Strange Days Indeed

The Beatle Killer forces are really loose now. Consider that John Hinkley was born-again and bought the trumped-up line that Lennon had challenged the supremacy of his Lord.

And where does this shit come from? The same wellspring of fear and hate-marketing that empowers the American right-wing resurgence: fundamentalists and evangelical idiots.

Yes, Master

I don't want to make too much of it, but Trump is Darth Vader or some kind of dark lord. I've heard that in journalism the rule is to personalize a big story and universalize a small one.

It makes sense to try to provide a perspective at both the empathetic, or personal, and abstract levels. Trump blows through this with appeals to emotion and identification but we'll bring him back to ground. Identification, after all, is not understanding. The Star Wars model might help us to figure out Trump's rise, a stunning democratic malfunction.

I mean, who votes for Vader? 

At a personal level Trump is Vaderesque. Anyone not identified with him is a loser and fair game for obliteration. It's a no-tolerance zone and very binary. The world is divided into two parts, Donald and the losers. In order not to be a loser you have to be in harmony with him and subservient. This is epic grandiosity. Those in harmony can share in his power and glory.

At a universal, abstract level Trump is every villain seeking world domination, an imperative and an insatiable need. Vader seems to be an arch villain but he's a henchman. In reality he's taking it up the ass upstairs. What about Trump? I think he is an aboriginally psychotic entity. His demons are within him. His grandiosity is confoundingly immense and revealing.

Trump appears to be the dog and the rest of us the tail, in his mind. If he were to fail as a president it wouldn't bother him. We would be another casino that didn't make it. So what. And he is a birther in multiple ways. Racists and birthers believe that they are better by dispensation out of the womb, fuck-all. Behavior doesn't matter. They are superior by birth.

This means that Trump is a galactic garbage-fart. We are incapable of seeing it because he is one of us. We have identified too often and easily with the heroes in our stories and we are blind to the villains and demons among us because that kind of evil is alien by definition. Oh, but it isn't. And Trump wants us to bet on him. Really, to bet ourselves on him.

Let's not go there.

If it doesn't work out he will blame someone else and walk away. At a personal level Trump is easy to understand. He's a big baby wanting the tit that never goes away, so he's aggressive out of dependency. He hasn't a conscience at all. He's a Vader-baby, a hideous little HoHo with breathing problems. Anyhow, lacking a conscience is not inconsequential.

A conscience is a terrible thing not to have and adults are supposed to have one. Now, just in case he should win, repeat after me: "Yes, Master." We'll want to be on his good side. I don't want no Darth chasing my ass around. Yes, Master. Yes, Master...

No, That's Not a Toy. Oh, He Broke It. He Says He's Broken Things Before

How do you declare a country bankrupt? Can he have a do-over? Little Donnie doesn't understand. Call it a Mulligan! Maybe he will understand that. Our boy has been a little insulated. It was nothing but a guarantee of the good life from birth. So forgive him if he leaves some messes behind. He is very forward-looking, in a way. Someone else always cleans up the mess.

(from the chapter "what to do when the birds come home to roost and they're vultures and they projectile vomit half-digested guts all over everything, including you" in "A Hitchhiker's Guide to Trumplandia")

Very Aryan

Trumplandia is a very Aryan place--have you noticed?--and a land roiling with discontent. What do all of these white people have to be angry about? Oh, I know, they have been shafted.

Their trust has been abused and they have a grudge. Abused by whom? Donald and his class and kind? Well, yes, kind of. There was some inevitability to the decline of Aryan Middle America.

But it didn't have to play out the way it did and to that extent it's innovative Republican shafting. And so with characteristic brazenness and cunning Republicans exploit the mess they have made. 

It isn't fair to blame Trump--the man's just riding a wave. Then, again, why not? Why the fuck not? Blame is his game anyway. He's casting aspersions and shit. Let's fry his ass with accusations.

Trump Thwart

Democrats and other caring Americans are going to have to understand that there is the possibility of a Trump presidency because the problems are systemic. The system is really screwed up. Luckily there are precedents in place for what to do, under the heading of "nullification."

Republicans have been practicing nullification openly and in earnest for at least two decades, since the arrival of the Gingrich-Republican Operation in Nullification, or GROIN, in Washington in 1994. Their idea was to refuse to comply with anything they didn't like. Presidential election?

Not a problem! You can impeach a president for non-impeachable offenses uncovered in an illegal investigation-turned-persecution-turned-prosecution. Laws are held hostage. Budgets are blackballed. Nominees neglected. Stuff pigeonholed. The precedents are there and justify anything. 

