A Critical Point

 

 

 

I remember something I learned almost 40 years ago in a basic introduction to computers class i.e. G.I.G.O. (Garbage In, Garbage Out) & it struck me recently how relevant that is to American society today.

 

I have been struggling for over 30 years to connect the dots and/or simplify some of the complex issues facing us. I am a working-class guy & I have experienced or seen much of the suffering visited upon my fellow blue-collar citizens over the course of my life.

 

The only difference between me & most of the people I have known or met in my life is that I have an insatiable appetite for knowledge & strive to make sense of the chaos that engulfs us. Many, if not most of my family & friends over the years have dismissed my obsession & laugh at my efforts. But I continue in this lifetime goal because of my belief that each of us can make a difference.

 

Returning to G.I.G.O., it dawned on me that because we find ourselves now living in a “post-literate” society where many, if not most people, won’t or can’t write, & more and more people prefer texting to speaking to one another, we are facing an even greater mountain of obstacles than I had thought?

so much for the “social skills” school is supposed to teach kids

 

I hate to sound so doom & gloom but burying our heads in the sand won’t make the problems go away & certainly won’t save us from a possible nuclear exchange or total climate destruction.

 

I live in a constant state of frustration because I can’t seem to find the right words to awaken & inspire others to realizing that reading good books—challenging books like in the set of the Great Books of the Western World that was published by Encyclopedia Britannica—helps us develop our critical/analytical thinking skills.

 

And writing helps us to organize our thoughts & speaking to one another affirms our humanity i.e. gives us comfort & the energy to continue in the struggle to save ourselves from the destructive & greedy ones.

 

Tragically though, many of the so-called “best & brightest” have an almost religious devotion & belief that technology & Silicon Valley in particular, will save us. Well as I said, G.I.G.O. and if we (the working class & the technocrats) continue to cling to this delusion, we are shit out of luck!

the “social network” that is dividing us & dumbing us down

 

My religion (and I love saying this because I know it drives the “Christian” evangelicals/fundamentalists crazy) is humanism i.e. we got ourselves into this mess & it’s up to us, not some mythical god, to get ourselves out of it.

The “School of Athens” (Greek philosophy, the foundation of all knowledge)

 

I don’t know how true it is but when I hear it claimed that our average attention span is less than that of a goldfish, the more depressed I become. How can we reach people when the violence & titillation of murder, sex, destruction, greed, the end of the world, etc. preoccupies them? Oh yeah, speaking of our gold fish attention span, it gives a new meaning to that phrase; “living in a fish bowl” eh?

 

Moreover, when I see the absolute loyalty to Trump no matter what he does or says, it’s hard to not slip into utter despair. That craven cretin & totally despicable person even had the audacity to proclaim that he could stand on fifth avenue in New York & shoot somebody and it wouldn’t affect his supporters’ love for him. I wonder if they’d even turn a blind-eye to his inhumanity if he were to rape their 12-year-old daughter? I don’t ask this lightly but because it seems that we’ve sunk so low in terms of what is acceptable behavior & speech in this country.

his buddy Jeffrey Epstein trafficked in underage girls, Did Trump participate?

I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. (Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan)

 

Yet still there is hope & fighters like Bernie Sanders inspire hope in many of us. And despite the betrayal of the so-called liberal MSNBC & their attempts to sabotage Bernie’s campaign like the DNC did in 2016, it is possible that Bernie could pull it out. So, in that spirit, I too continue to struggle to reach people & show them some concrete tools they can use to empower themselves.

this is the Liberal channel?

 

A few of the “tools” that I tell people about are the Great Books which I already mentioned & which has a study guide for people interested in forming a small group to discuss/debate the Great Ideas that are central to Western Civilization as well as Eastern Civilization.

And one book in particular that a Jesuit scholar turned me onto many years ago is titled; “Problem Solving & Comprehension” by Arthur Whimbey & Jack Lochhead.” It is full of challenging problems with guides for people to work together in finding solutions so you need at least one other person to work through them together.

 

Continuing on, when trying to explain why people should read the more challenging books of our civilization, I use this analogy; suppose you are going to enter a foot race with the fastest kid in your school, well, you know that you are going to have to put out far more effort than you would if you knew your opponent was only a mediocre runner. In other words, the tougher the challenge, the more effort you’ll have to expend & as a result, you may not win but you’ll definitely come out stronger.

 

Developing our critical/analytical thinking skills is self-empowering & helps make us less vulnerable to liars & con artists like Trump.

If you’re not one of the Walking Dead, think it over?

 

We are at a critical point in human history & we can take the “Critical Path” that Buckminster Fuller showed us or we can continue to “Amuse Ourselves to Death” that Neil Postman warned us about & continue chuckling at the monomaniacal moron in the White House but the last laugh will be his & will be on us if we don’t get serious about saving ourselves & our planet!

Bucky Fuller known as the planet’s friendly genius & the modern day Leonardo da Vinci!

 

—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR Feb. 12, 2020

Addendum

 

I have this nagging feeling that perhaps I wasn’t as clear as I could be re: G.I.G.O. & its relevance to this critical point in history? In a nutshell, if as I argue, the information that we are fed via the “news” & the web is more & more unreliable and at the same time, we are getting dumber & dumber because of our lack of critical & analytical thinking skills and  several other factors such as a habitual liar in the Oval Office, it’s becoming more important than ever that we become highly skeptical & suspicious of what we read, see, or hear on the web as well as in the news. Anybody can post on the web & if you are ruled by your emotions i.e. hot button topics like God, Guns, & Gays which the 1% know how to play like a finely tuned musical instrument to manipulate the public into voting against their own best interests, you are playing a sucker’s game. And this game isn’t a game at all, we’re talking about our lives & the sustainability of our planet that our lives depend on!

 

 

The American Taliban under Trump

 

 

 

I first heard the term; “The American Taliban,” on the series; “The Newsroom,” which was created & written by Aaron Sorkin. But as is often the case, intelligent television doesn’t go over well with American viewers so it was a short-lived series.

However, we were fortunate in that Sorkin laid out the key features of the American Taliban in one of the series’ episodes & I am using them as an outline for this essay. Determine for yourself how accurate a portrait they give us of America as of January 21, 2020, the day the farce of the Impeachment against the miscreant in the White House began.

 

“Ideological purity: Fundamentalism is an term used to describe religious movements that reject modernism (particularly scientific thought and secularism), that claim to find all truth, including science, history, and psychology, in their sectarian scriptures, and that often try to impose some degree of religious law on all citizens of any government they are able to control. The type species is the Christian Fundamentalism of the 1920s, which is a reaction against Darwin’s theory of evolution; by extension the term is applied to Haredi Judaism and Wahhabism in Islam. In more abstract terms, it can refer to any movement to recapture an ideological “purity” within a religion, that supposedly has been lost by mainstream adherents of the religion at large;”

    • This “ideological purity” is an absolute that all fundamentalist leaders must strictly stick to whether they be Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or whatever. They must claim to know the Will of God & therefore, any who dares to question their claims is a heretic & must be driven out or killed in order to preserve the purity of their version of the truth. One would think that the founding values & principles of a religion would also have to adhere to this “ideological purity,” but clearly this isn’t the case when it comes to American “Christian” evangelicals. Why? Because Trump is the poster boy of how to violate every one of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount guiding principles for self-professed Christians but they love him anyway.
    • Compromise as weakness: and again, I’m confused because if compromise is weakness, why have the 60% to 70% who proclaim absolute support for Trump, compromised their “principles” & “values” by supporting such an evil person? Of course, the GOP who have gotten nearly everything on their wish list, won’t compromise an inch with the Democrats because they, the GOP have the upper hand because they control the Senate. And Mitch McConnell stated it very clearly from the beginning of Obama’s presidency that the GOP was going to block every single act or law that Obama tried to pass. This shows clearly that McConnell & the GOP don’t give a damn about the American people, only about maintaining & expanding their power. And again, the “Christians” believe that any compromise with non-Christians, especially Secular Humanists is a de facto bargain with the devil.

