The Betrayal of America’s Values & Principles

 

“We have met the enemy and he is us” — Pogo

 

         What does this quote from the old, comic strip character, Pogo, mean? It means that our greatest enemy isn’t outside ourselves but within. Sadly, far too many Americans are intellectually lazy, apathetic, & obsessively focused on material things and wealth.

 

         You may argue, then why do so many people from other countries want so desperately to come here? Quite simply, it’s because we have so many opportunities here that they don’t have in their home countries and/or that they are fleeing a society even more violent than here in the U.S. Unfortunately, as Noam Chomsky puts it, “Our public education system is enforced ignorance.”

 

         The power elite in America are content with our general state of stupidity because it suits their business model of exploitation just fine. History was never a popular subject when I was in high school but I found it interesting & it took me many years and lots of reading to find out what a pack of lies & outright propaganda much of it is.

Multi-national corporations are the de facto rulers of the world & many are more wealthy & powerful than nation states

 

         And one of the most destructive lies is the hidden history of the American Empire created mostly since the end of WWII. If you recall, America was founded upon a revolution against the British Empire & we have now come full circle and have replaced the once mighty British Empire with the American Empire though it’s mostly a taboo topic. We are indoctrinated from first grade through high school with tales of how great we are & how we come to the rescue of many poor, struggling nations. But few of us are aware of our C.I.A.’s dirty history since its formation in 1947.

 

Instances of the United States overthrowing, or attempting to overthrow, a foreign government since the Second World War. (* indicates successful ouster of a government)

  • China 1949 to early 1960s
  • Albania 1949-53
  • East Germany 1950s
  • Iran 1953 *
  • Guatemala 1954 *
  • Costa Rica mid-1950s
  • Syria 1956-7
  • Egypt 1957
  • Indonesia 1957-8
  • British Guiana 1953-64 *
  • Iraq 1963 *
  • North Vietnam 1945-73
  • Cambodia 1955-70 *
  • Laos 1958 *, 1959 *, 1960 *
  • Ecuador 1960-63 *
  • Congo 1960 *
  • France 1965
  • Brazil 1962-64 *
  • Dominican Republic 1963 *
  • Cuba 1959 to present
  • Bolivia 1964 *
  • Indonesia 1965 *
  • Ghana 1966 *
  • Chile 1964-73 *
  • Greece 1967 *
  • Costa Rica 1970-71
  • Bolivia 1971 *
  • Australia 1973-75 *
  • Angola 1975, 1980s
  • Zaire 1975
  • Portugal 1974-76 *
  • Jamaica 1976-80 *
  • Seychelles 1979-81
  • Chad 1981-82 *
  • Grenada 1983 *
  • South Yemen 1982-84
  • Suriname 1982-84
  • Fiji 1987 *
  • Libya 1980s
  • Nicaragua 1981-90 *
  • Panama 1989 *
  • Bulgaria 1990 *
  • Albania 1991 *
  • Iraq 1991
  • Afghanistan 1980s *
  • Somalia 1993
  • Yugoslavia 1999-2000 *
  • Ecuador 2000 *
  • Afghanistan 2001 *
  • Venezuela 2002 *
  • Iraq 2003 *
  • Haiti 2004 *
  • Somalia 2007 to present
  • Honduras 2009 *
  • Libya 2011 *
  • Syria 2012
  • Ukraine 2014 *

 

 

         If you care to inform yourself of this dark side of America & to comprehend why so many terrorists hate America, William Blum offers a very concise history in his work; The C.I.A. A Forgotten History. Have you ever wondered why we have over 900 military bases around the world? Or do you actually believe that we are always the knights in shining armor like in the Crusades who believed it was their duty as devout Christians to rescue Jerusalem from the Muslim hordes? You see, throughout recorded history, the Church and the State (kings, queens, emperors, etc.) have sought to control their citizens so they could exploit them & enjoy lavish lifestyles. And sometimes the Church & the State have joined forces in their subjection of their citizens & the public was truly fucked i.e. Rome making Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

 

         And throughout history, education has been the most empowering tool in our struggle for those mythical values & principles America supposedly is the champion of. Here are the seven principles expressed in our Constitution, the supposed bedrock of our democracy & our form of government.

 

  1. Popular Sovereignty

“We the people…” the first three words of the preamble to the Constitution describes the essence of popular sovereignty. The power in the government of the United States comes directly from the people.

  1. Limited Government

Limiting the power of government was extremely important to the founding fathers who had just overthrown a tyrannical king. The government of the United States is limited by our written laws.

  1. Separation of Powers

 

The constitutional principle of separation of powers refers to the division of powers within the government. This separation of powers creates a government in which there is no concentration of power in any one branch, power is equally divided.

 

  1. Checks and Balances

 

          The principle of checks and balances is closely related to separation of powers. This principle explains the concept of each of the three branches of government having the authority to check the power of the others.

 

  1. Individual Rights

 

          Individual rights are a principle of the constitution which is dealt with primarily in the Bill of Rights. When the American Revolution ended and the new nation was developing its government many citizens were worried that their individual or unalienable rights would be trampled on by the new government; just as they were trampled on by King George the III. Ratification of the Constitution was made possible by adding the Bill of Rights which is the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Most of these amendments deal with basic human rights such as freedom of speech, the right to bear arms, and no cruel and unusual punishment.

 

  1. Federalism

 

          Federalism is the principle of the constitution which splits power between a national or federal government and the local governments. This principle is important because the Articles of Confederation failed because there was no strong central government. Without a strong central government countries are weak and vulnerable. Federalism creates a strong central government while maintaining strong state governments as well which are necessary to handle regional problems.

 

  1. Other Principles

 

           “There are some principles of the Constitution that are sometimes left out because they overlap or because writers do not want to include them. One is republicanism. This principle refers to the fact that the United States does not have a direct democratic government but a republic where people vote for representatives who then make the decisions for them. Another principle sometimes mentioned is judicial review. This principle overlaps with checks and balances because it refers to the power that the Supreme Court has to declare laws unconstitutional.”

 

Let’s review just a few of the many glaring examples of hypocrisy & betrayal of these Constitutional principles we supposedly honor and hold so high. Don’t forget, our military & “our” corporations are consistently doing their patriotic & humane duty by bringing the benefits of democracy to the developing nations with the help of our C.I.A. clearing a path for them.

 

Popular sovereignty. The power in the government comes directly from the people. Yeah, right. Anyone with half a brain knows that “our” government works for its rich, political donors & passes legislation that benefits them, certainly not the public. On just about every social, economic, & political issue, the will of the people is ignored if it doesn’t please the 1%, the “masters of mankind.” After the world-wide economic crash of 2008, the public didn’t want the government to bail out the big banks, “too big to fail,” but the government did so anyway.

Limited government. Again, common sense shows us that the power of the government to intrude into our lives & tell us what we can and can’t do is only increasing not decreasing. Try buying a piece of land and building your own home. The government tells us we must be connected to the grid i.e. the public utilities such as the electric, water, & sewer. They’ll tell you whether you can erect a windmill on your property. Many of these so-called “communities” will tell you what color you can paint your home, what size dog you’re allowed to have, and what breeds of dogs are allowed or not allowed.

 

Separation of powers. Trump’s reign of terror & error showed us just how absurd this Constitutional claim is. Trump and the GOP broke the law & packed the Supreme Court with three justices. The GOP got down on its hands & knees, pulled its pants down & handed Trump the Vaseline to fuck our entire government & the public in any way he pleased. Trump might as well have planted a sign on the White House lawn, step right up suckers, pardons for sale, whatever legislation you want signed, if the price is right, it’s a done deal. He was there to enrich himself & urged foreign leaders to stay at his properties. Trump was like a bull with mad cow disease & his goal was to wreak as much havoc & destruction as possible and make himself the first American dictator for life.

 

Checks and balances. I think I’m going to vomit. When is the last time we’ve seen Congress face up to its responsibility in deciding whether the U.S. should go to war? Like the bunch of spineless, sniveling cowards that they are, they simply pass the buck to the president time & time again.

 

Individual rights. Another screaming farce. With the passage of The Patriot Act right after the events of 9/11 which they had already written up years earlier, they effectively shredded The Bill of Rights. And overnight, we were no longer a democracy.

Thomas Jefferson, recognizing that the cornerstone of democracy rests on the foundation of an educated electorate, said that “whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”

 

Federalism. This is a variation on the old, rope-a-dope tactic. When it comes to issues that the 1% don’t give a fuck about, they declare it a states’ rights issue. But when it’s an issue that requires an iron fist like NAFTA, it’s declared an issue of vital, national importance and the full force of the federal government is brought to bear down on its passage.

 

I’m sure that others have written books with hundreds of examples of just how shallow our “democracy” is, my goal was to just give a cursory overview. In a sense, this essay could serve as a basic, sort of primer for those who may have not reflected on such matters & believe in many of our government’s lies.

 

In present day America, many Americans are connecting the dots and some of our soldiers fighting in the endless wars initiated by the corporate elite so they can exploit the natural resources of other nations are aware of the ugly realities & fight only to protect their fellow soldiers.

 

Some are waking up to the realization that the way we are treating the citizens of the countries we’ve invaded is being brought home & we have become the enemy of the corporate cockroaches. The power elite know that they can never let their guard down so on the street level, young black men are shot in the back just about every week.

 

But in a society as large & as technologically sophisticated as the U.S., the true battlefield is the mind or the psyche of the public. And Silicon Valley via M.I.T. with its Pentagon funding for research, has given us the world-wide web with all its assets & liabilities. George Orwell is probably rolling over in his grave at how joyfully the masses have accepted their enslavement. Like lemmings following their Pied Pipers as they lead them over the cliff & into the abyss of Armageddon with their eyes glued to the screens of their Smart phones. Yep! Data has now replaced oil as the most valuable commodity on Earth.

some of these high tech companies voluntarily gave the govt. our data; Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, You Tube, Skype, & Apple

 

Summing up, I’m going to leave you with a few quotes & an illuminating video by one of humanity’s greatest friends & champions, Edward Snowden.

 

“In the communist and fascist political systems of the 20th century, and in 1984, the totalitarian regime maintained a tight grip of control on the populace through the use of manufactured fear. “

 

“Totalitarian leaders, whether of the right or of the left, know better than anyone else how to make use of…fear…They thrive on chaos and bewilderment… The strategy of fear is one of their most valuable tactics.”

Joost Meerloo, Rape of the Mind

 

(see Fox “news,” Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, etc. — Rob DeLoss)

 

“Constant surveillance of all of the citizens was an additional tool in the arsenal of the totalitarian regime of 1984. Surveillance not only allowed for more effective overt control of the citizenry but it also induced paranoia which made it less likely that any citizen would even dare step out of line. This surveillance was achieved, firstly, through the technology of the telescreen which was installed in everyone’s home and throughout the streets, and as Orwell explained: “

 

“The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously…There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment…It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinised.”

George Orwell, 1984

 

“Many victims of totalitarianism have told me in interviews that the most upsetting experience they faced…was the feeling of loss of logic, the state of confusion into which they had been brought—the state in which nothing had any validity…they simply did not know what was what.” (Meerloo)

Joost Meerloo, Rape of the Mind

 

(see Trump’s “alternate reality” & the media as the enemy of the people — Rob DeLoss)

 

“In 1984, widespread mental disorientation was stimulated via the falsification of history, and the negation of the concept of objective truth. The Ministry of Truth was the institution which falsified history.  “

 

“Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.”

George Orwell, 1984

 

“One of the reasons totalitarian regimes attempt to alter history is because it rids the society of any past reference points, or standards of comparison, which might remind the citizens that life in the past was so much better than it is in the sterile and oppressive present. “

 

“But another reason history is falsified by totalitarians is to ensure there are no historical roots to which the citizen can anchor and find truth, sustenance and strength. In totalitarianism there can be no historical information which contradicts or puts into question the reigning political ideology, nor any institution, such as a religion, which offers the individual a refuge from the influence of the State. For a totalitarian regime to condition the citizenry to accept the proverbial boot stomping on its face, it needs to control the past, and so as Orwell wrote in 1984:

 

Along with destroying or falsifying the past, widespread mental disorientation is further cultivated by destroying the belief in objective truth. This is done through a program of psychological warfare. Incessant and intentionally confusing propaganda, conflicting reports and blatant lies, are pumped out in “official reports” and through the mass media at all hours of the day. What is said today has no bearing on what may be said tomorrow, for as Orwell explained: “

Steve Bannon co-founded Cambridge Analytica which used military psychological warfare tools to assist Trump in his presidential campaign along with Facebook’s cooperation

 

“And only yesterday, [Winston] reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that [the citizens] could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it…Was he, then, alone in the possession of a memory?”

George Orwell, 1984

“In addition, contradictions, hypocrisies and lies form the foundation of the totalitarian ideology. The totalitarian system presents the enslavement of the individual as his or her liberation; censoring information is called protecting the truth; the destruction of culture or the economy is called its development; the military occupation of other countries is labeled as the furtherance of freedom and peace. In 1984, the Ministry of Peace instigated wars, the Ministry of Truth manufactured propaganda, and the Ministry of Plenty created shortages. On the enormous pyramidal structure of the Ministry of Truth hung the words:

“WAR IS PEACE. FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”

“The purpose of this all-encompassing program of psychological warfare is to bewilder the mind of the average citizen. For when the citizen is bombarded with contradictions and lies and lives in what Orwell called “that shifting phantasmagoric world in which black may be white tomorrow and yesterday’s weather can be changed by decree”, he or she eventually ceases to know what to think, or even how to think. The distinction between up and down, fact and fiction, truth and falsity, is not only blurred, but loses significance. The belief in objective truth disappears, and the average citizen becomes completely dependent on authority figures to feed him ideas, and thus, is ready to assent to lies and to believe the most absurd things – so long as those in the political class deem it to be true.”

In an essay titled Totalitarianism and the Lie, Leszek Kolakowski, a philosopher who was exiled from Poland for his criticisms of Communism and Marxism, wrote:

“This is what totalitarian regimes keep unceasingly trying to achieve. People whose memory—personal or collective—has been nationalized, has become state-owned and perfectly malleable, totally controllable, are entirely at the mercy of their rulers; they have been deprived of their identity; they are helpless and incapable of questioning anything they are told to believe. They will never revolt, never think, never create; they have been transformed into dead objects.”

Leszek Kolakowsk, Totalitarianism and the Lie

 

“Some have taken this ending as sign of Orwell’s pessimism, as an indication that humanity is doomed to a totalitarian future. Yet Orwell’s motive for writing this book was not to depress nor promote a fatalistic apathy, but to warn and rouse to action as many people as possible. For Orwell understood as well as anyone that in the battle between totalitarianism and freedom, no one can afford to stand aside. The fate of each and every one of us hangs in the balance.

“Don’t let it happen. It depends on you.”

https://academyofideas.com/2021/08/is-1984-becoming-a-reality-george-orwells-warning-to-the-wo

 

 

— Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, Oregon on July 16, 2023

The Truth Behind the War on Drugs

 

“I think I understand, fear is like a wilderness, stepping-stones or sinking sand.”

— Joni Mitchell

 

The truth behind the war on drugs is that big pharma clearly doesn’t give a fuck about our health and safety. And our political leaders, through a combination of willful ignorance, greed, & apathy, don’t either. I’ve long intuited this but after watching the brilliant & insightful documentary by Alex Gibney, The Crime of the Century, any doubts I may have had, have completely disappeared.

A little over 20 years ago, Purdue Pharma realized that if they could develop a market for their powerful opioid drugs that were restricted for use by cancer patients nearing the end of their lives, the potential for huge profits existed. So, they got busy developing a sales campaign to break through doctors’ fears of their patients dying from opioid overdoses.

 

They built their promotion campaign on supposed testimonials & evidence from doctors that didn’t even exist, and pain became the enemy. Patients had the right to enjoy pain-free lives not only on their death beds but from everyday chronic pain due to back problems, headaches, you name it. Arthur Sackler was the key figure in the Sackler family that owned Purdue Pharma & he micromanaged down to the smallest details, this campaign of subversion & deceit.

 

Sackler was successful in bribing a medical officer at the FDA, Curtis Wright, to vouch for the safety & efficacy of Purdue’s powerful new opioid, Oxycontin, which is a time-released drug. Moreover, Purdue assured doctors & patients that the likelihood of addiction was less than 1%. Armed with this fraudulent testimony and approval by the FDA, Purdue unleashed an army of sales reps to spread their pack of lies, and Purdue’s profits steadily grew to the point where they became the largest & wealthiest drug manufacturers in America.

 

Along with their profits, the death counts due to overdoses also grew. The Sacklers knew that if they could persuade doctors to write ever higher doses of Oxycontin prescriptions, patients would become addicted & would become steady customers for life. Purdue also knew that once people became addicted, they would pay the increasing prices for the drug & salesmen were pressured to keep on pushing doctors to not only increase the dosage levels, but to also expand the number of patients they could get hooked on Oxycontin.

 

The poor and often injured miners of small Appalachian mining towns were among the first targets of this heartless, greedy, & indifferent corporation. In fact, the popularity of Oxycontin in these communities grew to the point where it was dubbed, Hillbilly Heroin. Many miners become seriously injured on the job & therefore they became the lab rats so-to-speak, for Purdue. And their teenage children became curious about this wonder drug that obviously made their fathers feel so good. Appalachian teenagers began dying in ever greater numbers due to their experimentation with Oxycontin.

 

Of course, this alarming & drastic increase in teenage deaths couldn’t ever have reached such mindboggling levels were it not for the collusion of government officials along the way. Here is a brief overview of some of the more prominent colluders in this dark tale of death and destruction.

 

  • Senator Chris Dodd defended Purdue Pharma (it’s the addict’s fault)

    Remember the Dodd-Frank Act that was supposed to protect consumers after the 2008 Crash, yeah right!
  • Dodd received campaign donations ten times higher than other politicians from Purdue
  • Enter Rudy Giuliani on Purdue’s side

    Rudy Giuliani, “America’s mayor” on 9/11 & he soaked-up the celebrity for years & then became Trump’s butt-boy!
  • Two of the government’s top prosecutors blocked the requirement for Purdue’s top executives to testify in court
  • The Dept. of Justice manufactured a press release to make the deal between Purdue & the government for its crimes look tough i.e., a $600 million fine (after making tens of billions in profits)
  • After the settlement, Purdue doubled down on its manufacture & sales of Oxycontin
  • Purdue made $3 billion the first year after their settlement in 2007
  • The “Prosecution Memo” was buried by the Justice Dept.
  • 2013 enter Fentanyl, 100 times more powerful than heroin
  • Other drug manufacturers followed Purdue’s model after they saw the relative slap on the wrist for Purdue’s crimes
  • DEA investigators became suspicious when they saw opioid orders jump from a few thousand to tens of thousands suddenly
  • The DEA had the power to file an “Immediate Suspension of Registration” which could shut down a drug manufacturer overnight for suspicious activity
  • DEA lawyer/enforcer, Linden Barber, used this power more than any other DEA lawyers

    Linden Barber, sold the American people out for wealth
  • Enter Jamie Gorelick, the Deputy Attorney General (second most powerful law official in
    represents Amazon, BP, is fighting against student loan reform, represented Fannie Mae in $10 billion accounting scandal, & wants govt. to be able to break encrypted communications

    the U.S.) to represent Cardinal Drug Manufacturing, one of the top four manufacturers

  • She was appointed by Bill Clinton (look her up for some of her other infamous clients)
  • Purdue, Cardinal, & the other drug manufacturers didn’t like the DEA’s ability to shut them down overnight, so they joined together in a campaign of bribery targeting key politicians
  • A bill was written up that slightly changed the language of the law allowing the DEA to shut a company down (Immediate Suspension of Registration) & not a single congressman or President Obama uttered a peep of objection
  • Cardinal hired the former DEA lawyer/enforcer, Linden Barber, who had left the DEA & opened his own practice defending drug manufacturers
  • Barber, knowing the DEA’s weak spots from having worked for it for years, crafted the language of the new law that gutted its power in the war against the corrupt drug manufacturers
  • Trump’s pick for drug czar, Tom Marino, was forced to withdraw from accepting the post because of his bill that blocked federal agents from going after big pharma firms

Well as I said, that was just an overview of justice in America regarding the righteous War on Drugs. Over half a million American citizens have died from opioid overdoses in the past 20 years but nothing must impede the holy pursuit of profits by the corporate cockroaches!

 

I’m going to end this essay by offering several of my personal speculations on this deadly subject that has perhaps cost American taxpayers trillions of dollars not to mention the horrific personal costs in terms of lives ruined & families destroyed.

 

If you’re near my age, you probably remember that it was President Nixon who officially launched the War on Drugs. Well, Nixon ran on a platform of promising to withdraw U.S. troops from the Vietnam war & as soon as he won, he escalated the war. Millions of young people were outraged & many of them were student protestors & hippies who smoked pot & experimented with other drugs. I submit that Nixon launched his War on Drugs as an excuse to lock up & silence many of his young critics.

Could it be that our politicians & the power elite actually don’t want to ever end this charade of a war on drugs because at its root, it’s a useful tool for helping them control us & especially black Americans? Why black Americans? Because they have been fucked over by the ruling class from the beginning of our country & they have suffered more deeply than any other segment of our society. Why do you think they are shot & killed almost daily?

 

America’s original police forces were called slave patrols & I submit that they still are. This opioid crisis we’re going through illustrates just how little the poor, the people of color, etc. matter to the status quo. To them, we are superfluous (unnecessary) especially in this age of high tech that was created with our tax dollars. And our last useful function is as prisoners where they not only profit from our incarceration but also our forced labor.

 

Another aspect of our suppression & oppression is what Edward Snowden revealed. If you watch Laura Poitras’ film, Citizen Four, about Snowden’s meeting with her & Glenn Greenwald in Hong Kong after his escape from the NSA site in Hawaii with the treasure trove of classified material, Snowden said in passing that the illegal NSA spying on all Americans is about control.

I think it was very wise of Snowden to not belabor this point because it would’ve made him look like some conspiracy nut from Alex Jonesville. Reflect on this, the massive, data collection center the government built & is operating in Utah is supposedly for helping to protect us from terrorist attacks. This is total bullshit!

 

If you watch the film, The Looming Towers which is about how 9/11 happened, it’s clear that both the C.I.A. & the F.B.I. had ample evidence about the impending attacks but because of petty rivalry, they didn’t share vital information with each other. This is the tragic & often repeated scenario in many crises the U.S. has faced. We don’t need more data or information on terrorist suspects, we need to figure out how to get around the asinine, petty egos of our so-called intelligence agencies.

Snowden and others have warned us repeatedly that the massive storage facility in Utah & elsewhere true purpose is control over the U.S. public. And if any of us become a threat in their minds, they can cherry pick data from our lives to frame us & build a legal case against us so they can shut us up by locking us up in prison.

An article by Forbes estimates the storage capacity as between 3 and 12 exabytes as of 2013,

 

In conclusion, there are other examples of how control over us is the true or bottom-line agenda of the power elite but I’ll leave that for you to explore. My objective in this essay was to highlight just how little our supposed leaders care about us. Is it any wonder that we’re just about the only “developed nation,” that doesn’t have a national health care program, so we don’t have to fear getting sick & losing our homes?

 

A key factor in controlling a nation’s population is fear and the 1% who de facto own & control America are very adept at keeping us afraid of one another i.e., FOX “news,” for example. And fear of black people is a tried-and-true technique even though white collar crime is far more deadly i.e., the opioid crisis.

 

P.S. If you’d like to get a much more thorough explanation of all this, check out this interview with the venerable, Noam Chomsky at https://chomsky.info/199804__-2/

Addendum

I finished this piece two days ago & have been wrestling  with myself as to whether I should include this. This isn’t just another political essay among the hundreds that I’ve written over the years, no, this is a subject that touched me and my family deeply. On August 31, 1975, my mom found my brother dead, lying across her bed dead with the needle he’d used to inject himself with heroin, sticking out of his arm.

 

I knew he had been shooting heroin for quite some time & had even told our mother that he was doing so but she was in denial & refused to face the truth. I beat him up, I hugged him and told him that I loved him & I even called the cops on him once all to no avail. A week or so before he died, I got a message from a friend that my brother wanted me to call him but I didn’t because I’d given up on him. I was 22 years old and my brother, Tim, was 18. My world was turned upside down. I still wrestle with guilt over Tim’s death and I’m now 70 years old.

 

This essay is about the tens if not hundreds of thousands of people who became addicted to opioids purposely by giant, pharmaceutical corporations & turned to heroin when they could no longer afford the outrageous prices for the Oxycontin pills along with the other variants. These heartless companies turned their consumers into junkies and the devastation is incalculable. And our members of Congress either couldn’t be bothered to read the bill that allowed Big Pharma to keep on manufacturing their death pills or they simply didn’t give a fuck. Tell me again about what a wonderful country we are.

 

 

Neoliberalism as Class Warfare

 

“All for ourselves, and nothing for other People”

— Adam Smith (1723-1790)

 

I came from a working-class background & I will always be a working-class guy. The town I grew up in — my adolescence through my twenties — is Paramount. It’s an inner-city, industrially zoned town across the L.A. riverbed from the infamous Compton which for a while had the highest murder rate in America & was where the notorious street gang, the Crips, originated.

In other words, I didn’t grow-up in any Leave it to Beaver or Ozzie & Harriet idyllic community. And I have hated & fought against bullies my entire life. I see my writing as another form of continuing my fight against bullies. The rich & especially the super-rich have bullied everyone who is not as wealthy as them throughout history. If I come across as preaching in my writing, I apologize. My intention is to teach through my writing with the goal of helping others to understand how we ended up with towns like Compton & Paramount and perpetually behind the eight-ball socially, economically, & politically.

 

At first, reading & books were my escape from the ugly reality that was my family life. But somewhere in my twenties, light bulbs began to go on in my mind & the subjects of philosophy, political science, history, & literature showed me the interconnections, the hows, whys, & ways that the rich were fucking us all. I began to see that knowledge truly is a great, empowering tool for our liberation from slavery by the master class.

Benedict Arnold & his teacher.

 

In fact, you might find it hard to believe but conservatively, I’d guesstimate that in the last 30 years alone, I have spent 50,000 hours reading, writing, researching, etc. in the subjects I mentioned above. And no, I’m not saying this makes me an “expert” or a genius, but I have done my homework. So, excuse me if I sound a bit pompous or like an authority at times.

 

I started this essay with the quote by Adam Smith because it sums up the basic belief of the so-called 1% who de facto call all the shots behind the scenes, most notably behind the charade of Congress that is supposed to represent us but actually doesn’t give a shit whether we live or die.

Pissing on the Public!

 

I chose this particular quote by Adam Smith because he is often referred to as the “Father of Capitalism,” and this form of capitalism has caused so much death & destruction around the planet & continues to do so that if we don’t wake-up & organize ourselves to fight it, it may be the end of us all?

 

What really saddens me about this quote is that this perspective has spread to millions of working-class people around the world. Our most powerful defense against the powers that be is our numbers & if we are to be successful in this class warfare, we need to realize that solidarity is crucial.

Greenspan was considered the God of financial wisdom by both parties for decades then, oops! Sorry guys, guess I was wrong?

 

The status quo has been cranking-out their propaganda for decades to divide us & thereby weaken us as a force.

 

In the middle of his presidency, Ronald Reagan created a secret agency known as the Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD) with one nefarious purpose in mind: propaganda. This was no ordinary propaganda. It was deemed “white propaganda,” designed to be used on the American people. https://listverse.com/2015/01/15/10-reprehensible-crimes-of-ronald-reagan/

George Orwell said in his classic 1984 that the true enemy of Big Brother (the government) isn’t foreign but rather, its own citizens. This isn’t Alex Jones bullshit conspiracy, but most Americans have been so well indoctrinated that they believe it’s only the Russians & Chinese who use propaganda against their own citizens.

 

The Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean (S/LPD or ARA/LPD) was an intra-agency propaganda organization[1][2] established in the United States during the administration of Ronald Reagan. It was founded and managed by the Cuban-American Otto Reich, an ardent opponent of Fidel Castro.

In theory, the S/LPD operated under the auspices of the Department of State, but congressional investigations later determined it reported directly to Reagan’s National Security Council aide in the White House, Colonel Oliver North. The S/LPD collaborated with Central Intelligence Agency propaganda experts and Army psychological operations specialists to disseminate what it called “white propaganda” with the goal of influencing public opinion and spurring Congress to continue to fund the Reagan administration’s military campaign against Nicaragua‘s Sandinista government. By covertly disseminating intelligence leaks to journalists, it sought to trump up a Nicaraguan “threat,” and to sanctify the U.S.-backed Contra guerrillas fighting Nicaragua’s government as “freedom fighters.”  — Wikipedia

 

I could list hundreds of examples of U.S. propaganda used to brainwash us but here’s just a sampling.

 

We’ve all heard family members, friends, co-workers, etc. complain, why should I be forced to pay taxes for other peoples’ kids to go to school, for programs like Head Start, for food stamps, health care for lazy people who don’t want to work, etc. etc. etc.

Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum, two of the most dangerous & destructive presidents we’ve ever had.

 

Because they don’t teach the truth about the world, schools have to rely on beating students over the head with propaganda about democracy. If schools were, in reality, democratic, there would be no need to bombard students with platitudes about democracy. They would simply act and behave democratically, and we know this does not happen. The more there is a need to talk about the ideals of democracy, the less democratic the system usually is. (Noam Chomsky)

I’ll tell you why you should pay those taxes, because if we make sure that all kids have food in their bellies when they start their school day, they are better able to concentrate & less likely to be a behavior problem in their classrooms. In turn, this allows their teachers to be more effective because they don’t have to waste their time dealing with behavior problems & the other students aren’t cheated out of the time they need to learn & prosper.

 

I speak from experience here because I was an educator for over 20 years. And it’s a national disgrace that many schools in the poor areas like Paramount & Compton, often don’t even have enough textbooks for every student & many of their classrooms are little more than warehouses where we attempt to keep them contained until the end of the school day.

 

Kids may not be able to articulate what’s going on, but they know they’re being screwed & that kids who go to schools in places like Beverly Hills have it a thousand times better than they do. The poor students often grow up angry & turn to gangs for a sense of belonging & people who care about them. This in turn makes our communities more dangerous & it just becomes one horrific, vicious cycle that is far more costly to us all than if we’d treated them fairly from the beginning.

kids & those not blinded by the adult “realities” of life can see the Truth

 

And from the much bigger picture that I alluded to earlier i.e.  class warfare, think how much more powerful we’d become if all our children had a top-notch education. Again, the 1% want a nation of illiterates or barely literate citizens because they’re more susceptible to the propaganda designed to keep us divided & blaming one another for our troubles rather than them who become obscenely wealthy while more & more of us become homeless.

You may think I’m saying we should become a communist country, but you’d be wrong. No, I believe we should follow the model of countries like Sweden, Norway, Denmark, etc. And I have visited Denmark & Sweden and several other European countries in my vagabonding days — I’ve been to Europe a dozen times — sometimes on a one-way ticket & landing with a couple hundred bucks in my pocket. Yeah, they pay what seems outlandish taxes, but they have the best public education through college absolutely free, the same for medical care, clean & safe modern apartments, etc. The way I look at it is, if all your basic necessities are taken care of, the rest of your money is all for luxuries or whatever you want.

 

I believe to the marrow of my bones that every human being has a natural right to be treated with dignity & it’s inhumane to force people to suffer humiliation, degradation, needless suffering, fear, etc. just so an elite can live like kings. Bottom-line, if you don’t care about those less fortunate than yourself & don’t want to pay taxes to help them but are silent when it comes to our throwing trillions down the bottomless pit we call the Pentagon, I don’t want to even know you or be around you. And some day, you could find yourself in a lifeboat from a ship that just sunk & with a handful of those “undesirables” who may know what kind of person you are & may not help you survive because you are clearly one of the heartless who has no compassion or empathy for his fellow man.

While Reagan was unleashing the dark, satanic forces of neoliberalism on America, Maggie Thatcher was doing likewise on Great Britain

 

Okay, onward to the broad & rather vague or nebulous term, “Neoliberalism.” To be honest, neoliberalism has only come to my attention in the last several years though it’s been a powerful force for at least the last 40 years. And as usual with the propaganda put out by the corporate cockroaches via the corporate media, they’ve disguised it behind their favorite trigger words like freedom, democracy, patriotism, etc. and of course it’s wrapped in the American flag.

I want to reiterate that I’m a working class stiff & as such, I write for the kind of people like my relatives & the friends I grew up with who mostly just went to high school. So, I’m not going to attempt to give you all the lofty & deceptive economic jargon. Quite simply, neoliberalism is comprised of three programs of assault they employ against us, Deregulation, Privatization, & Austerity. I want to begin by sharing a passage from my intellectual & moral hero, Noam Chomsky.

 

Throughout history, Adam Smith observed, we find the workings of “the vile maxim of the masters of mankind”: “All for ourselves, and nothing for other People.” He had few illusions about the consequences. The invisible hand, he wrote, will destroy the possibility of a decent human existence “unless government takes pains to prevent” this outcome, as must be assured in “every improved and civilized society.” It will destroy community, the environment and human values generally — and even the masters themselves, which is why the business classes have regularly called for state intervention to protect them from market forces.

Notes of NAFTA: “The Masters of Man”

Noam Chomsky

The Nation, March, 1993

 

          By the way my imaginary reader, if you’re interested in gaining a truly, top-notch political education, read everything you can get your hands on by Noam Chomsky!

 

“Peer through the lens of neoliberalism and you see more clearly how the political thinkers most admired by Thatcher and Reagan helped shape the ideal of society as a kind of universal market (and not, for example, a polis, a civil sphere or a kind of family) and of human beings as profit-and-loss calculators (and not bearers of grace, or of inalienable rights and duties). Of course the goal was to weaken the welfare state and any commitment to full employment, and – always – to cut taxes and deregulate. But “neoliberalism” indicates something more than a standard rightwing wish list. It was a way of reordering social reality, and of rethinking our status as individuals.” https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/18/neoliberalism-the-idea-that-changed-the-world

 

The leading student of business propaganda, Australian social scientist Alex Carey, argues persuasively that the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy. — Noam Chomsky

 

You may think I’m beating a dead horse in regard to propaganda but if anything, I’m understating the seriousness of the issue. Do you recall our Pentagon war strategists during the Vietnam war & their “Winning the Hearts & Minds” of the Vietnamese people while we bombed the Hell out of them?

 

“The war could have never been won in terms of the employment of firepower. The solution to winning the war was to cause reform in the government, to win the hearts and minds of the people.” (David Hackworth)

 

If you haven’t heard of Colonel Hackworth, shame on you. He served in both Korea & Vietnam and was a living legend. He was often in trouble with his superiors because he’d ignore their stupid commands & he created an outfit that turned the guerilla tactics of Mao against the North Vietnamese & was highly effective. He was shot more than any other soldier since WWII I believe & was awarded over 90 medals & etc. But around 1971, he couldn’t remain silent any longer & started speaking out against our involvement in Vietnam & the Pentagon’s propaganda dept. went after him by trying to destroy his credibility.

 

Returning to the main topic, neoliberalism, here’s a long view historically speaking that came to me a few days ago. This may be an example of the cyclical view of history in that it repeats itself, and I see the precursors of neoliberalism in this perspective.

 

It began with the Great Depression, which was caused by the Stock Market crash of 1929, the massive number of bank failures, etc. It lasted from 1929 to 1939 and largely due to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs, we slowly pulled out of it. All you “MAGA” fans of Trump & Reagan should note that if it weren’t for the federal government’s assistance, which might’ve spelled the end of America.

You see, the neoliberals have been spreading their propaganda that the government is the cause of all our problems & refuse to see that in fact, it’s the corporate greed of the 1% & the Wolves of Wall St. who are the de facto culprits. And amazingly, even though the federal government bailed Wall St. out after their corruption & greed had dealt such a body-blow to America, the power elite immediately started waging their propaganda campaign against the government.

F.D.R.’s “New Deal” which by-the-way would’ve never happened were it not for the solidarity & continual pressure of the American public who had suffered so long & hard. In fact, several of our richest business tycoons were so outraged by being forced to “give” some of their wealth in the form of taxes for New Deal programs, that they planned & organized a coup against F.D.R. If it hadn’t been for the true patriot, Smedley F. Butler whom they approached to lead their coup, the United States might very well have become a fascist tyranny overnight. Butler was another amazing soldier beloved by hundreds of thousands of soldiers whom he’d led in his career.

Fast forward to January 6th & Trump’s attempted coup, another one of the supposed 1% who’s mantra is “All for ourselves and nothing for other People.” And were it not for all the government loans & subsidies that Trump has received over the years along with his fraud, corruption, & Mafia buddies, he’d probably be selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door.

The darling of Reagan, Alan Greenspan, Paul Ryan, etc. who railed against welfare or help of any kind to the poor but in her last years she was on welfare & medicare.

 

The key point to bear in mind in my cyclical view of history is the nearly total worldwide economic meltdown of 2008. Thanks again to deregulation, specifically Bill Clinton’s repeal of F.D.R.’s Glass Steagall Act, which the supposedly conservative republicans had been trying to do since Reagan was in power, billions of hard-working citizens around the world lost their homes, their jobs, their pensions, their savings, their health care.

Except this time, after the federal government bailed-out the Wolves of Wall St. yet again, and they didn’t put it in writing that the banks had to ease up & make loans for individuals who needed help for either starting up their small businesses or keeping their small businesses from going bankrupt.

Again, and again it’s clear, the government will do everything within its power to protect the uber rich but could give a shit less about the 99% of us who are left to sink or swim on our own & pay our taxes. This is neoliberalism!

 

Deregulation, Privatization, & Austerity are their weapons of choice & how they are destroying the last vestiges of Democracy & turning America into a fascist, corporate tyranny owned lock, stock, & barrel by the billionaire class that so many of our citizens idolize.

 

“Reagan installs neoliberalism

From the 1930s to 1981, a period of time spanning more than two full generations, the American political and economic system was run under a “well-regulated capitalism” system conceived by economist John Maynard Keynes and put into place in 1933 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

A top income tax bracket of 91% that kicked in at around $3 million a year in today’s money guaranteed that nobody became obscenely rich, while strong protections for workers and their right to unionize ensured that a good chunk of corporate profits went to the workers who created that revenue.” https://www.salon.com/2021/08/15/the-crisis-of-neoliberalism-america-arrives-at-one-of-historys-gre

 

“Friedman, Reagan and the wealthy funders of the Republican Party saw this inflation, which was devastating the Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter one-term presidencies, as a political gift. To a man, they insisted it was caused by FDR’s and LBJ’s “welfare state” policies and the “big spending” associated with them, even though that was a complete lie.” (ibid.)

 

“America, shaken by that decade of seemingly intractable inflation, bought his sales pitch and Reaganomics — aka neoliberalism — became the operational economic and political system of America in 1981. Everything from trickle-down to busting unions to “ending welfare as we know it” and “tough on crime” policing fell under this single rubric.” (ibid.)

 

“Reagan’s destruction of American unions had also dried up the Democratic Party’s main revenue source, so by 1992 jumping into bed with giant corporations and the super-rich had become a political survival strategy for Democrats. ”

Embracing multinational corporations that wanted to move their expensive-labor manufacturing facilities overseas meant overflowing campaign coffers for the newly-neoliberal Democratic Party and Clinton’s political arm, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC).” (ibid.)

 

 

 

The final nail in the regulatory coffin was the Bill Clinton administration (1993-2001). Clinton repealed laws and prevented government intervention in speculative markets, until they collapsed. These deregulations built upon the Nixon-Reagan era and ultimately contributed to the Crash of 2007, the Crisis of 2008 and the ongoing Recession. https://truthout.org/articles/out-of-control-a-brief-history-of-neoliberal-deregulation-in-the-usa/

 

“While Obama, like Clinton, had campaigned on themes that made it seem he was rejecting neoliberalism, in fact he was as deeply in its camp as were Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush.

By the time of his presidency neoliberalism was simply conventional wisdom in political circles, having been adopted in the U.K. in 1978 by Margaret Thatcher and in large part adopted by much of the rest of Europe in the 1990s and early 2000s. Onward to Davos to party with the neoliberal billionaires!

But still, as noble and soaring as Obama’s rhetoric was, and as good and decent a man as he was (in contrast to the war criminal and torturer Bush, the horny Clinton or the evil Nixon), neoliberalism still wasn’t working for anybody except America’s biggest corporations and richest individuals. And American workers knew it.

Enter Donald Trump, the political equivalent of the Little Boy Who Said the Emperor Has No Clothes. Trump attacked the neoliberal policies of both parties, although never directly using the word.” (ibid.)

Willful ignorance on full display!

 

 

 

I could provide a lot of financial doublespeak & jargon but that would only bore you. And if your curiosity is aroused, you can do some research on your own, but I want to make clear that our financial troubles aren’t just the fault of the GOP.

 

Obviously, Clinton played a major role in the destruction of the American middle class but even the beloved Jimmy Carter had a hand in the hollowing-out of our democracy. Moreover, if democrats & liberals were aware of Carter’s role in the assault on Central America, they wouldn’t continue to portray him as a saint.

 

Returning to deregulation, here’s a perhaps simplistic but nevertheless important fact to keep in mind.

 

Without rules and control from the government, businesses can commit fraud more easily, putting consumers at risk.

 

One way President Biden can “Build Back Better” be following the example of one of the greatest deregulators to sit in the Oval Office: Jimmy Carter. Whilst most think of Carter as a standard New Deal-Great Society liberal, deregulation was a major part of Carter’s economic agenda and one of the greatest aspects of his legacy.  It’s something that Carter and Reagan had in common, not something that set them apart. https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/jimmy-carter-the-great-deregulator/

 

Over the past four decades or better, the more I’ve dug into the connections or interdependence of the behemoth corporations, our political system, & our economic system, the more nauseous I have become. Every now & then when a company, a corporation, or a conglomerate of corporations gets busted for wrongdoing, we hear the same old, “it was just a few bad apples,” or “they were the exception to the rule.” Well, this is simply bullshit, fraud isn’t the exception, it’s the rule & the higher up the food chain, in terms of wealth, you go, the more prevalent it is.

I wrote an essay years ago which I titled, “The Business of America is Fraud,” and as the years have passed, my convictions have only been strengthened. And “our” government has utterly failed us ad infinitum. The old adage our grandparents & great grandparents followed, “Buyer Beware,” were/are so fuckin’ true or right. I’m just sharing a few examples with you in this essay of the fraud & corruption that has permeated nearly every crevice of our society & culture. But if you don’t want to become just another victim to the unbridled greed of the 1%, the so-called “Masters of the Universe,” all I can advise is that you put away your “Smart phone,” which is actually making you dumber, and you get busy informing yourself to help protect your loved ones.

Last night I stumbled across a movie from 2019 called, “The Devil Has a Name,” and once again I couldn’t believe that our fuckin’ government didn’t step in to protect us, the consumers and citizens of this wonderful nation.

 

You’d think that after 40 years or better of studying the corruption in big business & our political system, not much could surprise me, but it still does. I brought up this film because it’s an excellent example of the destructive consequences of neoliberalism or the capture of our political system by what I call the corporate cockroaches.

 

In brief, for several decades, the oil companies who own those oil derricks pumping oil out of the ground in California’s Central Valley, have been pumping the toxic water that comes from sucking the oil out of the land, into unlined ponds which then leak into the groundwater & contaminate and poison the crops adjacent to the oil fields.

 

Therefore, California’s Central Valley, which produces roughly half the nuts, fruits, & vegetables which feed our nation, is selling us food that is carcinogenic. So much for all the vegan health nuts & their arrogance & sense of superiority. There’s no other way to put it other than the water companies & the oil companies’ collusion for the sake of ever greater profits clearly outweighs the public’s health & safety. https://psmag.com/environment/california-oil-field-waste-is-threatening-water-supplies

Perhaps the most important takeaway from this film & the issue raised in the film of companies getting busted for illegal & dangerous practices but, they usually just pay a relatively small fine & return to doing the same crime. You see, corporations are about one thing i.e., maximizing their profits & as long as the government just gives them a slap on the wrist, they’ll continue in their destructive behaviors because it basically always boils down to cost-benefit analysis & they even have a term for this i.e. “Net Present Value.”

 

Remember what I said earlier about the business of America is fraud? I’ll tell you one thing, you can be damn sure that the power elite or the 1% who de facto own America, don’t buy or eat the food produced in California’s Central Valley. They most likely have their own, private organic farms where they know the soil, water, etc. used to grow their food is 100% pure.

 

Getting back to deregulation, Reagan was probably the most deregulating president we’ve had since neoliberalism began to infest our country. If you recall, one of the first acts Reagan passed after he became president in his first term, was to fire the air traffic controllers who were on strike, for life.

 

The air traffic controllers were rightfully concerned about the dangerous overcrowding in the skies & the serious understaffing of air traffic controllers so the airlines could increase their profits. Many of the controllers were forced to work long shifts & this of course increased the likelihood of accidents because the more tired a person is, the less sharp & alert their senses are. Think about that the next time you’re on a flight!

Reagan has always been a corporate lackey or lapdog & I’m old enough to remember the television commercials made for G.E. for 20 years as he traveled around America as their official spokesman. He even dubbed it, “The Speech,” which basically boiled down to “The Commies Are Coming, The Commies Are Coming!” In short, Reagan’s job was to keep stoking the fear of the American public, you know, what FOX “News’” role has been for the past 25 years or better.

 

By-the-way, here’s another couple of interesting “fun facts” for you, G.E. was involved in building America’s first atomic bomb, the one used to vaporize hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians in Hiroshima. And the plutonium used came from the Hanford Nuclear Facility in Washington state. Moreover, there are countless newspaper articles from the 1950s about livestock raised along the Columbia River that were born with two heads & various other deformities. Our brilliant leaders allowed Hanford to bury the radioactive waste in cement containers which they buried & they soon began eroding into the groundwater that connected with the Columbia. Bon Appetit fellow citizens, Uncle Sam loves you! https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-05-07-vw-3730-story.html

 

Moving right along, here’s another fine example of good old deregulation, Enron. Do you remember our Howdy Doody president, Georgie “Dubya” Bush & his good friend, Ken Lay? Of course, as soon as Enron got busted, Dubya suddenly forgot Kenny boy as he used to call him & even though Kenny boy let Georgie use his private jet to fly around the country when he was running for the presidency, Bush dropped him like a hot potato when Enron’s grand scam was exposed.

 

The Enron scandal is a complex story of financial fraud & accounting and manipulation of the energy market with the help of Wall St. The key lesson is that once again, we see how fucked-up things can become when big business isn’t regulated or watched by “our” government. And for the record, when Enron was finally caught for all its illegal activities, especially its massive accounting fraud, it was the fifth largest business in America. Here is a significant snippet for your review.

 

After the passage of the deregulation law, California had a total of 38 Stage 3 rolling blackouts declared, until federal regulators intervened during June 2001.[60] These blackouts occurred as a result of a poorly designed market system that was manipulated by traders and marketers, as well as from poor state management and regulatory oversight. Subsequently, Enron traders were revealed as intentionally encouraging the removal of power from the market during California’s energy crisis by encouraging suppliers to shut down plants to perform unnecessary maintenance, as documented in recordings made at the time.[61][62] These acts contributed to the need for rolling blackouts, which adversely affected many businesses dependent upon a reliable supply of electricity, and inconvenienced a large number of retail customers. This scattered supply increased the price, and Enron traders were thus able to sell power at premium prices, sometimes up to a factor of 20 × its normal peak value.  (Wikipedia)

 

By-the-way, something we should all keep in mind when these massive corporations occasionally are punished, they are allowed to file for bankruptcy & in many instances, they don’t even have to plead guilty & don’t even receive a criminal record for their crimes. And the cherry on top is that the IRS keeps cutting the number of auditors whose job it is to audit the wealthy & the major corporations while increasing their staff to audit average citizens. Yep! Another example of equality in America & our respect for Law & Order. Oh yeah, the IRS is also making it harder & harder for working class Americans to file for bankruptcy while streamlining the process for the corporate cockroaches. Aren’t you proud to be an American?

 

One last gem before I move on, remember my telling you that Jimmy Carter isn’t the good, little Christian he pretends to be & the overwhelming majority of democrats have portrayed him as a near saint? Well, Mr. Peanut signed the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 & he pushed Congress to deregulate the trucking industry & the railroad industry. I’ll leave you to research the deadly results of those pieces of legislation.

Onward & upward to weapon number two used in the class war by the corporate cockroaches, “Privatization.” My hero, Noam Chomsky, summed it up very simply like this (my paraphrase) when the neoliberals want to privatize a public service or program, they simply defund it & when it begins to fail, they suggest it be privatized because everyone knows that private companies/corporations due a much better job than the government does & for less money.

 

As I mentioned earlier, when FDR passed the New Deal, many, if not most of America’s business tycoons were outraged that the government was going to help the people who were suffering so terribly during the Great Depression. They didn’t want to be forced to help subsidize these “social welfare” programs, remember, the megalithic corporations who go belly-up because of their fraud & greed are the only ones worthy of help from the “nanny state,” the rest of us are supposed to rely only on ourselves as Reagan’s fictional favorite, Horatio Alger, & pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.

 

Moreover, those faux conservatives who cry foul the loudest have a hidden agenda — as far as the average citizen is concerned — they seek to privatize the government-funded programs because they are usually made up of mostly democrats. And they have very large & enticing pots of money like public education.

 

This is the truth behind the G.O.P.’s war on public education. As Chomsky pointed out, they surreptitiously defund it at every opportunity & by-the-way, this serves their agenda in two respects, 1) it weakens our educational system, 2) with the introduction of charter schools, the G.O.P. gets the vote of millions of phony Christians because they can indoctrinate students with the Bible in charter schools, they can pray in school, & they can indoctrinate/brainwash the students with their hidden curricula.

“Christian” fundamentalists, evangelicals, extremists, etc. fear & hate Secular Humanism with a fierce passion because it’s basically about the principles & values of the Enlightenment or what America was founded upon & it adheres firmly to the separation of church & state. Our founding fathers were scholars of the Enlightenment & were therefore well aware of the centuries of deadly conflicts when the church was an official part of the government.

 

These self-professed “Christians” are obviously not true Christians because 74 million of them not only voted for Trump, but they support him wholeheartedly. And if I need to point out to you how obviously non-Christian Trump is, you have drunk his Jim Jones Kool-Aid & are part of the willfully ignorant & morally bankrupt.

 

The U.S. Postal Service is another powerful union & is made up of many democrats. So, the neoliberals passed one of the most outrageous acts ever.

An unprecedented congressional mandate threatens the Postal Service’s ability to continue to provide good jobs and universal service.

July 15, 2019
Sarah Anderson, Scott Klinger, Brian Wakamo

Originally in Inequality.org

In 2006, Congress passed a law that imposed extraordinary costs on the U.S. Postal Service. The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) required the USPS to create a $72 billion fund to pay for the cost of its post-retirement health care costs, 75 years into the future. This burden applies to no other federal agency or private corporation.

If the costs of this retiree health care mandate were removed from the USPS financial statements, the Post Office would have reported operating profits in each of the last six years. This extraordinary mandate created a financial “crisis” that has been used to justify harmful service cuts and even calls for postal privatization. Additional cuts in service and privatization would be devastating for millions of postal workers and customers.

In its December 2018 report, President Trump’s Task Force on the United States Postal Service reaffirmed current rules related to postal retiree health benefits, calling it “part of a mandate for postal self-sustainability.” https://ips-dc.org/how-congress-manufactured-a-postal-crisis-and-how-to-fix-it/

 

The third tool or weapon of mass destruction used by the neoliberal cabal to keep the rabble under their thumb is “Austerity.” You should take notice that whenever they bring up the importance of austerity, they’re referring to us, the 99%, not themselves.

We’re just the suckers who must pay all the bills & suffer the consequences of their financial “mistakes.” Their fraud, greed, theft, schemes tanked the entire world economy in 2008 but most of them pulled their money out just days before the crash & many of them awarded themselves lavish bonuses before their house of cards came falling down. But tens, if not hundreds of millions of people around the world lost their jobs, their pensions, their health insurance, etc. and were told, “You need to tighten your belts, suck it up, and get through it by following our recommended austerity measures.”

“However, by tracing the roots of these policies back to the rise of neoliberalism in the 1970s, Shefner and Blad show that the “medicine” of austerity actually serves as a cudgel to discipline and control countries across the world.

Since the 1970s, the aim of the neoliberal project in the Global South has been to use austerity as a hammer to destroy the region’s developmental capacity, discipline and control its labor force, and make their economies dependent on international capital. In the Global North, austerity, starting with the Reagan and Thatcher governments of the early 1980s, has slowly hammered away at worker protections, guaranteed pensions, access to health care, and access to well-funded public education. Despite the anti-state rhetoric of neoliberalism, its aim has not been to reduce the size of the state but to reduce state social services and public goods as much as possible by using austerity to privatize the costs of these services and goods, while socializing the costs of the increased public debt that governments have accumulated by providing bailouts and tax breaks to private financial institutions and multinational industries, and requiring those in the working class and middle class to foot the bill by paying higher taxes.” https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2021/0521nawabi.html

Again, neoliberalism began to infect the U.S. economy under Jimmy Carter, but it was full steam ahead once Reagan & Maggie Thatcher were in power. Reagan announced to America & the rest of the world from day one of his presidency that America from now on would be a safe haven for corporations i.e., it was now open season on unions & anybody else who interfered with big business in the U.S. This was as crystal clear a declaration of war against the poor, the working class, & the middle class as possible for the 1% to make.

Trump rode his bandwagon of fear, hate, & racism all the way up the steps & into the White House, pretending that he too hated the government but licking his lips with anticipation at all the plundering he’d now be able to do while pretending to be a populist. And here we are in March of 2023 at the start of another banking crisis & Biden swearing that the 99% will not be stuck with the bill the deregulation of the financial sector has caused once again.

 

They’ll try to disguise this bailout by using new jargon & hiding the facts & details but mark my word, they’re preparing to fuck us yet again & wipe-out the remaining skeleton crew of social safety net programs. What’s worse, now that the neoliberals have significantly gutted most of our federal & state social safety net programs, they are gradually becoming bolder in their agenda to make significant cuts to Medicare & Social Security.

 

These used to be referred to as the “third rail” in politics because if a politician dared to suggest cuts to them, it was like stepping on an electrified railroad track & spelled the end of their political career. They still hide their true intentions in public, but the word is getting out & since any suggestion of cutting military funding is a death knell to a politician, they will continue their covert campaigns to push us into a nation of the completely destitute & the obscenely wealthy.

You may dismiss me as just another one of the crazy QAnon nuts, but have you noticed that the police in our major cities now resemble soldiers in the many wars we’re involved in? They no longer serve to protect the people & now they wear military uniforms & their duty is to protect the property of the wealthy. This is what our soldiers in all these foreign lands are fighting for? We are being occupied in our own country.

 

Remember my friend, they, the 1% are waging a de facto class war against all of us not a part of the power elite. And this isn’t that façade of a war they call a culture war. No, this is a matter of real life & death. Our water is poisoned if we are forced to live next to their factories & industrial plants. Why don’t they ever build these toxic plants next to cities like Beverly Hills?

 

I could go on & on with thousands of examples of how the corporate cockroaches are endangering & poisoning us and our loved ones, but you’re already aware of these facts. The question is, how much longer are we going to allow them to oppress us, degrade & humiliate us, and to poison us?

 

Upon reflection, I realize that it’s probably not wise of me to assume the general awareness of the public regarding just how consistent the poisoning has been or rather, the interconnections between the rich getting richer & the rest of us dying in ever greater numbers?

 

In conclusion, Capitalism is defined as; an economic and political system in which property, business, and industry are controlled by private owners rather than by the state, with the purpose of making a profit:

 

We often hear the titans of business, industry, & finance in America whining or proclaiming in self-righteous indignation that the “nanny state” is guilty of coddling the public with its social “safety net” programs which only encourage laziness & dependence. Yet every time the corporate giants & Wall St. face a crisis, the first thing they do is go begging to the “nanny state,” for help, for bailouts, for subsidies, etc. I guess they just suffer from temporary amnesia when it suits them?

America’s greediest pig ever who crawled out of the swamp & onto the farmlands of America like a snake-oil con man.

 

Like everything else out of the corporate cockroaches’ mouths, their claims about the marvels of America’s capitalist system are a lie & a pernicious fraud. Here is an insight from America’s greatest champion, Noam Chomsky.

 

Finkel: How do you assess the Bush administration, especially in terms of domestic policies? Where does it continue the Reagan era and where is it a departure?

Chomsky: It’s a continuation of the Carter-Reagan policies. Remember that the Reagan policies were proposed by Carter, who didn’t have the muscle to push them through. Carter proposed essentially the military buildup that Reagan carried through, except that Reagan escalated it more rapidly in the beginning and leveled it off later.

The Carter administration also proposed to attack welfare spending and the social support system for the poorer sectors, which the Reagan administration then carried through with bipartisan support. What these policies amounted to is turning the state, even more than before, into a welfare state for the rich: a much more interventionist state that pours public resources into high-technology industry and distributes resources away from the poor, combined with attacks on labor and civil rights. Don’t forget that it was Clinton & Biden who slashed our welfare system for the poor & the working class!

The Welfare Queen who enjoys molesting & raping beauty queens.

It’s objectively a sound policy, I believe, for the privileged and powerful in an internationally complicated environment. They’ve internationalized capital to take advantage of cheap labor abroad, and intensified the class war that business has always waged against labor and the disadvantaged.  https://chomsky.info/1991____02/

 

Chomsky has pointed out in thoroughly footnoted & documented detail in books for decades that America is not a capitalist economy but rather, a State/Capitalist system. Our government intervenes consistently in the operation/running of our economy & overwhelmingly on the side of private corporations. In fact, the corruption has become so brazen that in effect, the corporate behemoths’ lawyers de facto write the legislative laws that “govern” business affairs in the U.S. See “A.L.E.C.” (American Legislative Exchange Council) https://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/What_is_ALEC  

This is what they call the Free Market & fair competition.

Yep! The good old “free market” and “Capitalism” in all their glorious hypocrisy. And don’t forget “free trade,” another one of those pernicious myths that were created to brainwash us into believing that ours is the best economic & political system in the world. If you’d care to empower yourself, I strongly recommend “The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market” by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. I just started reading it a couple of weeks ago & I’m sure that I’m going to learn a lot from it. Here’s a link to an interview with Naomi Oreskes on a radio show I’ve been listening to for over 40 years, Background Briefing with Ian Masters  https://www.backgroundbriefing.org/2023/02/26/background-briefing-february-26-2023/

 

In a nutshell, a corporation’s top priority is to make as much profit as possible so it can continue to grow & increase the profits for its shareholders. You may think, well, of course, this is simple common sense. But have you heard of what they call “Externalities?” This is where “common sense” goes right out the window and the monstrous side of corporations is revealed.

Recently I was watching a You Tube video clip of Noam Chomsky, and he commented that the economic collapse of 2008 was one of these “externalities,” and I felt as if I had been struck by lightning or had an epiphany. I had never thought of that.

Externalities are basically any costs of doing business that corporations can pass on to the public and claim that they aren’t their responsibility. Many, if not most of these “costs” are often clearly connected/related to the corporations’ business. And the ramifications of Wall St.’s “housing bubble” that resulted in the near total collapse of the world’s economy is truly mind-numbing!

 

An estimated 10 million people lost their homes in the U.S. alone thanks to the fraud of Wall St. in its “housing bubble scams.” Anywhere from six to twelve million Americans lost their jobs.

 

“The morbid joke about the Great Recession was that it turned Americans’ 401(k)s into 201(k)s. Indeed, the nation’s 401(k)s and IRAs lost about $2.4 trillion in the final two quarters of 2008, and the average loss that year for workers who had been on the job for 20 years was, according to one estimate, about 25 percent.” https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/the-recession-hurt-americans-retirement-accounts-more-

 

“Also, the combined peak loss from declining stock and home values totaled nearly $100,000, on average per U.S. household, during the July 2008 to March 2009 period.”  https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/2010/04/28/the-impact-of-the-september-2008-econo

 

“According to the report, entitled “Cost of the Crisis“, the financial and economic crisis cost Americans $12.8 trillion, including:

But $12.8 trillion is a conservative estimate, says Better Markets president & CEO Dennis Kelleher, who joined The Daily Ticker’s Henry Blodget in the accompanying interview.

The report also highlights the current impact to the U.S. economy, including:

  • 1 million Americans, or 15% of the public, are out of work or unable to find full-time jobs using the broadest measure of unemployment, or U-6.
  • 3 million Americans have lost their health insurance.
  • 11 million homeowners, almost 1 in 4, are saddled with mortgages higher than the value of their homes.” DP during the period. DP during the period.

This is from an article at yahoo finance.

 

“  A dramatic spike in suicides between 2008 and 2010 can be linked with the economic crisis, according to a study published today in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

Researchers from the University of Oxford compared suicide data from before 2007 with the years of the crisis and found more than 10,000 “economic suicides” associated with the recession across the U.S., Canada and Europe.

‘There has been a substantial rise in suicides during the recession, considerably more than we would have expected based on previous trends,” says lead author Aaron Reeves, a postdoctoral researcher in the sociology department at Oxford University.

And, says senior author David Stuckler, also of Oxford: “Suicides are just the tip of the iceberg. These data reveal a looming mental health crisis in Europe and North America.”  https://www.forbes.com/sites/melaniehaiken/2014/06/12/more-than-10000-suicides-tied-to-economic-crisis-study-

 

Here’s a short video clip to lay it out for you.

 

https://youtu.be/OqYTQB6lrQQ

 

Remember, the greed & unregulated corruption and fraud of Wall St. bankers, hedge fund managers, the insurance behemoth A.I.G., the corruption of the three major credit rating agencies, etc. became fabulously wealthy because their criminal behavior was basically considered an “externality,” and the public was stuck with the bill and forced to bail them out because they were “too big to fail.”

 

As Chomsky has pointed out time and time again, “Capitalism for the 99% of us and Socialism for the 1%,” who look down upon us as peons & consider themselves the “Masters of Mankind,” because they write the laws in Congress with their bought and paid for politicians.

Oh, it gets better my friend. Here are a few more examples of “externalities” sure to warm your heart:

 

  • The toxic contamination of nearby rivers, lakes, aquifers, oceans, etc. whether willfully or innocently
  • The pollution of the air so terribly that it causes respiratory problems & death of the nearby residents.
  • The poisoning of the soil and the food supply i.e., Monsanto’s GMO foods
  • The death of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of animal species & plant life
  • What they euphemistically call “climate change” but more accurately, climate destruction & the end of life on Earth
  • The infrastructure necessary for companies/corporations to conduct their business i.e., roads, highways, airports, harbors, bridges, tunnels, etc.
  • The police who protect their businesses & property and the military who protect their companies overseas from angry citizens who they exploit and invade & occupy their countries (see Smedley F. Butler)</li>

I’m sure there are many other examples of externalities that corporations & their owners, the 1%, believe they shouldn’t have to pay for. We hear them complaining & we see them dodging paying their fair share of taxes ad nauseam i.e., Trump. But we are the leeches, the moochers, the unpatriotic bums.

 

A lot of Americans don’t realize that corporations are private tyrannies. And this isn’t hyperbole, Chomsky has repeatedly shown us this for most of his career. When you walk through the door of the company you work for, the Bill of Rights is de facto null & void. The owner is in effect a tyrant or a dictator. They can search your work locker whenever they choose & don’t need probable cause or a search warrant. They can surveil your phone calls & spy on you when you’re using their restrooms. Some employees are fortunate & may have a benevolent tyrant and others, like Amazon employees, aren’t so lucky.

Moreover, to really rub salt in our wounds, we, as taxpayers are forced to subsidize many of the wealthiest, corporate conglomerates on the planet like the oil industry, big pharma, high tech, big agriculture, automobiles, & health care.

 

Take the world-wide Web for example. The research for developing it came mostly via the Pentagon and its funding of the research through mostly M.I.T. And once they began to realize the vast money earning potential of the Web, the government turns over the research funded by our tax dollars to private corporations so they can reap all the rewards i.e., the privatization of the profits generated by publicly funded research. And we, the public, are forced to pay through the nose for the privilege of using the Internet twice over.

 

But hey, I could be full of shit & just spinning a web of conspiratorial lies to support my general thesis that the 99% of us are being fucked over in so many ways that we’re not even aware of. So, do your own work i.e., research if you doubt me.

 

The most critically important thing that I hope you’ll bring away from this lengthy essay is that this battle plan of the Haves against the Have Nots isn’t some benign goal like the Culture War meant to distract & divide us. No, we are being systematically killed off or silenced.

Reflect on the so-called War on Drugs and the “opioid crisis” which the FDA, Big Pharma, the Justice Dept., & the sell-outs in Congress gave us and has killed over half a million American citizens in the past 20 years. And consider the fact that we have over 1,877 “Superfund Sites” (toxic death concentrations) around our nation. Over 24 million Americans live within a mile of these toxic pits.

These toxic dump piles are the result of either willful or criminally negligent corporations who don’t feel it’s their responsibility to clean them up. They’re “externalities” that they can dump on the taxpayers’ shoulders. And what does our racist con artist Trump do, he slashes the EPA’s budget by 31%.

 

The police departments in our largest cities are gradually morphing into Robocops & this isn’t just because they thought it’d look cool. No, the police are becoming a de facto domestic, military force whose mission isn’t to protect & serve we, the citizens, but rather to protect & serve their corporate cockroach masters.

It really upsets the masters of society when their property is vandalized by angry citizens in protests. So, we are now witnessing the outlawing of protest & dissent in America and more & more protestors are being labeled terrorists so the masters can more easily dispose of them.

 

But hey, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” like the New Age faux hippies counsel us to be. And when the tanks in our streets start blowing up our homes, if we’re still fortunate enough to have one, oh well, at least we were entertained as we circled the toilet of history.

 

“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”

— Will Durant

 

“If you read the debates at the Constitutional Convention, Madison said, “The major concern of the
society has to be to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.” And he had
arguments. Suppose everyone had a vote freely. He said, “Well, the majority of the poor would
get together and they would organize to take away the property of the rich.” And, he said, “That
would obviously be unjust, so you can’t have that.” So, therefore the constitutional system has to
be set up to prevent democracy.”

— Noam Chomsky, Requiem for the American Dream

— Rob DeLoss, May 10, 2023

 

 

MAGA Projections and Perversions!

MAGA #1 & MAGA #2, America’s “Best & Brightest!”

The supreme hypocrisy and irony of the MAGA hordes is their moral outrage directed at Democrats, liberals, & Leftists for supposed grooming their children to become homosexuals, transexuals, pedophiles, etc. while their messiah, Trump, boasts on national television that he’s allowed to grab women by their pussies.

When Trump started his campaign to run for the presidency, just about everyone I spoke to would say, “I like Trump because he tells it like it is!” If this is true, his cult members would do well to remember a few inconvenient facts about their idol. Trump has also repeatedly bragged about being able to walk into beauty contestants dressing rooms while they were dressing or undressing because he owned the beauty pageant.

Can’t help but wonder if he enjoyed walking in when Ivanka was getting undressed?

 

I’d be interested in all the MAGA fans’ responses if a man walked into their daughter’s locker rooms while they were getting dressed for P.E. Or how about Trump’s repeated comments about his daughter Ivanka’s sexy appearance & how if she weren’t his daughter, he might date her? Is this too simply “telling it like it is?”

Trump & Jeffrey Epstein were friends for years, (birds of a feather hang out together?)

 

Yet these MAGA extremists & conspiracy nut-jobs sincerely believe that the Democratic party is made up of secret cabals who engage in Satanic rituals in which they sacrifice babies, drink their blood, & all sorts of other lurid details? Not so long ago, people who believed & proclaimed such things publicly, were locked up in insane asylums. Today, they are members of Congress and are entrusted to write our laws & administer the business of our government.

Note the MAGA cult’s obsession with pedophiles & Trump and Jeffrey’s fondness for underage girls

 

Perhaps this is a good point to explain the psychological concept of “projection?”

 

“Projection is the process of displacing one’s feelings onto a different person, animal, or object. The term is most commonly used to describe defensive projection—attributing one’s own unacceptable urges to another. For example, if someone continuously bullies and ridicules a peer about his insecurities, the bully might be projecting his own struggle with self-esteem onto the other person.”

 

The main thesis of my essay is that the supposedly righteous & patriotic MAGA cult are in reality, some very dangerous & perverse individuals because of their blind loyalty to Trump. We have seen a clear rise in the levels of hate crimes & division in America and we’d better open our eyes & organize against this social contagion before it further infects our nation.

 

Take a moment to reflect on this projection on the part of MAGA followers if you will. It is clearly evidence of a sick & perverse mind to not only come up with these dark conspiracies but to also physically attack other human beings because your cult leader has brainwashed you into believing his pack of lies that serve his agenda of power & profit.

 

I won’t cite the usual comparison of Hitler with Trump because Trump simply isn’t bright enough to have a well thought out agenda. But tragically, there have been many sad examples of dangerous & deadly cults throughout history. Not that long ago, we saw the result of the charismatic religious leader, Jim Jones’ cult in Guyana. Whether his cult members all willingly drank the lethal Kool Aid or not, is still open to question & you may think the comparison to Trump is absurd, but is it?

 

All cults have one thing in common, they start out seemingly benign but slowly morph into monsters as their leaders see their power over their followers grow into a state of total, blind obedience no matter how outrageous their leader’s behavior becomes.

 

Another aspect of this MAGA phenomenon is that it arose understandably from the years of being lied to, betrayed, & manipulated by politicians on both sides of the political aisle but once again, the gullible jump into Trump’s camp naively believing that because he wasn’t a politician, he’d be their honest champion.

 

Closely linked to the fact that Trump wasn’t a politician was the myth that he was a billionaire. Yeah myth because Trump has lied about every aspect of his life all his life but he perfected his con job during his “reality T.V.” role (talk about an oxymoron i.e. reality T.V.). And most likely you’ve heard of what’s popularly known as the “Cult of Personality,” in America & are aware of how passionately we revere or idolize T.V., movie, sport, & financial celebrities. As much as I hate to admit it, Trump has been very clever in that he knows that as long as he can keep the myth alive of his being fabulously wealthy & lying through his teeth no matter how obvious the fact that he is, he’ll maintain his sway over his devout believers.

 

Unlike Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan, I’m going to reveal one of my hypocrisies, I’m going to brag that back when I was 19 years old & started taking business courses at the local community college, it didn’t take long to become obvious to me that all you needed to “succeed,” in business was to be greedy & unethical. I guess that’s not common sense & for many, if not most, he who dies with the most money is the best and the brightest? More of those good, old “Christian” values.

 

Speaking of “Christian” values, as I was growing up, my family moved frequently & I attended a variety of churches because I enjoyed going to Sunday School. One of the clearest lessons I learned in Sunday School was that the core of Jesus’ teaching was contained in his “Sermon on the Mount.” Consequently, I sincerely believe that the 70 million self-professed “Christians” who not only voted for Trump but also sing his praises, have willfully turned their backs on Jesus because they conveniently ignore his simple message of helping the poor & the downtrodden.

 

The irony is that I left organized religion when I was about 14 or 15 years of age precisely because of the hypocrisy I witnessed in my church at the time, and I honestly feel that I’m far more Christian than those who claim to be Christian & sing Trump’s praises at the same time. And here we come to a brutally honest truth in my opinion, all those faux Christians who defend Trump against critics like myself, only care about power & authority and that’s their common bond with Trump.

 

You see, fundamentalist Christians are staunch believers in authoritarianism. In their families, the father is the absolute authority & wives and children better never question their fathers’ words or actions. And the preachers are the absolute authorities in their churches. These fraudulent Christians support Trump because they naively believe that he’ll keep all his promises to them & their wish list will be fulfilled by Donny who has never set foot in a church & is the poster boy for consistently violating & ignoring every one of the Ten Commandments.

 

Their goal is not unlike that of the Taliban in Afghanistan, women & girls should not be allowed to attend school, hold what are considered men’s jobs, definitely not have abortions, all should be allowed/required to pray in school, etc. And tin-pot, wannabe dictators like Donald Duck, want absolute authority over the entire country. He has done everything he can to destroy our Democracy & steal as much money from the Federal Treasury as he could. He’s just frustrated that he didn’t get a second term so he could continue robbing the national bank & doing even more destruction to our system of government. Why do you think Trump loves & admires dictators so much & regularly insults our allies around the world?

 

Again, it’s “projection,” because he knows he’s weak, corrupt, greedy, a sexual deviant, & stupid! So, keep spreading the fear & hatred with the help of FOX “News,” and he’ll keep his MAGA cult members anger & hatred alive. This too is right out of the authoritarian or dictator’s playbook. The only real accomplishment Trump made in his four year crime-spree as America’s president was to give the already obscenely wealthy Americans yet another massive “tax break.”

 

It’s beyond me how his MAGA mob let this major hypocrisy slide without a peep of protest? In effect, this tax break was a reward to precisely those who have fucked all of the 99% by closing down their factories here, stealing our pensions & health insurance, etc. and driving more & more of us into homelessness.

 

By-the-way, under Trump, there was obviously an overt conspiracy to further undermine our public education system by appointing Betsy DeVos as the Secretary of Education. She never taught a single day in a public school & did all she could to shove even more Charter Schools down our throats. Remember, students are allowed & encouraged to pray in Charter Schools, study the Bible, etc. In short, be indoctrinated into the “Christian” authoritarian mindset, again, not that different from the Taliban’s “madrassas” schools with their Islamic authoritarianism.

 

“Christianity and authoritarianism are commonly believed to be at opposite ends of the democratic-autocratic continuum. A commonly held belief is that Christians, guided by The Bible, are accepting and caring of each other and others, and are thus democratic. Yes, many Christians do good with-and-for others, inspired by Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount’s emphasis on mercy and forgiveness and peacemaking (Matthew 5: 1-10), his teaching that doing to others as you would have then do to you is the bottom line of religion (Matthew 7L 12), and his saying that the greatest commandments are to love God and one’s neighbor as oneself. (Matthew 22: 36-40)

 

…. For these Christians, it is not about The Golden Rule of empathy between people, but about using biblically-based beliefs to rule over people. It is about the overriding authority of particular biblical pronouncements and required obedience to them. Such authority and obedience are actually fundamental characteristics of anti-democratic tendencies. Claiming that biblical passages are revelations from God does not make them true, nor demanding obedience to them any less authoritarian.” https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/05/beware-of-authoritarian-christians/

Need I say more about putting your money where your mouth is?

Since we’re talking about schools, note that no matter how long or in how many ways the phony “Christians,” deny the facts like Trump does with his “alternate facts,” America’s founding fathers absolutely rejected us having a national religion. They were well-educated men & thus they were all too aware of the death & destruction caused when the state & church were unified in a nation.

 

Furthermore, it’s important to note that before Guttenberg invented the printing press, the Bible was basically only in the possession of the priests & both the Church and the State wanted it to remain that way. Why? Because when the Church & State controlled literacy & knowledge, it was far easier to control the public. But once people begin to learn on their own & educate themselves, they begin to question authorities & slowly become rebellious because of the injustices they suffer.

 

Let’s take a closer look at perhaps where some of those perversities that the MAGA extremists love to project onto others who disagree with them, may have come from? Anybody familiar with Christian theology is aware of perhaps the oldest conspiracy in Christianity, the belief that Satan is always tempting Christians in his efforts to destroy Christianity.

 

Another popular conspiracy amongst Christian fundamentalists is that Secular Humanism is a vast conspiracy against Christians because it places man above God & is therefore Christianity’s enemy. I became very interested in Secular Humanism approximately 40 years ago & have done extensive research on the subject. In fact, I have written a book about this “war” between Christian fundamentalists & Secular Humanists.

 

In a nutshell, most of the “Christians” I’ve met over the course of my life weren’t able to rationally defend their positions & that’s when they resort to “magical thinking.” This boils down to a matter of belief i.e. just trust me because I’m a good person & Jesus loves you. But be aware of these “good people,” because if you intellectually challenge their belief structure, some of them will kill you in the name of Christ.

 

And conspiracy theories demonizing others is just another tool in religious extremists’ tool bags which isn’t only used by Christians. Note that the very word “demonize” comes from Christianity. Continuing on, another reason why there is such a preponderance of conspiracy theories could be related to the increasing chaos in our society, a lot of it created by Trump & his deliberate campaign to sow division, fear, & hatred among us?

 

If you can spare an hour away from your “Smart phone,” ponder the revelations from this PBS Frontline expose which is a very real threat to our peace & well-being;

 

 

Furthermore, I have noticed over the years that as a general rule, the less educated a person is, the more susceptible they are to conspiratorial thinking. And no, this isn’t elitist snobbery. The higher you go up the educational ladder so-to-speak, the more experience you get in developing your critical & analytical thinking skills. Moreover, it’s common knowledge that we’re becoming more & more of a post-literate society i.e. people are reading less & less because of their preference to watch movies, play video games, & pseudo-socialize via the “social media” which is another oxymoron because it divides people far more often than it unites them & as a result, we have an alarming rate of teenagers harming themselves & especially girls who commit suicide!

 

P.T. Barnum was noted for his quote, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” and greedy & morally bankrupt individuals like Trump & Alex Jones have made millions manipulating suckers with their conspiracy theories. They know all too well how intellectually lazy most people are & this makes them ripe targets for fleecing. And speaking of manipulating, we mustn’t neglect the powerful effect that Hollywood has on the public psyche.

 

This is a rich subject that we could explore at great length but for the sake of brevity, I ask you to simply reflect on the large number of doomsday, post-apocalyptic, or dystopian movies there have been for a few decades now. Obviously these movies subject many, ill-prepared mentally viewers to absurd conspiracy theories as well. Moreover, now that “reality” & unreality have become so intertwined with the introduction of “Reality T.V.,” people have become more susceptible to cons & psychological manipulation. Isn’t it interesting to note that Trump came to national attention via reality television? By-the-way, Trump demanded that every time his name was mentioned on “The Apprentice,” they had to add, “the Billionaire.”

 

This made-up reality television program is what cemented in his MAGA cult members’ minds the belief that Trump was a great success as a businessman. No, he was not! How inept & incompetent does a person have to be to fail as a casino owner & not just one casino but three or four casinos? But hey, if it says he’s a smart businessman on T.V., it must be true, right? If your televangelist like Pat Robertson who is a multi-millionaire says he has the corner on the truth from God, it must be true, right? Oh yeah, in case you’ve forgotten, Pat Robertson ran for president of the United States once. Can you spell theocracy?

 

Speaking of conspiracy theories, one that has definitely caught my attention is the so-called Critical Race Theory. This is such a brazen attempt to push us another step closer to a Putin-like society that it truly amazes me, even in this age of utter absurdity. If you’ve ever read Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States,” you’re well aware of how whitewashed the telling of American history already is. Yet this isn’t enough for the MAGA minions who want to completely erase every last “inconvenient truth” about our history. In other words, their goal is to turn every event in our history into a “Black Hawk Down” Hollywood farce so we can all beat our chests & proclaim our superiority over every other nation on the planet.

 

Back in 1974 as I hitchhiked across the U.S., I read the classic, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” by Dee Brown. And as I turned the pages, it was simply one revelation after another. I had taken U.S. history in the 6th, 8th, & 10th grades and it was the same story over & over i.e. whenever the Native Americans won in a battle against the white men, it was a slaughter, a massacre against the innocent whites. But whenever the whites won against the indigenous people, it was a great victory & proof of our natural superiority over the heathen savages.

 

Obviously, this was “projection” on a national scale & the true savages were the white settlers who slaughtered, raped, & robbed their way across the entire continent in the name of God & progress. And speaking of perversions, it was white men who originated the practice of scalping their enemies in battle & placed bounties on scalps to incentivize the practice. By-the-way, we also showed our great respect for the law by breaking just about every single treaty we offered the Native Americans out of the hundreds we’d initiated.

I mentioned the book by Dee Brown one day in an interview for a part-time Christmas job I was applying for. I sensed from our conversation that the manager was a fairly, open-minded person & he was Hispanic & president of the local school district which I had happened to have graduated from in 1971. So, I took a chance and asked him directly, why is it that we’re taught the same lies about U.S. history all the way through jr. high & high school? He answered matter-of-factly, “Most people don’t go on to higher education & the government wants you to leave school with a good feeling about your country.”

 

I was flabbergasted, so this was their rationale for deliberately lying to us all the way through our public education system? This was over 45 years ago & we have devolved to this point today where the MAGA morons are demanding that we lie about our true history to an even greater degree.

 

Heaven forbid we mention our nearly complete genocide of the original inhabitants of this land, the proud peoples who lived here thousands of years before the white invaders. Moreover, we absolutely must skip over the little, hiccup in our history known as slavery & the fact that were it not for slavery, America never would’ve developed such a powerful & wealthy manufacturing base or economy.

 

There were other races & peoples sacrificed to the creation of the American Empire as well. The Chinese who were casually tossed to their deaths as if they were human refuse or garbage once they’d served their purpose. In fact, a quaint little saying developed, “Going to Hell in a basket.” This was in reference to the practice of having a Chinese railroad worker sit in a basket which would be lowered down to a spot & his job was to place dynamite in a crevice in the rock, light it but instead of raising him back up to safety, the railroad owners & their minions figured, why bother, just let him be blown to bits by the dynamite.

 

Furthermore, we mustn’t forget about the Mexicans whom we stole most of the Southwest from & treated just about as disrespectfully and shamefully as the Native Americans, the Blacks, & the Chinese. And in 21st century America, we have devolved to the point where truth & fact are mocked thanks in large part to the popularization of stupidity by such scum as Trump. Remember, “he tells it like it is.”

 

A country that builds itself on ever changing & shifting sand like we have is doomed to crumble & it should come as no surprise. Our freedoms and principles are eroding daily but as long as we have our “smart phones,” video games, Hollywood blockbusters, sports, etc. to entertain us & keep us dumbed-down, the powers that be have little to worry about.

 

We have forgotten what it means to be men, to be proud citizens with integrity & true courage. We have sold our souls for ease, comfort, & pleasure and that’s why when the shit comes down, we’ll have a mighty rude awakening & find that our toys and our bank accounts will be worthless & useless in our last ditch struggle to save ourselves & our Mother Gaia!

 

 

 

 

National Security for Whom?

 

 

“Most terrorists are people deeply concerned by what they see as social, political, or religious injustice and hypocrisy, and the immediate grounds for their terrorism is often retaliation for an action of the United States.”
― William Blum

 

This is a subject so vast, I could start virtually anywhere but I recently watched the Hulu mini-series, “The Looming Tower,” and Condoleeza Rice’s cavalier & dismissive attitude to Richard Clarke’s & John O’Neil’s repeated warnings about Usama bin Laden’s likely attack against the U.S. really got under my skin so I’ll start with her.

But first, a few words about the term “National Security.” I first became interested in politics when Reagan became president because although I didn’t know much about him, I knew he was a bald-faced liar & didn’t give a shit about the public. And as time passed, more & more I came across those two, magic words, “National Security.” It became clear that whenever the government had done something wrong or wanted to keep something hidden, all they had to do was utter those two words & that was that.

 

It was like the curtain the Wizard of Oz hid behind in “The Wizard of Oz.” It was like it was sacrosanct or something? Speaking of which, I had heard years ago that Condoleeza was a specialist on the Soviet Union so I just looked it up. Yeah, she earned her doctorate in international studies from the University of Denver & specialized in Eastern & Central Europe and the Soviet Union including military & security affairs.

 

Well, we all were aware of what a Mensa marvel George “Dubya” Bush is & he clearly knew how to pick a top-notch cabinet when he was president. Ms. Rice, like the C.I.A., weren’t even aware that the Soviet Union had imploded until they saw the videos on T.V. of the crowds tearing down the Berlin Wall.

Perhaps her “I didn’t have a clue kind of response” when she was grilled by one of the members on the 9/11 Commission, wasn’t an act? And who can forget her actions when she learned of the devastating damage done to New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina, she decided to go shopping for shoes & then went out to a play that night. So much for National Security & her responsibilities to the citizens of America. Of course, she was merely following her boss, Dubya’s lead as he felt it more important that he continue his vacation at his home in Crawford, Texas.

What’s more, for the month of August 2001, Dubya was vacationing in Crawford even though he received a PDB (Presidential Daily Briefing) on August 6th that terrorists might fly commercial airlines into buildings or cities. So much for “National Security” concerns by the Bush administration.

After finally coming out of hiding like a typical corporate cockroach, Bush had his photo op to prove he was the “War President”

 

Moreover, isn’t it interesting to note Condoleeza & Dubya’s lackadaisical attitudes towards National Security before 9/11 and their alarm when they were manufacturing their case for the invasion of Iraq? Who can forget Rice’s dire warning,

 

 

“Condi Rice discusses Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s nuclear capabilities with Wolf Blitzer on Jan 10th, 2003 and she infamously said: “there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

 

Bear in mind my friend that several members of Dubya’s cabinet, most notably, Dick Cheney, were members of P.N.A.C. (Project for the New American Century) and invading & occupying Iraq was high on their wish list. Don’t take my word for it, look it up for yourself. And this is why they went to such great lengths to manufacture their case for attacking Iraq just a few months after 9/11 even though Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had absolutely nothing to do with September 11th.

Honest scholars & military experts all testified that it was absolutely absurd to claim that Saddam Hussein & bin Laden were working together. Usama bin Laden was a Muslim religious extremist & Saddam Hussein was a secularist who didn’t give a shit about the Islam religion.

The Bush cabal of crooks & liars all appeared on television at every chance to spread their fear & lies but as the years wore on & we became bogged-down in the Iraq quagmire, they changed their tunes & began claiming that they hadn’t said all those things designed to whip up fear in the U.S.

 

But in the big picture, the Bush criminal consortium succeeded because they had stirred-up such a hornet’s nest in the Middle East, it all became a self-fulfilling prophecy & the billions and trillions of dollars will never stop flowing into the Pentagon & the 1% who own the “Defense industries’” pockets. And this was all done in the name of “National Security.”

 

Furthermore, this can’t all be lain at the feet of the Republicans, nope, those champions of the working class, the darling Democrats have done their bit in defense of “National Security.” Enter our Black crusader on a white horse who got so many Americans as well as freedom loving people around the world so excited & hopeful for a more just world.

 

I too, fell for his lofty rhetoric, articulate speech, & intelligence and voted for him on his first go round but not his second. You may doubt me but in that brief space between winning the presidential election & his inauguration, I realized that he had conned us all because of the choices he made for his top, economic advisors & cabinet members.

Yep! Our buddy who promised us every time he gave a nationally televised speech that he was going to bring real change to America, was a fuckin’ liar. He picked Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers, etc., the very foxes who had raided the hen house & helped drain the federal treasury. And he & his Attorney General, Eric Holder, never prosecuted a single one of the bank C.E.O.s, the hedge fund managers of Wall St., etc.

 

So, it shouldn’t have come as any surprise that Obama also did his bit to support & expand the National Security complex and its horrific agenda. Moreover, Uncle Tom Obama was a Constitutional scholar & professor and knew full well that he was breaking Constitutional laws left & right.

 

He went after whistleblowers who warned us about the National Security apparatus that was being used to oppress us & control us, with a vengeance. In fact, he prosecuted more whistleblowers than all the other presidents combined since the passage of the Espionage Act in 1917.

 

In short, don’t prosecute the clearly criminal fat cats of Wall St. who not only tanked America’s economy but caused the near, total economic meltdown of the entire world’s economy. But go gung-ho after courageous Americans who were true patriots trying to wake us up to the Constitutionally illegal & immoral actions being done by “our” N.S.A., C.I.A., F.B.I., etc. agencies against us. Some champion of the people, eh? And for the record, I hated all the racist slurs & garbage hurled at Obama but I to this day, hate him for his betrayal & that’s why I called him an Uncle Tom.

 

As for Obama’s direct, criminal culpability in terms of fanning the flames on the “War on Terror,” his Drone warfare program was the most egregious and brazen example of his total abandonment of our Constitution which he & all other politicians, police, military, & other government officials swear to uphold & defend.

Obama & his fellow club members declared themselves de facto judges, juries, & executioners of anyone, including American citizens, around the world.

“Senior officials in the administration of President Barack Obama variously described drone strikes as “precise,” “closely supervised,” “effective,” “indispensable,” and even the “only game in town” – but what they emphasized most of all is that the drone strikes they authorized were lawful.

In this context, though, “lawful” had a specialized meaning. Except at the highest level of abstraction, the law of the drone campaign had not been enacted by Congress or published in the US Code. No federal agency had issued regulations relating to drone strikes, and no federal court had adjudicated their legality. Obama administration officials insisted that drone strikes were lawful, but the “law” they invoked was their own. It was written by executive branch lawyers behind closed doors, withheld from the public and even from Congress, and shielded from judicial review.”  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/15/targeted-killing-secrecy-drone-memos-excerpt

 

Do you remember our so-called “Smart bombs” in the Persian Gulf War & other military “adventures,” and how supposedly accurate or precise they were in hitting targets? Yep! More Pentagon P.R. bullshit that was put out to convince the public that its tax dollars were being spent wisely. Many of these “smart bombs” were lucky if they landed within half a kilometer of their intended target.

 

Fast forward to Obama’s illegal & immoral Drone warfare program;

 

“Drone strikes conducted by the United States during a 5-month-long campaign in Afghanistan caused the deaths of unintended targets nearly nine out of ten times, leaked intelligence documents suggest.

The apparent 10 percent success rate with regards to a specific span in America’s drone war is among the most damning revelations to surface so far as the result of a series of articles published by The Intercept on Thursday this week which rely on classified and confidential intelligence documents supplied by an unknown source.

“These docs illustrate what a video game, drained of all humanity, these drone assassinations have become,” founding editor Glenn Greenwald tweeted on Thursday.”  https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/oct/15/90-of-people-killed-by-us-drone-strike

 

Step back for a minute and reflect on this. Probably tens of thousands of innocent civilians killed by drones, how would you feel if your family & friends were killed by bombs dropped from Drones? And no, I’m not trying to justify terrorist attacks against Americans but I am trying to open people’s minds a little to shed some light on this never-ending War on Terror that is so vague & ambiguous that there is no way to gauge its success or ending.

 

“Obama’s global drone assassination campaign, a remarkable innovation in global terrorism, exhibits the same patterns. By most accounts, it is generating terrorists more rapidly than it is murdering those suspected of someday intending to harm us—an impressive contribution by a constitutional lawyer on the eight hundredth anniversary of Magna Carta, which established the basis for the principle of presumption of innocence that is the foundation of civilized law.”
― Noam Chomsky, Who Rules the World?

 

 

And like our War on Drugs, it’ll go on ad infinitum wasting billions if not trillions of federal tax dollars. Moreover, the government leaders will continue to tell us, sorry, we don’t have any money for health, education, or welfare, we’re fighting terrorists & drug lords.

 

I’ll tell you my honest response the moment I heard of the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, I thought, the chickens have come home to roost. All the raping, pillaging, & plundering our military forces had been doing for several decades around the world had finally come back to us. Chalmers Johnson, a noted historian, wrote a trilogy about all this & his first book was titled, Blowback. Sooner or later, what we put out there comes back to haunt us.

The American embassies that were bombed in Africa prior to 9/11, the attack on the U.S.S. Cole, the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, etc. were all the fruits of our foreign policies or National Security measures committed around the globe. By-the-way, on that fateful morning of 9/11 when I heard the news, I had just arrived at work, a school where I was working with special education students, & I felt just like I did when I was in the fourth grade & heard that JFK had been assassinated, I felt numb & dumbstruck.

 

Moving along, we come to one of the most detestable people to ever walk upright, Donald Trump. His reign of error & terror in the White House not only made it okay in the sick minds of the American born & bred racists, pro-fascists, & pro-Nazis to commit heinous acts of terror in the U.S., he also revived these perverse feelings of hatred around the globe.

 

And Trump repeatedly proclaimed his love & admiration for dictators, especially Putin whom he had/has a serious man-crush on. But for the purpose of this essay, I’m going to focus on Trump’s deliberate sabotage of our medical establishment’s attempts to at least slow down the onset of the COVID pandemic in America. In my view, COVID was & still is a deadly serious threat to our National Security in a very literal way.

Exhibit number one, Trump, in his third grade childish mentality & behavior immediately set out to eliminate every last thing Obama had established no matter how beneficial it was to the American public.

 

“The Lancet launched the commission on Public Policy and Health in the Trump Era in April 2017, tasking the group with chronicling the administration’s actions.

The commission’s analysis found that 461,000 fewer Americans would have died in 2018 if the United States’ death rate had been equivalent to those of the other G-7 nations.

The 49-page report also concludes that Trump’s “hostility” to environmental regulations (including the rollback of at least 84 separate environmental and workplace protections) significantly worsened pollution, resulting in more than 22,000 extra deaths in 2019 alone.

PROMOTED

According to the commission, Trump’s “appalling response” to the coronavirus pandemic, which included the politicization of masks and repudiation of science, “expedited the spread of Covid-19” in the U.S.

The Trump Administration’s cuts to global health programs and public health agencies greatly hindered the country’s response to the pandemic, the report states, “causing tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2021/02/11/trumps-policies-resulted-in-the-unnecessary-deaths

 

And note that this was from Forbes magazine, not exactly a “liberal rag,” should tell you something. The key point I want to make regarding the MAGA Moron & his criminally negligent mishandling of America’s COVID response was that Obama had established an office in the White House to handle serious health crises & the bumbling little boy, Trump, immediately disbanded it when he moved into the White House because of his childish jealousy of everything Obama.

 

Of course, the main reason Trump kept denying there even was a deadly virus spreading across the U.S. was because he was concerned about the “negative press” while he was in charge. Yeah, his petty vanity & fragile ego allowed/caused hundreds of thousands of Americans to die needlessly.

 

I thought we’re supposed to be a nation that prides itself on Law & Order? Isn’t there something called “criminally negligent behavior?” And in Trump’s case, he was “willfully negligent or ignorant.” You know, the old, “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.”

Some may try to argue that Trump’s being completely out to lunch in regard to the spread of COVID in the U.S. isn’t technically a matter of National Security, my response to that is that the physical health & well-being of a country’s citizens is clearly one of the most obvious & basic aspects of a nation’s National Security. And to argue against this is a morally bankrupt argument. National Security isn’t just measured in deaths on foreign battlefields but also on the state of national health at home.

For example, consider the deleterious health effects that so many of our First Responders, Firemen, & Police suffered who so courageously worked to rescue the survivors & the victims of 9/11. As far as I’m concerned, their health should be considered a matter of National Security as well & once again, our government was/is criminally negligent in regards to their health & many of them have died, are suffering serious health issues, & are being ignored or pushed to the side after their noble sacrifice for their fellow citizens.

Lastly, here is just a partial list of some other serious threats to our National Security committed by Trump in the past, present, & into the future;

 

This was taken from a Salon.com article titled; “Trump regime’s amazing list of crimes keeps getting longer — but we can’t afford to look away

By, Chauncey DeVega (a friend of mine said the link didn’t work for him so I’m posting it like this)

 

Biden is the last & our current president that I’m going to take to task regarding the United States’ state of “National Security.” For most of my adult life, I was proud to identify myself as a liberal, then a progressive but now, on the home stretch of my lifetime, I have formally left the Democratic party & now call myself an Independent.

 

I have just seen far too many examples of how the Democratic party has betrayed & abandoned the working class as well as the middle class in America. Of course they deny it to this very day but Bill Clinton was the final nail in the coffin of the democratic party as far as I’m concerned. And the de facto proof of this was his signing of NAFTA.

I have covered the issues regarding the Dems abandonment of the 99% whom they swore to support, protect, & represent, in other essays so I won’t go into it here. This was just a prelude to my critique of Biden in regards to our National Security for this article. The following is from an email I sent to a friend;

 

Wed, Jan 11 at 11:17 AM

The Real Joe Biden

 

  • He didn’t cancel the portion of the Student Loan Debt through the Higher Education Act
  • Obama picked him because although he’s a democrat, he votes Republican
  • He has a really dirty voting record
  • He went after Anita Hill so Clarence Thomas could sit on the Supreme Court
  • He was one of the most fervent advocates of the wars in the Middle East
  • He was an abject supporter of the apartheid state of Israel
  • He fought school bussing with Strom Thurmond, an open segregationist & racist
  • He sponsored the comprehensive Crime Control Act which eliminated parole for federal prisoners & limited the amount of time sentences that they had for good behavior
  • He was behind the 1994  Omnibus Crime bill that he helped draft & massively expanded the death penalty for federal crimes from a couple to 51 doubling the nation’s prison population
  • He militarized the police by pushing through the  1996 Anti-Terrorism and effective Death Penalty Act that gutted the Writ of Habeas Corpus
  • He was one of the authors of the Patriot Act which allows the government with very little oversight to monitor all of our Communications; phone, phone, email, bank records, credit card reports & of course any activity on the Internet
  • He was one of the architects of the destruction of Welfare & 70% of the original recipients on Welfare were children
  • He has long called to cut Social Security
  • He fought for NAFTA
  • He backed the Illegal Immigration Reform & Immigrant Responsibility Act that eliminated the defenses for undocumented people & saw them far more easily deported
  • He helped deregulate the Banking industry with the abolition of Glass-Steagall & that was a major contributor not only in the global financial crisis but in the collapse of nearly 500 banks in the U.S.
  • He’s long been a tool of the Pharmaceutical Industry & the Insurance Industry which contributed heavily to his campaign
  • No mainstream media publication is going to lay out who Joe Biden really is
  • He used to be called Senator Credit Card because of all the credit card companies headquartered in Delaware

 

Again, like my criticisms against Trump, I don’t feel it’s too great a stretch to classify many, if not most of these actions by Biden as harmful to our National Security but there’s one issue that I didn’t mention & it represents a very “Clear & Present Danger,” to not only America’s well-being but to the very survival of our species, the War in Ukraine.

 

A little background is necessary here. Bear in mind that I’m in no way excusing Putin’s invasion of Ukraine but I am trying to shed some light on this deadly serious situation.

“NATO has not stopped expanding since the fall of the Soviet Union, growing from 17 countries in 1990 to 30 today, several of which were once part of the Soviet-led Warsaw pact.”

 

Think about this fact for a moment & try to forget briefly the propaganda we’ve been fed all our lives about Russia’s aggression. Look at a current map of the world & the location as well as the number of nations under Russia’s control & compare them to the number & locations of all the nations under America’s “Sphere of Influence.” You might also care to check out Chalmers Johnson’s credentials & his list of U.S. military bases around the globe. Now try to put yourself in Russia’s shoes for a few minutes & answer how you’d feel? Would it be mere paranoia on their part to fear being encircled by the U.S., the world’s mightiest military force with a military budget equal to the next 20 or more nations in descending order of military might, weaponry, number of troops, etc., combined.

 

Noam Chomsky has pointed out that we, NATO, promised we wouldn’t move a single inch eastwards toward Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed & now, we’re on their border. Reminds me of those hundreds, if not thousands of treaties we made with America’s indigenous tribes, and how we broke nearly every single one of them.

 

Biden is now in charge of U.S Foreign Policy & that means, our National Security. And he’s in effect, playing a game of chicken with Putin because Russia has God knows how many nuclear bombs but I’m sure they don’t have as many as we do. Instead of trying to negotiate & cool the tensions between Russia, Ukraine, & the U.S., our government keeps throwing fuel on the fire with the billions of dollars’ worth of military weaponry.

The last time the U.S. played this game with Russia was during the Cuban Missile Crisis & as Chomsky and many other scholars have pointed out, we came perilously close to WWIII and no nation wins when Armageddon is unleashed.

 

I began this essay by talking about the excellent series, “The Looming Tower,” and I was reviewing the series, scene by scene, looking for examples to support my main argument in this essay, “National Security” is basically one, huge farce or charade because the bastards running the show in Washington D.C. flat-out don’t give a fuck about our well-being as a nation or as individual citizens.

 

While taking notes on the series the other day, when commercials came on, I was reading quotes by William Blum who Chomsky as well as other scholars agree, was the greatest scholar when it came to the long & ignominious history of the C.I.A.

 

And all of a sudden, it felt like I’d been struck by lightning or experienced an epiphany. Here’s the specific quote by Blum that struck me but there are several more corroborating quotes if you’d like to read them for yourself. (Go to quotes by William Blum at Goodreads)

 

“The United States is not actually against terrorism per se, only those terrorists who are not allies of the empire. There is a lengthy and infamous history of Washington’s support for numerous anti-Castro terrorists, even when their terrorist acts were committed in the United States. At this moment, Luis Posada Carriles remains protected by the US government, though he masterminded the blowing up of a Cuban airplane that killed 73 people. He’s but one of hundreds of anti-Castro terrorists who’ve been given haven in the United States over the years. The United States has also provided close support to terrorists, or fought on the same side as Islamic jihadists, in Kosovo, Bosnia, Iran, Libya, and Syria, including those with known connections to al-Qaeda, to further foreign policy goals more important than fighting terrorism.”
― William Blum, America’s Deadliest Export

 

In a nutshell, as I kept being struck by the gross incompetence, the deliberate withholding of critically important information about Al Qaeda cells within the U.S. from the F.B.I. by the C.I.A. especially given all the serious warnings by John O’ Neil & Richard Clarke about the likelihood of an attack by Al Qaeda within the U.S. & the possibility of those attacks coming in the form of commercial airliners being flown into buildings, again & again I couldn’t believe their deliberate noncooperation & dismissal of so many critical facts & bits of intelligence.

 

I was numb & dumbstruck like on the morning of 9/11 when bin Laden unleashed his tsunami of terror against us. The C.I.A., the F.B.I., & especially the White House’s lack of concern didn’t add up or make any sense but when I read Blum’s quote, it hit me. And no, I’m not one of those Alex Jones conspiracy morons like Trump, 9/11 simply reflected the decades old willful ignorance & myopic focus on only one thing i.e. whatever evidence that pointed to Russia’s threat to America & capitalism was all they were concerned with.

 

Of course, 9/11 was a godsend to the Masters of the Universe because now they had carte blanche for ad infinitum to after terrorists & that’d mean the Pentagon budget would never dry up. So, after the horrific attacks on September 11th, the warmongers simply added Islamic terrorists to the ever present Russian threat & all was well. Naturally, they didn’t tell the American public that 9/11 happened because they were asleep at the wheel & basically didn’t give a fuck & already had their sights set on Iraq.

A day or two after 9/11, Condoleeza Rice said to Richard Clarke, “Rumsfeld wants the attacks linked to Iraq.” Note that Donald Rumsfeld was a member of P.N.A.C. (Project for the New American Century) Note that before we invaded Iraq, many critics were accusing the Bush administration of simply invading Iraq to take control of their oil fields. They denied this accusation of course. Note that we, America, built our largest embassy in the world in Iraq & it’s still there and so are several thousand U.S. soldiers. Gee, I wonder if they’re guarding the oil fields?

 

Here’s one last nugget for you in the form of another quote by Bill Blum;

 

“The Empire would love to rip Ukraine from Moscow’s bosom, evict the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and establish a US military and/or NATO presence on Russia’s border. Kiev’s membership of the European Union would then not be far off; after which the country could embrace the joys of neoconservatism, receiving the benefits of the standard privatization-deregulation-austerity package and join Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain as an impoverished orphan of the family; but perhaps no price is too great to pay to for being part of glorious Europe and the West!”
― William Blum, America’s Deadliest Export

 

So, go back to your video games, zombie movies, smart phones, etc. and sleep well. As Gore Vidal so aptly put it, we live in The United States of Amnesia! And speaking of amnesia, does anyone remember that little incident called COINTELPRO?

 

It was an elaborate government program that was created to spy on peace & anti-war groups and organizations in the 1960s & 70s. You see, my imaginary reader, George  Orwell, Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, Howard Zinn & many others have warned us over the years that our government fears our own citizens far more than it does terrorists. And coincidentally, right after the attacks on 9/11, our government just happened to have this 300 page, detailed “Act,” lying around & it rammed it through Congress in the middle of the night with no one even having the time to read it before signing-off on it. Conspiracy? No, fact!

 

Here’s another gem of wisdom from “The Master of Those Who Know,” Noam Chomsky.

 

Actually, the phrase “national security” is barely used until the 1930s. And there’s a reason. By then, the United States was beginning to become global. Before that the United States had been mostly a regional power – Britain was the biggest global power. After the Second World War, national security is everywhere, because we basically owned the world, so our security is threatened everywhere. Not just on our borders, but everywhere – so you have to have a thousand military bases around the world for “defense.”

Noam Chomsky

 

Bonus Gift

“Historical amnesia is a dangerous phenomenon not only because it undermines moral and intellectual integrity but also because it lays the groundwork for crimes that still lie ahead.”
― Noam Chomsky, Who Rules the World?

 

In like fashion, the Bush Administration rammed through The Patriot Act to justify its destruction of our Bill of Rights & the U.S. Constitution as the Nixon administration had done with its COINTELPRO program claiming it was necessary for our National Security.

 

My guess is that you’re probably beginning to wonder if I haven’t fallen into that dark pool of conspiracy thinking that Trump, Alex Jones, & other charlatans have engulfed the feeble-minded in. Nonetheless, it’s critically important that we bear in mind that not all conspiracy theories are merely theories. The infamous “Red Car Conspiracy” regarding L.A.’s public transportation system, the Plot to Overthrow FDR by several business tycoons of the time (see Smedley F. Butler), etc. Unfortunately today, we have been inundated by so many absurd conspiracy theories that the real or actual conspiracies suffer because of it. So, I will try to refrain from wandering into that quagmire but keep this passage from Orwell’s classic, 1984 in mind if you will in the context of The Patriot Act and its relation to the events leading up to 9/11 & the consequences of that horrific day.

 

“The war, therefore if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that the hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word “war,” therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that is exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and has been replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three superstates, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed forever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This–although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense–is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: WAR IS PEACE.”
― George Orwell, 1984

 

What this passage says to me is that Chomsky, William Blum, & countless others are right, our government, like most other governments around the globe fear most is an enlightened public. Why? Because if the public truly understood the dark game being played against them, we’d rise up & take back what is rightfully ours. We wouldn’t have cocksuckers like Jeff Bezos so obscenely wealthy while his employees are forced to piss in bottles at their work stations & make barely enough to pay their basic bills.

Let’s return to The Looming Tower, as I watched it, I couldn’t get over the deliberate sabotaging & undermining of the F.B.I.’s agents by the C.I.A.’s agents especially the handful at the top of the C.I.A.’s administration. But upon reflection, I began to understand why it had happened. If you’ve ever worked in a large bureaucracy, it won’t come as that great a surprise.

 

For example, when I first got into the education profession, I was so naïve that I actually believed that administrators & teachers worked together for the benefit of the students. What a rude awakening I had. I soon learned that the administrators didn’t want to hear about our problems with students, they wanted us to handle all problems & leave them to their paper-pushing & higher salaries.

 

This relates to the subject at hand in that within each of the “intelligence agencies,” involved in this television series, the F.B.I. & the C.I.A., there are many divisions, departments, & so on. And not only do they often not cooperate with other intelligence agencies, they often don’t cooperate with other departments within their own agency. Makes you feel all warm & cozy doesn’t it when you reflect on the fact that they’re supposedly the ones protecting us in the name of “National Security,” against the terrorists?

 

Reminds me of a book I read decades ago called, Helter Skelter, & was about the Manson murders. Because of petty rivalry between the L.A. Police Dept. & the L.A. Sheriff’s Dept., one of them actually had Charles Manson in custody but didn’t know that he was wanted for the heinous murders & let him go.

 

Another deadly factor in the pathetic lack of cooperation between our “intelligence agencies” is the often petty minds & spirits of their leaders i.e. they want not only the glory of being the agency to solve the case that means fancy badges, ribbons, trophies, etc. but also results in more money or larger budgets for their agency or at least their dept. within the agency.

 

Here’s another piece of bitter fruit from this poison tree, look up the mind-boggling story of Sibel Edmonds, https://truthout.org/articles/classified-life-sibel-edmonds-story/ she was hired as a translator by the F.B.I. after the events of 9/11. She speaks Farsi, Turkish, & Azerbaijani. Her story also reflects just how fuckin’ absurd the bureaucracies of our “intelligence agencies” are.

 

Perhaps one of the most critical things to keep in mind while thinking/reflecting on this whole, colossal fuck-up is that the Bush administration used their tragic failures due to their incompetence & complete lack of concern about Al Qaeda warnings to call for not only massive budget increases but also the restrictions contained in our Constitution & Bill of Rights to be de facto nullified or voided.

Our “War time president” with the classic, deer caught in the headlights look for several minutes after being told about the attack on the World Trade Center.

 

I sincerely believe that 9/11 could’ve been avoided if the Bush administration wasn’t obsessed with finding excuses to invade Iraq. And for the record, we have 17 distinct “intelligence agencies,” in our government.

Why Does the United States Have 17 Different Intelligence Agencies?

We have built over thirty building complexes for top-secret intelligence work since 2001—and our security state just keeps growing. 

By Tom Engelhardt

August 4, 2014

As every schoolchild knows, there are three check-and-balance branches of the US government: the executive, Congress and the judiciary. That’s bedrock Americanism and the most basic high school civics material. Only one problem: it’s just not so.

During the Cold War years and far more strikingly in the twenty-first century, the US government has evolved. It sprouted a fourth branch: the national security state, whose main characteristic may be an unquenchable urge to expand its power and reach. Admittedly, it still lacks certain formal prerogatives of governmental power. Nonetheless, at a time when Congress and the presidency are in a check-and-balance ballet of inactivity that would have been unimaginable to Americans of earlier eras, the Fourth Branch is an ever more unchecked and unbalanced power center in Washington. Curtained off from accountability by a penumbra of secrecy, its leaders increasingly are making nitty-gritty policy decisions and largely doing what they want, a situation illuminated by a recent controversy over the possible release of a Senate report on CIA rendition and torture practices.

All of this is or should be obvious, but remains surprisingly unacknowledged in our American world. The rise of the Fourth Branch began at a moment of mobilization for a global conflict, World War II. It gained heft and staying power in the Cold War of the second half of the twentieth century, when that other superpower, the Soviet Union, provided the excuse for expansion of every sort.

Its officials bided their time in the years after the fall of the Soviet Union, when “terrorism” had yet to claim the landscape and enemies were in short supply. In the post-9/11 era, in a phony “wartime” atmosphere, fed by trillions of taxpayer dollars, and under the banner of American “safety,” it has grown to unparalleled size and power. So much so that it sparked a building boom in and around the national capital (as well as elsewhere in the country). In their 2010 Washington Post series “Top Secret America,” Dana Priest and William Arkin offered this thumbnail summary of the extent of that boom for the US Intelligence Community: “In Washington and the surrounding area,” they wrote, “33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 US Capitol buildings—about 17 million square feet of space.” And in 2014, the expansion is ongoing.

In this century, a full-scale second “Defense Department,” the Department of Homeland Security, was created. Around it has grown up a mini-version of the military-industrial complex, with the usual set of consultants, K Street lobbyists, political contributions and power relations: just the sort of edifice that President Eisenhower warned Americans about in his famed farewell address in 1961. In the meantime, the original military-industrial complex has only gained strength and influence.

Increasingly, post-9/11, under the rubric of “privatization,” though it should more accurately have been called “corporatization,” the Pentagon took a series of crony companies off to war with it. In the process, it gave “capitalist war” a more literal meaning, thanks to its wholesale financial support of, and the shrugging off of previously military tasks onto, a series of warrior corporations.

Meanwhile, the seventeen members of the US Intelligence Community—yes, there are seventeen major intelligence outfits in the national security state—have been growing, some at prodigious rates. A number of them have undergone their own versions of corporatization, outsourcing many of their operations to private contractors in staggering numbers, so that we now have “capitalist intelligence” as well. With the fears from 9/11 injected into society and the wind of terrorism at their backs, the Intelligence Community has had a remarkably free hand to develop surveillance systems that are now essentially “watching” everyone—including, it seems, other branches of the government.

Think of Edward Snowden, the former CIA employee who went over to the corporate side of the developing national security economy, as the first blowback figure from and on the world of “capitalist intelligence.” Thanks to him, we have an insider’s view of the magnitude of the ambitions and operations of the National Security Agency. The scope of that agency’s surveillance operations and the range of global and domestic communications it now collects have proven breathtaking—with more information on its reach still coming out. And keep in mind that it’s only one agency.

We know as well that the secret world has developed its own secret body of law and its own secret judiciary, largely on the principle of legalizing whatever it wanted to do. As The New York Times’s Eric Lichtblau has reported, it even has its own Supreme Court equivalent in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. And about all this, the other branches of government know only limited amounts and American citizens know next to nothing.

From the Pentagon to the Department of Homeland Security to the labyrinthine world of intelligence, the rise to power of the national security state has been a spectacle of our time. Whenever news of its secret operations begins to ooze out, threatening to unnerve the public, the White House and Congress discuss “reforms” which will, at best, modestly impede the expansive powers of that state within a state. Generally speaking, its powers and prerogatives remain beyond constraint by that third branch of government, the non-secret judiciary. It is deferred to with remarkable frequency by the executive branch and, with the rarest of exceptions, it has been supported handsomely with much obeisance and few doubts by Congress.

And also keep in mind that, of the four branches of government, only two of them—an activist Supreme Court and the national security state—seem capable of functioning in a genuine policymaking capacity at the moment.

“Misleading” Congress

In that light, let’s turn to a set of intertwined events in Washington that have largely been dealt with in the media as your typical tempest in a teapot, a catfight among the vested and powerful. I’m talking about the various charges and countercharges, anger, outrage and irritation, as well as news of acts of seeming illegality now swirling around a 6,300-page CIA “torture report” produced but not yet made public by the Senate Intelligence Committee. This ongoing controversy reveals a great deal about the nature of the checks and balances on the Fourth Branch of government in 2014.

One of the duties of Congress is to keep an eye on the functioning of the government using its powers of investigation and oversight. In the case of the CIA’s program of Bush-era rendition, black sites (offshore prisons) and “enhanced interrogation techniques” (a k a torture), the Senate Intelligence Committee launched an investigation in March 2009 into what exactly occurred when suspects in the war on terror were taken to those offshore prisons and brutally interrogated. “Millions” of CIA documents, handed over by the Agency, were analyzed by Intelligence Committee staffers at a “secure” CIA location in Northern Virginia.

Among them was a partial copy of a document known as the “Internal Panetta Review,” evidently a report for the previous CIA director on what the Senate committee might find among those documents being handed over to its investigators. It reportedly reached some fairly strong conclusions of its own about the nature of the CIA’s interrogation overreach in those years. According to Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, the committee head, this document was among the mass of documentation the CIA turned over—whether purposely, inadvertently or thanks to a whistleblower no one knows. (The CIA, on the other hand, claimed, until recently, that committee staffers had essentially stolen it from its computer system.)

The Agency or its private contractors (intelligence capitalism strikes again!) reportedly worked in various ways to obstruct the committee’s investigation, including by secretly removing previously released documents from the committee’s “secure” computer system. Nonetheless, its report was completed in December 2012 and passed on to the White House “for comment”—and then the fun began.

Though relatively few details about its specific contents have leaked out, word has it that it will prove devastating. It will supposedly show, among other things, that those “enhanced interrogation techniques” the CIA used were significantly more brutal than what was described to congressional overseers; that they went well beyond what the “torture memo” lawyers of the Bush administration had laid out (which, mind you, was brutal enough); that no plots were broken up thanks to torture; and that top figures in the Agency, assumedly under oath, “misled” Congress (a polite word for “lied to,” a potential criminal offense that goes by the name of perjury). Senators knowledgeable on the contents of the report have repeatedly insisted that when it goes public, Americans will be shocked by its contents.

Let’s keep in mind as well that committee head Feinstein was previously known as one of the most loyal and powerful supporters of the national security state and the CIA. Until recently, she has, in fact, essentially been the senator from the national security state. She and her colleagues, themselves shocked by what they had learned, understandably wanted their report declassified and released to the American people with all due speed. It naturally had to be vetted to ensure that it contained no names of active agents and the like. But two and a half years later, after endless reviews and a process of vetting by the CIA and the White House that gives the word “glacial” a bad name, it has yet to be released (though there are regular reports that this will—or will not—happen soon).

During this time, the CIA seemed to go to Def Con 2 and decided to turn its spying skills on the committee and its staffers. Claiming that those staffers had gotten the Panetta Internal Review by “hacking” the CIA’s computers, it essentially hacked the committee’s computers and searched them. In the meantime, its acting general counsel, Robert Eatinger, who had been the chief lawyer for the counterterrorism unit out of which the CIA interrogation programs were run, and who was mentioned 1,600 times in the Senate report, filed (to quote Feinstein) a “crimes report to the Department of Justice on the actions of congressional staff—the same congressional staff who researched and drafted a report that details how CIA officers—including the acting general counsel himself—provided inaccurate information to the Department of Justice about the program.” (Back in 2005, Eatinger had also been one of two lawyers responsible for not stopping the destruction of CIA videotapes of the brutal interrogations of terror suspects in its secret prisons.)

In addition, according to Feinstein, CIA Director John Brennan met with her, lied to her and essentially tried to intimidate her by telling her “that the CIA had searched a ‘walled-off committee network drive containing the committee’s own internal work product and communications’ and that he was going to ‘order further forensic evidence of the committee network to learn more about activities of the committee’s oversight staff.’” In other words, the overseen were spying upon and now out to get the overseers. And more than that, based on a single incident in which one of its greatest supporters in Congress stepped over the line, the Agency was specifically out to get the senator from the national security state.

There was a clear message here: oversight or not, don’t tread on us.

By the way, since the CIA is the injuring, not the injured, party, there is no reason to take seriously the self-interested words of its officials, past or present, on any of this, or any account they offer of events or charges they make. We’re talking, after all, about an outfit responsible for the initial brutal acts of interrogation, for false descriptions of them, for lying to Congress about them, for destroying evidence of the worst of what it had done, for spying on a Senate committee and its computer system and for somehow obtaining “legally protected email and other unspecified communications between whistleblower officials and lawmakers this spring relating to the Agency and the committee’s report.” In addition, according to a recent front-page story in The New York Times, its former director from the Bush years, George Tenet, has been actively plotting “a counterattack against the Senate committee’s voluminous report” with the present director and various past Agency officials. (And keep in mind that “roughly 200 people under [Tenet’s] leadership [who] had at some point participated in the interrogation program” are still working at the Agency.)

The Age of Impunity in Washington

In December 2012, the report began to wend its way through a “review and declassification” process, which has yet to end. Once again, the CIA stepped in. The Senate was eager to declassify the report’s findings, conclusions and its 600-page executive summary. The CIA, which had already done its damnedest to block the Senate investigation process, now ensured that the vetting would be interminable.

As a start, the White House vested the CIA as the lead agency in the review and vetting process, which meant that it was to be allowed to slow things to a crawl, stop them entirely or alternatively remove crucial and damning material from the report via redaction. If you want a gauge of just how powerful the various outfits that make up the Fourth Branch have become in Washington (and what limits on them still remain), look no further.

Fourteen years into the twenty-first century, we’re so used to this sort of thing that we seldom think about what it means to let the CIA—accused of a variety of crimes—be the agency to decide what exactly can be known by the public, in conjunction with a deferential White House. The Agency’s present director, it should be noted, has been a close confidant and friend of the president and was for years his key counterterrorism adviser. To get a sense of what all this really means, you need perhaps to imagine that, in 2004, the 9/11 Commission was forced to turn its report over to Osama bin Laden for vetting and redaction before releasing it to the public. Extreme as that may sound, the CIA is no less a self-interested party. And this interminable process has yet to end, although the White House is supposed to release something, possibly heavily redacted, as early as this coming week or perhaps in the dog days of August.

Keep in mind again that we’re still only talking about the overwhelming sense of power of one of the seventeen agencies that make up the Intelligence Community, which itself is but part of the far vaster national security state. Just one. Think of this, nonetheless, as a kind of litmus test for the shifting state of power relations in the new Washington. Or think of it this way: on the basis of a single negative Senate report about its past operations, the CIA was willing to go after one of the national security state’s most fervent congressional supporters. It attempted to intimidate her, tried to bring charges against her staffers, and so drove her “reluctantly” and in a kind of desperation to the Senate floor, where she offered a remarkable denunciation of the agency she had long supported. In its wake, last week, the CIA director dramatically backed off somewhat, perhaps sensing that there was a bridge too far even in Washington in 2014. Amid Senate calls for his resignation, he offered an “apology” for the extreme actions of lower level Agency employees. (But don’t hold your breath waiting for real reform at the CIA.)

In her Senate speech, Feinstein accused the Agency of potentially breaching both the law and the Constitution. “I have grave concerns,” she said, “that the CIA’s search [of the committee’s computer system] may well have violated the separation of powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution, including the Speech and Debate clause. It may have undermined the constitutional framework essential to effective congressional oversight of intelligence activities or any other government function.… Besides the constitutional implications, the CIA’s search may also have violated the Fourth Amendment, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as well as Executive Order 12333, which prohibits the CIA from conducting domestic searches or surveillance.”

In the process, she anatomized an agency covering its tail and its trail, unwilling to admit to error of any sort or volunteer crucial information, while it attempted to block or even dismantle the oversight power of Congress. Her sobering speech should be read by every American, especially as it comes not from a critic but a perennial supporter of the Fourth Branch.

In retrospect, this “incident” may be seen as a critical moment in the still-unsettled evolution of governing power in America. Feinstein’s speech was covered briefly as a kind of kerfuffle in Washington and then largely dropped for other, more important stories. In the meantime, the so-called vetting process on the Senate report continued for yet more months in the White House and in Langley, Virginia, as if nothing whatsoever had occurred; the White House refused to act or commit itself on the subject; and the Justice Department refused to press charges of any sort. While a few senators threatened to invoke Senate Resolution 400—a forty-year-old unused power of that body to declassify information on its own—it was something of an idle threat. (A majority of the Senate would have to agree to vote against the CIA and the White House to put it into effect, which is unlikely indeed.)

Whatever happens with the report itself and despite the recent CIA apology, don’t expect the Senate to bring perjury charges against former CIA leaders for any lies to Congress. (It didn’t do so, after all, in the earlier case of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.) And don’t expect prosecutions of significant figures from a Justice Department that, in the Obama years, refused to prosecute even those in the CIA responsible for the deaths of prisoners.

The fact is that, for the Fourth Branch, this remains the age of impunity. Hidden in a veil of secrecy, bolstered by secret law and secret courts, surrounded by its chosen corporations and politicians, its power to define policy and act as it sees fit in the name of American safety is visibly on the rise. No matter what setbacks it experiences along the way, its urge to expand and control seems, at the moment, beyond staunching. In the context of the Senate’s torture report, the question at hand remains: Who rules Washington?

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/fourth-branch-us-government/

 

I decided to include the full article because not only is it relevant, this website is another of the many sites who allow you only a few “free” visits & then charge you. I’m on Social Security & can’t afford to pay for the information that should rightfully belong to all of us for free but those corporate cockroaches never stop trying to suck us dry.

 

Another thing that struck me as odd about this series was the fact that Michael Hayden, the head of the NSA was shown in a couple of scenes but never said anything? I think there may have been one, brief mention of the NSA in the entire ten episodes of the series.

 

But when it came to documentaries, etc. about Edward Snowden’s revelations regarding the illegal activities of the NSA, Hayden had a whole lot to say. For those of you who aren’t an old fart like me, the NSA is a very interesting subject all its own. Not that long ago, our government wouldn’t even acknowledge that it existed. In fact, it became somewhat of an insider’s joke & the NSA was dubbed, “No Such Agency,” exists. Another tidbit is that I read a book back in the 1970s, maybe the early 80s, & I believe it was by Senator Frank Church of Idaho & he said, “The NSA makes the CIA look like the Mickey Mouse Club.”

 

By-the-way, there’s no way to even find out what the budget of the CIA or the NSA is. They’re like black holes that the government just keeps on throwing billions & trillions of dollars into but hey, sorry American public, we just can’t afford to help you with your health care, improving our educational system, or the general welfare of our citizens. So sad, too bad! But you’d better keep paying your taxes or we’ll get you. Of course the 1% don’t have to pay any taxes because they’re the “job creators.” Except those jobs just happen to be in poor countries where the people are forced to work for maybe a dollar or two a day, just enough for a bowl of rice.

 

In conclusion, you may be tempted to dismiss me as just another cynical old man but that’d be a cop-out & disingenuous. Yes, I have perhaps obsessively studied politics, our society & culture for well over 40 years & have definitely become more pessimistic with time. Less idealistic & less optimistic but something keeps pushing me forward in the hope & dream of a far more equitable & just world.

 

I’ve also received some very encouraging feedback over the years, especially from my hero, Noam Chomsky. He has urged me to keep on fighting and so I shall. Moreover, I’ve also been working on what I call a Social/Political Fantasy for many years & I believe that it helps me keep my spirits up when the negativity of the ugly realities of American foreign & domestic policies weigh me down. I have written nearly 7,000 pages on my magnum opus of Love and Peace & it is great fun some times.

Coming full circle on this essay, I started by telling you about my epiphany & I think that’s a good place to end this piece on. If you’ll take the time to read those few pages of quotes by William Blum that I mentioned, it’ll be clear & help make sense of the chaos, incompetence, & willful ignorance that resulted in that day that shook America & much of the world.

This is what the trillions of dollars spent on “National Security” has given us.

 

When the U.S. emerged from WWII relatively unscathed, the self-appointed “Masters of the Universe,” in the corridors of power in Washington D.C. & on Wall St. came together & devised their grand strategy for a Pax Americana but first, they needed to bring the rest of the nations to their knees.

 

“We should not forget Adam Smith’s perspicuous observation that the “masters of mankind”—in his day, the merchants and manufacturers of England—never cease to pursue their “vile maxim”: “All for ourselves, and nothing for other people.”
― Noam Chomsky, Who Rules the World?

 

— Rob DeLoss, January 25, 2023

 

I wish you Peace and Perseverance!

Addendum

I often find myself wanting to add more to a piece because while my conscious mind tells me I’ve finished the piece, my subconscious is still working on it  24/7.

 

In  a recent essay that I wrote, I pointed out that in the great, Rob Reiner film, Shock and Awe, there was a pivotal scene in which the editor of the Knight-Ridder News Agency, the only news agency in America that refused to jump on the Iraq War bandwagon, the editor met clandestinely with a source in the government.

 

… the snippet of information that absolutely blew my mind came from an intelligence analyst who met clandestinely with the editor of Knight-Ridder, John Walcott, and when asked about why the Bush administration had let Osama bin Laden slip away at Tora Bora, he replied, “if they kill or capture bin Laden, the support for the war goes right down the shitter.”

 

Now of course doubters could claim, how credible is this source but this is the conundrum that is inherent in the relationships between all reporters & their sources i.e. if a reporter reveals their sources, they will never be trusted again & may very well miss out on critical information necessary to break the big stories.

 

I believe that I read that John Walcott purposely avoided top level sources because they often compromise their integrity because they know that if they reveal information a little too close to the powers that be at the top of the food chain so-to-speak, it’d be career suicide. So Walcott & his reporters aimed more for mid-level sources who didn’t risk quite as much.

 

The critically important point to be made here is that if Walcott’s source was honest & correct, this exposed the very core of the warmongers & war profiteers true motives as to why we invaded Afghanistan. They knew the American public’s war fever was at a pitch & screamed for revenge. They couldn’t wait around while they created their fictional case as to why we should invade Iraq.

So, by invading Afghanistan & pretending to be hunting down Usama bin Laden, that would give them time to prepare for their true agenda, the oil fields of Iraq. Of course, we most likely will never know the full truth about these two deadly wars but I have tried to avoid the simplistic, conspiracy theories that immoral morons like Trump & Alex Jones throw out in order to cause divisiveness. In the end, it’s up to us individually to inform ourselves as best we can & decide for ourselves what the truth is.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/29/osama-bin-laden-senate-report

https://youtu.be/gd5feEA3XfI

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, & Vietnam

I received an “Undesirable  Discharge” from the U.S. Army because I trusted my gut instinct & kept going AWOL after being a “good soldier” for six months. And no, I was anything but politically aware back then. I didn’t follow the news, so I didn’t really know much about what was happening in the Vietnam war. My guess is that because rebellion & revolution was in the air in the 1960s & early 70s, I was predisposed to distrust the U.S. Army & the federal government.

Moreover, I didn’t enlist in the army because I wanted to but because I was in the lottery & knew that they’d draft me soon if I didn’t join one of the branches. I chose the army because it required the least amount of time, two years. Unfortunately, I didn’t know about the college deferment option, or I definitely would’ve taken that route.

 

 

Anyway, it didn’t take me long to develop a strong hate for the whole experience. Now I know that some guys thrive in the military experience & love the whole, structured experience. But for me, I hated the authoritarianism, the fact that our “superiors” could scream in our faces, etc. I can’t tell you how many of my “superiors” made me so angry that I had to struggle not to punch their lights out.

“Winning” the Hearts & Minds of the Vietnamese people

 

And the irony was that after taking a battery of tests in the first week of my “Basic Training,” me and about four or five other guys from my company kept being pulled-out & taken to these meetings with some high-ranking officers. I was confused about the rankings with the “scrambled eggs” on the bill of their hats, the stripes on their arms, the medals on their chests, etc. but I knew they were pretty high-ranking officers.

 

Why I was in this little group was a mystery to me. The only thing I could figure was that I had been an avid reader all my life & they told me that I was reading at the 11th grade, sixth month level when I was in the sixth grade. Well, talk about high-pressure salesmanship, they basically promised us the moon i.e., they told us that we could go into whatever M.O.S. (Military Occupational Specialty) that we wanted to & that they’d station us wherever we wanted to be stationed around the world.

but remember, “We don’t do torture.”

 

There’s one thing you learn very quickly in the army, don’t believe anything they promise you, especially the recruiters who will tell you anything to get you to sign that contract. While their attempts to seduce me into re-upping (extend my contract to four or six more years & go to Officer Candidate School) I kept respectfully turning down their sales pitches. I was tempted to tell them that I didn’t even want to be a squad leader (ten guys).

I was disgusted from the first week as I observed many petty, little spirits & egos who loved fucking with the brand-new guys the moment they stepped off the bus like we’d done just a week earlier. Furthermore, some guys had trouble making it through the obstacle course or dealing with the daily PT (physical training). Not to brag but I had always been active as a teenager i.e., wrestling, bike riding, swimming, climbing trees, gymnastics, etc. so the physical aspects of my basic training weren’t shit.

 

My greatest challenge was the psychological games they run on you. Drill sergeants screaming insults & orders in my face, just a few inches from my nose. I saw their game, break down our identities as individuals & brainwash us into good little soldiers who would walk off a cliff if they ordered us to. I also had to contend with one little G.I. Joe wannabe who frequently flipped me shit because I wasn’t gung-ho like him. I didn’t spit-shine my belt buckles or my boots. I didn’t make the super tight, hospital corners when making my bed up in the mornings. I did the bare minimum necessary to keep our platoon (about 40 guys) sergeant off my ass.

Oh but we’re so morally superior to the terrorists.

 

After a few weeks of this scrawny, little Mexican guy who probably weighed about 120 lbs. if that, fucking with me, I invited him to step into the head (bathroom) one night. I made sure we were alone & I didn’t raise my voice, but I looked him straight in the eye & told him, look, you play G.I. Joe all you want to, but you get off my ass or we can settle it right here & now. He didn’t fuck with me anymore after that.

 

That’s enough of all that so let me fast forward to the point where I took that fateful & scary first step of rebellion. After completing basic training, I was transferred to Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. They were going to train me to be a combat field medic but on the first night we were there & filling out a bunch of paperwork, they said, “we need some clerk typists, who wants to be a clerk typist?” I raised my hand; the guy asked me if I could type & I said yes. (I had one class on how to type when I was in middle school & I think I received a D?

 

Well, three days later they made me a clerk typist & I found it very amusing. Remember what I said about not trusting their promises? When I first spoke with the army recruiter & he read through a long list of possible jobs, I chose clerk typist because it sounded like an easy job. The recruiter said, “sorry, if you want to be a clerk typist, you’ll need to add on another year.” I said forget it because again, the only reason I chose the army was because it had the least amount of time, two years.

And lo & behold, six months later I was a clerk typist. I didn’t have to go through the usual A.I.T. (Advanced Individual Training), I delivered paperwork between officers, filled out Article 15s, etc., I had my own room, got to go to the head of the chow line whenever I was hungry, could go into town practically whenever I wanted to, etc. In other words, I had it made.

 

For a while, I found myself working in the same job as that first night when we got off the bus from the airport, filled out all the paperwork, & were assigned to where we were to bunk & the guy had asked who wants to be a clerk typist. I worked with maybe three or four other guys & we sat on our asses for long periods of time waiting for the next busload of guys to arrive.

 

Naturally, we often talked about our hometowns & etc. and we felt homesick. And I began to think, why am I here? Is this going to be my life for the next year and a half? So, thoughts of going AWOL started percolating in my brain & one night, I went for it. Unfortunately, my face must’ve had guilty written all over it because a couple of M.P.s at the airport busted me & took me back to the base.

More “Winning of Hearts & Minds?”

 

My company commander thought I was just a little mixed-up, so I was supposed to be fined half a month’s pay & had to mop floors a couple of nights. Well, I met an older guy who had been trying to get out of the army for a while & he told me, “Bottom-line Rob, the army doesn’t give a shit that you’re unhappy & want out. You have to show them that you’re more trouble than you’re worth. So, keep going AWOL but turn yourself in just before 30 days is up so they can’t classify you a deserter.”

 

He had also told me that as long as I kept going AWOL, they couldn’t ship me out because I’d be tied-up in court martial proceedings. I figured, well, I’ve started this so I may as well follow through, but it was one of the scariest periods of my life up to that point. I was defying the U.S. Army & I didn’t know for sure what they’d do to me. Send me to military prison for five years? Were they right when they told us we’d ruin the rest of our lives, etc.? I couldn’t go to my mom’s house because she definitely wouldn’t have approved.

She was proud of me when I enlisted and now, I was no better than those “dirty hippies.” The hardest thing was swallowing my pride & having to ask “friends,” if I could crash on their couches, sleep in their garages, etc. I felt so low at one point that I briefly entertained the thought of suicide & the very thought of it scared the shit out of me.

 

On my second AWOL escape, I thought, well they busted me at the San Antonio airport last time, so I’ll outsmart them & I took a bus to El Paso & caught a flight to L.A. from there. It was a close one though, because while in line at the El Paso airport, I was talking to a guy who was AWOL too but just before we were to board the plane, the F.B.I. asked for his I.D. and busted him.

 

There were moments of humor to all this though, the army in its usual incompetence was supposed to be docking my pay but they’d screw-up & give me my full pay and I’d say to myself, okay you stupid shits, I’m outta here and I’d be off to L.A. yet again. My mom must’ve learned from my sisters or brother that I was AWOL and hanging around the neighborhood & I found myself living under her roof again.

 

I’d gone AWOL three or four times at this point, I believe? But the army didn’t seem to be taking me seriously, so I decided to stay gone & was AWOL for close to two & a half months I believe? Then early one morning there was a knock at the door, I saw one guy in a suit, walk down one side of our house while the other guy was knocking on the front door & I panicked & started to climb out a window but the one agent had picked a strategic location so he could watch two sides of the house simultaneously.

 

They were F.B.I. and they arrested me, but they were cool in that they didn’t handcuff me. They took me to some tiny, military jail in San Pedro & I was transferred back to the stockade at Ft. Ord where I’d done my basic training. I did 11 days in the stockade and the Fort’s commander was fed-up at having to deal with all of us AWOL assholes & they put a piece of paper in front of me saying that if I waived my right to the G.I. Bill, I’d be discharged with an “Undesirable.” I jumped at the opportunity & had to hitchhike all the way to L.A. flat broke, but I was free at last!

 

Of course, none of this had anything to do with the war itself, I only knew when I was there in Texas, that half of us were going to be shipped to Vietnam & the other half would be going to Germany. I freely admit that if I knew for sure that I’d be transferred to Germany, I would’ve stayed in, but I wasn’t about to risk my life and maybe be shipped to Vietnam.

It wasn’t until years later & after I’d become interested in politics that I learned about the totally fabricated i.e., grand lie, Gulf of Tonkin “incident.” How long were we in Vietnam? I believe it was approximately ten years & we had 56,000 Americans killed in that phony war. I don’t know how many poor souls were maimed by losing an arm, a leg, etc. to say nothing of the mental & emotional Hell that many of them still suffer from to this day. And don’t forget about Agent Orange which our government denied for years.

Moreover, we’re not supposed to mention or care about the fact that we may have killed as many as two million Vietnamese people. But for the past 45 years or better, I have been obsessed about learning the dirty secrets & lies behind our endless stream of wars. I have conservatively spent at least 50,000 hours learning about our shameful past, present, & the spooky future before us.

So, it came as no surprise to me after we’d invaded Afghanistan then Iraq, it was all a pack of lies yet again to sucker the public into going along with all the death & destruction. And what about the cost of these wars? I heard an estimate recently that we spent something like $20 trillion over the course of our twenty years in Afghanistan.

What did we accomplish in these wars? Did we gain some great geopolitically strategic advantage? How are the citizens of those countries doing after we withdrew? If memory serves, China was our greatest fear & threat and was why we had to invade Vietnam & interfere in its civil war. Remember the rationale, we had to avoid/prevent the “Domino Effect,” of all the nations in that part of the world from becoming Communist. Yet not long after we withdrew from Vietnam, Nixon & Kissinger were applauding themselves for their great breakthrough in developing “Détente” with Communist China who soon became one of our biggest trading partners.

How’s Iraq after our “liberation?” We bombed their infrastructure back to the Stone Age. But remember, we’re the creators of Democracy around the globe. Yep! The Middle East is now a hornet’s nest & a viper’s nest of terrorists. Of course, it wasn’t before we came in and “liberated” it and opened the floodgates of pent-up hostilities that go back centuries between the Sunnis & the Shiites. But that’s American foreign policy & wisdom in a nutshell i.e., establish those self-fulfilling prophecies then step back as the carnage unfolds & declare, “See, we told you.”

This is what the war planners dub, “Making the World Safe for Democracy.” What a sick, perverted sense of humor those evil bastards have! At least they used to be more honest when it was called, “The War Department.” Talk about Orwell’s “Doublespeak.”

The spark that ignited or inspired me to write this piece came from a movie I rewatched a couple of months ago, Shock and Awe directed by Rob Reiner. This movie was based on the true story of the Knight Ridder news organization & clearly showed how the mainstream media has betrayed the American public & served the interests of the 1% who own them.

 

Another great movie based on the truth about the totally fabricated campaign pushed by the George W. Bush White House that Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, was Fair Game . The Bush White House deliberately revealed the identity of a top C.I.A. agent, Valerie Plame, in an effort to silence her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, who had a very stellar & courageous reputation for his work in the Middle East.

 

Getting back to Shock and Awe, the snippet of information that absolutely blew my mind came from an intelligence analyst who met clandestinely with the editor of Knight-Ridder, John Walcott, and when asked about why the Bush administration had let Osama bin Laden slip away at Tora Bora, he replied, “if they kill or capture bin Laden, the support for the war goes right down the shitter.”

Let that percolate in your mind for a few minutes. In other words, in order to keep the war fever burning in the public’s mind, they needed a bogeyman, a person who represented the evil unleashed against America on 9/11. So, even though Bush & Cheney actually had their eyes fixed on invading Iraq for control of its oil fields, bin Laden was a useful scapegoat who would guarantee the flow of the billions of our tax dollars into the Pentagon, to keep the illegal & immoral war against Iraq going. The administration put on a full-court press so-to-speak in terms of cherry-picking & outright lying about Saddam Hussein to manufacture a justification for invading & occupying Iraq.

 

The movie briefly mentioned an organization called P.N.A.C. (Project for the New American Century) but they didn’t tell us a whole lot about it. It wasn’t a secret organization & it basically was their blueprint for dominating the world in the coming 21st century. It was established in 1997 and three of its members were Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, & Paul Wolfowitz, the three key architects of the plan to invade Iraq in the Bush administration.

 

In fact, the organization called for regime change in Iraq in its statement of principles back in 1997. Many Americans probably aren’t even aware of the fact that for many years, the U.S. loved Saddam Hussein & gave him many weapons of mass destruction even as he murdered & gassed his own people, especially the poor Kurdish population of Iraq.

 

“[PNAC’s] ideology was summarized in a major position paper, Rebuilding America’s Defenses, in 2000. This document advocated a global Pax Americana unrestrained by international law …”[55]   — Wikipedia

Some of P.N.A.C.’s members lamented before the events of 9/11 that what was needed was another Pearl Harbor, “a catastrophic and catalyzing event.” So, in effect, 9/11 was a gift from heaven as far as these warmongers were concerned. Now they could implement their plans for world domination by America. Keep in mind that they had the several hundred pages Patriot Act already written & again were just looking for an excuse to pass it into law. I’m not going to wander into an Alex Jones conspiracy land nightmare scenario but it’s worth bearing these things in mind.

 

Note though that the Patriot Act violated several aspects of our Bill of Rights and was a direct assault on the U.S. Constitution, you know, that document our government was founded upon & which presidents as well as police officers & military personnel must swear to defend & uphold.

 

Of course, Donald Trump, many politicians in the GOP as well as the MAGA morons chose to wipe their asses with our Constitution especially on January 6th when they sought to overthrow our government.

Let’s review the consequences of America’s foreign policy since the end of WWII. Twenty years in Afghanistan & some analysts say $20 trillion dollars later, and was clearly unnecessary not to mention, immoral. Several scholars said we should’ve gone after bin Laden like a criminal case with a small police-type group of people who spoke the language, knew the customs & traditions, etc. but then the American warlords wouldn’t have the excuse for wasting billions of dollars. (See the movie Zero Dark Thirty)

 

In hindsight, it’s now obvious that Iraq was the target even before 9/11 (see P.N.A.C.) game plan in 1997 but they needed to appear to care about 9/11 & Afghanistan at least gave them the flimsy excuse that it was used as a training ground for Al Qaeda. But much more logically, why didn’t we say or do anything about Saudi Arabia because 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia & bin Laden himself is from Saudi Arabia & he was related to the royal family & derived his wealth from them?

Smedley F. Butler
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket 

 

How can any American feel patriotic let alone trust or believe this government when it calls us to war? Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq etc. etc. etc. https://californiaman.substack.com/p/list-of-us-wars-and-interventions  

Those in power are guilty of pure, naked aggression with only one goal, wealth & power. They let our infrastructure (roads, bridges, highways, etc.) crumble, they let/cause our citizens to become homeless, let the American public die needlessly in a pandemic (see Trump’s deliberate undermining of COVID treatment), they allow Wall St. steal our pensions, and the GOP along with help from some Democrats like Biden are open to making cuts to, even eliminating Social Security & Medicare.

“Find the Cost of Freedom” buried in the ground.

 

They allow scum like Trump & FOX “news,” to sow the seeds of fear, hate, & racism to keep us divided, but by all means, don’t make the 1% pay their fair share of taxes. Note that under Eisenhower, the wealthy were in the 90% tax bracket but today, it’s around 20% & most of them actually pay around 10% or less. Of course, many of the elite effectively pay zero with their tax dodges & tax havens. And many, if not most of the richest corporations pay not only nothing in taxes, but some also even get tax rebates in the millions. Yet they use our infrastructure to conduct their business, are protected by our police & military, and we, the 99% have to pay for the infrastructure, etc.

Our military rapes, pillages, & plunders most of the world for its natural resources & cheap labor and we call it “Bringing Democracy & Freedom.” (See Major General Smedley F. Butler who several business tycoons tried to enlist to lead a coup against FDR because they hated his New Deal policies) Why did the 1% allow such an obvious grifter like Trump to become president? Behind the scenes of all the presidential campaigns & the national, political spectacle that goes on ad nauseam, the 1% decide who will be elected.

 

With America’s long list of wars & police actions since the end of WWII, our indiscriminate Drone warfare & etc., are you still at a loss to explain/understand why so many terrorists want to kill Americans? This isn’t a defense or excuse of terrorism but is my attempt to shine a light on its causes.

Another good movie is Fair Game with Sean Penn. It shows just how far “our” government will go to silence our whistleblowers.

 

In conclusion, an excellent example of how corrupt & politicized our military has become over the decades & which reflects the rot at the core of our political system is the My Lai massacre in Vietnam in 1968. Colin Powell was sent by the Pentagon to “investigate,” and his report basically said that the slaughter of over 500 Vietnamese peasants was a rare event & the blame was placed squarely on Lt. William Calley.

I’m not excusing Calley’s actions, but this was a typical occurrence, not a rare event & many soldiers have backed this up including John Kerry, I believe, in his testimony before Congress shortly after his return from duty in Vietnam ended. My point is that because Powell proved dependable to the Pentagon, his rise to the top position in the military, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was all but secured.

And the Bush administration used Powell to sell the invasion of Iraq to the world at the United Nations. Powell had far more credibility than anyone else in Bush’s cabinet & even though he knew the evidence they’d cobbled together to justify attacking Iraq was bogus, Powell did his masters’ bidding.

Yeah, I’m the “undesirable” one!

 

— Rob DeLoss, January 16, 2023

P.S.  The key point to keep in mind regarding all of this is the point that the 1% who own the Defense industry corporations will keep the wars coming until the entire planet blows up in a nuclear conflagration or the world economy completely implodes.

The Boredom Cop-Out

 

‘’It is nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.’’  [quoted in The New York Times, March 13 1949, p. 34].

— Albert Einstein

 

I was a substitute teacher at the secondary level for L.A. Unified Schools in the San Fernando Valley from 1987 to 1992. And I can’t even begin to tell you how sick & tired I got of hearing students — especially middle school students — complain, “This is boring,” or “I’m bored.”

The main argument against home schooling is that it hinders the development of “social skills,” How’s that going?

 

Then one day, I subbed in a class that had this quote on the board, “The cure for boredom is curiosity and there is no cure for curiosity.” It was like I had discovered gold & I was elated. Now I had an answer for those complaints of boredom. If students would listen or were even interested, I’d point out, how can you be bored when there are millions of new sights, sounds, tastes, etc.? So, if you’re bored, it’s your fault and you are merely copping out or being intellectually lazy.

 

Today from the vantage point of an old fart of 70, I am more sympathetic to those students’ complaints. What they were really saying & feeling but didn’t know how to articulate it was, the rote method of teaching employed in the overwhelming majority of public schools was what was boring them to death. Einstein’s quote above puts it far more succinctly. Yet, to a large extent, we have raised the last couple of generations to expect to be entertained 24 hours a day & they believe it’s their birthright to a large extent.

 

What worries me is that the individual student & citizen is drowning in this sea of entertainment. And I have come to the conclusion that Aldous Huxley’s vision of the future was far more correct than George Orwell’s was. Dismiss me as a fear monger or an alarmist if you will but, hear me out.

In American society today, our blind trust in technology, especially in the “Social Media” gurus of Silicon Valley, we have de facto entrusted our minds & our emotional well-being to the greedy entrepreneurs who have become mega-millionaires at our destructive expense.

 

There is a myriad of personal costs as well as our national well-being from this blind trust & worship of all things high-tech, but the most pernicious cost is the erosion of our ability to think critically or analytically for ourselves. For example, behind all this supposed “social media,” & high-tech gadgets like “Smart phones,” the artificial connection via “platforms,” has to an alarming extent, replaced the actual, physical connections with friends.

If that fact alone doesn’t worry or scare you, perhaps you too have become so addicted that you can’t see it? Behind all this faux “social media,” & its tools of enslavement is advertising. And in Silicon Valley, advertising success is what their fortunes depend on & what it boils down to is “eyeballs” i.e., the length of time people watch/use their platforms. So, in a nutshell, what these tech titans don’t want you to know/understand is that the corporate conglomerates are in effect, controlling & manipulating all those who are addicted to their supposed benign tools & platforms.

In the fairly recent documentary, “The Great Hack,” Britney Kaiser who claims to have been unaware & now pretends to be a whistleblower after Cambridge Analytica was busted, said one thing that surprised me & made me sit up & take notice. She said that “information has replaced oil as the world’s most valuable commodity.” This is not wild, conspiratorial speculation because the fact is that the high-tech, social media firms have been collecting every scrap of our personal information, many of them willingly cooperating with the government, & it’s being stored in a massive, data storage facility in Utah.

I’m going to move on or return to the main thesis of this essay now because I don’t wish to go too far afield of my subject. My central point is that many, if not most of these modern marvels are making us mentally flabby or are enfeebling us. And I don’t believe that so many millions of us would’ve fallen for such an obvious phony like Trump were we not so dumbed-down — see John Taylor Gatto, one of America’s greatest teachers — by the Wizards of Oz in the Silicon Valley, “our” mainstream media, & our deliberately undermined public education system. (See several of my other essays on my blog if you’re interested in these subjects)

Don’t Worry, Be Happy! Right?

 

As this essay was taking shape in my mind, it occurred to me, how as individuals & collectively as a society, are we to progress if we continue to allow this sapping of our mental capabilities? My intellectual as well as spiritual guru, Noam Chomsky, made a very cogent point in regard to the dilemma of higher education from the standpoint of the corporate overlords. One the one hand, they want a society of obedient & subservient employees & that’s why they have undermined public education but when it comes to graduate school, they depend on students who are free thinkers, nonconformists, people who dare to question authority i.e., the traditional ways of thinking.

 

Why? Because those are the people who make the breakthroughs in technology, medicine, etc., the ones who dare to think “outside the box.” The students who obey & follow all the rules rarely, if ever, come up with original ideas or perspectives. It’s the rebels, the nonconformists, the dreamers, the idealists, etc. that true progress depends on.

Sadly & unfortunately, many, if not most of those free thinkers are destroyed by this society that praises conformity & playing by the rules, and punishes & ridicules those who can’t or who refuse to. What’s important for all of us to remember is that technology is a double-edged sword i.e., it can be beneficial to mankind, or it can become a dangerous weapon that harms humanity in a myriad of ways.

Again, this is why it’s so critically important that far more of us, ideally, all of us intellectually capable, acquire the skills of critical & analytical thinking. I have been urging family, friends, & strangers alike for almost four decades now, to develop these skills but my words have mostly fallen on deaf ears.

 

I don’t claim to be some sort of grand master or something, but I have spent tens of thousands of hours seeking answers & looking for patterns & causes behind the crisis’s humanity faces. And Chomsky has focused his laser-like attention on the two, greatest threats to human survival, climate destruction & the threat of a nuclear war, and his perseverance has in turn inspired me to persevere no matter how often I am mocked & dismissed.

 

So, when people disingenuously try to dismiss or ignore me as if I were simply another one of those proverbial, street-corner preachers ranting & raving about the coming Apocalypse, I know that my aim is true & pure, and I continue to pay the price socially.

 

My beloved wife, Jeri, who passed away over nine years ago, was one of the hardest working & most dedicated teachers I have ever known. And while she was usually swallowed-up in the asinine bureaucracy of being a special education teacher, she respected my Don Quixote crusade to inform & ideally inspire people to stand-up, speak out, & fight the powers that be. And I miss her down to the marrow of my bones & hope that I may someday be worthy of her love. In that spirit, I shall leave you with a gem from Doris Lessing who happened to be the favorite author of my first English literature professor, Roy Garrot, in the top four of the most inspiring teachers in my life!

 

Here’s an excerpt from “The Golden Notebook” that every teacher and parent should read:

“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”

Unfortunately, there isn’t a way to ensure or guarantee that all teachers will be fired-up with a passion for learning & teaching but if we were honest with ourselves as a society that claims to value equality, democracy, freedom, & truth, we would earnestly strive to create such an educational system. For now, we must individually pursue this dream.

 

As for me, my conscience is clear & even though I never took a single course in the teacher education curriculum, I have had ESL students cry when I had to move on. Those were the highest compliments I’ve ever receiving in my career. My training was all on the job so-to-speak & I believe those students loved me because they knew that I loved them & truly cared about their welfare and wished them healthy & happy futures.

— Persevere!

 

 

The Real Joe Biden

Remember Biden’s promise to hold MBS accountable for murder of American journalist Jamal Khashoggi?
  • He didn’t cancel the portion of the Student Loan Debt through the Higher Education Act
  • Obama picked him because although he’s a democrat, he votes Republican
  • He has a really dirty voting record
  • He went after Anita Hill so Clarence Thomas could sit on the Supreme Court
  • He was one of the most fervent advocates of the wars in the Middle East
  • He was an abject supporter of the apartheid state of Israel
  • He fought school bussing with Strom Thurmond, an open segregationist & racist
  • He sponsored the comprehensive Crime Control Act which eliminated parole for federal prisoners & limited the amount of time sentences that they had for good behavior
  • He was behind the 1994 Omnibus Crime bill that he helped draft & massively expanded the death penalty for federal crimes from a couple to 51 doubling the nation’s prison population
  • He militarized the police by pushing through the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and effective Death Penalty Act that gutted the Writ of Habeas Corpus
  • He was one of the authors of the Patriot Act which allows the government with very little oversight to monitor all of our Communications; phone, phone, email, bank records, credit card reports & of course any activity on the Internet
  • He was one of the architects of the destruction of Welfare & 70% of the original recipients on Welfare were children
  • He has long called to cut Social Security
  • He fought for NAFTA
  • He backed the Illegal Immigration Reform & Immigrant Responsibility Act that eliminated the defenses for undocumented people & saw them far more easily deported
  • He helped deregulate the Banking industry with the abolition of Glass-Steagall & that was a major contributor not only in the global financial crisis but in the collapse of nearly 500 banks in the U.S.
  • He’s long been a tool of the Pharmaceutical Industry & the Insurance Industry which contributed heavily to his campaign
  • No mainstream media publication is going to lay out who Joe Biden really is
  • He used to be called Senator Credit Card because of all the credit card companies headquartered in Delaware

 

This is just a partial list but I’m guessing that you most likely weren’t aware of all the things on it?

 

 

Poor Choices?

 

An Irish pub in Portland that Jeri took me out to dinner to celebrate my last birthday before she passed away

An acquaintance of mine for over 50 years said to me several months ago that I was in the position I am in because I have made poor choices over the course of my life. I felt infuriated at this heartless dismissal but didn’t respond because I was so emotionally raw at his comment. And for the past several days, I was reflecting on this & I recently re-watched the film, “Too Big to Fail,” and I began to think that perhaps my story was a microcosm of the bigger story, the macrocosm of the 1% in this country?

 

To try to keep it from sounding like a purely personal attack against my acquaintance, I’m going to refer to him as simply “M”. I now call him an acquaintance because he’s shown me far too many times that he’s not a friend. I recently turned 70 years old & all my life I have wrestled with deep-seated feelings of insecurity & inferiority.

 

I believe that in the beginning of our friendship, I was amusing to M. & he enjoyed hearing my stories about hitchhiking around the country & Europe. But as the decades passed, M. didn’t find me so amusing anymore & he tired of reading my critiques about the social & political state of America. Moreover, M. is a multi-millionaire & I think he’s become more defensive over the years because of his wealth & prestige.

 

As far as I can tell, when the rich are confronted by the 99% of us who weren’t born with a silver spoon in our mouths, they blame us & accuse us of being too lazy, too ignorant, or of having made “poor choices.” So, yeah, this essay is obviously going to sound very defensive but how could it not be? And when the wealthy dismiss us as basically losers because of supposed character flaws, I feel like they are rubbing salt in our wounds. And those wounds are more often than not, the results of the callous indifference of the privileged elite.

 

We must remind ourselves that the 1% write the laws that keep the majority of us in poverty not only economically but also criminally. Everyone knows that there are two sets of law in America, one set for the 99%, especially the working poor, & another set of laws for the power elite who can literally get away with murder if they have enough money to buy the highest priced lawyers.

 

M didn’t have to work his way through college, it was handed to him by his daddy just as his position in daddy’s insurance agency was. He clearly didn’t have to worry about getting fired. I know that this may sound like I’m making excuses or simply being a whiner but how else am I to tell my story if I don’t tell you the facts of my life?

 

I started going to community college when I was 19 years old. I dreamed of becoming a forest ranger but learned that I should’ve taken physics, calculus, trigonometry, etc. in high school. But because I went to secondary school in Paramount, CA, an “industrially-zoned” city, they didn’t even offer these subjects. We were all placed on a “vocational track.” By-the-way, I was reading at the 11th grade, sixth month level when I was in the sixth grade.

 

Like most young men around 18 to 20 years old, I was being pressured at home to move out & make my own way in life & it seemed impractical to spend a couple of years taking these prerequisites before I could even begin the four years necessary to become a forest ranger. So, I began taking business courses because they seemed the most practical & might help me get my foot in the door with some company?

 

The problem with the business courses I took was that they were extremely boring & easy. I soon surmised that to succeed in business, only two things were necessary i.e., greed & a lack of ethics. Think about the millions of young men & women who had their dreams shot down because they couldn’t afford to go to the right colleges for the careers they wanted to pursue.

 

You see, I was born on the proverbial “wrong side of the tracks,” and was raised by a single mother with my three siblings. And it seemed that my entire childhood & adolescence was one long series of crises. Being the eldest, it fell to me to look after my brother & sisters i.e., cook dinner for them, make them do their homework & chores, and protect them from harm. I believe that a large part of the reason why I did so much wandering & hitchhiking in my 20s was because I was trying to make-up for my lost youth due to all the responsibilities I had as a child & a teenager?

 

I seriously doubt that M ever had such burdens & responsibilities placed on him as he was growing up. I spent my 20s switching college majors several times & I dropped-out of many courses sometimes half-way or even three-quarters of the way through a semester. Community college in those days was dirt-cheap & you basically just had to pay for your books so dropping-out was no big deal as far as I was concerned.

 

And if I had to guesstimate, I probably had close to a hundred different what I dubbed, “Mickey Mouse” jobs in those years. I usually quit a job for one of three reasons besides just being bored & wanting to travel. 1) the work conditions were too dangerous, 2) a supervisor treated me like I was their personal whipping-boy like I was a slave & they were my master, 3) it simply wasn’t challenging. The highest price I paid for my seemingly “irresponsible” ways was being labeled a quitter or a loser by family members as well as “friends.”

 

You see, I’ve been a dreamer all my life & ever since I was in the second grade, I’d dreamed of visiting Switzerland. I was impatient to live my dreams & figured that if I waited until I was retired, my health would probably be shot & I couldn’t hike those Alpine trails or swim in those glacier-fed lakes, etc. So, I’d work at some Mickey Mouse job for a few months & sometimes I’d buy a one-way ticket to Europe & land with a couple hundred bucks in my pocket & stay as long as I could stretch my money out.

 

Returning to those rationalizations the 1% use to blame us for our misfortunes, if I was too lazy, why have I written over 8,000 pages on one book that is “published,” and three others that are still works in progress? Why did I write over 300 essays? If I’m too dumb or ignorant, why did I persist for 14 years & finally earn my B.A. in English literature with no help from my family?

 

For over 40 years, I have obsessively followed i.e., read, watched documentaries, written about, collected articles, listened to political programs, etc. about America & the world’s social & political histories as well as current events. I’d guesstimate that conservatively; I have spent at least 50,000 hours in these pursuits. Why?

 

Because I hate injustice, inequality, the unnecessary suffering, pain, humiliation, & sometimes death of billions of the poor, the working class, & etc. around the globe. People like M haven’t got a clue & don’t give a shit! They sit in their penthouse suites, their luxury offices, their mansions, their yachts, their jets & feel so smug & superior and dismiss the rest of us as inferiors & not worthy of what they inherited or stole from the 99%.

 

The movie, “Too Big to Fail,” reveals these immoral & heartless bastards in all their ignominious glory. I have said for many years that as a general rule, the bigger a corporation is, the more likely they are committing fraud & it’s probably become their standard business practice because they know that if they get busted, the fines almost always are less than the profits they made breaking the law, so they have no to little incentive to stop breaking the law.

A handful of America’s largest banks, hedge fund managers, the three major credit rating agencies, the insurance behemoth A.I.G., our entire financial services  industry forced the world economic system to the precipice of total collapse. Was this just a matter of “poor choices?”

 

The 1%’s “poor choices,” or fraud, caused tens of millions of people around the world to lose their jobs, their homes, their pensions, their health care, etc. Their hubris is breathtaking! The overwhelming majority of the American public made it very clear & said, Hell no, don’t bail the greedy crooks out but “our” government did it anyway.

 

And the architects of the bail-out, Hank Paulson, Timothy Geithner, & Ben Bernanke didn’t write into the legal paperwork the requirement that the banks would loosen-up credit requirements so that small businesses & individual borrowers could borrow again & help stimulate the dangerously sluggish economy. It was understood & believed that they would but guess what? They laughed all the way to the bank, didn’t make loans available to us, the suckers, & gave themselves lavish bonuses.

Three of the financial gurus who were part of the problem & Obama appointed them first thing in his administration.

Lesson learned? Yeah right! The banks are bigger than before, deregulation still reigns supreme, and the fraudsters aren’t worried because the public will be forced to pay for their “poor choices,” yet again because they’re too big to fail.

So, I sit here slowly dying from cancer that I can’t afford to fight because Medicare will only cover 80% of the necessary treatment & Social Security is my only income. My “choice” is to pay the 20% out of the inheritance my beloved wife left to me & end up homeless & still die from the incurable cancer I have or to hang on to a semblance of dignity & hope that my end isn’t too excruciatingly painful.

 

Another “poor choice” on my part? Or the honest reality that the poor have no choice in this rigged system. And those compassionate conservatives & corporate democrats want to slash Medicare & Social Security. Their greed knows no limits & they have no humanity!

 

— Rob DeLoss, January 12, 2023

 

 

P.S.  Oh yeah, I almost forgot about another “poor choice,” I made. I was in the U.S. Army because I wasn’t even aware of college deferments & after six months, orders were coming down & half of us were to be sent to Germany & half of us would be sent to Vietnam. I kept going AWOL because they couldn’t ship you out while you were being court martialed. I’ve always referred to this as the most fortunate mistake of my life.

 

 

 

 

Infantilization and Integrity

 

Infantilization is the process of treating someone as if they are a child. This can be done for various reasons, including to make someone feel more powerless or to make them easier to control. Infantilization can have negative consequences, however, as it can foster feelings of dependency and insecurity. It can also lead to a loss of self-respect and diminished self-esteem.

When infantilization is used as a form of control, it can be especially harmful, as it can prevent individuals from thinking for themselves and making their own decisions.

In some cases, infantilization may be used as a way to control someone through manipulation and fear. For example, an abusive partner may infantilize their victim in order to keep them from leaving the relationship.

In other cases, infantilization may be the result of systemic factors, such as sexism or racism.

When women and people of color are infantilized by those in positions of power, it reinforces their status as second-class citizens.  https://magnifymind.com/what-is-infantilization/

 

First of all, don’t  worry! This isn’t one of those lunatic QAnon conspiracy theories but some observations & guesses as to how we have devolved to such a childish state. The other night I was looking for something to watch on T.V. & these days it’s hard to find anything worth watching. In fact, call me a snob if you like but our choices as far as something worthwhile to watch are becoming more pathetic by the day in my opinion.

 

And mind you, I’m well aware that I’m a hypocrite or a walking contradiction because I often enjoy watching “action” films for example & I decided to rewatch one of Keanu Reeves’ movies, John Wick part 3 and as I was watching it, it occurred to me that it was basically like one of the countless video games that kids, young guys, & even middle aged guys enjoy playing for countless hours — though I never got into playing them.

 

It was basically John Wick going from room to room killing bad guys nonstop like in the video games. I asked myself, Rob, what are you doing? You’re just watching teenage action/violence crap with no redeeming value whatsoever. What also puzzles me is why for all intents and purposes, I have stopped reading?

 

I was an avid reader for most of my life & have collected an awesome library if I do say so myself. But it seems that nowadays, I will spend & often do spend several hours a day writing. And for the last several years or more, I still buy books, probably at least a half-dozen a year but I don’t read them?

 

I wonder if I’m becoming more like the culture I criticize in my writing or if it’s honestly because writing takes so much mental energy out of me? And at the risk of sounding like that nauseating braggart, Trump, I know that I’m far ahead of the average American intellectually. I bring these matters or observations up because I am truly alarmed at the state of our culture especially since Trump’s inspiring & unleashing of so much hate, violence, & racism.

 

Here are some of my observations, you decide for yourself whether they’re accurate or important insights into our collective psyche.  Let’s start with television. Perhaps not coincidentally, television & I are about the same age, 70 years old. The 1950s were dubbed the “Golden Age of Television,” it lasted from 1947 to 1960 and was noted for its live, drama programs of serious & intelligent content. Many great authors’ work was presented to the American public & stimulated debate & serious conversation.

 

But in the 1960s when they began taping programs, the quality of the content began to decline especially as the producers & owners began to see the huge sums of money they could make if they dumbed-down the content to appeal to a wider audience. This is speculation on my part, but it wouldn’t be hard to substantiate it.

 

Now fast-forward to today’s choices on television as well as in the movies. An endless parade of totally asinine comedies, soap operas, “reality t.v.” etc. It’s clear to all but the willfully ignorant MAGA morons that the series, “The Apprentice” is the key factor that led to Trump being appointed president. And note that the Trump cult has gone so far as to actually believe in “alternate facts & realities.” But back in the real world, those are recognized for what they’ve always been known as, lies!

I remember being struck by the first “reality” television series, “Survivor,” over 20 years ago. I watched one episode with my wife & said to her afterwards, think about what this is teaching children, it’s teaching them that it’s okay to lie, cheat, steal, backstab, etc. because “winning” is everything. No wonder Trump did so well in his alternate reality role because he didn’t have to act at all, this was his life in business except that he failed many more times in business than he succeeded even with all the handouts & protection of his slumlord daddy.

 

I was also flabbergasted at this serious downturn in Americans’ general intelligence because television is an artificial medium to begin with but now, by claiming that they were capturing reality & presenting it to us in an artificial format or medium (see Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message)  we were being shown the actual world of people & their behavior, beliefs, etc. This was an absolute descent into Alice in Wonderland.

 

Moreover, the producers of “The Apprentice” have freely admitted that it was all a staged farce, but the gullible public lapped it up like hotcakes they couldn’t get enough of. What’s this say about America, the supposed greatest nation on earth? I won’t pussyfoot around the issue & believe all “reality television” is a sham! Yep, step right up suckers.

 

To be clear, with the overwhelmingly vast majority of television & movies like these few examples, our culture is keeping us childlike because our minds can’t mature on a diet of such fast-food crap. We need stimulating & challenging material for our mental as well as our moral growth as individuals & collectively as a society & nation. In short, the more we are handicapped intellectually, the easier it is for the unscrupulous elite like Trump & the real 1%, to manipulate & control us.

 

If you are concerned about the very real harms caused by these phenomena to your own families, I suggest that you read Neil Postman’s classic on the subject, “Amusing Ourselves to Death.” Okay, now I’m about to probably piss-off the majority of men in America because I’m about to cross the threshold of one of the most sacrosanct pastimes which is Sports.

