The Lies Have a Life of Their Own

Nobody will ever be able to say we didn't have the opportunity to choose the truth. My God, we have been obliterated by a tidal wave of lies and survey that rubble still incapable of seeing the reality for what it is, an entire culture and empire of dishonesty. For the people behind this the situation is stark.

Evangelical Christians think they must have their lies or die. There is no negotiating room. They are delusional, manning the barricades of denial and falsehood with determination, aborting decency. The lies lead to death. Death it is, then. By failing to uproot the lies we have allowed their flourishing.

Fascist Feeding Frenzy

Wow. The actions and behaviors of the most powerful country ever are being determined by its most extreme and irresponsible elements through their infantile emperor, Donald Trump. This lunacy is spontaneously refining itself into its purest, most toxic and aggressive form as Rush and Ann hurry in, compulsively competing for more of our carcass.

Ecstatic Sarah

The Republican insanity is reaching extasis. Their Delphic Oracle and sybil, Sarah Sanders, speaks in stories and riddles indecipherable by the journalistic rabble. Only the pure of heart understand. "A great empire will fall." Hell, yeah. We're watching it happen.

Sarah is speaking in tongues, inspired by the Holy Spirit--or Beelzebub, as you will. Fox News speaks in tongues as well. She--they--are beside themselves, somewhat permanently out-of-body in premonition of their divine fate--to be raptured and reunited with God.

Or, they might be damned to hell. I don't think they care. The critical thing is to participate in the divine drama, not some miserable human mess and masquerade defined by reason and Democrats. Reason is pitiful. Reason is not the language of divinity and destiny.

They will roll the dice, content to be saved, savaged by heathen or swept up by Satan. A primal drama must be had. Don't look to Sarah or Fox for human truth. They are way beyond that, in the dissociating domain of extraterrestrials. They are that, they think.

And they impatiently await a return to their celestial home. They are divine beings trapped in sorry materiality. But what about those poor humanoids, the rest of us, deemed by them to be without divine spark? We deserve nothing. We deserve misery and death. 

We are inconsequential, soulless chaff, empty earthen vessels and unevolved hominid mud people abandoned by God--to be ignored, used, or annihilated if we get in the way. Yet, I humbly ask, from my puny point-of-view, does Sarah seem celestial to you?

Subvert the Dominance Paradigm

What is the core view and object of America's new controlling factions, plutocrats and despicable neo-Confederates claiming to be Christians? They believe that some people are innately better and more deserving as dictated by God or revealed by personal performance in life, never mind that we are already in a situation where inherited money is largely determining everything.

And never mind that other, arbitrary circumstances are known usually to play a deciding role in life-success. THEIR groups were "chosen" and they are INFINITELY deserving. Everyone else is cannon fodder. Their domination is therefore circumstantial but deemed by them to be merited and inevitable. They think they invented it, like adolescents and sex, but it's the oldest trick out there. 

Rape and pillage, winner-take-all, and don't look back. Their core doctrine and aim is domination and exploitation, screwing others mercilessly. Justice doesn't concern them. Trust me on this, they can get millions of people killed, including their own, and not give a shit. Or billions. They like big, dramatic numbers even when not attached to dollar signs. It's that fatalistic perspective they have.

No matter what, they are not responsible and it simply doesn't matter. 

National Emergency Noise

The notion of a national emergency has been reduced to noise. The term evokes images of Pearl Harbor, the Blitz and the Battle of Britain. New images are replacing those, of helpless migrants seeking refuge and resettlement after their societies have been destroyed by America's drug demand and political interference.

Children are jailed. Their parents are separately detained and thrust into containment centers--concentration camps. Racism is rife. A wall is in the works. Totalitarianism and empire-building are on display, echoing Stalin and Hitler. Our Oedipal president constantly parades around, trying to prove he is a big man.

This shame will be hard to outlive. 

Wife of Re-Education Minister Touts Measles

Darla Shine, wife of Trump's Minster of Propaganda, Re-education and Rebuttal, Bill Shine, is recommending against vaccinations for children, further embracing the race-to-the-gutter mindset of Republicans and especially Trump himself. The surplus population of "takers" must be weakened or diminished so the rich can have access to more resources. 

Thereby the engines of free enterprise will be unshackled and enhanced, with the results trickling down to the masses sometime after the world ends. And, measles builds character, right-wing sources are reporting. Who knows what they really think. Thinking isn't a useful tool anyway. Consciences are nothing but a nuisance. Accountability is for losers.

