First and foremost, I can relate to Trump’s followers’ anger & frustration at our establishment because I have been battling the establishment ever since I went AWOL from the U.S. Army back in 1972. And for a young man of 19 years, that was one of the scariest periods of my life.

 

As I matured, I began to see what a pack of lies my generation had been told. I saw how our public education system was built on a mountain of lies & false promises. And as I worked at one Mickey Mouse job after another, I began to realize that this was perhaps one of the cruelest myths of all. Hard work & dedication to your job rarely paid off. No, it was usually those who were related to the owner of the company or those who were the biggest brown-nosers who “succeeded.”

 

In brief, if you had integrity & couldn’t bring yourself to suck-up to the bosses, you were usually marginalized or gotten rid of. I busted my ass pursuing higher education for 14 years. I rode a bicycle five miles to a community college, four nights a week after working an eight-hour day in a golf club factory for a couple of semesters at one point. I studied business administration, oceanography, & liberal arts and often dropped-out half way or even three-quarters of the way through a semester because I was bored & not inspired by what I was learning.

 

I pursued my dreams of adventure & hitchhiked up & down the West Coast dozens of times, across America, & around Europe several times often on a one-way ticket with a couple hundred bucks in my pocket.

 

I had been raised mostly by a single parent, my mom. She often worked two or three jobs at a time to feed us & keep a roof over our heads. I basically raised my brother & sisters & fought everyone’s battles. I got 40 cents a day for lunch when I was in high school. And I held down two paper routes to earn my spending money & pumped gas as a senior in high school.

 

I stood up against some of my mom’s boyfriends who were cruel to us or raised a hand to my mom. I clearly didn’t have a happy childhood but through it all, I kept my dreams alive & read like a person possessed.

 

And after my experience in the army, I thank God that I trusted my gut instinct & didn’t let them send me to Vietnam. I wasn’t politically aware but I had seen enough of the army’s lies to know that they couldn’t be trusted. I got out of the army with an undesirable discharge & began to read a lot of books on history, philosophy, & politics due largely to some very smart people I’d met on my travels. And slowly the veil of ignorance was removed & I began to connect the dots.

 

This is the major difference between me & Trump’s cult of zombies. They, often through no fault of their own, haven’t read the great authors like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, or Michael Parenti & because of this, they haven’t developed their critical/analytical thinking skills and are much more susceptible to the propaganda & bullshit of people like Trump.

 

And this is not only sad but dangerous because Trump’s followers are so easily aroused to anger & hatred because he is a master at manipulating their emotions to direct their anger at fellow victims rather than our true enemy i.e. the 1% who are the masters of the political establishment.

 

I call these “masters,” the corporate cockroaches because they hide in the dark & they have succeeded fantastically over the past 40 years or better in blaming the government for their dirty deeds. And no, I’m not saying that the politicians are innocent. Not by a longshot but if we are to survive this onslaught, we must focus our energies on the corporate sector.

 

I must say that it really baffles me how the poor, the struggling working class can actually believe an established habitual liar who claims to be a self-made billionaire, is their champion. Trump failed at nearly every business venture he got into but daddy kept bailing him out & gave him hundreds of millions of dollars & a million dollars annually so he could never fail totally. And he has a long track record of screwing contractors & employees out of the money he owes them. This is your hero?

 

Daddy Trump made his fortune by being a slum-lord & discriminating against Black American citizens. And this is the key to Trump’s success in becoming our president, he played the race card brilliantly in his own, evil way.

 

Nothing takes peoples’ minds off their troubles easier & better than by focusing their anger on scapegoats. This is standard operating procedure for all demagogues, dictators, fascists, & authoritarians. And Trump clearly loves dictators i.e. Putin, Duterte, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, etc. Moreover, Trump fancies himself an authoritarian because he’s always gotten his way as a spoiled-child whom daddy always bankrolled & protected from the law with a platoon of lawyers. And Donny got to play the part of a successful billionaire on television—which was almost entirely a work of fiction. Check it out for yourself by seeing what the producers of The Apprentice have revealed.