Yeah, I know that by criticizing sports, I am violating an unspoken but sacred taboo in America & most of the world but so be it! My greatest hero & mentor is Noam Chomsky & years ago he confessed that when he was in high school, it dawned on him, “Why should I attend all my school’s football games & etc. and cheer them on, I don’t know any of them & they don’t mean anything to me?”

 

Pretty honest & succinct wouldn’t you say? Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the competition in a clean & fair game, but I’ve never understood the depth & breadth or the absolutely insane worship of football, basketball, baseball, etc. To illustrate, why is it that across America in some of our poorest, most dilapidated, crime-ridden inner cities, the city planners will use billions of the taxpayers’ money to build Roman Coliseum-type sports arenas & give them free to the mega-rich sports teams owners? The taxpayers who paid for those arenas don’t receive a portion of the earnings from the ticket sales & have to pay exorbitant prices to attend the “games.” But when those same, poor inner-city residents ask for better schools, health care, or social welfare programs, they’re told, “Sorry, we just don’t have the money.”

 

I’d say this illustrates clearly how upside-down our priorities are & how absurdly out of proportion our love of sports has become. When I was in my 20s & living in L.A., my friends used to crack-up at me because we’d all be partying & watching some game for hours, but I wouldn’t know what teams were playing. And it’s not like I was some armchair-sissy or something, we played very aggressive volleyball almost every Sunday for nearly 11 years & I was notorious for playing rough i.e. I was never as coordinated as my friends & would jam my fingers in the net, raise my knee up when I was going against the guy on the other side of the net, etc. But we did eventually clean our act up & it was no longer a  contact sport. Ha! Ha!

 

I always had a backpack of books with me & never stopped trying to get my friends to read a few sentences or a paragraph of something I felt was worthwhile when they’d give me their attention for a few moments. And it saddens me to the marrow of my bones that for over 50 years whenever I try to persuade a friend to read something that may take 15 minutes & affects their lives i.e. their healthcare, their pension, whether their job will be shipped overseas, etc., their response is always the same, “Sorry, it’s been a long day at work, I just don’t have the time, etc.”

 

They can spend four to eight hours after getting off work to watch sports, play childish video games, watch “reality t.v.,” etc. but no, they can’t or won’t spend a few minutes to empower themselves. The older I get, the more compassion & empathy I feel for those poor souls fleeing the dictators of their home countries — many whom the U.S. put in power — and the less sympathy I feel for my fellow citizens who have it so much better off than those migrants desperately trying to provide a better life for their families.

 

If you get nothing else out of this essay my imaginary reader, I hope you’ll come to understand that one of the key tactics that fascist leaders, tyrants, & dictators throughout history have always used is to focus their citizens’ anger on immigrants & migrants. This is called scapegoating & is a very clever tactic for dividing the public & getting them to blame the poor souls innocently trying to survive, for their economic troubles.

 

And again, Trump is a prime example of a tin-pot, wanna be dictator because he is very skilled at whipping-up the emotions & anger of his followers at his rallies by blaming the Mexican migrants, the Muslims, gay people, liberals, democrats, college students, etc. all to distract his zombie fans from the fact that it is precisely people like Trump & the other corporate cockroaches who are to blame for losing their jobs, health insurance, pensions, etc. Trump has fucked-over & ripped-off thousands of people who’ve worked for him over the decades, yet he’s convinced his Duck Dynasty Klansmen that he’s their champion.

Trump & Italy’s fascist dictator, Mussolini who said “Fascism should more rightly be called Corporatism”

 

Yep! Again & again, we witness how the elite treat us like children & infantilize us with claims like, don’t worry my children, Daddy Trump is here to protect you & look out for you. And all the while, he’s pocketing millions from his gullible children too busy to educate & empower themselves because they’re playing video games, watching sports, or watching mind-numbing T.V. programs or movies.

Next on my list of things that are keeping us childlike & vulnerable to the powers that be are so-called “Smart phones.” I’ve been saying for several years now that whoever dubbed them smart phones had a perverse sense of humor because they’re actually making their users dumber the more they use them.

 

I won’t belabor this subject too much for the sake of brevity in terms of the length of this essay but if you’ll take the time to watch a few, short You Tube videos by Tristan Harris who used to design Smart Phones when he worked for Google, I believe you’ll see my point? Again, these phones help to condition us to be passive consumers distracted by our phones all day, every day. A good analogy would be those hanging mobiles over baby’s cribs to visually stimulate & occupy their attention.

As Tristan Harris points out, our smart phones purposely distract & occupy our attention with all their bells, lights, & whistles and are very much like slot machines designed to addict us to them. And excuse my bragging again but I’m proud to say that I don’t own one & I’ve never learned to “text.” These phones not only help to shorten our attention spans but also are undermining our ability to focus mentally, to write, & even to speak i.e., fewer & fewer people nowadays will even leave a voicemail.

 

People proudly proclaim, “look at all the things I can do with my smart phone,” ignoring the sad facts that I just listed regarding our overall mental capabilities. Of course, it’s become a humorous cliché these days to point out the funny & sometimes serious consequences of people walking down the street with their eyes glued to the tiny screen on their phones but in terms of our progress as a culture or a society, we are paying a very dear price indeed.

 

Lastly, I want to touch on the subject of the so-called “social media.” Again, this is another perverse twist on the facts of social media. In brief, they are actually anti-social platforms that have sown far more division in our society than unity. Where would Trump have been were it not for his Twitter account for the first several years of his presidency. Furthermore, I still don’t understand why a lot more attention hasn’t focused on Trump’s use of Cambridge Analytica’s deliberate propaganda campaign supplied by Facebook’s greedy & unconcerned, Mark Zuckerberg.

If this is of concern to you, I heartily recommend another fantastic video available on You Tube called “The Great Hack.” And because this is an area of such vast & national interest, I encourage you to watch another video that reveals the real meat & potatoes so-to-speak, about “social media,” called, “Toxic by Design.” Yes, my imaginary friend, the knowledge is available as to how, why, & etc. the power elite have kept us as children so they could become richer & richer.

We know that no matter how many mansions, yachts, private jets, etc. they own, it’s never enough for them. And no my friends, we’re not going to be saved by one of Hollywood’s comic book heroes. If we are to survive & prosper, we must do the heavy lifting ourselves like mature men & women. If you refuse to put away your playthings, you will live out your sad life like a child trapped in their crib stunted mentally, morally, & emotionally for life.

 

It’s a moral imperative that we become men & women of integrity. A rare quality in these days of a fast buck at whatever the cost.

 

“People with integrity tell the truth and act in a sincere way. They treat people equally and take responsibility for their own feelings and actions. Integrity is more than just being honest; it’s acting ethically, consistently, and in a trustworthy manner.

Integrity is sometimes summed up as “doing the right thing, even when no one is looking.” It’s an apt motto for kids in the digital age, when everything from cheating with cell phones to plagiarizing to cyberbullying anonymously can be done with no witnesses. Integrity secures the whole foundation of our interconnected relationships — both online and off.

It’s natural for kids to have setbacks as they build their character strengths. Be patient and forgiving, as integrity is strengthened over time in various challenging situations.”  https://www.commonsensemedia.org/articles/what-is-integrity

 

As I was growing up, I heard the term “Renaissance man,” used again & again and it aroused my intellectual curiosity. Here is a thumbnail sketch of the term.

 

Renaissance man, also called Universal Man, Italian Uomo Universale, an ideal that developed in Renaissance Italy from the notion expressed by one of its most-accomplished representatives, Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72), that “a man can do all things if he will.” The ideal embodied the basic tenets of Renaissance humanism, which considered man the centre of the universe, limitless in his capacities for development, and led to the notion that men should try to embrace all knowledge and develop their own capacities as fully as possible.

Thus the gifted men of the Renaissance sought to develop skills in all areas of knowledge, in physical development, in social accomplishments, and in the arts. The ideal was most brilliantly exemplified in Alberti—who was an accomplished architect, painter, classicist, poet, scientist, and mathematician and who also boasted of his skill as a horseman and in physical feats—and in Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), whose gifts were manifest in the fields of art, science, music, invention, and writing.

 

In today’s ass-backwards value system we are told repeatedly that we must focus our studies on a specific subject or in other words, specialize. This is the antithesis of the Renaissance ideal which was to generalize because as Leonardo da Vinci knew all too well, all knowledge is interconnected!

 

This is a good point at which to segue to one of today’s major crises, the continued attempts by the Christian extremists to infantilize the entire American population. If this strikes you as an exaggeration, reflect on their success in overturning Roe vs. Wade. You see, these wolves in “Christian clothing” have as their major goal, a desire to turn not just America but the entire world into their ideal of a “Christian paradise” here on earth. And that can only be accomplished by their becoming authoritarians barely discernible from the likes of Hitler or Stalin.

 

This is why over 74 million of the so-called American Christians not only voted for Trump, but they also sing his praises. And they have no problem with Trump bragging about being able to grab women by their pussies. I wonder how they’d feel if he did this to their wives or daughters?

 

In these delusional hypocrites’ theology, women are to remain barefoot, pregnant, & silent in the home. The husband/father is the authoritarian in the family & the preacher is the authoritarian i.e., absolute ruler, in their churches. And the more you study these people, the more similarities you will find between them & the Muslim extremists like the Taliban in Afghanistan & the Jewish extremists in Israel trying to exterminate the Palestinians.

 

I posit that America’s “Christian” extremists & White Supremacists are traitors & should be tried & sent to prison because they seek to tear down the wall of separation between Church & State that our founding fathers established. And yeah, I acknowledge that the framers of our Constitutional form of government were white, wealthy landowners, & many were slave owners. What they gave us was far from perfect, ideal, or humane but it has allowed us far more freedoms than many, if not most other nations.

 

It always comes back to education & I’m referring to education in the broadest sense as in the ideal of the Renaissance man & Humanism. These “Christians” who have turned their backs on Jesus’ teaching laid out so simple & clear in his Sermon on the Mount, are scared to death of Humanism because it reveals all their ugly hypocrisies & true agenda.

 

Our founding fathers were students of the Enlightenment, another glorious era of education & that’s why they purposely separated the Church & State in our founding document, the U.S. Constitution. A cursory look back at the history of Western Civilization shows just how powerful & destructive a force it is when the Church & State work together. The individual in such a society is little more than a peasant or a serf who is forced to slave from sun-up to sundown & even then, he often can’t feed his own family because he’s forced to give the majority of his harvest to the Church & the State i.e., kings, lords, barons, etc.

Noam Chomsky whom the New York Times said is “arguably, the most important intellectual alive.”

 

A few years back, I sent Noam Chomsky an email asking him for an example of the harm when the Church & the State work together & oppress the average citizen. I felt pretty dumb when Noam replied with the simple answer which was so obvious i.e., when the Roman Empire declared Christianity to be their state religion. Mull that over for a while if you will.

 

I’ll leave you with a little bit of not so common knowledge that will probably surprise you & gives me a bit of hope that if enough of us wake-up by informing ourselves & uniting, we may survive the mass insanity we are witnessing around us.

 

Muslims, Jews, & Christians lived together in Palestine in relatively modest harmony for centuries! https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/08/04/jews-muslims-and-christians-once-lived-harmoniously-in-palest

 

It’s imperative that we don’t forget that Hitler’s Nazis called themselves Christians even as they murdered six million Jews along with a couple of million gypsies, artists, homosexuals, scholars, Poles, etc. And it’s not insignificant that most of the far-right “Christian supremacists” of today & in Trump’s army of the Walking Dead deny the Holocaust even happened.

 

Remember the old maxim that those who don’t learn the mistakes of history are condemned to repeat the same “mistakes.” The faux “Christians” are like termites destroying a house from within but the house they’re tearing apart is our home, our country, the United States of America and United we Stand, Divided we Fall! Don’t let the haters like Trump divide & conquer us, show them that we’re not children but men & women of integrity!

 

— Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR  January 9, 2023

 

 

The Conspiracy Against Public Education began with The Trial of Socrates

 

 

First of all, this isn’t simply another one of those dumb-fuck conspiracy theories by the QAnon brain-dead. I used to be a lot more susceptible to conspiracy theories in my 20s but have long since matured. Yet, there has been a nagging question in the back of my mind for decades & that is, is there a conspiracy by the power elite to keep the public dumbed-down or is it merely the unfortunate confluence of several negative forces, a coincidence if you will?

 

In a very real sense, my entire life has been centered around the subject of education. From kindergarten on, I have been madly in love with education & this love has propelled me forward ever since. In fact, looking back, it’s probably also a factor in my initial attraction to the lady who was to become my wife.

 

From the moment Jeri & I were dancing in the nightclub where I met her, we were exchanging ideas about education & travel. She was teaching Special Education at a high school & I was a college student still trying to find myself. And with her love for me & belief in me, I finally became serious about college & began to pursue my B.A. in earnest.

 

Around the same time, I developed an interest in politics & Reagan who was the former governor of our state, was elected president. Ronnie was the first president who truly worried me because I could see that he was clearly on the side of the rich & the powerful. He was brazen in his war against the poor & the working class & around this same time, I had also stumbled upon the subject of philosophy.

 

Prior to philosophy, nothing really stirred my spirit in college but with philosophy I thought, now this is something I can really sink my teeth into. And Socrates, the “Father of Western Philosophy,” was like a lighthouse on a dark, stormy night for a ship desperately trying to find a safe harbor.

The School of Athens (Plato & Aristotle, the two pillars of Western Civilization in archway)

 

No disrespect intended but for those of you who may not be aware of Socrates’ story, I’m going to give a thumb-nail sketch here. Note before I get started that Athens was Socrates’ home & it was also where our form of government, Democracy, was born. Socrates loved to think & he loved to inspire others to think not just on the usual, superficial level, but on a much deeper level so ideally, they could have a true or honest discussion about serious matters.

 

As a matter-of-fact, I believe that Noam Chomsky, often referred to as the greatest living intellectual on the planet & I’m very proud to claim as a friend, is similar to Socrates in that his constant probing is his way of empowering ourselves. And like Socrates who was loved & respected by roughly half of Athens, Chomsky is either loved or feared & hated by a large proportion of people because he doesn’t pull his punches.

Socrates spent his days wandering the streets of Athens & followed by young men who enjoyed watching him cut the arrogant & ignorant down to size intellectually. For example, a man could become well-known & respected as a master shipbuilder but he’d think therefore he was entitled to pontificate on everything from how to properly raise a child to how to strategize for a war campaign.

 

Naturally, Socrates public humiliation which revealed their ignorance & pomposity created a number of enemies for Socrates though he didn’t set out to publicly ridicule them, he simply let them hang themselves or reveal their ignorance all on their own. And again, Chomsky pretty much does the same.

Noam doesn’t watch T.V. or movies, he simply reads & writes and gives talks.

 

One of Socrates’ central or core stratagems in his attempts to wake people up was to always come back to the definition of a word or a concept. Many, if not most people use words assuming that they’re understood universally & agreed upon. Words like freedom, truth, beauty, etc. But with a little digging & more in depth conversations, it soon becomes evident that two people in a conversation or a debate, could hold two entirely different perspective on key words/concepts they are discussing or arguing about.

 

Well eventually, Socrates’ detractors grew to such a large number that he was charged with; “Socrates was accused of impiety against the traditional Greek religion, of acting (as a member of the Popular Assembly) against the will of the people, of speaking against the democratic idea of elections, and of corrupting the young to his own beliefs. “

 

As to the charge of impiety, it’s obvious that religion still exerts a powerful control over our lives i.e. every politician must include in their speeches, “God bless America.” I don’t want to wander too far afield re: the will of the people or the democratic idea of elections but as for corrupting the young to his own beliefs, this is key.

 

Obviously, Socrates’ teaching was the antithesis of “belief”  and what he was truly guilty of was teaching people to question authority. This of course pissed-off the leaders of Athens who like all leaders, want total obedience & no questioning of their authority.

 

A cursory review of history shows that the Church & the State have vied for power over the public continuously & at times, they have united in their suppression of the public & those have been the worst of times for humanity. In the U.S., the powers that be passed a law that all children of school age must attend public school. Why? It certainly isn’t because they give a damn about the education of our children though they constantly proclaim it is, no, it’s quite simply because  young children are far more susceptible to indoctrination when they’re young.

Now this is most likely where you may think I’ve gone off the rails into conspiracy land but I assure you, no, I haven’t & here are just a couple of examples to support my contention.

 

Back around 1974, I was interviewing for a job & the guy seemed fairly openminded & I learned that he was president of the local school district. I had read, “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” by Dee Brown & I took a chance. I asked him directly, why do they teach us lies about the so-called “Winning of the West,” and etc. His reply was simple & direct, “Because most students don’t go on to college & the government wants students to leave public school with a good feeling about their country.”

 

I was surprised at his candor & the matter-of-fact tone in which he spoke about it. I thought, Jesus Christ, this is a Hispanic guy who must be aware of how fucked-over his race has been by the White men yet it doesn’t seem to matter  to him?

 

Continuing on, years later I read John Taylor Gatto’s classic, “The Underground History of American Education.” This book totally blew my mind & was a real eye-opener. In fact, I wrote a book on the subject using Gatto’s book as the skeleton or outline upon which I created my book but I haven’t gotten around to editing it yet.  Here are just a couple of things that I learned from Gatto’s monumental work.

 

Our illustrious president, Woodrow Wilson who ran for the presidency promising to keep America out of WWI but once in office, promptly turned around & got us involved in “the war to end all wars,” had this to say about public education;

 

“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”
― Woodrow Wilson

 

If this isn’t clear enough for you to see or understand what I’m trying to convey in this essay, then I don’t know what would be? The important thing to note in this quote from President Wilson is that he, like the other rulers of America over the years, wasn’t attempting to hide his true beliefs. Obviously this isn’t a conspiracy in the usual sense or understanding of the word. No, rather it is a conspiracy hiding in plain sight. A declaration if you will of what the power elite truly believe i.e. they are superior beings & the rest of us, the 99%, are here to serve them & make them wealthier.

As an aside, friends over the years have come to me for answers because they know how deeply I love education & my advice has often been; 1)read to your children when they’re young & let them see you reading on a regular basis 2)study the subjects you didn’t do well in when you were in school 3) and study what the rich study.

 

And no, I’m not talking about the obvious subjects like accounting, economics, etc. that many of the rich studied & became rich because of it because that’s just a glorified version of a trade school. Yes, study economics, finance, etc. but the true source of their wealth lies in the classics of the humanities in the academic disciplines of history, literature, philosophy, etc.

 

Unfortunately, far too many people dismiss the humanities as useless pursuits but they couldn’t be more wrong. Quite simply, the humanities are about humanity or people, their common dreams, fears, worries, etc. and since all business boils down to people, mostly how to manipulate & control them so you can sell them your products or services, the better you understand people, the better your chances of success in business.

 

Personally, I enjoy the humanities because I am a utopian or an idealist & want to see humanity become more harmonious & less at the mercy of the greedy & the merciless. But in general, the more we can arm or empower ourselves intellectually, the greater our chances of survival.

 

Another example of the conspiracy against us is something else I learned from Mr. Gatto, for the sake of brevity because I’m all too aware of how short people’s attention spans have become, I’m going to lay it out short & sweet. Four of America’s most notorious or famous Robber Barons depending on your perspective were Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, & Morgan. These “titans of industry,” like the master shipbuilder in Socrates’ day, felt they were naturally the founts of wisdom in regards to the proper education of our young.

 

And because a lot of their wealth derived from the factory system model in terms of how to run a successful business, they believed the same system could be employed in educating American students. The covert curriculum was very basic & consisted of punctuality, obedience, & repetitive work.

 

This just reminded me of another personal experience. I worked as a cub reporter for the little paper in Paramount, CA where I attended school from the 6th grade to graduation & I was interviewing the principal of my old high school one day. I asked him why Paramount High School didn’t offer classes like trigonometry, calculus, physics, etc. & he replied matter-of-factly that it was because we were an industrially-zoned city. So, our students were on a vocational track.

The more I thought about his reply in the months & years that followed, the more angry I became. You see, when I first started going to college, I wanted to become a forest ranger but I soon learned that I should’ve taken those classes that I mentioned above, while in high school. Moreover, when I was in the sixth grade, I scored in the 11th grade, sixth month level in reading. But never once was I encouraged or told about other possible options to make the best use of my intelligence. In short, these bastards were playing God with not only my life but the lives of countless others.

 

In conclusion, the inspiration for writing this essay came from a book I recently started reading titled, “The Hidden History of Neoliberalism” by Thom Hartmann. And on page 18, Mr. Hartmann states;

 

“… the ‘creeds’ of the modern democracies of the 1940s that were expanding government services like free health care and education for working class people threatened to destroy ‘freedom of thought and expression’ and could only lead to totalitarianism.”

 

This passage struck me like a thunderbolt & I thought, here it is & as obvious as the nose on my face, the “freedom of thought & expression,” they are speaking of is only meant for the wealthy. The rest of us aren’t worthy of such noble ideals & should be content with our lots in life like the peasants & serfs of the feudal age.

 

The “elite” proclaim ad nauseam that the rest of us are too lazy or too stupid to know how to run our lives because if we weren’t, we’d be rich like them. Leaving out inconvenient truths like the fact that they have stood on our throats with their boots from the day we were born until the day we die.

Of course the charade or the façade of freedom, equality, justice, etc. must be maintained so when a politician is running for office, these worn-out platitudes are given lip-service. Yet underneath it all, the 1% have been waging a non-stop, underground war against public education. But Trump didn’t give a shit & didn’t even bother to hide his contempt for public education & appointed Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education.

What’s to be done? Well, it’s always been the same answer, we must take our own education as well as the education of our loved ones into our own hands. Yep! No simple remedy my friend, just plain, old fashioned work & ingenuity if we are to survive individually & collectively? Here’s a gem from Doris Lessing, a favorite author of one of my favorite professors when I was an undergrad in English literature, Roy Garrot;

 

“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”

 

— Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR December 27, 2022

 

P.S.  here’s a quote from Rockefeller, “I don’t want a nation of thinkers, I want a nation of workers.” By-the-way, when is the last time you heard of a new weapons system that was denied because “we just can’t afford it?” Why not? Because the military-industrial complex is owned by the 1% & every new weapons system is cash in the bank for these unholy scum & another working class student is denied a chance to make something  of their life. And this isn’t some secret conspiracy, it’s perfectly legal because they are the only law that matters in this corrupt nation under God!

My Friendship with Noam Chomsky

Perhaps appropriately, Noam Chomsky was born on Dec. 7th, 1928. I say this because as you know, America was attacked by the Japanese on Dec. 7th, 1941, in Pearl Harbor. And in my not so humble opinion, Chomsky is like a force of nature & luckily for us & the rest of the world, he is a force for good & dedicated to trying to inform & wake the U.S. in particular, about the serious threats to humanity’s survival.

 

I don’t recall exactly when I first came across Chomsky’s writing but when I was bumming around Europe in the summer of 1976, his books took up the majority of the space allotted for books in English in bookstores across Europe. Paris, Madrid, Rome are just a few of the cities I’d look for something in English to read, and Chomsky dominated the bookshelves.

 

I’m drawing an analogy between Chomsky & the impact of Pearl Harbor in an effort to emphasize the devastating affect this one man’s wisdom & insights can & often does have on the major issues of our day. I hope the tone of this essay doesn’t sound like I’m a simpering sychophant? But it’s hard not to sound like that the more I’ve learned about Chomsky over the years, especially when this world-famous genius, took the time for 16 years, to reply to my emails.

 

I’m probably getting carried away to some extent when I say I believe Chomsky was in the very first group of professors who began to publicly protest about America’s early intervention in the Vietnamese civil war. He’d often have a few students at his home, or theirs & they’d discuss & debate the issue. He’d give a talk to five or six people in a church, a store front, etc. including a few drunk bums off the street. Yep! This was in the very early 1960s & way before any national or huge crowds were protesting against the Vietnam War.

Noam with his friends, Howard Zinn & Daniel Ellsberg

 

I trailed-off in my argument about Chomsky & the Vietnam civil war, Chomsky may have well been the spark that lit the Anti-Vietnam War movement in the 60s. I lived in L.A. at the time, and a lot of the anti-war movement seemed to center around Berkeley in the San Francisco area at Berkeley University.

 

So, wherever the movement began or exactly when doesn’t matter, what matters is that we have the knowledge & wisdom of truly the world’s greatest living author to inform us & empower ourselves against the corporate cockroaches that have infected nearly everything. Hopefully I’ll finish this essay before his birthday because everybody should know about this fine man’s life & dedication to his work & his love for all of humanity!

 

It was the Spring of 2006 & I was living out of my old Ford Econoline van. I was trying to find work in Newport, my favorite town on the Oregon coast & I practically lived at the unemployment office. When I needed the Internet, I could use the computers in the unemployment office, they didn’t watch too closely. I got the idea one day to try to contact Noam Chomsky & it didn’t take long to get his email address at M.I.T.

 

The thing I perhaps love the most about the Internet is that if you have the nerve, you can contact an amazing number of well-respected scholars, journalists, authors, etc. and to my wonderful astonishment, I sent Noam an email & he replied either a couple hours later that same day, or the next day? And for the record, I have attempted to contact several lot less famous people & either received no reply or a rude, dismissive message. Here is Noam’s first reply to me & the rest as they say, is history.

a little “light” reading

 

“Quite a story.  The best part is that “the bastards haven’t stopped me yet! I’m going to keep on fighting them until my dying days.” That’s the right attitude, and over time, it does make a difference.

Good luck.

 

Noam”

—– Original Message —–

From: Rob DeLoss (by way of Noam Chomsky <chomsky@mit.edu>)

To: Noam Chomsky

Sent: Friday, March 17, 2006 10:07 AM

Subject: Re: submission of an essay

perhaps Noam’s key message to humanity

 

I often wish that I was a heck of a lot more technology-savvy, especially re: computers & the Internet because I wanted to include the date & time stamp from each email to & from Noam to attest to their veracity. But several years back, I culled through a number of them & did save a few pages of the highlights of my correspondence with Noam over the years. So, if you doubt my word, I’m not going to lose sleep over it, my conscience is clear.

 

Again, for me the simple fact that this man who gives talks around the world, teaches, writes books, & from what I understand, spends several hours per day trying to answer his correspondence, has repeatedly honored me by replying, is a terribly generous gift. And I try to keep my emails to Noam short & succinct. His replies are rarely more than a couple of sentences, but they are precious.

Noam with Julian Assange at Ecuador’s embassy in London. Noam has always defended the victims of the powers that be.

 

By-the-way, I have sent “snail-mail” to Noam a few times as well & he responded with letters that had M.I.T.’s letterhead. I have also made music CDs a few times for Noam though he doesn’t seem to have much interest in music. And I remember one St. Patrick’s Day when I sent him a You Tube video clip of Van Morrison’s “Contacting My Angel” and he responded immediately saying, “I’m just sitting here mesmerized by the visuals in this song,” (or something to that effect?) and we each took a shot of whiskey.

I told Noam once how I’d love to share a couple of pints in a pub with him.

 

Speaking of which, I’m such a goof-ball that upon hearing that he used to get beat-up by Irish bullies in the neighborhood he grew up in Philadelphia, I sent him an email apologizing for my Irish relatives (tongue in cheek) & Noam wrote back that if for some reason he were ever forced to leave America, Ireland is where he’d like to retire.

Noam & his beloved wife of 59 years, Carol

One very special correspondence was not long after his beloved wife, Carol, had passed away. I had stumbled upon this imitation of a parchment scroll in the gift shop of Canterbury Cathedral after my mother had died, “Death is Nothing” by Henry Scott-Holland (1847-1918). It gave me more personal comfort than anything else I’d found after my mom’s passing, so I made a nice copy of it & snail-mailed it to Noam.

 

Noam told me that it had brought tears to his eyes & that he’d store it in a very special place. And he made a copy of it & returned the copy I sent him because he thought it was the original. The fact that I’d touched his heart warmed my heart more than I can express.

Always has been & always will be, a man of the people.

 

To return to our correspondence, I had a thick stack of notes I’d compiled many years ago for a book on Christian fundamentalists, but my inner critic told me, Who do you think you’re fooling? You’re not qualified to write a book. And I let the notes sit on my bookshelf for 17 years. But when I turned 50, I said to my “inner critic,” Shut the fuck up!

 

And I spread the notes (on 4”X 5” slips of paper) on the living room carpet & started categorizing them. They became the skeleton outline & I filled in the gaps, but I still left the project unfinished. One day I wrote to Noam about my project & he replied;

 

“You should think about publishing the book. Today the fundamentalists are really a dangerous force.”

 

So, I paid an editor $200 to professionally edit my book & it took him over a year (he works on several projects at a time) & a few years back, I discovered Amazon’s “Kindle publishing,” which claimed that it was very easy to format & publish your book using it. I spent hours & just became more & more frustrated & pissed-off. I hired a gal & she too had a hell of a lot of problems trying to format it.

 

I “published” it & told Noam I had. The original version was in paperback & Noam bought a copy, in fact, he received his copy before I got mine. It was so embarrassing & looked totally unprofessional, but Noam said, “Don’t worry about it, I’ve seen worse.”

 

I went to the local print shop & had a copy made in 8.5” X 11” & bound with that spiral plastic and sent it to Noam. And I switched it to only available in a Kindle format on Amazon. I may have sold half a dozen copies so far in about four years? Ha! Ha! But the fact that Noam Chomsky was perhaps the first to buy a copy is again such a badge of honor.

This reminds me of a humorous email I received from Noam several years back. I confessed to him that I was still insecure about my grammar even though I’d earned my B.A. in English literature. Noam chuckled so-to-speak & confided to me that the only class he’d ever failed was a class in Grammar in high school. And he often argues with editors who want to change something in the books he’s written. Isn’t that a hoot? Noam revolutionized the field of linguistics, yet editors argue with him about his grammar?

 

Switching gears & I hope this isn’t seen as morbid, but I want to share with you, my imaginary reader, just how real & compassionate this man is. A couple years ago, I was diagnosed with an incurable form of cancer. They don’t know which kind of cancer it is but assured me that it is manageable. I thought it over very thoroughly & decided that no, I’m not going to spend the rest of my life going through chemo & radiation as my savings gradually disappear.

 

You end up broke & homeless like so many other poor souls on our streets that our society has simply discarded & this isn’t me. I’d rather go out with a semblance of dignity & defiance. And like in so many other critical times in my life such as the passing of my dear wife, Jeri, in 2013, I often seek Noam’s counsel. He’s been like a surrogate father for me.

 

Noam took a couple of days to respond & apologized saying he wasn’t quite sure how to respond? But he told me that my letter was one of the most moving letters he’d ever received. These brief responses from Noam have meant the world to me & Jeri knew how precious my friendship with Noam was to me which also touched my heart.

The poster on the wall is of Bertrand Russell, one of Noam’s main heroes.

Well as usual with our fucked-up medical system, my medical provider i.e., P.A. (physician’s assistant) never bothered to tell me anything about what to expect from my cancer so for several months I thought that I could kick the bucket at any time. And call it ego or whatever you like but the thought of passing on with all the writing I’ve done over the years ending up in a trash-can bugs me. So, in the remote possibility of someone who gives a shit about my work, trying to publish it, I took the bold step of asking Noam if he’d write a short blurb that could possibly help someone to get my work published. This is what my friend had to say.

 

Rob DeLoss and I have been good friends for many years, through regular correspondence. During these years I have had the opportunity to read much of what he has written, with much appreciation. His work is penetrating, instructive, challenging, always appealing. It is very good to know that it is being edited and collected for publication. (Noam Chomsky)

 

I must also confess here, my imaginary reader, that if I come across as desperate & insecure, it’s because I am. Hopefully this doesn’t come across as a self-pity party but for the last forty years or better, I have practically pleaded with family & friends as well as strangers, to read my essays & tell me what they think. It’s been like pulling teeth & I’m so fed-up with it, I can scream!

 

In fact, I was so desperate for feedback that several years ago I joined Facebook even though my gut told me it was a fool’s errand. But the stubborn Irish mule that I am, kept on trying naively thinking I’d find some real people on Facebook. I should’ve listened to my gut instinct & I’m more pissed-off at myself than I am all those self-deluded people on “social media” platforms who believe that clicking on emojis is communicating.

Moreover, I wrote to Noam about my having written to a hundred of my former Facebook “friends,” whom I believed I actually had a friendship with, pleading with them that we morally support one another by writing to each other & reading each other’s work and not a single one of them replied.

 

Noam’s reply: “Confirms my commitment to keep away from Facebook and all social media.” Gee, I wonder why the Democrats & the liberals can’t get their shit together and we have so many willfully ignorant morons in Congress & the Republican party?

Noam & his wife, Valeria, who has given him a new lease on life!

 

I could go on & on sharing my treasured correspondence with Noam but will end with one about an email I sent to him because I wanted to show him another part of me. Noam’s moral courage in standing up to the federal government in the early days of our participation in Vietnam’s civil war, his facing a possible lengthy stay in prison, etc. inspired me to share my experience in the infamous, Santa Rita Jail (more like a prison than a jail).

Noam signed this pic of himself & I had it framed.

 

This “jail” is in Alameda County in California & the citizens of Oakland, make up the majority of its inmates. We were being held in a large cell about 25’ X 25’ & we were crammed together like sardines. There were about three or four Hispanics & two white guys, one of which was me & a young kid.

 

In the middle of the cell & face-down was a Black man & by the look of his clothes, he was probably homeless. A group of young, Black punks were standing near him & making all sorts of really ugly comments & thought they were so funny. I could see the shame in the older Black men around my age, I was 54 at the time. One young asshole was so pleased with himself & seemed to be the main instigator of all the vile shit coming out of their mouths.

 

I got so disgusted that I moved to the back wall of the cell & sat down. I was so tempted to tell them what I thought of them & kept telling myself, No Rob, don’t do it! But I couldn’t take any more so I stood up, walked back to the center & started to speak but was speaking in too low a voice so I raised my voice & looking at the young “leader of the pack,” I exclaimed; “There’s an old saying, People may just think you’re stupid, so why open your mouth and remove all doubt? The punk’s mouth opened but he was dumbfounded & struggled to find a response and just mumbled something.

 

I returned to the back wall & sat down with my back to the wall. The young, white kid came over & sat down beside me and simply offered his hand to shake mine & we didn’t speak.

 

Noam responded with; “That’s impressive. Took a lot of guts. No reason to keep it secret. Can’t think of much like it.”

Thanks for listening, my imaginary reader.

 

— Rob DeLoss Gold Beach, Oregon Dec. 4, 2022

Whatever happened to Common Sense?

How much more obvious does this fake president have to be?

 

Common sense is sound, practical judgment concerning everyday matters, or a basic ability to perceiveunderstand, and judge in a manner that is shared by (i.e. common to) nearly all people.[1]

 

My common sense tells me after four years under an absolutely bankrupt morally & mentally Trump administration that common sense can no longer be trusted. Critical & analytical thinking must become our goal, or we are truly doomed.

 

Common sense tells anyone who possesses it that a supposed billionaire doesn’t have anything in common with me or anyone else in the working class & doesn’t give a shit whether we live or die. How do you think people who are that obscenely wealthy made all that money? By playing fair in their business dealings or treating their customers fairly? Duh! How can so many millions of Americans who have lost their once decent paying jobs, had their homes foreclosed on, had their pensions stolen by the Super banks, you know, the ones too big to fail or jail, believe Trump is their champion?

 

Common sense also tells me that “Reality T.V. shows” aren’t real & the term is an oxymoron i.e., T.V. is an artificial construct & medium for entertaining people. But thanks to the long & steady decline of intelligence in America by the immoral C.E.O.s of many, if not most, of those corporations who profit from a dumbed-down workforce & citizenry, we find ourselves in this Mad Hatter state of being.

Every day of Trump’s presidency defied common sense, yet his believers chose to close their eyes, their ears, their minds, & their hearts to his daily displays of an absolutely heartless & self-centered psychopath. And like those millions of so-called Christians who have completely abandoned Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount & his principles for living the Christian faith, the rest of his cult of greed are blind to their hypocrisy.

 

The most destructive result of the four years we experienced under Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan is that we have devolved to a nation where truth is now whatever any moron with a megaphone says it is. Facts are ignored that are inconvenient to whatever absurdity the imbeciles claim to be truth.

 

Trump owes a large measure of his “success,” to Facebook & Twitter and the “mainstream media,” who gave him tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of free advertisement when he was running for the presidency. Don’t forget Fox “news,” the National Enquirer of today which also played a significant role in dumbing the U.S. public down.

 

And no, I’m not another Alex Jones conspiracy-nut or fan. But many of the institutions & individuals who find that an uninformed public makes their goal of robbing the U.S. Federal Treasury that much easier to accomplish. Why would Trump appoint Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education when she hasn’t spent a day of her life in a public classroom & wants Charter Schools to completely take over our public education system? And Betsy’s family fortune came from that legal Ponzi scheme known as Amway.

 

For as long as I can remember, lawyers, politicians, & used car salesmen have been considered the lowest of the low in American society. And most Americans know that Jeff Bezos didn’t become the wealthiest man on the planet by treating his employees anywhere near fairly. Yet when it comes to the uber-wealthy CEOs of corporations, many of which are more powerful than nations, the mountains of evidence that they screwed their employees & consumers and made their surrounding environments toxic doesn’t seem to bother people?

 

Trump apologists believe that because he wasn’t a politician but is supposedly a billionaire means he gets a free pass & can be trusted. Does this represent common sense to you?

 

I must be from some lost world because if someone or some corporation poisoned my loved ones with their toxic products, etc., not only would I not trust them or believe a word out of their mouths, I would be as Mad as Hell & seek justice. And it’s quite remarkable that Trump supporters can block so much about Trump’s past from their minds & actually believe that the liberal democrats, the mass media, etc. etc. etc. are one vast conspiracy united in an agenda of hate toward their leader.

My common sense tells me how utterly absurd a theory like that is. As most people know who have ever tried to organize even their own local PTA board, there are going to be those who aren’t in agreement & who will try to undermine the organizing. Yet we’re asked to believe that this vast, liberal conspiracy is 100% united & working together to tear down poor daddy Donald?

 

Reflect for a moment on how disorganized the liberals & the democrats are & have been throughout their history. Then recall that the so-called “Conservatives,” have always been far more unified in their agenda, policies, & practices. Why? It’s quite simple actually, that’s because the G.O.P. has only one constant agenda/goal & that is greed, power, & profit!

 

My common sense tells me that any politician who works at getting rid of food stamps, housing assistance, unemployment, public welfare, voters rights, health care for the 99%, and on & on & on is my enemy!

 

Why is it that so many of these common sense champions barely utter a word of criticism towards the “Defense industry” which takes over half our tax dollars for tanks the Pentagon doesn’t even want, $900 toilet seats, planes, weapons, etc. that don’t even work, etc. but go ballistic when some greedy & immoral politician claims that the liberals are the ones bankrupting America?

 

It couldn’t be the fact that the G.O.P. & its perverted propaganda agenda from the moment FDR passed the New Deal has been to utterly destroy every vestige of humane concern listed in the New Deal, could it? You see, anything that takes a penny of profit out of the corporate cockroaches’ pockets is seen as immoral, obscene, & theft.

 

Of course, the 1% aren’t worried because they know how short the average person’s attention span is i.e., eight seconds, just behind that of the goldfish. And forget about history, most students hated history in high school & thanks to all the bells & whistles and bright, shiny objects that our “social media,” distracts them with, they have nothing to worry about.

 

Yep, it’s pretty amazing to think that this vast, liberal conspiracy is so technologically-sophisticated that they can instantaneously alter what Trump says & does to make him look bad. We can offer video clips, sound bites, etc. of Trump’s lies & crimes until the cows come home but those commie liberals are able to create all their lies because they hate Trump and all he has done for America.

What scares me most profoundly is that this lowest of human scum, Trump, has created such a Svengali spell over his followers that millions of Americans have died from the COVID virus & many are taking the horse & cattle deworming treatment and are being rushed to emergency for self-poisoning. That’s some special kind of stupid along with Donnie’s suggestion that they drink bleach or inject it. Wouldn’t a true leader lead by example i.e., inject some bleach into his arm, take the horse/cattle dewormer, etc. to prove to his followers how safe it is & how much he believes his own counsel to his fans?

 

Trump is obviously an imbecile & a grifter (to engage in swindling or cheating) to all but the happily ignorant. He pretends to be a successful businessman & lest we forget it, he reminds us at every opportunity. And I seriously doubt that were it not for “reality T.V.” and the “social media,” we would’ve ever allowed such a contemptible person to become president let alone dog catcher.

 

“Reality T.V.” is actors pretending to not be actors & it reflects how desperately dependent we have become on entertaining ourselves. Here’s a brief introduction to a book published by Neil Postman in 1985 which we should seriously reflect on,

 

“Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985) is a book by educator Neil Postman. The book’s origins lay in a talk Postman gave to the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1984. He was participating in a panel on George Orwell‘s Nineteen Eighty-Four and the contemporary world. In the introduction to his book, Postman said that the contemporary world was better reflected by Aldous Huxley‘s Brave New World, whose public was oppressed by their addiction to amusement, rather than by Orwell’s work, where they were oppressed by state control.

 

Postman distinguishes the Orwellian vision of the future, in which totalitarian governments seize individual rights, from that offered by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World, where people medicate themselves into bliss, thereby voluntarily sacrificing their rights. Drawing an analogy with the latter scenario, Postman sees television‘s entertainment value as a present-day “soma“, the fictitious pleasure drug in Brave New World, by means of which the citizens’ rights are exchanged for consumers’ entertainment.

The essential premise of the book, which Postman extends to the rest of his argument(s), is that “form excludes the content”, that is, a particular medium can only sustain a particular level of ideas. Thus rational argument, integral to print typography, is militated against by the medium of television for this reason. Owing to this shortcoming, politics and religion are diluted, and “news of the day” becomes a packaged commodity. Television de-emphasises the quality of information in favour of satisfying the far-reaching needs of entertainment, by which information is encumbered and to which it is subordinate.”

 

I think the first “reality t.v.” show I ever watched & the last one I ever watched was, “Survivor.” People on an island divided up into teams with the goal of being the first to win whatever the prize was. And at the end of that first “reality” show, I said to my beloved wife who is no longer alive, this is total crap! They’re telling people that winning is everything & lying, cheating, backstabbing or whatever you need to do in order to win is okay.

 

Isn’t it strange or is it merely coincidental that this “win at all costs,” is also the business ethos of corporate America though few will admit to it? So, it’s not surprising that Trump should be selected to play the “Reality T.V. star” of the series, “The Apprentice.”

 

Unfortunately, the millions of Americans who fell in love with Trump didn’t make this connection. He didn’t have to act, he only had to be himself. And the fact that not only was he a lousy actor, he was also a lousy businessman, didn’t matter to Trump’s “Walking Dead” because many, if not most of them are probably of about the same I.Q. level as Trump i.e., about fifth grade.

You are probably aware of how great, wonderful, spectacular, etc. Trump is at just about everything he attempts in life because he never ceases to remind his loyal base at every opportunity. So, why has he threatened to sue any school or college he ever attended if they dare to release transcripts of his grades?

 

Our national obsession with entertainment or amusement, our intellectual laziness, our distaste for reading anything even remotely mentally challenging, & our general apathy has all contributed to the zombification of America, the supposedly most powerful nation on Earth.

 

We have clearly entered the new, “Post literate” world & in my not so humble opinion, we are in a death spiral! When we can no longer distinguish between truth, facts, & reality amidst this sea of amusement nor even care that we have, we’re closer than ever to the edge of that cliff overlooking the abyss.

 

We have become a nation of infants like babies in their cribs reaching upward to grab those bright, shiny, colorful shapes in the mobiles just out of reach. And this is the business model that Facebook & many of the other “Social media” use to seduce & distract us while they become ever more obscenely wealthy & we become homeless and die needlessly because of the corporate cockroach’s insistence on medical care as a profit-making system.

 

The “social media” giants like Facebook & Twitter employ “likes,” “shares,” etc. like slot machines with their bells & whistles to keep people coming back & ever more addicted. And Trump knows only too well what Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels knew i.e., the bigger the lie & the more often you repeat it, the “truer” it becomes. In other words, the more the public will believe it. So, grab your popcorn & other goodies and don’t miss a single episode of your “reality T.V.” before the Trumpsters of this land of the free & home of the brave kick you out into the overflowing gutters of America like Donny’s Secretary of the Treasury who was nicknamed the foreclosure king of California.

 

Have you about had your fill of all this “Common Sense?” Don’t be a fool like all those Americans who fought against fascism in WWII, instead, join the fascist army that Trump has inspired & keep patting yourselves on the back knowing that you are the true patriots, not the liberals who believe in sharing & caring about all of humanity & the environment.

 

Yep! Global warming is just another hoax. Don’t worry, Be Happy all you “Christian soldiers.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do Smart phones make us Dumber or Smarter?

Group of teenage boys and girls ignoring each other while using their cell phones at school

 

 

I confess from the start that I’ve been against “Smart phones,” from the beginning. I look out at our cultural wasteland & the armies of zombies hypnotized by their phones, and it depresses me deeply. Americans are reading less & less and they’re communicating less & less even though they believe they’re more in touch with friends than ever.

 

People don’t even like to leave voice mails any longer but prefer leaving text messages. Forget about critical & analytical thinking skills, that requires close reading, reflection, & exchanging thoughts with your friends. Instead, we are drowning in oceans of images & truncated messages of 144 characters or less via Twitter. Why do you think Trump used Twitter so much?

 

Because it’s the perfect format for morons who are like him & can barely put two coherent thoughts together. Chopped, little blurbs designed to rouse people’s emotions not to help them understand the complexities of modern life.

 

I look around & it’s becoming ever clearer that the visual has definitely overtaken the written word. And we can thank the public relations industry as well as the advertising industry for this general dumbing-down of the American public. The introduction & spread of television played a major role in creating our world & fertilizing the soil in which creatures like Trump could grow.

 

Some scholars argue that we’ve entered a “post-literate world,” and I’m more & more inclined to agree with them. How else can we explain the frightening phenomenon that a third of the American public don’t believe scientists & doctors but do believe Trump is their champion?

 

I have spent my life enthralled in my pursuit of knowledge, wisdom, & hopefully peace so perhaps you can get an idea of how painfully depressing modern life in America is for me? I have only met a handful of people in my life who could see beyond a purely utilitarian perspective regarding knowledge. In brief, most people only value knowledge that is going to put more money in their pocket.

Moreover, our never-ending pursuit of money & material possessions is a major factor in why we are facing global catastrophe environmentally & the ever-present possibility of some nation accidentally or purposely initiating a nuclear exchange. Donald the Dunce repeatedly asked those around him why he couldn’t use our nuclear weapons. Yep! I’m not bullshitting.

 

Those of you closer in age to me, may recall that Silicon Valley & the gurus of the New Age tech revolution originally sold us on these gadgets with promises that it would bring us closer together i.e., Facebook’s Zuckerberg but when the money started rolling in, he sold us out & followed a simple “business model” of using algorithms that spread false & hateful posts because people enjoy being scared & hating others whom they believe are behind their hardships & they’ll stay on a “social platform” far longer. Posts & platforms that talk of love, peace, solidarity, etc. don’t hold peoples’ attention long. And the profit is tied to the length of time people are on a page.

 

Furthermore, this all dovetails like a hand in a glove with Smart phones. After all, Smart phones are de facto portable computers. In my opinion, the very labeling of these phones as smart shows how stupid people are because machines can’t be smart, stupid, retarded, intellectually challenged, etc. People have forgotten the basics; it is the human mind that has created all this technology i.e., the smartest beings are human beings. And yeah, I can hear the hardcore & devout high-tech acolytes protesting that robots are already thinking independently, etc.

 

This perspective glosses over the myriad aspects of what it means to be human. And in their zeal & dreams of a future run completely by robots, computers, etc. they are losing sight of their humanity & the millions of little things that are part of the true joy of life. Most notably our human/social interactions. We are social creatures & we need each other to thrive not only on the physical level but the emotional or spiritual level as well.

 

As I was saying earlier, this technology is causing us to become more socially isolated from one another as we withdraw into our own fantasy world bubbles. We’ve all witnessed scenes where a group of young people walk in & it appears that they are a group of friends but within seconds, they are all staring at their smart phones & interacting with others on their phones but not their real or physically present friends sitting next to them.

 

I have long argued that these “social platforms” like Facebook, Twitter, etc. are de facto anti-social, not social tools that bring people together. We learn by interacting with others & comparing ideas, emotions, etc. In a nutshell, we are destroying ourselves from within & with a smile and confident that we are normal, healthy, & well-balanced individuals.

 

I could go on for many pages tackling one point after another in an attempt to persuade you to get rid of your smart phone, but I realize the almost total futility of that. Instead, I’ll just point out a few of the most egregious flaws & falsehoods.

 

First of all, almost all of the “wonders” of your smart phone can be reduced down to the fact that it’s basically a fancy calculator that can make computations at amazing rates or speed. Big deal! Life is about quality not quantity & we should all bear in mind G.I.G.O. (Garbage In, Garbage Out) In other words, your phone is only as good or accurate as the people who programmed it. And what our ever-dwindling powers of critical & analytical thinking skills is showing us that instead of becoming more intelligent as a result of our obsession with computers, phones, etc., we are becoming ever more dumb, vulnerable, & gullible i.e., Trump as president of the most powerful nation on Earth.

 

Here’s a personal anecdote to help illustrate my point. I was enjoying a conversation with a young man in a tavern & he pulled out his smart phone & he repeatedly would break eye contact with me to look something up on his phone. He never bothered to say excuse me & I became more & more pissed-off and finally just got up & walked away without saying anything to him as to why I was angry.

 

I was tempted to get in his face & say, I was interested in talking to you not your phone/computer. He like countless millions of other young people don’t have a clue as to why someone like me would find this behavior extremely rude & disrespectful. I can drink at home for a lot less money, but I go out to public bars to socially interact with other humans not their fuckin’ phones!

 

To be honest with you, I am tiring of attempting to reach others. I have spent hundreds of thousands of hours pursuing knowledge over the course of my life, but I see the love of knowledge going the way of the dinosaur. I feel more & more like a fool, like a modern-day Don Quixote chasing the windmills of my mind. And I’m tired of the laughing behind my back, the smug smiles, & casual dismissal of nearly everything I’ve believed in & treasured throughout my life.

 

Perhaps I’m morphing into a bitter, disillusioned old hermit and am becoming a misanthrope? At the ripe old age of 69, I now have one good friend who attempts to keep up with the things I ask him to read & gives me some feedback. And I have another friend whom I’m not that close to, but we maintain a semblance of a friendship that has stretched over a half century.

 

Without a doubt, the highest point or achievement of my life was meeting & falling in love with my wife, Jeri. And just below that is the joy of developing a friendship with the planet’s friendly & loving defender, Noam Chomsky.

 

So, when the mental midgets mock me, the reassuring words of encouragement that Noam has shared with me over the years comforts me & I know who the true fools are!

 

—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR Dec. 19, 2021

 

P.S.  I’m inserting several videos & links to relevant articles because as much as I’m tempted, I can’t seem to shake the glimmer of hope that resides in my spirit. That prayer that we can save ourselves & the planet from our stupidity.

 

 

 

How we lost our Democracy

President Donald Trump hugs the American flag before his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference

Hurricanes, wildfires, floods & other natural disasters have become far more destructive and frequent thanks to what we benignly call “Climate Change.” In fact, the damage they leave behind is so cataclysmic that they are anything but natural. And like climate deniers, who deny the reality of our environment’s destruction, we also have election deniers who claim to have supernatural powers to detect conspiracies.

The reality of the Trump tornado & his reign of terror is denied vehemently even though he ran for office promising he would destroy the corrupt government in Washington D.C. The M.A.G.A. mental midgets dance with joy at all the harm Trump has caused & apparently respect Putin and his authoritarian (dictatorial) form of government even though their Twinkie-loving toadie Trump hasn’t a clue as to what to replace our government with.

 

I guess they imagine some new variation of the old west before law & order took over? So, everybody packs an automatic rifle & it’ll be survival of the fittest. Not exactly Disneyland or Leave it to Beaver. But hey, at least we’ll be free & not have any more rules or regulations protecting citizens from runaway corporate corruption. Yep! The M.A.G.A. morons think things were bad before their greedy buffoon came along, in the near future, we will return to the good old Dark Ages.

 

No, Trump didn’t swing the wrecking-ball all on his own, America was ripe for a demagogue, but Trump is like a demon on steroids in his insatiable greed & lust for power over others. This is why he goes weak in the knees whenever he shares the world stage or a room with Vlad the Impaler of Russia. The irony of our situation would be humorous if it were not so dishonorable. Trump’s walking dead & mentally and morally challenged traitors are spitting on the graves of their fathers & grandfathers who fought against communism & fascism. Yet they strut around in their fatigues waving the U.S. flag that represents the hard-won freedom & democracy that we supposedly still fight & die for around the globe?

 

Naturally, all the “Defense” contractors couldn’t be happier because their Weapons of Mass Destruction will not only be used against terrorists real & made up, but they can now be turned against American citizens as well.

 

How did we arrive at this dystopia? Well, Trump was just the final straw that broke America’s back & there are plenty of contributing factors. My goal in writing this essay is to simply highlight some of those Weapons of Mass Delusion & other destructive forces. This isn’t a comprehensive list & I’m presenting them in no particular order or rank in terms of their horrific consequences.

 

I believe a significant factor in America’s demise was the advent of “Reality T.V.” I think the “reality” series “Survivor” was one of the first of these absurd shows? I watched an episode with my wife & afterwards, I said, what is this teaching children & young people? It’s telling them that lying, cheating, in short, doing anything to win is okay because this is the reality of life. I never watched another episode or any of the spawns that grew out of this sad phenomenon. How appropriate that it was this kind of television that made Trump a celebrity & played such a large role in helping him to become our president. By-the-way, the producers of the show revealed that Trump demanded that every time his name was mentioned, they had to say, Trump the billionaire. In brief, the show, just like everything about Trump was a staged fraud or fake! And millions of viewers came to believe that Trump was indeed a successful businessman, never mind the facts that his casinos all failed, countless businesses he started, failed, and that his daddy gave him over $400 million dollars, not the measly $1 million he’s always claimed.

 

Equally significant in our slide down towards oblivion was the rise of the so-called “social media.” I really feel like a sucker when it comes to this massively harmful social phenomenon. For years, I wouldn’t join Facebook & thought it was more suited for teenage girls but a cousin of mine told me it was a way to connect with many relatives I didn’t know.

I soon learned that was a dead-end but came up with a pipedream that I could attract readers to my blog via Facebook. I wrote hundreds of posts, posted my essays, answered people’s questions or comments at great length, etc. but like an addict, I couldn’t walk away. Before emojis took over, I’d get an occasional sentence or two from “friends,” every great now & then. I’m not sure of exactly how long I wasted my time, energy, & love on this anti-social platform, probably seven or eight years in total?

 

You could say that it was no wonder that I fit in so well in the field of special education & worked in this area for most of my adult working career. In the context of this essay, it’s important to note that Facebook like other social media platforms is based on a business model that is “Toxic by Design.” In brief, they thrive i.e., prosper financially by sowing seeds of hate & fear and other negative emotions because this keeps people on their pages much longer. And Steve Bannon, one of Trump’s most sinister advisors before he took office, headed an organization called, “Cambridge Analytica.” Thanks to Zuckerberg’s unbridled greed, he gave Bannon access to something like 80,000 American Facebook users which also gave them access to every one of those 80,000’s friends.

And Bannon, being the Dr. Mengele that he is, created hundreds if not thousands of false stories about Hillary & false stories about how wonderful Trump is & they targeted all the Facebook users they knew were persuadable thanks to those “free & innocent looking quizzes” they plant in your Facebook feed. All the while, the DNC was obsessed with Russian trolls for over two years, but it didn’t matter whether they were Russian, Greek, French, Chinese, or whoever, the fact that Facebook allowed them in was basically ignored. So, this too was a significant nail in the coffin of American democracy.

 

Continuing on, consider all the self-righteous protests on the part of the White Supremacists or White Nationalists over what they laughingly call, “Critical Race Theory.” In a nutshell, this is a smokescreen the White Supremacists are hiding behind in their audacious claims that they are the victims & are being labeled as racists. And they hope to completely eliminate any mention of America’s ugly racist past in our public schools because it will soon become evident that racism is alive & well in America. There’s hardly a week that passes without some white cop shooting & killing a young, unarmed black man.

Howard Zinn and his beloved wife, Roz (Roslyn)

 

The venerable Howard Zinn must be rolling over in his grave because his classic, “A People’s History of the United States,” proved that American history has always been taught from the perspectives of the White elite & never from the perspective of the Black people who made the U.S. rich on their backs as slaves. The subjugation & theft from Mexico that created our great Southwest. American women’s role as second class citizens not even allowed to vote until fairly recently, etc.

I graduated high school in 1971 but it wasn’t until 1974 when I read “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” by Dee Brown that I’d ever heard a word about the so-called “Winning of the West,” from a native American’s perspective & this book absolutely blew my mind! The Christian Fascists (see Chris Hedges) & the White Fascists & Nazis have been so emboldened by their Fuhrer Donald that they have gone on the offensive against bleeding-heart liberals, etc. who have the temerity to believe that we should be taught about our entire history, not just the selective stories that paint America as the great, benign, superpower.

Moving along our path to destruction is the erosion of what used to be a proud & honorable profession, American journalism. For those of you who’d like a crash course on some of our most illustrious newsmen, look up George Seldes, I.F. Stone, & Edward R. Murrow. There are many good books on the fall & decline of American journalism but in my opinion, the most succinct & factual book ever written on the subject is “Manufacturing Consent,” by Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky. I have to interject here that Noam Chomsky is considered the greatest living intellectual by millions of people around the globe, including myself.

The American corporate media is such a complex issue that there’s no way I could do the subject justice in this essay but to greatly oversimplify it, when the media conglomerates betrayed their Constitutional duty as our founding fathers laid down i.e. to serve as a watchdog on the government, and realized that the news departments could generate profits, they became little more than whores for the political powers that be. This is when the term, “Infotainment,” was coined & it says it all, especially under Trump’s reign of error & blatant, non-stop, self-serving lies!

Noam Chomsky, my mentor, hero, & friend and the most quoted scholar alive.

 

Some who read this essay may be tempted to dismiss me as simply a technophobe or Luddite, but they couldn’t be more wrong. I acknowledge that technology has brought many wonderful advances to mankind, but my criticism of certain modern, technological gadgets is an honest appraisal of the things dragging us down in a death-spiral & can’t be ignored.

 

In several respects, the introduction of television has played a large role in the overall “dumbing-down” of America. In the beginning, in what was called “The Golden Age of Television,” there were several excellent programs that presented serious issues that enlarged people’s minds & spirits. Classic works of literature & brilliant dramas that encouraged dialog between us as citizens in a free nation.

 

“The early days of television introduced hour-long anthology drama series, many of which received critical acclaim.[6][7] Examples include Kraft Television Theatre (debuted May 7, 1947), The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre (debuted September 27, 1948), Television Playhouse (debuted December 4, 1947), The Philco Television Playhouse (debuted October 3, 1948), Westinghouse Studio One (debuted November 7, 1948), and Your Show Time (debuted January 21, 1949).

High culture dominated commercial network television programming in the 1950s with the first television appearances of Leonard Bernstein (on Omnibus) and Arturo Toscanini, the first telecasts from Carnegie Hall, the first live U.S. telecasts of plays by Shakespeare, the first telecasts of Tchaikovsky‘s ballets The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, and the first opera specially composed for television, Gian Carlo Menotti‘s Amahl and the Night Visitors. The Bell Telephone Hour, an NBC radio program, began its television run featuring both classical and Broadway performers. The networks employed art critics, notably Aline Saarinen and Brian O’Doherty, something that was mostly discontinued by the start of the digital television era (CBS’s John Leonard being the last of significance).[8][9]

 

Of course, in today’s Trump world, this would be dismissed as elitist snobbery. But have you ever reflected on the fact that elitists in sports, business, music, etc. are revered but if they label you an intellectual or cultural elitist, their critics can be especially vicious, crude, & ugly and Trump has played this card continuously in his fake posture as a populist.

 

Moreover, there have been notable exceptions in terms of quality television series & “The West Wing,” was definitely such a pleasant exception. But overall & at the risk of being dismissed as an elitist snob, the overwhelming majority of choices on television today is pure, unadulterated crap! And the same goes for the movies.

One comic book hero from the past after another & sequels ad nauseam. It’s like the imagination of Hollywood movie producers & writers has gone on permanent vacation. Zombies, vampires, asinine comedies only the most immature & ignorant can appreciate. An endless stream of war movies always showing America as the great champions & protectors of the rest of humanity. Dystopian nightmares like Mad Max are extremely popular. Animated movies, so-called comedies that make one want to cry. Just one disappointment after another but again, there are exceptions. Where is the cultural uplift, the intellectual contribution that helps to make us better humans, more compassionate, more empathetic?

 

A great book on this subject is “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” by Neil Postman should you care to enlighten & warn yourself and your loved ones. The key point here is to reflect on just how powerful the medium of television has become especially in the context of this essay & specifically how it has propelled a braggart, grifter, fraud, & criminal like Trump to the highest position in the world. Note also that Trump is indeed a master at manipulating the media and he got something like $5 billion dollars worth of free advertising by the media during his campaign because he knows how to keep the cameras on him with his disgusting comments & behavior. So, when the corporate news media lamented their treatment by Trump, I felt absolutely no sympathy for them.

Trump’s inner-self revealed

 

And speaking of the slow death of our democracy, we mustn’t forget the role of the military/congressional complex. The historian, Chalmers Johnson summed it up nicely, “We can either be an empire or a democracy, but we can’t be both.” I have been consistently amazed over the years at how pissed-off people get at mythical welfare cheaters but never say a harsh word about the Pentagon’s charging $900 for a hammer & countless other examples of outright theft & corruption in the Pentagon & the numerous “Defense contractors.”

I believe it was recently revealed that since the start of the war in Afghanistan, something like $20 trillion dollars has basically been squandered. Where’s the outrage? Why are the Trumpsters silent on this issue? The politicians tell us again & again, sorry, we don’t have the money for health, education, welfare, our infrastructure, training our working class for decent paying jobs, etc. but magically, they always seem to find the millions & billions for weapons — many which don’t even work — and the PR firms spin the narrative so the public blames the victims even worse off than them, for their economic woes.

 

In the name of fairness & honesty, yes, the Democratic party has betrayed working class & middle-class America repeatedly & most obviously when Clinton signed NAFTA into law. But Clinton only did what the Republicans had been trying to do ever since their darling Reagan was in office. I know that two wrongs don’t make a right but at least the Democrats do a few good things along the way. Yet with the unleashing of the beast that Trump is, the G.O.P. no longer even attempts to hide its utter contempt for everyone who isn’t a part of the 1%. And it really boggles my mind to witness the Trump supporters so fiercely loyal to him as he & the G.O.P. plot & plan to cut-off their food stamps, shutdown Social Security & Medicare, etc. etc. etc. Talk about blind loyalty, this is definitely the Theatre of the Absurd.

 

Is it any wonder I’m so pessimistic, cynical, & despairing? If I dare to mention these contradictions & hypocrisies in a bar or tavern, guys want to beat me up & the bartenders often tell me to shut-up or get out. It’s okay to repeat the latest talking points on FOX “news,” but it’s taboo to open your mouth if you’re a liberal or a democrat. This is yet another one of those freedoms our soldiers are fighting & dying for around the world in our perpetual wars that have been going on ever since I was born in 1952.

Without a doubt, one of the things that I find so incredibly difficult to understand is the fact that Trump idolizes & fawns all over bloody dictators around the globe like Putin and he disrespects America’s allies & other members of NATO & Trump’s walking dead never utter a word of criticism against Trump? It seems these cretins would rather America become a dictatorship as long as we have a “strong leader,” like Trump in charge? Tell me this isn’t the Twilight Zone.

 

We mustn’t forget the important role the “Christian” fundamentalists, evangelicals, & Dominionists have played in our destruction from within. I have written a book on this subject & again for the sake of brevity, I’ll just point out a rather scary observation on my part. You may have heard the often-repeated criticism against Muslim schools like in Afghanistan run by the Taliban & called madrasah (s)?

 

They are usually dismissed as little more than terrorist training schools where the students are taught to hate Americans. I could counter with the sad phenomenon of “Charter schools,” in the U.S. The difference being that in our charter schools which suck money away from public education & aren’t held accountable for test results like public schools are, their students are taught to fear/hate especially secular humanists. Yet a five-minute Google search will show you that our founding fathers were secular humanists, not Christians like the lying, Christian fascists want you to believe.

Tragically for free thinking Americans, something like 74 million of these wolves in sheep’s clothing that call themselves Christians, not only voted for Trump both times, but they also sing his praises. We moved around a lot as I was growing up, sometimes two or three times a year. And I attended Sunday school in a variety of Christian denominations, I didn’t know anything about the differences, I just liked going. But when I was around 14 or so, the hypocrisy just became so blatant that I stopped going to church & calling myself a Christian. But there’s one thing I know for sure and that is that Jesus laid it out as clear as could be in regard to how Christians should believe & behave in his Sermon on the Mount. Trump is like the poster boy for exactly the kind of guy that Jesus would’ve kicked to the curb. The only thing I can figure as to how so many self-professed Christians could follow & support such a vile creature as Trump is their moral cowardice & willingness to overlook Trump’s “little flaws,” because he promises to allow prayer in school, ban abortion, etc.

 

Marching along in our dark parade is perhaps one of the most pernicious forces in American history that didn’t originate here but was definitely imported by the Puritans, anti-intellectualism. Throughout the long & ignoble history of Christianity, the majority of the “Church Fathers,” were anti-intellectualists because they feared their power over their followers would be weakened if the people were educated.

By-the-way, dictators have also feared intellectuals & one of the first things they do when they overthrow the government in a coup is shut down the universities & the press. Note Trump’s installment of Betsy DeVos a rabid anti-intellectual Christian who wants to replace our entire public education system with Charter Schools. The ongoing war against intelligence in American society is a very long & complex story but if you give a damn, Richard Hofstadter’s “Anti-intellectualism in American Life” is the classic & the seminal book on the subject. I’ve read it twice & have dissected it for a book I’ve written but haven’t edited yet. One last note on this subject, if I remember correctly, the Church was against the use of Guttenberg’s printing press even though the Bible was the first book that was mass published. Mull that over if you will?

Speaking of anti-intellectualism, another technological innovation, the so-called “Smart phone,” is also dumbing us down yet many who own one believe it’s the best thing since sliced bread. Whoever came up with the name & the marketing campaign for these stupid phones must be very pleased with themselves for duping the public in such a massively devious PR strategy. People think their communication skills have in effect been put on steroids with these devices. In much the same manner that people who believe the social media has made them more sociable.

 

When I’m in public places like restaurants or bars & I see groups of people who by outward appearances I think are friends yet they’re not socializing with one another, no, their eyes are glued to the tiny screens on their phones like junkies hooked on heroin, oblivious to their “friends,” and the life going on around them. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that these phones aren’t making people smarter & are actually making them dumber because our human interactions are one of our best and most important ways of learning from one another. Tristan Harris lays out the danger much more succinctly than I & he was an ethicist for Google when he woke up to the harm being done by these distracting toys.

This video by Harris touches on several critical areas & you’ll probably dismiss me as unrealistic, a dreamer, a utopian but hey, why don’t we just get rid of these goddamn “smart phones,” and have phones that can only receive or send a voice mail? Real life emergencies i.e., a family member gets hurt, your car breaks down, etc. are the only valid reasons for owning a portable phone in my opinion. Then we can & should get down to the really serious issues facing humanity like climate destruction, the threats of a nuclear exchange, & the loss of our freedom.

 

Returning to the main subject of this essay, denialism i.e., climate destruction denial, election denial, etc. it’s also very relevant that roughly a third of our population deny the Holocaust happened. And if that doesn’t scare the shit out of you, nothing will because if people can deny such a massive & horrific attempt at the total genocide of a people, it’s that much easier for it to happen again.

Moreover, this essay isn’t just about the denialism of the stupid & the willfully ignorant who have fallen under the spell of the dumbest & most immoral president we’ve ever had, no, it’s also about the denialism on the so-called “Left” in America.

The Trump tornado of terror didn’t come out of nowhere, no, it slowly built-up & steadily grew right under our noses. When Trump first announced that he was running for the office of president of the U.S., most of those on the “Left,” i.e., democrats, liberals, progressives got a real laugh out of it & said things like, are you kidding, Trump isn’t even qualified to be a dog catcher let alone president? But like those religious extremists we see standing on the streetcorners ranting & raving, we dismissed him as just another looney.

 

Note that 74 million self-professed Christians voted for the Golden Calf that is Trump & they also literally believe that all mankind’s problems began when Adam ate that apple from the Tree of Knowledge. In brief, they believe God wants us all to be ignorant & obedient to him, the ultimate authoritarian & the charlatans that come along like Trump, who are convincing authoritarians, should be obeyed.

The devout Christian Trump holding a Bible upside down, How appropriate!

 

This is very personal for me because for almost half a century, I have tried to warn family, friends, & strangers how dangerously ignorant Americans are as a whole. And I’ve been mocked & dismissed for most of my life. I don’t derive any satisfaction from having been proven right after all these years & as a matter of fact, I never thought of myself as an exceptional student until I was in my late 20s when a handful of professors from philosophy, political science, & literature each told me in their own ways that I was a bright guy.  And even though I was told in the sixth grade that I was reading at the 11th grade, sixth month level, neither my mom nor any school counselors encouraged me academically.

I’ve shared this bit of my personal history in perhaps a naïve attempt to reveal how painfully alone I have been all my life. Without a doubt, the best years of my life were the first four years I lived with Jeri who was to become my wife. As human beings, we all need to be heard & to feel we have truly communicated with others, so we know we’re not alone. But with all these fancy new gadgets or toys, we are feeling more isolated & alienated from one another than ever before in human history.

 

I don’t think Mother Gaia is going to miss her ignorant, greedy, & destructive children so we’d better pull together my friends or it truly will be the end of humanity. I have a few more important & highly relevant points to share before I wind this essay up & I hope you will give them an honest consideration.

 

Again, Trump isn’t the sole reason we are perilously close to losing our democracy, but he definitely was a catalyst that hastened the end. Sort of like a snowball that grows in size as it speeds down a hillside & become more dangerous & powerful as it gains momentum. Speaking of which, if you’d care to get an in-depth understanding of how Trump built his fortune & fame, there’s a documentary called, “Where’s My Roy Cohn,” which Trump actually said in one of his frustrating moments in office. Cohn was, at the risk of sounding overly dramatic, evil incarnate & mind you, I stopped calling myself a Christian around the age of 14.

If you watch this film, most likely you’ll be struck as I was at the amazing parallels between Trump & Cohn. And if you take the time to inform yourself on Trump’s background, I recommend, “Trump, the Greatest Show on Earth,” by Wayne Barrett. Mr. Barrett followed Trump’s career for over 38 years until his death in 2017. He was the first reporter who took Trump seriously & nailed him for some of his crimes at the beginning. He is the most authoritative writer on Trump in my opinion & another excellent writer in regard to exposing his career of corruption is David Cay Johnston who wrote, “The Making of Donald Trump.” Mr. Johnston has known Trump for over 28 years & is known as America’s de facto top tax enforcer because of his exposes on tax fraud in America’s corporate elite.

If we’re very lucky, Trump’s tax fraud over the decades may be the final nail in his coffin but that won’t save us from future demagogues which are now more likely than ever to replace Trump. Just look at what the GOP has devolved to, something like 350 members of Congress now actively support & spread absurd conspiracy theories & these are the people supposedly representing us? For your edification, here is a list of the methods of demagogues & it requires little effort to see that Trump followed this playbook to the letter:

 

 

Like it or not and acknowledge it or not, Trump is a mirror of our culture and society. He showed the world our dark side. And again, all of us who sat on the side apathetically & didn’t speak out are just as culpable as those MAGA morons who voted for him.

Mussolini & Trump, twin sons of different mothers. Note their sneer of superiority, but the MAGA morons believe he’s down-to-earth?

 

History tells us that Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy, was a role model for Hitler. Here’s a quote attributed to Mussolini that some dispute but nevertheless is very relevant to America today. By-the-way, thanks to our impoverished public education system, most Americans aren’t aware of the fact that many of our corporations loved Mussolini & fascism because it demolished worker’s unions & therefore made corrupt businesses run much smoother. In fact, several of America’s largest corporations supported & did business with Mussolini’s fascist government as well as Hitler’s Nazi government. Are you beginning to catch on my friend?

 

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”
― Benito Mussolini

 

This again is what boggles my mind about Trump supporters, how in the Hell can they think/believe that Trump, a member of the wealthy elite, is going to look out for their financial well-being? His kind get rich by exploiting the working class & he’s done so countless times over the years from simple laborers to contractors, etc. And he has hidden behind the laws created by the politicians & the corporate cockroaches to enrich himself. He used his term in office to enrich himself & his family at every opportunity like a cheap, used car salesman & the MAGA morons love him?

The Early Warning Signs of Fascism

  1. The cult of tradition. This is the belief that the truth is already known once and for all. Fascists believe there is no need to advance in learning.
  2. The rejection of modernism. Fascists reject the Enlightenment and its evidence-based rationality.
  3. The cult of action for action’s sake. Fascist leaders act impulsively, without thinking or planning ahead.
  4. No analytical criticism. Fascists ignore nuance and see any disagreement as treasonous.
  5. Fear of difference. Fascists fear diversity. Thus, they are racist by definition.
  6. Appeal to a frustrated middle class. An economically frustrated and/or politically marginalized middle class is easy to stir to anger.
  7. Obsession with a plot. Because the followers must be made to feel besieged, an internal “enemy” is provided: Immigrants, Muslims, Hispanics, Blacks. (Historically the Jews were often made to be “the enemy.”)
  8. Anti-elitism. The followers are made to feel humiliated by the wealth and strength of the educated “elite.” This is used to create resentment.
  9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. Fascists believe that life is permanent warfare. Therefore, a desire for peace is treasonous.
  10. Contempt for the weak. A fascist leader despises his underlings, who in turn despise those under them. They all either mock or ignore the poor, the sick, and the disabled.
  11. The cult of heroism. The Fascist is eager to die a hero’s death. In his impatience, he frequently sends other people to their deaths.
  12. Machismo. Fascists show disdain for women, disregard for chastity, and condemnation of homosexuality.
  13. Selective populism. Under fascism, the “voice of the people” is not the democratic majority, but only the voices of those who support the leader.
  14. Ur-fascism speaks Newspeak. Just as in Orwell’s 1984, Fascists use an impoverished vocabulary and an elementary syntax to limit complex and critical reasoning.

Or in a simpler way.

  • Powerful and continuing nationalism
  • Disdain for human rights
  • Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
  • Supremacy of the military
  • Rampant sexism
  • Controlled mass media
  • Obsession with national security
  • Religion and government intertwined
  • Corporate power protected
  • Labor power suppressed
  • Disdain for intellectuals & the arts
  • Obsession with crime & punishment
  • Rampant cronyism & corruption
  • Fraudulent elections

Look familiar to Trump’s agenda?

Germany’s Jewish population kept denying that Hitler would come to power and go as far as he did in trying to exterminate them right up to

 

Kristallnacht, (German: “Crystal Night”) , also called Night of Broken Glass or November Pogroms, the night of November 9–10, 1938, when German Nazis attacked Jewish persons and property. The name Kristallnacht refers ironically to the litter of broken glass left in the streets after these pogroms. The violence continued during the day of November 10, and in some places acts of violence continued for several more days.

The pretext for the pogroms was the shooting in Paris on November 7 of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by a Polish-Jewish student, Herschel Grynszpan. News of Rath’s death on November 9 reached Adolf Hitler in Munich, Germany, where he was celebrating the anniversary of the abortive 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. There, Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, after conferring with Hitler, harangued a gathering of old storm troopers, urging violent reprisals staged to appear as “spontaneous demonstrations.” Telephone orders from Munich triggered pogroms throughout Germany, which then included Austria.

 

Just before midnight on November 9, Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller sent a telegram to all police units informing them that “in shortest order, actions against Jews and especially their synagogues will take place in all of Germany. These are not to be interfered with.” Rather, the police were to arrest the victims. Fire companies stood by synagogues in flames with explicit instructions to let the buildings burn. They were to intervene only if a fire threatened adjacent “Aryan” properties.

In two days and nights, more than 1,000 synagogues were burned or otherwise damaged. Rioters ransacked and looted about 7,500 Jewish businesses, killed at least 91 Jews, and vandalized Jewish hospitals, homes, schools, and cemeteries. The attackers were often neighbors. Some 30,000 Jewish males aged 16 to 60 were arrested. To accommodate so many new prisoners, the concentration camps at Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen were expanded.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Kristallnacht

 

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

― Edmund Burke

“Fascists use patriotism and religion to manipulate dumb people.

Fascist propaganda works best on the dumbest of the dumb. They don’t know when they’re being lied to.

That’s why it’s no coincidence that the MAGA death cult are the dumbest people in America.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, American Fascism: A German Writer’s Urgent Warning To America

Birds of a feather, America’s celebrity grifters. Robertson’s net worth is $100 million dollars.

“If fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” (Sinclair Lewis)

Victims of the Great Depression brought to us by the bankers & corporate cockroaches the fascists love.

In the end, we only have ourselves to blame. What makes us human is our ability to feel compassion and empathy for our fellow human beings. It is what separates us from beasts. Trump clearly isn’t capable of feeling empathy or compassion for others. He’s a malignant narcissist sociopath and those that think he’s wonderful are either the same or blind. This is what pushed America into just another failed and corrupt state!

— Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, Oregon November 7, 2022

“We have met the Enemy and …

… He is Us!”

(Pogo)

Joe McCarthy & Roy Cohn who destroyed so many lives & careers and Cohn was Trump’s mentor i.e. Dr. Frankenstein

First of all, I wish to be very clear that this essay isn’t about lamenting the end of the American Empire but it is a grieving for the unnecessary pain & suffering that has gone before & will continue for the millions of innocent victims of the corporate cockroaches.

 

Moreover, I focus on America because I am an American & therefore, I not only have a right but also a duty to hold my government accountable. And secondly, because America has such a powerful military force & dominates the world economy, we threaten & intimidate the other nations to bend them to our will. Therefore, as American citizens we have the heavy burden of responsibility to do all that we can in terms of harm reduction.

You might attempt to argue that therefore the attempted coup against our democratic form of government on January 6, 2021 was a good thing. And you’d be dead wrong because two wrongs have never made a right. The tens of millions who blindly trust Trump are a combination of ignorant & stupid people. Ignorance can be fixed but stupidity is hopelessly lost. What these MAGA minions don’t grasp is that Trump & all his ass-kissers don’t give a shit about them. They are serving their corporate masters by attacking their fellow citizens.

And these so-called Culture Wars are merely a smokescreen created to keep us divided & therefore weaker and easier to control. Every great now & then, a truth would slip out of the baboon’s mouth i.e. “I like the less-educated.” Of course, Trump’s walking dead interpreted this to mean that he hated the cultural elite and was one of them, an average Joe.

Obviously, Trump’s ability to convince tens of millions of Americans that he & they have far more in common than differences, is one of the most amazing feats of PR (Public Relations) scams in the past half century. Trump envied New York’s cultural elite for decades & tried to join their club repeatedly but was always rejected because of his obvious ignorance, rude, & crude behavior.

 

I grew up in the poor & working class of America. My mom was mostly single & tried her best to raise four children. Being the eldest, it fell to me to protect & supervise my siblings and I had to physically take on some of my mom’s drunken & cruel husbands and boyfriends. I mention this to prove that I’m not from some privileged background & definitely never received $400 million from daddy like your phony populist, Donny boy.

 

The working class stiffs that I grew up with & still live amongst are fond of their mantra, “All you need is common sense!” Well it’s clear as a bell to me that tens of millions of Donny’s fan club don’t have common sense or they’d see the elephant in the room. Donald Duck struts the national stage like the Emperor Who Wore No Clothes & Donny is pure, naked greed and his repeated attempts to have conferences & etc. with world leaders at his golf resorts & etc. so he’d collect huge profits, is but one example.

FOX “news” and Trump feed off each other & the same was true for George “Dubya.” And FOX wasn’t alone in beating the war drums for Iraq invasion i.e. the New York Times & MSNBC

 

I am getting too far afield by focusing on the creature from the black lagoon because the moral rot has clearly infected the entire GOP and a large percentage of the Democratic party as well. This is why I seriously doubt there will ever be a real stop to campaign financing. Both parties are corrupt & have long ago sold-out the public because they are addicted to all those “perks” the corporate lobbyists give them in exchange for political favors i.e. writing laws that benefit the corporations but harm Americans, especially the poor, the working class, the middle class, & people of color.

Jones became a multi-millionaire spreading his fear, hate, & conspiracy theories.

I know that this is a very dark & pessimistic picture I’m painting but if we’re ever going to change this picture, we must first see it, recognize it, & then go to work to creating a much fairer picture. You can’t appreciate beauty if you can’t face the ugly reality around us. And with that in mind, here is a picture of the utter insanity & absurdity of a up & coming power broker in the GOP’s upper echelon, Marjorie Taylor Greene:

 

The following is a guide to Greene’s conspiracy theories and toxic rhetoric.

https://www.mediamatters.org/congress/guide-rep-marjorie-taylor-greenes-conspiracy-theories-and 

Of course the most pernicious conspiracy theory that she & approximately 250 other members of Congress believe in & are espousing is that the election was stolen by Biden. If this goes on, we will be or perhaps already are on that slippery slope to becoming a fascist nation like those our fathers & grandfathers fought against in WWII. And even though I am 100% against the perpetual wars the corporate cockroaches have manipulated us into over my lifetime, it still nauseates me to see these fascists parading through our public streets with American flags & proclaiming their patriotism.

 

And at the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist myself & of oversimplifying the issue, I believe our public education system is largely responsible for the pathetic &  tragic level of ignorance in America. But no, it’s not the result of some grand conspiracy. Rather, it is a confluence of destructive forces. Forces like the “Christian” fundamentalists who fear & hate public education and want us to be a nation of Christians ruled by their authoritarian dictates.

Trump’s idea of “Draining the Swamp”

It’s also a result of decades of political whores who only want power for themselves & fear an educated public who can block their grabs for ever more power. Note that most politicians must be millionaires to even run for office but if they win a seat in Congress, that million often grows exponentially because they have the power to write the laws.

Yep! Corporate America’s “Free Market!” Step right up Suckers!

Thirdly & clearly most significantly, our woeful state of a poorly educated public can be laid at the feet of the transnational corporations. Their short-sighted obsession with profits inclines them to run PR campaigns against funding public education & every other public program because it means that much less of the federal treasury that goes into their pockets. This illustrates why Trump’s appointment of Betsy DeVos made perfect sense for the 1% because she was clearly one of the most brazen, anti-public education people they could find.

 

Moreover, Trump’s entire cabinet wasn’t chosen by him because he can’t think his way out of a paper bag. No, his handlers i.e. the true power behind the throne  we like to call the presidency, are actively subverting & destroying every last vestige of our democracy so they can have total control. This is the goal of every fascist or dictatorial government in history.

 

Again, not a vast  conspiracy like the brain-dead MAGA morons love to believe the Democrats are behind like in an oldie but goodie, The Illuminati Conspiracy. But a tragic convergence of greedy forces that will never own enough penthouses, yachts, private jets, etc. like that good, old homeboy Donny whose idea of fine dining is Taco Bell with Twinkies for dessert.

 

I have been an avid reader and lover of knowledge since kindergarten & part of what has driven me in my 70 years is my hatred for bullies & the elite rich who are responsible for the majority of the degradation, humiliation, suffering, & death of billions of people around the globe. And unlike that detestable braggart Trump, I can back my words up with factual, not make-believe “alternate reality” like the megalomaniac moron, details, footnotes, sources, etc. And I have never been motivated by money. Love and compassion for the suffering is what drives me forward so I hope you believe me but whether you do or not doesn’t matter in the end, I know in my heart & soul it is the truth.

 

Here is my summation of the clear and present dangers that threaten not only America’s future but the entire planet’s future by extension. The enemies that Walt Kelly was referring to in his parody of a line by a military official with, “We have met the enemy and he is us,” were those who were polluting our environment in the 1960s & the early 1970s. It was the beginning of the Environmental Movement & was mocked & dismissed by many people back then. Of course Walt had no way of knowing just how prescient his words would prove to be & now, climate destruction threatens our very survival as a species. And this is representative of the combined destructive forces we are coexisting with today.

 

Part of my education over the years has been my seeking out & attending lectures, book signings, conferences, etc. and one gentlemen I met years ago is Chris Hedges. His amazing insights, courage, & experiences are captured in this ten minute video clip.

Returning to my thesis for this essay, a few of our major enemies that are destroying us from within are stupidity, fear, propaganda, & conspiracy theories. Note that in the video clip you just watched, many of those poor souls living in those “Sacrifice Zones,” in the Appalachian mining towns voted for & idolize Trump. Talk about effective propaganda on the part of the phony “conservatives.” My God! Also note that it was Joe Manchin, the Democratic Senator from West Virginia who is a coal mine owner, who practically single-handedly blocked Biden’s “Build Back Better bill.

 

Are you beginning to see what I mean? The GOP isn’t even bothering to hide or disguise their corruption but with Democratic leaders like Joe Manchin, we are clearly being betrayed even though they still give lip-service to their claim to care about us.

 

The bill is roughly half of Biden’s original $3.5 trillion plan. It includes hundreds of billions of dollars for clean energy and climate investments, child tax credits, housing and child care. Paid family leave, free community college, raised wealth taxes and lower prices for prescription drugs were among the measures left out.  https://www.allsides.com/story/democrats-release-text-bidens-build-back-better-bill 

The American Empire is rotting from within & the parasitic forces are feeding off the host that is the American public. If you deny that we are an empire because the powers that be haven’t publicly acknowledged it, you are one of the willfully ignorant. And how do you explain the fact that we have approximately 900 military bases circling the globe & surrounding our so-called enemies like China & Russia.

 

Yeah Russia, whose leader makes Trump practically cream his pants every time he’s near him. Yet Trump & another serious threat to our national security, General Michael Flynn, claim to be anti-communist? And we continue doing business with China? If not for China’s slave labor, Walmart would be out of business. Open your eyes you MAGA minions.

 

Perhaps one of the key factors causing the United States to circle the drain so-to-speak, is the grandiose arrogance or hubris of the powers that be. This has led to the collapse of most empires that came before us from the Roman empire to the British empire. You see, “our” leaders (I know, what a farce) think as they relax on their yachts in the south of France, they are so obscenely wealthy because of their superior intelligence. Actually they are wealthy because they lack compassion, empathy, and any sense or respect for morality or ethics like Trump, the temper tantrum toddler who lied, cheated, & stole his way to where he is.

Speaking of the deadly stupid Trump, his willful ignorance & denial of the COVID virus for months after it first struck America is clearly responsible for the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Yet once again, the anti-elite or the anti-intellectual Trumpsters still sing his praises? Are you beginning to understand just how deadly stupidity can be? I say that Trump’s presidency was like the bubonic plague unleashed on the United States & we may never recover from it given the spawn that it has bred.

 

The source that these parasites feed on is again, multi-faceted but includes the near total genocide of America’s indigenous people who lived here for thousands of years before the white pestilence invaded. The enslavement & degradation of the Black men  who created the wealth of this nation with their forced labor.

 

In addition to the theft & murder of Black Americans & the indigenous peoples land & resources, our government & business elite have invaded, raped, pillaged, & plundered the peoples & the resources of countless other developing nations. Major General Smedley F. Butler lays it out succinctly for all to see.

Furthermore, the knowledge with little to no concern for morality that created the weapons of mass destruction due to the blind belief in technology by the status quo. As a result, we are living with & dying from who knows how many man-made chemicals? Cancer now kills one out of every two men & one out of every three women but who gives a fuck as long as the rich can buy themselves another yacht, an even bigger yacht, a fleet of personal jets, a mansion in all the playgrounds of the rich & famous, etc.

 

We are being poisoned by the land, the food Monsanto grows on it with their GMO seeds, the air we need to breathe, the water we drink, the sea  that gives us so much of the food we need to survive, etc. And the scum-sucking parasites proclaim that what’s good for business is “Good for America!”

 

But hey, at least we won’t be bored as we lay dying. We are “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” a brilliant book by Neil Postman. You see, there’s a very important lesson that emperors & all rulers of empire learned centuries ago, you must distract the public from its suffering so they are less likely to unite & rise up against their oppressors.

 

The Roman Emperors & Senators were perhaps the masters of this fine art of the spectacle? And today’s PR industry has also done a dandy job in this regard with the greedy assistance of the corporate-owned media. Note that Trump received perhaps $5 billion dollars worth of free advertising in his snake-oil show that duped tens of millions of America’s most gullible television viewers. His rallies clearly resemble Hitler’s rallies in pre-war, Nazi Germany & Goebel’s insights such as the bigger the lie, the better and the more frequently the lie is repeated, the sooner it becomes accepted as fact by the bewildered herd.

Yep! If we somehow manage to not blow ourselves up with a nuclear exchange—note Trump asked his advisors repeatedly why he couldn’t use our nuclear weapons on countries he didn’t like— or destroy our environment & climate beyond the point of no return, I predict that many, if not most of those American citizens who come after us will be absolutely amazed at how we allowed such a craven cretin as Trump anywhere near the White House.

 

A rapist, a thief, a racist, a traitor who led an attempted coup against our government & trampled on our Constitution as if it were a floor mat for wiping one’s boots off. A blatant & consistent agenda to purposely neuter or eliminate every federal department established to protect & help the vulnerable among us. “Our” leaders love to pontificate & proclaim to the rest of the world consistently about how America is a nation based on Law & Order & they mock so-called “Banana Republics,” but the U.S. is the biggest banana of all & we, the people, are the ones who keep slipping, falling, & hurting from that banana peel on the floor of our Capitol as revealed on January 6, 2021.

And the alien being with the Cheshire Cat grin who has lead a life of crime too long to list here has never spent a night in jail? And over 74 million “Christians,” adore him like he’s their messiah? Just shows how senile they are & how far they have strayed from Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount,” which laid out very clearly how true Christians were to behave. Our options have never been clearer, either we get busy fighting back against these all too real evils or we get busy dying!

— Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, Oregon  October 26, 2022

 

P.S. By-the-way, I attended church & Sunday school regularly up until I was around 14 & I no longer consider myself a “Christian,” and I’m proud of it because I am far more Christian than those millions who believe in Trump & turn a blind-eye to all his evil.

 

Addendum

 

 

A little over 20 years ago, Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes concocted a profitable way to tap into the white supremacist ideology still bubbling below America’s surface.

They started a “news” network that, instead of providing actual news, gave white, conservative viewers the news they wanted to hear: that they, their families, and their values were under attack by minorities, gays, women, liberals, socialists, Muslims, atheists, the media, etc. — and therefore their biases were justified.

It’s been a lucrative strategy. However, just making a buck wasn’t enough for them. They also wanted to shape the fortunes of the country they were dividing. Here, too, they had tremendous success.

And that is what is getting lost amid the outcry over Donald Trump’s latest round of racist tweets: The US president is often just parroting what he sees on Fox News.* His racism and distorted view of reality are a direct reflection of what this conservative network decides to put on the air.

While regimes throughout history have used propaganda outlets to get the word out and spread their ideology, in the US it is now very much a two-way street. Fox News is both a tool and a puppeteer, manipulating events directly and indirectly. In many cases, the network drives the conservative agenda with its programming. Then, when Trump and his allies pick up on it, Fox News gives them a platform to broadcast that agenda with no fear of criticism or being fact-checked.

Then, with the message already amplified, Trump tweets clips from the network — primarily clips of its many conservative commentators — or tweets promotions for its shows.

The president’s recent racist rants are a perfect illustration of how this works: Trump’s tweets directed at four Democratic Congresswomen in July followed an attack from Fox News host Tucker Carlson on one of them, US Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN).

Last week, the target of another racist Trump tirade was Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD). Again, the tweets seemed to have been triggered by a Fox News segment on the lawmaker’s district in Baltimore.

This symbiotic relationship between the president and his favorite TV channel is also reflected in the revolving door between Fox News and the Trump administration.

Former White House communications director Hope Hicks now works as a senior PR executive for the network’s parent company, Fox Corp. Just last month, she was joined by former White House deputy press secretary Raj Shah. In addition, former Trump campaign and administration officials, such as deputy campaign manager David Bossie and acting ICE director Thomas Homan, appear on the network as analysts or contributors.

At the same time, lots of Fox News contributors and staff have found a home in the Trump administration. John Bolton is national security adviser, Ben Carson is secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Morgan Ortagus is the State Department spokesperson. In addition Richard Grenell (Germany), Scott Brown (New Zealand), and Georgette Mosbacher (Poland) now serve as ambassadors. And those are just some of the Fox News alumni currently serving in the US government.

The well-worn path between Fox News and the White House also includes the network’s former co-president Bill Shine, who worked as White House deputy communications director and left to take a job with Trump’s reelection campaign. Right-wing nutjob Sebastian Gorka was a Fox News contributor, then a deputy assistant to the president before going back to Fox News, and then leaving again. Mercedes Schlapp, a former Fox News contributor, first served as White House director of strategic communications and now works for Trump’s reelection campaign.

And all this only scratches the surface, because, through their programming and sometimes in person, the network’s top personalities, such as Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Carlson, or the Fox & Friends crew, are effectively Trump advisers. The only difference between them and official White House staffers is that they are not subject to any transparency and accountability rules — and they are paid better.

The president is not the only political figure getting cues from Fox News. Following the Mueller hearings last week, a clip made the rounds showing that the opening remarks of Rep. Devin Nunes (CA) — the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee — exactly mirrored the rhetoric of Hannity.

 

For two decades, Fox News operated under the laughably false motto of “fair & balanced” until ending that charade in 2017. That’s like McDonald’s advertising the Big Mac as “the world’s healthiest food.”

In fact, the network has been a subsidiary of — and a driving force behind — the GOP and the alt-right for some time. Its viewers are presented with an alternative reality, and it’s no surprise that they vote accordingly. They don’t live in a land of facts but rather in a country of conservative make-believe in which Trump is a messiah.

Not surprisingly, the network’s right-wing propaganda is having an impact. A 2017 study published in the peer-reviewed American Economic Review estimates that if Fox News had not existed in 2000, the overall Republican presidential vote would have been 0.46 percentage points lower. Just as a reminder, George W. Bush won Florida by 537 votes. It’s not a stretch to argue that the network put a Republican in the White House that year — for the first time.

In 2004, this “Fox effect” had jumped to 3.59 percentage points and in 2008 it was 6.34 percentage points.

It’s only gotten worse since then. A study in 2012 by Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind showed that people who did not follow the news at all were more informed than people who watched Fox News.

Since then, the network’s misinformation campaign has reached new heights, culminating in the election of Trump.

And after his inauguration, Fox News basically became a part of the White House communications department. Its coverage now is every bit as partisan and deceptive as that of Pravda and TASS in the old Soviet Union.

While Fox News likes to cloak itself in a mantle of patriotism, it actually does Americans a great disservice. Its coverage is often blatantly racist, it hypes an anti-immigrant agenda, and it exploits other divisions in society.

For example, in 2018, when a group of asylum seekers made its way toward the border ahead of the midterm election, Fox News covered the “caravan” as though it were a harbinger of the end of days. When an immigrant commits a crime, Fox News covers it endlessly, but the threat of radical white supremacists is hardly discussed.

The ad nauseam coverage of the danger immigrants supposedly pose stands in stark contrast to the coverage of an actual threat to the US: the interference in its election by Russia. Since such interference was done on behalf of Trump, you won’t hear much about it on the network. Instead, its top host peddles conspiracy theories to deflect from what Russia did.

Here is the bottom line: People getting their information from Fox News and Trump’s Twitter account are increasingly detached from reality and facts. In turn, this is leading to their ideological radicalization, which is not only troublesome, but also potentially dangerous, for example if Trump loses the 2020 election and refuses to leave — claiming that his victory was stolen.

*Fox News, simply put, is a right-wing propaganda tool,  not a serious media outlet that deserves to have the name “news” in its name. However, for reasons of clarity, we refer to it as a news organization and use the name Fox News, however misleading it may be, in this editorial. It should also be noted that a handful of people and a small share of the programming is dedicated to something that could even remotely be referred to as “objective.” And when that happens, Trump is quick to call them out over it.

Like a Fox — How a TV Channel Is Tearing America Apart

 

Will We Wake in Time?

 

This is simply, my perhaps feeble attempt, to explain the why and how we have arrived at the edge of the cliff overlooking Dante’s “Inferno.” And while I have no official expertise or credentials, I have been studying these particular factors for well over 30 years. Moreover, this isn’t a claim that these are the sole factors but I believe they are some of the most significant factors.

The Hell we are making?

 

In no particular order, Christian fundamentalists were among the first social phenomenon that began to worry me in the early 1980s. A little later, my close analysis of Richard Hofstadter’s classic, “Anti-intellectualism in American Life,” was a real eye-opener & helped me to see connections with other destructive forces in American society. Furthermore, when I read or basically dissected John Taylor Gatto’s brilliant, “The Underground History of American Education,” I began to realize the depth & scope of America’s decline into a state of nearly complete corporate capture & rule. Of course the corporate domination of the media market only sped-up the avalanche of destructive forces & personalities that reached its nadir when Trump became president.

It can’t happen here, right? Just what they thought in pre-war Germany.

 

I feel that Trump’s election is prima facie proof that Richard Hofstadter & John Taylor Gatto were absolutely correct & prescient in their analysis of American culture & society. Our primary challenge now is to wake the somnambulant members of our country & to take on the Herculean work before us necessary to do so.

Probably would’ve liked weekly book burnings.

 

The most difficult challenge for me in writing this essay is how to condense the thousands of pages I’ve written on these subjects into a relatively short essay. So, here goes starting with the wolves in “Christian” sheep’s clothes.

I stopped attending church around the age of 14 because of the blatant hypocrisy I witnessed of what they preached & what they practiced. And like most other rational people, I dismissed them as religious “nuts.” This was our collective oversight because while we had ignored them & written them off as harmless loonie-tunes, they began building their empires of influence on our society.

Reagan, that other Christian president dubbed the 1980s, the “Me Decade” i.e. Greed is Good! (Gordon Gecko)

 

The once small portion of “Christian” extremists, fundamentalists, evangelicals or whatever you want to label them, grew in number & power in terms of influence with their own media primarily in radio & cable television. Hence the term, “televangelist” was created with Pat Robertson becoming one of the richest of these hyenas feeding off the ignorance & gullibility of millions of his flock.

And when Jim Baker got out of prison, they were welcomed back on T.V. to continue their grifting.

 

Moreover, these soldiers of Christ established their own colleges & with their religious fervor & blindness to the greed & grifting of their star preachers like Jim & Tammy Baker, Jimmy Swaggart, etc. they just kept building their religious base of followers. And because of the intellectual laziness & unwillingness of most of the Democratic Left in our political power structure, this steady threat to our democracy grew like a deadly virus on our body politic.

Falwell’s Liberty University, earn a degree in Stupidity & Hate like at Trump University.

 

The fervor of the far right “Christians,” has never waned & their absolute belief in their righteousness has enabled them to become a major voting block in local, state, & national politics. In fact, it has become an absolute prerequisite for all political candidates to declare their unquestioning defense of & belief in Christianity if they wish to be elected. And talk about the theatre of the absurd, somewhere around 74 million American “Christians,” not only voted for Trump, clearly the worst example of a Christian, & they sing his praises. I see many parallels between these American “Christians,” & the Taliban in Afghanistan as well as the Iranian theocracy with its complete subjugation of Iranian women.

Onward Christian Soldiers! Die for oil & kill Muslims. God loves you.

 

Furthermore, it’s equally important that we don’t ignore the Jewish extremists in  Israel that believe it’s righteous of them to steal the Palestinians’ land, persecute them, & to kill them in their agenda of expansion & rule. Ironically, America’s “Christian” evangelicals are in complete agreement with Israel’s fundamentalists even though the Orthodox Jews believe it’s their duty to slaughter the Christians.

America’s Christian total support for Israel’s apartheid & slow death of the Palestinians.

 

Marching right along in this parade of horror that claims to be about spreading peace, love, & democracy around the world, the subject of anti-intellectualism plays a major role. This is why Hofstadter’s book was a true eye-opener for me in many many ways. At first I thought, maybe this anti-intellectualism is a relatively recent phenomenon but I soon learned that it goes back throughout the history of western civilization.

Just good Christians having a little fun on Saturday night. And today’s MAGA crowd!

 

Copernicus and Galileo are two of the most infamous examples of anti-intellectualism & if you are familiar with these two cases, you know that it was the Church who prosecuted & persecuted these two great scientists. And if you reflect on it for a bit longer, it’s obvious that the “Church” has been rabidly anti-intellectual ever since their version of the Garden of Eden story.

That Tree of Knowledge that existed in Eden & Eve giving that apple to Adam, against God’s wishes, represented or symbolized that knowledge is Evil & women are wicked or more prone to Sin because Eve tempted Adam & was seduced by the snake aka Satan. Moral of the story? Knowledge is Evil so avoid it at all costs.

Expelled from England for their religious extremism, didn’t take long for them to start hanging witches in America. (Christian Values)

How convenient this “rationale” or religious logic is for not only setting the Church fathers up as the righteous leaders but also rulers over women & this too, parallels with the Islamic & Jewish fundamentalists’ teachings & beliefs.

 

A brief review of western civilization’s history reveals that the Church & the State have struggled & fought for control over their subjects or citizens for centuries. But the worst periods of human history were when the Church & State cooperated in their dominion over the people.

This brings us to the present crisis in American politics because the Church & the State have once again united to suppress us into a sort of hybrid theocracy & oligarchy. Our Founding Fathers were students of the Enlightenment and knew only too well, the destructive consequences of these two powerful forces. This is why they were very clear about the necessity of separating Church from State. Yet, like Trump, the dark forces believe that if they keep repeating their lies denying this fact, the public will eventually believe them.

Speaking of persuading the public or shaping their beliefs & opinions, the general “dumbing-down” of the American public, a term I believe John Taylor Gatto originated, is the sad state of our public education system. I have already mentioned the motivation for the Christian far-right in keeping the American public in the dark or away from that tree of knowledge, but it also benefits the corporate cockroaches’ (my phrase) agenda of keeping the American consumer dumb so they’ll continue to believe that the corporate rulers who dominate nearly every aspect of our lives, are their benefactors.

One Corporate Authoritarian World Order!

 

Of course, the corporate (I’m referring to the behemoth corporate conglomerates that dominate the globe) agenda is far more complex in its methods, tactics, & strategies but again, this essay is meant to serve as a sort of broad overview of our present crises in the struggle for survival of our species.

I hope I’m crystal clear here when I say that no, this isn’t one grand conspiracy but rather a confluence if you will, of several dirty or polluted tributaries flowing into one river, the river of life so-to-speak, that all of humanity drinks from. When you dive into that sea of conspiracy theories, you begin to drown in terms of reaching people &  you are ready for the Qanon funny farm.

 

You see, corporations haven’t exactly hidden their true agenda which is to control their work forces & a big part of that control involves having employees intelligent enough to keep the business running efficiently & generating ever increasing profits for the owners. The major threat to corporate owners is a work force that is well-educated because they start organizing their fellow workers & demanding safer working conditions, a fair share in the profits they generate, etc.

Here is where my intellectual and moral hero, Noam Chomsky, fits in. I’d argue that of the hundred or more books he has written, his perhaps most significant & most influential book is, “Manufacturing Consent,” written with Edward Hermann. In Noam’s trademark objective & factual writing style and backed-up with copious footnotes, sources, & references, he lays out how the corporate-owned media distorts, misinforms, & ignores a significant amount of the hidden facts in news reporting that is broadcast on what used to be the public’s airwaves.

 

I believe the major turning-point for the worse in American news media came when corporations were allowed to ignore their responsibility to present one hour per day of news entirely in the public’s interest. They feigned as if they were still adhering to this rule but news programs were allowed to devolve into what is now referred to as “infotainment.”

In short, the news departments of major media conglomerates used to be accepted as not profit generating because they were honoring their obligation to inform the public in exchange for the other 23 hours per day in which they created profits. But with the advent of cable television, corporate owners began to realize they could make great profits creating news personalities like Rush Limbaugh, FOX “news,” talking heads who spewed a steady stream of fear & hate, etc. and the standards of objective, factual, & honest reporting were allowed to wither & die.

 

The death blow to American journalism came with the introduction of FOX “news.” And their destructive power & influence became most evident when during Bush “Dubya’s) reign of terror as president, FOX “news” would literally receive their daily list of “talking points,” that the White House wanted them to bombard the public with.

Moreover, the rest of the corporate media, even those who used to have a semblance of journalistic integrity grew envious of the profits that FOX was bringing in so they followed suit. MSNBC was supposedly the liberals or the democrats counter to FOX’s obvious “conservative” bias but soon revealed their shallow or hollow principles. Phil Donahue hosted one of MSNBC’s first & most popular talk/news programs but because he dared to have on one “liberal” or anti-war (pre-Iraq invasion) guest for every two, pro-war guests, he was fired.

Yep! So much for the so-called, “liberal media bias,” decried by the phony “conservatives,” who bear no resemblance to true political conservatives. But again, like Hitler’s minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels knew, just keep on repeating the lies or the propaganda ad nauseam & the herd will eventually accept it as a fact. Oh yeah, I can’t leave without pointing out the fact that the New York Times, the most famous newspaper in America & that sets the standard daily of emulation by the overwhelming majority of America’s newspapers, beat the war drums for our invasion of Iraq every bit as strongly as did FOX “news.” And they have supported every war the U.S. has been in from the get-go.

One last point regarding “our” national media before I conclude, the ultimate irony that Trump represents in terms of his destructive reign in Washington D.C. In the beginning of Donny’s run for the highest political office in the U.S., the corporate media dismissed him, mocked him, called him a moron which was obvious to most people. Yet, because he knew all too well how to remain in the spotlight by being & saying the most outrageous & absurd things day in, day out, they kept giving him the lion’s share of the media’s attention.

 

Estimates vary, but some claim that overall, Trump received something like five billion dollars worth of free media attention & this was far more than Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, & all the other presidential candidates combined. What was the corporate media’s reward? Trump denounced them as “fake news,” in his never-ending fear & hate rallies throughout his tenure in office. Sometimes he even turned his zombie-dogs on them & reporters covering his rallies left in fear for their lives.

 

In conclusion, Trump & the entire G.O.P. have revealed their true colors & don’t even bother to hide their fascist, democracy hating, racist, & authoritarian worshiping. It seems the label “Dictator,” has been replaced with the more benign “Authoritarian” label these days? Trump is clearly a traitor yet he is worshipped by “Christians,” and White Supremacists alike? He defends, apologizes for, & sings the praises of his fellow authoritarian thugs like Putin, M.B.S. of Saudi Arabia, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Un of N. Korea, Mubarak of Egypt, Xi Jinping of China, Erdowan of Turkey, Duterte of the Phillipines, Mussolini of Italy, Moammar Gadhafi of Libya, the 1980s Chinese Communist Party who massacred Chinese students in Tiananmen Square, etc.

True courage! A warrior for Humanity & Freedom.

 

In brief, Trump has never heard of or met a murderous dictator that he doesn’t respect. What does this behavior say to all our soldiers past or present? How in the Hell can soldiers defend & idolize Trump? I am and have been opposed to every war the U.S. has been involved in during my lifetime & I was born in 1952 but I am absolutely disgusted at Trump’s pissing on the memory, the sacrifice, & the death of all of America’s soldiers! Tell me I’m wrong about the level of ignorance & immorality in the United States today.

Every living human being alive that isn’t starving to death or dying of easily preventable diseases that are the result of the corporate cockroaches’ greed, apathy, & complete indifference, has a responsibility to fight against these tragic consequences. And if you don’t join in the struggle to save humanity & our planet, you are in the same, non-human species that aren’t even worthy of being classed as a reptile or insect that Trump is!

How many more people have to die in the name of Greed?

 

We are well on our way towards a one world authoritarian order, will you join in the fight or sit on the sidelines amusing yourself to death with your smart phone?

Last man standing wins?

 

Rob DeLoss  October 22, 2022

Anti-Elitism?

 

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’
― Isaac Asimov

I got straight A’s, believe me!

Tragically, we’ve lived through four years of a president who believes just this, yet he continues to strut the national stage as if he is Mussolini. Is this the secret to Trump’s popularity, to always pose as a superior person or elitist even though he can barely string two sentences together? Do his MAGA zombies love him because they feel inferior or stupid, but he makes them feel superior? I am bewildered as to how his lemmings  are blind to his blatant elitism & simultaneously despise anyone with more than a sixth grade education & accuse them of being the elitists?

Birds of a feather i.e. Fear-mongers & Haters

 

He makes his cult members feel superior by putting down Mexicans, Muslims, the handicapped, women, etc. And this is racist or racial elitism but that never occurs to his “Walking Dead” fan club. It’s those damn liberals, students, professors, journalists, democrats, etc. who are responsible for your plight. Not his Wall St. buddies who wreck our economy again & again. The people like himself, who spend their lives pulling scams on the less informed & the gullible.

just one category of many types of people Trump hates in his MAGA world

 

To support and believe that Trump “tells it like it is,” and is a typical American you can relate to is like saying you respect the slumlord who won’t do anything about the rats & cockroaches infesting your apartment. And who jacks up the rent at every opportunity & eventually throws you & your family into the gutter so he can build another Trump tower.

Talk about licking the boots of your master, this is beyond the absurd? This is Trump’s & his father before him’s history. Moreover, Trump has been ripping-off contractors, electricians, carpenters, plumbers, & even the laborers over the years who were foolish enough to work for him. All you have to do is read a few articles about his illustrious career as a casino mogul. Of course, reading is discouraged in Trump world, just ask the graduates of Trump University.

 

For the past half century or better, I have heard one of the favorite mantras of the anti-intellectuals or anti-elitists, “All you need is common sense!” Yet today, common sense has become very rare indeed. No one knows for sure what Trump’s actual net worth is & just because he claims to be a billionaire ad nauseam, that doesn’t make it a fact.

 

The habitual liar has finally been busted for claiming his properties are at a much lower value when it comes to paying his taxes but when he applies for loans, he claims these same properties to be far more valuable by factors of ten or probably much more than that. By-the-way, do you know that Trump had it written into his contract with the producers of “The Apprentice,” that every time his name was mentioned, they had to refer to him as Donald Trump the Billionaire?

I know, just more “fake news” right? How odd that every time something positive about Trump is said, it’s a fact but every time a criticism is leveled against him, it’s “fake news?” Yep! Where’s the “common sense” people? My intelligence tells me that Trump is the premiere snake-oil salesman America has ever produced.

 

And I believe his cult of the angry & bewildered hate “elitists” however they define them because, they feel inferior & jealous of those more intelligent than they are & it’s much easier to focus your anger on fellow victims. Furthermore, so-called elitists are remote from the average person’s world so they are easy targets. And how convenient it is to have a focus for all your pent-up anger at having been fucked-over for most of your life. Trump cleverly manipulated his minions into targeting Washington D.C. yet Trump & his daddy built their fortunes by manipulating the mayors, city councils, bankers, etc. and without the help of the government, the Trumps would’ve been just a couple more failed real estate developers.

 

To proclaim your hatred of the government & especially the liberals, reveals your ignorance & I seriously doubt that you’d gladly eliminate every one of their political programs & acts. Take ten minutes to review this basic list of what liberals & democrats have done for America & then tell me again of what terrible pedophiles, blood drinkers, etc. they are.

 

  • The GI Bill
  • Endangered Species Act
  • Environmental Laws
  • The Space Program
  • The Peace Corps
  • Americorps
  • The Civil Rights Movement
  • Earned Income Tax Credit
  • Family & Medical Leave Act
  • Consumer Product Safety Commission
  • Americans With Disabilities Act
  • Freedom of Information Act
  • Women’s right to control their reproductive future
  • Allowing citizens to view their own credit records
  • The Internet
  • Balancing the federal budget
  • The Brady Bill (5-day wait on handgun purchases for background checks)
  • Lobbying Disclosure Act
  • “Motor-Voter” Act
  • The Voting Rights Act
  • Unemployment Insurance
  • Medicare/Medicaid
  • Food Stamps/WIC
  • Social Security
  • Peace between Israel and Egypt

 

  • The Department of Education
  • The Department of Energy
  • The Department of Transportation
  • The Department of Housing and Urban Development
  • Labor Laws
  • The Marshall Plan
  • Winning World War II
  • Food Safety Laws
  • Workplace Safety Laws
  • The Tennessee Valley Project
  • The Civilian Conservation Corps
  • The Securites and Exchange Commission
  • Women’s Right to Vote
  • Universal Public Education
  • National Weather Service
  • Product Labeling Laws
  • Truth in Advertising Laws
  • Morrill Land Grant Act
  • Rural Electrification
  • Public Universities
  • Bank Deposit Insurance (FDIC)
  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  • Public Broadcasting
  • Supporting the establishment of Israel
  • The United Nations
  • NATO

 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2005/10/14/156663/-

 

In other words, for the working class & middle class supporters of Trump who attack the government so viciously makes about as much sense as a guy from one of those ghost towns in the Appalachians with a family barely surviving & totally dependent on food stamps to cancel his family’s food stamps because it’s one of those damn elitist democrat programs.

 

Common sense? You might care to note that your beloved Republican party voted against every single one of those programs on the list above. And for the record, you might dismiss me as yet another apologist & dupe for the democratic party or the liberals but you couldn’t be more wrong. I am one of the harshest critics of the democratic party primarily because of their abandonment of America’s workers starting with Clinton’s passing of NAFTA.

 

Returning to the focus of this essay, elitism or anti-elitism, I believe most people use the term to refer specifically to “intellectuals.” Instead of using the term, intellectual elite, we should say they are people who pursue intellectual or academic excellence. Well, I don’t know about you but I sure as Hell want the smartest doctor to operate on me, not some average Joe doctor. I also prefer that the pilot who’s flying the jet I’m on was at the top of his class in aviator school. Do you get my point?

 

And in case it’s escaped your “common sense,” Trump is clearly an elitist. Do common folk own private jets, yachts, penthouses, etc.? Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan struts around with the same smirk as Jamie Dimon, America’s greatest bank robber & Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy who also thought that his shit didn’t stink.

Furthermore, the 74 million “Christian” evangelicals & fundamentalists who sing Trump’s praises and were a major factor in his being elected, aren’t morally superior or elite, are they? Trump brags about being able to grab women by their pussies because he’s a celebrity but that doesn’t trouble the spiritual elite. And he hangs out with his good pal, Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted serial rapist & pedophile but hey, boys will be boys, right?

Trump has repeatedly made inappropriate remarks about his daughter, Ivanka i.e.perhaps if she wasn’t my daughter, I’d date her?

 

Were Plato and Aristotle elitists? A history professor of mine once told us that you can roughly divide Western Civilization between these two men in terms of their influence on it. Or what about the list of Western Civilization’s top ten most cited authors which includes Plato & Aristotle, Freud, the Bible, & Noam Chomsky, the only one on the list who is alive? And for the record, I’m very proud to claim Noam as a friend of mine. We’ve been corresponding since 2006. Were these people elitists? Why has this term taken on such a negative connotation? Could it be that it’s a product of the propaganda that the truly evil form of elitists, like Trump & his ilk have been spreading all their lives?

 

And no, this isn’t more liberal propaganda because if you study a little history, you’ll find that the rich & powerful throughout history have done their best to divide & conquer the masses. To accomplish this end, they have waged a constant cultural war designed to make us fear & hate each other. Try to keep this in mind & watch as many Trump rallies as you can stomach to see for yourself if this is his consistent strategy.

 

The thing that most politicians & many religious leaders have in common is their love for authoritarian rule over their flocks. This is why Trump goes weak in the knees when he’s in the company of the world’s most brutal dictators. The word “dictator” seems to have fallen out of favor so now they’re called, “authoritarians,” but evil is evil no matter what name you give it.

Trump, the failed dictator!

 

Lest you think I’m defending intellectual snobbery, you couldn’t be more wrong. I’m saying that if a person has devoted their life to developing their intellectual or academic skills such as critical & analytical abilities, they deserve respect. Just as a person who has become a top level mechanic, carpenter, electrician, etc. deserves respect not mockery.

 

Many who idolize Trump have fallen for his deceitful tactics & strategies such as conflating the truism that everyone has the right to their opinion with the assumption that therefore, all opinions are equally valid. This would be like someone such as myself who consider it a great accomplishment to replace a battery in my car, arguing with a guy who can rebuild an engine about some intricate & hidden problem with my car’s engine & has been a top-rated mechanic for over 50 years. Again, who would you trust to work on your car which you entrust your family’s to, me, or a trusted mechanic you may have known for decades? On the other hand, who would you trust your children’s education with, me, who has been a lifelong lover of learning, earned a B.A. in English literature, taken enough college courses to have earned two B.A.s if I applied for it. Was reading at the 11th grade, sixth month level when I was in the sixth grade. Have collected a library of approximately 10,000 classics, etc. etc. etc.? Or, your friendly & knowledgeable mechanic?

 

Again, this is the centuries old tactic of dividing & conquering us so we don’t wise-up & rise-up. This is why our Founding Fathers, for all their faults, tried their best to separate the powers of the Church & State. They were intellectual elites & students of history & the Enlightenment and were only too aware of the lessons of history. Kings & the Church elites have always enjoyed the special rights & privileges they’ve given themselves i.e. the majority of the crops the peasants grew, the best food, best accommodations, etc. and so what if the peasants couldn’t survive on the crumbs of the leftovers.

 

The State tells us we must bow to their authority laid out in their laws but when the rich elite, the 1%, break the laws, like Trump has done all his life, they aren’t held accountable. The Church threatens us with eternal damnation while many pastors, preachers, ministers, rabbis, etc. become multi-millionaires with their own private jets, mansions, etc. & their sheep keep sending them the little money they may have leftover after paying their rent which Trump type realtors keep jacking-up.

 

Another factor to bear in mind is the fact that the elite cockroaches know how powerful the use of spectacle is. Roman emperors & senates kept their starving citizens distracted by holding gladiator competitions & throwing people to the lions in the Collaseum which when you think of it, is kind of like the thrill fans of “The Walking Dead,” enjoy.

Trump’s MAGA Christians who are now the Gladiators for Christ!

 

Today’s Circus Maximus is headed by vampires like Trump who used his time in office to suck out every dollar he could for himself & his spawn. Speaking of money, why is it that so many of us want to send our kids to one of those terrible, “elite” universities? Could it be because they believe that a degree from them practically guarantees their children a high-paying job upon graduation?

The good old days that the 74 million Christians who sing Trump’s praises seem to have forgotten?

 

Yet many, if not most of those parents who’d love to be able to afford to send their kids to an elite college don’t really give a shit about academic excellence, only about how much money their children might earn. Of course, because the greed of the 1% just keeps growing & they know they, the owners of those universities know they have a captive audience, the price of admission has gone through the roof.

 

Sadly, most students are forced to in effect, make Faustian deals with the Devil which are the Corporate Cockroach class because they leave university owing tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans. Basically, colleges have become little more than glorified trade schools. Not that trade schools are necessarily a bad thing. I’m not one of those who believe that everyone should go to college. But I do believe that everyone who wants to, should be able to & shouldn’t have to sell their soul in order to afford it.

 

America is rapidly circling the drain in my opinion & I bet that when the last nail is pounded into our collective coffin, the “leaders” and the 1% will plead ignorance. Don’t you believe it. They’ve known all along & they simply don’t give a fuck! You Trump zombies may recall his exclamation during one of his hate rallies, “I love the poorly educated!” A Freudian slip if ever there was one & I’m sure the prayer of every grifter, used car salesman, lawyer, & televangelist.

Just shows that all you need to succeed in business is no conscience, morality, or ethics.

 

Sorry but I have more bad news for you anti-intellectuals or anti-elitists, the “Smart phones,” you carry with you all day weren’t invented by dummies with less than a sixth grade education. In fact, the Internet was invented mostly by a British citizen by the name of Sir Tim Burners-Lee who attended Oxford University & he and his colleagues at M.I.T., yep, intellectuals, gave the world perhaps the greatest tool for learning & sharing knowledge. Try imagining a world without the world-wide web today.

 

Moreover, I can’t think of any advances, inventions, discoveries in science or technology that weren’t the product of intellectual elites? I know you who have been indoctrinated into believing the M.A.G.A. myth can’t tell us exactly when that supposed golden age was. Perhaps you think it was in the 1950s & before Black people were allowed to vote? And if you do, that tells us that you’re one of those patriotic, good Christians of the KKK.

 

Chances are you are a regular viewer of FOX “News,” the fear & hate channel that drills into its viewers heads & hearts that it’s Blacks, Mexicans, gays, Muslims, etc. who are responsible for your humiliating & miserable situation. But the facts are that it was Democrats & Republicans who pushed for the passage of NAFTA. And behind them are the true puppet masters, the 1% who we are forced to subsidize & give them one tax cut after another & it was your hypocritical hero, Trump, who gave them one of the biggest tax cuts in history. So much for his “draining the swamp in Washington.”

I understand your anger at our government & many of your grievances are legitimate but to believe that we can fix things by tearing down the government physically is like burning your home down with all your possessions in it & then being forced to stay in a homeless shelter. Not very smart.

 

The way to make this government accountable to us, the 99%, is to inform ourselves, unite, boycott, & force the passage of a bill removing money i.e. legal bribes that corporations give to politicians to seduce them & turn them into corporate whores (high-priced call girls). There are several other critically important actions we must also make a reality but as long as we keep  wrongly blaming one another, the game remains the same & we all lose!

 

I have observed & written about this tragic phenomenon of anti-intellectualism in America for over 30 years & it makes me very sad because there are billions of people on this planet who would be ecstatic to have the opportunity to even learn the basics of reading, writing, & arithmetic. And a third or better of our population believe education is at the root of the evil destroying America.

 

“Elitism is the idea that people, by belonging to a particular class, gender, culture, sex, race, or nationality, or by having certain attributes, are better than other people. It is the concept, the guiding principle, that gives the right to other people to dominate others and deny to some the privilege and rights which others are being afforded.”

Ponder this question if you will, why is it that we put the wealthy up on pedestals as elites because of their wealth. We put athletic superstars up on pedestals as well. And the same can be said for movie stars, rock stars, etc. etc. etc. yet if a person has attained a level on intellectual superiority or excellence, we dismiss them as elitist snobs who think they’re better than us?

The other elitists whom we idolize, are better than us only in that they have much more money than we do, or they’re far better athletes than we are, etc. but if someone is smarter than we are, we in effect, spit on them! Personally, I love it when I meet someone smarter than myself if they’re not an arrogant asshole like Trump, because I can then pick their brains & get tips on ways to become more intelligent than I am.

 

In the meantime, let’s delve a bit deeper into this word, “elitism,” and how it relates to Trump’s infamous reign of grifting on a scale that has surpassed all other presidents by light years. First of all, you must always bear in mind that he has the intelligence level of a third grader. And he’s like a spoiled-brat & boorish bully who has been used to getting his way for most of his life. When historians look back on this period & write books on it, and if we haven’t blown the world up or died from our wanton climate destruction, future generations are going to marvel at how we let such an obvious phony become our president. He has seized every opportunity during his tenure in the White House to stuff his bank accounts from his grifting & outright larceny, theft, & embezzlement.

 

Early in his career of real estate development, Donny longed to be part of New York City’s social elite & attend their parties where intellectual, artistic, & cultural events were held but he was simply so crass & boorish or rude, lewd, & crude that they didn’t invite him to their soirees.

 

This deeply offended his delicate sensibilities so he began attacking them for their snobbishness & irrelevance and he has flip-flopped back & forth over the decades between hating them & still longing to become a member of the “in-crowd.” It seems obvious that because he clearly wasn’t anywhere close to being an intellectual elite, or an athletic, musical, or a movie star, he focused on trying to become a financial elite. But don’t forget that he has reminded us more than once of his “really big brain.” And come to think of it, I guess we could say that he is in an elite class of his own when it comes to bragging?

 

On a very serious note though, Donny’s willful ignorance has cost the lives of several hundred thousands of American citizens that was the direct result of his calling the COVID virus a hoax & his active undermining of the CDC’s advice to wear masks, socially distance ourselves, etc. And when he advised people to drink bleach, I was totally flabbergasted at such stupidity. If only he’d have taken his own advice when he contracted the virus, we’d have been spared so much more suffering, death, & division.

 

Remember, M.A.G.A. morons don’t trust anyone with more than a sixth grade education so it doesn’t matter where you get your medical advice from, Alex Jones, a witch doctor, your astrologer, etc. Again because everyone is entitled to their own facts & everyone’s opinion is equally valid. So, if you or any of your loved ones comes down with a serious disease, you can simply hold a séance in your backyard & hell, you might as well have a barbecue at the same time & get drunk with the other intellectual giants who you call friends. And you don’t have to worry about losing your home because of the outrageous costs of our medical system.

 

Moreover, you may have noticed Donny’s fondness of calling out the “fake news?” This is definitely an area of expertise for him because he’s been deploying it for decades in his never-ending agenda of self-aggrandizement. For example, back in the 60s whenever there was a radio program on that mentioned Trump’s name, he’d call in & pretend to be an anonymous caller & he’d remind the audience what a brilliant businessman Donny was & how successful he was. If you recall, Donny has repeatedly claimed that daddy only loaned him a mere million dollars but it’s been revealed that it was more like $400,000,000 and countless political favors he had in his pocket due to his mafia connections, favors by city councils, zoning departments, etc. Yep! A self-made man if there ever was one?

One of the biggest nails in our coffin & truly scary that so many haven’t a clue as to how blatant their propaganda is.

 

Furthermore, because Donny wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the box, he had his own Joseph Goebbels in the form of Steve Bannon much like Georgie “Dubya” Bush had his Karl Rove. The two years the DNC wasted on trying to prove that the Russians were responsible for Donny’s win in 2016 was just that, a tremendous waste of time & energy.

 

In my opinion, it mattered little who was behind the trolling & bots & etc. Much more significant was the fact that Steve Bannon’s organization, Cambridge Analytica, was allowed to target & post tens of thousands of fake news stories about Hillary on Facebook. Especially when you consider the fact that something like 70% of Facebook users relie on Facebook for their news.

 

In other words, the mentally and morally-challenged individuals who believed that everything Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, etc. spewed out was the gospel truth, received a tremendous boon because of the power Facebook had accrued over the years. And we mustn’t forget how much FOX “news,”  has done to help Bush & Trump gain popularity & credibility. Talk about “fake news,” I have been referring to FOX “news” as the Fear and Hate channel pretty much from the introduction of it to our airwaves. (actually after about a year of its establishment)

 

Another very critical fact that hopefully won’t slide down our collective “memory hole,” is the complex web of lies the Bush administration wove to push into our invasion & occupation of Iraq. How many American lives were lost? How many American soldiers were maimed physically & mentally? How many innocent Iraqis? And what were the consequences? We stirred-up a hornet’s nest in the Middle East that may take several decades if ever, to calm back down? And for the record, I blame the New York Times to a considerable degree for helping to launch that immoral invasion as well as FOX “news.”

Okay, it’s time for another lesson from history, F.D.R. (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) who passed the New Deal (with a lot of pressure from below) was the greatest president America ever had. And the “New Deal” really pissed-off & scared the obscenely wealthy in America because they’ve never been fond of sharing with us, the peasants who create their wealth. Anyway, in his inaugural address in 1933 at the height of the “Great Depression,” proclaimed that “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

This is such a profound insight & a true gem of wisdom because it reminds us that in effect, the rich & powerful use fear to control & manipulate us. Most notably when it comes to stirring the public up so they’ll go along with yet another war in our never-ending parade of wars.

 

Additionally, President Eisenhower warned us as he was leaving office to “Be aware of the military/industrial complex.” (he wanted to add Congress but his P.R. people feared that was going too far in terms of honesty) I don’t  believe Eisenhower tried to slow down the build-up of the military/industrial complex while he was in office? But I could be wrong about that?

 

Strolling on along our path to oblivion largely as a result of disrespect & dismissal of intelligence & intellectual excellence, we meet a  honest scholar & former, cold war warrior, Chalmers Johnson. You might care to take two minutes to review his credentials & background if you give a shit about these minor issues? This video clip is well worth taking the time to watch & I hope you will.

Professor Johnson tells us in a nutshell & in detail within his trilogy before passing away in 2010 that we can be a Democracy or we can be an Empire, a tyranny but we can’t be both at the same time and our Republic is circling the drain ever faster because of the absurd amount of money we’re wasting on our military budget (an oxymoron if ever there was one).

 

Remember the mantra of “common sense” that those who reside in Trump land believe is their province alone? Well, please be so kind as to explain to me why there’s never enough money when it comes to our health, education, or welfare but magically, the Pentagon always manages to keep on producing bombs, missiles, etc. that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars each & we’re able to give them to nations like the Ukraine & the several little proxy wars we’ve got going around the world?

 

Chalmers lays it out in excellent detail but you’re probably in a hurry to get back to watching your “reality television” program to spend an hour listening to Chalmers, right? Yeah, I’m just another one of those intellectual elite snobs because I actually give a shit about our destruction unlike all the Sunshine Patriots who idolize the circus  master with the girly-hands.

 

Here’s a list of just the top 100 “Defense contractors,” it’s too bad for us that we stopped calling it the War Dept. decades ago, at least that was honest. https://dsm.forecastinternational.com/wordpress/2022/07/26/top-100-defense-contractors-2021/

 

You might also note that it used to be a serious crime to be a “war profiteer,” of course that didn’t apply to the President of Vice, Dick Cheney, who made millions from Halliburton whom he just happened to work for & awarded the lion’s share of contracts to “rebuild” Iraq after we bombed it back into the Stone Age. And no big deal that Halliburton lost pallets of money it was supposed to use to help the Iraqis and never got around to rebuilding a majority of those projects it got paid for anyway. Yep! Good old American Crony Capitalism in action yet again.

 

Oh well? Moving right along, we should also bear in mind the enormous power & influence of what’s called the P.R. industry (Public Relations). In short, they’re responsible for creating & manipulating images. Not only of products but also political policies, politicians, actors, etc. Note for example that on Obama’s first run at the presidency, the P.R. firm that managed his image, won one of the highest awards in marketing for the year.

 

The key or the most critical point in the context of the PR industry is that they come up with the tools, tactics, & strategies of selling the public on everything from launching new wars to the corporate ideology that helps to persuade us that habitual liars & grifters par excellence like Trump the Terrible Tot is the greatest president we’ve ever had.

 

Here’s another little dose of “common sense” for you if you can wake your senses long enough to shake free from Trump-speak? Take a look at a world map showing U.S. military bases and N.A.T.O. countries & compare it to a map showing the countries that China & Russia own or dominate. It’s  clear that we, the defenders of Freedom & Democracy are attempting to & have already done so to a large extent, surrounding Russia & China with hostile forces. And no, I’m not fucking defending Putin or making excuses for him but let’s get real!

 

America’s military might is superior to something like the next 25 nations below us combined. So why are we some of the most frightened & fearful people on earth? My moral & intellectual hero, Noam Chomsky, has pointed out that the rest of the world is far more afraid of America than any other country! Does that get your patriotic juices flowing? If it does, you just might want to take a look in a mirror because it means you’re a tyrant or a dictator lover like Trump, the would be tin-pot dictator who gets weak in the knees when he’s around his idols like Putin, M.B.S. of Saudi Arabia, Duterte of the Phillipines, Bolsanaro of Brazil, etc. Yep! Rally round the flag pole, boys!

As Chalmers Johnson details for us, we have close to 800 military bases around the globe in 150 different countries not to mention how many secret, black operations sites? You might argue that “Ignorance is Bliss,” well yeah, if you’re part of the Church or the State. Throughout history they have done their best to keep people stupid, it’s far easier to control them than it is those pesky, intellectual elites. Also worthy of note is the fact that over 60% of our government’s billion dollar PR “budget” goes to the Pentagon.

Here’s a little parting gift that came to me in the middle of the night, a few days back;

Conspiracy theories are the last refuge of a moron!

 

— Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, Oregon  October 16, 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Student Debt in America

 

The fact that we have tens, if not hundreds of thousands of students in debt up to a quarter of a million dollars for pursuing college degrees is a national disgrace! Is this one of those “American values” we love to boast of? As Noam Chomsky & others have pointed out, when a student graduates with such a huge debt, they are forced to work for corporations they most likely wouldn’t like to work for but because they offer the higher salaries, many students will take jobs with them in the hope of being able to pay off those back-breaking & soul-crushing debts.

Chomsky in his earlier years in his office doing his favorite pastime, reading.

 

I am one of those “perpetual” or “professional” students who has pursued knowledge all my life because I have an obsession for learning. You see, I have always aspired to nobility but not the nobility of title & fortune, no, the nobility of mind & spirit. Sadly though, in this nation that worships wealth & celebrity, the very adjectives I mentioned above, “perpetual student,” & “professional student,” are usually met with derision, ridicule, & dismissal. “You’re unrealistic, irresponsible, wasting your life, etc.”

Yet these idealistic dreams & guiding principles are what has given my life purpose & made me a better person. And I confess that I too believed in the myth that a college degree guaranteed you a better or much more comfortable life, a more secure future. The lie is abundantly clear today but the culture shapers in the 1% find it useful to perpetuate this grand delusion. Why? Because college shows an employer that you can make deadlines as in assignments professors hand out. That you have the discipline to cram the information they’ve shoved down your throat, into your brain for at least long enough to regurgitate it on their tests.

In brutal honesty, college like public school is all about breaking your spirit, especially those with the more robust or rebellious spirits, & turning you into a docile & subservient employee. But this destructive practice can & often does backfire on the corporate cockroach masters because it stifles creativity, investigation, or “thinking outside the box,” in general. You see, it’s a double-edged sword! 

Doris Lessing (one of my favorite professors, favorite writers & Nobel Prize winner in Literature)

 

“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.” — Doris Lessing

Step right up Suckers! The less you know, the easier it is for slime-balls like this to screw you!

Don’t get me wrong, the purpose of this essay isn’t a pragmatic or utilitarian defense of college education but a humanitarian or idealistic vision of what college can & should be. You see my friend, I have worked at many shitty jobs in my life, especially in my 20s when I was floundering so-to-speak. I hadn’t found any subject in college that inspired me to sacrifice four years of my life. Many of those jobs had managers or owners who looked at me like I was some domesticated farm animal. Naturally, I seethed inside & wanted to spit in their faces & scream, you dare to look down on me, you greedy simpleton! But in a sense this was good for me because it drove me to push myself & prove all those who thought they were my superiors, wrong! 

This philosopher had so much influence on the 20th century, it’d blow your mind!

 

Those who commend work. – In the glorification of ‘work’, in the unwearied talk of the ‘blessing of work’, I see the same covert idea as in the praise of useful impersonal actions: that of fear of everything individual. Fundamentally, one now feels at the sight of work – one always means by work that hard industriousness from early till late – that such work is the best policeman, that it keeps everyone in bounds and can mightily hinder the development of reason, covetousness, desire for independence. For it uses up an extraordinary amount of nervous energy, which is thus denied to reflection, brooding, dreaming, worrying, loving, hating; it sets a small goal always in sight and guarantees easy and regular satisfactions. Thus a society in which there is continual hard work will have more security: and security is now worshipped as the supreme divinity. – And now! Horror! Precisely the ‘worker’ has become dangerous! The place is swarming with ‘dangerous individuals’! And behind them the danger of dangers – the individual!” — Nietzsche (essay also titled, “The Eulogists of Work”

Unfortunately, many are finding themselves in astronomical debt & their degrees aren’t “worth” much more than this in the rigged “free market.”

Luckily, I also have a quiet & reflective side and this has helped me weather the storms or tempests of my life when I feared I might lose my self-control & unload on the arrogant bastards who enjoy bullying people less fortunate than them. Ever since I was a little boy & my grandmother got me my first library card, books have been an escape, a comfort, & a refuge from the ugly childhood experiences I went through. Books never let me down when friends & family often did. I can open a book any time I feel the need for a mental or emotional pick me upper therefore, books have always been my most loyal & consistent friends.

You may be thinking I’ve gone around the bend as the saying goes but, I assure you I haven’t. When I mentioned the “nobility of mind & spirit” that I have been seeking all my life earlier, what I’m referring to can be explained in more down to earth terms. Not so long ago in England for example, when a young man or woman from the upper class, finished their Bachelor of Arts degree at University, it was customary for them to go on The Grand Tour.

The purpose or goal of going on this Grand Tour was to expose a young person of refinement & class to the great works of art, architecture, music, etc. along with the exquisite cuisines, wines, etc. of Europe. It was believed that this travel would deepen the breadth & depth of their knowledge & help to make them a well-rounded, and thus more suitable person for upper class nobility & able to converse & behave properly among the political, religious, & financial elite.

You may be curious as to why I would want to study such things, well quite simply, I set my sights on the highest goals because if I could at least familiarize myself with these areas of knowledge, I believed I could look even the wealthiest of the corporate cockroaches in the eye & hold a decent conversation & even feel intellectually superior to them. I’ve known all my life that I’d never become rich & have never had wealth as my goal. My goals have always been equality, peace, pride, self-respect, & ceaseless learning.

I forget how Bob Dylan phrased it in one of his songs but basically, I believe I’m not better than anyone & no one is better than me. Yet, I will get on my arrogant high-horse if someone tries to put me down. And it’s usually very easy to show them how intellectually, morally, & spiritually inferior they are when they try to use their wealth or material possessions to substantiate their superiority. Donald Trump is a prime example of this kind of person, need I say more?

Sign-up at your local Walmart my MAGA friends!

 

For many years, I have tried to inspire people to reach higher than they often think they are capable of. Why? Because only by pushing ourselves beyond what we may think our limits are, do we surpass our self-imposed limits. I have often used the analogy of a foot race to try to explain my reasoning. Let’s say you’re a pretty fast runner at your school & you’ve been challenged to a race against the student who holds first place. You know that you’re going to have to push yourself physically, mentally, & emotionally harder than you ever have in your life if you are to stand a chance of winning. Well, the same holds true for us intellectually or in any other arena we dream of excelling in.

This is why I have always pushed myself intellectually or academically and I know I won’t stop pushing myself in terms of trying to develop my mental skills/abilities to their fullest capability. The push for this excellence has made my life rich, interesting, & stimulating and never boring. I firmly believe that many more of us would be happier, more fulfilled & contributing citizens if America raised its academic standards rather than just continuing to lower those standards.

Here are a few suggestions if we wish to accomplish such goals or to actually make a lot of those professed values & principles a reality. In no particular order; Drastically raise teacher’s salaries but also the requirements to become a teacher. For example, to earn a B.A. degree requires about 120 units, 40 in your major & 80 in general education. Let’s flip that on its head & require 80 units in your major so you’re a lot more knowledgeable in your area of so-called expertise.

Eliminate the majority of the teacher education classes required to earn your teaching credential. The majority of teachers I have spoken to about these courses, over the years have told me they were a waste of time & they learned far more by actually being on the job & learning by experience. Provide every new teacher with a mentor to guide & encourage them.

Pay beginning teachers a salary of $50,000 & pay professors a beginning salary of $100,000. Today’s professors must publish as a part of their professional requirements. Fine, but let them spend half their day teaching students & the other half working on their writing/publishing of papers, articles for journals, books, etc.

Of course there’s no way of mandating excellence in teachers/professors in terms of the intellectual elite I was describing earlier but we can & we must recognize, reward, & otherwise encourage a striving for the kind of excellence as understood in the medieval ages when speaking of a person as a “Renaissance man.”

Universal man, Uomo universale

By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica


Renaissance man, also called Universal Man, Italian Uomo Universale, an ideal that developed in Renaissance Italy from the notion expressed by one of its most-accomplished representatives, Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72), that “a man can do all things if he will.” The ideal embodied the basic tenets of Renaissance humanism, which considered man the centre of the universe, limitless in his capacities for development, and led to the notion that men should try to embrace all knowledge and develop their own capacities as fully as possible.

Thus the gifted men of the Renaissance sought to develop skills in all areas of knowledge, in physical development, in social accomplishments, and in the arts. The ideal was most brilliantly exemplified in Alberti—who was an accomplished architect, painter, classicist, poet, scientist, and mathematician and who also boasted of his skill as a horseman and in physical feats—and in Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), whose gifts were manifest in the fields of art, science, music, invention, and writing.

Undoubtedly, we have a long, uphill battle if we are to ever reach this kind of intellectual dream world I am describing. I am so saddened & ashamed that America, well, those in the MAGA universe, now openly celebrate their stupidity & wear it as a badge of honor. And we mustn’t forget to thank America’s Taliban, the “Christian” far-right for their significant role in dumbing us down along with the corporate media.

Don’t lose hope though because as we know, being aware that a problem exists is half the battle because we can then formulate our tactics to chase them back into their caves of ignorance, fear, & hate.

In conclusion, tragically for us, we have been dismissing & ignoring these destructive forces within for decades and they have now reached the very pinnacles of power, the presidency, the Congress, & the Supreme Court. Are we going to wait until one of them launches a nuclear war or the climate has been so devastated that any one of those popular dystopian movies such as “Mad Max,” becomes a horrifying reality? The responsibility falls on each & every one of us my friends. What will you do?

It can’t happen here, right?

“The Father of the Atomic Bomb” at Los Alamos Lab in New Mexico “Trinity tests” in shock & horror at what he’d helped to create

 

P.S. Education from pre-school all the way through to earning a Ph.D. should be absolutely free or, let’s at least be honest & stop pretending that our current higher education system is anything other than a glorified trade school!

Death by Ignorance

The Burning of Witches to “Save their Souls”

 

 

In some respects, this essay could be seen as a sort of autopsy on the death of America. And death certificates are required to state the cause of death, these are some of those causes in my opinion.

 

I have recently been re-watching the excellent series, “Band of Brothers,” & the episode I watched last night made me think of some parallels to the present state of affairs in the United States. The episode was the one showing the American soldiers’ shock when they came upon one of Hitler’s extermination camps.

 

The “concentration camp” or “death camp” was located just outside a German village or small town & the German residents claimed to have had no idea of what was going on in the camp. Yeah, the flakes of human skin from the crematorium that rained down on the village never raised their suspicions or caused them to be curious.

 

This is a class of ignorance that can only be referred to as willful ignorance. In other words, when people are either too afraid to face the truth or they’re simply apathetic & indifferent to mass slaughter like what was going on a few kilometers from their homes.

There’s a special place in Hell reserved for these sorts of people whether they be German or American or any other nationality or race. And this leads to my first bit of evidence in my case that supports my argument that ignorance is killing, has killed, & will continue to kill unless & until people are brave enough to speak the truth!

 

Back around the mid-1990s, I heard that roughly a third of Americans don’t believe the Holocaust even happened & I was dumbfounded? Could this possibly be true? So, I did a little research & found Deborah Lipstadt’s book, “Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory,” and much to my dismay, I discovered that it is indeed true.

Let this sink in for a few moments if you will because this is deadly serious. Imagine, if the white supremacists can persuade a third of America that the Holocaust never happened & several million Jews as well as five million gays, artists, intellectuals, gypsies, etc., weren’t murdered, what’s next? Will we wake from our national stupor to find that almost overnight, our Democracy has been banished & we now live under a dictatorship & are effectively back in the age of feudalism with no rights whatsoever?

 

Some argue & posit that Trump’s assault on our government has effectively turned back the clock considerably. But as my hero, Noam Chomsky & others have pointed out, Trump is just too damn stupid to have made it a reality though he clearly wanted to become the de facto authoritarian “leader” for life like several of the dictators around the world that he admires i.e., Putin, Bolsanaro, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, Erdogan, Duterte, etc. Trump has no ideology; he only lives for his insatiable greed. But Trump’s destruction will take years, if not decades to repair & with the wholesale prostitution of the GOP’s “leadership,” it may prove impossible to ever repair the damage? Moreover, if another Trump, but someone with a brain takes over the White House, we can kiss the last vestiges of Democracy goodbye forever!

 

And speaking of goodbyes, we are on the Highway to Hell to borrow a song title by Chris Rea, because a handful of billionaires like the Koch brothers & oil companies have spent millions in spreading disinformation & propaganda that denies Global Warming—which should be called Climate Destruction!

Are you beginning to see the pattern illustrating Death by Ignorance? Let’s see, will the White Supremacist fascists cave our heads in or shoot us or will Mother Nature roll over & die and we live what time we have left in a wasteland not fit for humans or animals? Where all water supplies are toxic as well as what food sources are available, & we all need to wear oxygen masks because the very air we need to breathe, will kill us?

Trump’s final Make America Great Again rally

 

Yes, I know this is very morbid & depressing but if you can’t even contemplate my words or ideas, what’s your option? Bury your head in the sand, buy a better entertainment system & pray that I’m just a nut-job and none of these depressing ideas will ever come true or stand a chance of happening.

And since I’m on a roll, here’s another bit of cheerful news, Germany was considered one of the most enlightened, sophisticated, & cultured nations pre-Hitler. Yep! I shit you not! Don’t look to me for all the answers, I’m trying to simply inform people & hopefully spur them to thought & discussion with others in the hope that if we work together, perhaps we can find the necessary solutions to save humanity from its own self-destructive impulses?

 

But one thing I do know for sure is that a third of America believing that the election was stolen from Trump is a very dangerous warning sign! We could be a lot farther down the road to fascism than we realize? Bear in mind that it was fascism that we fought to destroy in WWII & the goddamn Nazis came really close to winning. Moreover, if it weren’t for Russia losing 20 million of its citizens fighting the Nazis on the Eastern Front, we definitely would’ve lost WWII!

This is a good point to insert a critically important theory of mine which no, I can’t prove it, that’s why I said “theory.” But have you ever asked yourself why it is that our government & corporate business “leaders” feed us the same pack of lies in public school about our history?

 

Now this is a subject that is worthy of an entire essay or book by itself, but so I don’t roam too far afield, I believe that if the truth about America’s history was taught in public schools i.e., the near total genocide of the indigenous Native Americans, the fact that slavery created much of the wealth that got the U.S. on its feet so-to-speak in terms of our economy. Cotton in those early years was like oil today in terms of the wealth it generated.

 

These two facts alone are just the tip of the iceberg of America’s hidden history & could turn a lot of America’s young people away from joining the military. Who would fight the never-ending wars the politicians & corporate business leaders keep coming up with? You see, bottom-line, all these wars are about profits for the transnational corporations who really don’t give a fuck about American workers i.e., NAFTA. Need I say more on this subject?

If we could take a few steps back & enlarge our worldview through a historical lens, it is clear that throughout recorded history & probably even before it began to be written down, two forces have struggled against one another & sometimes they have united, in trying to control the people, the peasants, their citizens, organized religion (the official church of each nation) & the state i.e., the government which is owned & told what it can & can’t do by the megalithic corporations!

 

Obviously, the better educated the people are, the more difficult it is to “control” them. By-the-way, Ed Snowden didn’t belabor the point, but I believe it was his central or key warning to us, the spying the government, military, intelligence agencies, etc. does against us is about Control! Mull that over for a while if you will?

Returning to our current state of affairs, you may have noticed Trump & his zombie cult of the walking dead have all but declared war on Science, Facts, Truth, & Reality. This is the key danger of Personality Cults, their leaders can tell their followers to not believe even what their own eyes, ears, & common sense tells them & the true believers won’t trust their own senses, but they will trust the Master’s “truths.” Note Jim Jones influence was so powerful over his flock that most of them willingly drank the Kool-Aid he had laced with poison.

 

“Just remember: What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

In his novel 1984, George Orwell wrote, “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

We’re accustomed to politicians peddling falsehoods to the public and hoping to get away with it. What we’re seeing with Trump, however, is qualitatively different. This is what Rachel described on the show last night as “deliberate trafficking in unreality.”

As regular readers know, it’s become a staple of the Trump presidency. The White House hasn’t exactly been subtle about its vision: Don’t trust news organizations. Don’t trust the courts. Don’t trust pollsters. Don’t trust U.S. intelligence agencies. Don’t trust unemployment numbers. Don’t even trust election results.

 

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-tells-supporters-what-youre-seeing-not-whats-happening-

 

And who can forget Trump’s former, most trusted adviser & campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway’s world-famous knee-slapper that had the world rolling on the floor with laughter:

Most infamous was Conway’s explanation that Trump’s advisers have “alternative facts.” Conway used the phrase to explain then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s utterly false and easily disprovable claims about the size of Trump’s inauguration crowd — comments clearly meant to bolster Trump’s own false claims and ego.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/24/kellyanne-conways-legacy-alternative-facts-ification-gop/

 

Trump and his Happy Meal followers’ open war on science, fact, truth, & reality isn’t just a modern or recent phenomenon, and if this subject intrigues you half as much as it did me, you’re bound to be fascinated by the classic, “Anti-intellectualism in American Life,” by Richard Hofstadter. I read this book twice & with a fine-tooth comb so-to-speak because I used it as a framework for a book of mine on the subject of anti-intellectualism.

 

Hofstadter described anti-intellectualism as “resentment of the life of the mind, and those who are considered to represent it; and a disposition to constantly minimize the value of that life.”[6]

Also, he described the term as a view that “intellectuals…are pretentious, conceited… and snobbish; and very likely immoral, dangerous, and subversive …

Oh, the joy of finding things so appropriate when doing a bit of research on a topic I’m interested in;

 

https://www.salon.com/2020/05/30/anti-intellectualism-is-back–because-it-never-went-away-and-

 

Of course, I might as well be speaking Martian to those who sit on the edge of their seats in rapture when their holy man, Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan speaks because my thoughts & words are alien to their ears. To illustrate how far down the rabbit-hole we have fallen, it used to be illegal to scream “fire” in a crowded theater if it weren’t true, but not anymore.

 

Nope! Not in George W. Bush’s “Compassionate Conservatives” America. Donald the Dick has repeatedly gotten away with screaming “Liar!” when America’s top medical experts have tried to warn us about the deadly serious consequences of our not wearing masks, social distancing, testing, getting vaccinated, etc. and you can be sure that the numbers of Americans who have died from the COVID virus are far higher than the government or the corporate-owned media have stated. And not only is the President of Trump University not held to account for the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans, he isn’t even publicly chastised for this unconscionable behavior let alone driven from office?

these “Christians” are perverse cuz they pray for this to become real!

 

Death by Ignorance again & again & again! I keep asking myself, what’s it going to take for the Trump cult followers to wake-up? A nuclear attack on New York & L.A.? Seriously, just how stupid can we be? It might interest you to know that again, roughly a third of the American population is illiterate. Try to put yourself in their shoes for a day, they’re not able to read street signs so their world is limited to the close by & the familiar. They can’t read menus, so they order the standard fare of a hamburger or steak probably? They can’t read the danger warning signs on medicines, toxic chemicals they may use, etc. etc. etc. To say nothing of how easily lying, con artists like Trump can manipulate them into voting against their own self-interests.

Moreover, speaking of manipulation, an area that has me especially concerned is the so-called, “social media.” And you may dismiss it as fear mongering, but I believe it’s not too far of a reach to conclude that the supposed “social media,” which has come to play such a significant role in peoples’ lives have “radicalized” some of the mentally unstable who went on to commit deadly mass shootings!

 

Here is a link to a video in which a professor calmly & rationally informs us about how the “social media” is de facto, “Toxic by Design.”

https://youtu.be/wpvv_ooqJik And for the record, I too was seduced into becoming a Facebook user & what a massive waste of time, energy, & emotions it turned out to be. I think my “vacation from reality” on Facebook lasted a good five years or better? Furthermore, I didn’t quit Facebook for any of the reasons I share in this essay, no, it was basically out of frustration/aggravation at “Friends” apathy & intellectual laziness.

 

In a nutshell, Facebook & most of the other “social media” does far more harm than good in terms of spreading fear, hatred, & violence which have one overriding common denominator, and that is ignorance!

“Racism is a symptom of psychological disorder. It is a sign of a lack of self-esteem and insecurity. People who are psychologically healthy have a stable sense of self and have no need to bolster their sense of self through group identity. They have no need to define themselves in contrast to and in conflict with others. America’s racist structure is no accident. It was deliberately created to gain power and keep power….

 

In the end, racism is ignorance. It is an ignorance that becomes fear, and that fear becomes hatred. It is evil. White Americans are not only ignorant of racism but are also ignorant of their own ignorance. They don’t know that they don’t know. They have no idea why ghettos still remain and are indifferent to them. They are ignorant of the tenacity of racism because this ignorance serves their psychological and material interests.”

 

https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2020/12/28/22198159/letter-racism-is-both-ignorance-and-insecurity

 

For most of my life, this has basically been my view of racism, but I wasn’t nearly as eloquent & succinct as this author. There are those that argue that many racists are well-educated, I say Bullshit! If a person is truly “well-educated,” they understand that all humanity is connected & we all want basically the same few things. To provide for our families a decent home, quality health care, & a meaningful job in a nutshell. And we don’t need organized religion to tell us we should be good to one another; common sense tells us that.

May I remind you that many, if not most “good Germans” saw the rising tide of fascism as Hitler slowly came to power, but they dismissed it as a relatively small percentage of Germans who were nut-jobs not unlike the White supremacy groups that have steadily been growing in America over the past few decades. Go ahead, dismiss me as just another fear monger but my trying to warn Americans by showing the parallels in history isn’t meant to simply get attention. No, my goals are always the same, to inspire people to inform & empower themselves and ideally to unite & organize against the true monsters like Trump.

Pursuing this further, connections between racism & ignorance help shed light on the growing phenomenon of the rise in belief in conspiracy theories especially since the rise of Trump. Consider how popular & wealthy Alex Jones for example has become. His secret? Spread conspiracy theories. His passionate appeals to his viewers & listeners complete with tears, convinced his followers he was the real deal or genuine. And again, the less educated are far more vulnerable to manipulation than others simply because they aren’t aware of the common tactics used by the unscrupulous to suck them into their world view i.e., the Jews are coming, the liberals are coming, the homosexuals are coming etc. Here in brief is why conspiracy theories are so popular:

 

  • The desire for understanding and certainty
  • The desire for control and security
  • The desire to maintain a positive self-image

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-apes/201801/why-do-people-believe-in-conspiracy-theories

 

I’m not going to delve into this subject here because it’d only make my essay longer & people want brevity so they can get back to the more important things in life i.e., “reality t.v.,” sports, making more money, “social media,” etc. but note if you will, that behind many, if not most of the dark chapters in world history, there was a conspiracy theory. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, & the attempted genocide of the Jews in WWII, to name just a few.

 

Some of you may think that I’m just weaving my own conspiracy theory when I claim that the 1% want us ignorant & only intelligent enough to run the machines in their factories & etc.? Here’s a personal anecdote & a quote regarding this;

 

Many years ago, I was in an interview & the manager told me that he was president of the local school district, ABC Unified School District (Paramount, CA). He seemed like an open-minded person, so I asked him why we were continually lied to regarding the so-called “Winning of the West,” and he replied in a matter-of-fact manner, not the least apologetic; “Most students don’t go on to higher education & the government wants students to leave high school with a positive feeling about their country.”

The poster boy for anti-intellectualism
“collateral damage”

 

Do you recall my theory that the government & our corporate rulers know or fear that if the truth were told about America’s history, it might be very difficult to find enough recruits for the military?

 

“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” (President Woodrow Wilson, from 1913 to 1921 who ran for office promising he’d keep us out of war but then led us into WWI)

 

 

In my defense against possible accusations of being a hypocrite, I have been a perpetual student & voracious reader all my life. I worked in the public education field for over 20 years & although it’s hard to quantify something like education & I may be accused of being one of those dreaded elitist snobs, I shall try to quantify my area of expertise. Ha! Ha!

 

In terms of my formal education, I went up to having earned a B.A. in English literature. Yet, it took me 14 years to earn that four-year degree because I dropped out of community college courses many times, sometimes half or even three-quarters of the way through a semester. Just because I didn’t receive the college credits for those classes I dropped out of, I still learned while I was in them.

 

Above all, I am most proud of my personal library which I have been collecting for over half a century. Approximately 10,000 books and no, I haven’t read them all, but I have made copious notes in several hundred of them. I use those notes often in essays I’ve written or books I am in the process of writing. Finally, if I had to guesstimate, I’d conservatively say that I’ve spent 50,000 hours or more in studying, writing, listening to & watching documentaries, etc. in the area of political science in particular. If this makes me an elitist, then yeah, I’m a goddamn elitist intellectual & I earned it, I paid my dues and I continue to pay my dues.

 

Why is it that people idolize & have such great respect for people who have become obscenely wealthy, but disrespect & dismiss people like myself? I’ll leave that to you to reflect upon. Consider Trump, who even knows what his true net worth is, he’s been lying about it his entire life. To all but the willfully ignorant, Trump is a moron of gargantuan proportions! This is a person to respect, trust, & believe?

 

We’ve all seen & heard the age-old maxim, “Ignorance is Bliss,” well if this is how you prefer to go through life, more power to you & you will continue to be shocked & wonder why each personal & national crisis happens. I’ll end by bringing it back full circle to the willful ignorance of the Holocaust deniers & what happened as a result of the “Good Germans,” who denied the rising tide of fascism in pre-WWII Germany;

 

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

— Pastor Martin Niemoller

(a public critic of Hitler who spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in a concentration camp)

The illusion that war will make us safe isn’t worth the pain this young woman is experiencing! 

 

— Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, Oregon June 6, 2022

 

 

 

 

Dangerous Illusions Part II

 

Notwithstanding the possibility that my thoughts here will be dismissed as yet another absurd Alex Jones conspiracy theory, I am once again going to sound the alarm bell. I believe to a large extent; complacency is behind the scary state of being America is in.

 

How else would you explain the fact that someone as brazenly corrupt as Donald Trump could become president of the most powerful nation on the planet? Are we condemned as George Santayana said?

 

“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Definition of a fool is someone who keeps repeating the same mistake & boy is America full of fools!

I’m sure that most countries are equally as guilty as the U.S. when it comes to denying their past history or the truth of their dastardly & immoral acts, they committed in acquiring, maintaining, & expanding their empires. However, I’m an American citizen & therefore responsible for the good things the U.S. has done as well as the immoral things we have done. And as my hero, Noam Chomsky points out, we can do something about what’s going on in America at a local level, a state level, & a federal level so yeah, we can pass moral/ethical judgments on foreign governments, but we can’t affect their government’s policies/actions, so we should do what we can to change our government’s policies/practices.

 

And yes, this is grossly oversimplifying but to a huge extent, Trump slimed his way into the presidency because far too many of us supposedly intelligent Leftists were asleep at the wheel. We laughed whenever someone suggested Trump had a real chance of winning.

 

Yep! We on the “progressive” side in most matters, have been the stupid ones. We have underestimated, ignored, dismissed, & forgotten just what our enemies are capable of. Again, our damn complacency & that applies to our intellectual complacency as well.

The key argument against home schooling was the sacred need to develop social skills. How’s that working for ya?

A case in point, “Smart phones.” I must tip my hat to whatever advertising agency came up with that one, it’s been a phenomenal success. I bet you that many, if not most people who own a smart phone actually believe it makes them smarter. Seems almost primitive like some indigenous peoples who have their magical beliefs in trees, animals, forces of nature that empower them just by being near them.

Unequivocally, “Smart phones” do not make us smarter, they’re a convenience, not a necessity! They are the descendants of the old, 10-key, adding machines, then the pocket calculators, and then personal computers. And basically, their primary value is the fact that they can make calculations far faster than humans can. People seem to mistake speed for quality.

 

You may have heard the story that when Einstein was in grammar school, his teachers often thought he was intellectually-challenged. This is the trending term for the field I & my wife worked in for most of our careers, Special Education.

 

Einstein’s teachers thought because he was so slow to respond when a teacher called on him because his mind was deep in reflection upon other possible answers to the teacher’s question. In other words, we respect the “quick-witted,” & dismiss those who are slow to answer i.e., those thinkers who know that quality is far more important than how quickly you can produce an answer.

I have witnessed our slow decay if you like, over the course of my life i.e., we learned the multiplication tables by 4th grade, I believe and up to 12 X 12? And over the years, they stopped teaching students how to multiply so now kids are allowed to use pocket calculators in the classroom.

 

I have also noted that teenagers can no longer count your change back to you when you make a purchase. McDonald’s employees for example, can’t operate the standard cash register. So, McDonald’s cash register tells them how much money to return to the customer.

Around 1992 when I was a substitute teacher in Los Angeles, I learned that the average high school graduate’s reading level was at an 8th grade level. This isn’t meant to lay all the blame on the teachers, the students, the system, but to highlight the fact that our public education standards have been declining for decades. The students, the educational bureaucracy, the parents, & society in general share in the responsibility for our decline.

The Press lies by omission & Trump is habitual liar

Yet on the other hand, we’re told that all is saved, we have “Smart phones.” How do we account for this miracle? Could it be that the Emperor has No Clothes? Yes, the naked truth is that it’s an illusion that smart phones are making us smarter. In fact, it’s a dangerous delusion because with the white supremacists, fascists, & Trump zombies amongst us, free thought along with free speech may become a thing of the past because people are so busy playing games, taking “selfies,” checking the “likes” etc. on their phones that the fascists are infiltrating our society at an alarming rate.

Noam is a humble man but is revered around the globe as perhaps the most important intellectual alive?

We need intelligent, informed, passionate & empathetic people to unify & organize, so please put away that Smart phone & read one of Chomsky’s books or books by Howard Zinn, Arundhati Roy, Chris Hedges, etc. Here’s a few more examples of how Smart phones are actually making us stupider.

 

You’ve probably heard the old maxim, “Use it or lose it”in terms of your muscles, well the same applies to our mental muscles. The proliferation of “Smart phones” over the past 35 years has corresponded with a decline in reading, especially the reading of the Classics & important non-fiction authors.

 

Professors at our top, Ivy league universities like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc. have been lamenting the fact that most of their incoming freshmen students are woefully unprepared i.e., they’ve either never heard of let alone can tell you anything about Plato, Aristotle, the Enlightenment, etc.

The School of Athens with Plato & Aristotle as the pillars of Western Civilization!

 

Today’s youth are techno-wizards when it comes to accessing platforms, apps, etc. on their phones & computers but don’t ask them to write a cogent paragraph or a well-reasoned essay on current events. Critical or analytical thinking skills have become an anachronism.

 

In short, people are becoming ever more vulnerable to “fake news” stories & we are morphing into a nation of functioning illiterates. Do you remember Zuckerberg’s promises when Facebook came on the scene? These tools of the New Age created in the Silicon Valley were going to bring people together & greatly enhance communication between us.

 

Instead, we are living in a society that hasn’t been this polarized & filled with hate, fear, & violence since the Civil War. And Facebook bears a huge amount of responsibility for this ugly reality because it purposely chose the algorithms of fake stories, blatant propaganda against Hillary Clinton & pro-Trump, etc. because they push peoples’ emotional buttons & users stay on these fake posts longer & the advertisers pay Facebook more money the longer people stay on these bile-filled, fascist propaganda pieces.

 

And Facebook’s selling of their user’s personal data to Cambridge Analytica played a major role in Trump’s stealing of the 2016 election. The more you dumb your users down & the 24/7 spreading of all this negativity, erodes our intellectual self-defense & something like 70% of the American public get their news from Facebook & the other “social media” platforms.

 

We are literally witnessing the age-old strategy of Divide & Conquer and no, this isn’t a great conspiracy, it’s simply a matter of the greedy, corporate cockroaches making as great a profit as possible and we all lose in the big picture.

 

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Thomas Jefferson

And they call it the Art of War

Next on my list of Dangerous Illusions are our mythical “Smart bombs.” The Pentagon & our presidents from George H.W. Bush onward assured us that these “Smart bombs” would greatly reduce the number of innocents killed if we used them & that our military leaders always strove to not kill innocents in our war campaigns

Does this make you feel patriotic?

 

Quite frankly, they were & are liars in this regard and have consistently underreported or flat out lied about the numbers of innocents killed in our Smart bomb attacks over the past 30 years. (Note how often they lied about body counts in Vietnam) Why do you think the Pentagon required reporters to be embedded with select military units ever since the Gulf War?

“I think this is a very hard choice,” replied Albright, “but the price–we think the price is worth it.”

 

Furthermore, have you reflected on the Pentagon’s use of “Depleted Uranium” weapons from 1990 on?

 

Depleted uranium (DU) weapons were first used during the first Gulf War against Iraq in 1991. The Pentagon estimated that between 315 and 350 tons of DU were fired during the first Gulf War. During the 2003 invasion and current occupation of Iraq, U.S. and British troops have reportedly used more than five times as many DU bombs and shells as the total number used during the 1991 war….

 

…. Dr. Doug Rokke, on the other hand, former director of the U.S. Army’s Depleted Uranium Project, is very willing to talk about the effects of DU. Rokke was involved in the “clean up” of 34 Abrams tanks and Bradley armored vehicles hit by friendly fire during the 1991 Gulf War. Today he suffers from the ill effects of DU in his body.

Rokke told American Free Press that the Pentagon uses DU weapons because they are the most effective at killing and destroying everything they hit. The highest level of the U.S. and British governments have “totally disregarded the consequences” of the use of DU weapons, Rokke said.

The first Gulf War was the largest friendly fire incident in the history of American warfare, Rokke says. “The majority of the casualties were the result of friendly fire,” he told AFP.

DU is used in many forms of ammunition as an armor penetrator because of its extreme weight and density. The uranium used in these missiles and bombs is a by-product of the nuclear enrichment process. Experts say the Department of Energy has 100 million tons of DU and using it in weapons saves the government money on the cost of its disposal.

Rather than disposing of the radioactive waste, it is shaped into penetrator rods used in the billions of rounds being fired in Iraq and Afghanistan . The radioactive waste from the U.S. nuclear weapons industry has, in effect, been forcibly exported and spread in the environments of Iraq, Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia, Puerto Rico, and elsewhere.

 

https://www.wagingpeace.org/the-real-dirty-bombs-depleted-uranium/

 

Mull this over for a few moments if you will, not only have our “smart bombs” killed hundreds of thousands of innocents in our wars over the past 30 years, more Americans were killed by “friendly fire” in the Gulf War than by our enemy. How smart is that?

The illusion that war will make us safe isn’t worth the pain this young woman is experiencing!

 

Moreover, using depleted uranium in our bombs & weapons exposes not only the innocents in these wars but also our own troops to the deadly, cancerous effects of the radiation. Remember Agent Orange in Vietnam & how long the Pentagon denied having used it? Gee, I wonder why one generation after another of terrorists keep on coming after us? Could you ignore the slaughter of your family & friends who were innocents & not want to seek revenge?

 

You see, our permanent state of war is because of the unbridled, corporate greed of our “Defense industry,” which used to be more honestly called the War Department. And as long as there are valuable natural resources anywhere in the world, we want to steal it & just because these resources happen to be in other countries, doesn’t matter.

 

Our Pentagon’s public relations machine just goes to work on the American public to convince them that these countries pose a threat to us & we’re invading them because we want to promote peace & democracy—talk about Orwellian.