But measles might kill you. In the end the lies of the right have intrinsic value, not just because they erode accountability and stultify people into drones and zombies incapable of discerning the truth. Republicans love lies now out of familiarity, loyalty, aesthetic devotion and familial, emotional bonding, independently of goals or objectives. 

Both Sides Now

There is no "other side" in the argument against genocide. There is no other side in arguments against hate--the reviling and persecution of innocent people.

Therefore, there is no other side in the argument against Trump and Trumpism. As a political force it must be destroyed, before it destroys us. And it will destroy us. 

There is no dialectic in fascism. There is one way--their way--and anyone disagreeing must be obliterated. The doctrine is domination--the annihilation of dissent.

The "both sides" thing only works if it is mutually respected. Otherwise, it is a "wolves and sheep" thing. Trump is the head wolf. But he's a bully, a pussy predator.

He only hunts in packs. Disempower Trump. Deprive him of his pack. He's nothing without the support of his hordes and cave-dwelling masses of degenerates.

There is no "both sides" to hate.

The American Song of Hate

Every day we have to listen to the Republican song of hate, with Donald Trump conducting. That, or cut yourself off from everything. The American song of hatred is that pervasive. Notice how few Republicans resist. Democratic influence isn't an option.

Nor is compromise. Democracy isn't an option. Also notice how well Republicans did in their last spell of social control, the Bush years. They bankrupted the government, lied us into endless, murderous wars and obliterated the world economy with deregulation.

Trump is on track to outdo Bush. Just give him some time. Or, maybe not. What a thought. Let's pull the plug on Trump. Impeach Trump. Drive Trump from office. Put Trump in jail and take all his loot. We know now it was all acquired by criminal means anyway.

Forty Years A-Screwing

An important time for remembrance is ahead. In only 40 years Republicans have managed to deconstruct the American Dream. We know now how it worked because it is in pieces. This wasn't an analytical deconstruction it was actual. The dream is dead.

Attaching a date to this is an unsure thing but I will choose it beginning in 1980, the glorious dawn of Reaganomics, when Americans voted to believe in a comforting lie. We had been primed for this through attitudes of self-righteousness and exceptionalism. 

When came the 60s, a decade of optimism, skepticism and effervescent energy, ending in assassinations and Nixon. Conservatives, supposedly preservationists typified by stodgy old white men trying to be Tories in a land without titles, recoiled and revolted. 

Well, hell, they became Tories. Royalists. Victorious ones, at that.

But how? They sold their souls to the Taliban, or the nearest available thing, generational remnants of the Confederacy. Those remnants were REALLY mad about desegregation. A deal was struck. Rednecks voted Republican in return for promises of restitution.

Promises, dog-whistle style. Southerners are raised on dissimulation, making things look like what they aren't. Politically incorrectly, but sincerely, it's ALL LIES.

Restitution, and a restoration of their oligarchy of segregated greed. They didn't want money for confiscated slaves, duh. They want a lower class of black people doomed forever to despair. Black people carry the burden of the degeneracy of white southerners. 

Somebody has to do it. The shame is too much for them to bear. Anyway, 2020 is the year to celebrate their triumph. Sure, the rednecks screwed themselves in the process but they didn't care as long as the darkies were kept down. At that they have succeeded.

Enhanced Otherness

Bigotry requires enhanced otherness. It requires we believe other people are more different from us than they are. They are more alike.

Paradise in Trouble

The New Jerusalem is turning out to be such a shithole. As evangelicals continue their rise, working hand-in-glove with corporate crooks, America becomes more miserable.

On measures of social welfare America is lagging and getting worse. America is getting meaner. Evangelicals are at fault. Theirs is a paradise of persecution and judgment.

Evangelicals believe they are sure of salvation. Jesus told them they were saved. So, why not play God? Or golf? If they destroy the world it is God's will. God must hate creation.

They hate creation. Therefore, the New Jerusalem is a land of contempt, cynicism and greed, reigned over by their lord of contempt, Donald Trump. That is their will. 

That is God's will, according to them.

Being Nothing

Can something be nothing? I would argue, yes, because a being can be too inauthentic to map onto reality, too vacuous to occupy existential space. Take Trump. The void within is greater than the man so he lives at an existential deficit, which he is compelled to try to remediate. Obviously, the struggle to demonstrate worth evidences its absence.

