O Captain! My Captain!

He divided a country because he was bored, amusing himself by opening old wounds. Or, rather, out of blind, pathological ambition.

The ship of state is Fox News. Hate is at the helm, steering by fear. There’s a hole and void where democracy and decency used to be.

A frantic Captain barks incoherent orders. He is the master and commander of a pirated ship now and the crew is kept in check by fear.

We Got Fooled Again

Pick your poison. Choose your lies. An entire generation thought it could see through the haze. They thought they could live in the truth but they are awash in lies as never before. No one can live in the bright light of pure truth.

People must choose the lies of freedom and the stories of decency. Choose your myths carefully or you’ll fall back right into the arms of despair. Don’t delude yourself. Or, delude yourself well. No one escapes. Think you can?

EDHD—Driven to Destruction

Ethical Deficit Hyperpartisan Destructivity (Disorder) is a newly epidemic malaise classified based on field observations and studies of Republican politicians, their appointees and surrogates. It is broadly considered a compensatory reaction formation and spoken of among psychologists as a disorder of insecurity and suspected inferiority, causing aggression, acting-out, domination displays and personality malformation.

It is also a type of vandalism and related to arrestedness in adolescence and Oedipal fixations playing out as denial, projection and repression. The federal government is the mother image to which Republicans are compulsively drawn for gratification while vehemently denying those desires. Many victims are pudgy, pathetic, inferior physical specimens, like Mitch McConnell, Newt Gingrich, Lindsey Graham, Phil Gramm and Scott Walker, but it is a psychological and not a physical ailment per se.

Paul Ryan and Jim Jordan, others among the afflicted, are even somewhat buff. Democratic men are the responsible father figures and providers Republicans are unwittingly driven to try to displace and destroy out of jealousy. Democratic presidents, especially self-made men like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, will render them completely insane and elicit extreme agitation and extraordinary aggression.

Now, I don’t mean to be hard on them. This is a medical condition requiring treatment but if Bob Barr, Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell are the pride of Republican manhood someone should order up SOME FUCKING HELP. The impaired should be involuntarily admitted to an asylum and facility if they won’t admit themselves. Deep down they want to be stopped, the theory is, and thus reassured of the society’s resiliency.

Any understanding of the origins of this locus and epidemic of failed manhood is preliminary, speculative and hypothetical but it seems certain that it is generational and related to the inability of the “baby boomers” and the man-groups following on those that built the culture and fought in WWII to “measure up” and grow up. They are stuck intractably in a most vicious and destructive kind of adolescence.

Money. Prestige. Power.

Why do Republican representatives and appointees want to hold onto their positions so strongly they will eat dirt and grovel before Trump, these public servants? Their jobs are meant to involve the sacrifice of uprooting themselves and abandoning the lives they have cultivated with complete freedom in a prosperous and fruitful land for the constraints of serving their fellow citizens.

How laughable! We can see now that they came to plunder. The public good? What a quant idea for people who champion greed and say it will all somehow work out to the benefit of everyone. Their “invisible hand” is invisible because it doesn’t exist. Or, it is the hand of oppression and servitude for their victims. They should all be thrilled to get back to their private lives and go home.

Washington is their home. Like Trump they never gave up their selfish ambitions. They are creatures desperate to maintain the system they have made, in defiance of law and tradition, to benefit themselves. Newt Gingrich rocketed out of obscurity in some Georgia shithole, using his master’s term, to wealth and fame. He waddles around Rome now, erupting occasionally in support of Trump.

He feasts away at our expense looking like the emperors he emulates—an obese, gesticulating clown sputtering through his spittle. Government checks have made his life. Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan followed the same track and married rich women for insurance. They love the easy lives WE provide and will fight to keep them by their practiced tactics: lies and intimidation.

They have created a government modeled on multi-level-marketing, transitioning to a culture of inheritance and permanent Republican hegemony. The money flows in and they don’t have to do anything but sit atop a corrupt organization and beat down challenges. They beat down competition. They came not to serve but for money, privilege and power. The will do anything to keep it.

