The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Dickhead

I don’t mean to invoke sympathy but think how essentially and profoundly alone Donald Trump must be. At some level he knows nobody wants to be around him for anything but his own kinds of motives, all of which are selfish and bad.

Captivated by Lies

Why will so many people degrade themselves for Trump? Why will they abandon their integrity to defend him? They have lived too long captivated by lies. They are in cages made of lies and afraid to go out into the light of truth and freedom.

The Boor War

We might be destroyed by misfits and not monsters. Or, monsters might be empowered misfits -- weak, petty, injured people in powerful positions. 

I look at history and I don't see malevolent beings driving all the evil but losers. The lesson then is not to create losers. Don't promote fear and cause grudges.

There's enough unavoidable bad stuff already.

Can a Girl Be a Goon?

Kellyanne Conway argues for “yes”.

An Evangelical Prayer

O Holy Jesus, we bless you and thank you for creating us as wolves among your sheep. We observe that, in the Bible, one son gets the inheritance and the other does not. Some are saved and others are not. Your justice is inscrutable and so we were so pleased when the pastor on the TV told us we were saved. We sent him some money just to be sure. Who knew it could be so easy!

We used to feel bad about the injustice in the world but we know now it is all part of your plan so we won’t mess with it. We know it is wrong for us to interfere with nature as you made it. There are the eaters and the eaten. We are the eaters. The heathen all around us are doomed and don't matter but we still appreciate the opportunity to take advantage of them, to use them as we will.

Because, we know we are the chosen ones and the children of God.

The Armageddon Edition

Friends. An addendum is required, or an entirely new edition, to whatever book or books you have read detailing the lies and propaganda we have all been fed regarding what our country stands for and its role in history. The most extreme revisionism needs to be revised. It was never enough and we were never what we thought we were, let alone how we defensively, reflexively and obsessively portrayed ourselves to the rest of the world as being exceptional and unprecedentedly better than everyone else.

We were always pigs. We appeared better than, removed from and/or above other peoples because we were untouched by their hardships. At the first hint of hurt we showed the world what we were, spoiled brats and vain bullies. That trend, begun under high commissioner, commissar and perennial fuckup Herr Bush, reached its assumed peak, zenith and (not so paradoxically) nadir under Trump, where it now resides in the fulfillment of our destiny in debasement, humiliation and destruction.

What a Stroke of Luck!

Donald Trump is so lucky. He doesn’t look so good after killing an Iranian general. He looks rash and desperate and a little unhinged. Then the Iranians shoot down a passenger plane and Donald gets to lord it over them.

What a stroke of luck! Never mind the people who were killed. Do you think that even registers with Trump? Of course not. What are a hundred and some lives in comparison with the big boy’s vanity? Nothing! Donald is thrilled.

If I Had a Hammer

Trump would look a lot like a nail.

Trump Even Ruins the Past

So, I was watching The Crown on Netflix and the episode depicting the moon landings. Sure enough, as so often happens, I felt sick with the sense of far we have fallen to have the disgraceful, cowardly, self-serving shit we now have running the country, lining their pockets and building up their egos at the expense of their fellow citizens and the rest of the world. They are absolute garbage and scum and I am so sick of it.

Trump Ruins Everything

Trump makes you feel bad about life, the universe and everything.

Heroes of the Revolution

As the Republican revolution nears completion we can discern its real outlines. It was never about fiscal responsibility. It was never about respecting traditional social structures, fundamental civic principles and values or constitutional norms.

It has been about removing all constraints so that one group could feast on the financial carcasses of their fellow citizens. The heroes, oddly, are the henchmen. This has been accomplished in a functioning democracy. There was no overt coup.

There was no overthrow. But, don’t worry, there are still plenty of people to whom statues may be raised and homage paid for their contributions. When the sine qua non is applied we have to give final credit to the Confederate voting bloc.

They not only kept electing scumbags they rewarded the worst among them. A downward spiral ensued and continues. Nobody was too crazy. It all culminates in Trump. Their coalition’s members all had grudges against their government.