Why do you think we have something like 900 military bases around the globe? I believe Russia has around three or four military bases & they’re on their border. China has a couple bases & likewise, they’re on their borders. The U.S. spends more on our military than the next dozen or so nations combined & below us in terms of military power i.e., France, Germany, the U.K., Russia, China, etc.

 

Tell me why it is that we are so paranoid & feel that we’re always vulnerable to attack when we have such an awesome & terrifying arsenal of jets, nuclear submarines, battleships, nuclear bombs, etc.? Could it be a massive PR campaign of propaganda created to keep us terrified, so we’ll keep paying our taxes which pay for the military-industrial-congressional complex?

Yep, George “Dubya,” the Coward from Crawford, Texas proved what a “compassionate conservative” he was by stirring the hornet’s nest in Iraq which lo & behold was about oil, never mind the fact that our oil just happened to belong to Iraq. We need to also ignore the fact that the terrorist response to our unprovoked “Shock & Awe” campaign in Iraq gradually spread throughout the Middle East.

 

In addition, Georgie aka Alfred E. Newman gave Osama bin Laden the perfect gift he was wishing for i.e., proof that the U.S. was waging a war against Muslims, so they now had a holy duty to defend their religion against the “Great Satan.” If we withdrew from every nation we’ve invaded & occupied in the Middle East today, the passionate hate we’ve instilled in millions of our victims, might take 50 years to calm down? Maybe there’s little to no hope of ever extinguishing their hatred for us? Did you notice Joe Biden’s recent act of generosity when he gave the Pentagon something like $80 billion more than they asked for in regard to the Pentagon “budget” for the coming year?

 

Yep! Good ol’ Joe, our Democratic savior from all things Trump. He also sold billions military planes to Saudi Arabia though he swore he wouldn’t in his presidential campaign. And we should just ignore Joe’s promise to not allow any more drilling in the Alaskan artic. If democrats would take 15 minutes to review Joe’s tenure in the Senate, it’d be clear who Joe loves—the corporate cockroaches, not the 99% of us who are living in a constant state of stress & worrying about how to make their mortgage payments, pay for their health care, not be killed by the COVID virus variations, etc.

 

Following this further, we now have to not only worry about the White Supremacists, but we absolutely must wake-up to the reality of the threats the “Christian” evangelists, fundamentalists, Dominionists, etc. pose to our democracy.

From practically the moment they, the Pilgrims, stepped out of their boats, they proclaimed their thanks for having come to a place of religious freedom, and immediately went to work on subjecting all of us to their “truths,” and their religion.

 

This subject has worried me greatly for over 40 years or better. And I basically dissected the classic, “Anti-intellectualism in American Life” by Richard Hofstadter, making copious notes in the blank pages. In brief, Mr. Hofstadter does a masterful historian’s review & explanation of this tragic phenomenon i.e., anti-intellectualism from the beginning of our history to the recent past.

Trump’s America, I’m Stupid & Proud of it!

This can not be overstated, these pseudo- “Christians” are every bit as serious about their children’s education as they are about abortion. Well, politicians, especially presidential candidates know all too well how critically important it is to woo the far right, “Christians,” because they’re very vocal & not shy about telling us how we should live & believe. And they’re extremely well organized.

Mike Pence was clearly chosen by Trump’s puppet masters to assuage the faux “Christians.” He posed no threat to the GOP or was he likely to piss-off the little tyrant who often threw tantrums. And those unholy Christians were salivating at the thought of Trump kicking the bucket & one of their own stepping into the driver’s seat.

 

Do you think I may be exaggerating or unnecessarily alarmist? Really? How many times over the decades have we been assured that Roe v. Wade could never be overturned? I believe it’s in serious peril like the very fabric of what we thought was our Democracy.

 

Check it out for yourself, I could be wrong? I know this is cliché, maybe corny, but I sincerely believe that knowledge is power, but we should seek that knowledge that empowers people, not helps to enslave them. These wolves in sheep’s clothing, calling themselves “Christians,” have very selectively forgotten somehow, the Sermon on the Mount?

these “Christians” are perverse cuz they pray for this to become real!

 

 

And if you can look in a mirror & call yourself a good Christian & believe Trump was a wonderful president, sorry my friend, you obviously need some serious counseling? This reminds me of how I never cease to be amazed as I grow older & come across these wolves. And even though I pretty much rejected the “Christian” values of a church I was attending around the age of 14 or 15, & organized Christianity in general, I often feel that I’m far more Christian than many, if not most of those I have met claimed to be.

 

In a nutshell, these people want to turn every school in America from pre-school to graduate school, into a “Charter school.” Not that far removed from how the Taliban run their indoctrination program i.e., teach primarily their religion & the basics of reading, writing, & arithmetic and of course a good daily dose of hate our enemies!

 

In brief, both are authoritarians & by definition, that’s against our key beliefs as Americans i.e., freedom of thought, speech, the press, etc. Whether we’re speaking of Islamic extremists or Christian extremists, societies that allow such hateful propaganda to go unchallenged, are turning a blind-eye to the violence that is simmering below the surface of their society.

 

Continuing on in terms of dangerous illusions, can you explain to me why we keep adding to our nuclear arsenals? I was in my 20s I believe when I heard that we had enough nuclear bombs/weapons to blow the world up over 25 times!

 

Pause for a moment if you will & let that soak in. You have to be Donald Trump crazy or certifiable to think this a good thing. I have no idea of how many times over we can now obliterate our planet & at times, I feel like what’s the point of even trying to get through to people on subjects like this.

 

Of course, our Smartphones, video games, obsession with sports, corporate propaganda, etc. are all contributing to our dumbing down & I often despair that it’s all just too formidable i.e., what’s the point of even trying to fight against all these destructive forces seemingly Hell bent on bringing on the wet dream of the “Christian” fundamentalists.

 

Nonetheless, some little flicker of hope still burns within me & I don’t really have the option of throwing in the towel. And even though I’ve never had the chance to meet Noam Chomsky in person, I have developed a friendship with him via email over the past 16 years or so & he helps remind me & the world of the progress we have made in fighting back against what I refer to as the corporate cockroaches.

 

Notwithstanding, Chomsky has been somewhat of a broken record for the past several years in terms of his focus on what he considers the two most pernicious threats facing humanity, a nuclear exchange between two or more nations & climate change (destruction). Yet given what I just shared regarding our attention spans, the predominance of the so-called “social media,” and several other key factors, you might be able to understand my doom & gloom worries/obsession.

 

Perhaps I have been living with my own dangerous illusion all these years in thinking that if we can just educate/inform enough people in time, we can at least slow down this madness & our seemingly unalterable path over the edge & into the abyss of extinction?

 

Noam & other great intellects point out that the Internet is a powerful tool & it can be used in positive as well as negative ways but from what I’ve seen, people mostly use the Internet & their toys derived from it i.e., smart phones, to amuse & distract themselves.

 

Above all else, Chomsky emphasizes that sooner or later, we’ll get through this COVID pandemic, but we won’t survive the global warming & resultant climate destruction we’re experiencing if we don’t get really serious about it & really quick!

 

As citizens of the wealthiest & militarily most powerful nation on the planet, we have perfected the art of denial & we enjoy an endless stream of distractions, so we don’t have to face the horrific world events that are a fact of life

whether we choose to acknowledge them or not. And if we stand a chance of surviving, like in 12 step programs & life in general, half the battle is in acknowledging there is a problem. My self-appointed job is to inform others of the problems we are beset by.

 

Therefore, I am going to end this essay by sharing some critical knowledge on climate denial in America & like most other serious issues that we face, money, or rather the love of wealth above health & all else is the culprit hiding in the shadows like the corporate cockroaches who have infested our highest levels of government & the business world.

 

And like real life cockroaches, when you flip the light switch on, they run for any dark corner or crevice they can find to hide in. I watched a PBS Frontline documentary some time back & it definitely shown a light on this dark & deadly campaign of deceit financed by gas & oil conglomerates & subsidized by us, the taxpayers.

check out Edward Bernays, founder of Advertising industry, ran an ad to persuade women to. smoke

Moreover, like the tobacco industry CEOs who testified before Congress that they had no idea that nicotine was deadly, these cock-sucking cockroaches in the oil or energy sector of our economy knew for decades how deadly the effects of oil exploration, drilling, & transportation are but denied it until it was no longer possible to do so.

 

Tragically, Americans in particular have a great propensity for a short attention span, laughable ignorance of history, & little desire to inform themselves about mundane subjects like the toxic pollution & death of our water sources, the air we breathe, & the land we live on. In business speak, these are examples of “externalities.” In short, corporate America refuses to take responsibility for the death & destruction they cause as they seek to maximize their profits & the cost of cleaning-up these deadly externalities falls on the taxpaying public. Think of the deadly public water system in Flint, Michigan & how long it’s been allowed to go on & it still hasn’t been resolved. Of course, it’s merely a coincidence that the majority of Flint’s residents are people of color.

Why should the “Banks Too Big to Fail,” be held responsible for tanking the world-wide economy, they were just filling their capitalist duties.

A key factor in this tale of woe is the corporate cockroaches use of academic “experts” whom they buy. And as in the lead-up to the world-wide economic crash of 2008 that nearly brought down the entire house of cards, professors of economics with no concern about the financial destruction they were sweeping under the rug for the handsome bribes offered them by Wall St. & the financial sector of America’s economy. I highly recommend the documentary, “Inside Job” should you be curious as to why you lost or came close to losing your home, your job, your life savings, your health insurance, etc.

Speaking of top-notch documentaries on subjects very near & dear to our survival, another such film is, “The Corporation.” I guarantee you that it’ll blow your mind! In fact, after more than three decades of paying attention to these matters, I have coined a phrase, the business of America is Fraud! And yeah, I know that it isn’t just us who practice these dirty & destructive habits but I’m an American & therefore, it is my duty to focus on the wrongs of my own country, not the corruption of other nations i.e., get your own house in order before chastising other states.

Returning to the specifics of climate destruction, the oil & natural gas corporations who bear a very large percentage of the responsibility for, know that they can’t outright deny scientific facts, so they have focused their attention on creating doubt about Climate change & have found a relative handful of “scientists,” who were only too willing to write “expert” papers questioning the validity of the overwhelming majority of the world-wide scientific community. Do you remember Trump’s spokesperson, Kellyanne Conway & her claim that there are “alternate facts?”

 

Yep! And only in a nation as dumbed-down as America could the spokesman for our president make such a farcical statement with a straight-face. Clearly, a third of our population is so willfully ignorant that Trump got away with four years of outright, blatant & brazen lying & he basically got away with it. Don’t forget to thank the tens of millions of “Christians,” who swoon at the mere sight or voice of Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan. So much for their moral righteousness!

In conclusion my friends, the corporate cockroaches know only too well & from decades of practice, if all the evidence shows you’re wrong, deny, distract, & attack. It’s worked well for Donald Trump, an absolute moron totally lacking in all the qualities that make us human & therefore the perfect “leader” for the corporate cockroach class.

I don’t know how true it is but when I was a much younger man, it used to be said that cockroaches would be the only ones to survive a nuclear war. So, as Edward R. Murrow used to end his reports, “Good Night & Good Luck!”

 

—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR Jan. 16, 2022

 

P.S.  Oops! A “senior moment” I guess? The brilliant & insightful documentary I watched on PBS Frontline a few years back & that was the inspiration for this essay is, “Climate of Doubt,” and may I suggest printing a copy of the transcript of this film so you can really sink your teeth into the meat & potatoes of this deadly serious threat to our survival as a species! https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/climate-of-doubt/

 

 

 

Addendum

Is this how our Liberty dies?

 

I tried searching for the names of the foundations and/or individuals who are funding most of this propaganda campaign of Climate Denial but seems the majority of the money comes from “Dark money” sources. Why are they hiding if they believe so fiercely that global climate destruction is a hoax? So much for the “conviction of their beliefs.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blaming the Victims

The French Revolution: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (brotherhood)

https://jessicalexicus.medium.com/heres-why-you-re-broke-according-to-wealthy-americans-who-skim

 

 

“Minimum wage is an employer’s way of saying I’d pay you even less, but the government makes me pay a minimum wage.”

—famous Rap artist

“The Great Depression,” brought about by the greed of Wall St. but we’re supposed to blame the victims, not the businessmen.

 

I am saddened when I hear people blaming or labeling other people, often people of a different race as lazy, freeloaders just waiting on their government handouts, etc. Why? Because the overwhelming majority of us who make up the 99% in America’s class war are victims of the 1% who are obscenely wealthy. And we should feel empathy or compassion for one another because we are all being screwed to some extent. We should be in solidarity, not fighting one another.

 

These are personal experiences, observations, & things I have learned while “wasting my time in college and/or reading non-fiction books.” (sarcasm)

 

  • It dawned on me many years ago while checking the job board in an unemployment office that our taxes pay the salaries & operating costs of State unemployment offices, yet they serve the interests of private corporations, not me.
  • More & more of the jobs listed in unemployment offices are through temp agencies & every temp agency I’ve ever applied for work in asks what the minimum wage is you’ll accept. And if I dare to ask for a dollar or two above the minimum wage, they always tell me, sorry, that’s too much. So basically, it doesn’t matter how educated you are or how qualified you are, all temp agencies are out to fuck you!
  • This is clearly a major conflict of interest because a government agency that supposedly exists to help us, the unemployed, actually serves private industry.
  • A supervisor at a job I got through a temp agency once asked me how much I was being paid by the agency. The supervisor was shocked & told me, “They’re charging us nearly three times that & you’re a good employee, I tell you what needs to be done & don’t need to check up on you, you’re doing a great job.”
  • Have you noticed over the years how consistently Congress votes against raising the minimum wage but every time we turn around, they quietly raise their salaries & benefits?
  • My guess is that the overwhelming majority of corporate business owners call themselves conservatives? Why is that? Could it be that they are unified in their belief that workers or employees are basically a necessary evil & always trying to rip-off their bosses for more money, benefits, rights, etc.?

    Grover Norquist, Champion of “The Pledge” i.e. no raising of taxes especially for the 1%—95% of GOP signed. Govt. is only necessary when helping the rich, the Hell with the poor!
  • And these “conservative” business owners are the first & the loudest in declaring workers to be lazy & asking for more but not deserving it. Common sense tells us that if we weren’t making our employers more money per hour than they’re paying us, they wouldn’t have us as their employees.
  • In the mid-1950s, one out of every three non-farm workers were members of a union & today, statistics vary from 5% to 10%. What does that tell you about the fate of workers in the U.S.?
  • Two of the major union strongholds for American workers today are teachers & postal workers and the “conservatives” have been waging a steady war against them for decades. Why is that?
  • In our largest cities & spreading to many rural communities today, the cost of living, most notably in rental rates has been skyrocketing for years. Please explain to me how a person making minimum wage is supposed to be able to afford to pay their bills?
  • I just checked the minimum wage rates for each state & California is the highest at $13 per hour while many, if not most states are still at $7.25 per hour.
  • I have experienced long periods i.e., six months or more of not being able to find a job in cities like Portland, Oregon & it was almost always a matter of not being qualified or of my being “over-qualified” that was given for the reason they wouldn’t give me a job.
  • I was born in 1952 & throughout my public schooling, we were told that if we worked hard in school & got good grades, we would get a good job & enjoy a good standard of living.
  • Well, I worked hard & struggled for 14 years to earn my B.A. in English literature but in the long run, it hasn’t meant shit to the overwhelming majority of employers I hoped to work for. In fact, it has been more of a negative than a positive in my search for work over the course of my life i.e., “you’re obviously qualified but how do I know that you’ll stay with us?”
  • It’s gotten to where I now practically conduct the interviews when HR depts. Interview me.
  • And I have to talk myself down i.e., break it down for the employer how my skills, knowledge, & experience is relevant to their job opening & I assure them that as long as they treat me fairly & give me opportunities to grow, I’ll be one of their most loyal employees.
  • I tell you about my personal experiences not to brag but because I’m sure there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of other Americans who have experienced similar things.
  • My beloved wife who has passed away, once said that I hadn’t ever liked a job I had worked at. I replied, No, you’re wrong. I loved being a teacher. Teaching was the only job I ever felt respected in & where I could put to use my lifelong love of learning.
  • I referred to the 1% & the 99% which thankfully the Occupy Wall St. movement made us all aware of. In brief, not since just before the Great Depression has there ever been such a vast chasm of inequality in America.

    The most powerful champion & defender of victims the world over!
  • And I’ve learned over the decades how the wealthy maintain their stranglehold over us & one of their most powerful weapons is their consistent propaganda with one goal in mind i.e., divide & conquer. The more they can keep us fighting amongst ourselves & blaming one another, the longer they have power over us & can keep us in “our place.”
  • Throughout our inglorious history, Blacks have been more consistently the targets of prejudice, hatred, & violence than any other race, or class of citizens except the indigenous native people whom we stole “our” nation.
  • I believe this cruel & ugly history is why so many Black citizens have such a bitter hatred & distrust of the White or Caucasian race.
  • How can I, a white person, ever truly understand their justifiable & deep-seated hatred?

    The Land of the Free & Home of the Brave
  • I have long wondered why they call each other “nigger,” and my guess, after reflecting on this phenomenon for many years now is that they do so to weaken or take away the power of that evil label Whites used against them for centuries. Each time they use the word between themselves it’s like saying to Whites, Fuck you, we are united & you can’t break us down anymore!
  • All the negative shit I’ve experienced in my life can’t compare, can’t even get close to what they’ve experienced & continue to experience. Look at the facts i.e., just about every week we hear about yet another instance of a white cop shooting a young, black man in the back & not being held accountable.</li>
  • Let’s return to the wider picture again, it was that darling of the Democrat leadership, Bill Clinton, who fucked us all royally with not only NAFTA & the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, but his “Crime omnibus bill.”
  • Every politician whom I’ve listened to when they were running for office whether local, state, or federal, declares they will wage a war on crime. Note though that they very, very rarely go after the corporate criminals who steal on colossal levels. And it’s not mere coincidence that when Clinton passed his “Crime bill,” is when America’s prison population began to exponentially explode.
  • And unless you’re a true Klu Klux Klan member & believe Black men are natural-born criminals, how do you explain the fact that Black men make up the majority of the prisoners in our Industrial Prison Complex?
  • Could it be that the corporate cockroach class know that Black America is one of the most vulnerable segments of our population & yeah, I’m not forgetting the Hispanics & others? In other words, the more Blacks these politicians/whores for their corporate masters, lock up, the stronger they appear to their constituents?
  • Perhaps the key reason as to why/how Trump became president was his talent for stirring-up the racial prejudices that had been dormant & not okay for decades?
  • I believe there is even more prejudice/hatred against Blacks than there is against Hispanics because Hispanics live in constant fear of being deported. And this fear keeps them mostly silent.
  • Hispanic people, some of the warmest, friendliest, & hardest working people I have ever known, flee their countries of origin like Mexico because they are killed so frequently with little to no legal recourse.
  • Put yourself in their shoes for a minute if you will. They have no rights whatsoever because they’re not citizens & therefore, they must do the shit jobs that not even the poorest White Americans will do. And if they don’t work, they don’t eat!
  • But those damn Blacks know that they are citizens & therefore have at least a modicum of rights. Why do you think the GOP is so frantically trying to turn back the clock on Civil Rights, the Right to Vote, etc.?
  • Even a cursory look back at world history will show you that the strategy of Divide & Conquer has been around since the beginning of recorded history. Keep the slaves, the peasants, the working poor, & the middle class at each other’s throats & the powers that be will not only retain their power over us, they’ll expand their control over us. So please don’t allow yourself to be their pawns & continue to blame your fellow victims!
  • P.S.  A few quotes to mull over on this subject; “I’d like someone to rationally explain to me how factors such as your family situation growing up, your level of education, the job opportunities you are handed, the rate of crime and drug use in your neighborhood – and so many other similar factors that shape our young lives – aren’t supposed to affect a child’s future. https://everydayfeminism.com/2013/07/how-we-ignore-poverty-and-blame-poor-people/
  • If you remember, when the French peoples’ rage could no longer be contained & exploded in The French Revolution, perhaps one of the final straws was when the people were begging the aristocracy for bread, Marie Antoinette showed the typical contempt the rich have for the poor with, “Let them eat cake!”
  • The peasants showed her & half the aristocracy of France their contempt by making sure they’d never eat cake again by chopping their heads off with public executions by guillotine.
  • Something for you obscenely wealthy scum like Jeff Bezos, the Waltons, etc. to “chew over!”

    Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (Brotherhood)

  • Viva la Revolucion! 
    Adios Corporate Cockroaches!

    Big business in America has been steadily doing everything possible since FDR passed the New Deal to destroy it & they have largely succeeded in their mission. And the corporate media has helped enormously in these efforts i.e. the myth of a liberal bias in the media. Yeah, right! The 1% who own the media are purposely sabotaging themselves by allowing too many “liberals” spread their propaganda.

  • For example, Phil Donahue’s news show on MSNBC had one liberal guest on for every. two conservative guests it had on but that was too much. It was one of the most popular news shows in the country at the time but we were about to invade Iraq & MSNBC (the flagship of liberal bias news in America) didn’t want Fox “news’ to appear more patriotic, so they fired Phil Donahue.

The Return of the Know Nothings

 

“It is not possible to make a mistake.

In the beginning, God created all this stuff, then

put Adam and then Eve in the middle of it, and

they could dig it all right. It was paradise. Then

God, who was no dummy, said, “Look kids, I’ve got

some business to take care of, have fun and do

whatever you feel like, but whatever you do, don’t

touch that tree over there.” So of course, they did.

and God came back, threw a fit, tore up the lease

and threw them out.

So, the story goes.

And it all rings true. Adam and Eve. Mankind, ate of

The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

and lost their primal innocence, expanded their

awareness and they were on their way, they couldn’t

turn back, like all our actions their act was irrevocable.

Okay.

But what is this bullshit about a religion based on

REGRETTING that move?

it isn’t possible to make a mistake, is it?”

 

—“Das Energi” (Paul Williams)

Yes, God does make mistakes! And here’s a big one.

 

 

In other words, God isn’t capable of making a mistake because he’s omniscient (knows everything), so why would he tell Adam & Eve to ignore their natural curiosity and not eat an apple from the Tree of Knowledge? Every parent knows that children are born naturally curious about everything & to be curious is normal. So, Christianity is based on a fear of knowledge & if one wishes to be a good Christian, they should avoid knowledge like the plague. Well, I submit that this fear & distrust of knowledge has been with us throughout history & is the root cause of more death & destruction than just about any other force I can think of. Here’s a thumbnail description of anti-intellectualism to bear in mind as you read this essay;

 

“Anti-intellectualism is hostility to and mistrust of intellectintellectuals, and intellectualism, commonly expressed as deprecation of education and philosophy and the dismissal of artliterature, and science as impractical, politically motivated, and even contemptible human pursuits.[1] Anti-intellectuals present themselves and are perceived as champions of common folk—populists against political and academic elitism—and tend to see educated people as a status class that dominates political discourse and higher education while being detached from the concerns of ordinary people.[1]” (Wikipedia) 

*What’s happened to that holy “Common Sense’ that we so often hear praised by working class Americans? Everything about Trump defies common sense!

Have you ever heard of a billionaire who gained his wealth honestly?

 

Let’s take a cursory glance back at history to see if my thesis regarding the harmful effects of willful ignorance holds true? First of all, I want to point out that this story about the Garden of Eden is from Christian mythology & like Islam mythology as well as Hebrew mythology, it contains some elements of truth which are meant to serve as lessons for humanity to live by. Unfortunately, though, the unscrupulous as usual, look for opportunities to twist knowledge, myths, fables, etc. so they can profit from others ignorance.

 

For instance, until the invention of the Guttenberg printing press & the gradual availability of books for the masses, the ability to read was pretty much the domain of the nobility & the priests, rabbis, clerics, etc. Why do you think it was illegal in the slave owning states of America to teach black people how to read?

Could it be that the powers that be throughout history have always preferred to keep their citizens ignorant because ignorant (not knowing) citizens are a Hell of a lot easier to manipulate & control. Why did the Nazis have massive book burning bonfires? Why is it that when dictators wage a coup d’état to take over the government, one of the first things they do is shut down the universities & the press?

 

Melania’s song to Donny;

Moreover, the priesthood & the kings or nobility i.e., lords, earls, etc. have been at constant war with one another over the centuries in that each sought the final or absolute power over the public. And at times they have made temporary alliances when the peasants & serfs rose up in rebellion against their oppressors. You see, the powers that be throughout history soon get spoiled & rather enjoy getting the best of the crops that their subjects are forced to give them, the fine clothes & jewels, the castles, the taxes, etc. And the fact that the people were often starving because they were forced to give the majority of their harvests & the animals that people relied upon for their meat, to the nobility & the Church. Remember, God wanted things this way because this was constantly drilled into their heads by the preachers, ministers, priests, spokesmen for the king & the nobility.

 

And when kings became fearful that the priests may be getting a bit too powerful, they came up with a useful new concept called the Divine Rights of Kings. Yep! Once again Christianity proved useful in the power struggles between the two forces making living Hells out of most peoples’ lives.

Furthermore, the constant war against knowledge or the anti-intellectualism from the spread of the Garden of Eden myth through the Dark Ages also took the form of an anti-Science bias which resulted in the death of countless people, many being charged with Satanism, blasphemy, corruption of the young, etc. Galileo & Copernicus being just two of the most recognizable names. Galileo was forced to recant his scientific observations & theories and spent the rest of his life under house arrest for his most notable discovery that the Earth revolves around the Sun not vice versa.

Onward Christian Soldiers for Oil!

Continuing on, it’s probably impossible to calculate just how many people have been killed over the centuries thanks to the Know Nothings or the Anti-intellectuals. We had several “Christian” Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the “Missionaries” & Mercenaries i.e., the Conquistadors, the Witch trials, etc. etc. etc. But my guess would be that it had to amount to the loss of billions of innocent lives. Of course, the secular powers i.e., governments, dictators, etc. gave us God knows how many wars over the centuries and WWI & WWII and the perpetual war that my country has waged since I was born in 1952 & is still going strong in 2021.

 

If we are to ever stand a chance of slowing down this murder & mayhem and the unnecessary suffering, degradation, & humiliation of the overwhelming majority of mankind, it’s imperative that we study & learn the lessons of history.

 

“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”

― Woodrow Wilson (28th president of the U.S.)

 

I honestly wish I could paint a more optimistic history for you my friend but if I’m not to become the enemy which I’m railing against, burying my head in the sand is not an option. So, onward & upward. The official “Know Nothing Party” is an American phenomenon & occurred about 170 years ago.

 

In brief, they were anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, anti-immigration, populist and xenophobic. And to be completely honest, they had some positive aspects i.e., some factions were anti-slavery. I seized upon the name because of the Trump parallels in today’s America & I look for every opportunity to bash Trump & all those who support him! Perhaps a better title for this essay would be, “Trump & A Return to the Dark Ages.”

 

You decide for yourself which title is more fitting? The original Know Nothing Party believed there was a Catholic conspiracy to take over America (Trump sees a Muslim conspiracy), and it became the main alternative to the dominant Democratic Party. Irish immigrants were a central target because they were/are mostly Catholic.

 

They also called themselves the Native American Party or the “Order of the Star Spangled Banner.” Note Trump’s “America First” mantra & disguise for his “Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America” by Bertram Gross. “The key to Know Nothing success in 1854 was the collapse of the second party system.” I definitely see a parallel with not only the Republican party of today which has abandoned all pretense of civility, patriotism, or morality & today’s Democratic Party which betrayed the working class & the middle class and has become pretty much the lackeys of the corporate cockroaches.

 

Here’s a quote from a brilliant social, cultural, & political critic, Thomas Frank:

 

Donald Trump comes across as a kind of buffoon, the hair, the egotism. But there’s some canny political strategy here. His emphasis on trade, on NAFTA. It was Bill Clinton that did it, over the objections of organized labor, the voice of the working class. He ran a steam-roller over these people and got NAFTA done. That was the great betrayal. – Thomas Frank

 

Of course, we can’t nail it down to a single action but if you recall, Clinton’s “Crime bill,” effectively gut-punched millions of women on welfare, caused our prison population to explode to the point where the U.S. now leads the world in our incarceration levels, & he passed the dissolution of the Glass-Steagall Act which FDR established to separate common commercial banks where the 99% bank from the “Investment” banks the wealthy use to speculate with their money.

 

Surprise! The “Crash of 2008” & the government which the GOP hates so venomously, bailed the banks out but said, tough shit to the 99% who have to pay their taxes or go to prison. And our faux champion, Obama didn’t prosecute a single CEO of the dozens of Wall St. wolves who were behind the “crash” (code to hide the spooky word, “Depression.”) Clearly another corporate Democrat or what they euphemistically like to label, a “Conservative Democrat.” Sounds like an oxymoron to me?

 

Another parallel between the Know Nothings of 170 years ago & Trump’s base was their use of conspiracy theories to get the public riled-up & manipulate them in order to help his side or, the corporate/government backers. As for me, I still can’t wrap my head around the apparent popularity of Alex Jones for example & a good buddy of Trump’s? Jones is pure National Enquirer trash suitable only for lining your bird’s cage, yet Trump helps spread Jones’ evil shit like Jones claiming for countless shows that the massacre of all those poor, young grade schoolers in Sandy Hook was a hoax. How could any human being spit on the memories of all those parents’ children? Well as the old saying goes, birds of a feather flock together.

 

“The key to Know Nothing success in 1854 was the collapse of the second party system.” (Wikipedia entry)

 

Could the complete cowardice of the current GOP along with the spineless Democratic Party encapsulate our current economic stagnation & the possible coming civil war due to the extreme polarization?  Are we going to see an even more violent form of Trumpism or a coming together of peace-loving people who believe in compassion for our neighbors?

 

“Nativism became a new American rage.” Ibid. We’ve all seen thousands of Trump ads declaring America First! i.e. We are the champions of the world & everyone knows it, etc. etc. etc.

 

“…The new party was populist and highly democratic, hostile to wealth, elites and to expertise.   …the Know Nothing electorate was strongest in the poor districts.”

 

This is about where I start getting lost? I have been pondering throughout Trump’s reign of terror, how can so many of America’s poorest believe that this faux billionaire is their champion or even gives a shit about them? Why no hostility toward Trump, one of their declared enemies because of his supposed wealth & his garish display of wealth though he probably just spray-painted everything gold in his homes?

I think Trump made it okay for the worst among us to come out of their holes in the ground like cockroaches when the lights are turned off. Suddenly it was okay to be racist, a bigot, a male chauvinist, rude, crude, & lewd, xenophobic, stupid, conspiracy nut, bully, violent, greedy, hateful, fear mongering, etc. and even though millions of us are circling the toilet, as long as we have some scapegoats to blame all our troubles on, the game will go on.

 

Could it be that the more desperate one is financially, etc. the more desperate they are for some leader to make sense of it all for them & guide them/us back to the; “Make America Great Again” good ol’ days? But lest we forget, not necessarily so great for a good number of us. So, maybe this is why or partially why so many of those who Trump shits on, still love him? Because the rubes believe that as long as they’re White, they’re safe & they can prosper. The Hell with everyone else & especially with all the foreigners, Mexicans, Muslims, etc.

 

Ultimately, what connects the Know Nothings of 170 years ago with the willful ignoramuses of today is Authoritarianism. That is to say that in today’s America, Trump’s cult of the stupid & gullible no longer hide or are ashamed of their ignorance. In fact, they wear their stupidity proudly.

 

This is very perplexing because as I grew up, doing well in school, being well-read, & following current domestic & foreign affairs was the mark of a well-cultured person. In fact, I don’t believe I even heard the term, “anti-intellectual” until I was somewhere in my late 20s or early 30s? Moreover, I remember how embarrassed I felt when I first visited Europe in 1976 & met a guy two years younger than me who knew far more about American history, literature, philosophy, politics, etc. than I did and he was from Switzerland. Unlike most people though, I didn’t reject or attack him but started picking his brain i.e., asking him to recommend authors.

 

I basically just lamented this sad state of affairs over the years & have done what I can to try to inspire people to inform themselves but today in the year 2021, humanity is on a precipice overlooking the abyss of extinction & we’d damn well better take our education much more seriously or we can sit around our televisions & watch all that makes living & life worthwhile, disintegrate & disappear.

 

So long as the Trumps of this world are allowed to go on spewing hate, fear, & the glorification of the stupid, we are on the highway to Hell! Donny boy with the girly hands & his orangutang complexion has idolized authoritarians all his life & he has emulated them since his earliest days as a schoolyard bully. And Donny the Dunce first fell in love with authoritarians when his daddy would take him along to meet with his business partners in organized crime i.e., several of New York’s mafia bosses who ran the construction business & most notably controlled the cement industry which Fred Trump’s business relied upon.

 

Daddy Trump taught Jr. how to kiss ass with not only the Italian mob but also the city fathers who approved building permits, zoning regulations, etc. Of course, Jr., being the inveterate loser & dumb-shit, had to hone his lying skills as he failed in one business venture after another. And even with the $400,000,000 that daddy gave him which Jr. claimed was only $1,000,000 & his Italian mafia protectors & all the politicians that daddy had in his pocket, Donald the Dumb-fuck managed to lose it all.

How Trump’s Casino Bankruptcies Screwed His Workers out of Millions in Retirement Savings

 

Undeniably, you have to be pretty fuckin’ stupid to even fail when you own four casinos but once again, daddy dearest came to Jr.’s rescue & tried to save his son from his gross incompetence but the banks who gave Jr. loan after loan after loan because of dad’s co-signing for the loans, finally realized that giving Jr. any more loans was simply throwing their money down a dark hole of no return & wouldn’t loan Jr. another dime.

 

Enter the Russian mafia who needed someone or somewhere to launder their billions in dirty money from their drug running, human trafficking, & other businesses. And Jr. was the perfect “front man” for these sleazeballs & human excrement. Yep! The Russian mob noted for its extreme violence & their talent for intimidation & coercion, were only too happy to bribe Donald Duck, their “useful idiot,” & keep bleeding the Russian people by stealing countless billions from the Russian economy.

 

Maybe you can now begin to understand why Donny boy goes weak in the knees at the mere mention of his new daddy, Putin. Need I point out what an authoritarian Putin is? By-the-way, have you noticed Donny’s fondness for authoritarian “leaders” (what we used to more honesty call dictators) around the globe? Duterte in the Philippines, Erdogan in Turkey, MBS of Saudi Arabia, Bolsanaro of Brazil, President Xi of China who declared himself “president for life,” the freaky, little fat guy of North Korea, etc.

 

Furthermore, we mustn’t overlook what a key, critical role the “Christian” authoritarians in the fundamentalist & evangelical sects of America’s religious extremists played in bringing the plague of willful ignorance & hate crimes to America. Yeah, like the Taliban who terrorize the people of Afghanistan with their extremist interpretations of The Koran to normally peace-loving Muslims, America’s faux Christians intimidate & terrorize American women who have the audacity to believe they have the right to opt for an abortion.

 

Yep, America’s “Christian” Taliban have followed & preached a strict authoritarianism from the beginning of their pseudo preaching & claims to be loyal followers of Christ & his teachings. So, inciting their more radical followers to murder doctors who perform abortions, are defended as acts of devout believers. Just as the Muslims who strap bombs on themselves to kill as many non-believers as possible are praised as martyrs & devout believers of the Islam religion.

 

Once again, we witness the common bond or glue of these mindboggling acts of extreme violence & hatred is ignorance i.e., the Know Nothings of this world. And Trump was just the right, want to be authoritarian who came along at the right time in America’s political, economic, & cultural state of affairs.

 

The massive betrayal of the Democratic party & its selling out to Wall St. just like the Republican party earlier, created a vacuum into which Donald Duck swam. Trump, an aspiring authoritarian all his life who dreamed of being an Emperor for life whose personality & character commanded respect, salivated at the idea of becoming president. But Trump’s handlers i.e., PR advisers like Steve Bannon, knew that they couldn’t succeed without the “Christian” vote, so Mike Pence was the ideal vice-president for Trump’s administration.

Yep! Pence was perfect for the job, Hell, he wouldn’t even share a meal with a woman if his wife wasn’t present. He spent four years as Trump’s lapdog, kept his mouth shut, & the faux Christians prayed that something would happen to Trump so their “man,” Pence would become president of the United States. Of course, Trump had to promise the gullible, hateful, racist Christians that he would fight for prayer in school, complete ban against abortion, etc. would be his top priorities.

 

Obviously, these wolves in sheep’s clothing who call themselves Christians & swear that all human life is sacred, are oblivious to the hypocrisy they practice because their “love” only goes as far as the birth of a child. Then once the child is born, they support the politicians like Trump & the overwhelming majority of the GOP & the Dems who vote to slash or totally eliminate just about every single program that was established to help the poor, the working poor, & the middle class. Remember Bill Clinton’s omnibus crime bill?

 

The end result of this phony Christian piety is the fact that under Trump’s reign of terror & error, America, the supposedly most advanced nation on Earth suffered the greatest number of deaths due to the COVID pandemic we are experiencing because Donald Duck didn’t want the bad press to negatively affect his chance for a second term.

 

I’m sure Jesus & his dad are smiling down on all you “good Christians.” And oh well, so much for the sanctity of human life? You see, my imaginary reader, religions are based on superstitious fears. Imagine cavemen huddled around campfires in a cave with thunder & raging storms outside. They’re naturally scared, even terrified & they didn’t possess the scientific understanding back then to rationally explain the natural phenomenon that was scaring them, that we do today.

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/donald-trump-government-shutdown-screwing-workers/

Dumb and Dumber

 

But in this day & age we have no such excuse. So, the authoritarians who only have two overriding goals, wealth & power, must scare us into submission with their 24/7 cable news outlets like Fox “news,” which is anything but legitimate news, fake posts on Facebook, etc.

 

The trouble is, two monumental realities we, as a species, are facing today & that no amount of propaganda or lies can make disappear are the destruction of our environment & climate and the ever-growing likelihood of mutually assured destruction from a nuclear exchange. And the mental midget & morally bankrupt miscreant who occupied the White House actually asked his advisors repeatedly why he couldn’t use the nuclear weapons at his command.

 

Do you remember the old adage, “What you don’t know can’t hurt you?” Well, in the authoritarian mindset —talk about an oxymoron—this is a truism because their fearless leader like Trump, knows all & he will protect them from evil. And just in case the people aren’t sufficiently stupid enough to fall for their propaganda, the billionaire corporate cockroaches have spent hundreds of millions, if not billions, in manipulating the public into believing that climate warming, the COVID pandemic, is all an elaborate hoax.

Do you recall the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in America & for how long Trump called it a hoax? If you’re still reading this essay at this point, my hunch is that you don’t need any further proof that the hoax is on all those who still serve in the army of Trump’s “Walking Dead.”
(John Trudell was the spokesman for A.I.M., the American Indian Movement)
The effort & love I have poured into writing this essay is in the hope that you share this with any of your family or friends who haven’t been totally lobotomized by falling for the evil charlatan who is still poisoning discourse concerning these critical threats.

Just open your eyes, mind, & heart America.

 

“So-called common sense is a fallacy that has been foisted on us by our culture of ideology (any ideology that wants to tell us what we should think and do) that prefers us to be stupid, ill-informed, and poor decision-makers. Common sense is even used as an ideological cudgel by conservatives in which so-called coastal elites lack sense and, as a result, are out of touch with “real Americans” who apparently have an abundance of common sense.” https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-power-prime/201107/common-sense-is-neither-common-nor-sense

 

 

Suggested Reading/Viewing List

 

  1. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/climate-of-doubt/
  2. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter
  3. The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto
  4. Illiterate America by Jonathan Kozol
  5. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media by Edward Hermann & Noam Chomsky (my friend & the greatest living intellectual & friend of Humanity)

 

—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR  November 2, 2021

P.S.  Could it be that the “great” religion we refer to as Christianity is de facto based on anti-intellectualism or “Knowing Nothing?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pernicious Myths

Pissing on the Public!

 

Pernicious; having a very harmful effect or influence

(dangerous, adverse, apocalyptic, detrimental, devastating, corrosive, do more harm than good, insidiousness, malicious, negatively, troublesome, unwholesome, kiss of death, murder, rogue state, unholy)

 

These are in no particular order & vary in terms of the degree or extent that they undermine the principles of social cohesion most of us are pursuing in the hope of survival as a species.

He was light-years ahead of most of us!
  • Civilization — John Trudell, whom I consider a sort of Native American Che Guevara summed this subject up concisely; “The Great Lie is that Civilization is not Civilized, it’s been the most bloodthirsty & brutalized system ever imposed on this planet. Or, if it does represent what Civilization is, then the Great Lie is Civilization is good for us.” And at the risk of greatly oversimplifying the novel, “The Lord of the Flies,” I posit that just beneath the veneer of this much abused word, “Civilization,” much, if not most of humanity can & has rapidly devolved into savagery many times over the centuries.
  • Democracy— America isn’t a true democracy & is actually supposed to be a Democratic Republic. Americans love to boast that we are the greatest Democracy on earth yet in the central tenet of what a democracy is i.e., a political system in which the people are represented by their elected political leaders, we fall shamefully far short. “Our” politicians represent the interests of their corporate masters & could give a shit less about the American public!

    The “Business of America” is Fraud!
  • Free market— one of the most destructive myths we live under. “Our” government protects/shelters “American” corporations from truly open & free markets around the globe with protectionist policies & monopolies like Amazon, Walmart, etc. illegally & immorally swallow their smaller competitors.

    The TRUTH from the world’s greatest living intellectual.
  • Work hard, and get a good education, & you have a good chance at a good career— need I point out how often those who have believed in this myth have been pushed aside & the job was given to people far less qualified but who had the right connection.</li>
  • Free trade— Yeah right! Again, “our” government protects its favorite corporations from free trade by placing unfair tariffs on foreign competitors & when another nation won’t let “our” corporate plunderers rape, pillage, & plunder their natural resources, we erect crippling trade sanctions against them & if that fails to deliver the desired result, we send our military forces in to force them into submission.</li>
  • Patriotism— this myth has killed more Americans perhaps than any other pernicious myth? We have been subjected to a relentless indoctrination over the decades & centuries designed to convince us that the corporate interests & the foreign policy aims of “our” government are one & the same as are ours i.e., the general public. Yeah right! So, all those corporations who shut down their factories in the U.S. to go overseas & pay their workers a dollar or two a day & force us into poverty or working at below subsistent wages here, are patriotic.
  • Corporate responsibility— Yep! Most of the largest, corporate conglomerates pay little to nothing in taxes & as they pollute our rivers, lakes, air, land, etc., they dub them “externalities” and pass the costs of the clean-ups on to us, the taxpayers.
  • Freedom of Speech— if you are wealthy enough & with the Supreme Court’s passage of their “Citizens United” decision, the corporate cockroaches can now legally spend as much as they want to influence the outcome of political elections. It used to be illegal & was considered a crime known as bribery.
  • Fairness & Equality— one of America’s most cherished myths i.e., in all matters whether legal, financial, etc., all citizens are treated fairly & equally. Yup! It doesn’t matter that a corporation which has hundreds of top-notch lawyers & we, as simple, working class citizens have only a public defender, we will be treated fairly & equally under the law.</li>
  • Free Press— if you actually believe that in a nation where six corporate conglomerates own 99% or better of all the media e.g., television, cable, Internet, radio, magazines, newspapers, books, etc., allows every American to voice his or her opinion, nothing I say here is going to dissuade you from believing this myth.
  • Health Care— the myth is that America has the greatest health care system in the world. In fact, we have the worst health care system in the so-called “advanced or developed nations.” A health care system built on a for profit model by definition is destined to fail & this is why Medical bills are the number one cause of homelessness in America.</li>
  • Law & Justice— the myth is that Justice in America is blind & therefore all citizens receive justice in our courts of law. Therefore, the rich criminals who hire lawyers at thousands of dollars per hour, receive the same “just” court decisions as those of us who can’t even afford the least expensive lawyers. Justice, like everything else in our corporate capitalist system, is up for sale to the highest bidder.
  • America is the defender & promoter of Freedom around the world— this holds true if you define freedom as being bombed back into the stone age, assassinating foreign leaders our corporate/political leaders don’t like, raping, pillaging, & plundering every nation we can convince our population is a national security threat to us, etc.
  • American history— unfortunately, most high school students seem to hate history & very few of us have ever even read or heard about our true history, not the corporate propaganda version of it we get in our textbooks. And as Santayana showed us, “Those who don’t know or understand/follow history, are condemned to repeat the mistakes of history.” (my paraphrasing) See Howard Zinn if you give a fuck?
  • War is Freedom— I’m not sure if these were George Orwell’s words but the propaganda & the outcome is the same i.e., as long as we remain at war, we are getting ever closer to true freedom (we can bomb our way to a true paradise on Earth)</li>
  • Whites or Caucasians are the Superior race— Yep! If you happen to have been brought up in one of our many, desperately poverty-stricken regions & there is no one to blame for your poverty other than your fellow victims who just happen to be another race. People gotta have someone else to blame for their misery so they don’t wake-up to the fact that it’s the corporate cockroaches who are behind the overwhelming majority of our misery, degradation, & suffering. And “Christian” preachers often play a major role in whipping-up racial hatred, violence, & lynchings.
  • America isn’t a nation of Class divisions like Great Britain for example— of course you must ignore the fact that we are under constant attack by the 1% but whenever we, the peasants, draw attention to the crimes of the rich, they cry, “The liberals & democrats are waging Class warfare against us!”
  • Equal Opportunity— one of my favorite myths. It doesn’t matter that your high school didn’t even offer subjects like trigonometry, physics, calculus, etc. when you apply for a position in a corporation that pays a handsome salary & the other job candidate graduated from a state of the art, top notch private academy, you both have an equal opportunity to get the job.
  • Law & Order are America’s foundation— the truth is that “Order,” rules supreme. Why? Because the wealthy’s homes, businesses, property, etc. must at all costs be protected from the violent masses who only want to destroy them & their property. So, if the cops have to break the law, maim & kill citizens who often don’t even see the inside of a courtroom, so be it!
  • Technology will save us— Yep! It doesn’t matter how much we pollute & destroy our planet; technology is the new religion & it will step-in at the right moment & save us from our colossal blunders. Therefore, Don’t Worry, Be Happy! And remember Zuckerberg’s promise when he started Facebook i.e. I just want to bring people together.</li>
  • Good triumphs over Evil— Of course! All one need do is take a cursory look back over human history & bear in mind minor, little exceptions to the rule like the “Christian” Crusades, the burning of witches, the Spanish Inquisition, the “Christian” missionaries spreading of the Gospel, the near total genocide of the Native American Indians or Indigenous Peoples, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, etc.
  • A college education should be towards a good job— if you accept this as valid/worthy goal or purpose for going to college, fine. But don’t call it college or university, it’s a glorified trade school. A true university education seeks to inspire us to take our educations into our own hands, to learn how to learn, to develop our critical/analytical thinking skills to help empower ourselves & defend others and fulfill our truly patriotic responsibility of participating in our political process, decision-making, etc. (by-the-way, if the liberal arts & the humanities are “useless escapes” from reality, why do many, if not most of the 1% kids study them?)

    The School of Athens (Philosophy’s foundation)
  • Men are the final Authority— Clearly men have done a great job over the centuries! Yeah, No! Of course, the politicians have made frequent & steady use of this myth i.e., winning support from the Evangelical “Christians” as long as the government is backing a “Christian.” Doesn’t matter if he’s a regular violator of Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount,” which the hypocrites claim to strive to live by like Trump. As long as a candidate swears fealty to their brand of “Christianity,” they’ll send their “Christian” soldiers into battle against the Humanists, etc.</li>
  • There is only One God! — the most vocal “Christians” in America unfortunately get far too much attention but their absolute faith/belief in the Authority & Righteousness of their Crusade against all the atheists, non-believers, humanists, liberals, etc. makes them truly dangerous! And they are blind to the parallels between their beliefs & practices and those of the Taliban. Both the extremists in Christianity who believe it’s righteous to kill a doctor who performs abortions & a Taliban leader who believes it’s righteous of him to have a woman stoned to death for kissing, or some other infraction. Closed minds reject everything outside their spiritual training or anything that contradicts their beliefs. But the more educated a person becomes, the more they begin to realize that no one has the corner on the Truth!</li>
  • National Security— this is the grandaddy of pernicious myths & the pyramid of lies, manipulations, & theft that the military/industrial/Congressional complex hide behind. It was recently revealed that the U.S. has spent over $20 Trillion dollars on “Defense” since 9/11 but the “con-servatives” are fighting tooth & nail against the proposed $3.5 trillion to help fight the effects of climate disaster caused by the corporate cockroaches & war profiteers. The American public’s health, education, & welfare to say nothing of our nation’s crumbling infrastructure that the corporate cockroaches rely on to conduct what businesses that are left in the U.S. You could fill a set of encyclopedias with the history of this tragic myth & its deadly harvest!</li>
  • Fear & Hate are Normal— they are a part of us & they are the easiest of human emotions to manipulate & Facebook has become a trillion-dollar corporation by preying on this. We are indoctrinated with countless messages of fear & hate in the history we are taught in school, televangelists like Pat Robertson, the nightly news, the “social media,” throughout our lives & Trump has fanned the flames of hatred & prejudice to such an extent that we may be on the verge of a Civil War in America?</li>
  • Greed is natural, normal, & okay— No! It is not! People are social beings & we need one another and what’s natural & normal is for us to care about one another, our neighbors, our countrymen, & all of humanity. And this is what Jesus preached in his “Sermon on the Mount,” but the weak “Christians,” who easily fall under the sway of their preachers of fear & hate have somehow selectively forgotten these few admonitions of the “Son of God” whom they pray to?</li>
  • We are Powerless— we have been brainwashed into believing & accepting this deadly perspective from childhood on i.e., that’s just the way it is & there’s no use trying to change things. If we truly believed in this, all progress would come to a complete standstill. All the positive things humanity has created i.e., elimination of deadly diseases, right to vote, technology, flight to the moon, etc. would have never come about so don’t fall for this sucker’s game the powers that be try to control us with, stand-up on your own hind legs & scream, Fuck You!
  • The Earth’s resources are infinite— Yeah right! That is until they aren’t. So, the mighty Petroleum conglomerates will keep on sucking every last ounce of oil out of the ground until they’re forced to turn to a renewable source of energy to fuel our cars, our ships, our planes, etc. & Mother Gaia where we go for aesthetic sustenance will have become one global wasteland so bleak & hideous that we will only venture out of our cubicle habitats when absolutely necessary.
  • Progress must be allowed to march on— another subterfuge in that it’s the centuries old maxim of laissez-faire capitalism i.e., government should leave business decisions to businessmen & not regulate business except in terms of the absolutely bare-minimum requirements such as using the police to protect the property of the wealthy.
  • Fate & Destiny— these are two of the most abused & hence cynical or pessimistic terms used against us by the rich & powerful. I thought this would be a good place to share a quote by humanity’s greatest living champion, Noam Chomsky.

    “The Master of Those Who Know” (Dante in reference to Aristotle)

As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.

 

Truth is an Illusion— given Trump’s reign of terror, fear, & hatred, this would seem to be a truism (one too obvious for mention), but Trump actually did us a favor to some extent because he reminded us of how critically important “Truth” is. The world has witnessed one of the most ignorant world “leaders” of the past century or better in Trump, but the Power Elite found Trump a “useful idiot” because he did such a great job dividing us & distracting us while Trump delivered a massive tax giveaway to his masters & pretended to be “Draining the Swamp.” I argue that “Truth” is perhaps the most elusive concept mankind has wrestled with from the beginning of recorded history, but it is obtainable if one is strong enough & sincere in his/her struggle to discover it? “A free-thinker – someone who’s mind is not bound by any chain, free to explore the great abyss unhindered by fear, emotion, or ideology.

In reality, it is outside the box free-thinkers, who are the engines of social change and ingenuity, often leading society into new directions not yet seen before. They represent a voice of authenticity and uniqueness in a world that is all too filled with conformity and linear thinking. While the achievements are applauded by future generations, in the present they are often looked down upon, feared, laughed at, and even seen as crazy for their unique perspectives on life. It is often a lonely road for the truly unleashed free-thinker.” https://wakeup-world.com/2016/09/28/the-lonely-road-of-the-free-thinker/

Overpopulation is a Threat— I’m with Bucky Fuller on this & he says basically that there are more than enough resources to properly feed, house, & take care of all of humanity were it not for the greed of the “great pirates.” (see Jeff Bezos, et al) “It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a ‘higher standard of living than any have ever known.’ It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary and henceforth unrationalizable as mandated by survival.

  • Philanthropy & Charity will save the poor— as the brilliant author, Anand Giridharadas, detailed in his book, “Winners Take All,” the super wealthy like to pretend that they can fix our broken, economic system by donating huge sums to charities & if the government will just leave them alone i.e., not regulate or tax them unfairly, everything will be fine. These are little more than PR ploys/deceptions to make the wealthy look sympathetic & compassionate and they are tax write-offs, but the wealthy won’t stop screwing their employees, polluting the environment, or stop their illegal & immoral business practices because they want those millions & billions to keep on flowing into their bank accounts.</li>
  • We can win the “War Against Drugs” — I have no idea of how much money the government has wasted on this absurd idea ever since Nixon got it going but it has to be up there in the trillions like in their “War Against Terrorism.” And the hypocrisy is breathtaking given its scope. First of all, the govt has to stop protecting Big Pharma at all costs i.e., we subsidize their research & development on drugs but when the drugs that were developed using our tax dollars start to become profitable, all the profits go to Big Pharma & they’re allowed to gouge the public all they want. Secondly, the Justice Dept has to stop prosecuting the poor, the working class, & the minorities so harshly but allowing middle class whites to get off with a relative slap on the wrist. And the C.I.A. & any other agencies involved in the smuggling of cocaine into L.A. in the 1980s by the tons should be prosecuted to the full letter of the law like their victims in South Central L.A. and be sent to prisons like Pelican Bay for life for all the families they destroyed. We should educate not incarcerate the victims!</li>
  • Our military will protect us— Hands down, this is the biggest scam “our govt.” has been running ever since WWII. As I mentioned earlier, we spent over $20 trillion just since 9/11 so who knows how much went down the drain from the intervening half century? Chuck Spinney who was a financial analyst in the Pentagon for decades has testified again & again before Congress about the staggering waste & fraud in the military budget, but nothing changes. Meanwhile, the generals who leave the service & become consultants for “Defense Contractors,” T.V. journalists, etc. & become very wealthy. And these endless & unjustified wars that never end just keep creating more terrorists because our “Smart” bombs, etc. keep killing thousands & thousands of innocents. So, we spend more on our military than the next dozen, maybe all the countries who have a military combined. Yet we are the most fearful citizens on the planet? Talk about getting ripped-off! And the “Fair and Balanced,” cable “news” network, Fox, keeps raking in millions because they are the de facto Fear & Hate channel & don’t get anywhere close to deserving to be called a News organization! They keep stoking fear & hate like their sociopathic spokesman, Trump of the Duck Dynasty Klan.</li>
  • Capitalism is the only economic system that works— this is obviously a very broad scope/subject of which I am not qualified to speak authoritatively about but I will note that there is a corporation/company in Spain which is owned completely by the employees of the company. They all have an equal voice they share at all business meetings. Or what about economic systems like in Scandinavia which are a sort of Socialist/Capitalist blending? Yeah, the citizens pay much higher taxes than we in the U.S., but they have universal health care, top notch education, housing, etc. One thing is abundantly clear, our economic system is monstrously unfair!
  • America is always on the side of the poor, the oppressed—this was perhaps the greatest shock as I began to read books by Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, listen to KPFK radio station in L.A., & had a great history professor at CSULB in the early 1980s who told us that the U.S. has & continues to support butcherous dictators around the globe. (if you’re curious, I have quite a lot of resources to point you towards?)
  • Indigenous Peoples are savages— What do you call dropping two Atomic bombs, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, & obliterating a couple hundred thousand people & causing the slow, painful death that takes years to kill hundreds of thousands more?
  • Love & Peace will save us— I refer to this as New Age Nonsense. I feel that New Agers are basically carryovers from the 60s Hippies of which I’m proud to claim to be. But they have gone too far towards the Buddhist & other ideas about peace. The dangerous ones have pressed us & Mother Gaia about as far as they could. Climate Ecoside & the Perpetual War mentality of the so-called Master class is a Clear & Present Danger not only to us, the “chosen ones,” but to humanity itself! This means that sometimes when things become so dire & you’re forced to either take action or sit silently by & watch the man-made apocalypse come true.
  • Peace is a Pipe-Dream— this may seem to contradict what I just said about the “New Age” philosophy but not really. We must be at least able to imagine a truly peaceful world if we are to ever attain it. Of course, it’s an almost totally uphill battle but I, for one, refuse to sit by silently as the racists, the ignorant, the vicious, etc. threaten & terrorize any of those groups who Trump turned his fascist & feebleminded lynch mobs on. So yes, I believe in Peace, I dream of Peace, & I try to practice Peace as much as possible but if a serious crime like rape or physical assault or a serious verbal assault, I try to step-up to home base & declare, You’re Out! (and kick their ass!)
  • Women are Inferior— I know this is absolute rubbish! My beloved wife, Jeri, disliked it from the beginning of our relationship when I’d refer to her as my Rock of Gibraltar. But the 32 years we spent together, separated, divorced, only proved me right. She was far stronger than me psychologically, handling finances, etc.
  • Ignorance is Bliss— this myth has always puzzled me deeply? Isn’t this a way of saying, I’m too lazy to make the effort to enlighten myself? A grand cop-out on life! I’m not responsible for any or all of the terrible things going on in America. I pay my bills & mind my own business. I’m a loyal & patriotic American citizen. All I need to know is how to do my job to the best of my abilities, follow Jesus’ teaching, & raise my family. Sorry! These people get no sympathy from me when calamity hits them. Ignorance makes you vulnerable & unable to defend your family!

    Do these “Christians” who ignore Trump’s transgressions use “selective memory?”

 

I could go on & on with absurd & nonsensical myths, but I have to end this essay somewhere so here is as good a place as any. A gentleman, Charles Morgan, who used to deliver a daily, 15-minute essay on KPFK in L.A. always signed-off with one word i.e., “Persevere!” And that is what I hope humanity does in general & all compassionate people do specifically.

The Con in Conservatism

 

The con in conservatism is hidden in plain sight. They are con artists.

 

a person adept at lying, cajolery, or glib self-serving talk.

a person adept at swindling by means of confidence games; swindler.

 

     “There are few genuine conservatives within the U.S. political system, and it is a sign of the intellectual corruption of the age that the honorable term ‘conservatism’ can be appropriated to disguise the advocacy of a powerful, lawless, aggressive and violent state, a welfare state for the rich dedicated to a lunatic form of Keynesian economic intervention that enhances state and private power while mortgaging the country’s future.”

― Noam Chomsky, The Culture of Terrorism

 


a
the principles and policies of a Conservative party

bthe Conservative party

2adisposition in politics to preserve what is established

ba political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt changespecifically: such a philosophy calling for lower taxes, limited government regulation of business and investing, a strong national defense, and individual financial responsibility for personal needs (such as retirement income or health-care coverage)

3the tendency to prefer an existing or traditional situation to change

The only constant in the American con job called “Conservatism,” is their continual search for ever more ways to cut the taxes of the 1% & to rob the 99% who must pay whatever tax the con artists set for the rest of us or face prison. Here is my overview of the bleak present & the nightmarish future if we continue to allow these thieves to thrive.

 

 

Let’s begin with “The Great Depression,” which caused unemployment to rise to 25% of the work force & forced millions of fathers & husbands to leave their families in search of work & a run on banks. We can thank the elite of Wall St. for it as well as the 2008 Crash that brought the entire planet’s economic system to the brink of the abyss. Isn’t deregulation grand?

For a moment at the height of the 2008 Crash, Wall St. was really scared & thought they were going to prison, but Obama quickly reassured them that once again, Uncle Sam would protect his greedy & self-destructive children from the consequences of their insatiable greed.

 

Yep! America’s captive citizens i.e., the 99% would be forced to bail-out their masters & overlords again & the Wolves of Wall St. could go right back to deregulating every law that slowed-down or got in the way of their raping of the American public & their theft of the U.S. Treasury.

 

Well, as you can imagine, the public finally had enough of the raping, pillaging, & plundering done to them by the rich & raised so much Hell that F.D.R. woke-up & passed the “New Deal.” Of course, the rich were very upset about this dividing up of the national economic pie that helped the poor. As far as the con-artists are concerned, the government exists to protect the rich, not the poor. And the con party i.e., the Republicans have been very busy little cockroaches ever since the New Deal was struck in their efforts to turn back the clock to the good old days of little to no regulations.

 

     The Powell Memo (AKA the Powell Manifesto)

The Powell Memo was first published August 23, 1971

Introduction

“In 1971, Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and member of the boards of 11 corporations, wrote a memo to his friend Eugene Sydnor, Jr., the Director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The memorandum was dated August 23, 1971, two months prior to Powell’s nomination by President Nixon to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Powell Memo did not become available to the public until long after his confirmation to the Court. It was leaked to Jack Anderson, a liberal syndicated columnist, who stirred interest in the document when he cited it as reason to doubt Powell’s legal objectivity. Anderson cautioned that Powell, “Might use his position on the Supreme Court to put his ideas into practice… in behalf of business interests.”

Though Powell’s memo was not the sole influence, the Chamber and corporate activists took his advice to heart and began building a powerful array of institutions designed to shift public attitudes and beliefs over the course of years and decades. The memo influenced the creation of the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the Cato Institute, Citizens for a Sound Economy, Accuracy in Academe, and other powerful organizations. Their long-term focus began paying off handsomely in the 1980s, in coordination with the Reagan Administration’s “hands-off business” philosophy.” ”

 

Talk about understatement? Reagan went far beyond a “hands-off business” philosophy & basically opened the vault door to the Federal Treasury declaring to the corporate cockroaches, Step right up friends, gorge yourselves to your heart’s delight! And he signaled this change with his first act as president, the firing of the air-traffic controllers for life for daring to go on strike against the extremely dangerous conditions of our overcrowded skies.

 

 

Reagan went even further in his grand con dubbed, “Trickle-down.” A “theory,” that if the government lowered the tax rate of the corporations & their obscenely wealthy owners & CEOs, they would expand their businesses & either hire more workers or rehire the ones they’d laid off.

Pissing on the Public!

 

Naturally, the con artist class didn’t do this but instead just increased their closing down of factories in America & moving overseas where they could pay workers a couple of bucks per day & not be bothered with environmental regulations, employee rights, etc.

 

But like that T.V. ad for the “Energizer bunny,” they never stop in proclaiming the success & genius of their Trickle-down rationale. And 40 years later, they cling to their pack of lies (trickle-down economics) as fervently as those televangelist preachers on T.V. who fleece their sheep so they can live the jet-set lifestyles they’ve grown accustomed to.

 

Furthermore, ever since I can remember, the Democratic party has been dubbed, “The tax & spend party.” Once again, it’d be funny were it not for its deadly effects on all of us not born with the proverbial “silver spoon in our mouths.” You see, what the cons fail to disclose is that they too are the tax & spend political party except they continually shift the tax burdens to the poor, the working class, & the middle class. By cutting taxes on the uber rich & spending trillions on the perpetual wars initiated by themselves via the Pentagon “budget.”

 

And because the vulture class owns the “Defense industry,” they de facto are legally stealing from the 99% & moving the money from their bank accounts, in the form of taxes, into the off-shore accounts of the filthy rich.

 

Admittedly, I can’t point to a smoking gun that proves my accusations so this may come across as “conspiracy thinking,” but if you step back & look at the big picture, it sure is strange how things just seem to fall into place for the status quo or the power elite—see C. Wright Mills 1956 book.

 

Undeniably, the introduction of “Fox news,” to our national airwaves was/is a tremendous boon to the insane ideology of the con artists. Personally, I could not believe that Fox was even allowed to pretend to be a news program?

Demonstratively, Fox “news,” has served as a stenographer to the con artist ideology since its inception in 1996. And it became so obvious that when the Coward from Crawford became president, his president of Vice, Dickhead Cheney, would call the sexual predator, Roger Ailes, the chairman & CEO of Fox with his daily “talking points,” which Ailes would disguise as “news.”

 

Consequently, America invaded Iraq (along with help from The New York Times & its star reporter, Judith Miller) and I don’t feel it’s necessary to point out the tragic consequences of that little mishap, or do I?

 

Moving along memory lane, another noble endeavor in the agenda of the con artists is to privatize absolutely every resource in the world. Yep! And that goes for the very water we need to live. Too far-fetched you say? Case in point, the sweet corporation, Nestle.

 

“Last week, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality did the unthinkable; they ruled in favor of Nestle in their controversial bid to double the amount of water they pump for next to nothing and sell back to us. Make no mistake, the amount of water that Nestle will now be taking qualifies as a harmful water withdrawal according to MDEQ’s own flawed water withdrawal assessment tool. For years, Clean Water Action and our members and allies have been fighting against water privatization, and this is a giant step back in that fight as well.

The arguments around this are simple, and a resounding 99% of the comments that MDEQ received on Nestle’s permit application agree: the waters of the Great Lakes are public trust waters. That means they are there for the use and enjoyment of the people of Michigan. Not for the greedy hands of corporate profiteers and their multi-billion dollar foreign companies like Nestle. It is frustrating to see the agency that has been entrusted to protect our most precious resource neglect their duty and become a doormat for private corporations. Frustrating, but not entirely surprising. One of the biggest problems here is the fact that in a rational world, DEQ allowing this would be surprising. Instead, we have a DEQ headed up by someone whose career was in public relations for the oil and gas industry, who made a name for herself spinning news for BP after they destroyed the Gulf of Mexico, and someone who has zero interest in, or understanding of the importance of, protecting 20% of the world’s fresh water.”  https://cleanwateraction.org/2018/04/09/nestle-wins-and-our-great-lakes-lose

 

Oh, by-the-way, you may recall the trivial story about Flint, Michigan & how the con artists cut-off the once healthy water supply from Lake Huron via the Detroit water supply. So, the people of Flint were forced to drink water from the toxic dump known as the Flint river. The powers that be reasoned that because the majority of Flint’s residents are Black, they could get away with their crimes against humanity. And fortunately, Obama, the darling of the Democratic party helped out in the charade/façade by holding a press conference in Michigan & pretending to take a drink of water supposedly from the Flint water supply.

 

Yep! Sorry if I burst your ideological bubble, but the democrats are in many respects, just slightly less guilty than the con artist party in their naked exploitation & screwing of the American public.

Another example in the never-ending sea of corruption, death, dread, & despair caused by the bottomless pit of human greed under the heading of “privatization,” is the Internet.

 

Yep! Step right up suckers! Witness yet another one of the wonders of the free market. The research that spanned decades in the development of the Internet was funded by us, the coerced taxpayers, via the Pentagon’s “budget” (there’s an oxymoron for you). And a good chunk of that research was done at M.I.T. but when they discovered that they could make a fortune by selling advertising on the Internet, sorry citizens, it’s time to privatize the Internet & nope, you, the public, don’t get a share of the profits & in fact, we’re going to double-fuck you by charging you ever greater rates to connect to the Internet you already paid for.

 

Pursuing this further, the propagandists, better known as the P.R. industry (Public Relations) realized that they needed to come up with a new, catchy con-phrase & chose, “Neo liberalism,” as their new camouflage. Moreover, this had the added benefit of confusing the public by using the word, “liberal,” which would undoubtedly help dupe the yokels into thinking it would benefit them.

 

I should also add another prime example of how “privatization” is sounding the death knell of unions in America. The U.S. Postal Service is one of only a handful of unions left & the evil geniuses of the con artist class warfare assault, claimed that the postal service is going bankrupt because they don’t have enough funding to pay their employees for 75 years into the future.

 

You see, it’s fine that the banks, hedge fund companies, giant insurance corporations like A.I.G. were leveraged to such extremes that one downturn in their financial cycles could not only bankrupt the corporations involved, it could cause the collapse of our entire financial system.

 

But being the concerned & conscientious class they are, they were determined to save our federal system of delivering mail for the public. Could it be that their true agenda is to force the public to pay whatever UPS & other corporations want for the delivery of their mail?

 

However, every now & then there are glitches in the otherwise sound ideology of the “Conservative” worldview. But we’re asked to overlook these minor setbacks. My intellectual & moral hero, guide, and friend, Noam Chomsky points out that these are the times the bankrupt ideology of these moral midgets begs the “Nanny State,” i.e., the federal government, to rescue them.

 

Remember, whenever the federal government helps the poor, the working & the middle class, it’s Socialism or even Communism but not when it helps the Con-servatives. Noam succinctly calls it, Socialism for the Wealthy & Capitalism for the rest of us.

 

Speaking of Socialism, the con artists hope you never read about & definitely not visit the Scandinavian countries like Norway, Finland, Sweden, & Denmark because in just about every standard of living or quality of life measure, life in these countries is head & shoulders above & beyond that of life in America.

 

By-the-way, I have visited Denmark & Sweden and I was blown away by their standard of living. Their citizens, no matter what their economic status, enjoy clean, well maintained apts. & houses, nutritious food, free education up through & including a doctorate from university, best health care systems in the world, low crime rates, etc. etc. etc.

 

And as I have been arguing ever since my first trip to Europe in 1976, I wouldn’t mind paying what appears to be an outrageous percentage of their wages in taxes because all their needs are well taken care of so what money you have left is like pocket money you can spend on whatever luxury items you want.

 

Of course, the con artists can only repeat their mantra of, their citizens are taxed to death. Just ignore the facts like if you or a loved one gets a serious disease in the U.S., Americans often end-up losing their homes, their pensions, their savings, & find themselves kicked to the curb i.e., homeless.

 

Another example of the contradictions & hypocrisies of the heartless reptilians that they hope you never reflect on is the fact that no, they aren’t self-made millionaires. As usual, we, the taxpayer slaves pay for America’s infrastructure, not those cowardly corporate cockroaches who act like their shit doesn’t stink.

 

Highways, streets, bridges, ports, airports, etc. are all paid for by the 99% while the wealthiest pay little to none in taxes & many of them actually receive tax rebates in the millions, if not billions. Answer this, how would these crime lords deliver their products, receive the raw materials or parts necessary for their businesses, protect their businesses from violent criminals, etc. if it weren’t for the “Nanny State,” paying for the very infrastructure necessary for them to stay in business?

 

I know, just another one of those annoying facts that the con artists dismiss so glibly whenever it suits their line of “reasoning.” Remember Kellyanne Conway’s “alternate facts?”

 

Speaking of Kellyanne, Trump’s spokeswoman, when you get right down to it, Trump is really little more than a used car salesman with even less scruples, morals, or ethics than the average used car salesman, politician, or lawyer.

A Con who should spend life in Pelican Bay with a big, black guy named Bubba!

 

Do you know that before Trump would sign the contract to play the big cheese on “The Apprentice,” he demanded that it be written into his contract that every time his name was mentioned/spoken on the series, they had to say, Trump, the Billionaire? What does that tell you about his self-confidence? Note the term, “confidence man,” when talking about the myriad cons that con artists pull on their victims.

 

Conversely, I feel it’d be constructive to point out some of the things that those Satanic Socialists have infested our holy land of the free with at this stage of my essay;

 

(this is only a partial list)

 

The military & defense establishment

Public libraries

The police

The fire dept

Student loans & grants

Garbage collection

War

Farm subsidies

The C.I.A.

The F.B.I.

Congressional Health Care

Polio vaccine

EPA

Social Security

Museums

Public Schools

Jail & Prison system

Corporate & Business SUBSIDIES!

Veteran’s (VA) Health Care

Public parks

All elected government officials

Food stamps

Sewer system

Medicare

Court system

G.I. bill

Hoover dam

State & City Zoos

IRS

Free lunch program

The Pentagon

Medicaid

FDA

Health Care for 9/11 Rescue Workers

Swine Flu vaccine

Disability Insurance (SSDI)

Town/State run beaches

Corporate bailouts/welfare

State construction (fixing potholes, erecting buildings, etc.)

Unemployment Insurance

City/Metro buses

WIC (assistance for women & children—food, health, education

State Snow Removal

PBS

CDC (Center for Disease Control)

Welfare

Public Street Lighting

FEMA

Public Defenders

Amtrak

NPR

The Dept. of Homeland Security

OSHA

State & National Monuments

U.S. Dept of Agriculture (USDA)

Government Scholarships

Dept of Health & Human services

Census Bureau

Dept of Energy

Customs & Border Protection

Dept of Education

Secret Service

Peace Corps

Dept of Justice

National Weather Service

The White House

Government

Law

 

All of these institutions, programs, policies, etc. have one thing in common & that is Socialism. They are paid for collectively by those of us who pay our taxes. In brief, if you use, like, or rely on any of these, you aren’t totally opposed to socialism & perhaps you’d care to discuss the ideas a bit before dismissing it without even reading a simple list like this one?

 

You see, the con artists want us to believe that they i.e., the rich, the successful, the celebrities, etc. did it all on their own & never had any help from anyone.

 

This is clearly one of the most significant “Big Lies,” & Trump was overqualified in this area. So was his Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. Now, I have to admit that it’s sometimes fun to follow a conspiracy thread for a bit but as my mentor, Noam Chomsky reminds us, the powers that be are happy when we’re chasing our tails with these conspiracy theories because, it distracts us from the serious shit they’re doing in the present tense. (my colorful choice of a few adjectives)

 

I’ve been an avid reader & learner since kindergarten, and I’ve been a student & educator of one kind or another for most of my life, so I take education very seriously.

 

I can’t prove it, but I’ve been looking long & hard and have to rely on my gut & intuition. Whether the 1% have devised an amazingly successful method & program to purposely “dumb us down,” is true or not, the critical lesson we all need to learn is to trust ourselves more & become more suspicious of “authorities.”

 

Betsy de Vos was the appropriate Stepford Wife to play the role of Secretary of Education. Her family’s wealth came from the legal pyramid scheme known as Amway & some other “business.” And she was good at pretending to be a devout Christian.

 

This, in my opinion, is why De Vos pushed Charter Schools. In Charter Schools Christianity—or their interpretation of it—is the core of their “curriculum.” And what is at the core of the conservative Christian community?

 

Authoritarianism!

 

God is the top boss, then the preacher, priest, minister, rabbi, etc. who tell “their” people what God said, wants, believes, feels, etc. So, girls & women are here to serve men, shut-up, stay barefoot & pregnant in the kitchen!

You may notice a similarity here between authoritarians & dictators? Does that sound like Democracy, Freedom, Equality to you? If you review history briefly, I believe that ever since Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, the Church & the State have fought over “control” of the people.

 

Whether the authoritarians claim God as their foundation or “to serve the public,” we must be on guard against their “common sense,” or “everybody knows,” pearls of wisdom. If you dig beneath the surface a little, you’ll usually find the corporate cockroach’s slime-trails in short order.

 

No, I don’t search for an idyllic utopia where everything & everyone is perfect. That’d be boring anyway. I simply dream of what Bucky Fuller proclaimed was reasonable & within reach. And that rascal, that traitor to his class, F.D.R. had the audacity to read out loud to the American public:

My ideals!

 

The Second Bill of Rights was proposed by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt during his State of the Union Address on Tuesday, January 11, 1944.[1] In his address, Roosevelt suggested that the nation had come to recognise and should now implement, a second “bill of rights“. Roosevelt argued that the “political rights” guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights had “proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness“. His remedy was to declare an “economic bill of rights” to guarantee these specific rights:

 

All in all, the so-called Conservatives have nearly destroyed our economy twice & caused so much physical, mental, & emotional pain that many Americans have resorted to suicide. Are humiliation, degradation, & despair to be our constant companions in this life we are told is the highest standard of living in the world?

 

Of course, it’d be wonderful if I could sum it all up for you in a nice & neat little package with a bow on it, but you know how little people value things that are free & they didn’t have to work for them.

 

We all have to pay our dues in terms of educating ourselves. Nobody else can do it for us. Many argue that experience is the best teacher. Unfortunately, we don’t have that luxury when it comes to global warming or nuclear annihilation.

The con artist corporate cockroaches can only look forward as far as the next accounting cycle & that myopic perspective poses a very real threat to our survival as a species. So, my friend, you can bury your head in the sand but just because you deny the facts, they don’t cease to exist.

 

Trump has perfected the art of denial & lives in his bubble of Big Macs & big breasted blondes who speak only when spoken to. And the fact that a third of the American public is so stupid that many of them are now drinking horse & cattle deworming chemicals shows us how far we’ve fallen down that rabbit hole of absolute lunacy.

 

The pandemic we are living through or existing in has shown me that we, especially in the U.S., had better dam well become Socialists at least in the sense of caring about one another’s welfare. Because if we don’t, this mutation of the COVID virus, nuclear conflagration, or global warming could very well be humanity’s last hurrah!

Persevere!

P.S.  And fuck you who call yourselves Christians & love Trump. Jesus was a Socialist!

The Spirit of the 1960s we so desperately need to recapture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our Choice, Fascism or Socialism?

 

 

In our “social environment,” here in the U.S., it seems that being “social” or “interactive” with one another no longer requires reading & most definitely not writing. And when I check on the “readability level” of the essays I post on my blog, I usually get critiques of my writing as too difficult, too many big words, not being a trending subject, etc.

 

So, I’m destined to never be socially acceptable or popular in this society of the shallow & superficial. Therefore, I have resigned myself to writing for myself. And if a writer craves celebrity & wealth in such a milieu, he or she must abandon any pretense of seriousness or quality in their work.

 

You must also devote as much time, if not more, to jumping through all the hoops the “authorities” tell us we must do i.e., write to the level of a Bart Simpson or a Donald Trump. Quantity is worshipped & Quality is dismissed as “elitist.” And as much as I detest the Cro-Magnon world we live in; I still persist in my efforts to communicate.

What Patriotism has wrought
“The last patriot

 

Given all the invisible chains that are choking those of us who truly care about the state of the world, we have little choice, and we must forge ahead or simply roll over & play dead. And I posit that our steady lowering of standards in nearly all areas of cultural significance, has brought us to this cultural wasteland.

 

So, let me attempt to explain what I mean by fascism, a subject that has many interpretations. In a nutshell, fascism is about control & authority. And this is why millions of self-professed “Christians,” are de facto fascists & love Trump. They completely ignore their idol, Jesus Christ’s “Sermon on the Mount,” with its clear principles as to how Christians should live their lives because they desire above all else, power over all of us. Not unlike the Islamic fundamentalists like the Taliban, who silence their intellectual critics.

Onward Christian soldiers!
Onward Christian Soldiers!

 

It absolutely blows my mind that the 40 million or so of America’s Trump cult don’t or can’t see or perhaps aren’t even aware that we fought WWII because we were opposed to the tenets or practices of the fascists. And as some scholars argue, we, the Western world, would’ve lost WWII if it weren’t for the Communists of Russia who bore the brunt on the Nazis aggression. I believe Russia lost something like 20 million citizens.

Not in America, right?

 

Another inconvenient truth is the fact that many, if not most of America’s corporate elite, were enamored of the fascists because they showed their citizens/employees how to behave in the workplace i.e., keep your mouth shut & do as your told. Do a Google search of Major General Smedley F. Butler of the USMC if you doubt my words?

A True Patriot!
A True Patriot!

 

Several of our largest corporate owners tried to persuade General Butler to lead a coup against our government because he commanded such respect from our armed forces.

 

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
― Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier

 

“Fascism should rightly be called corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.”

― Benito Mussolini 

Trump’s spiritual guide

 

I have been writing about what I’ve dubbed, The Corporate Cockroaches for over 30 years & would be more than happy to point anyone interested in the subject to dozens of writers who have given us a wealth of insights into how these vile creatures have infested the social fabric of not only America but the entire world.

 

We, as Americans who love to boast of our freedoms, democracy, etc. should note how many of our domestic terrorists like The Proud Boys, etc. who participated in the attempted coup of our government on January 6th, are cops & soldiers. And talk about the Theatre of the Absurd, the propaganda masters are labeling dissenters against the authoritarians’ assault on our democracy, as terrorists or as Trump calls them, “the enemy of the people.”

 

The parallels between George Orwell’s dystopian nightmare world of “1984,” and what Trump has done to sow the seeds of hatred & violence in America are numerous & truly frightening. And Trump knew that by waging his war against the press & intelligence, he was strengthening his “base of the willfully ignorant.”

He resorts to bullying tactics when he can’t defend his position i.e. yelling, name calling, threatening, etc.

 

And no, Trump wasn’t an aberration, he merely capitalized on the sad state of public education in the U.S. & his war on Science or intellect in general, empowered his Duck Dynasty lemmings & emboldened them to the scary point that millions of them refuse to wear a mask, social distance, or get vaccinated. I submit that public enemy number one in America is willful ignorance i.e., people who choose to remain ignorant & are actually proud of their stupidity.

Ignorance is bliss?

 

Tragically, there are kernels of truth in some of Trump’s assault on Reason, but they are cherry picked for their ability to confuse & distract the public from the machinations of the 1% who are the de facto rulers of America. I may be veering off course a bit so let me return to the early warning signs of fascism by offering a few examples of how they are rapidly turning our fledgling democracy into a totalitarian state. You might note Trump’s fondness for authoritarians—what we used to call Dictators. Putin, Duterte, Bolsanaro, Erdowan, etc.

 

  1. Nationalism—display the U.S. flag everywhere & at every public event i.e., pic of Trump hugging the flag. Obviously to distract people from his blatant disrespect for law & order.

    He’d rather be humping a teenage, Miss America
  2. Disdain for human rights—so what if all the authoritarians Trump admires have slaughtered & continue to slaughter their own citizens by the tens of thousands.
  3. Identification of enemies as a unifying cause—Muslims are all terrorists & want to destroy America. Mexicans are drug smugglers, rapists, etc.
  4. Supremacy of the military—except when the generals won’t let you do whatever you want i.e., drive tanks down our major boulevards to intimidate & silence citizens who dare to protest
  5. Rampant sexism—an area Trump excels in i.e., raping girls/women, bragging about “grabbing them by their pussies,” his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, his life-long habit of extremely crude comments about women, his belief that he can grope women whenever he feels like it, walk into the dressing rooms of girls in “his beauty pageants,” etc.

    Would you allow your daughter to be around either of these scum?
  6. Controlled mass media—and here we can lay a lot of blame on the mass media itself for their shameless behavior in giving Trump billions in the form of free advertising as he ran for the presidency. Moreover, Trump admitted in a 60 Minutes interview that he attacks the media so their credibility is weakened whenever they have the temerity to publicly criticize him. Of course, when they say something flattering about him, they’re the champions of liberty, freedom, & democracy.</li>
  7. Obsession with National Security—of course in fascists’ minds, anything that strengthens their power & control over the public is great but anything that questions their power or integrity is an enemy of the state & must be stamped-out. These two words (National Security) have been employed ad nauseam to hide the crimes of the 1%
  8. Religion & Government intertwined—we should simply ignore our Founding Fathers concern because they were students of world history & knew only too well the genocide, torture, etc. that occurs so frequently when these two powerful institutions unite against the citizens. Recall George W. Bush’s “Faith-based initiative” in which he illegally installed an office in every major department of our government.
  9. Corporate Power Protected—this is so obvious that it’s almost not even necessary to discuss but then again, we are living in a country that celebrates the stupid & dismisses the intelligent. Law school is a place you go to learn how to protect the 1% from going to prison.
  10. Labor Power Suppressed—fascists have been waging a war against workers from the beginning of the rise of corporate power. Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of workers in America have been silenced one way or another i.e., fired, beaten-up, killed, etc. Reflect on the fact that two of the largest corporations in America, Walmart & Amazon are rampant anti-union. And dear old Ronnie Reagan opened season on unions from the moment he took office & fired the Air Traffic Controllers for life.
  11. Obsession with Crime & Punishment—when it comes to blue-collar “criminals” but a slap on the wrist of the megalithic corporate conglomerates every now & then who are destroying our environment & killing us all.
  12. Rampant Cronyism & Corruption—this is an area that Trump excels in & he’ll probably go down in U.S. history as the poster boy for all time most corrupt U.S. president. He stopped just short of placing a cash register on his desk in the oval office.
  13. Fraudulent Elections—and Trump did everything he could in his stealing of the presidency just short of having soldiers at every polling station with machine guns to intimidate voters.

 

This is obviously a light review of the vast conspiracy of the fascists amongst us & I could go on for thousands of pages but if you’re still in denial, what’s the point of going on, you probably haven’t even read this far anyway?

 

Now, the other ideology, “Socialism,” has as many definitions or examples as fascism does & I’m not going to attempt to provide you with its long history. I am also far from an expert on Socialism, but I will attempt to give you a brief sketch of what I interpret it to mean or stand for. By-the-way, to be clear, I believe that Socialism & Democracy are very compatible or should be in my idealized view.

 

Moreover, true socialism, like true democracy, true communism, or true capitalism doesn’t really exist but is a noble ideal for those of us who believe greed is destroying us & pushing the world to the cliff’s edge overlooking the abyss of human extinction.

 

Perhaps the simplest or the easiest way for me to describe what socialism is would be to cite the Scandinavian countries as examples? Everyone is entitled to & receives a well-maintained apartment or house, healthy food, a top-notch education & universal health care, along with meaningful work suited for one’s skill set, talents, & interests.

 

Homelessness is non-existent, if you or a loved one gets a serious disease, you don’t pay a dime in medical expenses, you receive a comfortable pension from the state when you retire. Basically, everyone pays a high percentage of their income in taxes, but it doesn’t matter because all your needs are met & whatever money you have left each month is pocket money for you to spend on whatever luxury items you care to.

 

There is little, if any, class distinctions and people don’t go through life feeling ashamed or less than others. As a result, you have a far more compatible society & far less crime, especially violent crimes.

That should suffice for now & again, there’s no such thing as the perfect nation but Social Democracies come far closer than any so-called Capitalist democracy. Unfortunately, the status quo’s propagandists gave us the pack of lies they call “Neo liberalism,” which has managed to significantly undermine even those Scandinavian societies that represent hope for the world’s starving masses.

 

And hope is what billions of people around the planet cling to especially in this time of pandemic. Will humanity survive? It’s not looking likely but it’s our duty to not give up or give in to the greedy psychopaths who threaten our very existence.

 

Complacency & apathy will be the end of us if we don’t wake up in time & recognize our common humanity.

Life under fascist rule

 

Persevere my brothers & sisters.

 

Viva la Revolucion!

 

P.S. I’ve spent my life ringing the alarm & I’ve been mocked & dismissed by family & “friends” alike, but my conscience is clear & I know to the marrow of my bones that I’ve at least tried to make this a fairer & more equitable society to the best of my ability.

 

 

 

Evangelical Family Values

He’d rather be humping a teenage, Miss America

 

“A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.”

Bertrand Russell

B. Russell, Nobel Prize winner & worked with Einstein to stop development of Nuclear bombs.

 

I attended Church up until I was approximately 14 or 15 years old. My family moved sometimes two or three times per year & I went to a variety of Christian denominations’ churches not knowing or caring about what denomination they were. I enjoyed Sunday School for the same reason I enjoyed school i.e., because I have loved learning all my life.

I’m guessing, Easter Sunday? But my sister & me went to Sunday School religiously. Ha! ha!

 

But I stopped attending Church as I matured & began to see the glaring contradictions between what they preached & what they practiced. I am now 68 years old & my distrust and disrespect for nearly every self-professed Christian I have met in my life has only confirmed my suspicions all those years ago.

Jimmy Bakker & Tammy Faye, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, Robert Schuller, & the King of the Self-Righteous Hypocrites, Pat Robertson. Need I say more?

 

And the fact that somewhere around 90% of America’s evangelicals support & believe in Donald Trump to this very day, is the elephant in the room & proves how intolerable, sinful, & wicked these faux “Christians,” actually are. Note: this matches the percentage of Americans who voted for Trump.

 

For those of you who may not be aware of the supposed values & principles of those who profess to be Christians are, here is a brief primer.

Do these “Christians” who ignore Trump’s transgressions use “selective memory?”

 

Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount,” encapsulated these principles in a simple, clear, & concise manner and are the bedrock of what Christianity is supposed to represent. I feel you can break it down even further into two words: Compassion & Empathy!

 

Moreover, he was speaking about the poor, the starving, the homeless, the sick, the lepers, the prostitutes, etc.

 

3Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
4Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
5Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the Earth.
6Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be satisfied.
7Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
8Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
9Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
10Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

 

In the Book of Luke, it was laid-out even clearer;

 

“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
21Blessed are you who hunger now,
for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
22Blessed are you when people hate you,
when they exclude you and insult you
and reject your name as evil,
because of the Son of Man.

Contrast these traits with Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.”

 

And here is what Jesus’ thought of the rich, the Donald Trumps of his day;

 

24“But woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort.
25Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.
26Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.

The “Golden Calf,” well, more Orange than Gold?

 

So, your phony “Christians,” who claim to be so righteous & superior to the rest of us are in effect worshipping that “golden calf” that God warned you about, a golden orangutan with a sprayed-on orangish tan by the name of Donald Trump.

 

Here’s an off the top of my head list of Trump’s immoral beliefs & practices, well, those that I can think of right now.

 

  1. He directed his administration to cruelly separate families at the Mexico/U.S. border, lock the children up in separate caged cells, & losing track of parents for hundreds, if not thousands of scared to death children.

    What would Jesus say?
  2. He bragged on national television that he was free to grab women by their genitals whenever he felt like it.
  3. He believed because he was the “owner” of a few beauty pageants, he could walk into their dressing-rooms whenever he wanted to, knowing that many, if not most of them would be nude or semi-nude.
  4. As president, he had the most powerful “bully pulpit,” in the world & throughout his life, he has preached hate, fear, prejudice, & racial divide. And to a much lesser degree now that he’s no longer president, he continues to rip-apart the fragile, social fabric we once had. We are now a divided nation close to what we had just before the Civil War broke out.</li>
  5. He absolutely fawned over the cruelest, the most vicious authoritarian leaders/dictators in power today.
  6. He gave the 1%, America’s richest citizens a massive tax break—yeah, even those who in effect paid no taxes.
  7. His vicious & deranged destruction of every program that had Obama’s signature on it, has seriously hurt the poorest amongst us i.e., shutting-down the White House program for dealing with a pandemic.</li>
  8. Perhaps as many as 900,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, & the majority of those poor souls died needlessly because Trump personally mocked & dismissed the CDS’s repeated warnings & called for the wearing of masks, social distancing, etc.
  9. Trump’s vitriolic rhetoric has inspired mass killings like in El Paso, Texas where a psychotic, Trump fan massacred something like 20 or so, poor Mexicans in a Walmart. Lately we’re witnessing vicious, physical assaults on elderly Asian women, some Anti-Jewish attacks, etc. not to mention Trump’s obsession/desire to deport every Arab or Muslim in America. Strange though how he loves to suck up to the Oil sheiks?

Continue reading

How America was Trumped

 

 

“There are a great many people who have a vested interest in maintaining the stupidity of the American public.” (Gore Vidal)

 

No, this isn’t another conspiracy theory & the elite haven’t exactly been discrete about their agenda of “dumbing us down,” i.e.

“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” (President Woodrow Wilson)

 

Yep, another White Supremacist who has been labeled a liberal but is clearly quite another thing. Think about it, who or what institutions would have a vested interest in keeping the majority of the public ignorant & what would they gain from our being ignorant?

this is only a basic overview, it’s much more insidious

 

The first institution that comes to mind is the most obvious in my opinion & it is the corporate sector.

 

“In fact, quite generally, commercial advertising is fundamentally an effort to undermine markets. We should recognize that. If you’ve taken an economics course, you know that markets are supposed to be based on informed consumers making rational choices. You take a look at the first ad you see on television and ask yourself … is that it’s purpose? No, it’s not. It’s to create uninformed consumers making irrational choices. And these same institutions run political campaigns. It’s pretty much the same: you have to undermine democracy by trying to get uninformed people to make irrational choices.”  —Noam Chomsky

“The Master of Those Who Know” (Dante in reference to Aristotle)

      If Chomsky was wrong about the goals of the corporate sector in their advertising, why would the overwhelming majority of corporations spend billions on seducing & distracting their potential customers? It’s crystal clear that corporate America doesn’t give a shit about all the toxic pollution they’ve poisoned our air, food, water, etc. with. And they have absolutely no loyalty to their employees or to America.

      They have no moral qualms about closing their factories here in the U.S. & moving to countries where they can pay their workers a couple dollars a day, have no environmental restrictions, & can poison their new, host country’s land, air, water, etc. Yet Trump’s supporters blame it all on liberals & democrats conveniently ignoring the fact that it’s both democrats & republicans who pushed NAFTA through.

      I think of all the functions Trump fulfilled as president; none was as important as his role of circus master for the powers that be. While he kept his Duck Dynasty Klan fans amused & distracted, his donors siphoned billions from the U.S. Treasury into their pockets. Once again, Noam is right on the mark;

some say it wasn’t PT Barnum who said there’s a sucker born every minute but tricksters & confidence men used the saying

“Everyone knows that when you look at a television ad, you do not expect to get information. You expect to see delusion and imagery.”

      And this is exactly what Trump’s whole life has been i.e. a third-rate actor selling delusion & imagery. He came to power because of a tragic confluence of forces like the Democratic party’s utter spinelessness & the continuous disintegration of tens of millions of Americans’ lives due to the insatiable greed of the corporate elite.

      Moreover, because of Trump’s virulent racism, xenophobia, misogyny, moral bankruptcy, & his rhetorical skills, he duped a third of the American public into actually believing that he was going to be their savior.

      Of course, if we were a truly enlightened or well-educated public, a Trump would’ve never made it to first base in our political system. Here are a few relevant quotes on the subject of American intelligence:

We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.  (Gore Vidal)

 

At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice. (Gore Vidal)

 

Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half. (Gore Vidal)

 

Furthermore, what’s even more depressing is the fact that Trump supporters are the first & most vocal in their support of stupidity & every asinine & moronic statement that Trump utters only endears him to their hearts even more so i.e. Oh isn’t he cute, he speaks just as stupidly as I do so I know he’s one of us.

 

Trump’s army of the mentally walking dead are so uninformed & ignorant that they are blind to the fact that it is Trump’s handlers, the corporate elite, who have their boots on their throats &  have discarded hundreds of millions of Americans into the gutter homeless, stolen their pensions & their health plans, & could give a shit less about them or their loved ones getting COVID-19 & dying from it.

this is what willful ignorance can unleash

 

In my opinion, the overriding & most critically important thing that all true progressives must focus on is how to communicate to the public how the corporate elite are pulling the strings of nearly every politician. Until & unless we succeed in doing this, we may as well be spitting in the wind!

If you want to arm yourself intellectually to fight back against the corporate cockroaches

 

Yes, I’m well aware of what a gargantuan task this is but our lives & our species survival, damn well depend on it. Trump appealed to the extremely ignorant among us because he told people there was nothing wrong with them & they didn’t need to inform themselves, they only needed to follow him. And when I heard Trump telling his people not to believe anything they saw, read, or heard because it was all “fake news,” I was flabbergasted at the gullibility of his followers? Whatever happened to that much touted; All you need is “Common sense.”

Well anybody who had an ounce of common sense would’ve abandoned Trump from day one of his reign of destruction & theft. So clearly, people had better get serious about informing & arming themselves intellectually or else it’s all over & the U.S. will have gone the way of many other “Banana Republics,” like our C.I.A. has helped to create around the globe.

I believe it was Russell who also said that Common Sense isn’t actually common at all?

 

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”  —Thomas Jefferson

 

Yet tragically, tens of millions of Americans cling to the belief that a smooth-talking used car salesman, a political outsider, can magically make the corporate elite bring back those fairly decent paying jobs they once had. Yeah right!

 

Corporations like all businesses or I should say, the overwhelming majority of them are in business for one thing & one thing only i.e. to make as much profit as is possible & ethics rarely concerns them. So, no way in Hell are the corporate cockroaches going to move their companies back to the U.S. where they’ll be forced to pay more than starvation wages, adhere to environmental regulations, pay their fair share of taxes, etc.

 

Our dreams of economic justice, fairness, equality, etc. will only come about through our united & continuous push back against the corporate behemoths & getting the money out of politics should be our primary focus for the foreseeable future.

Tragically, because we’ve become so dumbed-down generally speaking & corporate propaganda has been so steady in its decades long efforts to keep the public distracted & uninformed, and due to the never ending war of the “Christian” authoritarians against our government, many, if not most of the public have forgotten that no, our founding fathers were not pious, religious believers & warned of the dangers of allowing the religious to dictate our personal beliefs i.e. tell us how to live our lives down to the smallest details.

 

Unfortunately, due to the never-ending war of the elite against the poor, they have largely succeeded in brainwashing a very large segment of our population into hating everything & everyone with the slightest whiff of being a liberal.

Liberalism was one of the key concepts of The Enlightenment but in Trump land, liberal has been turned into a dirty word & a key reason why so many Americans are either destitute or damn close to it is the fact that the divide & conquer strategy of the power elite has been so successful.

 

Here’s a brief reminder of what true liberalism is & I’ll be the first to acknowledge that many who claim to be liberal or progressive, are the farthest from it.

 

Liberalism was another idea of American Enlightenment thinking. It is the belief in human rights and freedom. Liberalism was rooted in practical unity and embraced by dealers in Northern Europe. They were completely public to the free exchange of ideas and therefore causing them anti-authoritarian. They have consistently supported a part of the government that allowed them freedom of expression and movement.

During the enlightenment age, liberalism became a distinct movement which made it popular among western scholars. The main idea of this concept was to completely vanish absolute kingship, traditional conservatism, representative democracy, and hereditary privilege norms. https://thriveglobal.com/stories/6-main-ideas-of-the-enlightenment/

 

You see, my imaginary reader, a major wake-up call hit the supposed “conservatives” in America when the New Deal programs were passed after the “conservatives” i.e. the bankers, Wall St. crowd, the titans of business, etc. had caused the crash of the U.S. economy. And ever since, they have sworn to dismantle every single program that F.D.R. established & guess what, they have come very close to succeeding in their heartless agenda.

I sometimes wish that I had a photographic memory so every time I hear the same old bullshit propaganda about how liberals have destroyed America, I could rattle off lists like the one I’m about to share to remind people of many of the wonderful things liberalism has given us:

  • The GI Bill
  • Endangered Species Act
  • Environmental Laws
  • The Space Program
  • The Peace Corps
  • Americorps
  • The Civil Rights Movement
  • Earned Income Tax Credit
  • Family & Medical Leave Act
  • Consumer Product Safety Commission
  • Americans With Disabilities Act
  • Freedom of Information Act
  • Women’s right to control their reproductive future
  • Allowing citizens to view their own credit records
  • The Internet
  • Balancing the federal budget
  • The Brady Bill (5-day wait on handgun purchases for background checks)
  • Lobbying Disclosure Act
  • “Motor-Voter” Act
  • The Voting Rights Act
  • Unemployment Insurance
  • Medicare/Medicaid
  • Food Stamps/WIC
  • Social Security
  • Peace between Israel and Egypt
  • Peace between Israel and Jordan
  • The Department of Education
  • The Department of Energy
  • The Department of Transportation
  • The Department of Housing and Urban Development
  • Labor Laws
  • The Marshall Plan
  • Winning World War II
  • Food Safety Laws
  • Workplace Safety Laws
  • The Tennessee Valley Project
  • The Civilian Conservation Corps
  • The Securites and Exchange Commission
  • Women’s Right to Vote
  • Universal Public Education
  • National Weather Service
  • Product Labeling Laws
  • Truth in Advertising Laws
  • Morrill Land Grant Act
  • Rural Electrification
  • Public Universities
  • Bank Deposit Insurance (FDIC)
  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  • Public Broadcasting
  • Supporting the establishment of Israel
  • The United Nations
  • NATO

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2005/10/14/156663/-

 

Sadly, because propagandists know that it doesn’t matter how big a lie is or how absurd their claims, all they need do is just keep repeating the lies ad nauseam & the general public will eventually accept it as truth or fact. They’ve been waging their propaganda war in this context as I said, at least since the New Deal & in some respects, for even longer than that. And they learned the importance of repetition from none other than Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s right-hand man & the Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany.

 

Furthermore, every time I hear a Trump fan call themselves conservative, I want to yell in their face, you don’t have a fuckin’ clue! To explain what Conservatism is, it’s perhaps easier if I highlight what it isn’t?

  • Powerful and continuing nationalism
  • Disdain for human rights
  • Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
  • Supremacy of the military
  • Rampant sexism
  • Controlled mass media
  • Obsession with national security
  • Religion and government intertwined
  • Corporate power protected
  • Labor [sic] power suppressed
  • Disdain for intellectuals & the arts
  • Obsession with crime & punishment
  • Rampant cronyism & corruption
  • Fraudulent elections

No, my friend, these are not conservative principles but are in fact, the early warning signs that a society is approaching fascism, you know, Italy, Germany, & Japan in pre-WWII and which America joined the rest of the world in fighting against.

 

And I’m sure that any of our veterans still alive from WWII must be so disillusioned & ashamed of what America has become under this tin-pot, wannabe dictator, Trump. For those Trump supporters who have spit on the memory of their fathers & grandfathers by supporting a pseudo-fascist like Trump, you should be deeply ashamed of yourself & spend the rest of your life trying to atone for your crimes.

 

Again & again we must bring it back to our flagrant anti-intellectualism which again, the powers that be have been promoting from the beginning of our nation’s history. I could go on & on & on in my analysis of our political, social, environmental, & economic crisis but this brief overview will have to do for now.

 

In conclusion, the corporate media also plays a very significant role in keeping the public ignorant by manipulating public opinion, repeating the corporate/political lies, & most glaringly, the billions in free advertising they gave Trump before he was elected & all through the last four years of chaos & insanity.

But without a doubt, the overarching forces of the corporate multi-nationals are the key factor in our march like lemmings blindly following the Trumps of this world over the edge into the abyss or the death of life itself!

 

Here are a few more quotes that I hope may inspire you to take back your rights as a free citizen of this world or simply a human being. But first, I have a challenge for you, the next time your family member or friend starts with their litany of how evil “liberals” are, demand that they reject, not use or accept any of the protections, etc. that liberals have brought us that I listed earlier.

 

The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity – much less dissent.

—Gore Vidal

 

There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party…and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt – until recently… and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.

—Gore Vidal

 

When you control opinion, as corporate America controls opinion in the United States by owning the media, you can make the masses believe almost anything you want, and guide them as you please.

—Gore Vidal

 

Our only political party has two right wings, one called Republican, the other Democratic. But Henry Adams figured all that out back in the 1890s. “We have a single system,” he wrote, and “in that system the only question is the price at which the proletariat is to be bought and sold, the bread and circuses.”

—Gore Vidal

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”

—Noam Chomsky

“The more you can increase fear of drugs, crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all of the people.”

—Noam Chomsky

 

Does this last quote remind you of anyone you know?

 

P.S. My next essay will be an “Intellectual Self-Defense Course,” inspired by my friend, mentor, & intellectual hero, Noam Chomsky.

 

—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, Oregon Jan. 14, 2021

*one week before that happy day when we see Trump’s fat ass wandering off into the weeds of his golf course, cheating as he usually does because he’s a colossal narcissist & spoiled rich brat.

 

Addendum

I started this essay claiming that no, this isn’t simply another conspiracy yet here is a truly troubling but revealing snippet of how the wealthiest men of their time directly interfered & played a huge role in the shaping of public education policy & practice in America. Think about it, do you believe this was because of their altruism? Do the super wealthy become so rich by genuinely caring about their employees? Or could they have interfered because they wanted a hand in preparing their ideal workers i.e. docile & domesticated? This is from John Taylor Gatto & his books on our public education system are an education in themselves.

 

“Between 1906 and 1920, a handful of world famous industrialists and financiers, together with their private foundations, hand picked University administrators and house politicians, and spent more attention and more money toward forced schooling than the national government did. Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller alone spent more money than the government did between 1900 and 1920. In this fashion, the system of modern schooling was constructed outside the public eye and outside the public’s representatives. Now I want you to listen to a direct quote, I have not altered a word of this, it’s certainly traceable through your local librarians. From the very first report issued by John D. Rockefeller’s General Education Board — this is their first mission statement: “In our dreams, people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions of intellectual and character education fade from their minds and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into men of learning or philosophers, or men of science. We have not to raise up from them authors, educators, poets or men of letters, great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, (he’s really covering the whole gamut of employment isn’t he?) statesmen, politicians, creatures of whom we have ample supply (whoever the pronoun we is meant to stand for there). The task is simple. We will organize children and teach them in an perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way”. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trump made the Stupid Feel Proud

 

 

 

“We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated.”

— Donald TrumpDonald Trump on Nevada win: CNN Video

 

 

 

I can understand why so many people voted for Trump & fell for his cheap, con man snow job but I can’t forgive them! What’s the old saying; Fool me once, shame on you but fool me twice & it’s shame on me?

 

This repulsive & repugnant cretin got away with duping his zombie fan club for four years & counting. Now that’s some really special kind or degree of stupid. And to purposely turn a blind eye to all the destructive & violent things Trump said & did means in my book that you should be right there in a jail cell rotting away for the rest of your life.

for the intellectually & morally bankrupted
Happiness is a Warm Gun

 

When he claimed during his campaign for office that he didn’t accept money from donors because he was financing his own campaign because; “I’m really rich,” I remembered Arnold Schwarzenegger & Ross Perot making the same basic argument & knew it was total bullshit immediately. No matter how rich a person is, it’s never or it’s rarely ever enough. There are an extremely few individuals who have managed to curb their appetites for the things the Rich & Famous covet.

America’s Corporate Cockroach Masters

 

Because we have become such a materialistic society—you can thank our advertising corporate overlords for a significant role in this—and because we are such an insecure nation, people believe they can get social approval if they drive fancy cars, wear expensive suits, etc.

 

Yes, for all our strutting around on the world stage proclaiming that we’re the badest & toughest mother fuckers on earth, we are far more fearful than most other nations. Just mention gun control & watch the scared little boys react.

 

 

And speaking of fear, this is a subject that I am sadly all too familiar with. My brother, sisters, & I all lived in a constant state of fear of being punished by the several husbands or boyfriends our mother let live with us. Additionally, I have what’s called a “lazy eye,” & if I played baseball, etc. for too long & strained my eyes, one eye turned inward like I was cross-eyed & I was teased horribly by the other kids.

 

Moreover, I worked at many different factory-type jobs in my late teens through my 20s & beyond and I absolutely hated it when an owner of the factory I was working in, would take a group of possible investors for a tour & they’d stop and observe me operating the machine I was assigned but wouldn’t bother to say hello or introduce me. I felt like a barnyard animal not even worthy of a modicum of courtesy.

 

My saving grace my whole life has been the world of books. And from the day my grandmother helped me get my first library card at the Salem Public Library across the street from Oregon’s capital, books became my closest friends & my security blanket. Whether I was hiding out from one of my mom’s abusive boyfriends or kids who were mocking me for being cross-eyed, books were always there for me like a dear friend.

 

I sensed we were poor as I grew up, but it didn’t really start to hit home until I was in high school & started going to parties. When I began to see how much nicer some people lived than we did, my class consciousness began to develop. And my awareness of my intelligence level didn’t really sink in until I was in my late 20s.

 

I believe that meeting my future wife & our living together was a major turning point in my life. I had also just met the wonderful subject of philosophy & it rocked my world. At last here was a subject that I could really sink my teeth into & I started moving to the front row of the classes I was taking.

 

For most of my life I had sat in the backrow hoping the teacher wouldn’t call on me for fear that I’d be wrong in my answer to whatever questioned I was asked. I loved learning but always wanted to be a silent partner. But when I found the confidence/courage to sit up front & participate in the class discussion, sometimes it was almost as if it were just me & the professor having a discussion and the other students were like furniture. And a handful of my teachers/professors in college were so inspiring that I’d go to their offices just to talk about the big picture i.e. college education, politics, philosophy, life, etc.

 

And this is when it dawned on me that I was/am an exceptional student or smarter than the average bear because I saw how few, if any, of my fellow students cared about the discussions. As one of my most inspiring teachers put it; “They just want to know what’s going to be on the test, memorize the answers, & forget about it.”

 

This teacher’s name was Mr. Garrot & he said to me; “Rob, don’t you think there comes a time to stop reading & to start writing?” I’ve shared my personal background with you because I want you to understand that when I fiercely criticize those Americans who were/are so stupid to believe in Trump, it’s not because I’m one of those elitists they hate but because I came from the same background as most of them & have many of the same feelings of inferiority, shame, guilt, etc.

 

I think this subject is even more personally enraging than it is for most people precisely because of where I came from? I have struggled for the past 40 years or more to awaken or spark an interest in learning in my relatives, friends, & strangers because the injustice, misery, suffering, violence, etc. that is a part of these millions of Americans’ lives gets my blood boiling & the very people who are so desperately in need of an intellectual enlightenment are often the ones most passionately against education.

 

My guess is that the majority of the blame for this hatred of education stems from their experiences in public school? Tragically for millions of Americans, they had harmful teachers who made their students’ lives a living Hell & therefore turned them off to learning for the rest of their lives.

 

So, when a flamboyant, confident sounding, & apparent billionaire takes their side & champions them, it’s mighty hard to resist the intoxication of his words & the emotions they bring up in people. Moreover, all the racist, misogynist, xenophobic, etc. trash that Trump talks only endears him even more in his Duck Dynasty crowd. They feel; “He tells it like it is,” “He’s one of us,” “He’s shaking up Washington & he’s gonna make real changes to help us.”

 

These people are like a drowning man clinging to a life preserver so no matter how little evidence there is of Trump fulfilling his promises to them, they will cling to him like they’d cling to a life preserver if drowning. And now that Trump’s reign of error & terror is coming to a close, we are left to try & clean up his wreckage.

In the field of psychology, they say that the most important first step in trying to overcome your problem is to acknowledge that it exists. I don’t believe we’re ever going to truly heal our seriously divided nation until we honestly grapple with the myriad issues that made such a human piece of scum like Trump appealing to those who voted for him.

 

I know that in this country where we have become accustomed to instant gratification i.e. short, simple answers to complex issues, this will probably go in one ear & out the other but again, teaching is my vocation & my love and is the other side of the coin of learning/knowledge. So, I will continue trying to heal the divide.

Trump’s hero, Mussolini who said fascism should more correctly be called Corporatism

 

Speaking of healing, it just dawned on me that there is another parallel between Trump & Hitler i.e. after the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust & the heinous murder of millions of Jews, intellectuals, gypsies, homosexuals, etc., many have asked; How could the Good Germans have stood by why this was happening? I ask myself; how can the millions of Trump loyalists stand by as Trump purposely sabotaged our health care system, ignored the medical science regarding COVID-19, & watched as hundreds of thousands of Americans died needlessly from the virus?

whether by perpetual war, pathetic medical system, or poverty, the 1% are committing de facto genocide of humanity

 

By-the-way, roughly a third of the American public deny the Holocaust even happened! What percentage of these people do you think are Trump supporters? The key point here is that the cult of personality which is so strong in America gave us this shameless grifter & proves just how dangerous blind obedience to any one individual or personality can be. If the American public were better educated, they’d have learned this lesson from not only world history but American history as well.

 

Another critical lesson that history can teach us is that the “Church” has been trying & sometimes succeeding from the beginning of its existence to have absolute rule over the nations in which it had a foothold. And America’s “Christian” evangelicals/fundamentalists—not all of them of course but a sizable majority—backed Trump because his advisors knew how powerful a voting block they are & had him choose Pence as his running mate.

 

Just try asking a friend to write you a letter or to discuss politics

The stupid & the weak always seek a strong leader because they don’t want to think for themselves & because they aren’t able to. So, if a charlatan puts on a good enough show, they’ll jump faithfully in line & follow the leader like lemmings right off a cliff. And America has now lived & proved how wrong that old maxim; “What you don’t know can’t hurt you,” truly is.

 

In conclusion, the next Trump who comes along won’t be so stupid or crude and then we & the world will truly be fucked! So, the choice is ours, Enlightenment or Apocalypse, which side are you on?

—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR January 2, 2021

Addendum

It occurred to me that maybe I wasn’t clear enough in explaining what Trump said/did that made his believers proud? Trump has been carefully sculpting his public image & persona his whole life. He has lied about his “self-made” fortune, called in to radio shows in New York posing as someone else & asserting that Trump was far richer than he actually was.

Trump’s intellectual peers; reading level 4th grade

 

If you’ll spend a short amount of time reading about his background, you’ll soon see that his “empire” was built on sand from the grains of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of lies. But to his willfully blind & ignorant herd, he’s a rich guy who thinks & speaks like they do i.e. hates & fears everyone who isn’t white & racist like they are. And most importantly, his Duck Dynasty Klan members love his constant bashing of anyone with more than a sixth grade education because many, if not most of his tribe, have felt stupid & inferior for most of their lives & here was the president of the United States telling them they were wronged & they should “beat the hell out of the fake news journalists & all his other critics.” They feel his words viscerally & are only too happy to physically beat the shit out of all Trump’s “enemies.”

 

The bitter truth & sad irony of this dark chapter in U.S. politics is the fact that Trump has tried his best for decades to become accepted by New York City’s elite but because of his rude, crude, lewd behavior & unbelievable stupidity, he has been rejected consistently. So, what we’ve witnessed is Trump’s revenge on the cultural & intellectual elite, but it has cost America & the world, a very great price!

What we truly need if we are to survive the wanna be dictators like Trump or the real ones like Putin, Bolsanaro, Duterte, etc.

 

 

 

Not Talking about Politics….

the poor, whiny little bitch i.e. they’re mean to me (journalists)

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Thomas Jefferson

 

…is what allowed the Twitter-toddler Trump to become president of the most powerful nation on earth. And not speaking about politics doesn’t make our problems disappear much the same way that not talking about your problems in a troubled marriage, only allows the marriage to slowly disintegrate.

 

A healthy nation requires hard work & open communication. And “not talking about politics,” only allows the same destructive habits i.e. the Trumps of America to go on wreaking damage & causing havoc.

 

I have been commanded to shut-up or leave many taverns over the years & it’s always the same old excuse i.e. no talking about politics but I’ve seen it time & time again, what they really mean is; Liberals keep your fucking mouths shut!

 

This tragic state of affairs is more common here in small towns made up of mostly hunters & fishermen where there are often only two radio stations, one for the Bible-thumpers & the other that broadcasts Rush Limbaugh & FOX “News.”

The Russian people know Pravda is propaganda, the American public doesn’t know that FOX “News,” is propaganda

 

To begin with, FOX “News,” shouldn’t have ever been allowed to call itself a news organization. It’s America’s version of Russia’s largest newspaper, Pravda. But I’m sure that the overwhelming majority of FOX viewers & listeners don’t realize that it’s almost entirely propaganda for the Right-wing corporate owners & the 1% who own America. FOX is mostly loud-mouthed, fear & hate spewing opinion & that’s not news my friends!

“The Most Trusted Man in America,” Walter Cronkite (journalist when I was growing-up)

 

Actual news is supposed to be facts, not editorializing but our journalistic standards have been slowly deteriorating ever since they began turning it into infotainment. But the King of the Liars Club, Trump hides his duplicity by labeling anyone & everyone who dares to point out his hypocrisy, inconsistency, & manipulations as “fake news.” He’s admitted that he does this, so his critics lose credibility & he’s allowed to go on lying & very rarely is held accountable.

Don’t fall for Trump’s doublespeak on “fake news”

Trump, the scum-bucket used to pose as someone else & call in to news programs & other shows to plant lies about him being much richer than he actually was in his early days. So, he truly has some nerve calling reporters “fake news” every other time he opens his mouth.

 

A long time back, I dubbed FOX “News,” the Fear & Hate channel because if you watch or listen to it for even an hour, it’s as obvious as the nose on your face that these are the two emotional buttons they push around the clock. Like Hitler & countless other dictators whom Trump admires, they know that by keeping the public worked-up, you can distract them while you rob the national treasury.

 

Moreover, as long as people are emotionally reacting, they’re not thinking, writing, or talking about the serious issues that affect their lives. It has deeply saddened me to watch this process go on & on & on for most of my adult life. I am not only silenced in public bars but even in friends & relatives’ homes because I disturb the otherwise happy environment.

 

And it would be almost humorous if it weren’t so destructive, but most people don’t even realize that they are being hypocritical when they command me to not talk about politics because whenever the subject of gun ownership comes up, they’re immediately fired-up.

 

“They want to take away your guns!” The corporate cockroaches have been using this chestnut for decades because it works every time & closes peoples’ minds instantly on whatever subject they may be discussing. It’s a tried & true part of the three Gs i.e. God, Guns, & Gays!

 

Keep the bewildered herd distracted by invoking these three “issues,” and nothing else matters. For the past 20 years or better, I try to tactfully point out to those who seem somewhat reasonable, so, you’re not interested in politics?

 

That’s in effect saying that you don’t care if they shutdown your company & move overseas where they can pay their workers as little as $2 a day. Or you don’t care if the Wall St. wolves steal your company’s pension plan. And so, if they overnight cancel your health insurance, no big deal! The fact that the rich are purposely destroying our public education system doesn’t mean shit, right? And the fact that without a top-notch education, your children have a snowball’s chance in Hell of finding a decent paying career. Take a look at Betsy DeVos’s track record if you think I’m full of it.

I could go on with hundreds of examples of how politics does matter to each & every one of us, but I’ve given you enough to chew on already. Try putting yourself in my shoes for a minute if you will, my imaginary reader. I have conservatively invested at least 50,000 hours of my time & energy over the past 40 years or better in reading, researching, writing, listening, & watching documentaries, attending lectures, etc. and I am silenced by either threats of being 86ed out of a bar, physical intimidation, social exclusion, etc.

 

I have only one outlet & that is my writing which hardly anyone will take the time to read. It may take 15 minutes to read one of my essays, but people say they don’t have the time. Yet they will watch T.V., movies, etc. for several hours a day.

 

I contend that if a lot more of us would’ve had lively discussions, fair debates without attacking the other person’s character, etc., we never would’ve ended-up with such a dangerous moron as Trump in the oval office.

What do we try to teach our children as they grow? Responsibility is a major lesson we hope to teach them, right? Well, as our founding fathers tried to teach us, it’s our responsibility to inform ourselves & to hold our government accountable to we, the people. How are we doing in that department my friends?

 

I accuse Trump of being the most dangerous president who ever was because there are two major threats to humanity’s survival; 1) the rapid destruction of our environment which is caused by our climate’s inability to keep up with technological waste due to the insatiable greed of the corporate cockroaches; 2) the threat of nuclear war. The mind-boggling stupidity of Trump in this area in particular is nightmarish. He actually asked those who were trying to inform him about our nuclear arsenal, “I don’t get it, why can’t we use our nuclear weapons i.e. since we have them, why don’t we use them?

Trump’s legacy of Death & Destruction!

 

In conclusion, without a doubt, the most heinous crime of this con artist, woman hater, etc. was his not only blocking but also undermining the Center for Disease Control, the World Health Organization, etc. in their efforts to prepare us for the COVID 19 pandemic which led directly to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans’ lives!

 

And to continue to refuse to discuss politics i.e. liberals’ points of views, speaks volumes about what we have allowed ourselves to become!

 

—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR December 21, 2020

 

Addendum

 

I may not have been quite as clear as I want to be regarding talking about politics in bars? The regulars or locals are free to complain about the actions or inactions of their local government, planning commission, etc. & they can get as loud as they like in condemning liberals or progressives on abortion, protests, homosexual rights, etc. and you can bash the federal government to your heart’s content.

Here are a few things those dirty Liberals gave us:

  • The GI Bill
  • Endangered Species Act
  • Environmental Laws
  • The Space Program
  • The Peace Corps
  • Americorps
  • The Civil Rights Movement
  • Earned Income Tax Credit
  • Family & Medical Leave Act
  • Consumer Product Safety Commission
  • Americans With Disabilities Act
  • Freedom of Information Act
  • Women’s right to control their reproductive future
  • Allowing citizens to view their own credit records
  • The Internet
  • Balancing the federal budget
  • The Brady Bill (5-day wait on handgun purchases for background checks)
  • Lobbying Disclosure Act
  • “Motor-Voter” Act
  • The Voting Rights Act
  • Unemployment Insurance
  • Medicare/Medicaid
  • Food Stamps/WIC
  • Social Security
  • Peace between Israel and Egypt
  • Peace between Israel and Jordan
  • The Department of Education
  • The Department of Energy
  • The Department of Transportation
  • The Department of Housing and Urban Development
  • Labor Laws
  • The Marshall Plan
  • Winning World War II
  • Food Safety Laws
  • Workplace Safety Laws
  • The Tennessee Valley Project
  • The Civilian Conservation Corps
  • The Securites and Exchange Commission
  • Women’s Right to Vote
  • Universal Public Education
  • National Weather Service
  • Product Labeling Laws
  • Truth in Advertising Laws
  • Morrill Land Grant Act
  • Rural Electrification
  • Public Universities
  • Bank Deposit Insurance (FDIC)
  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  • Public Broadcasting
  • Supporting the establishment of Israel
  • The United Nations
  • NATO

 

But if you dare to defend some aspects of our federal government or criticize our foreign policy, watch out! In brief, as long as you tow the party line i.e. Limbaugh, FOX “News,” & Alex Jones’ insane conspiracy theories since his buddy, the spoiled, rich brat & bully, Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan was illegally installed in the White House, you are free to speak your “mind.”

Herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he had no desire for that of which he feels no want.

The Love of my Life, my wife, Jeri & me

What Trump has Wrought

 

This picture as the old saying goes, says a thousand words & poignantly expresses what the humans among us feel. Yes, I am inferring that Trump believers are sub-human because they have no compassion for anyone outside their insane asylum.

 

Many of us senior citizens, myself included, fear a horrific end of our lives like this picture suggests i.e. to not be able to touch, kiss, or hug our loved ones as we lay dying in intensive care. And we now have the additional worry of perhaps not even having a bed available in the I.C.U.

 

And even sadder is the fact that this is a very rare doctor because his holding a fellow human being even with all this protective equipment on is the exception, not the rule. Can you imagine how terrified & depressed this poor soul must feel? For quite some time now it has been known how critically important the human touch is i.e. babies deprived of the warmth & nurturing touch of their mothers, if they survive, grow up emotionally damaged & maybe even mentally handicapped though I’m not sure about the mental aspect?

 

Speaking of emotionally & mentally handicapped, Trump obviously is one of those but this in no way excuses him for all the damage he has done & unleashed on America and the rest of the world.

Until Death Do Them Part!

This poor man’s suffering hit home to me on a very personal level as well because it made me realize that as my wife lay dying in the I.C.U. back in 2013 & we had disconnected the machine that was keeping her alive, she could no longer speak or see but she could feel.

 

Jeri was disconnected from the machine around six p.m. on the evening of August 17th & she clung to life until about six a.m. the next morning. I was blessed to be able to hold her hand, our fingers interlaced for nearly the entire night i.e. I took a couple of maybe, ten-minute breaks, and finally succumbed to sleep & had just laid my head on her bed when maybe five minutes later, my son’s wife nudged me & said, “she’s stopped breathing.”

 

It was as if she couldn’t let go literally until I had let go by falling asleep? I am glad that at least she had the comfort of my touch & knew how deeply I loved her as she slipped away into that final transition.

The Love of my Life, Jeri Ellen DeLoss & me.

 

I stopped going to church & calling myself a Christian back when I was in middle school but over the past 50 years or better of my life, this personal decision has only been confirmed as the right choice.

 

How so many self-professed “Christians” can so fervently worship at the altar of the golden calf, Trump, truly blows my mind? And it’s so glaringly obvious to even non-believers like myself that Trump spits on every admonition that Jesus laid out for his disciples in his Sermon on the Mount i.e. a sort of Cliff Notes version of what Christianity is about.

 

Many religious scholars have boiled down this sermon to what they call the Beatitudes. I prefer this term & can’t help but wonder if perhaps this is where The Beats, or Beatniks, the forerunners of the hippies took their name? And if so, how ironic because the beats & the hippies were so despised by mainstream America for rejecting their righteous hypocrisy but practiced a true Christianity in their love of nature, belief in peace, anti-war stance, rejection of materialism, etc. that de facto was an embrace of the beatitudes.

the writers/poets of the Beat generation who inspired Dylan & many others in the 1960s

 

Obviously, millions in Trump’s cult of personality who call themselves Christians, need to reread Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount,” so here it is; 

 

The eight Beatitudes in Matthew:[7][8][9]

³Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
⁴Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
⁵Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the Earth.
⁶Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
⁷Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
⁸Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
⁹Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
¹⁰Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
¹¹Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
¹²Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

 

I was going to illustrate how Trump has defiled each & every one of the beatitudes but have decided that’s not necessary & instead, I’ll just offer a few observations on the wolves in sheep’s clothing who are so willfully blind & ignorant!

Intellectual & Moral hero of my hero, Noam Chomsky!

 

By-the-way, I have long pointed out that this simple sermon supposedly given by Jesus, really boils down to the crux of the Ten Commandments & is coincidentally the one commandment common to nearly all the world’s major religions i.e. Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you!

for the intellectually & morally bankrupt

 

But our buffoon in chief by his actions & words has unleashed a wave of barbarity in America not unlike the barbarian hordes that attacked & overthrew the seat of Christian power at the time, Rome.

Fake president imitating second-rate actor

 

Because Trump is supposedly a billionaire —but who knows for sure because he’s been lying about his fortune for decades — and has his hands on the reins of power of the most destructive force on earth, the U.S., his cult believe they are righteous Christians & therefore their vile, vicious, hatred, & even murder of all others is justified.

It’s critically important to bear in mind that the proud members of that illustrious organization known as the KKK have always considered themselves “Christians” as well. Yep, their idea of a good ‘ol time’ on a Saturday night is to get a belly full of beer, then go out & lynch some poor black man or boy. And they get up the next morning & go to church and sing their gospel songs about love & peace.

Proud tradition of American South’s “Good Christians”

 

One of Trump’s beliefs that I was sure would sink any chances of his winning the presidency in 2016 was the “Access Hollywood” video clip in which he bragged about being able to “grab them by the pussy” (women” and no one would do or say anything against him for it.

And depressingly, he was right because among his millions of “Christian” evangelicals & fundamentalists, men are the masters & women are subservient slaves. In short, their view is that of the authoritarian father figure who can do no wrong & his word is law. It is clear to those of us who refused to drink Trump’s Kool-Aid, he looks up to authoritarian aka dictators & wishes he could be one here.

 

If any of these “Christians,” had half a brain, they’d follow this “logic” of Trump’s through & realize that he’s de facto saying that rape is okay. Therefore, if you idolize Trump & believe everything he says & does is good, right, & righteous, you wouldn’t mind if a strange man raped your daughter, your wife, or your mother.

 

Gee, I wonder if Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan would be upset if someone were to rape his daughter, Ivanka? But then again, maybe he’d like to rape her, given some of the amazingly crude things he’s said about her over the years?

Yet ironically, back in 1989, Trump took out a full-page ad in New York City newspapers calling for the death of the five, black teenagers accused of the brutal rape of a white woman. And these poor guys served years in prison only to be proven innocent. Connect these facts with Trump’s obsession/hate of Obama & you’ll see that he’s built his political career on stirring the race-baiting cauldron simmering just beneath the veneer of our “society.”

 

Or note the fact of Trump being sued for rape dozens of times over the years & his bragging about his freedom to walk in on the girls in the beauty pageants he owns while they’re getting dressed. Yep! Onward “Christian” soldiers as you go proudly marching on against every semblance of decency.

birds of prey flock together!

 

Underneath this despicable swamp creature’s words & actions is a philosophy of sorts i.e. mankind is basically like those apes in the beginning of Stanley Kubrick’s famous film; “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In brief, ever since our primate ancestors learned how to wield a club & kill their competitors, this is the way it is & shall always be. He who is stronger & more aggressive is the rightful leader of his pack, community, city, nation, & in the final analysis, the rightful master of the universe.

Trump’s final Make America Great Again rally

 

Moreover, and I’m sure this has never occurred to Donny’s pea-brain, I believe Kubrick was showing us in this film that our so-called evolution as illustrated in our technological advances i.e. the creation of nuclear bombs, of which we, the U.S. just happen to possess the largest & deadliest stockpiles of, may very well reduce humanity to its origins like those apes huddled in fear in dark caves desperately searching for water & food to sustain ourselves?

 

Therefore, it should come as no surprise to us who are capable of independent thought, that those anti-human, reptilian brains who walk amongst us, view all of Western cultures discoveries & accomplishments in the humanities as well as the hard sciences is but a façade.

The “School of Athens” (Greek philosophy, the foundation of all knowledge)

And they cling to their automatic weapons like a baby clings to his security blanket because they are scared to death & will lash out and maim or kill anyone they perceive as a threat!

America’s domestic terrorists are greatest threat to our National Security!

 

Given these observations that I’ve laid out, is it any wonder that we have a humanoid replica of an orangutan behind the desk in the oval office who reportedly asked a national security expert three times if we could use our nuclear weapons. It’s not been established whether this is accurate or not but given Trump’s mind-boggling ignorance, I don’t find it hard to believe at all.

You may think that not even someone as cold-blooded & heartless as Trump could possibly have asked such a question but bear in mind the fact that the death of over a quarter of a million Americans due to the COVID-19 pandemic we are cowering in fear of, doesn’t trouble Trump. No, his only concern the whole time we’ve been living with & dying from this pandemic, Trump has only been concerned about how it would affect his chances of winning the 2020 election. So, to all you “Christians,” who still love this piece of excrement I say, shame on you!

 

Resist or Perish is our only Choice!

 

—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR Dec. 1, 2020

The Greed Pandemic

 

the inner Trump in physical form

 

I have been in a state of shock pretty much since the coronavirus pandemic struck. I mean, Jesus Christ! Just how much more brazen or in our faces does the 1% have to be? Have Americans become so dumbed-down that they need a giant poster of Wall St. & Congress flipping off the public & a caption that reads; Too Bad, Too Sad!

People are dying by the tens of thousands & we’re told that the government doesn’t have the masks, ventilators, tests, etc. we need to stop this pandemic because the casino & crony capitalists want only the bare minimum of these critical supplies in their warehouses —gotta be cost effective don’t you know?  and “our” government, “led” by the class dunce, Donald Duck, give trillions to bail out the airlines, the tourist industry, hedge fund companies, etc. etc. etc.? and it’s only a coincidence that the Chief Thief in the oval office personally gets richer because his golf resorts & etc. rely on these industries.

Thank Trump for the tens of thousands of Americans who died needlessly!

 

Yeah, I’m sure those millions of Americans who have been laid-off or fired, are planning their next cruise to the Caribbean or a month on the French Riviera if they’re able to pay their rent or buy groceries this month. Several of those who can still read & think critically warned us before Trump even became president that if a crisis happened when Trump was in the White House we’d be fucked & they were clearly right about that!

And we won’t be prepared for the next pandemic either!

 

Yet even as they circle the drain, many, if not most of the Trump zombie crowd still sing his praises? Absolutely mind-boggling that living, breathing people can still believe in such a narcissistic cretin who clearly doesn’t give a shit about his followers or the rest of us?

Until Death Do Them Part!

 

Ready for some more good news? Epidemiologists tell us that there are millions of other viruses out there but it won’t mean a thing to the 1% who are so blinded by their greed. What’s that saying? A fool is someone who keeps doing the same thing but expects a different result. And mark my word, once we get through this coronavirus crisis, our political & corporate bosses will go right back to business as usual. So, when the next pandemic strikes, we’ll be short on masks, protective equipment, hospital beds, etc. all over again & tens of thousands of people will die needlessly.

If you’re human, you feel her pain. If you’re Trump you have no empathy cuz you’re a sociopath!

 

It’s abundantly clear or obvious that the powers that be could give a shit less about us. If you recall in 2008 when the world economy was on the brink of total collapse & the Bush Cabal rammed the TARP funding through Congress, to the “Banks Too Big to Fail,” they assumed the banks would free up loans to individuals & small businesses.

Liars row; the Bankers too Big to Fail & didn’t use bail-out money to help Americans but gave themselves nice bonuses.

 

As Gomer Pyle used to exclaim; “Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!,” the Big Banks didn’t free up loans but just kept on doing what they’d been doing before the crash & giving themselves obscene bonuses, etc. Guess what? Yep, they’re doing it again but this time it’s several trillion dollars that’s being given away with no strings attached i.e. no regulations. And the real fuck you to us is they put Mnuchin in charge of overseeing this mind-boggling giveaway. Talk about the fox guarding the hen house, but the real fox we have to be wary of is FOX “News” which provides Trump with his daily “ideas” of what to lie & rant about.

Furthermore, why is it that the “military budget” is never questioned? It’s like the Pentagon is America’s sacred temple & the generals are the priests. Eisenhower warned us of the military/industrial complex & wanted to include Congress in that complex but that was a bit too revealing. Anyway, he knew about this complex because during his tenure in office, our military budget skyrocketed i.e. he presided over it.

So, they—the federal government—always have the funds to bail-out the mythical free market capitalists & they always have the funds for more wars & weapons (some of which the Pentagon doesn’t even ask for) yet they never can find the funds for Health, Education, & Welfare?

 

How interesting? One might believe they i.e. the corporate cockroaches who de facto own & give the politicians their marching orders, don’t actually care about us, the peasants, who make up the other 99% of America? In fact, one is tempted to think that our only value to the power elite is our consumer spending, taxes, our lives as cannon fodder in the military, & if nothing else, as prisoners in the rapidly growing & profitable prison industry?

 

Furthermore, if we were to consider the hidden costs of our military complex we’d find that the amount we spend on the military is far greater than what we’re led to believe. Here’s a brief video of Chalmers Johnson, obviously a liberal radical (I’m being facetious or sarcastic)

Yep, Chalmers Johnson R.I.P. ; Chalmers Ashby Johnson (August 6, 1931 – November 20, 2010)[1] was an American political scientist and professor emeritus of the University of California, San Diego. He served in the Korean War, was a consultant for the CIA from 1967 to 1973, and chaired the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley from 1967 to 1972.[2] He was also president and co-founder with Steven Clemons of the Japan Policy Research Institute (now based at the University of San Francisco), an organization promoting public education about Japan and Asia.[3]

 

Perhaps the liars & thieves like Trump & McConnel don’t want the public to know the facts about how much they waste of our national budget on the military?

 

2015 total discretionary spending was $1.1 trillion, so including nuke spending and veterans spending, spending on the military represented 63% of the total. In other words, two-thirds of your tax bill!

https://www.nationofchange.org/2017/03/27/real-figure-military-spending-us-66-3-discretionary-federal-budg

 

On the other hand, even though “we” spend two-thirds of our “budget” (note that for regular people, a budget means keeping close watch on how much you’re spending) The United States public is more frightened than just about any other nation & we are the most feared nation on Earth because of our perpetual wars/police actions, etc. I believe it was my intellectual hero, Noam Chomsky, who has pointed out this interesting irony? Moreover, I bet the majority of the American public doesn’t have a clue as to how many actual military bases we have around the world, let alone “black sites” (where they’re free to torture prisoners)?

 

It’s not easy to assess the size or exact value of our empire of bases. Official records on these subjects are misleading, although instructive. According to the Defense Department’s annual “Base Structure Report” for fiscal year 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and HAS another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories.

https://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1181/chalmers_johnson_on_garrisoning_the_planet

 

Pursuing this further, I wager that not very many patriotic Americans would acknowledge that we are an empire? Why? Because it’s drilled into our heads from elementary school through high school & to a large extent even in our so-called institutions of higher learning that the U.S. is always on the side of democracy & freedom. So how could we possibly be an empire? Well here’s another “commie lover” doing the “unthinkable,” i.e. speaking truth at power:

 

At the time of his death, Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, also known as “The Fighting Quaker”, was the most decorated Marine in US history; he was the only person to be awarded a Marine Corps Brevet Medal and a Medal of Honor for two separate military actions. He had also become an unrelenting voice against the business of war.

 

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

The most fortunate mistake of my life. They tried to get me to go to Officer Candidate School but I didn’t have the “guts” to use guys like chess pieces.

I’ve been trying to tell people for approximately 40 years that the U.S. military is basically used in foreign countries to protect the corporate cockroaches who rape, pillage, & plunder them so these corporations can become ever more powerful & rich. But, I’m usually mocked & dismissed. This is why it’s of such critical importance that the corporate media doesn’t report these inconvenient facts, because the public might become aroused & do something about it.

Those who never served are usually the loudest chickenhawks!

 

The greed & ignorance of those at the top of the financial services sector of our economy & those at the top in politics i.e. Trump & Mitch McConnel is so insanely unfettered that the coming crash could very well make the Great Depression look like a picnic in the park by comparison?

 

Moreover, this endless cycle of greed, graft, & waste won’t stop until we’ve taken back our rightful power. But we might not get that chance because the corporate cockroaches are destroying our environment, the environment that gives us life, faster than we can protect it. And equally threatening to humanity’s survival is the ever present, 24/7 threat of nuclear war hence, nuclear annihilation which our vice-president & the lunatic “Christian” right extremists & fundamentalists pray for.

How much more obvious do these “Jesus Jumpers” have to be? They’re Sick!

I know, very depressing. So, people go back to their smart phones & sports on T.V. while we steadily march like lemmings off that cliff to oblivion. Well at least some of us did try to stop the madness.

As for me, I’ve only begun to fight back against the Wall of Ignorance that Trump exemplifies & is building. Yeah, let’s waste trillions on this symbol of ignorance, fear & hatred while tens of thousands of Americans are dying, many in their homes alone. That’s your “successful” fake billionaire’s business strategy. Gee? I wonder why his casinos went bankrupt?

We’ve put this guy in charge of our economy & the Federal Treasury???

 

So, if you were hoping this essay would be a fairy tale with a happy ending, don’t waste your time reading further because my aim is to expose as much of the dirty truth or facts as I can in the hope of breaking through that wall of ignorance that a third or better of the U.S. public lean against.

 

When I first started attending community colleges after I got out of the U.S. Army on an “Undesirable Discharge,” — undesirable because I refused to let them send me to Vietnam & believe me, the army was far worse than undesirable in my book — I was 19 years old. I didn’t have a clue as to what I wanted to major in so I took several business courses (accounting, salesmanship, intro to retailing, intro to small business management, business law, etc.) and it didn’t take long for me to realize that all one needed to “succeed” in business is be extremely greedy & not have a conscience.

Well being the “loser” who couldn’t complete the two years I had signed-up for in the U.S. Army (not really my “choice” to sign-up i.e. I was in the lottery & my number was so low that I knew they’d draft me soon, and I “joined” the army because it had the least amount of a time commitment i.e. two years, versus the other branches of the military, I began a “career” (sarcasm) of changing majors, dropping-out —many times half-way or even three-quarters of the way through a semester—in my search for some meaning in my life.

 

I’ve had several ideas over the years of how I could’ve probably been very “successful” & made a lot of money using the cheap labor that so many poor Mexicans would do in trying to provide for their families. But the loser in me just couldn’t do it. By-the-way, this was all way before I became interested in politics. That happened when Reagan became president because he scared me & he was the governor of the state I grew up in, California.

Here’s a brief review of an excellent book I read back in the 1980s; “Greed is Not Enough,”  by Robert Lekachman & it gives an excellent overview of just how harmful Reagan was to America; https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1982/4/20/dismantling-reaganomics-pbdburing-the-last-week/  

What COVID-19 has shown more conspicuously than anything else is how morally bankrupt the Capitalist system we are living under is. Congress’ first concern, especially the GOP, was the welfare of the corporate cockroach class i.e. the CEOs of the major industries like the oil industry that has been subsidized by us, the 99%, for decades. Yep, we gotta protect it even as they gouge us at the gas pump & push humanity into a horrific environmental nightmare. Gotta keep the greediest amongst us happy.And that was why Reagan was so beloved by the “Defense Industry” because he gave the same speech for 20 years for G.E. i.e. the Commies are Coming, the Commies are Coming!

 

Equally terrifying is the constant threat of a nuclear exchange & with a spoiled brat like Trump in the oval office & his penchant for throwing tantrums, humanity is overlooking that abyss the lunatic “Christians” are praying for. Here’s a relevant quote from Bertrand Russell, a true humanist who devoted his life to the pursuit of peace;

Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature, Anti-War activist, jailed for protesting WWI

 

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid … Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.”

He resorts to bullying tactics when he can’t defend his position i.e. yelling, name calling, threatening, etc.

 

What humanity is desperately in need of right now is far more calm, rational minds not unthinking, emotional nut-jobs easily manipulated into committing acts of violence by demagogues like Trump of the Duck Dynasty Klan. Do you seriously feel okay with someone as crude & callous as Trump who clearly only cares about his wealth & fame, arguing with the president, king, or prime minister of a nation that possesses nuclear weapons over some trade or territorial dispute? This is akin to two, little boys playing chicken on their bicycles.

Trump’s intellectual peers; reading level 4th grade

 

The priests in the Temple of Capitalism never change their sermon, it’s the same old song for every crisis that comes along or when they simply feel the need for more gifts & tribute from the peasantry i.e. we must get this tax break or the economy will crash & put everybody out of work, etc. and if you’ll help us out just one more time, we’ll put Americans back to work. But oddly, they never seem to follow through on this “promise?”

 

Continuing on with this sad history of greed & corruption that has grown to such monstrous heights, we are also witnessing the rise of wars over water rights. And as usual, it’s the already suffering & dying masses of people in Africa who are among the first to feel the effects of the greed pandemic. Moreover, for those of you who claim to only care about America, why has Michigan allowed the mind-boggling callous indifference towards the people of Flint? Worse yet, this has been going on for years now & the clean water that used to flow from the Flint river into its citizens homes is now given away, practically free to the Nestle corporation? And Americans have the gall to call themselves the defenders of freedom & democracy?

Majority of Flint residents are Black & Obama sold them out for his Wall St. buddies

 

Of course, the fact that the majority of the residents of Flint happen to be Black doesn’t have anything to do with this state of affairs, right? And let’s not forget Obama, the Black Knight on the White steed who brought change to America. He participated in a public charade to convince the people of Flint their water was safe. Bottom-line, Trump rose to power on a platform of fear & hate and racism was the most powerful tool in his bag of dirty tricks.

 

And Trump’s virulent & disgusting racism has also been effective in convincing his Walking Dead-heads that it’s the “hordes” of illegal immigrants who are behind the disappearance of all those jobs that paid enough for a simple, country boy to live comfortably. Yeah, just ignore the fact that it was the corporate pigs who closed down their plants here & moved overseas where they could pay their slaves as little as $2 a day, & primordial creatures like Trump got richer by screwing America’s workers & the “illegals.”

 

Yep! All these free-loaders are just making-up their stories of fleeing brutal dictators, vicious drug lords & the gangs that roam their streets, or the simple fact that they can’t find any work. They’re actually a part of a vast conspiracy to destroy America from within & therefore, feel free to spit on them, beat them up, even kill them if you feel like it & Make America Great Again!

 

Meanwhile, as all this domestic terrorism against starving & fearful people simply trying to provide for their families goes on, the Know-Nothing Movement inspired by Trump’s proud ignorance, is distracted from the fact that humanity has reached or is damn close to the “tipping point” i.e. the point of no return in terms of the world environment’s total collapse or destruction & no longer being able to sustain human, animal, or plant life. Just more scare tactics by those Satan worshipping Secular Humanists who don’t even believe in God!

 

Conversely, I find it interesting to note that with all these morons supposedly in charge, when people like myself argue for universal health care or single-payer health care, we’re dismissed as not being “realistic” because “we” (the federal government) can’t afford it. Yet once again, it’s obvious what a pack of lies this is because they magically produce trillions to save the stock market? All these greedy corporate thieves who get one tax break after another like the one Trump the Terrible just gave them, just use the handouts they receive to do stock buy backs & become even richer. Hell, they’d be fools not to in their value system because they know the fed will always come to their rescue while the hundreds of thousands of small, mom & pop businesses are denied financial help & told to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, the Horatio Alger myth that Reagan was so fond of.

 

Well we can’t help but see where their version of “reality” has gotten us; critically short of vital, life-saving medical equipment, hospital beds, medical professionals, etc. even though the Center for Disease Control has been telling them for years that more pandemics were coming. How’s that for planning ahead in those “realistic” masters of the universe’s pointed little heads? And worse yet, we have Captain Dumb-fuck giving daily press briefings advising people to do the most dangerous & absurd things imaginable? (like inject disinfectants) Donny is a public menace & a clear & present danger to the American public yet he’s allowed to go on spewing his ignorance & hate?

 

America & the rest of the world is in dire need of a Humanist Crusade for Humanity! The greed of the petty spirited has gone beyond ad absurdum but to even point out such things as this is dismissed as being alarmist? It’s the mass & pervasive ignorance that is scarier than anything else in my book.

 

Tragically, we have lived under this insane system which allows unbridled greed & corruption to spread like a virus for so long that most people don’t believe there’s any other system possible. It’s an extremely sick, depraved, & psychopathic mentality that allows a Jeff Bezos to become the richest man in the world as humanity is dying all around us.

 

Relatively speaking, a handful of men like Bezos are allowed to de facto own or control the very air, water, & land we need to exist as living beings on this planet. We, through our willful ignorance & apathy have given these modern day Genghis Khan’s the power of Life & Death over billions of loving parents, children, brothers, sisters, etc. who simply wish to live & thrive and be able to provide a decent roof over their loved ones’ heads, food in their bellies, clean water to drink, air that isn’t so polluted that it’s unhealthy to breathe it, & their greatest dreams are to be able to give their children a quality education so they may have the same things for their families when they mature.

 

But we’re told by the Trumps of this world that this is asking too much. What the obscenely wealthy are in effect telling us is that everyone not filthy rich like they are, are insects that you should be about as concerned about as you would a pesky fly.

The “fiscally responsible” who run up the deficit when they’re in office & demand it be cut when the Dems are in office

 

I know it’s politically incorrect of me as well as spiritually incorrect of me according to the New Age Nonsense movement but, I would love to see all these inhumane “leaders” & men of power & wealth have to watch as their loved ones suffered the fate of the poor & watch their children suffer & die needlessly. But then again, it seems that most of those on top, aren’t even capable of normal human sympathy or compassion i.e. Trump being Public Exhibit Number One.

The tin-man, scarecrow, & cowardly lion all in one

 

My guess is that many, if not most, of the people who’ve known me at least somewhat over the course of my life, probably think of me as a doomsayer who revels in depressing news & facts. And it saddens me that they can’t see that I have spent my life learning about these matters in an effort to awaken people & hopefully stir them to action because I love & care about people.

 

And I sometimes worry that I may be “losing it,” because I can break into tears, several times a day. I feel the suffering & pain of others in my being and I can’t just sit idly by as so much evil is allowed to go on basically unchecked. This is why I am more worried & stressed-out than I’ve ever been under any other president in my lifetime, with this vile, despicable megalomaniac in the most powerful office in the world. As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t start paying attention until Reagan became president because I thought, no one could be as self-serving & obedient to the corrupt wealthy as him but Trump makes Reagan look like a Boy Scout in comparison. Be forewarned, here’s another truly frightening & depressing fact, anywhere from a third to half of the American public think Trump is the greatest thing since sliced-bread. This is truly stupefying?

This kind of willful ignorance is simply beyond comprehension? I mean, Jesus H. Christ! Trump shows his ignorance, his indifference to our health, his disengagement from the COVID-19 pandemic, & his pathetic attempts to shift the blame for his criminal neglect when it comes to leading in this terrifying time. I don’t care how much you’ve fallen for this cult of personality cardboard figure, you must be an alien from some other planet to be able to overlook the hundreds of examples of obvious failures on Trump’s part. You know what this malignant narcissist’s concern is during this dark time? It’s that he can’t go golfing. His handlers must’ve persuaded him that that would be just too far even for his die-hard Walking Dead constituency.

he frequently doesn’t even attend or read the briefings & needs lots of pictures to “understand”

 

On the other hand, one of the most effective strategies the rich & powerful have used throughout history is to Divide & Conquer so we must give credit where credit is due, Trump may be the greatest divider this country has ever seen?

Trump is like some old rock & roll band that never stops touring in their pathetic attempt to keep their name out there in the public’s consciousness. And this is why he never stops holding his fear & hate rallies, well, up till now, but it’s driving him crazy & he’s been using what are supposed to be public health information about the virus daily press briefings, to keep the focus on him, blaming others, & fanning the flames of racism, xenophobia, & insurrection against the federal government’s warnings & steps to at least slow down the spread of the virus.

 

Moreover, it’s getting scarier on our public streets because not only are we fearful of catching the virus so we’re attempting to maintain “social distancing” guidelines, we have to worry about the Trump goon squads who are having protests & carrying their automatic rifles in public. These “people” are salivating at the thought of being able to play out their fantasy roles like zombie killers, preventing foreign powers from taking over America, etc.

 

I think they played their video games way too long i.e. from childhood to middle age & beyond for some of them. They feel so powerless in their real world lives that they can’t wait to dish out some fear & hatred on whatever group is Trump’s latest target to blame for America’s problems.

 

Furthermore, once again, how they cannot see that it’s exactly Trump’s kind of buddies on Wall St. and in the boardrooms of the behemoth corporations who have fucked them, sent their jobs overseas, & stolen their pensions, and every single safety net program. Yep! As Sam Elliot says in those funny cartoons; You must be some special kind of stupid!

 

Moving along on this trail of tears, yet another consequence of the unbridled greed in this country, is the cauldron of anger in many of our inner cities & especially those that are made up of primarily Black Americans. Why? If you have to ask, you must’ve been living under a rock for the past half century or better.

 

Blacks have been on the bottom of the totem pole in America from the beginning of our history to the present & sometimes these communities erupt like after the verdict in the Rodney King trial. If one were truly cynical, you’d be tempted to believe that it’s an overt conspiracy to kill off as many Black Americans as possible. It seems almost daily or at least weekly that white cops shoot down young black men & rarely are they held accountable for what is literally murder!

 

The greed aspect behind this tragic phenomenon is the rich who suck every penny they can from the ghettos in exorbant rents, keeping their wages barely subsistent, etc. and turning this section of our population into redundant i.e. not needed, workers. They steal a man’s pride because many of these men can no longer feed their families. Is it any wonder that many of these poor souls turn to drugs & alcohol to escape their daily misery?

 

On another note, I find it very interesting & worrisome that we’re not allowed to talk about politics in bars. Could it be a conspiracy of silence (no pun intended) or is it merely a coincidence? I believe that bars are the best place to discuss politics because they are the most common meeting place for average workers across America. And again, I can’t help but be suspicious of this absurd social taboo against speaking about politics in bars because it might be that the rich don’t want us comparing notes & possibly uniting against that 1% who are responsible for just about every social, financial, & political problem in our lives.

 

The same questions could be asked about our public education system. I know that I’m treading on thin-ice when I mention the possibility of conspiracies by the power elite because Alex Jones & charlatans like him have gone off the deep-end for far too many years. And I, like many others, roll my eyes & tune-out and look for an exit when someone starts going off on conspiracies by the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission, etc. But I’ve been an educator for over 20 years & have attended school for almost half my life (I’m 67). I firmly believe they (the 1%) want us to only have enough education to be able to run their machines in their factories—the few that are still left—& perform the “service sector” jobs of our economy i.e. pump gas, wait on tables, house maids, gardeners, etc. I’ll end this paragraph with an anecdote from my life, I interviewed for a part-time job many years ago & discovered that the guy who was interviewing me was president of the local school district. He seemed open-minded so I asked him directly, why do they lie to us about American history all the way through high school? And he replied matter of factly; Well, most people don’t go on to higher education & the government wants you to leave high school with a good feeling about your country. In brief, not many people would be willing to join the military & put their lives on the line if they knew the true, ugly history of America.

 

In case I wasn’t clear as to how the greed factor relates to public schooling, the dumber they can keep us, the easier it is for them to exploit us through our jobs, our banking, mortgages, everything. I have long advised people to study what the rich have their kids study if you want to truly empower yourself!

 

And a key part of an elitist’ education is the humanities & the classics in the humanities always includes Charles Dickens. Perhaps the most powerful event in the young Dickens life was when his father was locked up in Debtors Prison. Not only did it put a tremendous strain on his family financially but the emotional scars due to the humiliation, etc. haunted him his entire life. And I believe that because of his background, Dickens was a master storyteller when it came to describing the poverty of those on the lowest rung in English life in his time.

 

Supposedly, debtors’ prisons were done away with but if they ever did?  They have clearly come back now. Many, if not the overwhelming majority of people in our prisons today, come from impoverished childhoods & our disgraceful public education system. Moreover, since there are hardly any jobs left other than the minimum wage, dead-end jobs, or taking the “option” of joining the military in the perpetual war system that is American foreign policy & dying or coming home maimed & then denied proper medical care. So again, it’s that vicious cycle of poverty, ignorance, & violence and the majority of these broken spirits end up in prison. Guess what’s one of the most profitable industries in America today? Yep! The prison industry. So, if the wealthy can’t profit off you as a consumer or a worker, they can profit off your incarceration because the government pays a hefty salary for locking us up like animals. And it’s our tax dollars that are used to pay for it. Of course, the rich pay little to nothing in taxes though.

 

I have long felt the tragic irony of the fact that these criminals in the boardrooms & fancy office suites are free to defraud us of billions of dollars & only once in a while is one of them offered up as a scapegoat to appease the ignorant hordes briefly. Of course, they’re sent to a federal country club “prison” while the rest of us are sent to living Hell-holes not fit for man or beast!

 

Moreover, the very police & military forces who are used when riots erupt, are from the same background as the rest of us & regularly get screwed by the wealthy as well. If they only knew just how much more they have in common with us than those corporate cockroaches who give them their orders.

 

Returning to the subject of the “Classics,” I’m not sure if H.G. Wells is included but I believe he was one of the first science fiction writers along with Jules Verne? Anyway, this quote from H.G. Wells struck me like a lightning bolt when I first came across it;

 

“Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.”

         And this quote has never been more pertinent than it is today. The ignorance & arrogance of Trump has already caused the unnecessary deaths of perhaps tens of thousands of Americans & this pandemic is only getting started. My goal isn’t to frighten you, we, myself included, are already sufficiently scared but I’m doing what I can to help inform people & thereby empower them.

         You see, my imaginary reader, fear is dangerous because it often blocks reason & we are in desperate need for a cool, rational, & intelligent leader to take charge in this dangerous time. And fear is one of Trump’s greatest tools in his manipulation of his cult members. Keep people fearful & give them someone to blame for their misfortunes by constantly fanning the flames of hatred is how a despot or a demagogue remains in power.

         Speaking of power, I’m fairly sure that it was H.G. Wells who imagined a nuclear bomb in his book; “The Shape of Things to Come.” And as our resident genius & a scholar’s scholar, Noam Chomsky, has written & spoken about in great detail, the ever-present threat of a nuclear exchange which would immediately escalate into a nuclear war & the entire planet would be blown up, is a very real threat to our survival.

         Furthermore, it’s not absurd or completely off the mark to fear that someone as childish, ignorant, self-centered as Trump could start a war, maybe even launch a nuclear weapon if he felt backed into a corner by possibly being removed from office & then being open to criminal charges & being sent to prison? Trump clearly only cares about himself & we witness almost daily his tantrums, and his ranting & ravings. I worry because it probably wouldn’t take very much to send him off the deep-end & in his sick mind along with his inability to feel any sympathy or empathy with others, he might just figure; Fuck it! Why not start a nuclear war because I’ll go out in style and people will remember my name?

         And as if this weren’t already more than enough to be concerned about, we have the “Christian” crazies i.e. the fundamentalists or the evangelical extremists who are praying for the end of the world. Like the toddler in the White House, they have held a deep grudge for many years. They feel persecuted for their beliefs & are becoming ever more paranoid in their warped & perverted views on life.

         Once again, we find the billionaires who manage to find a way to profit off every natural disaster as well as man-made disaster—usually attributed to their machinations behind the scenes. Witness a recent discovery i.e. our Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, a billionaire, whose agenda is to destroy public education & replace it with Charter Schools, is behind these armed protestors in Michigan who believe the “Shelter in Place” guidelines are a secret plan to take their guns.

         Yep! old Betsy is one of those “Christians,” who love charter schools because they can proselytize their extremist “Christian” views in them. History has shown that from the beginning of recorded history, the Church & the State have fought one another for the control over the public and at times, they have united in their mutual interests of keeping the public subservient to them so they can horde all the profits from the peasants’ labors.

         Furthermore, I spent several years researching the “Christian” fundamentalists & they’re really scary because many of them actually believe they’re doing us a great favor by killing us if we disagree with them a bit too strongly. And at a time so dangerous as this, we need cool heads to prevail, not the lunatic fringe.

         We desperately are in need of leaders who respect the simple philosophy of Secular Humanism. Guess who hates & fears Humanists? Yep! Religious fundamentalists around the world whether Christian, Muslim, or Jewish. In fact, I wrote a book on the subject & if you’d like to check it out, simply type in “Truth Against the World,” by Rob DeLoss on Amazon. You can read the first several pages I believe, for free?

         If you’ve made it this far in this lengthy essay, congratulations, you must have a very high pain threshold? Ha! Ha! Since we’re on the subject of the end of the world, here’s another cheerful tidbit for ya; turns out that the phrase; Masters of the Universe, isn’t so ridiculous as it first sounds. These powerful overlords clearly don’t give a shit about their near total destruction of our environment & are planning ahead. Yep! Look up; Full Spectrum Dominance, a program with the goal of dominating the galaxy & who knows, maybe the universe after that?

         Think I’ve gone around the bend as the saying goes? Well, this “program” is a literal program of our Air Force & their goal is simple i.e. have strategic satellites above the earth that can target whoever or whatever they want to on earth & threaten them with total annihilation with military laser weapons stationed in Space.  Note fairly recent announcements by Mike Pence, a ‘Christian” evangelical, of what is to become the 6th branch of U.S. Military Forces; Space Command.

         If you’re as old as me, you may remember Reagan’s infamous “Star Wars” program with the aim of developing laser weapons in space & creating a magical shield to protect America? It was thoroughly discredited by the majority of scientists & experts on such matters and supposedly was permanently shelved. I’ve long suspected that they were secretly continuing with their research into such a possibility, I’d say that my hunch was most likely correct? Here’s a link to our government’s very own Defense dept. and a story on this comforting news https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/1717200/pence-space-command-will-integrate-military-

         Once again let me remind you that “we” never have the money for trivial matters like our health care, our public education system, or our general welfare which used to be known as our “Social Safety Net.” And in this pandemic, we see how successful Trump’s destruction of every program established to help us in hard times, has been.

         Very few & far from enough tests to determine just how far this virus has gone, massive shortages of even the most basic protective equipment even for the doctors & nurses on the front lines, a tiny fraction of the ventilators that can extend people’s lives as the doctors frantically search for ways to help us, etc. What do you bet that every single person in that infamous 1% have the best & as many of these life-saving things as they could ever need? Personally, I think the thing that would help America the most would be for Trump to contract the virus because then he just might possibly curtail his greed long enough to give us what we so desperately need? I know, pie-in-the-sky thinking?

         Hand-in-glove with this frightening state of affairs is the fact that many, if not most, of our younger generation have been raised on these dystopian movies & violent video games & heavy metal music to some extent. Why do I bring this up? Because I believe many of those young people have reconciled themselves to what they believe is a fact i.e. they have no future, all is bleak & futile so they may as well party-hearty while they can? Note those Spring Break kids who defied the “social distancing” guidelines, etc. and now some of them have contracted the virus & I believe some have even died?

         Consider the popularity of the series; “The Walking Dead,” and the fondness for vampires. They even have vampire love stories like soap operas. I kid you not! I believe that a lot of these depressing phenomena is a result of families struggling so hard to survive forces fathers & mothers to work absurd hours and they can’t be at home to supervise & guide their children’s viewing habits, etc. Again, we have to thank the greedy elite who are destroying the social fabric of America all in the name of the Almighty Buck!

         Personally speaking, and yeah, I know this isn’t politically correct to say but, I can’t stand being around many of these young people because of their crass & vulgar disrespect to anyone not of their generation, their violence towards others, their disregard of litter laws, etc. etc. etc. Also note their glee in bullying & shaming their more timid classmates on the “social media.” Yeah, real social, eh? I feel that this could serve as a sort of barometer of our barbarity as a society?

         Okay, follow the Yellow Brick Road. How appropriate! Get it? Yellow bricks representing Gold & our obsession with getting it is so powerful that we follow this empty road to desolation & destruction both physically & spiritually? A key factor or component in this society run amok is the de facto reality that we are not a nation founded on law & the Constitution means nothing to the mega rich.</h1>

         Laws are only enforced when the elite want to keep us in our places i.e. out of their sight so as to not disturb their delicate sensibilities or aesthetic senses. This is why the homeless in almost every city across this great land, are pushed to the outer city limits and industrial areas, etc.

         Think I’m exaggerating? Okay, then how in the Hell is it that we have a cheap con-man in the White House who has broken the law consistently throughout his entire business career yet he’s never been sent to jail, let alone prison? And why is it that for many of the largest corporations, they break the laws against dumping toxic waste into the waterways, the air, the ground, etc. on a daily basis or as a standard business practice because they know that if they do get fined for breaking these laws, the fine will be far less than the profits they made by ignoring the laws? And what’s worse, if they do have to appear before a judge & even if they’re found guilty, it doesn’t go on their record & they don’t even have to acknowledge that they committed a crime.

         Are you beginning to see the pattern here? These inhuman creatures who disregard the rest of us like we were piss-ants, care only about their profits & they will do everything & anything to ensure those profits never stop coming in & continually expand. Their insatiable greed is literally killing the planet & poisoning humanity in the process. But hey, we’ve been indoctrinated our entire lives to believe that he who dies with the most toys, wins. And it doesn’t matter how many yachts they own, or how big they are, or how many private jets they own, or mansions around the world, etc.

         How do “people” like Trump & his corporate cockroach cronies continue to get away with their endless crimes against humanity? Well in regards to Donald of the Duck Dynasty, it’s largely because of his skillful manipulation of the media which he has been perfecting from the beginning of his life of crime.

         Donnie learned a few simple strategies from his evil mentor, Roy Cohn, who was Joseph McCarthy’s adviser in his witch-hunt campaign of terror in the 1950s. Cohn stressed the importance of always being in the public’s eye i.e. it doesn’t matter whether the public loves you or hates you, only that they’re always talking about you or focused on you. And whenever you are criticized or charged with a crime, Deny, Divert, & Detract!

1.   Deny everything you’re accused of or criticized for. 2. Divert the attention of your critics from their charges against you by blaming others, etc. to take the focus off you. And 3. Detract or attack the character of anyone who criticizes you or attacks you in any shape or form. More importantly, every time someone dares to criticize you or even says something even slightly negative about you, attack & attack viciously & mercilessly. This is why Trump has been in court with law suits either as plaintiff or as defendant throughout his “career.”

And the easiest way to get media attention is to say or do such outrageous, crude, ignorant, hateful, twisted things that you’re sure to get the media’s attention & the more attention you get, the more you control the media and aren’t controlled by it.

Without a doubt, the single most important factor in Trump’s rise to power was his skillful manipulation of his fake image on The Apprentice. He even required that every time they mentioned his name of the show, they had to add, “the billionaire.” He most likely isn’t actually a billionaire but he’s been claiming that he is for so long, hardly anyone ever questions it now. Of course, this is probably why he’ll never release his tax records because they’d reveal that he’s just a paper tiger i.e. a fake billionaire.

     As much as I hate to admit it, this human scum has balls of steel in terms of his hubris & arrogance because his whole life is based on fake news yet he uses those two words to dismiss every reporter who dares to ask him a question he either doesn’t like or can’t answer. And in this upside down, insane world of celebrities who are listened to & believed in far more than the scientists who have spent their lives pursuing knowledge. We celebrate stupidity in America & we mock and dismiss many, if not most, of the experts in most fields of study.

     For example, the oil & gas industry has been waging a steady propaganda war for decades to cause people to doubt the world’s climatologists’ dire warnings. It’s gone to such an extreme that many people who may have not even graduated high school or read a single book in their lives, feels qualified or entitled to dismiss & mock the overwhelming majority of the world’s scientists, something like 95% or more of them, with the belief that their opinion is just as valid as these “experts.”

     Therefore, whatever Daddy Donald says is equally valid to anything his detractors say about him. There’s no reasoning with this kind of mentality & this allows the oil & gas industry to carry on destroying our planet & enriching themselves at all our expenses. And when people like myself attempt to open these people’s minds even a little, I am dismissed & accused as just another elitist snob. I think a lot of Trump’s supporters were embarrassed in their public schools & were dismissed as ignorant losers so they have a lot of pent-up hostility in them. And I can’t blame them for those sorts of feelings, that was wrong of any teachers who practiced shaming or allowed it to happen without it being stopped. This doesn’t excuse the ignorance & the assault on reason that we’re undergoing today though!

     What would be humorous were it not so dangerous is Trump’s typical performance right out of the Wizard of Oz i.e. I am the great & powerful & all-knowing Trump, the billionaire in his bellowing voice that he thinks makes him more convincing. But as in the book, when the little dog pulled back the curtain, it revealed, a small, frightened old man using tricks & devices to persuade the citizens that he was the great & powerful Wizard of Oz.

     This is why Trump has threatened to sue any of the schools he attended if they reveal his grades. He needs desperately to hide his incompetence & his whole fake charade or façade that he’s hid behind his entire business career. If his image was seriously damaged, he’d lose everything because he uses that fake image to sell his name to the corporations who want to use that false image of success to sell their products or services.

     If people really wanted to empower themselves & not continue to be at the mercy of the Trumps of this world & not simply whine about it, the first & most important thing they need to do is develop their Critical & Analytical thinking skills. And here’s a good place to start; Problem Solving & Comprehension by Arthur Whimbey. I just looked it up on Amazon & oh my God! They want $52 for a paperback copy of it. I guess it has become very popular & maybe the public is catching-on to how valuable it is? I paid something like $10 for it 40 years ago. If you hunt around, you can probably find it for a lower price or perhaps your local library has a copy of it? Anyway, it was recommended to me by a Jesuit scholar at the university I was attending & if you’re not aware of it, the Jesuits are some of the best educated scholars in the world.

     If we are to stand a chance in our battle for survival against the death & destruction caused by the insatiable greed of the behemoth corporations, we need to ignore this so-called “post-literate” society of ours; we need to get rid of our “smart phones,” because they are de facto making you stupider; & we need to stop texting & start talking far more to one another in person or on the phone if that’s your only option? By talking to one another, we help to inspire each other & encourage people to fight back against the ominous forces arrayed against us.

     Greed allows the corporate cockroaches to justify their manufacture of genetically modified food which we aren’t even certain of nor do we have substantial data & test results for & the possible physical, intellectual, & emotional harm it might cause humans. Furthermore, if it’s so supposedly safe as they claim, then why are they preventing us from requiring that every food that has been genetically modified be clearly labeled? Do you trust these greedy slime-balls with your children’s lives & futures? I sure as hell don’t!