      Obama bent over backwards trying to compromise with GOP & as a result, we got Trumped!
    • A fundamentalist belief in scriptural literalism: Yep! Like back in the days of the Old Testament, people really did live for 800 to 900 years, Noah actually took two of every animal species on Earth into the Ark, etc. etc. etc. And if you dare to question such things, you are guilty of heresy and may be stoned like the Islamic fundamentalists enjoy doing in Afghanistan but it’s usually women who are the ones getting stoned for some reason?
    • Denying science: this one goes almost without saying as the one I just covered makes clear i.e. Science easily proves the absurdity of such claims as people roaming the earth with dinosaurs, etc. so organized religion has been at war with science throughout most of history. Just reflect on the fate of  Galileo for example. In fact, the modern variation of Christian fundamentalism basically sprang from the days when Darwin’s Theory of Evolution started being taught in our public schools. And tragically, in Trump’s reign of ignorance, Climate destruction denial which denies the scientific proof of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists on the planet & the Christian fundamentalists are tickled pink about it because they can’t wait for the destruction of our planet & believe Jesus is going to thank them for their ignorance & their help in bringing an end to the world. Remember, Jesus loves you!
    • Unmoved by Facts: Yep & as Trump’s resident witch, Kellyanne Conway tells all their faithful,” there are alternative facts. “Of course, there are in their alternate realities. I wish someone would dare Kellyanne and Trump to demonstrate their alternative facts by jumping off a high roof to prove that gravity isn’t a fact either. Naturally, the Trump team spout alternate facts daily but we, non-believers have always referred to alternate facts as lies. In fact, I think Trump is going for the world record in alternate facts with his list of lies which is somewhere around 16,241 but hey, who’s counting?
    • Undeterred by new information: a polite euphemism for stubborn as a mule, willfully ignorant, and you may as well give up hope of them ever opening their minds. They have their “faith” and that’s all they need. These are just the kinds of people who make good, little Nazis, cult followers, etc.

      a third of the U.S. public has drunk Trump’s Jonestown Kool-Aid
    • A hostile fear of progress: like their fear and rejection of science & facts, progress is seen as a threat to their calcified beliefs that they desperately cling to or else their entire belief structure could collapse. This scares the hell out of these pea-brains & they’ll kill you rather than admit their errors. Of course, they conveniently ignore things like the automobiles which they drive were invented due to progress. And it never ceases to amaze me how they constantly love to portray themselves as the victims of our society. When they are the bullies & the ones who persecute people, who don’t accept their hypocritical principles & values & seek to enslave us all.
    • A demonization of education: this is a subject that is dear to my heart because I have loved education all my life, been an avid reader since second grade, & have worked as an educator for the majority of my work career. In fact, my first book is about the Christian fundamentalists war on secular humanism which they see as a clear & present danger to their reign of error & terror. It’s not a coincidence that Trump appointed Betsy DeVos as our Secretary of Education, a person who never attended public schools, who is rich, & who is pushing Charter Schools down our throats.
      “It Can’t Happen Here,” right?

      Also bear in mind that one of the first things that all dictators, whether religious (theocrats) or oligarchs do is either shut down all the public schools or take them over. Why? Because as people slowly become more & more informed, they begin to question established “authorities” like the Church & the State. {if you’d care to spend 10 mins. watching this video, you’ll gain a great overview of how the GOP has duped so many Americans into focusing their anger on the govt. rather than the corporate cockroaches who deserve the lion’s share of the blame for why we’re in this terrible state of being}</li>

    • A need to control women’s bodies: this is one of those aspects of fundamentalists’ beliefs that I can only speculate on because it is hard for me to fathom their fear of women? Perhaps it’s as simple as their insecurity as men & their wish to always remain in control over their families? And by being the authoritarians in their communities as well as in their families, they never have to worry about pleasing their wives sexually?

      Trump’s “Christian” values i.e. “Grab them by the pussy.”
    • Severe xenophobia: strangers & foreigners who are by definition strangers, like knowledge, new information, etc. are a threat to their belief systems which are clearly very fragile or they wouldn’t be so insecure about it. Why? Because contradictory ideas may slowly infect their communities, their families and they will lose their precious control. Of course, this also helps to justify or rationalize their racism & their desperate attempts to maintain the purity of their ideology. And once again, they just conveniently ignore all inconvenient truths & facts i.e. that America is a nation made up of immigrants from all over the world. If these frightened & dangerous children had their way, they’d live in a nation not unlike what Hitler wanted for Germany where everyone was blue-eyed & blonde.
    • Tribal mentality: well, as I just pointed out, fundamentalists ideally would like to live in a world where there are as few physical differences between their faithful as possible but given the realities of this world, a close second is a common mentality or way of thinking about the world. And this is why they paint a picture of you’re either with us or against us as our illustrious, chicken-hawk president, George W. Bush, the Coward from Crawford declared when he launched his “War on Terror.” This simplistic & obviously ignorant Manichean view of the world makes it easier for their faithful to carry out their crimes against humanity in the name of Jesus, God, Allah, or whoever.
    • Intolerance of dissent: this attribute of the fundamentalist mindset is one of the scariest in my book & again reveals how dangerously ignorant these people are. Jesus was clearly a dissenter in his time in that he spoke out against the Roman authorities & committed civil acts of disobedience. And in America’s history, our founding fathers were all dissenters from British rule. The United States would’ve never even come into existence without dissent but fundamentalists don’t want us to remember these facts or to ever even learn about them. Again, showing how weak their faith is!
    • Pathological hatred of U.S. government: and here we have another one of those very convenient crossing of paths by the “Christian” fundamentalists & the Republican party. You see, my imaginary reader, the Republicans swore that they’d overturn every single part of FDR’s “New Deal” which established much of what we now refer to as the “Social Safety Net,” for all of us not born with a silver spoon in our mouths. And they’ve been spreading their anti-government propaganda ever since i.e. you too can become rich if you don’t rely on the government for unnecessary handouts which only make you lazy & prevent you from becoming self-sufficient & wealthy. We’re supposed to ignore the fact that most of the rich & the giant corporations who have monopolies over us, have been subsidized by that same evil government. Yep! The same government that keeps handing out tax breaks to the rich, subsidies for their Research & Development, tariff protections, the infrastructure that allows them to do business, the military to protect their corrupt businesses overseas, etc. etc. etc. And no, this isn’t a free pass in terms of excusing our government’s long track record of crimes against humanity. But, the government is the only force capable of standing up to the corporations when their greed is just too far overboard. Moreover, it does occasionally stand up for us & does provide some assistance to we, the people, every now & then. The corporations behind this decades long propaganda war against the government want to abolish everything the government does to help us but preserve every handout & protection it provides them with our tax dollars. So, when I hear these morons i.e. Alex Jones, Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, etc. railing against the government, I wish that I had a public forum from which I could call out their hypocrisy. Hell, if it weren’t for our government allowing the corporations to steal our public airwaves, these conspiracy theorists & traitors like Jones, Limbaugh, & Beck wouldn’t have the platforms they do to spew such bile and fear & hate.

 

Unquestionably, the Trump campaign team knew they’d have to throw these dangerously crazy evangelicals a big bone to gain their support for Trump, hence Pence as his running mate.

Trump is clearly one of those with the attention span of a goldfish

 

Some argued no big deal, the vice president does nothing of any significance but the fact that were Trump to have a heart attack or something, we could end up with this American Taliban as leader of the free world. Yeah, pretty scary shit, right?

 

A lot of us who live on either coast tend to forget or perhaps never knew just how powerful these “Christian” fundamentalists are & how many millions of regular Americans listen to them on the radio daily as well as to the Rush Limbaugh show. And we ignore these people at our own peril!

 

How soundly can we sleep knowing we have someone who prays for the end of the world, a heartbeat away from the presidency? Remind you of anyone? Osama bin Laden perhaps but with the mightiest arsenal of nuclear weapons on the planet at his fingertips?