There are no limits. Let the exercise in imagination begin! Anything to thwart Trump. It's all fair game. 

Trump Meme

Trump's appeal must be his essential non-existence. He's a shell and a shadow and a vehicle and a shapeless, improvisational thing. His unreality is an expression of social desire. He's a meme machine, an actual projection, without independence or substance.

 

My surmise is that this blurring of reality and unreality is about religious sensibility and abstraction, about placing non-materiality or non-existence on a higher plane. Trump is what people want him to be and want themselves to be, numbed and unfeeling.

It's entertainment as a religion. People want immersion and escape, the loss of consciousness through distraction and amusement, a death wish. Trump is an ejection seat or theme park ride. The medium is the message. And we have amused ourselves to death.

Truther Consequences

The most primitive assumption of modern Republicanism is privilege, that there are different standards for different people and groups of people. Clinton gets impeached but their boy's innumerable crimes are unacknowledged and unpunished and wished away. 

Privilege is also the link in the coalition of bluebloods and rednecks, the Brahmins and the bigots. America's old wealth quickly resorted to the usual ploy: their position was justified by innate goodness and superiority, not education or application or luck.

Whiteness is the innate goodness of the rednecks and God's sanction. They have mostly failed in the persecution of their latest surrogate for slaves, the homos, but the homos are still going to hell. God's ways are inscrutable in the elevation or condemnation of His work.

And it's inscrutable as well in His arbitrarily chosen people so we may as well all live like animals. But, wait, that would mean that the darkies could rise up and kill the white people, which would only prove that the darkies were the chosen ones all along. Go figure.

Look at the circular insanity of this. Is it any wonder their lust for power and money and arsenals of assault weapons and shit. They intend to live like criminals, with the restraints of "civilization" applied only to their adversaries. They are bullies and thugs.

The Bush family is the wormhole here, the point of passage between the dimensionally disparate worlds of parlor games and dog fights. Junior is the embodiment, the original blueblooded redneck and an incompetent and screwup saved from accountability.

LieCloud

Hypothetically, if I were to be on O'Reilly's show some day, after he discovered my interesting opinions, I would tell him that almost everything he says is a lie. He would probably rise up in his chair like a threatened animal and ask if I was calling him a liar.

To which I would say "no, Bill, I'm calling you a piece of garbage." I would explain that I can't see into his soul. He may not know he's lying. He may have sold out to the devil. I wish this didn't sound so outlandish. It happens too easily and often and imperceptibly. 

A French philosopher thought that we are so overwhelmingly free it results in despair. Think of how reassuring it is to be part of a group with a positive identity and common purpose, to give up on the individual struggle and your freedom and be the agent of another's will.

Who would the "another" be? Roger Ailes? And who is his "another?" No, it's impersonal. That must be why people postulated the devil, a docking point on the dark star, the lie-place. So it's impossible to see and resist the right-wing insanity from normal, terrestrial grounds.

O'Reilly's virtual place is groupthink, a version from hell, and to fight it you have to latch onto the life-star, to give your heart over to God. Now, I am not a believer, but I think I understand what "God" represents: sanity, justice, accountability, intelligibility and so on.

Archetypal forces of evil are always and everywhere around and have to be resisted from that same, mythological level but from the countervailing side. First it's necessary to see the extent of the evil, then that it's impersonal and that it can be condemned impersonally. 

The dark elements of dominance and submission come from a subhuman level. The good forces must draw strength from the life-place of individuality and free will and the belief that we can't only be animals. We are unavoidably either better or worse.

This is the point of the stories of the true religious traditions, the mix of opportunity and responsibility and the need to see the limits of the responsibility, to comprehend and embrace and even celebrate the impermanence and evanescence of life. We are ephemeral.

We are ephemeral and can't live rightly without understanding the terms of our existence and the folly of self-importance. Self-importance, though natural enough, is always a delusion and a dream. So, big Bill, sit your ass down and take it like a man. Liar!

Roger Dodger

Roger Ailes has lost, I guess. He will no longer be the head of Fox News. What does losing look like, in his world? Not so bad.

He is inconceivably wealthy. He got there while (by) wrecking a country. Thanks, Ronald Reagan, for repealing the Fairness Doctrine. 

After all, who needs fairness where there is bountiful cash and faith and freedom. It was fascist radio that spawned Fox News.