     A major health as well as aesthetic consequence of human greed is the fact that our oceans have become massive toilet bowls in the way they are treated. I guess those brilliant billionaires aren’t concerned about the fact that the more they keep up their absolute negligence & willful polluting of our oceans & lakes, rivers, ponds, etc. pretty soon, they’ll be sailing in giant cesspools?

     Here’s another anecdote from my experience; Several years ago, I was helping a guy remodel a beach house in Ventura, just north of L.A. maybe 20 miles or so. One day he suggested that we take a break and go for a swim in the ocean. And when we got down to the beach, there was a sign warning of “high fecal content in the water.” He went for a swim anyway but I declined. Later on, I said to my co-worker, so people pay a million dollars or more for these beach houses that overlook a giant turd-bowl, kind of fitting when you think about it?

     Here’s another little gem for you; I’m sure you’ve seen the signs along our highways & freeways warning us that if we get caught littering, it is a $1,000 fine, right? Well a couple of years ago, a neighbor of mine told me that his son is in the U.S. Navy & his son told him that every time one of our massive naval ships puts out to sea, they go out maybe a few miles & then they dump all their garbage into the ocean.

     Think about it? Some of those ships have a couple thousand men & women on them so there must be a huge amount of trash when they dump it in the ocean? Have you heard of those giant, floating islands of trash in the oceans? Again & again we witness the utter contempt the greedy rich have for not only our lives but the lives of all the creatures in the oceans. By-the-way, I took a few courses in Oceanography back in 1974 when I was thinking about becoming an oceanographer because I enjoyed watching the shows created by Jacques Cousteau. I learned that something like 80% of the oxygen we need to breathe, comes from the seaweed or kelp in our oceans. So, we’re literally strangling ourselves to death with our blind obedience to the God Greed, the ruler of Capitalism!</h1>

     Or consider the plight of the poor people of Flint, Michigan, who just happen to be predominantly Black people. Nope, no racial discrimination there, right? The whole world knows that the citizens of Flint are forced to live with a toxic, heavily lead-laden water supply for several years now but “our” government won’t do a goddamn thing about it! It gets better folks, the Nestle corporation is allowed to pump 1.1 million gallons of water per day for $200 a year from Lake Michigan!

     I shit you not! And another bit of depressing news is that our glorified president Obama (don’t misunderstand me, this isn’t a racist rant & I voted for Obama the first time, I hated all the ugly racist remarks made about him but I do judge him harshly on a lot of things he did while in office) who was such a Champion of Change—remember his mantra when he was running for the presidency—stooped to participating in a sham public gathering P.R. event set up to reassure the citizens of Flint that their water was safe. Yep, he took a sip from a glass of water that was supposedly from the Flint river to prove that their water was okay. How’s that for standing up for America’s poor & working class and his own people, the Black citizens of Flint? Believe it or not, within a matter of a few weeks after he took office in his first term, I woke-up & realized that I too had been suckered by his advertising/public relations propaganda bonanza when he appointed Summers, Geithner, & Bernanke, three of the most responsible financial elite who helped bring us the World-wide Economic Crash of 2008 from which we still haven’t fully recovered. That’s when my eyes were opened regarding that liar in chief!

Obama’s “brain trust” the guys who helped cause the Crash of 2008

     Like the never-ending lust for wealth & power by these craven cretins, the list of their dastardly deeds is also never-ending but I am getting close to a point at which I am going to stop detailing their criminal records because it all gets to be just too much & too depressing.

     I am only human & as such, I, believe it or not, reach a point in my telling of the ugly realities going on all around us where I need to stop writing for a while & take a mental health day. Pursuing this ever more unraveling investigation of how greed is like a deadly pandemic that threatens all of humanity is another major factor which dwarfs all the other streams of greedy individuals & institutions destroying life as we know it, is what’s laughingly referred to as the U.S. Military Budget which is larger than all the other nations military budgets combined.

     I’m not going to go into much detail here because I just did in a recent essay. But suffice it to say that President Eisenhower knew of what he spoke when he gave his warning about the military/industrial complex. Because he presided over it when he was our president & was obviously afraid to speak up while in office so he waited until he was on his way out the door. He also left off the third leg of that complex i.e. Congress.</h1>

Moreover, here’s a tidbit perhaps, but I feel it’s a very significant fact that is very revealing of our military & political elite’s hidden agenda i.e. to create a permanent military force that our founders had warned against because it would become too tempting to keep getting involved in wars in other countries that posed no threat to America’s borders & peoples. If you recall, our Dept. of Defense used to be called the War Dept. which was at least more honest. There’s one author I strongly recommend for people to check out & that’s Gore Vidal.

Many of our more honest historians have said that Vidal was perhaps our greatest historian in terms of honesty, scholarship, & fearless & ceaseless criticism when & where it was warranted. Near the end of his life, Gore Vidal wrote several short books which were wonderfully simple in their presentation of the facts & his analysis of many of American history’s shortcomings as well as some positive notes.

     Here is a brief blurb about this insightful little book titled; Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace which highlights & provides a list of every war, police action, operation, etc. the branches of our military forces engaged in since the end of WWII;

The United States has been engaged in what the great historian Charles A. Beard called “perpetual war for perpetual peace.” The Federation of American Scientists has cataloged nearly 200 military incursions since 1945 in which the United States has been the aggressor. In a series of penetrating and alarming essays, whose centerpiece is a commentary on the events of September 11, 2001

Do you understand now why I said that when it was called the War Dept., it was at least more honest? I bet the overwhelming majority of Americans have no idea of just how busy our military/industrial leaders have been over the past half century? And because of the never-ending war propaganda campaign that we’ve been exposed to our entire lives, very few even question the motivations or the premises of why we need to go to war again & again & again. The military “budget” is the cash-cow that never stops giving & is the top priority in every administration whether Democrat or Republican. To dare to stand up & challenge the truisms & justifications for the war or police action of the month would be to commit political suicide or corporate suicide if you’re on that side of the receiving end of the largesse.

     If we were even the faintest example of a true democracy & believed in those principles the politicians love to trot out whenever it suits their need to rouse the public’s support, we wouldn’t be the laughing stock of the world for our hypocrisy in how we treat our citizens i.e. keep them in a constant state of fear that they were going to lose their homes, their pensions, their health care, etc. Instead, we are told ad nauseam & ad absurdum the commies are coming, the terrorists are coming, the Mexicans are coming, etc. etc. etc.

     The true terrorists are the corporate cockroaches who have enslaved us & impoverished us to the point that we have the largest prison population in the world. Greater than even the evil Russian Empire or the Chinese Empire.

     Once again, it’s imperative that we remember at all times just how significant a role the public education system plays in this grand scheme of the Masters of the Universe. And two of the clearest examples of just how deeply & extensively the greedy rich have succeeded in dismantling our public education system are the election of Dumbo Donald & Betsy DeVos, the faux “Christian,” who married into the pyramid scheme known as Amway & is sister to one of our most infamous mercenary corporation’s CEO, Eric Prince.

     To reiterate, the “Christian” cult of fascists & White Supremacists has been steadily building its base for the past three or four decades at least & now they have a guy in the White House posing as vice-president. And what used to be contained within the crazies camps i.e. Anti-Science, Anti-Intellectual, Chauvinist, Xenophobic, Racist, now have a national platform from which to spew their bile & venom in the form of one of the greediest & most ignorant pigs to walk upright in America.

     Not only has Trump destroyed decades of progress in Science, Diplomacy, Health & Safety, etc. he has stirred an extremely dangerous Neo-Nazi underground which seeks America’s complete destruction & the collapse of civilization as we know it!

     Of course, we do need to do some serious house-cleaning of several institutions in our society but to follow the game plan of these perverted & vicious people invites the very real possibility of unleashing a nuclear confrontation which is already capable of blowing the world to smithereens at least 25 times over. Talk about “overkill?” And yes, pun intended!

     You may be tempted to dismiss this next part of what I have to say as just another Alex Jones dark fantasy conspiracy but I believe it’s pretty straight forward? I think it’s obvious that the main reason the powers that be hate Edward Snowden with such vehemence is because he revealed their dirty house of cards?

     In brief, we know why the “social media” or platforms have mined our private data & used it to make themselves filthy rich and this was just too tempting a dish for the government & military elite to pass up. Snowden is a very cautious person when he speaks about these matters because he too knows just how easily the powerful can destroy people’s reputations, frame dissidents, torture, & lock them up for the rest of their lives. And he doesn’t want to be dismissed as just another Alex Jones Cult of Ignorance fan club.

     In the excellent documentary which detailed how he (Snowden) came to his decision to reveal what he’d learned about the NSA & some of our other “intelligence” agencies, he only gave a glimpse of the key truth behind all the illegal spying on Americans i.e. it’s about control. And he didn’t harp on the point or belabor it or anything. I wish he had but I understand why he didn’t.

     You see, as societies & nations decline, the social disruptions increase in intensity & frequency. So, the more sophisticated and extensive a government’s spying on its citizens, the greater control they have over their public & the easier it is for them to nip any serious rebellions in the bud.

     A somewhat relevant & familiar practice to some extent in many, if not most revolutions is the fact that one of the first steps a new dictator takes after taking over the government is to shut down the universities & the media because they reveal the illegal & immoral behavior of the dictator. I feel that was what Snowden did for America i.e. he spilled the beans!

     I am writing this essay in the last week of April 2020. I tell you this because we are experiencing the first wave of the deadly coronavirus pandemic or what they’ve now abbreviated to COVID-19. And tragically for America & the rest of the world, Trump, one of the slimiest & greediest reptilians to ever crawl out of a swamp, is president.

     Each day that passes, this cretin spouts some new absurdity but some of his absurdities have deadly consequences. And when he suggested that people inject bleach or other disinfectants, I was absolutely floored. Electing this creature from the dark ages to become president shows just how harmful greed can be. The GOP has backed this Neanderthal all the way through his first three years because he is doing their dirty work & they’ve undid decades of progress in just about every dept. of our federal government all in the name of profit & greed!

     And just when we thought things couldn’t get much worse i.e. having this moronic pig in the oval office, we are hit with this world-wide pandemic. Trump’s avarice knows no bounds or limits & he put his concern about looking bad in the polls because he’s hoping for another four years to continue fucking us, ahead of the American public’s health & safety.

     This petty tyrant’s denial of the virus even existing though he’d been warned of its dangerous & deadly consequences two months before he ever lifted a finger, has caused the death of tens of thousands of Americans already & who knows how many more yet to come?

     I don’t think he’s ever accepted responsibility for anything in his entire life? And he’s in full denial mode now. And he’s clearly incapable of leadership. The only thing he’s good at is passing the buck & taking credit for what others do. But what has shocked & saddened me even more than Trump’s dangerousness is just how blatant the GOP & the 1% have shown us their greed is.

     The most brazen example of their insatiable greed & absolute disregard for the American public was revealed when they passed the first of their “stimulus bills.” Yeah it stimulated their cold hearts & beady eyes as they gave themselves trillions of dollars & told the public, sorry, there’s nothing left!

     And the motherfuckers think we’re so goddamned stupid that they could toss us a one-time check for $1,200 claiming that would tide us over for the months, if not years we may be suffering & dying from this pandemic. Moreover, they placed all kinds of rules on this largesse & also told their bankers that if any of the peasants owe the banks late fees, overdraft fees, etc., the banks could deduct it from the $1,200.

     We don’t have nearly enough of the test kits to help determine who has the virus, not anywhere close to enough protective gear for the doctors & nurses and others on the front lines helping people, and forget about masks for the peasants who only pay the taxes that the obscenely wealthy don’t have to pay & from which they get a large portion of their wealth.

     Furthermore, if it’s even possible, I am even more angry at all the American citizens who sit passively by & let this private looting of the Federal Treasury & exponential increase of the national debt go on and on and on ad absurdum. Just how stupid & apathetic can people be? Especially all the imbeciles who still believe every lying word out of Trump’s pie-hole. If they’re that brain-dead, perhaps injecting the disinfectants may be a step up for them?

     If this absolute insanity & greed is allowed to go on, we’re going to soon be a nation of homeless scarecrows wandering a vast dustbowl & haunting the streets like the broken souls in those countless cities & towns of what they call the “rust-belt,” or what Chris Hedges refers to as “sacrifice zones.”</h1>

     Have you ever noticed that throughout history, it’s always those on the bottom who must sacrifice? In the eyes of the 1%, nothing else matters except their wealth & the growing of it. This pandemic caused a drastic drop in the stock market & the obscenely wealthy immediately went into panic mode. So, the true reason for the “stimulus bill” was to save the holy stock market.

     It’d be amusing were it not so enraging. The stock market doesn’t mean shit to the average American because he or she doesn’t own any stocks. The robber barons try to tell us that the health of the stock market is important to the health of the economy which in turn determines the job market. Yeah! A pack of lies!

     Here’s an example for you; when corporations shut down their manufacturing plants here in America & go overseas where they can pay workers 22 cents per hour, their stock values go up & we lose those jobs which used to allow the workers in those factories to live a respectable life i.e. pay their mortgages, own a reliable car, have health care for their families, & send their kids to colleges which would enable their children to move a step up on that ladder. The overwhelming majority of corporations don’t give a shit about whether you are thrown out of your home—our current Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin, got rich by illegally kicking people out of their homes in the 2008 Crash that his kind caused—lose health insurance for your family, have your pension stolen by some hedge fund manager, and are reduced to living out of your car. And if you believe a single word out of their mouths, you’re a goddamned fool!

     These so-called Wizards of Wall St. tell us that they trade in futures & commodities. Yeah, this is true but those “futures” should more rightly be called, workers’ futures or whether they will barely manage to pay their bills or be kicked to the curb. And as for those “commodities,” that’s basically what we are to them just like cattle, pigs, chickens, etc. We’re not humans in their eyes, or more specifically, we’re about as worthy of attention as a piss-ant crawling along on their sidewalks.

     The end-all & be-all of these “Masters of the Universe,” is profit! And anyone or anything that gets in the way of their obsessive or incessant pursuit of that profit will be crushed like one of those piss-ants.

     Continuing on in this depressing but honest appraisal of things, it’s important to realize that the corporate media is a powerful tool wielded by the mighty rich to control the masses & hence, allow the rich to keep on raping, pillaging, & plundering all the people & natural resources of this planet. This is why it’s so amusing every time I hear some high-school dropout proclaim the enemy is the liberal media.

     I lived in Orange County, CA for several years from when I was about 19 years old to 26 years old. My mom & her drinking buddies often gathered at her house and invariably, we’d get on the subject of politics (Reagan was president) and by-the-way, it was said back then that Orange County was one of the most “conservative” i.e. Republican counties in the U.S.

     Well, it was the same story each time I participated in their meeting of the minds i.e. All you need is common sense! And they all laughed & enjoyed dismissing me as hopelessly liberal & not realistic as I tried to tell them how corrupt Reagan was for example. I brought this up because if you value “common sense,” does it make sense for that handful of corporate conglomerates who own the media in the U.S. to allow a liberal bias?

     “Common sense,” tells this liberal idiot that to allow a liberal bias in their media empires would be absolutely insane because true liberals would & do assault the corrupt structures of corporations. So, if they ran the newsrooms, etc. the rich would in effect be allowing liberal termites to eat away at the foundations of their empires. Duh!

     Therefore, Orwell was right on the mark when he said;

““Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”

I’ll leave it to you to figure this out. And once again, it’d be funny were it not so deadly serious in regards to Trump’s perpetual war on the press. You see, he’s actually partly right but what he leaves out is the fact that yes, he knows all about fake media because he’s been using it all his business career. What I mean by this is that yes, the mainstream media doesn’t always tell us the full story because of the inherent filters the news must go through before being published or aired on T.V.

     The classic & definitive study of this was written by Noam Chomsky & Edward Hermann. In short, yeah, the media is censored in some respects & to some extent but nonetheless, a lot of accurate facts & information manages to come out after going through those filters.

     What that charlatan & con man Trump has done & continues to do is dismiss every reporter who asks him a difficult question i.e. one that he doesn’t have one of his pat lies for, as “fake news.” Yet every news story that says anything positive about him is factual even if both the pro & con stories are from the same news outlet. This requires a very selective memory & Donald the Duplicitous Demagogue of the Duck Dynasty Dunces has trained his zombies well. Oh yeah, one other interesting contradiction is the fact that Donnie sure didn’t complain when he received several billions of dollars’ worth of free publicity while he was running for president. Far more than Bernie Sanders did. Donald the Dick-head has been honing his skills of how to manipulate the mass media since he was a yuppie in New York in his twenties making sure that his face & his name was in every major celebrity function or party for the photo shots used in the papers & television.

     Believe it or not, I am beginning to wind-down in my lengthy perspective on Greed. Those who wield the most power in any society are not only the richest but the most intelligent. And when a rich person doesn’t personally possess the intellectual capabilities, they hire the people who are the sharpest in the room as they say.

     Trump, for example, would’ve been sent to prison long ago were it not for the fact that he at least knows who the smartest lawyers are & he either retains them or has them on speed-dial because Trump’s business & personal life has been one long trail of lawsuits.

     Remember what I said a few pages back? My mom & her friends proclaimed ad nauseam; All you need is Common Sense! Well, as some wit observed, they call it common sense because it’s common i.e. most people have it. Well, “common sense” won’t save your ass in the complicated legal & financial matters of a master con artist like Trump who has screwed thousands of people in his illustrious career.

     Moreover, “common sense” won’t protect or save you from the countless scam artists, grifters, & thieves who spend their lives devising ways to steal other people’s fortunes. Nope, you need people around you—ideally you should devote a lot of your time & energy to developing your own intellectual skills—who have far more than just common sense.

     Following this further, the sad phenomenon of anti-intellectualism has a long & inglorious history in America. And the totally unscrupulous rip-off artists are adept at convincing their groupies that intellectuals are their enemies.

     Yep! This is why Trump deliberately chose to play the role of a simple, down-to-earth “businessman” who doesn’t put on any airs or act superior like those East Coast Elite. Many, if not most of Trump supporters have been screwed over by banks, corporate CEOs, insurance giants, etc. etc. etc. and by pretending to be on the side of those victims, Trump has gained their trust. One of this perverse president’s most popular sales slogans while running for office was; “I’m going to drain the swamp.”

     In a sense, he did. Except he replaced the former bottom-feeders with craven & insatiable crocodiles. And they’ve been systematically looting every program they can get their bloody talons on. Moreover, all those country bumpkins who fell for Trump’s Aw Shucks Routine, have either already hit rock-bottom or they soon will thanks to their god Trump, that is if they don’t die from the coronavirus first?

     Yes people, what you don’t know can hurt you & sometimes kill you! And sorry, but stupidity, honesty, & hard work won’t save you from the likes of the Trumps of this world. We all must inform & empower ourselves and unite against the powers that be because they have sure as Hell united against us a long time ago.

     Okay, one more example of how inhumane the greedy are & then I’ll wrap it all up. We’ve been indoctrinated throughout our public education system here in America & it’s probably the same for citizens of other countries to some extent? But this indoctrination seriously blinds us to the realities of what the greedy, power elite have done to us & the poor of other nations for decades. Before I delve into this matter more deeply, I want to share a powerful insight into public education by Doris Lessing.

     One of my favorite professors when I was in college was an absolutely brilliant man named Mr. Garrot. I used to go to his office hours not for help with homework or anything but simply because I enjoyed talking to him about serious matters. I bring this up because he turned me onto Doris Lessing & he said; “She’s the greatest author alive!”

“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: ‘You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”
― Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

Perhaps the most powerful proof of how greed rules the world & specifically here in America, is our long & ignoble history of supporting murderous dictators in our press, our training of their secret police & etc., the assistance of our military in logistics to help their overthrowing of democratically-elected presidents, our financial funding of such heinous groups as the Contras in Central America, etc. And every one of these illegal & immoral involvements, some as barbaric as any Nazi atrocities in WWII, was done under the proclamation of our supporting democracy & freedom in these countries. This is the dark, ugly, & embarrassing history of America’s support of bloody butchers that we don’t hear about in our public education system or our mainstream media.

     Don’t just accept my word for it. Do a little research for yourself if you’re not just another shallow hypocrite who pretends to be a true American patriot?

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html

In conclusion, here is the quintessential demonstration of how greed rules our lives & our very existence in America. I believe the case of Edward Snowden is the best exemplar of what I’m trying to communicate here.

     Those who feel that Snowden was a traitor for releasing all those classified files may be tempted to dismiss what I’m about to say as just another paranoid conspiracy theory, hopefully you’ll try to remain open-minded long enough to reflect on my argument?

     Snowden, like the majority of whistleblowers, tried to go through the normal or proper channels to report his misgivings & what he felt to be clear examples of felonies being committed on a regular basis & on a vast scale. But unfortunately, he ran into that wall of bureaucracy that seeks to silence all dissent. Every bureaucracy, especially those in such vast programs as the NSA, seeks to maintain their power & budget above all other concerns.

     And the primary mission for the NSA is what’s known as Total Information Awareness, now referred to as Terrorism Information Awareness:

 

Total Information Awareness (TIA) is the name of a massive U.S. data mining project focused on scanning travel, financial and other data from public and private sources with the goal of detecting and preventing transnational threats to national security. TIA has also been called Terrorism Information Awareness. The program was part of the Homeland Security Act and, after its creation in January 2003, was managed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). In September 2003, U.S. Congressional negotiators agreed to terminate the program and ceased funding. in 2006, however, news agencies reported that software developed for it had been shifted to other agencies, specifically the National Security Agency (NSA). https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/Total-Information-Awareness

 

Snowden’s unforgivable  sin was his turning the spotlight of the American public’s attention on this sacred cow program of the NSA which guaranteed a never-ending flow of funding. And what really blows my mind is the fact that so many Americans are outraged over Snowden’s leaking of the details of this illegal program but don’t seem to be troubled at the fact that the NSA was violating our Constitution which every member of our military forces, politicians, & employees of our intelligence agencies takes an oath to protect against foreign & domestic enemies.

 

Snowden obviously took his oath to uphold the Constitution seriously unlike all those who participated in this & other illegal programs which committed hundreds of thousands of felonies in a standard operating practice laissez-faire manner. You see, every single act of illegal spying on American citizens without a warrant, is a felony.

 

The day the Patriot Act was rammed through Congress & passed will go down in history as the day we went from a democracy to a totalitarian state. Hardly a single congressman even bothered to read the Patriot Act before signing it. And coincidentally, the powers that be in D.C. had it written & ready to go way before the events of 9/11.

 

And again, no, this isn’t merely conspiratorial conjecture, look it up. Cheney, the president of vice & his cabal of crooks had been praying for just such a national tragedy so they could implement their game plan known as P.N.A.C. (Project for the New American Century). In fact, I believe it was Cheney who commented a few years before 9/11; “What we need is a Pearl Harbor,” i.e. a massive assault against America that would give them the justification to wage war against terrorism ad infinitum & they’d get all the funding they’d ever wanted & be able to launch every nefarious operation they’d dreamed of. I forget who it was that pointed out that with the passage of the Patriot Act, they effectively gutted the Bill of Rights. You know, that other insignificant document we’re so proud of.

 

John Whitehead explains: The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments–the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments–and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well. The Patriot Act also redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience were considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.”

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2011/06/20/patriot-act-and-quiet-death-us-bill-rights

 

You see, my imaginary reader, the NSA & our government assure us that they’re just collecting metadata on us i.e. not the detailed content of our communications. If you believe this, you’re in for a rude awakening. They didn’t build that massive data collecting facility in Utah for the hell of it. Its capacity is so astronomical that they don’t even have numbers to adequately represent its capacities for storage.

 

The American Masters of the Universe are steadily creating a totalitarian society & the Silicon Valley tech elite are selling our personal data to the corporate cockroaches for billions of dollars i.e. Zuckerberg. And the government is intimidating the “social media” giants into allowing them to “piggy-back” on their platforms because that collected data on individuals can be used against us anytime we get a little too big for our britches i.e. our protests begin to hamper their illegal activities, etc.

Snowden was cautious about what he said in the film; Citizen Four regarding this. I believe he knew that if he elaborated on the subject, he could very well be dismissed as just another conspiracy theorist. He made one comment on the subject and simply said; “It’s about Control.”

Moreover, speaking of control, I had to insert here a bit about Surveillance Capitalism, a book written by Shoshana Zuboff. She is a Harvard professor & she spent several years writing this detailed account of what it is & how it’s basically gone unchallenged for the 20 years it’s been undermining democracy & much more.

“Surveillance Capitalism is the manifestation of George Orwell’s prophesied Memory Hole combined with the constant surveillance, storage and analysis of our thoughts and actions, with such minute precision, and artificial intelligence algorithmic analysis, that our future thoughts and actions can be predicted, and manipulated, for the concentration of power and wealth of the very few. These 32 citations barely scratch the surface of Surveillance Capitalism and yet provide a terrifying display of the powerful forces arrayed against democracy. Surveillance Capitalism desensitizes us to their destruction of individual autonomy, rights, freedom of thought and action, privacy, sovereignty, thoughtful analysis and memory while demanding and ensuring corporations, and the 1%, have absolute rights, privacy and impunity.” https://www.surveillancecapitalism.com/

Moreover, if you check out the documentary; The Great Hack, you’ll learn that data has replaced oil as the world’s most valuable commodity. We can thank Zuckerberg to a very large extent for helping Trump steal the presidency because of Zuckerberg’s supposed oversight regarding the data he gave Cambridge Analytica access to.

Birds of prey i.e. Vulture Capitalists, hang together or separately, doesn’t matter?

 

Furthermore, if you’ve been paying attention for the past 50 years roughly, every time “our” government gets caught doing something illegal or immoral or both, they proclaim; “It’s a matter of National Security.” If you buy this tired, old dog of “National Security” that they trot out ad nauseam, you’re either very gullible or naïve or maybe simply willfully ignorant?

 

It’s the giant umbrella under which they (the National Security State) hide under to justify every war, police action, operation, etc. throughout the history of the NSA, CIA, etc. And we’ve been very busy indeed over the past half century. If you’d care to get an overview of our Perpetual State of War, check out;

 

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace

by

Gore Vidal

 

“The United States has been engaged in what the great historian Charles A. Beard called perpetual war for perpetual peace. The Federation of American Scientists has cataloged nearly 200 military incursions since 1945 in which the United States has been the aggressor.”

Personally speaking, I believe Snowden when he says that he’d gladly return to the U.S. if he was guaranteed a public trial & could present his reasons for releasing all the classified files that he did. He knows just as Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, etc. that when the government tells the judges that it’s a matter of National Security so the trial needs to be in private & the defendant can’t use any of the classified material he’s charged with revealing, in his defense, it’s a slam-dunk for the federal prosecutors to convict him & sentence him to life in prison.

 

In a nutshell, the government assures the Court & the public that we can trust them because they care about us & want to protect us. Yeah, right! Like they protected us from the Pentagon Papers & how many Americans died in the Vietnam War or how about the completely falsified reasons for the Iraq War, etc. etc. etc. Of course, we can trust them!

 

You see, “National Security” is actually doublespeak for the powers that be & their security. They are salivating at the thought of getting their hands-on Snowden because he really spoiled their fun by revealing their dirty secrets & swamp of lies. Now they’ve had to slink back into the shadows once again but you can be sure, they’ll soon be right back at their dirty tricks.

 

The government keeps the data flowing by threatening the tech giants & the social media monopolies by reminding them that their subsidies, tax breaks, even their licenses to do business can all be taken away in a heartbeat if they don’t play ball.

The main argument against home schooling is that kids need to develop their social skills.

 

This is a look inside as to how the destructive duo; the government & the corporate cockroach cabal keep the overwhelming majority of our tax dollars flowing into their pockets.

 

And once more my dear friend, I don’t throw accusations like these around casually. I have spent approximately 50,000 hours over the past 40 years or more reading, writing, researching, watching documentaries, listening to social, political, economic, etc. programs on the alternative media, collecting or archiving thousands of articles, etc. And no, this doesn’t mean that I have the corner on the Truth but it does mean that I’ve done far more of my homework regarding these issues than the majority of working-class Americans & therefore deserve respect & a fair listening to.

 

I learned a few decades ago that you need to tread very lightly when it comes to conspiracy theories because most people will simply tune you out when you start to speak about them. I am personally very offended if someone tries to dismiss me as just another Alex Jones nut-job. I feel nauseous if I even listen to him for ten minutes. Note that our Dumb-shit in the oval office is fond of Alex Jones & gets a lot of his material from him which he then passes along in his press briefings & his fear & hate rallies.

 

My intellectual & moral hero, Noam Chomsky, pointed out years ago, even before all the crazies with their 9/11 conspiracy theories, that indulging in this pastime is just what the power elite want us to do because it distracts us from doing the real work of serious research & in depth reading, which will reveal the facts behind the tsunami of lies (my phrase)! Oh yeah, again in case you think me out in Left field,{Yeah, I know I’ve already mentioned this, sorry.} check out “Surveillance Capitalism,” by Shoshana Zuboff & I guarantee you she will blow your mind with the depth & breadth of her knowledge & her insights. And although she points out a lot of the negative aspects, several of which I’ve touched on in this essay. She does offer us some hope but it boils down to what each of us is willing to do to fight back? I’ll include links to a couple of her videos which I feel are good introductions to her overview of this precarious position we find ourselves in.

Afterword: If you are concerned about this relatively new phenomenon, here’s an excellent interview with Ms. Zuboff: https://theintercept.com/2019/02/02/shoshana-zuboff-age-of-surveillance-capitalism/

Persevere!

—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR 4/28/20

Addendum

I just came across this video the other day that is a perfect cap to this essay because if you reflect on what the various commentators say, you’ll begin to see just how vast this pandemic of greed is & how it has permeated every aspect of our lives & it is every bit as insidious as the coronavirus my friends. As H.G. Wells said over a hundred & twenty years ago; It’s becoming more & more of a race between education & catastrophe. And I don’t mean to bum you out but when you add in to the mix, the fact that we have already passed the 350 parts per million I believe Mr. McKibben warned us about, what future we may have left, looks very dismal. So, do we just throw in the towel & say Fuck it!

As for me, I will not go gently into that dark night.

We all need to remember & remind ourselves & others that No! Greed isn’t inevitable! And we should take serious stock of our lives, are we just going to sit by apathetic & watch our children & loved ones die as our environment implodes & can no longer sustain human, animal, or plant life? Yeah, I know it’s like Sisyphus pushing that boulder up to the top of the hill only to watch it fall back down again, but we have no other choice my friends. We either keep on fighting the good fight or just roll over to the likes of swamp-scum like Trump & his kind!

Just in case I haven’t been clear enough, it’s the insatiable greed of the “social networks” & their CEOs that is weakening people’s mental abilities & helping drive us to oblivion because we too focus on ourselves & isolate ourselves from our fellow human beings. United we Stand, & Divided we Fall!

This is the biggest lie i.e. this isn’t social media, it’s anti-social media.

“Greed is an uncontrolled longing for increase in the acquisition or use: of material gain; or social value, such as status, or power. Greed has been identified an as undesirable behavior throughout known human history.”

Here’s the piece de resistance for any of you who may still be a doubting thomas?

     Yeah, I know, what an overwhelmingly dark picture of our world. Nonetheless, I have been honest in presenting my case. So, you can bury your head in the sand like Trump’s Walking Dead fan club or you can invest some of your time & energy in reflecting on these matters? Better yet, in discussing these ideas with your friends because no matter how ugly it all is, just as no matter how dangerously stupid Trump is, he’s a reality we have to deal with & the sooner we get to it, the better for us and all of humanity!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Defense of Edward Snowden

 

 

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”  –Benjamin Franklin

 

 

 

A friend of mine and I in a recent telephone conversation touched on the subject of Edward Snowden but it wasn’t the time or place to get into a long, political debate. So, I thought I would express my views on the subject in the form of an essay.

 

My friend said he understood why Snowden did what he did but that he disapproved of his doing it. I feel that the reasoning of why he did what he did, contains the justification of his actions.

There are several different perspectives on why it was wrong of him to release so much classified National Security information, some people argue from an ethical or moral stance, some from a pragmatic view, some from a patriotic perspective, and some from a military or national security viewpoint. There may be more perspectives but these are the ones that first came to me.

 

Now from everything that I’ve seen or read about or by Snowden, he comes across as a very humble guy & he definitely doesn’t brag about his skills unlike the braggart & national embarrassment in the White House at present. For instance, Snowden never tells us how much he was being paid by the government but it was clearly a significant amount. My guess is that it would’ve been probably somewhere around a couple hundred thousand dollars a year? Moreover, he was stationed in Hawaii which many consider paradise. Why would someone give all this up knowing that the full weight of the U.S. government would come down on him mercilessly?

 

My opinion is that he is a person with tremendous integrity & a strong moral compass. And personally speaking, I stood-up against the U.S. Army so-to-speak when I kept going AWOL because I didn’t want them to be able to send me to Vietnam and that was one of the most frightening times of my life.

They wanted to make me an officer but I didn’t even want to be a squad leader.

 

Returning to the topic at hand, I believe him when he said that he was becoming more & more alarmed at what the NSA was up to. And he was well aware that they were violating the U.S. Constitution. Now some people like that moron behind the desk in the oval office, see the Constitution as little more than a quaint & amusing list of suggestions & feel that they are above the law. Obviously, Snowden’s superiors at the NSA felt this way too because they violated the laws daily & to such an extent that it was hard for Snowden to accept the degree of corruption in the intelligence community.

Worked for NSA for 30 yrs. retired 10/31/01 disgusted at what was going on!

 

Moreover, Snowden because of his amazing level of expertise in computer systems, security, programming, etc. knew on a much deeper level than me or the average American citizen. He also knew what happened to other whistleblowers like Bill Binney & Thomas Drake who had followed the official chain of command & protocol for reporting misconduct, illegal spying on American citizens, etc. etc. etc.

 

Obama, the supposed champion of the people, had prosecuted more whistleblowers than all the other presidents combined since the Espionage Act was passed over a hundred years ago. It’s become very clear that anyone who dares to reveal the secrets of the temple so-to-speak, will be locked up most likely for the rest of their life. And you can forget about any semblance of a fair trial because you’re not allowed to present your argument from anything which may reveal state secrets i.e. anything they consider a matter of national security, is off limits in your defense. Step back for a second & reflect on that i.e. they are violating federal laws & Constitutional law on a massive scale & in effect, they get to claim the protection of the very laws they’re violating.

Obama’s idea of “Change” was kissing Wall St.’s ass

The prosecutors of these whistleblowers are de facto judges, jurors, & executioners if the accused can’t fully defend themselves in open court. Don’t worry, just trust us because we know what is right & wrong and we will protect you. Yeah right, how many times & ways have they, the powers that be, violated that trust?

 

Nope, I don’t blame Snowden one bit for not being willing to turn himself in to the legal authorities in this nation because he’d basically face a kangaroo court with a rubber-stamp of guilty guaranteed. If you think I’m going too far afield in these assertions, just consider the U.S. Patriot Act which was rammed through shortly after 9/11. It basically gutted our Bill of Rights. But hey, who cares? Americans in general don’t care about what the intelligence agencies are up to & believe them when they’re told that this surveillance of American citizens is necessary in order to protect us from terrorists. Yeah right!

One sentence from Snowden in the documentary; Citizen Four sent my mind into overdrive, he said it’s about control. I believe this is the central fact or the key truth in this whole convoluted & complex issue. And for the record, No, I’m not a fan of Alex Jones. I think he is a dangerous imbecile like his fan, Trump.

 

Mull this over if you will i.e. we are told now that all this information about us, what they call metadata, is not important & that we needn’t worry about their collecting it. Snowden has informed us that all this metadata can be easily connected to form a detailed profile of us & which can be used against us in the future if any legal authority wants to build a case against us.

 

And the typical brilliant response is; Hey, I got nothing to worry about because I’m doing anything wrong so let them collect all the metadata they want to. This is one of the most ignorant responses a person can spout. So, you wouldn’t mind if these “intelligence agencies” which are collecting a lot of their data with the help of good old Mark Zuckerberg, Google, Apple, etc. etc. etc. and they’re sharing our data with corporations so they can more effectively target perspective customers with their personally designed ads.

Use it or Lose it doesn’t just refer to your physical muscles

 

Furthermore, it’s even more sinister than this & if you’re curious about what I’m referring to, watch the documentary; The Great Hack which isn’t just a stupid conspiracy piece & is the product of a carefully researched & edited investigation of Cambridge Analytica.

This company is part of a larger corporation that was headquartered in England & in a nutshell, with the help of Zuckerberg who has no ethical standards when it comes to making money, sold Cambridge Analytica over 50 million of Facebook users’ personal data. By the way, having access to those 50 million Americans’ personal data, also gave them access to every friend those people had in their lists of friends.

 

I just realized that I’ve strayed off topic to some extent, so back to why you should be concerned about the metadata being collected about us. Here’s a list I came up with some time ago for another essay of possible things or scenarios that you might be embarrassed about the government & the corporate world having at their fingertips. This took about ten minutes to come up with, I’m sure someone could generate a list hundreds of pages long of private matters:

 

  • Cheating on your wife or husband
  • A homosexual experience
  • You masturbating
  • Making love to your spouse
  • Shitting your pants
  • A sexual disease you contracted
  • A diagnosis of cancer
  • Fights with your kids or your spouse
  • Getting fired
  • Losing your home
  • Being obese
  • Being homeless
  • Your kids’ private lives
  • Your spouse naked
  • Porn you watch
  • Paying a hooker for sex
  • Funerals you attend
  • Your breaking down emotionally
  • Your spouse telling you they want a divorce
  • Your dying in the hospital
  • Being drunk & starting a fight and seriously hurting someone
  • You drunk driving
  • Whipping your child
  • Beating your wife
  • Threatening someone
  • Cheating on your taxes
  • Having sex with someone you’re embarrassed to have been with
  • Your daughter’s period
  • Your home burning down
  • Stealing something
  • Cheating on a test

 

And remember, it’s not just a matter of being embarrassed by this kind of data but anytime the government or the private corporate sector want to build a case against you so they could dismiss, ignore, or destroy you should they wish to. Do you still have nothing to hide?

 

Continuing with the monumental harm done to us by Facebook in selling our data to Cambridge Analytica, a very strong case could be built to charge Zuckerberg was largely responsible for Trump’s victory in 2016. You see, a lot of the data that proved to be so valuable to Cambridge Analytica came from those seemingly innocent tests on Facebook that asked; What kind of person are you? A pragmatist? A dreamer, An artist, etc. And with all this data, they were able to create detailed files on these 50 million Facebook users  https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election

& all their friends & then zero in on those they considered persuadable i.e. easier to manipulate intellectually or emotionally like Trump fans. And under the tutelage & loving guidance of Steve Bannon the far-right’s Dr. Mengele who dreams of the American government in a big pile of rubble, and the White Supremacists taking over, they bombarded all those persuadable with thousands of anti-Hillary & pro-Trump propaganda ads & videos.

 

So, when the Democratic party raised so much hell & focused on the Russian interference in our election, I have to agree with my intellectual hero, Noam Chomsky. He pointed out the inconvenient truth that the U.S. has been interfering with other countries’ elections for decades. I’m sure the vast majority of Americans aren’t even aware of the hundreds of times our C.I.A. have funded coup d’états, trained people in guerilla warfare tactics & skills, assassinated democratically elected leaders, etc. around the globe. If you’d care to skim a brief list of these crimes against humanity, check out this link; http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html

 

I share these ugly facts with you not because I take some perverse pleasure in criticizing America but because I sincerely believe that the American public needs to know what’s been done in our names & usually without our awareness if we are to ever put a stop to it. I have given-up hope that any real change will come about through the DNC. They are so corrupt & willfully blind to their own ignorance, lack of integrity, & desire to hold on to what power they have at any expense. And that includes losing the presidency & another four years of Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan.

 

The Democratic party used to represent the working class & help defend us against the Republicans who are simply more brazen in their greed & lust for power. And both parties are soft on illegal surveillance & corporate crime. I agree with Gore Vidal when he said; “There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.”

 

In short, we, the 99%, are at the mercy of some very powerful forces & we need every bit of help we can get. In the documentary; Citizen Four when Snowden was pressed on the issue of what he was most afraid of, he said; (my paraphrasing) That the public simply wouldn’t care & even after he’d released all this information, files, etc. on how & why the NSA was spying on us, they’d simply go back to the way they were & not care or do anything about it.

 

In the past, I felt that the government was guilty of benign neglect of the public’s interests or welfare but now, with this boastful, vile, naked thief in the White House, I’d say “our” government is guilty of criminal neglect!

 

Whistleblowers are every bit as important to a functioning democracy as the Free Press & Free Speech. And petty tyrants like Trump try to muzzle the press & whistleblowers because they want to go on draining the federal treasury in perpetuity. We need more Edward Snowdens & he should be honored as a true patriot of the highest order!

Addendum

     The big picture? This is the rationale or the “logic’ behind this massive spying on the American public, They couldn’t find or weren’t aware of the likelihood of the events of 9/11 even though Richard Clark, who was National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism for the United States between 1998 and 2003, had repeatedly reported the likelihood to his superiors.

And they, the men in the highest positions of our “intelligence agencies” & the overall structure of these 17 or better agencies who like children with fragile egos, wouldn”t communicate or cooperate with one another prior to 9/11, but now, we’re supposed to rest easy with many of the same players in charge? You see, they all jealously guard their turf because they fear losing even a fraction of their power & authority and most importantly, their funding.

Before the tragic events of 9/11, the truly valuable intel, the accurate intel was like a needle in a haystack even with the world’s most sophisticated information gathering programs & now, they are vacuuming up astronomical quantities of our metadata & we’re supposed to believe they’ll catch the next 9/11 before it happens?

They’ve basically increased the size of that haystack exponentially & I’m sure their “critical & analytical abilities” haven’t kept up even remotely to their new workload. No, what we need are far more individuals like John O’Neill who wined & dined his Middle East contacts in the finest restaurants in New York & Washington D.C. and made them feel respected & valued. We need people who speak the languages in this boiling cauldron of the Middle East that we bear a large part of the responsibility for creating.

Instead, our “power elite” prefer to send in our troops like blundering giants causing far more unnecessary deaths & hence sowing the seeds of greater & greater hatred towards America & spawning a never-ending crop of terrorists willing to sacrifice their lives in defence against the Great Satan!

Snowden & other courageous souls like him showed us that we don’t need to conduct this massive & indiscriminate collection of our data because they can do the necessary collection of data in a far less invasive manner & for far less money than is currently being wasted on these efforts. But, it’s the same old sad story of individuals with petty egos & agencies who fear losing out on the largesse,  who continue to rule the day & meanwhile, we are less safe than we’d care to admit or face!

John O’Neill, was a counter-terrorism expert in the F.B.I. & eventually became the special agent in charge of counter-terrorism in the F.B.I. but because of personal clashes with some of his superiors in the F.B.I. his warnings of the likelihood of another attack on the World Trade Center were ignored & he was pushed out of the F.B.I. and the day after he left the F.B.I., he became the head of security at The World Trade Center and was killed on 9/11 as he was helping people evacuate the North Tower.

So for people to accuse Snowden of being a traitor is a gross travesty of justice & mind-boggling ignorance about what is actually happening behind the closed doors of the various intelligence agencies & the NSA in particular. The real traitors are all those who enable this corrupt system & all the morally bankrupt people who turn a blind eye to what’s being done in the name of National Security.

One last, perhaps insignificant point to some, Snowden clearly had the wherewithal to do considerably more damage to the NSA & the whole corrupted system of surveillance but he didn’t. He didn’t name any specific individuals who could be targeted for assassination or who could even lose their jobs. His actions were clearly not those of a person who was seeking fame or fortune. He simply wanted to ease his guilt at having participated & helped in this illegal & immoral program. And he simply gave his potentially serious treasure trove of classified material to two journalists he had immense respect for; Laura Poitras & Glenn Greenwald along with a newspaper he trusted, The Guardian.

He simply left it to them to decide on which stories to reveal to the public. He was again, clearly not seeking notoriety or fame. It was his heartfelt conviction that the truth needed to be told. And his critics have not been able to point to a single case of anyone mentioned in the files he gave to these trusted journalists, being harmed, let alone killed. I am reminded of a quote from the venerated John Milton;

“Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?”

[if you’d like to watch Part 2 of the Frontline story; “The United States of Secrets” which is even more pertinent to this whole issue i.e. of whether Snowden is a traitor or a national hero & the frightening state of affairs. today in Silicon Valley, you can watch it here https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/united-states-of-secrets/#video-2 It’s available for purchase on You Tube but you can’t find it there for viewing. Okay, two final points.

  1. the fact that they built the data storage facility in Utah that can store astronomical amounts of data proves that they i.e. the government, are storing every single thing about us (recall that they kept promising that they weren’t storing it?)
  2. Newsflash: terrorists aren’t retarded & know all this as well and they’ve simply gone back to the old fashioned way of plotting attacks i.e. they go off-grid & only meet & pass information along in person. So why do we need to spend trillions on this Orwellian spying apparatus that is being used to control us, sell us shit, & keep us afraid of one another & indifferent to the complete gutting of what used to be a Republic with a Democratic government???

 

 

Drain the Swamp?

 

 

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

—Edmund Burke, the philosophical founder of modern Conservatism

Yes, this is absurd but then again, isn’t everything about this megalomaniac absurd?

 

Trump has redefined “corruption” in our political elite much like Caligula redefined orgies in the ancient Roman Senate, and only someone who has been lost in a swamp for the past four years would fail to know that this “Drain the Swamp” mantra was one of the key promises that the Liar in Chief made on his presidential campaign. This was Trump’s vow to chase the corrupt politicians out of Washington D.C. But, had he followed through on this promise, where would he & his cabinet along with everyone he has appointed during his administration live?

 

“Base” is one of those words that political pundits love to use ad nauseam & refers to a politician’s main supporters. And in Trump’s case, “base” is the appropriate word to describe a lot of the people who love Donald no matter how base his actions or words are because they (for the most part in my opinion) are lacking in the higher qualities of mind or spirit.

 

Moreover, I bet if you were to take a poll of Trump’s cult members, the majority of them are also fans of the series; The Walking Dead. Personally speaking, I watched about 15 minutes or so of one episode in the first season, I believe? And it turned my stomach. Guess I’m just one of those elitists Trump fans love to hate?

 

In the same way, I can’t handle watching one of Trump’s never-ending fear & hate rallies for more than 15 minutes or so. Why? Because Trump revels in all things base or crude & enjoys whipping his base into a frenzy of hate & violence. You see, fear & hate are the two most powerful emotions & this is why authoritarians depend on them to “keep the rabble” in line (Chomsky) And this reveals what is truly dangerous about this demagogue in the Oval Office. By-the-way, fear & hate are the secret power behind the “social media” and why it has spread like a plague (Chomsky) over the Earth.

 

By appealing to the lowest common denominator in his cult, Trump has unleashed an ugly force not unlike that of lynch mobs like the Ku Klux Klan. More specifically, Trump’s public boasting of being free to grab women by their genitals, walk into women’s dressing rooms, or sexually assault them is laughed at by both the men & the women who make up his base. And any woman who would cheer this kind of language or behavior clearly has a very low opinion of herself or women in general.

 

Now, you may have heard the phrase; “rude, crude, & lewd,” and this is another appropriate description of Trump’s kind of “people.” And Trump can’t understand why New York City’s social elite have always laughed at him & rejected him from their social circles?

 

Let’s return to that primordial swamp that Trump & his army of zombies crawled out of & which he promised to drain. And if it weren’t so deadly serious, it’d be hilarious that he has the audacity to label others as corrupt when he’s the king of corruption & all that we hate in politicians as well as people in general.

 

Trump apologists obviously know next to nothing of their leader’s background or the world of crime & corruption that spawned Donald doesn’t trouble their “Christian,” sensibilities? Similar to that list of over 16,000 or more lies that Trump has told just in the first three years of his reign of error & terror, the girly-man probably has an equally long list of criminal activities he’s been involved in or committed?

I am going to expose a small portion of this wanna-be mafia boss’ track record in this essay starting with the fact that he has exemplified a stupefying degree of lying. Moreover, he’ll spout a lie & in the same sentence contradict himself & swear that he never said what he just uttered? And his behavior in both his personal & professional life has been one long stream of corrupt practices.

 

Donald’s father was a slumlord who discriminated against people of color & bribed city officials re: building permits, tax breaks, tax schemes, and a close relationship with New York’s mafia elite. These mob bosses were known for their union-busting. Fred Trump was awarded federal govt. contracts to provide housing for the poor which he repeatedly didn’t honor.  Fred Trump used his political connections (bribes) to “win” these sweetheart contracts available through the Federal Housing Authority established by FDR to help those suffering under the Great Depression, etc. etc. etc. and sonny boy Donald followed in daddy’s footsteps & his grandiosity (greed) knew no bounds. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/fred-trump-tax-dodge-donald-inheritanc 

*Note how often Trump condemns those who feed off the government like parasites but of course this criticism to him or his daddy.

 

Trump is infamous for not paying contractors on his construction projects & God knows how many individual workers over the years? But one example stands out in the little background research I’ve done on Trump and that is the group of poor Polish construction workers who worked on Trump Tower. These poor guys were exposed to asbestos & other unsafe working conditions.

 

“As noted in an Aug. 25, 2016, story in TIME, Trump hired a group of undocumented Polish laborers who put in “12-hour shifts with inadequate safety equipment at subpar wages that their contractor paid sporadically, if at all.” https://time.com/5039109/donald-trump-undocumented-polish-trump-tower-bonwit-teller/

 

By-the-way, when Trump did pay these Polish workers, it was for a whooping $4 per hour & they were so poor that they slept at the construction site. In brief, Trump has used undocumented workers to build his real estate “empire,” but now he rails against them in his hate & fear rallies because as every tyrant knows, you gotta have a scapegoat to focus your base’s anger on. So, the undocumented continue to work for the slumlord Trump but now as scapegoats. And being the cowardly bully that he has always been, he loves picking on the weak & the vulnerable. Moreover, the poor immigrants who both Trump & Obama have persecuted & prosecuted, can’t even fight back in their own defense because they have basically no voice in the corporate media but Trump has the largest bully pulpit in America & gets to bash these poor souls every day with little  in the way of push back.

 

 

Furthermore, Trump has also hired undocumented workers at his beloved Mar-a-Lago & some of his golf resorts. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2018/12/06/president-trump-uses-undocumented-immigrant-labor

 

Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan by auto reflex dismisses every journalist & their news outlet as “fake news.” Doesn’t it ever occur to any of his willfully blind loyalists that when these same news outlets say something complementary about him he brags ad nauseam of it. He has even had the audacity to tell his brain-dead groupies, Don’t believe anything you read or see, only believe what I say.

Oh, if  only the public would read the short list of the early warning signs of fascism, they might wake-up before it’s too late? But I wouldn’t hold my breath.

  • Powerful and continuing nationalism
  • Disdain for human rights
  • Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
  • Supremacy of the military
  • Rampant sexism
  • Controlled mass media
  • Obsession with national security
  • Religion and government intertwined
  • Corporate power protected
  • Labor [sic] power suppressed
  • Disdain for intellectuals & the arts
  • Obsession with crime & punishment
  • Rampant cronyism & corruption
  • Fraudulent elections
some argue that Trump doesn’t have a fascist agenda but he’s doing a pretty good job of following fascism’s playbook

 

Continuing with the amazingly corrupt career & behavior of this cretin in the White House are Trump’s consistent threats to sue anybody who criticizes him. This has been his modus operandi his entire business career & reveals his Achilles Heel i.e. his brand which is simply his name.

You see, modus operandi or M.O. as police detectives like to say, means “mode of operating or working.” And “the Donald” is nothing without his image or brand name recognition. He has skillfully promoted his brand i.e. himself, for the last 40 years if not more? I bet the majority of his indoctrinated following actually believe that he owns everything with his name on it? They haven’t caught on yet that he leases his “name,” to many companies, individuals, etc. allowing them to use his name because it usually brings them more business.

And this is why Trump never stops promoting himself, no matter what happens in the world or what anyone says, Trump will find a way to brag about himself in his response. I bet this lunatic even brags to himself in his dreams? So, Trump attacks anyone who dares to question him let alone commit the unpardonable sin of criticizing something he said or did, like a junkyard dog. He’s so insecure that he’s in a constant state of paranoia lest any sliver of criticism goes unchallenged. Like that pervert who was the Emperor Caligula, Trump lives in perpetual fear that someone may poison him. But in Trump’s case, the poison is slanderous remarks made about him.

Another critically important aspect of Trump’s personality & behavior was what his idol & role model perhaps even more important than his father? His mentor, Roy Cohn taught him i.e. the three D’s (Deny, Divert, & Detract). Cohn was a mob lawyer & introduced Donny the man-child to several of his more prominent clients like the heads of several of New York’s top crime families who just happen to control the construction business in New York, most notably, the cement business.

 

Roy Cohn taught Donny two absolutes; 1) anytime someone attacks you no matter how slight it may be, hit back viciously, & 2) it doesn’t matter if media attention about you is negative, because media attention keeps your name in the public eye. And because journalism in America has pretty much become infotainment & ratings are everything, Trump got billions of dollars in free advertising when he was running for the office of president. Why? Because Trump knows that the more outrageous, profane, & crazy his words or actions are, the more media attention he will receive.

Additionally, perhaps the single greatest factor in his “winning” the presidency is the fact that he starred in his own “Reality show” the Apprentice for several years. And once again, I bet the majority of his acolytes were regular viewers of this absurd sit-com? If you’d care to gain some valuable insight into how this series boosted Trump’s image so profoundly, watch this short You Tube video by the creators of the show. And yep, you guessed it, this series made me nauseous also within 15 minutes of watching it.

 

Anyone who tarnishes the girly-man with the small hands image one iota is public enemy #1 and must be shredded instantly! To maintain & protect his fragile ego and precious, gold spray paint image, Donnie has probably retained a platoon of lawyers over the years though I couldn’t find an exact number of them?

 

Believe it or not, I still maintain a bit of optimism that Trump’s die-hard believers might be slowly waking to the fact that they’ve been duped? Chinks in this tin-pot dictator’s armor of arrogance are beginning to rise to the surface & I predict that as our death toll numbers continue to grow, the willfully brain-dead will be forced to remove those scales from their eyes?

 

I have been urging people to develop their critical & analytical thinking skills for decades now but I’ve been about as effective in this as a screen-door in a submarine. Sadly, I bet that the majority of Americans don’t even know what critical thinking is & probably think it means to simply criticize someone? And I contend that this is another significant factor in the public’s gullibility?

 

Furthermore, I’m confident that the majority of Trump supporters are regular viewers of FOX “News,” and/or listen to Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Glenn Beck and other spewers of hate ad nauseam 24/7. I must admit that I didn’t catch on to FOX “News” for probably the first year or so of its existence. Perhaps I never became a regular viewer of it? But after I realized its agenda & function in our society, I was even more disillusioned that the mainstream media & to some extent, even our alternative media failed to denounce FOX “News.”

 

Ignoring the playground bully doesn’t make him go away & ignoring FOX “News,” and not denouncing it as fake news hasn’t made it go away either. I firmly believe that every time the alternative press refers to FOX as “News,” they are adding to its credibility.

 

Moreover, I have been living in small towns along the Oregon coast for the past several years & FOX “News,” and Limbaugh are about all there is in terms of “informing the public.” And I am only too painfully aware of the fact that anyone who would take the time to read any of my essays would realize that I haven’t really taught them anything, or very little, that they already don’t know?

 

I think that at bottom, I write for those ordinary working-class people whom I’ve always lived among. I have been obsessed with informing & empowering myself for well over 40 years & even though I am mostly spitting in the wind, I am compelled to go on not unlike Don Quixote, tilting at windmills.

 

Continuing on, FOX “News” with its sham of being “fair &. Balanced,” has caused very significant brain-damage in its viewers & this has been going on for 20 years now. And we can thank Ronnie Reagan to a large extent for this tragic turn of events because of his elimination of the “Fairness Doctrine.”

 

This “doctrine” quite simply required that broadcast news present both sides (which in itself is absurd because like life, there are many sides to most of the important issues we face) which was simplified to merely the “conservative” side of an issue & the “liberal” side of the same issue. Cable “news” was exempt from the fairness doctrine & Reagan vetoed the bill from a Democratic Congress that sought to have it reintroduced. And FOX “News” was born on cable news of course.

 

My central point here is that with the advent of cable news & the elimination of the fairness doctrine requirement for broadcast news, the range of debate about the critical issues we have faced ever since then has narrowed considerably. Mind you, I am only speaking about the surface of this truly vital function of what euphemistically called the “free press.” My intellectual hero, Noam Chomsky along with a colleague of his, Edward Herman, wrote the definitive classic on the subject in Manufacturing Consent which was published in 1988. In it, they detail & elaborate on the five filters through which the “news” must pass before it is aired or published. And they explain how narrowed the range of acceptable discussion of vital issues has become over the years. So, to some extent, I probably shouldn’t judge FOX “News” viewers so harshly but I do & I’ll continue to do so!

 

Thinking about this issue reminded me of how much I used to love watching the CBS news program, 60 Minutes. I watched it religiously for about 25 years but became more & more disillusioned as I watched its standards slowly devolve which I believe had to do with its executive producer, Don Hewitt, leaving & his passing away in 2009?

 

One of my favorite segments of the 60 Minutes weekly show was Point-Counterpoint which was included through most of 1970s. It had Shana Alexander who represented the liberal side of issues & James Kilpatrick who represented the conservative side of issues. And I believe this was the beginning of my political education? 60 Minutes had the reputation of being the most watched news program for most of its existence & I owe a lot to it. And I can think of no better or starker a comparison to portray the enfeeblement of the American mind when it comes to being informed about current events than from the height of journalistic integrity that was 60 Minutes & the gradual decline which is exemplified in FOX “New.”

 

Moving along on this trail of broken hearts & spirits to our current Commander of Thieves, Trump, the hypocrisy between what we were taught in public school about America’s defense of freedom & democracy around the globe, and the de facto reality that the U.S. now has the distinct honor of being the most feared & hated nation on earth should cause all sentient beings to pause & reflect on how we got here?  Therefore, perhaps in a sort of perverse logic, it’s appropriate that we have such a venal & vile creature sitting behind the desk in the once, well at least much more respectable guys who sat there?

 

And because Trump has been sliming Mexican immigrants in particular pretty much in an unabated malevolence for three years, I want to express what I’ve felt about the subject of “illegal immigrants,” since I was in my 20s. Please don’t misunderstand what I’m about to say but for argument’s sake, say we were to agree that “illegal immigrants” shouldn’t be allowed to stay in the U.S., why is it that the corporations, the construction industry, the hospitality industry, etc. etc. etc. that hire these loving, good-natured, & extremely hard-working people & exploit them, are rarely ever locked up?

 

 

I’ll tell you why, it’s again because of the corporate greed & hypocrisy. If the politicians & the countless corporate cockroaches were hit with devastating fines & lengthy prison sentences in our toughest prisons like Pelican Bay, every time they employed these poor souls, you can bet your bottom dollar it would end illegal immigration in a heartbeat! And one last point on this subject i.e. if it weren’t for the immigrants who toil away in the hot sun in our fields in the Central Valley of California & elsewhere, food prices would skyrocket. Moreover, for all those phony liberals out there who portray Obama as such a wonderful president, he wasn’t dubbed, “The Deporter in Chief” for nothing! A guesstimate is that somewhere around three million people were deported under the wonderful & wise leadership of Obama. By-the-way, I voted for him on his first bid for the presidency but not his second one because I saw from the beginning of his first term that his appointing Summers, Geithner, & Bernanke to name just a few, meant that he was a Wall St. lackey & therefore a phony champion of the working poor & the middle-class in America.

 

On the subject of abortion which Trump has flip-flopped on through the years, several times, he clearly “took the position of being against it,” to placate the faux “Christians” who praise him & played such a significant role in his infestation of the White House. Moreover, the vast majority of the Evil Evangelicals & the Fascist “Christians” who pretend that life is so precious to them & that’s why they’re fighting to protect the unborn, are some of the most vocal critics of our welfare system.

The $100 million dollar televangelist con man & the Con Man & Chief Thief.

 

This translates into the unnecessary suffering & hardship for millions of young women who can’t provide a roof over the heads of their newborn babies or to feed them, etc. etc. etc. And this war on welfare got a major boost under that other darling of the lying liberals, Bill Clinton. Don’t get me wrong, I believe the republicans are even more vicious in their lack of empathy for all the downtrodden in our society.

 

As for the subject of “gun control,” this is just another red herring i.e. it’s an absurd argument! Allowing for the fact that perhaps it’s true that many people enjoy target practice & truly feel more secure if they own a gun, I argue that okay, allow simple handguns that can only fire six shots & hunting rifles. But to claim that the liberals want to take all your guns away is preposterous. Nobody needs an automatic rifle or handgun. These serve only one purpose & that is to kill as many people as possible in as short a period of time as is possible. I submit that those who demand that these weapons of mass destruction must remain legal, are de facto cowards & owning these kinds of weapons makes them feel strong. They are insecure little boys who like Trump, revel in bullying others & want the freedom to parade around in public with these murderous weapons to intimidate others. Moreover, I bet that most of these people are incapable of winning in debates without resorting to either physical threats or insinuated threats with their automatic weapons?

 

I believe that the majority of these anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, & pro-gun people are a large, if not the largest, segment of Trump’s “base?” And time after time we see that Trump’s hypocrisy in his speech & his behavior doesn’t trouble them one bit. Why? Because they don’t believe in their own lies & rhetoric either.

A third of the American public don’t believe the Holocaust ever happened

 

Trump has elevated willful ignorance to a level of national pride & proof of their patriotism. And this is why these simpletons actually believe there are alternative facts. Today, we are facing a nightmare pandemic that could’ve been greatly weakened in its proliferation in the United States were it not for the unfathomable ignorance & lack of empathy of Trump, Mitch McConnel, & all those craven cowards in the GOP who didn’t have the backbone to stand up to the inhumane policies & speech of Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan!

 

Some pundits point out that Donny boy masterfully exploited the very real & honest anger at the elite of D.C. and insinuate that we shouldn’t therefore judge the Trump sector of our populace, too harshly. I say fuck that! Ignorance is no excuse & certainly doesn’t justify their glee in watching Trump & Company’s destruction of our government or their acts of violence against everyone different from them.

The first graduating class of Trump University

 

How much longer will Trump’s army of the Walking Dead defend him? Will they continue to defend him when the politicians take away their Social Security checks, their unemployment, they die in the streets as many of the poor around the globe are doing & they are forced to live in those streets with corpses all around them? Perhaps not even a real-life world that grows ever closer to the horrific series they love to watch will deter them from singing Trump’s praises? Too absurd you say? Remember Einstein’s words;

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

Albert Einstein

 

         Undeniably, we are witnessing perhaps the most egregious displays of how inhumane the 1% truly are, in our lifetimes? They proclaim every time we ask for universal healthcare, “Oh, we simply can’t afford that! Yet every time the obscenely wealthy’s unfettered greed (deregulation) causes a panic among them, we are told that it’s a national emergency & we must bail them out once again.

 

But when we have the audacity to ask for help, they condescendingly tell us: “Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps;” “You weren’t fiscally responsible;” “You didn’t save or plan ahead;” “Welfare makes people weak & dependent or lazy;” “You must take responsibility for your actions;” etc. etc. etc.

 

Moreover, whenever we deign to protest, we are mocked & ridiculed for being naïve, idealistic, or childish to believe we can change this putrid political system. This is just the way it is!

 

 

And because we’ve allowed them to get away with their greed & irresponsibility for the past four decades or better, they aren’t even bothering to hide their contempt for us & our lives. Yet that smug serpent, Trump is still getting away with his charade of being the champion of his base. Those who can’t see that the only thing Trump has accomplished besides his sabotage of every single bit of legislation or program that has Obama’s name attached to it, is his massive tax giveaway to the Masters of the Universe.

 

I can’t help but wonder if those who voted for Trump because they wanted to see him cause havoc in our government, are still happy about their decisions?

 

Yet even in the overwhelmingly abundant examples of Trump’s lies, selfishness, & destructiveness, his die-hard fans are still perplexed as to why the evil Democrats, liberals, intelligence agencies, journalists, etc. continue to plot against him & want to see him fall?

Jim Jones’ believers who drank his Kool Aid of Death because of their blind faith in him. Will the die-hard Trump supporters follow suit?

 

If you remember the horror that was Jonestown that Jim Jones was responsible for, you may recall the fact that he supposedly had his followers so hypnotized that the overwhelming majority of them willingly drank that deadly Kool Aid he’d poured for them? I honestly fear that most of Trump’s staunchest defenders have drunk the poisonous Kool Aid that Trump has given them?

 

Just how much more obvious does his corruption have to be? Trump was involved in over 3,500 lawsuits before he was installed in the White House. Yep! 1,900 lawsuits in which he was the plaintiff, 1,450 in which he was the defendant, & 150 which involved bankruptcies or third parties, or other matters.

 

Yeah, poor Donald, the picked on rich boy who daddy bailed-out of his failed business ventures again & again & again, is the victim of a vast Left-wing conspiracy. The Democrats & the Liberals hate him because he’s the protector of the poor, the working class, & the middle class & he made his vast fortune through his willpower, intelligence, & skills as a businessman.

 

I’ve had brief conversations with people like Trump’s acolytes over the years & when I realize that I’m simply beating my head against a wall not unlike that Wall that the petulant man-child is so proud of and my patience has grown short over the years so I no longer will waste my precious time on such imbeciles. In other words, I now realize & accept that I don’t have to “win” every argument. No, that is for the petty minds & petty spirits like Donald Duck. We have only so much mental, physical, & emotional energy and we shouldn’t waste it on the likes of this protoplasm that oozed out of the primordial swamp before humankind took form.

 

I know that Trump would whine that I’m not nice for these terrible things I’ve said about him but guess what? I don’t give a shit! And in fact, I’d love it if he were to catch the coronavirus because maybe if his life was on the line like the hundreds of millions around the world, he might find some remote, tiny speck of empathy in his black heart? You can be damn sure that he’d get the best medical care in the world but as to whether he’d change his policies blocking progress by our medical experts is another matter altogether?

 

But I do know one thing for sure i.e. if he were to get the virus & fighting for his life, there’d be Dancing in the Streets as Martha Reeves & the Vandellas put it.

 

Trump’s Cabinet of Corruption & moral cowardice may very well cause the unnecessary deaths of tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Americans? And though I have no voice outside of a half dozen friends will hear, I will not be silent in my anger & hatred of everything Trump & that includes his inhumane & non-human cult worshippers. And quite frankly it simply baffles me as to how anybody, even his most loyal can fail to see through his façade of caring about Joe six-pack or America?

 

Trump is basically little more than a glorified used car salesman or ambulance chasing lawyer & is held in about the same regard as these two fields of scamming & rip-off artists by the two-thirds or more of America that see him for what he is.

 

This liar in chief who has over 16,000 lies to his credit in just over three years, and has brought a tsunami of corruption to an already corrupt government & political process but he has raised the bar of corruption to a level never witnessed or even imagined before? In fact, the corruption is so patently obvious that we should change our national bird from the bald-eagle to the vulture or more accurately a Vulture Capitalist.

The greatest fraud perpetrated against the American people, the Vietnam war!

 

In conclusion, one of the most obvious signs of corruption in a business or corporation or an industry is the evidence of rampant fraud. And how appropriate considering Trump has been a fraud all his life. In fact, we should call him the Emperor of Fraud. After all, he does enjoy strutting around like he’s an emperor with that Mussolini smug arrogance or Cheshire Cat smile on his hideous face. And here is a window into the fraudulent practices of the financial services industry that brought the world to its knees. The price of doing business?

 

It occurred to me that in some ways, Trump is a current version of the fairy tale; The Emperor Wears No Clothes, but he’s the Emperor of Fraud & has gotten away with his life of crime & deception for the better part of his life. Oh, he gets slapped on the wrist every now & then in the form of being forced to pay a settlement in a lawsuit against him like his fraudulent; Trump University but he denies having lost any of the lawsuits in which he was convicted, changes the subject, & attacks his detractors to take the spotlight off of himself.

 

Moreover, like that emperor in the fairy tale, Trump is blank to his own nakedness i.e. his corruption. And like the corruption & moral decay of the ancient Roman senate, Trump is destroying the American Empire not that it would be such a bad thing if it were done in a more rational & piecemeal manner?

the inner Trump in physical form

 

No, this swineherd has flung open the vault of the federal treasury & encouraged all his fellow pigs to help themselves to our taxes that we, the peasants are forced to pay under threat of imprisonment, but that the 1% don’t have to pay.

 

This private gorging at the public trough reminds me of an old television series of many years ago. Contestants were given an empty shopping cart & so many minutes—perhaps 15 minutes or so? –to run through the empty grocery store & stuff their carts as full as possible from the shelves of the store & whoever had the highest total of food items typical prices was declared the winner.

 

Trump can never stop, not even for a few moments, his self-promotion which is a blizzard of lies, exaggerations, & phony hype about himself. He needs to keep not only the public fooled & distracted from his agenda of greed & destruction, his ability to maintain a semblance of being in control of himself is critically dependent on this wafer-thin illusion & delusion he lives under. He is constantly living on the edge & being at risk of going bat-shit insane!

Greta’s facial expression says it all i.e.righteous moral outrage

 

A prime example of this fragile monster’s childish temperament was when he felt the need to mock the teenage champion of the world’s environment, Greta Thunberg because, like the child in the fairy tale, The Emperor Wears No Clothes, who had the courage to declare; the emperor is naked, Greta had the temerity to call out the hypocrites who give lip-service to the necessity of slowing down the world’s climate & environmental destruction.

Greta’s facial expression as well as her short scolding of the adults posing as our leaders, was priceless, and Greta like so many young people around the world aren’t impressed or fooled by Trump’s veneer of success. No, that is for the willingly ignorant & for Donald himself.

 

He hides his moral bankruptcy & the hole in his chest where humans have a heart behind his screen of ostentatious wealth that is about as subtle as Attila the Hun’s diplomacy in war. And when I see those pictures of the would be dictator sitting in his gold, spray-painted living rooms, I have to chuckle & I am reminded of some of the low-riders where I grew up in the ghettos of L.A. & their cars that were everything to them, their status symbol that said they were special with their tuck & roll upholstery that was often installed in Tijuana, Mexico complete with the little white dingle balls (I believe they were called?) that hung from their ceilings.

Maybe Donald will invite some of his supporters from the coal mines of Virginia over for a barbecue?

 

Trump’s function as the ringmaster in this farce we call a Democracy & that is to keep the rabble in line (Chomsky) with his traveling circus & carnival of fear & hate. And his occupation of the White House represents his only value to the power elite, that of keeping us divided so we will remain conquered & subservient slaves to the status quo.

 

This Divide & Conquer strategy is as old as recorded history itself. Yet, even with the astronomical power & wealth of the “Master Class” & their arsenals of weapons of mass destruction, their ownership of the financial “services” sectors of our economies, their domination of the world’s corporate media, public education systems, etc. etc. etc., the brave & loving men & women on the front lines in the fight against this deadly virus, show us again & again that the true power of this world is the power of love, compassion, & empathy. Here is a portrait of some of those compassionate brave souls fighting for us on the front lines who keep their spirits up as well as ours during these nightmarish times;

 

And the overwhelming majority of mankind have not allowed themselves to slowly morph into creatures from the black lagoon like Trump & his zombies. No, we know to the marrow of our bones that Love Conquers Hate and it is only by our mutual love & care for one another that we will survive not only this deadly virus but also the destruction of our climate & the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation!

 

Humanity’s true heroes & greatest protectors have been the humble teachers like Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Martin Luther King, Noam Chomsky, & Howard Zinn to name just a few who have led by example, not the shallow rhetoric of tyrants like Trump the Terrible!

—Rob DeLoss, (alive & kicking in beautiful Gold Beach on this sunny day, April 12th 2020)

 

Namaste & Persevere my Brothers & Sisters!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let Truth & Falsehood Grapple in the Free Marketplace of Ideas

 

 

 

Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter? (John Milton, Areopagitica)

 

 

In a perfect world, this would be the norm but obviously we are far from such a world. And at this time of the deadly pandemic caused by the Coronavirus, the ignorance as evidenced by Trump’s behavior may well cause the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans?

 

I don’t know what could be a more obvious example of how deadly ignorance can be? Because of this megalomaniac’s narcissism & sociopathic personality, the American public, well, those who didn’t fall for Trump’s rhetoric of fear & hate, are living in a state of terror!

 

And I am very concerned that I may not have much longer to live because I’m an old fart (67 years old) & have several of the highest risk factors, so this essay is probably going to be very raw & perhaps one of my most honest essays?

 

One of the things that most surprised me when Donny boy became president was the fact that there is clearly no requirement to be able to pass a basic intelligence test for the most powerful office in the world? Moreover, what does that say about our collective intelligence?

Trump reads at level of a 4th grade student & conned people into believing in his scam university?

 

My central thesis in this essay is that I believe if we had true freedom of speech & specifically in the most common meeting places for average Americans i.e. bars, taverns, & pubs, we might have been able to persuade our neighbors to open their minds & not fall for Trump’s con job?

 

Obviously, it’s too late now but perhaps those who survive this pandemic will wake-up to the necessity of informing themselves so that it can’t happen again? I have loved learning from the time I was in first grade & I believe that it is the responsibility of those of us who are true educators, to share what we’ve learned with our fellow citizens.

 

To begin with, I stumbled across a list of 50 Characteristics of an Educated Person, which I’ll share with you at the end of this essay, & I challenge you to find a single one of these characteristics in “our” president. I, like many others, have to admit that this buffoon is very clever at manipulating the media & that’s how he managed to con his way into office. Those who believe in his honesty i.e. “he tells it like it is,” “he cares about the little guy & the working class,” “he’s draining the swamp,” etc. are beyond the pale of an ordinary or average intelligence & therefore easily manipulated by pushing their emotional hot button topics. And it doesn’t take more than two or three minutes of “conversation” with these individuals to determine if they are Trump’s cult members i.e. as soon as you make one critical remark about Trump, they shut-down & like that wall he’s building, they erect a wall in their “minds.”

 

Yeah, I know, I’m sounding like one of those elitists. You’re goddamn straight I am! You can trace my elitism back to when I was in the sixth grade & was reading at an 11th grade, sixth month level. Moreover, I was a closet elitist because I hid my elitism in my single-parent, working class background. Pretty clever huh?

 

One of the things that confuses me about Trump who keeps reassuring us that he’s a very stable genius, and uses big words, & is more knowledgeable in just about any profession you can think of i.e. scientists, doctors, generals, etc. So why has he threatened to sue any of the schools he’s ever attended if they reveal his grades? Could it be that like his tax returns, he’s afraid if his grades were revealed, the public would realize that his entire life has been one big scam?

 

Mental midgets like Trump believe that he who shouts the loudest in an argument is the winner of the argument. And he has the biggest megaphone in America i.e. the bully pulpit of the White House. As a result, the public is constantly bombarded with Trump’s lies & propaganda, and we have, as I said, very few places to refute his ignorance, racism, & fear-mongering. Moreover, Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan has FOX “News,” to spread his lies 24/7 and we all know how “fair & balanced” they are, right?

 

And one of the key aspects of Trump’s reign of error & terror is his perpetual rallies throughout his term in office. Have you ever seen another president wage a non-stop propaganda campaign like his? It’s crystal clear that although Trump struts the world stage with his chest puffed-out and his chin protruding as far as possible not because he is supremely self-confident, but rather supremely insecure & this is why he needs constant praising from his sycophants.

 

Returning to the “free marketplace of ideas” in the title of this essay, it’s obviously a reference or an analogy to the mythical “free market,” that has been proclaimed for so many decades that it is now accepted as a truism or similar to a law of nature. But this concept is one of the most pernicious ideas in the lexicon of this perverted crony or casino capitalist system that is now literally killing us. And a little research will show that this “system” is a total farce created to keep the gullible & ignorant playing in a rigged-game that they can never win. Here is the truth behind this sham from Noam Chomsky, my intellectual & moral hero;

Noam Chomsky, considered by many to be the most important intellectual alive!

 

The free market is ‘socialism’ for the rich: the public pays the costs and the rich get the benefit – markets for the poor and plenty of state protection for the rich.

Noam Chomsky

 

Because of the successful destruction of unions in America, we are no longer of much value to the powers that be i.e. we used to serve the purpose of consuming the manufactured products that were made in America but we’ve been beaten-down to such an extent that our only value now is our incarceration.

 

I am sharing this knowledge with you, my imaginary reader, not because I’m an egotist like Donald Duck but because I believe the central responsibility of educators is to share what we’ve learned & hopefully inspire students to take up their own self education. I forget if it was Plato or Aristotle that said this in a slightly different manner but it is the gospel truth!

 

Perhaps this would be a good point at which to share some of my bona fides, & unlike Trump who thinks that just by uttering whatever words he wants to, makes them a fact or the truth, I can back up my claims of intellectual abilities.

 

In brief, I attended community colleges in the L.A. & Orange County areas off & on for about a decade. I dropped-out of many courses half-way & sometimes even three-quarters of the way through a semester. Nothing really grabbed me until I stumbled upon philosophy. I told myself, now this is a subject I can really sink my teeth into.

 

And about this time, I had the great fortune of meeting my future wife who was a Special Education teacher & finishing up her Master’s degree in Special Education. Her B.A. was in Art. Her belief in me & her encouragement inspired me & I stopped dropping out of classes after that & within a couple more years, I earned my B.A. in English literature (the philosophy dept. where I was attending a four-year university, sucked & I figured, well at least I can enjoy the reading as a literature major.

 

Moreover, I have amassed a personal library of approximately 10,000 books over the course of my life. And no, I haven’t read them all but I have dissected so-to-speak, several hundred of them i.e. made copious notes in the blank pages so I can turn to the exact page if I want to show or prove to someone that I’m not making up what I’m trying to tell them about.

 

I’ve also been writing essays & working on two major writing projects for over 30 years. I would conservatively guesstimate that I have spent at least 50,000 hours over the past 40 years reading, writing, researching, watching documentaries, listening to political programs, etc. By-the-way, when some people try to dismiss that decade of switching majors several times & dropping-out time & time again, I ask them; So, you think that because I didn’t get the official credit for the course that I didn’t learn anything in all those classes?

 

And since we’re on the subject of education, here’s a quote by Aristotle who one professor told me, was one of the twin pillars of Western Civilization, Plato being the other; “The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.”

 

Yep! Another one of those god-damn elitist snobs! Now, some of you who may still have some of that holy seed of curiosity left in you as Einstein put it, may be wondering how in the hell did we get to such a desperate state like the one we’re living in now? Let me break it down for you because I have also worked in the education profession for approximately 20 years.

First of all, our public education system isn’t set up for excellence but rather to crank-out cookie-cutter, conformist citizens much like that video clip of students in Pink Floyd’s song; “We Don’t Need No Education.” And if you’ll take the time to reflect on the 50 characteristics of an educated person at the end of this essay, I think you’ll see what I mean?

 

Because we have to face the ugly reality of the way our educational system is, we must rely on ourselves & that means self-education. Of course, we must first learn what is worthy of learning. And if you accept the current capitalist system that is once again fuckin’ us that I don’t see how anyone can fail to see it. But then again, I almost forgot about the Trump cult where ignorance is celebrated?

 

And this is what I’ve learned in my lifetime, the two most important skills a person can acquire that will help empower them against the constant forces that manipulate us & defraud us daily are Critical & Analytical thinking skills. The book I am about to mention was recommended to me by a Jesuit scholar. And they are some of the best educated scholars in the world!

 

Problem Solving & Comprehension by Whimbey & Lochhead. I see that the price of the book has definitely gone up over the years? I bought a paperback copy back around 1983 for maybe $9.00? Well, it saddens me to have to report that in all these years, I haven’t been able to persuade a single friend to go through the exercises/problems in this book that help to develop your critical & analytical thinking skills. Like I’ve long said, welcome to Illiterate America, another great book by one of our best educators, Jonathan Kozol.

 

Being proud of being stupid didn’t start with Trump, no, it’s long been a part of our history. And another book which I “dissected” is The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto is a guaranteed mind-blowing experience if you dare to read it? This is another one of my books that I dissected & read twice because I used it extensively in writing my magnum opus which is only three-fifths completed.

At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist & I pray that you don’t lump me in with the likes of Trump’s buddy, Alex Jones, quite simply, the 1% don’t want a nation of well-educated citizens because we are then more troublesome.

 

Moving right along, the next destructive force that has brought us to the brink is the media or more accurately, the corporate media aka mainstream media. And there’s no better place to jump in than the Reagan presidency from which Donald the Dipshit, stole his campaign motto; Make America Great Again.

 

You see, before Reagan, the mainstream media which was ABC, CBS, & NBC in those days, were required to give us both sides of an issue when they weren’t just reporting the straight news/facts. By-the-way, there are far more than two perspectives on the serious issues humanity faces.

 

Yep! Reagan was the father of “fake news,” is it any wonder Trump has emulated him? Ronnie’s elimination of the “Fairness Doctrine,” paved the way for FOX “News,” Trump’s daily briefing sessions. I say this because it’s pretty common knowledge just as Trump’s non-attendance at who knows how many of the daily presidential briefings. And those that he does deign to honor with his presence must boil the complex issues down to a single page with pictures.

 

This is the leader of the “free world.” Doesn’t it make you all fuzzy & warm knowing you can rest assured that the child behind the desk in the oval office wants to keep it simple? Yeah, he’s simple alright, he’s a fuckin’ simpleton but one with the capability of starting a nuclear war if somebody hurts his feelings.

 

Returning to our slide down the slope of journalistic integrity, the mainstream media was gutted by the corporate elite who saw ratings as the key to ever greater wealth. So, like a deadly virus, “infotainment” became the accepted norm & who other than Trump was a master at entertaining with his circus act of smoke & mirrors i.e. a barrage of lies & fake news i.e. before he became a “celebrity,” he’d call in to radio programs & pretend to be somebody else & sing his own praises.

 

Moving right along in our exploration of how America became so uninformed & wide-open to manipulation by the greedy & corrupt like Trump, we have the destructive rise of “reality television.”

 

I have heard very few, if any critics point out that the basic premise of “reality T.V.” is built on the premise that a fake medium i.e. television, can & does provide us with an accurate & honest view of ‘reality.’ And who else but Trump who built his celebrity on fake stories & his grandiose lies about his success, could “succeed” on such a massive scale in a fake portrait of reality?

 

Tragically, this too helps to shed light on this dangerous phenomenon of an absolute moron & moral degenerate in charge of a nation. Trump is not merely mediocre, no, he’s monumentally incompetent intellectually as well as totally morally bankrupt!

 

There’s a mountain of evidence proving he doesn’t have a single ounce of compassion or empathy for anyone but himself. And again, this is why I argue that if his Walking Dead zombies had even basic critical & analytical thinking skills, they could see through his grand sham.

In a battle of wits, Trump supporters are unarmed.

Remember my friend, television & movies succeed the more skillful they are at causing us to “willfully suspend disbelief.” Do you understand what I’m saying? Speaking of which, I believe that a major turning point in the dumbing-down of America came when FOX “News” was allowed to call itself an authentic news station.

 

And I hold “mainstream media” responsible in that they didn’t raise hell about this propaganda channel posing as “fair & balanced” reporters of the news. This clearly was an attempt to portray themselves as loyal exemplars of journalism before Reagan eliminated the “Fairness Doctrine.”

 

But speaking of “fairness,” American journalism had been failing us for decades before Reagan. And Edward R. Murrow as well as his mentors like I.F. Stone & George Seldes revealed this in their noble & brilliant careers of fantastic dedication & tireless work in uncovering the facts behind the lies of government & corporations.

 

Another nail in our collective coffin is the birth of the so-called “social media.” Moreover, it’d be rather amusing if it weren’t for the fact that it’s so dangerously serious. If you give a shit about true reality vs. the artificial world of the plastic people like Trump, you’d eventually have to acknowledge that this supposed “social media” is de facto anti-social.

 

Why you may ask? Facebook & Twitter being the two major exemplars of this fake reality, in fact encourage people to be anti-social and hurl ugly epithets back & forth. Tristan Harris, a former employee of Google;

 

“he worked as a design ethicist at Google, where he studied ethics of human persuasion.”

 

This young man’s courage & intellectual honest touched my heart. And I’m sure if you’ll take the time to read the bio about him on Wikipedia or watch any of the You Tube videos by or about him, you’ll agree.

 

In a nutshell, Mr. Harris shared with us the key to the kingdom that has become Google i.e. razzle & dazzle people with bells & whistles so like a slot machine in Vegas, they become addicted & will keep checking back for how many likes, etc. they have received in the past few minutes i.e. they become addicted to the constant feedback. Hey, does that sound like anybody you know? Hint: Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan who spends the majority of his “work day” watching FOX “News” for his agenda of what American domestic as well as foreign policy should be.

 

Yes, we have a teenage girl as president. And she can never be more than a few feet from her “smart phone,” because she must constantly monitor her “social approval ratings.”

 

Are you still confused or wondering why we’re in such a state of fear? Or why we are so woefully unprepared for this pandemic? No, it isn’t just Donald the Dumb-fuck, it’s this capitalist system that only cares about profit. We’ve been through this before but the “Masters of the Universe,” chose to ignore common sense & have a stockpile of the necessary equipment because they could make greater profits by keeping it ‘close to the vest’ i.e. only manufacturing on demand or as the need arose for products so as to not have stockpiles in their warehouses that weren’t being used or sold. They could save money by eliminating every possible unnecessary product until it was needed. And lo and behold, now that we’re in a national and world-wide crisis, they can’t manufacture what we, the peons need fast enough so many of us will die because of their greed & shortsightedness.

 

And I gotta chuckle or I will double-over in a fit of rage that these corporate cockroaches have the balls to ask for bail-outs in this time of crisis? Yep! Trump’s very own children are asking for their share of the government handouts while Jared Kushner tells renters they must pay their rent but he needs help from the banks regarding his loans.

One that really caught my attention was Goldman Sachs, dubbed “the Goldman Sachs” treasury department is also asking for help? Matt Taibbi wrote a book about Goldman Sachs called “Vampire Squid” and I don’t know where this particular quote by him came form but I feel it’s as succinct a summary of why, once again, we, the 99% are being fucked while Wall St. is once again, being bailed-out against our wills & we have to foot the bill even as we are kicked out of our homes.

 

‘Nobody goes to jail.’ This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world’s wealth – and nobody went to jail.

 

This is in reference to the 2008 Crash that came seriously close to collapsing the entire world’s economic system. But hey, no big deal, right? Place your trust in a fake billionaire who is using the White House as an ad agency to promote his business interests.

 

You see, my imaginary reader, if we were truly free to speak & I mean anywhere & everywhere, most importantly in ye olde public houses i.e. bars, taverns, & pubs like our founding fathers did when they were plotting their revolution, we might just be able to stem the tide of stupidity that has engulfed us?

 

Those of us who survive this pandemic owe it to the memory of all those who didn’t survive. I just hope that the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans may at last galvanize the apathetic to rising up and slapping those greedy pigs down & imprisoning them so those who attempt to follow in their footsteps at least know that they’re not going to get a cell in any of those federal country club “prisons.”

 

We seem to be fond of declaring wars against drugs, crime, welfare cheats, etc., how about we declare a War on Stupidity? And what say you about requiring our presidents to be above a fourth-grade level intellectually?

 

It is only through exercising our minds that we self-empower ourselves & stop being victims. We must retake our places as human beings who deserve to be treated respectfully & as people worthy of all that is laid out in “The Declaration of Human Rights” or Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “Second Bill of Rights.

 

I leave you with this reminder; “United We Stand, Divided We Fall,” and that has been the game plan of the powerful & wealthy throughout history i.e. to divide and conquer us. It’s only our stupidity or ignorance that is holding us back.

 

My hope is that like the peasants of France who finally had enough of watching their children die of hunger & the queen consort of Louis the 16th, Marie Antoinette’s callous remark; “Let them eat cake,” was the final straw that caused the people to rise up and take back what was rightfully theirs & their right to be treated with dignity as human beings!

 

And here’s a little reminder for all you in that special category of the “1%,” you might take a lesson from history i.e. the French peasants finally reached their breaking point & chopped the heads off of half the elite of France.

 

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

Albert Einstein

50 Characteristics of an Educated Person

  1. An educated person has the ability to think clearly and independently.
  2. An educated person has good judgment.
  3. An educated person knows how to learn.
  4. An educated person knows how to acquire desired skills by identifying and utilizing available resources, deconstructing the process required for learning a particular skill, and experimenting with potential approaches.
  5. An educated person has the ability to take initiative and work alone.
  6. An educated person has the ability to communicate thoughts and ideas in writing, clearly and concisely.
  7. An educated person has the ability to speak clearly.
  8. An educated person has the ability to reason analytically and critically.
  9. An educated person has the ability to think inductively and deductively.
  10. An educated person questions assumptions.
  11. An educated person doesn’t blindly accept what they are told; they go see for themselves. They can discern truth from error, regardless of the source.
  12. An educated person knows how to distinguish between relevant and irrelevant information (between the important and the trivial).
  13. An educated person knows how to make productive use of knowledge; they know where to get the knowledge that they need, and they have the ability to organize that knowledge into a plan of action that is directed to a definite end.
  14. An educated person understands human nature and has the ability to establish, maintain, and improve lasting relationships.
  15. An educated person knows how to establish rapport with others; they know how get others to trust and respect them.
  16. An educated person knows how to cooperate and collaborate effectively with others.
  17. An educated person knows how to resolve conflicts with others.
  18. An educated person knows how to persuade others.
  19. An educated person has the ability to conceptualize and solve problems.
  20. An educated person knows how to make decisions.
  21. An educated person has the ability to see connections among disciplines, ideas and cultures.
  22. An educated person is able to cross disciplinary boundaries and explore problems and their solutions from multiple perspectives.
  23. An educated person is someone who has been educated holistically: creatively, culturally, spiritually, morally, physically, technologically, and intellectually.
  24. An educated person has a broad liberal-arts education. They have a good overview of the following subjects: the natural sciences; the social sciences; history; geography; literature; philosophy; and theology.
  25. An educated person has depth of knowledge—that is, specialized knowledge–in a particular field.
  26. An educated person has achieved victory over themselves; they know how to withstand discomfort in the short term in order to achieve important goals in the long term.
  27. An educated person has the capacity to endure and persevere.
  28. An educated person is self-aware; they know how to perceive and manage their own internal states and emotions.
  29. An educated person knows where and how to focus their attention.
  30. An educated person has ethical values and has integrity.
  31. An educated person has the ability and the discipline to do what is right.
  32. An educated personis well-readand has cultural sophistication.
  33. An educated person has equal esteem for everyone, without regard to gender, race, religion, country of origin, and so on.

 

 

 

 

  1. An educated person understands their obligation to leave the world a little better than they found it.
  2. An educated person is capable of doing new things; they have the ability to generate ideas and turn them into reality. An educated person is innovative.
  3. An educated person is one whose natural curiosity has been awakened with the purpose of satisfying that curiosity.
  4. An educated person has the ability to identify needed behaviors and traits and turn them into habits.
  5. An educated person has the ability to identify harmful behaviors and traits—including thinking habits that are not serving them well—and the ability to modify them.
  6. An educated person has the ability to keep their life in proper balance.
  7. An educated person has the flexibility to admit when they’re wrong.
  8. An educated person has quantitative literacy; they know how to use arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and statistics to solve problems.
  9. An educated person can speak at least one language other than their own.
  10. An educated person has financial literacy; they have the knowledge necessary to make sound financial decisions.
  11. An educated person is adaptable and knows how to deal with change.
  12. An educated person knows how to handle ambiguity.
  13. An educated person has the ability to explore alternative viewpoints.
  14. An educated person has aesthetic appreciation; they can sing and dance well, play at least one musical instrument, and can appreciate architecture, great art, and other expressions of creative genius.
  15. An educated person has developed the personal philosophy that will allow them to be happy and successful.
  16. An educated person has the ability and the discipline to constantly improve.
  17. An educated person has the ability to pursue lifelong learning.

Addendum

As often happens when I think I’ve finished an essay, I remember some important points that I meant to make but got sidetracked from in the essay.

I think a lot, if not most people don’t realize that watching T.V. is a passive experience i.e. you’re just receiving the information, images, etc. & you are definitely not thinking critically or analytically when you’re watching T.V.

And the proliferation of T.V. shows (sit-coms, soap operas, sports programs, etc.) has slowly turned our minds into Swiss cheese. Moreover, with the advent of the Internet, the nefarious powers that only seek profit not enlightenment, have enhanced the deterioration of our mental capacities.

We are living in a post-literate society because reading requires mental effort & people primarily just want to be entertained. For example, I allowed myself to get sucked into the world of Facebook several years ago & I was excited and thought I’d be able to exchange important ideas with people. I used to write paragraphs, if not abbreviated essays in response to the important posts I read & once in a while someone would say; “I learned so much from your posts & comments.” And it became rarer over time to even get a single sentence in response. With the introduction of emojis, I became angrier because a sentence was now almost nonexistent. Yet people think they’re communicating?

Trying to get people to write is like pulling teeth & I finally gave up altogether & deleted my Facebook account about a year ago. And to illustrate even further America’s enfeeblement, it seems people today prefer texting over talking to someone on the phone. Yeah, pretty depressing! So, we don’t read, we don’t write, & we’re getting to the point where we won’t even talk.

I believe these factors that I have mentioned in this essay all point to how we’ve arrived at this tragic & deadly point in our history. The simple fact that a third to a half of the American public actually support Trump no matter how venal, crude, & brazenly only concerned about enriching himself he is. And that says more about us than it does about him.

Bottom-line, Trump has always followed his mentor, Roy Cohn’s simple battle plan for everything i.e. Deny, Divert, & Detract. Every time someone accuses you of something, Deny it. Divert their attention by changing the subject & not allowing them to pursue their accusation, & Detract i.e. start attacking their character, make shit up, do whatever you can to keep tearing them down.

This is abundantly clear in how he’s avoided taking any responsibility for his ineptitude, mishandling, & lying every step of the way in this dark time of the coronavirus spread which may kill a hundred thousand or more Americans & which was largely preventable if we had an intelligent person of moral character in the White House.

The Koch brothers & several of the wealthiest oil & gas corporations employed these same tactics in funding the massive propaganda campaign of Climate Change Denial. All they had to do was muddy the waters, question the credentials of the 98% or better of the world’s scientists who have warned of the impending disaster that will make the coronavirus pale in comparison!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Making America Great Again

 

 

 

Yeah, if you consider the 1918 flu pandemic that killed anywhere from 20 to 50 million worldwide, and the approximately 675,000 Americans who died, a great America?  Moreover, Daddy Trump said today; “If only 100,000 Americans die from the coronavirus, that means he’s done a good job.”

 

Yep, the 99%’s lives don’t matter at all, the only lives that matter are the 1%’s. You know, the ones who gave us the worldwide Crash of 2008. The ones, we, the taxpayers bail-out against our will, time & time again. It’s the same old sad song i.e. Socialism for the Rich & pull yourself up by the bootstraps for the rest of us. If you fail & go bankrupt & are fired through no fault of your own & are illegally foreclosed on, too bad, too sad!

 

The status quo must remain solvent & in control. The poor babies & hypocrites need another mansion, another yacht, another private Lear jet, etc. etc. etc. And they never change their mantra of mendacity i.e. we need the massive tax breaks (even though we pay little if any taxes) so we can put workers back to work. But they leave out the fact that they’re talking about workers in the “developing” world where they have no unions, no health & safety on the job, no voice whatsoever.

 

The “neo-liberal” theology that basically took root in the reign of Bill Clinton, the faux democrat who sold out the working class & the middle class. Yep! Another lying democrat who pretended to be our champion but sucked-up to the corporate cockroaches hoping they’d let him in the inner-circle of the corrupt elite in corporate America.

 

His price of admission to that sacred grove was passing the elimination of Glass-Steagall & the passing of NAFTA. Along with a few lesser issues like locking up every Latino and black citizen possible, slashing “welfare,” for the undeserving poor who would just waste it on food & other frivolous things like rent, utilities, etc.

 

But even these gifts that Billy Boy laid at his masters’ feet were not enough. No, he was also necessary as a perpetual whipping-boy for the crime-lords at the top of the food chain & that has continued down to this day with his wife, Hillary the Hun!

 

And in between the two democratic sell-outs Clinton & Obama, we had good old Alfred E. Newman. Yep, Georgie, the Coward from Crawford who was so spineless & stupid that Cheney, the man from Halliburton had to be employed to prop him up. And with Dick’s loving guidance, Georgie boy manipulated the gullible Americans whose minds have been eaten away by FOX “News,” into invading & occupying Iraq which has been a wet-dream for the military/industrial/congressional complex.

Pravda is Russia’s main paper but they know it’s propaganda, Americans don’t have a clue about FOX “News”

 

Yep! By unleashing a tsunami of propaganda & lies on the American public, the powers that be had a new perpetual enemy to justify their perpetual state of war i.e. the terrorists are coming! Be afraid, be very afraid! It doesn’t matter that our military is more powerful than all the other nations on earth’s combined militaries.

The $100 million televangelist & The Commander & Chief Thief!

 

And to help in this Crusade for Christianity, FOX “News” was invaluable in its 24/7 fear & hate campaign. Yep! And good ol’ country boy, Georgie “Dubya,” did his bit to help the cause of the greedy & the craven by turning a blind-eye to Wall St.’s ambitious theft scam which sent the world into a tail-spin.

 

Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! After Alfred E. Newman exited stage left, they thought they’d really confuse us with I must admit, a very clever ad campaign, in fact, Obama’s presidential campaign won an award for the best advertising campaign of the year he was elected.

Wall St.’s Liars Row, just like the tobacco CEOs years later; “We had no idea?”

 

And in the spirit of “full disclosure,” I have to confess that I too fell for Obama’s ad campaign. But, believe me or not, I knew within a few weeks after the Black Crusader on the White Horse rode into Washington D.C. that I was just another sucker. His appointments of Geithner, Bernanke, Summers, et al showed me instantly the error of my ways & what a fool I had been in voting for him. Not one single Wall St. CEO was prosecuted by Obama administration!

Obama almost literally would get weak in the knees whenever Jamie Dimon entered a room he was in at the same time. Yeah! Perhaps the worst of the worst in the financial sector of our economy with his Cheshire Cat, smug mug because he knew he was getting away with grand larceny on a national scale.

 

And now we have the piece de la resistance, the Marie Antoinette cross-dresser, Donald the Charlatan, the Duck Dynasty worship & grovel at his feet to in abject submission. I cling to the dream of Trump’s Walking Dead army waking from their somnambulant anorexia & uniting with the healthy amongst us to overthrow this tyranny that threatens not only America but the entire planet.

“Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.”

 

This duplicitous dumb-shit asks questions like; Why can’t we use our nuclear weapons? And if this doesn’t scare you, you might want to check your pulse because you may be one of the Body Snatchers? I for one, simply can’t wrap my head around the apparent reality that half of the American public can’t see how truly destructive & dangerous this colossal moron is?

 

Will the Donald of the Duck Dynasty’s Klan members still sing his praises as they & their loved ones slowly die from this modern-day plague that we could’ve drastically reduced the effects of? The misanthrope who is incapable of human sympathy, empathy, or compassion unnecessarily put countless millions of Americans at risk for catching this deadly virus because he didn’t want his numbers to go down in the polls as to how he was “dealing” with the pandemic.

And each & every day when I say to myself, this fuckin’ piece of human excrement can’t possibly say or do anything stupider, he proves me wrong? He is purposely subverting, undermining, & sabotaging the efforts of our top scientists & epidemiologists to contain & hopefully reduce the fatalities this virus causes.

The True Hoax is that Trump gives a shit about anybody but himself

If this isn’t a case of our top executive posing a clear & present danger to America’s national security, then you tell me what the fuck is? Are we going to follow this inhumane creature off the cliff like passive & obedient lemmings, or are we going to find our backbones & stand & fight for our lives?

The choice is yours my friend. The corporate cockroach class see us as only a means to an end. They know full well that climate change & destruction is real but they figure that the billions & trillions they can stuff into their pockets takes precedence over minor considerations like say, humanity’s continuation.

“The Very Stable Genius” throwing a tantrum

 

Their motto is; He who dies with the most toys is the winner! And the thought of their grandchildren playing in the rubble of a Hiroshima or freezing in sub-zero Arctic wastelands doesn’t trouble their empty hearts & souls.

If you care to know who the true Masters of the Universe are, watch this documentary:

I’ll tell you this my imaginary friend i.e. I get so few readers, guess they’re busy with their “Smart phones,” and “Socializing?” If we don’t somehow find our lost compassion for not only our loved ones but for our fellow man, we are truly overlooking that horrific abyss that Dante did a pretty good job of describing.

 

From the marrow of my bones & the depth of my soul!

You’ve been warned!

 

—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, Oregon, March 30, 2020

What you don’t Know can Kill you!

 

 

“Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.”

—H.G. Wells

 

Trump’s final Make America Great Again rally

 

The Trump supporters I have met over the last three years have been fairly consistent in their mantra of why they like him i.e. he speaks his mind; he’s shaking things up, he’s not a politician.

 

I try to politely point out just a few of his glaring lies & inconsistencies between what he’s said & what he does. But the second they hear a criticism of their leader, they go into shutdown mode & I may as well be talking to his beloved wall.

 

It’s so glaringly obvious that his followers have completely shut down their minds to any criticism of Trump & it worries me that such a huge percentage of the American public can be so willfully blind & ignorant. Why? Because this is a tell-tale sign of being in a cult not a democracy.

The speaker in the next video wrote a book titled; “Holocaust Denial” which I bought. In it she says that roughly a third of the American public don’t believe the Holocaust happened. I can’t help but wonder how many of Trump’s believers are in this segment of our country? And my guess that a large proportion of these people are also climate deniers?

We are now facing a pandemic that has been spreading for over two months & Trump is fighting the experts’ advice on how to best contain it. The imbecile even had the gall to call it a hoax. Yep, a grand hoax like that other grand hoax, Global Warming. And I am flabbergasted at Trump fans who must clearly believe his daily pronouncements of his expertise in everything, including how to deal with this virus.

I have a question for those of you in the dark i.e. if he’s truly such a brilliant expert in such a wide variety of professions, why did he threaten to sue any of the schools he’s attended if they dared to release his grades? And how does he inform himself? His own staff have told us repeatedly that he won’t attend the daily briefings that every president has since the process was established. They also inform us that he wants every issue that’s put before him to be summarized in a single page with pictures. And he watches hours of T.V. daily, FOX & Friends in particular.

Another aspect of Trump’s behavior & personality that troubles me is his obsession with Twitter. His ego & self-image must be very low because a healthy & balanced individual, especially an adult who is in his 70s wouldn’t spend such an inordinate amount of time Tweeting. No, this kind of behavior is common amongst teenage girls who feel slighted by some gossip. Yet this behavior doesn’t seem to bother Trump cult members one bit?

Trump’s open-mindedness throughout his academic career

 

As for his “speaking his mind,” big deal! Even a raving lunatic speaks his mind! And as for “shaking things up,” yeah, he’s done a top rate job in that department. In fact, he’s got most of the world shaking in their boots out of fear what this ludicrous lunatic is going to do next? He is very fond of some of the world’s most despicable dictators & he continues to insult & offend national leaders who were our allies in the past. Are these Trump devotee’s idea of defending democracy & being a patriotic American?

Trump idolizes dictators cuz he imagines himself one but his followers don’t care that they massacre thousands of their own citizens, at least they’re “strong” men

 

People go ape-shit over someone desecrating our flag but Trump insulted Senator John McCain saying; “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t…” And this coming from a spoiled rich-brat whose daddy paid a doctor to write a report claiming Donny boy had bone-spurs?

 

And here’s an inconvenient truth for you Trump lovers;

 

Trump spent the first few months of 2016 claiming he sent nearly $6 million to veterans’ groups nationwide, but Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold couldn’t find any evidence of any donations.

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/times-trump-insulted-u-s-veterans-military-service-article-1.320

 

I’m confident that with a little bit of digging, you could find many more contradictions with what your master has claimed & the facts regarding each of those claims.

 

To return to the central thesis of this essay, deadly ignorance, anti-intellectualism has a long & infamous history. But in Trump world, anti-intellectualism has risen to glorious heights never reached before. Trump acolytes love mocking intellectuals & being stupid is popular. And I sometimes feel like I’m in some lost episode of the Twilight Zone?

The classic book on the subject of anti-intellectualism was written by Richard Hofstadter in 1963; Anti-intellectualism in American Life. I read this book twice because it served as the skeleton for the book I wrote on the subject. And unlike Trump, I can back-up this claim with the physical book & the copious notes I made in the blank pages.

 

In Trump Land, he only has to claim something & it’s a de facto truth. This of course is far easier to get away with when your admirers have lost any semblance of critical or analytical thinking skills, if they ever had them at all? And in a nation where the average attention span is less than that of a goldfish, well, you get my meaning I’m sure.

 

Mind you, I’m not saying that Trump is the cause of our national stupidity but he has sure capitalized on it. And “social media” has played a significant role in this depressing nightmare as well. You see, people actually believe they’re communicating & socializing when they send emojis back & forth and can only manage a sentence fragment every great now & then.

young people “socializing”

Yeah, I can hear the criticisms of my essay already i.e. too much of a downer; too depressing, etc. because we’ve become a country whose national credo is Hear no evil, See no evil, & Speak no evil! Bury your head in the sand & meditate. Don’t Worry, Be Happy! The New Age gurus counsel us to be calm, do yoga, watch what you eat & all will be well. In my opinion, this isn’t too far removed from telling a guy sitting in a house on fire, don’t worry, the fire is only a mirage.

“Christian” fundamentalists’ wet dream

 

The culmination of apathy & ignorance and the nonsensical nirvana of the beautiful people has brought us this moron in the White House, not only a serious threat to America’s survival but that of world as well.

my first book which delves into the dangers posed by the “Christian” fundamentalists or evangelicals

 

Furthermore, Trump’s appointment of Betsy De Vos as Secretary of Education reveals what I believe to be one of the key agenda items on the 1%’s To Do List i.e. ensure that the public remains as ignorant as possible. Why, you may ask? It’s really quite simple & authoritarians have been following this guiding principle for decades if not centuries i.e. keep the citizens as uninformed as possible & they’re a lot easier to manipulate & you can control them & rob them blind.

Do you think I’m just repeating some asinine Alex Jones conspiracy theory? Then why is it that every time an authoritarian or a dictator wages a coup against their government, one of the first things they do is shut down the universities and the media?

The School for Suckers shut-down for fraud & Trump had to pay $25 million in court judgment

 

I happen to be a somewhat unique American from the working class who fell in love with learning from the first grade on. Excuse me if I come across as just another braggart like the humble Donald but it’s relevant at this point.

 

I was told that I was reading at the 11th grade, sixth month level when I was in the sixth grade. I didn’t think anything of it until I was in my early 20s & began to see how the public education system had fucked so many of us from the working class & the middle class to a slightly lesser degree.

 

Moreover, in my adult working life, I worked in the educational profession for approximately 20 years. I’ve served as a teaching assistant, a substitute teacher, an adult education teacher, etc. I tell you this because I want you to know where I’m coming from when I say that education & learning has been my life, my passion, & my saving grace (not meaning to sound religious).

“Approximately 32 million adults in America are considered to be illiterate; about 14% of the entire adult population cannot read.” https://www.creditdonkey.com/illiteracy-in-america.html

A third of the American public don’t believe the Holocaust ever happened

 

So, as I witness America’s slow decline into a sort of cultural & mental barbarism, it strikes close to my heart. And it’s the only explanation that I can come up with as to why such a megalomaniac with no empathy, a true mental midget, became our president?

Trump’s book; The Art of the Deal should be changed to The Art of Denial; Obama Did It!

 

When Trump was appointed president, not unlike George W. Bush to some extent, and the spineless D.N.C. were dumbfounded and have remained in denial as to their responsibility in the matter to this very day, my spirit grew dark. The tactical racist that Trump is, knew he’d stumbled upon the keys to the kingdom by scapegoating the most vulnerable amongst us. Yep! Give all those who have been consistently fucked by the 1% someone to blame & they won’t come after the obscenely wealthy who are the true architects of our destruction.

And as Gomer Pyle, that funny, ignorant country boy from the popular sitcom in the 1960s liked to say; “Sur-prise, Sur-prise, Sur-prise,” the two trillion dollar “bail-out” to save the economy is just another con-job with a con-artist, Trump, as circus master. Yeah, we’re reassured once again that there will be oversight to prevent abuses but like the 2008 bail-out, no oversight, no one held accountable & the rich just got richer while the rest of us suffered & have continued to suffer since.

But, you argue, Donald is our champion! He promised us he’d “drain the swamp” in Washington D.C. Yeah right! The only thing he’s drained is the federal treasury. And his only “accomplishment” is giving yet another mind-boggling “tax-break” i.e. giveaway to the filthy rich.

 

You might care to note that a large factor in the “recession of 2008” was due to the fact of the deregulation of the banks & the financial sector of our economy that is now the largest part of our economy even though they don’t produce anything, they just manipulate numbers & keep sucking up the national wealth as we work two or three jobs trying to keep our heads above water.

Yet, Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan has been a busy boy deregulating everything he can get his tiny hands on. And who’s in charge of this phenomenal boondoggle i.e. the $2 trillion bail-out (which I’m positive will come to fruition)? Yep, Steve Mnuchin, the ‘Foreclosure King’ of California who along with his partners in crime, in the chaos & fear of the world-wide economic collapse of 2008, bought California’s Indy Mac bank & then foreclosed on over 36,000 homeowners including active duty military personnel. How’s that for an example of Trump’s patriotism?

 

“…rushed delinquent homeowners out of their homes by violating notice and waiting period statutes, illegally backdated key documents, and effectively gamed foreclosure auctions.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/steven-mnuchin-foreclosure-king-of-america_b_5a020bf6e4b06ff32c93f55f  (this is from an article by Nomi Prins, a brilliant & courageous young woman who was high up on the chain of power at Goldman Sachs whose former & future employees make up the overwhelming majority of staff of the U.S. Federal Treasury, coincidentally)

 

Yep, the head of our Treasury Department & with his infamous record of crime, is now going to be in charge of this $2 trillion-dollar gift from King Midas to the usual suspects. Doesn’t that just warm your heart? Talk about putting the fox in charge of the hen-house? Just how stupid can we be?

 

And when Trump was asked, I believe it was yesterday? Who’s going to be in charge of oversight on this $2 trillion bail-out, “I am.” Oh, sometimes I just have to laugh or I’d cry at how gullible Trump’s disciples are.

In a nutshell my friends, Trump “won” because the Democratic Party abandoned & betrayed the working class decades ago.

If only Trump’s addicts could for a few minutes do a search of his illustrious business history, they’d soon see that his “business empire” has been built on a foundation of lies, graft, corruption, & the backing of city councilmen, the New York mafia, & then the Russian mafia, etc.

I know, wishful thinking on my part? One can only dream. But Jesus Fuckin’ Christ! What is it going to take for Trump’s Walking Dead to regain consciousness? How many of them & us have to die suffering miserably because the arrogant & ignorant child refused to accept aid from the World Health Organization and ….

 

The Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team in 2018 to cut costs. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-fire-pandemic-team/

 

Trump’s consistent ignoring of the medical expert’s advice, his dismissal of science in general & his alternate facts which was proclaimed by his chief spinner of truth & fiction, Kellyanne Conway, is bad enough but his flagrant & consistent pronouncements which totally contradict the advice & warnings of our nation’s top medical advisers poses a very real Clear & Present Danger to America!

“Alternate Realities” for the mentally & morally disengaged

 

This world class moron’s boast a few years ago of being able to shoot someone standing in the middle of fifth avenue in New York City and it not mattering to his lemmings (my adjective), was perhaps a Freudian Slip on the part of the dumb-fuck supposedly in charge with his fat-ass sitting behind that once honored desk?

twin sons of different mothers (the other guy is Mussolini, Italy’s fascist leader & darling of America’s top business leaders

If you happen to recall the infamous story of the Roman Empire’s Emperor Nero, who sat and played the fiddle as Rome burned, could Trump be our Nero? Will he be sitting on his golden throne i.e. his gold-plated toilet sending out Tweets with one hand while holding a Big Mac with the other?

A Hard Day’s Night

 

Trump is the “leader of the Free World” who asked;

Trump on a “joy ride”

 

Donald Trump ‘asked why US couldn’t use nuclear weapons if he becomes president’ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/03/donald-trump-asked-why-us-cant-use-nuclear-weapons-if-he- 

         And perhaps most importantly, this charlatan in “charge,” is pushing us full-steam ahead towards that ledge overlooking the abyss?

“He is locking in permanent, irreversible damage to our environment through his irresponsible environmental policies, including his efforts to block progress on climate change,” said Dr. Michael E. Mann, distinguished professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University and the director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center. “Once we go beyond key tipping points — the melting of the major ice sheets — there is no going back.”

https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/04/politics/trump-climate-change-policy-rollbacks/index.html

         Yep! this is the kind of essay that an atypical citizen i.e. one fond of reading & thinking, writes. And I hope my essay disturbs you!

Trump’s farewell

         Dismissing this cretin in the White House as an anomaly is a luxury we can’t afford. We are in a high-stakes poker game with the future of humanity in the balance. You may recall Trump’s several failures as a casino owner, are you willing to gamble your children’s and your grandchildren’s futures on this loser?

                           —Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR March 25, 2020</h1>

Addendum

         Think about it, Trump is so colossally stupid & selfish that he’s unnecessarily putting all Americans at risk of getting the coronavirus because he wants to be reelected. Furthermore, every single Republican in the Senate who cowardly wouldn’t vote for Trump’s impeachment has the blood of all those Americans who die from this pandemic, on their hands. Is this what Trump means by “Making America Great Again?” Well, as I said, What you don’t know can kill you!

 

 

 

 

Reality T.V. and Reason

 

 

“Reason obeys itself; and ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it.”

—Thomas Paine

 

 

For those of you who may not be familiar with who Thomas Paine was, he played a very significant role in the launching of The American Revolution.

America’s exemplar of Reason & clear-eyed thinking

 

Just when we need our Reasoning faculties more desperately than ever due to the Coronavirus pandemic & our collective response to it, we have a cretin (a stupid, vulgar, or insensitive person) sitting behind the desk in the oval office with about as much “reason” as a Pet Rock.

Trump has clearly proven how decisive & brilliant he is dealing with the coronavirus!

 

Not just America but all of humanity needs to come together to defeat this virus but tragically, our reasoning capabilities have been replaced by irrational hatred and racism in far too many of us.

we begin by informing ourselves & spreading the facts to our fellow citizens

 

And Robber Barons like Trump have manipulated peoples’ herd mentality into an inhuman mob. Because a fake businessman played a successful real estate tycoon on a “reality” T.V. show that duped its viewers into believing anything he says.

Trump has succeeded beyond our worst nightmares! He tells his cult followers to not believe their own eyes or ears but only him & a third of the American public have fallen for it because “reason” fell out of fashion a long time ago.

See no Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak no Evil & deny your former “Common Sense”

 

The three years that Trump has been in office has proven to be a reign of error & terror. Terror for the suffering immigrants locked up like animals in the arena of farce & spectacle.

behind the image of the “successful” business man

 

And now the whole world is beginning to get an idea of what those poor immigrants feel like. But who’s in charge of leading our nation in this crisis, a petty & childish man-boy who has put all of America at a much greater risk of getting the virus because of his vanity & colossal ignorance!

 

Moreover, the Silicon Valley idiot-savants who promised us a New Age of solidarity, instead sold us out. The “social media” has morphed us into a nation of isolated & alienated individuals who have persuaded themselves into believing that they are well-rounded wonderful social beings with thousands of “friends.”

 

People who’ve fallen for the techno/social babble and think they’re communicating by adding “happy faces” to their often-incoherent sentence fragments like Donald Duck, their president.

Trump has repeatedly asked; “Why Can’t We Use Our Nuclear Weapons?”

 

Anti-intellectualism has become chic among the climate deniers. And as our world’s climate is dying around us, these indoctrinated onlookers look to Dr. Donald Strangelove who like Slim Pickens, is riding a nuclear missile down to Armageddon!

Trump tells the herd, Don’t Worry, Be Happy because it’s all a hoax & I’m making America great again one dead body at a time. Approximately 20 years ago, I watched my first & last episode of a “reality” T.V. show. It was the series, “Survivor,” I believe? I said to my wife, to “survive” on this show, you have to ignore any principles we were taught as we grew up i.e. honesty, sympathy, fairness, etc. And this “reality” show tells people that the world is cut-throat & everyone is a threat and a competitor. So, backstabbing, lying, cheating, etc. are not only okay but what you must do to “survive” or win.

 

Little did I know that 20 years later, the plethora of these crappy “reality” T.V. shows would vomit up a Trump. I only knew that I didn’t accept their premises so I wouldn’t watch them. It’s little wonder Donny became a fake celebrity on a fake T.V. show because he has all the negative traits of backstabbing, con man, thief, etc. And he knows all about “fake news,” because he’s a master of it.

 

From the beginning of his career, he built his “success” on fake news stories he’d get his friends to post in the media. He’d even call in to radio shows & pretend to be someone else & sing his own praises. Things haven’t changed much.

 

This pandemic is reminding us of a true reality, the reality that we must all cooperate & care about our fellow men because our survival depends on it!

 

Perhaps this would be a good point at which to remind you of the definition of “reason?” (a statement offered in explanation or justification; a rational ground or motive; the thing that makes some fact intelligible; a sufficient ground of explanation or of logical defense; the power of comprehending, inferring, or thinking especially in orderly rational ways; proper exercise of the mind; sanity; the sum of the intellectual powers)

 

If you haven’t downed all of Trump’s Kool Aid, you might care to reflect on Trump’s record over the past three years with these definitions of reason in mind?

for those who don’t remember Jim Jones & his cult who were forced to drink a deadly Kool-Aid!

 

FOX “News” (America’s equivalent to Russia’s Pravda & which I dubbed the fear & hate channel, several years ago) played a very significant role in providing the fertilizer for the soil which has led to the growth of willful ignorance in America. And Trump blossomed in this garden of evil, hate, & violence against the weak & vulnerable convenient scapegoats he rose to power in.

 

FOX viewers are indoctrinated into Trump’s, Mitch McConnel’s, Rush Limbaugh’s, etc. dystopian & paranoid and imaginary worldview where truth & facts are whatever they say they are. So, probably a good chunk of Trump’s Walking Dead as well as many “Christian” evangelicals are still clinging to their faith in Trump & denial of scientific fact. This wouldn’t be so terrifying were it not for the fact that they are now becoming a real threat to our collective well-being because they will be carriers & help to hasten the spread of this deadly virus.

 

Trump’s harvest of fear & hate will eventually produce the reality of his mind-boggling incompetence & ignorance which is slowly coming to fruition. We’re only at the beginning of this world-wide nightmare & because of Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan’s standard modus operandi, Deny, Divert, & Detract, perhaps millions of Americans who wouldn’t have died if he had an ounce of reason or compassion, will probably die. And when that time comes, not even the stupidest amongst us will be able to deny or ignore the horrific reality this fake scumbag helped to cause.

one of my recurring day-dreams

 

We’ve run out of time & every minute we delay may prove fatal. We, you, I, us, need to unite & to first of all shut the phony, lying moron in the White House up! We need to rediscover those principles the “reality” T.V. shows made us forget i.e. love, truth, compassion, empathy, trust, equality, fairness, etc.

United we Stand, Divided we Fall!

as all the great peacemakers (Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, etc. said) Love of your neighbor is our strength, our truth, our salvation!

 

Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, Oregon March 21, 2020

 

 

Mafia Nation

 

 

 

Isn’t it time to just come out & admit that we’ve thrown in the towel and given up on democracy? We’re certainly not fooling the rest of the world, they are scratching their heads in confusion as to how we could’ve elected such a corrupt moron as Trump to represent us. And two thirds of the American public know full well what a racist & sexist megalomaniac Donny is but I guess that third of the electorate that are in the Trump cult must cling to the charade that America is still a republic. I refer to these people as the Duck Dynasty Klan because they have clearly drunk Trump’s Kool-Aid & are living in Trumptown waiting for the signal to self-destruct.

Jim Jones cult weren’t that different from Trump’s

 

Here’s a brief overview for those of you in post-literate America, of Donny the misanthropic misanthrope’s background.

 

Donald Trump brands himself as a builder and manager of luxury developments, including Trump Tower, where he resides. He is surrounded by marble and gold, as well as the finest furniture. However, what most people fail to see that the roots of his fortune were built on the lower and middle classes, largely with the assistance of the government.  http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/ignatoff/160219 

the humble populist his supporters find so reassuring

 

If your memory hasn’t calcified, you’ll note that Donny with the girly hands & bone-spurs, came to power proclaiming his defense of the real Americans i.e. the working class & the ever-dwindling middle class. But if you’ll do even a little reading & research, you’ll soon learn that Donny & his daddy built their “real estate empires” on the backs of those same people Donny now claims to be defending. The Trumps took advantage of government loans to build many of their low-income projects (recall how much Donny hates the government?) & basically, became slumlords who often refused to make necessary repairs for their tenants. Moreover, the Trump crime family often turned-down rental applications from people of color.

People on Welfare Bad! People who get govt. contracts to screw the welfare people, Good!

Furthermore, in Atlantic City, Donny got a special building permit which allowed him to erect one of his casinos right next to a freeway offramp because of his promise to build low-income housing which he never delivered on like the tens of thousands of promises & lies he has made in his road to success. And if you give a damn about facts & truth, you know, those concepts so foreign to Donny boy, one of the best historians of Trump’s rise to celebrity & wealth is the late, Wayne Barrett in his book; “Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth.”

 

You see, Trump like so many corrupt politicians & businessmen count on people’s intellectual laziness & pitiful memories. Here’s another insightful little snippet from the link I provided above:

 

The Trump Organization was built by his father, Fred Trump, and later headed by Donald Trump from 1971. The senior Trump built small homes in the boroughs of New York City after WWII, largely with the help of low interest government loans. He also built and managed apartment complexes that were far from luxurious, also with help from the government. He built the Beach Haven Apartment complex in Brooklyn, New York over swampland, and the foundations were continually settling. These and other developments would eventually bring in great wealth from the United States government, utilizing the federal Section 8 housing program, which was designed to assist low income people.

 

Yep! That terrible government of ours which Trump refers to as The Swamp but if it weren’t for that same government, the Trump tyranny might very well never have come into existence? So, it seems the Trumps have been promising to “drain the swamp” for decades but they failed to mention the swamps under their building projects & how it affected their trapped tenants. I don’t know about you, but I’ve known more than my fair share of slumlords in my life, owners who refused to make repairs & always seem to find an excuse to not give me my security deposit back when I moved out? Yet Trump’s Walking Dead believe he’ll protect them from the government which helped make him obscenely wealthy by manipulating building codes & permits and gave him fraudulent tax breaks at the same time?

 

Again, with just a little bit of effort & research, you’ll discover that the super-rich, the G.O.P., & many, if not most of the sell-out Democratic party, have been manipulating the government via their armies of lobbyists who help or literally write the legislation that protects their wealth & gives them perpetual loopholes to avoid paying taxes, ignore regulations, & make the public pay for all their “mistakes” i.e. environmental destruction, pollution of our rivers, create the infrastructure for them to do their business, etc. etc. etc. And their refrain is always the same i.e. we can’t afford universal health care, a quality public education system, welfare, food stamps, etc. No, whatever money is available must go to the military/industrial complex which the 1% coincidentally happen to own.

 

 

Returning to that lovable liar in chief of ours, who learned the three most important tactics of his business & political life from the infamous, mob lawyer, Roy Cohn. And they are; Deny, Divert, & Detract. If you’ll make an effort to remove your rose-colored glasses while watching any video of Trump, you’ll see countless examples of him sticking to these three tactics 100% of the time.

 

Another bit of historical background is the fact that Roy Cohn, one of the most disgusting & despised lawyers of his time, served as Senator McCarthy’s hatchet-man during the McCarthy hearings that destroyed countless American writers, journalists, etc.’s lives & with little to no evidence to support their character assassinations. McCarthy relied on the lies, the gossip, the propaganda, etc. supplied to him by Cohn who built his fortune on defending the mafia crime bosses of New York, New Jersey, & Philadelphia to name a few. And Cohn, a self-hating homosexual who kept it in the closet until his battle with AIDS could no longer remain hidden, introduced Donny to his mob boss friends/clients.

 

Of course, the fact that many, if not most of these new friends of Donny’s happened to be in the construction business & concrete in particular, had nothing to do with Trump’s growing real estate empire. Nope! Donny didn’t receive any special rates on the cement he used in his building projects that he bought from the mafia bosses. Moreover, Trump didn’t benefit from his new friends’ control over labor unions in the construction business either. And once again, it was just a stroke of good luck that when all the other casinos’ employees went on strike in Atlantic City, Trump’s employees didn’t go on strike as well.

 

We’re supposed to believe that it was Donny’s business savvy that made him so rich, just ignore those countless mafia movies we grew up on, especially The Godfather which was so popular. Nothing to do with reality, right? But the “reality” of T.V.’s avalanche of “reality T.V. shows over the past 20 years is “real,” right? Obviously, the fact—remember Kellyanne’s ‘alternate facts?’ —that Donny, the self-proclaimed billionaire who demanded that every time his name was mentioned on the show, must be followed by the words; “the billionaire,” also had nothing to do with his “success” & clearly wasn’t a major factor in his becoming president.

 

Here’s another troubling fact for the blowhard in charge, King Trump the Dumb, appointed the most corrupt cabinet in U.S. history but hey, remember, he has always felt most comfortable in the company of crooks. And here’s another inconvenient truth for you Trump zombies who prefer to remain willfully ignorant (from the same article I quoted earlier)

 

When the former Soviet Union immigrants arrived in New York in the late 80’s and early 90’s, they needed a place to live. The Trumps were more than accommodating. First, they bought condemned buildings in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, New York and brought them barely up to code to rent to them. However, they also had multiple apartment buildings that they could convert to Section 8 for low income people, and the immigrants fell into that category. Most came from the Ukraine, and many were released from Soviet prisons.

They could only take the equivalent of $200 American dollars out of the Soviet Union, and these people had no jobs waiting for them. Also, most did not speak English, and the possibility of work seemed remote. However, they were eligible for Welfare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Education, Job Training, and Section 8 housing.

 

Gee? Guess Russian immigrants are okay in Donald’s world-view? Just not Mexican or Muslim immigrants. I can’t help but wonder if this was when Donny boy started his love relationship with Vladimir Putin & the other Russian mobsters who took over Russia’s government? Of course, now that Trump is supposedly so wealthy, he’s declared war on all those programs that assisted Trump’s Ukrainian friends because now he’s concerned with assisting his best buddies in the 1% of America’s wealthiest who are suffering under the weight of their billions of dollars. How I would love to be there to watch each of Trump’s blind followers when they lose their food stamps, public assistance, section eight housing, Medicaid, etc. I wonder if they’ll still be chanting; Make America Great Again?

 

So obviously, Trump has expanded his network of friends from the Italian mobsters who terrified the working class in New York, etc. to the Russian mobsters (oligarchs) who terrorize the entire Russian public. Are you beginning to understand why Trump the Mendacious loves & respects the world’s most vicious, bloody dictators like; Saddam Hussein, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-Un, Duterte, Xi Jinping, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi (Egypt), Erdogan (Turkey), Mohammad bin Salman (Saudi Arabia), Netanyahu (Israel), Bolsenaro (Brazil), & President Modi (India). And because these days, one can’t even assume that most people even have common sense, let me spell it out for you i.e. the people you admire says a lot about you—your values, your ethics, your principles. Gone are the days when our leaders & especially our presidents used to proclaim our respect for & our support for democracy, freedom, equality, and the law. Now we have a brazen lover of authoritarians & murderous dictators & a despiser of many of our former allies. So, what did all our friends & family members die for in the non-stop wars we’ve been involved in all my life (since 1952)?

Why do we have this vile, crude creature from the Black Lagoon sitting behind the desk in the oval office? One of the two forces we fought against in WWII was fascism which originated in Italy & the Nazis whom Trump & a sizeable number of his staunchest supporters love & respect i.e. the Neo-Nazis who attacked & beat the anti-Trump protestors in Charlotte, South Carolina and killed one young woman & Trump said; “They’re many good people on both sides.” Be careful what you wish for you Walking Dead & morally-bankrupt because Trump & his kind have brought fascism to a large extent to America already.

 

Continuing on with Trump’s reign of error & terror against America’s citizens, Donny has been laundering money for the Russian mafia for decades & mostly through his condos & other real estate holdings. Again, if you can bother to take the time or aren’t afraid of having your little world collapse, read on. After Trump declared bankruptcy on three of his casinos, Trump Plaza Hotel, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, & Trump Entertainment Resorts, American banks would no longer loan him the money to buy even a hot dog. And don’t forget his long list of business failures like Trump University which was proven a scam from the beginning & the countless Trump products that failed.

 

But for the Russian mafia, Trump was the ideal business partner because they could launder the billions they stole from the Russian people by buying condos in Trump’s gaudy & tasteless hotels, etc. & in return, they loaned him all the money he needed to keep from going completely belly-up in his businesses. American banks didn’t prosecute Trump for the hundreds of millions he still owed them because they figured they might eventually recoup some of their losses from this business tycoon that all the country rubes believed in.

 

Here’s some food for thought? Why is it that not only the republicans but also the corporate democrats keep attacking Bernie Sanders as being a socialist like it’s some sort of horrible crime yet Donald sings the praises of communist leaders from China & Russia and etc. & does business with them but I don’t hear any criticism of Donald for being in bed with communists & his supporters don’t seem to mind one bit? And here’s another historical tidbit that very few seem to remember or having ever known, if it hadn’t been for the Russian communists in WWII, we might have lost the war. The Russians lost something like 20 million of their citizens but overnight, after the war, they were all of a sudden Public Enemy Number One? Could it be the machinations of that slimy 1% who have all of us under their boot-heels?

 

Note that all authoritarians need a scapegoat to focus the citizens anger & hatred while they rob us all. Trump has clearly distracted his zombies on the vulnerable Mexican immigrants who are fleeing the drug cartels & even more obviously corrupt than our own government, their government leaders. Also significant is the fact that the Mexican crime lords have been murdering journalists in record numbers & Trump would obviously like to be able to do the same thing here.

 

Like all successful dictators, you must discredit the press because they investigate corruption & report the facts. Trump hates the media, especially the New York Times because they had an investigative team that spent over a year & a half investigating Trump’s claim to be a self-made billionaire who only received a small loan of one million dollars from daddy. They discovered & reported that in fact, Daddy Warbucks bailed his failure of a son out repeatedly & used his political contacts to get special deals for Donald in his real estate endeavors like tax breaks, special zoning permits, etc. And in fact, Donald the Dip-shit actually got more than $400 million dollars from daddy. My bet is that it’s probably far more than that but the investigative team could only substantiate the $400 million.

Here’s another conjecture for you, my imaginary reader, that is definitely not my original idea but I do add my personal touch to it. It just dawned on me today as I’m writing this essay that even though Al Capone committed numerous crimes including murder many times, the government couldn’t convict him on anything until they nailed him for tax evasion. Think about it, why do you think Donald Duck has been fighting tooth & nail for decades to keep his tax reports hidden? The most obvious reason that many have suggested is that if his tax records were revealed, they’d most likely show him to be the biggest phony & liar that he’s always been because he’s not really a billionaire.

 

I read somewhere that Trump used to call in to radio shows when he was still struggling to gain fame and he’d pretend to be someone else & would sing his own praises & grossly exaggerate and lie about his business successes & the amount of wealth he had. In fact, he lied about how much he was worth to Forbes magazine so he’d be placed on some list of the super wealthy. This is the guy who keeps proclaiming “fake news?” Wake-up people!

 

Trump has been a bully all his life & this too is why he loves dictators because after all, they’re bullies on a grand scale with their imprisonment, torture, & killing of their dissenters. You see, Trump has been on a non-stop self-promotion tour all his life because his most valuable commodity is the brand he’s built up over the decades i.e. his name which he leases out to corporations because of its name recognition. But sadly, most of his cult believe he actually owns everything that bears his name & therefore believe he’s nothing but one huge success story & that they too can become successful if they just listen to his wisdom & accept his principles as their own, that is to say, having no principles.

 

And this is why we have the first Twitter president who behaves more like a malicious, teen-age bully attacking every single person who dares to point out his lies & contradictions. So much for the “social media,” and its illusory bringing people together. No, Trump is like that Wizard in the Wizard of Oz who hid behind a curtain & used a loud, bellowing & spooky voice to intimidate his subjects and only the seriously challenged mentally & morally could fall for such a scam & sham as P.T. Barnum Trump.

 

Need I point out the obvious like the fact that the mafia uses verbal threats, then physical intimidation, & finally if all else fails, murder to keep people fearful & turning over their hard-earned money? Particularly revealing is when Trump in his Nazi rallies calls on his henchmen to beat the hell out of a protestor & get them outta here. I am truly fearful that this may only be the beginning of these brown-shirt tactics?

Also like his mafia role models, Trump hands out favors to those who are loyal to him & publicly kiss his ass or do his dirty work but when they get busted every now & then, all of a sudden Donny declares; “I don’t know that guy.” That’s girly man’s idea of loyalty, a person who will take the fall for him even when he publicly claims he doesn’t know you or had nothing to do with whatever crime you committed at his request.

 

Talk about a nation of suckers, roughly a third of America’s citizens are slavishly loyal to this fake megalomaniac & we have now reached a point where it can literally mean their lives! Yep! When the coronavirus first came to our attention, Trump declared it a hoax created by the Democrats to hurt him in the 2020 presidential election. And this declaration as well as advising people to go to work even if they’re feeling sick proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that he doesn’t give a damn about anyone except himself & his reelection because as long as he’s president, he can’t be prosecuted for his long list of crimes.

 

It really boggles the mind that his supporters will back him on every dirty deed he commits no matter how egregious & now, no matter how deadly believing in him can be. If this isn’t the hallmark of an authoritarian wanna be dictator, they’d better change the definition? Like mafia bosses whose words were absolute & anyone who didn’t follow their orders to the T, are silenced one way or another.

 

Returning to the pandemic now terrifying the world, Trump’s cult also conveniently ignores the fact that Trump in his obsession to eliminate every single act, no matter how valuable it may have been to the general welfare of all Americans;

 

“In 2018, the Trump administration fired the government’s entire pandemic response chain of command, including the White House management infrastructure.”  https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/31/coronavirus-china-trump-united-states-public-health-emergency-r

 

“Building on the Ebola experience, the Obama administration set up a permanent epidemic monitoring and command group inside the White House National Security Council (NSC) and another in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—both of which followed the scientific and public health leads of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the diplomatic advice of the State Department.”

 

The last quote is from the same link above & for the record, “Foreign Policy” is a conservative & highly respected journal among America’s academic & military elite, hardly a liberal publication.

 

“But other White House efforts included reducing $15 billion in national health spending and cutting the global disease-fighting operational budgets of the CDC, NSC, DHS, and HHS. And the government’s $30 million Complex Crises Fund was eliminated.”

 

Doesn’t this make you feel safe & secure? Yeah, about as safe & secure as living in an inner-city ghetto controlled by drug lords or cartels. Trump’s hatred of everything Obama is clearly pathological & my perhaps simplistic take on it —but then again, we are dealing with a guy who reads & speaks on a fifth grade level—is that Obama humiliated Trump at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner in 2011, showing him for what he is i.e. a fake who built his political base by starting the “Birther Movement” that just wouldn’t stop in its obsession of proving that Obama wasn’t born in America.

 

Of course, this stirred the blood of America’s racists & bigots who refused to accept the fact that a black guy had been elected president & Trump’s base to this day is primarily made up of such patriots. Here’s the video clip if you’d like to enjoy a few laughs?

 

https://youtu.be/HHckZCxdRkA

 

But returning to the deadly seriousness of our situation re: the coronavirus, here are a few more details of how mind-bogglingly irresponsible this moron in the oval office has behaved;

 

“In May 2018, Trump ordered the NSC’s entire global health security unit shut down, calling for reassignment of Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer and dissolution of his team inside the agency. The month before, then-White House National Security Advisor John Bolton pressured Ziemer’s DHS counterpart, Tom Bossert, to resign along with his team. Neither the NSC nor DHS epidemic teams have been replaced. The global health section of the CDC was so drastically cut in 2018 that much of its staff was laid off and the number of countries it was working in was reduced from 49 to merely 10.” (again, from the same article as above)

 

I could continue citing more depressing info from the article but I’m sure you take my point already. Perhaps some of you may recall how another great Republican president, George W. Bush, responded after the disaster of Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans? Well this time it’s not only the Black residents of New Orleans who are going to be thrown under the bus, but all of us.

But don’t say the G.O.P. doesn’t have a sense of humor, no, because they clearly do i.e. George Bush Sr. declared that under his leadership, America was becoming a “kinder & gentler nation.” I’ll leave it to you to decide for yourself as to the veracity of that claim. And not to be outdone by daddy, George W. Bush, declared that under his stalwart leadership, the Republican party were now known as “Compassionate Conservatives.” Yeah, I’m sure the Iraqis would agree with that self-assessment as well.

 

Okay, back to our present “compassionate conservative” who proves his patriotism by hugging a U.S. flag in a somewhat perverse manner, Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan aka Mafia Don.

 

Because I have a habit of trying to educate people by way of my writing, my essays are often lengthy & in this post-literate society of ours, very few are likely or perhaps even capable of such sustained attention. So, I’m going to just list the rest of the points I’d like to make in my assessment of how we, the U.S., who have been kicking ass & taking the resources of a large part of the Developing Nations for decades now while under the banner of; ‘”Bringing Freedom & Democracy to the World,” have de facto become a nation ruled by Mafioso but legal mobsters because they got the stamp of approval by their captains in Congress.

 

  • Forget the obsession by the DNC that Russia put Trump in the White House (this is a distraction by the DNC to avoid their own incompetence as a major factor in why Hillary lost But the Russian government is made up of & headed by a mobster & Russian troll farms did spread millions of false rumors, etc. about Hillary & pro-Trump ads and Facebook sold Americans’ data to Cambridge Analytica which it used to zero in on the “persuadables” which they bombarded with their fake news & this did indeed play a major role in Trump’s theft of the presidency.</li>
  • Rule #1 in the Mafia, keep your mouth shut & we’ll take care of you & this is Trump through & through though he rarely keeps his word to his flunkies who fall on their swords for their amoral boss
  • And like mafia bosses who have judges, police commissioners, D.A.s, etc. in their pockets, Mafia Don has the Attorney General in his pocket & the Justice Dept. so it’s “All Skate Day” for Trump’s cronies
  • The girly-man also hands out favors like mob bosses to those who have been loyal to him
  • The Emoluments Clause of our Constitution, the bedrock of our legal & political system, (the Constitution) is crystal clear i.e. a sitting president can’t receive money, expensive gifts, etc. or in other words profit off the presidency. Trump says fuck that! And even more brazenly, he tells foreign leaders, etc. to stay at his properties so he collects tributes (bribes) in full display but no one has the balls to nail him on his blatant disregard of our laws.
  • Donald Duck has been a consistent business failure throughout his career but daddy bailed him out time & time again, then the Italian mafia bailed him out in his Atlantic City casinos, then the Russian mafia when U.S. banks wouldn’t loan him any more money because he was already in debt over $4 billion but Donny Boy’s skillful manipulation of the media throughout his life has enabled him to dodge, bury, & switch the attention of the media, to scapegoat selected targets & divert the attention from his failures, incompetence, & corrupt business practices</li>
  • Like mafia loan sharks, Donald tells his Walking Dead cult members to beat people up i.e. “get him out of here & if you get sued, I’ll pay for your legal fees” Mafioso start with breaking people’s knees, then burning their businesses or their homes, & finally in “eliminating” their public enemies not unlike in Las Vegas where they end up buried in the desert
  • Donny follows similar tactics Mussolini, the fascist leader of Italy in WWII whom many of our top business leaders loved, & coincidentally, the American mafia got started in Italy, Sicily in particular
  • One of the most nauseating facts about this swine in the White House is that he was able to dupe so many poor & working-class people into believing he was/is their champion. This is akin to the mafia bosses who took over America’s labor unions, claiming they’re the defenders of the American workers, who fought for a decent wage, overtime, workplace safety, etc. for decades i.e. the Teamsters being the most infamous case. American mobsters ran a decades long program of intimidation, beatings, & killing of union leaders. And now, Trump has fooled the gullible, though understandably fed-up with the spine-less Democrats who sold them out in the 1970s, into believing he, a guy who has screwed poor, working class tenants & employees, & contractors throughout his artificial rise to billionaire status. So, if you believe a mafia boss is your friend & champion, you clearly need to remove the scales from your eyes.
  • Like mafia bosses, Trump is eliminating every program that offers help to the poor, the unemployed, the homeless, and the dying, so you will have no one to turn to for help but him, the Emperor with No Clothes who decides your fate like the Kings & “nobility” in the feudal ages depending on his mood at the moment. No laws, no rights, no nothing unless you bow, scrape, & grovel at his feet and praise him as he does himself
  • “Fake News?” Yeah, the duplicitous duck knows all about this subject because he has mastered it over the course of his fake life. Trump clearly believes in Joseph Goebbels (Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda) major insight i.e. the bigger the lie & the more often you tell it, eventually will become a “truth,” or a “fact” in Kelly Anne’s “alternate facts” universe. “Inconvenient truths” are dismissed as “fake science” or “fake facts” and only the almighty Oz (Donald) knows what is fact & what is fake i.e. anything that is critical of him is fake, and anything that says he’s a genius & etc. ad nauseam, is a fact!
  • Here’s a little-known fact for you—here in the real world where the laws of gravity for example, are a real fact—Donald the Insecure demanded that every time his name was mentioned on “The Apprentice,” they must say “billionaire.” The creators, producers, & writers of the series have openly admitted that the show was fake from beginning to end but evidently, many, if not most Trump believers took it as proof of Trump’s superiority & business expertise. And for-the-record, I’m going to interject here & brag about myself—Trump does it 24/7 but I’ll probably be accused of making this all up just to tarnish the image of Little Lord Fauntleroy, the Fuhrer from Queens. I watched one episode of “Survivor” over 20 years ago which I believe was the first “reality” t.v. show & was immediately turned-off. I thought & I said to any who would listen, first of all, there’s something wrong here when we watch T.V., an artificial medium designed to dupe us into buying products we don’t need, to get a picture of reality.? This is an oxymoron or blatant contradiction in terms. And secondly, from the beginning of this tragic phenomenon, these shows all have one thing in common & that thing is what Trump has built his fortune on i.e. lie, cheat, steal, do whatever you have to do to come out on top. And this is our national leader? The kind of role model we want our children to emulate? So, Hell yeah, I’m proud as Hell that I saw through this bullshit from the get-go!
  • And America’s election system has become almost as indistinguishable as that of the so-called “Banana Republics” we love to look down our noses at. In other words, our political system is just as corrupt as any mafia’s hierarchy where he who has the most money & the most politicians & judges in their pockets, “wins.” I have long recognized the fact that the Democratic Party is basically spineless but I deluded myself into believing that at least they cared a little about the poor & the working class but I no longer believe this. Bernie Sanders is not perfect by any means, but he clearly has a very long track record of fighting for the common man. Yet, I have to face the fact that the DNC with the help of the so-called “liberal” MSNBC cable network is blatantly sabotaging Bernie’s bid for the presidency. Why? Quite simply because he represents a very real threat to their corruption as usual policies & practices just a little less overt than the G.O.P. Again, not that different from the mafia-controlled unions who pretend to defend the American worker. By-the-way, I have not forgotten that the supposedly “liberal news network, MSNBC, fired Phil Donahue for his unforgivable crime of having on one “anti Irag invasion guest for every two, pro Iraq invasion guests.” So much for MSNBC’s reputation as a bulwark against the Right wing’s assault on Democracy. (there are many other examples but I need to get to the point of this essay)

 

 

In conclusion, I was going to end this essay without including one of the most obvious facts which I’d forgotten i.e. it was the Italian/American mafia that built Las Vegas & Atlantic City so they could launder the hundreds of millions they’d gained from their criminal empires. And Trump clearly never would’ve made it to where he is without being in bed with the American mafia in the beginning of his ‘career.’ So now our president is a former casino owner i.e. laundered millions for both Italian mobsters & Russian mobsters? Boy has the bar dropped in terms of the caliber of man we’ll allow to be president of the most powerful nation on Earth. At this rate, we won’t be on top much longer!

 

Then the Russian mafia saved his stupid ass i.e. how dumb a businessman do you have to be to fail as an owner of a casino? For example, it never dawned on Donald the Dip-Shit that opening other casinos in the same town would be competing against yourself for business. And only mafia figures who had so much to gain by backing Donald the Moron,  no matter how stupid he was because he was very valuable as a circus master to distract the public & the government from looking too close in to their shady deals, would loan this loser money.

 

And like the millions of suckers every year who lose their money, sometimes their entire life-savings in gambling, all those who voted for Trump & bet on his making a real change for the better in their lives, will maybe someday realize what a fool’s errand they were on? The house always wins & the house is the mafia dons, the corporate cockroaches, & the political “leaders” like Mitch McConnell who have sabotaged every single piece of legislation that could help us, the poor, working (well, sometimes?) class to live with just a modicum of dignity or self-respect?

 

You see, my imaginary reader, the common factors between mafia organizations, drug cartels, dictatorships, etc. is that in order to maintain power, you must rule with an iron fist. And to do so, you must master the techniques of effective threats, intimidation, & fear. Say what you want about Donald’s inability to speak in coherent sentences or a semblance of logic or rational thought, but he is a master manipulator & fear monger.

 

And a “successful” mafia boss must never be troubled by things like a conscience, empathy, sympathy, morality, or principles. Donald is clearly at the top of that class along with his favorite despots around the world like Putin, Duterte, Erdogan, Xi, Bosonaro, & his love interest, Rocket Man of North Korea, to name just a few, in terms of not being hampered by those irritating humanistic qualities.

 

Unfortunately for humanity, all those who are not members of the 1%, the mob bosses are gambling with our lives & if the coronavirus doesn’t kill us, global warming, or a possible nuclear exchange which Trump with his 5th grade intelligence level & impulsiveness & preference for running the American government via Twitter just might be tempted to launch in one of his frequent temper-tantrums at imagined or real, public sleights or criticisms?

Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR March 8, 2020

 

 

 

 

A Critical Point

 

 

 

I remember something I learned almost 40 years ago in a basic introduction to computers class i.e. G.I.G.O. (Garbage In, Garbage Out) & it struck me recently how relevant that is to American society today.

 

I have been struggling for over 30 years to connect the dots and/or simplify some of the complex issues facing us. I am a working-class guy & I have experienced or seen much of the suffering visited upon my fellow blue-collar citizens over the course of my life.

 

The only difference between me & most of the people I have known or met in my life is that I have an insatiable appetite for knowledge & strive to make sense of the chaos that engulfs us. Many, if not most of my family & friends over the years have dismissed my obsession & laugh at my efforts. But I continue in this lifetime goal because of my belief that each of us can make a difference.

 

Returning to G.I.G.O., it dawned on me that because we find ourselves now living in a “post-literate” society where many, if not most people, won’t or can’t write, & more and more people prefer texting to speaking to one another, we are facing an even greater mountain of obstacles than I had thought?

so much for the “social skills” school is supposed to teach kids

 

I hate to sound so doom & gloom but burying our heads in the sand won’t make the problems go away & certainly won’t save us from a possible nuclear exchange or total climate destruction.

 

I live in a constant state of frustration because I can’t seem to find the right words to awaken & inspire others to realizing that reading good books—challenging books like in the set of the Great Books of the Western World that was published by Encyclopedia Britannica—helps us develop our critical/analytical thinking skills.

 

And writing helps us to organize our thoughts & speaking to one another affirms our humanity i.e. gives us comfort & the energy to continue in the struggle to save ourselves from the destructive & greedy ones.

 

Tragically though, many of the so-called “best & brightest” have an almost religious devotion & belief that technology & Silicon Valley in particular, will save us. Well as I said, G.I.G.O. and if we (the working class & the technocrats) continue to cling to this delusion, we are shit out of luck!

the “social network” that is dividing us & dumbing us down

 

My religion (and I love saying this because I know it drives the “Christian” evangelicals/fundamentalists crazy) is humanism i.e. we got ourselves into this mess & it’s up to us, not some mythical god, to get ourselves out of it.

The “School of Athens” (Greek philosophy, the foundation of all knowledge)

 

I don’t know how true it is but when I hear it claimed that our average attention span is less than that of a goldfish, the more depressed I become. How can we reach people when the violence & titillation of murder, sex, destruction, greed, the end of the world, etc. preoccupies them? Oh yeah, speaking of our gold fish attention span, it gives a new meaning to that phrase; “living in a fish bowl” eh?

 

Moreover, when I see the absolute loyalty to Trump no matter what he does or says, it’s hard to not slip into utter despair. That craven cretin & totally despicable person even had the audacity to proclaim that he could stand on fifth avenue in New York & shoot somebody and it wouldn’t affect his supporters’ love for him. I wonder if they’d even turn a blind-eye to his inhumanity if he were to rape their 12-year-old daughter? I don’t ask this lightly but because it seems that we’ve sunk so low in terms of what is acceptable behavior & speech in this country.

his buddy Jeffrey Epstein trafficked in underage girls, Did Trump participate?

I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. (Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan)

 

Yet still there is hope & fighters like Bernie Sanders inspire hope in many of us. And despite the betrayal of the so-called liberal MSNBC & their attempts to sabotage Bernie’s campaign like the DNC did in 2016, it is possible that Bernie could pull it out. So, in that spirit, I too continue to struggle to reach people & show them some concrete tools they can use to empower themselves.

this is the Liberal channel?

 

A few of the “tools” that I tell people about are the Great Books which I already mentioned & which has a study guide for people interested in forming a small group to discuss/debate the Great Ideas that are central to Western Civilization as well as Eastern Civilization.

And one book in particular that a Jesuit scholar turned me onto many years ago is titled; “Problem Solving & Comprehension” by Arthur Whimbey & Jack Lochhead.” It is full of challenging problems with guides for people to work together in finding solutions so you need at least one other person to work through them together.

 

Continuing on, when trying to explain why people should read the more challenging books of our civilization, I use this analogy; suppose you are going to enter a foot race with the fastest kid in your school, well, you know that you are going to have to put out far more effort than you would if you knew your opponent was only a mediocre runner. In other words, the tougher the challenge, the more effort you’ll have to expend & as a result, you may not win but you’ll definitely come out stronger.

 

Developing our critical/analytical thinking skills is self-empowering & helps make us less vulnerable to liars & con artists like Trump.

If you’re not one of the Walking Dead, think it over?

 

We are at a critical point in human history & we can take the “Critical Path” that Buckminster Fuller showed us or we can continue to “Amuse Ourselves to Death” that Neil Postman warned us about & continue chuckling at the monomaniacal moron in the White House but the last laugh will be his & will be on us if we don’t get serious about saving ourselves & our planet!

Bucky Fuller known as the planet’s friendly genius & the modern day Leonardo da Vinci!

 

—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR Feb. 12, 2020

Addendum

 

I have this nagging feeling that perhaps I wasn’t as clear as I could be re: G.I.G.O. & its relevance to this critical point in history? In a nutshell, if as I argue, the information that we are fed via the “news” & the web is more & more unreliable and at the same time, we are getting dumber & dumber because of our lack of critical & analytical thinking skills and  several other factors such as a habitual liar in the Oval Office, it’s becoming more important than ever that we become highly skeptical & suspicious of what we read, see, or hear on the web as well as in the news. Anybody can post on the web & if you are ruled by your emotions i.e. hot button topics like God, Guns, & Gays which the 1% know how to play like a finely tuned musical instrument to manipulate the public into voting against their own best interests, you are playing a sucker’s game. And this game isn’t a game at all, we’re talking about our lives & the sustainability of our planet that our lives depend on!

 

 

A Recipe for Disaster

 

 

Ingredients

 

“reality T.V.”

FOX “News”

Facebook

Twitter

Breitbart

Apathy

Willful ignorance

Half-cup of shameless republicans

Half-cup of spineless democrats

A good dose of post-literate society

“smart phones”

Google

Cup of Trump yeast

 

Mix thoroughly with a dash of conspiracy theory, Glenn Beck, & some Rush Limbaugh & ¼ cup of Alex Jones

Add a public education system constantly under attack

 

Blend all the ingredients in a terrorist mixing bowl & bake at Fahrenheit 9/11 for 40 years

 

Yield: A Nation Divided as badly as the American Civil War, if not worse?

Onward Christian Soldiers!

The American Taliban under Trump

 

 

 

I first heard the term; “The American Taliban,” on the series; “The Newsroom,” which was created & written by Aaron Sorkin. But as is often the case, intelligent television doesn’t go over well with American viewers so it was a short-lived series.

However, we were fortunate in that Sorkin laid out the key features of the American Taliban in one of the series’ episodes & I am using them as an outline for this essay. Determine for yourself how accurate a portrait they give us of America as of January 21, 2020, the day the farce of the Impeachment against the miscreant in the White House began.

 

“Ideological purity: Fundamentalism is an term used to describe religious movements that reject modernism (particularly scientific thought and secularism), that claim to find all truth, including science, history, and psychology, in their sectarian scriptures, and that often try to impose some degree of religious law on all citizens of any government they are able to control. The type species is the Christian Fundamentalism of the 1920s, which is a reaction against Darwin’s theory of evolution; by extension the term is applied to Haredi Judaism and Wahhabism in Islam. In more abstract terms, it can refer to any movement to recapture an ideological “purity” within a religion, that supposedly has been lost by mainstream adherents of the religion at large;”

    • This “ideological purity” is an absolute that all fundamentalist leaders must strictly stick to whether they be Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or whatever. They must claim to know the Will of God & therefore, any who dares to question their claims is a heretic & must be driven out or killed in order to preserve the purity of their version of the truth. One would think that the founding values & principles of a religion would also have to adhere to this “ideological purity,” but clearly this isn’t the case when it comes to American “Christian” evangelicals. Why? Because Trump is the poster boy of how to violate every one of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount guiding principles for self-professed Christians but they love him anyway.
    • Compromise as weakness: and again, I’m confused because if compromise is weakness, why have the 60% to 70% who proclaim absolute support for Trump, compromised their “principles” & “values” by supporting such an evil person? Of course, the GOP who have gotten nearly everything on their wish list, won’t compromise an inch with the Democrats because they, the GOP have the upper hand because they control the Senate. And Mitch McConnell stated it very clearly from the beginning of Obama’s presidency that the GOP was going to block every single act or law that Obama tried to pass. This shows clearly that McConnell & the GOP don’t give a damn about the American people, only about maintaining & expanding their power. And again, the “Christians” believe that any compromise with non-Christians, especially Secular Humanists is a de facto bargain with the devil.

      Obama bent over backwards trying to compromise with GOP & as a result, we got Trumped!
    • A fundamentalist belief in scriptural literalism: Yep! Like back in the days of the Old Testament, people really did live for 800 to 900 years, Noah actually took two of every animal species on Earth into the Ark, etc. etc. etc. And if you dare to question such things, you are guilty of heresy and may be stoned like the Islamic fundamentalists enjoy doing in Afghanistan but it’s usually women who are the ones getting stoned for some reason?
    • Denying science: this one goes almost without saying as the one I just covered makes clear i.e. Science easily proves the absurdity of such claims as people roaming the earth with dinosaurs, etc. so organized religion has been at war with science throughout most of history. Just reflect on the fate of  Galileo for example. In fact, the modern variation of Christian fundamentalism basically sprang from the days when Darwin’s Theory of Evolution started being taught in our public schools. And tragically, in Trump’s reign of ignorance, Climate destruction denial which denies the scientific proof of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists on the planet & the Christian fundamentalists are tickled pink about it because they can’t wait for the destruction of our planet & believe Jesus is going to thank them for their ignorance & their help in bringing an end to the world. Remember, Jesus loves you!
    • Unmoved by Facts: Yep & as Trump’s resident witch, Kellyanne Conway tells all their faithful,” there are alternative facts. “Of course, there are in their alternate realities. I wish someone would dare Kellyanne and Trump to demonstrate their alternative facts by jumping off a high roof to prove that gravity isn’t a fact either. Naturally, the Trump team spout alternate facts daily but we, non-believers have always referred to alternate facts as lies. In fact, I think Trump is going for the world record in alternate facts with his list of lies which is somewhere around 16,241 but hey, who’s counting?
    • Undeterred by new information: a polite euphemism for stubborn as a mule, willfully ignorant, and you may as well give up hope of them ever opening their minds. They have their “faith” and that’s all they need. These are just the kinds of people who make good, little Nazis, cult followers, etc.

      a third of the U.S. public has drunk Trump’s Jonestown Kool-Aid
    • A hostile fear of progress: like their fear and rejection of science & facts, progress is seen as a threat to their calcified beliefs that they desperately cling to or else their entire belief structure could collapse. This scares the hell out of these pea-brains & they’ll kill you rather than admit their errors. Of course, they conveniently ignore things like the automobiles which they drive were invented due to progress. And it never ceases to amaze me how they constantly love to portray themselves as the victims of our society. When they are the bullies & the ones who persecute people, who don’t accept their hypocritical principles & values & seek to enslave us all.
    • A demonization of education: this is a subject that is dear to my heart because I have loved education all my life, been an avid reader since second grade, & have worked as an educator for the majority of my work career. In fact, my first book is about the Christian fundamentalists war on secular humanism which they see as a clear & present danger to their reign of error & terror. It’s not a coincidence that Trump appointed Betsy DeVos as our Secretary of Education, a person who never attended public schools, who is rich, & who is pushing Charter Schools down our throats.
      “It Can’t Happen Here,” right?

      Also bear in mind that one of the first things that all dictators, whether religious (theocrats) or oligarchs do is either shut down all the public schools or take them over. Why? Because as people slowly become more & more informed, they begin to question established “authorities” like the Church & the State. {if you’d care to spend 10 mins. watching this video, you’ll gain a great overview of how the GOP has duped so many Americans into focusing their anger on the govt. rather than the corporate cockroaches who deserve the lion’s share of the blame for why we’re in this terrible state of being}</li>

    • A need to control women’s bodies: this is one of those aspects of fundamentalists’ beliefs that I can only speculate on because it is hard for me to fathom their fear of women? Perhaps it’s as simple as their insecurity as men & their wish to always remain in control over their families? And by being the authoritarians in their communities as well as in their families, they never have to worry about pleasing their wives sexually?

      Trump’s “Christian” values i.e. “Grab them by the pussy.”
    • Severe xenophobia: strangers & foreigners who are by definition strangers, like knowledge, new information, etc. are a threat to their belief systems which are clearly very fragile or they wouldn’t be so insecure about it. Why? Because contradictory ideas may slowly infect their communities, their families and they will lose their precious control. Of course, this also helps to justify or rationalize their racism & their desperate attempts to maintain the purity of their ideology. And once again, they just conveniently ignore all inconvenient truths & facts i.e. that America is a nation made up of immigrants from all over the world. If these frightened & dangerous children had their way, they’d live in a nation not unlike what Hitler wanted for Germany where everyone was blue-eyed & blonde.
    • Tribal mentality: well, as I just pointed out, fundamentalists ideally would like to live in a world where there are as few physical differences between their faithful as possible but given the realities of this world, a close second is a common mentality or way of thinking about the world. And this is why they paint a picture of you’re either with us or against us as our illustrious, chicken-hawk president, George W. Bush, the Coward from Crawford declared when he launched his “War on Terror.” This simplistic & obviously ignorant Manichean view of the world makes it easier for their faithful to carry out their crimes against humanity in the name of Jesus, God, Allah, or whoever.
    • Intolerance of dissent: this attribute of the fundamentalist mindset is one of the scariest in my book & again reveals how dangerously ignorant these people are. Jesus was clearly a dissenter in his time in that he spoke out against the Roman authorities & committed civil acts of disobedience. And in America’s history, our founding fathers were all dissenters from British rule. The United States would’ve never even come into existence without dissent but fundamentalists don’t want us to remember these facts or to ever even learn about them. Again, showing how weak their faith is!
    • Pathological hatred of U.S. government: and here we have another one of those very convenient crossing of paths by the “Christian” fundamentalists & the Republican party. You see, my imaginary reader, the Republicans swore that they’d overturn every single part of FDR’s “New Deal” which established much of what we now refer to as the “Social Safety Net,” for all of us not born with a silver spoon in our mouths. And they’ve been spreading their anti-government propaganda ever since i.e. you too can become rich if you don’t rely on the government for unnecessary handouts which only make you lazy & prevent you from becoming self-sufficient & wealthy. We’re supposed to ignore the fact that most of the rich & the giant corporations who have monopolies over us, have been subsidized by that same evil government. Yep! The same government that keeps handing out tax breaks to the rich, subsidies for their Research & Development, tariff protections, the infrastructure that allows them to do business, the military to protect their corrupt businesses overseas, etc. etc. etc. And no, this isn’t a free pass in terms of excusing our government’s long track record of crimes against humanity. But, the government is the only force capable of standing up to the corporations when their greed is just too far overboard. Moreover, it does occasionally stand up for us & does provide some assistance to we, the people, every now & then. The corporations behind this decades long propaganda war against the government want to abolish everything the government does to help us but preserve every handout & protection it provides them with our tax dollars. So, when I hear these morons i.e. Alex Jones, Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, etc. railing against the government, I wish that I had a public forum from which I could call out their hypocrisy. Hell, if it weren’t for our government allowing the corporations to steal our public airwaves, these conspiracy theorists & traitors like Jones, Limbaugh, & Beck wouldn’t have the platforms they do to spew such bile and fear & hate.

 

Unquestionably, the Trump campaign team knew they’d have to throw these dangerously crazy evangelicals a big bone to gain their support for Trump, hence Pence as his running mate.

Trump is clearly one of those with the attention span of a goldfish

 

Some argued no big deal, the vice president does nothing of any significance but the fact that were Trump to have a heart attack or something, we could end up with this American Taliban as leader of the free world. Yeah, pretty scary shit, right?

 

A lot of us who live on either coast tend to forget or perhaps never knew just how powerful these “Christian” fundamentalists are & how many millions of regular Americans listen to them on the radio daily as well as to the Rush Limbaugh show. And we ignore these people at our own peril!

 

How soundly can we sleep knowing we have someone who prays for the end of the world, a heartbeat away from the presidency? Remind you of anyone? Osama bin Laden perhaps but with the mightiest arsenal of nuclear weapons on the planet at his fingertips?

 

Scare tactics you say? Fuckin’ A! But bear in mind that the corporate cockroach masters who own the media & Washington D.C., are using scare tactics day-in & day-out and have been for well over 40 years to scare us into spending over half our budget on weapons of mass destruction while letting our health, education, & welfare go to ruin.

I am trying to warn you but we have become so used to the steady barrage of fear mongering by the powers that be that honest warnings like mine fall on deaf ears I fear? If the public knew of how many close calls we’ve had regarding nuclear exchanges between the U.S. & Russia, they’d be shaking in their boots.

 

Conclusion, we have a 73-year-old who is obviously cognitively impaired to many, if not most of our mental health professionals. And he is also clearly morally bankrupt to all but the willfully blind & ignorant who proclaim they’ll support him no matter what. Gee? I wonder if they’d still support him if he raped their 12-year-old daughter? After all, he was buddies with Jeffrey Epstein though of course he now denies it.

I wonder what Trump’s buddy, Jeffrey Epstein might have told us about Trump?

But he did hire Epstein’s lawyer, Dershowitz, to help with his fight against his impeachment. And Dershowitz succeeded in getting Epstein a mind-boggling deal after being convicted of sexually trafficking teenage girls.

 

Yeah, once again we see on full public display those good, wholesome American values the American Taliban love to brag about along with their GOP (Greedy Old Pigs) pals.

 

So, we have this spoiled, rich brat as president who more resembles a teenage girl spending the majority of her day on Twitter spreading gossip & rumors and viciously attacking other girls’ character with lies. And our “commander in chief” who can’t even be bothered to read his daily briefings because he’s most likely not even able to comprehend their complexity, is sitting in the White House playing with matches in a gasoline-soaked room. And if he continues playing with the powder kegs in the Middle East, he may just make the American Taliban’s dream of the Apocalypse a reality?

“Christian” evangelicals’ Wet Dream

 

As for me, I’m an atheist who believes in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and that’s how I live my life.

 

Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR on January 22, 2020

 

Dangerous Stupidity!

 

 

 

Of course, nowadays on the Left side of the political spectrum, it’s not PC to call people stupid. No, we’re supposed to be sensitive of others’ feelings, etc., no matter how hate & violence-spewing they are.  Well I say, fuck that shit!

the laws against hate speech don’t apply to Trump or the rich

 

We’re being killed and you tell me to be polite? Is it any wonder that we’re constantly beat by the far Right? Michael Moore said that he was talking with Steve Bannon some time back & that he asked Bannon about this & Bannon said; “the liberals or democrats are having a pillow fight while we go for the head shot i.e. shooting to kill.”

Greta Thunberg’s “How Dare You?” to world leaders says it all!

 

And let’s face it, he was at least honest in this regard. Speaking of Steve Bannon, let me lay out for you how this vile, Machiavellian strategist for Trump who played a major role in getting Trump into the White House, capitalized on the public’s general stupidity to do so.

Bannon is on a Crusade stirring-up racial hatred around Europe

 

You see, Bannon was vice-president of a company called Cambridge Analytica & the Trump campaign hired Cambridge Analytica to help in Trump’s run for the presidency. Well, Cambridge Analytica bought access to Facebook’s data base & because of Zuckerberg’s greed & not bothering to place any limits on Analytica’s use of their data on over 80 million Americans, Analytica was able to target those American voters it refers to as “persuadable.”

Brittany Kaiser, supposed whistleblower but I don’t buy it (Cambridge Analytica)

 

If you are or were a Facebook user like myself, you’ve probably come across those apparently innocent little quizzes that are posted now & then asking if you’d care to see how you measure up against others in your type of personality or some other respect. Well, from the results of these “quizzes,” and the treasure trove of other data we willingly posted & divulged on Facebook, Analytica was able to brag to the corporations it tried to sell its services to that it had over 5,000 data points on every American citizen.

 

And unbelievable as it may sound, something like 70% of Americans get their news from Facebook & I don’t know what percentage of regular FOX “News” viewers we have but FOX is de facto America’s version of Pravda (look Pravda up for yourself; hint, it’s Russia’s major, perhaps only newspaper).

 

Access to the personal data of over 80 million Americans’ personal data & all their friends’ personal data as well, gave the Trump campaign a powerful weapon with which they were able to pinpoint the stupid, the weak-minded, the gullible in every voting precinct in the U.S. & they created over a million political “ads” designed sometimes for just a handful of voters whom they knew they could manipulate into voting for Trump with their absurd, obscene, & outright lies in obvious political propaganda ads attacking Hillary Clinton.

