I Am Waiting

For nearly 40 years we have been waiting for the wonderful effects of Rising Tide and Supply Side Economics to work. It's a long wait. 

Koch-Sucker Award

David Remnick's recent review of Trump's first 100 days includes an excellent and succinct assessment of the man's "low character" where I might prefer "flaming degeneracy" but it's still well executed. Donald's dumpster-fire presidency was contrastingly well defended, however, by Bill Johnson, congressman from an arm-pit area of the increasingly desperate and downtrodden state of Ohio, in a radio interview.

Who's fault is the descent of places like Johnson's gerrymandered, economically disadvantaged district into sad irrelevancy? The fault of Republicans, whose continued kowtowing to the super-rich has resulted in a death spiral and tax-break induced decay for anyone south of the median income-line--meaning, of course, nearly everyone in Bill's depressed district, the interests of which he stubbornly refuses to promote. 

Trump and his submissive cohorts in Congress (like Bill) continue to try to fawningly slash taxes on rich citizens. Bill, for this impressive display of depraved indifference to decency and on-your-knees obeisance I bestow unto you this month's Kochsucker Award, the highest honor available to degraded, obsequious public servants. You wear your knee pads well. Onward, sir, to depriving your constituents of healthcare.

Freedom Filters

Freedom Caucus members have their own set of filters, most familiarly the "not crazy enough" one employed in electoral politics and culminating in Trump. There is no upper limit on this filter. 

The other primary example, the "not screwed enough" filter, applies to non-wealthy citizens and can be seen in-action in the attempts to deprive people of jobs, security, income and healthcare. 

Trump, the Traitor, Blows the Curve

There's a natural bottleneck in trying to explain the hideous awfulness of the traitor, Donald Trump, and it's as hard to comprehend as it is to describe. Trump is a 15 on a ten-scale of awfulness and incompetence. This is possible because he is an outsider (traitor) in citizen guise gaming the system. 

Trump and his allies are rogue elements within the society and economy--that is, they necessarily entail the long-term destruction of the society and its political and economic institutions and structures. They are parasites and a deadly virus and can't be processed or understood from within.

Fahrenheit Trump

Trump is the temperature at which everything burns.

Let Him Play Golf

Trump is probably less dangerous on a golf course than anywhere. Let him play golf.

Discontinuity

Everyone knows the government has all kinds of plans to ensure its own (continuity) survival if there's a nuclear attack or another kind of calamity but what about Trump, Bannon and Miller? They are the fifth column and a nuclear attack on our government. 

They seem intent on weakening the government as much as they can by throwing every kind of wrench into every machine, probably so that rich people can have their way exclusively. They are all about discontinuity. And they call this conservative?

No doubt there's a plan for their survival so they are both the attackers and the people most likely to be protected. I'm not sure I understand this but I think it's a revolution and a coup. Average citizens are irrelevant or a nuisance and not meaningfully involved.

Their role was over after the election. We are all spectators now and it's not our government or country anymore. We got played. Only the government stood in the way of their evil empire of oligarchs and autocrats. The destroyers of order have won.

Jobs Report

It's stunning to think that Trump and his henchmen are government employees who are being paid to screw us. They get a government paycheck. 

Also, they have a negative mandate. Trump resoundingly lost the popular vote. One white guy named Mercer outweighs 54% of voting Americans.

Mercer is behind Breitbart, Bannon and now Trump. They are savages and crooks intent on instituting a permanent, anti-democratic hegemony.

My Monocausal Explanation for Everything

I'm suspicious of simple, monocausal explanations even when they're mine but I'm having an own your shit day so I will. I have a monocausal explanation for everything from Goldwater to Trump.

It's the South, stupid (me). Take away the southern voting bloc and all of the insanity goes away. No southern strategy equals no insanity. Convince me I'm wrong and I'll renounce my theory. 

But for now I'm sticking with it.

Robotics

The Republican corporatization of everything relies on deception and double-speak. So, the surest course is to start with the inverse of whatever they say and go from there. It works for me. 

For example, they ramble on about freedom and slap its name on everything but they hate it, insisting on conformity, unanimity of opinion and the suppression and subversion of dissent. 