Animals, plants and other inanimate things can’t be inauthentic by nature, lacking consciousness, which is the ability to stand back from oneself, among other things. Only a conscious being can betray itself out of existence. But notice how citizens flock to Trump, desiring the same oblivion, a loss of humanity. Being human is a privilege, a gift.

People evolve within a lifetime, in ways other things can’t. But life is also a responsibility, not to betray consciousness by slipping into an abyss of devolution, embracing compulsion, as does Donald. Notice how Trump actually degrades the humanity of everyone around him. Sadly, human beings can be worthless, Donald being a case. He condemns himself.

Every moment he is alive the world is worse and he is no better. Don't condemn yourself with him. Don't betray and degrade yourself. His being is nothingness. Responsible societies protect their members from such monsters. We put him in charge of everything. 

Royal Apothecary Ladies Await

Armageddon is upon us but white women will have their abortions, no matter what. Something is coming to an end, either just America or the world--I can't tell which--but Democratic women are manning the abortion booth at the Republican Renaissance Faire. A bang-up business it is, as you can imagine. 

Everyone wants a pro-choice sticker for their donkey cart, right? Before virtual reality there was role-play. Republicans have recreated anachronism as a political force, insisting on free time and improvisation instead of something resembling policy and work. Attach the armor and gird the loins, trusty steward, Donald will fight the horrid heathen with his big sword, as did Bush, under corporate sponsorship, and with mead and a feast of venison at the end, a predetermined, celebratory outcome.

It's all fixed. None of it is real. Their estate is kept afloat by vassals and serfs.

His father initiated the thing, buying Donald adventures while alive and endowing his son's future with amusement. Donald will wear laurel or there will be shutdowns and tantrums. No wonder his interest in professional wrestling. Generationally, these Republican battles are more medieval than modern, abounding with elder knights reeling and lunging with swords at fake, feeble and starven enemies. Think like Wall Street, an insular game. The silver-haired, boastful host's vanity keeps him always in view. 

Enter the ladies of the Royal Apothecary, whose potions prevent pregnancy or end it if that fails, marching in place of the jousts with their handbills and banners, interrupting the spectacles. However socially responsible, they are horrible entertainment and they are heckled and driven away with a fusillade of ripened fruit and other stuff--anything the crowds can get their hands on. Masses must be amused and the mistresses remind everyone of shrews and spoilsports. Who wants responsibilities?

Donald and his disciples intend to expose unwanted infants on hillsides and rocky places instead. And even some wanted ones, just for fun. The wenches are condemned for political correctness and comeliness lacking. Meanwhile, the games continue, all funded for Donald by bankers whose logos emblazon his shields and cover his steeds. Mind-numbing profits are made. A portion is spread thinly among the rabble, ensuring docility and contentment. One has to play the game, to some degree. 

That is the moral of this episode. Democrats can't win back the working classes with a platform brandable as promoting transexuality and infanticide. You wonder why so many working people voted for Trump? Wake the fuck up, fair ladies. Before 2020, if possible. It isn't the reality that counts anymore, it's the branding, and the bad stuff is very well branded. It's buried, in fact, in fanfare, trumpeting and pageantry.

To Form a More Perfectionist Union

Perfectionism is a disease, related to Utopianism. Perfectionism is divorced from reality in proportion to its severity because reality is awfully messy and imperfect, always changing. People are messy and imperfect. Perfectionists set themselves up as gods, as the agents and enforcers of standards, so they are always judging, always dissatisfied and always angry. The lens is never turned on them. 

Not consciously. Unconsciously, however, perfectionists are always the objects of their own contempt. That contempt is turned onto the world around them and its inhabitants. Us. Deists understood that only God was immune to imperfection and therefore unchanging. Systems are unchanging and perfect in their flux, if that makes sense. The parts come and go, into and out of existence. 

Nature plays the averages. We are among the parts. 

We come and go, into and out of existence. Perfectionists are in denial of this, so they're in denial of their humanity. Institutionally, perfectionism and Utopianism are represented in America by Calvinists. Their eyes are always on God, as the point of comparison, so they despise life. They despise creation for its imperfection and "the flesh" for its corruption. They long for the destruction of creation.

Fundamentalists are the most imperfect of us all and in denial of their imperfection, living in the certainty of salvation, as self-appointed guards in the prison of life. They live within the bounds of original sin, never escaping, taking for granted the gift of life. They look at the thing they cannot have, God's own status, and they covet it. They spend their lives obsessed with other people's morality. 

Why? Look at theirs. It's the worst of all. They are our Hell.