Driving While Democrat

Democrats are about to get pulled over by Bill Barr's Boss Hogg. He is playing a small-town sheriff in the segregated South.

Unequitable, racist, bigoted, biased, flagrantly prejudicial enforcement is his plan. Democrats are the new black underclass.

First He Wasn’t. Then He Was. Now He Isn’t.

Initially Donald Trump wasn't the issue. Nobody knew how incompetent, stupid and inconceivably corrupt he was. Then he became the issue, with a childlike reliance on all the infrastructure Republicans have built up over the years to guarantee America would be a paradise for rich people and reduce everyone else to misery and inconsequence.

Donald wanted to be liked. New Yorkers knew he was an oaf. He was never accepted there and, at some level, he knew it but, as president, he could make even the highest reaches of the aristocracy pay attention and, to some extent, dance to his tune. He used every kind of incentive and threat, like any good grifter, huckster, briber and blackmailer.

Now he isn’t the issue again. He is so blindly, recklessly, garishly corrupt he makes impeachment easy, not that the Senate will comply or anything will be admitted. That is what is interesting now—the resulting issue. Trump exposed the Republican Party as a treasonous and seething mess of self-serving frauds and scoundrels, a fifth column.

Republicans are the swamp and they have compromised the government. They were always disloyal. They have owned and managed Trump because he was a characterless void:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/swamp-trump/551807/

Donald’s Special Day

No, it’s not his birthday.

Donald loves to hurt and belittle people and Americans, in their wisdom, made Donald Trump president so every day is his special day now. He gets to belittle people and, as for hurting, it goes on even on his many days off playing golf because of his enormous power and the opportunity to delegate the pleasure and privilege of hurting to his surrogates, enablers, underlings and enforcers.

There is, of course, a children’s book of this title and the first to be rated “R” which is a real breakthrough in despoiling and perversion. You might think it’s bad business to have a children’s book they can’t even buy but this is Donald’s genius and particular gift, to build failure into everything he touches. His failures continue creating chaos and doing damage even once he has moved on.

Failures are strewn about in his wake like carnage on a battlefield and people are corrupted and demeaned by Donald to such a degree they go right on demeaning like little Trump mini-trolls even when set free from the immediate influence and active oversight of their evil master. In business they refer to “multipliers” and Donald, as a businessman, prides himself on his power to multiply turmoil.

It is his special skill and gift to the world. He is so damaged and degraded his soul has ceased to exist. It only wants to share and promote this destruction. Donald’s only function is to annihilate other souls. He is the kind of demon or vampire you read about in novels, a black hole of despair, gluttony and greed. Donald’s is a need incapable of being filled so every day is his special day of doom.

Corruption is his compulsion or quest and Americans, desiring to die, made him their leader—a harbinger and agent of the end of the world. Jesus, they believe, will then swoop in and gather up his special, chosen souls and take them to heaven. And you thought the Taliban and ISIS were insane. They are amateurs and powerless little perverts, by comparison. America must always be the best.

Even, or especially, at this satanic, soul-sucking enterprise.

The Grand Mufti of Mar-a-Lago

Donald Trump refuses to be a president and do his job. His “policies” are based on whim, superstition, magical thinking and political expediency of a sort which means he must placate two groups, oligarchs and bigoted extremists. The latter are largely religious and certified throwbacks.

This makes him not a president but a satrap or a grand mufti. He increases his power by narrowing and parochializing his vision. Sadly, that is not his job. He was always a narrow, ignorant guy anyway, lacking the bandwidth to be anything else. Let’s put him back in appropriate circumstances.

From Florida Trump can stream fatwas and insults at his leisure and ease. That pesky press won’t bother him. In Florida Trump can feel like a king, well-insulated from reality. Reality bites and sucks for Trump. From Florida our coddled champion can throw tantrums at will. Get thee back, Don-boy.

