Be Fair to Trump

Trump can’t be judged relative to other presidents. He comes up an unprecedented goon and an incompetent ass. Trump must be judged in comparison with evangelical preachers like Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, obvious charlatans and con-men who praise God only to build up themselves.

Their followers want to thumb their noses at the “elites” and anyone who upholds standards. Nobody is going to tell them what to do.

How could anyone have been naive and ignorant enough to support Jim Bakker? Now we have Trump, who is as driven to build himself up and have gold-plated everything as Bakker ever was. Trump, too, has a trophy wife caked in makeup. View him as a kind of preacher and he makes perfect sense.

Make America Grate Again

It appears there is no point of satiation for Republicans throwing sand into the electoral and governmental machinery. They want to destroy the whole thing.

The Anti-Catholic Climatologists

With the advent of Trump it's easier for people to see how the Civil War never ended and that the South kept on fighting for privilege and bigotry. What's less obvious is that they are also still fighting the Reformation.

For example, if no priest (expert) is going to intervene in your salvation neither is any expert (climatologist) going to tell you what to think about their area of study. You know better no matter what an ignorant oaf you are.

The problems with authority that now plague us are, in other words, to a great extent, more trouble caused by evangelicals. They'll hold stupid opinions just to try to prove they can't be pushed around and told what to think or do.

Add to them the Koch crowd. They also don’t want anyone telling them what to do. Then you have the insane culture of today. The only common efforts respected and validated are in antisocial areas — warfare and business.

Trump and the Power of the Void

What is it about consciousness that pains people? It would be easier to ask: where are the rewards? Consciousness is a pain in the ass. The lure of Trump is the lure of drugs and addiction, the loss of self in irresponsibility and the happy forgetfulness of farming out your conscience, ethics and convictions to a moron.

Fear Not the Bot

A bot is no different from the average Trump voter, anyway.

The Conservative Dilemma and the Wanker Dominion

The dilemma of American conservatives is that they live in a democracy. I’ve pinned down a couple of “libertarians” and they admitted that, if things were run properly, American citizens who didn’t have the money would be turned away from emergency rooms, to die on the side of the road and be picked up by sanitation workers if it came to that. They know the voting public doesn’t want this so they lie. And lie and lie and lie.

They lie and, meanwhile, they try to lock in minority rule so if the people they’ve duped into voting for them ever wake up it will be too late. We are probably there now, the defining moment. They have their authoritarian, lying king who is asserting that no “rule of law’ exists and Republicans are backing him on this right on up to their “think tanks” and supposedly respectable publications like the National Review.

Really they are shit-eaters. There’s a big Scots-Irish, deterministic, Calvinist cast to this. They are fatalists and schismatics to the point of nihilism and solipsism. Every person is their own church, in effect, reaching God in a kind of autistic union, breaking out of their isolation from “the spirit” by a buildup of tension culminating in a lightning bolt-like union with God after which they are turned into Tom DeLay or someone like him.

True exemplars of the Christian principles of humility, generosity, kindness and inclusion, notwithstanding they think you should die on the side of the road if you are poor because God willed it —  by definition or it wouldn’t have happened. The Scots-Irish love to laud themselves, mostly for their combativeness and violence, but they are a servile, bigoted race which made them, once, perfect henchmen in the slave economy.

Now they seek to recreate it, again through blind allegiance to the an authoritarian rule of hereditary wealth and privilege — the Wanker Dominion of Donald Trump for which they have degraded themselves and to which they are subservient. So much for human dignity:

https://youtu.be/f1CB-D1TtXc

Oh, Lord ...

Professional racist Stephen Miller might actually procreate. What a horrifying thought.

FUCK YOU

I know someone who couldn’t be a nicer, more responsible, kind and hardworking person and she is getting into trouble over medical costs. She isn’t even 50 and doesn’t drink or smoke. This is nothing but bad luck.

To every Republican who has been voting us into this dystopia and to every single person who voted for Trump, and very especially to those who intend to vote for him again after we have witnessed what a sick, cruel and worthless piece of shit he is, I want to say a hearty and heartfelt FUCK YOU. I hope you all die before you can vote for him again.

All Asshole Government

The age of assholes has arrived. What I mean is that, in America, not to be an asshole is not to have a voice — to have no say in government. It is a government of, by and for assholes. Non-assholes have been completely disenfranchised and see nothing in their government that is reflective of them — not in the efficacious parts of it. Their part has no say and is powerless.

Senate Shits Itself

The U. S. Senate — or, the Republican proportion — just shit all over itself, smeared it around and played in it, unloading a shit-bomb on the Supreme Court as well by having John Roberts witness and implicitly approve of their treachery.