 

And speaking of revealing, here are my revelations for those of you who give a fuck about who Trump really is behind all those Hollywood staged rallies. Moreover, I can back my shit up unlike Trump who just makes outrageous claims daily but can never back them up with facts. Why do you think he threatened every school he ever attended with lawsuits if they dared to release his grades? This mental & moral midget hides behind his wall of lies always protected by lawyers & publicists or P.R. people like Kellyanne Conway with her “alternate facts.”

 

Facebook and the other “social media platforms” like Twitter & our ‘Smart phones,” are reducing us to our basest, reptilian minds & we simply react on a flight or fight level.

 

The more successful these platforms are at pushing peoples’ emotional buttons like fear & hate, the more addicted people become to these platforms. Hence, the more time they spend on Facebook, Twitter, etc., the wealthier the owners like Zuckerberg become from the advertising revenues they collect. And what’s really spooky is the fact that over 50% of Americans get their news from Facebook. By-the-way, Zuckerberg refuses to accept responsibility for the truthfulness of the political ads on Facebook & Breitbart—the Neo-Nazi & White Nationalist epicenter—is the largest political advertising customer on Facebook. And Breitbart via its former editor, Steve Bannon, hired Cambridge Analytica which bought the personal data of over 80,000 Facebook users & by extension got all their friends as well, and this is how they targeted the Facebook users they knew would be receptive to the fake news stories about Hillary & put Trump in the White House.

 

Can you understand now how perversely hypocritical it is every time Trump lashes out at “fake news” when he has benefitted more than anyone else from fake news? Let alone the fact that he received at least 23 times the media coverage running up to the election than Bernie Sanders by the “mainstream media.”

 

Continuing, so like the movies that most of us who weren’t born with the silver spoon in our mouths like Donnie was watch, they’re becoming ever more violent, bloody, gory, etc. in a constant effort by Hollywood to outdo itself in a deescalating road to the darkest pits of Hell even more horrifying than anything Dante could imagine.

 

Call me a sissy, I don’t give a shit. But I could only stomach about ten minutes of one episode of The Walking Dead series, once. It was nauseating in its gory & gruesome details of hacking a zombie to death. I thought, this is definitely not my idea of entertainment. So, you can imagine my sad surprise at the popularity of this series.

 

Another factor in how we have come to this sad state of affairs is the fact that our attention spans are growing ever shorter. Yep! The average American’s attention span has now shrunk to less than that of a goldfish. I shit you not. Does this not embarrass you? And again, we can thank Hollywood to a large extent for this tragic phenomenon.

 

Our brains have been conditioned to needing ever faster visual stimulation & an escalating volume of images mostly action or emotionally themed. We are like rats in a maze, hamsters in a cage.

 

Need more convincing? Scan your T.V. guide & look at the most popular movies of the last several years. T.V. shows & movies about vampires & zombies are amongst the most popular. Movies about the dystopian future and the coming apocalypse are amongst the biggest blockbusters along with superhero movies. Our psyches need to believe some superhero like a Donald Trump are going to rescue us from the dreaded liberals & democrats who have destroyed our once idyllic America (Make America Great Again) & ignore the fact that there never was a time when America was great for everyone.

 

Furthermore, consider what passes for news nowadays. The “mainstream” media (corporate owned) & cable news has indeed become infotainment. News reporters & pundits have become interchangeable & pass back & forth through the revolving door that has blurred fact & fiction.

 

Journalists in Edward R. Murrow’s day were supposed to be objective reporters of the facts. Of course, Murrow’s personal opinion pieces were hugely popular but they were clearly identified as editorials & in the main, the news divisions were objective & factual. Today they have abandoned almost entirely this journalistic ethic. And for the record, I was shocked & saddened from nearly the beginning of FOX “News’” introduction to our airwaves. FOX is clearly the closest thing to Russia’s Pravda that we’ve ever known. (look it up if you can spare the time)

 

We now have a president who relies on The National Enquirer to protect him from some of his most damning actions & words. A president who openly believes in & promotes conspiracy theories from his buddy, Alex Jones who called the Sandy Hook massacre of over 20 elementary school students a grand hoax. A president who refuses to read his daily briefings & can barely form a coherent sentence and that’s becoming ever rarer.