Trump: A Walking Superfund Site

The chicken and the egg. Does Donald Trump’s diet fuel his mangled psyche or the other way around? Who knows but I think it’s a feedback loop of doom:

https://www.salon.com/2019/11/03/self-destructiveness-paranoia-and-disdain-trumps-unhealthy-food-choices-impact-his-mental-health/

The Economics of Adolescence Among Republicans

Guess who’s back. Phil Gramm, the person most responsible for the ‘08 economic downturn, has a new opinion piece in the WSJ, having been drawn into the fray by the wonderful surge in unreason. He condescendingly explains to the “takers” how lucky they are as though they aren’t the experts on what their lives are like.

Gramm is another instance of a Freudian’s field day—physically substandard, morally stunted and exhibiting compensatory intellectual disdain, a “Peter Pan” if there ever was. He avoids honest, productive enterprise while hating those who actually engage in it. In his case I condemn both the sin and the sinner, he is so loathsome.

Repressed stuff has a way of surfacing, however. Phil Gramm married a girl named Wendy, his partner in delusion and deregulatory crime.

That’s the Way the Country Crumbles

Every single Republican in Washington, it appears, thinks nothing of subverting the law and the government for personal and partisan gain. So, this is how it all ends, with a sigh and a whimper and a lot of undeserving idiots scampering around, not with high drama and people of character battling it out over knowingly momentous issues.

Honest Exploitation

A great shift is afoot. Republicans used to represent sustainable, honest exploitation. Now it’s suicidal and compulsive. I see two likely causes. Firstly, with increased mechanization and then robotics, labor is no longer such an important factor in production.

Secondly, Republicans, doomed forever to minority status in a democracy in which they openly championed the interests of a wealthy elite, gained power by playing political footsie with a faction of racist troglodytes in the American South and elsewhere.

Perhaps at one time they thought there would never be a price to pay. I don’t know but the troglodytes have finally asserted themselves after a couple of decades of giving up their votes without receiving the insane, retrograde social shit they wanted in return. 

Those days are over. Troglodytes are running everything and rampaging through the country’s rules and standards like so much chaff and waste. They crave an end to everything. That, or a return to Calvin’s Geneva, a rule remarkably resembling the Taliban’s. 

Bonehead’s Border Wall Falls to Inexpensive Saws

Republicans, being weak-minded, must have fixations. They try to arrive at confidence and feelings of certainty and security by reducing everything to a sound bite or sweepingly simple stab at policies requiring more intelligence and insight than they have. Therefore, we have the tax cutting fixation, the mother of them all. We have the free market and deregulatory fixations and the military spending fixation.

We have a fixation on cutting social services.

On paper, these add up to bankruptcy. In reality, these have added up to bankruptcy and a failing middle class. Hence the lies. Republicans, having caused social deterioration and distress, observable to anyone, have to enforce a break with reality. We are there now. All they do is lie. Enter “the wall” and Donald Trump. A person can be stupid and shrewd at the same time, you know. Trump not only speaks he thinks in fixations.

He’s a bigot and a moron, with a weak intellect.

This means he can’t adapt. He’s a one trick moron. Attack, attack, attack. Refugees are sawing through his wall with inexpensive tools. He’ll try to lie his way out of it, of course. He craves complete control with no accountability. In a sane world control comes with responsibility. Theirs is not a sane world but a world of lies. Let’s watch Trump lie some more. “I wanted concrete but the Dem’s wouldn’t allow it” might be his spin.

We will see but remember that nothing is ever his fault. The Tao of Trumpism and the Republicans is irresponsible living resulting in maximized capital accumulation. Their grail is greed—a quest for control, unaccountable power and their own earthly dominion.

They are all parasites and predators, incapable of productive, cooperative, responsible living. Jails were invented and built for such people. 

Watch for It

An eclipse is nothing in comparison with an ethical inversion. And, an ethical inversion can be viewed from anywhere. No need to drive all over and lie down in a field out in the middle of nowhere or put on special glasses. All you have to do is have a conscience.