 

Scare tactics you say? Fuckin’ A! But bear in mind that the corporate cockroach masters who own the media & Washington D.C., are using scare tactics day-in & day-out and have been for well over 40 years to scare us into spending over half our budget on weapons of mass destruction while letting our health, education, & welfare go to ruin.

I am trying to warn you but we have become so used to the steady barrage of fear mongering by the powers that be that honest warnings like mine fall on deaf ears I fear? If the public knew of how many close calls we’ve had regarding nuclear exchanges between the U.S. & Russia, they’d be shaking in their boots.

 

Conclusion, we have a 73-year-old who is obviously cognitively impaired to many, if not most of our mental health professionals. And he is also clearly morally bankrupt to all but the willfully blind & ignorant who proclaim they’ll support him no matter what. Gee? I wonder if they’d still support him if he raped their 12-year-old daughter? After all, he was buddies with Jeffrey Epstein though of course he now denies it.

I wonder what Trump’s buddy, Jeffrey Epstein might have told us about Trump?

But he did hire Epstein’s lawyer, Dershowitz, to help with his fight against his impeachment. And Dershowitz succeeded in getting Epstein a mind-boggling deal after being convicted of sexually trafficking teenage girls.

 

Yeah, once again we see on full public display those good, wholesome American values the American Taliban love to brag about along with their GOP (Greedy Old Pigs) pals.

 

So, we have this spoiled, rich brat as president who more resembles a teenage girl spending the majority of her day on Twitter spreading gossip & rumors and viciously attacking other girls’ character with lies. And our “commander in chief” who can’t even be bothered to read his daily briefings because he’s most likely not even able to comprehend their complexity, is sitting in the White House playing with matches in a gasoline-soaked room. And if he continues playing with the powder kegs in the Middle East, he may just make the American Taliban’s dream of the Apocalypse a reality?

“Christian” evangelicals’ Wet Dream

 

As for me, I’m an atheist who believes in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and that’s how I live my life.

 

Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR on January 22, 2020

 

Barbarians at the Gate

 

 

 

My title is a reference to several sackings i.e. raping, pillaging, & plundering of Rome by various “barbarians” in ancient history. Yet today in another one of those perverse or ironic twists of history, we have a barbarian setting on the throne in 21st century America?

 

Yeah, except our “barbarian” would be king, is a girly-man who likes to strut around like he’s a bad-ass mafia boss but he’s actually a cissy-boy. And I’d be willing to bet that he’s never been in a real fight in his life unless you consider his beating-up smaller kids on the playground “fighting?”

 

You see, Donny has always known that he’s a coward & if it weren’t for daddy protecting him every time he got in trouble as he grew up, he’d be a lot more humane. His insecurity is so obvious to all but his die-hard zombie cult. As Sam Elliot says; “You must be some special kind of stupid?” if you fail to acknowledge this fact about the girly-man.

 

This essay was begging me to release it and it’s a collection of several observations of mine. First of all, in regards to the term, “barbarian,” here’s the definition of the term; “uncivilized, culturally inferior, brutal, cruel, insensitive, etc.” And again, to all but the willfully blind or willfully ignorant, Trump is indeed a barbarian.

The “Great Business Negotiator” in action

 

And poor baby Trump has been crying outside the gates of the posh, upper East side of Manhattan & its intellectual and cultural elite ever since he came of age and began his lifetime of begging to be let in. This is why he is so venomous in his perpetual attacks on The New York Times i.e. “The Paper of Record,” (the newspaper that sets the standard for all other newspapers in America) & the other cultural institutions that reject his pleas for inclusion. You see, New York City had Trump’s number decades ago i.e. a vulgar, low-class, no taste impostor & their rejection has been like an acid eating away at his vanity all this time.

An investigative team from The Times proved Trump’s a liar re: his fortune

 

Obviously, this is the politics of resentment & hate which Trump knows only too well. And Trump has masterfully tapped into that poison well that roughly a third of America is immersed in. Always blame the “other” and deny any self-responsibility.

 

Trump’s fragile, little boy ego could never accept the fact that he’s not liked is because he’s just a crude, ignorant, egomaniac & bully so he has cleverly substituted his jealousy & hatred towards the intellectual elite, or perhaps transferred would be the better word, on to the poor immigrants struggling to feed their families & flee the drug lords, corruption, etc. of their home countries because this dove-tails so perfectly with the racists & bigots so easily manipulated by demagogues & their rhetoric.

 

And this blows my mind & truly saddens me to my core because those Trump supporters have so much more in common with the immigrants they persecute & blame than with a slime-ball, fake billionaire, fake actor, fake success like Trump of the Duck Dynasty Klan. Of course, the 1% have allowed this all to happen not because of some grand conspiracy but simply because they don’t give a fuck & are probably laughing their asses off as we self-destruct & they continue to rape, pillage, & plunder “our” federal treasury.

 

Returning to the word, “barbarian,” I believe many of you would or do consider bikers to be a sort of modern variation of the barbarians who sacked Rome? Well, I’d just like to interject here that 20 years ago, I lived a few blocks from a “biker bar” in Portland, Oregon & because I wanted to avoid getting a D.U.I., and this bar was walking distance, I started hanging out there. In fact, I became somewhat of a “regular,” for the approximate six months I lived in the area. They would back their Harleys up to the curb out front & I’d ride my old-fashioned, cruiser type bicycle there & lock it to a nearby tree.

 

One day, a gal who was sitting at one of the outside tables with her boyfriend, I presume, said; “Hey, go ahead & park your bike next to the others!” I gave her a quizzical look & they both said; “Yeah,” so I did and we all laughed. In brief, I never had one ounce of trouble, was never threatened, never even insulted by any of the biker crowd who were regulars there. The manager befriended me as well as the owner & one night, a regular & his girlfriend invited me back to their place to continue partying & offered me their couch for the night.

 

You may be wondering why I brought this all up? I mention these experiences because I felt & still do that they were far more cultured, sensitive, & civilized than that poser in the White house who, unlike any other president in U.S. history as far as I know, continually has his pep rallies of fear, hate, & ignorance.

 

And speaking of ignorance, if you know much about modern history, have you ever wondered why the Nazis burned books in their reign of terror which culminated in the murder of over six million Jews, and another couple of million gypsies, homosexuals, intellectuals, etc.?

Books are the stored-up wisdom of all those who came before us. From Aristotle, the author of the first encyclopedia to Freud & beyond. As some have noted, we stand on the shoulders of those intellectual giants who came before us. And hopefully not to sound like an admirer of warmongers, but I used to have an old, blacklight poster that was a giant, peace sign made up of interlocking swastikas (which originally was a symbol of peace) & this quote by Napoleon Bonaparte; “There are but two powers in the world, the sword and the mind. And in the end, the mind always conquers.”

You see, books, which represent knowledge & hence, freedom or independence because of their liberating power, are a threat to the powers that be who wish to keep us ignorant & vulnerable. So, it’s obvious, keep the people ignorant (to simply not know something) and you keep them under your control. And this is why both the State & the Church want to keep you ignorant. But good news comrades! You can empower yourself by going to your public library & devouring every great author you can. If you’d like some suggestions as to who to read, simply start with the “Great Books of the Western World” published in 1952 by Encyclopedia Britannica. This could take you many years to wade through but it would definitely render you a well-read person capable of facing the world on your own!

Poster girl for anti-intellectual “Christians,” married into Amway fortune, & sister to Eric Prince, America’s most infamous mercenary

 

You see my imaginary reader; the root of racism is fear of others whom you don’t know much if anything about. And fear is the root of hatred. So, if you keep people ignorant, it’s much easier to whip-up peoples’ fear & hatred and turn that to your political advantage.

 

Naturally, destroying the books of all those who have differing points of view from yours especially when it comes to politics, religion, culture, civilization, etc. is an important first step in destroying those “dangerous” others. And here in America, there has been a pervasive strain of anti-intellectualism throughout our history. Richard Hofstadter wrote the classic book on the subject & I have dissected his book not once, but twice because I used my notes from it in my major work; “Truth Against the World.” And no, this doesn’t make me an authority but I have definitely earned a fair hearing in that I have conservatively spent over 50,000 hours researching, reading, writing, watching documentaries, etc. over a 30-year period.