The Confederates, for kicking their asses in the Civil War. Hard-core Calvinists, for not creating a theocratic state. Mormons had a legitimate gripe but it’s old and they should get over it. Rich guys, like the Kochs, want to be feudal lords.

Nobody tells them what to do. Only the government is powerful enough to attempt it. The Calvinists are so stuck in the Reformation they ended up insisting not only that good works can’t get you into heaven they deny all behavioral standards.

So much so, the behavioral standards became inverted. Corruption, connected with wealth, is an indication of holiness because good works, being absent, can’t have been attempted to earn God’s favor, which is manifested in the wealth.

Hail the henchmen! They are the heroes. Oh, wait. Their statues, to their generals and soldiers of the Civil War, have been coming down. Oh, well. But, who needs statues when they have seized control of the most powerful country in the world?

Heil — sorry — hail the henchmen!

Newt Gingrich’s Wonderful Life

These are heady days for assholes. They are reveling, none so more than the Newtster. His project of destruction is nearly complete. And, he is sucking off the government as ever, feasting his fetid ass off around Rome on our money. He doesn’t even have a job.

This asshole is a proud member of the wrecking crew and might be its most productive associate. “Productivity” for them means destruction, an appropriate piece of perversion. Trashing the accomplishments of the well-lived lives of others — vandalism — is easy.

Newt is a pervert. Newt is a sick punk. He should be shunned — a pariah. Whatever happened to tar and feathers? Or, the stocks? Followed by jail. People who spend their time destroying other people’s lives should be removed from society. Jails are meant for that.

Read on about the gloatfest of a real piece of shit...

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/newt-gingrich-says-youre-welcome/570832/

Mean Gene

When circumstances favor sociopaths you have a real problem. Consider Republican attitudes about taxation. You always cut taxes. You cut taxes when the economy is down. You cut taxes when the economy is up. You always cut taxes.

If this isn’t the definition of ideology, as opposed to adaptation and thinking, it is something close. Add to that, these are not just bad ideas they are self-servingly bad ideas and you have sociopathy. Add to that the cruelty. Gratuitous cruelty.

Their fixed ideas are cruel. Similarly to taxation Republicans are always at war. They must always have enemies. The more the merrier, it seems. The fall of communism was therefore a problem. You see it in their insanity about Islam.

Islam is no threat to us. Nobody is a threat to us. Except ourselves. Democrats aren’t mean. That’s why there is no Fox News or Rush Limbaugh on the left. Democrats don’t need enemies. That’s a disadvantage in fighting Republicans.

Democrats don't have the mean gene. All of the assholes are congregating in the Republican Party. And assholes can be hard to beat. They are delusional assholes, fighting a vulnerable system from the inside. It gives them a huge advantage.

Am I Alight?

Once again, before I die, I'd like to own a vehicle where, when I smell smoke, I don't first wonder if it's me that's on fire.

Did you ever stop to think...

That the entire world might be destroyed because some rich American asshole, maybe named Koch, didn’t want ANYBODY telling him what to do?

He Cares Enough To Cover His Ass

John Roberts must know, or suspect, that his name will be forever attached to the court remembered for reducing the federal judiciary to a haven for political hacks and partisan extremists. His court might be remembered for enabling the destruction of America.

Some earlier Republican Court appointees came around, to the dismay of their party, and voted as true custodians of the law. The Federalist Society, yet another Republican group set on undermining majority rule, put an end that. I hold little hope for Roberts.

There are few likely signs of integrity. Roberts has acted to cover his, and his party’s, ass.

Once Upon a Time in the White House

Reading about Stephen Miller’s schemes as they hatch and are implemented or exposed I hear a harmonica. Why, you might wonder. A movie, Once Upon a Time in the West.

Watch it. And, ask yourself how you might react, as a once needlessly persecuted child, to what Miller has done. Revenge fantasies have their place because justice has its place.

Beware the harmonica, Stephen, you repulsive, sadistic piece of shit:

https://youtu.be/qwb3P0fuM1c

Where’s My Supply Side?

Where’s my rising tide? In 2020 we’ll be celebrating 40 years of Republican lies. It’s been a hell of a run and marks a generational shift. Marketing principles came to apply.