Republicans are robots. They are drones. They are projectiles--a willfully dehumanized subspecies of bureaucratized automatons, trading their (freedom) humanity for thoughtless certainty.

Worry about Republicans when you worry about robots. The mechanized ones may take our jobs but Republicans will take our freedom and our souls. It can be done. It has been done already.

Stephen Miller's Contempt Muse

Stephen Miller deserves some credit for owning his inner Darth Vader. He isn't only unafraid of being loathed--I think he likes it--he's unafraid of being loathsome. As with Darth the life-hating force is strong in him but employed in the service of his master, an unknown lord or maybe just darkness, the hatred of everything decent, sustainable and good. 

I half expect him to hiss and seethe at any moment. Always there are these issues on the New American Right of dominance and submission, their Marxist assumptions about the nature of life and its struggle, self-fulfilling nonsense representing an unconscious projection of their own, internal feelings of contempt. Contempt is their muse and marching band. 

Watch it on parade every day now in Washington. What Miller evidently doesn't see is the racism. Rational arguments can have hidden assumptions and be premised on rash, irrational and instinctual character judgements. Presidents are complex figures--functional, but also ceremonial and as close a thing as we have to a human embodiment of our ideals. 

Their boy Bush was defended no matter what and Obama attacked and reviled before he did anything--there was talk of impeaching him even before his inauguration. This is purely racism and tribalism. Behavior doesn't matter. Identification does and it requires submission, conformity and unanimity of opinion. Dissent is not tolerated. Resistance will be punished.

Stephen Miller will punish someone and he will enjoy it but his side is far from unified now. There will be retribution for sure, maybe an inner purge and then the full force of the enmity will be back on us. (Picture him in black leather breaches with whips and chains, a gravitas-lacking version of Dick Cheney sneaking in at the door of a faux, GOP biker-bar)  

Silicon Valley Days

I keep hearing about the moral vacuum of Silicon Valley and the sociopaths who are acculturated there--the techies, owners and investors who think that, whatever they have, it isn't enough. This is about arrestedness. Greed doesn't explain the immorality because it's about power and insecurity. 

The interplay of those never ends. Power doesn't counteract insecurity. Maybe it does in the immediate, hormonally intoxicating onrush of success but the goal is then moved and the awareness resurfaces not just of the old insecurity but of its reinvention.

Aha!--now they have more to lose and they are defined by their losable stuff, not by character and conviction. So, typically of the arrested personality, they drill down on themselves and come up with nothing--nothing because the meaning of life is societal, elusive, interpersonal and ephemeral.

They are even more isolated now by their money and success and everything is determined by it. I don't know these people--not a single billionaire. I see it, however, in the petty tyrants around me, those who compulsively crave power and are never satisfied. 

I know that there are few people in this exclusive place and many good people beneath them but they are part of a determining minority, a ruling cabal, along with their innately sociopathic allies--the professional politicians, fundamentalist Christians and irresponsible, toxic mutants like Trump. 

Retributive Injustice

Among those who think Trumpian thoughts retributive injustice is a higher art than retributive justice because it is purer in its display of power. The dispensing of justice is typically bureaucratic, corporatized and contingent--limited by the law--whereas injustice can be individual, impulsive, arbitrary, unchecked and self-indulgent.

Consider Trump's threats of extrajudicial attacks against Hillary and others. Their illegality enhances their power. The execution of these threats would act as a warning against enemies--not of the state but of Trump himself and his allies. The result is the intimidation of a veiled threat. People will think twice before messing with Trump. 

Sock-Puppet Government Prevails

With the revelation that Roger Ailes ran sock-puppet websites we see a trend and realize that wealthy Republicans have invented and instituted sock-puppet government, arguably beginning at the time of Reagan though the movement was discernible much earlier. 

Their goal is to have the government incapably weak and unable to resist them--ideally one which furthers their interests. We have that now, an administration entirely under the control of wealthy people. Donald Trump, however, is a sock-puppet of another sort.

He's the first president with their kind of wealth so there's confusion about his role and function. He is his own sock-puppet and was so before he became president. Trump doesn't have his head up his ass he has his ass up his ass--an asshole-reductive vortex of doom.