 

And unlike Trump, I can back my claims. That fuckin’ national embarrassment actually believes that simply because he says something, it makes it so. If he’s such a “genius” as he proclaims to be, why has he threatened every school he’s ever attended if they dare to release his grades?

 

Unfortunately for the rest of us Americans who haven’t drunk Trump’s Jim Jonestown’s Kool-Aid, and the rest of the world who are vulnerable due to the U.S.’s obscene level of militarism, the whole world lives in fear of a boy-child with the mental age of a third-grade student & the playground bully.

 

Yes, this is what willful ignorance, apathy, & utter indifference has brought us. Seems far too many of my fellow citizens hoped that they could escape their responsibilities as citizens & we’d be magically protected forever from the dark forces like Trump & his insatiably greedy masters of the universe. But no, life is not a Sci fi fantasy where the good overcome simply because they’re good.

 

Goodness, fairness, equality, freedom, etc. has always been a struggle & sometimes it has won out & sometimes it has lost. But one thing is for certain, if we shirk our duties to defend these values & principles, we will certainly go down with the ship. The ship of the damned, the ship steered by the likes of Trump!

“Christians” praying for the end of the world? Is this what Jesus taught them?

 

Addendum

 

I showed my own ignorance when some time back, I asked my friend & mentor, Noam Chomsky, something like; So, when or what was the first instance of the joining of the Church & the State and their domination over the people? As usual, Noam was sensitive in his response & simply pointed out that it was when the Roman empire declared Christianity the official religion of the empire.

 

Think about it my friends, the so-called “Christian” fundamentalists and/or evangelicals have been waging a perpetual war against secular humanism for decades. Why? Quite simply because they reject superstition & supernaturalism and encourage us to use our reason & to think for ourselves.

Trump loves spreading Alex Jones’ conspiracies like the Sandy Hook massacre that killed 20 six & seven year old students & six adult staff was fake.

 

Most organized religions like many governments, including our own, also expect blind obedience. And they both fear the individual who dares to think for him or herself & dares to question their dogma.

 

In a nutshell, Trump, like the hypocritical “Christians” who support him no matter how vile his actions or words, only want your blind obedience & your dollars. I may sound like a preacher myself but if so, my hope is that you’ll think of me as a preacher of love & peace and that you will stand-up on your moral & intellectual hind-legs and; “Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Do not go gentle into that Dark Night!” (Dylan Thomas)

—Rob DeLoss Gold Beach, Oregon, Dec. 27, 2019

 

 

 

Trump the Terrible!

the petulant little boy upset that he’s not the center of attention

 

 

Invariably when I meet someone new and the subject of Trump comes up, the first words out of their mouths are; I like Trump because he tells it like it is. And my spirit sinks every time I hear this moronic mantra come out of a person’s mouth. Can a third of the American public really be this stupid?

And in Trump-land, being stupid is worn as a badge of honor

 

Yeah, I’m calling people stupid because they have clearly closed their minds & their hearts to all the greed and cruelty of Trump’s behavior. In my twenties, I lived in Orange County, then the most conservative county in the U.S., Reagan country. And when I’d visit my mom, her friends & her would laugh at my criticisms of Reagan & repeat ad nauseam; “All you need is common sense.”

 

Well can someone please explain to me where that much touted “common sense” is hiding please? By its very definition, it’s supposed to be “common” (occurring or appearing frequently). I submit that this phrase or maxim is just another myth like the one of “rugged individualism,” or “self-reliance.”

 

The average American citizen has been deluged with approximately 6,580 hours of advertising by the time they graduate from high school & they read at the sixth or seventh grade level. Moreover, this ties in with another cherished mantra by many of our fellow citizens i.e. there is a “liberal bias” in the mainstream news. And once again we see that good old common sense has failed us.

The “Liberal Media” Wake up people!

 

Ask yourself why the 1% who own the corporate media would allow a truly liberal bias to dominate their broadcasting networks? Liberals by definition are harsh critics of that infamous 1% who keep getting wealthier while the rest of us keep getting poorer. So, if the liberals were truly in control of the media, their criticisms would undermine the very power structure of their organizations & the owners would soon go out of business.

 

Furthermore, this highlights perhaps the central absurdity of Trump’s supposed fighting for the working class & the middle class of America i.e. the rich, especially the super-rich of which Donald is supposedly a member but of course we’ll never know because he refuses to release his tax returns, rarely become wealthy because they’re simple, honest, hard-working people. But again, the Trump cult prefer to ignore the reality in front of their faces i.e. Trump has spent his adult life in court & has a platoon of lawyers because he threatens & bullies anyone who dares to stand up to him when he’s ripped them off. And he has thousands of lawsuits filed against him every year for a plethora of civil & criminal actions on his part.

 

So how do we explain this apparent willful ignorance on the part of the Trump zombies staggering helplessly toward their destruction? I believe that once again, television plays a significant part in this phenomenon. I know that I’m stating the obvious to those who pay attention to the true reality, not the T.V. “reality,” but those people are the exception to the rule.

 

If you’ve made it this far in reading my essay, congratulations because many people would be dismissing me as one of those East coast elitists at this point. But if you knew my background, you’d really get a chuckle out of this. My mom raised the four of us as a single parent. She worked as a telephone operator & waitress mostly. I walked to school all the way through my public schooling & got 40 cents a day for lunch when I was in high school.

 

And when I was in the sixth grade, I was told that I was reading at the 11th grade, sixth month level. It took me 14 years to earn my B.A. in English literature but the overwhelming majority of what I’ve learned has come through my own reading. So yeah, it cracks me up when people attempt to dismiss me as an elitist, out of touch with the common man’s reality.

 

Okay, back to the “boob-tube.” I remember when “reality T.V.” first raised its stupid head i.e. the series “Survivor” I believe was the first successful show. I could be wrong because I only watched one episode & was turned-off. I asked my wife, what does this teach people, or our children? It teaches them to do anything to “survive” i.e. lie, cheat, steal, backstab or do whatever it takes to win. Of course, this show was perfect for creatures from the black lagoon like Trump because this has been his business “work ethic” or model from day one after daddy gave him $400,000,000 & which he has consistently lied about & claims that daddy war bucks only gave him a million dollars which he soon paid back.

many “Christians” thought Mussolini & Hitler were great leaders too

 

Trump is a living, walking example of the Seven Deadly Sins and the evangelicals or “Christian” fundamentalists who support him show what hypocritical hyenas they truly are for ignoring his “shortcomings.” It also amazes me that the Trump lobotomized simply choose to ignore all his business failures. I think a key factor here is the fact that because Trump’s name is plastered on buildings all over the world, his disciples either don’t know or choose to ignore the fact that what Donny-boy sells more than anything else is his name brand. Most of his “business investments” are the leasing of his name i.e. allowing corporations to put Trump’s name on their properties because it supposedly draws in more customers. But again, we’ll never know the truth because the girly-man with the small hands hides his true financial standing from us.

American ignorance on proud display, “Reality,” for the intellectually impaired.

 

Continuing on, Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan has been truly successful at selling fear & hate. And this is probably the crux of the matter when it comes to why he’s so popular with a third of the voting electorate i.e. he’s given them permission to voice their anger & hate. Tragically for America & the rest of the world by extension, this has given rise to a sort of populist fascism. And Donnie loves his fellow tyrants & dictators and proudly proclaims his love of totalitarian leaders to the world.

Trump’s heroes but Putin is his idol

 

And every time I hear such profanity come out of his pie-hole, I wonder what happened to the principles & values we supposedly once stood for i.e. freedom, democracy, equality, etc.? What have all our soldiers fought & died for? How in the Hell could Trump worshipers not see the glaring contradictions between what Trump does & says and the ideals that the U.S. is supposed to represent?

Is America under the greedy moron Trump what they’ve sacrificed their lives for?