Our Fearless Leader...

is a piece of shit. Republicans, say after me, ”Our fearless leader is a piece of shit." Free your souls from ambition and hate. You can do it! Regain your self-respect. Fear not the tweets! This nightmare will pass. 

And we will remember if you stood with your country against the horror of Trump.

If You Scratch a Fascist Do You Find a Catholic?

No, not necessarily, but you might find an Irishman. What you find is a loser. Someone I talked to thought fascism was a Catholic thing but fascists are, more fundamentally, losers. Fascists feel humiliated and small. They feel impotent, disrespected and left behind. They surrender their individualism and compromise their humanity because there wasn't enough humanity there in the first place.

Still, that was their choice. They lacked character. They feel they are lesser beings, often because of tribal allegiance to fellow losers. They turn to tribalism for a remedy, band together for power and use it to denigrate others. They persecute, insult and belittle others. They want to lord it over others. They are bullies and it validates their own weakness. They validate and confirm their loser status.

They can cause enormous harm. Americans find fascism hard to understand and detect, making us vulnerable. We weren't losers. Americans were too fortunate, especially the greatest generation, to understand grudges and multigenerational enmities--tribal, irrational, irreducible and consuming resentment. We were heroes and the unsullied victors in a seemingly moral war. But there are losers among us. 

Somebody lost a war. Somebody got invaded and saw their culture destroyed.

Southerners were crushed in the Civil War. Irishmen were subjugated by the English. These humiliations survive for generations, causing persecutions which create more grudges, the injury propagating itself by aggression. The retributive imperative arose after civil rights, among southerners newly empowered by greedy Yankees. The hillbillies were being used but their hatred was underestimated and misunderstood, as was their cunning.

These fascists--Republicans--seek to destroy the federal government, the institution which ensures the rights of individuals against hate and corporate hegemony. 

Irishmen and many others, some with personal--not tribal--scores to settle, piled in on the bandwagon of hate. They are all losers. The Irish, like Hannity and O'Reilly, typically for the Irish, are losers among the losers, less excellent and effective at hate--overbearing, smug, bombastic fascists. The real killers are the Confederates. They follow in the footsteps of Lee Atwater--punks like Mitch McConnell, Trey Gowdy, Tom Cotton and Jeff Sessions.
. 

The Irish are pussies by comparison. Mick Mulvaney is a rare hybrid of Irish Catholic moral degeneracy and implacable southern resentment, race-baiting depravity and vindictiveness--a leprechaun from hell--AND he's from South Carolina, the primal home of secessionist urges. Trump is a typical fascist hero and commander, a monumental loser who tries to convince himself he's not by dominating, degrading and demeaning everyone he can. 

Authority problems and daddy issues define these Republican leaders. They are caught in a futile struggle to measure up. Mostly the Irish are amateurs on the Atwater scale of evil. Catholics have, however, proved useful as cannon fodder in the culture wars--the idiots--schooled in blind submission and unquestioning allegiance to authority by the Church. Thus, there is an imperfect association between fascism and Catholicism.

Hate Will Make You Happy

Just look at that. Immerse yourselves in its untruth. Try to fathom its folly. Hate will never make you happy. Division will never make you whole. Lies will never set you free.

Clear your minds of hate. Quell the fear and confusion. Now look back at those who are marketing hate to you. Whose interests do they serve? Certainly not yours. Not ours. 

They create the cacophony. They must obliterate the obvious truth with noise. Hate will never make you happy. Resentment and suspicion will never set you free. Choose love.

Dear Koch Boys

Dear Koch Boys:

I don’t mean to be a nuisance but I’m trying to figure out some things. I believe there is no lost love with y’all and Trump. I think you have criticized, decried and berated him at times probably because he is a loose cannon and you are obsessive control freaks with not-so-delusional ideas of grandeur and omnipotence. In the event, though, Trump, being a vacuous piece of garbage and an idiot, has had to rely for help on many of the private institutions you have financially favored. He passed a massive tax cut while failing to curtail spending, a mixed bag for you but a Republican certainty.

Trump has deregulated everything he could get his hands on, deprofessionalized and gutted the Civil Service and promoted hacks everywhere, again standard Republican fare. His ascent would have been impossible without several decades of your groundwork. You reduced a sizeable share of the American electorate to sheep and imbeciles not only incapable of seeing the truth but inoculated against it and smitten with a defensive web of lies. They also have a taste for aggression--killer sheep. Very clever. Americans didn't want what you were peddling so you concocted an enormous deceit.