So, the shrill noises and cacophony coming out of the White House are from feedback--and there may be an explosion or implosion, depending on centrifugal and centripetal forces, which are in short-term, destructive equilibrium. Don't stand too close. It may blow.

Oh, damn, we are already unavoidably too close.

Open, My Ass

I was a victim of the Open School Movement. Beginning in the 7th grade and initially at the behest of a "groovy nun" my schooling was obliterated, through to the tenth grade, by then at the hands of groovy priests and brothers. 

Classroom teaching--dismissed as retrograde, authoritarian and ineffective--was abandoned entirely. It was usually replaced with nothing though sometimes with a modish alternative, such as "Visual Concepts" instead of English. 

It was a kind of speed reading. Freshman Algebra was turned into a study hall. There was no regular instruction, tests or grading. We were issued evaluations, mine noting that I liked to "play" in class. I'll stipulate to that. I was fifteen.

These schools had previously been highly structured and strict--uniforms and dress codes and marching around double-file and so on. I was the worst served by these changes of anyone I knew and it was nothing but bad luck. 

We had blocks of free time, unaccountable to anyone, as in college. It was thought we would use these productively. The result was a mix of chaos and sloth. Some students did okay but I bet they would have done well no matter what.

The little shits. I mean--I envied them. To be independently composed, stable, responsible and productive at that age was beyond my understanding and ability. I learned from this not to mistrust innovation but zealotry and certitude. 

That arrogance is a sign of ignorance and immaturity and I think it's nearly always compensatory and anchored in insecurity. So, my political allegiance immediately went left with the rise of arrogantly self-righteous conservatism. 

Junior year I changed schools, by the way, horrified at my experience. The new school had more structure but it was still a mess. By then I was doomed. I didn't begin to recover until college and in some respects I never did.  

Our Hero

Donald dropped a budget buster bomb on ISIS. It only cost us $500,000 per combatant killed, though they're still counting. 

Meanwhile, we're subsidizing the hell out of his high-life. The least he can do is chip in for some of those MOABs and cruise things. 

Maybe that would take the itch out if his little trigger finger. Hurling bombs and missiles around is his only arguable success. 

I don't like to think where it might take us.

Let Them Eat Fritos

I find that the best time frame for examining the pernicious stupidity of Republicanism is thirty to fifty years or so ago. More recently and there are problems with both the tidal wave of rationalizing nonsense and the immaturity of the consequences--waiting for those to ripen into full-blown, observable insanity.

Further back and the consequences have played out through the system, often been repaired by Democrats or lost some of their emotional force and impact, as in the case of the Great Depression, which was caused by the same kind of crazy, deregulatory economic thinking promoted on the right more recently. 

Now, other people have done an excellent job of it so I encourage you to investigate Earl Butz, Secretary of Agriculture under Richard Nixon, to see how knee-jerk, Republican ideology and policy, rooted in political calculation and blind belief in corporatism and business consolidation, plays out over time. 

The damage to American infrastructure, the environment and even our health has been incalculable. And, having made average citizens both poorer and less healthy, Republicans want to deprive them of fair access to medical services. Look into Butz. You will see a familiar and telling paradigm and its results.

How Screwed Are We?

Donald, you say you screw someone back 10 times as much they screwed you, and then you say 15 times. Which is it? You are now employed by and accountable to the American people--we actually pay you--though we allow that Trumps have been sucking off the government in various ways for decades.

Get your act together and decide whether the revenge screwing-standard is by a factor of ten or fifteen. You are a government employee now. We can't keep you, clearly, from doing what you want but in government service it must be codified and determined and then evaluated and standardized.

Once documented and assessed practices can then either be continued or abandoned relative to their effectiveness and efficiency. In such a way societies move forward and wantonly revenge-screwing people, your innovation and contribution to public life, must be similarly and properly treated.

A Familiar Pattern Emerges

Trump has already lowered standards even further than Bush. We will be grateful if any military or economic catastrophe is even survivable. What a way to live.

Where there is Trump there is no God.

Trump and justice are incompatible. God is incompatible with injustice. Therefore, God and Trump are incompatible.

Where there is Trump there is no God. Is it possible that Evangelicals elected Trump to try to end the world?