 

It dawned on me the other day as I was driving back from L.A., that Trump stooges seem to wear their ignorance proudly as if it were a badge of honor? They may as well put a bumper sticker on their cars proclaiming; I’m stupid & proud of it!

 

And speaking of stupid, this is one of the reasons the pseudo-Christians support Trump, because he put Betsy DeVos, a rich “Christian,” who is out to destroy public education, in as the Secretary of Education. I wrote a book on the subject of the “Christian” fundamentalists war against Humanism & it’s truly frightening the more you delve into the subject. In brief, these faux “Christians,” want an American Taliban of “Christians,” who rule over the rest of us every bit as absolutely as the Taliban in Afghanistan want to dominate their population.

 

Resuming with our commander in chief of stupid, Trump, it absolutely bewilders me how even the most ardent of Donnie’s toadies aren’t bothered by his daily demonstrations of his monumental ignorance? And this guy is our leader? God help us if a serious threat arises because he couldn’t find his way around the block with a map. He can barely complete a single sentence with any resemblance to coherence or logic. He repeats the same half dozen adjectives like; great, wonderful, totally, perfect, etc. ad nauseam. I believe the average third grader would be considered eloquent compared to this moron. By-the-way, here’s another example of Donnie’s “telling it like it is;” He threatened every school he attended as he was growing up with a lawsuit if they revealed his grades. Any of you “common sense” champions need a hint? Before I move on, here’s another sweet morsel of a tidbit for you that I almost forgot to share; I read that one of Trump’s demands to the producers of “The Apprentice,” was that every time his name was mentioned in the show, they had to add, “Trump, the billionaire.” Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels taught Roy Cohn that i.e. the bigger the lie & the more often you say it, the sooner it becomes a fact or a truth. And Roy Cohn was Trump’s mentor & Joseph McCarthy’s right-hand man in the Communist Witch Hunts of the 1950s so you see, Trump does know something about witch hunts.

Cohn was a mob lawyer & one of the most vile creatures to ever crawl out of that swamp in New York City

 

You see, my friend, that old adage of; What you don’t know can’t hurt you, is bullshit! Ignorance can be deadly. Here are a few fun facts for you but of course if you are a Trump acolyte, facts & truth don’t matter, all you need to do is believe everything the Fuhrer tells you:

when you don’t give a shit about knowledge, “alternative facts” are easy to accept

 

  • Despite being a global economic & political leader, illiteracy continues to be a pervasive problem in the U.S.
  • Approximately 32 million adults in America are considered to be illiterate.
  • About 14% of the entire adult population cannot read.
  • Among developed nations, the U.S. ranks 16th for adult reading skills.
  • Between 40 and 44 million adults, or roughly 20 to 23% of adults in the U.S., are limited to reading at the basic or below basic proficiency levels.
  • Some 30 million adults aren’t able to comprehend texts that are appropriate for 10-year olds.
  • An estimated 63 million adults read between a sixth and eighth grade level.
  • Research has also linked illiteracy to poverty as an adult.
  • As many as 75% of welfare recipients struggle to read even the simplest texts.
  • In terms of lost productivity, it’s estimated that the portion of the population that can’t read costs the nation a staggering $225 billion each year.

    I read this book 30 years ago & it’s truly scary how ignorant we are as a nation

 

What reading level do you think Trump or his sycophants

Read at? Observers have estimated that Trump reads at about the fifth-grade level & this is probably why he refuses to read his daily briefings as president. Don’t you think we should have a president who can at least read at the 12th grade level? Do I have to remind you that we live in a very complex world which requires someone with the kind of power that Trump has at his fingertips, to be able to think on their feet? And forget about critical or analytical thinking skills when it comes to the Duckmeister. He’s a sad & bad joke when it comes to intellectual prowess.

If you’d care to understand the historical context of why we celebrate morons like Trump, read this classic

 

Why do you think Trump is such a big fan of conspiracy theories? Why is Alex Jones a trusted friend? And as for FOX “news,” I have been saying for nearly the 20 years since FOX began that it’s a farce to even consider FOX “News” a legitimate news program. It is the American version of Pravda. Pravda was the state newspaper of the former Soviet Union but their citizens new it was propaganda & disregarded it. Yet here in the land of freedom & opportunity, we seem to be the world’s biggest suckers & will fall for anything, even a puffed-up, nonstop braggart who is using the office of the president of the United States to shamelessly enrich himself & clearly is a con man, a traitor, and a serious threat to all of us!

Trump’s info sources; Alex Jones, The National Enquirer, & FOX “News”

 

In conclusion, I’ll leave you with this brief insight into why some people believe conspiracy theories. Note how fond Trump is of conspiracy theories i.e. it’s all a mass plot by the Democrats, a witch hunt, etc.

 

The desire for control and security. People need to feel they’re in control of their lives. For instance, many people feel safer when they’re the driver in the car rather than a passenger. Of course, even the best drivers can get into accidents for reasons beyond their control.

Likewise, conspiracy theories can give their believers a sense of control and security. This is especially true when the alternative account feels threatening. For example, if global temperatures are rising catastrophically due to human activity, then I’ll have to make painful changes to my comfortable lifestyle. But if pundits and politicians assure me that global warming is a hoax, then I can maintain my current way of living. This kind of motivated reasoning is an important component in conspiracy theory beliefs. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-apes/201801/why-do-people-believe-in-conspiracy-theories

 

Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan is clearly paranoid & suffers from delusions of grandeur but will America survive this petty tyrant with an insatiable greed & totally lacking in any sense of basic, human decency?

he spends a lot of time on the toilet because he’s so full of shit!

 

—-Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, Oregon Sept. 29, 2019

 

Addendum

I get so caught up in detailing the lies & machinations of the Trump circus that I sometimes forget to step-back & point out the big picture. Trump is the ring master for the true Power Elite (The Power Elite is a 1956 book by sociologist C. Wright Mills, in which Mills calls attention to the interwoven interests of the leaders of the militarycorporate, and political elements of society and suggests that the ordinary citizen is a relatively powerless subject of manipulation by those entities.) It’s clear as a bell to all but the hopelessly brain-dead that Trump doesn’t have the brain power to pass a GED exam let alone hatch an intricate conspiracy to take over America.

we should add Congress, the Corporate Media, Higher Education, etc. to his warning

 

No, Trump is what is known as a “useful idiot” (In political jargon, a useful idiot is a derogatory term for a person perceived as propagandizing for a cause without fully comprehending the cause’s goals, and who is cynically used by the cause’s leaders. ) and the term circus master is an appropriate descriptor of this vile person because like a magician, Trump distracts us from the hidden agenda of the power elite. The Republican party overwhelmingly remain silent no matter how outrageous the rhetoric or the crimes of Trump because his distractions keep the public’s attention on the idiocy of Trump and off the G.O.P.’s raping, pillaging, & plundering of our economy & by extension, the world’s poor & the natural resources of most of the world.

 

Magicians have told us again & again of how they distract their audiences with one hand while the other hand does the “magic.” And the magic that Trump does so well is keep the public pissed-off and fighting amongst themselves with his racial slurs, his conspiracy theories, his blaming the media, the Muslims, the Mexicans, the liberals, the Democrats, etc. etc. etc. And his Duck Dynasty hillbillies love him for allowing & encouraging their venting of their racist, anti-intellectual, & poisonous and scary, preapocalyptic fantasies.

 

Many, if not most, of these Neanderthals are as happy as pigs rolling in the mud as they watch Donny dismantle every federal agency’s ability to perform their mission to protect us from the greed of the 1%. But when they can no longer drink the water out of the spigots in their homes like in Flint, Michigan, breathe the air where they live because it’s too toxic or poisonous, trust the food they put into their kids’ mouths, pay their electric bill, afford to drive their cars, put a roof over their family’s heads, count on their Social Security checks coming in, have their life savings stolen along with their pensions, etc., they will only have themselves to blame. They were so stupid as to actually believe a phony billionaire was on their side.