 

So, with Facebook’s selling of all our personal data to Cambridge Analytica & the unscrupulous machinations of the likes of Steve Bannon, the stupid, the conspiracy cult believers, the Duck Dynasty crowd, the racists & haters of everyone not a White Supremacist, & especially the faux “Christian” voters, this combination of dark forces put Trump in the White House.

 

And since Trump the simpleton & malignant narcissist who refused to even follow the rule of putting his companies in a trust so he couldn’t be accused of profiting from being president, has been systematically destroying our government.

 

As a matter of fact, in today’s headlines, the Trump administration is now trying to take away Social Security funds from those with disabilities. Yep! All you stupid morons who believe this lying piece of shit, this crook, this traitor to America, this sexual predator is cutting food stamps & every part of the social safety net that many of you probably rely on & you sing his praises? Yeah, that is indeed some “special kind of stupid!”

 

To elaborate on the dangerous aspects in the big picture regarding this tin-pot would-be dictator (an autocratic ruler with little political credibility & delusions of grandeur), malignant narcissist, con man, huckster, & sexual predator the morons put in office, reflect on this; Trump knows absolutely nothing about foreign policy but loves to strut the world stage like he’s some sort of gangster.

 

You see, Trump has been partnering with the Italian mafia for most of his life i.e. they got the contracts for cement in his buildings, ensured that his employees in his Atlantic City casinos wouldn’t strike with the other hotel employees who were striking, etc. And now he has “progressed” to relying on the Russian mafia for loans because American banks will no longer give him loans because he defaulted on hundreds of millions in previous loans—yeah, this is the “successful businessman” you’ve all been suckered into believing.

 

He thinks he can bully & bluster his way through his presidency but his latest truly stupid move against Iran is playing with a very deadly fire. Iran is by far the most powerful nation in the Middle East & if we were to seriously engage in a war with them, it’d be all over for all of humanity!

 

If Trump truly had a brain, he wouldn’t have threatened every school he’s ever attended if they dared to release his grades. Moreover, his trade wars are actually hurting the American economy but he’ll lie & deny until the day he dies & his cult will turn a blind eye no matter what.

 

For example, roughly a third of the American public don’t believe the Holocaust actually happened, what do you bet they’re the same third of our fellow citizens who think Trump is the next best thing to the Second Coming?

 

It’s taken America over two hundred years to evolve & yes, we have a lot of ugly history or crimes against humanity to answer for but how in the Hell can Trump zombies actually think that the total destruction of our government’s structure & institutions is a good thing just proves my point i.e. they’re fuckin’ morons!

 

Trump is so brazenly corrupt that it boggles the mind? Step right up suckers. Stay at my hotels, play gold at my resorts, buy my products, etc. And thanks to the totally spineless G.O.P., he is given free rein to defy every norm of human decency, decorum, & law.

 

Some of you may recall that when John Kerry was running for the presidency, they made a big deal out of his so-called, “flip-flopping” on issues? This idiot flip-flops within the same sentence time & time again. He says stuff, it’s recorded, and ten minutes later he denies ever having said it. He’s called on it & claims it’s all a conspiracy against him by the Deep State. Yeah, they’re so powerful that they can immediately alter video tapes of his speaking within a matter of ten minutes. People who believe this bag of shit shouldn’t be allowed to operate a car let alone own a gun.

 

And one of the scariest things about this orangutan in the oval office is the fact that approximately 70% of so-called evangelicals love him because they believe he’ll bring us Armageddon. The destruction of the Earth is their dream.

“Christian” evangelicals’ Wet dream i.e. WWIII

 

In conclusion, here’s a little thought experiment for you; if you’re familiar with the long-running, hit T.V. series, “The West Wing,” it was a very educational program in that it showed a lot of the inner workings in the White House i.e. the wheeling & dealing in the passing of bills, how compromises are reached, what happens in times of serious international crises, etc. Now this was classified as a fictional television series but a large part of its popularity was due to the fact that it was so closely modeled on the reality of our government & how it does & doesn’t function in so many ways.

 

Now consider the thousands of insights we’ve gotten over the three years that Trump has been the president & how himself & his administration can’t seem to function in even the simplest of tasks. It’s clear to all who aren’t willfully ignorant, Trump doesn’t have a clue, won’t even read his daily briefings let along attempt to inform himself on the critical issues facing us both domestically & internationally. He prefers to spend his days watching FOX “News,” tweeting, & playing golf or holding his Nuremberg-like fear & hate rallies & promoting his hotels & resorts.

 

Now ask yourself, would I rather have this dangerous buffoon running our country & ensuring our safety & prosperity or would I rather have a real actor like Martin Sheen, in the oval office? A man of compassion & intelligence!

 

Moreover, this total moron behind the desk in the White House decides to play chicken with Iran (which is clearly the most powerful nation in the Middle East) for absolutely no reason at all other than to “look tough.” It seems pretty clear to all with a functioning brain that Trump is desperately trying to distract us from impeaching his ass because he knows that once he’s out of office, a prison cell will be his next home. Gee, I wonder if they’ll let the girly-man Tweet from prison?

Barbarians at the Gate

 

 

 

My title is a reference to several sackings i.e. raping, pillaging, & plundering of Rome by various “barbarians” in ancient history. Yet today in another one of those perverse or ironic twists of history, we have a barbarian setting on the throne in 21st century America?

 

Yeah, except our “barbarian” would be king, is a girly-man who likes to strut around like he’s a bad-ass mafia boss but he’s actually a cissy-boy. And I’d be willing to bet that he’s never been in a real fight in his life unless you consider his beating-up smaller kids on the playground “fighting?”

 

You see, Donny has always known that he’s a coward & if it weren’t for daddy protecting him every time he got in trouble as he grew up, he’d be a lot more humane. His insecurity is so obvious to all but his die-hard zombie cult. As Sam Elliot says; “You must be some special kind of stupid?” if you fail to acknowledge this fact about the girly-man.

 

This essay was begging me to release it and it’s a collection of several observations of mine. First of all, in regards to the term, “barbarian,” here’s the definition of the term; “uncivilized, culturally inferior, brutal, cruel, insensitive, etc.” And again, to all but the willfully blind or willfully ignorant, Trump is indeed a barbarian.

The “Great Business Negotiator” in action

 

And poor baby Trump has been crying outside the gates of the posh, upper East side of Manhattan & its intellectual and cultural elite ever since he came of age and began his lifetime of begging to be let in. This is why he is so venomous in his perpetual attacks on The New York Times i.e. “The Paper of Record,” (the newspaper that sets the standard for all other newspapers in America) & the other cultural institutions that reject his pleas for inclusion. You see, New York City had Trump’s number decades ago i.e. a vulgar, low-class, no taste impostor & their rejection has been like an acid eating away at his vanity all this time.

An investigative team from The Times proved Trump’s a liar re: his fortune

 

Obviously, this is the politics of resentment & hate which Trump knows only too well. And Trump has masterfully tapped into that poison well that roughly a third of America is immersed in. Always blame the “other” and deny any self-responsibility.

 

Trump’s fragile, little boy ego could never accept the fact that he’s not liked is because he’s just a crude, ignorant, egomaniac & bully so he has cleverly substituted his jealousy & hatred towards the intellectual elite, or perhaps transferred would be the better word, on to the poor immigrants struggling to feed their families & flee the drug lords, corruption, etc. of their home countries because this dove-tails so perfectly with the racists & bigots so easily manipulated by demagogues & their rhetoric.

 

And this blows my mind & truly saddens me to my core because those Trump supporters have so much more in common with the immigrants they persecute & blame than with a slime-ball, fake billionaire, fake actor, fake success like Trump of the Duck Dynasty Klan. Of course, the 1% have allowed this all to happen not because of some grand conspiracy but simply because they don’t give a fuck & are probably laughing their asses off as we self-destruct & they continue to rape, pillage, & plunder “our” federal treasury.

 

Returning to the word, “barbarian,” I believe many of you would or do consider bikers to be a sort of modern variation of the barbarians who sacked Rome? Well, I’d just like to interject here that 20 years ago, I lived a few blocks from a “biker bar” in Portland, Oregon & because I wanted to avoid getting a D.U.I., and this bar was walking distance, I started hanging out there. In fact, I became somewhat of a “regular,” for the approximate six months I lived in the area. They would back their Harleys up to the curb out front & I’d ride my old-fashioned, cruiser type bicycle there & lock it to a nearby tree.

 

One day, a gal who was sitting at one of the outside tables with her boyfriend, I presume, said; “Hey, go ahead & park your bike next to the others!” I gave her a quizzical look & they both said; “Yeah,” so I did and we all laughed. In brief, I never had one ounce of trouble, was never threatened, never even insulted by any of the biker crowd who were regulars there. The manager befriended me as well as the owner & one night, a regular & his girlfriend invited me back to their place to continue partying & offered me their couch for the night.

 

You may be wondering why I brought this all up? I mention these experiences because I felt & still do that they were far more cultured, sensitive, & civilized than that poser in the White house who, unlike any other president in U.S. history as far as I know, continually has his pep rallies of fear, hate, & ignorance.

 

And speaking of ignorance, if you know much about modern history, have you ever wondered why the Nazis burned books in their reign of terror which culminated in the murder of over six million Jews, and another couple of million gypsies, homosexuals, intellectuals, etc.?

Books are the stored-up wisdom of all those who came before us. From Aristotle, the author of the first encyclopedia to Freud & beyond. As some have noted, we stand on the shoulders of those intellectual giants who came before us. And hopefully not to sound like an admirer of warmongers, but I used to have an old, blacklight poster that was a giant, peace sign made up of interlocking swastikas (which originally was a symbol of peace) & this quote by Napoleon Bonaparte; “There are but two powers in the world, the sword and the mind. And in the end, the mind always conquers.”

You see, books, which represent knowledge & hence, freedom or independence because of their liberating power, are a threat to the powers that be who wish to keep us ignorant & vulnerable. So, it’s obvious, keep the people ignorant (to simply not know something) and you keep them under your control. And this is why both the State & the Church want to keep you ignorant. But good news comrades! You can empower yourself by going to your public library & devouring every great author you can. If you’d like some suggestions as to who to read, simply start with the “Great Books of the Western World” published in 1952 by Encyclopedia Britannica. This could take you many years to wade through but it would definitely render you a well-read person capable of facing the world on your own!

Poster girl for anti-intellectual “Christians,” married into Amway fortune, & sister to Eric Prince, America’s most infamous mercenary

 

You see my imaginary reader; the root of racism is fear of others whom you don’t know much if anything about. And fear is the root of hatred. So, if you keep people ignorant, it’s much easier to whip-up peoples’ fear & hatred and turn that to your political advantage.

 

Naturally, destroying the books of all those who have differing points of view from yours especially when it comes to politics, religion, culture, civilization, etc. is an important first step in destroying those “dangerous” others. And here in America, there has been a pervasive strain of anti-intellectualism throughout our history. Richard Hofstadter wrote the classic book on the subject & I have dissected his book not once, but twice because I used my notes from it in my major work; “Truth Against the World.” And no, this doesn’t make me an authority but I have definitely earned a fair hearing in that I have conservatively spent over 50,000 hours researching, reading, writing, watching documentaries, etc. over a 30-year period.

 

And unlike Trump, I can back my claims. That fuckin’ national embarrassment actually believes that simply because he says something, it makes it so. If he’s such a “genius” as he proclaims to be, why has he threatened every school he’s ever attended if they dare to release his grades?

 

Unfortunately for the rest of us Americans who haven’t drunk Trump’s Jim Jonestown’s Kool-Aid, and the rest of the world who are vulnerable due to the U.S.’s obscene level of militarism, the whole world lives in fear of a boy-child with the mental age of a third-grade student & the playground bully.

 

Yes, this is what willful ignorance, apathy, & utter indifference has brought us. Seems far too many of my fellow citizens hoped that they could escape their responsibilities as citizens & we’d be magically protected forever from the dark forces like Trump & his insatiably greedy masters of the universe. But no, life is not a Sci fi fantasy where the good overcome simply because they’re good.

 

Goodness, fairness, equality, freedom, etc. has always been a struggle & sometimes it has won out & sometimes it has lost. But one thing is for certain, if we shirk our duties to defend these values & principles, we will certainly go down with the ship. The ship of the damned, the ship steered by the likes of Trump!

“Christians” praying for the end of the world? Is this what Jesus taught them?

 

Addendum

 

I showed my own ignorance when some time back, I asked my friend & mentor, Noam Chomsky, something like; So, when or what was the first instance of the joining of the Church & the State and their domination over the people? As usual, Noam was sensitive in his response & simply pointed out that it was when the Roman empire declared Christianity the official religion of the empire.

 

Think about it my friends, the so-called “Christian” fundamentalists and/or evangelicals have been waging a perpetual war against secular humanism for decades. Why? Quite simply because they reject superstition & supernaturalism and encourage us to use our reason & to think for ourselves.

Trump loves spreading Alex Jones’ conspiracies like the Sandy Hook massacre that killed 20 six & seven year old students & six adult staff was fake.

 

Most organized religions like many governments, including our own, also expect blind obedience. And they both fear the individual who dares to think for him or herself & dares to question their dogma.

 

In a nutshell, Trump, like the hypocritical “Christians” who support him no matter how vile his actions or words, only want your blind obedience & your dollars. I may sound like a preacher myself but if so, my hope is that you’ll think of me as a preacher of love & peace and that you will stand-up on your moral & intellectual hind-legs and; “Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Do not go gentle into that Dark Night!” (Dylan Thomas)

—Rob DeLoss Gold Beach, Oregon, Dec. 27, 2019

 

 

 

What the 1% Think of Us

 

 

 

In a word, Trump. What do I mean by this? Here is a person who is perhaps the most vile, corrupt, detestable person who has ever occupied the White House & most of us know that no one gets even close to that position without having been approved of by that tiny fraction of the 1%. And this says to me that they just plain don’t give a fuck about what we think or feel.

so all female Trump fans don’t mind if men grab their pussies???

 

Trump is like that tiny fraction of the elite, morally bankrupt corporate cockroaches flipping us & the rest of the world, the middle finger i.e. we could give a shit less about what you think, feel, or care about.

our “engaged” president thinking about a Big Mac

 

Many of us have heard of the proverbial “talk” given to new presidents when they take office. The new president may have promised the world to his constituents regarding all the changes he was going to implement but after “the talk,” those promises seem to just fade away?

 

So, it’s very clear except to the willfully blind that those who give the new presidents this lesson in the reality of how the U.S. government is really run are those top-secret men behind the veil of secrecy, and they are the de facto masters of the universe.

The banking cabal, not all the Masters but a significant part

 

And my guess is that were it not for Trump being the president, most of the high-class restaurants & clubs across America wouldn’t even allow Trump in their establishments due to his vulgarity & total lack of decent etiquette or proper behavior & speech. This may be another reason why he just hangs out at his own hotels & resorts though who knows if he actually owns them or merely gets to plaster his name all over them for the grand façade of his “success” brand.

Trump’s “brain-trust”

 

You see, my imaginary reader, Trump isn’t simply some malevolent force out of the blue, no, he’s just the end result—sort of like the end result of our bodies’ processing of the food we take in—of a publicly declared agenda by the rich after FDR enacted his “New Deal.”

 

In short, they declared that they weren’t going to stop fighting until they had rolled-back every single aspect of the New Deal that helped us, the coerced taxpayers & cost them so much as a penny. Moreover, you may recall Mitch McConnel, the Machiavellian miscreant who announced from Day 1 of Obama’s election that he & the G.O.P. were going to block Obama at every single bit of legislation he tried to pass. What a noble patriot!

 

By-the-way, don’t misunderstand me, the Democratic party is pretty damn close to being equally guilty in their betrayal of us, the 99% but for the sake of brevity in this essay, I’ll keep my criticisms mostly targeted on the G.O.P. (Greedy Old Pigs).

 

So, here’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how that elite scum think of us or rather, don’t think of us.

 

  • The privatization of all public water—note Nestles water in Michigan which gets the water from the Great Lakes at pennies on the dollar while Flint’s once clean source of water is shut-off & they are forced to use the toxic water of the Flint River

    Why won’t Trump drain the swamp in Flint???
  • The elimination of all unions, public & private. Note one of Reagan’s first acts as president was to fire the Air Traffic Controllers out on strike for life. And this sent a message to corporate America i.e. it’s open season on unions

    he busted-up every union he could but didn’t break up the Screen Actor’s Guild which he used to head?
  • Sorry American public, but there’s simply not enough money for quality health care, education, or welfare for the 99% but there’s a never-ending flow of billions & trillions to the “Defense Industries,” because the terrorists are coming (and we get a nice slice of the pie!) i.e. Halliburton, Bechtel, G.E., etc.

    Do you remember how Cheney/Bush backtracked after their lies were revealed?
  • No taxes for the rich or the megalithic monopolies that are strangling not only America’s workers but workers around the world. And ever since Reagan, they’ve promised that this would cause a trickle-down benefit for all of us. Yeah, and how are you doing financially from this trickle? But we, the intimidated taxpayers are sent to jail if we “cheat” on our taxes.

    Trump’s version of “Draining the Swamp” i.e. the U.S. Treasury & the 99%’s pockets
  • No, or very rarely do they prosecute the rich & when they do, the rich, especially the giant corporations, don’t even have to plead guilty & there’s no conviction on their record. So, they go right back to committing fraud, poisoning our environment, etc., pay a relatively small fine as compared to the profits they made from their criminal activities. You or I, pay a huge fine relative to our financial status, have a record, & often go to jail or prison. And we get three strikes & we’re out i.e. your third offence could be as little as stealing a candy bar & you spend the rest of your life in prison.</li>
  • More & more protestors are being labeled terrorists so they have no rights such as habeas corpus, right to a lawyer, etc. & their lives are destroyed (see The Patriot Act) & note Obama’s prosecution of more Whistleblowers than all other presidents combined—the brave souls like Edward Snowden who warned us that our government with the help of the tech giants is spying on every single communication device & platform

    Continuous Fear/Hate rallies, above the law, silence the media, countless criminal acts-Wake up People!
  • The Hell with clean air, clean water, safe food—Monsanto can experiment with GMO food & we can’t even know which foods are GMO (would hurt their profit margin) the corporate cockroaches are polluting the entire planet & pushing into ever greater ecological disaster which threatens humanity’s very survival, Oh well? They’re getting richer by the minute.

    And you claim that you love your kids???
  • Deregulation ad nauseam i.e. deregulate every industry but when their greed brings about their downfall, we, the taxpayers must once again bail them out (The World-wide Crash of 2008 which stole the pensions, homes, life savings, & jobs of tens of millions of people around the world, but when we, Joe & Jane average with maybe a mom & pop mini-market, go under? Too bad, too sad, it’s the free market for us but socialism for the rich i.e. we are all left to that mythological “free market,” where it’s sink or swim or the law of the jungle but the elite are always bailed out by us, the taxpayers because we’re forced to. And they proclaim that they must be saved or America will go under.

    Trump is busy deregulating every industry he can becuz 2008 was so much fun

 

In conclusion, the 1% have nothing but complete & utter contempt for the 99%. Just look at Trump’s chin, poked out in arrogance like he’s Louis the XIV th or Mussolini. He’s been spoiled & protected all his life because of his dad’s wealth built largely on his being a slum lord & manipulating the loopholes of tax laws, bribing of city council members, & friendships with mafia figures.

The Great “Deal Maker”

 

And this is why Donny throws a fit whenever anyone criticizes him. He’s used to always getting his way & this is also why he loves authoritarian figures around the globe. They remind him of the mafia bosses & the fear they have instilled in their citizens who dare not speak out for fear of being killed.

Trump idolizes dictators cuz he imagines himself one but his followers don’t care that they massacre thousands of their own citizens, at least they’re “strong” men

 

Trump demands total loyalty to him like the kings during the age of feudalism but he has absolutely no loyalty to anyone except his buddy, Putin who has killed god knows how many of his own citizens. Putin even hunts down his opponents who have fled to other countries like those in England that he had poisoned.

 

Trump admires Duterte who declared himself above the law & told his police to shoot dead anyone they suspect of using or selling drugs. Tens of thousands of Philippinos have been gunned down in the Philippines, no court hearing just summary execution. This appeals to Trump again because he loves the feeling or thought that he has absolute power & his word is law.

 

We also have Erdogan in Turkey who has declared himself “sultan,” and runs his country like it as well. And don’t forget Trump’s friend whom he declared falling in love with i.e. Rocket Man of North Korea has been letting his people starve for decades so that he can live like Kubla Khan in opulence. And last but not least, President Xi of China who declared himself president for life & has also killed god knows how many Chinese citizens & has the world’s largest open prison comprised of that religious sect who harm no one but dare to dissent.

 

Moreover, what really confuses & depresses me is the fact that so many American citizens can sit by & watch Trump flout our laws—remember, we love to brag about being a nation built on law & order—most glaringly his ignoring of the emolument’s clause in our most sacred document, the U.S. Constitution, and brazenly he tries to steer the G7 Summit for next year to be held at one of his resorts.

 

Trump supporters are either the world’s biggest fools or hypocrites & willfully blind to the fact that he is clearly not one of them & has nothing but contempt for them. He’s coming for your food stamps people, Make America Great Again! I’ll see you in line at the food bank.

Ah yeah, Trump telling it like it is

 

—Rob DeLoss, Dec. 4, 2019 in Gold Beach, Oregon

 

P.S.  I almost forgot to add that the arrogance of the rich has touched my life as well. I worked many shitty factory jobs in my 20s & I hated it with a passion on one particular occasion, the owner of the factory was leading a group of businessmen on a tour of the factory. I was standing & working at the machine I was assigned to & they stood not ten feet away from me & studied the machine & never once acknowledged my presence, not even a nod of recognition. I felt like a domestic animal in their barn. That anger has helped to fuel my lifelong pursuit of knowledge in order to empower myself and not have to be in a position like that one ever again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bartlet for President!

 

 

“The government you elect is the government you deserve”

 

—Thomas Jefferson

 

For those of you who don’t recognize the title of this essay, you clearly weren’t fans of what I consider perhaps the best television series in my lifetime i.e. The West Wing.

 

So, what say you about Thomas Jefferson’s words above? Do you feel that we deserve Trump? Could it be the laws of karma paying us back for neglecting our fellow men & women for so long? America’s imperial crimes against humanity have been going on for quite some time yet most Americans deny that we’re an empire. But all one has to do is read several articles by Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, or Michael Parenti to begin to wake-up from our national stupor.

The greatest intellectual alive & my pen-pal since 2006, Noam Chomsky

 

Of course, reading is no longer fashionable in the U.S. & people prefer to get their “news” and information from watching videos. And something like 60% or more of Americans get their news from Facebook of all places. In case you haven’t heard it yet, Facebook doesn’t fact-check the news posts & the company Cambridge Analytica basically targeted tens of thousands of Americans it knew would be susceptible to the propaganda posts supporting Trump & defaming Hillary Clinton. In a nutshell, we can thank Mark Zuckerberg’s insatiable greed for giving us Trump.

Well, I mention these things in the context of this essay because it dawned on me a while back of how wide a difference there is between the president as played by Martin Sheen on The West Wing & our real-life president. Hell, there’s a Grand Canyon of difference between the two.

 

Practically every single day, Trump says or does something even worse than the previous day. This moron has no sense of decency, proper behavior, manners, or tact whatsoever. In fact, I find it very hard to believe he’s anywhere near as rich as he claims to be given such behavior? Who would do business with such a cretin?

 

Unlike Trump, Sheen is a truly humble man & he has been asked by fans several times since The West Wing ended, if he’d run for president in real life but he consistently tells his fans; “you’re confusing celebrity with credibility.” Unfortunately for America & the rest of the world, Trump has deluded himself into believing just the opposite of what Sheen knows to be the truth. And roughly a third of the American public have clearly made that serious mistake as well. I refer to him as Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan, in other words, the worst that America has to offer.

 

By way of contrast, reflect on these descriptors of the American president played by Sheen with all that you’ve witnessed so far of Trump’s behavior & intelligence;

 

  • Manifest integrity (clearly apparent to the sight or understanding; obvious; steadfast adherence to a strict moral or ethical code)
  • Quick witticisms (a clever or witty remark)
  • Fierce intellect (a person of extraordinary intelligence)

& Compassionate stoicism (a feeling of deep sympathy & sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering; stoicism (The philosophy asserts that virtue (such as wisdom) is happiness and judgment should be based on behavior, rather than words.)

 

I hope that you weren’t eating or drinking anything while you read these descriptions of Jeb Bartlet & contrasting them with Trump, because you might’ve choked on your food or spit out your drink?

 

Okay, here’s my brief take on these four attributes in relation to Trump, the creature from the black lagoon:

 

Oh yeah, he’s clearly a very moral & ethical person; “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful [women]—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything … Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

 

As for “quick witticisms,” Yeah, right! If you pay attention when he speaks, he almost always stumbles to find the words to express what he wants to say & I’ve never heard a single, witty remark come from this orangutan whose wit is on par with middle-school boys in a locker room bragging about their imaginary sexual exploits.

 

Of course, according to the humble Trump, he’s the smartest person who ever walked the face of the earth. Don’t you see it every time he speaks? If not, you must be just another loser like myself. And this is why he speaks at a fourth-grade level & has threatened to sue every single school he’s ever attended if they dare to release his grades. He’s just so humble.

 

As for compassion, it just oozes from Trump’s every pore. Remember his imitation of the handicapped journalist at one of his rallies? You might also care to note that the Trump organization was busted for theft of funds collected in one of his “charities.” Yep! He “shifted” money from the kids’ cancer charity he was running, into his own pocket. https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2017/06/06/how-donald-trump-shifted-kids-cancer-charity-money-into-his-business/#7eaa8a36b4a3

 

And note, this is an article from Forbes magazine, not exactly a liberal rag.

 

Furthermore, consider this sampling of the issues the T.V. president, Jeb Bartlet, wrestled with & try to imagine how Trump would deal with them. Trump doesn’t have a clue about anything let alone would he have a fraction of the intelligence, strategic ability, or the moral or intellectual fortitude required to deal with these issues. Just reflect on how he has capitulated to Russia on every single issue that has come up related to Russia. He’s clearly Putin’s lap-dog & has sided with the Russians against our own intelligence agencies every single time.

 

Exploration of Real-World Issues on The West Wing

 

 

Other issues explored in The West Wing include:

 

 

And what bothers me even more than Trump being such an obvious moron is that roughly a third of our citizens believe him even though he is clearly a habitual, compulsive, pathological, & narcissistic liar. For his supporters to be so perversely & willfully blind and ignorant to this fraud tells us far more about who they are than who Trump is.

 

We stand on the brink of abyss & we are staring into the face of Armageddon & the good “Christian evangelicals or fundamentalists” are praying that we do blow up the planet. Moreover, the “Christians” who haven’t gone totally bat-shit crazy, sit silently on the sidelines as the whack-jobs keep growing more powerful by the day.

 

For the better part of his adult life, Martin Sheen has not only been talking the talk but also walking the walk & has been arrested over 66 times as of 2009. Here is a partial list of some of the real-life issues that Mr. Sheen has been fighting for or against & again, try to imagine Trump doing likewise or even knowing a fuckin’ thing about them let alone giving a shit about them because he only cares about his wealth & has turned the White House into a cat house where everything is for sale including the prestige it used to symbolize.

 

  • Against the war in Iraq
  • Opposition to the School of the Americas (where we train the Death Squads of Dictators around the world)
  • Against apartheid
  • Against racism
  • Against homelessness
  • Against Nuclear weapons testing i.e. Reagan’s S.D.I. (Star Wars program) or “Strategic Defense Initiative
  • In support of the Farm Worker’s boycotts i.e. Cesar Chavez
  • For gun control
  • For “Earth First!” (environmental group)
  • For Justice for Bhopal

 

Who would you rather have as our real-life president, the phony “celebrity” created from a t.v. script about a self-made billionaire who never loses in any of his business deals—even though he has failed at many of his business ventures & doesn’t own most of the buildings with his name on them but the suckers believe he does—and who tweets his racist, hateful, divisive remarks daily?

 

This third-rate actor, Reagan was a step ahead of him because he was at least a second-rate actor.Trump is like the thief who was invited to dinner & ended-up stealing all the silverware & fine China,  but he is robbing the Federal Treasury & this is called “Draining the Swamp?”

 

Trump has opened the doors to every agency established to look out for the welfare of our Republic & our citizens & welcomed in every corporate pig to gorge themselves to their hearts’ content. You may think the World-wide economic collapse of 2008 was scary (and we’re still suffering from its effects) wait till Trump has finished with his raping, pillaging, & plundering of all that is America.

 

We have the reality of an unreal malignant narcissist & sociopath in charge of our government & our well-being, give me the t.v. actor, Martin Sheen any time of the day or night. He is light-years ahead of Trump ethically, morally, intellectually. Sheen is a man who has fought all his life for true democracy & is a principled and moral man of the highest caliber.

 

It’s real simple my fellow citizens if you can just step outside the bubble of propaganda we’ve been fed all our lives. We, the taxpayers, must face the fact that no matter how much of our blood, sweat, & tears we shed as we work our lives away for the corporate cockroaches, it will never be enough to satisfy them.  And no matter how loyal we are to those corporations that rule our lives like the private tyrannies they de facto are, they have absolutely no loyalty in return & will throw us on the garbage dump the minute they find it more profitable to move to some third world nation where they can pay workers a couple of bucks per day with no environmental or labor regulations whatsoever.

 

And “our” tax dollars go to feeding the military/industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us of but its appetite is insatiable.And we are told ad infinitum that we must give the 1% er corporations more tax breaks because it’ll stimulate the economy. Yeah, it’ll stimulate your ass as they butt-fuck you & close their plants down here to go overseas & do some more stimulating of those poor suckers. (this is known as the “Trickle-down theory” or where they piss on us & tell us it’s raining—invented by Reagan, the darling of the conservative cockroach class.) And they tax us even more & tell us they aren’t, it’s just our imagination i.e. Trump’s massive tax giveaway to the rich.

And even with our military might, equal to the rest of the world’s nations’ military budgets combined, we are the most fearful people on the planet i.e. the terrorists are coming, the terrorists are coming. (Note: they had to replace the old boogey-man, “the communists are coming, the communists are coming” with something to keep the trillions flowing into their greasy paws)

 

And no matter how much we are forced to “give” in the form of our tax dollars, it is never enough or it’s just barely enough for the status quo i.e. to maintain our military superiority, but there’s never enough left over for trivial things like decent & affordable housing for all of us who pay our taxes or healthy food that we can afford or for us to be able to rest easy knowing that our families will receive the best medical care available no matter what illness, disease, or accident befalls them.

 

You see, my imaginary reader, the greed of the 1% guarantees this status quo as an absolute fact because they write the laws that we must obey but not them. And the police as well as the military are their enforcers. Step out of line or protest and you will be jailed or killed. This is what’s laughingly known as freedom & democracy.

 

In conclusion, my intellectual as well as moral hero is Noam Chomsky. And by-the-way, if you’re interested in a truly revolutionary education i.e. a liberating education, a reading of Chomsky’s work would be like earning your Ph. D. in political science, history, philosophy, etc. etc. etc.

 

Chomsky is turning 91 years of age on December 7, 2019 and he has spent the last several years warning the world of the two most critical issues facing humanity i.e. climate destruction & the ever-growing threat of a nuclear exchange. Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention that Chomsky has been referred to as the “most important intellectual alive & the only person in the top ten most quoted people throughout Western history,” and this list includes The Bible, Plato, & Aristotle. Not too shabby in any intelligent person’s book!

 

It would also do us well to remember that ignorance in a court of law isn’t a valid or legal defense nor is it in reality. So, my fellow citizens, it is up to each of us to decide, to choose as to whether we’ll go along willingly with our continued enslavement (yeah, even though you suffer from the delusion of freedom because you have lots of nice, shiny playthings) and our very real destruction or do you choose to stand-up on your hind-legs like a true man or woman & scream; No! I will not go gentle into that dark night. (Dylan Thomas)

 

Let me leave you with this quote by H.G. Wells whom some call the father of science-fiction. I’d argue that Jules Verne is a real close second, if not the first?

 

“It’s becoming more and more of a race between education and catastrophe.”

Addendum

I have watched this series because of its superior intellectual content, several times over. Especially when I am hungry for something to watch that I can really sink my teeth into. Yeah, I know, I sound like one of those “horrible East Coast elitists” who look down their noses at you. Well, so be it because you are acting like the morons they think you are!

Why? Because you watch such utter crap like “The Walking Dead,” and the countless “reality t.v. shows” that offend any intelligent persons’ intelligence. Yes, these “social critics” are insulting but they are mere distractions. Your anger should be targeted against the true enemies of the people, the corporate cockroaches.

And no, I’m not defending these effete social critics but I am advising you to not run & hide & hate them but rather to arm yourselves intellectually & do battle with them, standing on your hind-legs. Let me remind you, I grew-up in Paramount (1964-1983 approx.) though you never really leave home. Yep! A poor, industrially-zoned town across the wide, L.A. river-bed from the infamous Compton, you know, the home of that insignificant gang called The Crips?  Clearly I’m just another one of those fuckin’ elitists!

Reality Deniers

“You’re saying it’s a falsehood and Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that.” —Kellyanne Conway, January 22, 2017 (re: Spicer’s claim that Trump’s inauguration was the largest ever)

Well Mrs. Conway, as Gertrude Stein would inform you; A fact is a fact is a fact. And if you’d like to show America how sure you are of your alternative world, why don’t you go to the top of a skyscraper & step off the ledge to prove that the Laws of Gravity are just an alternative fact or opinion as well?

This coming from the woman whose official title is Counselor to the President but more accurately, she’s his apologist & personal minister of propaganda i.e. Joseph Goebbels reincarnated.

David Fitzsimmons / Arizona Star
David Fitzsimmons / Arizona Star

We have arrived at this fantastically depressing day in U.S. history for a myriad of reasons but two of the most prominent factors are the rise of the “Reality television shows” phenomenon that began 20 years ago along with the rise of our own version of Russia’s “Pravda” i.e. FOX “News.”

Everyone knows that politicians are liars but at least they used to be considerably more restrained in the quantity & quality of their deceptions. But our narcissistic & totally unconcerned about reality bully-boy in the White House doesn’t care about facts & has been allowed to get away with habitual lying his entire life because daddy always protected him.

With Trump, lying has risen to another level, beyond the rational universe & this is why his base consists of born-again Bible thumpers who pray for the end of the world & those who just love his vicious & heartless attacks on everyone not like them i.e. liberals, gays, Mexicans, Muslims, the handicapped, intellectuals, democrats, journalists, women, etc. etc. etc. And of course, the greedy corporate cockroaches who are making out like bandits thanks to Trump’s tax give a ways to the super rich while slashing every program that offers a bit of help to the poor, the working class, the middle class, etc. And the 35% to 39% or so who are Trump’s die-hard fans are so stupid, they don’t care that he’s taking away their food stamps & etc. They’ll still be singing his praises as they climb out of their cardboard “homes” on Skid Row & they’ll continue to curse Obama’s very existence. trump5

But before I wander too far afield, I want to highlight the elephant in the room that is so glaringly obvious because it’s been so consistent that most of us now see it as “normal,” i.e. Trump’s habitual lying. He just recently passed the 14,000 lies mark & it doesn’t mean shit to his base. Now that’s some kind of willful ignorance! I wonder if these Trump fans tell their kids it’s okay to lie? Or do they simply ignore their kids’ lying as they do Trump’s and say; Oh, isn’t he cute?

Trump has said things & ten minutes later when he’s been called on a lie, he’ll lie about the lie and claim that it’s the fake news. Yep! I guess the “fake news” and the “Deep State” (C.I.A., F.B.I. N.S.A., etc.) are so fast & powerful that within ten minutes of Donald saying something, they can alter what he said & accuse him of lying? The poor baby is just so picked on.

Think about it, they’d have to hack into every news station in the country, rewrite every reporters’ notes from Donny’s press conference, hack into every phone, video camera, etc. all just because they hate him for no valid reason? It can’t possibly be that there is no plot to get him but that two-thirds of the country actually detest him because of his vile & vulgar behavior, his racism, his hate speech, & his crimes (thousands of them over the years & that’s why he’s maintain a platoon of lawyers all his business life), can it?

This is clearly denial of reality on a scale we’ve never witnessed before and what does it say about us as citizens of the supposedly most free & democratic nation on Earth? Okay, it’s clearly time to go back to school—pun intended—because as a country, we’re pretty damn dumb! And a common thread that will wind through this essay is the subject of “control.”

In the documentary, “Citizen Four” which is about Edward Snowden’s decision to no longer be a pawn in the NSA’s illegal spying on all Americans, he understated the issue of our freedom as very much relevant to the NSA’s unconstitutional activities. I think he was going overboard to not come off as a conspiracy nut & that’s why he simply said at one point in the film; “It’s about control.”

And control is what our public education system is all about whether you are aware of it or not and whether you accept this accusation or not. It’s real simple in its broad strokes i.e. the government basically follows the wishes of the 1% & the 1% want workers who are obedient & just smart enough to run the machinery (both physical machines & the operation of its companies i.e. accountants, salesmen, administrators, office workers, etc.) to keep their profits coming in but not too clever because they might lead the workers to organizing, protesting, boycotting, & worst of all, sit down strikes where the workers take over the plants, factories, etc.

Again, it’s important to not get off on those fun, grand conspiracies like Trump loves to because they actually serve the interests of the 1% by distracting & confusing the workers & the voters. Gore Vidal put it very succinctly, “They don’t need to conspire, they all think alike.” And unlike Trump who simply makes claims that he can’t back up, I can prove my expertise when it comes to the field of education. I graduated high school, spent 14 years going to college (dropping in & out several times before earning my B.A. in English literature), have collected a personal library of approx. 10,000 books (have probably read at least 700 of them), and have been writing for over 30 years. And last but not least, was reading at the 11th grade, sixth month level when I was in the sixth grade. What level do you think Trump reads at with that impressive & articulate rhetorical style of his? Moreover, why did Trump threaten to sue any school he’s ever attended if they released his grades to anyone if he’s so “brilliant” and a “stable genius?” Are we to believe that he’s humble when it comes to his grades and that’s why he doesn’t want them released? Yeah right, the guy who brags about himself everyday & every way he can. No matter what the subject or topic that is being discussed, Trump always finds a way to turn it into an opportunity to brag about his legendary accomplishments—almost always fantasies which are the product of his little pea-brain—yet his “base” just laps it up? Guess Goebbels was right? The bigger the lie and the more often you tell it, the more the people will accept it as truth & it becomes fact. (for those of you who don’t remember, Goebbels was Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda)

Regarding our public education system, in a nutshell, it too has been invaded & to a very large extent, has been coopted by the 1% as well as those good ol’ “Christian evangelicals” who have turned a blind-eye to all Trump’s sins because he gives them lip-service “support” in their war against the evil secularists who are destroying Christian values. I wrote a book on this subject should you care to check the veracity of my claims?

Let’s return to the subject of the Bible-thumpers who are the overwhelming majority of Trump supporters. These people have been denying reality all their lives & trying to reach them on an intellectual or intelligent basis is about as pointless as a screen-door in a submarine. They’re infamous for their closed-minds. But what’s really scary about them is the fact that they actually pray for the end of the world & this too is why they love Trump i.e. he may just make it happen?

I was re-watching a documentary about Gore Vidal recently and he reminded me of this dangerous delusion of the evangelicals or “Christian” fundamentalists. We’re so worried about Muslim jihadists? We should be more worried about our “Christian” jihadists who have one of their own, Mike Pence, as vice president of the United States. If Trump were to be marched out of the White House in handcuffs, Pence becomes president & yet his own wife won’t trust him alone with another woman if she’s not there? So much for their faith between themselves as man & wife but we’re supposed to trust him with the nuclear launch codes? Be afraid! Be very afraid!

Gore Vidal pointed out; “39% of the American public believe in the death of the Earth by Nuclear Fire and in Rapture. Among the 39% is Ronald Reagan.”

the unholy alliance of two thieves!

I know, silly me to worry about such mundane things as the Christian loonies praying for the end of humanity. But these perversions of what passes for human beings are very active politically from their local schoolboards up to the presidency. You see, I used to be like most everyone I knew and didn’t give a damn about politics until Reagan became president.

I didn’t pay attention to the news or read about politics but I guess through osmosis or something & growing up in California while Reagan was governor, I knew we were in serious danger when he was elected president. And now we have Trump who makes Reagan look like a boy scout.

Here’s a flashback for you regarding this subject; my beloved wife, Jeri (who passed away over six years ago now) and me were on our honeymoon in Europe & we were visiting Paris. We were in some crowded public square when a reporter approached us & he had a camera man with him. He asked if we were Americans & I said yes. (guess he could tell from the goose-down coats we were wearing?) Anyway, the reporter said that he was like the Dan Rather of Czechoslovakia & he wanted to know our opinion of Reagan’s talk of fighting a limited nuclear war in Europe. I simply said that I think he’s a moron & he scares the Hell out of me. And when the camera man turned off his camera, the journalist said to me something like; “Thank God not all Americans are stupid, I just interviewed another American couple who thought fighting a limited nuclear war in Europe was a good idea.”

Commander and Dunce in Chief?

Think about it my imaginary reader i.e. how can so-called Christians believe in Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” which I believe all that a true Christian need practice & at the same time pray for the death & destruction of the overwhelming majority of life, plant & animal, the wiping-out of the world’s forests, mountains, rivers, oceans, etc.? Talk about cognitive dissonance, Jesus Christ!

Our Fabricator in Chief, Donald Trump’s level of ignorance is wickedly scary because he asks questions like;

Trump said he might use nuclear weapons and questioned why we would make them if we wouldn’t use them

Trump said he was open to nuking Europe because it’s a “big place”

Trump said that “you want to be unpredictable” with nuclear weapons

Trump said he wasn’t that worried about more countries getting nukes since “it’s not like, gee whiz, nobody has them”

Trump had no idea what the “nuclear triad” was

Trump said he’d be OK with a nuclear arms race in Asia

Donald Trump ‘suggested dropping nuclear bombs to divert hurricanes’

Yep! just the kind of guy to make you feel all warm, safe, & cozy in your bed at night, right? I’m old enough to remember when the Iranians took those American hostages & people had bumper stickers on their cars saying; “Nuke Iran!” and it scared me then as it does now that people could be so fucking stupid! They can’t seem to get it through their ignorant heads that the radiation released when a nuclear bomb goes off doesn’t just stay within the borders of the country it exploded in. I guess Chernobyl taught all these sorts of morons nothing?

The radiation that was released as a result of the Chernobyl disaster i.e. accident, traveled around the globe poisoning food, plants, animals, & people. Milk supplies were contaminated. I think that herds of caribou in Finland were contaminated? How does this sit with you reality deniers? Would it concern you if your children or your grandchildren were exposed to potentially life-threatening or cancer-causing levels of radioactivity? I used to work in the field of industrial x-ray back in my late teens & my early 20s with a step-dad of mine at the time and the more I learned about it, the more scared I became and I eventually quit working with this stuff that lasts for thousands of years & can’t be safely stored or destroyed.

Perhaps you’re a member of the trendy, New Age Deniers? I danced around the edges of that cult too. There was an explosion of New Age gurus & Pop Psychologists that began in the 1970s & every bookstore that I walked into, I made a bee-line for the New Age & Pop Psychology section.

I was disillusioned with the common wisdom of my elders i.e. get a job & stick with it no matter whether you like it or not. I was seeking a purpose or a calling and I hoped to find a community where I felt I belonged. I hitchhiked up & down the West coast dozens of times, checked out a few communes, hitched across the U.S., and made several trips to Europe, sometimes with only a one-way ticket and a couple hundred bucks in my pocket.

Again, and again, the ugly, harsh realities of life smacked me in the face. After reading dozens & dozens of these New Age books & Pop Psychology books, perhaps hundreds of them, I began to realize that they were offering simplistic, easy answers to many of the most challenging philosophical questions that the greatest philosophers of Western & Eastern Philosophy and Religion had been wrestling with their entire lives. I saw what an insult their pablum panaceas were to men & women of serious & honest intellectual inquiry. And what made me sadder yet was that the overwhelming majority of these self-described spiritual seekers & pop psychologist gurus were just in it for the money.

It wasn’t until around the time that I met my sweet lady, my Rock of Gibraltar, my wife Jeri that I stumbled upon philosophy and this awoke my life-long passion for knowledge in the hope of finding wisdom & peace. Philosophy didn’t offer answers in popular, best sellers in the New Age industry on subjects like Rolfing, Est, primal screaming, etc. And I came across the “work” of Gurdjieff which was extremely alluring & made Scientology look like the Mickey Mouse Club. In fact, I attended a meeting of Gurdjieff followers in Portland, Oregon and they came very close to seducing me with their appeals to my ego but thankfully, at that time in my life, my heart, mind, & spirit were very strong and I trusted my gut instinct to get away from them.

And no, it wasn’t melodramatic, I simply realized what was happening i.e. the meeting was held in a mansion in an exclusive part of town. There were expensive paintings, sculpture, vases, rugs, tapestries, etc. and we sat at a long dining-like table. I learned that I was amongst doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. and I was just an unemployed hippie sleeping on a cousin’s couch. But when they said that we had to give 10% of our monthly income or $100 per month that I knew the game was rigged. After a little research, I learned that they were all over the world from Newport Beach in Orange County to Tokyo, London, Paris, Madrid, Rome, etc. and they were always located in the most expensive parts of these world capitals.

I read books on their guru who had died in 1949 and he was quite frank about his “shearing of the sheep” as he put it. He drank, ate the best food, womanized, etc. Trump would’ve loved him. He held orgies with the rich & privileged like Trump’s buddy, Jeffrey Epstein. And the rich gave him fortunes for his guidance in the pursuit of enlightenment.

birds of a feather (birds of prey) flock together

Anyway, I said to myself, Nah! I can smell a con artist when I see one and Trump is a con man of unbelievable hubris but he only gets away with his level of ignorance & grifting with those who are the least educated & therefore easier to deceive & manipulate.

And speaking of deception & manipulation, another reason why I finally quit Facebook for good was all the drivel that the New Agers keep posting. I was snide & sarcastic to many of them and would often comment, Thanks for the New Age Hallmark card. What angers me about this “movement,” is that like so much other crap in our lives, New Age has become a sort of religion for the young & middle aged who are so confident that they have the answers that their “philosophy” can basically be put as “Don’t Worry, Be Happy!”

Yeah, right! Our planet is dying & we have a sociopath who is running a garage sale out of the White House. Trump’s egregious disregard for any semblance of respectability for the institution of the presidency is beyond the pale. But these New Agers smugly sit back in their yoga pants eating their tofu & drinking their veggie smoothies. They act so above it all and don’t lift a finger to try to stop the thieves like Trump or Wall St. One big cop-out & they have the audacity to look down their noses at people like myself who believe we all have a responsibility to fight the system!

This brings me to one of the most critical issues that far too many of us are in denial about i.e. climate destruction & the death of our planet. The oil industry, EXXON in particular did their own study and have known for over 30 years of the massive destruction they are causing our environment i.e. pollution that kills not only the creatures dependent on the oceans but also people.

Once again, it’s abundantly clear that the almighty dollar wins out yet again. Let’s see the mother fuckers as they’re dying from lack of air, food, & water and ask them, aren’t you glad you made all that money? The oil corporations & especially the Koch brothers, have spent & continue to spend something like over a hundred million dollars every year in spreading fake news, fake scientific reports, & fake advertising denying that the polar ice caps are melting & etc.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are wondering, perhaps praying for this?

The overwhelming majority of climate scientists around the globe are in agreement about the seriousness of this but the powers that be pay off a few whores in academia and its; What climate change? Do you remember that when they built the Titanic, all the experts & engineers swore that it was unsinkable? What do you think was going through their minds as all those people were dying in the frigid waters of the Atlantic? Is that what it’s going to take for the climate deniers to face reality?

The reality is that we’ve elected to the highest position in America and the world because of our power, a failed businessman who just keeps on lying no matter how many times & ways he’s called out. Trump is the master denier of reality because if he ever faced reality or real consequences for even a fraction of the crimes he’s committed, he’d be locked-up for the rest of his days.

it’s pretty bad when even the fake news network is calling you out for fake news

Think about it. Trump stars in a fake reality T.V. series that the producers freely admit it was i.e. it was all staged & Trump insisted that every time his name was mentioned, they had to refer to him as a billionaire. Why would someone insist on such a thing if they were truly a billionaire? It’s obviously to all but the willfully ignorant that Trump really isn’t a billionaire, he just keeps claiming he is because he wants us to believe he is. This is why he won’t release his tax records.

Getting back to “reality t.v.,” I remember 20 years ago when the phenomenon started & I said to anyone who would listen, wait a minute, we’re supposed to believe that this artificial or fake t.v. show is real? I always suggested that we just live our lives because they’re real i.e. if you lose your job, you may then lose your home, etc. How’s that for reality?

P.T. Barnum was so right when he declared that there’s a sucker born every minute! Trump’s grand i.e. the biggest & best in the world, etc. casinos failed & that’s not an easy thing to do because casinos are cash generating businesses i.e. people rarely stop gambling no matter how much they win & they then end up losing it all back and then some to the casino. But Mr. Business even fucked that up to say nothing about all his other failures & most notably his fake university which he had to settle out of court.

I look forward to the time when Trump’s Duck Dynasty Klan fans are hit across the face with a two by four of reality and realize what absolute morons they were to ever believe a single word out of his mouth. But America is world famous for its escape from reality i.e. Hollywood, the “Christian Right” and its belief in Armageddon & those evil people are doing everything they can to ensure the end of the world. And they love Trump because he’s doing his best to make their reality our reality. The extremists on the “Christian Right” are every bit as delusional & dangerous as the extremists in the Muslim faith who want to kill all who aren’t Muslim. And our politicians & military leaders have done an excellent job of really pissing off over a billion Muslims around the world with minor little things like Obama’s illegal & immoral Drone Warfare program.

I understand why the majority of Trump voters are so angry at the government though they have near total amnesia when it comes to the hundreds of good things our government does. But every time you meet a Trump voter, one of the first things out of their mouths is; “He tells it like it is.”

Well no, he doesn’t tell it like it is, not even close. I think what this statement is really saying is that they feel that he speaks like they do? So, they’re really insulting themselves & admitting that they’re ignorant racists, homophobes, misogynists, and totally lacking in compassion. That’s something to be proud of?

After three years of the Trump presidency, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s totally pointless to argue with a Trump supporter. They truly do live in an alternative universe. You may as well try to convince a “Christian” fundamentalist that there is no God.

So, what are we to do given the reality of where we’re at? I wish I could offer you some simple, concrete steps to follow but then I’d be just another reality denier. The fact is, we’re some of the stupidest people on this planet but we’re not supposed to say that. Everywhere I turn, I hear “liberal” apologists saying to not call people stupid because that won’t help. Yeah? Let’s play nice while the other side is trying to kill us or at least chase us out of our own country for daring to call a spade a spade?

I feel that part of the reason why or how we got here is because we’ve been too worried about being “politically correct.” We’ve been denying & ignoring our pathetic public education system for decades & now we believe that turning our schools into charter schools where they can teach religion & pray in school is going to make things better? Yeah right! Just what we need, some more delusional, reality denying Bible thumpers.

I am becoming more & more cynical the older I get & the more I learn about this sick, twisted phenomenon of the cult of Trump. The reality that millions of so-called “Christians,” love him when he is the absolute antithesis of their so-called values & principles, shows how hollow, hypocritical, & worthless their beliefs are.

I also wish that our so-called news organizations were giving us the facts but they too have sold their souls for the corporate dollars & their shot at celebrity. Edward R. Murrow must be rolling over in his grave at how pathetically low we’ve fallen in terms of journalistic integrity.

remember the little boy who cried wolf (Trump) Well, I told you!

Moreover, there’s no country we can escape to that I know of? This wave of fascism led by Trump is spreading around the globe & people are being killed in ever greater numbers by their presidents, dictators, & despots whom are Donald’s idols, especially Putin. I wonder at times what percentage of our military personnel admire Trump & what percentage of them are reviled by him as much as I am?

And here’s another bit of reality for you, especially to all my Trump friends, China is a little behind us in terms of AI (Artificial Intelligence) technology but they’re definitely ahead of us in terms of their implementation of AI to suppress & oppress their citizens i.e. they have more cameras watching their citizens than any other nation and they use facial recognition software. In fact, China is holding over a million Uighurs in what is basically a secret concentration camp. It has been referred to as one of the world’s largest, open-air prisons.

Tell me again what we fought the Vietnam war for? I thought it was to prevent the Chinese from taking Vietnam but now they’ve adopted a sort of blend of Communism & Capitalism and Trump just loves their leader as he does that mass murderer in charge of North Korea.

If you give a shit, you can check out the recent documentary on AI on PBS’s Frontline series & it’s sure to pick up your spirits. Remember, we mustn’t be sad as we circle the drain. Don’t worry, be happy!

So, we have China as our trading partner & note that the overwhelming majority of Walmart’s products come from China & Walmart is supposedly the world’s biggest retailer. And we have Russia with Putin the ex-KGB officer (think C.I.A.) who poisons his political enemies or has his Russian mafia take care of them and we have Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan in charge here. What could go wrong?

All three of these powers have already unleashed Orwell’s Big Brother on their citizens & note that America has the largest per capita number of prisoners in the world. Edward Snowden rang the warning bell not unlike Paul Revere who warned us that the British were coming & for that true patriotic act, he is now hunted by America & forced to live in exile in sunny old Russia.

By-the-way, out of 194 nations on this planet, the U.S. ranks 124th in terms of literacy (ability of its citizens to read & write) but we’re number one when it comes to military might. In fact, our military budget (yeah, right. Since when have they ever had to stick to a budget) is very close to being equal to all the other nations’ military budgets combined.

So why is it that we’re amongst the most scared people on the planet? It couldn’t be that the politicians at the behest of their corporate masters, have drummed their war propaganda into our minds from cradle to grave since the end of WWII so they could keep the trillions of our tax dollars flowing into their bank accounts, could it?

Nah! I’m just denying the reality of our world, right? Ask around & see how many Americans are even aware of the fact that were it not for the Russians fighting the Germans on the Eastern Front, we would’ve lost WWII. And the Russians lost over 20 million people in WWII. But as soon as the war ended, the Russians became our enemy overnight. Remember the McCarthy trials of Communists? And here’s another fact for you reality deniers; Trump’s mentor, the guy who taught him the importance of being ruthless in attacking everyone who criticizes you & to always deny, deflect, & distract, was none other than Roy Cohn. Yeah, a real swell guy who mostly represented mafia kingpins & introduced Donald to many of his clients who became helpful to Donald as he created his empire with daddy’s money. And Cohn was McCarthy’s right-hand man in the un-Constitutional trials that destroyed the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of actors, writers, directors, producers, etc. in the good old days of the 1950s. And NO! This isn’t a conspiracy theory, it’s a FACT!

In the final analysis my reality deniers, it doesn’t matter whether it’s communist China who enslaves us or Capitalist America who enslaves us because we are hopelessly brain-dead and you might as well enjoy your myriad of choices of conspiracy theories that Trump generously shares with his cult members to distract you from the reality of what an inhuman creature from the Black Lagoon he truly is!

the breakfast of champions? Yeah, right Bart

And what an amazing series of coincidences that Trump defends Putin at every turn or his actions benefit the Russians against our so-called values & principle? We’re not supposed to connect the dots that trace back decades of Russian mafia figures have been giving Trump loans when American banks no longer will or that the Russians are among Trump’s biggest customers when it comes to selling his apartments in Trump Tower. No, it would just be too unreal to imagine that we could have a traitor in the Oval Office, right?

So, You Don’t Care about NSA Mass Surveillance?

 

 

 

“Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”[17]

“When you say, ‘I have nothing to hide,’ you’re saying, ‘I don’t care about this right.’

—Edward Snowden

 

Mr. Snowden goes on to say; “The way rights work is, the government has to justify its intrusion into your rights, and nobody needs to justify why they ‘need’ a right.” Some of you may remember that other little document our government is founded on i.e. The Bill of Rights? Or how about that other golden oldie, The Declaration of Independence?

 

How is it that one minute, Americans can be boasting to the world, We’re the greatest nation on earth, we have freedom & democracy and our soldiers have given their lives in defense of freedom & democracy, & the next minute they shrug their shoulders and say, I have nothing to hide so I don’t care if the government spies on me?

Fascism’s Friendly Big Brother

 

Another ignorant response I get from probably 90% or more of the people I speak to when I tell that that I write about politics is; “Oh, I’m not interested in politics.” These responses sadden me every time I hear them because they show how lazy people have become mentally. But most importantly, what they reveal if we look below their glib surface is that they’re de facto saying that they don’t care that their family or friends who died in the never-ending wars that America is embroiled in because remember; you don’t care about your right to privacy, the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution, or politics.

 

For the past decade or better, I try to tactfully point out when people say they’re not interested in politics; So, what you’re saying is that you don’t care if the company you worked for & given your blood, sweat, & tears to for years, maybe decades, just shuts its doors & moves overseas where they can pay workers $1 an hour or a couple of bucks per day. And you don’t care if the government allows your company to invest in hedge funds with your pension plan & the hedge fund company loses your pension betting on Wall St.

 

Or you don’t mind if your company cuts back or completely eliminates your health insurance & if you or your loved ones get sick, oh well, too bad! The G.O.P. spends millions on their public advertising propaganda against “socialized medicine,” to keep the public fooled and vote against their own best interests. The Republicans are consistent in their agenda & you can bet your last dollar that behind every bit of legislation they’re for or against, it’s because they want the freedom to rape, pillage, & plunder us to their hearts’ content. (What am I saying? They don’t have hearts & Trump is prima facie evidence of this)

 

I could go on citing example after example but I feel that I’ve made my point. Returning to the subject of our freedoms, one of the things that really pisses me off is the fact that in perhaps the majority of bars, taverns, pubs, etc. across this home of the brave & land of the free, we are forbidden to speak about politics.

 

As I pointed out above, politics affects every one of our lives whether we realize it or not & to be told time & time again that I’d better shut up or I’ll be kicked out really gets my blood boiling. Where else can we meet with our fellow citizens & discuss the topics of the day like the nut-job in El Paso a few weeks back who killed over 20 Hispanics because he believed this was what Trump was telling us we should do.

 

We’re supposed to just sit silent & not discuss or debate such heinous crimes against humanity? And I’ve noticed that this social taboo against speaking about politics in bars is hypocritical in that you can talk about the local politics in your town i.e. the city not fixing potholes, a new local tax, etc. but dare to bring up the serious, national issues like El Paso & the bartenders who often just barely graduated high school, swoop on you like they’re the guardians at the gate.

 

Yet every once in a while, I’ve been in a tavern where the bartender was more enlightened & several of us customers got into a lively discussion/debate about national & international issues and I saw the light come on in peoples’ eyes. And afterwards, I’ve had people come up to me & thank me with comments like; “Wow! That was the best conversation I’ve had in ten years!” I believe people are hungry for real conversation/debate because we have been slowly getting dumbed-down with asinine television programming & advertisements for our entire lives.

 

Unlike our infamous “leader,” I’m not bragging & claiming that those energizing conversations happened because I’m so brilliant. No, I merely played the role of moderator & would add interesting points or questions here & there and encourage those who were mostly just listening, to join in with their perspective. And yes, I realize that I can’t expect every conversation in a bar to be as stimulating as those rare ones that I have experienced but to command us to be silent is closer to living in a totalitarian state like Russia or China & I thought we were supposed to be better than that?

 

Furthermore, I don’t buy the standard excuse for why we’re not allowed to speak about politics in bars; “People get too upset & start fights.” Why not just cut-off or 86 those who become belligerent just as you would for any one of hundreds of other reasons people become aggressive in bars? I have had guys come really close to trying to physically intimidate me & have realized that I was arguing with a brick wall so I’d say, let’s just agree to disagree, and I’d either change the subject or if they were still trying to intimidate me, I’d get up and move or simply leave the bar.

 

Perhaps we’ve also lost our sense of outrage at the erosion of our freedoms & rights due to the fact that most of us work for private corporations which are de facto “private tyrannies?” This concept never even occurred to me until I learned about it from my intellectual hero, Noam Chomsky. Here’s a quote from Noam that should give every true patriot cause for serious concern;

 

January 21, 2010 will go down as a dark day in the history of American democracy, and its decline. The editors of the New York Times did not exaggerate when they wrote that the Supreme Court decision that day “strikes at the heart of democracy” by having “paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding” — more explicitly, for permitting corporate managers to do so, since current laws permit them to spend shareholder money without consent.

https://chomsky.info/20100124/

 

To conclude my remarks on the subject of our rights being severely curtailed, I want to unequivocally state that no, I’m not a grand conspiracy theorist & I detest Alex Jones, who Trump loves to cite in his fear & hate rallies. But, it is a fact that the Patriot Act which was rammed through Congress two months after 9/11 & didn’t even give Congress time to read it, in effect, shredded our Bill of Rights.

 

Moreover, 9/11 was just the sort of event that Dick Cheney & the others who formed the right-wing, think tank P.N.A.C. (Project for the New American Century) established in 1997, had been looking for so they could initiate their War on Terror campaign which would guarantee that the billions & trillions of dollars being siphoned off from the U.S. Treasury would continue ad infinitum. Yes, this was the perfect justification for the theft & waste by the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about because it is the gift that never stops giving i.e. terrorism will never stop especially because the more we bomb other nations & kill innocent civilians, the more terrorists we keep on creating.Sorry but I’m going to disillusion you Sunshine Patriots yet again, here are the facts about America’s so-called desire to bring peace, freedom, & democracy to the world—a list of our wars or police actions since the founding of the United States (read it if you dare i.e. if the facts don’t scare you as they do with Trump followers & many “Christian” evangelicals; https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-has-been-at-war-93-of-the-time-222-out-of-239-years-since-1776/55659 )

 

And once again, No, this isn’t a grand conspiracy because quite frankly, they’re not that clever. It boils down to the fact that all these players i.e. the government, “Defense” contractors, the 1%, etc. are unified in one thing, their greed.

 

Some of you may still not care that the NSA is illegally spying on every American citizen & is storing all our data, “content” and metadata, in their new, storage center in Utah. And as Snowden showed us, this metadata provided to the government by Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, etc. can be used against us whenever the government may wish to do so. Our metadata is a record of our location, the sites we log on to, the duration of our phone calls, our e-mail exchanges, etc. etc. etc. and if we should ever be a target of our government, it’d be very easy for them to fabricate a crime we supposedly committed by simply linking our metadata & concocting a fictitious narrative about us. Perhaps you think this is very unlikely? How many times have we heard of people framed by the police and/or the district attorney simply because they wanted to look good in the public’s eye for having solved a crime.

 

As for you who still don’t give a shit about your privacy, consider these possible scenarios the NSA could record about your behavior:

 

  • Cheating on your wife or husband
  • A homosexual experience
  • You masturbating
  • Making love to your spouse
  • Shitting your pants
  • A sexual disease you contracted
  • A diagnosis of cancer
  • Fights with your kids or your spouse
  • Getting fired
  • Losing your home
  • Being obese
  • Being homeless
  • Your kids’ private lives
  • Your spouse naked
  • Porn you watch
  • Paying a hooker for sex
  • Funerals you attend
  • Your breaking down emotionally
  • Your spouse telling you they want a divorce
  • Your dying in the hospital
  • Being drunk & starting a fight and seriously hurting someone
  • You drunk driving
  • Whipping your child
  • Beating your wife
  • Threatening someone
  • Cheating on your taxes
  • Having sex with someone you’re embarrassed to have been with
  • Your daughter’s period
  • Your home burning down
  • Stealing something
  • Cheating on a test

 

Naturally, this list could go on & on and you could come up with your own list of things you’d rather not be known or common knowledge. So, tell me again that you have nothing to hide & you don’t mind the fact that the NSA has invaded every nook & cranny of our daily lives & is recording it.

 

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

― Benjamin Franklin

 

 

Addendum

 

 

I almost forgot one of the key points on this subject, as Edward Snowden mentioned in the excellent film; “Citizen Four,” it’s all about “Control.” I believe he was being very cautious because he didn’t want to be dismissed as yet another “conspiracy nut,” and that’s why he only touched on the “control” issue so briefly. Moreover, in a nutshell, this connects with what Chomsky titled one of his books; “Keeping the Rabble in Line.”

 

Principle 8- Keep the Rabble in Line

Elites’ concentrated efforts against democratizing tendencies, as Chomsky has noted several times, are nothing new along the course of American history. One of the most successful counterforces to these efforts has been organized labor, because “they provide a barrier that defends workers’ rights, but also popular rights generally” (107). Naturally, the business class extended their offensive to dismantle organized labor, one of their strongest opponents to what Chomsky calls “corporate tyranny” (107). Until the New Deal, the labor movement was relatively stagnant. Franklin Delano Roosevelt asked union leaders to use the voice of the masses to effectively force the administration into labor reform initiatives. He argued that his hands were tied politically until the “popular pressure [was] sufficient” enough to overrule disagreements about New Deal policies among society’s elites (109). According to Chomsky, leaders of.

http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-requiem-for-the-american-dream/chapanal008.html#gsc.tab=

And as a parting gift for you true seekers of knowledge & understanding;

 

 

 

 

 

How We Could Reduce the level of Ignorance in America

 

 

A good starting place would be for us to frog-march Trump, the Commander & Chief Dunce, out of the White House in an orange jump-suit to match his tan & in handcuffs right into Pelican Bay & throw away the key.

the poster boy for “willful ignorance”

 

I know, wishful thinking but hey, we don’t have much else to live on nowadays given the insatiable greed of the 1% & their lackeys in both political parties. Here are a few suggestions that came to me & in no particular order but bear in mind that the best & most important place to start is in your own home & your own life because we sure as Hell can’t rely on the putrid politicians sucking on the teats of the corporate cockroaches who make up the 1%.

 

I have spent my life seriously pursuing knowledge & by extension, wisdom & truth. I was a teacher in various guises from serving as a tutor to being a teacher. I have collected a personal library of approximately 10,000 books & have made copious notes in several hundred of my books. I have spent approximately 50,000 hours conservatively over the past 40 years reading, writing, watching documentaries, listening to radio programs, etc. about politics. And I have written probably 300 essays or better, some 20 to 30 pages. I also have two major writing projects or works in progress, one that is non-fiction is over 2,000 pages & the fiction project which is a combination of fantasy, autobiography, & politics is over 2,400 pages at present. This doesn’t mean that I believe that I’m a world authority but it does mean that I’ve done my homework & am light-years ahead of our liar in chief, the moron sitting behind the empty desk in the oval office.

how the rich buy “respectability”

 

  • Prosecute Betsy DeVos for the fraud of pretending to be human & educated
  • Eliminate all standardized testing
  • Stop the use of Scantron tests (multiple choice & true/false questions)
  • Instead of stopping the teaching of reading in the fourth grade, keep teaching every student how to read until they are able to read at their grade level (exceptions of course for those who are truly intellectually-challenged like Trump)</li>
  • All people should have books (mentally stimulating books) in their homes, especially those with young children
  • Reading on a regular basis sends a powerful message to your kids that reading is a worthwhile activity because it shows not just tells them that it’s good for them to do
  • Read to your kids in bed for as long as they’ll allow you to without complaining that they’ve outgrown the practice
  • Have students start writing stories, book reports, poems, essays, etc. as soon as possible in their public education or private education
  • If the educational bureaucracy won’t get off teachers’ backs, assign a personal secretary for every teacher whose job is to take care of the bullshit paperwork
  • Outlaw the stealing of public education funding & giving it to charter schools
  • Charter schools reflect the power of the “Christian” evangelicals or fundamentalists over spine-less politicians</li>
  • Our founding fathers insisted on the separation of Church & State precisely because they feared what is happening now, Charter schools’agenda of turning our nation into a delusional nation where rational thought is dismissed—Trump’s “alternative facts”
  • Take 5% of the annual waste, fraud, & abuse in the Pentagon’s budget & give it to public education
  • Pay teachers on a scale comparable to high tech professionals
  • Enforce the FCC’s original mandate to provide the public with high-quality educational & cultural programming & expand it to three hours of prime-time every day of the week & make all the networks, including the cable networks, pay 20 % of their net profits to our public education system
  • Limit all class sizes to 20 students as the absolute maximum allowable under law</li>
  • Start teaching critical & analytical thinking skills to students as soon as they are developmentally able to comprehend them
  • Every American citizen as well as resident, can attend any university they want to absolutely free (from their local community college to Harvard University)
  • Expand the study of the humanities as well as the arts from kindergarten to university & bestow national recognition on their study with awards, honors, etc.
  • Call out every politician who knowingly lies on national television with unbiased great scholars who publicly humiliate them
  • Promote & establish community learning centers in every community where residents can get academic help, and can enjoy lively discussions/debates on any subject/topic of their choice with academic referees to moderate & guide the discussions
  • Call out advertisers who purposely dumb us down with their insulting advertisements & publicly ridicule them
  • Create/build high-quality public libraries in every community no matter how poor; house them in beautifully designed architectural works of art with all the latest technology, top-notch librarians, & collections worthy of the Library of Congress
  • Give Writers & Educators & Artists from every form of art, the national attention, recognition, & respect as we do of our Sports stars</li>
  • Subsidize students from poor circumstances in a way that isn’t personally embarrassing to the students
  • Take away the tax-free status of churches & make them pay a substantial tax to their local, public schools
  • Outlaw all on-line “universities” unless they can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that their graduates have clearly benefitted greatly from their studies
  • Build, maintain, & ensure the future of a public education system that is the envy of the world in terms of its physical structures, the quality of instruction, & a sincere love for each and every student
  • Start teaching students about informal fallacies of logic as soon as they are able to comprehend them so they hopefully won’t be as easily duped as so many of their parents are by Trump, the Great Deceiver!
  • Develop programs to expand students’ attention spans so they can pursue self-education whether in or out of formal school settings</li>

 

Utopian? Yeah, I expect such reactions but I have always been a sort of Don Quixote chasing after windmills & I remember those immortal words of Martin Luther King; “I have a Dream!” Without our dreams to push us forward, what’s the point of our lives? To simply be able to put on our tombstones; They paid their bills & kept a clean house? It’s the dreamers who have always inspired us & who have led us to times when we weren’t just the peasants for the lords like Little Lord Fauntleroy Trump to spit on.

 

Addendum: I originally was going to end this essay here but as I was editing this, I thought; I have to share with you the man the New York Times once said was “arguably the most important intellectual alive,’ Noam Chomsky.

America’s Zombie Cult

 

 

 

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.

The darkest days of my life until I lost my wife

 

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.”

A real patriot, Ron Kovic, who spoke the truth after realizing the lie of Vietnam war.

 

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.

I read this book 30 years ago & it’s truly scary how ignorant we are as a nation

 

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.

isn’t it interesting how the “Christian” agenda & the corporate cockroach agenda go hand-in-glove?

 

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.

smile & laugh because they are too, all the way to the bank as they steal your pension, your home, etc.

 

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?

this is why Trump hates the Times more than any other newspaper

 

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.

Do you actually need testimonies as to Trump’s colossal ignorance on just about everything? Open your eyes!

 

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.”

would your teachers in public school accept these “arguments” for your laziness & stupidity???

 

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.

The beginning of wisdom is knowing that you don’t know. (Socrates)

 

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.

I’m not a religious person but if I were, this is the anti-Christ i.e. no compassion whatsoever

 

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.

the journalist who dared to take on the witch-hunter McCarthy who terrified Hollywood & the national media

 

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)

McCarthy & Roy Cohn, Trump’s mentor i.e. Distract, Deceive, Deny & above all else, keep your name in the public’s mind whether positive or negative

 

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.

A very dangerous clown who definitely shouldn’t be taken lightly!

 

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/

P.T. Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” and boy was he right

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.”

 

 

Facebook’s Friendly Fascism

 

 

“When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”  —Sinclair Lewis

Did you say wrapped in a flag or humping a flag?

 

“Fascism is when corporations take over the government.” —Bill Maher

Pat Robertson, the good “Christian” worth $100 million-crooks of a feather hang together

 

 

 

 

Because of American’s aversion to history and as a result, our general ignorance of history, I’m going to start by giving you a brief history of American business’ fondness for fascism. Note; Pence carries the Cross for Trump & that’s all they had to do to win-over the “Christian” evangelicals’ vote.

 

“Mussolini’s regime received particularly warm praise from America’s business leaders. In his 1972 work, Prof. Diggins writes (pp. 146-47): “With few exceptions, the dominant voices of business responded to Fascism with a hearty enthusiasm. Favorable editorials, could be read in publications such as Barron’s, Journal of Commerce and Commercial Bulletin, Commerce and Finance, Nation’s Business (the official organ of the US Chamber of Commerce), and the reputable Wall Street Journal. Aside from the press, the list of outspoken business admirers reads like a Wall Street ‘Who’s Who’.”

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v15/v15n3p6_weber.html

 

 

Moreover, here is just a partial list of American corporations who not only did business in Nazi Germany but actually had the gall to sue our own government for damages done to their factories in Germany during the war & won reparations. Yeah! I shit you not:

 

  • Coca-Cola
  • Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
  • Chase Manhattan Bank
  • Dow Chemical
  • Brown Brothers Harriman (Bush family)
  • Woolworth (Woolworth’s 5 & 10 cent stores)
  • Alcoa Aluminum
  • Ford Motor Company
  • General Motors
  • B.M. (International Business Machines)

 

https://www.toptenz.net/top-10-american-companies-that-aided-the-nazis.php

 

And lastly but certainly not least, here’s a bit of history for you that really shocked me when I first learned of it:

 

The Business Plot was an alleged political conspiracy in 1933 in the United States. Retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butlerclaimed that wealthy businessmen were plotting to create a fascist veterans’ organization with Butler as its leader and use it in a coup d’état to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1934, Butler testified before the United States House of Representatives Special Committee on Un-American Activities (the “McCormackDickstein Committee”) on these claims.[1] No one was prosecuted.

 

This is from a Wikipedia entry & yeah, I know, you might choose to lump me in with the likes of Alex Jones—whom I detest & know to be a fear and hate monger like his buddy Trump—but it’s common knowledge that Congress is & has been bought & paid for by Corporate America so is it any wonder that they’d brush this attempted coup under the rug? (Note Trump’s fondness for conspiracy theories except when they’re ones he’s involved in)

And no, this isn’t peculiar to only America but as the most powerful nation on Earth, we bear the majority of the responsibility for corporate corruption around the globe & it is my duty as an American citizen to hold my government accountable first & foremost before I criticize other nations.

 

Guess whose name came up again in this “alleged” plot? Yep! Prescott Bush, the senator & the father of George H.W. Bush. (the Business Plot to overthrow F.D.R., not the Red Car conspiracy) Here’s one last tidbit for you:

 

“He mentioned that the Remington arms manufacturers would supply the army, thanks to a working relationship with the DuPonts. “We need a Fascist government in this country,” he told the reporter, “to save the nation from the communists who want to tear it down and wreck all that we have built in America. The only men who have the patriotism to do it are the soldiers and Smedley Butler is the ideal leader. He could organize a million men overnight.”

 

https://timeline.com/business-plot-overthrow-fdr-9a59a012c32a

 

I took the time to provide you with this lengthy warm-up to my essay so as to show you that the only loyalty that many, if not most of “our” largest corporations have is to the almighty dollar. They have & they continue to betray us day in, day out i.e. NAFTA.(remember it was Clinton who signed NAFTA into law) Trump is nothing more than a circus clown whose job is to distract us while the corporate cockroaches rob us. Reagan did pretty much the same thing but he clearly wasn’t anywhere as crude & vulgar as Trump.

Stephen King should make a horror movie of this guy

 

Trump’s “win” showed the world how truly stupid we are because only in America, could such a colossal moron be elected president. And my life’s mission is to chip away at our ignorance so in that vein, here we go.

 

This essay is basically my attempt to connect the dots of the fantastic documentary just released on Netflix; “The Great Hack.” I’ll try to use quotation marks consistently but if I forget from time to time, I don’t mean to plagiarize it’s merely an oversight on my part?

In brief, this film exposes how the British firm, Cambridge Analytica, bought Facebook user’s personal data to target people they knew were susceptible to fake news & propaganda ads so they’d vote for Trump.

 

Mussolini, Italy’s fascist dictator who inspired Hitler, said that fascism should more rightly be called Corporatism because it’s a marriage of the state & corporations. Zuckerberg has proven that he’s a fascist because he sold our data to any company that’d pay for it & he willingly provides our data to the government. And as a result of Zuckerberg’s greed, we have a president who is clearly only out to make as much money for himself & his family and doesn’t give a shit about us as citizens, about the environment, or anything else except what feeds his ego.

Thanks buddy!

 

Returning to the film, Brittany Kaiser is a central figure in this nightmare become reality. She was “a key employee at Cambridge Analytica but before that, she worked for the Obama campaign then the Trump campaign.”

 

The narrator of the film points out that “our behavior is being accurately predicted” (via all our personal data that we freely provide to Facebook). Enter David Carroll, associate professor at Parsons School of Design. He basically got the ball rolling for this film by suing in a British court, Cambridge Analytica to get his personal data back. He informs us that they (Cambridge Analytica) are “creating specific ads for us as individuals, through the data we have supplied on Facebook & other social media platforms.”

 

“It (Facebook) began as a dream where we could all become connected via the Internet. It became our matchmaker, personal entertainer, guardian of our memories, even our therapist, but these data trails of ourselves are being mined into a trillion dollar a year business.”

 

Yeah, “we are now the commodity.” And I assert that we are no longer the consumer except in a perverse way we are because we’re consuming ourselves, a sort of cannibalism, & we are being served up to the fascists who rule the world. Moreover, it’s our “content” i.e. our stories, pictures, etc., that is the product being sold—we lose our intellectual property rights as soon as we post something on Facebook.

 

“We were so in love with all those ‘free’ gifts (on Facebook) that no one bothered to read the terms & conditions.” I am reminded of the old adage, Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. “All our interactions, credit card swipes, web searches, locations, ‘Likes,’ etc. are being collected in ‘real time,’ and are attached to our Identity.”

 

Perhaps you think this is an exaggeration? If so, then why did they build a data storage center in Bluffdale, Utah supposedly for the NSA & our “Intelligence Community” which covers over a million square feet & collects data on the order of “exabytes” or larger?

Home sweet home for every American’s data. Thanks Big Brother!

 

The exabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. In the International System of Units (SI), the prefix exa indicates multiplication by the sixth power of 1000 (1018). Therefore, one exabyte is one quintillion bytes (short scale). The unit symbol for the exabyte is EB.

 

You’re probably in the dark like me when it comes to having the foggiest idea of how big a quintillion is, so here’s an example;

 

The entire Earth contains about 326 quintillion gallons of water.

 

We’re supposed to believe “our” government when they tell us that all this data they’re collecting is for our national security. Yeah, right! Just how many times & in how many ways do they have to screw you before you wake-up and smell the coffee? That brave soul & true patriot, Edward Snowden, gave up his freedom, his ability to ever see his home country again to spend the rest of his life in exile with the ever-present possibility of being imprisoned & tortured by our “Intelligence community,” to reveal the truth about what the NSA, CIA, FBI, etc. are really doing with all our data. And he only mentioned it briefly in the stupendous documentary by Laura Poitras; “Citizen Four.” In a word, Snowden said it’s about “Control.”

Let that word roll around in your mind for a few minutes. Facebook & most of the other “social media platforms,” our Intelligence agencies, & the corporate cockroaches all have one thing in common i.e. their desire to control not only our buying habits but our obedience to the political elite, whoever they may be at any given point in time.

 

And no, this isn’t the latest science fiction movie blockbuster, this is the cold, hard reality that is enveloping us like a menacing fog. Okay, now that I’ve probably depressed you considerably, let’s return to the documentary; “The Great Hack.” But first let me remind those of you who are old enough to remember, COINTELPRO, to bear that in mind while we reflect on the NSA’s abilities today & Facebook’s reach (two billion users). Still feel free here in the land of democracy?

The narrator goes on to inform us that our data willingly sold by Facebook to any buyer, “gives them direct access to our emotional pulse” as well. I immediately thought of our “Hearts and Minds” strategy employed by our “military intelligence” during the Vietnam debacle. Yep! Win the people’s whose country you’re invading, gratitude & cooperation by “Pacifying” them i.e. burning their villages down & imprisoning them in concentration camps.

 

Need I remind you of how well that strategy worked out in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.? Gee! I sure do regret not being a “good soldier” & participating in the humanitarian agenda in Vietnam. (this is sarcasm for those of you who may not catch on?)

 

Analogously, I view corporate America’s & the “Intelligence community’s” agenda for winning our hearts & minds is also doomed to fail because of its inherent evil.

 

The narrator continues; “Armed with this (emotional) knowledge of us, they (social media platforms) compete for our attention feeding us a steady stream of “Content” built for & seen by only me.” In other words, their algorithms are so finely-tuned that we don’t even realize that we’re being manipulated i.e. we feel that we are not alone in thinking/feeling the way we do & have magically stumbled upon like-minded individuals because just about every post that comes through our Facebook feed, confirms what I know & believe.

 

“And this is true for each and every one of us i.e. what we like, what we feel, what gets our attention, what our boundaries are, & what it takes to cross our boundaries.” Speaking of feelings, here’s an insider who revealed what your “Smart phone,” is doing to you;

Does this not horrify you? At least in the horror sci-fi genre of movies we watch, we can take comfort in knowing that these are merely Hollywood techniques meant to give us a thrill by scaring us. And perhaps naturally, we’re unwilling or unable to face the ugly reality of what is creeping up on us?

 

Speaking of nightmares, Trump is every sentient being’s living image of the worst of humanity, I believe? It’s truly unfathomable that a more despicable person could occupy the oval office? And as the narrator points out, “We saw the fallout of our filtered reality in the 2016 election. The real world became a deeply divided refuge site.”

 

Giving proof, in my opinion, that the introduction of “reality T.V.,” is partially responsible for our social & intellectual decay. Case in point, as I recall, “Survivor” was the first of the onslaught of these ignorant & obnoxious television series. I believe that I watched one complete episode before turning to my dear wife, Jeri, and commenting; Jesus! What is this teaching our kids? It’s teaching them that lying, cheating, stealing, backstabbing i.e. anything is okay in the pursuit of victory. And here’s a bit of “reality” for those of you not afraid to be truly real; https://www.inverse.com/article/13603-psychology-tv-how-reality-programming-impacts-our-brains

 

Fast forward a decade and voila, we have the epitome of all that is worst in people as president. Who just coincidentally starred in “The Apprentice.” Yeah, it should’ve been called “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” or more accurately, “The Devil’s Apprentice.” I have often felt like a sort of modern-day Don Quixote because of some of my observations over the years i.e. how is it that we watch an artificial medium (mode of communication) to supposedly get a view of “reality?” This is like a double-negative in mathematics i.e. it cancels itself out. I think this may have all contributed to our enfeeblement?

Getting back to the narrator’s last comment, my question for you, my imaginary reader, is where are we able to find true refuge in this mad world we’ve created? And yeah, I know that many of you will offer suggestions like meditation, yoga, etc. but I’m asking about help for the average Joe who doesn’t have the time or the inclination to pursue these more esoteric paths.

 

The narrator asks, “How did the dream of a connected world tear us apart?” Well I would answer that this documentary is precisely about trying to answer that very question. Or, in brief, I’d say that human greed & stupidity is what’s tearing us apart. And don’t forget apathy, willful ignorance, & anti-intellectualism (a particular trait of Trump fans who’ve been angry for most of their lives for being put-down or ostracized for their ignorance but will never take responsibility for their lack of education or do anything about remedying the fact).

 

Moving along, the narrator asks; “Who is feeding us Fear and how?” Well duh? Trump is the most glaring example but yes, we need to look beyond the obvious reptilian from the Black Lagoon that Trump is. In a nutshell my friend, the corporate cockroaches i.e. those who see themselves as the Masters of the Universe—who just announced & not coincidentally, “U.S. Space Command will launch this month, ahead of Trump’s Space Force.” (USA Today, 8/20/19) —are as serious as a heart-attack.

Moreover, I submit for your consideration that Trump & his evangelical eunuch, Pence, aren’t the first space cadets. No, Reagan’s “Star Wars program,” was the tip-off for these dangerous loonies. After God knows how many billions of our tax dollars were flushed down the toilet under Reagan, the program was supposedly halted but I don’t believe it.

 

In 1997, the U.S. Air Force announced its goal of “Full Spectrum Dominance.” Hint: America’s true agenda isn’t freedom & democracy for the world but “our” total domination of all lands & all peoples i.e. we spend more on our military than all the other nations on Earth combined & we have over 900 military bases around the globe & God knows how many secret “black op” sites? And you wonder why we can’t afford free, high quality health care for our citizens?

 

Returning to the subject of who the fear mongers are, the next most glaring example is “Fox news.” I’ve been saying since roughly a year after Fox “news,” came into existence (roughly 20 years ago) that it is America’s version of Russia’s “Pravda” state newspaper. Sadly though, Goebbels (Hitler’s minister of propaganda) was correct when he said that the bigger the lie & the more often you repeat it, the more it becomes truth or fact—my paraphrasing. I have dubbed Fox “news,” the Fear & Hate channel & here’s another bit of history for ya; FDR declared; “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

 

You see, my imaginary reader, through time immemorial, the powers that be have sought to scare their subjects, or their citizens into submission to their authority. In other words, the old tactic of Divide & Conquer which military leaders have used probably even before recorded history? And what better & easier way to divide & conquer us than with the help of the social media platform, Facebook which has over two billion “commodities” formerly known as human beings.

 

Following this further, I didn’t notice how appropriate the name of the Trump’s campaign project to steal the election was until just now. They dubbed it “Project Alamo.” This really shouldn’t come as any great surprise given the fact that Trump, launched the “Birther movement” against Obama & his campaign to become president, was built upon his xenophobia & never-ending racist rhetoric primarily focused on Mexicans & to a slightly lesser degree, Muslims.

 

A recent guest on Ian Master’s program, “Background Briefing,” which I’ve been following off & on for over 30 years, noted that “Trump is a strategic racist” i.e. his racism isn’t just willy-nilly, no, it’s purposely planned & delivered so as to keep the public confused & divided.

 

“He uses racism by triggering two major sources of anxiety for many white people: economic insecurity and demographic change.”  https://haasinstitute.berkeley.edu/trumps-racism-isnt-just-racism-its-strategy  —Ian Haney Lopez

 

Think about it, “Project Alamo.” The perfect name for a campaign based on scapegoating Mexicans or Latinos in general. Perhaps the most vulnerable segment of our society? And the Alamo being the location of our mythical & courageous stand against the marauding Mexicans—we’re supposed to forget that it was us who invaded their country & stole:

 

The whole states of CaliforniaNevadaUtahArizonaNew Mexico and Texas, as well as parts of WyomingColorado, Oklahoma and Kansas,

 

from Mexico. And this is precisely why U.S. history as taught in our public education system is so packed with lies i.e. the powers that be realize that they must brainwash us into believing we’re always the good guy & the victims of invading hordes of criminals, rapists, drug dealers, etc. as Trump proclaims ad nauseam.

 

Furthermore, the narrator tells us that the Trump presidential campaign’s “digital arm i.e. Project Alamo at its peak was spending a million dollars a day on Facebook ads.” Naturally, Marky Mark Zuckerberg neglects to mention this whenever he tries to defend Facebook against its critics.

 

Moreover, the team from Cambridge Analytica worked in the same room with Trump’s campaign team but in their own corner of the room while working jointly on Project Alamo. And as the narrator pointed out; “Cambridge Analytica was the brain of the data center” in which both groups worked.

 

Enter “Paul Olivier Dehaye, a mathematician based in Switzerland who had been following Cambridge Analytica for over a year & became suspicious.” Dehaye & David Carroll, the narrator who brought the law suit against Cambridge Analytica, “realized that in order to send people personalized messages, you needed to be able to access their data.”

 

In their sales pitch to perspective customers, “Cambridge claimed to have 5,000 data points on every American voter.” Let me break down for you what these data points are referring to;

 

When people take surveys for statistical purposes or when the Census Bureau comes around and gets everybody’s information, information from one person is one data point for them. At the end of its research or survey, the company will have gathered many bits of information from many people. One bit of information equals one data pointhttps://study.com/academy/lesson/data-points-definition-lesson-quiz.html

 

 

In other words, from those seemingly innocent “personality tests” that Facebook suckered us into taking again & again, and other tools, Cambridge Analytica was able to accumulate over 5,000 bits of personal information on all of us who fell for the ruse. Things like what we read, our political leanings, our buying habits, hobbies, friends, drinking habits, etc. etc. etc. and this gave them the weapons they could turn around & use on us to manipulate us (some easier than others) into voting for Trump or not voting at all, etc.

 

As the narrator pointed out; “But this information was invisible & the question became, how to make the invisible visible?” Continuing on, “Dehaye’s hypothesis was that U.S. voter data was processed by Cambridge’s parent company in the U.K. & if this were true, the narrator, David Carroll, could sue using a British lawyer to force Cambridge Analytica to give him his data.”

 

Enter, Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica. “Nix focused on building an election business using people’s data to steer elections around the world—including Obama’s election to some extent.”

 

Let’s stop & reflect on this for a bit. Here was a company that bought our personal data from Facebook & then used our data to manipulate elections around the globe. Obviously, Zuckerberg has a lot more to answer for than the election of Trump but is he in prison? No, he got a light slap on the wrist financially speaking & continues doing business & claiming ignorance & innocence regarding these global crimes which have had serious consequences for people’s lives.[I’m adding this here after having aleady completed this essay; the fact that we are now a “post-literate” society & images and videos are the dominant mediums used to manipulate us, ponder the ramifications of this short video clip: Exhibit A: Donald Trump brought to us by “Reality T.V.” how about a nightmare brought to us by fake television?]

 

First of all, bear in mind that Facebook has two billion users around the world, obviously that’s quite a data base to draw from in terms of manipulating the hearts & minds of people. Cambridge meddled in & steered elections for their clients in Australia, India, Kenya, Malta, Mexico, U.K., and the U.S.

And Cambridge Analytica’s executives said in 2018 that the company had worked in more than 200 elections around the world, including in Trinidad and TobagoNigeria, the Czech RepublicArgentina,[57] and the Philippines (Rodrigo Duterte).[154]

 

I’m going to keep searching for a comprehensive list of all the elections that these British bastards rigged but this was all that I could find for the time being. I don’t know about you but this just staggers the mind, the fact that a single corporation could wreak such global havoc? Perhaps we’re headed for a global fascist state?

 

An important thing to keep in mind as we delve deeper into this colossal scandal is that all this data wasn’t gained by some nefarious hackers but was freely sold by Facebook to Cambridge Analytica. Zuckerberg, already one of the wealthiest men in America, a billionaire several times over, wasn’t satisfied & craved more power & more wealth. As the old adage goes, a capitalist is a guy who will sell you the rope with which to hang him. I for one, would love to see Capitalism fail and a truly Social form of economics take its place.

 

I want to emphasize here that we must never forget that it was good old Saint Obama who prosecuted more whistleblowers than all our other presidents combined. Yep! The full force of the U.S. government is brought down on whistleblowers who are the true patriots, like Edward Snowden, Thomas Drake, Edward Binney, John Kiriakou, J. Kirk Wiebe, Edward Loomis, & Chelsea Manning, but these companies like Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, or our NSA who ignored our Constitution, supposedly the bedrock of U.S. law & government, either receive a slap on the wrist or aren’t punished at all for their massive criminal acts.

 

Admittedly, I voted for Obama in his first bid to become president but a few weeks after he took office & he appointed Summers, Geithner, & Bernanke to just name a few, I knew that I had been duped & I thought I was pretty politically sophisticated with my 30 years of studying politics. Yeah, it became abundantly obvious that Obama was in the pockets of Wall St.

 

Do you remember Obama’s mantra “Change” that was literally on the lecterns he stood at in nearly every political speech he made during his first campaign for the presidency? And how he swore that his presidency would be the most transparent presidency ever? Well as the cynical point out, they are all liars. And I have to agree. Obama was & clearly still is in the pockets of the military/industrial/congressional complex and his crimes against humanity i.e. his drone war, his deportation of millions of immigrants, etc. will soon, if they haven’t already, disappear down the memory hole of the American public. Here’s a fragment on the “crimes” of a few of the whistleblowers he persecuted & prosecuted;

 

The story goes back to 2002, when three of the whistleblowers—Loomis, Wiebe and Binney—asked the Pentagon to investigate the NSA for wasting “millions and millions of dollars” on Trailblazer, which had been chosen as the agency’s flagship system for analyzing intercepted communications over a smaller and cheaper in-house program known as Thin Thread.  https://www.thenation.com/article/obamas-crackdown-whistleblowers/

 

 

Continuing with the Cambridge Analytica crime spree, after helping Obama in his election campaign, “they were then contracted to work for the Republican party & Ted Cruz went from last place to first place before Trump got the nomination.”

 

The film then shows a presentation by Nix called “The Power of Big Data and Psychographics.” To reiterate, the crucial data that Cambridge Analytica relied on to create their data base for manipulating people politically came from mostly those personality tests—several of which I took myself. Here’s a bit of insight into how the data gathered from those tests was used;

 

Psychometrics, sometimes also called psychographics, focuses on measuring psychological traits, such as personality. In the 1980s, two teams of psychologists developed a model that sought to assess human beings based on five personality traits, known as the “Big Five.” These are: openness (how open you are to new experiences?), conscientiousness (how much of a perfectionist are you?), extroversion (how sociable are you?), agreeableness (how considerate and cooperative you are?) and neuroticism (are you easily upset?). Based on these dimensions—they are also known as OCEAN, an acronym for openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism—we can make a relatively accurate assessment of the kind of person in front of us. This includes their needs and fears, and how they are likely to behave. The “Big Five” has become the standard technique of psychometrics. But for a long time, the problem with this approach was data collection, because it involved filling out a complicated, highly personal questionnaire. Then came the Internet. And Facebook. And Kosinski.  https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mg9vvn/how-our-likes-helped-trump-win

 

I don’t know about you but this kind of makes me feel like a lab rat? And I hate to sound so pessimistic but with all that this film has revealed & the knowledge that gerrymandering, tampering with election machines, etc. etc. etc. I am tempted to just give up and run away to some deserted island. But that’s soon not even going to be an option with the rising seas thanks to global warming & Trump’s sabotaging of every govt. agency whose mission is to protect the environment.

 

However, I still have some fight in me & will continue to fight the good fight even though I feel like I’m often spitting in the wind especially in post-literate America.

 

The narrator then shares with the audience that Cambridge targeted those “who were persuadable.” (I’d simply say, those who were/are weak-minded and/or ignorant) Consequently, “personality drives behavior and behavior influences how you vote.” Logically, “they then started to target people with highly targeted video content” i.e. fake news & videos claiming Hillary Clinton ran a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor & they drank children’s blood, etc. —the sort of stuff right up Alex jones (Trump’s confidante) alley. Or as I refer to these ridiculously gullible people, The Duck Dynasty Klan (Trump’s base).

 

Of course, after their success in putting Trump in office, “Cambridge felt they were on their way to becoming a billion-dollar company.”

 

Enter Carole Cadwalladr, “investigative journalist for The Guardian, she’d been investigating Cambridge and its ties to the Brexit campaign.” And enter, Nigel Farage “with the Brexit campaign who is a friend of Steve Bannon’s.” And for those of you who may not follow politics very closely, Steve Bannon was like George W. Bush’s Darth Vader, Karl Rove. Except Bannon was kicked to the curb early in Trump’s triumphant reign of terror in the White House, well at least publicly—he may still be operating behind the curtain?

 

Bannon had to leave because of his comments to a reporter about Trump & my guess is that it may have also had something to do with the exposure of Breitbart News as an extremist “conservative” media outlet. Yeah, they’re about as “conservative” as the John Birch Society. Bannon is a fear & hate monger par excel lance. And since his departure from Team Trump, he’s been sowing the seeds of hate & racism in Europe. One last note regarding Breitbart of which Bannon was the executive chairman, uh, correction, this deserves a bit more than one last note. Robert Mercer is a hedge fund billionaire who has played a significant role also in the rise of the Trump Terror Tyranny (my phrase).

 

Robert Mercer is the money behind Donald Trump. But then, I will come to learn, Robert Mercer is the money behind an awful lot of things. He was Trump’s single biggest donor. Mercer started backing Ted Cruz, but when he fell out of the presidential race he threw his money – $13.5m of it – behind the Trump campaign….

The billionaire funding Breitbart that inspires mass murderers like the guy in El Paso who wanted to kill as many Mexicans as possible

 

One of its funds, Medallion, which manages only its employees’ money, is the most successful in the world – generating $55bn so far. And since 2010, Mercer has donated $45m to different political campaigns – all Republican – and another $50m to non-profits – all rightwing, ultra-conservative. This is a billionaire who is, as billionaires are wont, trying to reshape the world according to his personal beliefs….

 

so to gauge his beliefs you have to look at where he channels his money: a series of yachts, all called Sea Owl; a $2.9m model train set; climate change denial (he funds a climate change denial thinktank, the Heartland Institute); and what is maybe the ultimate rich man’s plaything – the disruption of the mainstream media. In this he is helped by his close associate Steve Bannon, Trump’s campaign manager and now chief strategist. The money he gives to the Media Research Center, with its mission of correcting “liberal bias” is just one of his media plays. There are other bigger, and even more deliberate strategies, and shining brightly, the star at the centre of the Mercer media galaxy, is Breitbart.

 

It was $10m of Mercer’s money that enabled Bannon to fund Breitbart – a rightwing news site, set up with the express intention of being a Huffington Post for the right. It has launched the careers of Milo Yiannopoulos and his like, regularly hosts antisemitic and Islamophobic views, and is currently being boycotted by more than 1,000 brands after an activist campaign. It has been phenomenally successful: the 29th most popular site in America with 2bn page views a year. It’s bigger than its inspiration, the Huffington Post, bigger, even, than PornHub. It’s the biggest political site on Facebook. The biggest on Twitter….

 

But there was another reason why I recognized Robert Mercer’s name: because of his connection to Cambridge Analytica, a small data analytics company. He is reported to have a $10m stake in the company, which was spun out of a bigger British company called SCL Group. It specializes in “election management strategies” and “messaging and information operations”, refined over 25 years in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. In military circles this is known as “psyops” – psychological operations. (Mass propaganda that works by acting on people’s emotions.)

 

…. We’re not quite in the alternative reality where the actual news has become “FAKE news!!!” But we’re almost there. Out on Twitter, the new transnational battleground for the future, someone I follow tweets a quote by Marshall McLuhan, the great information theorist of the 60s. “World War III will be a guerrilla information war,” it says. “With no divisions between military and civilian participation.”

By that definition we’re already there.

 

Guess what? These six paragraphs that I copied and pasted here are from an article by none other than Carole Cadwalladr https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage

 

 

Are you beginning to see the big picture i.e. it’s the super-wealthy, the 1%, who again & again we witness, are/have already de facto bought governments around the world & will never cease in their agenda of enslaving us all? An exaggeration? Consider the fate of unions in America. “Fifty years ago, nearly a third of U.S. workers belonged to a union. Today, it’s one in 10.” https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/23/385843576/50-years-of-shrinking-u

 

 

I’m going to assume that you’ve at least heard of how Walmart crushes any employee who dares to mention the word “union?” The G.O.P. (Greedy Old Pigs) declared publicly as soon as FDR established the New Deal to help alleviate the destruction done to American workers & families because of the Great Depression that was brought on by the greed of the Wall St. wolves, that they’ll fight tooth & nail to destroy every single aspect of the New Deal. And they’ve been true to their word. Also note the G.O.P.’s declaration after Obama was elected that they’d do everything they could to block every single piece of legislation he introduced & they did and he kept saying; “Can’t we just get along?”

 

I’d like to remind you of a few nuggets of wisdom; It’s better die standing than to live on your knees. And, if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. This reminds me of why I’m so opposed to Nancy Pelosi i.e. she keeps blocking the DNC from impeaching Trump with her rationale that they couldn’t succeed because the Senate is controlled by the G.O.P. Well my response is that this is total bullshit! You don’t only take on fights that you know you can win, it’s a matter of principles & values. All Americans should see all the evidence of Trump’s reign of error & terror and decide for themselves as to his guilt or innocence. I believe what would obviously become a long & detailed investigation would persuade many of Trump’s supporters to abandon him. So, it doesn’t matter really if the Dems were successful in impeaching him, what matters is that his phenomenal incompetence, greed, & destruction would be out there and more comprehensible. I am simply befuddled as to how they could impeach Clinton for a blow-job yet Trump has committed thousands of illegal & immoral (sexually molested dozens of women) acts but Nancy says No, we shouldn’t take on this fight? We’ve witnessed the DNC’s brilliance in terms of their political strategies, time & time again and that’s why we’re in this unholy place!

 

Please excuse the long-winded diatribe but this shit gets my blood boiling. Okay, back to the drawing board. Ms. Cadwalladr (Carole) goes on to say that “she tracked down all the ex-Cambridge employees & found Chris Wyley who said he’d talk to her & that he had helped set up Cambridge Analytica.”

 

Enter Chris Wyley, data engineer; “Cambridge is a full-service propaganda machine.” The narrator then informs us that Steve Bannon was the editor of Breitbart & said; “If you want to fundamentally change society, you first have to break it.” This should send chills down all our spines, well those of us who aren’t mere globs of protoplasm with no hearts, souls, or any resemblance of a human being.

 

Bannon’s statement isn’t just another asinine comment by a right-wing nut, No, this is precisely what Trump & what those who pushed for Brexit are all about i.e. the utter destruction of their societies. Need I remind you of Trump’s first actions as president? He appointed as the head of every one of our most critical agencies, not only the least qualified people he could find but also those whose sole mission was to sabotage the very dept. or agency they headed.

 

Ben Carson, Betsy DeVos, Rick Perry, Mike Pompeo (Christian Fascist), Steve Mnuchin (who got rich illegally foreclosing on thousands of California homeowners), Wilbur Ross, Rex Tillerson. Supreme Court—Kavanaugh (sexual predator), Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders-Propaganda Minister along with Kelly Anne Conway, Attorney Generals, Sessions (spineless racist), & Barr (mafia lawyer for Trump). The list goes on & on & on. You’ll have to do your own homework from here if you give a damn? Oh yeah, we definitely mustn’t forget Vice President Pence, the Christian soldier like Eric Prince (Betsy DeVos’ brother & mercenary for despots around the world who love murdering in the name of God).

 

Before winning (stealing) the election, Trump campaigned on “Draining the Swamp.” His quaint euphemism for cleaning up Washington D.C. Yeah, right. This tantrum throwing tyrant has been doing just what Bannon told him he should do i.e. break the whole system so the Alex Jones racists & corporate cockroaches could have a free hand in creating a Fascist New World Order.

 

You might be thinking just about now that I’m off in Alex Jones’ Conspiracy Carnival but if you’ll take five minutes to look up what’s called PNAC (Project for the New American Century), and realize that the fascists among us have been plotting & steadily working towards their ideal state for decades—sometimes they go below the radar for a while when their agendas are a bit too public. Here’s a partial list of their alumni & believers;

 

Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, Elliot Abrams, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, William Bennett (Secretary of Education under two presidents), Jeb Bush, Steve Forbes (Forbes Business magazine), John Bolton (currently strongest cheerleader for war with Iran), & Richard Perle to just name a few of the most recognizable names in this Hall of Shame. {Need I remind/inform you of the role these fascists played in starting the wars in Afghanistan & Iraq?}

 

Obviously, Trump didn’t really want to drain the swamp but rather, re-stock it with the slimiest creatures from the Black Lagoon in which he has resided his whole life. Besides, if he actually did drain that proverbial “swamp,” where would his Duck Dynasty “Deliverance” homeboys find their dates for the Deviant’s Ball? Yep! Trump’s cabinet picks are like placing his buddy, Jeffrey Epstein, in charge of security at a girls’ summer camp. Doesn’t that just warm your heart?

recall the video of Trump bragging he could grab women by their pussy? Here he is giving Jeffrey Epstein some tips

 

Admittedly, I veer off-course perhaps a bit here & there but that’s because I know how ill-informed most of my fellow citizens are & I hope to help them connect the dots. Not that I have the corner on the truth but I have spent over 30 years in serious pursuit of that elusive truth & therefore feel that I have earned the right to speak with some degree of authority. Hell, look who we have as president. It’s a pretty safe bet that he’s never read a single book of substance from cover to cover.

 

Returning to our film, Chris Wylie who filled us in on Steve Bannon, goes on to quote Bannon; “It’s only when you break it (our govt.) that you can then remold it into your vision of a great society.” I want to interject here that sure, our government & our business culture is corrupt as Hell but to dismantle our govt in the name of saving it is like burning your house down because a forest fire was close by & thinking you’d save it from a worse fire. This is utter absurdity & madness and only misanthropic & mercenary minds could think this the right path to a healthy society.

 

Wylie continues; “This was the weapon Bannon wanted to use to wage his Culture War.” Note how frequently the so-called “Conservatives” whine of the culture war being waged against them. “Wylie went to professors at Cambridge University (how appropriate) to ask for their ideas on how to pursue their mission & they showed him the ‘one click personality test.’

 

They got special permission to use apps on Facebook to harvest the info & also go into their entire friend network & pull out all their friends’ data as well. They didn’t just target you as a voter but also as a personality. Their app only needed to tap into a couple hundred thousand people to build a psychological profile of every voter in America. People had no idea their data was being taken in this way. This was a grossly unethical experiment, the psychology of an entire country without their awareness or consent.”

 

But hey, I’m just exaggerating things, right? And it’s unfair of me to label Facebook as fascist for this simple & innocent oversight on their part, right? Remember, fascism is the combination/marriage if you like, of big business & government with the common goal/agenda of controlling the public or the people. And if this form of control & spying on us doesn’t bother you, you’d be right at home in Putin’s Russia & are probably understanding of Trump’s consistent kissing of Putin’s ass. How patriotic of you? I bet your ancestors are rolling over in their graves in disgust with your betrayal of what America used to stand for.

 

Continuing on, “They were playing with the psychology of an entire nation within the context of a democratic process.” I take umbrage with the use of the word ‘playing’ and ‘within the context of a democratic process.’ First of all, this wasn’t mere playing unless you’re referring to a diabolical game played by would-be Masters of the Universe. And secondly, unless the author of the phrase “within the context of a democratic process” means that this was a legitimate act in a democratic system of government, I am lost, confused, & couldn’t disagree more!

 

How in the Hell does democracy come into play within a corporation? Corporations are private tyrannies & the moment an employee walks through their employer’s door, their rights go out the window i.e. your employer can listen in on your phone calls, search your locker, forbid you from talking about forming a union, etc. etc. etc. And note that bars/pubs are private corporations & that’s why they can stop us from talking about politics in their bars. Food for thought?

 

Yeah, many, if not most people have no idea of just how little power or rights we have in our workplaces. Of course, Walmart is perhaps the most blatantly anti-union corporation & many of us realize that. Gee, I wonder why Walmart is the most profitable corporation in America & the Walmart family are among the richest in the U.S.?

 

Here’s a claim made by Alexander Nix, remember him? He was the CEO of Cambridge Analytica; “We don’t have Facebook data & we don’t use Facebook data, but we do use Facebook as a platform to advertise on.” Can you believe such audacity? In Cambridge’s sales videos, etc. they bragged about having 5,000 data points on every American voter but I guess all that data just somehow magically appeared in Cambridge’s lap?

 

I wonder why the Trump campaign was paying Cambridge a million dollars a day? Could it be that their advertising was that costly but didn’t have any of our personal data? Wylie commented; “When people see the extent of the surveillance, I think they’re going to be shocked.”

Maybe? But like everything else in this mad world, the public gets upset for a minute or two & soon goes back to their smart phones & checking the latest number of “likes” they got.

 

Well I’m definitely not one of the Walking Dead like my fellow Americans & like a bulldog, I keep on keeping on in my fight against the corporate cockroaches & their fascist assault on us all.

 

David Carroll, who brought the lawsuit against Cambridge; “It’s crazy that I have to mount a risky, year-long court battle to get my Voter Profile.”

 

A bit of good news though; “Facebook stock falls by 6% or $120 billion because of Carroll’s lawsuit finally getting some attention. Facebook knew of this data collection by Cambridge over two years ago but didn’t go public about it until Carroll’s lawsuit caused Cambridge’s headquarters in London was raided.”

 

Isn’t it interesting to note how CEO’s memories often seem to lapse, just like many politicians, after they’ve been exposed for wrongdoing? I remember when Reagan was finally made to testify behind closed doors re: the Iran/Contra Scandal & out of something like 280 questions put to him, roughly 265 times his response was; I can’t remember, I don’t recall, etc. If you or I tried that in court, our asses would be behind bars in short order.

 

Yep! “Facebook claimed to not notice that 50 million people’s data had been breeched but every time it’s my sister’s dog’s birthday, I get a notification.” (some comedian’s witty observation)

 

However, what’s not funny is expressed by Carroll; “People don’t want to admit that propaganda works because to admit it means confronting our own susceptibilities, our horrific lack of privacy, & our hopeless dependencies on tech platforms that are ruining our democracies on various attack surfaces.”

 

Yes indeed! If you’re around my age (66) you grew up hearing about communist propaganda but there was never any mention of American or capitalist propaganda. In fact, in the early days of Advertising & the Public Relations industry, it was more honestly referred to as propaganda. And as Chomsky points out, these are powerful institutions in America. May I suggest that you look up Noam Chomsky on You Tube re: this subject, it’ll definitely be worth your time.

 

Moreover, I can definitely attest to the fact that people don’t want to acknowledge the power that advertising has over us. I’ve been trying to clue people in for decades but I’m usually dismissed as some good-natured nut case.

 

Wylie continues to discuss the U.K.’s enquiry into ‘fake news.’ “When you’re busted for doping in the Olympics, you lose your medal, but we allow cheating in our democratic process. What about next time? What about the time after that? You shouldn’t be allowed to win by cheating.” But of course, Trump did and the spineless DNC won’t even impeach him! In this new age, morality & ethics are a joke, its dog eat dog & we have the most immoral president in U.S. history flouting the U.S. legal system daily & grinning his ass off in arrogant defiance.

 

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” —Pogo

 

I included this famous quip from a comic strip to point out that we are now witnessing the steady dismantling of our democracy albeit it has been on shaky ground for quite some time preceding Trump. Our general apathy & our intellectual laziness coupled with the harmful aspects of this new technology i.e. Smart phones, social media platforms & apps., etc. has all but rendered us as helpless as a turtle on its back. And the rapacious Republican party has no conscience & clearly craves power so much it’d rather watch America descend into chaos & anarchy than stand up to Trump & call him out for the vile, most despicable individual imaginable. Here is a guy who laid out the toxicity of social media clearer than anything I’ve come across;

Without a doubt, apathy in combination with innocent ignorance & willful ignorance will be on America’s tombstone as future generations look back on this stage in history, perhaps the final stage at the rate we’re destroying our environment. And this in conjunction with a dope in the oval office who knows even less about world history than the average third grade student, presents a truly frightening scenario.

 

Though I could be way off base because the generations after mine have been raised in a game & movie world of zombies & vampires—some of which are portrayed as having some redeeming human qualities such as sensitivity. Moreover, it seems the majority of Hollywood’s top hits are doomsday & apocalyptic visions of our not too distant future so maybe a large portion of Americans aren’t as worried as I am about the way we’re headed?

 

For example, early in this film, Carroll, the protagonist is talking about what these “social media” platforms are doing to us & a young, female student in his class says that the ads don’t really bother her perhaps because she grew up in this world. She goes on to ask him; “So, at what point do things become sour (I assume she means bad?)

Ah! Here we arrive at perhaps a vital turning point? I argue that we have already passed the critical juncture because for young people like this student to admit they’re not troubled by the gross manipulation we’re already experiencing is a telltale sign that we’re half-way lost already.

And for-the-record, Snowden again gave us fair warning about how Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Pal Talk, AOL, Skype, You Tube, & Apple to only name the most prominent amongst these corporate betrayers, willingly assists the status quo in their on-going agenda of enslaving us.

 

Does this worry the younger generations? Apparently not. They gleefully & blindly carry on using these platforms & tools of enslavement. I know, I’m sounding a bit Alex Jones? Sorry, but for an old fart like me who grew up in a very different America in which we didn’t even have voice machines to record our missed calls, I am perhaps much more aware of these intrusions into our privacy & it sure as Hell does bother & anger me. By-the-way, perhaps this will cause your heart rate to at least go up a few points, these same corporate giants who are making billions exploiting us via our data, pay next to nothing in taxes. Do you give a shit about that?

 

Getting back to the documentary, Wylie speaking before a U.K. enquiry commission re: fake news; “Someone else you should be speaking to is Brittany Kaiser.” Now the plot really begins to thicken because Ms. Kaiser is the other central character in this drama, & she played a very significant part in this coup overthrowing democracies around the globe. And I must confess that I had my suspicions while watching this film for the first time.

Cute & pixie-like as a teenager to this; the price of selling your soul?

 

But watching it again a few days ago, I have become a lot more distrustful of whatever she says in her defense. For now, I’m just going to toss out there a few observations & my reactions in case I forget them later on. First of all, the film starts out at a “Burning Man” festival in Nevada & shows Brittany, dressed like a typical tribal person at this annual event, write with a marker on this wooden structure where participants inscribe something profound, I assume? She writes on it; “’Cambridge Analytica.”

Like I said, I glossed over this seemingly insignificant act in my first viewing of this film but now, I wonder if this could be a sort of Freudian Slip? In other words, could it be that her work for Cambridge Analytica is what she’s actually the proudest of?

 

You see, once the full extent of Cambridge Analytica’s crimes begins to be revealed, Kaiser starts pretending that she’s a whistleblower who helped bring them down. But she knew what they were doing for at least two years prior to the fall & took great pride in helping Trump “win” the U.S. election. She was as critical to their success as Chris Wylie was. His talent was in data engineering & her’s was in developing their business model & their PR face if-you-will.

 

Kaiser’s ego was glowing in the limelight of the attention she received in photo ops with Trump, the fact that she had her own set of keys to Steve Bannon’s townhouse in Washington D.C.,  etc. And we see her throughout the film staying at very expensive & posh hotels around the world, sipping a cocktail in one of those “Infinity” pools at some luxury resort in Thailand, etc.

 

Yet, once again, after Cambridge is on public trial so-to-speak, Kaiser tells us that her family lost their home after the 2008 economic crash & her father’s brain cancer and she had to make money to help her family out. Yeah, that’s suppose to excuse her Faustian deal with the devil i.e. the Republican party & Trump in particular.

 

Moreover, at another point in the film it is revealed that she admits to carrying two sets of business cards. They don’t specify as to what these two sets are but it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to guess. I’m confident that one set is for playing the concerned environmentalist & worker for human rights when she was young and the other set is for her rich patrons in the corporate/political world.

 

Admittedly, what I’m about to say could be seen as chauvinistic or misogynist or something but what the fuck, here goes; earlier glimpses of Ms. Kaiser when she was young & working on human rights campaigns, etc., she looked physically cute, cheerful, & positive but after her entry into the nefarious world of the corporate cockroaches & their political lapdogs, I believe you can see her physical being manifest her moral decay? And for-the-record, in the film we witness a scene in which she is being questioned by some sort of judge or attorney, I presume? And she is asked something like, “Have you ever provided data to an intelligence agency?” Her eyes say it all i.e. she stops dead in her tracks verbally-speaking, her eyebrows raise up & her eyes nervously twitch back & forth for a while before she answers in the negative after a pregnant pause.

 

Okay, back to the script from the documentary; “She (Kaiser) was the go-getter, the initiator of the Cambridge contract with Trump (my phrasing). “She spoke at the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) with Kelly Anne Conway in 2016.” Hopefully I don’t have to explain to you who Kelly Anne Conway is? Just in case I do? Kelly Anne is Trump’s number one apologist & she can rationalize whatever horrible thing he says or does i.e. she’s his greatest ass-kisser or brown-noser!

I wish she’d go back to her alternative planet

 

Continuing; “She (Kaiser) was at the lavish party on election night for Trump along with Rebecca Mercer” (Robert Mercer’s daughter, owner of Breitbart) and proudly posing for pics with Donald the Dastardly (my phrasing). To reiterate my opinion, Kaiser tried to save her ass by informing on Cambridge once their records, documents, etc. were seized by the British police.

 

Kaiser, “The reason why Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc. are so powerful is because last year, ‘Data’ surpassed Oil as the world’s most valuable ‘commodity.’” Remember friends, we are that commodity, in other words, all the data we supply these so-called “social platforms” with is our ‘value’ in this Brave New World (Aldous Huxley).

Enter Paul Hilder, writer & self-described, Political Technologist. In my opinion, he was basically an apologist & spinmeister for Kaiser during & after her fall from the jet-set insiders’cabal of wealth & politics. And here’s a fun fact for you, “When Kaiser met with Trump’s campaign manager in 2015, she wondered why it looked familiar & then realized they were on the set of ‘The Apprentice.’ Trump’s campaign headquarters was a ‘Reality T.V. set.’”

 

I’m sure this bit of trivia doesn’t bother or strike those of you who grew-up watching ‘Reality T.V.,’ as out of the norm. Let me be clear, this is “reality” turned on its head & again reveals just how far down the rabbit hole we have fallen. “Reality T.V.” is for ignorant & intellectually lazy people who are accustomed to spectacle, superficiality, & not straining their brains. Yep! I said it loud & proud. And I don’t give a fuck if you dismiss me as just another example of those “East Coast elite who look down their noses on everyone who isn’t a member of their club.” Again, I grew up in a single parent, working class family & my mom worked two or three jobs at a time trying to make ends meet so go fuck yourselves if you think/believe me an elitist!

 

Furthermore, I’d better say it again for those of you who may not grasp the simple facts of life i.e. T.V. is an artificial medium (it’s not reality). Reality is going to work every day, paying your bills, raising your kids, worrying about losing your job, whether your pension will be there when you retire, your loved ones’ health, etc. etc. etc. This crap posing as reality is pure bullshit i.e. staged drama to suck in the gullible. Therefore, watching & believing an artificial medium (mode of communicating) and on top of that, believing the circus acts they claim are true/honest portrayals of life, is akin to believing everything a used car salesman or a politician says. Comprende? (Spanish for Comprehend?)

 

By-the-way, I bet many of you haven’t caught on yet that Trump’s continual dismissal of “fake news,” is or would be very amusing if it weren’t so devastating to us all because like his fake “reality” show that made him so familiar to millions of Americans who watched it, everything about Trump is fake i.e. his wealth, his celebrity, his business success, etc. etc. etc. This is why he’s on a constant pep rally to his base (lacking or indicating the lack of higher qualities of mind or spirit)

“base.” I don’t think there’s ever been a political leader since Hitler, that felt the need to keep on holding public rallies after having won the presidency?

 

To me this just reveals how great his sense of insecurity is & that he must keep on feeding his ego or he’ll deflate like the hot air balloon that he in fact is & he will fly away into obscurity & infamy. And speaking of “infamy”

Very bad reputation; notoriety.

The condition of being infamous; disgrace.

An evil or criminal act that is publicly known.

 

I’m not normally a betting man but I’m absolutely positive that Trump will go down in history as the most infamous, notorious, noxious president throughout the history of the United States & I bet that the majority of all those who voted for him & cheered him in his Nazi rallies will hang their heads in disgrace for the rest of their lives. How I wish I could be there & smirk as I said to each of them; Yeah, you were abysmally (Resembling an abyss in depth; unfathomable)

stupid to have fallen for such a grotesque (Characterized by ludicrous, repulsive, or incongruous distortion, as of appearance or manner. synonymugly.)

human being’s con job!

 

Some may ask why I’m so harsh in my comments here? Duh! Consider all those poor immigrant children who were separated from their parents & the psychological devastation on their lives. I could go on ad infinitum about the harm physically, mentally, emotionally, & spiritually caused by this denizen (An inhabitant; a resident.) of the deepest, darkest parts of the human psyche who only cares about enriching himself at the expense of all of humanity! So yeah, I have no qualms (
An uneasy feeling about the propriety or rightness of a course of action.) whatsoever about insulting those who helped empower this human monster.

 

In simple terms, in the mid to late 1980s, I was an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher in L.A. both during the day at the secondary level & at night as an Adult Education teacher. Many of my students were from El Salvador, Nicaragua, & Mexico and they had seen things I hope to never witness!

 

One student in particular, Maria, who was from Nicaragua told me a story that chilled me to the bone. The Contras captured her sister who was nine months pregnant, and slit open her belly, pulled out her baby & slit its throat in front of her as she was dying. Reagan championed the Contras throughout his presidency & likened them to our Founding Fathers claiming they were defenders of freedom & democracy. I could go on & on but if you give a shit, you’ll do further research on your own.

 

Bottom-line, Reagan was the precursor to what morphed into the Trump phenomenon i.e. Reagan marked a turning point in American history, a clear betrayal of the working class & the middle class by scapegoating immigrants & all the victims of the rapacious rich. Another historical flashback for ya; One of Reagan’s first acts as president was to fire the air traffic controllers who were on strike due to unsafe skies, for life! And this sent a clear message to corporate America i.e. it’s open season on unions.

At times, yeah, I can somewhat relate to those who prefer to be blind & ignorant to this tsunami of terribly depressing information & knowledge but to turn a blind-eye to these crimes against humanity is the coward’s way out!

 

Why is it that we never tire of all the Hollywood blockbusters that glorify our soldiers in their physical acts of valor but rarely acknowledge let alone, glorify the intellectual & ethical heroes who stood up against our warmongers or the corporate cockroaches who like termites, have weakened our house to the point of collapse?

 

Returning to the film, Hilder points out “The reality is that a large-scale data-mining company identified the triggers that are going to ‘move’ people.” Translation: Cambridge Analytica simply refined the age-old “hot button topics” guaranteed to fire-up the rubes (An unsophisticated country person.)  formerly summarized as “God, Guns, & Gays.”

 

You know, the unholy trinity by people like our president of vice, Mike Pence, who doesn’t even trust himself to have lunch with a woman without his wife present. So much for that “Christian” faith in the power of belief in God & Jesus i.e. says more about the moral/ethical weakness of the Jesus-Jumpers than it ever does about the so-called sinners.

 

I apologize again, it’s so hard not to elaborate on these seemingly unrelated details but believe me, they aren’t unrelated, they’re all connecting dots in the general unraveling of our government, our society, & our culture. And like Bannon & Trump’s goal of destroying every last vestige of what we used to call America, the Mike Pence Walking Dead “Christians,” also pray for our complete disintegration in their fervent hope of turning us into an American version of the Taliban where women who dare to speak-up can be stoned to death.

I can only presume & hope that any who may be reading these words must care about our fellow human beings otherwise, they wouldn’t be reading such religious or political blasphemy?

 

Hilder then asks a very profound question; “What does this say about individual freedom, autonomy, and democracy? To my mind, this is the crux (The basic, central, or critical point or feature) of the film. In other words, have we ceased to be autonomous, free agents with free will as the “Christians” claim we are, or have we morphed into automatons easily manipulated into following our master’s agenda?

 

In ancient times i.e. the 1950s & 60s as I was growing up, the powers that be had at least a modicum of respect for our intellectual abilities hence the appeals to our rational faculties. Yet with the so-called “technological advances,” we have gradually become enslaved by our lower functioning, primal or reptilian brains. As a consequence, it’s become far easier to manipulate us today than it was when I was growing up. And the prima facie evidence is none other than Trump, the lowest common denominator on the human scale.

 

And Trump’s handmaiden of evil, Brittany Kaiser, attempts to rationalize her dastardly deeds with; “We’re educating people about other options and if they’re on the fence, they can be persuaded to go another way. This is their own choice.”

 

I almost gagged when I heard this! Yeah “we’re educating people about other options,” as if it were some innocuous (not harmful or injurious; harmless) agenda on the part of Cambridge Analytica in their neutral, good-natured campaign paid for by Robert Mercer under the direction of Steve Bannon to help their buddy, Donald Trump in his honest campaign for the presidency of the most powerful nation on Earth.

 

In my not so humble opinion, this campaign by Cambridge Analytica was waged against every American voter & citizen and was about as “harmless” as the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Indeed, this obscenity Kaiser submitted was akin also to Mao’s “Re-education Camps.”

 

Throughout history, intellectuals have been frequent targets of tyrannical regimes to suppress political dissent. But Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong himself boasted about taking it a step further.

After the Chinese Communist Party took power in 1949, Mao had instilled a climate of fear and terror.  In the late 1940s to early 1950s, he mobilized Chinese peasants to kill off the landlord class, resulting in a death toll that various estimates place from the hundreds of thousands, to up to several million. In some areas, public trials became the norm, and Mao’s politicized peasants became judge, jury, and executioner of the landlord class in China. Amid the repressive climate, intellectuals seemingly lacked a voice to say anything about the communist party.

 

https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-biggest-anti-intellectual-movement-in-history_2234683.html

 

You see, my imaginary friend, there has been a major & consistent thread amongst all authoritarian regimes or dictatorships throughout history & that is anti-intellectualism. What is that you may wonder? [don’t forget that this was/is Communist China whom we fought the Vietnam war against supposedly but soon thereafter became our trading partner & Communist Russia now under the control of the Russian mafia i.e. Putin, is Trump’s dearest friend along with North Korea’s perverted dictator]

 

Well, it’s been a significant part of our culture since the beginning of our nation although it’s a sort of oxymoron to combine “culture” and “anti-intellectualism” in the same sentence. In brief, look at Trump’s repeated attacks on the “East Coast elites.” This is code or dog-whistle politics for blaming intellectuals for just about everything that is wrong with America. {Did you notice the mention of Mao’s use of fear & terror? Sound familiar? Trump’s never-ending rally.}

 

Of course, Trump is counting on his base not knowing much about Trump’s own history & his massive inferiority complex because of his rejection by the New York elite. And Trump capitalized on the general sense of frustration & anger by so many of our citizens who’ve been fucked-over by the elite of Wall St. But what really blew my mind was that so many who had been screwed by the 1%, the corporate cockroach elite, could actually believe that Trump who is clearly a member of their class at least financially & in terms of not giving a fuck about employees or the environment or the law etc. etc. etc., was one of them & qualified to speak for them? Here’s a look into Trump’s family business that clearly shows his claim to fame of being a self-made billionaire has all been a grand scam. I suggest you watch it before any of the other videos because it may very well be pulled soon by either Trump lawyers or Showtime?

Do you recall that quote from the comic strip “Pogo,” that I printed above? Get it? We are our own worst enemies because we internalize the “social propaganda” fed to us by the corporate owned media. And it’s gotten so absurd that those who believe in Trump, actually think he’s going to help them. Yeah, one of the greediest bastards to ever walk upright & never ceases in his bragging about his mythological talents, intelligence, accomplishments, etc. is their Knight in Shining Armor.

 

I know that it’s highly unlikely but if you’d care to invest a few minutes in your well-being, you should research the history of how Trump has screwed the vast majority of people who’ve worked for him as both short-term contract workers or full-time employees. Then tell me again what a wonderful guy he is.

 

Speaking of “wonderful,” it’s time to return to Cambridge Analytica’s most admirable Ms. Kaiser; “Working for Human Rights wasn’t satisfying because I couldn’t see the results of my work but when I worked for the U.S. Republican party, I could.”

Translation: She made very little money working for noble causes such as human rights but when she moved to the dark side, she was amply rewarded & clearly enjoying the lifestyle as evident in the film.

 

Pursuing Ms. Kaiser’s personal degradation, she was approached by Alexander Nix, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica who unabashedly (
Not disconcerted or embarrassed; poised.) said, “Let me get you drunk and steal your secrets.” Apparently, that’s all it took to turn Ms. Kaiser from the former fighter for human rights to a lackey for the rich & famous. So much for her personal “integrity.” Funny that Mr. Nix was so up-front about his agenda because this is just what the “social media” has done to us i.e. it’s gotten us drunk on the intoxicating illusion of meeting new people & making thousands of friends around the globe while it steals our secrets & sells them to corporate cockroaches & gives them to the government surveillance agencies who have been overthrowing other governments for decades with propaganda, murder, etc.

“She turned ‘Conservative’ and started dressing posh & speaking more ‘refined.’ She became an NRA member & said, I think the main problem in U.S. politics is that people are so polarized (neglecting to mention her role in polarizing the American public) and therefore can’t work together & can’t get anything done (again neglecting the fact that the G.O.P. stated from the beginning of Obama’s presidency that they had one goal i.e. to block every single piece of legislation that he attempted to pass).

 

Evidently, Ms. Kaiser was so “wired-in” that right on camera in this documentary, she showed that she was able to pose a question to Zuckerberg that would be asked by one of the U.S. senators the next day in the hearing before Congress that Zuckerberg was forced to appear before.

 

Her question? “How much of Facebook’s revenue comes directly from Facebook’s monetization of people’s personal data?” Yes, a damn good question but clearly an attempt to distract from Cambridge Analytica’s responsibility in this high crime against democracy & free elections.

 

A “devil’s advocate” might’ve asked in return; And how much did your company profit from this illegal & immoral contract with the G.O.P. and Trump’s campaign & your companies use of the Facebook data you used to manipulate the U.S. election in Trump’s favor?

 

Moreover, Kaiser goes on to say; “We always spent the vast majority of our money for ads or political campaigns on Facebook because it gets the best results.”

 

Stop for a minute! In one breath she is criticizing/attacking Facebook for the money it took from the Trump campaign & in her next breath, she’s admitting that Cambridge Analytical used Facebook because “it gets the best results.” Does “speaking out of both sides of her mouth,” seem an appropriate accusation here?

 

Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way defending Facebook or Zuckerberg’s amoral business model & behavior. No, personally I’d love to see Marky Mark along with many others, handcuffed and led away to prison for at least 30 years & not to some plush, federal prison but to prisons like Pelican Bay. And I include Ms. Kaiser, Mr. Nix, etc. in that chain-gang of rotten criminals.

 

Moreover & above all else it’s imperative that when Ms. Kaiser mentioned above that they spent the majority of their money for ads on Facebook because it got the best results, it sounds like they were just paying for innocuous (1. Having no adverse effect; harmless. 2. Not likely to offend or provoke to strong emotion; insipid.)  political ads.

 

Talk about an understatement, this was a whopper! The “ads” that Cambridge Analytica ran on Facebook rarely had a scintilla of truth or factual accuracy in them. Over the course of my lifetime, political ads have gradually sunk to lower & lower standards. Political campaign managers used to advise their candidates to not stoop to “negative ads,” until they became an absolute necessity. Well clearly not so these days. And I believe that if an award was given out to which party aired the vilest political ads, the Republicans would win hands down. Why? Because they are clearly the least ethical of the two parties we’re unfortunately saddled with.

 

For example; they ran an ad claiming that Hillary Clinton ran a child sex ring out of a pizza parlor & that they drank children’s blood. Yeah, I shit you not! This is the sort of trash that is worthy of “The National Enquirer,” and Alex Jones’ conspiracy “news” program; “Info Wars.” Two of Trump’s trusted news sources as contrasted with the “fake news” outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, etc. And Kaiser’s again seemingly innocent statement; “…because they get the best results,” is bullshit as well.

 

Cambridge went with Facebook because they knew damn well that Facebook had over two billion members world-wide & that if they just targeted a hundred thousand or so of strategic (gullible, less educated) Facebook members, their vile ads would spread like a deadly virus & corrupt or at least throw into chaos & doubt, Clinton’s campaign for the presidency & make Trump look like the voice of reason.

 

Yeah, pretty mindboggling that someone like Trump could be made to look like the voice of reason but this is the power of the so-called “social media,” in this day & age.

 

Kaiser is clearly no dummy & that’s why she was paid a phenomenal salary—by outward appearance of her lavish lifestyle. (she’s worth a million & a half dollars) So, she acknowledged; “Regarding those personality tests, the truth is that we didn’t target all Americans equally, we spent more money targeting those whose minds we thought we could change.”

 

No shit Sherlock! In other words, they targeted the least educated, which wasn’t hard to do when you had everybody’s personal histories & on your page where they ask you to list your favorite books, movies, t.v. shows, etc. and a person can’t remember the title of a single book & lists the latest Hollywood action blockbuster for a movie & “The Walking Dead,” for their favorite television show.

 

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this person would be a “persuadable” voter they could steer towards the Trump campaign of racism & hatred for everybody not a Duck Dynasty fan. Remember that Kaiser first worked for the Obama campaign & headed the “social media” arms of his campaign for the presidency. And she worked for “human rights” organizations but got tired of not seeing the results of her work (translation; not making any or making very little money). It’s evident in the film that she enjoyed the jet-set lifestyle that working for the corporate cockroaches like the G.O.P. and the Trump campaign gave her a taste of.

 

Kaiser continues; “they’re (the persuadables) are everywhere in the U.S. —Duh? …but the ones that mattered were in the Swing states like; Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, & Florida. They broke the states down into precincts and if you targeted enough of the “persuadable,” the state turned from Blue to Red in key precincts.”

 

Are you beginning to understand the undeniable power & influence that Facebook had in bringing the most despicable human being imaginable to occupy the oval office? And note how Zuckerberg to this day still claims that Facebook is still following its original agenda of “connecting people.” Yeah, Facebook is about as good at connecting people as Trump is on his never-ending Fear & Hate Tour.

 

More specifically, do you see why I titled this essay, “Facebook’s Friendly Fascism?” I purposely used the word “friendly” as a pun & play on Facebook’s charade of helping people make “friends.” By-the-way, the reality behind Facebook is that it helps you to make enemies because its structure/design encourages the negativity in people to be expressed because the negativity or anger, hatred, etc. draws more people in than the positive emotions like love & peace. And the negativity spreads like wildfire, just the sort of atmosphere that Trump thrives in.

 

Consequently, Facebook was the perfect vehicle to spread all the racism & division of the Trump message; immigrants, people of color, liberals, democrats, etc. are the cause of your troubles, they take your jobs, they’re draining our economy because they’re taking advantage of our too generous & too liberal programs like food stamps, welfare, etc. By-the-way, Breitbart, I just learned, is the biggest political advertiser on Facebook.

 

Naturally, what the Trumps of this country will never admit to is that they, the 1%, who own everything, are the true cause of our poverty, poor educational system, pitiful health care, loss of our jobs, etc. etc. etc. And it absolutely blew my mind that the poorest amongst us could actually fall for Trump’s posing as their hero. I won’t go off on a tangent here but that charade was breathtaking & very depressing to say the least.

 

Returning to the reptilian Ms. Kaiser, she goes on to state; “Our creative team developed/designed personalized content to target these voters.” “Creative team?” This phrase almost made me gag because this is somewhat akin to saying that Hitler had a creative team that developed/designed solutions to the Jewish problem.

 

And again, my imaginary reader, I am equating Facebook with Fascism because it exemplifies just how destructive a force it is in not only the major role it played in bringing a wannabe dictator like Trump to the most powerful position in the world, it also exposes the fascist nature of megalithic corporate conglomerates.

In a nutshell, every natural resource in the world & every human being that is not part of the 1% has only one purpose for living i.e. to serve their masters & keep on increasing their masters’ wealth. These corporate cockroaches sincerely believe they deserve half a billion-dollar yachts & the rest of us should be grateful for a Big Mac if we know our place, keep our mouths shut, & work till we drop!

 

Furthermore, Kaiser provides more details in her obvious attempts to curry favor & hopefully escape prosecution for her crimes; “We bombarded them with blogs, articles, websites, ads, etc. until they saw the world the way we wanted them to.”

 

Bear in mind the fact that Cambridge Analytica’s parent company was in the business of developing psychological warfare operations/programs for governments for decades. I’m not sure if they’re still doing so? But in the context of this essay, Cambridge was waging a de facto psychological warfare advertising (propaganda) campaign against the American voting public. Yet this doesn’t seem to bother many Americans or perhaps they just haven’t connected the dots yet?

 

Moreover, my intellectual hero, Noam Chomsky, clued us in a long time ago regarding the Advertising industry as well as the Public Relations industry and informed us that in the early days of Advertising & Public Relations, they were more honest & referred to them as propaganda; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfIwUlY44CM

 

Mull this over for a bit because it’s a critically important point for us all to reflect on. I feel that sometimes I may come across as lecturing or preaching but at the risk of sounding like one of those hated, intellectual elite, I see daily the deterioration of our intellectual standards & critical/analytical thinking skills.

 

In magazines, newspapers, books, radio, television, & movies, editing/proofreading seems to be vanishing and few seem to care? And this intellectual apathy regarding standards of quality or accuracy is clearly reflected in terms of what is available for us to watch on television.

 

It seems the dumber, the more crude, vulgar, backstabbing, etc. you are in television series, the more popular your program becomes & therefore the more money your show brings in. And it’s a race to the bottom, just look at who’s occupying the oval office. Perhaps I should remind people here that I grew up in a poor, single parent home, and am definitely not from some elitist background. I have worked my ass off for my whole life in terms of trying to educate myself to the best of my abilities. So, if you try to dismiss me as just another elitist snob, you’re only showing your ignorance & prejudice against anyone who can read beyond a sixth-grade level.

 

Another way of looking at Cambridge’s “ad campaign,” for Trump’s presidential campaign is the casual manner & tone of Kaiser’s last statement; “…until they saw the world the way we wanted them to.” This is uttered in an almost blasé (unconcerned) tone & attitude. Of course, Mao Zedong’s “Cultural Revolution” in China from 1966 to 1976 killed anywhere from 500,000 to over 2,000,000 Chinese citizens in their “re-education” program, but it occurred to me, what if China’s leaders or any world leaders referred to that horror as casually with; “until they saw the world the way we wanted them to?”

 

America is supposed to stand for freedom, democracy, liberation but we seem to have become so complacent (unbothered) regarding the horrors being committed around the world by bloody tyrants & dictators that a propaganda campaign employed by the Republican party & executed by a company like Cambridge, receives little attention by the media & little concern by our citizens?

It appears to me that we—American citizens—have become numb not only mentally but also ethically/morally. Yet we still love to strut around proclaiming to the world how wonderful & powerful we are as a nation? And the only time we get passionate is when the politicians & their handmaidens, the media, manipulate us into a frenzy regarding an American or small number of Americans has been captured or killed.

 

And when the latest “crisis” is over, we slip right back into our somnambulant (sleepwalking) stupor (a condition of greatly dulled or completely suspended sense or sensibility). America’s hypocrisy regarding our professed principles & values and the reality of the millions of innocents killed around the globe by our bombing and our support of so many bloody dictators i.e. Trump’s heroes & idols, has made a mockery of our hollow rhetoric.

 

Above all, as some historian has pointed out, the way a nation treats the people of other nations, eventually comes home i.e. think of how our soldiers have treated Iraqi civilians, and the people of Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, etc. etc. etc. And think of the way American mercenaries like Blackwater, assaulted the people of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina or the militarization of our police forces around the country. Before I move on from this topic, think about this warning from Pastor Niemoller in Nazi Germany as the brown shirts (Trump’s idea of fine people; see his speech re: the violent protest in Charlottesville):

 

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

 

Finally, I ask you, where are all those “good Christians,” who believe in Christ? Again, just more flagrant hypocrites who choose when to observe & when to ignore Christ’s “Sermon on the Mount.” I stopped calling myself a Christian, decades ago and am probably a borderline atheist or agnostic but I know in my heart that I am far more of a Christian than the majority of those who do consider themselves Christians.

 

Admittedly, I may have veered slightly off topic a bit but not really. One of our gravest problems as citizens of the United States is our moral laxity (careless or negligent). And please don’t lump me together with those phony or faux “Christians,” when I point out these glaring contradictions.

 

Okay, let’s get back to Cambridge Analytica but first I just want to insert; I bet Cambridge University wishes that this company hadn’t used its name because Cambridge University is one of the oldest & most revered universities in the world.

 

Moreover, speaking of this ancient hollowed university, I am sadly reminded that in the overall analysis of higher education today, there is very little pretense anymore of pursuing a university education because it is the mark of a well-rounded or cultured person. No, it’s pretty blatant now that young people pursue a college degree with one aim in mind i.e. a high-paying career.

And I can anticipate your response, yeah, culture & all those lofty ideals are all fine & dandy but money is more important than all that stuff. Well perhaps I can show you the utility of pursuing the humanities & yeah, I know that public education today especially at the secondary level (middle & high school) has been forced to teach only the material that will be on the standardized tests.

 

But here’s how we can beat them at their own game! First of all, I can show you a simple mnemonic strategy/technique that will blow your mind because it makes memorizing data, facts, information so much easier & that will take a great weight off your mind when taking those pointless standardized tests.

 

Consequently, your mind & your spirit will be freed-up to pursue the truly valuable knowledge that will help you in the big picture of what our lives can be. It dawned on me somewhere in my twenties that what we should study is what the rich study. Simplistic? No, not if you reflect on it for a bit.

 

Let’s start at the top because if you’re going to be the best at whatever profession you wish to excel in, you must set your sights on what skills the best in your field possess. And in academia, the most prestigious scholarship you can win is a Rhodes Scholarship. I actually visited Oxford University on one of my trips to Europe because I had long been curious as to exactly what Rhodes Scholars studied & the simplicity of their course of study was refreshing.

 

First of all, you must’ve already earned a B.A. and must have excelled in not only your academic subject but also in athletics & as a leader. And the core of your studies as a Rhodes Scholar boils down to your meeting with a professor—they call them dons—once a week, I believe? They give you reading assignments in the classics & a writing project on what you read then you meet & the don quizzes you to gauge the depth of your understanding of the material you read & guides your efforts.

 

For over 40 years, I’ve been trying to get this simple but powerful point through to family & friends but I’m usually dismissed as being out there in left field or something. So, answer me this; If studying the classics in literature, history, philosophy, political science, etc. is such a waste of time, why do the elite, the 1%, study these subjects?

 

I’ll tell you why, it’s because pursuing academic excellence develops an excellence of mind i.e. superior critical & analytical thinking skills. I can personally attest to the truth of this. When I first started taking courses at a local community college, I had to take the English Placement Test. Well, I scored so low that they told me that I’d have to take remedial English which consisted of setting at a desk with a cassette player & headphones on as I listened to; “See Dick & Jane, see Spot,” etc. I put up with that bullshit for about a week and dropped-out.

 

I then started taking business courses not because I was interested in becoming a businessman but because I thought they might be useful at some point in my future. I dropped-out of many courses over the next several years, sometimes half-way or even three-quarters of the way through. I was bored to tears & I worked at a wide variety of what I called Mickey Mouse jobs i.e. pumping gas, flipping burgers, etc.

 

I was a young man in search of adventure so I started going to Europe, sometimes on a one-way ticket with a couple hundred bucks in my pocket. And I met some very intelligent people on my travels & picking their brains for good authors to read, I fell in love with some of the greatest writers i.e. Hemmingway, Dostoyevsky, Hesse, Steinbeck, etc.

It had been five years since I’d taken that first English Placement Test but I decided to give it another shot because I wanted to take some courses in writing & literature but was told again that I must take this damn test. And to my utter surprise, this time I scored in the top 10% on the test so now I could take any courses in the English dept. that I wanted to. And lo & behold, I ended-up earning a B.A. in English lit. How’s that for going from bone-head English (that remedial class with the cassette player) to graduating in English.

 

I realized some time later that the only logical explanation for this phenomenon had to be the fact that by reading great writers, your vocabulary, comprehension, & writing abilities can’t help but improve significantly.

 

I’ve tried many times over the years to explain or defend this course of study & here’s an analogy I’ve often used; let’s say that you’re going to be in a foot-race against the fastest runner in your school. Clearly, you’re going to have to give every last ounce of energy, effort, spirit or whatever you want to call it, if you truly want a shot at winning that race.

 

The same goes for intellectual excellence i.e. you must pit your brain against the best minds that have ever lived. Of course, it’s very unlikely that you’ll surpass them but by engaging with that level of thinking, you’re going to push your mind to the greatest level it is capable of attaining & this will set you head & shoulders above most of your competition in the modern marketplace of work.

 

Furthermore, here are some other arguments for striving to develop your intellect that I copied from watching a short, You Tube video I stumbled across a few weeks ago; “Why You Should Read Books; 15 Benefits:”

 

Acquire knowledge

Improve memory

Strengthen critical & analytical skills

Advance your career

Improve writing skills

Reduce stress & anxiety

Improve focus & concentration

Boost inspiration & motivation

Learn at your own pace

Stimulate imagination

Improve conversation skills

Become more empathetic

Sleep better

Source of companionship

Increase your lifespan

 

Okay, you’re probably wondering what this side-trip of mine has to do with the whole Cambridge Analytica scandal and Facebook? In a nutshell, if we had stronger critical & analytical thinking skills, we wouldn’t be so easily suckered by the bogus types of posts, ads, propaganda that inundates us on “social media” platforms like Facebook. By-the-way, here’s a valuable tip for those of you who are serious about developing that other 90% or more of your brain that is lying dormant, buy a copy of “Problem Solving & Comprehension” by Whimbey & Lochhead, $11 on Amazon.

 

By-the-way, a Jesuit scholar (some of the best scholars in the world) suggested this book to me when I went to the remedial learning lab in the library at Cal State University at Long Beach after doing horribly on a test in a history course. Find a friend or relative or two who’d like to stretch their minds as well & work the problems in this book together. I’m sure you’ll be amazed & very pleased at what you will accomplish.

Bottom-line, our public-school system has been neglected & undermined for decades so we must take our education into our own hands. And if you care about not only your own welfare but the well-being & the future of your loved ones, you now know some concrete steps that you can take to empower yourself.

 

“Social media,” is weakening us mentally & helping the powers that be to enslave us. The clock of history is gradually being turned back to the days of feudalism. Bullshit? Look at what they’re doing to the hard-won progress of the Women’s Movement. Those “Christian” fundamentalists are salivating at the growing prospect of overturning Roe vs. Wade so women will have to go back to back-alley butchers for abortions. Ignore what’s going on around us at your own peril.

 

Perhaps you don’t remember or maybe you’ve simply never learned about the Dark Ages & what feudal life was like? In short, the nobility i.e. lords, kings, priests, etc. got the best of the crops that their serfs & the peasants who worked the fields produced and peasants’ families usually went hungry & begged for scraps from the lords’ tables gorging themselves at their banquets. Look around at the wealth of Jeff Bezos & the Walmart family whose wealth equals half of the American public.

 

American workers’ wages have basically been stagnant for the past 40 years & most of us are forced to work two or three jobs desperately trying to keep our heads above water. So, if none of this bothers you, just keep on amusing yourself to death by watching the crap served up on T.V. and keep attending those Trump rallies where he makes you feel good by scapegoating those even worse off than you i.e. the Mexicans & other Latinos from Central America fleeing the drug lords, drought, & the in your face corruption of their governments—who followed our own government’s model.

 

My intention when I started this essay was to thoroughly go through the entire documentary & break it down step-by-step but I know that only perhaps one out of a thousand or maybe even ten thousand who might stumble across this essay, would take the time to read. We’ve become a people with the attention span of a gold fish & we’re obsessed with pictures i.e. selfies & video and I’m growing very weary of expending so much energy in trying to communicate with the intellectually lazy. And Trump is merely a symptom of this sad state of our society. I can’t and I choose not to waste my spirit & my intellect on those who don’t give a shit. So, more power to you but I feel no sympathy for those who have the ability to improve their lot in life but prefer to sit on the couch & watch “The Walking Dead.”

 

Addendum

 

I was in a bar on my birthday back in 2018 and got into a lively discussion with a few guys around me, we got to the subject of Facebook. This guy tried to tell me that he loved it because it was free. I told him, oh yeah, then why does Zuckerberg make billions from it?

I didn’t feel it was worth trying to explain to this guy who was obviously one of the unthinking masses how Facebook sells our data to corporations who then target us with their ads. In a nutshell, we are being stalked by corporate America & the federal government. We are their prey and we are a helluva lot less free than we imagine. And what people can’t see, they basically don’t care about i.e. I used to work in industrial x-ray & welders would walk through the areas we were x-raying in—and which we had roped-off with warning signs—and when we’d confront them they’d say, I don’t care, I’ve already had my children. What we don’t see is Zuckerberg’s ego. Facebook just had to pay a $5 billion dollar fine but it was less than 1% of Facebook’s worth & the next day, their stock went up by $6 billion. And Marky-Mark feels so smug that he refused requests from both Canada & the U.K. to appear before their committees scrutinizing disinformation & online election influence campaigns.

I’d say that Zuckerberg, like the countless other corporate cockroaches, clearly feel that they are above the law because they are never held accountable for their countless criminal acts & this basically makes them fascists. And the most important thing to bear in mind is that these oligarchs like Zuckerberg, strut the world stage like they’re the untouchables just as Al Capone thought he was. Note that Trump’s best buddy, Putin and his circle of comrades are often referred to as oligarchs as well but that’s just a polite cover for what they really are, the Russian mafia!

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/facebook-uk-canada-parliaments-invite-mark-zuckerberg-to-first-ever-com 

 

I’ll boil-down a key lesson I have learned from the 40 years or better that I have been studying politics in America. Whenever you hear someone make the claim that our government is the problem, the enemy, etc. Bear in mind that this is the result of the “con”-servatives propaganda campaign that they began as soon as FDR enacted the New Deal. And what they really want is for us to get rid of all regulations that prevent them from making even greater profits i.e. environmental regulations, IRS regulations, labor regulations, etc. etc. etc. But they definitely don’t want to get rid of all the government subsidies they get. The oil industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the high tech industries, etc. all depend on & receive billions of dollars in subsidies from us the taxpayers. Take the Internet for example. We subsidized its invention mostly through tax dollars given to the Pentagon but as soon as an invention proves successful, the government gives it to private corporations who receive all the profits but we don’t get a share of those profits or even a discount on the invention or product. Listen to what the beloved FDR had to say about our rights as Americans, as human beings & tell me again how corporate America is so wonderful & Trump is your hero.

The Early Warning Signs of Fascism

 

  • Powerful and continuing nationalism
  • Disdain for human rights
  • Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
  • Supremacy of the military
  • Rampant sexism
  • Controlled mass media
  • Obsession with national security
  • Religion and government intertwined
  • Corporate power protected
  • Labor [sic] power suppressed
  • Disdain for intellectuals & the arts
  • Obsession with crime & punishment
  • Rampant cronyism & corruption
  • Fraudulent elections

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Fake News President

 

 

The ultimate irony is that this phony braggart who keeps accusing the press of being fake, wouldn’t have become president were it not for the tsunami of fake news posts on Facebook. And depressingly, almost half of all Americans get their news from Facebook. This conspiratorial assault on the hearts & minds of the American electorate was designed & implemented by Cambridge Analytica’s then vice-president, Steve Bannon.

And the great Fear & Hate Monger spreading it throughout Europe now

 

Bannon just happened to be the CEO of Trump’s presidential campaign & once Trump became the occupant of the oval office, he was the White House’s chief strategist for seven months until he criticized the boy-king in a book he’d written.

funny how he doesn’t tell it like it is when he loses?

 

Moreover, another key factor in how Trump stole the presidency was the fact that the “public enemy” i.e. the mainstream media, gave Donny over 23 times the media attention that Sanders got. Why? Because Trump would say things so outrageous that it made for better television ratings. And obviously the better the ratings, the more money the networks bring in. Obviously, the fake news circus maximus waged by team Trump has been & continues to be the key to his success.

“Freedom of the Press,
if it means anything at all,
means the freedom
to criticize and oppose”
― George Orwell

 

Of course, the most egregious example of fake news is FOX “news.” I have been putting the news in that reference in parenthesis for well over the past decade because I refuse to refer to them as a legitimate news organization. And the fact that the rest of the mainstream media in this country have gone along with this farce for the 20 years that FOX has been in business, reveals how little integrity they have as well.

You can be sure of one thing i.e. this isn’t the first time he’s been charged with fraud

 

Most notably during the George W. Bush reign of error & terror, the White House issued its daily talking points & FOX “news,” dutifully echoed it. Whenever I get into a brief, political discussion with someone, I can tell within a couple of minutes if they’re a FOX “news” devotee because they simply spew out the same tired propaganda they just watched on FOX.

Yeah I bet all the families of our soldiers who died in Iraq thought this was real funny

 

However, in the spirit of full disclosure, let’s review briefly that minor incident we call the Iraq War. Of course, FOX “news” beat the drums for invasion louder than any “news” network but The New York Times, supposedly the “paper of record” i.e. the paper that sets the standard for all the rest of the major newspapers in America, also beat the war-drums. Judith Miller was their star reporter covering the lead-up to the war & she basically just served as a stenographer to Ahmad Chalabi. A few weeks after Miller’s complete lack of journalistic ethics, she was forced to leave the New York Times staff.

the kind of reporter that Trump loves

This was a guy that would’ve been a perfect business partner for Trump. He’d amassed a fortune of over $100,000,000 through bank fraud in Jordan, being an Iraqi businessman in the oil industry, etc. But his primary value was as a source for the Bush administration’s claim of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So much for the Times’ reputation of research & fact-checking. Oh yeah, Chalabi hoped that his dishonesty & dirty deals with the Bush administration would be rewarded by his being made president of Iraq after the U.S. leveled the country.

he won’t release his taxes because they’ll prove he’s a tax cheat & not a billionaire!

 

What the above example reveals is that yes, to some extent, all media is fake but to conclude that Trump is therefore justified in his ad nauseam attacks on the media as the public enemy is reducto ad absurdum (argument to absurdity). And I often hear people claim that MSNBC is equal to FOX “news” in terms of their biases which is ridiculous as well.

If you give a shit about how the media really works, this man is the greatest intellectual alive!

 

Time to return to the Master of Fraud, Trump. Everything about this blowhard (an arrogantly & pompously boastful or opinionated person; braggart, windbag) is fake from his glued-down toupee to his “bone-spurs.” We witness daily how mind-bogglingly stupid & incompetent he is yet nearly half of America love his chest-beating & his racist hatred of all who aren’t from “his base.”

not that I have any love for Romney but here he’s speaking the truth

 

This “teller like it is,” is so insecure that he employs a platoon of lawyers 24/7, 365 days a year who protect him from lawsuits filed against him & who threaten lawsuits against anyone who dares to besmirch his “good name” and his entire business career has been one continuous stream of lawsuits as either defendant or plaintiff.

Trump’s mentor & mafia lawyer on the right, Joseph McCarthy’s hatchet-man, Roy Cohn

What his Jonestown cult members refuse to acknowledge is Trump’s paranoid fear of being exposed for the epitome (a perfect example of a class or type) of a fraud. There’s a good reason why lawyers, politicians, & used-car salesmen are on the lowest rung of America’s social ladder & Trump is the lowest of the low when you take the time to check out his past. Yet his Walking Dead cheerleaders will never betray him because he gives them their daily fix of dopamine every time he lashes out at immigrants, Mexicans, Muslims, Democrats, liberals, etc. etc. etc.

Is this what it’s going to take before Trump fans wake-up? Another Jonestown?

 

Furthermore, what’s truly amazing is that those who support this charlatan are those whose mantra is “All you need is common sense.” I know these kinds of people. I used to argue with them all the time in my mom’s house in my 20s when we’d be partying & they’d blindly defend Ronald Reagan. So, where is the “common sense” of the typical Trump fan?

Is America really so dumb as to fall for this fake???

 

How can a person who owns a casino, go bankrupt & not just once but four times even when given special zoning permission that other casino owners in Atlantic City weren’t given? Seems rather obvious to me that he’s a colossal failure as a businessman. And if he’s such a genius as he loves to boast ad nauseam, why has he threatened lawsuits against any of the schools he’s attended from elementary school to college if they dare to reveal his grades? Duh! He’s always been the fuckin’ moron we see before our eyes & only the willfully blind fail to see it.

The state of higher education in America; hundreds of fraudulent, on-line “universities” & massive student debt

 

And speaking of blind, America as evidenced by the millions who believe in Trump are clearly also members of the deaf, dumb, & blind and clearly represent a threat to not only our fragile democracy but often a physical threat to those who dare to speak out.

 

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane for those of you who may not remember the beginning of the “reality T.V. phenomenon.” The first & the only “Reality T.V. show” I ever watched as far as I can remember, was “Survivor.” I watched perhaps two or three episodes of it with my dear, departed wife and I commented to her, think about it, what is this series telling us? It’s telling us to win at any cost i.e. lie, cheat, steal, backstab, etc., you know, the seven cardinal virtues that all Christians aspire to. (No, I’m being facetious here but I did point out the negative lessons the show was promoting)

This is the kind of leader Trump admires i.e. cruel & fascist

 

Don’t get me wrong, but what I’m about to say isn’t because I consider myself holier than thou but rather due to the fact that I’ve been an outsider or a loner all my life. My “friends” in L.A. as I was progressing through my 20s, often mocked or ridiculed me because they weren’t readers like I am and therefore a lot of what I tried to tell them sounded preposterous.

the IRS goes after far more ordinary Americans than the 1% tax cheaters who make billions

 

Well I believe it’s been close to 20 years now & we now have clear evidence of the harm that our infatuation with “reality t.v.” has wrought on our society & culture. I have tried for years to point out to people the Alice in Wonderland absurdity of watching a fake “medium” (technology used to communicate) to supposedly get a view of our reality. I’d say things like, Hey, I have an idea, how about instead of watching T.V. to get a view of “reality,” you go out and live real life, you know, what’s happening right outside your door?

Authoritarians appeal to people when they are desperate & worried about their economic future

 

Of course, my concerns were dismissed and mocked as usual but it gives me no pleasure to point that out now, my worries have clearly been proven correct. Donald J. Trump, the phony star of a phony t.v. series built on a formula perfect for such a vile & corrupt person as Donny, with the critical help of this series, The Apprentice, has become the president of the most powerful nation on earth & is clearly a serious threat to our national security & our economic well-being.

like some of the Roman Emperors, Trump is a megalomaniac & poses a threat to the planet!

 

I also heartily recommend that you check out the documentary series on Netflix called “Dirty Money,” and the episode titled; “Confidence Man,” which of course is about Trump. Again, those of you who believe you have “common sense,” might ponder why it is that Donnie demanded that every time that his name was mentioned on The Apprentice, they had to add; “the billionaire?” If he’s so confident of his wealth, why does he need to keep on saying he’s very, very rich or fantastically rich, etc. etc. etc. so often that it makes me feel like puking? Or reflect on this; We had something like 585 billionaires in America as of 2018 but we don’t hear them bragging to the world daily of their wealth, why do you think that is?

I don’t know about you but I have always detested braggarts and when I’m around one, I usually make a quick escape. I prefer to be around people who are humble and if they are talented in some areas, I usually discover their talents on my own. I feel that this is a good point at which to lay-out just how significant Steve Bannon & Cambridge Analytica’s role was in dumping this human trash-can, Trump on us. I am going to give you a thumbnail overview of the subject & if you’d care to look a bit deeper, I suggest you check out the fantastic documentary also available on Netflix called “The Great Hack.”

In a nutshell, Cambridge Analytica was a branch of a larger corporation that had been doing psychological operations work or contracts with governments, corporations, intelligence agencies, etc. for decades i.e. disrupting, manipulating, etc. elections with fake news stories or propaganda. And when Zuckerberg sold them the data of over 90 million of American Facebook users, supposedly unaware of the harm it could cause, Cambridge Analytica went to work.

the facts behind the fraud & no, not “alternative facts”

 

Bannon is like an evil wizard who immediately realized just what a powerful weapon this data could be & probably started salivating from the beginning. And one of their primary tools for gaining insights into American voters’ personalities, character, etc. was the use of the seemingly simple personality tests they posted on Facebook. And I too fell for these tests several times. Cambridge boasted in their sales campaigns that they had over 5,000 data points on every American user of Facebook.

 

And all this data they had collected illegally & immorally on us, made it easy for them to target those whom they called “persuadable.” These were the Facebook users that they targeted with their fake news stories i.e. propaganda portraying Hillary Clinton as the head of a child sex ring that drank children’s blood & assorted other National Enquirer type “news stories.” Remember the fact that nearly half of America’s citizens who are on Facebook, get their news from this so-called, “social media platform.”

Get the picture? Facebook, the most powerful social media platform in the world with over two billion users, along with FOX “news,” Alex Jones’ “Info Wars” website, the Conspiracy Channel in other words i.e. the Sandy Hook massacre of 20 children from six to seven years old along with six adult staff at this elementary school was called a hoax by Alex Jones.

 

“…. claims that the massacre was “a giant hoax” and “that the whole thing was fake” — staged by the federal government, which hired professional actors for the purposes of undermining Second Amendment rights.”  https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/17/603223968/sandy-hook-parents-sue-conspiracy-theorist-al

 

And America’s infamous “Anti-intellectualism” (see the classic by Richard Hofstadter) have combined in a perverse sort of perfect storm to bring us one of the most despicable creatures to ever walk upright, Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan.

“Trump has repeatedly cited or pushed claims that were traced back to infowars.com” Moreover, Jones two areas of “expertise” are conspiracy theories and fake news. What an amazing coincidence? If, unlike Trump, you are capable of compassion or empathy, try to imagine what the parents of those children who were murdered must’ve felt like with this evil propagandist, Alex Jones, calling this horrific nightmare a grand conspiracy.

 

A few of the parents of the murdered children filed a law suit against Jones for his horrible behavior in pushing this conspiracy theory for I’m not sure how long but I do know that Jones finally lost in court. And now he claims that “a form of psychosis caused him to believe that the Sandy Hook massacre was staged.” Yeah, right! And this is the kind of guy that our fake news president cites & promotes conspiracy theories from? This shows just how gullible millions of Americans are & how quick they are to believe the most absurd claims of nut-jobs.

 

In conclusion, I am going to pull back the curtain on Trump’s greatest fraud which is his claim to fame i.e. that he’s a self-made billionaire. But before I do so, it’s appropriate to remind you, my imaginary reader, of a fantastic statement by the liar-in-chief;

 

“What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

This is almost a little too on-the-nose Orwellian. In 1984, George Orwell described the totalitarian government’s ultimate demand of its subjects:

The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.  https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a22547037/donald-trump-orwellian-truth-reality-eyes-ears/

This admonition is clearly from the mind of a megalomaniac and any rational person capable of even a semblance of critical & analytical thinking would be frightened but not Trump’s Walking Dead army. In other words, Trump is telling his pro-Nazi & neo-fascist fan club to only believe whatever he says. Trump is clearly a textbook example of a demagogue & let me save you the effort to go to your dictionary, if you were so inclined?

 

demagogue /ˈdɛməɡɒɡ/ (from Greek δημαγωγός, a popular leader, a leader of a mob, from δῆμος, people, populace, the commons + ἀγωγός leading, leader)[1] or rabble-rouser[2][3] is a leader who gains popularity in a democracy by exploiting prejudice and ignorance to arouse the common people against elites, whipping up the passions of the crowd and shutting down reasoned deliberation.[1][4] Demagogues overturn established norms of political conduct, or promise or threaten to do so.[5]

 

Of course, Trump’s Conspiracy of Ignorance campaign is two-pronged i.e. pretending to be going after the elites of which he is a member at least financially-speaking. By-the-way, Trump tried his best to gain acceptance into New York’s intellectual & cultural elite for many years in his 20s but they laughed at him & rejected him time & time again. So, I believe a lot of his animus towards this pseudo elite, accounts for a lot of his bitterness nowadays? And the second prong of Trump’s war against America is his base which adore him & feed his super-ego.

 

Okay, now for the piece de resistance (French for; an outstanding item or event: showpiece), upon which Trump has built the edifice of his empire, his wealth. By-the-way, my guess is that this expose (to make known: bring to light) done by a team of investigative reporters from The New York Times is probably the main reason he detests this newspaper above all the rest?

 

Back in 2005, David Cay Johnston, revealed three pages of one of Trump’s tax returns that he had gotten his hands on. He has closely observed Trump’s career for over 28 years & has challenged Trump on many occasions to sue him but Trump has never taken him up on his invitation. The three pages caught the attention of this small team of journalists at the Times & they began a 14-month investigation of Donnie Darko.

And here is what they discovered thanks in large part to getting their hands-on Donnie’s daddy’s Will. Moreover, because Donnie’s sister, who was a federal judge, had to file a full financial disclosure each year that she was a judge & dutifully listed the details of every trust, business organization, etc. from which she received money, they were able to zero in on Donnie’s true sources of his wealth. Each of Donnie’s siblings received the same amount in Fred Trump’s Will but from the age of three when Donald Duck was receiving $250,000 a year & throughout his life, Daddy Warbucks never stopped funneling millions of dollars every year to the spoiled & intellectually-challenged Donald Duck.

 

In brief, Donnie the Despicable has never been a true entrepreneur because Daddy had to co-sign for every loan he used to get in his early years until the banks had their fill of his defaults on his loans. In 2005, his tax return showed that he had earned $150,000,000 but the investigative team discovered that this was a one-shot thing & it was because he had inherited it from daddy. Again, you can do a brief check to see just how many times his “brilliant” business mind has failed. And in the early 1990s, he was over $3 billion in debt with three of his Atlantic City casinos bankrupt. But then came his saving grace i.e. The Apprentice.  https://people.com/politics/apprentice-creators-donald-trump-scam/

 

Obviously, Trump’s entire life has been a gargantuan fraud and he has focused on expanding the Trump name & its façade of his being a self-made billionaire for decades. This is why he is so quick to sue anyone who dares to defame his “good name” i.e. his name plastered on buildings around the world make the unthinking believe he actually owns all those buildings when in fact, he’s simply the front-man, like the doorman standing outside a fancy hotel proclaiming; “Come on in to the greatest hotel in the world!”

 

It’s the sheer audacity of his hypocrisy (phrase used by Scott Horton) that has enabled him to survive along with his inheritance that has kept his head above water financially, not to mention his countless criminal acts.

 

And if you watch the video about how he got his fortune from daddy whom he has always claimed only gave him a “small loan of one million & which he had to pay interest on,” they also reveal how Donald & his siblings ripped daddy off for hundreds of millions so they wouldn’t have to pay 55% in taxes on their inheritance. Yep! Like I’ve showed in several instances, this racist, hate-monger, & national embarrassment has been nothing but a fake & a fraud all his life and yet he struts the world stage as if he were a present-day Mussolini and expects us to all grovel at his feet in awe of his magnificence. Well, here are my parting words for all of you who will persist in this grand delusion, but first I thought I might lighten things up briefly because I forewarn you, my last thoughts on this subject are very dark.

 

 

The Emperor Wears No Clothes
P.T. Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” and boy was he right

 

And here is Steve Bannon, the conspiracy theorist who is very sly and intelligent & this makes him a very dangerous person indeed because he is out to destroy every government that is pro-democracy and he wants to create a New World Order of Fascism!

And now back to the real “reality” of our lives in this dark time, this era of Trump and the darkness that has spread over the land.

 

You grin and cheer for this fake because like a lynch-mob, he can whip you up into a frenzy so easily. He helps you vent your anger that comes from your fears about how you’re going to pay your bills & your family’s future but this is the demagogue’s oldest trick in the book i.e. blame others, immigrants, Muslims, democrats, liberals, etc. etc. etc. when you should be ashamed of yourselves for not seeing that Trump isn’t your champion, he’s the enemy.