We are approaching totality now. Good is bad and bad is good. Bloodied and battered, the truth is in retreat against an attack of lies. “Christians” live in hate, destroy people’s lives and insist they are destined for heaven. “Patriots” undermine the government.

The anointed guardians of democracy are the products of privilege, claiming infinite entitlement, to the extent that their frivolous desires outweigh others' rights even to exist, and they claim unlimited recompense. That is, “rights” are determined by power.

Those without power have no rights.

Individuals are so wealthy they can corrupt the government and deny the collective will of millions. ONE PERSON, that is. No institution can resist them when they form alliances. They have “think tanks” and PACs. They have organizations and own newspapers.

They have legions of lackeys who whoop at every victory for falsehood and decry attempts to enforce accountability and return the world to sanity. They attack viciously. They respect no rules. Laws are subverted. Equitable enforcement is impossible. People live in fear.

We are on the cusp now but ethical inversions can only be verified once they happen. No one knows when we will cross the line into totality and darkness. But the results, in chaos and brutality, are unmistakable. People without consciences are blind to inversions.

That aspect of it is confusing. They really can’t see them.

Prosperity Slut to Infest White House

Paula White, prosperity slut, will now show up for work at the White House and get a government check. Say what you will about Trump, he has an ear for insulting behavior.

Overwhelming Farce

Trump’s administration is trying to find its way to victory, against their fellow citizens, by employing overwhelming farce and impropriety. In some ways it seems to be working.

Hey Mr. Tangerine Man...

He of the orange countenance, the sultan of insults who can’t stand criticism, is reacting predictably to the threat of impeachment by going fully apeshit. We think we’ve seen the worst but nearly every day there’s some new low.

Big Dickhead Energy

Big Dickhead Energy is where you dominate everybody by being the biggest sociopathic asshole and maybe even mentally ill. Think of Donald Trump.

Pesky Blighters

Those pesky blighters in the Trump administration just won’t take legality for an answer. The “rule of law” is not only something they don’t respect it’s to be deliberately and arbitrarily eroded. Chaos and disorder are encouraged for their own sake or as an enhancement in their quest for unchecked power which is inconsistent and incompatible, of course, with any kind of legal constraint. In Trumpworld legality is for losers.

Captains Contagious

Where do we draw the line on innocence? Trump’s dupes buy the lie. Are the gullible guilty? We have to judge behaviors so the question is existential and academic. We have to judge output and results. We judge what people do and Trump and Republicans before him have destroyed people’s lives and caused many deaths. Yes, they are responsible. They are guilty. We will figure out punishments in the penalty phase.

The fear they foster is contagious but this pathogen is self-administered. The exposure is voluntary, by association. It is a choice.

Matt Gaetz, Gladiator

Pathetic, pudgy, ass-licking white boy Matt Gaetz sees himself as a gladiator, according to reports. I support self-invention and a certain amount of romance in life—the right and opportunity to have a personal myth to sand down some edges and inflate a few vain attributes into accomplishments and apparent merit but this is too much.

Gaetz is the water-boy’s water-boy, licking the ass-lickers’s butts while awaiting a shot at Trump’s own anus—a mascot amusing a master who is himself a charlatan. Gaetz is a Sancho to Trump’s Quixote but without irony or common sense, and another Republican beset with grandiosity. All the while his grinning head is submerged in the federal trough.

The Annotated Malice: A Collection of the Tweets of Donald Trump, President of the United States and Vile Defamer...

Someone will have the terrible task of collating and publishing the collected spate and drivel contained in the tweets of Donald Trump. He is the president and was in some way elected, a horrible truth to speak. These tweets will have to be annotated to place the incredible outpouring of insults, innuendo, invention and invective in some context.