Trump Horror

I always thought that part of Trump's appeal to the fools and degenerates who voted for him was that he wasn't overawed by the office he sought and now holds. They got that right. He wasn't overawed because he hasn't any respect for anything and certainly not himself. 

Since everything was given to Donald and made easy he doesn't respect any of it. Now it's our loss. Donald doesn't answer to anyone. He never has. His concerns outweigh those of the rest of the country and world put together, so he lashes out without justice or cause.

The man is a horror. He doesn't deserve the presidency. His doesn't deserve his citizenship. In a better world such a piece of shit would never have been born.

Daily Thought on Republicanism

When you hire people to run the government who hate the government and don't want it to work then the government doesn't work. When asked what they are doing they will blame someone else for their failure.

Where Has All the Money Gone?

In a country as rich as ours squandering the amount of money it takes to impoverish the middle class requires a really bottomless pit--ideally one that is on fire and so acting as an incinerator and the Republican incinerator is military spending. Spending the money wastefully isn't enough. 

No hole is big enough and the hardware would begin to accumulate and people would begin to notice and ask if all that stuff is necessary, so heedless wars, interventionism and adventurism are the solutions, thereby destroying the hardware. Young, mostly lower-class Americans are also killed.

The Republican Oligarchic Revolution

Too often now we have witnessed the Republican dread of empowering the American people and never more than with healthcare, so the case is instructive. Always these so-called conservatives will disgracefully vote with their wealthy overlords since they live submissively within the castle walls. 

The breakdown and division in a society remade along oligarchic lines is this, whether a person is within the walls or without. The serfs may, if appropriately humble, be protected and welcomed inside the walls if the oligarch next door decides to invade--but, no promises. Serfs must be powerless. 

Weakness is necessary because the walls are also there to protect the lords and their henchmen from a possible uprising of the serfs who do all the work and pay for everything. The oligarchic system is, incidentally, exactly what America was founded in reaction to and in opposition against.

Repeal and Rejoice

Republicans are reviving Obamacare repeal and healthcare reform, not wanting to miss out on such a great opportunity to screw the American people, that being the force that energizes them and the hope that gives their lives meaning. They will rejoice at the renewed suffering.

Reaganomics and the Common Man

Supply-side, rising-tide and trickle-down--how well we remember. Behold the results of Republican economic policy and a generation's worth of screwing working Americans out of their livelihoods, in a simple graph and culminating in the final insult--their pussy-grabbing, poster-boy and playboy president, Donald Trump, who may be pictured riding the crests of the upward-sloping line:

The Trump Test

Trump is serving as an excellent test to determine which Republicans, if any, place national priorities above party loyalty. The list is very short and determined more by Trump than them, now that he has won, because they are standing in line waiting for an opportunity to show fealty. Even Mitt disgraced himself over frog's legs at the dark tower.

Democrats must understand that Republicans will never be their partners if running the country well and serving all of its citizens is the point. Trump is a test and indication of how far we've fallen, that it's not about competence in the pursuit of common goals but about the goals themselves--whether they will be national or personal and partisan.

Duct Tape!

The White House has issued a plea for cartons and cases of duct tape--whatever anyone has at hand or will donate--to try to hold together Trump's failing presidency long enough for them to get their bearings, stop walking into doors, explore escape routes and figure out if anything, including their own careers and assorted, associated perks, can be salvaged. The situation is dire and desperate. 

A band is playing inspirational tunes but circumstances are too chaotic to give an assessment of morale or of the survivability of the institutions themselves, the shells into which the molten iron of incompetence has been poured and solidifies as it simultaneously sets fire to everything around it, so, add to that request some duct tape with asbestos, recently unbanned and deregulated over at the EPA. 

Don't worry, foreign workers have been employed to apply all toxic materials. It's the least they can do for our wonderful country in return for the beneficences it has bestowed on them before they are unceremoniously deported to some third-rate, third-world hellhole to live out their lives in despair and filth as God obviously intended or He wouldn't have made Donald president in the first place. 

United by Contempt

Geeky Libertarians and Fundamentalist Christians are strange associates until you think that both groups crave a world of purity--the geeks abstract, mathematical perfection and the bible-thumpers spiritual purity in unity with God. That is to say, death. In a way both groups despise life.