 

Trump is truly a clown, a very scary clown & one that doesn’t give a shit about anything except his gold-plated toilet & the childish thrill of texting absurd Tweets 24/7 and receiving so much attention from the chaos he thrives on. I’ll leave you with one last bit of that “common sense” that is so elusive to the average American, especially the FOX “News,” bubble-brains, that horrible media, you know, “the enemy of the people,” gave Donny billions of dollars of free publicity when he was running for office & Bernie Sanders received a small fraction of media attention. So, how is it that now, whenever journalists dare to criticize Trump, they’re his enemy? Whenever they give him positive attention, he kisses their asses but when they dare to point out his vulgar speech & behavior, they’re liars and on a witch hunt to destroy him?

 

This most egregious example of all that is worst in us, Trumpelstiltskyn, would suffer a total mental & emotional meltdown if he weren’t the center of attention for even a single day. So, congratulations all you simpletons, you got what you wished for. I’ll see you as we paddle our life-rafts over our former fields of amber grain!

Is this what you Trump supporters look forward to after he’s destroyed our government?

 

 

 

 

Democracy’s Delusion

Trump, the “Chosen One” according to the “Christian” fundamentalists

 

 

“Those who sacrifice freedom for safety deserve neither.”

—Thomas Jefferson

 

One of America’s central delusions is that of free speech. And the powers that be, those CEOs who run the mammoth, corporate conglomerates who tell politicians & presidents when to shit & when to get off the pot, silence those who speak a little too freely. In nations like Mexico, they’re not very subtle & they simply murder journalists who inform the public about the corruption that is impoverishing their citizens.

 

But here in the good old U.S.A. our political/corporate elite hide their dark agendas behind grandiose words like; freedom, democracy, liberty, etc. Take five minutes to skim over the names of the most prominent right-wing or conservative think tanks & you’ll take my point.

 

You see, here in the land of the free & home of the brave, we’re supposed to just wave our flags on the 4th of July, Memorial Day, etc. and then shut the fuck up rest of the time. If you dare to question or criticize our government, as Thomas Jefferson said was not only our right but our duty, you are told to “Love it or leave it.” How’s that for freedom?

 

My motivation for writing this essay is the fact that I’m getting so fuckin’ tired of being told to either shut-up or leave when I begin to talk about political matters in bars. And it’s usually some bartender that knows nothing about what’s happening in our country & could give a shit less but has a smug sense of superiority because they have the “power” to 86 me.

 

I hate this feeling of being in a constant verbal straitjacket and want to scream Fuck you, you little flunky bartender! The older I become, the more I realize just how unfree we are in this fairy tale land we call America. My political awakening began in my late teens when I kept going AWOL from the U.S. Army because I didn’t think going to Vietnam was such a great idea.

The darkest days of my life until I lost my wife

 

And throughout my 20s, whenever I was partying with my friends, they often mocked me for my comments & opinions which seemed so foreign to them. They were mostly good natured though so I kept trying to get through to them. But again, as I grew older & was confronted sometimes with physical threats in bars, I became more disillusioned with this whole farce we call Democracy. You may think me a liar but I don’t give a fuck because I know my truth i.e. conservatively, I have spent at least 50,000 hours over my adult life reading, taking notes, listening, watching, researching, & writing about American politics & foreign policy. So, yeah, I dare to speak with an air of confidence or self-assuredness on many of the issues facing us today. And I welcome anyone who cares to challenge me intellectually because I know I’ve paid my dues & continue to do so.

 

So, go ahead, make my day as Clint Eastwood is famous for saying. When you consider the pathetic state of awareness of the average American & read the statistics regarding American’s reading habits, etc., I take comfort in knowing that I am light-years ahead of most of my countrymen. And no, I don’t give a shit how elitist that makes me sound & I know how much Trump followers detest elitists like myself because we “make them feel inferior.”

 

Well, my response is, if the shoe fits? This is a cop-out & these intellectually lazy citizens refuse to accept responsibility for their not being willing to pick up a book on a regular basis & blame those who are intellectually superior to them for acting superior. I came from the poor side of the tracks, raised by a single mother with a brother & two sisters. I was the eldest & began cooking for my siblings when I was 12 years old. Made them do their chores, their homework, be in bed on time, fought their battles, etc. So, don’t give me your sob stories claiming that you couldn’t find the time to go to the library & read and educate yourself.

 

Returning to the main thesis of this essay, over the years, I have occasionally been in a bar where we were “allowed” to speak freely and a serious political discussion/debate ensued & I absolutely loved it when I saw the spark in people’s eyes or their faces light up. And once in a while after such intense discussions, one or more of the participants would come up to me and say things like; “Wow! That was the best conversation I’ve had in ten years,” or “I learned so much, thank you!” And yeah, I’ve gotten into some heated debates with individuals but realized that their mind was closed & I was just beating my head against the wall. So, I’d end it by saying something like; Well, we’re obviously getting nowhere so can we just agree that we disagree? And we’d either change the subject or go our separate ways peacefully.

 

Continuing on, I fondly recall an experience I had while waiting in the cell outside the courtroom in Oakland, CA awaiting my appearance before the judge for a D.U.I. There were approximately six young black guys, a couple of older black guys near my age & myself. The young guys were gangbangers & drug dealers (I learned this from overhearing their conversations)

 

Well, they got into a religious debate and one of them had long, Dred-locks and was in favor of Buddhism while the others were mostly Christian. Their debate went on for about a half hour and I could no longer resist so I raised my hand like a boy in school. They cracked-up and nodded that it was okay for me to join in. I soon found myself serving as a sort of moderator & interjected at times; “Okay, now it’s his turn” and would point to another individual so he could say his piece.

 

We were let out of jail in the middle of the night & these young gangsters took me under their wings so-to-speak. They walked me to the nearest BART station & accompanied me to the best stop for me to connect & get back to the Berkeley area where my van was. And they hugged me as we parted.

 

I tell you this not to brag but to show you that even in such harsh conditions as being locked-up in jail, people can behave in a civilized manner even when discussing religion which I believe is the other taboo subject we’re not supposed to talk about in bars?

 

So, tell me, do you believe the “common wisdom” that if people talk about politics in bars, things are likely to get out of control i.e. fights will break out? I feel that what this taboo is saying is that we can’t be trusted to behave in a civil manner, especially when we’re drinking. I say, Bull-shit!

 

People start fights or get into fights in bars for any one of thousands of reasons & politics may be a reason they do now & then but that doesn’t mean that we should ban political speech in bars absolutely. If a person becomes belligerent in a bar for whatever reason, yeah, kick them out but don’t censor all of us for what a minority of assholes may do. Because this makes a mockery of our Declaration of Independence, our Bill of Rights, & our supposed freedoms.

 

Here’s something for you to mull over if you will; Why do we have over 900 military bases around the world with God knows how many “black op sites,” supposedly to protect & promote democracy abroad but we can’t speak about matters that affect our democracy at home when we’re in bars, the most common meeting place for citizens on a regular basis?

 

And no, I’m not trying to paint some grand Alex Jones conspiracy theory but it sure is interesting to note how this taboo just coincidentally benefits the 1%. What other public location or institutions allows us to speak freely to one another?

 

I have even been kicked-out of some bars for pointing out to bartenders who commanded me to shut up because I was talking about politics, when other customers were talking about local political matters i.e. city hall, road construction, etc. I’d say, hey, they’re talking about politics & boy would the bartender become flustered & immediately proclaim their authority; “Get out!”

 

Seems that local politics are basically okay to speak about but not national or international politics? So perhaps we’re getting a bit closer to the truth or the reality of our so-called “freedom of speech” in America? We’re allowed to speak freely within the confines of our own homes but hardly anywhere else? And we’re allowed to speak freely as long as it isn’t about any sensitive subjects that might offend the 1%, you know, the super elite that Trump wishes he were a part of but who won’t allow Little Lord Fauntleroy into their clubs.

 

We definitely lose all our rights when we walk through the entrance to our workplace because private employers are tyrannies and Walmart is a prime example i.e. if any employee dares to mention forming a union, they are out the door. Our election system is fast becoming a joke & is resembling more & more those “banana Republics” which we have looked down our noses at for decades even though we helped create them—see Major General Smedley F. Butler of the U.S.M.C.