This will be a testament to someone degraded beyond the imagination of most of us. He is a violent, angry person. He is ignorant, impulsive and implausible. He is reactive and abusive. He is greedy and conniving. He is treacherous, unjust and repugnant. A lot of shit will have to be owned before it is all done. He’s an asshole, an idiot and a tweeting machine.

The Kraut Who Came in from the Cold

Why pick on Peter Thiel? No reason. He’s only one of the many rich assholes asserting their uninalienable right not to have to answer to anybody. But, he did put an entire, profitable media organization out of business. That is intimidation in action.

Intimidation is now accepted, Republican governmental policy in use against citizens for personal gain. Trump and company are on a roll. Kellyanne Conway, who has family roots in the Mafia, called a journalist to apply some muscle. She thinks she’s a feminist.

So she says but I think it’s all nonsense.

They will do anything to win. Trump is asserting dictatorial, “constitutional” immunity, a terminal contradiction, that he isn’t legally responsible for anything he does. We are living in the age of assholes. They have come in from the cold and are openly claiming authority. A small group of infinitely greedy people already control everything.

Still, they want more.

Peter Thiel is just such an asshole. He wanted revenge and he got it, sending a huge message to a beleaguered and essential industry to always hold back and watch your step. Look to the rear now and then. The Kraut or one of his kind might be after you. 

Under-the-Bus Throwing

Versions of this idiom are used a lot lately. Trump’s allies and underlings try to protect their vainglorious boss and he tries to protect himself. Among the new conservatives, because character and integrity are non-starters, it is a sport and Ayn Rand is their honorary cheerleader and babe.

But “under-the-bus throwing” doesn’t roll off the tongue as one would like. Let’s just call it “treason” since it’s the elevation of self above everything anyway, including one’s country, and Trump is a fitting master, a hideous ethical black hole and charlatan. The country is there to serve him.

Under the bus it goes, if it suits. Remember, a Randian hero would rather blow something up than have it not be an appropriate testament to their greatness. Under the bus we all go.

Strange Sensibilities

Their boy, George W, Bush, got over a million people killed and exploded the world with his lies and incompetence. There has been no official assessment, accounting and legislative action against him. Republicans in the House, however, want to censure Adam Schiff.

They take a cue from their temperamental leader and his monstrous mess of an administration just steeped in and seething with illegality.

Schiff dared to criticize Little Donny Trump. They are princesses in a world of peas and Trump is the final snowflake—fragile and floating to his doom while protesting how he is so special and unique, a pouty prima donna raised to think of himself as a king.

Enablers and Abettors Scrambling Around...

As one would expect in an administration kept afloat by falsity Donald Trump’s enablers are having trouble getting their lies right. The lies are all made up anyway, by their nature, and only have reference to escaping responsibility and protecting the head craftsman of doom, Herr Donald himself.

Squirmy Mick Mulvaney had a time of it yesterday. And Mike Pence made sure to extol his glorious leader while trying to control the turd-fest Trump unleashed among the Turks. Asswipes abound among the Trumpists, some more servile than others in panting their appreciation for their master. 

A Head Between the Cheeks

I wonder if, in private, Republicans talk about the flavor of Donald Trump’s anus like it is wine, “tannic, earthy, and robust with hints of licorice, berries and talc,” or whatever. Bob Barr’s jowls must be overly occupied there, feasting away between the cheeks.

Trump Crosses a Line

Donald Trump usually follows “conservative” advice when he acts because he has no brain. Largely these people and organizations are ecstatic because he’s been implementing their awful, self-serving, destructive policies consistently. They get the crazy shit they have always wanted with some degree of insulation and separation from accountability.

But Donald doesn’t understand the military angle, that our forces are there not to protect America from actual threats but to further business interests. And Donald must be monitored at all times or he will improvise and do something incredibly stupid. So, he caves in to Turkey’s autocratic leader on a phone call. He was probably winging it.

But NOW some and certain “conservatives” are upset and criticizing him. Are there humanitarian issues? Yes. Are there foreign policy issues? Yes. Are there all kinds of issues? Of course. There always are, but they only get weighed when the larger issues of America’s corporate interests are at stake because that’s all they really care about.