Then Trump stole your sheep. Trump appealed more primitively to all the hatreds you nurtured. Those resentments were based on imaginary threats and made-up causes anyway, of governmental overreach and mobs of marauding, freeloading, morally inferior and unfit citizens seeking solace in the nanny-state. How do you feel about all of this now? It must be ambivalent. You have wanted to destroy the government but Trump might destroy more than that, perhaps threatening your wealth and revenue streams. And what happens if Trump inadvertently triggers a reaction against you?

Your influence might wane forever. You think you are so invulnerable and then Trump comes along but the seeds of the insanity were planted by you. When reality and truth come unmoored who can control it? Did you really think you could? You have created this unbelievable mess and wrecked a nation’s character. It is both what you intended and not. Ambivalence must be the answer, to how you feel, but I will hope to hear from you to resolve my remaining doubts and uncertainty about your attitude to this mutant strain of conservatism escaped from your libertarian lab.

That infectious pseudo-philosophy of hate is stalking the wastelands of conservative thought, making inroads in its highest reaches, producing compulsion and enslavement. Corpses cover the ground. There were never any real principles there, so, there is no resistance. Trump rules now, but there is evidence of an impending self-destruct. We will see.

I await your response. And, take heart. Your sheep are out there still, in reality neglected and abused by Trump until he needs them again, though thrown an occasional bone. Perhaps you can get them back. They are ready to follow someone off a cliff, meanwhile grazing democracy out of existence. 

Sincerely, and with Kind Regards,

James M Flanagan

Dear Koch Boys

Dear Koch Boys:

I wondered if the complete and utter trashing of our society is what you intended or if things got out of hand. I have given up on any hope of recovery—I think we are screwed—so I don’t mean to fix blame. I am only curious. Is the libertarian utopia upon us, derailed by results unforeseen or still in the works? I never quite got the vision. Please respond at your convenience.

Sincerely,

James M Flanagan

The Rain, The Snark and Other Things

What the fuck has happened to the innocence, sincerity and hope that once characterized America, especially in the 60s? It didn't have to die. I will never believe it. 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=foepOwQlXpI

I Love You, But...

Conservatives, I love you but you are shit. You are trash. You suck. You are all going to hell. I tell you this, as a person of conscience, because I love you.

You see, whatever I am it is what you are not. Fundamental to that is a non-racist outlook. I criticize behaviors, not people. I criticize you because you act like sociopathic scum and culture-molesters, killers of Christ and people without morals.

Systematically you seek to deprive others, typically women, children, minorities and the elderly first, of the means and opportunity of (a good) life. I believe they are entitled to this by our laws and customs, including the religious and constitutional precepts you spout on about constantly with dismaying certainty and self-righteousness.

Also, you are so greedy. But I believe you can change. I believe in transformation. I believe in the kind of transformation of one's soul by love which underlies the entirety of the Bible. I believe in the secular principles of equality before the law, enfranchisement and fair play. I believe you can change, in spite of your corruption.

The sooner the better, if you know what I mean. 

Boomer Breakdown

Something died in the nineteen-seventies. Maybe it was the assassinations of '68 that did it. Or disco. Or maybe the boomers felt they could never match the “greatest generation” within their inherited context.

The boomers destroyed the context, replacing it with nothing. They replaced it with an ethos of selfishness, which is nothing. They are a generation of swine living under their new swine king, Donald Trump.

Nothing Stops There

Why? There is no “there” there. Republicans attempt to live in an ethical vacuum. Such a thing is impossible. They are the vacuum, negating themselves. They have to deny their own humanity. They do that by the lies. 

They deny our rights and humanity, dehumanizing themselves in the end, a festival of sin and degradation. Why would anyone do this? They have a sickness of the heart, a moral psychosis and humanitarian malfunction.

Mojo Antimatter and Meltdown

I never got Trump in the first place. I never watched his show. I never saw the mojo. I never saw the power and glory. He seemed weak and pathetic to me.

Mojo isn’t something you buy at a gun show like the white boys try. Or, take the political hacks that lay out their juice by bullying, baiting and grandstanding.

Striving like that kind is mojo antimatter, not only revealing its lack but reducing whatever hope for it or nascent bit of it there is into a puddle and mojo melt.

Trump’s is a pool now, spreading under him everywhere on the White House floors. Donald never understood anything--no learning curve, just fixations and resentments. 

The boy has value, however. He holds up a mirror to America showing us the awful thing we are. Preening, vain, vindictive, pathetic and selfish, Trump is us.