This is the ugly truth behind the corporate cockroaches’ agenda of perpetual war

 

Gerrymandering, voter suppression/intimidation, tampering with voter machines, & Russian hacking which Mitch McConnell won’t allow us to do anything about, etc. has clearly made a mockery of our much-touted free elections. So much for expressing ourselves via the voting booth.

 

Moreover, if you’ll spend even a modicum of time checking out:

 

Jaron Lanier; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc_Jq42Og7Q&t=4s

 

Tristan Harris; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C74amJRp730&t=117s

 

Chamath Palihapitiya; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J54k7WrbfMg&t=5s

 

Shoshana Zuboff; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo6K-bPh39M

 

Edward Snowden

 

Or the recent Netflix documentary; “The Big Hack”

 

You’ll begin to realize the folly of turning to the “social media,” to save us. It is purposely designed to divide us & promote aggressive & fearful feelings between us because that brings more viewers (eyeballs) which increase their profits. Some of the above played pivotal roles in bringing about the social media so you might pay close attention to what they’re saying.

 

Perhaps most importantly, the revelations regarding Cambridge Analytica & Trump’s “winning” of the presidency proves just how extensively our “democracy” has been hacked & hence, our gradual slide into mere drones for the powers that be.

 

Specifically, what do our other supposed freedoms mean if we don’t truly have freedom of speech? Freedom of speech is the bedrock, the cornerstone, the foundation of all our other freedoms in the Bill of Rights, & the Declaration of Independence.

 

And speaking of The Bill of Rights, are you aware of how the powers that be gutted this so-called sacred document of our Republic shortly after the events of September 11, 2001? Yep! Because the Bush administration had been asleep at the wheel, they scrambled to cover their ignorance, laziness, & ineptitude by ramming through these draconian assaults on our “holy” rights & freedoms as Americans. Not very reassuring in my book i.e. just how firm is the “foundation” of this nation that struts the world stage declaring how powerful we are & that we have the best form of government on Earth. (see https://ccrjustice.org/home/blog/2015/11/17/911-decade-and-decline-us-democracy

 

If you’d care to inform yourself more on this sad subject)

 

Last night, in less than ten minutes, I came up with this list of subjects we’re not allowed to talk about in bars because if we do, within a matter of minutes, we’ll be discussing political matters:

 

  1. The recent slaughter in El Paso
  2. The Vietnam War
  3. The Iraq War
  4. The social media
  5. Losing our jobs
  6. Being homeless
  7. NAFTA
  8. Student debt
  9. Global warming
  • Nuclear war
  • Trump’s tweets
  • The coming Recession or Depression?
  • Bankruptcy
  • Health insurance or the lack thereof
  • The future of work
  • Christian fundamentalists support of Trump

 

For the past decade or better, I have tried to be tactful when people tell me that they’re not interested in politics. And my usual response is something like; Oh, I see? So, you’re not interested in whether or not you lose your job, your health insurance, your pension, etc. And believe it or not, it really does sadden me that I have to keep pointing out to people that politics affects every aspect of our lives & we’d better wake the fuck up!

what have they all died for?

 

To not do so is to spit on the graves of all those soldiers, sailors, marines, & airmen who sacrificed their lives for these freedoms that we so love to brag about to the world. We are slip-sliding into Trump’s Totalitarian Terrorism (my phrase) here at home & abroad and it’s up to us as individuals & as citizens of America to stand up on our hind legs & yell; “I’m as Mad as Hell & I’m not going to take it anymore!”

Half a million young people sharing Love, Peace, & Music for 3 days

 

I’m so glad that my “coming of age” was in the 1960s because although we were naïve romanticists & idealists, it felt so wonderful to share the same mass delusion with so many brothers & sisters as evidenced in the miracle known as Woodstock and our Flower Power Revolution.

Love, Trust, & Freedom in the 1960s. Compare that with today in Trump’s racist America & hate rallies

 

Persevere & Viva la Revolucion!

 

 

Facebook & the Road to Fascism

 

 

 

 

 

I fear that those of you who may take the time to read this essay will be tempted to dismiss my thoughts as those of a paranoid conspiracist? And yes, this is going to be a very convoluted or complicated subject because it involves the very technology that affects every one of our lives. Now most people will become defensive or attempt to retreat into a bubble of denial because the scope of what is being done to us is global & has such a pernicious effect on humanity as a whole.

remember the argument against homeschooling i.e. they need to develop social skills???

 

My personal experience has been that of a somewhat reluctant participant especially regarding “Smart phones.” And I wish that I had followed my initial aversion towards Facebook. My gut told me that Facebook was for teenage girls the first several years it came into existence but a cousin of mine told me that we had lots of relatives in Eastern Oregon that I wasn’t even aware of. So, I asked him how I could contact them thinking it’d be nice for my son to get to know more of his relatives. It never panned-out but I became hooked-on Facebook & slowly began to spend more & more of my time on it.

 

I was under the delusion that I could be of help & share some of the knowledge that I had been hoarding up for decades. I would write short essays practically on many of the serious social & political issues facing us. And once in a while I’d get a comment like; “I learned so much from you,” etc. But especially after the introduction to emojis, even a single sentence in response to my posts just about disappeared entirely & an emoji was all that people could manage to “communicate.”

 

And over the last couple of years that I was a Facebook user, I’d deactivate my account for months at a time to see if any of my “friends,” would notice. I had accumulated over 3,000 “friends” when I finally quit Facebook for good & with each passing day, I am so glad that I finally saw the light i.e. Facebook is the enemy of humanity & has done more to divide us than just about anything I can think of.

 

Do you recall Zuckerberg’s stated mission when Facebook began? And he still claims it to be their goal, yeah, to bring people together in a sense of community. Well, you’d have to either extremely naïve or willfully ignorant to not acknowledge that Zuckerberg has become one of the wealthiest men in America because of his selling our personal information to any buyer with enough money.

 

I am going to rely on & cite from two major sources for this article. The first is a You Tube video that I stumbled upon; “Social Media: Toxic by Design (Sam Vaknin)”

 

 

Now, I had my suspicions or doubts about Facebook the longer I participated on it, but this “interview” with Sam Vaknin blew my mind because of his in-depth revelations about the psychology of how this platform actually operates or conducts its nefarious work. So, hold on to your hats my friends, we’re headed for one helluva rollercoaster ride.

 

 

Before we get started, I want to acknowledge that I basically transcribed the entire “conversation” between Vaknin & his interlocutor —who basically took notes on what Vaknin was elaborating on. Therefore, I’m just going to put in quotation marks (some of the time)  whatever Vaknin said & not cite him every single time in the hope of making this article read a bit more naturally than some scholarly work? Note: I did search for a transcript of this talk but had no luck. By-the-way, I am using the term “fascism” in the sense that Mussolini did (though some disagree that he described it this way);

 

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

For the record, I am no fan of Alex Jones or his absurd conspiracy theories though Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan is. And Donny of the Small Fingers & Tiny Brain is also an avid reader of The National Enquirer, you know that publication of such high repute. And the more we get into this Edgar Allen Poe tale of horror, the more you will realize how our collective dumbing-down has contributed to our downfall.

from the time I was a teenager, we knew the Enquirer was only good for one thing i.e. the bottom of your birdcage

Let’s begin with the inner machinations of our benevolent “Big Brother” Marky Zuckerberg & the platform he stole from his college “friends,” i.e. Facebook.

 

I was instantly a fan of Vaknin’s when he mentioned Facebook & its appeal to teenage girls because as I mentioned earlier, that was my initial appraisal of the “platform.” Vaknin begins with; “You’re constantly competing against yourself to get more likes than on your last post.” Two thoughts came to me regarding this; 1) we clearly are an overly competitive society i.e. our lives are measured in how well we do in competition against our fellow students, workers, neighbors, etc. 2) and this is closely linked to our crass materialism as well as our cult of celebrity i.e. so many of us desire national, if not worldwide celebrity. It’s as if we’re a nation of insecurity even though we have the most powerful military & economy on Earth? Prima facie evidence; Trump’s constant need for recognition & approval. And most tragically, the gunman or mass shooters who crave attention & go on killing sprees to get it.