From “e pluribus unum” to “Fuck Off”

The Republican takeover of America defies description and analysis. Its awfulness is experiential and confounding. Maybe someone can capture it in art. Other means are inadequate.

The Tsars Are Back

Tsar Trump lives in opulence and gilt. Everything about him reassures him of his superiority, untouchable nature and removal from the unwashed masses of humanity for which he reportedly and reputedly has some responsibility, but he only lessens their lot.

I have another kind of removal in mind for our feckless, obtuse, spoiled, cruel and posturing president. The more removed the better. From his position. From society. From his crookedly obtained wealth. From everything from which he can possibly be removed.

15 Minutes of Shame

Every real Republican wants their fifteen minutes of shame before the crazy bus crashes. Watch as they scurry and slither ...

Warped Drive

Trump’s administration is turning out to be worse than anyone could have imagined. Republicans around him realized he would choose or could be manipulated into choosing, from the options presented to him, the one most destructive and insulting to his perceived enemies.

Trump therefore became a vehicle for the darkest desires of some already evil people. He’s an opportunity for them to do things they wouldn’t have otherwise dared, and they were already wrecking the world with their arrogance, greed and stupidity. Now it’s happening faster.

All of My Boy Friends Were Boneheads

Not only am I wondering and aghast at the number and intensity of the assholes our society is producing I’m confronting the truth that a very high percentage of them are from my background. Were there always so many dicks in our societal closets or are they the product of more recent circumstances and trends? I think both, that there was untapped asshole potential and that there are more because circumstances tapped that potential.

Notice, anyway, how many of the supremely degraded individuals and sadists are Catholics. They are not only Catholics but from my hyper-competitive kind of Catholic background where winning was everything, presumably because it was existentially unimportant and limited to areas this side of salvation, but they’ve blown entirely through that distinction and allowed it to overrun their hope of eternal life and heavenly bliss. They sold their souls.

Witness: Bill Barr. Witness: Brett Kavanaugh and EVERY OTHER Supreme Court justice who votes consistently conservatively. They all have a degree of Catholic background though some have abandoned it over the cause of multiple marriages. Newt, always backwardsly progressive, became Catholic AFTER multiple marriages, culminating in his latest temptress receiving a Vatican appointment. She’s ambassadress, qualifying by adultery.

Witness: Fox News, the soul of which is Catholic, as attested by the ranks of scurrilous Irishmen and such manning every other post there. Kellyanne Conway is a perfect thug-ette. In any case, I look back on a childhood I once considered normal with horror. I recall the bullying and brutality. I recall the willingness and drive to win, by cheating if necessary, if not by a preference for its grander humiliating capacities. I recall going to mass and praying to kick ass.

A guy from those days whose family were the self-appointed bullies and tormentors of my family called me recently from our high school reunion—I’m convinced, to try to gloat—after 40 YEARS of no contact. He seems to think he has won. He was an amazing asshole in high school and insanely competitive. My family had been taken down by sickness, mental-illness and, ultimately, death. Still, every time I saw them back then, by chance encounter, it was criticism, slights and cruelty.

Trump helps us to understand, that there is no “victory” for them but only the primal pleasure of vindictiveness and acts of cruelty. My sister, a brilliant girl loosed from a home with no meanness in it or even hardness, was destroyed by the viciousness of one of the family’s daughters. As late as my brother’s wedding, years after I had seen any of them, a younger sister recounted an episode humiliating to me and touted her brother.

What the fuck? Can some people not comprehend that others don’t play their game? Again, Trump comes to the rescue. Through the impenetrable irrationality, small-mindedness and compulsion of his vindictiveness we can see the truth, about the fragility of his underlying psyche, while acknowledging, of the necessity of survival, his incredible powers of destruction. He could wipe out the whole world and not give a shit. That is inconceivably sick.

But Is It Art?

It’s obvious enough now that Donald Trump’s Art of the Deal was a lie and that any deal-making skills he possessed were trumped, so to speak, by his more fundamental, innate, basic and highly developed talents in scamming and self-promotion.

A question remains, though. Is there an art to those—to insults, innuendo, takedowns and lies? Or, rather, is it too much a matter of the brain-stem to qualify as art?

Death to America!

We knew it was coming, but Republicans are again seeking to see more Americans needlessly suffer and die. After incredible fiscal profligacy Donald Trump has discovered his budgetary conscience and applied it to Medicare and Medicaid.

More importantly, though, rich people are flourishing as never before, simply swimming in obscene wealth, and the only thing trickling down is Republican contempt for decency and the lives of average citizens. Hooray! Death to America!

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.