 

He represents the bankers who illegally foreclosed on your home and evicted you. He’s the hedge fund manager who wiped-out your pension fund. He’s one of the corporate crooks who pay lawyers & politicians to write laws that allow all the fraud & theft.

 

The government by and large works for the corporate cockroaches just like every one of us who works for thieves like Walmart, Amazon, etc. Trump, like his other swamp creature friends like Jeffrey Epstein for example, have gotten rich by fucking us all & using the government and the “law” to do so legally. But this doesn’t mean that we should therefore tear down the government completely because our government provides hundreds of positive functions & services as well.

 

You see, ever since FDR passed the New Deal, the Republicans have vowed & waged a non-stop propaganda campaign and war on every aspect of our government that does some good for we, the people. The G.O.P. has only one agenda and that is the unfettered pursuit of profit & power over the rest of us. So, take all their assaults on the government for what they truly represent i.e. an assault on us which is crystal clear as evidenced by the ever-expanding inequality financially speaking.

 

What Trump excels at is distracting us from what the 1% are doing behind the scenes i.e. Paul Ryan & Mitch McConnel being the key architects of the grand theft of our federal treasury as well as enablers of it. Trump’s actions & rhetoric has delivered a perhaps fatal blow to what we used to believe America stood for. And as Noam Chomsky has pointed out, the rest of the world now fears America more than any other nation or supposed terrorist threat.

 

Trump’s reign of ignorance & terror is shameless & unbridled and dishonors all those who have died in defense of America. I am truly saddened that so many of you just disregard his behavior & dismiss it as Donnie just being “real.”

Is Trump’s vision for America what she lost her love for?

 

Trump is causing physical, mental, & emotional harm to millions of Americans and you cheer him on? Well when the flaps of the giant circus tent that Trump is the ringmaster of go down, you won’t be grinning because you’ll be the present-day Tom Joad family (John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath”).

 

I’m not a religious person but if there is a God and a heaven, when you stand before St. Peter & those pearly gates, he’s going to tell you to Go to Hell for your cruel indifference & inhumanity towards your fellow human beings. You show a total lack of compassion or empathy for all the poor souls, men, women, & children locked up in cages like animals at our border. And you have clearly forgotten entirely what your savior, Jesus, boiled it down to in his Sermon on the Mount.

 

These dehumanized and discarded people bleed red just like you & I when cut. And they put their pants on one leg at a time like your or me. They simply want to live and to enable their children to grow up healthy and not live in a constant state of fear. The drug cartels prey on them like vultures and if their teenage children refuse to join the drug gangs, they are threatened with the death of their entire family. They are fleeing the droughts caused mainly by the pollution of their Northern neighbor and other so-called “technologically-advanced nations.” And they are fleeing the absolute corruption of their government & their corporate sector.

 

America is a leader in corporate corruption but we’re more discrete about our abuses & we have a very effective propaganda system in place to disguise the ugly history of our corporate cockroaches:

 

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
― Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier 

These drug cartels have become obscenely wealthy because of our absolutely asinine & insane War on Drugs and like Trump, they have become so rich because their drugs help people to escape at least temporarily from the nightmares of their daily lives. And the U.S. is the world’s largest market for their drugs because so many Americans hate their lives & your idol is the biggest drug dealer of them all because he pushes the most seductive drug of all i.e. fear & hate!

Oops?

 

 

—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, Oregon October 12, 2019

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trump the Terrible!

the petulant little boy upset that he’s not the center of attention

 

 

Invariably when I meet someone new and the subject of Trump comes up, the first words out of their mouths are; I like Trump because he tells it like it is. And my spirit sinks every time I hear this moronic mantra come out of a person’s mouth. Can a third of the American public really be this stupid?

And in Trump-land, being stupid is worn as a badge of honor

 

Yeah, I’m calling people stupid because they have clearly closed their minds & their hearts to all the greed and cruelty of Trump’s behavior. In my twenties, I lived in Orange County, then the most conservative county in the U.S., Reagan country. And when I’d visit my mom, her friends & her would laugh at my criticisms of Reagan & repeat ad nauseam; “All you need is common sense.”

 

Well can someone please explain to me where that much touted “common sense” is hiding please? By its very definition, it’s supposed to be “common” (occurring or appearing frequently). I submit that this phrase or maxim is just another myth like the one of “rugged individualism,” or “self-reliance.”

 

The average American citizen has been deluged with approximately 6,580 hours of advertising by the time they graduate from high school & they read at the sixth or seventh grade level. Moreover, this ties in with another cherished mantra by many of our fellow citizens i.e. there is a “liberal bias” in the mainstream news. And once again we see that good old common sense has failed us.

The “Liberal Media” Wake up people!

 

Ask yourself why the 1% who own the corporate media would allow a truly liberal bias to dominate their broadcasting networks? Liberals by definition are harsh critics of that infamous 1% who keep getting wealthier while the rest of us keep getting poorer. So, if the liberals were truly in control of the media, their criticisms would undermine the very power structure of their organizations & the owners would soon go out of business.

 

Furthermore, this highlights perhaps the central absurdity of Trump’s supposed fighting for the working class & the middle class of America i.e. the rich, especially the super-rich of which Donald is supposedly a member but of course we’ll never know because he refuses to release his tax returns, rarely become wealthy because they’re simple, honest, hard-working people. But again, the Trump cult prefer to ignore the reality in front of their faces i.e. Trump has spent his adult life in court & has a platoon of lawyers because he threatens & bullies anyone who dares to stand up to him when he’s ripped them off. And he has thousands of lawsuits filed against him every year for a plethora of civil & criminal actions on his part.

 

So how do we explain this apparent willful ignorance on the part of the Trump zombies staggering helplessly toward their destruction? I believe that once again, television plays a significant part in this phenomenon. I know that I’m stating the obvious to those who pay attention to the true reality, not the T.V. “reality,” but those people are the exception to the rule.

 

If you’ve made it this far in reading my essay, congratulations because many people would be dismissing me as one of those East coast elitists at this point. But if you knew my background, you’d really get a chuckle out of this. My mom raised the four of us as a single parent. She worked as a telephone operator & waitress mostly. I walked to school all the way through my public schooling & got 40 cents a day for lunch when I was in high school.

 

And when I was in the sixth grade, I was told that I was reading at the 11th grade, sixth month level. It took me 14 years to earn my B.A. in English literature but the overwhelming majority of what I’ve learned has come through my own reading. So yeah, it cracks me up when people attempt to dismiss me as an elitist, out of touch with the common man’s reality.

 

Okay, back to the “boob-tube.” I remember when “reality T.V.” first raised its stupid head i.e. the series “Survivor” I believe was the first successful show. I could be wrong because I only watched one episode & was turned-off. I asked my wife, what does this teach people, or our children? It teaches them to do anything to “survive” i.e. lie, cheat, steal, backstab or do whatever it takes to win. Of course, this show was perfect for creatures from the black lagoon like Trump because this has been his business “work ethic” or model from day one after daddy gave him $400,000,000 & which he has consistently lied about & claims that daddy war bucks only gave him a million dollars which he soon paid back.

many “Christians” thought Mussolini & Hitler were great leaders too

 

Trump is a living, walking example of the Seven Deadly Sins and the evangelicals or “Christian” fundamentalists who support him show what hypocritical hyenas they truly are for ignoring his “shortcomings.” It also amazes me that the Trump lobotomized simply choose to ignore all his business failures. I think a key factor here is the fact that because Trump’s name is plastered on buildings all over the world, his disciples either don’t know or choose to ignore the fact that what Donny-boy sells more than anything else is his name brand. Most of his “business investments” are the leasing of his name i.e. allowing corporations to put Trump’s name on their properties because it supposedly draws in more customers. But again, we’ll never know the truth because the girly-man with the small hands hides his true financial standing from us.

American ignorance on proud display, “Reality,” for the intellectually impaired.

 

Continuing on, Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan has been truly successful at selling fear & hate. And this is probably the crux of the matter when it comes to why he’s so popular with a third of the voting electorate i.e. he’s given them permission to voice their anger & hate. Tragically for America & the rest of the world by extension, this has given rise to a sort of populist fascism. And Donnie loves his fellow tyrants & dictators and proudly proclaims his love of totalitarian leaders to the world.

Trump’s heroes but Putin is his idol

 

And every time I hear such profanity come out of his pie-hole, I wonder what happened to the principles & values we supposedly once stood for i.e. freedom, democracy, equality, etc.? What have all our soldiers fought & died for? How in the Hell could Trump worshipers not see the glaring contradictions between what Trump does & says and the ideals that the U.S. is supposed to represent?

Is America under the greedy moron Trump what they’ve sacrificed their lives for?

 

It dawned on me the other day as I was driving back from L.A., that Trump stooges seem to wear their ignorance proudly as if it were a badge of honor? They may as well put a bumper sticker on their cars proclaiming; I’m stupid & proud of it!

 

And speaking of stupid, this is one of the reasons the pseudo-Christians support Trump, because he put Betsy DeVos, a rich “Christian,” who is out to destroy public education, in as the Secretary of Education. I wrote a book on the subject of the “Christian” fundamentalists war against Humanism & it’s truly frightening the more you delve into the subject. In brief, these faux “Christians,” want an American Taliban of “Christians,” who rule over the rest of us every bit as absolutely as the Taliban in Afghanistan want to dominate their population.

 

Resuming with our commander in chief of stupid, Trump, it absolutely bewilders me how even the most ardent of Donnie’s toadies aren’t bothered by his daily demonstrations of his monumental ignorance? And this guy is our leader? God help us if a serious threat arises because he couldn’t find his way around the block with a map. He can barely complete a single sentence with any resemblance to coherence or logic. He repeats the same half dozen adjectives like; great, wonderful, totally, perfect, etc. ad nauseam. I believe the average third grader would be considered eloquent compared to this moron. By-the-way, here’s another example of Donnie’s “telling it like it is;” He threatened every school he attended as he was growing up with a lawsuit if they revealed his grades. Any of you “common sense” champions need a hint? Before I move on, here’s another sweet morsel of a tidbit for you that I almost forgot to share; I read that one of Trump’s demands to the producers of “The Apprentice,” was that every time his name was mentioned in the show, they had to add, “Trump, the billionaire.” Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels taught Roy Cohn that i.e. the bigger the lie & the more often you say it, the sooner it becomes a fact or a truth. And Roy Cohn was Trump’s mentor & Joseph McCarthy’s right-hand man in the Communist Witch Hunts of the 1950s so you see, Trump does know something about witch hunts.

Cohn was a mob lawyer & one of the most vile creatures to ever crawl out of that swamp in New York City

 

You see, my friend, that old adage of; What you don’t know can’t hurt you, is bullshit! Ignorance can be deadly. Here are a few fun facts for you but of course if you are a Trump acolyte, facts & truth don’t matter, all you need to do is believe everything the Fuhrer tells you:

when you don’t give a shit about knowledge, “alternative facts” are easy to accept

 

  • Despite being a global economic & political leader, illiteracy continues to be a pervasive problem in the U.S.
  • Approximately 32 million adults in America are considered to be illiterate.
  • About 14% of the entire adult population cannot read.
  • Among developed nations, the U.S. ranks 16th for adult reading skills.
  • Between 40 and 44 million adults, or roughly 20 to 23% of adults in the U.S., are limited to reading at the basic or below basic proficiency levels.
  • Some 30 million adults aren’t able to comprehend texts that are appropriate for 10-year olds.
  • An estimated 63 million adults read between a sixth and eighth grade level.
  • Research has also linked illiteracy to poverty as an adult.
  • As many as 75% of welfare recipients struggle to read even the simplest texts.
  • In terms of lost productivity, it’s estimated that the portion of the population that can’t read costs the nation a staggering $225 billion each year.

    I read this book 30 years ago & it’s truly scary how ignorant we are as a nation

 

What reading level do you think Trump or his sycophants

Read at? Observers have estimated that Trump reads at about the fifth-grade level & this is probably why he refuses to read his daily briefings as president. Don’t you think we should have a president who can at least read at the 12th grade level? Do I have to remind you that we live in a very complex world which requires someone with the kind of power that Trump has at his fingertips, to be able to think on their feet? And forget about critical or analytical thinking skills when it comes to the Duckmeister. He’s a sad & bad joke when it comes to intellectual prowess.

If you’d care to understand the historical context of why we celebrate morons like Trump, read this classic

 

Why do you think Trump is such a big fan of conspiracy theories? Why is Alex Jones a trusted friend? And as for FOX “news,” I have been saying for nearly the 20 years since FOX began that it’s a farce to even consider FOX “News” a legitimate news program. It is the American version of Pravda. Pravda was the state newspaper of the former Soviet Union but their citizens new it was propaganda & disregarded it. Yet here in the land of freedom & opportunity, we seem to be the world’s biggest suckers & will fall for anything, even a puffed-up, nonstop braggart who is using the office of the president of the United States to shamelessly enrich himself & clearly is a con man, a traitor, and a serious threat to all of us!

Trump’s info sources; Alex Jones, The National Enquirer, & FOX “News”

 

In conclusion, I’ll leave you with this brief insight into why some people believe conspiracy theories. Note how fond Trump is of conspiracy theories i.e. it’s all a mass plot by the Democrats, a witch hunt, etc.

 

The desire for control and security. People need to feel they’re in control of their lives. For instance, many people feel safer when they’re the driver in the car rather than a passenger. Of course, even the best drivers can get into accidents for reasons beyond their control.

Likewise, conspiracy theories can give their believers a sense of control and security. This is especially true when the alternative account feels threatening. For example, if global temperatures are rising catastrophically due to human activity, then I’ll have to make painful changes to my comfortable lifestyle. But if pundits and politicians assure me that global warming is a hoax, then I can maintain my current way of living. This kind of motivated reasoning is an important component in conspiracy theory beliefs. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-apes/201801/why-do-people-believe-in-conspiracy-theories

 

Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan is clearly paranoid & suffers from delusions of grandeur but will America survive this petty tyrant with an insatiable greed & totally lacking in any sense of basic, human decency?

he spends a lot of time on the toilet because he’s so full of shit!

 

—-Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, Oregon Sept. 29, 2019

 

Addendum

I get so caught up in detailing the lies & machinations of the Trump circus that I sometimes forget to step-back & point out the big picture. Trump is the ring master for the true Power Elite (The Power Elite is a 1956 book by sociologist C. Wright Mills, in which Mills calls attention to the interwoven interests of the leaders of the militarycorporate, and political elements of society and suggests that the ordinary citizen is a relatively powerless subject of manipulation by those entities.) It’s clear as a bell to all but the hopelessly brain-dead that Trump doesn’t have the brain power to pass a GED exam let alone hatch an intricate conspiracy to take over America.

we should add Congress, the Corporate Media, Higher Education, etc. to his warning

 

No, Trump is what is known as a “useful idiot” (In political jargon, a useful idiot is a derogatory term for a person perceived as propagandizing for a cause without fully comprehending the cause’s goals, and who is cynically used by the cause’s leaders. ) and the term circus master is an appropriate descriptor of this vile person because like a magician, Trump distracts us from the hidden agenda of the power elite. The Republican party overwhelmingly remain silent no matter how outrageous the rhetoric or the crimes of Trump because his distractions keep the public’s attention on the idiocy of Trump and off the G.O.P.’s raping, pillaging, & plundering of our economy & by extension, the world’s poor & the natural resources of most of the world.

 

Magicians have told us again & again of how they distract their audiences with one hand while the other hand does the “magic.” And the magic that Trump does so well is keep the public pissed-off and fighting amongst themselves with his racial slurs, his conspiracy theories, his blaming the media, the Muslims, the Mexicans, the liberals, the Democrats, etc. etc. etc. And his Duck Dynasty hillbillies love him for allowing & encouraging their venting of their racist, anti-intellectual, & poisonous and scary, preapocalyptic fantasies.

 

Many, if not most, of these Neanderthals are as happy as pigs rolling in the mud as they watch Donny dismantle every federal agency’s ability to perform their mission to protect us from the greed of the 1%. But when they can no longer drink the water out of the spigots in their homes like in Flint, Michigan, breathe the air where they live because it’s too toxic or poisonous, trust the food they put into their kids’ mouths, pay their electric bill, afford to drive their cars, put a roof over their family’s heads, count on their Social Security checks coming in, have their life savings stolen along with their pensions, etc., they will only have themselves to blame. They were so stupid as to actually believe a phony billionaire was on their side.

 

Trump is truly a clown, a very scary clown & one that doesn’t give a shit about anything except his gold-plated toilet & the childish thrill of texting absurd Tweets 24/7 and receiving so much attention from the chaos he thrives on. I’ll leave you with one last bit of that “common sense” that is so elusive to the average American, especially the FOX “News,” bubble-brains, that horrible media, you know, “the enemy of the people,” gave Donny billions of dollars of free publicity when he was running for office & Bernie Sanders received a small fraction of media attention. So, how is it that now, whenever journalists dare to criticize Trump, they’re his enemy? Whenever they give him positive attention, he kisses their asses but when they dare to point out his vulgar speech & behavior, they’re liars and on a witch hunt to destroy him?

 

This most egregious example of all that is worst in us, Trumpelstiltskyn, would suffer a total mental & emotional meltdown if he weren’t the center of attention for even a single day. So, congratulations all you simpletons, you got what you wished for. I’ll see you as we paddle our life-rafts over our former fields of amber grain!

Is this what you Trump supporters look forward to after he’s destroyed our government?

 

 

 

 

Democracy’s Delusion

Trump, the “Chosen One” according to the “Christian” fundamentalists

 

 

“Those who sacrifice freedom for safety deserve neither.”

—Thomas Jefferson

 

One of America’s central delusions is that of free speech. And the powers that be, those CEOs who run the mammoth, corporate conglomerates who tell politicians & presidents when to shit & when to get off the pot, silence those who speak a little too freely. In nations like Mexico, they’re not very subtle & they simply murder journalists who inform the public about the corruption that is impoverishing their citizens.

 

But here in the good old U.S.A. our political/corporate elite hide their dark agendas behind grandiose words like; freedom, democracy, liberty, etc. Take five minutes to skim over the names of the most prominent right-wing or conservative think tanks & you’ll take my point.

 

You see, here in the land of the free & home of the brave, we’re supposed to just wave our flags on the 4th of July, Memorial Day, etc. and then shut the fuck up rest of the time. If you dare to question or criticize our government, as Thomas Jefferson said was not only our right but our duty, you are told to “Love it or leave it.” How’s that for freedom?

 

My motivation for writing this essay is the fact that I’m getting so fuckin’ tired of being told to either shut-up or leave when I begin to talk about political matters in bars. And it’s usually some bartender that knows nothing about what’s happening in our country & could give a shit less but has a smug sense of superiority because they have the “power” to 86 me.

 

I hate this feeling of being in a constant verbal straitjacket and want to scream Fuck you, you little flunky bartender! The older I become, the more I realize just how unfree we are in this fairy tale land we call America. My political awakening began in my late teens when I kept going AWOL from the U.S. Army because I didn’t think going to Vietnam was such a great idea.

The darkest days of my life until I lost my wife

 

And throughout my 20s, whenever I was partying with my friends, they often mocked me for my comments & opinions which seemed so foreign to them. They were mostly good natured though so I kept trying to get through to them. But again, as I grew older & was confronted sometimes with physical threats in bars, I became more disillusioned with this whole farce we call Democracy. You may think me a liar but I don’t give a fuck because I know my truth i.e. conservatively, I have spent at least 50,000 hours over my adult life reading, taking notes, listening, watching, researching, & writing about American politics & foreign policy. So, yeah, I dare to speak with an air of confidence or self-assuredness on many of the issues facing us today. And I welcome anyone who cares to challenge me intellectually because I know I’ve paid my dues & continue to do so.

 

So, go ahead, make my day as Clint Eastwood is famous for saying. When you consider the pathetic state of awareness of the average American & read the statistics regarding American’s reading habits, etc., I take comfort in knowing that I am light-years ahead of most of my countrymen. And no, I don’t give a shit how elitist that makes me sound & I know how much Trump followers detest elitists like myself because we “make them feel inferior.”

 

Well, my response is, if the shoe fits? This is a cop-out & these intellectually lazy citizens refuse to accept responsibility for their not being willing to pick up a book on a regular basis & blame those who are intellectually superior to them for acting superior. I came from the poor side of the tracks, raised by a single mother with a brother & two sisters. I was the eldest & began cooking for my siblings when I was 12 years old. Made them do their chores, their homework, be in bed on time, fought their battles, etc. So, don’t give me your sob stories claiming that you couldn’t find the time to go to the library & read and educate yourself.

 

Returning to the main thesis of this essay, over the years, I have occasionally been in a bar where we were “allowed” to speak freely and a serious political discussion/debate ensued & I absolutely loved it when I saw the spark in people’s eyes or their faces light up. And once in a while after such intense discussions, one or more of the participants would come up to me and say things like; “Wow! That was the best conversation I’ve had in ten years,” or “I learned so much, thank you!” And yeah, I’ve gotten into some heated debates with individuals but realized that their mind was closed & I was just beating my head against the wall. So, I’d end it by saying something like; Well, we’re obviously getting nowhere so can we just agree that we disagree? And we’d either change the subject or go our separate ways peacefully.

 

Continuing on, I fondly recall an experience I had while waiting in the cell outside the courtroom in Oakland, CA awaiting my appearance before the judge for a D.U.I. There were approximately six young black guys, a couple of older black guys near my age & myself. The young guys were gangbangers & drug dealers (I learned this from overhearing their conversations)

 

Well, they got into a religious debate and one of them had long, Dred-locks and was in favor of Buddhism while the others were mostly Christian. Their debate went on for about a half hour and I could no longer resist so I raised my hand like a boy in school. They cracked-up and nodded that it was okay for me to join in. I soon found myself serving as a sort of moderator & interjected at times; “Okay, now it’s his turn” and would point to another individual so he could say his piece.

 

We were let out of jail in the middle of the night & these young gangsters took me under their wings so-to-speak. They walked me to the nearest BART station & accompanied me to the best stop for me to connect & get back to the Berkeley area where my van was. And they hugged me as we parted.

 

I tell you this not to brag but to show you that even in such harsh conditions as being locked-up in jail, people can behave in a civilized manner even when discussing religion which I believe is the other taboo subject we’re not supposed to talk about in bars?

 

So, tell me, do you believe the “common wisdom” that if people talk about politics in bars, things are likely to get out of control i.e. fights will break out? I feel that what this taboo is saying is that we can’t be trusted to behave in a civil manner, especially when we’re drinking. I say, Bull-shit!

 

People start fights or get into fights in bars for any one of thousands of reasons & politics may be a reason they do now & then but that doesn’t mean that we should ban political speech in bars absolutely. If a person becomes belligerent in a bar for whatever reason, yeah, kick them out but don’t censor all of us for what a minority of assholes may do. Because this makes a mockery of our Declaration of Independence, our Bill of Rights, & our supposed freedoms.

 

Here’s something for you to mull over if you will; Why do we have over 900 military bases around the world with God knows how many “black op sites,” supposedly to protect & promote democracy abroad but we can’t speak about matters that affect our democracy at home when we’re in bars, the most common meeting place for citizens on a regular basis?

 

And no, I’m not trying to paint some grand Alex Jones conspiracy theory but it sure is interesting to note how this taboo just coincidentally benefits the 1%. What other public location or institutions allows us to speak freely to one another?

 

I have even been kicked-out of some bars for pointing out to bartenders who commanded me to shut up because I was talking about politics, when other customers were talking about local political matters i.e. city hall, road construction, etc. I’d say, hey, they’re talking about politics & boy would the bartender become flustered & immediately proclaim their authority; “Get out!”

 

Seems that local politics are basically okay to speak about but not national or international politics? So perhaps we’re getting a bit closer to the truth or the reality of our so-called “freedom of speech” in America? We’re allowed to speak freely within the confines of our own homes but hardly anywhere else? And we’re allowed to speak freely as long as it isn’t about any sensitive subjects that might offend the 1%, you know, the super elite that Trump wishes he were a part of but who won’t allow Little Lord Fauntleroy into their clubs.

 

We definitely lose all our rights when we walk through the entrance to our workplace because private employers are tyrannies and Walmart is a prime example i.e. if any employee dares to mention forming a union, they are out the door. Our election system is fast becoming a joke & is resembling more & more those “banana Republics” which we have looked down our noses at for decades even though we helped create them—see Major General Smedley F. Butler of the U.S.M.C.

This is the ugly truth behind the corporate cockroaches’ agenda of perpetual war

 

Gerrymandering, voter suppression/intimidation, tampering with voter machines, & Russian hacking which Mitch McConnell won’t allow us to do anything about, etc. has clearly made a mockery of our much-touted free elections. So much for expressing ourselves via the voting booth.

 

Moreover, if you’ll spend even a modicum of time checking out:

 

Jaron Lanier; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc_Jq42Og7Q&t=4s

 

Tristan Harris; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C74amJRp730&t=117s

 

Chamath Palihapitiya; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J54k7WrbfMg&t=5s

 

Shoshana Zuboff; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo6K-bPh39M

 

Edward Snowden

 

Or the recent Netflix documentary; “The Big Hack”

 

You’ll begin to realize the folly of turning to the “social media,” to save us. It is purposely designed to divide us & promote aggressive & fearful feelings between us because that brings more viewers (eyeballs) which increase their profits. Some of the above played pivotal roles in bringing about the social media so you might pay close attention to what they’re saying.

 

Perhaps most importantly, the revelations regarding Cambridge Analytica & Trump’s “winning” of the presidency proves just how extensively our “democracy” has been hacked & hence, our gradual slide into mere drones for the powers that be.

 

Specifically, what do our other supposed freedoms mean if we don’t truly have freedom of speech? Freedom of speech is the bedrock, the cornerstone, the foundation of all our other freedoms in the Bill of Rights, & the Declaration of Independence.

 

And speaking of The Bill of Rights, are you aware of how the powers that be gutted this so-called sacred document of our Republic shortly after the events of September 11, 2001? Yep! Because the Bush administration had been asleep at the wheel, they scrambled to cover their ignorance, laziness, & ineptitude by ramming through these draconian assaults on our “holy” rights & freedoms as Americans. Not very reassuring in my book i.e. just how firm is the “foundation” of this nation that struts the world stage declaring how powerful we are & that we have the best form of government on Earth. (see https://ccrjustice.org/home/blog/2015/11/17/911-decade-and-decline-us-democracy

 

If you’d care to inform yourself more on this sad subject)

 

Last night, in less than ten minutes, I came up with this list of subjects we’re not allowed to talk about in bars because if we do, within a matter of minutes, we’ll be discussing political matters:

 

  1. The recent slaughter in El Paso
  2. The Vietnam War
  3. The Iraq War
  4. The social media
  5. Losing our jobs
  6. Being homeless
  7. NAFTA
  8. Student debt
  9. Global warming
  • Nuclear war
  • Trump’s tweets
  • The coming Recession or Depression?
  • Bankruptcy
  • Health insurance or the lack thereof
  • The future of work
  • Christian fundamentalists support of Trump

 

For the past decade or better, I have tried to be tactful when people tell me that they’re not interested in politics. And my usual response is something like; Oh, I see? So, you’re not interested in whether or not you lose your job, your health insurance, your pension, etc. And believe it or not, it really does sadden me that I have to keep pointing out to people that politics affects every aspect of our lives & we’d better wake the fuck up!

what have they all died for?

 

To not do so is to spit on the graves of all those soldiers, sailors, marines, & airmen who sacrificed their lives for these freedoms that we so love to brag about to the world. We are slip-sliding into Trump’s Totalitarian Terrorism (my phrase) here at home & abroad and it’s up to us as individuals & as citizens of America to stand up on our hind legs & yell; “I’m as Mad as Hell & I’m not going to take it anymore!”

Half a million young people sharing Love, Peace, & Music for 3 days

 

I’m so glad that my “coming of age” was in the 1960s because although we were naïve romanticists & idealists, it felt so wonderful to share the same mass delusion with so many brothers & sisters as evidenced in the miracle known as Woodstock and our Flower Power Revolution.

Love, Trust, & Freedom in the 1960s. Compare that with today in Trump’s racist America & hate rallies

 

Persevere & Viva la Revolucion!

 

 

Facebook & the Road to Fascism

 

 

 

 

 

I fear that those of you who may take the time to read this essay will be tempted to dismiss my thoughts as those of a paranoid conspiracist? And yes, this is going to be a very convoluted or complicated subject because it involves the very technology that affects every one of our lives. Now most people will become defensive or attempt to retreat into a bubble of denial because the scope of what is being done to us is global & has such a pernicious effect on humanity as a whole.

remember the argument against homeschooling i.e. they need to develop social skills???

 

My personal experience has been that of a somewhat reluctant participant especially regarding “Smart phones.” And I wish that I had followed my initial aversion towards Facebook. My gut told me that Facebook was for teenage girls the first several years it came into existence but a cousin of mine told me that we had lots of relatives in Eastern Oregon that I wasn’t even aware of. So, I asked him how I could contact them thinking it’d be nice for my son to get to know more of his relatives. It never panned-out but I became hooked-on Facebook & slowly began to spend more & more of my time on it.

 

I was under the delusion that I could be of help & share some of the knowledge that I had been hoarding up for decades. I would write short essays practically on many of the serious social & political issues facing us. And once in a while I’d get a comment like; “I learned so much from you,” etc. But especially after the introduction to emojis, even a single sentence in response to my posts just about disappeared entirely & an emoji was all that people could manage to “communicate.”

 

And over the last couple of years that I was a Facebook user, I’d deactivate my account for months at a time to see if any of my “friends,” would notice. I had accumulated over 3,000 “friends” when I finally quit Facebook for good & with each passing day, I am so glad that I finally saw the light i.e. Facebook is the enemy of humanity & has done more to divide us than just about anything I can think of.

 

Do you recall Zuckerberg’s stated mission when Facebook began? And he still claims it to be their goal, yeah, to bring people together in a sense of community. Well, you’d have to either extremely naïve or willfully ignorant to not acknowledge that Zuckerberg has become one of the wealthiest men in America because of his selling our personal information to any buyer with enough money.

 

I am going to rely on & cite from two major sources for this article. The first is a You Tube video that I stumbled upon; “Social Media: Toxic by Design (Sam Vaknin)”

 

 

Now, I had my suspicions or doubts about Facebook the longer I participated on it, but this “interview” with Sam Vaknin blew my mind because of his in-depth revelations about the psychology of how this platform actually operates or conducts its nefarious work. So, hold on to your hats my friends, we’re headed for one helluva rollercoaster ride.

 

 

Before we get started, I want to acknowledge that I basically transcribed the entire “conversation” between Vaknin & his interlocutor —who basically took notes on what Vaknin was elaborating on. Therefore, I’m just going to put in quotation marks (some of the time)  whatever Vaknin said & not cite him every single time in the hope of making this article read a bit more naturally than some scholarly work? Note: I did search for a transcript of this talk but had no luck. By-the-way, I am using the term “fascism” in the sense that Mussolini did (though some disagree that he described it this way);

 

““Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”

For the record, I am no fan of Alex Jones or his absurd conspiracy theories though Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan is. And Donny of the Small Fingers & Tiny Brain is also an avid reader of The National Enquirer, you know that publication of such high repute. And the more we get into this Edgar Allen Poe tale of horror, the more you will realize how our collective dumbing-down has contributed to our downfall.

from the time I was a teenager, we knew the Enquirer was only good for one thing i.e. the bottom of your birdcage

Let’s begin with the inner machinations of our benevolent “Big Brother” Marky Zuckerberg & the platform he stole from his college “friends,” i.e. Facebook.

 

I was instantly a fan of Vaknin’s when he mentioned Facebook & its appeal to teenage girls because as I mentioned earlier, that was my initial appraisal of the “platform.” Vaknin begins with; “You’re constantly competing against yourself to get more likes than on your last post.” Two thoughts came to me regarding this; 1) we clearly are an overly competitive society i.e. our lives are measured in how well we do in competition against our fellow students, workers, neighbors, etc. 2) and this is closely linked to our crass materialism as well as our cult of celebrity i.e. so many of us desire national, if not worldwide celebrity. It’s as if we’re a nation of insecurity even though we have the most powerful military & economy on Earth? Prima facie evidence; Trump’s constant need for recognition & approval. And most tragically, the gunman or mass shooters who crave attention & go on killing sprees to get it.

 

This self-competition creates “performance anxiety.” And as a male in this society & especially as an old fart, I can attest to this anxiety when every great now & then, I am honored to share a bed with a lovely lady.

 

“Social media has tripled young people’s anxiety.” Obviously, in a world as unpredictable & unstable as ours, where not only the young but the middle-aged & even many seniors are so full of anxiety as to whether they’ll be able to pay their rent & afford their medications, the last thing young people need is more anxiety.

Yep! The G.O.P. idea of “A kinder & gentler nation,” & “Compassionate Conservatism.”

 

“Social media is like an epidemic, a virus.” You’re goddamn straight! I look around me and it never ceases to sadden me how virulent an epidemic it has become. It’s like we’re living in a world of the Walking Dead but the zombies are all hypnotized by their “Smart phones.”

 

“The world is being divided into two camps; those who use social media & those who don’t.” And Hallelujah brothers & sisters to those of us who have awoken from Zuckerberg et al, the Pied Pipers of Hamlin & their siren songs. As I get older, I realize just how precious this gift of life we’ve been given is. And to be honest with you my imaginary friend, since my soulmate has passed away, Jeri, I care less & less about how much time I have left but I do care about the quality of that time i.e. I’m not going to squander my time on such trivial matters as how many “likes” I have received.

Here’s one you Sci-fi fans are sure to love; “This is a reengineering of human psychology.” Yeah, many of you who are younger & grew up in your video game worlds & who may believe that artificial intelligence is a natural progression for the human species, may not be troubled by this? Well I sure as Hell am troubled but no, I’m not so fearful that I worry that we’re about to be taken over as in the classic; “I, Robot” by Isaac Asimov, the master of science fiction.

 

We must always remember a basic axiom of computer technology, one that I learned way back in 1983/1984 when I took a course called; “Computer Literacy.” It’s called, G.I.G.O. (Garbage In, Garbage Out) In other words, the information we get out of our computers i.e. the Internet, is only as valid as the people putting that info on the internet. What I’m saying is that anybody, even Alex Jones & Donnie the Trumpster Dumpster can say whatever they want on the internet but that doesn’t make it truth or valid.

 

Let me break it down for you, I had to take a ridiculous half-unit course called; Introduction to College Life, after three years of pursuing my B.A. in English Literature. They showed us where the library was & other useful things. But, in this little pamphlet they gave us, what really caught my attention was this; (roughly paraphrasing from memory) “To determine the truth of a statement/claim, there are two requirements; 1) check out the credentials of the person making the claim, 2) see what other experts in the field of this subject, have to say about the person making the claim to truth.”

 

Sorry but I can’t help but invoke our illustrious leader here as a prime example of definitely someone you shouldn’t listen to. Just because he raises his little hands & proclaims; “Believe me,” doesn’t mean that you should give him the time of day. Of course, his Walking Dead-heads would never doubt his credentials to speak as if he were god himself proclaiming from the pulpit like Captain Ahab in “Moby Dick,” one of the handful of American classics in literature.

The first graduating class of Trump University

 

Continuing on, “Social media was created by men i.e. schizoids, recluses, socially inept, nerds, asexuals. And they created social media in their own image” i.e. as if they were the standard by which all others would be judged. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to argue that we should model ourselves after Hollywood celebrities & we know how fucked-up most of them are. But if you’ll allow me to reveal a bit of my elitist educational perspective, perhaps we should attempt to emulate the Renaissance man/woman? (in case you don’t catch my drift, I’m being facetious i.e. my secondary education was in Paramount, a poor, industrially zoned city across the riverbed from Compton)

 

Renaissance man, also called Universal Man, Italian Uomo Universale, an ideal that developed in Renaissance Italy from the notion expressed by one of its most-accomplished representatives, Leon Battista Alberti (1404–72), that “a man can do all things if he will.” The ideal embodied the basic tenets of Renaissance humanism, which considered man the centre of the universe, limitless in his capacities for development, and led to the notion that men should try to embrace all knowledge and develop their own capacities as fully as possible.

Thus, the gifted men of the Renaissance sought to develop skills in all areas of knowledge, in physical development, in social accomplishments, and in the arts. The ideal was most brilliantly exemplified in Alberti—who was an accomplished architect, painter, classicist, poet, scientist, and mathematician and who also boasted of his skill as a horseman and in physical feats—and in Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), whose gifts were manifest in the fields of art, science, music, invention, and writing.”

 

Obviously, that Big Mac occupying the oval office couldn’t even spell Renaissance let alone hold a candle to the ideal. But, he is clever when it comes to manipulating not only the social media but the corporate media. He has had the “mainstream media” (corporate media) eating out of his hand all his manipulative “adult” life & most critically, since he announced his run for the presidency. The Duckmeister —who ducked serving in the military, ducked legal cases for fraud for decades, ducked revealing his taxes which we can be pretty damn sure he hasn’t paid & would reveal him for the faux billionaire he claims to be — has clearly bamboozled the section of the American public who believe in jet set televangelists.

Trump revealed!

 

Unfortunately for the rest of us, due to the apathy and ignorance of our general population, & the corruption of our electoral system, this miscreant who can barely form a coherent sentence, is now at the helm of the once proud nation known as the United States of America. And whether we allow this travesty of justice & everything we consider sacred & dear, is up to each & every one of us!

 

Furthermore, the technology employed by the social media engineers of Silicon Valley was designed for highly specific psychological profiling. For example, all those seemingly innocent Facebook posts inviting us to take a quick survey to see what decade we most identified with, etc., are anything but innocent. And I too took many of those surveys. We are slowly waking up to the fact that Facebook, Google, Amazon, Cambridge Analytica, etc. have been selling all our data to companies who use our info to target us on an individual level in their 24/7 advertisements. And this isn’t just about selling us crap, it’s also about conditioning us socially, emotionally, politically, etc.

Beware means Be Aware!

 

We have gone far beyond Orwell’s nightmare world of “1984,” or Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” Yet, the majority of Americans either refuse to believe these facts or don’t even care.

 

I’m sure that most of you have heard the expression; “Divide & Rule,” or “Divide & Conquer,” well, this is an ancient military tactic or strategy that probably goes back as far as Ancient Rome if not farther? But in this dystopian world we are living in today, this tactic is being used by the corporate masters who actually rule the world. And this is why Trump constantly whips his “base” up by stoking their fears with his descriptions of Mexicans, Muslims, and all who aren’t white males, as the enemy, “infestations.”

Trump busy draining the swamp by playing golf. Remember his criticism of Obama’s days off? And we pay for Trump’s golf trips to his golf courses???

 

F.D.R. summed it up nicely when he declared; “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Trump is a master distractor in that he keeps those who support him distracted from our real enemies i.e. the 1% who own everything. So, Trump’s army of the psychologically walking dead can vent their anger on all who aren’t in their exact position economically or socially. It’s far harder to see beyond your anger & to realize that these people & these groups you’re blaming for your troubles, are de facto fellow victims of the 1%. In short, by dividing us, Trump & his fellow elite have conquered us. The U.S. is slipping into a fascist tyranny of the filthy rich & this makes a mockery of all the wars we supposedly fought in defense of freedom & democracy.

It’s very simple i.e. Divide & Conquer!

 

As long as we sit complacently by in front of our T.V. screens & our computer screens, we will play the role of helpless victims. And Sam Vaknin points out the proven psychological harm being done to us as we spend more time exposed to screen time i.e. greater levels of anxiety, depression, suicide, decreases in happiness & life satisfaction. Moreover, teen suicide has doubled & suicide is the leading cause of death for young people up to the age of 24.

 

Above all, the conditioning we are experiencing the more we use the “social media,” is so pernicious that they—the “social engineers” of these technological platforms—are literally hacking into our brains & our behavior. I know this probably sounds like some paranoid, science fiction world that Trump would espouse but it’s very real. If it is absurd & just too fantastic to believe, then why are billions being spent by these megalithic corporations like Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc.? Are they just throwing their money away in delusions of grandeur?

 

You see, my imaginary reader, the corporate conglomerates dream world is one in which there are no protestors demanding a fair wage, safe working conditions, etc., only docile, obedient workers who are grateful for whatever scraps the corporate lords toss them & who buy their products & services with whatever small allowance they are given.

I’ve been referring to FOX “News” for nearly 20 years as the Fear & Hate channel

 

Edward Snowden only mentioned it briefly in the documentary Laura Poitras created about his courageous efforts to reveal to us what was happening in the NSA with the help of Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc. He said; “It’s about Control.” Control & Conditioning are one & the same to my way of thinking. And Sam Vaknin points out repeatedly that there is an important distinction between conditioning & addiction.

 

Tristan Harris, who worked for Google as a “Design Ethicist,” was one of those “social engineers” who helped to design the bells & whistles so-to-speak that help addict people to these social media platforms. Fortunately for those of us who care about these matters, Mr. Harris’s conscience got the better of him & he resigned from Google & began to spread the word in the hope of helping people wake-up from these harmful technologies. And when he spoke about how the feedback of “likes,” emojis, etc. trigger the lowest part of our brain-stem, our reptilian brains, I sat up & took notice. You see, Vaknin, Harris, & others have pointed out that human nature is ruled more by fear, anger, violence, & chaos (my paraphrasing) and this is why, the social engineers, or more precisely, the Mark Zuckerbergs & other top CEOs of these tech corporations deliberately chose the engineering models that they did i.e. by appealing to the lowest common denominator in humans, you ensure the widest possible audience to exploit or addict.

 

Furthermore, Vaknin informs us that addictions can be overcome but conditioning is much tougher to combat. One of the tools they use in their social engineering of us is the employment of envy in the construction of these platforms & it’s a pathological envy. They quantify envy with “likes,” “retweets,” etc. Then they leverage our envy to motivate us or cause us to adopt some course of action which they want to steer us towards.

Think about it!

 

In brief, they weaponize envy & even more so, they have weaponized aggression. Reflect on all the posts on Facebook attacking Hillary Clinton which were part of the massive PR campaign by Cambridge Analytica that was hired by Steve Bannon leading up to the presidential election of 2016. And they knew from all the personal data they had mined via Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc. just who to bombard with all their negative propaganda. Trump never would’ve become president were it not for this sophisticated & vicious psychological weaponry.

 

Continuing on, Vaknin also informs us that people confuse jealousy & envy. Jealousy motivates you to constructive action i.e. diet, exercise, etc., but pathological envy causes you to see the other as a source of frustration i.e. I can’t be like you so I will seek to destroy you. Are you beginning to realize just how anti-social these “social media” platforms actually are? Talk about Doublespeak? “All social media encourage aggression via their algorithms & via the way they foster interactions.”
(Emperor Nero’s top hit as Rome burned)

 

[I want to remind you again, my imaginary reader, that the overwhelming majority of this is almost verbatim by Vaknin but I’m being lazy & not using quotation marks nearly enough. I get so few readers that I don’t really give a damn anymore about following the “rules.”]

 

Facebook et al, encourage peer aggression, bullying, black humor, & brutal honesty. And these platforms encourage repeat compulsive use. And perhaps most significantly, aggression, envy, & hatred are the key emotions that encourage repeated use.

 

Conversely, “All psychological studies have shown or proved that Love does not encourage repeated actions or foster addiction.” These platforms were designed with Pathology in mind so it’s no wonder they’ve become platforms for hate speech, bullying, & fake news (Trump & White Supremacists, White Nationalists, etc.)

 

Pursuing this further, Twitter has capitalized (my phrase) on the fact that aggressive speech acts are much shorter than positive speech. It isn’t merely coincidental that Twitter was originally limited to 144 characters. The brevity was chosen to encourage negative speech which addicts people & motivates them to keep using the platform (is it any wonder that Trump has taken to Twitter like a Duck Dynasty Klansman?) [my question]

Trump Tweeting on his Throne of Tyranny

 

Vaknin goes on to point out that non-aggressive speech acts are a bit longer than aggressive ones i.e. love letters are effusive. I can attest to this, I once wrote a love letter to a girl in London that was something like 80 pages long (I was trying to persuade her to come to America).

 

“Social media” is the most asocial platform ever and has created an unprecedented wave of withdrawal & atomization. And those who have aggressive tendencies gravitate towards social media & enhance the toxicity. In short, it’s a self-perpetuating feedback loop, a negative filter which attracts, amplifies, & connects likeminded aggressive & dangerous people.

the social media’s role in domestic terrorism

 

This application is known as the “Network effect.” Let me remind you that as Vaknin stated earlier, this is only one of several different models that Zuckerberg could’ve used to launch Facebook but he purposely chose the Network effect because it was the most addictive (my paraphrasing). In other words, he knew it’d grow the fastest, become the most addictive & hence make him far richer than if he’d chosen a less harmful model. And the fuckin’ bastard has the audacity to still claim that he just wants to bring people together!

 

This “conversation” which I stumbled across on You Tube absolutely blew my mind because not only was it so illuminating but it was also the first time someone had ever broken down the mechanics so-to-speak of this world-wide phenomenon that I consider a social plague every bit as deadly as the bubonic plague that killed a third of the European population from 1340 to 1400.

 

Professor Vaknin continues to open our minds by informing us that we have numerous ways of organizing social interaction & poses the question; “Why did social media choose Networks rather than hierarchy or curated conversations with editors or moderators, for example?”

 

Before social media came on-line, we had other ways of interacting on-line in the cyber-world which had nothing to do with Networks i.e. forums. We were brainwashed by social media to believe that the only way to interact with others was through the Network model, it’s NOT TRUE!

Just bringing people together like G.E.”s “Bringing Good Things to Light” i.e. Nuclear weapons

 

It was purposely chosen because it’s the only model that has the Network Effect which leads back to Epidemiology (Epidemics). An epidemic is an infection sociological, psychological, or emotional. There are 20 to 30 existing models for on-line social interaction. They chose the only model that is self-replicating, self-duplicating & invades your DNA (your psychological DNA) and alters your brain via neuroplasticity and conditions you which later addicts you.

 

This has created a shared psychosis, mass hysteria, cults, including teenage death cults and it has created new types of role-models. It can be used for positive results i.e. Wikipedia which started as a Network model but became a cesspool of aggression, misinformation, slander & libel. But when Wikipedia went back to being curated, it went from three million editors to 60,000 because people were no longer interested i.e. they want the chaos & the aggression.

 

The professor continues; “Facebook, Twitter, etc. have maliciously & malevolently designed their algorithms for the destructive nature of people. But this (fortunately) is a self-limiting virus like the plague, etc. because the virus needs to leave some alive or it wipes itself out as well.

 

This has pathologized two billion people (Facebook’s members). I am reminded of the quote; “A Capitalist will sell you the rope to hang himself with.” These social media zombies (my phrase) swap their delusional world in the social media for reality & this is the definition of psychosis. (see Trump & “Reality T.V. i.e. “The Apprentice”)

 

By-the-way, I hope you’ll forgive me for a bit of bragging here but I never became a fan of “reality T.V.” I watched maybe one episode of perhaps the first “Reality T.V.” series; “Survivor” I believe it was called. And I said to my wife, this is crap! What is it telling us? Lying, backstabbing, cheating, etc. is the way to succeed. No thanks! And I never watched a single episode of “The Apprentice.”

Vaknin continues; “There’s never been a case in human history of a group so large, going psychotic (sick) except maybe Nazi Germany? And we can’t predict what will happen. However, there are some glimmers of hope; About 20% of people have left social media & some have even gotten rid of their “Smart” phones. And there are retreats where you can’t have your digital devices. There’s also a new diagnosis in the Physicians’ Desk Reference manual i.e. “Internet Addiction.”

Trump idolizes fascist leaders & his rallies feed his ego (his 4th of July military rally)

 

“The epidemic of the social media is reminiscent of zombie movies (note my reference to them as the Walking Dead).” There are groups of people who live within their worlds of multi-player games & teens who prefer to interact with other teens exclusively through social media. The amount of face-to-face social interaction among teens has dropped by 70% in the last 10 years. (and if this doesn’t worry you, you are part of the problem, not the solution—my words)

 

The bad news continues; Teenage dating has dropped by 63% & the number of sexual encounters between teens has dropped by 50%. Now this is probably good news for those of you who believe overpopulation to be the greatest threat to our survival & those “good Christian fundamentalists” among us?

Trump’s “Christian” values i.e. “Grab them by the pussy.”
Onward “Christian soldiers” Hear no evil. speak no evil, see no evil.
The “Christian” devaluation of women as purely sexual objects you can do what you want with.

 

Consequently, we have the social trend or reality that has boggled my mind since the first time I witnessed it i.e. groups of young people who seemingly are together, will walk into a pub for example but they don’t speak to one another except through their smart phones. Or, they are totally disengaged and are “communicating” with other friends who aren’t physically there.

The “Selfie” president, Selfish, Sadistic, & . Sick!

 

Or consider another disturbing trend i.e. “Selfies.” I’m going to skip this section of the “conversation” and simply say that the word “selfies” says it all. This “social media” is supposedly about “socializing” and connecting with others yet “Selfies,” reveal the truth i.e. it’s more about egocentrism & hence, just helps to further isolate us from one another.

 

Sorry if I burst your bubbles, all you “social beings.” Not really! Wake-up and smell the damn coffee you walking dead simpletons! Zuckerberg & his crony Masters of the Universe are “socializing” you into human lemmings who they can march right off the cliff into oblivion, or at least, docile servitude for the rest of your lives.

 

“Social media encourage Regression i.e. as we develop, we invest in others emotionally, etc. but social media causes us to regress into ourselves with primitive, baby-like defense mechanisms.” (see Donald Trump)

all hail Little Lord Fauntleroy, leader of the Free World

 

Incidentally, here’s more proof of just how monumentally unfit Donald the Draft Dodger is to inhabit the oval office; Another little minor “side-effect” of the stupendous “social media,” is known as “splitting.” And how appropriate because Trump is definitely a split-personality if not a Sybil with 16 or more personalities?

 

In this little toddler, would be emperor’s pea-brain, you’re either with him or against him & he throws his royal tantrums daily whenever someone dares to point out that the emperor wears no clothes i.e. he’s pure, unbridled greed, hatred, & jealousy.

 

In respect of “full disclosure,” I must remind you that the other coward, the Alfred E. Newman occupant of the White House, George W. Bush, also divided America into the equally simplistic & stupid dichotomy of; “You’re either with us or you’re against us.” But hey, no big deal, right? He just lied us into a totally unnecessary war with Iraq that only killed 5,000 or so American soldiers & approximately 100,000 Iraqis not counting of course all those who were maimed & those who fled their country.Several thousand American soldiers died in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died & Bush jokes about it? This is how to corporate fascist elite really feel i.e. their deep sense of Patriotism

The “Golden Calf” worshipped by the good, ol’ boys

 

Of course, this all just proves how serious Trump was about “draining the swamp,” in Washington D.C. Yep! All you deep-fried Twinkie eating simpletons who believed Trump’s racist dog-whistles & have been salivating ever since, may eventually catch on as your food stamps, the modicum of health care you get, your subsidized housing, etc. is yanked away that it was your Grand Wizard, Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan, who fucked you yet again, not the poor Hispanics fleeing the drug lords or the Muslims fleeing religious persecution. But then again, as Einstein said;

 

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”

Welcome to the world of Facebook & Trump

I despair though because Trump is clearly a vile low-life and yet no matter how despicable his behavior i.e. grabbing women by their pussy, or how crass the words that come out of his mouth, a third of the American public worship him? It’s clear that we have a national emergency when such a huge segment of our population glorifies such a detestable human being.

 

It’s prima facie evidence of how television & the movies & our pathetic public education system has failed us. And this essay is like spitting in the wind especially in post-literate America but at least my conscience is clear because I’ll never give up the fight to waken my fellow Americans from their mental & emotional lethargy.

 

Returning to the subject of the negative psychological aspects of the social media, another factor is called “splitting.” This boils down to simplistic “either or” thinking or rather reacting i.e. you’re either my friend or my enemy. And this is Trump in spades. His daily tirades & tantrums at every perceived insult clearly reveals that we have a pouting, third grader in the oval office. Also remember George W. Bush’s stupidity with his declaration; “You’re either with us or you’re against us,” in reference to the “War on Terrorism.” And social media caters to the most primitive defense mechanisms, behaviors, and traits in people. As Dr. Vaknin points out; “Therefore, there is no difference between social media & the tobacco industry who purposely put nicotine in tobacco to addict people.

tobacco industry’s top CEOs lying to Congress (see also Oil Industry, Banking industry, etc.)

 

And the nightmare gets even scarier i.e. social media adds to a lack of impulse control. Remind you of anyone? If you thought of Trump, give yourself a pat on the back. Again, all one has to do is turn on their television any time of day & any day of the week to witness our adolescent president in action.

 

Mr. Vaknin informs us that addictions can be treated and overcome but conditioning is much harder to overcome. And no, I’m not trying to paint some grand conspiracy, that’s Trump’s forte along with his paper of choice, The National Enquirer & his mentor, Alex Jones. But the effects of all this social media conditioning are destroying us as a nation & greatly amplifying the dangers to humanity.

 

Perhaps the core threat to our continuation as a species is the fact that humans are social beings & the social media has tapped into this powerful fact. Some of us are slowly waking up to the sinister manipulations of us by Facebook, Twitter, etc. and have stopped using the social media altogether but tragically, the majority of people couldn’t & don’t even want to contemplate life without their social media.

 

Do you think I’m exaggerating the power of social media? I invite you to observe closely for a single day people with their smart phones out in public, at home, in school, etc. I contend that they’re every bit as addicted & conditioned by their smart phones/social media as a hardcore heroin addict, meth user, etc.

 

As social beings, the most frightening thing for us isn’t lack of food, shelter, weather, etc., it’s being ostracized, excommunicated, or to not belong. Vaknin points out that people would rather die than to not belong. And when I reflect back on my life, I can see that I too have been looking for a sense of belonging or acceptance my whole life. My writing reflects that as well. I write in the hopes of being heard, in my desire to be understood. And hopefully this doesn’t sound too pathetic but the older I get, the more isolated I feel. As I stated earlier, I joined Facebook under the delusion/illusion that I would connect with others but the overwhelming majority of the 3,000 friends I collected on Facebook, couldn’t bother to even write a single word in response to the thousands of posts I submitted or the hundreds of essays that I wrote & posted. And here in the so-called “real world,” we’re not allowed to talk about politics in pubs or taverns so please tell me, where in the Hell are we allowed to honestly communicate with each other or how are we supposed to exchange ideas, console one another, & work to stop all this madness?

 

Vaknin cites a few examples of how critical our need to belong is from history i.e. Socrates & the Catholic Church’s power of excommunication which they wield like a club over the heads of their flock (my description). If you know a bit about history, you may recall that throughout history, the Church & the State have often vied for power over the people & sometimes they have joined forces to keep people submissive to their power. In my naivete & ignorance, I asked Noam Chomsky awhile back for an example of when the Church & State had united in their suppression of the public & he replied; When the Roman Empire officially adopted Christianity as the state’s religion.

 

Think about that for a few minutes. The Inquisition, the Holy Crusades, the Salem Witch Trials, the Christian missionary’s conversion of natives, etc. etc. etc. And in today’s Trump world, we witness the “Christian” fundamentalists who support Trump no matter what he says or does even though he’s like a poster boy for every cardinal sin there is because they too want the reins of power. These hypocritical “Christians” salivate at the thought of making America a Christian nation with them in charge/control over every aspect of our lives from what we can watch on T.V., how we dress, whom we can love, what we can say, etc. As someone quipped; “The American Taliban.” No, I’m not exaggerating, I wrote my first book on the subject & it’s truly scary. They are tickled pink with Mike Pence being in the role of our vice-president because they know how quickly he could become president were Trump forced out of office for any one of the hundreds of crimes he’s committed.

Trump knows all about witch hunts, he learned from his mentor, Roy Cohn, McCarthy’s right-hand man

 

Well, are you thoroughly depressed yet? Sadly, there’s more to come my friend. Returning to the subject of our fear of being excluded from any of the social groups to which we belong, social media does just this i.e. if you don’t play by their arbitrary rules, you are cut-off for a while. For example, I once included a picture of a beautiful young, hippie chick in a sample of a fantasy novel I have been working on for several years.

 

I believe it was a very tastefully done picture. It was a young woman standing on a rock by the ocean with her arms outstretched as if she were welcoming the new day. She was tan & had long dark, flowing hair and it showed her naked butt. And this was a violation of Facebook’s policies so I was cut-off for 30 days, I believe? Yet, pictures of people murdered by bombs, terrorists, etc. and countless other horrific scenes are no problem? Correction; I had to go back & look up the picture I’m talking about, it wasn’t her butt that was revealed, it was a side view of one of her breasts. I know, how shocking? But Trump’s misogynist insults about women & his behavior at beauty pageants, his buddy, Jeffrey Epstein, etc. is all fine as far as the “Christian” fundamentalists are concerned & Facebook’s guardians?

 

For me, one of the most pernicious aspects of the social media is their deliberate “dumbing-down” of their members. Intellectual matters are only rarely posted but “Selfies,” cute kittens, what people ate for dinner, etc. make up the majority of the posts. Keeping everything light & simple makes it easier for people to click that “like” button & speeds up the feedback loop that brings in more suckers & more customers for the corporations buying our data from Facebook & makes Zuckerberg richer.

 

Analogous to this deliberate dumbing-down it its customers i.e. Facebook members, is the fact that throughout history, the Church tried to keep its flock ignorant as well. For centuries, only the priests & royalty were taught to read so it was easier to control the public. Slaves in America were forbidden by law to learn how to read. And I argue that while it’s not a clear-cut case of conspiracy but the corporations who are the de facto rulers of America, also don’t want their average workers to be “too well educated,” because they often stir up the other workers to unite & form unions, etc.

 

As Vaknin points out, Facebook members soon internalize the message i.e. if I keep it simple & don’t use big words, I’ll be more popular and get more “likes.” This forces you to hide your true identity as I learned after wasting thousands of hours trying to reach people on an intellectual level. Moreover, if you’re empathetic, you have to hide that as well. If you’re a critical thinker, you must avoid revealing it.

 

I truly began to realize what a fool I’d been after Obama left office because if I dared to point out some of Obama’s hypocrisies i.e. never prosecuting the Wall St. wolves who destroyed our economy, his illegal & immoral drone warfare, etc. people who I had somewhat of a connection with, would send me nasty messages asking me to not include them in my posts, etc.

 

Yep! If you point out hypocrisy, contradictions between words & behavior, etc., you soon find yourself persona non grata. Obama is now put up on a pedestal as if he were a saint or something. And especially now with that miscreant Trump in the White House, people have buried every dirty deed of Obama’s. Don’t get me wrong, I hated all the racist attacks towards Obama—-Trump played a large part there as well—but I’ll never forgive him for his grand betrayal especially when he had such an overwhelming mandate as he took office.

 

Social media essentially rewards denial, denial of our better natures & it encourages our dark sides, our aggression, our regressive aspects, & our infantile personalities. Again, consider the occupant in the oval office, the bloated & bellicose baby throwing his daily fits. Is it any wonder that he can’t go a day without tweeting his verbal bile? Twitter is the perfect tool for such a lizard-brain racist & hate monger. In brief, Facebook & the other so-called social media is the breeding ground for narcissists & psychopaths. It forces you to fight with yourself i.e. the more you suppress the real you & join in the superficial & shallow, the more popular you are. I want to insert another fact from history here; if you look at military dictatorships around the world, whenever they take over a country, one of the first things they do is shut down the universities. Why? Because as the students become educated, they begin to share their knowledge with their countrymen & they begin to resist the dictators. And the powerful do the same with the media. Don’t tell me you haven’t seen Trump follow this same game plan here in America?

 

And this internal war or strife that many of us are experiencing is causing dissonance in our minds & our spirits. This is reflected in the growing levels of anxiety we are feeling. As Vaknin tells us, the minute you post a “selfie,” your anxiety level goes up because you are vulnerable i.e. what if people don’t like my picture, etc. When teens were asked if it made them feel good being on social media, 47% of them said No, it makes them feel bad. Of course, this begs the question, then why in the Hell do they stay with it? Obviously, they’ve become conditioned.

 

I feel that a brief description of “cognitive dissonance” would be useful at this point;

 

Psychologist Leon Festinger first proposed a theory of cognitive dissonance centered on how people try to reach internal consistency.2

He suggested that people have an inner need to ensure that their beliefs and behaviors are consistent. Inconsistent or conflicting beliefs lead to disharmony, which people strive to avoid.

 

In other words, the deeper we go in our study of the “social media,” the more evident it becomes that it is anything but socially engaging or helpful to us. In fact, it is making the world a more unsocial or asocial place. Just what we need as we’re facing our extinction via global warming or the ever-looming threats of a nuclear exchange & we have that smiling, Big Mac viper in the White House alienating our allies & kissing ass to the world’s despots & dictators.

Trump’s heroes (murderous dictators) & Trump’s gangbanger pose

 

The professor continues; Most of the behavior on social media is robotic i.e. it doesn’t give meaning, it merely gives pain or pleasure (my interpretation). You push a button & get a result and the more you push the buttons, the more results you get (Conditioning). Social media is simple, it’s anti-complex. There is no world for social media, it is the world! There is no reality outside it, they live in it.

 

These are simulated people, they live in the Matrix. Social media is their reality, bits & bytes are their atoms. Their families are their peers. They perceive reality to be unreal & they perceive unreality (social media) to be real. Can you spell Trump?

 

Social media is designed to deter intimacy & intimacy reduces the need for addiction. Wow! I can testify to this my friend. When I first met my wife, from day two i.e. our first date, we spent every night from then on, together. And as our relationship & our love grew, I spent less & less time getting high and getting drunk with my friends. Because Jeri didn’t put any chains on me, I wanted to be around her more & more. It felt so natural, healthy, & normal being with her. I could talk to her and felt I was always heard.

 

Dr. Vaknin says that Intimacy is the biggest addiction and I say, Hallelujah brother! Facebook competes with intimacy. (it’s a faux intimacy) You’re either intimate or you’re on Facebook. Intimacy simply consumes too much of your time & you don’t have time for other addictions.

 

Above all, “Facebook & Twitter rely on loneliness & atomization, schizoid, separated, hermits, recluses, nerds, socially inept & unable to bond people. Remember the guys who created these social platforms i.e. the nerds who became the prototypes of modern hip or cool. (my phrasing) Intimacy is the biggest threat to social media so they atomize individuals.

Need I say anything?

 

This theory refers to “the tendency for society to be made up of a collection of self-interested and largely self-sufficient individuals, operating as separate atoms”.[2] Therefore, all social values, institutions, developments and procedures evolve entirely out of the interests and actions of the individuals who inhabit any particular society. The individual is the ‘atom’ of society and therefore the only true object of concern and analysis.[3]

 

The facts are that you’re a shameless liar defending a habitual liar & sexual predator.

[A fact is a statement that is consistent with reality or can be proven with evidence. The usual test for a statement of fact is verifiability — that is, whether it can be demonstrated to correspond to experience. Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scientific facts are verified by repeatable careful observation or measurement.]

In other words, the self is supreme. We only have to listen to ourselves, forget everyone else. Reminds me of the “Greed is Good” speech in Oliver Stone’s first movie called “Wall St.” And those of you around my age may remember Reagan’s celebration of Greed when he declared the 1980s the “Me Decade.” And once again my imaginary reader, this is precisely what we don’t need in this fragile state we’re all in. We need true social dialog & cooperation. I don’t mean to sound like an alarmist but if we don’t get our shit together and soon, those phony Christians may just get their wish i.e. Armageddon.

 

Furthermore, social media is built-in obsolescence on steroids (my phrase). Social media expires much faster than any product. The minute you post a tweet & the minute it’s been liked, 24 hours later it’s dead. And you need to renew the product & post another tweet. {see our Twittering Tweedledum in the oval office} These are the only manufacturers in the world who have made you their employee. The users are its employees. When you use social media, you generate the “Content.” And they sell your “content” to advertisers. Social media is supposed to be a “communication platform” but you do the communicating & they reap all the profits (my point).

 

And what really blew my mind & angered me beyond words was when I discovered that Facebook own the rights to our communications i.e. our “Content.” So, all the writing I posted on my Facebook page trying to explain complex issues, facts, historical knowledge, etc. etc. etc. was the property of Facebook and they can/could use it anyway they wanted. Yet we hear these corporations scream about their “intellectual property rights.” Yeah, their rights are all that matter, not ours!

 

Facebook continuously encourages people to share their thoughts, feelings, memories, etc. under the pretense that they’re fostering closer intimacy between its members when all the while, they’re selling our content to advertisers who use it in their attempts to sucker us into buying their products. We truly are a nation of Suckers & P.T. Barnum would be oh so glad to see what’s become of us. P.T. Barnum was the founder of the Ringling Brothers Circus & promoted hoaxes—probably Trump’s inspiration for his conspiracy theories—and P.T. Barnum is famous for declaring “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Clearly, Trump’s “base” is the three-ring circus clowns he’s suckered into cheering for their own demise i.e. taking away their food stamps, their jobs, etc.

Trump definitely is Public Enemy #1

 

Though Trump himself is more suited to the role of a Carnival huckster boasting & attracting suckers with his outrageous claims & devious techniques for robbing them blind. And it’s painfully obvious that Trump supporters are deaf, dumb, & blind because they so willingly go along with whatever he says or does no matter how perverse or illogical. They are literally the lambs happily marching to their slaughter. And as Dr. Vaknin also points out, these social media platforms are built for instant gratification like drugs. So, intimacy isn’t a direct threat but the real threat is that you’ll find someone through Facebook & will no longer use Facebook.

 

Specifically, Facebook & its competitors need your eyeballs i.e. your attention and your girlfriend, other social media platforms, T.V., etc. are all a threat to their domination of your attention. Case in point, Facebook won’t allow Google to crawl their database because that would take your attention away from Facebook for a portion of your attention. And Trump clearly needs all our attention all the time due to his massive insecurity & inferiority complex.

 

This faux intimacy that Facebook & others peddle to the unwary carries with it on the flipside, the constant risk of a large dose of pain i.e. you post a “Selfie,” and 3 out of 10 people may tell you how ugly you are. So, how in the Hell can you expect intimacy from these imaginary “friends?” Hence, users learn to interact on very superficial levels—to reduce their exposure to painful responses—and members become very pain averse. Social media has exponentially amplified the amount of negative social interaction and again, I can personally attest to this as well. Unfortunately, I spent way too much time responding to personal attacks on my character. We are such a misinformed & ignorant society as a whole that much of what I shared with people on Facebook was so obscure to most of the Facebook universe, that many people thought i’d just made the stuff I said up. And Trump is exhibit #1 as to why we need to banish “Selfies.”

 

Not to brag but to rightfully speak up in my defense, I have conservatively spent over 50,000 hours in approximately a 30-year period of avid reading, research, watching of documentaries, etc. in the areas of political science, history, philosophy, classical literature, etc. but because most of this knowledge isn’t common knowledge, many critics dismiss me as a troll, fabricator, etc. Therefore, the old adage of “What you don’t know can’t hurt you” is clearly a pernicious lie. Exposing yourself on Facebook by expressing your opinions, etc. can easily result in your being attacked by over 20,000 people at any given moment. And clearly, it’d take a very healthy ego or self-image to withstand this powerful an assault.

 

In conclusion, my central thesis is that Facebook plays a significant role in leading us down the path to fascism because it is all about corporate power to manipulate not only our choices in the marketplace but also in the voting booth. The G.O.P. has obviously shown that their love of power far outweighs their patriotism & remain silent as Trump trashes our society because they don’t want to lose their jobs. They use voter suppression, gerrymandering, rigging of election machines, & even turn a blind eye to the Russians hacking into our election system. Republicans should hang their heads in shame & move to countries where there is no pretense of freedom & democracy.

 

When I began writing this essay, I planned on incorporating the new documentary, “The Great Hack,” released on Netflix a few weeks back. But I realized that it would become too lengthy & most people wouldn’t even be able to sit still long enough to read the first part so I’m going to delve into the political part of Facebook’s crimes against humanity in a second essay which I’m going to title; “The Road to Fascism Part Two.”

Before I get into the meat & potatoes so-to-speak of my conclusion, I want to provide you with a few links by some people who played an integral part in the social media assault on democracy. Some of you may think me a fringe critic with my own agenda for whatever nefarious reasons so if you’re not afraid or too lazy to do a bit of homework unlike Donald Duck, check these critics out:

 

 

 

 

 

If you managed to find or make the time to watch the above video clips, I’m sure that you’ll agree that I haven’t exaggerated the very real threats to our survival as a democracy & as a species in the big picture. Okay, now for the connecting of the dots in terms of fascism:

Again, I can’t assume that everyone who might read this essay will be familiar with who Mussolini was due to our pitiful public education system so here you go.

Twin sons of different mothers (Trump & Mussolini)

For those of you who don’t know much about history, in the end, the citizens of Italy revolted against Mussolini & hung him for all to see in the public square. Remember; Pride cometh before a fall & Trump’s constant bragging is going to mean quite a fall for this low-life.

 

was Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Italy from the fascists’ takeover of state power in 1922 until 1943, and Duce from 1919 to his execution in 1945 during the Italian civil war. As dictator of Italy and founder of fascism, Mussolini inspired several totalitarian rulers such as Adolf Hitler.[2][3][

 

Mussolini’s foremost priority was the subjugation of the minds of the Italian people through the use of propaganda. The regime promoted a lavish cult of personality centered on the figure of Mussolini.

Some argue that Mussolini didn’t actually say the following quote but for the sake of this essay, I feel that it summarizes my point nicely;

““Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.”

 

And if you deny the truth of this statement in today’s America, you most likely are a member of Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan. I have been studying the rise of the corporate state for over 30 years but of course if you prefer to believe in Alex Jones, Donald Trump, & the National Enquirer, you probably haven’t read a single book in your life and therefore, my facts will totally escape you. Here’s Alex Jones, Trump’s friend & reliable source of facts;

Moreover, the Supreme Court’s ruling “Citizens United” handed down in 2010 effectively sold American democracy out to the corporate or fascist powers that be. Because corporations are no longer restricted in terms of how much money they can “donate” (bribe) to politicians. This has been described as the unleashing of “Dark Money” because corporations can hide their “donations” and not risk being boycotted by an informed public or having their hidden agendas to fuck their customers & the American public in general. One might argue that this was the opening of the door to the fascists taking over of our government. By-the-way, reflect on how tenaciously Trump refuses to release his tax information. He never tires of bragging i.e. lying about his prowess as a businessman so why does he refuse to reveal just how much money he is worth if he’s so proud of being a “billionaire?” Could it be that it’s all a grand lie he uses to dupe his White Supremacists & fellow fascists into believing he knows what he’s doing?

 

I used to have a blog called “Corporate Cockroaches,” but it was stolen out from underneath me so I’ve started again & my new blog is “The Cockroach Conspiracy.” And I have long argued that like cockroaches, when you turn the light on, they scurry for dark crevices & places to hide. And this is clearly indicative of corporate America. They strive to hide their profits, how they made their money, etc. because they know that we, the public, would tear them down if their crimes were revealed. They buy politicians with “donations,” because the politicians write the laws that can hurt or help them. This is the de facto state of democracy & we’re only deluding ourselves if we think otherwise.

 

Consider if you will if this is what our soldiers, sailors, airmen, & Marines have been fighting for, getting maimed for, & dying for around the world for the past century? Could it be that we have over 900 military bases around the world—and God knows how many secret or “black sites” —to support the corporate or fascist agenda of ruling the globe?

 

Fascism is the antithesis or the opposite of Democracy but the powers that be know that if they were honest & called it what it is, we’d revolt. So, the charade of our being defenders & promoters of democracy is vital for them to maintain. And the relatively recent phenomenon of the “Social media,” has proven to be a very effective weapon for corporate America in its decades long propaganda campaign to keep us dumb & hence easier to manipulate.

 

And let me remind you once again that no, this isn’t just a variation of an Alex Jones grand conspiracy. This is an agenda of the major corporations to ensure their continued profits & control over the institutions that were established to promote the general welfare of the public against the corporate interests.

Corporate power is like the elephant in the room that no one dares to mention because it would spell economic as well as political suicide for any who dared to. They’ve been getting away with their crimes against humanity, their gutting of true democracy, etc. for so long that the majority of us accept it as a law of nature or just the way it is.

 

Trump “won” the presidency because of the asinine electoral college system which allows a candidate to win even though they lost the popular vote. And he “won” because of the sophisticated/skillful machinations of Cambridge Analytica which I’ll delve into in part two. And he won because of the lack of moral integrity on the part of the Democratic party i.e. their sabotage of Bernie Sanders’ campaign.

 

I realize that this is all extremely depressing but does that mean it’s okay for us to bury our heads in the sand & proclaim that there’s nothing we can do about it because it’s all just too vast & complicated? Is that what you’ll tell your children or your grandchildren when they find themselves living in a giant gulag or Fortress America? H.G. Wells, one of the first science fiction writers, summed it up nicely in a quote from over a hundred years ago;

 

“Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.”

 

If you dare to be honest with yourself, you’ll see that Trump is making Fascism our reality!

 

The ball is in your court my imaginary friend & my imaginary reader.

 

—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR August 17, 2019 (one day before the sixth anniversary of my dear wife, Jeri’s passing)

The Love of my Life, Jeri Ellen DeLoss & me.

 

P.S.  Sorry, I almost forgot to mention that the social media is a powerful tool being used to “win the hearts & minds” of the American public. Do you recall the U.S. Army’s campaign in the Vietnam War to “win the hearts & minds” of the Vietnamese people? This was the introduction of what they called “psy ops” (psychological operations) i.e. we, the citizens are the enemy of the corporate elite & they will stop at nothing in their agenda of absolute or total control over us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Center Cannot Hold

Obviously, America has become extremely polarized politically. I worry about the future of our democracy given the current state of affairs. Could somebody please explain to me how we’re supposed to resolve our differences when we’re in a verbal straightjacket when it comes to talking about politics in pubs & taverns?

 

Taverns are where people congregate on a regular basis, and I don’t believe people are more apt to become violent if they discuss/debate political matters. Violent people act out for thousands of reasons. Our soldiers are fighting around the globe supposedly to spread/defend freedom & democracy but we don’t defend them here.

 

So, we’re not allowed to discuss the slaughter in El Paso for example because it involves politics. Our nation’s social fabric is being torn apart and we’re supposed to sit silently by?

The inner Trump

 

The Politics of Resentment in Post-Literate America

 

 

 

We are living in a very dangerous time because just when we need a well-informed citizenry more desperately than perhaps any time before in our history, we have a moron in the oval office throwing gasoline on the fire.

“Christian” Supremacists new version of Morality & Ethics

 

Trump’s rallies i.e. his non-stop public spectacles staged to boost his ego on his never-ending carnival of self-aggrandizement, are resembling more & more Hitler’s speech at Nuremberg. Of course, Hitler focused primarily on the Jews who were German citizens while Trump’s venom & vitriol is more generalized i.e. Mexicans, Muslims, women, or anybody not a member of the Duck Dynasty Klan.

Fortress Amerika!

 

What really troubles my soul is that this centuries-old tactic of blaming the victims of the elite continues to be effective & obviously Trump’s “base,” has no historical memory. The automatons who worship the ground that Trump walks upon are completely oblivious to his blatant manipulation of them. How in the Hell can they find “common cause” with a supposed billionaire—who refuses to release his tax returns because they most likely reveal what a charlatan he is—who has screwed thousands of people who have worked for him?

Beware of Cults of Personality & Authoritarians!

 

I believe a key insight into this dreadful phenomenon lies in the politics of resentment. What do I mean by this term? Quite simply that what unites Trump’s fan club is a hatred & burning resentment towards all who aren’t like them i.e. poor, white, working class born in America people.

 

You see, all dictators, oligarchs, demagogues, etc. throughout history knew that the best way to distract their citizens from the ugly realities of their lives was to blame the “other.” And again, the “other” can be any group you choose i.e. Mexicans, Muslims, Jews, Blacks, gays, handicapped, etc.

The bigger the lie & the more often you repeat it, it becomes truth.

 

It seems to be almost axiomatic or reflexive for people to blame their fellow victims rather than the power elite who are actually the ones responsible for their deprivations. I have been observing & writing about this tragic state of affairs for decades now & I never will understand it. I guess it must be human nature to deny or ignore one’s own responsibility for not informing oneself & participating in the democratic process & to blame those even worse-off than yourself for your inability to feed your family, have adequate healthcare, put a roof over your family’s head, etc.?

 

I am continually baffled that my fellow citizens can’t seem to comprehend the obvious fact that it is the rich who pass things like NAFTA which rewards the corporations for closing down their plants in the U.S. & going overseas where they can pay workers far less than they have to in the U.S. i.e. minimum wage which is an employer’s way of saying that they’d pay you even less if they could but the law requires they pay at least the minimum wage (some rap artist pointed this out).

 

Naturally, but sadly, the overwhelming majority of Americans allow themselves to be buffeted back & forth like a cork floating in the high seas. The 1% own the mass media & have been manipulating public opinion for decades i.e. the liberal bias in the mass media—common sense tells us that those who own the media aren’t going to allow serious criticism of their propaganda to be heard on the very stations, magazines, radio, etc. they own. Why? Because this would threaten the very power structure that helps keep them in power.

The “Liberal Media”

 

And yet Donald, the Magnificent is a master at using the media to sell his brand i.e. himself, to the world. He got something like several billion dollars of free advertising as he campaigned to become president while Bernie Sanders received a small fraction of the media’s attention. Why? Because Trump is basically a “shock jock” and knows that the more outrageous, nasty, racist, etc. he is, the more attention he’ll get. And the kicker is, after getting so much free publicity from the national media, Trump turns on his benefactors & calls them “fake news,” etc. Where would Trump be if it weren’t for the so-called fake media?

the truth behind the Trump brand/logo  

 

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see Trump’s game plan, and his smug mug & Cheshire Cat trademark smirk says it all i.e. you really are a nation of rubes & oh so easily duped by my huckster rap. This is a good place to share a quote from the great Bertrand Russell with you;

 

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid … Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.”

 

Take a few moments to really chew this thought over if you will. To my mind, this quote encapsulates the core of the problem we’re all facing whether we acknowledge it or not. As long as we remain apathetic or unwilling to expend the energy to inform ourselves, the rich & powerful will continue to have their boots on our necks.

 

If you expect to be treated fairly without being willing to do your homework i.e. inform yourself, you are asking for what never has been nor ever will be. All of human progress in terms of lifting up the lives of ordinary men & women has only come about due to serious & prolonged struggles against the wealthy. They clearly enjoy their status, privileges, & wealth and will not willingly or easily give these “perks” up.

 

And this is what I am talking about when I refer to “post-literate America.” For example, I allowed myself to get sucked into the Facebook world even though my gut told me from the beginning that Facebook was basically a forum for teenage girls. I can’t tell you how many thousands of hours I wasted on Facebook writing lengthy responses & essays on many of the critical issues facing us in today’s world only to get a rare reply of a sentence or two. And once emojis were introduced, I didn’t even get a sentence but more often than not, a happy face.

 

Do you seriously think we’re going to mount a serious revolution for our freedom with emojis? In other words, if we can’t even be bothered to take the time to write a few sentences to each other in camaraderie or support of one another, what chance do we have of making any progress?

 

A couple of years ago, it dawned on me that since we’re clearly such a materialistic society i.e. we only value those members of our society that can prove their “worth” by pointing to their wealth, material possessions, celebrity, etc., quantification seems to reign supreme. So, it occurred to me that I should perhaps attempt to quantify my knowledge? By-the-way, before I met my lovely wife, Jeri, I had several relationships with girls/women whom I loved deeply & whom I believe loved me deeply but they invariably ended because they were afraid that I wasn’t “ambitious” enough.

 

This reflects just a part of the high price I’ve paid over the years. I too used to believe that the word “ambition” solely referred to how much money a person was “worth.” Then it dawned on me, Aha! True, I’m not “ambitious” in the usual sense of wanting to become financially wealthy but I am ambitious as Hell when it comes to becoming as knowledgeable or as wise as I possibly can.

 

Conservatively, over the last 30 years, I have spent roughly 50,000 hours reading the classics & modern classics in history, politics, philosophy, literature, etc. & unlike Donny the Liar & Denier in Chief, I can back it up. I have collected approximately 10,000 books in my personal library & have made copious notes in several hundred of my books. I have listened to radio programs on politics, collected thousands of articles, written a couple hundred essays, many of which are 20 to 30 pages or more, written a couple thousand pages on two major projects so far, read magazine articles, etc.

 

In the notes I have made in the blank pages of my books, I either copy passages that I feel are important, verbatim or I paraphrase them & often write someone’s name whom I remember having an argument with about the subject or whom I would like to show the passage to. I have also developed my own, crude symbology of stars, hearts, triangles, etc. in an attempt to show the value of said passage.

 

I hope that you, my imaginary reader, believe me when I tell you that this isn’t merely me imitating the braggart in the White House but my attempt to establish my bonifides. Continuing on with the twin pillars of this essay i.e. the politics of resentment & post-literate America, there are countless studies, polls, etc. confirming how anti-intellectual America has become over the past 50 years & even further if you read the classic by Richard Hofstadter, “Anti-intellectualism in American Life.” I basically dissected this book because I went through it with a fine-tooth comb so-to-speak, twice.

 

I went through this American classic the second time because I used it as a sort of skeleton outline in my on-going magnum opus; Truth Against the World. This project has become a work of gargantuan proportions & I’ve broken it down into three separate books. I still have a lot more to add but the first book in this series is titled; “The Christian Fundamentalists War Against Secular Humanism.”

 

Speaking of which, these so-called “Christians” personify a major portion of Trump’s & America’s politics of resentment. In a nutshell, these faux “Christians” are resentful & angry that they aren’t accorded the power & prestige as a sort of American Taliban. And to prove just how hypocritical they are, how else can you explain the fact that they staunchly support & defend Trump who is the embodiment of the Seven Deadly Sins? In brief, they prove how shallow their “Christianity” is & how meaningless Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” is to them.

 

We moved a lot as I was growing up but I always sought out & attended the local church wherever we went. I knew next to nothing about the differences between denominations. I simply enjoyed the experience & Sunday School. But somewhere around the age of 14 or 15, the hypocrisy just became too brazen. And at the risk of sounding grossly overly simplistic, I believe the Sermon on the Mount & the Commandment to do unto others as you’d have them do unto you, is all we need to practice.

 

Embarrassingly, we are known the world around as being one of the most illiterate nations on Earth, most notably among the so-called “advanced” nations. Many Americans openly brag about not having read a single book in the past year. Moreover, it’s become common knowledge that Trump won’t even bother to read the daily briefings that are so vital for the leader of the world’s most powerful nation.

 

Instead, Trump is noted for his watching television several hours per day & most conspicuously, “FOX News,” which any student of modern history knows should more accurately be referred to as America’s “Pravda.” (Russia’s version of the New York Times i.e. their paper of propaganda)

 

I must admit that I never cease to be amazed at the level of spectacular ignorance & utter inability to even formulate a single, coherent sentence by Trump. But somewhere deep inside I can’t help but wonder; Is this really a master act of deception on the part of Trump to distract us from his & his craven cronies consistent unraveling of our democracy?

 

In other words, is it humanly possible for someone to be so glaringly stupid in just about every sentence that comes out of his mouth?

 

In conclusion, I’d like to share with you a portion from a transcript of my favorite, alternative news station, “Democracy Now!” which I have been following for the past 20 years—nearly from its beginning. This is Wayne Barrett, who followed Trump’s infamous rise more thoroughly than any other journalist:

 

You know, he has made a career—when I say I don’t know why he’s never been prosecuted, maybe the prime time that he could have been prosecuted was at the time of his downfall in 1990 and ’91. Well, you know, the banks kept him alive, as he was too big to fail. So, they kept him alive. But I wrote in the book—he certainly didn’t sue when I said it—I didn’t say that he had made—submitted false financial statements to the bankers to get a billion dollars in personally guaranteed loans. I said he submitted fraudulent ones. Right? And I lay out a case for that in the book. He was engaged in completely defrauding the banks, and the banks knew it. OK? And they were giving him the loans anyway. So, they kept him alive. But even more so than that, the House Banking Committee wanted to do public hearings about it; the banks wouldn’t cooperate. The district attorney of Manhattan was a big friend of Donald’s. Donald was his second-biggest giver. Robert Morgenthau’s second-biggest giver was Donald Trump. Donald was the chairman of the Police Athletic League, which was Morgenthau’s biggest charity. So, he was extremely close. He hired—Andy Maloney was the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District. He hired Maloney’s brother. Right? Rudy Giuliani was the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, and we know how close they got. I wrote a whole story about how their relationship developed. I was at Rudy Giuliani’s first fundraiser when he decided to run for mayor, and there’s Donald at the main table. He’s the co-chair of the first Rudy Giuliani fundraiser for the mayorality in 1989. So, his relationships with prosecutors and the fact that the bankers—they were embarrassed by what they had done; they didn’t want any investigation of this. So, the combination of the two gave—gave them a pass—gave him a pass.

 

https://www.democracynow.org/2016/7/5/wayne_barrett_on_donald_trumps_broken

 

 

In brief, everything about Trump is a fraud and always has been. You could say that he is our greatest “flim-flam president.” And by “greatest,” I mean he represents the worst of the worst in terms of human qualities!

 

—Rob DeLoss, July 19, 2019 Gold Beach, Oregon

 

Addendum

 

Clearly in a “culture” as post-literate as ours & in which many Americans brag about not having read a single book in the past year, some even boast that they’ve never read a single book in their lives, it’s easy to manipulate their emotions as Trump obviously does. And willful ignorance & violence go hand in hand when people are looking to blame others for their misfortunes. Personally, I believe that Trump’s walking dead knows that it’s the rich who have fucked them but they don’t know where to focus their anger towards the rich or it just seems so impossible to take them on & that too is why they prefer to blame people of color.

 

Moreover, people seem to have a penchant for violence & chaos and Trump allows them to vent their anger on a regular basis which is satisfying for those of low I.Q. So, a rightful resentment toward the 1% is transferred on to the poorest victims of our society & they don’t have the power to fire you like your boss does.

 

Trump is the most audacious liar I’ve ever heard of & he even tells his zombie followers to not believe their own eyes or ears or any of the media but only to listen & believe his lies. And what is truly frightening is the fact that this dunce has the power to start a nuclear war & denies the reality of climate destruction. Trump hasn’t “drained the swamp,” but rather he is tearing down the structure of our government with every person he has appointed in his cabinet & etc. So, when your Social Security checks stop coming along with your pension checks, & etc., remember, you asked for it with your blind submission to that vile creature in the White House who I’m sure will be crying crocodile tears for you as you seek shelter on our mean streets!

 

Yep! The world-wide economic collapse of 2008 which crippled the world & from which we still haven’t fully recovered was largely due to deregulation of the financial markets & Trump is deregulating everything he can get his hands on so as to further enrich himself & his butt-buddies. Oh well?

What I imagine the inner “mind” of Trump to look like (Hieronymous Bosch)

The Christian Supremacists Pact with the Devil

 

 

Admittedly, my use of the word “Devil,” is sensationalistic but in today’s America, The National Enquirer appears to hold more sway than The New York Times with Trump automatons so this should appeal to their sensibilities?

 

Many of our fellow citizens have clearly fallen under the spell of the Charlatan in Chief & I feel sickened unto my soul at their blindness. And I sympathize with their righteous anger because I too, have been screwed-over countless times in my life—I’m 66 years old—by the government but even more so by the corporate giants which I refer to as the Corporate Cockroaches.

Trump defenders will undoubtedly spin this as proof of the witch-hunt against Trump

 

As far as I’m concerned, the key difference between myself & many, if not most, of Trump’s supporters is the fact that I have been paying serious attention to politics for well-over 30 years & I understand how the 1% who are truly running the world, have duped so many into believing it’s an elite cabal of liberals who are behind our troubles. (though there is an element of truth to this to some extent but the reality is it’s an amalgamation of greedy, self-interested forces, liberal, conservative, & numerous other perspectives)

 

If you’ll just take a brief survey of Western history, you’ll see the horrific history of what happened when the Church & the State worked together i.e. the individual got fucked royally (pun intended). And this is why our Founding Fathers were very clear about the importance of separating Church from State. Sadly, far too many Americans today either never learned the critical lessons of world history re: this matter or they simply don’t give a shit & are willingly ignorant on the subject?

substitute all the amoral/immoral acts of Trump for the word “Satan”

You see, my imaginary reader, when the power of the church i.e. Christian evangelicals & their steady encroachment into the halls of political power on the local, state, & federal levels over the decades, is united with the power of the government in the same spheres of influence & control over our lives, the overwhelming majority of citizen activist groups/organizations are steamrolled over.

 

Moreover, in today’s “connected” world via the power & scope of the Internet & the myriad so-called “social networks,” it’s very easy to spread fear, hate, & lies. And if we won’t, don’t, or can’t take the time to check out the validity of the claims by those trying to sucker us into their web of deceit, we become just more cannon-fodder for the morally bankrupt.

 

Believe it or not my friend, I do wish that I could offer you a simple method or answer to this complex state of affairs but unlike the con-man in the oval office, I won’t insult your intelligence as he does day-in & day-out. Sadly, in this crazy world of ours where the quantity of our “wealth” is just about the only thing that matters when it comes to our public “influence,” I am only wealthy in terms of the amount of time, energy, & love I have expended in my life-long pursuit of knowledge.

 

And yeah, I know that some of you, especially you die-hard Trump fans, will dismiss me as just another elitist & were this not so absurd, it’d be amusing. Yeah, me the elitist? Single parent (my mom), multiple cruel step-dads/mom’s boyfriends, drunkenness & violence throughout, piss-poor public schools, hundreds of Mickey Mouse dead-end jobs in factories, pumping gas, flipping burgers, etc. , standing up to the U.S. Army & refusing to allow them to send me to Vietnam even though they wanted to make me an officer, scoring at the 11th grade, sixth month level in reading when in the sixth grade but never given the opportunity or the encouragement to rise to my intellectual abilities. Yep! Obviously, I am just another one of the elitists that the humble Trump detests.

a dear friend who helped me emotionally weather the storm while AWOL from the U.S. Army

 

So, you decide for yourself, are you going to use your “common sense” which so many of our fellow working-class citizens love to proclaim, or are you going to continue to believe the perhaps billionaire—we’ll never know for sure because he’ll never release his tax returns—or is there the slightest possibility that I could be telling you straight-up?

“Christian” Supremacists new version of Morality & Ethics

 

Sorry if I get side-tracked & veer off course a bit but like our recently anointed Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh, I too like beer & I’m drinking beer as I write this. Yeah, there used to be a modicum of decorum, civility, or just simple decency but with the illegal insertion of Trump as the symbolic head of our government, all that has vanished out the window & the bar has been lowered to such an extent, that it’s about as difficult to step-over that “bar” as it’d be to step over the proverbial line in the sand.

 

I mean, seriously people? A president who brags about grabbing women’s pussies & getting away with it & a supreme court judge who was rammed-through the confirmation process under a very dark cloud of not being that different from the commander-in-chief when it comes to matters of morality? To say nothing of the assorted other despicable excuses for human beings that made up the Trump cabinet & keep getting replaced by more of the same.

 

How any of these self-proclaimed “Christian Supremacists,” or politicians or corporate spokesmen, etc. have the audacity to stand-up in front of television cameras on the world stage & defend this cabal of amoral human cockroaches, defies incredulity.

 

I stopped calling myself a Christian when I was about 14 years old. The hypocrisy just became all too obvious & in hindsight, I am glad that I did because I can proudly disassociate myself from all those wolves in sheep’s clothing who kiss Trump’s feet like spineless slugs.

 

In a nutshell my imaginary reader, the powers that be, the power elite, the status quo, or however you may care to refer to them, have used a tried but true strategy of divide & conquer. Yeah, this is a military term & tactic and is very appropriate because they, the 1%, have been conducting class warfare against the rest of us throughout recorded history.

 

Of course, they deny this vehemently & get all bent out of shape, stand up on their hind-legs spitting & foaming at the mouth in self-righteous indignation whenever accused of this. And it doesn’t take much effort to see the three clubs they wield with usual success i.e. God, Guns, & Gays. Trump merely added Mexicans & Muslims to the recipe & roughly a third of our fellow citizens swallowed the poison whole.

 

And even though I gave-up on Christianity as it is preached in most of America’s churches & not practiced in public & certainly not in politics, I can remember my Sunday School lessons like Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.” In my agnostic/atheist humble opinion, anyone who has a kind heart can see that the Beatitudes summed Christianity up in a nutshell and oh, so beautifully.

What part don’t you understand?

 

Yet it never ceases to amaze me & depress me at the same time how many of these “Christian” fundamentalists, Dominionists, evangelicals, white supremacists, Klansmen, Neo-Nazis, Alt Right, etc. seem to honestly believe that they are Christians?

 

I’ve never really been that much of a “pot-head,” and in fact, many of my friends over the years have been amused & amazed at how long a quarter ounce of pot can last me i.e. usually a year or longer. But I am proud to identify myself as an old hippie because it was very simple, and yeah, naïve of us but we basically believed in peace, love, & dope (the natural dope such as pot, peyote, mescaline that wasn’t adulterated by greedy & unscrupulous drug dealers).

 

We viewed “drugs” as a tool to help in our enlightenment & we cared about one another, the environment, justice, equality, freedom, truth, etc. —not that different from what our founding fathers believed in & tried to establish in our Constitution & our form of government (and yeah, I am aware of the hypocrisies & contradictions).

 

I for one, would love to see a Renaissance of those idealistic values of the hippies, the student protestors, the dope smokers, the non-conformists, the radicals, the wanderers of the 1960s and I am 100% in favor of the proposed “Green New Deal” that is drawing more & more of us like the Pied Piper of Hamlin towards a Shangri-La, a Paradise Lost. Excuse me, it’s the literature major in me. But what do we have nowadays, if not  our dreams?

 

“Reality T.V.,” which gave us the likes of Trump and the glorification of lie, cheat, steal, backstab, whatever it takes to win. Are these the values of Jesus? And how in the hell can Mike Pence stand up there next to Trump & believe he’s still a Christian? No, it’s as clear as the nose on your face, these faux Christians will & have sold their souls and any semblance of decency they may have had. Why?

 

Because of their lust for power. They are every bit as fanatical as the worst of the “Muslims” who claim to be Muslim but commit terrorist attacks. And like those phony “Muslims,” many of the American Taliban, gladly commit their own versions of domestic terrorism in the name of their god, who more honesty should be acknowledged as the Anti-Christ.

 

Isn’t this a pitiful state of affairs when an avowed non-Christian has to remind you “Christians” that you’re not behaving very Christ-like? I deliberately used the term “devil” in the title of this essay because to me, the words “devil,” “Satan,” “Lucifer,” etc. are really synonyms for evil and evil in my book is all that hurts, denigrates, physically attacks, humiliates, rejects, attempts to silence, shames, judges others, fears, intimidates, discourages, etc.

 

I could go on and on and on but I believe my point is clear? I believe down to the marrow of my bones that all of us who clearly have love for our fellow human beings in our hearts, are the truly righteous. I don’t want to rule over others & I sure as Hell don’t & won’t let anyone rule over me though I do have to appear to play along with this evil system.

 

In conclusion my friend, there is so much more that unites us than divides us. These divisions are grossly exaggerated & are used by the 1% to keep us divided so they can more easily control us. Why? Quite simply, for the wealth of the world. We have been indoctrinated our entire lives—for me, since 1952—into believing that there was a vast conspiracy of evildoers out to enslave us or kill us i.e. the Communists, the international drug cartels, and currently, terrorists.

 

And no, I’m not denying the existence of nor the destructiveness of these forces but, if you’ll do a bit of research, you’ll discover that each of these bogey-men have been used to keep us in line & paying our taxes, and dying or being maimed in the perpetual war system that has existed my whole life. Communist Russia has/had something like seven countries under its “control.” America has over 900 military bases around the world & who knows how many secret bases? Don’t believe me, check out Chalmers Johnson for yourself. America has been financially supporting, training the secret police of dictators, & often sending in our special forces & our regular army to back bloody dictators for decades.

 

Too much to swallow? Check out Major General Smedley F. Butler of the U.S.M.C. (United States Marine Corps) if you think me full of shit and spend just ten minutes reading his quotes re:  his tenure. And here’s probably the most bitter pill for you to swallow? America, manipulated by the transnational corporations that President Eisenhower warned us about in his farewell address i.e. Beware the Military-Industrial Complex—he wanted to include Congress in this unholy alliance but was persuaded to leave it out.

 

The data, the information, the knowledge, the truth, the wisdom is all available for any who seriously care & are willing to search for it for themselves. I have spent conservatively, 50,000 hours in my pursuit and no, this doesn’t mean that I have the corner on the truth but it does mean, that I am light-years ahead of fuckin’ cold-blooded mercenaries like Trump!

 

Rob DeLoss, Trinidad, CA (April 19, 2019)

The 1%’s Idea of “Choices”

 

 

An acquaintance of mine recently brought up the issue of “choices” again & basically said that I am in the situation I’m in because of the “choices” I’ve made in my life. This is my rebuttal, and instead of going into the centuries-old debate of “free will” vs. “determinism” and nature vs. nurture, I’m going to respond in my own, straight-forward manner.

 

I was going to title this essay, “Free Will and the Free Market,” but decided that would be perhaps too pedantic & too complex a topic to explore. Besides, those who claim to believe in the “free market,” have obviously already drunk the Kool-Aid of crony capitalism & its house of cards.

Get it?

 

Let me start by acknowledging that I don’t delude myself & think that I’m going to persuade any readers of this essay to reject the edifice upon which they’ve built their lives. No, this is merely the voice of a lone wolf howling in the wilderness of this shallow society.

 

You may think it extremely arrogant or audacious of me but I claim to speak for the downtrodden like myself, who’ve been screwed by this rigged-system their whole lives. Yet the 1% have succeeded to an astounding degree in convincing us that we are “losers” (one of Trump’s favorite slurs) because of our own “shortcomings.”

 

Yep! We are supposed to accept full responsibility for everything from losing a perhaps once, decent paying job & the health insurance we once had, our homes because we fell for those predatory lenders’ scams, our life savings because again, we weren’t smart enough to not trust our financial advisers who assured us that our investments were secure & guaranteed, etc.

 

Just poor choices on our parts. Too bad, too sad! But somehow, the rich always seem to come out on top? Yeah, miraculously the 1% seem to usually have the insider knowledge that not only protects their fortunes but even enables them to profit when the rest of us fail? It couldn’t be perhaps that because they have the wealth & power to influence & control the legislators who write the laws, is why they rarely pay for poor “choices,” could it?

 

Of course not! This is a meritocracy, right? Haven’t we been told all the way through our public education that if we work hard, follow the rules, & don’t rock the boat, we too can become rich & successful? Gee? I wonder where such “wisdom” originated? Well, that’s for another essay.

 

Remember! We’re a class-less society i.e. we don’t recognize or rather, we don’t acknowledge that there are different “classes” in America & we’re all equal. But don’t try driving in Beverly Hills, especially if you happen to be Black. Of course, Trump has shown the world what a truly classless person he is & represents the real America behind the veil like in the Wizard of Oz.

Yeah, as spiritually sick as Trump makes me, I’m actually glad that he’s up there on the world’s stage because there’s no hiding or denying just how rotten to the core this neo-liberal assault has been with Trump behind the desk in the oval office. And what has been the 1%’s response to this greedy, self-aggrandizing moron’s words & actions? Mostly mute because the Duck Dynasty’s Klansman has been a godsend to their continued looting of the federal treasury.

 

I may be veering a bit off topic here and could go into the “choices” that brought us this most vile, despicable, & craven mercenary but that too, is another topic for future exploration. You see, my imaginary reader, the concept of “choice” is thrown out by the rich whenever any of us, the peasants, dare to complain about “our lot in life.” This is their armor, their shield when attacked for their greed, selfishness, & the destruction they have wreaked in their blind pursuit of profit i.e. if we are unhappy with our life situations, we only have ourselves to blame for the poor choices we have made along the way.

 

Yep! If we accept this rationale of “choices,” then Trump has clearly made all the right choices in his career i.e. never admit guilt or wrongdoing, cheat/defraud thousands if not tens of thousands of employees, contractors, etc. always attack & never apologize, borrow & not repay banks, bribe city officials for permits for buildings & casinos and not honor the contracts, launder money for mafia figures, beg for loans from Russian mafia i.e. Russian government officials, and build his political career with a vicious fear & hate campaign that he never stops using to manipulate the gullible & willingly ignorant who believe in him.

clearly stuck in adolescence for life

 

But if you happen to be a simple person who believes in doing unto others as you’d have them do unto you, you are a sitting duck for the 1% who have no such moral qualms. Yes, they too made their choices & we see the consequences of their choices in the tabloids yet we continue to ignore these glaring lessons of what befalls the greedy & the heartless?

It’s really quite clear

 

Let me ask you this my friends; Did we who were raised by a single parent, usually our mothers, “choose” this? Or did we who were abused by cruel stepfathers from birth to adolescence have a say? Did we who were forced to attend whatever public school which happened to be nearby, have a choice in the academic curriculum or quality of said curriculum?

 

Did we, who went hungry at times in our childhoods, have a choice regarding whether we wanted to eat or not? Did we have a choice when it came to being brought up in a drunken & violent home? Or whether we had a decent roof over our heads, two loving parents, encouragement, cultural exposure, etc.?

Iconic pic of woman who made “poor choices” during the “Great Depression”

 

Were we free from the psychological as well as the physical harm inflicted upon us by cruel, unloving step-dads & live-in boyfriends of our mothers? Did we have a choice when it came to the fact that we never even met our biological fathers?

 

Did we have a choice when it came to being mocked, ridiculed, & humiliated every time we played sports as we grew up & our eyes crossed and our fellow students were so merciless & cruel?

 

Did we have a choice in being not only the eldest in our families but also amongst all our cousins & being forced to protect them but had no one to protect or defend us? Did we have a choice when it came to enjoying a “normal” childhood or adolescence?

 

Or what about the life or death choice of being in the military during the Vietnam war? Did we have a choice when it came to the lottery & the fact that our birth date set our fate? Did we have a choice of a college deferment when we didn’t even know of such an option? Moreover, was this an option if you didn’t have a rich daddy like the 1% who guaranteed your college tuition?

a dear friend who helped me emotionally weather the storm while AWOL

 

Remember, Donny the Duck’s daddy bribed a doctor to save Donny by claiming he had bone-spurs & now he struts the world-stage like he’s the most patriotic American there ever was. Guess he wasn’t forced into making that choice of serving? Guess the fact that a professor of mine suggested that I should be attending college at Stanford University but the fact that I was having trouble just paying for tuition at California State University at Long Beach, was just another poor choice on my part?

 

Furthermore, the 1% don’t have to worry about making poor choices or dumb mistakes when they work for daddy because they’re not going to be fired. How often are the children of the elite fired from any position they’ve ever held, no matter how briefly? Yeah, so much for meritocracy, equality, level playing field and all the other bullshit propaganda we’ve been spoon-fed our entire lives!

 

Do the children of the elite ever have to suffer the insults, degradation, & daily humiliation inflicted upon them by “superiors” who are clearly inferior in every way? Do they have to make a “choice” between eating or quitting and maintaining some semblance of self-respect? Do the elite have to refrain from the overwhelming desire to smash their supervisors’ faces to a pulp?

 

Has this so-called “power elite” ever been forced to work at jobs they knew were very dangerous i.e. handling toxic chemicals, driving trucks with faulty brakes, etc.  yet when they quit, they were labeled “losers,” unable to hold down a job. Have they ever known what it feels like to have all these pejorative terms applied to them like that crimson A sewn onto Hester Prim’s blouse for life?

 

And more insulting & unbearable than all these personal insults is the fact that I have spent my life in the continual pursuit of knowledge, truth, & wisdom yet am often forced to almost beg for some minimum wage “job.” Does this all stem from a series of poor “choices?” If you still believe that it does, it reveals you for who you are i.e. a member of the corporate cockroach class who should be stamped-out for humanity’s sake as well as for Mother Earth’s well-being.

 

Addendum

 

Isn’t it curious that when questioned about the legitimacy of their wealth, the overwhelming majority of the elite believe they rightfully deserve it because of the family they were born into or that they have “worked” so hard for it? And those of us who “begrudge” them their wealth are just jealous, lazy, not qualified, or have made “poor choices” in life.

Trump’s version of the Palace of Versailles from a Duck Dynasty perspective

 

Yeah, “poor choices” that the rich can relate to like choosing between going hungry & stealing; like quitting a dangerous job where you know you’re risking your life for minimum wage & becoming just another sad statistic or being broke again.

 

Bottom-line, you who have been fucked-over by life, often as the result of the elite’s policies & practices had & have about as much “choice” in terms of what course your lives follow as those sheltered “elite” bastards had in being born with the proverbial silver spoons in their mouths. So, don’t you buy their bullshit argument that it’s your “deficiencies” that are the cause, because if you do, you are only playing into their hands & blaming yourselves (and no, this isn’t to say that some of us aren’t guilty of laziness, etc.) rather than them, the want to be Masters of the Universe.

 

There is one historical fact that gives me hope & some sense of consolation, the French Revolution. Naturally, the powers that be will dismiss my arguments as being that of just another “loser.” Yeah, those of us who dare to stand up on our hind-legs & howl against the horrific injustices of this world are dismissed as “whiners,” apologists, losers, etc. etc. etc. because it requires honest & serious mental effort to refute my accusations.

the “peasants” will only take being fucked for so long, so 1% ers, be aware!

 

This is clearly such an easy cop-out that it is disingenuous at best & reflects a mind that is incapable of fair & logical argument.

 

The sad & cruel irony in today’s America is that Trump has succeeded to such an extent in duping his cult of the Walking Dead into believing the true enemy of the state are his fellow elite, who profit from the government subsidies/protections just as he has but that he is magically separate from it. Yep! Donald the Dick-head, the pussy-grabber, the fraudulent billionaire, the clearly senile & vile creature from the Black Lagoon ruling over the swamp lizards of Congress, has muddied the waters to such an extent that nobody knows what the future holds for America.

 

And like a cheap magician, Trump distracts us by waving his tiny hands, one hand pointed at the “enemy of the state” i.e. the press (because they do their job of informing us to some extent) while his other hand, wreaks havoc on our Constitution and our semblance of a democracy.

The Swine in Chief with his tiny fingers on the nuclear trigger. Yeah, be afraid, be very afraid!

 

Here’s a different perspective on the big picture if you care to expand your understanding? I dissected this book years ago & it gave me great comfort in its reassurance that I wasn’t crazy.  https://thesunmagazine.org/issues/487/em-from-em-br-we-ve-had-a-hundred-years-of-psychotherapy-an

 

—Rob DeLoss, Trinidad, CA (a couple of weeks before escape from this phony paradise of wanna-be hippies)  April 16, 2019

Yeah, you can dismiss me & my worries with trite comments like; We haven’t blown ourselves up yet but, the simple reality that we have come within seconds of nuclear exchange many times over the course of my life (1952 to the present) shouldn’t give any rational human being any comfort i.e. it’s mostly been due to sheer dumb luck.
 

 

My Love

My Love,

 

From the moment I laid eyes on you as you walked across the room in that bar where we met, my soul recognized you and my spirit soared.

 

It was like kismet and so appropriate that one of the songs we danced to that night was “With You I’m Born Again” by Billy Preston & Syreeta.

It was like a fairy tale come true and you were my princess. And that’s why I kissed your hand instead of your lips as we said goodbye.

 

I knew after the couple of hours that we’d spent dancing and talking that first night that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you. You were the classiest lady I had ever met. Your poise, style, and grace were like a magnet that drew me instantly to you.

 

And the very next day on our first date, we went to the beach to fly your kite. At the end of the day, you asked me if I’d like to smoke some pot & we went back to your apt. and before long we made love for the first time & I spent the night with you and felt right at home. I believe we spent that first weekend together hardly getting out of bed & for the next four years, maybe only two or three nights passed in which we didn’t spend the night together.

long weekend getaway to Monterey

 

I know that I scared you when I told you at some point within our first four months together that you were the kind of woman I’d like to marry. I had never said this to a girl or a woman before but I wanted you to know just how deeply I cared for you. We had both been burned/hurt by previous lovers & you were a little gun-shy to commit. But I became jealous when once in a while, one of your old boyfriends would call you. You kept saying that we were just friends & that hurt my feelings so after about four months of us spending every night together, I found the courage to express my feelings.

 

I was scared to death that I might scare you away because I guess you could say that I gave you an ultimatum of sorts? I told you that your actions made a liar out of you i.e. if we were only friends, then why did we spend every night together. I said that it’d be easier to call it quits right then & there rather than go on pretending we were only friends. I wanted you to acknowledge that we were boyfriend & girlfriend. And I was sweating bullets that I might chase you away with this confrontation.

 

To my great relief, you agreed that from then on, we were a couple & as I recall, it wasn’t long after that you moved in with me because my apt. was larger & there was no point in maintaining two apts. when we were together every night.

 

Those first four years of our living together were without a doubt, the best years of my life. I often referred to you as my Rock of Gibraltar & that used to bother you. I couldn’t understand why? I meant it as a high compliment in that your consistency or the stability of your love for me gave me great strength & solace. But I think you may have thought that I was saying that you were like a chain around my neck or weighing me down?

one of my favorite pics of Jeri because she was stoned (which was rare) & obviously so cute!

 

You see my love, before I met you, my life had been mostly chaotic & I never knew an unwavering love such as yours. My family history was ugly & often unpredictable or insecure. Because you loved me & believed in me, my self-confidence grew and I made great strides in my pursuit of a bachelor’s degree in English literature, I didn’t quit jobs so easily as I had in the past, and I began to realize that I was equal to & in some respects, superior to others who used to treat me as an inferior. I began to sit in the front row of many of my classes & I’d go to professors’ office hours just to engage in stimulating conversation.

I taught an ESL class right across the hall from Jeri’s special ed class

 

A few of my professors were very complimentary & this too increased my confidence level to the point that I began to feel worthy of becoming a teacher & a writer. And because you loved me but were secure in our love & therefore didn’t try to control me, I never felt trapped and only loved you that much more.

 

I was so proud of all your accomplishments & talents and I still am to this day & often brag about your artistic gifts. About the only joy I feel these days, months, & years since you’ve gone from this physical plane, is when I’m writing or working on some project to honor you. I love having pieces of your art projects around me in my trailer & the rare opportunities when I have a visitor whom I can show your talents to.

Jeri doing her thing on our honeymoon at a friend’s house in Zurich

 

You see my love, I know to the marrow of my bones that I wouldn’t have become a teacher or a writer were it not for your profound love for me, or at least not nearly as soon as I did with you in my corner? And I believe that the longer we lived together, the more fine-tuned our spirits became to one another.

 

This intuition hit me like a sledgehammer one morning when we were out to breakfast at some restaurant in Portland, Oregon where we had moved to in 1984. The only time the subject of marriage had ever come up between us was that comment I had made to you within the first four months of our being together re: you’re the kind of woman I’d like to marry someday. You said nothing in response to this & as I said, the subject never came up again. But four years later at that restaurant & over breakfast one morning you said; “Let’s do something crazy…” and I interrupted you & finished your sentence with; let’s go look at wedding rings.

in our apt. in Sellwood area of Portland (sorry for poor pic quality but love the memory/feeling)

 

I believe that we were both surprised but not really because we both sensed that it was time to take the plunge so-to-speak and tie the knot. This was another sign that you and me were kindred spirits destined to be together throughout eternity. And I have often pinched myself over the many years we’ve loved one another because I couldn’t & still can’t believe my great good fortune at having met you, lived & loved you, and gone through so much together. Now, our love has migrated to the higher realms that sages & saints have sought to describe over the centuries.

riding the rails on our honeymoon in Europe

 

And when I’m thinking of you & remembering these feelings & experiences that we shared, I am not alone, and I am not sad. I believe that my subconscious doesn’t allow me to see your face clearly in my dreams because it fears that I may not want to wake? I forget how long it was after your passing, maybe just a few months? But the clearest image I had of you in a dream was of you sitting alone in a booth across the room from where I was sitting. You had a sort of Mona Lisa smile on your face & you exuded a calm that caused me to feel calm as well. It was like you were telling me all was well without even speaking, just looking at me in such a loving & reassuring way.

a reflection of Jeri’s spirit

 

I believe that this letter to you my love may be a feeble attempt on my part to remind & reassure me that we will indeed be together again on another level of consciousness or however you want to describe it. I feel your presence to some extent, most of the time but the physical me longs so deeply to touch & caress you so desperately that I sometimes feel my heart is going to burst right through my chest.

a sense of Jeri’s presence

 

I search for signs, for insights, for reassurances, for proof that we’ll reunite somewhere & sometime. Part of me wishes that I was a religious person & thinks that if only I had that spiritual certainty that so many of them seem to have, it would lift this sadness, this blanket of depression that rarely leaves my shoulders.

 

I desperately long for certainty but I can’t or perhaps it’s that I refuse to lie to myself on such a matter? My character was formed decades ago & I believe as some of the ancient philosophers did i.e. we can’t alter who we are deep down inside. If I did try to deceive myself, it would be a betrayal not only to myself but to Jeri’s memory and all that I hold sacred i.e. only a pure heart is worthy of the occasional glimpses of true beauty & wisdom.

 

And I know that one of the things you loved me for was my sincerity & my commitment to my pursuit of truth, justice, fairness, equality, wisdom, & peace. If I betray what I’ve claimed to believe in my whole life, I will not only dishonor myself, I will betray your love for me honey. This is too high a price to pay for an illusionary sense of peace & I know that I must remain constant to my guiding star, my guardian angel, you my love.

 

As I plumb the core of my being in search of signs of how to connect with you on levels I can’t even comprehend yet, bits & pieces come into view. For example, I was once blessed to have experienced a truly cosmic consciousness glimpse into another level of being that most people would instantly dismiss as fantasy or the product of an overactive imagination.

 

Those doubters don’t bother me one iota because you know that night we took acid & had such a wonderful experience in the confines of your apt. The “trip” that gives me the greatest comfort or reassurance that this veil of “reality” is but a sham, a façade of the deeper & truer reality that only the really healthy acid trip can give us, was the time when I took acid with a friend at one of our volleyball games.

our trip to Disneyland for Ryan

 

And yeah, many, if not most, especially those who have never even taken acid, will dismiss my words as the lunacy of an old hippie who perhaps took too many acid trips. Well, they couldn’t be more wrong if they attempted to do so. I may have dropped acid a dozen times in my 66 years & I have talked several people down from “bad acid trips,” because of my calming reassurance & the respect I have earned over the years from my old friends when I was much younger.

 

This particular “trip” is still as vivid in my memory as if it had happened yesterday. Here’s an overview of my memory of this wonderful experience my sweet love, the greatest love I’ve ever known or shall know.

 

My friends & I played volleyball nearly every Sunday for close to 12 years & we were very competitive but this particular day when I dropped acid with my friend, Danny Hernandez, after I came on to the acid, there wasn’t an ounce of competitiveness in my body or spirit. And it was a remarkable day because it was atypical in that there were many strangers we’d never played against before. We had enough players to make probably seven or eight teams & several of our new friends had their families with them i.e. wives & children. We had kegs of beer, and we were barbecuing & having a fantastic time. This was before I met you honey and how I wish you could’ve been there.

cooling off on a hot summer day

 

You see honey, as I told you the night that we dropped acid at your apt., we were very fortunate in that we got some good acid that wasn’t cut with speed or other harmful ingredients that often happens. When this tab of acid that Danny gave me hit me, I knew a sense of peace & bliss that I have never experienced before or after this day.

 

Well, perhaps I’m overstating it a bit? Because I recall some moments when you, my love, and me & our son would wake in the morning in our bed and that joy was pretty comparable to this experience I’m trying to describe.

our home in North Hollywood

 

I was sitting on the bench of a picnic table when the full force of the acid came over me. I slowly began to feel connected to every blade of grass, every leaf on every tree, the trees surrounding us, the earth, the sky, the bench I was sitting on, every person who was present, & to all of humanity. This sense of connection extended to the physical, the emotional, the spiritual, the intellectual levels we all have. Maybe even on a sub-atomic particle level? There was no separation between all things human & inanimate & I sensed that it was all perfectly natural & it didn’t scare me or even seem worthy of mention.

 

Several toddlers & young children were playing on the ground in front of me & I enjoyed their presence and even though I never uttered a word to them, some of the children & me looked into each other’s eyes and it felt like we were communicating on some profound level.

Jeri & her aunt in park near our home in Portland

 

I remember that a couple of my friends were getting very angry with one another & I sensed that they might get in a fight so I simply walked over & said something—I can’t recall my words but probably something like maybe Gandhi or Martin Luther King might have said—and they stopped arguing. I then returned to my picnic table.

 

I also remember Danny’s brother, Fred, who was a friend of mine at the time, came over because he was concerned that I was having a bad trip. But I wasn’t having a bad trip and felt completely at ease with the negative as well as the positive in this world. Fred said something to the effect of “Don’t be depressed Rob.” My reply was something like; Depression is like a long, dark tunnel and you simply have to wade through it until you come out on the other side.

 

I’m sharing this memory with you my love because I believe it may be another piece of the puzzle which when completed, will reveal the truth that we never lose one another, we just slip away sometimes for awhile into other rooms or levels of existence but we are in fact, always with our loved ones & that you, my love, are looking over me & protecting me from my darker impulses.

Xmas at my mom’s house in Buena Park

 

I also believe that you, Jeri, are now my guardian angel & just continuing on in your protection of me as you did when we were on this same plane together. A year ago, I was towing my 5th wheel over the mountains between Redding, CA and Eureka, CA on the coast. I was coming down a steep section of the road and my brakes went out completely.

It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life & comparable to the times I almost drowned, etc. It all happened so fast that I have no way of knowing whether it was a matter of minutes or seconds? All I know is that I was flying downhill with no brakes & trying desperately to maintain control over the steering. I didn’t dare take my eyes off the road not even for a split second to check my speed. I sensed that I was doing over 50 or 60 m.p.h. but again, had no idea of my actual speed. The only thing that kept running through my brain was; My God! I’m going to come to one of those 30 mile an hour curves and go straight over a cliff. I was praying —yes, situations like this will make an instant convert of you—that I’d come to an incline and begin to slow down & hopefully find a place where I could pull over & manage somehow to stop.

I was in a serious bicycle accident & Jeri came to my rescue

 

Many, if not most, will claim that it was God who saved them from dying in similar circumstances but I prefer to claim that it was you, my love, who protected me on that fateful day. I believe that we are all here on Earth to serve some purpose, most often unknown to us. And until we have served that purpose, we must fumble in the darkness. And I won’t be free to join you my love, until I have completed whatever it is I’m supposed to do. In the meantime, I will continue to remind the world of your loving contributions towards making this planet a better place to live.

 

My darling, you simply moved on to a higher plane of our spiritual existence because of all your hard work as a special education teacher. I haven’t completed my work yet because I’ve always lacked your self-discipline and mind-boggling work ethic. And you were a fantastic role-model who inspired me greatly but clearly, I didn’t or wasn’t capable of learning as quickly as you.

the hardest working teacher I’ve ever known & yes, I am biased!

 

You see baby, perhaps because of the emotional damage I experienced as I was growing up, I’ve had to learn a lot of life’s hardest lessons the hard way? I am a very slow learner in some regards & although I wish it weren’t so, there’s no sense denying my shortcomings.

 

But on the other hand, some of the negativity that touched my life as a young boy growing up, also fine-tuned my sensitivity or my antennae which warns me when dangerous situations or dangerous people are near. And to be honest with you my love, I am not really sure as to whether I’m a good man or a bad man who is simply good at deceiving himself and others?

 

Perhaps you can show me the truth about myself from this extraordinary experience I had several years before your passing?

Ryan’s bar mitzvah

 

You and I were separated & I had taken to the open road yet again. I was making my way down the Oregon coast in our old VW van and stopped to spend the night at Cape Blanco, a beautiful state park with a lighthouse. I had a campfire going and had drunk several beers & smoked a little pot, I believe?

 

I was mostly a skeptic of much of the paranormal claims regarding ghosts, Big Foot, etc. but on this particular night as I was seated next to my campfire, all of a sudden, I got the scariest feeling that there was some evil presence lurking in the trees around me. Now, I am well aware of the psychological assertion that when we are confronted with a perceived dangerous situation, we basically either stand & fight or we run for safety.

 

And for whatever reason or combination of factors, my usual reaction when I sense danger, is to fight not to run. I don’t say this honey to brag but simply to state the facts of my personal history. Some may choose to dismiss this story as the product of a drunken idiot & I’ll be the first to admit, though not proudly, I have experienced many drunken, blackouts in my time but during those episodes, I don’t remember hardly anything & often, nothing. Yet on this occasion, I remember every detail only too vividly.

 

I remember the sensation of the hair on the back of my neck standing on end. I recall being on the brink of full-on panic or a paralyzing terror. And in this state of mind, rational or logical thought immediately goes right out the window. I picked up my baseball bat in one hand & held my flashlight in my other hand and I strode vigorously around my campfire like this for several minutes perhaps?

 

Moreover, in maybe an inverse proportion to my fear, I put on a false face of bravado and I decided to confront my imaginary demons head-on. So, with my wooden baseball bat in one hand & my flashlight in the other, I headed down the narrow asphalt road to the beach.

As I got nearer to the beach, there was a row of trees on both sides of the road & they leaned over towards one another forming a sort of canopy that I walked under. And I remember thinking or feeling like I was walking into the mouth of a monster. I still had my bat in one hand & my flashlight in the other and when I reached the end of the road, there were huge driftwood logs scattered everywhere.

 

Some voice somewhere deep within me said; You’d better get out of here Rob; your dumbass may slip & fall on one of these logs and knock your ass out. I listened and made my way back to my campsite. I was still so scared that I slept inside my van rather than outside in my tent and when I awoke the next day, I threw all my gear into my van and got out of there as rapidly as possible.

 

A few years later, I was at one of the local pubs near your home Jeri and somehow the topic came up re: Cape Blanco and the bartender told me that there was a rumor that a group of white men had slaughtered a group of Native Americans there at Cape Blanco and that legend has it that their spirits haunt the woods around there.

 

I wondered if perhaps these spirits knew that I was not like those murderous whites who had killed them & maybe they admired my courage (false courage) in my strutting around my campfire with baseball bat & flashlight in hand and perhaps that’s why they showed me some mercy?

she’s watching over me

 

I brought this up my love because maybe it too is a sign that I do indeed possess a sixth sense if-you-will and this was yet more proof that there are indeed realms beyond our perception that give us glimpses of the otherworld?

 

In conclusion, all these factors and many more which I have yet to learn of, persuade me that we are only aware of the surface of the great mysteries that surround us. I recall learning many years ago that geniuses only use about 5% to 10% of their brain’s potential.

 

And it dawned on me that maybe we all have hidden powers that we’re not even aware of but sometimes when we’re in extreme crisis situations, these powers kick in on their own? Anyway, I will continue to be skeptical but at the same time, I will remain open to these possibilities and my heart & soul tell me that you are waiting just around the corner for me.

the path to Jeri

 

I know that I will find you again my love, please be patient and know that I will never stop searching for you baby. The dream of finding you is what keeps the candle inside me lit! I am waiting with baited-breath to kiss you again & hold you in my loving arms. I swear on all that is holy to me to never stop until we are reunited.

Nature’s beauty & power which we are one with

Namaste

 

P.S.  To borrow a few lines from a couple of beautiful songs that help to convey the depth of my feelings for my lost love;

If I Could Be Where You Are

 

Where are you this moment?

Only in my dreams.

You’re missing, but you’re always

A heartbeat from me.

I’m lost now without you,

I don’t know where you are.

I keep watching, I keep hoping,

But time keeps us apart

 

Is there a way I can find you,

is there a sign I should know,

is there a road I could follow

to bring you back home?

 

Winter lies before me,

now you’re so far away.

In the darkness of my dreaming,

the light of you will stay.

 

If I could be close beside you,

If I could be where you are,

If I could reach out and touch you

and bring you back home.

is there a way I can find you,

is there a sign I should know,

is there a road I could follow,

to bring you back home to me?

 

And the wondrously ethereal song from the movie; “The Last of the Mohicans”

I Will Find You

 

Hope is your survival

A captive path I lead

 

No matter where you go

I will find you

If it takes a long long time

No matter where you go

I will find you

If it takes a thousand years

No matter where you goI will find youIn the place with no frontiersNo matter where you goI will find youIf it takes a thousand years

 

“According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.”

― Plato, The Symposium 

 

When man & woman were one being, it scared the gods and when Jeri and I were one, I never felt so powerful.

My Queen of the Slipstream  

 

 

 

 

A Son’s Betrayal

 

 

 

I want to start by assuring you that I loved being a dad well, up to about the time Ryan was 13 or 14 years old. That’s when I began to see him turn into a stranger that I no longer recognized. I especially loved when he was a toddler & I began to ask him for a hug and he’d waddle across the room & give me or Jeri a hug. It was especially touching when he’d ask us for a hug. He was such a happy & mellow toddler that people used to ask us what our secret was. We’d chuckle and reply something to the effect that no, we didn’t have any magic bag of tricks but we treated him like a person i.e. not the typical baby talk many parents use with their children.

need I say more?

 

And throughout most of his elementary school years, Ryan was a generous & loving son i.e. he’d make us breakfast on Mother’s Day as well as Father’s Day and our birthdays, etc. I would look for opportunities where I could pretend that I was stuck in figuring out how to fix something & would ask Ryan to help me figure it out so his self-confidence would grow. In fact, starting somewhere in his middle school years, I kept suggesting to him that he learn how to fix cars. I told him that not only would he save himself a lot of money but that he could also earn some pocket money from his friends by helping them fix their cars & of course, he grew up to be a top of the line mechanic.

 

I especially remember with great fondness the joy, love, & warmth of Jeri’s love for our son. She absolutely glowed as a mother and I have honestly never met another woman so well-suited to the role or better qualified. Unfortunately, due to a combination of factors, mostly the demands of Jeri’s ridiculously demanding work as a special education teacher & my sensitive nature, we drifted apart in terms of intimacy. But on the deeper levels of what constitutes love between two people, our love for one another never wavered.

mother & child in the wonderment of life

 

After my mother passed away, I was executor of her estate along with my Aunt Sylvia & she told me something one day that really touched my heart. She said that my mom had said to her, “Jeri is always there for Rob no matter what & he deserves that and has never had that before.” I believe that I too was always there for Jeri and that she knew it too & that’s why she included me in her Will? For instance, Jeri and I were separated when Ryan was in the 7th grade & I wasn’t working but had my inheritance from my mom’s passing and had my own apt. Well it was a particularly rough year for Ryan in terms of asthma attacks. He missed over 65 days of school that year due to his asthma & Jeri would call me the night before and ask if I could come over the next day to stay home with him.

on one of our weekend getaways before we married

 

I was always only too glad to be able to do so & I don’t say this to brag and I don’t deserve a medal or anything for having done it. In my book, it’s what any loving father would/should do. It made me feel good knowing that I helped take some of the worry off Jeri’s mind because she knew that no babysitter could care as much for his welfare as his father would. And when Jeri had some major project to do like painting the exterior of her home, cutting the wood from a tree she had felled, etc., she would head for the phone book but I’d insist that I could take care of it and for a lot less money & would get some of my friends to help and we’d do it. Portions of her fence would fall down from time to time due to the strong winds that would assault us & it gave me another opportunity to help her out.

 

And when we were together, I usually cooked dinner for us because poor Jeri often put in ten to twelve-hour days & would be totally exhausted by the time she got home. I tried explaining this to Ryan several times i.e. being a family isn’t just about sharing the good times, eating goodies, having fun, etc., it’s also about sharing the work. I usually spent anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half preparing good, nutritious meals, not just heating up some frozen dinner crap.

like I said, Jeri was one of the most loving mothers I’ve ever known

 

I truly appreciated whatever opportunity that came along which allowed me to be of help to Jeri because she had been there so many times when I had my back up against the wall i.e. I’d be stranded & broke in Europe and she’d send me a plane ticket back to Oregon or I couldn’t get a job for the life of me i.e. I was either “under-qualified” or “over-qualified.” And many of those jobs they said I wasn’t qualified to do was such a farce because I’ve seen how incompetent those performing those jobs were.

 

Moreover, I often had to practically plead with the employers who said I was “over-qualified” and would basically say, Look, wouldn’t you rather have someone over-qualified than not qualified? I still have bills to pay and if you treat me right & give me the opportunity, I guarantee you that I’ll be your best & hardest working employee. Unfortunately, there were several periods in my working life where I couldn’t find work for several months or more & Jeri allowed me to sleep on her couch. This is hard on a man’s pride & feelings of self-worth but Jeri was always gracious, or at least, most of the time but yeah, there was often friction between us. Yet underneath it all, I was comforted by the knowledge that she, like no one else I’ve ever known, cared more deeply about not only my physical well-being, but also my mental & emotional well-being.

 

Furthermore, it also warmed my heart that again, whether we were together or separated, when serious family matters came up i.e. when she discovered that Ryan was stealing money from her purse when he was around 11 or 12, she called me and asked how we should deal with it & I came over and we dealt with it then & there. Or when our dog, Rocket, was so old & in pain, I convinced her that the right thing for us to do was to take him to the humane society and have him put to sleep. I broke down in tears as we said goodbye to our old friend & I know that Jeri was relieved and knew too that it was the right decision.

 

Continuing on, when Jeri and I would be separated & I had my own place, often sharing a house or apt. with a roommate, I’d have Ryan stay the weekend with me. We’d do fun things together, stay up late, eat goodies. Sometimes Ryan would start to bad-mouth Jeri but I’d stop him and remind him of how much his mom loved him & how hard she worked to provide a good home, food, clothes, etc. I called Ryan just about every night when we didn’t live under the same roof to ask him how his day had been & I’d tell him that I loved him as we said goodbye.

Ryan & me taking a break from hitch-hiking towards the West Coast of Scotland

 

I’m telling you all this not to simply brag but to illustrate how things used to be between my son & I. And next to the loss of my beloved wife & the best friend I have ever had, Ryan’s betrayal of not only me but Jeri as well, has been the second most painful experience I’ve ever known. Before I veer off on the dark path, here’s a sketch of what I believe were the good things I did as a father;

Ryan & me in a pub in Northern Scotland

 

  • I went to every Little League game of his for the seven years he was in Little League
  • I attended just about every practice he went to for Little League
  • I went to every parent/teacher conference throughout his schooling
  • I stayed with him in the hospital overnight the vast majority of the times he was hospitalized because Jeri made three times the money I did & we figured that if anyone should have to lose their job, it made more sense for me to be the one
  • I spent over a year building him a tree-house (I’m a pathetic carpenter & was the joke at the local hardware store)
  • I insisted we get a dog because I believe every child should have a dog & learn how to care for their pets
  • I took him on several trips with just him & I including the month we spent in Europe of August 1997 & I looked for every opportunity to teach him street smarts—we backpacked, took Eurail, slept in youth hostels, etc.
  • Jeri and I both took turns reading to him in bed most nights throughout elementary school
  • I insisted that he read for at least 20 minutes per day during summer vacations
  • And when he was in high school, Jeri & her brother, Howard began encouraging Ryan to join the military when he graduated from high school. I’ve only jumped down Jeri’s throat a couple of times in all the years we loved one another & this was one of them. I was so worried about this possibility that I sat down at the kitchen table for two days in a row & must’ve written for 7 to 8 hours each day pouring out every reason I could as to why a young person should not join the military, in fact, that was my original title & a few years later I edited & expanded it and the title is now; The Politics of Patriotism. And it’s one of the essays I am proudest of & I have received some very nice compliments on it from several notable writers. I pleaded with Ryan to read it several times since I wrote it but he never could bother but then again, he never joined the military.
  • I gave Jeri $500 towards Ryan’s bar mitzvah & read a piece I’d written for the occasion & a poem by Bob Dylan and I became emotional in front of the crowd of people present.

    Ryan’s bar mitzvah

 

Now for the ugly part or the betrayal as I see it. Ryan was in either the seventh or eighth grade when I had my first rude & sad awakening. I overheard him & his best friend, Jeff, in the next room making fun of homeless people. I believe I told Jeri about it but she was in denial and I believe her denial lasted right up until the last month of her life when I told her that I had called Ryan the night she’d returned from L.A. because I was so worried about her obvious physical weakness & that I had gotten emotional over the phone. I had waited a day to see if he’d call his mom but he didn’t. And he only lived a ten-minute drive away.

 

Jeri didn’t say anything regarding this matter to me but I knew that he had cut her to the bone. She waited for four days & then sent him an e-mail saying that now she knew what kind of man he was & that she was very disappointed in him. I have saved this e-mail and would be glad to share it with any of you who may doubt me. Yeah, I do believe that some of you may doubt me because it seems that I have been kicked to the curb so-to-speak by most of you. Clearly you don’t have a clue as to the true nature & history of Jeri and mine’s love for one another.

on our honeymoon in Paris & without a doubt, the coldest place on Earth!

 

Before I forget, there’s one more item that I’d like to share with you, it’s a You Tube video I created a few years before Jeri passed away. Jeri told me that it brought tears to her eyes; I had written this essay several years before I posted it on You Tube and I’m happy that at least Jeri got to view it before she passed on.

 

Okay, back to the heart of darkness that this essay is about. As I mentioned earlier, Ryan has spent many days & nights in the hospital due to asthma attacks as he was growing up. Well, I’ve had surgery three or four times in the past dozen years or so and not only has Ryan never visited me when I was in the hospital, he never even picked up a phone to call and ask how I was doing. It was particularly depressing when I was in the hospital one New Year’s Eve.

on our honeymoon near Galway, Ireland at a local pub (my wild Irish rose)

Admittedly, his lack of empathy or concern about me is painful & while I’m willing to acknowledge that maybe I wasn’t the best role model as a father with my drinking, there is absolutely no excuse for the hurt he caused Jeri. For instance, a day or two before Ryan got married in Las Vegas, Jeri flew down to do what she could to help out. It was Mother’s Day and Ryan took his wife to be & her mother out to breakfast for Mother’s Day but didn’t invite Jeri. Howard—Jeri’s brother—and her had only paid for their three-week honeymoon cruise in the Mediterranean, about $10,000 I believe? And yeah, I know that money isn’t the point but it still merits a mention here.

 

Moreover, in terms of hurting Jeri, a few years before she passed on, Ryan casually announced at a Thanksgiving gathering that he was getting a vasectomy. To be honest, I had never really given the matter much thought, I guess I just took it for granted that one day I’d be a grandfather especially after Ryan had gotten married. But I know this decision on Ryan & his wife’s part, really hurt Jeri. And the casual, matter of fact way that he announced it also revealed his coldness i.e. “Kids are too expensive.”

the hardest working teacher I’ve ever known & yes, I am biased!

 

Above all, his almost complete heartlessness for the last month of his mother’s life, is why I disowned him and will never speak to him again! About a week or two after I had told Jeri that I had called Ryan & told him about his mother’s condition, did he bother to come over to her home & that was only because she had called him & requested that he do so because she had something she wanted to tell him & I.

 

We all sat down in Jeri’s living room & when she made her announcement, I was flabbergasted. She told us that she was “gifting” each of us $22,000. I said, I’m trying to hold back my tears Jeri. And Ryan immediately started lecturing me on how I should spend my gift from Jeri. I tried to bite my tongue for as long as I could but when I started to get angry, Jeri intervened and calmed things down. The audacity of this greedy, self-centered little prick was unbelievable? I simply couldn’t comprehend where or why he thought he was qualified to lecture me in such a condescending manner?

I was in a serious bicycle accident & Jeri came to my rescue

 

And that was the only time he could be bothered to come over to his mom’s house in the last month of her life. The next time he visited his mother was when I called him from the emergency room after I had taken Jeri there. She was in emergency for only a couple of hours before they transferred her upstairs to the I.C.U. I believe Ryan stayed for a few hours before leaving?

 

Jeri tried to persuade me to go to her house and get some sleep but I refused to because I knew that if I were in her shoes, I’d feel better knowing a loved one was there by my side. In fact, Jeri tried to get me to at least go sleep in the waiting area but again, I wanted my love to know she wasn’t alone & I slept in a chair by her bed.

 

Let me backtrack at this point as to how/why I took Jeri to the emergency room. As I mentioned already, upon Jeri’s return from L.A., she was visibly very weak & her strength along with her vision continued to degenerate over the next month. I drove her to doctor & ophthalmologist appointments almost daily. I offered to do the grocery shopping on my own but she was tired of being in bed all the time. But she could only stay on her feet for no more than 20 minutes at a time before needing to sit down & rest.

 

In fact, we joked about getting a bell she could ring like those rich people in the movies who’d ring a bell for their servants to come. It was funny because I’d be in the front room watching T.V. and Jeri would call me on her smart phone when she wanted or needed something. And one morning, I heard the t.v. in her room on so I went to see how she was. I asked her how she’d slept the night before & she replied; “Horribly, I was in agony.”

a magical wood gallery we stopped at as Jeri drove, towing my RV back to her home after my bicycle accident

 

I said, that’s it, I’m taking you to the hospital. She kept arguing with me but I was persistent and she finally gave up & agreed to go. She then wanted to change her clothes even though I tried to reassure her that she was dressed appropriately. I gave in and asked her if she’d like some privacy while she changed. She said; yes please. So, I stepped just outside her bedroom & left the door ajar so I could hear her.

 

I heard her struggling for several minutes to get dressed & then I asked if she could use some help. She faintly replied; “Yes please.” She was trying to pull her jeans up but didn’t have the strength to do so on her own so I helped her. I quickly went out to her car, and opened the passenger door then went back in and picked her up in my arms and carried her to her car & helped her into the seat. I drove to the nearest hospital I knew of & parked outside the Emergency entrance in the middle of the parking area. I ran inside and grabbed a wheelchair and went back to her car & lifted her into the wheelchair and wheeled her into Emergency.

 

The receiving nurse in Emergency or whatever you call them, could see how bad a shape Jeri was in & didn’t say shit about filling out forms and Jeri was immediately taken into Emergency. A guard told me that I needed to move my car so I did and then I called Ryan. I went back in and was standing outside the room where the doctors were helping Jeri. A female doctor came out and said; “Your wife is very sick and she told us of how great a care you’ve been taking of her.” I was struggling to keep from breaking down completely right then & there but I managed to keep it together at least on the surface.

 

As I recall, Jeri wasn’t in Emergency very long before they moved her up to the I.C.U. While I was waiting outside the Emergency room she was being attended to in, I got a phone call from the teacher I used to work for at Arcata High School in Humboldt County. We had agreed to do a conference call between him, the Vice-Principal of the high school and myself regarding a position. I had worked there for the entire school year a few years earlier. But when I answered the phone, I told them that I couldn’t speak right now because my wife was in Emergency. My former supervisor told me; “You know what Rob, we don’t need to interview you, I know of your work ethic. You have the job. Can you be here by the 26th of August?” I replied, I don’t know, can I call you back? Greg said, “sure.”

Jeri doing her thing on our honeymoon at a friend’s house in Zurich

 

Later on, when Jeri and I were alone in her room in the I.C.U., I told her about the phone call and she urged me to go because she knew how long I’d been out of work and desperately trying to find a job. I replied; Honey, I can get a job anytime, that’s not important. What’s important is you and I’m staying here with you.

 

I then told Jeri that I was going to start calling family & friends to let them know what was going on. I mentioned her brother, Howard & her niece, Anna first and Jeri said okay. Then I listed her friend from childhood, Arna and Jeri’s immediate response was, “No!” After a few moments though, she relented and said; “Well, okay.” This confirmed what I had long suspected i.e. there had been a falling-out between them. And my hunch is that it had a lot to do with me? I say this because sometimes Jeri would go down to L.A. to take care of some business but a few times after she’d returned from L.A. and I would ask her if she got together with Arna, Jeri snapped back with; “I don’t always need to see Arna when I go down to L.A.”

 

Reading between the lines, my guess is that Arna, like Jeri’s family and others, couldn’t understand why she continued to care about me & would help me when I was down and out. And again, my guess is that Arna probably bad-mouthed me to Jeri and this pissed Jeri off. You see, Jeri was always much more private than me & would keep her personal business to herself and not share it so freely like I do.

 

And since we’re on the subject of Arna, I’m going to fast-forward to the morning that Jeri passed on because like Ryan, Arna took off her mask of civility and revealed her contempt for me. I mentioned that Jeri’s niece, Anna, had hurt my feeling when she said that I had scared Jeri when I leaned in to kiss her once, before her vision had gone completely. I tried to explain to Anna that it wasn’t that I had scared Jeri but rather that I had startled her because her vision had deteriorated so dramatically that when I came into view, she was startled, not scared.

one of my favorite pics of Jeri because she was stoned (which was rare) & obviously so cute!

 

After saying this to Arna, her immediate response was something like; “I don’t give a shit what you feel!” I was taken aback by her coldness especially after the fact that I had suggested calling her right after calling Jeri’s brother & niece and Arna had witnessed my holding Jeri’s hand pretty much the entire 12 hours roughly after the doctors pulled the plug on the machine that was keeping Jeri alive.

 

I know that I’m veering away from the subject to some extent but I also mention this because I reached out to Arna for help regarding Jeri’s brother, Howard, and his betrayal of me by leading me on for a couple of years re: giving me the 15% of Jeri’s share of their parent’s Will because Jeri had bequeathed to me that amount in her Will.  Arna was amazed that I dared to reach out to her for help after having been so shitty to her on the morning I’m referring to. She reminded me of how I had treated her and the fact that she had bought all that food for our big breakfast. She also asked what my “end game” was?

 

Asking this sort of question regarding my behavior towards my son is perhaps only the kind of question a lawyer could ask? And for the record, this isn’t a fucking game, this is a matter of principle & character i.e. mine! Once again, this shows how shallow not only Arna is but all those who sit in judgment of me and of Jeri & mine’s relationship over the years. I do remember being cold towards Arna after her retort when I tried to express my sadness at Anna’s perspective. But to my recollection, I was pretty subtle & only really obvious in my sarcasm as she was walking out Jeri’s front door and I said to her; Well, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out! And the kicker regarding Arna’s negative reply to my e-mail of a few months back was her demand that I apologize to her & that I should put all Ryan’s words & behavior in the past. And she assured me at the same time that if I were to reply to her e-mail that she wouldn’t even read it before deleting it. Well, so much for the ice queen.

 

Continuing on with the calls to people about Jeri’s condition in the I.C.U. Even though I was jealous of Jeri’s friend, Randy, who owned the hot air balloon she often crewed on & they had a relationship after Jeri & I officially divorced in 2007, I called him to let him know because I knew that Jeri cared for him. And when he showed up, I offered to give them some privacy. They both insisted that it wasn’t necessary but I left anyways.

like I said, it didn’t matter whether we were separated or divorced, Jeri never forgot my B-Day nor I hers, this was at an Irish pub in Portland

 

Returning to the subject of my beloved son, to the best of my recollection, he graced his mother with a few hours of his valuable time each day. But one of central reasons why I can’t and won’t ever forgive him is the fact that he chose to not take off two of the four days his mom was in the I.C.U. before she died. He worked for himself and some may attempt to argue that therefore, he couldn’t take the time off. I say, Bull fuckin’ shit! If a person puts the making of money before being there for a dying parent who loved them as fully & completely as any parent could possibly do, they clearly lack the basic qualities of what it means to be human.

 

Albeit, I did manage to persuade the lizard king to stay the night with his mom after her vision had completely gone & she could no longer speak.  I wanted to go to Jeri’s house and create a final playlist of music for her. You see, to my mind, if I were dying and could no longer see or speak, music would be a nice distraction & help in my final hours.

 

Howard and Anna wanted to go back to Jeri’s with me so they did. Ryan and his wife stayed with Jeri. I spent several hours creating several music CDs for Jeri selecting every single song with the aim of saying something special to the love of my life or hoping to? I had completed my task and it was the middle of the night. Anna and I were talking & I told her that I was going back to the hospital. Anna asked if she could come & of course I said yeah. She said she wanted to wake Howard up and he too decided to join us. When we got back to Jeri’s room, Ryan was irritated and yeah, he asked me why I was there?

 

Do you still think/feel that I’m the bad guy? How could a loving son ask such a question is what I want to know? I believe that Howard & Anna went out to the waiting area and slept for the remainder of the night and that I slept in a chair in Jeri’s room? Not really sure, some of the incidents & times are a bit jumbled in my memory bank but not the key points.

 

For example, I believe it was the next day when I put the first music CD on in a boom box I had brought with me. But it only played for about 20 minutes or so before Ryan commanded that I turn the music off. And my next action or rather, inaction is something for which I’ll never be able to forgive myself. I was livid with rage but some part of me, I don’t know if it was my head or my heart, said, don’t do it Rob. Think about Jeri. You’ll upset her and she’s already going through Hell. So, like a coward, I shut the music off & I shut my mouth even though I wanted so badly to slap him down & scream at the top of my lungs; You ignorant, heartless prick! Don’t you get it? The music is for your mom!

 

I don’t know if irony is the right word here or perhaps “poignant,” but the fact that a couple of months earlier, Jeri and I were standing in her kitchen and she told me; “Rob, I really like the music CDs you’ve made for me over the years.”

 

The simple, incontrovertible fact that this alien creature I used to consider my son, couldn’t even comprehend that I created the music as a last testament of my love and care for his mother and it was for her pleasure, her pain, and hopefully a bit of respite from the sure knowledge that she was living her last hours on this earth. He was clearly unable to put himself in her shoes and consider how it might feel to not be able to speak or see but only to feel and hear as we, her loved ones, surrounded her for her last days, hours, & moments.

 

You see, when Jeri thanked me the first time on that day that I mentioned above, I gave a perfunctory “that’s okay, your welcome.” But Jeri reiterated, “No Rob, I really love the CDs you made me, especially when I’m driving on a long-distance trip” (she took such trips on her hot air ballooning experiences).

 

When she made it clear how serious she was in her thanks to me, it warmed my heart. I had periodically made music CDs for her throughout the years, and music cassettes before CDs came along. In fact, I have shared my music with family & friends for many years and love doing so. You see, this is all by way of my saying that what one of Jeri’s most precious nurses in the I.C.U. said when she took me aside some time after Ryan’s heartless command, touched me to my very soul.

 

This angel of a nurse & a person told me in private that Jeri said to her, and remember, this is after Jeri supposedly could no longer see or speak, that Jeri said to her; “I like the music.” These words have perplexed me ever since. Was this nurse simply trying to console me or did Jeri manage to utter these last words as this nurse was giving her a sponge bath or changing her or something? But whatever it was, it does give me some comfort to believe that Jeri knew to her dying moment how deep my love was for her. And even though we had “legally divorced,” that didn’t mean shit because we had honored that vow of “Until death do you part.”

 

Continuing on in my retelling of Ryan’s unbelievably callous behavior as his mother was dying and immediately after she had passed, is the fact that when the doctor came in to Jeri’s room and pronounced her officially dead, the doctor then informed us that Jeri’s body would be taken down to the morgue. I’m not sure if I screamed or merely raised my voice but I made it very clear when I said; No fuckin’ morgue!

 

I believe the doctor stepped outside the room for a few moments then returned and said; “Okay, she can remain here until the mortuary company comes to pick her up.” Ryan stood to leave, showing no signs of deep grief and I exclaimed; Wait a minute, we have to make funeral arrangements. He quipped; “Nope, anybody who mattered was here, that’s that.”

 

Again, I was incredulous and wondered if Ryan’s body hadn’t been invaded by some alien? And with that, Ryan & his wife got up and just walked out. My memory is a bit hazy here but I believe that Howard, Anna, & I may have stayed about a half hour before we left. And I feel such guilt for leaving before the mortuary company arrived & don’t know why I did? I feel that I abandoned my angel and there was no good reason for having done so.

 

Well, I believe it was that very same morning when we had returned to Jeri’s house when I got a call from a supposed good friend of Jeri’s. She asked me for Ryan’s phone number which I gave her. And I asked her if we could arrange a service where we could dump Jeri’s ashes from a hot-air balloon. Jeri’s friend said she’d ask.

 

The next day, Ryan called me to complain about all the people calling him & asking about funeral services for his mom. He was upset with me for giving them his phone number. And in a day or two, I learned that Jeri’s friend, Randy, whom I had called to let him know that she was dying, had decided that no, I wouldn’t be the one allowed to drop Jeri’s ashes from his hot air balloon even though it was my idea, but Ryan would. Yep! My “son” who didn’t even want to have a service was to be the one. Again, I’m just the worthless bastard who loved Jeri more than I love life itself, and the Hell with me.

 

I guess people have so much respect for the law i.e. the holy writ of a divorce, that it supersedes insignificant things like love and the abundant evidence of my love for Jeri? But curiously, that respect for the law seems to vanish into the ether whenever it comes to the crimes committed by the super-rich?

 

Believe it or not, I am going to attempt to wind this up now. A couple of the final straws that caused me to go over the edge and disown my former “son,” were the fact that he locked the gate to his mom’s house after she died. As I said, I was mostly on the road for the first few months but when I’d occasionally pass through Portland & even though the power was turned off, I’d spend the night in Jeri’s house just to be near her spirit but then he denied me even that. And backtracking yet again, several days after Jeri passed on & I was heading down towards Arcata for that job I told you about, I called Ryan and asked if he’d use his credit card to renew my AAA membership, and that I’d send him a money order to reimburse him.

 

Jeri had long ago accepted this about me i.e. my rejection of the whole credit racket or scam. You might reflect on the fact that just a couple of weeks before the world-wide economic collapse of 2008, those much-vaunted credit rating agencies of ours were still giving the super banks, the hedge funds, the insurance giant, A.I.G., Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, etc. all triple A credit ratings? But, if you or I are defrauded by corporations like AT&T which happens all the time & we refuse to pay their fraudulent claims against us, we are the criminals & our credit rating which rules over whether you can rent an apt., get a job, etc.

 

Well, I’ve only been studying politics for well over 30 years and conservatively have invested at least 49,000 hours in doing so, but obviously, I’m not going to be able to enlighten my son as to what a scam the whole credit game is in just a few sentences. So, it was clearly easier for him to write me off as a loser. Try to imagine how that would make you feel after all that I have shared with you regarding my love for my son as he was growing up. His condescending, patronizing, insulting tone on the phone that night as I stood outside that motel on my way south to Arcata cut me to the bone & I could no longer keep my feelings from erupting.

 

I simply informed him that not only had he just lost his mother, he had now lost his father as well. Ryan calmly replied; “Fine, you will hear from me through my lawyer from now on.”

 

As far as I’m concerned, Ryan no longer exists and I regret the day he was born. Before he came along, Jeri and I enjoyed a happy, healthy, and lively intimate relationship. And no, I’m not saying that I regret the joys of being a father when he was a toddler and as he went through elementary school. But yeah, I do regret what he became. And even more, I regret all the love Jeri and I wasted on him because he obviously evolved into some foreign being that now resembles nothing like the loving child we used to know.

 

I am sending this to the parties mentioned. And you Howard & Arna specifically, may feel that I deserve all this misery & sadness? Well, I submit that if you do, that speaks far more strongly as to who you are, not me.

 

I have been to Europe twice since Jeri has died. Europe used to be my Fountain of Youth, so-to-speak. And I took pride in the fact that I had been to Europe about a dozen times, often on a one-way ticket & sleeping on park benches, digging ditches, moving furniture to survive. Yet my first trip since Jeri’s passing was for three weeks & my second trip was for only three days. Why? Because there is no more joy in traveling for me since Jeri is gone. She was my Rock of Gibraltar, my guiding spirit, my home.

 

I never would’ve thought it possible for me to lose my love of travel & adventure that has animated my whole life since I was in the second grade and found that travel journal of a couple of college students who had rented my grandmother’s upper floor in her house.

 

Yeah, I used to think/believe as most young men do in their late teens and early 20s that we were/are invincible and the world was our oyster. But we, who make it to the ripe old age of 66, come to realize that it’s more luck than anything that has allowed us to still be here.

Without a doubt, the happiest day of my life!

 

Now, I feel like a man adrift in a rough sea desperately searching for something to cling to & hopefully keep me afloat. I was lonely the times Jeri and I were separated but I never felt all alone because I could call her or e-mail her any time I wanted to and she always promptly responded. We often spoke via telephone two or three times a week just to check in with one another as to how we were doing. And I often sent her articles on healthy foods, inspirational pieces (hoping to persuade her to retire early & go live in Tuscany for example and renew her love for painting, playing the flute, etc.) but she kept putting it off & rationalizing that she would do so next year even though she had more than enough money since her parents passed away

 

But now, my life-line, my soulmate, is on another plane of existence & I’m only with her occasionally in my dreams. I am slowly inching my way back to the living but as far as I’m concerned, Ryan is like a creature from another planet, a real alien, like Donald Trump, because I don’t see anything resembling a human in him!

 

And to switch gears completely, this is a song that Jeri and I danced to on the very first night we met at the Basin Street Lounge in Bellflower, CA, & it was “our song” from then on. I can think of no better way to end this sad essay than on the positive note of a love that few are able to comprehend or appreciate yet my love for this angel come down to earth is etched into my soul for eternity!

And another song that conveys just how deeply I dream of being reunited with my guardian angel;

 

I would willingly enter the gates of Hell and descend to the lowest rung of Dante’s Inferno if it would allow me one more day with my sweet angel, Jeri. And I would give all the knowledge, truth, & wisdom that I have sacrificed my life in the pursuit of for the same. I swear this on all that is holy to me!

Rob DeLoss,  March 30, 2019

 

Addendum

I forgot an important part and an event that could’ve changed my life significantly? A couple of weeks before Jeri left this world, she asked me to drive her to a lawyer’s office. She wanted to create a Living Trust. I waited in the car for a couple of hours but when she came out of the law office, she told me that they hadn’t completed the Trust. I went through Hell dealing with my sisters & my nephew as executor of my mom’s estate & knew how problematic it could be if Jeri passed away without her living trust completed. When the doctors told us how serious Jeri’s condition was and that she might not make it, I called the lawyer Jeri had started her living trust with & asked him to transfer Jeri’s basic wishes from the living trust into a Will and bring it to her hospital room so she could sign it.

The lawyer came in with a young lady, a paralegal to serve as a second witness to Jeri’s signing of her Will. Jeri became very agitated and was adamant about changing her Will. The lawyer said that it could cause serious problems down the line & I persuaded Jeri to just leave it as it was. I wasn’t even aware that she had named me in her Will. Howard & Anna were present when Jeri signed her Will.

Several months after Jeri passed away, I wanted to contest the Will because of how horribly Ryan was behaving towards me. I called the lawyer and asked if he’d corroborate the fact that Jeri wanted to change her Will & his first response was “Why? Do you want to sue me?” I was surprised that this was his response. I didn’t pursue the matter because it seemed like a long-shot for me to win. And when I called the lawyer again, he now denied ever saying that if Jeri changed her Will it could cause serious problems down the line. The paralegal had left the law office and I wasn’t able to track her down to verify my account of the signing of the Will. I asked Anna to back me up & yes, she remembered the event as I did but she wouldn’t go against her uncle Howard.

Looking back and given what I know now about Howard, he claimed to not remember Jeri wanting to change her Will but I believe he was covering his tracks because he was already plotting to cheat me out of what Jeri wanted me to have? Bottom-line and why I brought this matter up is that given how cold-blooded Ryan was the last month of Jeri’s life & as she told that first doctor in the Emergency room, “Rob took wonderful care of me for the past month,” or something to that effect, Jeri may very well have wanted to name me the executor of her estate & maybe even leave me a much greater percentage than the 15% she had originally put down in her Living Trust? Wishful thinking? Perhaps? But then why did she “gift” me and Ryan equal amounts of $22,000 a few weeks prior to her passing? Ryan wasn’t there when Jeri signed her Will and might not have had such an easy go of it had I not taken the initiative and had her Will prepared & followed through on. And I’m sure that he thinks he deserved every last dollar.

It was like Jeri’s death & naming him the executor freed him to show his true nature and he dropped any pretense of giving a shit about his father, the fool who tried his best to always be there for him unlike my biological father who left before i was even born. Well, I believe in karma and some day, Ryan will be repaid for his betrayal of both Jeri and me.

It must be a sign of getting old but I forgot another “minor” event that truly reveals Ryan’s sociopathic nature/character. And as I said, Jeri was in denial over the years regarding Ryan’s behavior & kept assuring me that we could teach him what a family is & guide him to becoming a loving son.

Ryan was in high school and had his driver’s license & a car. My prostate was completely blocked & I was home alone. All day I kept running to the bathroom but couldn’t pee. At times it felt like somebody was cutting my penis with an exacto knife and I was rolling on the floor in excruciating pain. When Ryan came home from school, I asked him if he’d take me to the hospital but he said that he was busy and couldn’t. Several hours later when Jeri walked in the front door and saw me, she instantly took me to the hospital. The nurses and the doctors in the Emergency room were all shocked at how much piss had backed-up in my bladder. I felt like some sort of freak or something. Yep! That was my loving son whom I never let stay overnight in a hospital alone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Social Skills in the 21st Century

 

 

Full disclosure; some may dismiss my remarks as being those of just another old curmudgeon but that’s disingenuous. And even though I came of age in another era, I believe that the core of social skills remains the same even though they’re becoming rarer in these times. It gives me little pleasure & no comfort to note how different the “socializing” of today’s youth is from when I was a young man.

remember the argument against homeschooling i.e. they need to develop social skills???

 

First on my hit list of things that I believe are having a deleterious effect on the young people of today is the “smart phone.” Everywhere I go, I see young people & increasingly, middle-aged people with their eyes glued to their “smart phones.” It’s like they’re cult members or zombies addicted to this techno-drug. And it saddens me to see so many people not interacting with one another because of their obsession with their gadgets. Perhaps these portable entertainment centers will serve them well as the corporate cockroaches slowly poison & strangle our natural environment? When all the trees have been felled, all waterways have become so polluted that it’s no longer safe to swim in any of them, when our air is so toxic that the entire human population is forced to wear masks like in China’s industrial zones, watching video clips of the days when humanity was nurtured by the real deal will have to suffice?

 

One of my pet peeves is when I’ll be involved in a conversation with a young person & their smart phone rings and they simply answer their phone & engage in a conversation, sometimes at length, with their “friend,” and leave me sitting there with no apology. It says to me that my feelings & my time is insignificant and reveals how pernicious the grip on their attention their phone has become. This is the height of rudeness & inconsiderate behavior in my opinion. And when this occurs, I will often just get up and leave to the surprise & amazement of my young acquaintance. They have no idea of why I left and if you have to tell them why, what’s the point?

 

Continuing on, I am personally disappointed in myself for allowing myself to get sucked into the Facebook orbit & its near universal capture of the younger generation. My gut told me long before I ever succumbed to its temptation, this is a platform for teenage girls and I resisted joining it for several years. But, a cousin of mine told me that it was how I could connect with relatives I’ve never met—which by-the-way, never panned-out—and I soon became addicted to the political posts.

 

You see, I have become obsessed with politics over the past 30 years or better & have conservatively invested over 50,000 hours or more in reading, researching, & writing about politics. And with Facebook, I deluded myself into believing that I had a real platform from which to speak and be heard. I would get an encouraging sentence or two every now & then, just enough to keep me going and God knows how much time & energy I invested in writing lengthy responses, observations, etc. on political issues over the several years I was a Facebook zombie?

 

I’ve always been a bit slow—perhaps that’s why I was a good fit as a teaching assistant in the special education field—but after the introduction of the emoticons as a way for people to “communicate” their responses on complex social & political issues, I slowly became more & more disillusioned. I finally saw the light after several, self-imposed exiles from this “Social media” megalith and had to accept the reality that my absence didn’t mean shit to my 3,000 or better “friends.” A couple of months ago, I finally took the leap of faith to sanity and permanently deleted my Facebook account after saving my history. Who knows, there may be something worthwhile to write about there?

 

Okay, onward & upward my fellow freedom fighters! You may be tempted to write me off as just another one of those Alex Jones conspiratorial nut-jobs like Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan but bear with me if you will? I’m not claiming that this is an overt or covert conspiracy on the part of the government but in terms of the harmful effects of the “social media” & the technological gadgets absorbing more & more of our attention, it may as well be a conspiracy. And the irony of calling these devices “smart phones,” would be hilarious if not for the fact that they are seriously undermining our ability to communicate with one another because of their built-in superficiality & manipulative functions.

 

Look up Tristan Harris if you doubt what I’m saying? He was high up on the food chain so-to-speak, in the Google corporation & has laid it out very succinctly i.e. smart phones are like mini slot machines in our pockets that people are becoming addicted to like gamblers addicted to gambling.

Obviously, reading is becoming an artifact from the past. Just do a brief search of Americans’ reading habits & the sad statistics that reveal how few of us have actually read a single book in the past year. The visual i.e. video clips, movies, video games, etc. has become the overwhelmingly favored mode of “learning” and “entertainment.” And returning to the subject of “smart phones,” this reminds me of another aggravating thing about them i.e. I’ll be having a conversation with someone & if I ask them a question about a subject or person or etc. that they’re not familiar with, they’ll pull out their smart phone to look it up. I try to politely tell them that I’m not interested in what their computer has to say on the subject & that they’re not being graded by me on our conversation. Sadly, far too many people today seem to believe that if it’s on the Internet, it’s a fact. But I’m old enough to remember the acronym G.I.G.O. (Garbage In, Garbage Out) i.e. just because someone entered the data on the Internet doesn’t make it truth or a fact. We have allowed ourselves to become slaves to the machines we’ve created & people have all but lost completely, the ability to think critically or analytically for themselves. And how convenient this all is for the corporate cockroaches who only have one agenda i.e. sell us as much of their crap as they possibly can!

 

Furthermore, thanks in large part to the beloved Bill Clinton & his signing of NAFTA into law, manufacturing which used to be a major part of our economy, has mostly disappeared from America so the powers that be aren’t really worried about worker strikes, etc. So, where do they think we’re going to get the money to buy their crappy products? And with their polarization of the public so effectively done by Trump with his hateful xenophobic rhetoric, along with our increasing isolation thanks to our smart phones, the status quo is smugly kicking back in their executive suites with their feet up on the table laughing at our gullibility.

 

This onslaught against working class Americans in particular & the public in general really became pronounced when Reagan became president. Exhibit A, one of Reagan’s first acts after becoming president was to fire the air traffic controllers who were on strike, for life. This sent a clear message to corporate America i.e. it’s open season on unions. And when Reagan proclaimed that the 1980s were the “Me Decade,” it was again evident that he & the G.O.P. were all about greed & selfishness and their “philosophy” was that of Ayn Rand’s. Do I need to remind you of that minor hiccup we experienced in 2008 when the world’s economy imploded thanks to the greed of bankers, hedge fund managers, the credit agencies, lack of regulations & enforcement of the regulations that were on the books, etc.? Yeah, a universal collapse that cost tens of millions of people to lose their homes, their pensions, their health insurance, their jobs, their life savings & their self-respect. So now when people tell me that they’re not interested in politics, I say, so none of the things I just mentioned above matter to you?

 

In today’s America, I rarely hear we or us, it’s usually me or I. Consider the very name of one of the most popular tech gadgets, the “i-Phone.” And they also offer the iPad, the iTablet, and God knows how many other “I” products? Get what I’m saying? It’s all about normalizing the glorification of the individual & selfishness or self-centeredness. Still not convinced? Consider the fact that Apple through clever tax avoidance schemes & loopholes takes advantage of Ireland’s low corporate tax rate of 3% to avoid the 35% it’d have to pay if it were honest in America. Again, greed is good & the hell with the public’s general welfare. We, the U.S. taxpayers pay our taxes because we can’t afford expensive whores like the corporate lawyers Apple pays to keep their profits growing. Never mind the fact that our taxes pay for the roads, highways, bridges, airports, ports, police, fire depts., military, etc. that these corporations rely on to conduct their business operations here in the U.S. even though they claim their headquarters are the P.O. Box they have in the Cayman Islands, etc.

 

I could go on and on about corporate corruption but I’ll try to refrain from doing so here. The point is that selfishness, which used to be considered a negative trait, has now become almost glorified or at least accepted as perfectly normal. Referring back to Reagan’s reign of error & terror, homelessness in America got a big start when Reagan closed down most state mental hospitals.. And for many, they became homeless because of medical bills or their companies closing down. Again, it was the greed & heartlessness of the corporate CEOs of the companies they worked for.

 

Moreover, this isn’t a partisan issue, Clinton also signed the bill that repealed the Glass-Steagall Act which FDR signed into law. If you aren’t familiar with it, it forbid commercial banks to make risky, speculative loans with people’s savings. And this too was a significant factor in the U.S. economic crash & the ripple effects in the world economy as a whole. Greed is just as popular and common in the democratic party as it is in the republican party.

 

Where has our humanity, our compassion for our fellow human beings, our empathy for others’ suffering, humiliation, & degradation gone to? Will you only care when it happens to you or a loved one? By then it’ll be too late. United we stand and divided we fall and division is what the corporate cockroaches are all about i.e. the centuries old strategy of divide & conquer.

 

It’d be laughable if it weren’t so damn serious that these “social media” are the antithesis of helping us to become more social beings. But I know that you’re probably still skeptical of my thesis and perhaps you will simply dismiss me as an alarmist or conspiracy nut so here are a couple of guys, one who is considered the father of Virtual Reality & a veteran of Silicon Valley and the other who was a part of the original team at Facebook;

and

Admittedly, I should emulate my intellectual hero, Noam Chomsky & read the New York Times and several other notable newspapers but my disillusionment with them was so deep that I turned against them decades ago. I get my news from the alternative media (not alternate facts but honest, in depth reporting) like Democracy Now! And Ian Masters on Background Briefing. I bring this up because I too was allowing myself to be manipulated by many of the “news” posts on Facebook but after it was revealed that Facebook sold our data to companies like Cambridge Analytica which played a major role in the election of Trump, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me & directly led to my escape from Facebook forever. Sadly, most Americans get their news from Facebook & not even having a modicum of critical or analytical thinking skills (I was an educator for over 20 years) they are easily manipulated by deceitful propagandists like Steve Bannon & FOX “News.”

 

In a nutshell, “social media” has taken over the role of mainstream media in terms of training us to be fearful of our government, fearful of our bosses i.e. will they fire me for something I wrote or posted on Facebook, etc.? fearful of terrorists, fearful of Muslims, etc. etc. etc. As I touched on earlier, people using these social media don’t want to have intelligent, fair debates on the serious issues facing us. No, they want to express their fears, their prejudices, their hate. And most are too lazy to even read more than a sentence, let alone respond in a calm, reasoned manner.

 

Obviously not only the corporations but also the U.S. government’s surveillance agencies like the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the N.S.A. and etc. are all tapping into our social media accounts & building detailed files on all of us. If you don’t know this by now, you must’ve been living in one of those caves that Osama bin Laden supposedly hid-out in. And please excuse me for a brief visit to Alex Jones land but how convenient for the masters of the universe who have access to all our personal histories. As Snowden pointed out, it’s all about control. Some theorize that should you become a problem to the powers that be, all they have to do is bring up all your personal history & build a case against you from there should they want to silence you.