They despise matter and especially biological existence--because it's messy, mortal and flawed--so geeks with libertarian leanings find themselves voting with revanchist, delusional, literalist biblical outcasts seeking to restore an old, divine world order which never really existed. 

Or, similarly, the Confederacy. Contempt and feelings of superiority unite and define them. Bannon, Miller, McConnell and Ryan drip with it. Falwell did as well but now he's pure--or, rotting in the ground. The coalition is united by contempt. They hate themselves, their lives, and humanity. 

Climate Change Toupée

Lamar Smith, resounding idiot of Texas and climate denier, is taking the toupée approach to global warming, just as he did with his own head, and the results are bad. Yes, dumbass, you are bald and it's better to own it. And yes, dumbass, the planet is warming and it's better to own it. Away with the toupée.

Death to Paul Ryan

Never, ever would I kill someone. I don't own a gun. (NSA, are you there?) But, my God, how I wish that Paul Ryan would die. That smug smile, apparently present whenever he sees his life-long ambition of screwing his fellow citizens out of their lives and livelihood possibly to be realized, is unbearable. 

How Louche

Louche is now resplendence. Excess and tack are tasteful. Trumpism is triumphant. It's a degenerate age.

Desecration Days

Not much reverence and respect still adhered to the American State by the time of Trump but an aura of deluded idealism hung about the place, that we were still special and were still, in any case, identifiably American. Even that thin air of authenticity is now being dispelled daily by Trump. 

His actions seemed deliberately designed to desecrate his office, the government generally and the tattered remnants of our ideals, a flag still flying and shot to pieces but now wet with Trump (yuck) urine. If someone had been designed from the ground up for desecration you couldn't beat Donald.

Presidential Polygraph

Somebody, tell me what would happen if Trump were hooked up to a polygraph, and not that it would start smoking and then burst into flames.

I mean, seriously. He doesn't​ seem to know what telling the truth is. I don't know how you get a baseline on him. He's not a normal person.

Python for President

Clearly we misunderstood Trump's talk about the swamp. He was a Burmese Python putting out a warning for the 'gators. And the 'gators--life-long and well-loathed and rightfully-feared reptiles like Ryan--are finding out what a python is like. 

Oh, the Humanity!

At this point observations about the degradation of Trump voters will only be trite. The souls are already sold and can't be redeemed at the White House pawn shop. Even those of us who love diversity have been coerced into a false duality by those who believe blindly in dominance and submission. They succumb to the Republican push for depravity and mostly end up in submissive roles. The model is dehumanizing to everyone but they have won at the polls and are running everything. 

What that model isn't is Christianity, one of the wise traditions insisting that we must submit only to God and that anything else is idolatry. So it is that Trump voters will continue to take it up the ass for the team because indignity becomes them and independence, reason and accountability are outside of their scope of operation but maybe they can glimpse it in the afterlife, if justice is then dispensed. They have given up on decency and are disgraced voyeurs at the spectacles of Trump.

Out of the Shadows

Of all of the groups to come out of the shadows lately none has been more routinely maligned and misunderstood than pussy-grabbers and Trump isn't doing them any favors. It wasn't so much feminism that drove them underground as political correctness since real pussy-grabbers know how to execute the thing and seldom grab an unwilling target and they never, ever, brag about it later.

And, frankly, they don't use the word "pussy" but they won't tell you what they do use in the unlikely event that the reference is needed. Suffice it to say that Trump is reviled by them and anathema. They are honorable people with a long history and traditions and they absolutely love women which Trump clearly does not. So also in this instance Trump is an outcast, as he was in New York Society. 

There, in the higher echelons, a surprisingly large contingent are members of the club. If white supremacists can own their stuff then the grabbers (it's called impulsive fondling, more correctly) can certainly own theirs. But, most importantly, they want it known that Donald does not speak for them. They can now speak for themselves because of renewed tolerance and lowered standards.

For this they grudgingly thank Donald. And Roger Ailes. And Bill O'Reilly...