 

In short, we’re drowning in a sea of crap. It’s all junk food for the senses with very little to absolutely nothing in the way of nutritional value for our minds or our souls. And this is why it’s far easier for us to remember the books we’ve read. Books require your mind to engage on a deep level i.e. remembering the plot, the characters, your thoughts as you ponder the actions & words of the characters, etc. But when we watch television or movies, our minds are passive & are just receiving the images & emotions and very little if any reflection takes place. This is why we, myself included, so often forget the movies we’ve watched. I’ll sometimes be halfway through a movie before I realize that I had seen it before. Movies & T.V. are like candy & taste good until they’re over but then we’re still hungry for something nutritional or substantial. This unhealthy diet of action & violence is a drug and most of us are addicted to it, especially those who fell for Trump’s snake-oil medicine show. And this addiction may very well spell the end of American democracy?

 

You see, my imaginary reader, the United States is one of the most violent societies on Earth, if not “the” most violent. And yeah, I know this is going to piss some of you off because we’ve all been indoctrinated from childhood on that America is the champion of the world. The protector & promoter of freedom & democracy. I obviously can’t distill down for you what it’s taken me over 30 years of research to learn about our ignoble past & present. And if you’re not willing to even entertain the possibility that this might be the truth, why should I waste my time & energy trying to reach you?

This is a key reason why Trump appeals to those who don’t or can’t read & those who prefer to remain ignorant. Trump again is like that candy that tastes so good for a minute but as soon as it’s  gone, you need another fix. Another fix of fiction, hatred, & blaming a convenient scapegoat who Trump is an expert on. You can’t help but remember Trump’s myriad areas of expertise because he graciously & generously reminds of them every time he opens his foul mouth.

 

To return to reality and no, not Kellyanne Conway’s “alternate reality/facts,” America is now the most feared nation on Earth—and yeah, I know earth is not supposed to be capitalized but I feel it should be because we are a planet— even more feared than terrorists.

Why, you may ask? Because of our actions like Obama’s illegal & immoral Drone warfare program and his weekly meetings in which they chose the target of the day. Yep, they were judge, jury, & executioner and even killed a couple of Americans they suspected of terrorist activity but couldn’t be bothered to taking them to trial.

 

We are feared because our C.I.A. and several of our other intelligence agencies have been overthrowing other nations’ democratically elected leaders for decades. It’s so absurd for us to get so self-righteous about the supposed Russian interference in our 2016 presidential election by hacking our system when we have assassinated world leaders who we felt threatened “our” corporate interests. And no, this doesn’t mean that I accept Trump’s conspiracy theory of the “Deep State,” and its secret mission to overthrow him.

And this is just one example amongst dozens & dozens of others.

 

Though there might be a small element of truth to the idea that our intelligence agencies would love to see Trump gone because of the very real threat that he poses to our government, I’m not going to get sidetracked by that grand conspiracy because that is just what the zombie puppet masters like Steve Bannon want us to do so we won’t notice the very real threats & destruction that Trump is getting away with.  Trump is to my mind, a clear & present danger to all of America and to the world by extension.

 

We have over 900 military bases around the globe & who knows how many secret bases where we’ve tortured or farmed-out torture to willing accomplices, those we’ve extraordinarily rendered i.e. kidnapped. I believe Russia has about nine or eleven bases and they’re on Russia’s borders? And no, in no way am I a defender of Putin, that’s your zombie leader Trump’s hero. Putin is a bloody dictator plain & simple and it strikes me as absolutely mind-boggling that the pundits warn us that if the democratic presidential contenders are labeled as being Socialist, the democratic party will once again lose & Trump may very well get another term.