No longer did the product matter. Essentially, the product ceased to exist. The hype was all that mattered. Nobody likes to admit they’ve been suckered. Our time has come.

Grievance Manifesto

Donald Trump's manifesto of grievances against Nancy Pelosi and impeachment offers no new insights into his angry, infantile soul but only more evidence for its crying disintegration under pressure and the willingness of those around him to abandon all standards in his defense. In other words, we know he was incapable of writing or thinking it, only that he must always get his way and that he feels genuinely persecuted because he thinks he’s the only person in existence. Really.

For Donald Trump’s reality is that of an infant. He is either being fed and coddled on demand or he is not. One of those situations is acceptable and the other results in a display of wailing. The manifesto was wailing processed by degraded minds of greater sophistication hence the conclusion that his army of ass-wipes and diaper changers was hard at work. But, remember how the output of George Bush’s anus could not be contained and how he ultimately shit the whole world.

What Good Is A Soul If You Can’t Sell It?

There are those who believe God gave us a soul as a stake in life to be sold in a pinch or as opportunity has it...

https://youtu.be/3jaQYNTs01w

But, man, why do people sell them so cheaply?

Hallmark to Trump

I can tell you how you get from a Hallmark show to Trump. I have done the research so you won’t have to, watching as much of When Calls the Heart on Netflix as I could stand. Such a mess of stereotypes and cliches, revealing an unbelievably simple world-view, you have never seen.

And what is Trumpism but a mess of stereotypes and cliches — prejudices — embedded in jingoism in an administration looking more like a hellish Carnival Cruise than a ship of state, with hidden peon masses belowdecks supporting the fantasy lives of the wealthy? It’s all unreality. It’s all lies. 

When you tell true believers they can’t have their fantasy life they get pissed. Put them all on a cruise ship to somewhere, I say, after evacuating the underlings. Send them anywhere, but get them the fuck away from me. Let them fight it out among themselves who has to serve the drinks.

William Barr Eats His Soul

Bill Barr has formally eaten his own soul the way someone might ingest an incriminating scrap of paper. Now you see it, now you don’t. Not only has he rendered evidence useless he’s declared his own subservience to the dark lords of intimidation and unreason in the most potent way possible, by using the tactics of the perversion and distortion of reality.

That is, he has reduced the rules of the game to ashes. A smaller inversion has taken place—only because he is but one cog in an evil machine, not because his own inversion isn’t complete. He is the man charged and taxed ABOVE ALL OTHERS to uphold and administer justice. He has not only refused he has asserted, in his way, that justice DOESN'T EXIST.

These applications of intimidation and dominating force are assertions of thuggery and Machiavellian intent.

Barr has made HIS will, in subservience to Donald Trump and other evil forces, the law of our land. The masquerade is ending as the pretense of order and intelligibility falls away. Those forces of darkness are revealing their hand in open defiance not only of specific rights within a structure and system but of the existence of any enforceable rights at all.

Tidings of Anguish and Despair

This Christmas the Republican Party brings you Donald Trump, an onslaught of insults and cruelty, and other assorted goodies from the deepest recesses of the human subconscious. Enjoy.

Closely Held Concern

America is supposed to be a publicly held property but billionaires are taking it private.

Baby Boomer Belongings

A buyer’s market is beginning for baby boomer belongings. Let that apply to consumerism and the fascist politics of Trump. I hope younger generations will devalue that stuff to what it is, worthless detritus and toxic waste.

The American Presidency Hamster Cage

Trump. Bush.

About McCain and Romney we will never know, but the American presidency and government in Republican hands are hamster cages for pets of the uber-rich. Victorious politicians are constrained from responsible action or otherwise coddled into compliance. The real ”deep state” is entirely in Republican hands, a vertically integrated operation designed to thwart, pervert, undermine and overthrow our democracy. American grit, determination and ingenuity are applied to subversion.