Pit Bull Radio

My sources tell me that Trump's tidal wave of misinformation will include radio talks called firesale chats patterned on Roosevelt's and meant to cement his place in our hearts with their intimacy, homespun imagery and earthy appeal, including anecdotes of racial animus and resentment. 

There will be exhortations and quasi-religious, inspirational material delivered in Donald's distinctive style which, if he realizes it is failing, will default to his attaching himself tenaciously to America's collective, psychological ass by his pit bull-like jaws of doom. We will never be free of him.

He will plague our minds and memories forever even if we manage to impeach him or if he dies. He looks as though he could die any day from over-stimulation and exasperation. He's always flush and intensely animated. Our assets have been sold cheap--old news--but the brand is now on the block.

It has been replaced with Trumpism and the firesale chats are ultimately about this, ensuring that Americans have once and forever forgotten what we formerly stood for. 

No Wall There

I keep telling friends of mine, earnest critics of Trump, that they're throwing stuff at a wall to see if it will stick and there's no wall there.

Donald Trump's Super Premium Presidency

There it is, by marketing decree, what Americans have longed for, manifestly excellent and exceptional! Trump's premium--a presidency for the ages!

What a shame it's not. That's what you get when you hire an actor and an advocate of branding. The presidency has been branded. What about us?

Unhinged

I'm envisioning a new interview or performance show featuring Republican politicians and called GOP Unhinged, patterned on MTV Unplugged and offering us a chance to assess our current leaders without all the trappings and over-produced aspects of the propaganda machines at Fox News and elsewhere. I bet we'll see just how crazy they really are. 

Maladaptive and Malicious Daydreaming

I hypothesize that maladaptive daydreaming is rampant and virulent and contagious among Republicans. The signs are rife. Read about it and tell me what you think but the loss of a sense of reality is a critical diagnostic criterion. That alone makes it plausible.

Fake President

Messages emerge from people's fixations, unconscious and accidental indicators of their failings. Donald's is authenticity, revealed by his obsession with fake news. From this we learn that he is a fake, struggling blindly to feel real. It isn't working. The man is a sham. 

Baby Seal Clubbers' Club

As Republicans cast about for innocents to slaughter the play of personalities is interesting to observe. In God's own court I think Donald Trump would be ruled non compos. But the smiles of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell​ are unforgettable as they consider the suffering and the harm they may cause. They kill people as surely as if they had shot them.

Children and old people were always first on their lists but with the rise of Trump the scope of their cruelty expands. Ryan and McConnell​ are the guys on whom you want to go medieval. Hang them above the city gates alive and in cages and let nature take its course. We didn't actually kill them--did we?--just as they never killed anyone themselves.

We Can't Afford Big Bird

Sadly, we can no longer afford Big Bird, our Republican overlords tell us. Such edicts arise from their gated communities. Occasionally I work in one of these, with the monstrous houses usually inhabited by an aging white person or two, and often only part-time. But we can't afford Big Bird, they tell us.

Who is This Trump Guy?

Donald is unknowable not because he's deep or complex but because there's nothing there. Trying to understand him is a waste of time. 

Observation makes sense. Analysis doesn't. He's already observably incoherent. Ridicule makes sense. Satirizing him makes sense. 

Criticism doesn't. There's nothing for the criticism to stick to. For the truth of Trump look at comedy. Look at farce. Look at Alec Baldwin. 

The SNL version is the truth of Trump. He isn't a kitschy president he is kitsch--gaudy, exaggerated, inauthentic and ephemeral. 

Dame Donald

Some day Donald will go to England and maybe meet the Queen. I think she should make him a dame. It feels right and it's more alliterative than if he were a sir.

The Carpet-Bombing of the Imbeciles

Let's not forget that Republicans had carpet-bombed their share of the electorate into imbeciles with lies long before Trump.

Let Trump be Trump

It was the irrefutable lesson of the campaign, that Donald was right and that he had the key to the electorate. He did it his way and he won. But it's one thing to run and another to rule.

Fresh Greed

It's Spring and the greed is in bloom everywhere and its leaves are fresh on the trees. The sap is rising in investors and there is no thought of Winter. And why not, since they have learned how to flee from the cold, vacationing on the funds they've hijacked from us.