A New Kind of Nut

The Republican coalition of greedy assholes and racist evangelicals dates to the dawn of the Southern Strategy. Early on it was easy to assume the greed faction was rational--they would blow US up and destroy the middle class but not the entire society and themselves. But then it became believable--obvious to me--that the corporatists were so interested in SHORT TERM profits they might blow up everything in the longer run, a second stage of more serious irresponsibility and ruin.

They are getting so rich they think they can survive anything or don't care.

Enron, George Bush's favorite business, was the model for this. The corruption and exploitative principles were extended to the government and therefore the whole society, since the government is the Wyatt Earp in their Dodge City. Only the government can stop crooks and scoundrels from running everything. So, we have had periods of rational criminality and then totally reckless criminality. The resulting '08 crash caused a rejection of Bushism in the election of Obama.

Many people, including me, assumed this meant that we had peered into the abyss and denied the death wish. Hold on, religious conservatives had been waiting all these years for their turn, which has come with Trump. These are the nihilists. They are our Taliban, an American ISIS. The effects of the rule of the short term capitalists are becoming obvious, societal self-destruction. Evangelicals and religious fundamentalists welcome the death wish. They want an apocalypse.

Every mean, stupid, destructive thing Donald Trump does warms their hearts and fuels their drive for annihilation. The end of life as we have known it awaits us.

Koch Kansas Katastrophe

Nowhere is the puritanical, libertarian utopia more on display than in Kansas. Taxes were slashed. Services crumbled. Everything is the matter in Kansas.

Time won’t let me...

wait that long. Impeach Trump.

It Is Time

We have waited long enough. Impeach Trump.

Impeach Trump

Impeach Trump. Put him in jail. Fumigate the White House. Then we can try to repair the damage..

Lying Scum Alert

Guess who's lying now. Republicans are so far gone there is no hope of redemption.

Panic Butthead

Trump's fragility plays out as panic. He's in a chronic panic. Choking is when someone starts thinking when they shouldn't, interfering with a practiced pattern that has become automatic and second nature.

Panic is not thinking when you should. Trump has lived his whole life in a panic, fearful of discovery. Discovery of what? That he's weak, pathetic, incompetent, vindictive, dependent and morally worthless.

Atlantic City, Here We Come

The guy running Trump’s casino operation tried desperately to get him not to expand it as much as he wanted but Donald was determined and nobody could tell him not to. His only mode was aggression. He wanted a huge win and success, to be a king.

He blew the whole thing up. Atlantic City, here we come!

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/nyregion/donald-trump-atlantic-city.html

Ergo

Some things are supposed to follow on other things, as consequences or conclusions, thus and therefore. Cause and effect. There are connections. There are premises, suppositions and presuppositions. There are repercussions and results. Things supposedly make sense.

Things are supposed to balance out and add up.

Not any more, because CERTAIN people have blown through and negated all of it. They have withdrawn, rescinded and reversed it. They have deconstructed and dissolved it. It has been falsified and undone. It has been blocked and rejected, vetoed and invalidated.

Republicans inhabit a world without consequences and accountability. How do they do it? They DECLARE all the benefits to be theirs. The bad stuff is then shunted onto other folks. All you need to join in is no conscience and some sick drives, a low commonality. 

Guilt By Dissociation

There aren't people suffering out there. Not because of YOUR actions. Convince yourself of that. You could be a REPUBLICAN. Leave your conscience at the door.

Hand-Me-Down World

Used. For Sale or Free to a Good Home. Take It, Already.

Republicans have raped and looted the world. They'll hand it over to the poor people one of these days, when there's nothing left worth having.

Trump Goes to Jail

Trump's latest gambit crosses the line for me--more suffering to assuage him in some needless way. The "wall" makes no sense. He's making stuff up again, inventing a crisis to serve selfish motives. Jail the fucker. Jail the whole family. Jail all the other rich crooks, scum-suckers and manipulators of governments for corporate benefit. Jail them all.

A Glorious Victory for Trump

Trump has won. He has created the longest government shutdown ever. It’s a big one. Whatever is his, it's got to be the biggest. We are there. Okay, now what?

One of Theirs

Not only are Republicans not sustaining significant losses in their war on democracy they are being rewarded for doing horrible things and carrying on forever with impunity. George Bush's administration blew the curve.

They won't let up until they get hurt themselves. Only we can hurt them. Only we can take away their easy money, status and powerful positions. Let's do it. Let's take the fuckers down. Let's take their children down. 