That leads to Trump. Will he falter? It doesn't matter. It's bad enough that he has gotten so far. The little monster is on the loose.

Il Duce is here. Hang the Hispanics! Deport the infidels! Screw the workers! Deregulate! Cut taxes! Everything will be better, they say. 

Is it better yet? We're still waiting, after decades of Supply Side and Rising Tide. Roger, tell us. Where, exactly, is it rising? 

No, not in your pants, dumbass. Take your pills. And creep off somewhere into obscurity, you silly, sorry prick.

Robust

I have been struggling to find a word to rate the level of racism and xenophobia and general paranoia at the Republican National Convention and have settled on "robust" but it may have to be revised upwards later. I'll keep you posted.

Play Group

Picture Donald Trump in a huge diaper, looking like a New Year's baby. There's a way in which the guys Republicans deem presidential are failproof because of their families. They're too blessed at birth to fail.

But this doesn't capture the innocent, childlike sociopathy of them. Trump and Romney and Bush and McCain are all developmentally arrested so early they shit themselves with impunity and are oblivious to the mess.

It isn't so easy when you're the shat-upon. Ask some Iraqis. Ask some of the business victims of Mitt and Herr Donald's libidinous drives to make more millions. McCain later hired the guy who smeared him silly in South Carolina.

The guy, I mean, who came up with the colored love-baby accusation against him. This isn't about regression or a race to the bottom. These boys never left the a pre-conscience stage of development. They didn't need to.

There was always someone to clean up after them. I think Americans elect them out of envy. Americans want a return to childhood innocence themselves. They want to get rid of the responsibilities of being grownups. 

Other People's Morality

One of the most annoying things about Fundamentalists and the Religious Right is their obsession with other people's morality. I have my hands full with my own. 

I can think of two possible explanations: that they are already perfect or that they are so corrupt and uncomfortable in their imperfection they can only stand to look outwards.

I think it's the latter. You be the judge. Their, the biblical, standard, I believe, is that you tell the tree from the fruit. Look at the fruit: brutality, backwardness and no accountability.

An American Hermann

I know it's bad to compare people to Hitler so I'm going for Göring. Donald Trump reminds me so much of Hermann. He has the same, flush-faced bravado and takes enormous pleasure in himself and loves to show off and parade around in triumph.

Mar-a-Lago doubles as a home and as a business version of a hunting lodge, with the spoils all around. Both men have a "you would do this too if you could" aspect to them. Harrumph! I'll have them know that I wouldn't, posthumously in the one instance. 

Sorry, Hermann. Are you there? He would love the unabashed self-promotion of Herr Donald and the way he struts his stuff. It will be that way until it all falls apart. But Trump would never have the courage or decency to kill himself. He would fester away.

"Realism" and the Triumph of the Will

You would think that "realism" as a political outlook or philosophy would be grounded in reality but it's not. Actually it's code language and cloaking for cynicism, preemption and the imposition of the will of one person or group on another. 

Since "paranoia" has bad connotations the Kissinger/Cheney school of thought has always marketed their thuggery in laundered terms, with the self-justification of necessity. Now, upon its utter failure, they have whitewashed the results.

And it has been partly rebranded as "neo-liberalism" and other things, fleeing responsibility for the catastrophic effects of its earlier implementation. The real underpinnings of the philosophy are rooted in delusion and personality flaws.

As such the dark origins of it, in whatever guise, are again self-justifying and circular. The whole thing is nothing but a tail-chasing club but not in a Roger Ailes kind of way. The former "realists" are trying to find their own asses, not someone else's.

The Accidental Eugenicist

Our boy Donald appears to be a eugenicist. His verbal output is heedless and Homeric, an epic spew of exaggeration and invention, so it's probably possible to attribute anything to him but in the sea of particulars there are recurring elements relating to a half-coherent, emotional outlook.

His own greatness arises continuously, as a theme, and the ridicule-inducing awfulness of anyone who opposes him. Most fundamentally he sees himself as a winner and as the winner in a genetic lottery. He struggles to find ways to comprehend and convey his excellence, the extent of it making it hard.

But there are disturbing behavioral traits in Trumpistan, among them the insatiable need for attention and adulation corresponding to the psychological concept of compensation. Compensatory striving doesn't come from confidence and self-regard but the opposite: insecurity and feelings of worthlessness. 

These characteristics could be catastrophic in a world leader since everything would be about him, no matter how obviously not. It's possible that Trump would rise to the occasion with his personal resources in hand and realize that doing a good job earns him the esteem he so craves but it's unlikely and a poor bet.

