“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.
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.”
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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?