Put Jared and Ivanka in prison. Put Donald in prison. Maybe then they'll get the point. They think they are immune to everything. They need to learn a lesson.

The Anti-Democratic Party

Republicans are now defined by nothing positive, only hatred of the imaginary threats they've been building on for years, notably Democrats. For that, read "democracy".

Strange Passion: the Pure Evil of Republicanism

Trump and the Republicans are descending into the throes of pure evil, a strange passion. At its core is compulsion and compulsion is dehumanizing, as evidenced by addiction. People are only distinct from being animals by being free and accountable.

In religious terms compulsion is the loss of a soul. Greed and power-lust are their compelling addictions and are the devil's sin--coveting the power and glory of God. Fatalism, as promoted by Calvinism, is similarly demeaning and dehumanizing.

These are the components of the Republican "base"--those who are degraded and corrupted by greed and the lust for power, and fatalistic, religious conservatives, those who believe in predestination and long for the end-times. The end-times are here.

Thanks to them. The fruit of their tree is death.

Trump's IEDs: Equal Protection Under Attack

Anarchy favors the status quo. Look at the 2008 economic meltdown, created by Republicans through deregulation. When certain people recommend "creative destruction" or "anarcho-capitalism" they are promoting a specific elimination of social and legal constraints. 

They have power and the upper hand, so selectively removing constraints can benefit them. Only governments can contain their power--it is so great--so they attack the government, reducing it to a coercive entity serving only them, a perversion of its real role.

The justification for any kind of government, mutual benefit and security, is under attack. Notice they have no problem burning up money on what further empowers and protects them. More insidiously, notice how they spend money actually creating destruction.

Crippling the wealth and welfare of a population as awash in resources as America's isn't easy, like laundering the proceeds of their illicit endeavors to avoid taxes, but they are good at it. Vandalism is their most telling tactic--deliberately promoting disorder.

Destabilizing the everyday lives of average citizens IS their tactic and intention, though disempowering and disenfranchising average citizens is their end-game--minority rule.

America's strength has always come from below--the investment of the electorate in the society. Republicans selectively weaken the government for this reason, claiming it interferes with the success of average, working citizens, but it enables everyone's success by ensuring fair play, by fighting against monopoly power and by maintaining infrastructure.

Exploitation is their game. Trump's adherence to this is most obvious in international relations. He blows things up, then tries to benefit from the chaos. Less obvious is how he does this at home. But it is getting more obvious. He is under threat so he employs IEDs. 

IEDs at home. That is Trump's new plan. Blow stuff up. Blow us up. Nothing matters to Donald Trump and the Republicans but increasing their own wealth and power.

Projective Language Fuels Speech

I have, in earlier articles, argued for interpreting Trumpian language and thought through pathological critical analysis, focusing on the projective content. Last night's speech was no exception to the explanatory power of employing this rule. The phrase "a crisis of the heart, a crisis of the soul" is revealing, drawing attention through its dramatic appeal.

The "crisis" is internal to the administration, of course, which is notable for its soulless and heartless behavior. The self-loathing of Trump and Stephen Miller, the presumed author since Trump is functionally illiterate, is thereby revealed in the projection of bad intent onto innocent and powerless people seeking refuge from social instability caused by us.

Depressed Mode

It is so discouraging watching the unbelievable corruption of the Republicans as they take control of everything to a greater extent than ever before.

Forty Years of Hegemony

2020 will mark forty years of Republican hegemony. Let's consider where it has gotten us, the destruction and desolation having been slightly lessened by some, largely feckless and ineffective, Democratic pushback. 

The government is bankrupted by tax cuts. Income and wealth polarization are more severe than ever and getting worse. Trillions have been wasted on neverending wars--money that might have been spent rebuilding American infrastructure. Agriculture has been wrecked by Republican meddling. Corporations and conglomerates have vast political power. Average individuals have less.

Financial firms contribute nothing and make inconceivable profits. Elections are determined by money, manipulation, and irresponsible, reprehensible media companies masquerading as producers of real journalism. Desperate, confused working people helped install a scoundrel, crook and rogue as president. All his accomplishments have only worsened the evil trends enumerated above.

Republicans are on track to produce another recession with the same terrible policies--deregulation and irresponsible tax cuts on the wealthy--that produced the last. Racism and ethnic violence are increasing. America is heading for a horrible reckoning thanks to the deliberate, self-serving, lying machinations of Republicans. They are evil, cynical people who should be in jail.