Consider his cluelessness and immaturity in defending the tasteless trail of crap he has bequeathed to the world. His presidency would be a virtual version of that, no doubt. The pride he shows in his DNA is the sort of thing that has resulted in the murders of perceived racial inferiors in various conflicts all over the place.

It may be childlike but it's not innocent or acceptable. So the horror of some people, sensing his insecurity and essential smallness, at the prospect of a Trump presidency is justified. He may not actively promote human selective breeding but it would be reasonable in relation to his evaluation of himself and beginning with himself.

He backed into it but Trump is a believer in eugenics, in racial superiority and the accidental, in his case and presumably, results of genetic beneficence and good breeding. Trump arrived there as a byproduct and happenstance of trying to understand and assert his own exceptional nature. 

Live at Roger's

Breaking Noise: there will be no consequences to Roger Ailes for years of inappropriate behavior and muscling people around, especially women.

The "American Dream" is now syndicated and proprietary. A slob like Roger can deny others their dreams in the pursuit of his own and walk away.

There's nothing really new in this but I think it's gotten worse with the Republican hegemony. The "rule of law" is supposed to prevent or curtail it. 

What nonsense. Assholes like Roger own the system. 

How to Destroy a Democracy: A Guide for the Compleat Idiot

This task is not as hard as it seems at first but it takes time. There is only one essential tool, an idiot voting bloc. We at the Idiot's Guide have studied ignorance for years and have learned that inculcating ignorance can result in entrenched stupidity, the inability to process easily intelligible information and the determination to persist in ignorance.

An idiot voting bloc can usually be found by following the effects of early exposure to pernicious influences. In our test case, the USA, we identified Jimmy Swaggart, Oral Roberts and other fundamentalist preachers as rife sources of ignorance and traced them to our idiot voting bloc, lower-class southern white people and especially rednecks.

Once the idiot voting bloc is in hand the rest is easy, by the nature of demolition. Any old procedure will work since the idiot voting bloc has been conditioned to love ignorance and to react defensively and fearfully against intelligence. In our test case rednecks continued to vote for all kinds of destructive policies even after the effects were known.

And this was true even when the ill effects, no matter how severe, were brought to bear disproportionately against them. As far as we know it is still going on since it seemed that they would carry their ignorance to the grave, though this was only a test case and it would be good if someone could find a way to stop it before things really implode.

Roger That

So it turns out that Roger Ailes is an unbelievable pig. I can't fault him. It's the case that the electorate is at fault when they empower bad people. So who empowers Ailes? And did he keep up the lechery for decades without success? 

That would be possible. Either way I don't want to go there. What kind of a society puts such a raging piece of shit in a position of such power? And--yes, I guess we must go there--what about the women who said yes? Oh, fuck. 

I mean yuck.

"Producing Black Smoke..."

I love eBay. What a wonderful and mighty-big slice of life. You encounter the occasional idiot or attitude problem but there's a lot of honest people doing the best they can. 

I saw a listing for a smoking power tool, as stipulated. Oh, it is us. Let's put America on the leadership block. But we better be honest. We are producing smoke.

It's why we never look back and insist we've never done anything wrong, but denial catches up with you in the end. Remember desegregation? That's what denial will do for you.

We should be leading the world on every environmental front and socially progressive issue. It's our true tradition and a natural fit. Ah, but the smoke is already in our eyes...

I Have (Another) Dream

Koch-daddy was behind this contribution to American culture--the insane, Bircher butt-head. I WANT TO SEE A FULL-PAGE VERSION OF THIS IN THE NEW YORK TIMES enumerating some of the more egregious insults to democracy of his sons, headlined:

WANTED FOR TREASON: THE KOCH BROTHERS

Let's play by their rules. 

The Kowtow Club

America is now an outlier country among the developed nations and it's getting worse.

Why is this? Republican Washington is a corporate Kowtow Club, like the Bada Bing and fittingly criminal. I hear that inner-circle members enjoy the "Koch-sucker" honorific.

Republicans believe that issues of dominance and submission are inescapable, a world of screwers and the screwed. Cooperation, conciliation and real civilization are impossible.

So almost all of the Republican elected representatives make the trip to Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform on arrival and kneel in fealty. We are told that this is normal.

We are told that this is what the Founding Fathers had in mind and that it represents accountability. Right, but to whom? The accountability is supposed to be to the electorate.