Where were they when Donald did all the other stupid shit? As long as it aided corporations and rich people they were entirely on board.

Scorched Earth/Hearth

Republicans have been so utterly victorious for the past 40 or so years the Democrats can’t even see it. The pain would be too great. The change in perspective too vast. The shame and humiliation too much to handle.

There is a way around it—to understand how Republicans did it—because they weren’t brilliant or anything of the sort. They went crazy, going “scorched-earth” against their fellow citizens and taking them hostage.

Stockholm Syndrome thereafter defines the Democrats, or a similar kind of disorder. They were stunned into incompetence.

Winning is easy for cheaters. Winning is easy when you abuse your insider status and betray your country. Republicans are seasoned traitors and Democrats are still too shocked and uncomprehending to do anything about it.

“Scum” and “Animals” Now Approved Presidential Language

I have long called Republicans “scum” thinking it was an accurate and irreplaceable descriptor but wondering if it wasn’t unacceptably strong and vivid language. The President’s use of the term has reassured me of its propriety, allowing that he himself used it unjustly in spouting off, as is his habit, but we are accustomed to that by now.

“Animals” is one I hadn’t employed. But, hearing it used by the President, I instantly recognized how it applies to Herr Donald and his family of thugs and crooks. I would never have brought it out myself but it is obviously okay and I think it suits the Trumps well, in their bottomless greed and degraded, selfish, aggressive, cruel and primal behaviors.

A Note on Perspective

With yet another Trumpist, Thomas Homan, doing his full-blown Nazi caveman routine in front of the House of Representatives we have to ask ourselves what is going on. Are there really as many flaming Hitlerian sociopaths in our country as it appears?

I say no, but there are many more than we ever suspected and they are wading out of their mires upon recognizing the great white hope of Trump, a reeking shitpile of inhumanity and depraved heap of garbage and uncompromising criminal and scoundrel.

This is the perspective to which we must adhere, that it is bad but not as bad as it seems, replacing despondency and despair with disappointment. We are not who we thought we were but not as bad as the concentration of evil under Trump would have it.

An Important Announcement

I have long reviled evangelical Christians for their support of Donald Trump and their overall treachery, cruelty and stupidity. I am adding to that list conservative Catholics. They did not vote for Donald Trump to the same disgraceful degree but they are making up for it by combining ass-kissing and being in positions of high influence.

Bill Barr and Corey Lewandowski have prompted this change, though every Supreme Court justice considered conservative is tied to Catholic education and tradition. Those are the traditions of defending authority at all costs and being able to rationalize anything. Fox News and the Trump administration are seething with these idolators.

They bow down before the golden calf of Trumpism. Evangelicals are mostly too stupid to do the heavy lifting for their movement.

They are leaving it to Catholics.

Parasite Playground

Courtesy of Republicans Washington is now a seething shithole of parasites and vermin. Apart from the museums, that is. The museums are nice.

PO(TU)S at Play

There’s nothing Donald Trump loves more than dragging everyone around him into the same shithole he has long occupied. The entire country is his shithole sandbox now.

What Would Dickhead Do?

Christians today have a more accessible and observable model than Jesus to regulate their behaviors. They can emulate Donald Trump and consider what that moron would do. I feel sure that, given a choice of making a million dollars or making a million dollars while destroying somebody Donald would choose to destroy somebody.

Why? WHO THE FUCK CARES. It doesn't matter. Apparently, he enjoys belittling people and ruining their lives. It makes him feel good. It makes him feel like a big man—like a king, to which status he father used to exhort him. Nothing is more kingly than to be cruel, arbitrary and randomly vindictive with other people and pay no price.

This is the guy evangelical Christians support, chose to elect and enjoy observing in action. By this we know them for what they really are, satanists and an abomination to God.