Trump even looks like a hamster and, more obviously than Bush but it’s clearer in Bush’s actions now in retrospect, all he can do is run around in an totally circumscribed way. He, too, would be punished if he strayed but he has been a good boy, probably surprising his masters and managers. He has relied on that infrastructure of doom, the Federalist Society and Heritage and Cato and all the rest down to obscure media enterprises executing disinformation and indoctrination protocols.  

The “Justice” Department—this is a big deal—is in the hands of a hamster though he looks like a sick one. Perhaps he was poisoned before he was appointed. They can’t and won’t act outside their incredibly defined roles as wholly-owned subsidiaries of the billionaires and tycoons. The Supreme Court and Justice Department have fallen. Congress is compromised. These are dark days.

The Epstein-Barr Connection

I’m assuming here that Bill Barr didn’t grow up rooting for Mr. Potter and the Flying Monkeys. Furthermore, that he isn’t a secret admirer of the Third Reich and its tactics. We must then go searching for explanations for his shameless and illegal authoritarianism.

He’s either morally incompetent—he doesn’t actually realize what he’s doing—or he thinks or hopes his side will be so victorious there will never be any accountability. In either case he’s a damaged soul and a look at his history reveals a connection with Jeffrey Epstein.

Barr’s father was headmaster at a school at which Epstein taught and, I believe, responsible for his hiring and thus later stratospheric ascent into wealth and degradation. Think of the effect such an association might have had on Bill, who now defends a scumbag. 

Barr defends a scumbag of Epsteinian proportions as though it is to-the-death or as though Trump is his father. Now, if Trump is a father figure to Barr by choice he must be fucked up beyond imagining. I hypothesize that Bill’s dad was implicated in Epstein’s depravity.

Anyway, it’s worth looking into, possibly explaining Barr’s descent into madness or moral turpitude.

Republican authoritarianism and consistent attempts at intimidation, as well represented by Barr, are clearly contagious and going viral. These might be similarly understood as a mass and generational example of Bill’s own horrifically desperate daddy problems. 

Revised Outlook

I used to think Americans were industrious. Trump and his supporters cause us to rethink that. A hardworking, responsible electorate wouldn’t place irresponsible people in roles of power, let alone a horror like Trump. We have nothing but a drive to plunder.

Trump is the plunderer president, an embodiment of the real American ethos. We are and always have been, as is now revealed, rapacious.

Redirecting...

Whatever Trump-voting Americans wanted in the last election I don’t think they got it. Now they’re too stubborn or proud to admit it. Nobody wants to admit they’ve been suckered and scammed and deceived. And, I don't think they’ll ever admit it. They are too implicated.

It’s up to the rest of us.

Fire Sale Chats

Trump should take his case directly to the American people. The anti-democratic case. If our democracy is bankrupt he should make his argument. Then we will decide. But, enough with the lies and deceit.

How Republicans Caused the Holocaust

You might look in awe at Republican stupidity, arrogance and treachery and think it’s unprecedented but it has happened before, in the 1920s, under Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. They created the Great Depression, the misery of which caused a fascist upswing culminating in the Holocaust. The same small-government, anti-immigration, laissez-faire doctrines prevailed then as prevail today. Once the Depression started Herbert Hoover practiced an equivalent of austerity, locking in the suffering.

Republicans love and celebrate suffering. Thank God we had Obama to lessen, to the extent they would allow it, the effects Republicans created in 2008. Still, the economic casualties have been many and the rich have only gotten richer as they always will under Republican policies. We are in a full fascist upswing and nobody knows where it will lead. I think these are games of inches and one good leader could save us. Democrats, however, are coughing up an uninspiring bunch. We need a Roosevelt.

The Intimidation Phase

I don’t want to downplay, diminish or fail to honor the significance of all the bullying and betrayal Democrats have endured up until now—I know it has been horrible—but something is seriously different since Trump’s thugs have taken over.

On balance we have moved from a period of pretense, illusion and deceit to one of intimidation, increasingly open hostility, suppression and domination, I assume because the lies are so undeniable. The mask is off and Republicans are exposed.

Exposed as what? I don’t even want to use the language of treachery, all the epithets appropriate in a society irreversibly falling apart but it is that and then some. The sadness so many of us feel is because we know we have already failed.