NOT to a fractionally small, power-hungry cabal of rich pricks. Call me old-fashioned.

What the founders had in mind, of course, was individualism and ethical and intellectual independence, involvement and informed consent. Man, how we have failed.

Gentlemen Prefer Bonds

Let's cut the shit. How many really wealthy men do you know who don't have a woman, if that's what they want? None. Money will get you a woman.

Men don't have to worry about women they can worry about money instead. You will never be alone if you have a lot of money. Money buys everything.

It's All Too Beautiful

I feel like I'm living in Eden but an insistent itch reminds me of the unreality of it. It's the itchy-coos. I want something else. Can't there be an Eden in reality? Or a reality with aspects of Eden?

Anyhow, the itch, I've learned, is from the horrible and invasive Trump-vine and there isn't a salve for that. We must stay away from it. Maybe eradication would be good. Grab y'all some Trump-i-cide!

Amazon. It's a Jungle Out There.

I have heard from a questionable source that Amazon is using whippings and beatings on its employees at its warehouses. I'm skeptical but it's consistent with a business model which values the welfare of workers at nothing. Does anyone know?

How to Make a Minion: Credulity and the Suspension of Disbelief

Trump doesn't have followers he has minions. Followers retain some species of independence and integrity. Minions trade that in for identification.

From that they get catharsis and feelings of belonging and security. The ticket to minionism is the suspension of disbelief, a convention of theater.

It involves overcoming the awareness of the obvious unreality of the performance, mostly through immersion, I suppose, and forced credulity. 

So Trump is a performance artist. But as an artist he is schlock, a symptom of cultural decline. The question is: how much lower can we go?

How much lower can we go than Trump, that is, before we come unglued? Or are we unglued already?

The Party of Foregone Conclusions

With the financialization of everything it's easy to see the tail and the dog and what is wagging what. Increasingly financial interests represent the ends and not the means, an inversion of the logical order of things.

Similarly the people who support corporations at the expense of everything else oppose the use of common sense and reason at the outset with respect to everything else, knowing that the results will not please them.

Imagine a Republican study group concluding that tax cuts are not a good idea. It's not possible because tax cuts are an article of faith for them. They start with conclusions and work backwards. That is rationalization. 

Reasoning requires an open mind or, at least, the absence of extreme, impenetrable prejudice. In financialization there is no investment but only financial interest since the "investors" play the averages, à la ENRON. 

Consider Mitt Romney. The businesses acquired or co-oped by the capitalists are impersonal and dehumanized things. Jobs and productivity aren't relevant, only short-term financial gain. They are like the neocons in Iraq. 

They can walk away from a mistake without consequences because the system has evolved to serve only their benefit, insuring them and insulating them from repercussions, supposedly to promote risk-taking.

The opposite is the case. They hate risk and want a sure thing. It's a case of rationalization but this is the Republican way. Conclusions are determined in advance, foregone, and based only on their self-interest.

The Boy Who Would Be Bling

Donald Trump was always a political happy meal and he's losing momentum. He says he wants to supersize us but it's all about him: short term satisfaction but no sustenance.

Trump is for people who buy the "Corinthian Leather" line. There was none. Or "Axis of Evil," for that matter. It had a nice ring. Trump is for people who don't care about the truth.

No, they actually like the lie. But even aesthetics are rooted in a kind of truth so you can only have sham aesthetics without it. Enter our new national hood-ornament, Herr Donald.

He can buy all the pink marble he wants and gold-plate his gonads. It won't change anything. He's still nothing but bling, all marketing and no substance. It's his chosen thing.

The Leilani Reforms

I am actually very conservative. As far back as I can remember I identified with authority. I liked structure. The authority I knew as a child didn't constrain me it gave me the freedom to live openly and aggressively in my childhood world without horrible results. 

Not that there weren't problems, I should say, just no loss of limb. The benign structures of my family and milieu were good for me because I was incautious. Now, I didn't like the Beatles. How's that for conservative? I was disappointed in the girls who liked them. 

And the changes of Vatican II befuddled me. Why would anyone give up Latin and Gregorian Chant for a lot of instantly trite ritual and insipid, overly sentimental singing? Where was the respect? It all seemed rash to me and I was confused by the lack of continuity.

Art museums and banks and similar places impressed me, as cumulative results of something good, some frozen or stockpiled place and product of intelligent or creative or cooperative endeavor. My elementary school got a groovy nun somewhere in there, Sister Leilani. 

