being idiots and imposters. They are now the lords of dust and ashes, a world in ruins bereft of hope and salvation.