We are already doomed and screwed. We fight on as though it can be fixed. It can’t. We have to be reborn now as something entirely new and different. Foreword is the only way. And the only way to be reborn is to crush the Republican thugs.

What it means to be a “Burkean” conservative in the age of Trump...

Watch “conservatives” scramble around trying to save face and convince the world they stand for anything other than living like pigs in the age of Trump. There was the “fiscal,” small government ploy, which a few of them still cite to try to separate themselves from the “social” conservatives, as though it makes any sense at all when they spend money like water on the military and the surveillance state and still cut taxes (mostly on the rich) thereby producing inconceivable deficits and bankrupting the government.

There’s the “Democrats are worse” faction who fail to mention Democrats haven’t had their way for forty years or since Republicans decided bullying their adversaries, subterfuge and hostage-taking, as in shuttering the government in the budget wars and other forms of intimidation, were appropriate tactics. What a gig! They insist on controlling everything but deny any responsibility for the outcomes. The occasional left-wing victory, like Obamacare, which was still crippled by them and a compromise, makes them livid and completely insane.

It becomes an obsession—a touchstone and focus for every irrational argument and unsupported assertion. Their culturally superior, literate, philosophical wing, like Andrew Sullivan and P. J. O’Rourke, call themselves “Burkean” alluding to vague, anti-progressive norms that fetishize an idealized state that never existed while plucking supposed nuggets of goodness from the huge sewage treatment apparatus surrounding Trump. They only want intelligent, thoughtful social evolution, I suppose. Where is that in Trump?

Where is it in his tsunami of incompetence and insults and in his extravaganza of decadence, debasement and decay? I give up. There is no dignity or decency among them, only a torrent of lies, so they forfeit the presumption of integrity. They look out for themselves while our institutions burn.

Sic Transit Trump

Something has to give. Trump is going to have to go. He is too ridiculously, stupendously incompetent to carry on in his job. Though, he’s really good at destroying things. Is that a talent? Still, in any case, it argues for getting rid of the son-of-a-bitch.

Wrassle Back

Republicans are trying to wrassle their way out of Trump’s tribulations. They placed Jim Jordan of Ohio, a soul-selling acolyte of Trump if there ever was one, on the intelligence committee and he showed up without a suit on, all ready to wrassle.

Trump loves wrassling but the fake kind, just like his entire life. His father left him so much money Donald could play and pretend at being a real developer and businessman and at having a life but Jim Jordan is a real wrassler trying to save a pretend president.

Donald pretends at president like everything else because he doesn’t know how not to. So, he’s screwing it up really badly. Oh, Lord, I just realized Trump doesn’t know he’s a fake and a fraud, kinda like The Truman Show. The names are almost the same.

Truman. Trump. What a discovery! Trump was, obviously, a huge mistake and somebody better pull the plug on our president. His whole life he’s been humored and protected but he could do fantastic damage. He flops around now like a fish out of water.

Undue Respect

Congressional Republicans deserve no personal respect and whatever they might claim from their elected positions they forfeited when they betrayed their oaths and responsibilities. Fuck them and the elephant they rode in on. It wasn’t the real one but a Trojan horse.

Ready for Primal Time

The barbarians aren’t just within the gates. They are running everything.

I’m so tired of it all.

It’s so wearing watching Republicans destroy the world.

Bachelor Trump

Under Republicans the American government has become a reality show. Sell your soul to win. Compare it to The Bachelor. Actual life is secondary to the show. Weddings occur at the end, not that it’s required but everyone understands the dramatic necessity. I don’t know their demographic but I bet the show is very popular among those who believe in the “sanctity of marriage.” Contestants can sleep together and hardly know one another but in some weird way the forms are observed.

Similarly with our government which, by the way, has the power to destroy the world in an instant. (To show their restraint they are doing it slowly.) Winning is the only thing that matters among Republicans. That and putting on a show, a whole lot of low drama. Masses must be entertained. Reality, the life and death-matter of running the country, is an afterthought. It’s not quite Jerry Springer yet but we’re trending there with concerns of dick size in debates. What will it be next?

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.