The Redneck Ascendancy

Yet another scam is in the works. Hillbilly Elegy, soon to be a major motion picture, depicts a (presumably waning) society “in crisis” but hillbilly values have won. America is ignorant, violent and obsessively addicted. America is self-destructive and teeming with guns. America is now an honor culture.

Don’t be fooled. 

The evangelical voting bloc has produced an anti-intellectual, redneck ascendancy and Trump, an anti-intellectualist’s dream, is their president. Bring on the stupidity. Bring on the violence. Bring on the inarticulate anger and resentment. America is going down. We need an elegy for America.

America is full of violent, gun-toting morons and bigots.

Asshole Going Down

Our asshole, dimwit, piece-of-shit President is going down. When Fox News the Wall Street Journal break a story so bad even the Senate will have to go along Don-boy is toast. This is not so good.

The worst elements in the treasonous hierarchy of government-destroying institutions, from the conservative “think-tanks” on through, have had their way with our moron executive from the beginning.

We are left with destruction and—what next?—a Pence presidency? And, watch now as fuckwad-halfwit will try negotiate his way out of it. He might agree to resign with Pence’s promise of a pardon.

He has, after all, gone bankrupt before.

Everything is a shambles and the people behind it will say the system worked as they creep away with their winnings. We’re looking at a version of the 2008 recession. Thanks again, Republicans.

The destroyers will walk away not only unscathed but enriched. Thousands of people should go to jail. They should have to build new prisons and the executive branch should be placed in receivership.

We will not have dodged anything.

I would like to see, however, those Republicans drinking out of toilets like the immigrant kids they have incarcerated. Better yet, I want those prisons to be privately owned by people who contribute to Democrats.

Tune In

Watch Republicans, after years of lying about their patriotism and devotion to America and the Constitution, eat shit and bow down before Trump.

There is no war. There is no emergency, crisis or threat and, yet, Republicans refuse to obey the law but submit instead to their illegal leader.

I take it back. There is a crisis. The crisis is them. The crisis is Trump. We are turning into a dictatorship. And you can watch it on TV.

The Mother of All Lies

I’m not sure the history of our times will ever be written. It might be the end times or some descent into an Orwellian nightmare in which history doesn’t exist anymore. Anyway, if it does get written in some rational, intelligible, honest and even-handed way I wonder if the Second Amendment battle will be seen as a turning point.

If they could bully their way into enforcing an obvious lie in that case why not carry on from there? They wanted to have their guns and so fuck the truth. They wanted to have a war in Iraq and so fuck the truth. They want to cut taxes—ALWAYS—and so fuck the truth, that it is the worst economic and social policy ever.

Fuck the truth. Can anybody really believe that “rising tide” and “supply side” aren’t just incredible, self-serving lies at this point? So, it’s not about guns or economics anymore, it’s about ensuring that there is NEVER any accountability because they can’t have that. Do you see what I’m saying? The lies have value now AS LIES.

They have value independently of the content. The promulgators of this have to erode the truth to protect themselves. The Left has their lies as well as well but it is nothing like this. Theirs are more like exaggerations. Theirs are pitiful and pathetic. The Left’s lies don’t even empower them. They still try to empower everybody. 

How quaint. How passé. How ridiculous. And what a shame it’s why the country was created in the first place, to include and empower its citizens.

Elvis in the Afterlife

I am hoping for a sign evangelicals can respect, something to tell them Donald Trump might not be the best guy to run the country. I am hoping for Elvis.

Apparitions of Elvis might get through to evangelicals. Let us pray to Elvis. We are talking about the sweaty, sequin-suited version, the one out of Vegas.

Elvis, are you there, boy?

The a Great Decider Decides

To call the decision making process in the current White House “tangled” assumes an underlying coherence and intelligibility where there is none, unless referring to the windings of Donald Trump’s intestines. Here we have another Republican president who relies on his gut, the output of which looks a lot like what one would expect.