 

The G.O.P. has waged a steady propaganda campaign ever since F.D.R. passed the New Deal. And they’ve been extremely successful in painting any programs or politicians who defend the rights of workers or the public are socialists or worse yet, communists. And here we have a president who openly & consistently defends the dictator of Russia but hey,  don’t let the democrats dare defend or call for socialist things like universal health care, free university, etc because that is the road to communism. Remember, that trivial thing called the Cold War & our arch enemies, Russia & China who are now Trump’s pen pals? . This is truly Alice in Wonderland. Why won’t the democratic party stand up on its hind legs and call out the contradictions & hypocrisy of this bullshit propaganda?

 

That was a rhetorical question because I know why they won’t. It’s because they are part of the same corrupt & rotten to the core system that infects our establishment i.e. everything is for the 1%.

 

Again, we have been so brainwashed over the decades as to the imperative need for a powerful military that no one dares—well almost no one, Bernie & Elizabeth speak to it to some extent—to challenge the bedrock premise of our entire military/industrial/congressional complex i.e. the barbarians are at the gates & we must be ever vigilant (was “the commies are coming” now, it’s “the terrorists are coming.”)

As a result of this relentless propaganda campaign that has existed all my life & I’m now 67 years old, we supposedly never have enough money to pay for a quality public education system, universal health care, and all those other unnecessary programs that only benefit the poor, the working class, & the middle class. Nope! We need more of those $900 hammers & billion-dollar weapons systems that don’t even work and some of which the Pentagon doesn’t even want.

 

And what has your champion, Trump done for you? Nothing, that’s what. He spews out lies nonstop because he knows that you won’t check out the facts & that you blindly believe every lie he tells you because you’re his zombie cult, unthinking & unfeeling unless he winds you up with his Hitler-like rallies.

 

In conclusion, if the 1% were to stop feeding us their propaganda of fear & hate which keeps us divided against one another, we might unite & take back our country. Of course, this would hurt them where it matters most i.e. in their financial portfolios.

 

None of this is new in world history, the elite from every nation throughout history have used the time-tested & reliable tactic of Divide & Conquer. Yep! Keep us blaming one another for what they’re doing to us all and the rich can & do get away with murder again & again. And we die in the gutters homeless, alone, & humiliated, blamed for not having made good choices in our lives.

 

Meanwhile, to some extent their propaganda has become a self-fulfilling prophecy because our never-ending wars in which we rape, pillage, & plunder the rest of the world keeps the hatred of America alive in the hearts of terrorists & helps recruits new terrorists. This is why 9/11 was a godsend to the powers that be, they now had the pretext for their hidden agenda of becoming masters of the universe.

 

Whenever you hear them use the phrase; “It’s a matter of National Security,” hold on to your wallet because that’s code for bend over suckers, we’re taking more of your hard-earned money & tough shit if you don’t like it.

 

Trump is little more than a circus ring-leader not unlike in the days of the mighty Roman Empire where they threw Christians to the lions for public spectacle to keep the Roman citizens distracted from the corrupt practices of their Senate,  who were the obscenely wealthy like Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan.

 

My guess is that a large portion of those who defend Trump no matter how vile his words or actions, are, are probably huge fans of The Walking Dead but while they are vicariously getting a thrill out of watching the zombies being butchered, they don’t realize that they are the zombies in real-life who are being slaughtered by the Trumps of this world!

P.S. By-the-way, Trump hasn’t honored a single one of his campaign promises but his tax break did give this gift to his crime-partners;

Trump’s Tax Cuts Are the Biggest Wealth Grab in Modern History  https://fortune.com/2017/11/03/trump-gop-tax-plan-cuts-2017/

How’s that for “draining the swamp?” (Hint; Reagan’s tired old lie is still alive & well i.e. his trickle-down theory that by giving the rich tax breaks, they’ll hire more workers & give their workers raises, etc. In reality, they piss on us & tell us it’s raining golden benefits on us. But hey, wait a minute, doesn’t Trump like golden showers from Russian hookers???

Addendum

I almost forgot. I sent Noam Chomsky—many consider him the most important intellectual alive—an e-mail a few days ago (October 23, 2019) about my belief that Facebook is mainly responsible for the election of Trump. Noam replied; “It’s a plague.”