She had a vision. The students would work in little groups. It was all that mattered. Formal classroom instruction was considered passé. Other adults came to our school to see us sitting at tables in our beloved little groups. I, for one, didn't learn anything and played around.

The little groups were an end in themselves. Behold: the high school I had revered and looked forward to attending was Leilani-land on crack. In some classes, notably Freshman Algebra, they stopped teaching entirely in an attempt to get us to work at our own rate.

That was the new catch-phrase and buzz. My rate was zero. Stationary. They wouldn't fail you so I worked into the summer to complete the required units. Sophomore year I got into a structured geometry class for the losers who couldn't handle the new freedom.

I got a 99%. At registration, however, for my junior-year classes they were all closed. I left the scene feeling sick and transferred to the well-structured, forced-integrated, riot-zone public school in whose district I lived. I learned more there but we had several deaths.

Now you would suppose from this that I would condemn newfangled everything and love the Catholic fascists at Fox News but, no. I learned how dependent we are on circumstances and how determined our fortunes are by luck, so I want better circumstances for everyone.

That's exactly what the Fox News people don't want.

Depressed Mode

Oh, I'm so depressed. Donald Trump is running for president. Hillary will run against him. It's so depressing. Is this the best we can do?

Strangers in Paradise

It's our kismet. But we are strangers in our own paradise. It's not that we are new to it. Rather, we have been too lucky for too long. 

Woe to those who take their good fortune for granted. They are destined to lose it. We have presumed on our good fortune.

We are about to lose it because of selfishness and stupidity. Woe to us. 

Post Martini

Talking about movies recently with someone I remembered how a friend of mine had once gone on a Martini bender after watching The Thin Man.

Myrna Loy and William Powell made Martini-drinking look morally good. And enjoyable. Then I had to admit I'd never had a Martini, which seems ridiculous. 

My parents loved them. I don't like resolutions and bucket-lists but one of these days I am going to have me a Martini, I hope without an ensuing bender.

However, if you don't hear from me for a few days please check in. Meanwhile, Asta, fetch! Fetch me a Martini! Good boy! 

It Will be Ugly

For most of his life my father was lucky. He scrounged his way through college in the '30's, working constantly. He said he couldn't comprehend how some of his classmates didn't have to work.

He was in ROTC, naturally--anything to get by. He worked for a bookie. He worked at Frigidaire on a crosscut saw when refrigerators were wooden iceboxes with compressors stuck on top.

Graduating in '39 he was already in the army when the war started, in ordnance, having requested a transfer there because it made more sense for an engineer than the infantry, or so he said. 

Anyway, he was stationed at a bomb depot near Gallup, New Mexico, somewhat in charge of operations. He instituted games and competitions for the Navajo workers and productivity was high.

Towards the end of the war, probably around or after V-E Day, he was transferred to a depot near Tooele, Utah, where they were working 24/7, with no holidays, and getting further behind. 

There was a set of buildings and the rail-yard. The guys worked back and forth between them, with two short breaks and a longer one in the middle of their shift. My father suggested a deal.

If they worked six hours nonstop at the tracks and very hard he would pay them for eight. And he would give them a weekend off if they caught up. Productivity soared and they caught up. 

Woohoo! The workers loved it. The work went by quickly. Some got second jobs. My father had stumbled into something he could do well. That was his luck. He ended the war a lieutenant-colonel.

So this was his thing, for the rest of his life, to try to create productivity out of nowhere through empathetic intelligence and cooperation in the workplace. This is, on average, the story of America.

That and being awash in natural resources. On balance we have been practical people and committed to a better society for everyone. But now we are doing the reverse of what my father did.

We are replacing good systems with bad and ensuring that everyone loses. Those responsible reject the idea of a "society," a common entity, entirely and rationalize their selfishness as individualism.

They can get away with their wasteful ways only because earlier generations of Americans have lived better lives than the new guys are able, more responsible and productive and fair. There's a lag.

Our society is not a reflection of what we are, pigs and idiots, but a decent thing only because of the inheritance we now burn through. When the reality catches up with us it is going to be ugly.

The Blue Tent

Hillary has plenty of women in her tent but otherwise she has problems. And white woman are famously fond of Republicans so even that isn't as predictably good as it seems.

Fastidiousness is Hillary's most notable trait. It's unappealing. Bill has problems staying on the rails so he married a mistress his own age. Ideally she would have been older.

