“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.

 

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:

• North Korea and Iranian nuclear ambitions
• Strained relations and a state of brinkmanship between India and Pakistan
• Legislation of the Central American Free Trade Agreement
• The formation of the Minuteman Project
• Peace making and terrorism in Palestine and Israel
• The genocide in Darfur, Sudan
• AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa
• The Northern Ireland peace process
• The War on Drugs and conflict in Colombia
• Controversy over Intelligent design in schools
• Brinkmanship and potential conflict between the People’s Republic of China and Republic of China over Taiwan’s political status
• A federal government shutdown
• The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act
• Anthrax attacks against the Bush Administration
• Federal funding for the arts
• Peak oil and the consequences of a decline in global oil production
• Federal subsidies for ethanol fuel given to corn growers
• Student loan forgiveness for teachers
• Invoking the 25th Amendment for an Acting President while the President is preoccupied with personal problems

 

 

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!