 

Okay, back to my thesis. The reality we (not the 1% born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouths) are faced with the fact that every last vestige of the “social safety net” that FDR established after the colossal harms done to us by the Robber Barons, is being slashed again & again & again. The Republicans have been very public about their opposition to the New Deal & have been doing everything in their power since it was established to totally eliminate every last vestige of it and have been largely successful in doing so. Trump is doing his best to help in their destruction & the simpletons who support him haven’t a clue.

 

Another aspect or result of our obsession with smart phones & social media is that they have become our shelter, the place we go to in search of solace & comfort. Have you ever noticed someone sitting alone in a café & how they attempt to escape their feeling of loneliness by bringing out their smart phone? This is yet another example of the closed, doom-loop system that is engulfing us.

 

We have Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter and a president who twitters like Tweedle-Dee & Tweedle-Dum rather than read a book on history or politics, etc. etc. etc. I can’t even keep up with all this nonsense nor do I care to. We’re so alone but we have convinced ourselves that we’re not really alone because we have thousands of “friends” on Facebook, etc. Artificial reality, alternate facts, alternate reality? Where does it all end if we don’t take a cold, hard, honest look at our lives and our values?

 

Consider if you will, the fact that the tax rate on the super wealthy was 91% under President Eisenhower’s term in office and today, it is under 14% and many of them have found loopholes so that they don’t even pay that. I bring this up to highlight the fact that there will never be enough personal wealth for them & therefore they keep finding ever more ways to take every last dime in our pockets. And because most Americans have been reduced to working two, three, four or more minimum wage jobs in their desperate attempts to avoid becoming homeless, one of the few remaining ways the wealthy can still profit from our desperation is by locking us up in their prisons for profit which have the additional benefit of forcing prisoners to work for private corporations like:

 

American Express Company, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan & Company, Allstate Insurance Company, GEICO, ExxonMobil Corporation, BP America, Johnson & Johnson, Sara Lee Corporation, Procter & Gamble, Sprint, AT&T, Verizon Communications, United Airlines, Wendy’s, McDonalds Corporation, Fruit of the Loom, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Quaker Oats and Microsoft.

 

And you thought the old chain-gang days where prisoners had to dig ditches, work for farmers, etc. were over? Yeah, welcome to America, the land where the rich are above the law & the free market is a bed-time story for the ignorant masses. Yeah, some prisoners earn as much as $1.15 per day but then the phone company charges them outrageous rates for personal phone calls which pretty much nullifies that.

 

Continuing on, every which way we turn, it’s all about quantity, not quality. How much money we make, how many friends we have, how expensive our clothes, our cars, our food, etc. is. How much time we saved on our drive to work. How fast our communications are not the quality of that communication just the speed. As a society, America is among the dumbest in the so-called “developed world.” Consider who’s representing us in the oval office. Every time he speaks, I feel nauseous or like someone is scratching a blackboard with their fingernails.

 

The vast Midwest has become a series of ghost towns because they were usually one company towns & when their CEOs realized they could make a lot more profit by shutting down and moving to countries where people are so desperately poor that they’ll work for a couple of dollars per day, they abandoned their loyal employees in the blink of an eye. And cities like New York & L.A. have become too expensive for the vast majority of us to live in. Mind you, I have nothing against someone who works hard & becomes rich except when they do so by lying, cheating, stealing & in general destroying people’s lives in order to become obscenely wealthy.

In conclusion, I’ve spent my life informing myself. I’ve been an avid reader since I was in the first grade & for the past 30 years or better, I guesstimate that I’ve spent at least 50,000 hours reading books on history, politics, philosophy, etc. and making copious notes in many of the books in my extensive library. I’ve watched countless documentaries, listened to political & social speakers, written hundreds of essays & over 4,000 pages on two major books I’m writing, etc. etc. etc. but I have nowhere to turn to for social interaction.

 

In fact, this reminds me of an amusing anecdote. As I mentioned earlier, I have been corresponding with Chomsky for the past 13 years, well in one of our exchanges, I complained about the social taboo against speaking about politics in bars & Noam wasn’t aware of it. Yeah, that caused me to chuckle but it depresses the hell out of me because the few times I have gotten away with talking about politics in bars, I saw people’s eyes light up & they became very animated and really enjoyed the conversation. Some have even said that it was the best conversation they’d had in years. Is it merely another “coincidence” that we’re not allowed to talk about politics in bars? Think about it, how convenient for the powers that be i.e. if the working class can’t share their thoughts on how they’re being screwed, it makes it easier to control them? Where else in our society can people gather & freely exchange their ideas, thoughts, worries, etc.?

 

But like babies in their cribs with those colorful mobiles with animals & sparkly objects to draw their attention, we have our smart phones to distract us from our troubles. And our cribs have invisible bars that surround us. I still keep spitting in the wind so-to-speak by posting new essays on my blog that no one reads or comments on. And just before I hit the publish button, I am told again & again that my writing is too difficult, that I should write simpler sentences and should write on trendy topics. Fuck that! Our collective apathy & intellectual laziness will be our downfall and we may very well end-up living in a version of Mad Max’s world. As for me, I escaped from L.A. with my wife & son over 25 years ago. We moved to Portland, Oregon and it was a great new life for a while but my wife & I drifted apart and she passed away five years ago now. So, I move up and down the coast in my RV staying for six months or so in one little coastal town after another but I may as well be living alone on a deserted island for all the social interaction I get. Paradise isn’t so pretty when you have no one to share it with & no one to talk to!

 

—Rob DeLoss, St. Patrick’s Day 2019 in Trinidad, California

 

P.S.  My wife always took the time to read my work and give me constructive feedback even though she was always swamped with paperwork because she was a Special Education teacher. And even though we were divorced, I never refer to her as my ex-wife because there was nothing “ex” about her. She was truly my best friend and we never stopped caring about each other.

 

 

Trump, the Malignant, Mendacious, Moronic, Malicious, Malevolent, Miscreant, Misanthrope, & Megalomaniac!

 

 

 

I used to get tired of hearing people say, “They all lie and they’re all crooks,” and felt it was a cop-out for people who couldn’t be bothered to get involved. But as I get older & have been paying close attention to politics for well over 30 years now, I have to admit that I see their point. Yet Donald Trump is a world apart from your ordinary lying president.

the inner Trump in physical form

Depending on how you choose to look at it, he is either an Olympian liar or he’s from the lowest or worst circle of Dante’s “Inferno,” i.e. Treachery. And he definitely personifies the other eight circles of Hell (lust, gluttony, greed, anger, violence, fraud) & many more of humanity’s worst attributes.

You don’t need to be religious to see this vile creature as evil personified

 

It’s almost too fantastic to believe that in a single human being, all that is vile & despicable could exist? Yet we witness his loathsome, sickening, & despicable words and actions daily. If he were just a private citizen, we wouldn’t need to be concerned but this babbling baboon could totally wreck our economy & start a nuclear exchange due to his mind-boggling ignorance & incompetence and his schoolyard temper tantrums.

he told us he was the greatest but not that he was the greatest threat to humanity

 

Let’s start with his malignancy. The word “malignant” is most often used in relation to cancer & signifies a tendency for the tumor or the cancer to progressively get worse & lead to death. Clearly Trump is a cancer on America & by extension, the World. His rhetoric of fear & hate is spreading around the globe & emboldening dictators to follow suit.

as one of Trump’s role models, Mussolini said; “Fascism should more rightly be called “Corporatism” because it’s a marriage of the state & corporate power

 

To get a deeper understanding of Trump’s malignant nature, one only has to briefly survey the signs of a malignant narcissist which Trump displays for all the world to see.

 

  1. A sense of entitlement: the way he struts around the world stage with his head held high & that Mussolini smug mug like he’s king of the world. Daddy Fred Trump obviously instilled in him a sense of superiority to black people, poor people, etc. And Trump’s lies regarding his being a “self-made man,” are being revealed more & more i.e. he claimed that his papa only loaned him a million dollars when in fact, daddy gave him over $420 million. But Donny helped daddy too, he set up phony corporations so daddy & mommy could hide the bulk of their fortune & not pay taxes on it.

    twin sons of different mothers
  2. A lack of conscience & empathy: the first example that comes to mind is his mocking of a physically-challenged person in one of his rallies as a presidential candidate, his disrespect of the Gold-Star family who lost their son in Iraq—while Donny’s daddy paid a doctor to say that Donny had bone-spurs so he couldn’t go in the military & possibly be sent to Vietnam, & his disrespect towards John McCain who was a prisoner of war for over five years.

    Yep! Another example of that “compassionate conservatism”
  3. A sadistic streak: there are many reports of Donny being a schoolyard bully & his personal and vicious attacks against anyone who dares to criticize or disagree with him is evident in his daily barrage of rants on Twitter. Moreover, consider his repeated calls to his Duck Dynasty Klan followers at his rallies to rough up the journalists or anyone who dares to raise their voice in protest.
  4. Egocentrism: Do I really need to provide examples here? Well, just in case any of you, my imaginary readers, have been on the Moon or some other planet for the past couple of years; Donald Duck never tires of singing his own praises i.e. he’s the best, the smartest, knows more than anyone else about any subject you bring up when he’s within earshot. Here’s an amusing video clip to corroborate just in case you still have doubts?
  5. Grandiosity: well again you would’ve had to be living under a rock for the past 40 years or better to not know that Donny truly believes he’s some sort of modern embodiment of King Louis the XIV of France & every one of the buildings with his name on them (though that’s all) must be Palaces of Versailles.
    Clearly just another Joe that his Duck Dynasty Klan members can relate to in his gold-plated bubble

    Personally, I feel that his taste in decorating is more in line with the Hispanic low-riders in L.A. who are fond of velvet paintings of Jesus, cheap, plush red velour, & dingle-balls hanging from the interior roofs of their cars. But like good old king Louie, Trump believes in the Divine Rights of Kings & since he inherited his divinity from Daddy Trump, he deserves respect & absolute loyalty. And here’s another tidbit for you, his daughter, Ivanka, who he seems to have an abnormal affection for, has the middle name of Marie & she and Marie Antoinette have a remarkably similar character i.e. “Let them eat cake.” Well take heart my friends because Marie & her hubby, Louis the XVI, lost their heads in the French Revolution (pun intended).

  6. Paranoia: Have you noticed how frequently Donny whines to his Jim Jones’ Kool-Aid drinking fans that he’s the victim of a witch-hunt, a democratic conspiracy, the deep-state, etc. etc. etc.? Could it be that he has a guilty conscience? No, silly me, he clearly doesn’t have a conscience any more than Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc. It’s probably just the realization that he’s committed so many crimes over the decades that he knows the law or public opinion is eventually going to find him out & he’s going to pay big-time.
  7. A Manipulative Nature: Duh! Donny’s very essence just screams Used Car Salesman, Snake-oil salesman, con man, hustler, grifter, etc. etc. etc. He successfully manipulates people with his 24/7 bragging about his phony accomplishments, his threats, his lies, his fear & hate mongering, etc.

    and oh so many willing suckers, what does that tell you about the intelligence of a third of our nation’s citizens?
  8. Projection (they project their bad behaviors onto others) I call this trying to turn the tables on their critics & an intellectual cop-out because they don’t have to bother to logically refute their critic, they simply accuse them of doing what they themselves are doing.

    Clear example of “projection” i.e. Trump calls the media “fake news” when in fact, he speaks nothing but lies–5,000 to date

 

In conclusion, I could go on ad nauseam & ad infinitum about this most despicable of persons let alone our president but I realize that you most likely already agree with me or if you don’t, you’ve probably stopped reading once you read the title of this essay.

for those with a “short” attention span

I’m an old fart, technologically-challenged, & definitely not a participant in the “social media” scene. Therefore, I doubt if many people will come across this essay. I have been writing like this for over three decades & have received a handful of positive feedback from a handful of readers but one of my readers of a recent essay that I wrote was Noam Chomsky. And that simple fact & his brief response has made it all worthwhile. I will leave you with one last morsel to chew on;

Not Interested in Politics?

 

 

 

      For most of my adult life, I have heard ad nauseam whenever the subject of politics came up, “I’m not interested in politics,” or “I don’t care about politics.” And I must confess that up until Ronald Reagan became president, I too, didn’t care about politics. As the featured image above reflects, this could be our future if we don’t stop entertaining ourselves to death. Trump & the other dictators around the world only succeed when their citizens sit silently by. “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” (Thomas Jefferson)

 

Perhaps my trips to Europe had something to do with my awakening, and the fact that, as a college counselor pointed out, most students don’t get serious about college until they’re around 27 or 28 years old? This meeting with the college counselor was amusing because I’d been attending community colleges for several years and all of a sudden, they figured I needed counseling? The counselor asked my age & I told him that I was 27. He then said “yeah, we’ve found that our best students are usually about 27 or 28 because by the time they have reached this age, they have had several dead-end jobs & realize that they’d better get serious about getting a good education if they want a shot at a good career.

 

I had been to Europe three times when Reagan first took office. And one of the things that struck me on my visits to Europe was the fact that it was very common for people—young and old—to have long, heated debates on politics. My friends in L.A., and just about everyone I met in my travels up and down the West coast of America, usually only talked about money, cars, sports, & women. In fact, there is somewhat of a social taboo regarding discussing religion & politics in taverns in America. Isn’t this strange in a country that is quick to boast about our freedom of speech? Could it be that just underneath this thin, veneer of friendliness & civility that we like to portray, is an ugly and ignorant cauldron of intolerance, hatred, & racism amongst other things?

 

To return to why I became interested in politics upon Reagan’s presidency, he said & initiated so many spooky things that it’s hard to select just one but here’s an example. My wife and I were on our honeymoon in Paris & a reporter, who identified himself as the “Dan Rather of Czechoslovakia,” & his cameraman approached us & asked our opinion on Reagan’s recent speech regarding the possibility of fighting a “limited nuclear war” in Europe.

Reagan, George “Dubya,” & Trump (Dumb, Dumber, & Dumbest)

I said that Reagan scares the hell out of me & I think he’s a moron! The reporter thanked me and said that he was somewhat relieved because the American couple he had interviewed just before us, had said that they thought fighting a limited nuclear war in Europe was a fine idea. The ignorance in America is truly frightening, and especially so when you consider that we are the most powerful nation on earth. And I never realized just how truly ignorant we are, as a whole, until I started visiting Europe & getting a much wider perspective of my country.

Trump’s ignorance & childish behavior is a very real threat to humanity

 

Furthermore, I can remember my feeling of embarrassment when I met my friend, Ruedi, who is a Swiss citizen, and after spending a week hanging out with him, realized that he knew more about American history, literature, politics, philosophy, etc., than I did! And amongst my friends in L.A., I was considered to be pretty intelligent. Yeah, right! Well, since those days, and with Ruedi serving as my inspiration & unofficial mentor, I have become obsessed with politics & read hundreds of books, essays, newspaper stories, magazine articles, etc., on the subject. And recently this insight came to me regarding the typical, apathetic “I’m not interested in politics” or “There’s nothing we can do.”

 

One of the simplest definitions of politics is that it’s about the study of power i.e. how to get it & how to keep it. And of course, the gaining & maintaining of power is to a large extent about economics or wealth. In fact, I heard somewhere that politics & economics used to be taught as one and the same subject in universities but somewhere along the line, it was divided into two separate subjects. That brings up some interesting questions but that’s for another time & essay. So, politics is about power & wealth. It’s not mere coincidence that the majority of politicians are lawyers. They are lawyers because they know that those who run the legal system i.e. the law game, gain access to the reins of power because they have people’s lives in their hands & when people are facing prison time, they’ll pay almost anything to stay out of jail. And as lawyers, they can worm their ways up to becoming judges & politicians who interpret & write the laws which affect not only the ordinary citizens but also the corporations. Naturally, the corporations pay handsomely to have the laws written & interpreted in ways that are favorable to them.

 

People who say they aren’t interested in politics, speak & act like politics is something that is outside their lives, something vague or abstract, and something which they have absolutely no control, no influence, & no stake in. And they couldn’t be more wrong! To say they aren’t interested in politics is tantamount to saying they don’t care whether their pension plan is stolen by their corporation’s executives. It’s to say that they don’t care if their health insurance is taken away by politicians or greedy, corporate officers. It’s to say that they don’t mind if their homes are foreclosed on. It’s to say that it wouldn’t bother them if Social Security was privatized & opened up to the stock market sharks & frauds. It’s to say that the fact that their children have received a pathetic, public education is of no consequence to them. It’s to say that the fact that corporations are given tax breaks for closing their plants here in America & going overseas & that they may lose their jobs is no big deal!

 

Moreover, because politics is about power and those who wield it, to say you don’t care about politics is akin to saying that you don’t care who has power over you. Therefore, by this logic, it wouldn’t matter if Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, etc., were our leader. If so, then why are we fighting in Iraq? Wasn’t one of Bush’s justifications for our invasion, the removal of a terrible tyrant? By the way, this was a total sham because we are supporting dozens of bloody dictators around the globe and have done so for decades.

 

In conclusion, and I know this is going to sound very harsh but it is long past the time for politeness because we, and the rest of the world, are in very serious danger & we need to be honest with ourselves and stop letting the bastards get away with their murderous deeds!

Robert De Niro telling Trump what I & the other two-thirds of America feel about Trump

To say you are helpless, don’t care, or aren’t interested in politics in this terrible time is in effect saying that you don’t care if your son, your daughter, your father, your mother, your brother, or your sister are maimed or killed in a war that was initiated by a pack of liars in order to enrich themselves & their cronies. And if you look close enough, you’ll see that the war isn’t only in Iraq, no, the power elite are waging a war on us right here in America. The Patriot Act & Homeland Security are the legal disguises they are using. Our Bill of Rights has been shredded. We are in effect becoming prisoners in a police state called Fortress America! Go ahead, write me off as just another nut case. But you can’t say that you haven’t been warned. Check it out for yourself. Or are you too afraid? Or are you simply too lazy? We still have a chance to turn things around but time is running out. United we stand and divided we fall!

Only the willfully blind could fail to see that Trump’s swamp is overflowing with felons & frauds 

 

—Rob DeLoss, May 11, 2007

The Truly Pornographic

this is the truly pornographic i.e. the continuous death of war & for what?

 

The other day, my ex-wife got upset at some photos I had printed of some nude women. I believe these photos are excellent examples of natural beauty & are every bit as lovely as Michelangelo’s “David,” Botticelli’s “Venus on a Half Shell,” the Mona Lisa, etc. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder & so is “pornography.” The true pornography is the pornography of violence that America reveres & is awash in.

I have never bought a Penthouse magazine or Hustler, etc. because to me, they are tasteless. I have bought many copies of Playboy over the years. But what occurred to me after my ex-wife got upset & felt so offended was that the true pornography is the pornography of power & the pornography of ignorance that allows or turns a blind eye to so much of the pain, suffering, degradation, & death all around us.

Trump & his “Christian” base don’t give a damn about these innocent victims of their wars for the corporate cockroaches

 

First off, what I mean by the pornography of power is the obscene levels of power that we have allowed our government & transnational corporations to acquire. Time and time again they have in effect, spit in our faces. The American public in poll after poll, voted against the bailout of Wall Street but the government went ahead & bailed them out. They tell us they don’t have the money to provide health care for all of us but they keep funding these wars in Iraq & Afghanistan to the tune of a billion dollars a week.

Of course, the “other’s” suffering & death never counts when it comes to America’s “good intentions”

Our public school system has been steadily crumbling for decades & they tell us there isn’t enough money yet the weapons manufacturers & the private mercenary corporations like Blackwater are flourishing. Our infrastructure is disintegrating

Obama’s stunt in Flint revealed his betrayal & sell-out to the powers that be

while the president of vice, Dick Cheney’s corporation, Halliburton is making record profits supposedly rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure, which we destroyed.

U.S. sent 363 tons of shrink-wrapped cash to Iraq & $9 billion goes missing, but, oh well?

 

These are but a few of the many truly pornographic or obscene acts that are going on & I wish my ex-wife and all Americans were even a fraction as outraged at these acts as those “Christian” fundamentalists are at abortion & gay marriage. It’s the pornography of ignorance that has allowed things to go so wrong for so long in this land of “freedom,” “equality,” & “democracy.” And the corporate media & the purposeful “dumbing down” of our children have deliberately spread this pornography of ignorance in our public educational system. The standards of academic or intellectual excellence have been watered down steadily over the past decades & as a result, many high school graduates aren’t even equipped to handle a minimum wage job. The paramount skills of critical & analytical thinking are taught in only a few, isolated school systems. An uninformed & unable to think clearly & rationally citizenry is easy to fool and easy to ignore.

And in Trump-land, being stupid is worn as a badge of honor

No, I’m not a ‘conspiracy nut,’ the elite have publicly declared their goals time and time again. Look up President Wilson’s statement regarding public education for a prime example of their contempt for us.

 

To continue, we’ve become so disengaged or psychically numbed that we don’t have sympathy or compassion for the soldiers returning from the horrors of the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan. I don’t see those outraged fanatics screaming that abortion is murder, scream about the suffering & humiliation of the homeless. Many if not most of the homeless are veterans of the Vietnam War, the Gulf war, & now the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan. Bumper stickers proclaim “Support Our Troops,” but this is the same shallow or simplistic jingoism as those bumper stickers commanding “America, Love It or Leave It.” If we truly supported our troops, we would house them & we would give them the best medical & psychological care available immediately. I just watched a panel of “Winter Soldiers” testify before members of Congress about the horrors of war they’d experienced in Iraq & Afghanistan and several told how they & many of their comrades turned to alcohol & drugs to escape the pain of what they’d seen & done in war and when they seek help, they are ridiculed, told they’re faking it, & put on waiting lists for up to a year or longer. Some tried to commit suicide & some succeeded.

This is the ugly truth behind the corporate cockroaches’ agenda of perpetual war

 

This is the true pornography and obscenity. The politicians & the military commanders turn these young, idealistic people into killers & then tell them they’re phonies or weaklings and turn their backs on them. Our soldiers are trained to dehumanize the “enemy,” in order to make the killing of the “enemy” easier to live with psychologically yet when they return to America, they are also dehumanized by the very people that told them it was their patriotic duty to go to war & defend America and her values. My family & “friends” have long told me that I’m “too sensitive,” and it has been both a blessing & a curse because I empathize with all the downtrodden of the world e.g. the working class who break their backs for a lifetime & live in a constant state of dread, despair, & pain; the scared immigrants who risk their lives to get here only to be treated like sub-humans & to be exploited by the wealthy;

Could it be that Trump & Co. doesn’t need cheap immigrant labor anymore when we have our prisoners to do the work? see A.L.E.C.

the people of countries that our military has invaded & bombed and killed & maimed their loved ones in the name of democracy & freedom. The corporate cockroaches & their lackeys in the government have duped us all.

 

To sum up, we should all be so outraged that we take to the streets en masse & bring business as usual to a complete standstill because it’s not until the greedy swine holding the reins of power, feel it in their bank accounts, will we begin to reclaim our dignity & honor as a people.

We need to find that spirit we had in the 1960s when we cared about one another

I’m not a religious person but when I see the picture of or an actual lovely nude woman, I feel she is a beautiful reminder of God’s handiwork just as much as those majestic Redwoods or the waves crashing on the Pacific coast. No my friend, the true pornography is that which degrades us as human beings & makes some of us do obscene things because the pain has killed that most precious gift, the human spirit!

Does this offend you more than the little Vietnamese girl burned by U.S. napalm? If so, you should look into your soul.

 

If we persist in our apathy & ignorance, this may come about sooner than we think, especially under Trump!

—Rob DeLoss, November 28, 2008

Willful Ignorance is a Cancer on America

Reminds me of Dick Cheney & his smug arrogance but Trump is a moron!

In a recent essay by Henry Giroux, “Resisting the Weaponization of Ignorance in the Age of Trump,” he starts with; “Ignorance now rules the U.S. Not the simple, if somewhat innocent ignorance that comes from an absence of knowledge, but a malicious ignorance forged in the arrogance of refusing to think hard about an issue.” I wrote this essay originally back in 2013 but wanted to insert this quote by Giroux because it is so right on the mark in this nightmare world with someone as astoundingly stupid as Trump in the oval office. And what’s worse is having to see that smug look on Trump’s face every time I watch the news or that nauseous smirk on his mug which radiates contempt. I believe he’s so self-satisfied because he knows the depth & breadth of the crimes & fraud he’s committed throughout his years. If there were a prize handed out for the most willfully ignorant person in America, Trump would win it hands-down, & willful ignorance is allowing Trump to destroy America!

“Christian” fundamentalists & White Supremacists

 

Preface: before I begin I want to state that my aim is to be briefer than usual because I know that most people aren’t willing to take the time to read anything “too lengthy.” Moreover, many on-line sites that allow you to post your writing, censor how long an article/essay can be. So, don’t criticize me if some of my points aren’t as clear as perhaps you’d like them to be. In fact, I was tempted to just make this a bullet-point list but upon reflection I realized that I must do more to “connect the dots.”

 

My simple definition of “willful ignorance” is that a person purposely blocks out new information, knowledge, or wisdom because it is basically too threatening to their belief structures. And by contrast, “innocent ignorance” simply means that a person doesn’t know something through no fault of their own, they simply have never been exposed to the new information. My thesis is that a pervasive willful ignorance is killing America and I am very concerned not just because I fear about America’s survival but also because America is such a major player in this global game of Monopoly, the survival of our planet is at stake!

an “option” for not having to go to prison for the rest of his life?

The recent revelations regarding our Justice department’s spying on Associated Press reporters motivated me to write this essay. And the general sense of apathy among the general public regarding our government spying on us so blatantly ever since 9/11 truly saddens me. When I bring this issue up to people I know or have recently met, the usual response is “Oh well, I have nothing to worry about because I’m not doing anything wrong!”

Yeah, like what you don’t know about Trump won’t hurt you either

This is mind-boggling to me & I ask myself “Then why have our soldiers died or been maimed in this perpetual state of war we’ve been in my whole life?” The constant refrain I hear is “Support Our Soldiers because they are fighting for our freedom, Democracy, etc.” How can this be when our freedoms, democracy, etc. is being seriously undermined & eliminated altogether here in America?

has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other presidents combined

 

Case in point; President Obama has prosecuted more “Whistleblowers” than All the presidents who preceded his administration. Like so many other terms or words, the word “whistleblower” has been twisted to the point that it is now almost completely understood as a negative thing. This is truly Orwellian because “whistleblowers” are the true patriots & are doing us a great service by warning us of illegal & immoral actions on the part of our government & the corporate cockroach elite.

 

Some of you may not be familiar with I.F. Stone, George Seldes, Edward R. Murrow, or Robert Scheer but these men were/are amongst a relatively small handful of our greatest whistleblowers & often labeled as “Muckrakers.” Another derisive term implying they just stirred up trouble & threw mud at political officials, corporate Robber Barons, etc. because they were jealous, mean-spirited, unpatriotic, etc. etc. etc.

and he absolutely idolized Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan/Chase the largest of the four most powerful banks in the U.S.

This is another example of willful ignorance and absolutely wrong. These men and women were the most patriotic and courageous people this country has produced because they dared to stand up on their hind-legs and blow the whistle on the thieves in high places by stating publicly how politicians & businessmen were breaking our laws as a nation & the higher laws to which humans are responsible for—the laws of humanity commonly known as ethics!

the only guy who could lose money owning casinos & now he gets to bankrupt the U.S. Treasury?

 

Today’s America is but a dim shadow of those golden ideals & principles that we were told we believed in & practiced as a nation as we went through public school. Most Americans are now either afraid to speak up or are too apathetic & as long as they have their inane television sit-coms, soap operas, sports, & “reality” shows, don’t give a shit! Willful ignorance is now held up as the way to be & well-meaning friends admonish me to not fight the system, it’s futile. I have been fighting this apathy & willful ignorance all my life and it’s been a lonely journey. For example, several years ago when my son was still in high school, his mother & her brother started saying they believed that it would be a good thing for my son to join the military. This scared the Hell out of me because I was in the U.S. Army and came close to being sent to Vietnam & knew after 30 years of serious searching for facts, knowledge, truth, & wisdom the lies, the needless slaughter of Vietnamese innocents, the death of over 55,000 American soldiers, etc. how wrong & how dangerous a game they were playing with my son’s life! (I know that my wife was innocently ignorant on this subject though)

 

So, I sat down at the kitchen table & wrote for two days, (see my post; The Politics of Patriotism https://cockroachconspiracy.com/the-politics-of-patriotism/ )every reason I could think of as to why my son, or any young person should not join the military. And to this day, I haven’t been able to persuade my son to read this outpouring of my soul in an attempt to save his life. Thankfully he didn’t join the military but I still feel the pain & suffering of all those poor, young people who have joined the military and had their souls crushed.

 

Continuing on, this isn’t a self-pity party but merely to substantiate my argument regarding America’s general sense of apathy & willful ignorance. I have been mocked & dismissed for most of my adult life because I am almost always in the minority regarding these issues & people take comfort & believe they must be right because they are in the majority when arguments arise about these topics. If we had more courageous journalists like those I mentioned earlier, then perhaps we could have averted invading Iraq and all the horrible aftermath of that war of choice?

 

Furthermore, I contend that because of our general sense of apathy and our willful ignorance, the powers that be have been, are, & will continue to erode & destroy America as a nation. And lest you think me an alarmist, conspiracy nut, or whatever, I challenge you to do a little research for yourself starting with the late, great Gore Vidal and his book “Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace.” In this simple little book, Vidal lists the over 200 military incursions or whatever you care to refer to them as, since 1945. Here is a blurb relevant to this point:

 

In all, the United States has only made 11 separate formal declarations of war against foreign nations encompassing 5 wars.

  1. War with Great Britain 1812 (Act of June 18, 1812, House 79-49; Senate 19-13)
  2. War with Mexico 1846 (Act of May 13, 1846, House 174-14; Senate 40-2)
  3. War with Spain 1898 (Act of April 25, 1898, House & Senate voice votes)
  4. War with Germany 1917 (Act of April 6, 1917, House 373-50; Senate 82-6)
  5. War with Austria-Hungary 1917 (Act of December 7, 1917, House 365-1; Senate 74-0))
  6. War with Japan 1941 (Act of December 8, 1941, House 388-1; Senate 82-0)
  7. War with Germany 1941 (Act of December 11, 1941, House 393-0; Senate 88-0)
  8. War with Italy 1941 (Act of December 11, 1941, House 399-0; Senate 90-0)
  9. War with Bulgaria 1942 (Act of June 5, 1942, House 357-0; Senate 73-0)
  10. War with Hungary 1942 (Act of June 5, 1942, House 360-0; Senate 73-0)
  11. War with Rumania 1942 (Act of June 5, 1942, House 361-0; Senate 73-0)9

Since 1942, of course the United States has not led the world in a seventy-years’ peace. Despite Roosevelt’s relative ease in obtaining six formal declarations of war, since World War Two Americans have been drawn time and time again into war without a congressional declaration. Gore Vidal commented:

“Since V-J Day 1945 (‘Victory over Japan’ and the end of World War II), we have been engaged in what the historian Charles A. Beard called ‘perpetual war for perpetual peace.’ I have occasionally referred to our ‘enemy of the month club’: each month we are confronted by a new horrendous enemy at whom we must strike before he destroys us.”

Vidal goes on to list several hundred wars and operations conducted against Communism, terrorism, drugs, or as he puts it, “sometimes nothing much” that occurred between Pearl Harbor and September 11, 2001.  Based on casualties alone the costliest conflicts following the last official declaration of war include the Korean War with 33,686, the Vietnam War with 47,424, Iraq War with 3,542 and Afghanistan at greater than 2,000.  http://inconvenienthistory.com/archive/2013/volume_5/number_1/war_is_declared.php 

 

 

And with the latest brainstorm on the part of the Pentagon & the politicians, we now “embed” our journalists in military units so they can “report” the facts of war protected by the units they are embedded with. Is it just me or does anyone else see the dangers inherent in this new version of war coverage by journalists? This is a very clever tactic designed to keep an even tighter leash on journalists by making them dependent on soldiers for their very lives, journalists will naturally be a lot more reluctant to report on abuses, crimes, etc. committed by the soldiers they are embedded with. And as a result, we, the American public will be left even more in the dark regarding the truth about the wars, police actions, incursions, etc. that we are continually involved in around the globe.

” We learned that the United States has approximately 800 formal military bases in 80 countries, a number that could exceed 1,000 if you count troops stationed at embassies and missions and so-called “lily-pond” bases, with some 138,000 soldiers stationed around the globe. David Vine, author of Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Overseas Harm America and the World,” https://www.thenation.com/article/the-us-has-military-bases-in-172-countries-all-of-them-m

 

One of the most pernicious myths about the Vietnam war is that it was the “liberal media” which caused us to lose that war because they were broadcasting all those horrible images of war back to our homes and as families sat around the T.V. and watched those images day in and day out, Americans gradually began to turn against the war. The movie “The Killing Fields” showed how bogus this claim was because it revealed the fact that most of the journalists covering the Vietnam war would wait until after a battle and the military had brought them to the battle scene after it had been “cleaned-up” and take their pictures & accept the military commanders’ version of what happened and dutifully transcribe it for their newspapers. Noam Chomsky clearly proved the falsity of these claims and the myths regarding the liberal opposition to the Vietnam war, etc. And again, because i don’t have the space to go into great depth, you’ll have to check out the truth of what I claim for yourself.

 

The myth or “truism” that there is a “liberal media bias” in America is just that, a myth. And it has been mostly been thanks to FOX News and the “mainstream” or corporate media which have vested interests in maintaining the status quo in America. It’s very well known that FOX News, especially during the Gulf war and the Iraq war, took their daily “talking points” directly from the White House so as to keep all their talking heads on the same page and hammering the same pack of lies day in and day out. And this brings me to an extremely important point e.g. just because a newscaster, a politician, or anyone keeps on repeating something it’s not necessarily true or a fact. I have gone around and round with people, including my ex-wife, on this matter and in particular, far too many naive people don’t recognize the difference between opinion and objective fact. Facts can be backed up or substantiated and yes everyone has a right to their opinion but not all opinions are valid or perhaps I should say, equally valid. FOX News is the farthest thing from news because it is mostly opinionated, loud-mouth bullies who believe that if they scream loud enough to drown out their disagreeing guests, they’re right and the guest has been proven wrong. Moreover, even sticking to mere opinions, if one person in an argument is arguing about a subject they have formally studied for years & have earned a degree in the subject is arguing with someone else who has never even read a book on the subject, their opinions are not equally valid. One is arguing from knowledge & experience and the other is arguing from an emotional perspective or a set of beliefs. And this is not elitist but simply logical or scholarly and is the basis for most of human progress. I know that for a lot of people I have met over the course of my adult life, this point regarding the validity of arguments is a bitter or hard pill to swallow. It sounds very arrogant of me to make such statements but consider it from this point of view if you will; I have next to no knowledge when it comes to mechanical aptitude or matters and if I tried telling some guy who had 30 years of experience as a mechanic that he was definitely wrong about some mechanical problem I was having, it would be just as absurd for him to tell me I was off my nut about some political issue which I had spent 30 years of my life studying.

 

Naturally, the power elite or the 1% want to keep the general public as ignorant as possible because it’s much easier to control an ignorant populace than a well-informed one. Why do you think they cracked down so hard on the Occupy Wall St. movement? These protestors were constantly derided on FOX News as dirty, lazy, young kids who didn’t want to work, etc. They weren’t allowed to use microphones at their meetings, they weren’t allowed to even carry a backpack but at the Tea Party rallies, they were allowed to use microphones, they could even bring their guns, and they were covered by the corporate media because they were the dupes of FOX News and the so-called conservative Republican party. Free speech in America? Yeah, right. Only if you agree with the corporate cockroaches are you allowed to be heard.

 

I didn’t start listening to what was going on politically until Ronald Reagan became president because I grew up in L.A. and I’d seen what he’d done as governor of California. Reagan the “great communicator,” cracked-down on student protestors with a vengeance & probably would’ve like to have them all shot down like dogs.

If you were rich, you loved Reagan, if you were poor, you knew he was the enemy of the people

So, when he became president I got worried and ever since his presidency, there has been a steady & stealthy building of power on the side of the rich in America. They built a network of think tanks and hammered away at the American public with their rhetoric & propaganda telling the public ad nauseam that it was the government that was making their lives tough & it was the liberals, the students, the illegal immigrants, gays, in short, anyone who wasn’t rich was the problem.

Reagan’s firing of air traffic controllers for life signaled corporate America it’s open season on unions

 

And just as Hitler’s minister of propaganda, joseph Goebbels realized, the more you repeat a lie and the greater the lie, the more people will accept it as truth. The Right-wing extremists in America now have the microphone almost exclusively & when people like myself who have been paying attention, try to speak up, we are shouted down as communists, terrorists, etc. It’s gotten so bad e.g. we’ve become such a corporatocracy that the Democratic party which once stood for the working Americans has now almost completely gone over to the corporate controlled side.

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY WAS ONCE THE PARTY OF THE NEW DEAL and the ally of organized labor. But by the time of Bill Clinton’s presidency, it had become the enemy of New Deal programs like welfare and Social Security and the champion of free trade deals. What explains this apparent reversal?….According to Frank, popular explanations which blame corporate lobby groups and the growing power of money in politics are insufficient. Frank instead points to a decision by Democratic Party elites in the 1970s to marginalize labor unions and transform from the party of the working class to the party of the professional class.” http://inthesetimes.com/features/listen-liberal-thomas-frank-democratic-party-elites (In a nutshell my imaginary reader, this is why we’re so screwed today & have a supposed billionaire posing as a populist in the White House.)

 

I thought I was pretty savvy politically speaking but Obama even fooled me but only for a few weeks. After he was elected and appointed Bernanke, Summers, & Geithner to the top financial & economic positions in America, I knew I & America had been duped yet again. And if you still need convincing of this, as many “liberals” do, note Obama’s speech where he said he wasn’t interested in “looking back” in reference to calls for Bush, Cheney, et al being prosecuted for lying us into the Iraq war and wrecking the U.S. economy. Yet Obama is going after ‘Whistleblowers’ with a vengeance & he has prosecuted those who are trying to protect America more than all the other presidents did in total. Obama the Oreo as I call him (black on the outside, white on the inside) not only hasn’t given up any of the illegal expanded powers of the presidency that Georgie Bush stole, he has expanded the imperial presidency and he personally participates in a weekly meeting where he & his advisors act as judge, jurors, & executioners as they select people to assassinate around the world, even American citizens.

 

At the risk of being dismissed as just another “conspiracy nut,” I think all these racist attacks against Obama on FOX News may serve the financial elite’s hidden agenda because it keeps the yokels, both the innocently ignorant & the willfully ignorant occupied & focusing their anger on Obama rather than the truly heinous criminal class who are sucking the lifeblood out of America. We have witnessed the largest transfer of wealth from the poor, the working class, & the middle class to the obscenely wealthy in the top 1% of our population over the past 30 years or so. The traitors at the top have almost completely eliminated unions, have outsourced almost every manufacturing plant that used to be in America, have gained ever more tax breaks, have made our land, air, & water toxic, and are now focused on getting their bloody talons on Social Security & completely gutting Medicare & privatizing our public education system.

 

By keeping the ignorant public focused on guns & gays & abortion, they have emptied the federal treasury and bankrupted America & turned us into a Third World nation. And the horrific events of 9/11 were the perfect excuse for them to hide their sinister agenda behind. With the passage overnight with no Congressional review & very few even took the time to read it, of The Patriot Act and Homeland Security, they have almost completely eviscerated our Constitution & Bill of Rights. We more closely resemble Stalinist Russia than the America I was born into in the 1950s. We hear the talking heads on television, the political pundits, the politicians, the corporate crocodile C.E.O.s, the televangelist preachers, etc. constantly telling us how great America is and how proud we should be of our soldiers fighting in the steady stream of wars overseas for freedom & democracy right? So then why are so much less free here in America? We are truly living that book by George Orwell “1984” here in the United States in 2013.

 

Again, as Gore Vidal has pointed out, just about every month there is some new enemy of the month and we must again spend billions of dollars fighting this never-ending stream of villains. As they slash our programs that were supposed to act as a Social Safety Net such as Head Start, food stamps, welfare, health care, etc. they keep spending billions & trillions on weapons systems that often don’t work & kill our own soldiers. They lose pallets of money in Iraq. They pay warlords in Afghanistan hundreds of thousands of dollars month in, month out for the past decade, those same warlords who also control the poppy fields that produce the majority of the world’s heroin. Yeah, it must be nice to be stupid & not think about all these blatant contradictions & hypocrisies that are going on, but this is why you’re being fucked & losing everything but don’t strain your brain, and don’t be surprised when you join the millions of other homeless haunting the landscape.

We were forced to bail-out the Wall St. wolves and the Banks too big to fail as they stole our homes, our pensions, our health care, our self-respect & dignity but hey, let’s go beat up some gays, some illegals, some Occupy Wall St. protestors because they are the ones causing our pain.

 

If you want to be a “success” in America, it’s really simple, all you have to do is ignore your conscience & be as cutthroat, ruthless, cold-blooded as you can be. Look at Colin Powell who made it up the ranks to the highest position in the military services. He showed the powers that be that he was their boy back in the 1960s when he was sent to investigate the My Lai Massacre and returned a report saying nothing had happened or no wrongdoing had been done. If you’re tired of being ignorant about the Vietnam war, check out a book by Lt. Colonel David L. Hackworth called “About Face.” This guy was a true Audie Murphy and had been wounded more times than is almost believable. He fought in N. Korea, Vietnam, etc. and after a few years of serving in Vietnam, he couldn’t take the lies & the waste of human life anymore and started speaking out and finally resigned in disgust. And Lt. Colonel David L. Hackworth was the most decorated soldier of his time & created and commanded a unit he called ‘Tiger Force’ which used guerrilla warfare tactics to fight against the Vietnamese guerrillas.

 

Furthermore, we have the case of another highly respected officer who tried also to wake up our military commanders in the Pentagon & the political leadership as to the folly of our involvement in Vietnam:

 

John Paul Vann became an adviser to the Saigon regime in the early 1960s. He was an ardent critic of how the war was fought, both on the part of the Saigon regime, which he viewed as corrupt and incompetent, and, as time went by, increasingly, on the part of the U.S. military. In particular, he was critical of the U.S. military command, especially under William Westmoreland, and their inability to adapt to the fact that they were facing a popular guerrilla movement while backing a corrupt regime. He argued that many of the tactics employed (for example the strategic hamlet relocation) further alienated the population and thus were counterproductive to U.S. objectives. Often he was unable to influence the military command but used the Saigon press corps including Neil Sheehan, David Halberstam and Malcolm Browne to disseminate his views.

The volume begins with a prologue giving an account of Vann’s funeral on June 16, 1972, following his death in a helicopter accident in Vietnam. The author, Sheehan, a personal friend, was present. The subsequent account is divided into seven “books” detailing Vann’s career in Vietnam and America’s involvement in the conflict. Book I tell of Vann’s assignment to Vietnam in 1962. Book II “The Antecedents to a Confrontation” tells of the origin of the Vietnam War. Book III gives a detailed account of the shambolic Battle of Ap Bac on January 2, 1963 in which the South Vietnamese army suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Viet Cong. Book IV details Vann’s criticism of the way the war was being fought, his conflict with the U.S. military command and his transfer back to America. Book V tracks back to give Vann’s personal history before his involvement in the war. In the final chapters, Books VI and VII give an account of Vann’s return to Vietnam in 1965 and his doomed attempt to implement a war winning formula for the beleaguered U.S. army and how he eventually compromised with the military system he once criticized.

(A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam)

 

But of course, if you don’t mind sending your sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, fathers, or mothers to slaughter or being maimed for life in these wars to make the rich even richer then by all means enjoy your blissful ignorance! Moreover, we are kept in the dark about the epidemic of sexual assaults against not only women in the military services but of men as well. We are also ignorant of the fact that a good percentage of the homeless wandering our streets like ghosts on the landscape are veterans who were used, chewed-up and spit out on the street with little to no assistance by the government who had promised them the world to get them to enlist.

 

As for me, I will continue to speak out, to argue, to scream about the true betrayers of the American promise, the real traitors like the politicians, the top officers in the Pentagon, the corporate cockroaches, & the cowards who crow so brazenly on television. Against the wolves in sheep’s clothing claiming to be Christians as they preach hatred, fear, & call for the murder of those whom they don’t agree with. Against the Bush administration who “leaked” Valerie Plame’s identity but weren’t prosecuted by Obama, the Constitutional law professor. True Christians know that Jesus focused all his time & energy on taking care of the homeless, the sick & disabled, those shunned by society such as the prostitutes, etc. and that he detested the rich for their greed, oppression of the poor, & their apathy. And I know what the true agenda or the motives behind the prosecution of whistleblowers are, it’s to silence the true patriots who sound the alarm warning us, the willfully ignorant, that the power elite are killing America just as surely as an inoperable cancer but under the guise of National Security. But what they mean by National Security is the military/industrial/congressional complex that gives the overwhelming majority of our tax dollars to the already obscenely wealthy while impoverishing the rest of us, the 99% forced to work for slave wages & pay taxes or be imprisoned! I choose to inform myself and will fight to inform others but of course if you prefer to be willingly ignorant, there’s nothing to be done and I feel no sympathy for you as you wither & die!

—Rob DeLoss, Gearhart, Oregon, May 16, 2013

 

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin — more even than death…. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.”

—Bertrand Russell, winner of the Nobel Prize

 

 

 

           

 

           

           

           

 

           

 

 

The Business of America is Fraud!

a trio of the top insiders who crashed our economy in 2008

Watch the film; “Inside Job” by Charles Fergusson if you give a shit about fraud at the highest levels. The pic above shows (Hank Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury under Bush; Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve; Timothy Geithner, Secretary of the Treasury under Obama). Of course, we mustn’t forget Alan Greenspan, Larry Summers, etc. This film won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary & was narrated by Matt Damon. It is about “the systemic corruption of the U.S. by the Financial Services Industry.”

Yes indeed, the business of America is fraud and the higher up the food chain from small companies to megalithic corporations, the more prevalent fraud is & the less likely they will be held accountable for their crimes.

a world of corporate conglomerates & no more sovereign nations

 

I recently spent three months traveling around the state looking for a place to retire & a home to buy. I was looking for a small, used manufactured home, but unfortunately, they’re almost all in trailer park “communities.” And these “communities” like corporations, are private tyrannies as Chomsky has pointed out. I’m not being facetious, each of these “communities” has its own set of rules & regulations and a number of hurdles one must pass for entrance.

 

I was going to pay cash for the home and then have to pay “rent” for the privilege of living in this “community.” Rent usually includes water, sewer, & garbage and an incredible number of restrictions which, if violated, could get you evicted. Most of these “communities” won’t allow you to have a dog or a cat. The few that do allow pets, often tell you what size dog you can have, what breed of dog you can have, etc. And most of these “communities” won’t allow you to park your RV there but will allow you to park them there if you pay an additional fee. I won’t go into the absurd assorted other rules & regulations but it is truly mind-boggling.

 

I was told that my income must be at least three times the rent amount which was going to be $375 per month. I get Social Security and it is several hundred dollars more than this rent amount but because I have a “bad” credit rating, my application was denied. So, I paid $50 to be rejected by the petty tyrant owners of this “community.” The owners are a husband & wife and I dealt with the wife. She tried to persuade me to pay off the debtors who made claims against me which give me the “bad” credit rating. It was all I could do to refrain from screaming nasty epithets at her over the phone.

 

A few days before this rejection, I was in her office going over my application & the notebook full of rules & regulations. I mentioned that I write about politics & she asked whether I was liberal or conservative. I said I’m definitely liberal & she said they were conservative. I responded with yeah, most business owners are conservatives. I had also mentioned that I started collecting my Social Security early because I feared that the GOP would get their hands on it soon & had been trying to do so for decades. She argued that it was democrats who wanted to tax & spend.

Yep! It’s always those damn tax & spend democrats

This is the non-thinking mantra of the so-called “conservatives,” and they’ve been repeating it ad nauseam for decades as well. I was very tempted to ask her, well, tell me, who was it that started the war in Afghanistan which is the longest war America has ever been in & what have we accomplished there.

why we’ve been in perpetual war since WWII

I also wanted to mention that it was again the republicans who started the war based on a pack of lies, in Iraq and we, the taxpayers have been forced to pay a billion dollars a week for all these years to finance these wars but I knew that I should keep my mouth shut & not antagonize the boss so I kept my mouth shut.

and he’s going to reduce the $21 trillion dollar national deficit? Yeah, right!

 

A little later in this enlightening conversation, this petty tyrant informed me that people on food stamps & government assistance are lazy & dependent and don’t want to get off this assistance. Yep, once again it’s clear that those with all the money & privilege see the rest of us as the unwashed masses intent on stealing their hard-earned wealth. Although I was looking forward to settling down in this area because it’s only a few blocks to the ocean & a nice area in Newport, Oregon where I’ve tried several times in the past to get a foothold, it’s probably for the best that I was turned-down. I can only bite my tongue for so long and sooner or later, I probably would’ve told her just how stupid she is.

 

I use this personal experience to highlight the bigger picture of what’s happening all across America i.e. a return to debtor’s prison. Charles Dickens is revered by many scholars as being on an equal level, if not superior to, William Shakespeare. And I believe he has attained this degree of respect largely because of his vivid portrayals of the down & out in England at the onset of the Industrial Revolution. And this “revolution” has clearly run its course in America and the so-called “First World” nations & has now moved on to the “developing nations.”

King Trump’s economic plan for the 99%

 

Dickens’ own father was imprisoned in a debtor’s prison & this is why his son could write so powerfully about the degrading & devastating effects of this relatively modern phenomenon. I have also experienced the horrors of growing up poor in America because my mom basically raised four children by herself & worked two or three jobs for a good part of her life in her struggle to keep us out of the gutter. This is why I have spent the last 30 years or better teaching myself about politics, economics, history, etc. And this is why my writing is often passionate & full of anger.

and Trump fans just ask that he uses Vaseline before proceeding

 

Don’t worry my friend, I haven’t forgotten what this essay is supposed to be about i.e. fraud & private tyrannies. In our so-called “advanced” society, the corporate cockroaches have only refined their methods of oppressing us & keeping us under their thumbs. As I said, in today’s world & in America, the home of the free, if you want to rent an apartment or a house, etc. you must not only pass a credit check but also a criminal background check. Imagine if they required all politicians and CEOs of corporations to do likewise?

 

And not only does this apply when seeking a roof over your head, it is also becoming the standard when applying for a job & they often require that you pass a drug test as well. The 99% in the United States of America, you know, all us suckers & victims who are forced to pay the taxes that enrich the wealthy or face prison, are trapped in an ever-smaller vicious circle. This circle or cycle is like a noose around a prisoner’s neck that is slowly tightening around their throat & it’s a Catch-22 from which there is little to no way to escape.

 

If you’re part of the 1%, you got there because you’re either a sociopath or a psychopath. But, if you have any semblance of compassion or empathy, you realize that many, if not most of our most vulnerable citizens i.e. the homeless, the working poor, the shrinking middle class, etc. often turn to drugs & alcohol as a means of temporary escape and/or relief from this nightmare we’re engulfed in. I believe pot is the drug of choice for most of us & I believe it’s relatively harmless in the scheme of things. Unfortunately, pot stays in our systems far longer than the more harmful drugs like crack, meth, heroin, etc. I’m not excusing those who commit violent crimes against others but if we truly gave a damn about crime in terms of the devastating personal toll it has on us as individuals, as families, and as a society, we would lock-up most of the corporate CEOs in this country.

the true face of crime in America, the untouchable super bankers

 

Reflect on this if you will, try to name a single, major corporation that hasn’t been guilty of defrauding its customers/consumers at least once? Most of the corporate behemoths have been charged with fraud repeatedly yet they are still allowed to go on doing business as usual. And to rub salt in the wound, they don’t even have to admit guilt in a court of law. They are occasionally required to pay a small fine relative to the amount of profit they made from their fraudulent practices. Yet, if you or I write a “bad check,” because we’re down & out and are just trying to feed our family and we’re out of work, we’re sent to jail or today’s “debtor’s prison.”

The Land of Opportunity for Corporate Cockroaches

 

Speaking of prison, are you aware of how profitable cheap, prison labor has become in this land of the free? Moreover, Walmart which is touted as the largest & most profitable retail business in the world, uses mostly prison labor & a de facto slave labor force from China. I believe that most of us have become desensitized to the fact that advertising, like it’s cousin, public relations (P.R.), a powerful tool of the politicians & the business class, is the art of lying or fraud in all its malevolent glory.

the president who made a career out of fraud

 

So, corporations are freely & legally allowed and encouraged to lie, cheat, steal, & manipulate us. They’re allowed to poison us with their GMO foods, their contamination of our air, water, & land. They’re partners with the politicians who are their high paid whores i.e. Dick Cheney & Halliburton and use their high paid PR whores to dupe us into wars of aggression i.e. Iraq. Our poor & desperate citizens who see no way out of their misery & poverty and fall for the military propaganda, reluctantly join the military & risk their lives and sanity in the never-ending stream of wars. And when they return, often with a limb missing & serious mental issues, they are denied benefits or receive pitiful care, in terms of the quality of assistance available to them. By the way, remember our reverence for the law in this nation based on Law & Order, and our reverence for business? Then why is it that contracts we sign, like the contracts I signed with telecom corporations who defrauded me, are airtight for us and can have such significant impact on our lives as for example in causing me to be denied residence in the trailer court I applied to, but when the military invents their policy of “Stop Gap,” they are free to break the contract you sign when you join a branch of the military? A soldier, whose tour of duty is complete & their spirit is soaring with the anticipation of returning home is told, sorry, we need you & you’re going to do another tour. Some poor souls have been forced to do three or four more tours of duty than they signed up for.

the only escape from the corporate cockroaches

 

For these and oh so many other reasons are why I say that the business of America is fraud. It’s a sad & truly horrifying Brave New World the corporate cockroaches & their lackeys in Washington D.C. have created for us. You may believe that if you play by all their rules & zealously pay all your bills, no matter how many of them are fraudulent, that you may escape the nightmares I describe but you are only deluding yourself. How many horror stories have you heard of people who were obedient & quiet all their lives only to retire & discover their pensions had been stolen by their corporate executives, their health coverage they were guaranteed for life was wiped-out, etc.? I have been spitting in the wind most of my adult life & I know that I’m probably little more than a modern-day Don Quixote but I also believe to the marrow of my bones that it’s better to die standing than to live on my knees!

 

—Rob DeLoss, Newport, Oregon (January 21st, 2015)

 

P.S.  I forgot to point out that because of my “bad credit” rating, I am now forced back into renting an apt. where I must jump through all the same unfair & outrageous requirements and if I disturb a neighbor by playing my music too loud if I’ve had a bit too much to drink for example, I face eviction. We face ever more outrageous rent prices & are de facto prisoners in our own homes. We are de facto all living in debtor’s prisons, it’s just that some have bars on the windows while others don’t. I confess though that I’m seriously considering abandoning ship i.e. leaving America for good and seeking asylum, spiritually speaking, in some other country where there is the possibility of owning my own home & peacefully retiring with fewer fascists dictating when I must shit, go to sleep, etc.

this is the truth behind the “free market” myth

 

Addendum

 

Well it appears that I did lose track of the central point I wanted to make regarding “bad credit.” I did mention this to the petty tyrant who rejected my application for becoming a resident of her luxurious (sarcasm intended) trailer court, though. Charles Ferguson pointed out in the brilliant documentary that he wrote, produced, & directed, “Inside Job,” that just a few days before the world-wide, economic collapse of 2008, the three major credit rating agencies in America gave the “Super Banks,” and many, if not most, of the hedge fund firms, the insurance giant, A.I.G., etc. triple A or at least double A ratings. The petty tyrant’s response when I told her this was “Well, there’s nothing I can do about that.” So, in other words she didn’t grasp the connection or the point that I was trying to make i.e. the big boys can tank the economy of the world & cause tens of millions of people to lose their jobs, their homes, & their life savings but you’re going to reject me because I refused to pay my “bill” to a few of the telecoms who defrauded me? This is the world we live in my friends & this is what passes for justice in this corporate cockroach infested society of ours! By the way, my mom worked for AT&T for 36 years but when she died, they kept denying that she had a pension. My aunt was co-executor with me though & she refused to give up and after months of persistent phone calls, my aunt got through to an honest employee there who told us, yeah, there’s $39,000 in a pension account.

Perhaps this is Trump’s “end game” i.e. he, the corporate cockroach master will survive Armageddon?

Anti-Intellectualism & Our Extinction

 

 

To Be or Not to Be, the haunting existential question that plagued Hamlet’s soul has now morphed into a universal nightmare stalking us all in our waking hours as well as in our nightmares. And what is the “Christian fundamentalists’” response? Celebration & thanks be to God.

Happiness is a Warm Gun

 

This is the beast drooling anxious to devour all that it can’t understand and thus fears: the freedom to experiment with one’s own life; the freedom to witness new sights, different voices, fumbling caresses, pungent as well as pleasant fragrances, the freedom to taste the bitter & the sweet; the liberty to explore the galaxies of one’s own mind & soul.

 

Any religion that demands the absolute inhibition of all that makes us human is an abomination & a blasphemy against life. It is sacrilegious to lock our souls, our spirits, our bodies in a coat of armor that cuts us off from all the life forces on this planet.

flower children

 

It is only through trial and error, pain and pleasure & the continual getting up again from the floor, that allows us to see our true beauty as free seekers of the divine within us like Michelangelo’s “David,” waiting within the uncarved marble.

at one with Mother Nature

 

These self-proclaimed “Warriors for God,” or America’s “Christian” fundamentalists have much in common with the Tea Party that had such a devastating impact on the G.O.P. several years ago & still does. As some have dubbed them i.e. the Tea Party, they are in effect, America’s Taliban. Yet because they call themselves Christians, few pay attention to their activities. This is a serious mistake on all our parts because they pose a very real threat to America’s survival and by extension, to the planet’s survival. This danger is every bit as real as the destruction we are all aware of from the Islamic fundamentalists or jihadists. And whether “Christian” fundamentalists or “Islamic” fundamentalists, they have perverted the true meaning of their religions to justify their heinous crimes against humanity.

 

And because I am an American, I will analyze this frightening phenomenon that has taken such strong root here in the nation that proclaims to be the home of the free & land of the brave.

 

The common thread that connects all fundamentalists whether they be Christian, Islamic, Jewish, or whatever, is anti-intellectualism. Let’s take a closer look, but first I want to list the main attributes of the American Tea Party which the lead character in the brilliant Aaron Sorkin’s short-lived but great series, “The Newsroom,” listed:

 

Ideological purity, compromise as weakness, a fundamentalist belief in scriptural literalism, denying science, unmoved by facts, undeterred by new information, a hostile fear of progress, a demonization of education, a need to control women’s bodies, severe xenophobia, tribal mentality, intolerance of dissent, & a pathological hatred of the U.S. government.

If he’s your idea of greatness, you’ve set a very low bar

 

I wanted to list these attributes of the Tea Party because they are basically the same for the so-called, American “Christian” fundamentalists. I can’t help but wonder if perhaps Sorkin referred to the Tea Party instead of the “Christian” fundamentalists because that would’ve been too hot of a button to push with these crazies? To be honest with you my friend, I sure wish all these nut-jobs would just go off to some deserted island to live together since they hate all of us so much. But we aren’t so lucky and they are determined to make all our lives a living Hell in their religious zealotry to either convert us or kill us in the name of their “loving” God.

Onward Christian soldiers leading us to Armageddon

 

Some refer to this as a “culture war,” but I feel that is much too benign a term. These people are dead serious & truly feel themselves & everything they believe in is under attack. Yeah, they are the aggressors but they like to portray themselves as the helpless victims. The more extreme among them believe it’s okay to murder doctors who perform abortions & physically assault women who seek an abortion. Yep! They yearn for the good, old days when girls & women were forced to seek out some back-alley butcher who often botched the job so badly that women bled to death or were unable to ever have children in the future should they want to.

“Christian” hypocrisy on full display

 

As mentioned above, these Neanderthals have a hostile fear of progress & for them, progress is anything that contradicts their childish beliefs or differs from them. This is why I suggest that if you consider their belief system as a whole, it boils down to a vicious anti-intellectualism. And because anti-intellectualism is the key to understanding where these dangerous people are coming from, let me share with you, what it is.

another lovely example of “Christian” anti-intellectualism (the Spanish Inquisition)

 

I can’t remember where I heard it but many years ago, I read something to the effect that anyone who reads at or is educated beyond the fifth or sixth grade is considered suspect. This is a good place to start because it reveals the absurdity of the basic tenets of anti-intellectualism. It obviously hasn’t dawned on them that just about everything they use in their daily lives, was invented by people educated far beyond the sixth grade i.e. cars, planes, televisions, computers, medicines, etc. etc. etc.

 

Moreover, there is a deeply ingrained distrust of all things intellectual as just useless banter amongst the aristocrats. Again, they reveal their ignorance & don’t consider our Constitution as anything special either. For these mental midgets, there is only one book worthy of study, do I need to tell you what that book is? If you want to have a bit of fun, try telling one of these holy-rollers that their Christianity owes a huge debt to Plato’s philosophy but be ready, because they might physically assault you. Personally, I have a lot more respect for Jesuits because at least they spent their lives in serious, scholarly pursuits to be able to back up their beliefs. It’s far easier of course to just reject what you haven’t even bothered to try to wrestle with intellectually. And this is why I say that they’re not only morally bankrupt, they’re intellectual cowards & mental weaklings as well.

The real witch-hunt is by Trump & his “Christians”

 

This brings me to one of my pet peeves about these people so arrogant in their willful ignorance that it causes my blood to boil. Conservatively, over the past 30 years roughly, I have spent at least 49,000 hours in serious pursuit of knowledge and wisdom yet some of these airheads have the audacity to dismiss all my blood, sweat, & tears from my efforts with trite comments like; Well, I know better because God told me so. Such breathtakingly spectacular stupidity is simply beyond belief yet they smugly stroll down the street absolutely sure they have the truth & I’m the deluded one.

don’t forget how “Christians” converted Native Americans & Pacific Islanders almost to complete genocide

 

You see, one of the things that is beyond their comprehension is what’s called the paradox of learning i.e. the more your knowledge expands, the more you become aware of just how little you know & how much more knowledge, wisdom, and truth there is for us to learn. The feeble-minded think that the more you learn, the more confident you should become & they can’t comprehend that it’s only through our humility that we grow intellectually. You’d think they’d be able to grasp this since Jesus often speaks about the need for our humbleness.

Asimov wrote over 500 books & inspired many to become scientists, biologists, chemists, etc.

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’” —Isaac Asimov (this is Trump & his followers in spades!)

 

Inversely or conversely, this is precisely why it’s so hard to reach these people on a rational level i.e. the more ignorant they are, the greater their walls of ignorance & superstition that surrounds them. And the more ignorant people are, the easier it is for unscrupulous charlatans to manipulate them. Just consider the many televangelists who ripped their congregations off & lived like jet-setters while screwing prostitutes, living in mansions, etc. like Jim & Tammy Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson who is supposedly worth $100 million. Yep, this is clear evidence of just how stupid people can be in that they’ll give their hard-earned money to these scum who swear that the Lord speaks to them & tells them that their congregations should give them their money because they’re doing the Lord’s work.

Jim Bakker was sent to prison but he’s out & back at it again (“Christian” fundamentalists ignorance knows no limits)

 

Undeniably, we are at an extremely critical juncture in not only our country’s history but in the history of the world because Donald Trump is sitting in the oval office. I argue this point for several reasons which I’ll soon get into but firstly because Trump has coincidentally become a born-again Christian just a few months before he started his campaign to become president. So, here we can see prima facie evidence of not only how dumb these “Christians” are for believing Trump is a Christian but also just how shallow their beliefs, values, & principles are.

“Christian” values on display for all the world to see

 

Trump can openly brag on national television that he gets away with grabbing women by their pussies & that he has walked right into beauty pageant contestants’ dressing rooms many times so he could see them naked or semi-nude. He committed adultery many times, lies & cheats his employees, is racist, has manipulated banks & local politicians to get his casinos built but when they failed, he walks away denying responsibility, etc. etc. etc. He is perhaps the vilest person to ever serve as our president & there isn’t a Christian bone in his body but his fan club doesn’t care because he claims to be their champion. And Mike Pence sits behind him like the Cheshire Cat just smugly waiting for his chance to take over and really implement their agenda of oppression against all of us who don’t believe in their hypocritical religiosity.

a man of integrity? Yeah, right!

 

The fact that millions of these faux Christians so passionately proclaim Trump their hero quite frankly, scares the Hell out of me! History is replete with examples of insane & outrageous leaders who were adept at public speaking & the psychological manipulation of their citizens, Hitler is the first example that comes to mind in this regard. And just as in pre-Nazi Germany, most of their citizens dismissed him as a nutcase who would never mount to anything. Trump has clearly revealed his fondness for authoritarians & dictators and harbors grand illusions of becoming our “strong-man.”

Jim Jones was very charismatic also, that is, right up till they drank the kool-aid

He openly flouts not only the social norms for our presidents i.e. putting his financial interests aside while president, showing an interest in the workings of our government by reading his daily briefings, etc. He shows no intellectual curiosity whatsoever & spends his days like the typical teenager watching television & tweeting. To think that this vile, profane buffoon has the codes to our nuclear weapons is a horrific nightmare. But again, his “Christian” base isn’t worried because they welcome the end of the world & can’t wait to see God. If only they’d all go again to some deserted island and commit suicide & leave the rest of us alone who enjoy living.

 

Trump and his born -again baboons share a mutual distrust & hatred of intellectuals. For Trump, his hatred of intellectuals is bound-up with the personal rejection he received from New York’s cultural elite as a young man trying to make a name for himself. And something occurred to me the other day regarding this matter, for some reason, in our educational system, we stop teaching students how to read once they’ve reached the fourth grade basically. And those who haven’t mastered the skills of reading proficiently by fourth grade start a gradual downhill slope from there on. After third grade, reading is the core skill necessary for all other learning & my guess is that Donald was one of those who didn’t master reading by fourth grade and he has been covering-up this fact all his life?

This would go a long way in terms of explaining Trump’s open hostility towards those he considers elitists i.e. anyone who criticizes him or shows him to be an ignorant fool. Moreover, it also shows why he is so fond of tyrants i.e. you can silence your critics by jailing them or having them killed if you’re an authoritarian say like Duterte in the Philippines who tells his police & military to simply shoot anyone they suspect of being a drug trafficker. Trump’s ego is so fragile that he crumbles each & every time someone makes fun of him, especially on the national scene. But his loyal “Christians,” and his racist, Neo-Nazi fan club buoy his spirits so he loves putting on his rallies as if he were still running for the office of which he holds.

how blind can people be???

 

Besides the very real threat to our survival as a species posed by this man-child, would be king with his finger on the nuclear trigger is the equally real danger our planet is facing from climate destruction. Of course, Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan, like his fellow “Christian” Klansmen, doesn’t give a shit about our dying planet because his pea-brain can only think in terms of instant gratification like the next Big Mac. He and his fellow cretins live only for today & could care less about their or our future. Shows how much they love their children & their grandchildren, doesn’t it? And I guess they don’t care that there will soon be no places left to go camping with their families, sailing on their yachts, etc. Yep! Just one living Hell right here on earth. But why do we all have to pay for their greed & ignorance? Well obviously, if we don’t want to see this nightmare come true, we need to get off our couches & turn off the sports drug programs and get out in the streets protesting against our common destruction & for a livable planet.

 

In conclusion, I just read a short article titled; “Donald Trump’s revolution against America’s intellectuals.” I thought it would be interesting & relevant to this essay that I’m writing but I have to call Bull-shit on its author! In brief, he posits the familiar claim that Trump won because people are tired of being “politically correct” and mocked for being dumb or called stupid. He goes on to state that many intellectuals are Jewish and that intellectuals in general are an arrogant clique or caste so-to-speak. Well duh! If you’ve spent your life in scholarly pursuits, wouldn’t you want to hang-out with other scholars so you can share & compare thoughts?

 

I have the misfortune of being from a poor, working-class, single parent family but I have spent my life educating myself. And my fate is that when I hang out at the local pub, I am not allowed to speak about politics because of the social taboo against it in this land of freedom & democracy. Yet, sometimes I can get away with speaking about these serious matters and I have seen the light come on in people’s eyes. Some have told me that our conversation was the best they’ve had in years. I believe most people are hungry for knowledge but yes, we, who are better educated need to be sensitive to people’s feelings and not make them feel like they’re being talked down to.

Should she be forced to be silent as well?

 

But for this author to argue that this resentment justifies the silencing of America’s intellectuals is a perverse turning of the table i.e. we’re supposed to keep our mouths shut and let the racists spew their bile? Fuck that! I am not a Christian but I know a thing or two and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount summed it up nicely.

True Christianity in a nut-shell

We are to care for the oppressed, the hungry, etc., not threaten them & ignore them. What Trump and his fellow “Christians,” conveniently overlook is the fact that the greatest welfare cheats are the “Defense contractors” who are draining our national treasury. Yeah, it’s much easier to beat-up on the poor who have been screwed every which way possible. So, for these blind zealots for Trump, your belief that he is your savior shows how monumentally stupid you are because he gave the obscenely wealthy, like himself, another massive tax break while sticking it to you rubes!

The “Defense Contractors” are the true Welfare Queens!
The darkest days of my life until I lost my wife

 

Finally, this anti-intellectualism seems to boil down to a basic inferiority complex on the part of all those who feel dumb. When I was in my early 20s and went to Europe for the first time—and before you say; “Aha! Another elitist” yeah, right. I slept on park benches, went hungry for three days, dug ditches, moved furniture, etc. —but I met a young guy who knew more about American history, literature, politics, philosophy, etc. but he wasn’t arrogant about it. I picked his brain so-to-speak and asked him about books & authors I should check out and that was my intellectual awakening. You see, the more common reaction when people meet someone they sense is smarter than they are, is to reject them by either mocking them or walking away. So again, if you feel stupid, that’s a clue that you have work to do and you should be happy because you know what to do & the more you learn, the better you’ll feel about yourself. It only took me 14 years to earn my B.A. in English literature which normally takes four years to complete but I was born on the wrong side of the tracks and wouldn’t have it any other way. And it tasted so sweet proving all my “friends” and family members wrong who had labeled me a quitter and a loser!

Knowledge is Power!

 

 

 

Alternative media is obviously crucial for us to inform ourselves but the most important tool for empowering ourselves is a solid grounding in critical and analytical thinking skills. There are several factors which have contributed to making us a citizenry so easily manipulated intellectually. The Christian fundamentalists assault on Secular Humanism, the anti-intellectualism strain throughout our history that Richard Hofstadter so eloquently detailed, the history of how our public educational system was formed, the betrayal of the U.S. public by our ‘mainstream media,’ and the ultimate culprit i.e. the global corporations. Because of the need for brevity, I can only give a thumbnail sketch and will restrict my focus to our public educational system to which I owe John Taylor Gatto a great debt of gratitude. I highly recommend his book The Underground History of American Education . I feel qualified to speak on educational matters because of my 15 years working in the field as tutor, substitute teacher, adult education teacher in ESL (English as a Second Language), teaching assistant in various multi-handicapped programs, etc. I took 14 years to earn my B.A. in English literature and I’ve been a voracious reader, collector, and note writer in the blank pages of my books. And I have traveled a fair amount in Europe and across America.

Western civilization owes Ancient Athens a tremendous debt

 

Okay, here is a simplistic overview of how we have arrived at this pathetic state of affairs in our public educational systems which I culled from Gatto’s book. By the way, I have dissected his book thoroughly and I’m now using quotes from it in a book I am writing. Just to let you know that this essay wasn’t written just off the cuff.

 

“The secret of American schooling is that it doesn’t teach the way children learn and it isn’t supposed to. It took seven years of reading and reflection to finally figure out that mass schooling of the young by force was a creation of the four great coal powers of the 19th century. Nearly 100 years later, on April 11, 1933, Max Mason, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, announced to insiders that a comprehensive national program was underway to allow, in Mason’s words, ‘the control of human behavior.’ (page xvi)

 

Here is a brief sketch of each of the four men who owned the great coal powers. “Andrew Carnegie. An enthusiastic Darwinist and early proponent of planned economy and society, reunion with Great Britain. Beatrice Webb, the Fabian, called him ‘a slimy little reptile: Carnegie Endowments. J.P. Morgan. The foremost Anglican layman in the world. Worked resolutely for the restoration of a class system in America, and Anglo-American sovereignty worldwide. John D. Rockefeller Sr. ‘Survival of the fittest is nature’s way of producing beauty, ‘said Rockefeller. As a principal stockholder in U.S. Steel, he approved of school experiments in Gary, Indiana, to dumb down curriculum, seek more effective means of mind control. Rockefeller Foundation. Henry Ford. ‘I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration,’ Hitler told a Detroit newspaper in 1931. In July, 1938, automaker Ford received the Grand Cross of the Golden Eagle, highest award the German government could give a foreigner. Lenin acknowledged his debt to Ford’s genius. Ford Foundation.” (pg. 36)

 

Carnegie’s survival of the fittest philosophy is the rationalization the greedy and unethical corporate crooks use to justify their destruction of the environment and their exploitation of people around the world i.e. the law of the jungle. J.P. Morgan got his wish regarding establishing a class system in America which is evident in the perpetuation of poverty in inner city schools largely due to the grossly inferior public schools there as contrasted with the public schools in cities like Beverly Hills.

 

The Gary Plan which was approved by Rockefeller boiled down to …” school subjects were departmentalized; this required movement of students from room to room on a regular basis so that all building spaces were in constant use. Bells would ring and just as with Pavlov’s salivating dog, children would shift out of their seats and lurch toward yet another class.” (pg. 187)

 

The Gary Plan was a very sinister assault on our psyches as students. By arbitrarily dissecting the learning process, they replaced the focus of public schools from learning to the new priority of conformity to schedules by using bells to condition students for their future as wage slaves in the manufacturing sector. It also made it harder for students to see the interconnectedness of many academic subjects thereby dumbing students down and making the learning experience duller and more lifeless.

 

Of course, Ford’s assembly line method of production can be seen in how our public schools are organized and how they just crank out students like inanimate objects with no regard for their uniqueness as individuals. In addition, this contributed to the emphasis on specialization which has greatly amplified the isolation of individuals and the breakdown of communication between professionals. This has not only been very costly in business terms but even more so in personal and social costs. It has led to our ability to create nuclear weapons but to divorce ourselves from the ethical ramifications of our inventions.

 

Next in this essay on the ‘dumbing down’ of America is the importation of the Prussian model of schooling with the work of Frederick W. Taylor who attended an aristocratic German academy and was greatly impressed because the Prussians had defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Jena. Here is a list of Taylor’s ‘Principles of Scientific Management’ which I’m sure you’ll recognize in our public schools: 1) A regimen of science, not rule of thumb. 2)An emphasis on harmony, not the discord of competition. 3)An insistence on cooperation, not individualism. 4)A fixation on maximum output. 5)The development of each man to his greatest productivity.” (pg. 172)

 

As a result of this Prussian system of conditioning we can see that science has been elevated over the humanities and hence our technological superiority but our general cultural ignorance. Also, hypocritically these social engineers and lying manipulators of the masses indoctrinate us in public schools to cooperate so when we get out in the real world we’ll be more manageable or submissive to the ruling class. Furthermore, our individualism—our once proud national characteristic—is undermined and makes us more susceptible to the collective mindset i.e. nationalism and consumerism. Obviously, the obsession with maximum output reflects our real value to the powers that be. They don’t care and in fact they seek to block us from realizing our full potentials.

 

This “adoption of business organization by schools” because “before 1900, school boards were large, clumsy organizations, with a seat available to represent every interest (they often had 30 to 50 members). A great transformation was engineered in the first decade of the 20th century, however, and after 1910 they were dominated by businessmen, lawyers, real estate men, and politicians…. Carnegie ‘the demand of the age is for practical education.’ “(pg. 174-75)

 

Though there are many layers in the educational bureaucracy, local school boards have a very significant influence on educational policies. And it is common wisdom how unethical and greedy businessmen, lawyers, and politicians are so, is it any wonder that schools have been designed to serve the needs of the Robber Barons and not the needs of the people?

Trump’s “base” wish they could’ve afforded to be ripped off by him

Moreover, is it any wonder that Americans prize practicality over intellectual talents when we started as a self-reliant people noted for our rugged individualism? And when such ‘successful’ businessmen as Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford, & J.P. Morgan advise people that the practical skills and common sense are all they need to succeed in life, the gullible and naïve often fall for it.

the “Super bankers” who robbed us & received bonuses for doing so

 

Unfortunately, because so many Americans believed the propaganda of the powerful and specialized in their educational pursuits rather than generalized like true champions of mankind like Bucky Fuller advised, many people graduate college only to find there is a glut of graduates in their field and they are not able to find work. Richard Barnet gives us a glimpse of the truth behind the propaganda. “The problem is starkly simple. An astonishingly large and increasing number of human beings are not needed or wanted to make the goods or provide the services that the paying customers of the world can afford.” (pg. 260, Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporations, Richard J. Barnet & Ronald E. Muller)

 

This rather depressing statement portends of the future of globalization and I don’t believe for one minute their claims that the globalization of the world will even out the distribution of jobs, goods, and services. This is the grand scam on a global scale and is a disguise for a race to the bottom i.e. a push to reduce all the workers of the world to starvation wages.

a world of corporate conglomerates & no more sovereign nations

And the power elite are preparing us for their globalized New World Order—a term coined by Hitler—with perhaps the most powerful psychological weapon in the public-school arsenal i.e. behaviorism. And the Holy Grail of Behaviorism is Socialization.

 

Socialization is the central argument against home-schooling and we are led to believe that if it weren’t for the compassionate concern of educational psychologists as evidenced in the objectives of social skills, we’d be a nation of social misfits. This is one of the dastardliest deceptive lies that has been perpetrated upon the public. Children learn social skills in a myriad of places and situations. Some examples are when playing with neighborhood kids, at church, after school sports programs, clubs, with their brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, etc. The hidden agenda behind socialization is the conditioning of students so they will become submissive and docile employees, consumers, and patriots.

 

“Behavioral theory demands endless recorded observations and assessments in the face of mountainous evidence that interruptions and delays caused by such assessments create formidable obstacles to learning—and for many derails the possibility entirely.” (pg. 269)

 

In short, this shift to behaviorism for the last century has been very good for the newly emergent pseudo-science of behaviorism but has caused more harm than good to our students. I say it has been harmful because it has drained millions if not billions of dollars from our schools which could’ve been used to lure better teachers into the profession by offering more competitive salaries, purchase of more & better textbooks, and the building of more schools so as to reduce class sizes. The obsession with behaviorism has been and continues to be distracting and interrupts the real business of schools which lo and behold should be teaching not playing psychologist/scientific observer.

 

“To say that various psychologies dominate modern schooling is hardly to plow new ground. The tough thing to do is to show how that happened and why—and how the project progresses to its unseen goals. The Atlantic Monthly had this to say in April 1993:

 

‘Schools have turned to therapeutic remediation. A growing proportion of many school budgets is devoted to counseling and other psychological services. The curriculum is becoming more therapeutic: children are taking courses in self-esteem, conflict resolution, and aggression management…. As a result, the mission is the psychologizing of American education.’ “(pg. 274)

 

Now you may argue that we need more psychologists in our schools not less due to the increased level of violence in our schools as evidenced in the killings at Columbine. I contend that psychoanalyzing our students is a band-aid approach and if we truly want to reduce the level of violence in our youth and in our culture, we need to address the deeper issues starting with public education, health care, and unemployment. Many studies have been done on the correlation between illiteracy and incarcerated people, and as has been said, it’s much cheaper to give students a college education than to lock them up in prison which averages $25,000 per year. As educated citizens they can be useful, contributing members to society rather than a financial drain on it. Consider that in 1942, the literacy rate of guys entering the military was 96% but by 1973, it had dropped to “…73% but a substantial chunk of even those were only barely adequate; they could not keep abreast of developments by reading a newspaper, they could not read for pleasure, they could not sustain a thought or an argument, they could not write well enough to manage their own affairs without assistance.” (pg. 52)

 

It is not merely a coincidence that in Vietnam, the majority of our young men who were there fighting were Hispanic, Black, and poor Whites. This is a national disgrace and clearly reveals the class lines or divisions perpetuated by our public schools. The military is far too often the only option for the poor and for minorities because of the inferior education they receive in inner-city schools. And this is closely related to another shameful part of our public educational system’s history i.e. the Eugenics movement.

 

“Between 1890 and 1920, the percentage of our population adjudged ‘feebleminded’ and condemned to institutional confinement more than doubled. The long contemplated hygienic form of social control of 18th century German social thinker Johann Frank, ‘complete medical policing,’ was launched with a vengeance. Few intimidations are more effective than the threat of a stay in an insane asylum. Did the fraction of crazies really double in those three decades? The answer given by one contemporary was elliptically Darwinian: ‘Marriage of these inferiors is a veritable manufactory of degenerates.’ It could no longer go unchecked.” (pg. 222-23)

 

I never saw any handicapped students all my years in public school as a student and as an adult, I have worked with the multi-handicapped for nearly 15 years and know only too well the contempt not only the general public but also of many teachers and school administrators towards these generally gentle souls. I believe the contempt is usually a cover for people’s fear of what they don’t understand or know about these people. I also think the rich fear the poor and perhaps that’s a factor in why they have also tried to selectively breed people like myself out of their ‘fine stock?’

 

“One of the ideas that ‘empty child’ thinking led directly to was the notion that human breeding could be enhanced or retarded as plant and animal breeding was—by scientific gardeners and husbandmen. Naturally the time scale over which this was plotted to happen was quite long. Nobody expected it to be like breeding fruit flies, but it was a major academic, governmental, and even military item generously funded until Hitler’s proactive program (following America’s lead) grew so embarrassing by 1939 that our own projects and plans became more circumspect. Back at the beginning of the 20th century, the monstrously influential Edward Thorndike of Columbia Teachers College said that school would establish conditions for ‘selective breeding before the masses take things into their own hands.’ “(pg. 59)

 

I know these are some pretty harsh charges against our public-school administrators, educational psychologists and so on but, do your own research and determine for yourself if there is any merit to these charges if they anger you or if you simply care about our students and the future of our country. Gatto asserts several times in his book that he’s not claiming this has all been the product of a vast conspiracy but more of a convergence of ‘interests’ with a few petty conspirators. I have wrestled with this question at great length and feel it’s more useful to acknowledge the hand we’ve been dealt—however it came about—and get on with correcting it.

 

Here are a few more of the concrete particulars and steps we can take to remedy these obstacles to learning. By the way, the ‘empty child thinking’ mentioned above is a reference to John Locke’s ‘tabula rasa’ concept that children are ‘blank slates’ just waiting for teachers to write on them and has been one of the most pernicious educational theories to come down the pike.

 

In addition to the harmful results of Locke’s theory was and is the practice of standardized testing. “Another major architect of standardized testing, H. H. Goddard, said in his book Human Efficiency (1920) that government schooling was about ‘the perfect organization of the hive.’ He said standardized testing was a way to make lower classes recognize their own inferiority. Like wearing a dunce cap, it would discourage them from breeding and having ambition. Goddard was head of the Psychology Department at Princeton, so imagine the effect he had on the minds of the doctoral candidates he coached, and there were hundreds.” (pg. 59)

 

Standardized testing is basically unfair because they use as their standard of measuring all students’ intelligence, the intelligence level of affluent students who have had the benefits of being raised in a two-parent home by usually college-educated parents who read regularly to their children, exposed them to classical music, symphonies, plays, museums, etc. It’s not that the affluent’s children are brighter than those raised in the ghettos but simply that they had the good fortune to be born into families they were born into. Ignorance, like poverty and violence is a vicious, self-perpetuating cycle that is damn hard to break out of because of so many environmental factors arrayed against you.

 

Next on what should be our ‘hit list’ are the pathetic textbooks teachers are forced to use and are expected to somehow make palatable to their students.

 

“Looking back on the original period of school formation in her study of American history textbooks, America Revised, Frances Fitzgerald remarked on the profound changes that emerged following suggestions issued by sociologists and social thinkers in the later 19th and early 20th centuries. The original history of our institutions and the documents which protect our unique liberties gradually began to be effaced. Fitzgerald raises the puzzle of textbook alteration:

 

‘The ideology that lies behind these texts is rather difficult to define….it does not fit usual political patterns….the texts never indicate any line of action….authors avoid what they choose to and some of them avoid main issues….they fail to develop any original ideas….they confuse social sciences with science….clouds of jargon….leave out ideas….historical names are given no character, they are cipher people….there are no conflicts, only ‘problems’…. (pg. 60-61)

 

Equally important, is the fact that many who sit on the textbook selection committees and school boards are on the Christian Right or are conservatives with their own agendas and these two groups are well-organized and vocal in this country and in the textbooks selected and approved for our public schools. When you denude textbooks of any and all controversial subject matter, is it any wonder that students are bored to death?

 

Perhaps the single greatest blow to our traditional educational system and by extension, the gravest harm done to generations of Americans was the replacement of teaching kids to read by using phonics with the ‘sight reading method.’ “Something strange has been going on in government schools, especially where the matter of reading is concerned. Abundant data exists to show that by 1840 the incidence of complex literacy in the United States was between 93 and 100%, wherever such a thing mattered. Yet compulsory schooling existed nowhere. Between the two world wars, schoolmen seem to have been assigned the task of exterminating our universal reading proficiency.” (pg. xvi)

 

What’s the old adage, ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it?’ Then why did they eliminate phonics? Could having a dumber work force have better suited the likes of Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford, & J.P. Morgan? Food for thought. The lack of reading proficiency is clearly extremely detrimental to the working poor and the middle class though because all the other subjects one needs to study to realize their potential is dependent on the ability to read well. Back around 1988 or so, I heard that the average high school graduate had an 8th grade reading level. By the way, not to brag but to illustrate, in 6th grade they told me I was reading at the 11th grade, 6th month level yet I never received any counseling all my remaining years to take courses to prepare for college and the high school I went to didn’t even offer them. Okay, back to the subject. I also heard that either 2 or 3 out of every 5 high school graduates couldn’t even make change and places like Mc Donald’s had to put pictures on the cash register keys to assist their young employees. A pretty sad state of affairs I’d say. And on the subject of history, Jonathan Kozol, a brilliant educational critic, said that a good understanding of history is important because it is the bedrock of so many other disciplines. Kozol also stated that the U.S. ranks about 50th in terms of literacy among the nations belonging to the United Nations.

 

I don’t mean to depress you but the time is long overdue for us to pull our heads out of the sand because our public school’s failures and problems aren’t simply going to vanish. Consider the following lest you still need convincing that our educational system is seriously flawed and is making the majority of America’s workers permanently redundant. By the way, I heard recently that the head of Hewlett-Packard said that they were going to have to move to India because that’s where the educated workers are.

 

“The National Adult Literacy Survey represents 190 million U.S. adults over age 16 with an average school attendance of 12.4 years. The survey is conducted by the Educational Testing Services of Princeton, New Jersey (they create the tests for the SAT, graduate school, law school, teacher certification, etc.). It ranks adult Americans into five levels. Here is its 1993 analysis:

 

  • 42,000,000 Americans over the age of 16 can’t read. Some of this group can

write their names on Social Security cards and fill in height, weight, and

birth spaces on applications.

  • 50,000,000 can recognize printed words on a 4th & 5th grade level. They can

not write simple messages or letters.

Donny is often frustrated because he reads at the level of an 8 yr. old
  • 55 to 60 million are limited to 6th, 7th, & 8th grade reading. A majority of this

group could not figure out the price per ounce of peanut butter in a 20-ounce

jar costing $1.99 when told they could round the answer off to a whole number.

  • 30,000,000 have 9th & 10th grade reading proficiency. This group (and all pre-

ceding) cannot understand a simplified written explanation of the procedures

used by attorneys & judges in selecting juries.

  • About 3.5 % of the 26,000—member sample demonstrated literacy skills

Adequate to do traditional college study, a level 30% of all U.S. high school

Students reached in 1940, and which 30% of secondary students in other

Developed countries can reach today. This last fact alone should warn you

How misleading comparisons drawn from international student competitions

Really are, since the samples each country sends are small elite ones, un-

Representative of the entire student population. But behind the bogus super-

Iority a real one is concealed.

  • 5 % of the American population is mediocre to illiterate when deciphering

print is concerned. This is no commentary on their intelligence, but without

ability to take in primary information from print and to interpret it they are at

the mercy of commentators who tell them what things mean. A working de-

nition of immaturity might include those who excessively require others to

tell them what things mean.” (pg. 61-2)

{I am inserting this update here from the present, Feb. 2019; more evidence is coming in that Trump may only read at a 4th grade level & this would make sense of other reports that he doesn’t read his daily briefings, has trouble reading the teleprompter, & prefers to watch a lot of T.V. every day, especially FOX “News” to find out what’s going on in the world—also note his childish speaking manner. I was an educator for over 20 years & I remember my surprise when I learned that we stop teaching kids how to read after the 4th grade & that’s when we begin to see gap between students’ ability to learn as they go through each succeeding grade, widen. In brief, if they haven’t sufficiently mastered how to read by 4th grade, they fall farther & farther behind their classmates as the years pass. Seems obvious to me that Trump was one of those whose intellectual development was arrested at the 4th grade but because of daddy’s wealth & sheer bravado, he has bullied & bull-shitted his way to the top of the corrupt political/corporate pyramid. Note also his frequent displays of childish behavior. }

 

Could this be why some have referred to America as a ‘Nation of Sheep?’

Am I being too insensitive? Too sharp in my criticisms? Well, I mean to shake you from your slumber because not only our future as Americans depends on our rousing from this long, national daydream, but the fate of the rest of the world hangs in the balance as well because we are the most powerful nation on the face of the earth and our global corporations affect every square inch of the planet just about!

 

In conclusion, ponder this little gem for awhile: “From the beginning, there was purpose behind forced schooling, purpose which had nothing to do with what parents, kids, or communities wanted; but instead was forged out of what a highly centralized corporate economy and system of finance bent on internationalizing itself was thought to need; that, and what a strong, centralized political state needed, too. School was looked upon from the first decade of the 20th century as a branch of industry and a tool of governance. For a considerable time, probably provoked by a climate of official anger and contempt directed against immigrants in the greatest displacement of people known to history, social managers of schooling were remarkably candid about what they were doing. This candor can be heard clearly in a speech Woodrow Wilson made to businessmen before the First World War: [I kid you not my imaginary reader, I wrote this essay years before Trump ran for president & I never watched “The Apprentice” because quite frankly, Trump always struck me as a stupid, self-centered phony, but please note Trump’s simple game-plan of attacking immigrants has been going on for decades, sorry all you Walking Dead Trump-heads]

 

‘We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.’

 

By 1917, the major administrative jobs in American schooling were under control of a group referred to in the press of that day as ‘the Education Trust.’ The first meeting of this trust included representatives of Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago, and the National Education Association. The chief end, wrote Benjamin Kidd, the British evolutionist, in 1918, was to ‘impose on the young the ideal of subordination.’ “(pg. 38)

 

I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions from this bit of ‘candor’ but, I will say that we have a very interesting double-standard in present day America. If any of us on the Left of the political spectrum dare to use the word ‘conspiracy,’ we are immediately marginalized yet those on the Right have been whining for decades about a mythological bias or conspiracy of the Left or liberals in our mass media? And of course, whenever we criticize them for their assaults on the social welfare programs for the needy, we are accused of waging class warfare. We’re not suppose to notice or speak about their continuous undermining of every liberal principle this country was founded upon and as the quote from President Wilson demonstrated.

 

In brief, I recommend what I’ve advised family and friends for years, and that is quite simply to study what the rich and privileged study. A good place to start is at the top i.e. the curriculum for Rhodes Scholars—the highest academic honor a student can earn. It basically boils down to The Classics in history, philosophy, political science, and literature. As in a foot race, the tougher your opponent, the harder you’ll have to work and the more you’ll improve or grow for having competed against a worthy opponent. Wrestling with the greatest minds of Western and Eastern civilization is exhausting and exhilarating. The humanities humanize and the liberal arts liberate! (I said that)

 

Furthermore, I recommend specifically that you buy and work through with a friend or two, Problem Solving and Comprehension by Dr. Arthur Whimbey & Clark, I believe? And Analytical Reading & Reasoning by Dr. Whimbey alone. An excellent encyclopedic set of the Classics was put out by Encyclopedia Britannica which Mortimer Adler edited and wrote what he called a Syntopicon for. It is a fantastic source you can use to cross-reference the Classics. It can cost upwards of $2,000 but if you’re patient and shop around, you may find a deal like I did at $175?

{another update/insert; back in 1982/83 when I was struggling with the new challenges of attending a four-year university, I met a librarian who was a Jesuit scholar & after I told him of my goal of finding truth/wisdom, he recommended this book to help me develop my critical/analytical thinking skills. It’s a collection of thinking problems for you to tackle & with sincere effort on your part, you will develop these vital skills that will empower you & make you less susceptible to manipulation by the countless practitioners of fraud i.e. salesmen, politicians, religious leaders, etc. Ideally, it is best if you do these exercises with at least one friend or a small group of friends. Merry Xmas & a Happy New and Empowered Life! https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Solving-Comprehension-Analytical-Reasoning-ebook/dp/B000

 

 

In addition, I urge you to become very familiar with the informal logical fallacies and to read the international press to get a more objective view of world events. The Guardian of London is a good newspaper source to check out. More generally speaking, I’d suggest debating or arguing politely with family, friends, and strangers on political, economic, social, and etc. matters. Form study groups. Mentor others. Write letters to the media. Recharge your batteries by socializing with like-minded individuals. Dance! Travel! Laugh! Cry! Be Angry! Be Passionate! Be Compassionate and sensitive to others who may not understand as much as yourself.

 

Most important of all, learn to trust in your own wisdom. Gatto does mention many books in his book but fails to provide a formal and scholarly bibliography or footnotes. He could have a hidden agenda—I believe it to be a Christian fundamentalist one—and I too, could have a secret agenda. I sincerely believe my intentions are noble and honorable but I could be deep in denial and maybe I’ve selectively chosen only the quotes that support my agenda? I believe that the closest we can come to the ever elusive ‘truth,’ is to check out a person’s credentials to see whether they are in fact qualified to speak on whatever subject they’re claiming expertise in—this is what drove Socrates’ opponents crazy—and then check out what the other ‘experts’ in the particular field under scrutiny have to say about this particular expert or scholar. Finally, it boils down to trusting your own judgment and heart!

Jesus’ message to Mike Pence & all the other faux “Christians”

 

I interpret Sir Francis Bacon’s wonderful maxim written in 1597 ‘Knowledge is Power,’ to mean that knowledge increases our power to defend ourselves, others, and the environment. And in our world of today which is run by global corporations trying to manipulate and use us 24/7, never has the empowerment that knowledge can provide us with been more critical to our survival!

 

ADDENDUM —I almost forgot a very important piece which is teacher certification. I believe this is a tremendous obstacle in terms of keeping a lot of good or great teachers out of the profession many times simply due to a lack of funds and/or the time to pursue the certificate. I have heard many teachers over the years admit that most of the educational courses they had to take for their certificate were a total waste of time. And if our certificate requirement were effective, then why do we have so many obviously unqualified teachers working? Yes, they were able to jump through the bureaucratic hurdles but that doesn’t mean they have a love of learning and therefore they aren’t able to inspire students because they lack the fire. And Gatto agrees with me on this. Near the very end of his book he lists several assumptions about public schooling which we need to recognize as false in his opinion; “The certified expertise of official schoolteachers is superior in its knowledge of children to the accomplishments of lay people, including parents. Protecting children from the uncertified is a compelling public concern. Actually, the enforced long-term segregation of children from the working world does them great damage, and the general body of men and women certified by the State as fit to teach is nearly the least fit occupational body in the entire economy if college performance is the standard.” (pg. 384) And, “Break the teacher certification monopoly so anyone with something valuable to teach can teach it. Nothing is more important than this.” (pg. 387) To corroborate this from my own experience, when I was a substitute teacher at the secondary level in Los Angeles for four years, several times, students said to me that they wished I was their regular teacher because I was more helpful or had more ideas. I want to end with paying proper respect to Mr. Gatto even though I don’t agree with his Christian fundamentalist point of view. He was a teacher for over 30 years in New York City and was named Teacher of the Year for the city a couple of times and Teacher of the Year for the entire state once!

The Return of the Flower Children: A Social & Political Fantasy

 

The essence of the Flower Child spirit! 

 

A raindrop fell on my face and woke me. As I slowly woke up, I remembered where I was. I was camping out in the last of the great Redwoods in Northern California. The ‘compassionate conservative’ president with his ‘healthy forests’ initiative, had allowed his buddies in the lumber industry to invade & cut these precious old wise ones to the point that a mere one percent of what been living when I was a boy in the 1950s. I was recently divorced and couldn’t find a job for the life of me. My rebellious ways had always made me one of those who seems to constantly swim upstream and because of my ‘unstable’ work history and being ‘overqualified,’ I couldn’t even get a minimum wage job flipping burgers or pumping gas. Of course with the introduction of background checks, credit checks, urine tests, & the countless other ways that Big Brother Georgie had invaded our privacy, I was on who knows how many government lists of subversives, undesirables, etc. Fortunately, a distant relative I had only met once when I was in my early twenties, had remembered me in her will & I inherited close to $50,000.

 

But the dollar was at an all-time low thanks to Bush & Co. and all their giveaways to their rich cronies, along with the bankrupting of the federal treasury. I decided to get out and live some more of my dreams before the coming apocalypse that Bush & the fundamentalist crazies were doing everything in their power to make a reality, actually came true. I bought a nice cruising bike before I left Portland and towed a small, lightweight trailer with some basic camping gear & other necessities. I had made my way down the Oregon coast in a little over two weeks and was just taking my time. This had been my first night in the Redwoods and I had arrived late at night & too tired to even eat or pitch my tent. As I soaked in the serenity of my surroundings, the majesty of these magnificent trees filled me with a calm I haven’t known for many years. It was early spring in the year 2008 & my spirit was sorely in need of recharging. I was estranged from my son because he thought I was just a bum & couldn’t understand why I couldn’t hold a job down or didn’t care about all the material things that he & everyone else valued. The last of my “friends,” i.e. drinking buddies, had deserted me and I had fallen into such a depression that I had let myself get fat, didn’t care about my appearance, & mostly stayed in and watched TV. I did occupy my mind by watching & listening to the alternative media and I wrote on a semi-regular basis but couldn’t get any of my “friends” or acquaintances to read what I wrote. My ex-wife and I had been separated for several years and I’d occasionally take off and do a bit of traveling & try to start a new life. But time and time again, I’d fail and would end up back on her couch and feeling like a loser. I was determined that this time, come hell or high water, I was not going to return and was going to succeed in starting a new life. A life where I could regain my self-respect & find a sense of purpose again.

 

As these thoughts were flooding through my mind once again, it dawned on me that I should celebrate being back in perhaps my favorite spot on earth i.e. the Redwoods. I had some good pot that I brought with me so I got out my pipe & put enough pot in for three or four good hits and lit up. Oh yeah, that was just what the doctor ordered. I laid back against my backpack and watched the mist rise among the gentle giants, and marveled at the giant ferns & thick moss everywhere. All of a sudden, I heard a faint sound. It sounded sort of like chanting of some sort. I decided to investigate as to what or who was making these hauntingly beautiful sounds. I walked perhaps 300 yards and just as I came out of a thicket of ferns, my eyes beheld one of the most gorgeous sights they have ever known.

 

Maybe twenty feet or so in front of me, sat a completely nude young woman with her legs crossed & her eyes closed as she chanted the Buddhist mantra of Nam-Myo-Ho-K-Ringe-Kho. She had a healthy, golden tan and appeared to be Hispanic or Native American with an exotic quality in her high cheekbones and eyes.

Karina, goddess of nature

 

She must have sensed or heard me because her eyes opened but there was no alarm or fear in her eyes, just a warm smile that melted my soul instantly. Her smile was wide and revealed a mouthful of pearly-white teeth. Her hair was thick and wavy & hung down covering her luscious breasts. I must’ve stood there like the village idiot with my mouth open and my eyes bulging for several moments because she chuckled and said “hi, are you alright?” I eventually managed to stutter “uh, yeah?” And as I stood there paralyzed by the beauty of this princess of the forest, she stood up and walked up to me. She was somewhere around 5’7” and 120 lbs. When she got to within a couple of feet of me, I could see her eyes were brown and I was transfixed. I thought I surely must be dreaming. But when she leaned in and gave me a light kiss on my lips and then said “welcome,” I knew she was real. My heart must have been beating a thousand miles an hour and I instantly had an erection that I feared was going to bust right through my jeans. She noticed the bulge in my pants and blushed slightly with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. I finally managed to say “hello, my name is Rob. Sorry for disturbing you but I heard your chanting and was curious.” She responded “oh, no worries, I was just doing my daily meditation. My name is Karina.” I said, “that’s a beautiful name.” Then in an instant, she gently took me by the hand and said “I want to show you something,” and led me through the forest for several hundred yards until we came upon a secluded little pond fed by a narrow river and surrounded with giant ferns and lush vegetation.

 

She let go of my hand and graciously strolled into the middle of the pond and about waist high in the water & her eyes said come join me. I immediately peeled-off my clothes and rushed into the pond with this delightful water nymph. As I neared Karina, she opened her arms to welcome me in & I wrapped my arms around her as in a bear hug. We kissed passionately and fell under the water briefly. I picked her up and carried her in my arms to a thick patch of grass beside the pond and we made love for hours losing all track of time and all inhibitions. We alternated between mad, violent thrusts and slow, tender moments of just laying in each others’ embrace. We slowly explored each other’s bodies with the innocent curiosity of a young child just discovering the world. Eventually we fell asleep in each other’s arms and I slept like a contented little cherub and had never known such bliss! When I awoke a few hours later, my head was in Karina’s lap and she was stroking my hair and humming a strange sort of lullaby. I asked her what she was humming and she replied “it’s an ancient song of the druids.” I then said “it’s strangely dark yet also beautiful,” and she gave me a knowing smile. “Tell me all about you. Who are you? Where do you come from?” Karina again smiled and responded with “there will be plenty of time for that later. I am a child of the flowers and the forest. I was sent here to do my part to help protect the wise, old ones whom the sick ones are killing. A revolution has begun and my part is to guide all those who come here, on to their path. I used to live in Berkeley until I met one of the masters who helped me find my path.” Before I could open my mouth, she leaned over and kissed me more deeply than I have ever been kissed in my life & we again made wild, crazy, beautiful love for hours. And again, I dozed off but when I awoke this time, she was gone.

 

At first I thought, she probably went to get her clothes and will return shortly. I got dressed and waited for what seemed like an eternity but she never returned. I began to question my sanity and wondered if it had all been a dream? I retraced our steps back to where I had first seen Karina chanting and she wasn’t there either so I continued on to where my bike and sleeping bag were. Laying on top of my sleeping bag was a piece of paper folded in half with a rock on top of it. I anxiously opened the note and it simply read, “Rob, you are a very special man & you have an important part to play in our revolution. Our paths will cross again. I hope you will persevere. You are a divine lover.” That was it, no clue as to where she had gone or how I could find her. My heart sank and so did my spirit. Finally I had met the love of my life after having been alone & lonely for so many years and she disappears like a fairy tale princess into the mist. It had been a long & exhausting day if you know what I mean, so I made myself a gigantic sandwich & devoured it. It was getting dark so I figured there was no point in moving on until the next morning. I didn’t feel like getting rained on again though so I pitched my pup tent before it was totally dark. I started a small fire and set up my CD player with the lightweight external speakers & put on a Joni Mitchell CD. I had one last bottle of wine and smoked a couple bowls of pot as I savored my wine. Joni’s lyrics & plaintive voice from her album “Blue,” struck the chords of my heart & were very appropriate considering I had just lost such a lovely dream. As I was wallowing in self-pity & slowly getting stoned, a thought came to me “wait a minute! She said she came from Berkeley. Maybe if I go there, I can find someone who knows her and can tell me how to find her?” And with that, I was back on Mount Olympus and confident that I would find my lady again but this time I wouldn’t let her go. I could hardly sleep with all the anticipation in my heart and was impatient for the sun to rise so I could be on my way.

 

That night I had one of the best dreams I’ve had in ages. I dreamt that I found Karina again and that we built a cabin in the Redwoods overlooking the Pacific Ocean and spent our days wandering around the forest naked, laughing, dancing, getting stoned, & in a state of constant bliss with no worries whatsoever. I awoke before dawn and quickly packed my tent and ate a bagel & an apple and was on my way as the sun was rising. I headed for Eureka and made good time. I was riding on the wings of love and felt like I was twenty years old again. I made my way through Fortuna, Garberville, & the various other little hamlets I had hitch-hiked through so many times over the years. If I was somewhat near a town I had fond memories of from earlier days & it was nearing dark, I’d go to one of the bars I remembered. The locals must’ve thought me a nut case or something because I usually sat alone, smiling to myself, & played a lot of old sixties music and would occassionally get up and dance to a song that I particularly liked. I made good time getting to the San Francisco area and got into Sausalito late on a Sunday nite. I spent the night at the ferry station and slept on a bench with my bike & gear, locked to the bench I was sleeping on. I caught the first ferry to Richmond the next morning and then rode my bike down San Pablo Ave. to Berkeley in search of a youth hostel to stay at. It took a little doing i.e. searching and asking around but I found a great hostel that had a place to store my bike and free Internet access. It was around noon and I was famished so I decided to treat myself to a good meal before beginning my search for the mysterious Karina. I stumbled across a Mexican restaurant that looked promising and went in. I sat down at a booth and a lovely, young Hispanic woman waited on me. I think she was trying to get a rise out of me because she kept leaning over towards me and because she was wearing a very low-cut blouse, her tits just about fell out each time she leaned over. Ah, lust for life! I had a delicious meal of huevos rancheros & left a generous tip for the sexy waitress and told her thanks for the view as I was leaving. She gave me a big smile & said “gracias.”

 

While I was waiting for my huevos rancheros, I had asked the cutie serving me if I could borrow their Yellow Pages and made up a list of every bar, cafe, & nightclub in Berkeley. I had a map of Berkeley that the hostel provided in their lobby and mapped out the most logical route to pursue my Indian princess. Each bar or cafe that I would go into, I’d order a beer, a cup of coffee, or juice and would just observe the staff for awhile & try to determine who’d be the best ones to ask about Karina. I’d start out by saying “excuse me but I was hoping that you might be able to help me find a friend of mine? She’s about 5’7″, 120 lbs, long, wavy brunette hair down past her knees, & she has an exotic kind of look. I’m not sure but she could be Hispanic or maybe Native American? Her name is Karina.” I must’ve hit a dozen bars & cafes but no one knew her. With each “sorry,” my spirits sank a bit further. It was getting late & I was tired so I headed back to the youth hostel and went straight to bed. I awoke early the next morning and was still feeling a little depressed and beginning to think that I was on a fool’s errand & that the chances of finding Karina like this were very slim. I went back to the Mexican restaurant thinking that the sight of that waitresses’ lovely breasts would pick my spirits up a bit but of course, she wasn’t working. Instead, an old guy with a limp waited on me but he was pleasant. I had a huge breakfast burrito this time and while eating it, I thought I’d take a ride down to the Berkeley marina where I had spent so much time when I was here a year ago.

 

The last time I was in Berkeley, I was living out of my van. It wasn’t too bad a life except for the loneliness. I had a 1983 Ford Econoline van with a box spring & mattress in it. I’d cook one hot meal a day on a hibachi & kept my perishable food in a large ice chest. I had a good assortment of books & music CDs which I played on a boom box. I also kept my big tent & camping gear with me in case I found a spot where I could set up camp for awhile. I was working temp jobs through Labor Ready that slave-driving rip-off joint that treats you like shit. Sometimes I felt like king of the road with the world at my feet & reveled in that sense of freedom because I could pick up and go wherever I wanted & whenever I wanted. But at other times, I felt so alone & isolated. I spent my evenings after getting off work, at the Berkeley marina drinking beer and watching the bay. My time in Berkeley came to an abrupt end though when I got a D.U.I. on Friday, October 13th 2006. I was tired of feeling so lonely and after downing several beers, went out nightclubbing. I spent six days in the lovely Santa Rita jail which was really more a prison and quite an experience. One day while I was in the cell outside the courtroom waiting to go before the judge, several young black gang-bangers got into a serious religious conversation & after about half an hour of being silent, I couldn’t resist so I raised my hand and the young guys cracked up. There were a couple of older black guys about my age but I was the only white guy and I sort of served as mediator because I would politely intervene at times & point out that so and so hadn’t had a chance to speak his mind. The gang bangers dealt drugs for a living and spoke of their guns & the violence of their lives. I think they tripped on me because I was sincere, polite, & respectful and they liked what I had to say. It was lucky for me that I met these young dudes because we were released around 2 in the morning and we were out in the boondocks & they took me under their wings and helped me to get to the BART station so I could get back to Berkeley. They warned me that downtown Oakland was no place for me even in broad daylight and especially not in the middle of the night. When we went our separate ways, a couple of them gave me a brief hug & called me O.G. I was flattered and thankful.

 

Okay, back to the present. I rode my bike the short couple of miles down to the marina and had left my trailer back at the hostel like I had the day before. I sat down at the picnic table where I had spent many an evening the year before. I smoked a few bowls to get my head right and plot my plan of attack for the day. Somewhere around the third bowl, it came to me like a bolt of lightning, Karina was obviously an intelligent woman and where do intelligent people like to hang-out? Bookstores! And I remembered the old guy who had given me a ride when I  was hitch-hiking from Berkeley south towards L.A. last March. He was driving a van that said Cody’s Books on the side of it & we had a great conversation about the Bushwhacker president and all his cuts to social welfare programs. I wanted to ask him if he worked at Cody’s Books or if he owned it but I thought it’d be impolite so I didn’t. I decided that I’d make Cody’s Books the first bookstore I’d check out in my search for my lovely lady. I found Cody’s by looking in a phone book in a gas station phone booth and when I walked through the front door, there was a checkout stand with a young guy behind the counter. I described the guy who had given me the ride several months earlier and the young guy said “oh, that’s Fred, him & his wife are the owners but they won’t be in today, but they’ll be here for sure first thing tomorrow morning.” I thanked him & decided to browse a bit. As I was wandering around, I noticed a wall covered with pictures of famous writers who had given talks here at Cody’s.

Anniversary of the bombing of Cody’s Book store

 

The wall was a virtual who’s who of the American Left. Here are a few of the author’s pictures who caught my attention: Michael Parenti; Alice Walker; Allen Ginsberg; President Bill Clinton; George Lakoff; Jane Fonda; Ken Kesey; Kurt Vonnegut; Norman Mailer; Studs Terkel; & Ralph Nader to name just a few of the dozens of celebrities hanging on this auspicious wall of fame. As I stood there gazing at the pictures, it dawned on me that this bookstore had to be a sort of intellectual Mecca and Karina had to have been a regular here if she’s part of an underground revolution. A feeling of impending success was growing in me & I couldn’t wait for tomorrow to be here. I was so confident that I was going to find Karina once I spoke to Fred the next day that I decided to take the rest of the day off & went into the Acme Bar, a place I had stumbled upon when I used to live in my van and hang out at the marina. When I was here last March, I had an interesting night in the Acme. I was on foot and when I walked in there were no other customers. I leaned my big backpack & two smaller packs against a wall in the corner and ordered a cheap beer. The bartender was a young gal with rings, piercings, & tatoos all over. She was a little heavy set and had bright red dyed hair & a great personality. She asked me where I was from & where I was headed. I told her that I’d just gotten off the Amtrak train from Portland and was hoping to find a cheap place to stay because I’d like to live in Berkeley for awhile & she said that she’d ask around & might know of a place where I could squat. She said there’s a website run by squatters and that it was a growing movement. People slowly filtered in and I continued drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon beers. I wasn’t quite sure if it was a gay bar or not but got a strange kind of feeling. Nobody hassled me and if it was a gay bar, it was one of the most low-key gay bars I’ve ever been in. A couple of bar stools down from me was a guy about my age & his friend who I’m pretty sure was female but she had a goatee. After awhile, the guy asked me my name, and I said “Rob.” He said, “Hah! I got you beat. My name is Ed and is only two letters and it ends a lot of words.” I had observed him with other customers for a few hours & he seemed to revel in being somewhat of a smart-ass so I couldn’t resist when he made the last comment, “yeah, Ed like in fuck-ED!” He gave me a quizzical look & I instantly apologized but his friend laughed and said “that’s a good one.” Ed smiled at me and knew that I was just joking and didn’t seem to be offended. In fact, he insisted on buying me a drink. I met several characters that night and when I finally decided that I had better be on my way because I didn’t even know where I was going to crash for the night & the bartender didn’t have any luck in coming up with an idea of where I could stay. I walked several blocks and it was a pain in the ass being drunk and having to carry three packs. I finally spotted an elementary school and was just about to hop over a fence figuring I’d sleep on the playground and get up early before the kids started arriving. All of a sudden, a young, good-looking black gal walked up to me and asked me what I was doing and I figured there was no point lying so I told her. An older black guy joined us and when I said that I was looking for a place to crash for the night, he said, “you can stay at my place for $20.” I hesitated for a bit and figured that I’d take a gamble & since they already knew what I was up to, if they were going to rob me, they’d know where I was. We walked a few blocks and while we were walking, the gal asked me if I wanted to have sex with her for $60 I believe? I politely told her I would but I was almost completely broke and that’s why I countered the guy’s price with an offer of $10 for the night. The gal went off another way and when we arrived at the guy’s house, he told me I had to be very quiet. We went down to a basement & he turned on a light that revealed a simple cot next to a pile of dirty clothes and a washer and dryer. He told me that I had to leave early before anyone was up. I surmised that this was his parents’ house and he and the gal were tweekers grabbing a buck wherever & however they could to support their habits. The guy left and I was feeling very nervous because I thought he might try to creep in when I was sleeping to steal whatever he could. And I had over $900 on me that Jeri had just wired me so I could get my van out of impound from the D.U.I. I had just gotten. I took my wallet out and buried it under the pile of dirty clothes figuring that’d be the last place he’d look if he did try to rip me off. A few hours later I woke up having to pee desperately and couldn’t find the light switch but remembered the general location of the washer & dryer so I felt my way over to them & raised the lid of what must’ve been the washer and did my business in it. I dozed off and on and didn’t sleep well at all because of the worrying. I awoke just before dawn and slipped quietly out and felt better the farther

away I got from that basement. What a life I sometimes lead!

The Love of My Life & my guardian angel!

 

It was a rather uneventful evening at the Acme Bar but I was in top spirits and returned to the hostel early to get a good night’s sleep in anticipation of tomorrow’s meeting with Fred of Cody’s Books. I woke up early and went for a ride down around the marina. After my bike ride, it was still too early for Cody’s to be open so I went for some breakfast at the Mexican restaurant I went to on my first day here. And low & behold, the sexy senorita was working and gave me a big smile when I walked in. I ordered Huevos Rancheros and as I was eating, the waitress who had just asked me if there was anything else I needed & was walking away, dropped some silverware & when she bent over to pick it up, because she was wearing a short skirt, I was treated to a full view of her lovely ass & she wasn’t wearing any panties. I almost choked on the mouthful of food I was chewing & she turned around and gave me a wink. When this little vixen placed my check on my table, she also gave me a slip of paper with her name & number on it and whispered, “call me if you’d like to go out dancing or for a drink.” I blushed and said “thank you, great food & an even greater view. You certainly made my day!” She just laughed & walked away with a provacative sway of the hips. I slowly regained my composure and tucked her number into my wallet and headed off on my bike for Cody’s. I got to Cody’s just as they were opening up and I recognized that it was Fred, the guy who had picked me up when I was hitch-hiking, who was unlocking the door and getting things ready for another day of business. I locked my bike up to a nearby tree and walked in with my heart pounding in the hope that I was going to get lucky. Fred was unpacking some boxes on a table and I walked up to him and said “excuse me but I believe you gave me a ride last year when I was hitching on the ramp near the marina & headed for San Francisco?” Fred paused for a moment as he looked me over and then he said “your face does look vaguely familiar.” I reminded him  of our conversation about Bush and all the cuts he’d made to every social welfare program he could get his hands on & I told him that he’d given me a bottle of water when I got out of the company van & that he’d let me out right around the corner from the police department. Fred remarked “oh yeah, you were heading south to L.A. if I recall?” I answered, “yeah and the real reason that I came in to talk to you is because I met this beautiful woman about a week ago up in the Redwoods on the coast north of Eureka. She said her name is Karina and she’s about 5’7″ & 120 lbs., long brown hair, and she sort of looks Native American or Hispanic.” Fred took a good, long look at me as if he was trying to size me up and finally asked “so what makes you think I might know this gal?”

 

My heart dropped into my stomach as I fumbled for an answer & at last I said, “well, she mentioned that she was from Berkeley and something she said to me in a note she left & in the brief conversation we had, made me realize that she’s obviously a very intelligent person & I figured that since your bookstore is famous for its Left wing or progressive atmosphere, this would be the kind of place a woman like her would frequent?” Fred’s demeanor all of a sudden became somewhat furtive or suspicious like and he said in a low voice, “what exactly did she say to you?” I responded “she said that she was a child of the flowers & the forest and was sent there to do her part to help protect the wise, old ones whom the sick ones are killing. A revolution has begun and her part is to guide all those who come there, on to their path. She also said that she used to live in Berkeley until she met one of the masters who helped her find her path. And in the note she left me, she said I was a very special man and have an important part to play in the revolution. In addition, she said that our paths would cross again & I hope you will persevere.” When I finished saying this, Fred’s face broke out in a big smile and still whispering, he said “welcome my friend, you have done well & have taken the first step necessary for what lies before you. It’s not safe to speak here though so I want you to meet me at this address one week from today at this time of day & I’ll direct you to where you next must go.” My head was swimming with questions & I blurted “but wait, what about Karina? When can I see her? Where am I suppose to go next?” Fred smiled again & gave me a fatherly look & tone “I know, you’re dying to see Karina, it’s natural. She has that affect on most people but you have to be patient and follow my directions to the letter and it’s critical that you memorize that address I just gave you & destroy it. I’ll see you in one week.” I felt both frustrated & elated at the same time but accepted that I had no choice but to do as Fred instructed & reluctantly left. As I was unlocking my bike, I thought, “great, what am I going to do for a week?” I decided to mull this all over down at the marina so I picked up a six-pak of Guinness and rode down to the marina & my picnic table. After openning my first bottle of stout, I filled my pipe and once again visited the Elysium Fields of euphoria. I had my CD player and speakers in my backpack along with a fair selection of my CDs and put on Joan Baez’s album “Diamonds & Rust.” Ever since I had met Karina, my head & heart were in a swirl of emotions, dreams, & an enticing mystery that left me feeling befuddled. I pulled out the address that Fred had given me again & read “10 Birdview Lane, Sausalito.” I had repeated it so many times in my mind that it had become a sort of mantra. I felt confident that I had it memorized so when I lit my next bowl, I burned the paper Fred had given me. It was a bright, sunny day and I enjoyed the beer buzz along with the pot high & my music. It was around three in the afternoon when I remembered that sexy Hispanic waitress who had given me her phone number. Her name was Theresa & just thinking of that lovely ass when she bent over, gave me a hard-on. I thought, what the hell, I have a week to kill and God knows how long before I see Karina. Besides, it’s not like we’re married or are a couple and wasn’t San Francisco & the flower children the center of free love? I knew I was rationalizing but I was lonely and had too much time on my hands so I called Theresa on my cell phone.

 

Theresa answered with “hola!” I said, “hi, I’m the guy who had breakfast in the restaurant you work at this morning and you gave me your phone number.” She giggled and said “oh, I thought you were never going to call, it’s been six hours! What are you doing? Where are you?” I laughed a deep belly laugh and told her that I was down at the marina and just learned that I had a week to kill before I had to leave town and thought I’d give her a call. Theresa let out a squeal of delight and insisted that I stay right where I was because she’d be off work in half an hour and would come right over. I asked her if she’d mind picking up some beer and I’d pay her when she got here. She admonished me “don’t worry about it sweetie, I’m so happy you called. What kind of beer do you like?” I replied that almost anything was fine with me, get whatever kind you like to drink. I’ll see you in awhile sexy.” And we hung up. I thought, well, this is indeed my lucky day. I have gotten one step closer to finding my lovely Karina & this femme fatale, Theresa, appears to be very interested in hooking up. I smoked another couple of bowls and laid down on the grass and felt the gentle breeze off the water blow across my face and watched the sea gulls coast high above me. I must’ve dozed off because the next thing I knew, I heard Theresa’s seductive voice and openned my eyes to discover her standing over me with that same skirt she had on this morning and still without panties. What a beautiful sight to wake up to! I had felt my life was cursed for so many years with all the bad luck I’d had that I had a really hard time understanding how things could be going so great for me now. This thought quickly vanished because in a instant, Theresa had plopped down next to me & in a flash was lying on top of me smiling with those big, beautiful Hispanic eyes that have always melted me since my high school sweetheart who was from Ecuador. We started kissing and I don’t think we stopped kissing for over an hour before we came up for a breath. Finally I said “hey, where’s that beer?” Theresa chuckled and said, “keep your pants on, well, at least for now.” And with that she got up and walked over to a little Toyota pickup truck and returned with a six pack of Heineken. As we were enjoying our beers, Theresa asked me where I was staying and I told her that I was staying at a hostel on San Pablo Ave. She then offered “well, we’ll have to do something about that. You know what? I’m house-sitting for this rich family that are in Europe for a month and I’d love it if you would come and stay with me to keep me company. You’ll love it and they have a fantastic pool like you’ve never seen, half of it is outdoors and half of it is indoors.” I was probably grinning from ear to ear and asked “why are you so good to me? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I just don’t understand what you see in me because I am not exactly Brad Pitt and we just met?” Theresa laughed and replied, “you remind me of my first boyfriend who was the love of my life & you have warm eyes. You know what they say about the eyes?” I said “no, what do they say about the eyes?” She quickly declared “the eyes are the windows to the soul,” and I feel you are a good soul.” And lest we forget the horrors of the Vietnam war, which I came very close to being just another casualty of, watch this video;

Theresa, la senorita mas fina! And reflect on this young woman’s pain;
(all too often this is the fate of our young people who because they have such a poor education, must choose between flipping burgers or joining the military)

 

Well, my mom didn’t raise no fool so I said, “I’d love to spend some time with you la senorita muy bonita.” Theresa clapped her hands with joy like a little girl openning her presents on Christmas morning, and with that we loaded my bike in the back of her truck and then drove to the hostel where I collected my things. The house Theresa was house-sitting for was up on a hill overlooking the bay and had an awesome view of the Golden Gate Bridge. It had to be over 5,000 square feet and she was right, I had never seen such a gorgeous pool and boy was it inviting. We were standing next to the pool & the next thing I knew, Theresa had given me a friendly push and I was in the pool with all my clothes on and my shoes. I yelled “you’re going to pay for that!” She just laughed and started a slow strip tease and jumped in. Wow! What a voluptuous little body. Theresa was about 5’2″ and 130 lbs. with pitch black hair that hung in ringlets down just past her shoulders and her breasts were like luscious fruit hanging from a tree that were absolutely mouth watering. She must have been something like 38 double d. She swam over to me and started helping me out of my clothes as we were passionately kissing. We made love right in the pool and afterwards Theresa led me to the guest bedroom she was sleeping in & we both fell asleep in each other’s arms. I must admit that for some reason I did feel a twinge of guilt for being with Theresa and as I was making love with Theresa, Karina kept popping into my thoughts. I awoke late at night & went in search of some food because I was famished. I found the kitchen and the refrigerator and was snooping around to see what I could find when all of a sudden those warm breasts of Theresa’s were pressed up against my back & I said “hello beautiful.” Theresa quipped “why thank you kind sir, can I help you find something?” “Why yes, I’m starved and was just looking for a quick bite,” and the next thing I knew, she bit my butt. “Hey, what are you a vampire?” She laughed and said “you said you wanted a quick bite.” I turned around and lifted her in my arms to where her breasts were level with my mouth and suckled at those mounds of joy like a newborn babe. Theresa groaned soft & low with contentment & when I set her back down on the floor, she said “okay, now it’s your turn,” and led me to a gigantic easy chair in a den right off the kitchen & had me sit down in the chair and lean back. And then this red-hot Latina went down on me like I’ve never known before & I was in pure ecstacy. When I was totally spent, my lovely lover kissed me deeply and said, “you just relax honey & I’ll whip up something for us to eat.” She and I were both butt naked and it felt so good and natural & I didn’t feel self-conscious one bit even though I was at least 30 lbs. overweight. Before I knew it, she had returned with an ice-cold beer for me & then hurried back to the kitchen. I sure loved watching her walk away from me because that ass of hers was a work of art. She yelled from the kitchen for me to help myself to the stereo system or the T.V. or whatever I felt like doing. I found the remote for the stereo system and it took me sometime to figure out how to even turn it on but I discovered a CD player which you could program to play random songs from whatever genre or combination of genres of music you wanted. I selected a bunch of particularly romantic songs I thought Theresa might like.

my foxy, little Latina Betty Crocker!

(this is Chapter 1 of my novel which is over 2,000 pgs. and on-going; contact me if you’d like to read more)

The Art of Manipulation

 

 

 

We are gradually morphing into a fascist society, yep, right here in the land of freedom & democracy. Fear mongering, exaggeration, being an alarmist, you say? A third of the American public believe that Trump is the populist champion of their dreams & he uses these tactics and many more and they believe him yet the majority of them most likely would dismiss my argument here? Okay, for those of you who are still able & willing to read an essay that’ll require 15 minutes of your time, here’s an overview of the subject for you.

It Can’t Happen Here, Right???

 

Most people are aware of the fact that Freud was the father of modern psychology but did you know that his nephew, Edward Bernays, was the father of the public relations industry or as we usually refer to it, the PR industry? There’s an old saying, “Advertising is what you pay for & Publicity is what you pray for.” Well Bernays soon became the darling of New York’s elite circle of businessmen because of his skillful use of his uncle’s insights into human behavior in his P.R. campaigns for many, if not most of the major corporations of his time. (by-the-way, Bernays published a book in 1928, its title was “Propaganda.”) 

 

And to give you an example of just how pernicious & powerful the P.R. industry became, let’s take a look at how he helped to make it acceptable for women to smoke cigarettes. Before this PR assault on America, it was considered a social taboo for women to smoke;

 

After WWI, Bernays was hired by the American Tobacco Company to encourage women to start smoking. While men smoked cigarettes, it was not publicly acceptable for women to smoke. Bernays staged a dramatic public display of women smoking during the Easter Day Parade in New York City. He then told the press to expect that women suffragists would light up “torches of freedom” during the parade to show they were equal to men. Like the “You’ve come a long way, baby” ads, this campaign commodified women’s progress and desire to be considered equal to men

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/02/27/torches-of-freedom-women-and-smokin  (by-the-way, Bernays hired dozens of young, beautiful women fashion models to play the part of female rebels defying social conventions).

 

Evidently, Bernays had stumbled upon the golden formula that generated millions in profits for the corporate cockroach class i.e. employing psychological appeals in their advertising & P.R. campaigns. By manipulating peoples’ fears & desires, corporations could sell their products that people didn’t need & condition them to want or desire the products which would serve as symbols of their elevated class status & thereby enhance their self-image. Need I illustrate? Look at all the car ads that show beautiful women flocking around a guy in a fancy sports car for example.

tell me again how different we are from Russia?

 

Well, as the 20th century rolled on, so did the power of corporations until the point we’re at today where these corporations are more powerful (in terms of wealth & influence) than many nations;

Walmart

Exxon Mobil

Royal Dutch Shell

Apple

Samsung

Amazon

Microsoft

Nestle

Google

 

And this is just a partial list. Let this sink in for a minute if you will? Private corporations so rich & powerful that they hire armies of lobbyists to seduce politicians into writing legislation that further increases their profits, protects them from lawsuits, provides them with millions & billions in tax subsidies for research & development, allows them to use the public infrastructure (highways, bridges, ports, airports, etc.) to conduct their business and most of these behemoth corporations pay little to no taxes—some even get back millions & billions in their tax returns.

What did our soldiers die for???

 

If this doesn’t morally outrage you, you are either a member of the corporate cockroach class or are a sociopathic narcissist like Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan. By-the-way, Donny is a great admirer of authoritarians & dictators in case you haven’t noticed; (Saddam Hussein, Putin, Kim Jong Un of N. Korea, Mussolini, Gadhafi, 1980s Chinese Communist Party, President Xi Jinping of China, Duterte of the Philippines, President Erdogan of Turkey, Egyptian President el-Sisi, the Saudis, & Brazil’s new president, Boisonaro. And Trump not only admires these murderous authoritarians & dictators, he envies them & wishes he could be America’s authoritarian like the role he played on The Apprentice “reality” T.V. program. Note; Trump insisted that as part of his contract with the producers of that absurd show that every time his name was mentioned on the show, they had to also say that he was a billionaire. Talk about manipulating his public image, are you beginning to take my point?

So this is defending freedom & democracy?

 

Moreover, speaking of Trump’s admiration of Mussolini, some have credited Mussolini with saying;

 

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”

 

I know how die-hard most of Trump’s “base” is but I am a proudly stubborn (determination undisciplined) Irishman & I don’t give up easily either so here’s a sampling of the mountain of evidence proving Trump a malignant, greedy, megalomaniac:

 

*Trump consistently attacks peoples’ characters when he can’t refute their argument

*he’s a non-stop braggart i.e. I’m the smartest, I’m the best, I’m the greatest negotiator, etc. etc. etc.

*his biggest lie is his wealth & that’s why he will never reveal his tax returns

*he’s intentionally vague so he can deny having said what he’s said because his words are often open to a variety of interpretations

*he’s been exaggerating his wealth, his popularity, his skills, etc. his entire life

*he minimizes others so he can exaggerate his own significance

*he is fond of making false equivalences

*he likes to use the lesser of two evils argument (which is bogus)

*repetition ad nauseam is one of his favorite deceptive tactics i.e. I am the most famous president ever, the most successful real estate developer in New York City, etc. etc. etc.

*Scapegoating was his lead-off in his presidential campaign i.e. Mexicans are rapists, murderers, etc. & he blames everyone except himself for everything that doesn’t go his way

*Emotional Appeals—a favorite tactic used by dictators throughout history i.e. Hitler’s constant claim that the Jews were behind all of Germany’s problems (using fear, guilt, & calls for loyalty to him)

*Bandwagon—everyone else is doing it, so why not me or we

*Black & White/Either-Or; it’s us against the democrats

Burden of Proof—trying to turn the tables & demand his accusers prove their credibility rather than answer a question

*false flattery—try to flatter your opponent to keep them from attacking you

*Incredulity—I am offended that you would even ask me such a question

*labeling—any journalist who criticizes him or disagrees with him is with the “fake press”

*Ridicule/Mocking—his shameful mocking of handicapped guy during one of his rallies

*slippery slope—if we don’t stop the illegal immigrants, we’ll soon be overrun by terrorists, etc.

*Dehumanizing—something Trump has a particular talent for especially when it comes to anyone who dares to say a bad word about him

*Slogans—replacement for serious thought i.e. America, love it or leave it

 

I could easily provide you with hundreds if not thousands of examples of Trump’s manipulative techniques/tactics but I realize that no matter how much proof I provide, Trump supporters aren’t open to logic or rational thought but are ruled by their passions & Trump is a master at pushing peoples’ emotional buttons in order to win them over. So, why should I waste my time talking to the willfully ignorant or rather trying to persuade them to reflect & trust their own judgment rather than the circus master Trump the Vile?

Trump as Jim Jones & the kind of loyalty Trump expects

 

I am providing a public service that some may seriously consider or may pass it on to some of those who haven’t drunk the Jim Jones Kool Aid yet, and that is my only solace. And in that spirit, here are the eight signs of malignant narcissism, and if you dare, see if any of them are accurate reflections of Donald the psychopathic narcissist:

 

  1. Sense of entitlement
  2. Lack of conscience and empathy
  3. Sadistic streak
  4. Egocentrism
  5. Grandiosity (I am the greatest, smartest, richest, etc.)
  6. Paranoia (it’s a witch hunt by the democrats)
  7. Manipulative nature
  8. They project their bad behavior onto others

 

In conclusion and to prove that this isn’t merely a one-sided attack on “republicans,” Obama bears a large part of the responsibility for Trump becoming president. In fact, Obama was so good at his “bait & switch” tactic that he used on us to persuade us that he was going to be the champion of “Hope & Change,” that his campaign for his first term as president won two awards at the Cannes Festival for Advertising:

 

“The campaign that drove Barack Obama to victory in the US presidential election has claimed two top awards at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Awards.

The campaign, submitted by Obama for America, has been hailed as a masterful combination of new media, door-to-door and community grass roots campaigning with a clever tactical use of traditional TV advertising.

The campaign won two grands prix in the Titanium and Integrated Lions categories.”

 

Yep! Obama swore up & down and everywhere he went that he was going to enact real changes, be the transparent president, etc. and what did he do within the first few weeks of his presidency? He appointed several of the top Wall St. wolves to the most powerful positions regarding our national economy i.e. Summers, Geitner, Bernanke, etc. And right then & there I knew I had been suckered just like the millions of other Americans. I detested all the racial attacks on him & Trump barely concealed his own racist campaign against Obama with his “birther” issue which he beat the drums for ad nauseam. But Obama’s refusal to prosecute the Wall St. culprits, the “Super Bankers” who were “Too Big to Fail & Too Big to Jail,” his war on Whistleblowers, etc. etc. etc. only fanned the flames of anger in America which should rightfully be directed at the corporate cockroach class because the politicians are merely the willing tools of these creatures who have no loyalty to America whatsoever. Look into how Obama sold out the residents of Flint with stunt pretending the water was safe to drink. Obama the Oreo President!

 

And Trump with his appeal to peoples’ fears and hate using his racism, bigotry, & the other techniques I listed above, managed to slink into the oval office. I recently permanently deleted my Facebook account for several reasons but a significant factor was that every time I criticized Obama, many so-called Progressives came unglued and practically accused me of being a. troll for Trump. Yep! A sad reflection of the myopia on the Left that just like the so-called conservatives who are blind to the crimes of their party, are willfully blind to the crimes & betrayals of the democratic party.

Lastly, what should really worry us all is what my intellectual hero, Noam Chomsky has been warning us about for quite some time now i.e. the catastrophic, perhaps already irreversible destruction of our climate or environment. Exxon Mobil & several of the other oil & natural gas conglomerates have spent millions, perhaps billions pushing their fake news sowing the seeds of doubt about climate change. Of course, Donald Duck is doing his part by claiming it’s all an elaborate Chinese hoax. In this Alice in Wonderland World where Trump is the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth, and can start a nuclear war in a childish fit which he is notorious for, we should all be quaking in our boots!

May we persevere!

Rob DeLoss, Trinidad, CA 1/28/19

 

P.S.  It must be a sign of old age but I forgot some juicy tidbits regarding Trump that I want to include. Trump’s supposed War against the “Fake News Media” would be laughable if it weren’t so destructive of a vital institution in any democracy. Moreover, where would Trump be if it weren’t for all the free media coverage he received in his campaign for the presidency—some estimate over $5 billion while Bernie got a tiny fraction of coverage. Trump learned from his slimy mentor, Roy Cohn, that any media attention i.e. publicity is good whether it’s scandalous or not because it keeps you in the public eye. Cohn’s “wisdom” which Trump assimilated into his very DNA was “to always hit back & never apologize.” You see, Trump’s “brand” is his most prized possession because he sells his brand i.e. logo, all around the world & people pay him millions to use his logo. Sadly, far too many Trump supporters believe that everything that has Trump’s name on it, is owned by him. And once again we witness just how destructive advertising & public relations can be.

Addendum

 

Oh yeah, another minor little detail i.e. our government launches P.R. campaigns to “motivate” us to go into wars. The Iraq War is one of the most blatant campaigns of lies to date. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al spent weeks & months going on the Sunday morning talk shows warning us what a threat to our freedom & democracy the Iraqis were, how they had weapons of mass destruction, etc. and it was all proven to be a grand conspiracy of lies afterwards but not a single one of these war criminals was held accountable. In fact, Cheney got rich off the war because his stock in Halliburton went through the roof because they just “coincidentally” were awarded the lion’s shares of the contracts for supplying our troops & rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure but neglected to do most of what they got paid for. And oh yeah, billions of dollars went missing, but what the hell? Moreover, the New York Times, the supposed bastion of liberal thought in America, beat the war drums every bit as loudly as FOX “News.” So, to some extent, Trump is right about the fake news of several of our “news outlets” but he clearly uses this label in his pathetic attempts to silence all his critics. Let’s see, officially we lost 4,486 military personnel & 32,226 casualties but if you dig deeper you’ll discover that our casualties are much closer to half a million if you count PTSD, depression, heart & breathing problems, etc. etc. etc.

 

And can you tell me again why we’ve been in Afghanistan now longer than any other war in U.S. history? Well, as Calvin Coolidge said, “the business of America is business.” Or to put it more bluntly, Welcome to Amerika, where the Corporate Cockroaches Rule!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Living in the Land of Trump-speak

 

 

 

Talk about surreal, we have clearly stepped through the Looking Glass & are living in a waking nightmare world. Every Trump supporter I have met proclaims from practically the first sentence out of their mouths that they like Trump because he “tells it like it is.” I have to try hard to hide my incredulity each time I hear this mantra because it truly blows my mind that so many Americans actually believe he’s a truth-teller.

Pushing people’s emotional buttons is easiest way to manipulate them

 

And the second I try to point out the latest lies by Trump, they go into automatic shut-down & dismiss whatever I say as part of the grand conspiracy against their hero. The supposed billionaire who cares about the working class who have been screwed by the elites in Washington D.C. I say “supposed billionaire” because there’s no proof that he is actually a billionaire & he refuses to release his tax records. Moreover, I learned recently that Donny insisted that as part of his contract with the producers of “The Apprentice” was that every time they mentioned his name on the program, they had to refer to him as “the billionaire.”

Lies repeated often enough from a bully pulpit become Truths

 

I would think that people who pride themselves on their “common sense,” could see that something is mighty fishy here when Donny insisted on this? And if he’s so secure & successful, why does he feel the compulsion to brag about himself every time he opens his mouth? I have been a lover of learning my whole life but even a kid in elementary school knows that another kid who constantly brags about himself or herself is a phony.

Common sense tells us that a braggart is full of shit!

 

Moving on, I am reminded of when Ross Perot ran for the presidency & told us that he was tired of making money & didn’t want to become president for the opportunities it would give him to make more money. Arnold Swarzenegger also tried this ploy when he ran for governor of California. You can be sure that anytime somebody makes such a claim, they’re full of shit! No matter how obscenely wealthy someone becomes, it’s never enough & they always want more.

 

I am also reminded of all the uproar of Kerry’s “flip-flopping” on a few issues when he was running for president yet Trump flip-flops often within the same sentence but his cult members either don’t notice or don’t give a damn because this is just part of his good old country boy charm & “telling it like it is.” Jesus, talk about willful ignorance! And it also doesn’t register with his groupies that how can a billionaire be a true representative or champion of the poor, the working class or the working class. How in the hell do you think he gained all that wealth? He got it like the overwhelming majority of the rich have i.e. by screwing everyone he could.

 

Trump has been the subject of law suits his entire business career & he’s screwed thousands of people who have worked for him. He’s declared bankruptcy several times & when the banks would no longer loan him money because he screwed them, he took out loans with the Italian American mobsters who were his buddies & helped him with his casinos & he in turn helped them with City Hall & his political connections (from his dad) and then he started taking money from Russian mafia figures—do you begin to see why he loves Putin and will never say a bad word against the Russians?

 

Again, it’s just all so patently absurd & so depressing that so many Americans have fallen for this Creature from the Black Lagoon’s B.S. He truly believes he’s above the law & his brazen profiting from his stint in the White House in many of his business ventures is a blatant middle finger to all Americans & any semblance of respect for the office he holds. Even Tony Soprano wouldn’t dare to be so disrespectful to custom & tradition.

 

Every time Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan opens his mouth, it’s painfully clear that he’s a moron. The average elementary school graduate knows more about American history & politics than this baboon in the oval office & the civilized world reels almost daily from Trump’s ignorant remarks.

we could really use a Mark Twain today to slap Trump down!

 

I try to refrain from being “too personal” in my criticism usually but the damage already done by this racist, greedy idiot demands that I take the gloves off. So, if you can’t see or refuse to acknowledge the mountain of evidence corroborating what a colossal criminal & cretin this piece of shit is, you share in the responsibility for tearing America down & spitting on the graves of all those who died in service to this country!

 

—Rob DeLoss, Trinidad, CA  Dec. 26, 2018

 

P.S.  Trump reminds me of something I learned back in my 20s when I lived in L.A. i.e. you meet a lot of phonies in L.A. who seemed to think that they could get away with lying & manipulating all the time because once they got found out in one circle of friends, they could just move on because there are so many people in L.A., they always had more suckers they could screw over.

Addendum

When I was a substitute teacher in the mid-eighties, the average high school graduate read at an 8th grade level. This report shows that nine years ago, it has dropped to just above the 5th grade level. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/22/top-reading_n_1373680.html I wonder if the fact that we have a president who reads at a third to fourth grade level could reflect some shortcoming on our part? And with a faux “Christian” in charge of the Dept. of Education, what do you think our chances are of surviving our ignorance?

I bet the overwhelming majority of Trump’s “base,” or fan club don’t know a minor detail about him i.e. he doesn’t own all the properties that bear his name, in fact, he owns a very small number of them. He charges the owners to use his name on them & his whole life has been about promoting himself. Note that every time he speaks, he’s lying, exaggerating, & proclaiming he is at this & that & that ad nauseam. And this is why he becomes so upset if anyone criticizes him i.e. it poses a threat to his brand. Think about it!

The Corporate Cockroach Conspiracy

 

 

 

…is to keep the 99.9% of us scared of one another and therefore hating each other. By keeping us focused on hating our fellow victims, their (the transnational corporations) crimes aren’t discussed or delved into. These corporations instigate one war after another & we are in a state of perpetual war as Gore Vidal called it. These wars are about stealing the resources of other nations & these corporations pay no taxes & are subsidized by us, the taxpayers. But if we don’t pay our taxes, we are sent to prison, a thriving industry in today’s America. This is all part & parcel of how the corporate cockroaches maintain their control or power over us. 

 

Why do I call them “corporate cockroaches?” Because like cockroaches, these human vermin hide in the dark & run away when we turn the spotlight on them. And like cockroaches, they spread disease but the disease they spread is fear & hate. Perhaps you think I’m exaggerating? Then how else do you explain the utter depravity of the Nazis? Or that virus of hatred so virulent that inspired their ingenious methods of killing, torturing, maiming, experimenting, etc. on Jews, intellectuals, artists, homosexuals, gypsies, etc.

Trump distracts while McConnell & Ryan destroy our Democracy

 

Orwell said; “Those who control the present control the past & those who control the past control the future.” Trump is the master distractor, he has done this all his life in business & now he’s doing it for the corporate cockroach masters hiding in the shadows.

 

We have become Fortress America & perhaps Trump’s “wall,” isn’t so much about keeping the oppressed out as it is about keeping our oppressed trapped & controlling us from within? Manufacturing has all but completely abandoned America & we have lost most of our value as “consumers,” so about the only way they can make money off us now is to lock us up.

 

A common thread amongst all authoritarians, tyrants, & dictators is their goal of silencing their critics & that is why they attempt to silence the press. They strive to create a “reality” where the only “truth” is what comes from them. Trump has repeatedly told his followers, “Don’t believe what you see or what you read, only “believe me.”

from the 1950s to 1990s Tobacco lobby lied re: nicotine as addictive

 

People are fleeing the drug lords, the vicious gangs, the police, the military, floods, famine, lack of clean water, etc., not because they’re violent, greedy thieves but because of our natural human instinct to seek to survive & protect the lives of our children. Americans’ general level of historical ignorance is truly depressing & is a significant factor in why we are in this sad state of affairs. I wish more people were aware of Major General Smedley D. Butler of the USMC for example or were familiar with a few of his amazingly honest quotes;

 

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
― Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier

 

And speaking of conspiracies, several of America’s largest corporations tried to enlist the general as leader in their plot to overthrow F.D.R. because they despised his “New Deal,” program to help America’s oppressed suffering from the Great Depression. Check it out for yourself if you doubt me.(It’s critically important that you don’t dismiss this as just another Alex Jones crackpot conspiracy—I despise Jones personally for all the fear, hatred, & harm he has caused; you can check the Congressional Record, etc. to verify Major General Smedley D. Butler’s testimony before Congress)

I don’t believe it’s much of an exaggeration to claim that the overwhelming majority of humanity’s problems stem from these corporate behemoths who have more power than most of the nations around the globe. So, when it becomes just as desperate here in America as it is in so many parts of the world as it is right now, we too will attempt to escape but where will we escape to? Answer: Nowhere! Climate destruction threatens our very existence as a species;

I know how overwhelming & depressing this all can be but if you bury your head in the sand, that won’t save your children & grandchildren from what we, as humans, have allowed to happen. We are still reeling from the world-wide economic collapse of 2008 & Trump’s corporate cockroach masters of Wall St. have continued their corrupt practices under Obama & Trump has given them the green light as well. What’s coming could make 2008 look like a walk in the park?
If Trump & his masters win in their propaganda war against reason, facts, & empathy, we may find ourselves locked in this vast, open-air prison we call the land of freedom and democracy?

 

—Rob DeLoss, Trinidad, CA Nov. 22, 2018 (Jeri’s B-day & Thanksgiving)

Why We’re Losing

 

 

Because technology has enslaved us! Yep! Everything from our “smart phones” to our “social media” platforms like Facebook to our entertainment world of television, movies, & the Internet. I’m going to limit the scope of this essay to just these forms of technology for the sake of brevity, especially in this day & age when the average attention span is eight seconds, a second less than a goldfish’s attention span. How’s that for a depressing statistic?

A “friend’s” betrayal

 

Some of you may wonder how we got to this sad state of affairs & probably even fewer of you may actually even care. Of course we didn’t become enslaved by these forms of technology overnight, no, it was a gradual decaying of our intellectual abilities and a good part of the blame rests with our public education system & the forces behind it i.e. politicians & their puppet masters, the corporate cockroaches.

A poignant & insightful critique

 

Moreover, the corporate media which is now in control of something like 90% of the media in America, bears a large part of the responsibility for the dumbing down of the U.S. public. Naturally, they don’t want a well-educated citizenry because they’d lose a lot of the profits they derive from a mind-numb population of consumers.

“Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”
― George Orwell, 1984

 

Public relations & advertising are two huge industries and corporations don’t spend tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising & public relations campaigns because they have nothing better to do with their money. Well, this opens a whole other can of worms so let me get back to the specifics of this essay.

 

Facebook is clearly the largest “social media” platform in America and around the globe & if you think I’m exaggerating any of what I’m about to tell you, check out the PBS “Frontline” special that was aired last week, October 29 & 30 of 2018 https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/facebook-dilemma/  I have been a critic of Facebook for quite some time and yeah, I too was suckered into its shallow world for several years & was blind to its pernicious aspects for most of that time. In fact, I was celebrating my birthday last week at a local pub & tried to tell this guy about Facebook’s business model & he clung to the “fact” that it wasn’t costing him anything. I felt like I was arguing with a tree stump or something & the last thing I asked him was; If it’s free, why is Zuckerberg worth anywhere from $60 billion to $84 billion dollars? My “friend” couldn’t answer & changed the subject. But poor Zuckerberg’s wealth dropped by $18.8 billion recently because fortunately, not all Facebook users are part of the Walking Dead.

The “free market” & “free elections”

 

Why the drop in its stock value? In brief because of their allowing the company, Cambridge Analytica to basically steal the election for Trump with its army of trolls planting fake news posts on Facebook. Of course Zuckerberg has plead ignorance & innocence because to do otherwise would be the end of his empire. But I call Bull-shit! He became so obscenely wealthy precisely because of his total lack of concern about ethical business practices.

 

And this brings us right back to Facebook’s “business model” which simply means, the more time they can get people to spend on Facebook, the greater the ad revenues they collect. Remember advertising is what keeps the whole charade of business in America going i.e. the business of America & the world is FRAUD! Yes fraud, deliberate, outright lying, deception, you name it. Anything to enrich themselves and fuck the consumers, fuck the environment, fuck everything but protect the holy profits which allows them to live the Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous.

The Cult of Personality that gave us Trump via Mark’s technology & greed

 

Lest you think I’ve completely forgotten my original & key point i.e. our enslavement, Edward Snowden is a fugitive for life because he cares deeply about our freedom whether we do or not. He warned us that these “social platforms” are selling & giving every bit of our personal data which we so gullibly posted on Facebook & the rest of them, with the government. In a nutshell, by collecting & storing all our personal data, the government & the private tyrannies we call corporations, can manipulate us both as consumers & as citizens to vote the way they want us to, and if we become a nuisance, they can assemble the evidence from our personal files to frame us as a terrorist or whatever they want. https://theconversation.com/your-life-is-facebooks-business-model-like-it-or-not-35841 

 

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. (Benjamin Franklin)

Snowden warned us to be aware of Facebook, Apple, Yahoo, Google, You Tube, etc. by telling us that they were all voluntarily giving our information to the government and if this doesn’t make it clear that these high tech companies are aiding in our enslavement, you may as well go back to your bowl of Fruit Loops & FOX “News.” You have been warned!

 

Okay, onward & upward or perhaps I should say, downward? As for the ubiquitous “smart phones,” they are actually making people dumber, not smarter. Yeah I know, at this point you’re probably tempted to dismiss me as just another old Luddite & yes I’m old i.e. I just turned 66 last week but I’ve been severely critical of these phones since they came out. Why? Because any technology that has so completely taken over people’s lives that they walk down the street eyes glued to their phones & some people have actually walked into traffic because of them, is far too dangerous.

Furthermore, it’d be funny if it weren’t so sad that these phones which the advertising proclaims will bring us closer to our friends & help us make new friends with the apps they offer, etc. are more accurately anti-social. I’ve seen it time & time again, a group of young people walk into a bar or café or wherever together but they hardly speak to one another because they’re all on their “smart phones,” sharing pictures of their food, discussing the latest soap opera, checking how many likes they’ve gotten on Facebook and the assortment of other shallow, time-wasting platforms, apps., etc.

Who’s in control, the technology or humans?

 

I used to write paragraphs on the serious posts that came across on my feed on Facebook and only very rarely did someone write a sentence or even a phrase in reply. And now it’s emoticons which have supplanted even a phrase let alone a sentence.  This clearly is enhancing the dumbing-down of people already short-changed by a public education system that is about controlling us, not freeing us.  To expect someone to take five minutes to read something you’ve poured serious intellectual energy into, let alone write a sentence or two in response, is a joke in these peoples’ worlds.

The key to empowerment, justice, & freedom!

 

You tell me how in the hell we’re going to save our planet or ourselves when people can’t find the time to relate to one another as human beings except via these artificial electronic devices designed to keep us distracted & spending ever greater parts of our days on them? I forget the exact statistics but it’s truly depressing how many Americans haven’t read a single book in the past year.

 

Again, lest you think me a nut-case, there’s a young man name of Tristan Harris who worked for Google & was high up on the food chain in the corporation so-to-speak. And in a nutshell, he shows that these smart phones are like slot machines in casinos purposely designed to give people a quick fix and keep on playing. Moreover, it’s a lot more serious than that but again, I don’t want to bore you or take up too much of your attention span so here’s a good link if you give a damn?

https://youtu.be/C74amJRp730

 

I’m going to just touch briefly on television & movies because I’m sure that I have already gone on for far too long. Television has been perhaps one of the most pernicious technological tools over the course of my life but with the advent of the Internet, television has now taken a back seat to the “Net.” This is perhaps just a refresher course or remedial learning if you get my drift? But T.V., as Noam Chomsky has reminded us is just “filler” i.e. the stuff we tune it to watch and the truly important stuff is the advertising because obviously that’s where they get their money. And again I assert that the “filler” is almost entirely drivel & enfeebling rather than enlightening.

 

When the phenomenon dubbed “Reality T.V.” was born, I was dumbfounded. This was over 20 years ago roughly & the first one of these farces I watched was called “Survivor” I believe? It was a group of people supposedly stranded on a desert island & their goal was to form alliances & basically do whatever it took to win. I watched maybe two or three episodes & said to my dear, departed wife, Jeri, this is crap! Think about it, what are they telling us & what are they teaching young, impressionable minds? I’ll tell you what, they’re glorifying lying, cheating, stealing, back-stabbing, etc. in other words, doing whatever it takes to win and the hell with fair play, ethics, etc.

Treasonous
Russian
Un-American
Moronic
Pussy Grabber (What does that spell? Yep! TRUMP)

 

You might care to note that the “reality” t.v. show, “The Apprentice” is our current dunce in residence in the oval office’s claim to fame. And when I hear that shows like “The Walking Dead” are hugely popular, my heart sinks for America again. I could only handle maybe 15 minutes of one episode and had to change the channel. It’s like a regular t.v. series of a slasher movie. I could go on and on but I won’t.

 

Please don’t think I’m one of those phony “Christian” fundamentalists, far from it. They are equally responsible for the installation of Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan as “our” president. But I do share in their revulsion when it comes to a lot of what passes for entertainment in America. But where I definitely disagree with them, is on the subject of “pornography.” You see, in their feeble, twisted minds & spirits, nudity and sex are Satan’s temptations & are far more harmful than all the blood & violence in the movies. Could it be that because there is so much violence in the Old Testament in particular, that they’re comfortable with it in t.v. & movies or at least they’re not nearly so outraged about it as they are about sex & nudity?

Trump’s Christian base turn a blind-eye to his “shortcomings”

 

You see, I’m proud to consider myself an old hippie and I remember fondly the idealism of the tumultuous 60s and free love, equality, truth, no war, etc. In short, I believe the true pornography is violence, not love, nudity, & sex! And don’t misinterpret this as a blanket acceptance of the rampant, gross bondage & other sick shit in the world gone amok porno world. No, anything that degrades & demeans others in that industry sickens me but to label all nudity & free love between mutually consenting adults as Satanic or evil,  is just another version of McCarthyism or the Salem witch trials.

The consumption of pork in any form is forbidden by several Orthodox religions, including Judaism, the Seventh-Day Adventists, Islam and the Ethiopian Orthodox church. For followers, the pig is considered to be an “unclean” animal. This classification for “uncleanliness” is based on the pig’s outward appearance and behaviors.

 

In conclusion, the steady assault on our freedoms whether by the “Christian” fundamentalists, the corporate cockroaches, or whoever, is an attempt to dominate & control us & implicitly says that the “authorities” doing so, are superior to us & know what’s best for us i.e. we shouldn’t trust our own judgment but should remain children looking to their loving guidance as if we are all ignorant children dependent on their benevolent guidance.  Need I remind you of how many televangelists were eventually revealed for their “immoral” acts with prostitutes, etc.?

 

Last, but certainly not least, Hollywood movies. Again, I won’t bore you with a thorough review of this sad aspect of our social conditioning but will simply point out the first example that comes to mind i.e. “Blackhawk Down.” (and no, I don’t apologize for my condescending tone in this essay because there is more than ample evidence to support such a tone) This movie which, by-the-way, I enjoyed, like the thousands of others that came before it, always seem to glorify America’s position in each & every conflict around the world & paint the “other” as evil incarnate. Well even if you do a brief, cursory review of our illustrious history, you will often find that our behavior was shall I say? Less than honorable?

 

In summary, these factors and so many others, have all contributed to our enslavement whether we have the courage & honesty to acknowledge it or not. And as they say in so many self-help groups, recognition of a problem is the first & the most important step in solving that problem!

Ironically, these corporate cockroaches, the “Super-bankers” too big to jail, are at the top of the food chain

 

Namaste!

—Rob DeLoss, Nov. 5, 2018

Our future after Trump???

 

 

Addendum

Perhaps it’s more of a male problem due to our overly competitive natures or conditioning but movies, video games, etc. must be non-stop action in order to keep our attention & this parasitic state of being is a sort of closed, doom-loop system. In other words, the more we participate in this constant flux of meaningless & violent action, the less we are able to disengage from it & contemplate the much bigger reality, the much more serious issues that are a threat to all of humanity i.e. the possibilities for nuclear war & the destruction of the world through climate change & the continuing death of our precious ecosystems.

my book available on Amazon

Trump Telling it Like it Isn’t!

 

 

 

I was watching a video clip recently of Michael Moore being interviewed about his new film, “Fahrenheit 11/9” and a couple of things he said, really hit home with me. He said that he had interviewed the notorious S.O.B. (my description) Steve Bannon, the hatchet guy who was probably the key factor in saving Trump’s failing presidential campaign near the end?

 

And when Moore asked Bannon why the republicans just keep kicking the democrats asses (my paraphrasing), Bannon replied; “We go for the head-shot & the democrats are having pillow fights.” And it struck me like it did Michael Moore that here it is in a nutshell, the raw, ugly, painful truth. 

 

So, that being said, I’m notifying you here & now, this essay is going to hit hard, maybe even below the belt so-to-speak at times. I’m sick to death of being advised to play nice, be civil, etc. and especially now that we have such a vile, crude, corrupt, greedy, habitual liar & braggart in the White House.

 

Just how fuckin’ stupid are all of you who believe in this con-man who has lied & bullied his way to the top of a house of cards? In the last few days, it’s been “revealed” that Trump isn’t the great success he keeps telling the world that he is & this cracks me up because it’s long been known by those who have been paying attention that this is perhaps his most outrageous claim & boldest lie!

and this is only a fraction of his failures!

 

If your pussy-grabbing low-life is so successful, why has he always refused to reveal his tax returns? Is this your idea of “telling it like it is?” If he is such an honest, “tell it like it is” guy, why did he have the White House refuse to release something like 90,000 pages of Kavanaugh’s record when he was working for George W. Bush? If he’s such a successful businessman, why did he file for bankruptcy four times because he failed at the casino business which is an amazing feat in itself? Why have so many of his business ventures failed? 

 

You know, it just dawned on me, he should market Trump Kool Aid because his base has definitely drunk long & deep from this well of swamp juice. Here’s just a few of his failures which he just glosses over when they fail, like the lawsuits he loses but still claims victory in. Trump airlines, Trump beverages, Trump: the Game, Trump Casinos (even when daddy bailed him out), Trump magazine, Trump Mortgage, Trump steaks, Trump’s travel site, Trump’s comms company, Trump Tower Tampa, Trump University, & Trump vodka to name just a few of his many failures.

 

Sadly, what so many of you Trump-aholics haven’t caught on to is the fact that the vast majority of what appear to be his real estate properties aren’t in fact owned by him, no, those who own them pay him for the use of his name. And his name is everything to him & is why he gets so defensive & aggressive to all who cast aspersions on his “good name,” i.e. his brand. This is why he can’t ever stop singing his own praises, even as president of the U.S., he’s a constant pitch-man, con-man, hustler trying to convince the public that he’s a success when he’s an utter failure on every level. 

 

For those of you who pride yourself on having “common sense,” doesn’t it occur to you that the age-old wisdom/maxim that those who are truly talented at something, don’t go around bragging about it because they know that people who know them & their work, already know it. The braggarts are always those who are the most insecure & almost always full of shit! 

 

Tragically for America & the rest of the world because of the damage Trump has already done & God knows how much more, Trump’s true success is his ability to lie, exaggerate, deny, confuse, & never apologize. He learned this from his mentor, Roy Cohn, one of the slimiest creatures to ever crawl out of that swamp that Trump swore to drain but has actually restocked. And another mentor of Trump’s is the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, who followed a simple formula i.e. lie & never stop lying, repeat the lie ad nauseam and gradually, the public will accept it as truth or fact. And the bigger the lie, the easier it is to get away with it.

Roy Cohn, taught Donald deny, lie, attack ad infinitum!

 

And this is why the recent revelations that one of Trump’s most treasured lies i.e. that daddy only loaned him a mere million dollars and that he paid him back with interest won’t matter either because the Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan fan club won’t believe that daddy actually gave him over $400,000,000 and that they both defrauded the government of hundreds of millions of dollars in a wide variety of tax scams. Of course, this is all part of the plan and why Donny Duck continuously attempts to discredit the media, especially the New York Times newspaper, because they print the ugly facts that could wake people up but which don’t matter if you’re from zombie-land.

Steve Benson / Creators Syndicate

 

And again for you simpletons who probably didn’t even graduate from high school, because your Fuhrer tells you to ignore everything you read, see, & hear except what he says, is an age-old technique of authoritarians, fascists, & tyrants. And you claim that you’re proud Americans? What do you think your fathers & grandfathers fought WWII for?

 

It’s truly frightening and depressing that a blatant fraud such as the girly-man Donny has duped so many of you into believing his bullshit! The Duck’s “success” such as it is, has been almost entirely dependent on Daddy War-bucks & the assistance of the Italian American mafia in New York & New Jersey whom his mentor, Roy Cohn, introduced him to and his new benefactors, the Russian mafia & their boss, Putin, who have bought/invested hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars of Donny’s “real estate holdings.”

 

This duplicitous would be tin-can dictator has retained a small army of lawyers throughout the course of his “business career,” because he is constantly being sued for fraud, failure to pay workers, sub-contractors, etc. etc. etc. and you actually believe this guy is your champion? Jesus fuckin’ Christ! I believe he has had something like 4,000 law suits filed against him. Yep, clearly a guy who “tells it like it is.”

 

Here’s a specific example of your leader’s business integrity, he hired several hundred “illegal” (though I hate the term) Polish construction workers to do the demolition of a building he was going to turn into one of his casinos. The workers were so poor that they lived on the construction (deconstruction site) and they were promised a whopping $4 an hour for their work but the Donald cheated them out of even that paltry wage. How would you like to be fucked like that? Would you still sing the Dick-head’s praises?

 

And speaking of “deconstruction,” how appropriate because that is precisely what this Creature from the Black Lagoon is doing to America i.e. he’s deconstructing our entire government, all the checks & balances, every program that was established to help those of us not born with a silver spoon in our mouths, and he’s eliminating even more of the regulations on the financial services companies that brought us to the brink of total economic collapse & which I contend we are still suffering from, and the complete elimination of all environmental regulations so the oil spill that did so much for the south part of the U.S. with the billions, if not trillions of gallons of oil that contaminated the Caribbean for decades if not centuries to come, etc. etc. etc. So, if you think the crash of 2008 wasn’t so bad, just wait until the next one. Yeah, it’s going to be great fun & you’d better get your sleeping bags ready because you’ll soon be joining those poor souls living on the margins of this so-called society & civilization. The super banks, “too big to fail,” have gotten even bigger & continue to give themselves obscene levels of bonuses as they suck the blood out of our economy.

 

Yeah, just keep burying your head in the FOX “News” bubble and when your children, your wives, your husbands, all your loved ones die slow, excruciating deaths & have no health insurance thanks to the Duck Dynasty, you can sleep comfortably knowing that you supported the dictator who made it possible. When he takes away your food stamps, your social security, your Medicare, Don’t worry, be happy, Donny made America great again, but the great is for the 1% who pay no taxes, ship the decent paying jobs overseas where they can pay workers $2.00 per day and don’t have to worry about health, environmental, pollution, etc. regulations, not you or I you simpletons! Yeah, this is your American Idol, the moron who flip-flops constantly even within the same sentence he turns around and denies having said what he just said, even though it’s on tape. Yes,  it’s all an elaborate Democratic conspiracy against him. And when you wear your “maga” hat in public, you’re in fact wearing a dunce cap for all the world to see.

 

Well, sorry to disturb your “common sense” again but, if the democrats were capable of such complex conspiracies, why aren’t they the ones in power? I hate to break it to you—No, not really!—but probably the overwhelming majority of you Trump Walking Dead are FOX “News” watchers. And the fact that they have been allowed to get away with this charade or façade of being a “news” organization for over 20 years proves how truly stupid we are as a nation. Moreover, FOX isn’t even the worst of it, Donny Darko is a fan of Alex Jones, you know, the guy who claims that the horrific murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School was all a hoax. And Donald Duck also believes in The National Enquirer, that rag that anyone with more than a third grade education has always known is only good for one thing i.e. to line the bottom of your bird’s cage.

For those of you who haven’t completely abandoned concern for the truth or facts, and no, not Kellyanne Conway’s “alternate facts,” and if you can spare the time away from your Kardashians soap operas, etc., you might look up what used to be called Russia’s main newspaper, Pravda. It literally means “truth” in Russian. You see, FOX “News” is America’s Pravda i.e. state propaganda voice. It was crystal clear during the George W. Bush administration & FOX leader, Roger Ailes, you know, your friendly sexual predator just like Donny Duck, Kavanaugh, etc. etc. etc. sent the White House their daily talking points i.e. the propaganda outline for the day to just repeat ad nauseam to the mindless viewers who took it as gospel truth.

And sadly, I have to admit here that The New York Times, you know, the bastion of “liberal thought & opinion” in America was equally guilty of beating the war drums for the invasion of Iraq and we, even you, should all be well aware by now of how great that turned out i.e. the creation of Isis & just one bloody mess after another guaranteeing that we’ll never run out of terrorists to go after.

 

Yeah, I know, terrible me, I’ve been so nasty, mean, etc. well, tough fuckin’ shit! We’re circling the drain and I’m sick & tired of playing nice-nice with all these corporate cockroaches and all the morons who kiss their asses even as they’re being kicked to the curb by the same cockroaches.

 

Take an honest look at the vast wasteland that stretches across America in between the East coast & the West coast, the towns that are now ghost towns. The rust belt as they call it. Yep! The wonders of the “free market” where the rich are free to fuck us all, commit fraud via their corporations as standard business practice but if you or I write a bad check, we go to jail. And they, every great once in awhile when busted, don’t even have to admit guilt and it isn’t even on their record, they pay a relatively small fine when compared to the profits they made committing their crimes and they return to doing the same shit.

 

We’re fast becoming one of those “third world” nations we’re so fond of looking down on & we blame the immigrants because the Duckmeister tells you it’s their fault. No, you morons, the fault is the corporate cockroaches at the highest levels of true power who don’t give a fuck about America or its citizens but pretend to so you’ll go or you’ll allow your children to go fight & die in their constant wars to make themselves ever richer. What a bunch of suckers!

 

So for every one of you ignorant fuckin’ assholes who proudly defend Trump, don’t come crying to me when you join the ranks of America’s ever expanding homeless who are treated like ghosts & garbage in this shallow, hollow land we proclaim as the land of freedom & democracy, because I won’t and don’t have one ounce of sympathy & it was your willful ignorance that allowed this to come about!