She is older at heart. Parachute Hillary into another generation and she's pro-prohibition. She was born to keep a lid on things, firstly herself or maybe Bill. And now us.

Good luck with Bill. He wants to enjoy himself. As do we. Hillary should embrace her inner Carrie Nation. It's what she is. She has a worthy cause, stopping America's self-destruction.

We could use someone like Hillary to get us through our national adolescence in one piece. But be careful with the hatchets, Hillary. Don't bring the tent down on our heads.

No Witnesses

Nobody wants to screw up, by their own standards, but the witnessing is worse than the mess-up itself. Think of how much easier it is to move on if there are no witnesses. 

I remember my entire adolescence with shame. I felt like a ball put into play in the wrong place, utterly passive and wondering when it would end, the game or my role in it.

Individualism has its limits. The fight for individual rights arose in a context of oppressive social structures but humane structures are necessary to guarantee personal freedom.

Compassionate societies allow people to grow and develop with the humiliations worked through and left behind but too much or too little accountability causes problems. 

My long unpracticed Catholicism comes to mind. Confession, the sacrament, for all of its strangeness embodies the balance. You acknowledge your failings and then move on.

You move on with the intention of doing better. Admitting the failing is critical but so is getting past it. If God is willing to forgive us who are we not to forgive ourselves.

The Portable Redneck Shithole of Despair

There's something you have to understand about Southerners and life in general in the Southern United States. There is a stigma attached to working and to being intelligent and productive.

Work is for losers and reason is dangerous because it's a threat to an insane, bigoted social system. I ran into a familiar redneck the other day and realized that everything he touches turns to shit.

He's a portable shithole of despair. And that show has gone on the road. The tea-party rednecks are running things in Washington, making it a pit of despair, and bringing that mess to all of us.

Our "So What?" Moment

Hillary has won the primary battle. So what? What Hillary represents is more of the same and we need anything but. She's a woman. Great but who cares.

There are more important issues at play, such as the survival of our relatively rational, humane, democratic institutions. All of that is under attack.

The outcome is uncertain. It's time for Hillary to man up. Okay, it's a figure of speech but the person doing it the best, Elizabeth Warren, is a woman as well.

Hillary, it isn't all about you. Do the fucking job.

Pat McCrory is a Pussy

North Carolina's Pat McCrory is one big pussy. His state is the kowtow capital of the country. Such a degree of pussydom ought to be acknowledged. 

Someday they'll make a statue of him on his knees, or writhing around on the ground as he's doing now trying to placate two evil forces, racism and greed.

I hope he has a bathroom of his own. The men's isn't a good fit. Let's pass a bill to that effect, that he can only use the bathroom marked for pussies.

After all, Pat and his comrades cracked the door on all of that, the bathroom sectarianism. Instead of house-to-house conflict it will be stall-to-stall. 

We will contest every urinal and commode. This is more in the way of dignified government from the side on the right.

Whew!

Against my expectation I think I figured out what's up with Trump. You know how it's possible to make a show about making a show? Maybe a movie, let's say?

Donald is this in relation to running a country. He's not entertaining he's entertainment. It has nothing to do with running a country. Whew, I'm glad we figured that out!

It was making me a little nuts thinking there was a connection to reality. We wouldn't actually elect him any more than we would hire an actor for the job, right?

Uh-oh.

Room Available

It's easy to call Trump vacuous but it isn't very helpful. He's clearly full of something. He's devoid of the things normally considered presidential but lots of people want him.

They want whatever he's full of. Which is what? We better figure it out. It's now us. While we're at it let's consider what he's missing, like integrity, because we're missing it too.

An Argument for the Existence of George Bush, with Apologies to Everyone

George Bush was more terrible for his position and circumstances than anyone could have conceived of as having been possible, so it's natural to want to think that it didn't happen or that it wasn't so incredibly bad.

But the inconceivable terribleness argues against its being imagined or exaggerated and for its having occurred. People, we couldn't have thought up this kind of tragic failure, so it's an unlikely invention. Yes, by God.

It really happened and there are good reasons why those who wanted him in office now backpedal and rewrite and rationalize. The distance between the demands of the office and the uselessness of the man was too great.

Springtime for Hitler and Germany

A natural song and dance number for Donald. Enjoy.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kHmYIo7bcUw

Between Trump and a Hard Place

Anyone who thinks Hillary isn't as big a narcissist as Trump isn't paying attention. She has a different style but the ambition comes from the same wellspring of selfishness and vanity.