Let’s revisit the last guy who let his instincts rule his brain, the great decider himself, author of the Iraq war, bankrupter of economies and a man still oblivious to the idea he has ever done anything wrong. This is where privilege will get you:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-feb-09-na-transcript9-story.html

I Predict

Republicans are setting the stage for the next sadistic onslaught. They will act when they can justify it, if only to themselves, with a crisis or event, probably created by them or even imagined. They thirst for blood.

Was It All a Dream?

Were we ever the people we thought we were—responsible, decent, hard-working, fair, open-minded, caring and generous? We sure aren’t now, led by a crooked, lying tycoon and scrambling around grasping for more resources as it becomes evident the great game of consumption is coming to an end.

Was it all a dream? Were we ever decent people?

Pride and Innocence

It’s weird, but when life is most brutal there is a kind of innocence. This is because there is no culpability among animals. Animals are just being animals.

Cruel people betray their humanity. They become animals again—nothing but animals. In that world everything is meaninglessness and compulsion.

There is innocence there but everything is unintelligible. That is because they are sick.  The people, I mean. I like animals.

Anyone Who Supports Trump Is a Piece of Shit

Someone who voted for Trump might only have been stupid or deluded. There was no telling how he would behave. But, now we know. Trump is garbage. Trump is a piece of shit beyond all others.

No more excuses. Anyone who still supports Trump is a piece of shit. They share in his treasonous shithood. We know now what he stands for, cruelty and the destruction of everything.

Trump’s Johnson

Britain is an older, more deeply rooted culture and the Tories have refused to eat shit as readily as their American counterparts. Nevertheless, they have a Trump problem because Boris doesn’t care about anyone but himself.

He has already won, by duping, swindling, deceiving and blustering his way into his job and, as with Tony Blair, who followed another American moron into the abyss, Boris will walk away. He wins now no matter what happens.

Things He Said Today

The only act Trump has two follow is his own, maintaining standards of cruelty and ignorance for his followers who crave it, and remaining the center of attention through outrage oneupmanship. He leapfrogs himself, nearly daily—his only real talents are in denigration and persecution.

Sarah Sanders Fits In

Sarah Sanders has immediately found a lucrative home among the horrible shills at Fox News, one of many participants in the Republican platinum parachute program in which thuggery and loyalty are rewarded with admittance to a society of permanent, private-sector parasitism. Among Republicans public and private money are seamlessly fused in a system of graft, exploitation, and markets in influence.

Megan Kelly showed how coddled they are at Fox—no talent necessary, only a track record of slavish devotion to Republican dogma. She tanked on arrival at NBC, not that they are great shakes, but Kelly is a pure hack and self-interested, sycophantic warrior maiden, another sucker off the state and spin-disciple of Roger Ailes, laundering racism and treason for public consumption at the behest of Kochs and their kind.

Trump Denies Denying What Never Happened Anyway

And it's just another day in the life of a superpower...

The Good (Fake) News

Try to comprehend that the entire world might be destroyed by American, evangelical Christians and rednecks. Their lies are that powerful. They happen to constitute a critical voting bloc in the most powerful country ever,

And, they happen to be in love with lies to the point they will die for them. This is not as strange as it sounds, Think of all the cults that have held their adherents in such thrall. Evangelicals were inculcated from birth with the lie of the “Lost Cause.” 

That is the lie that the good side lost in the Civil War. The Confederacy claimed not that they were treasonous, racist thugs, which they were, but superior beings and the chosen tribe of constitutional government and God. 

In other words, it was one, huge lie. The Gospel always was a story—a kind of lie—but it was a beautiful, humane story of love and inclusion. American rednecks have twisted it into a horror show. The “Good News” was fake news. 

Evangelicals aren’t in love with a specific lie anymore they are in love with lying. The loss of the central lie of their own righteousness is death to them. They have surrounded it with a defensive perimeter of other lies.

To the rest of us it looks awfully offensive. Trump and the “Fake News” fit right into the same slot in their heads. There must never be accountability and the truth just be avoided to the point of death. These are lies with legs.