The girly-man has duped his base into believing he’s fighting for them i.e. the giant tax break that goes to the uber rich & has inflated the national deficit which they will use to defend their need to cut food stamps, health care, Social Security, etc. for us, the 99%. Mark my words, you’ve been suckered by a snake-oil, con-man. The corporate cockroaches love Donny boy!

–Rob DeLoss, October 6, 2018   (Trinidad, CA)

 

P.S.  And for those of you who still claim that Trump is telling it like it is, you are clearly brain-dead & belong in an Alzheimer’s unit because you might wander into traffic & dent somebody’s car with your blockhead. Jim Jones would’ve loved having you as a member of Jonestown.

 

 

“Reality T.V.” and Trump-world

 

 

 

I believe the disturbing phenomenon of “reality t.v.,” coincided roughly with the equally disturbing introduction of what’s called “FOX News?” I’d like to begin by stating up front that I may be guilty from time to time of “lecturing” but sadly, I’ve learned that I can’t take for granted what so often seems like common wisdom. In fact, the older I get, the more I feel like a living anachronism.

 

These sinister forces began to creep into our culture roughly 20 years ago & I believe that the T.V. series “Survivor” was among the first, if not, the first of these “reality t.v. shows?” I watched perhaps two or three of this series with my wife & was immediately struck by its crassness or celebration of the worst in people I.e. backstabbing, lying, cheating, etc. In-other-words, win by any means necessary. I remember saying to my wife, what is this teaching our children, this is unhealthy, etc. I never watched it again nor any of the plethora of other “reality t.v.” programs that followed. Yeah, I know, many will probably dismiss me as an elitist snob, etc. Well, I wear that label as a badge of honor especially in this time & day where we have a reality t.v. show host as our president who is a national disgrace & embarrassment.

 

Before I proceed, here’s something to mull over; Trump’s supporters represent roughly a third of the American public, and coincidentally, approximately a third of our citizens also deny the Holocaust ever happened, & as of three years ago, roughly 32 million Americans are “functionally illiterate.” If you’re not one of Trump’s fans who has completely shut-off the rational side of your mind, reflect on the hundreds of times you’ve seen Trump address the public & his bumbling efforts to put together a single, coherent sentence. Moreover, he’s stated publicly many times his aversion to reading & that he doesn’t care to read the daily presidential briefings that all our other presidents read & knew was of critical importance. If this doesn’t worry you, congratulations, you are definitely one who has drunk the Kool Aid of our Jim Jones in the oval office.

 

Yes, this is very snide or sarcastic of me but I’m not really that far off the mark I.e. like Jim Jones, Trump has repeatedly advised his “base,” to ignore everything written about him or said about him if it doesn’t come from him. Yet, that isn’t even possible because we have tons of videotape of his public comments & he’ll deny having said what he said the very next day. It’s all a vast, left-wing conspiracy designed to make him look bad. If it weren’t all so serious & dangerous, it’d be laughable but it’s not! I remember how they labeled John Kerry a “flip-flopper” when he was running for the office of the presidency, Donny flip-flops often within the same sentence that just came out of his mouth, or at most, two or three “sentences” after whatever garbled string of words he let flow.

 

Trump has been seeking the approval & acceptance of what’s sometimes referred to as “the New York City Cultural or Intellectual Elite,” for decades, don’t forget that New York City is his hometown i.e. where he grew up & where his dad & he built their crooked, real estate empire. Naturally, they—the New York “elite” have shunned him because of his obvious ignorance & disdain for culture & intelligence as well as his crude, crass, & contemptible opinions & behavior over the decades. He now seeks to destroy their credibility like a boy seeking revenge for being bullied or socially ostracized. By-the-way, New York City is considered the intellectual capital of America & has been for quite some time because it is where the overwhelming majority of American publishing corporations are located. And, the New York Times has long been dubbed, “The Paper of Record” because they were the paper that represented the highest standard of American journalism. In brief, almost all the other major newspapers in America take their lead from the New York Times i.e. their lead stories are basically reprinted in the other major papers across the country.

 

Notwithstanding, there is a sliver of truth to Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan’s label of “fake news.” But “fake” isn’t the correct adjective to use, no, cowardly or sell-out would be more appropriate adjectives to describe the mainstream media. It’s really quite obvious, we are down to five or six megalithic corporations that own perhaps 95% or even more of our media (television, radio, magazines, books, newspapers, etc.) and they are certainly not going to allow serious critics of “our” media to be heard because it would undermine their business i.e. hurt them financially by causing them to lose advertisers which are their bread & butter.

 

As far as “journalistic integrity” is concerned, the American media have clearly betrayed the U.S. public because they have largely ceased to act as a watchdog on the government & the corporate interests. They more accurately should be referred to as “lapdogs.” And this again is why it’d be laughable if it weren’t so deadly serious that we have a “president” who is clearly proud of being an anti-intellectual. Trump is, if we are to believe that he’s actually a billionaire—who knows, he refuses to show us his tax returns—is part of that 1% who keep on reaping the lion’s share of the tax breaks & most notably the trillion & a half dollar one that he gave himself & his cronies just recently. My intellectual hero, Noam Chomsky, & his co-author, Edward Hermann, wrote the modern classic on how “our” media system really operates, it’s called “The Manufacture of Consent.”

“The” classic if you’re interested?

 

Here it is in a nutshell;

 

“ The essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news “filters,” fall under the following headings: (I) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (~) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and “experts” funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) “flak” as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) “anticommunism” as a national religion and control mechanism. These elements interact with and reinforce one another. The raw material of news must pass through successive filters, leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print. They fix the premises of discourse and interpretation, and the definition of what is newsworthy in the first place, and they explain the basis and operations of what amount to propaganda campaigns.”  https://chomsky.info/consent01/ 

 

You see, my imaginary reader, the conservatives started a myth decades ago there’s a “liberal media bias” & poor conservatives have been unfairly attacked & criticized roughly ever since the New Deal was established. And the New York Times is the bastion of liberalism in America. Yeah, right! That’s why the New York Times beat the war drums for our invasion of Iraq every bit as strongly as FOX “News.” Every time I hear FOX referred to as news, it almost makes me nauseous. For all you Trumpsters, if you weren’t so blinded by Trump’s dog whistle politics of hate, fear, & racism, you might begin to realize that FOX is truly the epitome of “fake news.” And FOX “News” is where Donny, the girly-man with small hands, gets his “facts” daily along with Alex Jones who claims the massacre of those schoolchildren at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a hoax to name only one of his most egregious & shameful ‘news stories.” And don’t forget that Donald Duck also relies on The National Enquirer to keep him up to date on the latest happenings. 

 

Let me share with you another actual fact, not an alternate reality “fact” from Kellyanne Conway’s warped mind i.e. Russia’s national newspaper “Pravda” (Russian for “truth”) was Russia’s official newspaper from 1912 to 1992 when it was sold to a private company but still retains the name. The Russian people were well aware though that it was the government’s propaganda tool & was used in an attempt to manipulate their minds/opinions. Well, FOX “News,” is America’s version of Pravda but sadly, far too many Americans aren’t aware of this. And it’s so depressing that they aren’t aware. How FOX has been allowed to get away with this sham for 20 years again reflects the cowardice of “our” media’s owners & reveals that the almighty dollar is the only thing they are loyal to. And for-the-record, I hold the left-wing media in America partly to blame as well because every time they refer to FOX as “news,” they’re only helping to legitimize this dangerous farce.

“Alternative facts”

 

Here’s the brick & mortar of what real journalism is supposed to be, you determine for yourself whether FOX “News” gets anywhere close to this;

 

“…. the principles of truthfulnessaccuracyobjectivityimpartiality, fairness, and public accountability, as these apply to the acquisition of newsworthy information and its subsequent dissemination to the public.[1][2][3][4]

 

To return to the connections between “reality t.v.” and its contribution to the rise of the Duckmeister, a “clear and present danger” to not only America, but the world as well, here are some more thoughts for your consideration. I read & dissected a classic titled; “Anti-intellectualism in American Life,” by Richard Hofstadter, years ago & it was mind-boggling to say the least. Seems we’ve had a long & ignoble history of anti-intellectualism almost from the very beginning of our nation. They used to be called “nativists” & today, they’re Trump’s “base” with their mantra of “America First,” etc. And there have been movements such as the “Know-Nothings” that were proud of their ignorance as well.

 

One only has to consider the climate deniers to realize the real danger these people represent. Of course, they prefer to not look into the corporations & individuals who are funding all the propaganda behind the denial. And like Donny, science is only theory & is akin to opinion and since everybody has an opinion, and all opinions are equally valid, the 99% of the world’s scientists’ “opinions” aren’t any more valid than the Duck Dynasty Klan’s opinions. Makes perfect sense, right? Yeah, if you inhabit the alternate universe of Trump, Kellyanne, Sarah Huckabee, et al. where facts aren’t facts but only suggestions or theories. Let’s ponder this a bit? The laws of gravity aren’t scientific facts so, just because you jump out of a tree, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you will always fall.

 

Moreover, electricians, engineers, nuclear scientists, medical doctors, mechanics, etc. etc. etc., don’t need to follow “scientific facts” because they’re just theories & we don’t need to follow those speed sign warnings when we’re driving on dangerous, winding mountain roads because they’re not facts, they’re only suggestions. How open-minded, democratic, & liberating of the Trumpsters. Thanks guys!

 

Admittedly, I am not of Trump’s world of delusions of grandeur & self-righteousness and call me a stubborn Irish mule but I will continue to believe in the world of science, not superstition & Alex Jones’ absurd “reality.” Here is a snippet regarding “reality t.v.” that I feel is pertinent:

The Ugly Reality

 

 

“…. are intended to humiliate and/or exploit participants. They make stars out of infamous (well known for some bad quality or deed; wicked; abominable) personalities. The actors are untalented or unworthy of fame. They glamorize vulgarity & materialism. “Sound like anyone you know? In other words, with the advent of “reality t.v.,” the powers that be in Hollywood have lowered the bar of basic decency to the lowest common denominator. And for-the-record, I said from the beginning of this sick phenomenon, something seems mighty strange here i.e. people watching an artificial medium (t.v.) to see “reality?” Seemed to me to be a collective stepping through the Looking Glass into Alice in Wonderland.

 

Continuing on this merry-go-round of American progress, almost every time I get in a conversation with a Trump supporter, it doesn’t take long at all for them to repeat the mantra; “I like Trump because he tells it like it is.” I never ceased to be amazed at how consistent this remark is from Trump loyalists. Is it something they put in their Kool Aid? Let’s reflect on this, So, if Trump asserts that Big Foot is real, that we have the bodies of aliens in Area 51, the landing on the Moon was fake, etc. etc. etc. he’s telling it like it is? Remember, he’s a staunch supporter of Alex Jones, FOX “News,” the National Enquirer, etc. Tell me again who’s in touch with “reality,” and who’s not?

 

Believe it or not, I will concede that I do understand to some extent why so many have fallen prey to Trump’s fear & hatred tactics to manipulate them and I even have a bit of sympathy, well at least for those who aren’t physically or verbally assaulting the rest of us. You see, the powers that be, the status quo, the power elite, or however you prefer to label them, have indeed been very clever in an extremely critical respect i.e. they have succeeded brilliantly in keeping us focused on the government’s failings & betrayals of us. But, the ignorant (remember, ignorant simply means “uninformed”) public fails to realize that the corporate cockroaches—the behemoth corporations—actually pull the strings of the politicians all the way up to the presidents. And most importantly, if it weren’t for “our” government subsidies, tax breaks, etc. of these corporate cockroaches, they’d go out of business. So, keep the rabble distracted & divided and scapegoating the victims of the crony capitalists, and the song remains the same. What saddens me to the marrow of my bones is that so many of us don’t remember the simple fact that we all bleed red when we’re cut, we all put our pants on one leg at a time, & we all want our kids to grow up in a better world, a world of equal opportunity, true justice, freedom, & a clean environment.

Only thing we have to fear is fear itself!

 

Let me review & perhaps add a bit here; If you recall in the blurb about “reality t.v.,” materialism is one of the hallmarks or “values” of a good “reality” t.v. star. Obviously, this is Trump in spades —pun intended—this moron who was an instant millionaire not because of any intelligence or talent on his part but because daddy gave it to him, struts the world stage like a self-made man. Yet, he managed to go bankrupt four times, lose his glorious gambling “empire,” be cut-off from any more loans from America’s “super banks,” and be saved by Russian gangsters who bought large chunks of his apartments & condos to launder their dirty money.

 

Donald, the Dick, has failed in every way that is humanly possible i.e. financially, socially, intellectually, & morally yet a third of the American public, including millions of self-proclaimed “Christians” think he’s the greatest thing since sliced-bread? Maybe it’s true, maybe I’m the one living in an alternate world? Oh yeah, for you “Christians” who love your furher, while I definitely don’t call myself a “Christian,” I do seem to recall something called “Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount & the simple guidelines he laid out for being a true Christian. Guess that just escaped your mind & your spirit?

 

Of course, those who don’t remember the lessons of history or more likely, never enjoyed history in high school, the frightening parallels between Trump & the most heinous dictators from the past as well as the present, can’t disturb your glorious dream of Donald, perhaps America’s first Fascist president, saving us from “fake news” and the liberals? But for those of us without the political as well as the moral blinders on, it’s damn hard not to notice the frightening delusions of grandeur that Trump entertains. [some deny this quote was from Mussolini but I feel it’s appropriate; “Fascism should more rightly be called Corporatism because it’s a marriage between government & corporations.” 

 

I’ll start with the superficial, out of respect for Emperor Trump. Simply do a Google image search of your idol & note his striking poses not unlike those of Mussolini, another popular fascist leader during WWII, you know, that trivial episode in our history where we fought against the Nazis & the fascists who Trump thinks contain many “good people.” And our fearless leader (who sadly couldn’t participate in the Vietnam war because of bone spurs) seems to have a real affinity for dictators & despots while insulting & alienating our “allies.” But don’t forget, these aren’t facts, because the Duck denies them. No worries, Donald will save the day, or will he? Could his colossal ego & ignorance be the wet-dream of Mike Pence and the “Christian right’s” desire for Armageddon & the Apocalypse to come about?

 

I have been concerned about the “Christian” fundamentalists for over 30 years & the fact that we now have one as our vice-president, is very spooky. My first book is about this scary phenomenon & as many have observed, the thought of Pence taking over in the not unlikely scenario of Trump being led out of the White House in chains, would be a nightmare surpassing any of the Freddy Kruger movies. Why? Because quite simply, Pence would surely set about in quick order of turning America into a “Christian” Taliban nation but with our nuclear arsenal, it wouldn’t take but a tiny spark to make their dream a reality.

good little lemmings

 

You might doubt my assessment of Trump’s ego? Okay, fair enough, but have you heard of his overwhelming obsession of having a military parade in Washington D.C.? The news headline the other day said that the original cost estimate of $12 million has now been updated to over $92 million dollars. And maybe, just maybe, you might wonder why we need or rather, our fearless leader wants this parade? Well, when he was in France recently, they had one and if you research it, he’s actually wanted one from the day he took office. Again, let me remind you of Donny’s admiration of dictators & his boundless ego. Yep! I can just picture him now, standing on some elevated platform with that Mussolini smugness as the troops file by & salute El Duce!

 

We can’t afford to fix our infrastructure, pay our teachers a decent salary, offer health care to our citizens, etc. but there’s always money available to stroke Donald the Dick’s ego & keep on feeding the military/industrial complex.

 

Continuing on, this “intellectual snob or elitist” whichever term of derision you care to choose, came from a single parent, my mom, who worked two or three jobs as my brother & two sisters grew. I got 40 cents a day for lunch when I was in high school & basically raised my brother & sisters i.e. made them do their chores, their homework, get to bed on time, fought their battles against bullies, etc. Yeah, I really had it easy compared to poor Donny. Oh yeah, you may choose to dismiss my criticisms as mere jealousy of Donald, the billionaire populist who speaks for all the downtrodden Americans. If you go that route, all I can say is that you are clearly a member of the Walking Dead, Donald’s constituency. Oh yeah, it took me 14 years to earn my B.A. in English literature because of not knowing what I really wanted to study, financial difficulties, and lack of discipline but I did it and I proved all my “friends” and “family” wrong. But far more than this accomplishment, I am proud of the conservative estimate of at least 49,000 hours I’ve spent over the last 30 years or better informing myself on matters of politics, history, & philosophy primarily. Yeah! I’m light years ahead of that mental midget in the White House and I challenge anyone to a mental competition! (except Noam Chomsky)

me & the Love of my Life, Jeri

 

Throughout my adult life, and especially since my confidence in my intellectual reasoning skills began to grow, I have heard the mantra of “All you need is common sense.” And it became very clear that this was a standard put-down of all us “bookworms,” etc. It was inferred that we were so book-smart that we were complete idiots and didn’t even know enough to come in out of the rain. Well, I eventually realized that this was a common defense of those who felt academically inferior because they had unfortunately been the victims of shitty teachers. I have realized slowly though, that I do in fact have an ample supply of “common sense,” and I have surprised myself as well as several of my friends who were/are carpenters, mechanics, plumbers, etc. over the years. Because I am humble & know what I don’t know in many of these trades, etc., I’m not afraid to ask what may appear to be stupid questions. And from time to time, I have surprised my skilled tradesmen friends with some of my suggestions for solving a seemingly unsolvable obstacle in a project we were working on. So, yeah, call me a braggart, but unlike your babbling buffoon of a president, I and everyone else I’ve ever met, know that those who feel the constant need to keep telling people how wonderful, how brilliant, etc. they are, are full of shit!

 

By-the-way, the next time the I.R.S. tells you that they’re going to audit you, tell them that you refuse to give them your past tax returns like your buddy Donald has done. See how long before you’re sitting in prison. Remember, he’s telling it like it is!

 

Believe it or not, I am getting close to winding this up but it’s hard to do because there’s just so much evidence & so many examples of this brain-dead & soulless miscreant’s trail of human wreckage, & although I have little to live for since the passing of my soul mate, Jeri, I do still care about & feel the pain of the billions of suffering souls around this planet due to the ugly greed of “people” like Donald Trump.

 

If I were forced to narrow down to its simplest form, the danger of Trump, I would have to say it’s the deadly combination of his ignorance & his arrogance. And because of the position of power that he holds, we should all be trembling unto our death (I believe this was Kierkegaard’s phrase?) This vile creature that walks upright like a primate but is more like a cold-blooded reptile or spineless crustacean, haunts my waking hours and if he doesn’t haunt yours, your children & your grandchildren will reap the consequences of a world which allowed such a creature from the Black Lagoon to become president of the United States which, don’t get me wrong, has a very long, and immoral history of which I’m deeply ashamed!

filling the swamp of moral decay

 

The mendacious, malicious, miscreant, megalomaniac (a person obsessed with their own power) creature known as Trump, is a reality that unfortunately, we have no choice but to deal with. And no, he’s not an aberration, he’s a symptom of a dark, underlying force not only in America, but around the world. Trump has made it okay for the worst in human nature to rear its ugly head & although I’m not a religious person, God save us from the likes of him!

so much for “Christian” Virtues!

 

Addendum

 

The American Press stands on the shoulders of the giants from our past i.e. Walter Cronkite, dubbed “the most trusted man in America,” Edward R. Murrow, who broadcast from London through the entire 56 days of what was dubbed the Blitz—the continuous bombing campaign with the aim of completely destroying London. I.F. Stone, called the “conscience of Washington” for his amazing investigative journalism in which he poured through the official documents/reports/etc. of D.C. to find the nuggets of truth often buried in thousands of pages of the Congressional Record & many other government documents. And George Seldes, perhaps the grandfather of modern free press, who lived through WWI & interviewed everyone from Lenin to Mussolini, covered the Spanish Civil War & often just barely escaped being captured by the fascists.

the grandfather of muckrakers i.e. truth tellers!

 

In fact, as I’m writing this, it’s very pertinent to the subject of Little Lord Fauntleroy i.e. Donny, born with the silver spoon in his mouth. Why? Because Trump’s number one mentor without a doubt was the infamous Roy Cohn who represented countless mobsters on the East Coast who just coincidentally became “business associates” with Trump & Cohn was Joseph McCarthy’s right-hand, hatchet man i.e. totally ruthless in destroying peoples’ lives with baseless, smear campaigns & assorted dirty tricks. And it was Edward R. Murrow who had the balls to go after McCarthy and his witch hunting tactics on his nationally broadcast CBS news program, “See It Now,” which led to McCarthy’s censure.

Roy Cohn, lawyer for the five largest mafia families in New York

 

Furthermore, it’s a sad fact that I feel I must remind far too many of my fellow Americans of what facts are. Trump walks around gloating because he has suckered so many of our citizens into believing whatever he says. Reflect on this truth if you will, “alternative facts” didn’t build the Golden Gate Bridge, put an American on the Moon, or find a cure for polio, no, these & countless other wonders were accomplished due to good old solid, scientific facts, mechanical, electrical, engineering, biological, chemical, etc. verifiable facts. And the fact that Donald, like the oil corporations have managed to confuse the general public to such an extent with the billions they’ve spent on their covert propaganda campaign to plant the seeds of doubt regarding climate change, is truly frightening. My hero, Noam Chomsky has been dubbed “Perhaps the most important intellectual alive,” by The New York Times but he often smiles & reminds his audiences that they leave out, the Times goes on to ask, “So why is he so often wrong?” Chomsky is on a list of the top ten most quoted people in Western Civilization which includes Plato, Aristotle, & the Bible and he’s the only one alive.

 

Excuse me for going on about Chomsky but I can’t honor him enough & again, it really saddens me that the overwhelming majority of Americans don’t even know who he is, including many self-proclaimed liberals. But, Chomsky says the two greatest dangers facing humanity are climate change & the threat of nuclear war. And we have this proud moron in the White House doing all he can to eliminate every regulation holding back the major polluters & he openly asks, “What good are these nukes if we can’t use them?”

 

No, my friend, what’s far scarier than this delusional dip-shit is the fact that a third of the American public are so blinded by his fear & hate rhetoric that he probably could get away with shooting someone in broad daylight on 5th Avenue in New York City? And the fact that people actually believe this delusional, would be American Caesar, shows that they are the ones who don’t have common sense.

Compassionate Conservative Christian “values”

 

—Rob DeLoss, August 31, 2018 Trinidad, CA

 

EARLY WARNING SIGNS OF FASCISM

  1. Powerful and continuing nationalism
    2. Disdain for human rights
    3. Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
    4. Rampant sexism
    5. Controlled mass media
    6. Obsession with national security
    7. Religion and government intertwined
    8. Corporate power protected
    9. Labor power suppressed
    10. Disdain for intellectual and the arts
    11. Obsession with crime and punishment
    12. Rampant cronyism and corruption

A true patriot will point out the relevant warning sign of approaching fascism when engaged in a conversation/debate with a Trump supporter.
 

 

 

 

 

Fake News and a Fake President

Fake News and a Fake President

         If it weren’t so deadly serious in terms of the harms already done & yet to come from this fake & shameless blowhard or as I prefer to call him, Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan, it’d be hilarious. And the fact that he has the audacity to act as if he’s some paragon of an honest & honorable person is mind-boggling to all of us who haven’t drank the FOX “News” Kool Aid regarding the dunce president.

         Admittedly, there is a kernel of truth to the girly-man’s accusations regarding the news & this is true in all forms of effective propaganda. And that’s the only fact that I’ll concede when it comes to this national embarrassment I.e. we have a world class moron as our president. So, for those of you who haven’t entirely shut down the higher functioning areas of your brains, ponder these facts if you will?

         Do you remember when John Kerry was running for president? If so, do you recall a tag he was labeled with called “flip-flopper?” Well the Trumpster has the unique ability to flip-flop sometimes within the same sentence, usually not more than two or three sentences later. In other words, Donny contradicts himself or outright lies consistently & frequently. How in the Hell can people think this is “telling it like it is?” Which of course is the mantra just about everybody who supports the Duck repeats within the first few minutes you start a conversation about him.

         Could it be that what people mean when they say they admire him for “telling it like it is,” are saying is they like his racism, fear mongering, & hate generating speech? Yeah, he is consistent in that but not in anything else. If one spends even a modicum of time researching authoritarians & dictators, it soon becomes evident that the above characteristics which the Klansman who would be king exhibits, is the common thread.

         Clearly, the Donald or his P.R. team realized that because so many millions of Americans are out of work or working two or three minimum wage jobs, have lost their homes to illegal foreclosures, had their pensions stolen, etc. they could tap into the fear & anger of all these people. And by distracting the public by scapegoating immigrants, Mexicans, Muslims, homosexuals, etc., thereby giving the public a focus for their anger, he could ride that wave of rage into the White House.

         You see, my friend, the rich have long known that as long as they can divide & distract the public with various scapegoats, the public won’t wake-up to the fact that it’s the rich who should be the focus of our anger. They are the ones who write the laws that coincidentally benefit them but screw the rest of us. For example, the recent tax break for the rich, the biggest in history, is overwhelmingly going to benefit the super-rich & hurt the rest of us, the 99% who have to pay the taxes that go to the true elite, while that same class, pay a minuscule, if any taxes.

         Why do you think your buddy won’t release his tax records? Could it be that it’d show that he’s one of them, not the defender of the working class as you’ve been suckered into believing? And here’s a bit of common sense for you, you may have noticed—-if your blinders aren’t totally in place—-that Donny boy loves to brag about himself, he usually can’t go more than a few sentences without pointing out how wonderful he is. And he’s been telling us for years of how fabulously wealthy he is, right? Well, I would think that he’d jump at the chance to prove to the world how stinking rich he is by showing us his tax records. Doesn’t that make sense?

         Might it also be that by revealing his tax records, it’d be clear to all that he’s not the brilliant businessman he’s always claimed to be? He’s filed for bankruptcy four times due to his poor management of the casinos he had his name on. After his last bankruptcy, none of the major banks would loan him money so he went to foreign banks, and got a life-line in terms of financial help from his Russian mafia friends. (Doesn’t it strike you as odd that he’s so enamored of Putin?) By-the-way, I’ll share another little secret hiding in plain sight, the overwhelming majority of properties with the Trump name on them, aren’t owned by Donny, the true owners pay him for his “brand” or logo which he has been obsessively protecting as if it were his daughter’s virginity, for decades.

         The spinmeister knows only too well how important image is & he can’t stop promoting his image for more than two minutes at a time. And this connects with his pseudo war on the media. The Duck has been a media whore his entire life & his mentor in this regard was Roy Cohn, the cold-blooded lawyer for the East coast mafia & right-hand man for Joseph McCarthy in the true witch-hunt that Joe waged in the 50s that ruined so many good peoples’ lives & was thoroughly anti-democratic & anti-American.

         Roy drilled home to his young, Richie Rich protege the fact that any media attention, whether good or bad, was beneficial in terms of keeping your name in the public mind. Moreover, we can thank the so-called “fake media” for being a major factor in the girly-man’s becoming president because they gave him billions of dollars of free advertising during his campaign.

         Perhaps you prefer to cling to your conspiratorial belief that the press is the enemy of the people? By-the-way, common sense again tells us that when anybody, and especially someone as powerful as the president of the most powerful nation on earth, tells us that we shouldn’t believe anyone who criticizes us, you should be afraid, VERY AFRAID!

         So, Daddy Donald will protect us against all the evil doers in the world yet he clearly flunked junior high school history. Just about every time he opens his mouth, he reveals how mind-bogglingly ignorant he is. Don’t believe me, do a little fact checking on your own if that isn’t against your religion?

         Obviously, the Duck Dynasty Dunce isn’t living in the common reality that most of us are. I mean, when his haggard & homely witch spokeswoman, Kellyanne Conway told us straight-faced, “Well, there are alternate facts,” that should’ve been a major wake-up call to all of us. And this is a key point my friends, what Donald & his handlers are hoping is that they can convince the third of Americans who loyally support him, that facts and opinions are one & the same. Sorry to break it to you but no, they’re not. Facts are established by Science & the scientific method I.e. hypothesis, test your hypothesis repeatedly, and the more it yields the same observable results, it eventually becomes a theory, & after quite a long time of consistent findings, it eventually is referred to as a law I.e. the law of gravity, etc.

         And yes, everybody has a right to their own opinion but not to their own facts. And some opinions are far worthier than others I.e. if a guy is a great mechanic, his opinions about mechanical matters are more worthy or valuable than someone like me, whose close to being a moron regarding mechanical knowledge. The closest we can come to “truth” on any subject requires two things; 1) check out their credentials, 2) check out what other experts in the field they’re claiming expertise in, have to say about their opinion, theory, etc.

         Socrates taught us this more than 2,500 years ago in Athens, the birthplace of Western democracy. And he pissed off a lot of people because he proved that just because a guy was say, a master shipbuilder, he got a swelled head & then thought he was a master on many matters totally unrelated I.e. how to raise a child, etc. Unfortunately, in this rapid-fire world of ours with technology jumping ahead with leaps & bounds, people have become so intellectually lazy & dependent on their “smart phones,” etc. that they won’t take the time to do a little research on the serious issues facing us i.e. Donald’s dangerous ignorance & alienating of our former allies & cozying up to one dictator after another. His launching of trade wars because of his perceived insults from other nation’s leaders. And most frightening, his wholesale deregulation of every federal agency established to protect us from greedy corporate cockroaches & the protection of our environment. If this goes on unabated, who’s going to want to go on vacation anywhere? The forests will all be chopped down, the ocean will be one huge toilet bowl, & we’ll all need to wear gas masks. Note how bad the air is in a lot of China due to its reckless plundering of its natural resources with no environmental protections.

         I almost forgot another minor detail of Donald’s giving free rein to corporate America I.e. the continued & expanding deregulation of Wall St., the too big to fail handful of super banks, the hedge fund managers, etc. Did you enjoy the world-wide economic crash of 2008? Wasn’t that fun watching tens of millions of people around the globe lose their jobs, pensions, homes, health insurance, etc. Well, you’ll love the crash that’s coming because Donald Duck loves Wall St. —-he’s been kissing their asses for decades —-and he & the 1% are busy hiding their wealth in so-called safe havens where they think they’ll be safe from all the ravages that all the rest of us will experience. And for the record, I voted for Obama the first time around but within a few weeks when he appointed Summers, Geithner, Bernanke, etc. I knew he’d sold us out and it was all a lie I.e. “Change,” (his mantra as he was campaigning for the presidency.

         In conclusion, I’m again going to try to insert some “common sense” you know, that quality that us eggheads aren’t supposed to have any of. How can the free press, Donny’s “enemy of the American people,” be accurate whenever they repeat things about King Donald that stroke his ego but the second they say something “critical” I.e. negative, they’re “fake news?” Fake to me is pretty much the same as Fraud & Donald the Dick-head has been committing fraud for decades, that’s why he’s fought hundreds, if not thousands of lawsuits & continues to be in legal jeopardy. He defrauded many people who worked for him over the decades from Polish, illegal immigrants, he hired to do the demolition on a building he wanted to turn into Trump Towers, to bankers, etc. etc. etc. Don’t forget Trump University, which he quietly paid something like $25 million for in the judgment against him. Yep! He’s like a modern-day Wizard of Oz but not the kindly, old guy from the movie. And as P.T. Barnum warned us decades ago, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” If it sounds too good to be true, you can bet it is! You’ve been warned and my conscience is clear.

Addendum

         George Orwell in his prescient novel “1984,” laid out a nightmare vision of a dystopian future & the older I get, the more that fictional nightmare seems to be our present “reality.”

 “War is peace. Freedom is slavery.  Ignorance is strength.”

“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”

“Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”

“The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.”

“Orthodoxy means not thinking–not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

“For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?”

“Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power”

“In Oceania at the present day, Science, in the old sense, has almost ceased to exist. In Newspeak there is no word for ‘Science’. The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc. And even technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be used for the diminution of human liberty. In all the useful arts the world is either standing still or going backwards. The fields are cultivated with horse-ploughs while books are written by machinery. But in matters of vital importance—meaning, in effect, war and police espionage—the empirical approach is still encouraged, or at least tolerated. The two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought.”

       And for the record, your darling duck conservatively received over $2 billion in free media time. Bernie received a tiny fraction of media time. Why? Because the Klansman has been manipulating the media for decades and knows how to shock people so he’ll get attention. But don’t forget, the media is the enemy of the people!

       —-Rob DeLoss, Trinidad, CA August 19, 2018

P.S.  It just dawned on me that I’ve forgotten the most glaring piece of evidence—-probably because I’ve known it for so long—that I’ve internalized & I forget that unfortunately, far too many Americans still haven’t caught on i.e. FOX “News” is “The” most fake news corporation in America! And as Joseph Goebbels knew only too well, the longer the lie has been repeated, the more people begin to accept it as a truth. And appropriately, FOX is de facto, America’s answer (copy) to Russia’s Pravda —their main newspaper & “Pravda” means truth in Russian. It’s common knowledge that Trump watches hours of FOX “News” every day so, this is where he gets his “knowledge” of current affairs from. And while I’m not a gambling man, I bet you that Trump’s “base” is overwhelmingly made up of FOX “News” viewers. Do a little research on your own as to what journalism is & you, like me, will be amazed that FOX has gotten away with posing as a news organization for these past 20 years. And I hold our mainstream as well as our alternative news sites partially responsible because, they have been reinforcing this delusion every time they repeat the phrase “FOX News.” I’ve been putting it in quotation marks for several years.

Why They Hate Us

Imperial powers, the U.S. to be specific, take the natural resources of other, weaker nations and we use our military to do so. Our intelligence  agencies support, train, & finance dictators who allow “our corporations,” to rape, pillage, and plunder other countries’ resources and people. This is why the U.S. has more than 800 military bases around the globe & God knows how many “black op sites” i.e. secret bases. https://www.thenation.com/article/the-united-states-probably-has-more-foreign-military-bases-than

And if a dictator’s military forces & police can’t control their citizens, the U.S. sends in our military—see Major General Smedley F. Butler, U.S.M.C. Our constant assault on the weaker & poorer nations kills hundreds of thousands & millions of their soldiers as well as the innocent civilians of those nations. quote-i-served-in-all-commissioned-ranks-from-second-lieutenant-to-major-general-and-during-smedley-butler-76-80-15

Naturally, this creates hatred of the U.S. military & government, and some people resort to terrorism as their only way to fight back because of our overwhelming military power. Our behemoth corporate conglomerates set the agenda i.e. tell the politicians who to go to war against. edward-bernays-quote

The P.R. (Public Relations) industry provides the cover or the justifications for these perpetual wars. And because the corporations’ greed is never satiated, the need for an ever growing military budget is also never ending. Cheney

And of course, the “Defense” industries profit handsomely from our constant state of war (see Dick Cheney & Halliburton). Moreover, the federal treasury only has so much money, so they must continually create rationalizations as to why they need to slash funding for social welfare programs i.e. health, education, welfare, social security, Medicare, etc. etc. etc. Welfare queens

Furthermore, the power elite i.e. the corporate masters are paying less & less taxes and hundreds of them pay no taxes whatsoever & even get refunds of tens of millions of dollars while we, the taxpayers, must pay the taxes that maintain the critical infrastructure of our nations’ roads, highways, bridges, airports, ports, etc. that the corporations use to operate their businesses. And many of these corporations are subsidized by our taxes via Research & Development costs, tax breaks, tax incentives, etc. —see the invention & development of the Internet. But if we “cheat” on our taxes or don’t pay them, we’re heavily fined, our business is closed down, and/or we are sent to prison.

In conclusion, I believe it’s rather obvious as to why we have witnessed an ever-expanding level of terrorist attacks around the globe yet sadly, due to the ever more sophisticated P.R. industry (propaganda), the majority of Americans believe our enemies are immigrants illegal as well as legal, Muslims, students, intellectuals, gays, & the government itself. But if their Social Security checks failed to come in the mail or their Medicare was completely cut-off, they’d raise holy hell i.e. they forget all the things the government does that benefits them. george-orwell-568725

The powers that be have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in diverting & distracting our attention from their criminal activity when they clearly are the greatest danger & oppressor of all of humanity as well as our environment. The strategy is as old as recorded history i.e. Divide & Conquer. (see FOX “News” or as I call it, the Fear & Hate channel) I refer to these institutions as the Corporate Cockroaches! FOX News

This is the vicious cycle of degradation, death, & destruction that like, Dr. Frankenstein’s creation, ended up killing its creator, its master, and there is next to nothing that can be done to stop it because Americans can’t be bothered to inform themselves because they’re too busy with their “Smart phones.” Our ignorance and our apathy are glaringly obvious with the “election” of Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan as our commander in chief.  wpid-zombie-walk-moviles-smartphone-humorsmart-phones-stupid-people-will-technology-make-us-stupid-17-728

—Rob DeLoss, May 7, 2018  Trinidad, CA

Trump’s War Against Journalists

Trump’s War Against Journalists

“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

                                                    —Thomas Jefferson free press

For those of you who may have never heard the term, the “fourth estate,” it’s a reference to the press or what we call the media in today’s world. The founding fathers of our form of government knew only too well the dangers posed by a government not kept in check by a free press. And they strove to establish as many checks & balances on possible corrupt & tyrannical government leaders by specifically including freedom of the press in the first amendment to our Constitution. It’s referred to as the fourth estate because to the framers of our government, it was every bit as important as the three major components or centers of power in the U.S. i.e. the Congress, the Legislative, & the Executive branch (the presidency).

The press’ central purpose is to serve as a sort of watchdog on the other three branches of power. Tragically, the press has almost completely abandoned their duty & nowadays basically serve as stenographers to those in power. And you might care to note that with the passage of the “Patriot Act,” right after 9/11, they effectively gutted just about the entire Bill of Rights—and hardly a single congressional member bothered to even read the Patriot Act before signing it. In my opinion, Congress is mostly an empty chamber full of cowards just seeking power, wealth, & privilege by sucking up to the corporate cockroaches. And this underscores how shallow & hollow our favorite myth of we’re fighting around the world to defend & promote freedom & democracy. Liberty and Patriot Act

I believe that Trump’s time as the boss i.e. authoritarian leader on the “reality show” The Apprentice, fed his ego to such an extent that he internalized the illusion as reality & if you dare to challenge or criticize him on any of the thousands of lies, distortions, myths, alternate facts, etc., his fragile ego can’t handle it & that’s why he launches into his childish & ignorant tirades via Twitter.

Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan is a spoiled brat who was born with the proverbial “silver spoon” in his mouth. He has deluded himself & millions of others that he’s a self-made man & a huge success. If he actually were anywhere near what he claims to be, why won’t he reveal his tax returns? Could it be that they’d show us the truth i.e. he’s a charlatan who knows that Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, was so right. In brief, the bigger the lie & the more frequently you repeat it, it eventually becomes accepted as truth. Donny boy’s tax returns would also reveal the numerous times he failed in his business ventures & was bailed-out by the mafia here in America as well as the Russian mafia. And the “Christian” right-wing fundamentalists love Donald Duck because they believe he’s going to push forward their agenda of destroying the last vestiges of the separation of church & state. So much for the “family values” they are so fond of pontificating on ad nauseam. quote-if-you-tell-a-lie-big-enough-and-keep-repeating-it-people-will-eventually-come-to-believe-it-joseph-goebbels-383851

The ties that bind these hypocritical “Christians,” and Donald, Darling of the KKK is their fervent belief in authoritarianism. These evil faux “Christians,” believe husbands rule over their wives & rule absolutely in the family. And they believe that compassionate or empathetic people are weak & need to be removed from the government and actually harm their children by “sparing the rod.” And Donald the Dumb-shit, like all petty tyrants (most husbands in the “Christian” evangelical movement), can’t handle any questioning of their authority or criticism of their actions. In case you forgot or don’t know it, the KKK has claimed that they’re good Christians throughout their horrific history of lynchings, racism, & bigotry. cjones09132014

Moreover, Hitler & the Nazis claimed to be good Christians as well & like Hitler, Trump is trying desperately to silence his critics in the media & wants his voice to be the only voice his Walking Dead base of supporters  hear. The Nazis burned all books they felt might be a threat to their power & Donny boy is attempting to silence all his critics with constant ridicule, dismissal, & outright lies. The Duck knows that he doesn’t have absolute power yet, so he has to wage a steady war ideologically against the press for his hidden agenda of undermining their authority.

Donald the Deceiver doesn’t want his celebrity cult worshippers to think for themselves. And I despair that America will ever outgrow its long history of anti-intellectualism (see Richard Hofstadter’s classic on the subject). But you’d have to be willfully ignorant to not see how we celebrate our ignorance in America & idolize violence & wealth. How so many of Trump’s supporters can believe that this supposed billionaire gives a rat’s ass about them & isn’t a part of the ruling elite who have fucked us all for so long, is beyond my comprehension. WillieFox

I’ve been pleading with others for most of my adult life to read the serious works of political science, history, philosophy, etc. so they could develop their critical/analytical thinking skills. And my words have usually fallen on deaf ears. And speaking of reading, I recently re-watched the classic movie based on Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” & a connection came to me regarding the thesis of this essay. Bradbury was basically saying that when people can no longer read books because it’s against the law, they lose their collective & individual memories and are much easier to control. maxresdefault

Well in the present dystopian society we’re living in, reading, especially the Classics is mocked, dismissed as elitism, and FOX “News” has been allowed to pose as a news channel for nearly 20 years now with barely any protest. FOX “news,” if people had any historical memory, is basically the American version of Russia’s major newspaper “Pravda,” which means Truth. It’s the fear & hate channel not unlike George Orwell’s nightmare world in “1984.” Is it any wonder that Trump gets his news from FOX “News” and watches several hours of T.V. per day? 47_190609_0

For those of you who haven’t drunk the Kool Aid & are concerned about our slide into a fascist state, I urge you to read a couple of classics on illiteracy in America; “Illiterate America” by Jonathan Kozol, & “Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Postman. And finally, if you doubt my assertions about Trump’s authoritarianism, you might do a bit of research for yourself & check out his respect for Putin, Duterte, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, Saddam Hussein, Erdogan, Bashar al-Assad, & Gaddafi. And no, the Dunce in the White House isn’t alone in his hypocrisy & betrayal of the soldiers who have fought & died for the supposed principles & ideals we stand for, here’s a list of “Friendly Dictators” that I bet you didn’t know we have trained, financed, & often sent our military forces to protect: 


Abacha, General Sani —————————-Nigeria
Amin, Idi ——————————————Uganda
Banzer, Colonel Hugo —————————Bolivia
Batista, Fulgencio ——————————–Cuba
Bolkiah, Sir Hassanal —————————-Brunei
Botha, P.W. —————————————South Africa
Branco, General Humberto ———————Brazil
Cedras, Raoul ————————————-Haiti
Cerezo, Vinicio ———————————–Guatemala
Chiang Kai-Shek ———————————Taiwan
Cordova, Roberto Suazo ————————Honduras
Christiani, Alfredo ——————————-El Salvador
Diem, Ngo Dihn ———————————Vietnam
Doe, General Samuel —————————-Liberia
Duvalier, Francois ——————————–Haiti
Duvalier, Jean Claude—————————–Haiti
Fahd bin’Abdul-‘Aziz, King ———————Saudi Arabia
Franco, General Francisco ———————–Spain
Hitler, Adolf —————————————Germany
Hassan II——————————————-Morocco
Marcos, Ferdinand ——————————-Philippines
Martinez, General Maximiliano Hernandez —El Salvador
Mobutu Sese Seko ——————————-Zaire
Noriega, General Manuel ————————Panama
Ozal, Turgut ————————————–Turkey
Pahlevi, Shah Mohammed Reza —————Iran
Papadopoulos, George ————————–Greece
Park Chung Hee ———————————South Korea
Pinochet, General Augusto ———————Chile
Pol Pot———————————————Cambodia
Rabuka, General Sitiveni ————————Fiji
Montt, General Efrain Rios ———————Guatemala
Salassie, Halie ————————————Ethiopia
Salazar, Antonio de Oliveira ——————–Portugal
Somoza, Anastasio Jr. ————————–Nicaragua
Somoza, Anastasio, Sr. ————————-Nicaragua
Smith, Ian —————————————-Rhodesia
Stroessner, Alfredo —————————–Paraguay
Suharto, General ———————————Indonesia
Trujillo, Rafael Leonidas ———————–Dominican Republic
Videla, General Jorge Rafael ——————Argentina
Zia Ul-Haq, Mohammed ———————-Pakistan

 

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”

Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier  

So yeah, be sure to hang your flags on all patriotic holidays & forget the gross hypocrisy & the millions of lives lived in desperate poverty or killed by the soldiers following orders from the corporate cockroaches. Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan is preparing the American version of the gas chambers. Onward Christian Soldiers! b1eb9a1fb3a801a093ee07e7435c8bc3

—Rob DeLoss, April 29, 2018 in Trinidad, CA

The Politics of Patriotism

All my life, I have watched politicians stand on the national stage & proclaim, “It’s your duty as an American to fight for democracy and freedom when your government calls you. As I gradually became more politically aware after decades of study, I saw that appeals to our patriotism are a con job by politicians. These politicians don’t represent us, they serve their masters, the megalithic corporate giants whom I refer to as Corporate Cockroaches. This is what I mean by the politics of patriotism i.e. the politicians are appealing to our sense of patriotism to manipulate us into serving in yet another war/police action that is really about raping, pillaging, & plundering other country’s natural resources to enrich America’s corporate cockroaches. 

“Judge Learned Hand of the U.S. Supreme Court once said that he would like to see these words ‘I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken,’ inscribed ‘over the portals of every church, every courthouse and at every crossroads in the nation.’ This is not only a plea for those who disagree with us. It is, profoundly, a plea for us to recognize that our righteousness can lead us into places that are most deeply wrong. At this time, perhaps more than any other time in the history of our wonderful human race, do we need to be in touch with our hearts. We need to be in touch with our humanity. The lesson of Nazi Germany is clear: it is those who dehumanize others who lose their own humanity. We are all artists, poets and intuitives. It is our birthright. As humans, we each have the ability to seek and connect with our most human qualities. Among these are love and compassion. In these lie our divinity, our humanity and our survival.” (Taken from: www.sarvananda.com Newsletter March-May 2003)

“If Fascism came to America it would be on a program of 100 percent Americanism.” —Huey P. Long, U.S. Army Talk, March 24, 1945leonard_peltier.jpg_309103967

I was trying to find the quote from Chief Justice Learned Hand and stumbled upon the quote above and felt it was appropriate to include the entire quote for the purposes of this essay. In fact, I sent this quote to President Clinton when he was in office when I wrote him a letter asking him to pardon Leonard Peltier. I wrote this essay in the hope that it may be of some help if even one person who is contemplating joining the military doesn’t join after reading what I’ve written. To risk being maimed physically and psychologically or being killed because the president & the corporate media tell us it’s our patriotic duty and without knowing the hidden history of America’s wars, is a fool’s errand. I was in the lottery for the Vietnam War in 1971 and my number was something like 69. I wasn’t politically aware back then but when it got close to me being possibly sent to Vietnam, I trusted my gut instinct and kept going AWOL until I got out of the army with an Undesirable Discharge. Receiving this “bad” discharge was morbidly humorous. So I wasn’t worthy of killing and possibly dying for my country? Oh the recruiters are masters of deceit. They’ll promise you the moon to get you to sign that contract. They told me that if I wanted to be a clerk-typist I’d have to sign up for another year. Lie! I didn’t even have to go to the normal advanced training that just about everyone goes through after their basic training in the army. I was a clerk typist as soon as I got to Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio. Almost everyone I’ve ever known or met that was in the military didn’t have hardly any use for the skills they acquired in the military in the work world when they looked for work after getting out of the military. In other words, their time in the military was dead time just as if they’d been in prison and out of the work force. Hence, wherever they found work, most started at the bottom. “Be All You Can Be,” is a sinister lie the recruiters, the Pentagon, & the presidents perpetuate and perhaps one of their key selling points, and is just another example of how appeals to patriotism are a con job by politicians.  Most of the gullible young fall for this tactic and believe when they get out they’ll walk into a challenging job and a good paying career. Sadly, most of us find ourselves pumping gas or flipping burgers.me in army

Just to show you how desperate the army was and probably still is for well-educated or somewhat intelligent recruits or enlistees, when I was in basic training and we’d taken a battery of written tests for the first 3 or 4 days we’d been there, they took me and 4 or 5 other guys out of our company to several meetings with high-ranking officers whose ranks I had trouble figuring out. Anyway, talk about high-pressure salesmanship; this was mind-blowing and ego inflating to the max. They basically told us that we could be stationed wherever we wanted to be in the world and that they would train us in whatever M.O.S. (Military Occupational Specialty) we wanted if we’d re-up (extend our contracted tour of duty’s amount of time) to six years I believe? I couldn’t see myself as being capable of sending men to certain death, which as an officer you might sometime have to do. They wanted to send us to O.C.S. (Officer Candidate School) and I didn’t even want to be a squad leader. As in the military, it’s the same it seems in the corporate business world that dictates everything about who we are, how we’re suppose to behave, talk, think, dress, etc., the less you rock-the-boat and the more incompetent you are and the better you are at ass-kissing, the higher up that so-called ‘ladder of success,’ you’ll go. I saw the army’s wise use of their manpower when I saw guys who had master’s degrees picking up cigarette butts, and not for disciplinary purposes.

Well when orders came down that half of us were going to be sent to Vietnam and the other half would be sent to Germany, I decided it was time to start going AWOL. I had met an older guy who was also trying to get out of the army and he told me that the army didn’t give a damn about how miserable you were or how much you hated it. He counseled me that you have to prove that you’re more trouble than you are worth before they will let you out. And if you keep going AWOL, you will be tied up with going to court martial hearings and they can’t ship you out while you’re going through this process. I went AWOL three or four times but they weren’t taking me seriously because I’d just receive a fine and have to do some extra duties like mop floors so the last time I went AWOL, I stayed gone and after about two months, the F.B.I. busted me at my mom’s house. Yet when Bush Jr. was AWOL for eight months or so, he was never arrested by the F.B.I. and his records disappeared. This is “justice” and “equality” in America.

Next on my list of reasons why you should think long and hard before joining the military is the obvious but maybe not as obvious as most of us are led to believe, risk of serious physical harm. And don’t get me wrong. I’m not a pacifist and I do believe there are times and circumstances when we should put our butts on the line and physically take up arms. I have said for many years that if any nation launched an attack against us on our own shores, I’d be the first son-of-a-bitch down there fighting them but for us to put ourselves in harm’s way just because we are told it is the right thing to do, is dangerously naïve on our part because patriotism is a con job by politicians. Look at the millions of mostly poor white boys, Latinos, and Black young men who went to Vietnam and were exposed to the defoliant, Agent Orange, and when they came down with a variety of exotic medical problems and diseases, this ‘honorable’ government of ours at first denied that Agent Orange had even been used. And when the lie could no longer be hidden, the government denied its connection to all the health issues our returning soldiers and their families had to deal with. The Pentagon and the federal government will deny responsibility for Agent Orange, the chemical weapons of the Gulf War, and the present use of depleted uranium until Hell freezes over! Why? Because if they admitted their responsibility it would open them up for a tidal wave of lawsuits and morally cut their legs off in terms of credibility with the general public. It would also seriously demoralize those now in the military service.

Another, ‘insignificant’ little factor that the military recruiters and television ads fail to mention in their sales pitches is the fact that once you sign that Faustian contract for your soul, you are in effect giving the military the right to use you like a lab rat or a guinea pig in whatever experimental programs they dream up. For example, the army thought it’d be interesting to see how soldiers fought when under the influence of powerful hallucinogens. Research for yourself what Timothy Leary had to say on this subject. And for a Hollywood version of it that was pretty horrific, see the movie, Jacob’s Ladder, with Tim Robbins.

Furthermore, our government and military’s total lack of care or concern for our health and welfare is illustrated with the series of atomic blasts they forced our military personnel to expose themselves to so the Pentagon and its Dr. Mengele imitators could study the effects of atomic radiation on humans, yet again, proof that appeals to patriotism are a con job by politicians who use us as guinea pigs. Or how about the fact that the Pentagon sent our soldiers into Vietnam with the new M-16 which we dubbed the ‘Mighty Mattel’ because the stock was made by the toy manufacturer and these ‘toy weapons’ jammed up repeatedly and cost many boys their lives. I understand that they eventually worked out the ‘kinks.’

How about the fact that many of our soldiers currently in Iraq complain that they don’t even have flak jackets or have half of one & when their parents started sending them flak jackets, this “compassionate conservative” administration forbid it? And only one in eight of the vehicles our soldiers in Iraq drive around it are armor plated. This is Bush’s idea of “supporting our troops.” How many stories has “60 Minutes” shown regarding the multitude of various weapons systems, aircraft, tanks, etc., that were defective and cost our people their lives? Many soldiers who returned from Iraq after the Gulf War reported that they either didn’t have a gas mask issued to them or else they were defective! And one of the things that really makes me want to go ballistic is when I heard that AWOL chicken-hawk, spoiled, rich brat, George ‘Dubya’ Bush, say how proud he is of our young soldiers in Iraq and how he supports their efforts and their sacrifices but behind the scene he has cut their medical benefits and pay! Are you beginning to see how appeals to our sense of patriotism is a con job by politicians because they clearly don’t give a fuck about your health once they’ve used you up. Moreover, it’s absolutely stunning how shamelessly Bush can stand in front of the television cameras and lie his ass off. I heard recently that soldiers are given a bonus for each additional tour of duty they serve in Iraq but if they get wounded and can’t finish out their tour, Bush wants them to return their bonuses. When this got out in the news, Bush & the Pentagon did some fast backpedaling and they’re now trying some other surreptitious way to screw the soldiers they proclaim to honor. This just highlights the betrayal of our soldiers and of America once again by the greedy elite. And all the defective and grossly over-inflated weapons systems that we, the taxpayers, are forced to pay for but not the rich, is part of what former President Eisenhower warned us of as he was leaving office when he said beware of the military/industrial complex (he was going to include Congress in this complex was talked out of it—a little too revealing would be my guess). And once again we see the ugly truth that appeals to our patriotism is a con job by politicians who serve the “defense contractors” who contribute to the politicians’ political campaigns. In addition to betraying everything America supposedly stands for and what our soldiers are suppose to be fighting for, is the fact that this insane, bottomless pit of manufacturing and buying with our tax dollars ever more weapons, bombs, aircraft, ships, etc., is bankrupting America. And you can be sure these corporate capitalist cockroaches in and out of government know full well what they’re doing because why else would Cheney be investing in the Euro dollar and not the American dollar? Mark my words my friend, they are going to drive America into a total financial collapse and then abandon ship and live overseas on their stolen billions.Born-on-the-Fourth-of-July

Equally important and to further illustrate not only the physical neglect of our soldiers but also the psychological impact of this government’s disregard for our soldiers, I strongly recommend all those contemplating joining the military watch the movies ‘Coming Home,’ and ‘Born on the Fourth of July.’ These movies will show you how well cared for you might be if you are unfortunate enough to be wounded in battle. Many V.A. hospitals are barbaric throwbacks to the Dark Ages and patients are forced to lay in their own feces and urine for hours. I’m drawing a blank on the name of that V.A. hospital that was recently in the news for its disgusting conditions and neglect of our soldiers? But as those movies I mentioned showed, rats and cockroaches often ran the hellholes and the V.A. nursing staff often treated the patients as annoying, sub-humans. Yeah, the government really appreciates your sacrifices! Let’s just hope and pray that the conditions in our V.A. hospitals are no longer as shameful as they were in these movies?

Next in my list of factors you should consider before signing your name on that enlistment contract are the economic or financial aspects that most young guys aren’t aware of when joining the military. The financial lies, distortions, & manipulations are especially egregious because most of those who join the military do so because they can’t find any work except minimum wage jobs with little or no future.And sadly, far too many, if not most of our military personnel discover that once they get out, they are right back to being forced to work at those Mickey Mouse jobs again showing how the appeals to our patriotism are a con job by politicians. Closely linked to young people’s inability to find a decent paying job is the pathetic state of our public education system. I heartily recommend that you read The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto if you want to really know just how extensively the government and the corporate robber barons have screwed us all with the public educational system they designed and made mandatory for us to attend or face the legal consequences. I have dissected this book and I’m using it in a book I am writing because it is a gold mine of utterly unbelievable machinations done by the powerful and the influential (Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan) to deliberately give the vast majority of Americans a “dumbed-down” education so we’d be obedient little workers and consumers. Are you willing to risk and possibly sacrifice your life and limb for an “Establishment” that sees itself as God-like and predetermines your future and condemns you to the life of an automaton on their assembly lines in their factories? A life that causes many of us to turn to alcohol or drugs for temporary escape from this ugly reality!

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In the meantime, to give you another example of Bush and his cronies’ “values,” have you noticed how he and Rudi Giuliani take advantage of every opportunity to show the flag-draped coffins of the police and firemen who died on September 11th, in their political ads for their campaigns? Yet Bush won’t allow the flag-draped coffins of our soldiers who die in Iraq to be shown on television? If this isn’t a clear-cut example of how appeals to our patriotism are a con job by politicians, I don’t know what is? And this is the same commander-in-chief who cut the salaries of New York’s policemen and firemen. Read what they have to say about Georgie & Rudi. This is also the fearless leader of our nation who told the Environmental Protection Agency to falsify their reports on the air quality around Ground Zero so people would return to the area and Wall Street would resume business as usual. And as Michael Moore showed us in his recent film Sicko!, many of the volunteer firemen, emergency workers, etc. who are now coming down with serious pulmonary and other diseases, are being denied medical coverage. It always boils down to money with the power elite yet they appeal to our patriotism to stir us to sacrificing in their wars to enrich themselves and then turn a callous back on our suffering and deny responsibility.

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Perhaps I sound a bit too harsh in my criticisms of “our” government and their corporate masters? Reflect on this if you will, besides the immorality of our invasion and occupation of Iraq is the pragmatic matter of what our presence there and our open-ended ‘War on Terrorism’ is doing to our economy. Many conservatives were elated with the collapse of Russia and credited Reagan with bringing it about. Well, I disagree and believe that Russia’s economy imploded due to their forty-year competition with us in the insane arms race. Russia’s economy simply fell apart before ours i.e. they couldn’t maintain their infrastructure of housing, health care, education, roads, bridges, etc. because they spent so much in trying to keep up with us in military weaponry. (and here’s an update for you, the U.S. national debt has now topped $21 trillion under Trump, perhaps he is a Russian agent helping us to go the way of Russia? Tell me, just what did we accomplish by invading Iraq besides stirring up the entire Middle East & creating an endless supply of terrorists who want to kill Americans? Yep, just another example of how appeals to our patriotism is a con job by politicians)

A lot of Americans aren’t aware that we used to be the world’s largest creditor nation but now we are the biggest debtor nation i.e. we owe more money than any other country. In other words, we are in hock up to our eyeballs. I recently found out that it is mostly Asian nations we have borrowed from and China is the nation we are most indebted to.

When I heard this, things suddenly added up that I couldn’t understand previously. For instance, I couldn’t comprehend why we didn’t do something when the Chinese government killed and jailed thousands of Chinese students who protested in Tinnamin Square for democratic reforms and even had a Statue of Liberty as a rallying point? Another betrayal on our part towards the promise of democracy was when we stood by and again did nothing when China invaded Tibet, murdered hundreds of Buddhist monks, destroyed ancient cultural artifacts, and forced the Dalai Llama to go into permanent exile. But then I shouldn’t have been surprised because we’re a “Christian” nation and we don’t give a shit about the world’s other major religions such as Buddhism and Islam. Yet time and time again, our president stands in front of T.V. cameras and proclaims for all the world to hear, “America stands for freedom, democracy, and basic human values.” The rest of the world has seen example after example of Bush’s hypocrisy and they don’t buy his empty rhetoric for one minute. It seems the only people who have fallen for Bush’s B.S., are the American people, well I should say, those who don’t care to read & don’t remember history.

I have been to Europe several times and listening to their perspectives on America has been quite an eye-opener for me. When you peel away all the layers of lies and deception that our politicians and corporate spokesmen have wrapped themselves in, at the core is one concern and one concern only i.e. the protection of their wealth and whatever it takes to ensure their pursuit of more wealth.

Let’s return to the issue of our “Defense budget,” and this is a misnomer and a cruel joke because the word ‘budget’ implies a practical balancing of one’s finances i.e. paying for the necessities of food, shelter, medical, insurance, etc. and staying within the limits of how much money you have to spend. I forget the guy’s name but I saw a PBS program with him and he worked in the Pentagon’s accounting department I believe for like 30 years? Well, he’s been telling Congress for decades about the deliberate fraud of ‘Defense’ contractors in purposely underbidding the costs of various weapons programs and once they were awarded the contract, then gouging the taxpayers and charging millions and sometimes billions over what they had originally stated. And don’t forget that many of these multi-million dollar projects turned out to have serious defects or never even worked at all and cost the lives of U.S. servicemen and women! Yep! You guessed it, another prima facie example of how appeals to our patriotism is a con job by politicians who empty the national treasury that we fill with our tax dollars into the pockets of the corporate cockroaches. 

This truth-teller also pointed out a very significant deception used by all the corrupt politicians, which is the fact that to really conduct an effective war on terror, all these expensive weapons systems are useless. What is needed to wage this war—which itself is an incorrect term because you can’t wage a war against an invisible enemy. What we need to wage should more accurately be referred to as a criminal investigation and we need agents well trained in the languages, customs, geography, religion, etc. of the terrorists we are hunting. But of course this doesn’t require the billions of dollars that our military/industrial/congressional complex wants to continue pouring into their pockets so they keep spreading the fear and the lies with their million dollar public relations firms, advertising agencies, ‘Spin-doctors,’ and hired guns i.e. ex-military officers, journalists, economists, professors, and etc.! (Just watch the FOX network)

Rumsfeld Sadam-Better

Why should you go fight in a war that Bush started with no provocation on the part of the Iraqis and based on false accusations and blatant lies that started with “we have to strip Saddam of his weapons of mass destruction,” which then evolved into “there are definite links between Saddam and Al Qaeda,” to the current line of crap “we’re bringing democracy to Iraq because we’re compassionate and caring defenders and promoters of democracy.” Yeah, Bush and his brother Jeb are real believers in democracy and proof of this was evidenced last year in Miami at the demonstrations against the I.M.F., the World Bank, and the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas). Do you remember that $80 billion or so that Bush requested for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq? Well the Bush-baby gave $7 million of it to his brother, the governor of Florida—who helped rig his election voting scam to ‘win’ the oval office—to hire cops from dozens of Florida counties and they illegally and brutally shot, beat, gassed, jailed, and ripped off the cameras and etc. of thousands of Americans who went to Miami to exercise their democratic right to protest the policies of their government! And on top of this travesty of justice, there was some scandal regarding their not spending the money granted by Congress for the reasons given in their request? I forget the details but this just shows to me that this wimp in the White House must see himself as back in the wild West where the only law was the gun and they could do as they pleased i.e. run rough-shod over our Bill of Rights and every law including international law and the Geneva Convention i.e. Rumsfeld said the Geneva Convention rules are outdated and the U.S. doesn’t have to observe them. Gee, I wonder where those soldiers who tortured and humiliated and killed so many Iraqi prisoners, got the notion they could do what they pleased with their captives? Or, what about that ‘democratic’ value or assumption of innocence until proven guilty in a court of law? Our soldiers fight for the honor and principles America stands for but our ‘leaders’ betray and undermine that honor and our principles. And this hypocrisy of claiming to respect law and order and defying international standards like the Geneva Convention which we signed at the end of WWII and which was established to hopefully prevent a repeat of the crimes against humanity committed by the Nazis and now violating, won’t leave us a leg to stand on morally speaking when our soldiers are captured and tortured by their captors.

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Furthermore on the subject of economic reasons why you should think twice before considering the military as the solution to your problems, you might not be aware of is the fact that part of the reason you can’t find any decent paying or livable wage jobs is because Bush and the other “compassionate conservatives,” give fantastic tax breaks to corporations who shut down their companies here and move them overseas for much cheaper labor costs. Where is the patriotism of the corporate cockroach elite when it comes to ensuring decent paying jobs for all the patriotic Americans who went to war?

Again, why should we risk our lives for “this country” when those who set the economic, social, political, etc. policies of “our country,” show us time after time that they could care less at the humiliation we suffer and the hardships we experience because they have no loyalty to us? I saw an expose on Bill Moyers’ PBS T.V. program on 4/16/04, a pitiful and disrespectful example of yet another way our military and political elite treat our young men and women who risk their lives fighting for this country. The story dealt with the fact that many families whose husbands are over in Iraq and in harm’s way but because the military pays them so little, their wives and children have to go to Food Banks and rely on the charity of their community! We really honor our men and women serving their country don’t we? Our loving and brilliant military and political elite instead spend our billions of tax dollars—of which almost none of the super-rich pay a dollar—to hire mercenaries (Blackwater for example) who were trained in the U.S. military and upon completion of their tours of duty are hired by ‘sub-contractors’ and make something like $100,000 per year. I also read recently in the Oregonian newspaper that many National Guardsmen were either not receiving their full pay or none at all. Yeah, join the army and “Be All That You Can Be!”

Additionally, why should you risk all for a government that deregulated dozens of industries such as the Savings and Loan industry which during Reagan’s reign went bankrupt or defaulted on tens of thousands of senior citizens and wiped out their life savings? Then just a few years ago, Ken Lay of Enron, Bush’s buddy, did the same thing but this time to his employees’ pension plans and stocks. Enron was only one of tens of dozens of corporations who screwed us once again on a grand scale. These kinds of business practices can only flourish in an atmosphere of corruption and with the politicians and regulatory agencies looking the other way. There’s another great book just out called Perfectly Legal and the author points out that something like 60% of our corporations have paid absolutely no taxes for several years by claiming their headquarters are in places like the Bahamas and yet they still enjoy all the rights of our legal system, the protection of our police and military, etc. Does this strike you as fair or egalitarian? Here is the dictionary definition of ‘egalitarian,’ you decide; ‘a belief in human equality especially with respect to social philosophy advocating the removal of inequalities among men.’ bush_cocaine

Sorry but I can’t believe in leaders who are trying to eliminate the right to overtime pay for 40 million American workers and at the same time make exceptions for those C.E.O.s who make over $10 million per year to shelter as much as they want in their 401K pension plans while the rest of us are limited to something like $13,000 per year. I guess my idea of patriotism is far broader than that of the powers that be?

In fact, believe it or not, I also recently learned that Bush cut the funding for the IRS program delegated to going after corporate tax evaders and at the same time increased the funding for the IRS program delegated to go after individuals evading paying their taxes. No, I can’t believe in such ‘leaders,’ and if I can’t believe in them, I’m sure as hell not going to risk my life because they say it’s my patriotic or moral duty! To these bastards, loyalty is a one-way street i.e. we owe it to them but they have no such obligation to us. They think they are our feudal lords and we are at their mercy, and we’re here to serve them as peasants serve their masters! You see my friend, fealty to the king has been replaced by fealty to the corporate cockroach masters of mankind!

Some of the reasons I have already brought up for why you should seriously question the morality of ‘our leaders’ who preach to us about the necessity of noble sacrifice for the United States, have already touched on the subject of betrayal and I want to now go into this subject at length. The power elite, status quo, or however you wish to refer to them, label those of us who dissent from their ideologies, policies, & practices as disloyal, anti-American, betrayers of American principles, or traitors and some of them even have the audacity to call for our incarceration or even our death. But I submit that they are the de facto betrayers of America’s principles and values and our founding fathers must be rolling over in their graves at such arrogance and betrayal of America’s citizens.

Deception is another of the forms of lying that the government and the Pentagon—which is a branch of the government, have become very proficient at. Take the Vietnam War and how the Pentagon (General Westmoreland) inflated the body counts for the North Vietnamese soldiers we killed and deliberately issued false lower numbers of our men who had been killed so as to keep the public in the dark. This clearly was an attempt by the powers that be to manipulate public opinion and keep us on the side of the pro-war hawks. Clearly, these deceptions show yet again how appeals to our patriotism is a con job by politicians.

And what strikes me as unbelievably callous and another clear example of the Pentagon and this administration’s attempts to deceive the American people is the fact that they won’t allow the coffins of our returning dead to be shown in the media, Bush hasn’t been to a single funeral of our fallen soldiers, and the military actively discourages the families of the dead servicemen and women from being there at Dover Air Field when their loved ones arrive—usually in the middle of the night under the cover of darkness. And this slime-ball of a person who claims to be “our president,” has the balls to declare ad nauseam that he “supports our troops?” No, Bush is the number one betrayer of America and more and more Americans are beginning to wake up to the truth of this.US_MEDIA-caricature01

You know, sometimes it takes the ‘village idiot’ or a child to state the obvious which seems to escape the rest of us as in that classic fairy tale The Emperor Has No Clothes and in this vein of thought it occurred to me that if our leaders were honorable men and women and this war in Iraq were such a noble cause then why is it necessary for them to lie, distort, & manipulate us into supporting it? These corrupt politicians and military elites can only get away with all their deceptive practices with the assistance or collusion of the mainstream media. The powers that be learned a crucial lesson regarding the power of the media during the Vietnam War debacle. Even though the Pentagon attempted to control what the war correspondents saw and photographed by flying them in to combat zones after the fighting was done and only allowed them access to battle areas where the military had nothing to hide. But, there were a handful of journalists who had integrity and refused to be spoon-fed the public relations propaganda dished out by the Pentagon. These brave souls found their own transportation and went to some of the restricted areas and reported back to us the truth of what they witnessed. This was very damaging to the politicians’ and the Pentagon brass’ images. But what was perhaps most damaging of all was the nightly news broadcasts which showed the steady stream of body bags and flag-draped coffins of our dead.Vietnamese girl napalm

And this is why they keep such a tight lid on the images of war ever since Vietnam because eventually the sleeping giant of the American public will waken from its long slumber and ask, ‘if we’re doing so well in this war then why are so many of our soldiers coming home dead or severely wounded?’ Unfortunately because we have become so hooked on television in the past half century, images are now much more powerful in shaping people’s opinions than the printed word. And because our public educational system is in such disarray, most Americans lack the critical or analytical skills necessary to defend themselves against the corporate indoctrination assault. The power brokers know that once the majority of American citizens turn against a war, their days of war profiteering are numbered. Personally, I feel it was so outlandish that for our invasion of Iraq, reporters had to be approved of by Pentagon officials and ‘embedded’ in specific military units. The muzzling and shackling of journalists during our times of war and in peace time as well has caused America to much more resemble those totalitarian nations we were always told we were so morally superior to. We have allowed these lying and morally repugnant people we call our ‘leaders,’ to almost totally erode our precious freedoms and the bedrock of those freedoms in contained in the First Amendment to our Constitution, which contains the ‘Freedom of the Press.’ It’s extremely important to recall these words from Thomas Jefferson, ‘Our liberty depends on freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.’ By the way, I just learned from watching Naomi Wolf on the most patriotic and real news program in America i.e. Democracy Now!, that Hitler embedded war correspondents in his divisions, for instance, he had a famous film director go along in the invasion of Poland who later on helped produce some of the Nazis’ most effective war propaganda documentaries. And what better way to appeal to our sense of patriotism than by using the movie industry to stir citizens up, & Frank Capra was one of America’s most zealous directors in this regard.

Now I don’t know about you but I’m a little confused because we are in Iraq and the latest PR rhetoric is that we are there to establish democracy yet while doing so, here in the U.S. the government is subverting our ‘democracy,’ by intimidating, restricting, and deliberately misleading our media? This again highlights the fact that patriotism is a con job by politicians who employ huge PR firms to manipulate the public into supporting the latest war or police action. A glaring example of this was when they had the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S. testify before Congress about supposed babies being ripped out of their incubators & thrown on the floor by Iraqi soldiers. (revealed to be a total lie) and they only gave her first name to hide the fact that she was the ambassador’s daughter & his collusion with the American government for the invasion.

a great little actress at the age of 15 who could turn on the tears at will (Nayirah)

Also related to the silencing of our media whether they are cooperating partners in the subterfuge or whether they have little choice but to go along is the issue of censoring the images and the numbers of Iraqis killed and wounded including the large percentage of innocent women, children, and the elderly! Or, how about our soldiers who signed up for a specific amount of time and are about to return to the U.S. only to learn that the Pentagon has extended their tours of duty and they have no choice in the matter? Wouldn’t this be the same as false advertising by the recruiters or be condemned by community standards as deceptive business practices? After all, it is a contract that you sign to enter the military. Yep! Yet another ad nauseam example of how their appeal to your sense of patriotism is a con job by the politicians to lure you into enlisting & then they won’t let you go when your “contract” is up because they are such great patriots. 

Similarly, the Pentagon has deceived us on another critical issue and I’m in no way excusing the sick and barbaric treatment of the Iraqi prisoners but I am arguing that these young military personnel didn’t invent these methods themselves! Just as in Vietnam in the most notorious case that we were told about i.e. the My Lai Massacre when the Pentagon tried to lay complete responsibility on Lt. William Calley, the Pentagon again is saying it was just a few bad apples. They really think we’re all stupid and have absolutely no memory. By the way, I just learned something amazing the other day i.e. Colin Powell was delegated to investigate the My Lai Massacre by his superiors in the Pentagon and he summed up his ‘investigation’ with “Nothing happened.” Is it patriotic to follow orders to murder innocent civilians & then cover the whole matter up?

Another example of how the corporate crocodiles in the boardrooms and in Congress have betrayed us, struck me one day while I was reflecting on “All that you can be.” I must admit this is a very clever bit of propaganda. It immediately appeals to that ‘egalitarian’ principle we supposedly all believe in. You know, we all have an equal opportunity to be whatever we choose to if we just knuckle-down and persevere? How can we have an equal opportunity or there be a level playing field if public schooling is so vastly inferior to most of those elite, private academies? I contend that you wouldn’t be so severely limited in your options after graduating high school if you had a truly good quality or top-notch education from your years in the public school system. How many of the rich kids going into those Ivy League colleges, join the military or if they do, how many see real action on the battlefront? How many more times do we have to witness how patriotism only applies to the 99% of us not born with a silver spoon in our mouths like the Donald Trumps of America who struts around like he’s such a patriot when his daddy paid a doctor to keep him out of going to Vietnam because of fictitious “bone-spurs.”

And the masters’ children don’t have to know the horrors of war. Our current bushwhacking president scored one point above the minimum score required to get into the Texas Air National Guard and yet his name was moved to the top of the list of those eligible and there were hundreds of other candidates who scored far higher than ‘Dubya’ and there was only one slot left. Just coincidentally, George Sr. had a friend at the time who placed a call and got junior in the Air Guard and even more amazing, when junior became governor of Texas, he appointed this old friend of dad’s to run the Texas lottery—and he was convicted of corruption and fired from the lottery commission a short time later.bush awol

Meanwhile, the betrayal goes on. I have to ask whether we are really still citizens of a democracy? It seems to me that with the passage of the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security bill, we have forfeited just about all those rights in the Bill of Rights? And the so-called “Patriot Act,” is truly mind-boggling in that it is yet another dog whistle tactic proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that patriotism is a con job by politicians because it is actually their playbook as to how to take away our rights & freedoms.

The Thought Police can demand that librarians and bookstore owners give them the lists of the books we check out or buy. The secret police can break in and arrest you or I wherever or whenever they want to and we no longer have a right to have a lawyer to represent us, to be told of the charges against us, etc. There is absolutely no such thing as privacy anymore. They can enter your home without a warrant and go through all your things including your computer and you may never even know they were there. They can spy on your e-mail, regular mail, and phone calls, whatever they want. (update; see Edward Snowden, I wrote this essay before Snowden revealed just how totalitarian our government has become)patriot act

I borrowed the term, ‘the thought police,’ from George Orwell and his masterpiece 1984. Why do you think the authorities are so interested in what we read? You may recall that in Nazi Germany, the brown shirts had massive public displays of book burnings. In other words, books, which represent knowledge, can be very dangerous to those in power. In fact, I have a paperback titled Books That Changed The World written by Robert B. Downs and I thought it appropriate to bring it up here because we don’t normally think of books or the ideas contained in them as having so much influence. As I like to say, the liberal arts liberate and the humanities humanize. And this isn’t merely clever word play. I believe this sincerely and if you too read deep and wide enough, you may also come to believe this. Are terrorists so stupid that they’d walk up to a librarian or a bookstore clerk and ask, ‘could you please direct me to the section on bomb-building?’ Common sense will tell you that any terrorist wouldn’t give their real name or leave any paper trail that would lead back to them. They’d copy whatever information they found useful or they’d purchase it by mail with a phony address or something. I know I’m going to probably sound like a conspiracy nut or something but as Michael Parenti said, “Conspiracy theories aren’t always theories.” I theorize that the secret police want to know what we read because they believe it will lead them to those of us who could possibly pose a threat to the status quo by spreading dangerous ideas like social justice, democracy, freedom, no special breaks for the rich, etc. etc. etc.

The power elite hide the facts from us because they know that most of what they’re doing is immoral and would outrage us if it were to be revealed. And speaking of ‘revealing,’ I was dumb-founded awhile back when I heard that Bush was joking around and looked under his desk and said, “no, no weapons of mass destruction under there,” and then he looked behind the curtains in the oval office and said, “nope, no weapons of mass destruction there either,” and then he laughed. My God! What kind of heartless bastard is he? How insensitive and disrespectful can he be to all of our soldiers whom he sent to Iraq under this shroud of lies and by manipulating our emotions by appealing to our sense of patriotism and our fears that terrorists are laying in wait. In my day it was the commies are coming, the commies are coming!

Another topic which I believe shows our leaders for the immoral, belly-crawling reptiles they are is the claim that Nixon and Killer Kissinger promised the communist Vietnamese government after we left Vietnam that they’d pay a ransom for our P.O.W.s and M.I.A.s that were being held and then chose to renege on the deal and left our men there to rot. I can’t substantiate the charge but after so many examples of our government’s treachery, I have no trouble believing it possible of them. And let me be crystal clear, both democrats and republicans are guilty of allowing these immoral and anti-democratic practices to continue to be done in our names. I believe deep down inside that most Americans are good people but as most humans when involved in immoral activities or military actions and etc. are without strong, ethical leadership and are encouraged to commit unethical, perverted, depraved, or savage acts by that same weak leadership can do, they can slip into a being with a Heart of Darkness. This is a book written by Joseph Conrad and was the basis of the movie Apocalypse Now. I purposely chose this book because I know that many of you have probably seen the movie but not read the book and I wanted to give an example of human barbaric acts in the extreme to get your attention. Too far or exaggerated? What about the atrocities at Abu Gharib to name just one glaring example that leaked out? Or what about the stories I have heard of American G.I.s in Vietnam collecting “gook” ears and wearing them as necklaces? Furthermore, I remember a picture a friend of mine showed me years ago of his dad and several of his buddies in WWII with one of the G.I.s holding the severed head of a Japanese soldier proudly displaying it as a trophy? Civil-Disobedience-Zinn

Again I want to remind you that America has a long and bloody history that we are never told about in our public schools. No doubt I will be written off by some of you as just another paranoid, conspiracy buff and I understand the reflexive thinking that causes most people to dismiss critics like myself with this cop-out of “conspiracy nut.” Okay, then why is it that the textbooks, which are used in our public education system, are so chock full of lies, perversions of the truth, distortions, revisionist versions of our history? Could this be yet another example of how “patriotism” is a con job by politicians or is the umbrella they, the corporate cockroaches hide all their anti-democratic practices under?

It’s no wonder that most kids are so turned-off to history because it has been so watered-down, sanitized, and twisted that it bears little resemblance to reality and students sense its untruthfulness or lifelessness. For instance, check out Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States in which he informs us that Christopher Columbus had his men kidnap native women & children and told their husbands if they didn’t come back with gold, they would kill their women and children. What really frightens me is the fact that because of our “educational system and mass media,” as much as a third of the American population doesn’t believe that the holocaust in Nazi Germany even happened! I am scared because if so many people can be in such an extreme state of denial about such a horrific episode in human history, it can indeed happen again and in fact, it is happening in Darfour in the Sudan like it happened in Rwanda and we, America, the champions of freedom and democracy sit by apathetic and more interested in Brittany Spears & Paris Hilton’s lack of underwear, public drunkenness, & other such shattering “news.” Check out Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory by Deborah Lipstadt if you’d like to know more about this phenomenon. You might also care to look up Hidden History: Exploring Our Secret Past by Daniel J. Boorstin, a former Librarian of Congress. It seems unlikely that they’d allow a conspiracy nut to hold such a prestigious position as librarian of Congress? Lastly, you might want to check out Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen. bush_crusade_for_oil

Now I wish to share with you some examples of our hidden history that anyone thinking about joining the military should know about before making that possibly fatal choice. George W. (WRONG!) Bush is the miscreant (one who behaves criminally or viciously) who calls himself a ‘compassionate conservative’ and declares he is on a holy mission from God to destroy evil. This is the man whose father as president before him, and during the Gulf War urged the Iraqis to rise up against Saddam—after we had withdrawn from Iraq—and when they did, he abandoned them and let them be slaughtered by Saddam. Our government supplied Saddam with the weapons of mass destruction, which he used to murder tens of thousands of his Kurdish & other citizens, and we didn’t raise a voice of protest because Saddam was our man (trained and put in power by the C.I.A.). And now these same hypocritical cowards repeat over and over how heinous a crime that was back then but conveniently don’t tell the public by omission i.e. it’s not allowed to be broadcast in the mainstream media, but is common knowledge in the alternative media.

Something else occurred to me while reflecting on U.S. support for freedom & democracy and that is, why, if we are so morally righteous and just, did we wait so long before we entered both WWI & WWII? As far as I’m concerned, the final nail in the coffin of those who shout that the U.S. has always been the defender of freedom and democracy is the simple list of most of the world’s most brutal and sadistic dictators whom our military, C.I.A., and etc. have given millions of dollars to and have trained their secret police in exotic and unbelievably inhumane techniques of torture. And by the way, our military has been used repeatedly to invade these countries and put down the poor who were revolting against their dictators. These dictators jail, torture, and kill students, teachers, professors, artists, peasants, journalists, musicians, writers, etc. who dare to speak out against the oppression of their fellow citizens.

I know this is not common knowledge because you won’t find this information in textbooks, mainstream T.V., radio, newspapers, or magazines. You will have to put forth significant effort to discover the hidden history and the current activities of “our” government and its agents of repression. Don’t just accept anything I say because you trust me or believe I’m an honest person. Find out for yourself and do your own homework because that’s the only truly worthwhile knowledge there is! I will point you in the direction of some very valuable resources that I have uncovered in my search though. I believe you will find them very enlightening and you will become more and more outraged as your knowledge expands. On the radio or Internet, look up the Pacifica Radio Network especially KPFK in Los Angeles and its Sunday program called Background Briefing with host, Ian Masters. And Robert McChesney does a weekly radio broadcast from Urbana University, which is very worth listening to. On the radio, the Internet, & some public cable access channels is Democracy Now! with host Amy Goodman who is a true heroine and has had her head caved in because she dared to try to report the truth of the slaughter in East Timor. Finally, there is Noam Chomsky who is a one-man revolution and who will rock your world. And Michael Parenti & Gore Vidal are mind-blowing in their analysis of history and politics and definitely worth your time. I almost forgot, here are some excellent magazines who speak for the progressive or liberal political point of view: The Nation, The Progressive, Z magazine, Harper’s magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, The Utne Reader, & Mother Jones. 

The true patriot is one who informs himself or herself and is not afraid to criticize & hold their government accountable for its actions. But “our” government does everything in its power to keep the facts & the truth about our history & our present from us because patriotism is a con job by politicians to keep us in the dark. And I’m sure that the overwhelming majority of American citizens have never heard of all these butchers “our” government has financed, trained their secret police, & many times sent our troops to support them against their citizens who were rebelling against them.

Here is just a partial list of those dictators “we” have supported because they allow “our” corporations to rape, pillage, & plunder their people and their natural resources—these are the ones I’m at least somewhat familiar with: Idi Amin of Uganda; Batista of Cuba; Botha of South Africa; Chiang Kai-Shek of Taiwan; Christiani of El Salvador; Duvallier of Haiti; Kind Faud bin’ Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia; Franco of Spain; Hitler of Germany; Marcos of the Philippines; Mobutu of Zaire; Noriega of Panama; Shah of Iran; Papadopoulos of Greece; Chung Hee Park of South Korea; Pinochet of Chile; Pol Pot of Cambodia; Halie Salassie of Ethiopia; Somoza of Nicaragua; Ian Smith of Rhodesia; Stroessner of Paraguay; Suharto of Indonesia; and Trujillo of the Dominican Republic. Note also that we invaded Nicaragua and Haiti several times in the 20th century to make it safe for corporations like United Fruit which the Bush family had significant investments in. And Bush says we’re bringing democracy to Iraq? Can you see why the people of Iraq may not believe him?

The true agenda of the robber barons is rarely clearly stated but if we pay attention to their actions, not their words, we can make fairly educated guesses as to what their real agenda is and here are some of my guesses. The powerful are some of the most paranoid people you’d never want to meet. I don’t know why they overreact to such an extent? Their gutting of the traditional public school curriculum has been nearly 100% effective in producing a nation of illiterates and functionally literate. They have censored, distorted, and left out so much of the true history of America that we truly have become a Nation of Sheep. Orwell wrote prophetically in 1948 when he published 1984, “those who control the past, control the present and those who control the present, control the future.” Think about it. When they rearrange the facts in our history textbooks aren’t they controlling the present? Therefore it’s a no-brainer i.e. they control our future. Remember how the Pentagon controls the reporters writing about and covering of our military actions around the planet! edward_r_murrow_a_nation_of_sheep_will_soon_have_a_government_of_wolves__2013-06-24

I feel this administration is a bunch of bush leaguers and that they are as cowardly as bushwhackers who shoot men in the back because they don’t have the courage to fight out in the open! Some critics have posited what I believe to be a plausible theory that we sent the weapons inspectors into Iraq to make sure as possible that there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction before we invaded to try to keep our casualties at a minimum and give the public a quick, clean victory? And this is another reason why the term ‘military intelligence’ is an oxymoron. Our ‘intelligence’ agencies and Condoleeza Rice was supposedly an expert on Russia, didn’t have a clue that Russia was collapsing and Ms. Rice & our “intelligence” agencies were caught completely off guard until after the fact when Russia self-imploded. Believe it or not, I am approaching the end of this rather lengthy essay of mine and if you’re still with me, I want to applaud you for your diligence. I tuned into Democracy Now! last week and was very glad that I did because there was a very lovely guest by the name of Naomi Wolf on and she was discussing her recent book The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. During the course of the interview, Ms. Wolf calmly & eloquently laid out what she calls the blueprint for fascism in 10 steps that she has observed from her study of despots and dictators and which is common in every despot’s attempts to destroy democratic movements or to close down a democratic society. I request that you keep these ten steps to fascism in mind and reflect back on what I have written and then decide for yourself how much ‘truth’ there is to my essay. Fascism (1)

[Update; in today’s America under Trump, it’s clear to me that he’s fulfilled every criteria for trying to turn the U.S. into a fascist tyranny, under him of course!]

  1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy. As Ms. Wolf points out this can be totally fictitious or true to some extent but grossly overstated or hyped to scare the public into compliance with the fascist agenda. Note our internment of thousands of Japanese Americans during WWII & the confiscation of their land. And also notice that Bush’s “War on Terror,” has no physical location or time limit so he & his cronies can carry on their war against internal & external “enemies” indefinitely. Also interesting is the parallel to the Reichstag fire in Germany to the attacks of Sept. 11th in that they galvanized the people against an invisible enemy.
  2. Create a gulag. Remember Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, which detailed the horrific conditions all those unfortunate souls whom Stalin dispatched to Siberia were forced to endure. Of course our most infamous gulag is Guantanamo and next to it is Abu Gharib. But there are perhaps hundreds of other “black sites” at secret locations around the globe. We have over 170 military bases around the globe and we also farm-out some of our torture to friendly dictatorships like Egypt & Syria. Naomi also reminds us of a famous pastor who lived in Nazi Germany, Pastor Martin Niemoler who realized that he, like so many other good Germans never spoke out because they first came for the communists, then the Jews, then the labor union leaders, then the Catholics, etc. but he never said anything because these were people on the fringes of German society and he didn’t identify with them but when the brown shirts came for him, there was no one left to speak out. “Most Americans don’t understand yet that the destruction of the rule of law at Guantanamo set a dangerous precedent for them, too.”
  3. Develop a thug caste. Mussolini had his Blackshirts & Hitler had his Brownshirts and Bush has Blackwater. Not a very original title for a private, paramilitary force on the part of the powers that be when you think about it. If you recall or in case you aren’t aware of it, Blackwater doesn’t just operate as cowboy mercenaries in Iraq and other ‘hot spots’ around the world but have been deployed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to intimidate, beat up, & terrify the black residents of New Orleans so they’d clear out and the rich cats could ‘gentrify’ New Orleans. And in the recent fires in Southern California, Blackwater was dispatched again to ‘help out’ and partnered with McDonalds. Ah, good old capitalism never ceases in its pursuit of profit while the poor are once again kicked in the teeth. Note that the State Dept. has been shielding Blackwater from prosecution for its murder of innocent civilians in Iraq. Equally important, another American ‘hero,’ Oliver North, who was awarded for his betrayal of America with his very own T.V. show, told us of Reagan’s preparations in case there was domestic ‘unrest’ whereby they would round up all dissidents, declare martial law, and lock up all the troublemakers. Can’t happen here?
  4. Set up an internal surveillance system. “In closed societies, this surveillance is cast as being about ‘national security’; the true function is to keep citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent.” The “Patriot Act” which should more rightly be called The War on Freedom Act has effectively taken away our right to privacy. And the masters have been hiding behind the term “National Security” for decades in order to cover all their crimes against American citizens and their covert activities around the world such as assassinating foreign leaders not ‘friendly’ towards American corporations who are exploiting sovereign nations’ resources and people. If you’d like to learn more about this subject, I invite you to check out another PBS Frontline program called Spying on the Home Front that first aired in May of 2007. In fact, I just went to the website and tried to access a side story on what the N.S.A. may be up to and got a message saying “Access Forbidden.” Home of the Free? Under the cloak of “protecting us from possible terrorist attacks,” the wicked wizards of wanton greed are actually tightening a noose around our necks and especially the necks of all of us who dare to dissent. Note that you can’t attend a public speech by Bush without signing a loyalty oath and if you’re wearing a t-shirt with anything remotely critical on it, you will get the bum’s rush escort and possibly a tazer tune-up? Mussolini, Hitler, Communist China, Communist East Germany, etc. have all employed internal spy networks in order to intimidate their citizens into silence. And it works remarkably well because people become more and more fearful that their neighbors or strangers might report them if they say the wrong thing. Keep on watching Jerry Springer, ‘reality T.V., and all the other mindless crap & don’t trouble yourself with these minor inconveniences or infringements and one day you’ll wake up and wonder where you are because America will have become one giant gulag. “Don’t Worry Be Happy!” (Stupid song from about 15 years ago)
  5. Harass citizens’ groups. As Senator Frank Church from Idaho, warned us around 1975 when he held the Church Committee Hearings to investigate the government’s COINTELPRO activities, our secret police infiltrated dozens of peace groups, anti-nuclear groups, the Black Panthers, etc. and sometimes marked charismatic leaders of these groups for death by other agencies, and used agent provocateurs to foment violence which then gave the fascists the pretext to cave-in people’s heads and haul them off to prison. I was at a demonstration once in L.A. outside a fancy hotel which was holding a $500 a plate dinner for Ronald Reagan and I got scared because a black man struck up a conversation with me and I felt that he was trying to suck me into suggesting we take some sort of violent action so he could arrest me. They are very subtle and clever in their tactics and you’d better be very careful about what you say and to whom if you don’t want to end up in prison. Anyway, our secret police had to cool it for a while but not for long because when Reagan took office, the gloves came off again in terms of spying on us. The bastards even go after pastors & preachers who dare to criticize their brutal and callous methods. But if you’re a fellow hatemonger like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson who even called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, you have nothing to fear. They use the IRS to intimidate church leaders into silence by threatening to revoke their tax-exempt status. Michael Moore also highlighted this harassment of citizens’ groups in his film Fahrenheit 9/11
  6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release. People, like myself, who have marched in peaceful demonstrations, signed petitions, written letters of dissent to editors, blogs, etc. have been put on a Terrorist Watch list. I don’t know yet if I’m on the list or not but will find out the next time I try to fly. The point is that if you dare to dissent in America under the Bush regime, you are likened to a terrorist. Of course this completely turns on its head what our founding fathers and framers of our Constitution established with our freedom of speech, right to assemble, right to privacy, etc.
  7. Target key individuals. You may recall that during the turbulent 1960s, virtually every leader of the organizations critical of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Panthers, etc. Leaders were either jailed or killed. Consider the fate of Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Abbie Hoffman, Timothy Leary, Tom Hayden, Stokely Carmichael, etc. Also reflect on the fact that in almost every coup d’etat, one of the first things the new dictator does is shut down the newspapers, T.V. stations, universities, etc. Why? Because they know that if they can keep the public in the dark and only allow the people to hear their propaganda, it’s much easier to control & shape their opinions and hence manipulate the people to go along with their hidden agendas. To illustrate, I remember my shock when I was attending California State University in the early 1980s and learned of an organization by right-wing “Christian” fundamentalists called “Accuracy in Academia.” Yeah, ‘accuracy!’ Not! It was clearly an attempt to silence ‘liberal’ professors and intimidate them into perpetuation of the right-wing ideological perspective. america the stupid
  8. Control the press. Unfortunately, the death knell for the ‘free press’ in America has long ago been sounded. For an excellent, detailed analysis of this woeful state of affairs, I warmly recommend that you check out Noam Chomsky & Edward S. Herman’s classic Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. “The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of U.S. journalists are at an all-time high: Josh Wolf (no relation), a blogger in San Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to turn over video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a criminal complaint against reporter Greg Palast, claiming he threatened ‘critical infrastructure’ when he and a TV producer were filming victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written a bestseller critical of the Bush administration. Other reporters and writers have been punished in other ways. Joseph C. Wilson accused Bush, in a New York Times op-ed, of leading the country to war on the basis of a false charge that Saddam Hussein had acquired yellowcake uranium in Niger. His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA spy—a form of retaliation that ended her career.” Yeah, here’s an example of true betrayal or treason but of course when the White House hoodlums do it, they get away with it. Scooter Libby was finally convicted of this crime and even though the blow-heart Bush who swore that when he discovered who outed Valerie Plame, they’d be punished to the full letter of the law. It was just another lie in a tidal wave of deceptions perpetrated by this junta of jackals. Bush pardoned Libby before he saw a single day in jail. And let’s not forget the once venerable New York Times the ‘paper of record,’ that sets the standard for the rest of the newspapers in America. They beat the war drums for the rush to war along with the FOX “News” channel. “You won’t have a shutdown of news in modern America—it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it’s not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can’t tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit. chomsky on dictators
  9. Dissent equals treason. “Cast dissent as ‘treason’ and criticism as ‘espionage.’ Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalize certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of ‘spy’ and ‘traitor.’” I’m sure that a lot of what I have said in this essay could be construed as ‘treason’ by these perverters of the truth and I’ve heard that they are either thinking of or have already started confiscating people who dissent’s property. Yep, land of the free and home of the brave. “And here is where the circle closes: most Americans do not realize that since September of last year—when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006—the president has the power to call any U.S. citizen an ‘enemy combatant.’ He has the power to define what ‘enemy combatant’ means. …he has the power to have us seized as we are changing planes at Newark tomorrow, or have us taken with a knock on the door; ship you or me to a navy brig; and keep you or me in isolation, possibly for months, while awaiting trial. (Prolonged isolation, as psychiatrists know, triggers psychosis in otherwise mentally healthy prisoners. That is why Stalin’s gulag had an isolation cell, like Guantanamo’s, in every satellite prison. Camp 6, the newest, most brutal facility at Guantanamo, is all isolation cells. We U.S. citizens will get a trial eventually—for now. But legal rights activists at the Center for Constitutional Rights say that the Bush administration is trying increasingly aggressively to find ways to get around giving even U.S. citizens fair trials. ‘Enemy combatant’ is a status offence—it is not even something you have to have done. ‘We have absolutely moved over into a preventive detention model—you look like you could so something bad, you might do something bad, so we’re going to hold you,’ says a spokeswoman of the CCR. Most Americans surely do not get this yet. No wonder: it is hard to believe, even though it is true. In every closing society, at a certain point there are some high-profile arrests—usually of opposition leaders, clergy, TV and radio, and the facades of a civil society. There just isn’t real dissent. There just isn’t freedom. If you look at history, just before those arrests is where we are now.” Reminds me of that futuristic movie Minority Report with Tom Cruise as a law enforcement officer who would arrest people before they committed a crime because the government had the ability to know which citizens were going to commit a crime in the future. Talk about life imitating art!
  10. Suspend the rule of law. “The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the National Guard. This means that in a national emergency—which the president now has enhanced powers to declare—he can send Michigan’s militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state’s governor and its citizens. Even as Americans were focused on Britney Spear’s meltdown and the question of who fathered Anna Nicole’s baby, the New York Times editorialized about this shift: ‘A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night…Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any ‘other condition.’ Critics see this as a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act…. the founders were terrified of exactly this kind of concentration of militias’ power over American people in the hands of an oppressive executive or faction. Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing-down of the system that followed Mussolini’s march on Rome or Hitler’s roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic habits are too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for any kind of scenario like that. Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion…. As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to Internet shopping and American idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are ‘at war’ in a ‘long war’—a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president—without U.S. citizens realizing it yet—the power over U.S. citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone…. What if, in a year and a half, there is another attack—say, God forbid, a dirty bomb? The executive can declare a state of emergency. History shows that any leader, of any party, will be tempted to maintain emergency powers after the crisis has passed. With the gutting of traditional checks and balances, we are no less endangered by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani—because any executive will be tempted to enforce his or her will through edict rather than the arduous, uncertain process of democratic negotiation and compromise…. Right now, only a handful of patriots are trying to hold back the tide of tyranny for the rest of us—staff at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who faced death threats for representing the detainees yet persisted all the way to the Supreme Court…. We need to look at history and face the ‘what ifs.’ For if we keep going down this road, the ‘end of America’ could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment….’The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands…is the definition of tyranny,’ wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry.” (excerpted from The Guardian, a British newspaper at www.guardian.co.ukfree press

It’s appropriate that step ten of Ms. Wolf’s ten steps to fascism is to suspend the rule of law because again it is truly frightening how far this criminal corporation in Washington D.C. has gone in their ignoring, violating, and suspension of the law. The power elite regularly proclaims the sanctity of American jurisprudence and remind us that we’re a nation based on law and order yet the acts of this administration has been perhaps the most lawless administration we have ever known? It also dawned on me awhile back that while we have a glut of TV programs about law & order—in fact, a series by the name with several spin-offs—yet our reality is the political & corporate crooks consistently get away with high crimes and misdemeanors while more and more of us on the lower end of the social ladder are being locked up for ever greater lengths of prison sentences? looking-back-at-the-reagan-years-iran-contra-scandal-14-convictions-8264672

Let’s take a brief stroll down memory lane. Anyone remember the Iran/Contra scandal? Dear old Ronnie Reagan who’s name brings a tear to the eye of a good number of Americans to this very day, swore we would never bargain with terrorists but behind closed doors and against the express law passed by Congress, sold weapons to the Iranians who kidnapped Americans and held them captive for over a year—and what a coincidence that the moment Reagan was being sworn into office, the Iranians released the hostages? And on top of this, the weapons that ‘we’ sold the Iranians were bought with drug money our CIA made from bringing cocaine into America. And ‘we’ supported the death squads in Nicaragua with this money as well. Yet when the Iran/Contra hearings were held, everyone involved, most notably Oliver North, hid behind yep, you guessed it, Patriotism. You may be getting tired of my citing example after example of how patriotism is a con job by politicians but I know only too well how long the propaganda campaign by the corporate cockroaches has been waged against us & therefore I realize how great a mountain I must climb to combat it.

I used to travel to students’ homes in L.A. & teach Spanish-speaking adults English. A woman from Nicaragua whom I worked with told me something that shocked me & made me sick to my heart that ‘our’ government & Reagan could compare the death squad butchers to our founding fathers. Maria told me that her sister was 9 months pregnant and the Contras came into their village and sliced her sister’s stomach open, pulled the baby out, & slit the baby’s throat in front of her sister as she bled to death! I also used to substitute for L.A. Unified Schools and had the privilege of teaching many young high school students from Nicaragua and El Salvador and I hope that I never have to witness what these poor souls had to go through. I taught these students for six weeks and when I had to move on, several of the girls started crying because they knew that I truly cared about them and they brought tears to my eyes as well! 

And speaking of ‘law & order,’ something else occurred to me while I was thinking about all the domestic spying that Big Brother is doing on us. I think it was something like a year or two back that the TV program Sixty Minutes did a story on a government program called “Echelon.” This story really caught my attention because my ex-wife’s cousin told me over twenty years ago that the government was listening to our phone conversations and if certain words like ‘bomb,’ ‘Allah,’ etc. were used, they flagged you and you would soon receive a visit from one of the intelligence agencies’ agents. This ‘Echelon’ story verified this and revealed that they now can pull the data from our e-mails, phone calls, faxes, websites we visit, in short—every form of communication we use, right out of the air. They no longer need to physically tap into our phone lines. I remember just before Bush launched our invasion of Iraq and he was pretending to go along with the requirement of getting the approval of the U.N.’s Security Council and it was revealed that ‘we’ were spying on the Security Council members to find out which way they were going to vote on the resolution. I bet Echelon was how they were able to spy on the members? Furthermore, I know I’m going to sound like a nut-case but I was also amazed when the movie Enemy of the State came out because even though it is a Hollywood movie i.e. work of fiction, I believe it has a lot of factual information in it and it surprised me that the ‘friendly fascists,’ would allow this knowledge to be revealed even if in a fictional Hollywood movie. If you’ve seen the movie, think about the technological capabilities that were shown in the movie and then consider what we now know about Echelon & Bush’s spying on us and in violation of the F.I.S.A. laws. The key question that this movie brought up was spoken by the woman who played Will Smith’s wife in the movie when she said, “yeah, but who’s going to watch the watchers?” Chew that one over for a while if you will. You see, in the corporate cockroaches’ perverted idea of patriotism, turning America into precisely what we’ve been fighting against throughout the Cold War i.e. communist dictatorships where there is no freedom of speech, privacy, right to a trial, etc. is their idea of freedom.

Anyway, I was going to quote at length from another PBS Frontline special called Cheney’s Law but I’ll leave that to those of you who might be intrigued enough to do a little digging on your own. But this Frontline program will show you just how great the contempt this administration has for Congress’s authority, for law, and for us. I fear that I’m going to lose more readers than retain so I’m going to start winding down this ‘essay.’ edward-snowden-it-lamentable-that-good-patriot-one-must-beco-politics-1373048072

When I originally wrote this essay back in May of 2004, I titled it “Reasons Why A Young Person Should Not Join the Military or Enter At Your Own Risk & Buyer Beware!” Several people who read it suggested that it could be more effective if I arranged it a little more logically so, I finally have done so and I’ve updated it a bit as well. I hope that it makes a difference in at least one person’s life because then it will have been worth the effort I’ve put into it. Far too many times our government has lied to us about the reasons for going to war and therefore you should be damn sure you have all the facts necessary to make an informed decision before you put your butt on the line. I wrote this not because I’m unpatriotic or anti-American but because I am a true patriot and not afraid to speak my mind (yet). I criticize our government because just as a good parent criticizes and disciplines their children so they’ll mature into honorable men and women, I criticize our government in the hope that it too can learn from its mistakes. And as Thomas Jefferson said, “it’s not only our right to hold our government accountable; it’s our duty as citizens of a democracy.” I must confess though that the primary reason I wrote this essay was because I have a son and I hope and pray that he won’t become just another sad statistic of yet another young person ground up and spit out of the military machine. And what really cuts me to the bone is the fact that my son won’t even take the time to read this essay that I wrote for him in an attempt to save his life and hopefully squash any thought he might ever have of joining the military. 

As I mentioned earlier, the military today regularly violates the contract they make with enlistees so when you sign on that line, you are theirs for an indefinite length of service like this indefinite ‘war on terror.’ And this ‘war on terror’ gave the right-wing extremists and reactionaries in the White House just what they were looking for i.e. an excuse to wage war on all the social welfare agencies and legislation passed and established over the last one hundred years. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Reactionary Right were desperately searching for a new national enemy to justify the continuation of the transfer of the money from the pockets of the poor to the pockets of the rich via what is called the ‘defense industry’ but should be referred to as the death industry. Can you recall that the ‘defense department’ used to be called what it actually is, the War Department? quote-the-war-on-drugs-cloaked-in-race-neutral-language-offered-whites-opposed-to-racial-reform-michelle-alexander-106-91-81

Before the terrorists came along and assisted their buddies in the White House by providing them with a rationale for invading and attacking any nation they so choose to, we had an interim and still on-going ‘War on Drugs.’ I recently watched a documentary on Free Speech TV (a very valuable learning tool) regarding this ‘War on Drugs,’ and it was deeply disturbing because I had what I believe to be a profound insight. Our government is funneling billions of dollars into Columbia’s war against coca and marijuana growers & smugglers but upon close examination you will discover that most of the drug traffickers in Columbia are involved in the trade because the money enables them to buy the weaponry necessary to fight the corrupt Columbian government backed by the U.S. A lot of the drug dealers are Leftists fighting for social justice, fair wages, the right to form unions, and etc. Coca-Cola for a case in point has hired assassins to threaten, torture, & kill union organizers. Once again our military forces and our tax dollars are being used to repress democratic aspirations of the poor and the disenfranchised under the guise of championing democracy. I believe the main Leftist group is called FARC and they too have committed crimes against humanity as in their kidnapping of foreigners for ransom. If the foreigners work for the U.S. military, government of the U.S., or the corporations exploiting the Columbian people & their resources, I can understand though I don’t approve of kidnapping. But if the people being kidnapped are innocent tourists or are there as teachers or health workers, it is morally reprehensible for them to suffer the trauma of being kidnapped! 

Our forty year ‘Cold War’ against the Communists, all our incursions into places like Haiti, Grenada, Panama, Nicaragua, Iraq, etc., the War on Drugs, and our current open-ended carte blanche ‘War on Terrorism,’ are in effect really a war on all the poor and working classes in every nation on earth. I know this sounds rather extreme but I bet that if you study the story behind the official ‘Newspeak’ handed to us, you’ll see a common pattern in country after country of the U.S. assisting the corrupt and helping to undermine the poor in their dreams of a more equitable social arrangement just as Naomi Wolf did when she discovered the blueprint common to all despots and dictators as they brought and are currently bringing fascism to their countries.

Please don’t misunderstand me; I’m in no way saying the Communists were the good guys! What I am saying is that we’ve all been so grievously wronged and ripped-off and betrayed—Russians and Americans—that we should all be raising holy hell and demanding the return of our sovereign rights! Neither side gives a damn about democracy, communism, freedom, or anything except power and all the material prosperity that the elite can hoard. I was recently reflecting on the reasons we were given for getting involved in that long quagmire called the Vietnam War—though never officially declared by the cowards in Congress—and as I recall, we were on a noble mission to save the world from communism? Remember the Domino Theory? It was claimed that if we didn’t intervene in Vietnam and it became communist, it would act as a domino (role model) and a ripple effect of all the surrounding countries becoming communist and falling like dominoes would be the result. If the communists were our mortal enemies and wickedness personified, then answer me this, why almost directly after our defeat in Vietnam did we reach out to Communist China and become trading partners? What did all our boys die for or come home with a leg or arm missing?

I say that ‘our’ government and military are really the servants of the global corporations who are shoving globalization down our throats not to make this a more democratic or equitable world—unless you consider all workers around the world making $2 or less per day, equitable—but rather to consolidate their power to such an extent that they need never worry again about the pesky peons demanding food and shelter! The illegal & immoral person who stole the U.S. presidency and whom I affectionately refer to as the Bushwhacker, paints his ‘War on Terror’ in very simplistic black and white terms i.e. “You’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists,” because this distracts people from the deeper issues and the gray areas by keeping us emotionally off balance and lusting for blood. The Bush & Cheney cabal have several reasons for why they embroiled us in yet another quagmire but this time in Iraq; 1) to establish a permanent military presence and large enough force to ensure a strategic post in the Middle East, 2) to control access and therefore power over our rivals for oil around the world, 3) to seek revenge for the attempt on George Sr.’s life, etc., etc., etc. chomsky on public ignorance

As I was watching another PBS Frontline documentary last night called Spying on the Homefront, something else occurred to me i.e. the strutting little dictator from Crawford keeps telling us that it’s necessary for them to spy on all of us in order to prevent further terrorist attacks against us. Yet, if this were true, then why did the F.B.I. fire Sibel Edmonds who was hired a few weeks after Sept. 11th as a translator because she speaks Farsi, Arabic, & Turkish? They fired her because she blew the whistle on her supervisors who were telling her to slow down in her translations of documents that intelligence agencies had gathered in their attempt to discover what terrorists were up to. She stated publicly that Condoleeza Rice’s claim that the administration had no idea of an impending attack by Al Qaeda before the tragic attack was an “outrageous lie.” Ms. Edmonds held the highest security clearance but like everyone else who dares to speak truth to power in this den of thieves and liars, they are gotten rid of and their character is assassinated by the Karl Rove smear team. But this courageous patriot hasn’t given up and she’s been fighting the swine in the courts. And something else occurred to me, a simplistic theory perhaps but nonetheless, I am old enough to remember that the former director of the F.B.I., J. Edgar Hoover, who enjoyed cross-dressing while conducting his fascist war against America, had secret files on just about every politician in Washington D.C. and whenever any politician, pundit, businessman, etc., dared to not go along with Hoover’s program, he’d threaten to publicly expose them and ruin their careers. I wonder if perhaps those men with the real power, through the use of Echelon and other NSA dirty tricks, have dossiers on everyone in Congress and the handful of corporate media moguls and other powerful interests and keep them in line by threatening them also?

One thing I am sure of though is the fact that politics is all about gaining power and then hanging onto it once you’ve gained it. A book written several hundred years ago by Nicolo Machiavelli called The Prince, laid out the blueprint for gaining power and holding onto it. It’s a very cold-blooded, calculating, & no holds barred inside picture of what goes on in the real halls of power and most of the world’s “leaders,” use it though very few will admit that they do. Just as in that movie by Oliver Stone called Wall Street with Michael Douglas revealed with the book by Sun Tzu titled The Art of War revealed the art of doing dirty business that the corporate, criminal class follow in their never enough pursuit of profit. And as the moral of the movie revealed, yes, you can gain great power by being ruthless but in the end you lose your soul. I can see this ruthlessness being used against the world’s poor & struggling billions now in the form of globalization but unlike in the movies where the good guys win in the end, I don’t see any force that is powerful enough to stop these modern day Attila the Huns. Our hope lies in whether enough of us care enough to empower ourselves with the knowledge necessary to stop them and unite in this ultimate battle for the life of the planet and the future of humanity. Again you may think I’m going off the deep end but consider if you will what the gluttonous, power-mad, warmongers are up to with their plans for space-based satellites with lasers for the domination of space and the entire planet. Look up Bruce Gagnon for a frightening glimpse into the next phase of Star Wars. It may seem that I have wandered way off the subject of this essay but it’s all connected. The question is, do you want to be part of those who are the oppressors and who are destroying life and turning this world into a living nightmare or do you want to join the battle for dignity, fairness, & peace?

The powers that be use fear and propaganda to push our emotional buttons and appeal to our ‘sense of patriotism,’ to remain in power and clearly have no loyalty to us as citizens of what used to be a sovereign power. Most Americans define patriotism as “my country, right or wrong.” And this is indeed a very narrow & childish understanding of the term. If you are interested in understanding what it means to be a true patriot on a much deeper level, the best source I can point you towards is an issue of The Nation that was devoted to this single subject and had brief pieces by a wide variety of artists, intellectuals, professors, journalists, teachers, etc. I think it was around the 4th of July in 1992 or perhaps around the time of the first Gulf War? The old saying by Samuel Johnson that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” isn’t just a witty little quip but is a very profound insight into those who use the concept to manipulate the gullible for their own personal gain. And Thomas Jefferson who wrote our Declaration of Independence was very serious indeed when he warned us to beware of “sunshine patriots.”

The government representatives, the military elite, the mass media corporate giants, the public school system & the university system, & the global corporations have betrayed us time & time again and care nothing about our physical well being, our psychological well being, whether we’re forced into homelessness, etc. So, we owe them no loyalty but we do owe it to ourselves to pull them down from their golden thrones because no one is superior to anyone else and we have a God-given or natural born right to live in a world of justice for all! The U.S. & Israel have defied international law and United Nations resolutions hundreds if not thousands of times, and have stood alone, united in their crimes against humanity. We are the rogue nations and our ‘leaders’ have the audacity to stand on the world’s stage in front of the media from around the globe and denounce Iran and any other nation who dares to tell us no, as threats to democracy and freedom? Their egos and arrogance is truly breathtaking. How they can stand there in front of all those cameras and say the preposterous shit that comes out of their mouths with a straight face is beyond my comprehension? Israel and we have about zero credibility in the eyes of the world and it’ll take a long time if it’s even possible for the U.S. to regain a semblance of respectability.

This in conjunction with Bush’s flagrant & consistent violations of U.S. law completely negates any claim to authority, respect, or trust of this oil cabal occupying the oval office and blackening America’s reputation the world over! We would do well to remember F.D.R.’s famous words “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Don’t let them scare you into submission. In conclusion, I say that on moral grounds ultimately I rest my case and that the ‘true’ (my truth) causes of terrorism as is generally understood i.e. individuals who have no respect for human life and commit suicide bomb attacks because they are religious fanatics and have no valid reason for their heinous crimes. This is brazen propaganda and indoctrination. By the way, don’t forget that the U.S. is the only country that has ever been labeled a terrorist nation by the International Court of Law, and we are the only nation to have ever used a nuclear bomb on another country. So how righteous are we and what moral high ground do we occupy? They won’t ever allow the deeper issues to be discussed in the national media because it would open a Pandora’s box of misery and humiliation and disgrace for them if we ever start a public dialogue on war issues or domestic politics. I believe the ‘true’ causes for most terrorist attacks against Americans is in brief all the bloody and butcherous dictators we have helped or installed in power and taught them also how to maintain their power by a perpetual reign of terror conducted against the poor, the workers, students, etc. And the emotional, physical, psychological tolls the oppressive and totalitarian vice-grip tactics take on the people because they are forced to work like dogs for pennies and under draconian conditions. They often slave away in factories owned by Americans and they can’t feed their children or find medical care. School is a luxury and only a rare few ever receive even a modicum of education. And be assured, I in no way condone acts of terrorism committed by other nations or individuals or by our own government or citizens. Two wrongs don’t make a right. I’m simply trying to inform you of some of the reasons behind terrorism.

Therefore, why should you risk your life when those who really hold the reigns of power in this country don’t give a damn about you or your loved ones? Most importantly, the psychological damage done to those who go to war, often goes unnoticed but as time passes, the results of that damage become evident in the large numbers of homeless vets, the high rates of divorce, alcoholism, drug abuse, estrangement from their loved ones & friends, & the screams in the middle of the night due to the horrific nightmares that so many soldiers suffer from. In a recent poll, 72% of our soldiers in Iraq said they believe we should withdraw from Iraq within a year. And 29% of those polled said we should withdraw immediately. The Pentagon says that since the year 2000, more than 40,000 military personnel have deserted. And the suicide rate of military personnel since the beginning of the Iraq invasion has alarmed many outside experts. What does this all tell you? It struck me recently that history has once again shown us a very cruel irony in that we supposedly entered into World War II to stop the fascist Germans, Italians, & Japanese and today it is we, the U.S. who are becoming the fascists. Strong or harsh accusation? You’re goddamned right!

The powerful have in common with the devoutly religious, mastered the art of denial and have raised it to a level of perfection hard to imagine. If you doubt the human capacity for barbarism that lurks within our souls, I suggest you read or watch The Lord of the Flies. And if after everything I have said, you still believe it right or worthwhile to join the military then, all I have to say is good luck and best wishes because it’s your life after all! But I can’t blame the Iraqis for rejecting our brand of democracy. And if you want to be a true patriot, you will arm yourself with knowledge of our history & speak out against the corporate cockroaches who are enslaving all of humanity!

widow-at-arlington-sm
(all too often this is the fate of our young people who because they have such a poor education, must choose between flipping burgers or joining the military)

—Rob DeLoss (first draft May 17, 2004, revised & updated December 6, 2007)

The Naked Truth about Public Education in the U.S.

The picture above says it all i.e.

All too often this is the fate of our young people who because they have such a poor education, must choose between flipping burgers or joining the military!

Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m now 65 years old & that the love of my life, my best friend & wife, Jeri has passed away that has brought me to this point? I think the last vestiges of my youthful idealism that we could take back our country from the corporate cockroaches, has died as well? But, I understand on a much deeper level now just how pervasive or insidious the corrosive corruption of wealth is on our public education system. And since we are a nation that values quantity above quality & if you can’t quantify your accomplishments, most people dismiss you as a bullshitter, loser, liar or all three, I am including the following personal info:

I have taken a fairly objective guesstimate of how much time & energy I’ve invested in educating myself & I’d say that I’ve spent at least 49,000 hours over the past 30 yrs. or so in reading, writing, attending college classes, lectures off campus, listening to political programs, watching political, social, cultural documentaries, etc. And I have made copious notes in the blank pages of many of my books. My personal collection of books is probably close to 10,000. And no, this isn’t an ego trip but to substantiate the sincerity of my pursuit of truth over the course of my lifetime.

Here’s a quote from President Woodrow Wilson that lays it out bare for all to see;

“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”

I have been wondering for decades if it’s all just a matter of coincidence or a conspiracy that has brought us to this pitiful state of ignorance in America? In fact, I just asked Noam Chomsky in an e-mail I sent him yesterday & he replied that no, it’s not really. I’ll simply put it like this, there are many forces that benefit from a dumbed-down public & they have been pretty brazen in their public proclamations regarding their agenda. If you care to educate yourself on this detailed history, check out John Taylor Gatto’s “The Underground History of American Education.” And no, I’m not going to simplify this critical history for you because I’ve done that for most of my adult life & all it does is encourage people to continue in their intellectual laziness.

My wife was a special education teacher for over 32 yrs. & a large part of being a special ed teacher is being/serving as a resource center i.e. knowing where the resources are to help students, other teachers, parents, etc. and guiding people to those sources to hopefully inspire them to empower themselves. Well, I too feel like a resource center but as the old saying goes; You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. By-the-way, there is a critical difference between being innocently ignorant & being willfully ignorant.

Furthermore, I am not nearly as understanding or forgiving as I used to be i.e. I believe that a good portion, perhaps the majority of those who voted for Trump, the undeniably most ignorant president we’ve ever had, are willfully ignorant (purposely block out any facts, knowledge, or wisdom that contradicts their dogma & prejudices). They say that knowledge is power but a commander in chief who is so clearly willfully ignorant is a clear & present danger to not only America but the entire world!

Call me cynical, pessimistic, jaded, burnt-out or whatever you like but, I seriously wonder if most of those who voted for Trump will ever wake-up to just how colossal the con-job he pulled on them was? I doubt that even as their food stamps, unemployment, meager health care, etc. is either eliminated entirely or cut so significantly that living in their cars will seem like  a step up, they’ll wake from their  Walking Dead coma.

I’ve studied under and worked with thousands of teachers over the course of my life & I can count the truly great teachers on one hand. The education “profession” is like the military i.e. do your time, don’t rock the boat, & collect your pension—if they didn’t invest it in Wall St. and it has vanished. The kind of teachers who inspire & light that candle of curiosity are slowly marginalized until most of them quit in utter frustration. A good example of this is Marva Collins. And again, no, I’m not going to spoon-feed you, if you care you’ll make the effort.

The constant talk we hear on the news about educational reform, etc. is just that i.e. talk or rather, empty rhetoric. It’s an elaborate public relations campaign designed solely to win political points & funding or defunding public education, depending on your political posture. Trump’s appointment of Betsy De Vos is simply the most blatant fuck-you to those of us who have a semblance of hope or belief in public education left in us.

In conclusion, here are some key points to bear in mind & some resources you can make use of. Quite simply, find out what they teach in the most elite colleges to get an idea of what is truly worthwhile pursuing intellectually. Common sense tells you that if the elite, ultra expensive colleges teach the classics in literature, philosophy, politics, etc., it must be worthwhile so don’t fall for their bullshit when they tell you that those subjects are useless in the “real world.” Buy a copy of “Problem Solving & Comprehension,” Arthur Whimbey & Jack Lochhead. It contains plenty of problems that help you learn how to analyze & approach complex problems. Do the exercises with a few family members or friends & you’ll see a marked improvement in your critical/analytical thinking skills. There are literally thousands of on-line courses you can take from such privileged universities as M.I.T. And no, you won’t get college credit for these courses but they’re Free! So you no longer have the excuse that you can’t afford a good education. And so what if you don’t get the credit for the course, you gain the knowledge & you don’t leave college $50,000 or more in debt. Use your imagination/creativity & show perspective employers what you can do from what you’ve learned. And once you get your foot in the door of a company you’d like to work for, the sky is the limit. Basic classes in subjects you feel inadequate to tackle can be taken relatively cheaply at local community colleges.

Bottom-line, we are the most privileged people on the planet & billions of people who are suffering terribly around the globe would love to have a fraction of the opportunities that we have. To squander those opportunities & feel sorry for ourselves is close to blasphemy in my book. Once we’ve empowered ourselves & our loved ones, hopefully you may feel like giving something back & reach out a helping hand to others? It’s utterly foolish or simply stupid to look to our nation’s “leaders” for solutions. Grass-roots action is the only thing that may save us! I’ll leave the last word to the famous, H.G. Wells, the noted science fiction writer of the last century;

“Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.”

 

—Rob DeLoss, Port Angeles, WA, March 10, 2018

 

P.S.  Here is Noam’s reply when I asked him if our public educational system was a conspiracy; “Not really a conspiracy.  Mass public education was pretty much designed as a two-tier system: turn independent farmers into disciplined wage laborers, and keep an elite system for those who run the world.  Contemporary versions are teaching-to-test vs the elite schools.”

Addendum

Moreover, I asked Noam why we’re still using behaviorist methodologies in our public schools after it had been discredited decades ago (in no small part because of Chomsky’s refutation of B.F. Skinner’s arguments) and this was his response;

Behaviorism is very convenient for the masters: it provides them with a justification for exercising control, since, after all, humans have no inherent properties (like an instinct for freedom, or sympathy for others, or other pathologies) that are harmed by the molding of behavior by the masters.”

So, you decide for yourself as to just how free, egalitarian, & democratic a society we live in and that our soldiers are supposedly fighting for around the globe???

Oh yeah! Just remembered this powerful bit of honesty:

 

“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: ‘You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook

 

 

 

The Big Short

The Big Short….

is a movie based on the reality of what caused the collapse of the world economy in 2007. In the financial “services” sector of the U.S. economy, a “short” is to bet against something.

The financial “elite” bet that they could get away with defrauding the American public indefinitely by purposely selling mortgages they knew were shit to one another & the audacity to then bet that they could bundle them together in vast quantities & hide their worthlessness. And the “credit rating” agencies upon which everything is valued & holds god-like power over us, stamped them with triple A ratings i.e. the best rating you can get. And these wealthy whores knew full well what they were doing & didn’t give a fuck because they knew the federal government would bail them out & that they wouldn’t see a single day in prison.

They were right & they duped the gullible public by shifting the blame to the poor & the immigrants as they have done throughout history. How? By labeling them greedy for thinking they could buy a home they obviously couldn’t afford. Of course they hid the true facts regarding their predatory lending practices i.e. if you were breathing, you qualified for their deceitful mortgages with the hidden balloon payments, etc.

“Masters of the Universe” (world-class thieves)

The cold, hard facts are that the economic meltdown was the fault of the insatiable greed of the “Super Banks” & many of their Wall St. cronies like hedge fund managers, the mortgage lending giants, the credit rating agencies that sanctioned the tens of millions of shitty loans, the real estate industry, the world’s largest insurance corporation—A.I.G., & all the corrupt politicians who looked the other way because of the campaign donations, etc. they received from the corporate cockroaches.

Hitler rose to power by blaming the Jews primarily for Germany’s economic depression between WWI & WWII. And once he became Germany’s most powerful man, he shored-up his power by first accusing, then beating up & jailing anyone who dared to challenge his authority. And when that didn’t work, he had them killed i.e. intellectuals, artists, writers, teachers, professors, homosexuals, immigrants, etc.

Does this sound at all familiar? Trump rose to the highest position in America, the presidency, by attacking & blaming Muslims, Mexicans, Blacks, gays, the Obama administration, Wall St., and the media. I fear that we may come to a new form of fascism, an American fascism & we may very well begin the mass incarceration then the extermination of all the Muslims living in America that the “intelligence” agencies, the military, & the police that are resembling military occupation forces more & more.

However, it will be much easier for the tin-pot would be dictator Trump than it was for Hitler because today, “our” government—what a farce—and the corporate cockroaches, especially the “social media” platforms like Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google, Facebook, Paltalk, You Tube, AOL, Skype, & Apple to name just the major culprits. Consider the fact that tens of millions if not billions of people—mostly young people—around the globe are addicted to their “Smart” phones to the point that they interact less & less with their friends in the old fashioned sense i.e. talking face to face, going out together, offering true human sympathy/empathy when their friends are troubled, etc. instead, they have developed insatiable appetites for collecting fake friends they’ve never met & the more “likes,” etc. they collect, the more popular they feel.

So, these so-called “Smart phones,” are de facto making us a much more atomized or isolated people, helping to “dumb us down,” and freely providing the government & the corporate cockroaches all our personal data by illegally & immorally all our e-mails, phone calls, physical locations which they can monitor & track, text messages, web searches, websites you visit, our purchases, what we read & write, etc. all with the friendly help of the “social media” platforms or websites & “services.”

Will we sleepwalk our way to our death & a horrific future more terrifying than any of the zombie or vampire cult movies & television programs the public is enthralled with? A large percentage of Germany’s Jewish population stood by in disbelief as Hitler’s gestapo & SS escalated their violence against them as well. And the so-called, “Good Germans” stood silently by as the evil spread like a virus among their countrymen.

Reflect if you will on the illiteracy of the American public i.e. just scan through your T.V. guide & yeah, we have hundreds of choices but it’s clearly not much of a choice if you’re at all concerned or value true intellectual stimulation. Movies are a steady stream of comic book heroes, monsters, ridiculous “Romance stories,” absurd science fiction (Heinlein, Bradbury, Asimov, Clarke are the rare exceptions), gratuitous violence, or pure pablum. The reading habits of Americans are the laughing stock of the world, and when is the last time you enjoyed a serious political discussion with your friends or even strangers? And lastly but certainly not least, the fact that we have the most illiterate & proudly anti-intellectual president in U.S. history, Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan is gutting every government agency established to protect the environment and us from the corporate predators & threatening a nuclear war with N. Korea, etc., should scare the Hell out of you! But hey, Hell may not be such a shock when it comes because we’re already acclimated thanks to Trump & the corporate cockroaches who are speeding-up Global Warming?

In conclusion, we’re all being shorted or bet against. The corporate cockroach conspiracy is that we’ll be too preoccupied with our smart phones & other distracting toys to notice that they’re fucking us yet again. Yep! They—the financial “wizards” which should rightfully be called the war profiteers & whores who rob us blind—were supposedly bailed-out to save our economy & offer loans to people to start new businesses, prevent bankruptcy, etc. but Paulson, Geitner, Bernanke, Summers, etc. were afraid to put it in writing for fear they might not accept the billions from our Treasury. And lo & behold, they refused to help us, the peasants who just pay all the taxes they used to bail out the Wall St. wolves & millions of Americans had their homes illegally foreclosed on.

And surprise! They’re at it again & Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan just gave the super-rich yet another giant, tax break (give away) which they’ll pocket & proclaim they must now cut more social welfare programs. P.T. Barnum is famous for having said, “There’s a Sucker born every minute.” How right he was, perhaps we should change our nation’s name to the United States of Suckers?

As the saying goes in Vegas, you drive into town in a cadillac & you leave on a Greyhound bus. You’ve been warned!

P.S.  I almost forgot to mention that those billions that were handed to the “Super Bankers” (Super Predators) helped the big boys to reward themselves with bonuses in the millions for having tanked our economy & sparked a world-wide, economic collapse. Pretty good work if you can get it, eh?

before you laugh, the joke is on us!

Nuclear Winter or Global Hell?

Well, as our Zen master of linguistics & global politics, Noam Chomsky, has put it, the two greatest threats to humanity are nuclear war & climate change. And I find it absolutely incredible that we, especially in the West, are still so remarkably silent & passive about these very real threats to our existence? Perhaps our apathy & ignorance will be the root cause of our extinction as a species?

Tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people are dying around the globe monthly if not weekly & crustaceans like Trump are accelerating the death count & the destruction of our planet’s ecosystems which give us life. Can we really be so blind & short-sighted as to not see what’s going on?

The world’s major religions that have stood the test of time all have one common rule, law, commandment or whatever you want to call it, Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you! Ignoring our fellow brothers & sisters will not erase our culpability in the evils being done. Are we going to wait like the “good Germans” who never spoke up or stood up as the Nazis came for the Socialists first, then the Trade Unionists, & finally for the Jews?

Do you not see the ominous parallels between Trump’s agenda to “Make America Great Again” and Hitler’s program to make Germany great again i.e. first silence & get rid of the muslims, then the Mexicans, then the feminists, gays, blacks, the poor? Who will be left after the coming genocide? Do you want to live in a world of the Walking Dead, because that won’t be far off the mark?

All of us who are physically and mentally able to fight have a moral imperative to do so. There are no other options. As Dylan Thomas told us; “Do not go gentle into that dark night, rage, rage against the dying of the light!” That light my friends is the divine light in each of us, our souls, our spirits and only we can allow that light to go out.

Each and every one of us bears the responsibility & the weight of the world on their shoulders. As that beautiful song from the 1960s said; “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother.” We must look for every opportunity to not only block but to stop the further development of nuclear weapons & go even further by committing peaceful acts of civil disobedience until we succeed in destroying all weapons of mass destruction.

Moreover, we must likewise halt the fossil fuel industry and all the destructive energy practices & uses that are poisoning our land, water, air, food, & homes. What the world needs now is hundreds of millions of compassionate human beings who will use their bodies as human monkey wrenches or cogs to stop the death machinery.

The corporate cockroaches & the ruthless rich are too blinded by their greed. They don’t even care about their own children or grandchildren or as Cat Stevens asked; “Where do the Children Play?” We have to be the torchbearers of the Truth & the protectors of humanity and our Mother Gaia. Spread the word my brothers & sisters who have joined me and the countless other flower children in our human revolution for Light, Life, & Love!

Persevere in Peace!

                                                     —Rob

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”

Elie Wiesel (survivor of both the Auschwitz & Buchenwald Death Camps & awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, at which time the Norwegian Nobel Committee called him a “messenger to mankind.”)

The Failures of the Fourth Estate

The Failures of the Fourth Estate

“No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions.”

                                     

                                —Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, 1804

For those who may not be familiar with the term, “the fourth estate,” let me define it for you & believe me, it gives me no joy in feeling it most likely necessary to do so. I have worked in the education profession for over 20 years so I’ve seen first hand how woefully lacking we are when it comes to educating our citizens.

The founding fathers were students or children of the Enlightenment if you will. Therefore, they knew full well how vital it is for a citizenry to be well-informed because they knew the history of the Dark Ages in Europe where the educated were mostly either the priests or the “nobility.” This was done deliberately so as to more easily control the citizens i.e. peasants.

In contrast, several, not all, of our founding fathers believed that without an educated citizenry, we too could slip back into a Dark Ages and be taken over by a corrupt aristocracy or oligarchy. Therefore, they included the free press in the Bill of Rights because it’s vital as a force to keep the three branches of government in check. And the last sentence in the quote I started this essay with should jump out at anyone not willfully ignorant i.e. the majority of Trump supporters.

You see, Donald the Dick knows only too well what all the other authoritarians & tyrants present & past know i.e. keep the people ignorant by constantly denigrating the free press or journalists, and you can remain in power. But, let the citizenry hear the valid criticisms of journalists, professors, writers, etc., and your power is eroded.

Admittedly, the press has been a dismal failure as a general rule but this doesn’t excuse the brazen attempts on Trump’s part to totally discredit any & every reporter who says anything critical about him. For the sake of brevity—I’m often guilty of being long-winded—I will simply refer any of you who care to understand this present dilemma, to the classic by Noam Chomsky & Edward Hermann, “The Manufacture of Consent.” And in a word, our “free press” has by and large failed abysmally due to the cannibalization of its principles by Capitalism’s insatiable appetite for ever greater profits.

Moreover, another major factor in why our press has prostituted itself to such a significant degree is the fact that, we, the citizens, haven’t done our duty as citizens of a democratic republic by keeping the pressure on the owners of the media. For example, I bet the majority of Americans aren’t even aware of the fact that the airwaves i.e. means by which television, radio, etc. are broadcast to us are owned by us. No, we blithely go through life silent & happy as long as they provide our daily distractions i.e. “entertainment” in the form of sports, soap operas, “reality” T.V., sit-coms, etc. and as a result, even the news has morphed into what is now referred to as “infotainment.”

America has become the laughing stock of the rest of the world. Why? Because we live in our bubble believing we are the greatest nation on earth but if you’ve done any traveling at all outside the U.S., and you meet other citizens of other nations & have a serious conversation, you’ll soon see that no, we’re not so wonderful. That’s all part of the constant propaganda we’ve been inundated with from the cradle to the grave.

Continuing on, another factor for our pitiful state of affairs is the fact that we have also allowed the corporate media to monopolize the ownership of the media & I’ve seen it go from 50 corporations in 1983 to just five corporations today. Think about it, five individuals determining what will and what won’t be published or aired on radio, television, cable news, magazines, newspapers, etc. And one of the most depressing aspects of all of this is that Rupert Murdoch’s “News Corporation” has been allowed to masquerade as “news” via “FOX News” for over 20 years. 

Here are a few, carefully chosen paragraphs from an article that breaks down just how significant it is that these five or six media conglomerates have such an influence on the American public as well as the public of most of the world’s citizens;

“These five conglomerates are Time Warner, Disney, Murdochs’ News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS). Their control spans most of the newspapers, magazines, books, radio and TV stations, movie studios, and much of the web news content of the United States. These conglomerates are in large measure responsible for inculcating the social, political, economic, and moral values of both adults and children in the United States….

….It was not always like this. Immediately after World War II three out of four US newspapers were independently owned. But the media-control numbers have been shrinking ever since then due to mergers, acquisitions, and other processes. By 1983, 50 corporations controlled 90 percent of US media. But today just five giant conglomerates control 90 percent of what most Americans read, watch, and listen to.

It is notable and should be emphasized that all the five major media conglomerates are corporate members of the Council on Foreign relations. This organization is a US think-tank whose members have been instrumental in formulating US government policies resulting in sanctions, destabilization efforts, and outright military attacks on nations which have never attacked the US.

The Council’s members’ activities helped to promote the Iraq war, the bombings of Serbia and Libya, and the recent overthrow of the elected government of the Ukraine. The promotion of these policies by the media conglomerates which belong to the Council has been key to preparing the American public to accept these policies….

….It should also be noted that the conglomerates themselves are giant corporations. They are among the largest companies in the world. They contribute to both of America’s big parties, the Republicans and Democrats, while supporting their policies. US media companies have also received from the Reagan, Clinton, and Bush administrations progressively greater media deregulation, which permitted ever greater media ownership concentration, culminating for the first time in allowing all the media in a community or city to be owned by one company….. “https://www.rt.com/op-ed/158920-us-ukraine-media-control/

FOX is America’s version of what the Russian newspaper, “Pravda,” except the Russians knew it was propaganda i.e. bullshit. And you wonder why we have a president like Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan, who gets his news daily from watching FOX, and who is again obliviously the most anti-intellectual president we’ve ever had? Trump isn’t an anomaly, no, he’s the symptom of an illiterate society and he’s clearly not capable mentally, emotionally, or morally of governing our nation. He could only get away with his racist remarks & scapegoating of Muslims, immigrants, gays, reporters, intellectuals, etc. etc. etc., in a country where being educated is considered being an elitist snob & anti-American.

In conclusion, my hero, Edward Snowden, the friend of the 99.9% of the world’s population summed it up nicely and humbly in the film, “Citizen Four” by Laura Poitras and also stars, Glenn Greenwald, one of the world’s greatest journalists in terms of integrity, when Snowden said something like; “It’s about Control.”

He’s referring to the mass surveillance of every human being on earth that uses a phone, computer, etc. and especially uses the “social media” platforms like Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, etc. In brief, they i.e. the governments of the world & the corporate cockroaches who are the de facto rulers of the world pulling the strings in the background, are storing our personal info so they can control us i.e. threaten us with jail, etc. if we become a threat to their power or control over us.

So, if we don’t inform ourselves & all who will listen, we are ensuring our own enslavement & possible death. This essay is dedicated to all my brothers & sisters in the Flower Power Revolution around the globe. As the famous maxim says, “The only thing we have to lose is our chains.”

Peace & Perseverance!

                                                 —Rob

P.S. A good place to start is by destroying your “Smart” phone.

A Clear & Present Danger

Clear and present danger was a doctrine adopted by the Supreme Court of the United States to determine under what circumstances limits can be placed on First Amendment freedoms of speech, press, or assembly.”

I borrowed the title for my essay from the movie of the same name with Harrison Ford as the star of the film. With Trump’s mind-boggling press conference performance last week, it has become clear for all to see, except for the willfully blind of course, this guy is obviously a can or two short of a full six-pack. And his incessant berating of the press is of concern for many like myself who fear what may be ahead for us if Trump succeeds in muzzling the free press.

That is to say, Trump represents a sort of apex of the forces threatening our national well-being & by extension, the well-being of the planet because of our military & economic power. The confluence of the far right “Christians’” political agenda & the secular, “free market conservatives” has reached its “promised land.” Trump clearly chose Mike Pence as his vice-president in order to win the support of the massive Christian Right and it doesn’t bother the hypocritical “Christian” Right that Trump is just about as far from a Christian as it is possible to get unless he were an avowed Satanist.

Just as the Christian Right has been screaming for freedom to have prayer in public schools, the freedom to outlaw abortion in America, the right to censor books in our schools, to censor T.V., movies, etc., to control women’s bodies, etc., those free market fundamentalists have been calling for the complete elimination of all laws that regulate their business practices and having to pay a single dollar in city, state, or federal taxes. You may feel that I’m exaggerating here but if you had been following these forces as I have over the past 30 years, you’d see that I’m definitely not exaggerating.

As far as these “religious” believers are concerned, Secular Humanism is their number one enemy & it’s synonymous with drug-induced, wild, pagan orgies worshipping the Devil. For their supposed “clean” minds, these guys are pretty out there. And their ceaseless pursuit of power over the rest of us is always hidden behind a call for religious freedom & a plea that the rest of us stop waging our war on religion.

On the other hand, their crime partners in business have long whined that they are being stifled & can’t compete against the rest of the world economically because of all the oppressive government regulations that hold them back i.e. workers’ rights, health & safety on the job, etc. The Great Depression which threw one out of every four workers in America out of a job & forced millions of men to wander the country in search of work and split-up millions of families, the Savings & Loan Scandal which happened under that darling of the liberals, Jimmy Carter & was allowed to go on unabated under Reagan and which cost us, the taxpayers; “ In 1996, the General Accounting Office estimated the total cost to be $160 billion, including $132.1 billion taken from taxpayers.[2][3]

The deregulation of S&Ls in 1980, by the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act signed by PresidentJimmy Carter on March 31, 1980, gave them many of the capabilities of banks without the same regulations as banks, without explicit FDIC oversight.

Yep, good ol’ Jimmy Carter, the simple country boy and good Christian. Of course we must’n forget good ol “Kenny boy” as that other devout Christian, George W. Bush liked to call him. And Kenny boy appreciated his buddy Georgie, the Coward from Crawford so much that he allowed Georgie to fly around the country on Enron’s private jet for his political campaigning for the presidency.

“While all this was occurring, the US Government and other public agencies continued to advocate for Enron, threatening poor countries like Mozambique with an end to aid if they did not accept Enron’s bid on a natural gas field. Enron was so intertwined with the US Government in many people’s minds that they assumed, as the late Croatian strongman Franjo Tjudman did, that pleasing Enron meant pleasing the White House. For Tjudman, he hoped that compliance with an overpriced Enron contract might parlay into an array of political favors, from softer treatment at The Hague’s War Crimes Tribunal to the entry of his country into the World Trade Organization.” http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=2279

Of course when Kenny boy & Enron were circling the drain, Bush claimed that he hardly knew Ken Lay, you know, another one of those “Christian” values i.e. abandon friends as soon as they’re in trouble. And you might recall that in one of the presidential debates when Georgie was asked who his favorite philosopher was, he said, Jesus Christ. My point here is that Enron represented just how dangerous it is when corporations & the government are so intricately intertwined that it’s hard to distinguish between where one’s interest leaves off and the other’s begins i.e. Goldman Sachs and it’s role in the world-wide economic collapse of 2008 & it’s overwhelming presence in our Treasury Department. Oh yeah, Hank Paulson, is another good “Christian,” a Christian Scientist.

Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing, WorldCom, Xerox, etc., what do they and so many other corporate cockroaches have in common? That belief in the free market, well in their definition of the free market which is government subsidies for their research & development but not having to share their profits once that research starts paying off i.e. the invention of the Internet mostly paid for from funding by the Pentagon & the research done at M.I.T., tax shelters, tax breaks, all our infrastructure that we, the taxpayers pay for i.e. roads, highways, bridges, airports, ports, police protection, military protection overseas as they’re invading one country after another so they can steal their natural resources, etc. all in the name of freedom. Yet when it comes to paying their taxes, their money is invested in the Cayman Islands, etc. and isn’t subject to being taxed?

Of course when the corporations that I mentioned above and oh so many others, get busted for fraud, theft, lying, massive pollution of our ecosystem, etc. every now & then, the first thing we hear out of their mouths is that, “Oh, it was just a few bad apples.” Yeah, and coincidentally, when those T.V. evangelists get busted for stealing their congregations’ donations, living like jet-setters, paying prostitutes, etc., yep, “just a few more bad apples.” (Jim & Tammy Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, etc.)

Evidently, these aren’t aberrations in business or in the religion industry, no, they’re sadly the norm. And in my opinion, this is why our founding fathers made sure to have a separation of Church & State because they knew from history & from being students of the Enlightenment:

The Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason;[1] in French: le Siècle des Lumières, lit. ‘the Century of Lights’; and inGerman: Aufklärung, ‘Enlightenment’)[2] was an intellectual movement which dominated the world of ideas in Europe in the 18th century. The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on reason as the primary source of authority and legitimacy, and came to advance ideals like liberty, progress, tolerance,fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.[3][4] In France, the central doctrines of les Lumières were individual liberty and religious tolerance in opposition to an absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of theRoman Catholic Church. The Enlightenment was marked by an emphasis on thescientific method and reductionism along with increased questioning of religious orthodoxy – an attitude captured by the phrase Sapere aude, “Dare to know”.[5]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

Our founding fathers were landowners & men of great wealth and sadly, slaveowners as well but moreover, they were also men with a great love of learning. And obviously, Donald Trump is a mental midget or not even in the same galaxy as them when it comes to intellectual prowess. Here’s a fragment of U.S. history that you may or may not be aware of;

“During the War of 1812, British forces entered Washington, D.C., burning the Capitol building and the 3,000-volume library inside it. Writing to Samuel Harrison Smith in September 1814, Jefferson expressed his particular distress at this loss: “I learn from the newspapers that the vandalism of our enemy has triumphed at Washington over science as well as the arts, by the destruction of the public library with the noble edifice in which it was deposited.”1 Recognizing that it would be difficult for Congress to replace the library that had been lost, given the war and the difficulty of procuring items from Europe, Thomas Jefferson offered up his large personal library to Congress.” https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/sale-books-library-congress-1815

Now normally I’m not a betting man but I’d be willing to bet you that if Trump has any books in any of his homes/apartments, they are probably Reader’s Digest Condensed Books & a collection of every magazine that has his picture or name mentioned in it and oh yeah, The National Enquirer. But all kidding aside, the so-called Christians that have jockeying for position & power within our political system for decades if not longer, have always felt that our secular government’s respect for intellect & belief in public education for all our citizens was a threat. Why? Because they are so insecure in their professed beliefs and people, like our founding fathers, who appreciate the wisdom that comes from a deep study of classic literature, history, philosophy, political science, theology, etc. aren’t so easily manipulated into belief in the authoritarianism of much of theological belief. And just as those televangelists & pastors of the mega-churches who want blind faith, the majority of organized religions see it as their holy duty to do everything they can to undermine public education.

Unfortunately for us as Americans and for the rest of the world again by extension because of our military empire, Trump, the Babbling Baboon & Buffoon who has conned his way into the White House won in his appointment of Betsy DeVos as our Secretary of Education. And DeVos represents those two sinister forces of which I speak i.e. the phony Christian whose goal is destroy public education & the free market fundamentalist who married into the Amway Corporation, you know, the legalized Ponzi scheme sanctioned by the government. Betsy knows absolutely nothing about public education, and neither she nor her children have ever attended a public school. She is clearly a part of that Christian far right organizations that have been steadily working against public education in the U.S. for decades.

Furthermore, Betsy’s brother is none other than the infamous, Erik Prince who heads one of the largest mercenary contractor agencies in the, well it used to be in the U.S. but then Erik felt the need to move to the U.A.E. (United Arab Emirates) because he & his organization, Blackwater, were under investigation & indictment for war crimes. You see, Erik is the perfect embodiment of John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” in that he loves killing Muslims in the service of the lord and making a pretty penny while at it.

Please excuse the interruption but I need to return to the separation of church & state issue briefly. While I confess (pun intended) that my study of history has been piecemeal i.e. I haven’t studied it formally in college but rather on my own by reading a variety of histories but my contention is that some of the most calamitous times in human history were when the church & state worked in unison i.e. the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Christian missionaries spreading their faith around the globe, etc.

Undeniably, America’s unequivocal support for Israel both militarily & politically has been the source of much of the tension in the Middle East and with our completely unnecessary attack & occupation of Iraq, we have stirred-up a hornet’s nest that is not likely to subside for decades. There is much debate on our motivations for invading Iraq but I feel that one would have to willfully ignorant to deny that oil was perhaps the overriding reason for it. Of course there’s also the geopolitical strategy of having a “foothold” in that region of the world & naturally “our” leaders trot out the tired, old worn-out pretense of, “We’re bringing democracy & freedom to them.” But it’s important to not lose track of the fact that many, if not most, in the Christian far right were also cheering & pushing for this modern day crusade for Christ.

Perhaps this is a good point at which to remind you of dear, old Georgie, the Coward from Crawford’s enabling of the Christian Right when he was in office?

The concept of the faith-based initiative, a political idea put forth by George W. Bush (in the United States), involved the U.S. federal government giving money to religious organizations in order that they would do the government’s work in caring for the poor, endangered, and troubled. Bush claimed that these initiatives could somehow work more efficiently than regular government agencies, an assertion that remains unproven bullshit. In order to implement this program, an executive order established a new government agency, the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI), soon after Bush’s inauguration.”  http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Faith-based_initiative

In other words, Georgie, like Donny, just ignore the U.S. Constitution whenever it suits their agenda. That document to which all politicians, military personnel, etc. swear an oath to protect & uphold against all enemies foreign, and domestic, is simply cast aside whenever it’s not politically expedient to these craven bastards! Yet strangely, we often hear them pontificating in front of the cameras as to how deeply they respect the rule of law & order? Isn’t that interesting? In other words, whenever our laws are inconvenient for them, they can simply disregard them but if you or I try disregarding the laws, well, I don’t have to tell you what happens to us. So by signing this “initiative” into law, Georgie Dubya scored a helluva lot of brownie points with his hypocritical “Christian” base just as Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan is busy doing now. Why do I use the word “klan” in describing Donny, the girly-man with the small hands? Because the KKK and the skin-heads are besides themselves with joy in that they’ve finally got one of their own in the White House & they too, consider themselves good Christians. This by the way, is also what Charles Manson had hoped for & was trying to instigate with the murders he ordered in the 1960s. He was salivating at the thought of starting a race war in which the poor, oppressed whites would rise-up and slaughter all the blacks & other undesirables which he feared & detested.

To return to Georgie’s & Obama the Oreo’s “faith-based initiative,” these good “Christians” now ensconced in various departments of our federal government, had this to say;

The second head of the department, Jim Towey, in a session of “Ask the Whitehouse” dated November 26, 2003, stated in regard to a question about pagan faith-based organizations:

“I haven’t run into a pagan faith-based group yet, much less a pagan group that cares for the poor! Once you make it clear to any applicant that public money must go to public purposes and can’t be used to promote ideology, the fringe groups lose interest. Helping the poor is tough work and only those with loving hearts seem drawn to it.”[13]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_Office_of_Faith-Based_and_Neighborhood_Partnerships

Of course, “pagans,” another code word for Secular Humanists, couldn’t possibly care about the poor, the suffering, the destitute homeless, etc. because they’re too busy indulging in orgies & dancing naked in the woods at midnight like some of my ancient, ancestors, the Druids, the original tree huggers. No, we’re suppose to rely on the good-natured, “Compassionate Conservatives” whom Dubya proclaimed the Repubican party to be, for not only our physical well-being but also our spiritual well-being. I mean, isn’t it obvious how deeply they care about us? Okay, I know that I’m getting side-tracked as per usual so I’ll try to wrap-up this “digression” to a certain extent.

On the other hand, we are in serious danger once again thanks to the free market fundamentalists. Let me first introduce you to Brooksley Born, who graduated at the top of her class at Stanford Law School and whom Bill Clinton interviewed for the position of attorney general in his cabinet. He felt she was too boring though so he appointed her as the head of the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission), a little agency with little authority & even smaller respect among the financial superstars like Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan, & Larry Summers—all die-hard, free market fundamentalists. Greenspan had served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve under five presidents & was a rock star in economics so-to-speak. And Greenspan was an unabashed devotee of Ayn Rand, the Queen of Selfish, a libertarian who was an ardent free market champion and opponent of regulations. She was noted for her philosophy “Objectivism,” (because they object to everything except what makes the wealthy wealthier, sorry my pun) “the central tenets of it are strong self-reliance, the right of the rich to ride roughshod over everyone, and a hatred of those who take government money.” If you’re around my age, you might recall Reagan’s denunciations of what he called “Welfare Queens” i.e. an imaginary black woman who drove her Cadillac to the welfare office to collect her checks. If only the public knew of Ayn Rand the welfare hypocrite who for the last eight years of her life collected Social Security & Medicare benefits because she was dying of lung cancer but they kept it a secret.

Of course, anyone who has been paying attention to politics over the last several years is clearly aware of the hundreds, if not thousands of ways the politicians, who speak for the wealthy, have been attacking all the programs of the Social Safety Net that FDR enacted to help the vast majority of the public who had suffered so terribly during the Great Depression. In fact, the con-servatives have been waging a steady war to destroy them ever since they first came into being.

To return to Brooksley Born, she became concerned about the trading of the OTC (Over The Counter) derivatives that were off the books i.e. next to nothing was known about them aka “a black box” in which over $27 trillion worth of these derivatives was being traded. Brooksley kept appealing all the way up the chain of command, so-to-speak, for the authority to regulate & learn about these derivatives but was ignored & dismissed. She raised such a fuss that Rubin, Greenspan, & Summers clamped down on her hard even though a year earlier her fears were realized;

“In 1998, a trillion-dollar hedge fund called Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) was near collapse. Using mathematical models to calculate debt risk, LTCM used derivatives to leverage $5 billion into more than $1 trillion, doing business with fifteen of Wall Street’s largest financial institutions. The derivative transactions were not regulated, nor were investors able to evaluate LTCM’s exposures. Born stated, “I thought that LTCM was exactly what I had been worried about”. In the last weekend of September 1998, the President’s working group was told that the entire American economy hung in the balance. After intervention by the Federal Reserve, the crisis was averted.” [the crisis was averted because the Federal Reserve commanded the Super Banks to come up with the necessary capital to bail-out the LTCM (Long Term Capital Management) corporation]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooksley_Born

Yet due to the arrogance of Rubin, Summers, Greenspan and the overwhelming majority of the financial experts, Brooksley continued to be ignored & dismissed with condescending comments inferring that she just wasn’t sophisticated enough to comprehend these complex “instruments.” The final straw for Brooksley came a year later when she was called before Congress and basically told to shut-up and that her agency had no authority to regulate these derivatives. She resigned in protest in 1999 and need I tell you what happened in 2008? And what does our illustrious girly-man with a fondness for twitter and avoidance of presidential briefings have in mind? You got it, deregulate every industry in America and his cabinet picks are just the ones for the job. Are you beginning to take my point regarding Donald as a clear and present danger to America?

More importantly, if the Duck Dynasty doesn’t cause our economy to implode first, he & his hawks are salivating at the thought of attacking Iran, the only nation on his list of seven nations that he’s attempting to ban their refugees from entering America that hasn’t been destroyed yet due to our drone warfare program started under Georgie & expanded under Obama. Yep, these seven nations (Syria, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Iran, Sudan, & Yemen) coincidentally have been bombed repeatedly by us and even though we’ve never been a target of a terrorist attack by any citizens of these countries, Donny says we must keep them out? What does that tell you? Could it be an acknowledgement that if anyone has a right to be pissed-off at us it is the citizens of these nations? And even though 15 of the 19 hijackers who hit us on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia, they’re still our ally and we sell them billions of dollars worth of military weapons.

Perhaps a brief refresher course in why the Iranian people hate America would be appropriate here? In 1953, Prime Minister Mosaddegh of Iran got the outrageous idea that his country should receive a lot more of the profits from its oil than the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. (a U.K. corporation) which changed its name a year later to British Petroleum (B.P.) and because the British & the Americans didn’t think this a good idea, their prime minister nationalized their oil industry. Well, this ticked-off our corporate cockroaches so they sent in our C.I.A. which was just learning its trade-craft of instigating coups, assassinating world leaders, etc. and via bribes, etc. we managed the overthrow of Mosaddegh and installed the Shah who was much more amenable to bribes. Well, he wasn’t such a nice guy so we trained his secret police who terrorized the Iranian people up to 1979 when the Iranians had finally had enough so they had a revolution & the Shah headed for the hills. Well, we being such good guys, more specifically, Henry Kissinger felt sorry for the poor, multi-millionaire Shah whom no one else seemed to want & persuaded Carter to allow the Shah to come to America for medical treatment. And Carter had been warned that if the U.S. allowed the Shah to enter the U.S., the American Embassy in Tehran might be taken hostage but as usual, old Henry could be very persuasive and voila, our embassy’s people were taken hostage and held for over a year. I’m going to go out on a limb here & suggest that gee, perhaps the Iranians have a legitimate right to be angry & distrustful of the American government?

Continuing on but leaving the subject of history & bringing up current events, Trump has already expressed his desire to go back and do over our war in Iraq and take their oil and with that horrific possibility in mind, I want to share with you, a military historian whom I have great respect for:

Andrew J. Bacevich, Sr. (born July 5, 1947) is an American historianspecializing in international relations, security studies, American foreign policy, and American diplomatic and military history. He is a Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies.[1] He is also a retired career officer in the Armor Branch of the United States Army, retiring with the rank of Colonel. He is a former director of Boston University’s Center for International Relations (from 1998 to 2005), now part of the Pardee School of Global Studies.[1]

Bacevich has been “a persistent, vocal critic of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, calling the conflict a catastrophic failure.”[2] In March 2007, he described George W. Bush‘s endorsement of such “preventive wars” as “immoral, illicit, and imprudent.”

Colonel Bacevich graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1969 and served in the United States Armyduring the Vietnam War, serving in Vietnam from the summer of 1970 to the summer of 1971…..He holds a Ph.D. in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University, and taught at West Pointand Johns Hopkins University before joining the faculty at Boston University in 1998.

On May 13, 2007, Bacevich’s son, Andrew John Bacevich, was killed in action in Iraq by an improvised explosive device south of Samarra in Salah ad Din Governorate.[8] The younger Bacevich, 27, was a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army,[9] assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 8th U.S. Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division….. (Wikipedia entry) [excuse the appearance of bragging but Colonel Bacevich was gracious enough to read my lengthy essay, The Politics of Patriotism when I sent it to him last May & he was also generous in the compliment he paid me—not many people, friends included, have been willing to do so]

In short, Colonel Bacevich is far from being the only scholar who thinks that an attack on Iran would be absolute madness & if you haven’t had a chance to watch the documentary, “Zero Days,” may I suggest that you make a point of doing so because it’s very eye-opening in that it reveals that due to the collusion of the U.S. & Israel and the insertion of a malware virus dubbed “Stuxnet,” which went undetected for quite some time & allowed us to sabotage the Iranians’ nuclear power processing plant, they discovered it & duplicated it and they too now can disrupt & destroy our infrastructure (communications systems, power systems, water filtration, etc.). Let that soak in for a minute and try to imagine what that could do to our economy even if only for a day let alone weeks or months. Unless you’re a Trump fan in which case, you’re probably not reading this essay anyway, you realize how seriously ignorant he is and the thought of this egomaniac having the ability to launch us into a war with Iran, China, or whoever hurts his feelings just as easily as he launches into his Twitter wars in the middle of the night, is truly terrifying.

The danger looms because appointments that Donald Trump is making to senior national security positions are installing at high levels of the new administration a predisposition to stoke permanent conflict with Iran, a predisposition that is far more visceral than analytical and that embodies the kind of fervor and hatred that has the risk of leading to armed conflict.” https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/08/trump-and-his-iran-haters/

Undeniably, the powers that be are always plotting new ways or strategies to ensure that the military/industrial/congressional complex never collapses because it is the grand conspiracy behind the two most profitable words in their lexicon i.e. “National Security,” and if you still need confirmation of their hidden agenda, here you go and please note that this was written & published in 1997 and signed into law by President Clinton in October 1998 i.e. they had it ready and were just looking for an excuse to put it into practice. One of the traitors said, “What we need is another Pearl Harbor type event.”

Calls for regime change in Iraq[edit]

Kristol and Kagan advocated regime change in Iraq throughout the Iraq disarmament crisis.[22][23] Following perceived Iraqi unwillingness to co-operate with UN weapons inspections, core members of the PNAC including Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, Elliot Abrams, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Zoellick, and John Bolton were among the signatories of an open letter initiated by the PNAC to President Bill Clinton calling for the removal of Saddam Hussein.[19][24] Portraying Saddam Hussein as a threat to the United States, its Middle East allies, and oil resources in the region, and emphasizing the potential danger of any Weapons of Mass Destruction under Iraq’s control, the letter asserted that the United States could “no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections.” Stating that American policy “cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council,” the letter’s signatories asserted that “the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf.”[25] Believing that UN sanctions against Iraq would be an ineffective means of disarming Iraq, PNAC members also wrote a letter to Republican members of the U.S. Congress Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott,[26] urging Congress to act, and supported the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (H.R.4655)[27][28] which President Clinton signed into law in October 1998.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century#Calls_for_regime_change_in_Iraq

I know that this is all very depressing & I understand most people’s impulse to want to avoid such knowledge but that is precisely why we have reached this turning-point in World history i.e. willful ignorance & apathy. And that’s why we are saddled with someone the likes of Trump. We can no longer afford to turn our heads and hope that someone else will do the work necessary to stop this madness. And as my hero, Noam Chomsky wrote back in the 1960s when he first started speaking out against the Vietnam War, it is the responsibility of intellectuals to inform themselves & to share that knowledge with others who don’t have the luxury to go to college and to read the important works & to write about them. If you’ve made it this far, I applaud your tenacity & your perseverance and I’m going to start winding-down but first, I have one last example in support of my thesis of the clear & present danger facing us. Some of you may recall dear, old Ronnie Ray-gun’s “Star Wars” program that was completely debunked and supposedly ended? Well, it may have appeared to have ended officially but I got news for you my friends, it didn’t and here is proof of it, they simply changed the name;

W

hen Donald Rumsfeld chaired a commission on space and national security just before taking office in 2001, the precursors for a deluge of spending on new space-based weapons programs were put into place. The commission concluded that to avoid a so-called “space Pearl Harbor” the U.S. must “vigorously pursue the capabilities called for in the National Space Policy to ensure that the President will have the option to deploy weapons in space.”

….These comments echoed the strategy recommended in an unclassified 2003 USAF document entitled Transformation Flight Plan. The latest Flight Plan details America’s right to “full-spectrum dominance”—the control of land, sea, and air, as well as space. According to the document, space superiority includes three main capabilities: protect space assets, deny adversaries access to space, and quickly launch vehicles into space to replace damaged or destroyed space assets…..

Much of this falls under the purview of the national Missile Defense Agency. After investing nearly $100 billion and 22 years into developing a ground-based missile defense system and yielding dismal results, the U.S is setting its sights on launching satellites capable of shooting down missiles. The Space-Based Interceptor Test Bed program — scheduled to begin in 2008 — would launch up to five such satellites…..

AMERICAN ARROGANCE

Senior military and space officials with the European Union, Canada, Russia, and China have all publicly objected to the notion of American space superiority. Last fall, the U.S. voted to block a United Nations resolution calling for a ban on weapons in space. Currently, the only international treaty on the subject is a 1967 agreement, ratified by 91 countries, that bans weapons of mass destruction in space.

“Almost unanimously, the rest of the world is seriously concerned about the direction of the U.S. with regard to military space,” comments Hitchens. “Because most nations hold that no one can own space, a move by the U.S. to try to establish ‘space dominance’ will be seen as highly threatening, and other nations are likely to react in a variety of negative ways.”  http://www.thirdeyemag.com/nonfiction/essays/full-spectrum-dominance/ 

In conclusion, Trump has appointed a Cabinet of climate change deniers, and pseudo or faux “Christians,” who are all in favor of a Crusade against Islam & who want to deregulate every industry in America. Moreover, we have a president who wonders why we can’t use the nuclear weapons at his disposal & has talked about fighting a nuclear war in Europe because “It’s a big place.”

When my dear wife, Jeri and I were on our honeymoon, we were walking in Paris & a reporter approached us along with his camera man & asked if we were American. I said yeah and he said that he was like the Dan Rather of Czechoslovakia & he asked what we thought of Reagan’s proposal of fighting a limited nuclear war in Europe? I didn’t hesitate and said, He scares the Hell out of me and I think he’s a moron.

If this confluence of corporate cockroaches & “Christian” fascists isn’t a Clear & Present Danger to humanity, then I don’t know what is? Furthermore, the rush to Economic Armageddon with the unleashing of the millionaires & billionaires in Dip-Shit Donald’s cabinet who apparently learned nothing from the World-wide economic crash of 2008. Tens of millions of people around the world lost their jobs, their homes, their medical care, their pensions, & their life savings but who gives a fuck as long as the 1% were saved & awarded themselves obscene levels of profit for tanking the world economy.

So, if Donald the Doomsday Dictator doesn’t start a war in Iran or somewhere else in the Middle East, he may cause our economy to self-destruct? And note that Muslims around the world are growing more fearful by the day & believe Osama bin Laden was correct when he warned them that the Great Satan, the United States of America, wanted to destroy Islam. “Our” leaders have played right into bin Laden’s game plan of igniting a world revolution against the West and the stakes just grow higher with each stupid move on the part of our political & military elite.

“Clear and Present Danger” was a test the U.S. Supreme Court devised to help them determine if a citizen had gone too far in protesting against America’s possible entry into WWI or posed a threat to our “National Security” by encouraging Americans to not join the military (my essay could well have landed me in prison in those days & who knows with the ways things are headed under the Tyrant Trump, it could still happen?).

In England, Lord Bertrand Russell was sent to prison for publicly protesting England’s entry into WWI and he went on to become a Nobel Prize winner for mathematics & philosophy. And he became a friend of Albert Einstein who also denounced war & was denied the security clearance to work on the Manhattan Project which may not have been completed before the Nazis’ similar program had it not been for Einstein’s discoveries?

Finally, we have now come full circle because as I’m sure you are well aware, Trump has been on a non-stop tirade against the media in this country & unlike the Supreme Court who silenced individual critics of America’s militarism, Trump has the galactic hubris to think that he can silence our entire free press because they annoy him with their “not nice” questions.

Following this train of thought a bit further, at the time of the McCarthy witch hunts for communists within our government, Hollywood, our press corps, etc., there was a journalist who embodied all that’s most noble & courageous in true journalism, his name was I.F. Stone. I stumbled upon his work over 30 years ago & was amazed at his work schedule & the sheer volume of his research not unlike that of Noam Chomsky’s. In fact, Stone although a royal pain in the ass to the power brokers in Washington D.C., was dubbed “Washington’s Conscience” because he’d cull through the Congressional Record and countless other documents that were available to the general public and he’d find the little gems often buried in thousands of pages of no consequence & his sharp, analytical mind would find the facts of what Congress was really up to, etc.

By way of contrast, today, the magazine, “The Nation” is widely respected as one of America’s greatest liberal or left-wing publications but during those years of McCarthy’s witch hunting for Commies, they wouldn’t hire I.F. Stone because he had been labeled a commie by McCarthy. So much for their “journalistic integrity.” Well Izzy as he was affectionately called by his friends, said fuck-it and he and his wife started their own little weekly paper of four pages. He’d do all the research & writing and deliver them to the post office, etc. while his wife handled all the business affairs, etc. Their paper started out with about 5,000 subscribers and three of their earliest subscribers were Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, & Eleanor Roosevelt. By the time Izzy decided to retire, their subscribers numbered about 80,000.

Additionally, Bertrand Russell was Noam Chomsky’s hero and he has a large poster of Russell on the wall of his office at M.I.T. And Chomsky feared that he too might be sent to prison in the 1960s because of his refusal to pay taxes as a protest against our war in Vietnam so his wife, Carol went back to college so she could support their children should he be sent to prison. About this time, Chomsky & Howard Zinn played a small part in helping with the publication of The Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg i.e. they helped to hide the documents from the government who was in hot pursuit of Daniel Ellsberg and when they were published it unleashed such a shit-storm that the government quietly dropped their case against Chomsky & others.

Last but certainly not least, I’m sure that the Supreme Court which developed that test, Clear & Present Danger just before we entered WWI, could never have imagined in their wildest dreams that America would ever elect a president as colossally ignorant & childish and who would use the presidency to promote his “brand” and further enrich himself.

So, who knows if it’ll be climate change, a nuclear war, or the implosion of our economy that will be the final nail in the coffin of America’s life but one thing is abundantly clear to me, we must empower ourselves & everyone else we possibly can by informing ourselves and that begins with reading Edward Bernays’ book, “Propaganda,” which was the basic template of the advertising & public relations industries that began at the turn of the 20th century along with the new, discipline of Psychology established by Sigmund Freud, Bernays’ uncle!

—Rob DeLoss, Florence, Oregon on Feb. 23, 2017