“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America but all of humanity needs to come together to defeat this virus but tragically, our reasoning capabilities have been replaced by irrational hatred and racism in far too many of us.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!
“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.
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.
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!
“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
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.
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?
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.”
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.
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:
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?
A 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 ClothesP.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!
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 sociologistC. Wright Mills, in which Mills calls attention to the interwoven interests of the leaders of the military, corporate, 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?
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?
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.
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;
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.