Pelosi at the Border

Inconveniently, foreign terrorists have not managed to stage another successful attack as they did in the days of George Bush. Donald Trump will declare a state of emergency anyway and assume full emergency powers because REAL leadership demands it.

Real leaders can't be constrained by the interference of lesser men, let alone Nancy Pelosi. The actual emergency, obviously, is the new, Democratic majority in the legislature. How the hell is Donald supposed to sleep at night? It was bad enough with Mueller.

Democrats are the ones at the border but thank God for that caravan or Donald would have to come up with another excuse, possibly causing a nuclear war. Whatever happened to that caravan, by the way? Holy Mother of Christ, they must have infiltrated!

To the barricades!

Bill Bennett’s Book of Virtues (2018 Revision)

(This pronouncement supersedes and replaces all of my earlier work prior to the advent and ascendency of Donald Trump, or somewhere in there. Please ignore anything previously written that could be construed as critical of his way of life and mode of being.)

The truth is what Donald Trump says it is. Bankrupting the government is a good thing. Destroying the Middle Class is a good thing. Destroying the Middle East is fine because we need their oil, Arabs are idiots, and I am a fat, wealthy white man. Destroying South and Central America with our demand for drugs is a shame but shit happens. George Bush's presidency is an example of American accountability, rectitude and moral responsibilty for the ages, besides being evidence for the efficacy of old-fashioned manliness. 

Barack Obama is bad -- no justification needing to be given. Donald Trump can take a shit on the Resolute Desk and it doesn't matter because he will appoint only conservative judges, especially to the Supreme Court, saving America from the liberals. Liberals are bad--no justification needing to be given. I wasn't serious about Donald Trump taking a shit on the Resolute Desk. But, if he does, by accident, I will clean it up if I have to because there are more important issues at stake. I am Bill Bennett, a fat, wealthy white man.

And I approve of Donald Trump.

Full Hindenburg

Tune in now, folks. Watch Donald Trump go full Hindenburg, flaming his way into the history books not just as an individual tragedy but as the end of an era of lying, corrupt, gas-bag government.

The End of Decentralization: One World (Corporate) Government is Here

Robert Bork got borked for a reason. It’s not the way Republicans portray it, of course. You should know that by now. They always lie. Democrats didn’t change the rules by borking Bork. Republicans changed the rules by nominating him.

He was a known outlier, extremist and partisan hack.

Bork had written the book on monopolies. His ideas were somewhat fluid, if not incoherent, but he loved monopolies. He wrote a book extolling monopolies. The consolidation of power in private hands is a consuming goal of Republican policies.

Think about all the things that used to be decentralized and distributed that have succumbed to corporations and conglomerates. They are concentration camps for capital run by thugs compelled to maximize profits for the shareholders.

Any decent-sized city used to have locally owned supermarkets and department stores. Not any more. And consolidation continues apace. Nationals are being destroyed by Amazon. It will never end. And look at Trump. He has to be the ONLY winner.

Republicans only want the BAD stuff distributed. They are great at distributing risk and injury. They are socialists and commies, believers in class warfare, privatizing profits and socializing risk, irresponsibly shedding it onto innocent citizens.

Only the government--OUR government--can protect us from them. That's why they hate it. They will destroy it so rich corporatists can run everything.

Troll for Christmas

The spirit of Christmas made no dent in Donald Trump’s conviction that only he matters. Donald is not his brother’s keeper. He is his brother’s nemesis.

He is now a menace to the entire world. Merry Christmas, world, from the American people, a once-decent race turned to shit. We give you Donald Trump.

The Rise of the Super Rat

“Pure” evil isn’t refined or based in strength. It is based, rooted and founded in mediocrity. Racism is for losers. Happy, secure, contented people have better things to do and aren’t drawn to contempt. Any normal person enjoys success but decent people don’t equate the failures of others or their downtrodden state with their own, or anyone’s, success.

Only rats rejoice in suffering. Rats are on the rise. Rats are asserting themselves and taking control. A super-rat is in charge, someone for whom putting people down is a pleasure and a pastime. But rats are disloyal. Rats care only about themselves and not even that in a wise, long-term way. Individually, rats are losers and bullies. They win by stealth and cheating.

They win by deceit, ganging-up and fear, scurrying away when discovered. They win by overwhelming their foes with their numbers but eventually they betray one another. It is the nature of rats. There is no accountability among rats. Witness the ascendency of the super-rats. Notice the gnaw marks and chewing noises. Rats are undermining everything.