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)
“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.
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.
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.”
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:
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:
The recent slaughter in El Paso
The Vietnam War
The Iraq War
The social media
Losing our jobs
Being homeless
NAFTA
Student debt
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