Shill Game

I'm a liberal Democrat and I find myself thinking about things like honor. It sounds strange and Middle Eastern or Medieval, with hints of duels and dependent women. 

So let's call it integrity: the idea that if someone has a job, for example, they are renting out bodies and brains, parts of themselves not including their souls.

But it's a buyer's market for souls these days. People give them away. And those most eager to unload their souls call themselves true believers and conservatives.

They are nothing but shills for the evil interests of money and power. They have no honor or integrity. I will duel with them, that's what I will do. I'll call them on it.

Choose your weapons, you cowards! Better yet, at my insistence and for my protection, we'll do paintball guns at thirty paces. I'll plaster their asses with color. 

The Digital New Jerusalem

Too often I am confronted with arrogant geeks, arrested guys with money and no sense of their own limits. But they were meant by disposition to be cogs. 

Their interior story goes like this: I am good at something like math or the scientific method and it applies to everything so I am good at everything. 

Since they must actively repress the awareness of their inadequacy in a defense against self-knowledge the arrogance ramps-up, usually aided by money.

They get a little money and they don't think they're lucky they think they're demigods, and they get affirmation of this in fantasy worlds and video games. 

Math, for example, is a world of purity and they want to inhabit such a world. This puts them oddly in line with old, puritanical, utopian traditions. 

It's a digital New Jerusalem, a land of abstract, binary perfection. But they have advanced past their level of competence and into uncertainty. 

Bill Gates is a billionaire and he can't choose a shirt. The insecurity and constant need for reassurance causes many of them to fall for bogus, heroic nonsense. 

They see themselves as superior beings in the world-views of Ayn Rand and libertarianism, half-baked pseudo-philosophies of personal success.

They think they're winners but they're still just punks, pencil pushers and prospective bank managers running amok and drunk on self-importance.

Crazy Little Thing

Another image arising in my head is of Donald Trump dancing around and singing A Crazy Little Thing Called Love by Queen. What he has in mind, of course, is how much everybody loves him.

The Real Causers of 9/11 Have Names Like "Kissinger"

"Realism" is an arbitrary standard in application. In practice it turns out to be nihilism, so it is only a nicer term for the law of the jungle. Applied to American foreign policy, other countries and peoples are treated as means to our ends, not entities with inborn rights and deserving of respect. 

They are devalued. Is it a wonder they hate us? Individuals, like Henry Kissinger, who are drawn to this are the measure of all things to themselves. They see their own psychology of anger, aggression and insecurity in the world around them and so must always be able to out-gun everyone else.

If it sounds familiar there's a domestic, NRA version of this. All the 9/11 guys did was to accept the battle on our terms, which assume an ethical vacuum. We shouldn't complain. We have been playing cynical, power politics in the Middle East forever, resulting in chaos there and many deaths.

There were a lot of innocent victims of 9/11 but, as a country, we asked for it. The war-hawks have declared open-season on America, I hope inadvertently, but it is sick stuff anyway. We can add to the list of innocents all the noncombatants killed by us since then in Iraq and elsewhere.

Not that the Neoconistas care. They have reinvented themselves in other roles, typically with no loss of prestige for being deadly wrong. It's a simpler world when you don't care, and that includes about our own dead, and when there are no consequences no matter how badly you fail.

Benghazi's Got Legs

Hillary Clinton may have a problem. It's interesting, though, that her trivial sins won't go away and that the mortal--and I mean involving tens of thousands of deaths--sins of the Bush crowd are strangely forgotten. Her incompetence somehow outranks their criminality.

Loving the Ruins

My latest tactic is to love a ruined America. I should say, to love it as a ruin and because it is a ruin and in full ruination, not in spite of its being ruined. What good is that?

Who wants that kind of backhanded embrace? No, I will love America absolutely as the falling-down version of itself it is. Welcome to my ruin, and don't you dare criticize. 

The Shit on our Shingle

Trump does have a kind of sincerity. Put on the fuzzy glasses. Now look at Trump. Notice, he doesn't really pretend to be anything other than a piece of shit.

Reality-Show Rubbish

The great disgrace of America's current situation is that it is still a democracy. The American public is voting for the reality-show rubbish of the ongoing election cycle.

We have no one to blame but ourselves. For all the system's faults we could stop the shameful spectacle in a single election. We kind of did in 2008, to the world's relief.

But there was no respect for that outcome and another disgrace in the 2010 election. Yuck. On the Republican side the system is primed for permanent minority rule.

That is the end of democracy, realty-show style.