 

This self-competition creates “performance anxiety.” And as a male in this society & especially as an old fart, I can attest to this anxiety when every great now & then, I am honored to share a bed with a lovely lady.

 

“Social media has tripled young people’s anxiety.” Obviously, in a world as unpredictable & unstable as ours, where not only the young but the middle-aged & even many seniors are so full of anxiety as to whether they’ll be able to pay their rent & afford their medications, the last thing young people need is more anxiety.

Yep! The G.O.P. idea of “A kinder & gentler nation,” & “Compassionate Conservatism.”

 

“Social media is like an epidemic, a virus.” You’re goddamn straight! I look around me and it never ceases to sadden me how virulent an epidemic it has become. It’s like we’re living in a world of the Walking Dead but the zombies are all hypnotized by their “Smart phones.”

 

“The world is being divided into two camps; those who use social media & those who don’t.” And Hallelujah brothers & sisters to those of us who have awoken from Zuckerberg et al, the Pied Pipers of Hamlin & their siren songs. As I get older, I realize just how precious this gift of life we’ve been given is. And to be honest with you my imaginary friend, since my soulmate has passed away, Jeri, I care less & less about how much time I have left but I do care about the quality of that time i.e. I’m not going to squander my time on such trivial matters as how many “likes” I have received.

Here’s one you Sci-fi fans are sure to love; “This is a reengineering of human psychology.” Yeah, many of you who are younger & grew up in your video game worlds & who may believe that artificial intelligence is a natural progression for the human species, may not be troubled by this? Well I sure as Hell am troubled but no, I’m not so fearful that I worry that we’re about to be taken over as in the classic; “I, Robot” by Isaac Asimov, the master of science fiction.

 

We must always remember a basic axiom of computer technology, one that I learned way back in 1983/1984 when I took a course called; “Computer Literacy.” It’s called, G.I.G.O. (Garbage In, Garbage Out) In other words, the information we get out of our computers i.e. the Internet, is only as valid as the people putting that info on the internet. What I’m saying is that anybody, even Alex Jones & Donnie the Trumpster Dumpster can say whatever they want on the internet but that doesn’t make it truth or valid.

 

Let me break it down for you, I had to take a ridiculous half-unit course called; Introduction to College Life, after three years of pursuing my B.A. in English Literature. They showed us where the library was & other useful things. But, in this little pamphlet they gave us, what really caught my attention was this; (roughly paraphrasing from memory) “To determine the truth of a statement/claim, there are two requirements; 1) check out the credentials of the person making the claim, 2) see what other experts in the field of this subject, have to say about the person making the claim to truth.”

 

Sorry but I can’t help but invoke our illustrious leader here as a prime example of definitely someone you shouldn’t listen to. Just because he raises his little hands & proclaims; “Believe me,” doesn’t mean that you should give him the time of day. Of course, his Walking Dead-heads would never doubt his credentials to speak as if he were god himself proclaiming from the pulpit like Captain Ahab in “Moby Dick,” one of the handful of American classics in literature.

The first graduating class of Trump University

 

Continuing on, “Social media was created by men i.e. schizoids, recluses, socially inept, nerds, asexuals. And they created social media in their own image” i.e. as if they were the standard by which all others would be judged. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to argue that we should model ourselves after Hollywood celebrities & we know how fucked-up most of them are. But if you’ll allow me to reveal a bit of my elitist educational perspective, perhaps we should attempt to emulate the Renaissance man/woman? (in case you don’t catch my drift, I’m being facetious i.e. my secondary education was in Paramount, a poor, industrially zoned city across the riverbed from Compton)

 

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

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

 

Obviously, that Big Mac occupying the oval office couldn’t even spell Renaissance let alone hold a candle to the ideal. But, he is clever when it comes to manipulating not only the social media but the corporate media. He has had the “mainstream media” (corporate media) eating out of his hand all his manipulative “adult” life & most critically, since he announced his run for the presidency. The Duckmeister —who ducked serving in the military, ducked legal cases for fraud for decades, ducked revealing his taxes which we can be pretty damn sure he hasn’t paid & would reveal him for the faux billionaire he claims to be — has clearly bamboozled the section of the American public who believe in jet set televangelists.

Trump revealed!

 

Unfortunately for the rest of us, due to the apathy and ignorance of our general population, & the corruption of our electoral system, this miscreant who can barely form a coherent sentence, is now at the helm of the once proud nation known as the United States of America. And whether we allow this travesty of justice & everything we consider sacred & dear, is up to each & every one of us!

 

Furthermore, the technology employed by the social media engineers of Silicon Valley was designed for highly specific psychological profiling. For example, all those seemingly innocent Facebook posts inviting us to take a quick survey to see what decade we most identified with, etc., are anything but innocent. And I too took many of those surveys. We are slowly waking up to the fact that Facebook, Google, Amazon, Cambridge Analytica, etc. have been selling all our data to companies who use our info to target us on an individual level in their 24/7 advertisements. And this isn’t just about selling us crap, it’s also about conditioning us socially, emotionally, politically, etc.

Beware means Be Aware!

 

We have gone far beyond Orwell’s nightmare world of “1984,” or Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” Yet, the majority of Americans either refuse to believe these facts or don’t even care.

 

I’m sure that most of you have heard the expression; “Divide & Rule,” or “Divide & Conquer,” well, this is an ancient military tactic or strategy that probably goes back as far as Ancient Rome if not farther? But in this dystopian world we are living in today, this tactic is being used by the corporate masters who actually rule the world. And this is why Trump constantly whips his “base” up by stoking their fears with his descriptions of Mexicans, Muslims, and all who aren’t white males, as the enemy, “infestations.”

Trump busy draining the swamp by playing golf. Remember his criticism of Obama’s days off? And we pay for Trump’s golf trips to his golf courses???

 

F.D.R. summed it up nicely when he declared; “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Trump is a master distractor in that he keeps those who support him distracted from our real enemies i.e. the 1% who own everything. So, Trump’s army of the psychologically walking dead can vent their anger on all who aren’t in their exact position economically or socially. It’s far harder to see beyond your anger & to realize that these people & these groups you’re blaming for your troubles, are de facto fellow victims of the 1%. In short, by dividing us, Trump & his fellow elite have conquered us. The U.S. is slipping into a fascist tyranny of the filthy rich & this makes a mockery of all the wars we supposedly fought in defense of freedom & democracy.

It’s very simple i.e. Divide & Conquer!

 

As long as we sit complacently by in front of our T.V. screens & our computer screens, we will play the role of helpless victims. And Sam Vaknin points out the proven psychological harm being done to us as we spend more time exposed to screen time i.e. greater levels of anxiety, depression, suicide, decreases in happiness & life satisfaction. Moreover, teen suicide has doubled & suicide is the leading cause of death for young people up to the age of 24.

 

Above all, the conditioning we are experiencing the more we use the “social media,” is so pernicious that they—the “social engineers” of these technological platforms—are literally hacking into our brains & our behavior. I know this probably sounds like some paranoid, science fiction world that Trump would espouse but it’s very real. If it is absurd & just too fantastic to believe, then why are billions being spent by these megalithic corporations like Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc.? Are they just throwing their money away in delusions of grandeur?

 

You see, my imaginary reader, the corporate conglomerates dream world is one in which there are no protestors demanding a fair wage, safe working conditions, etc., only docile, obedient workers who are grateful for whatever scraps the corporate lords toss them & who buy their products & services with whatever small allowance they are given.

I’ve been referring to FOX “News” for nearly 20 years as the Fear & Hate channel

 

Edward Snowden only mentioned it briefly in the documentary Laura Poitras created about his courageous efforts to reveal to us what was happening in the NSA with the help of Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc. He said; “It’s about Control.” Control & Conditioning are one & the same to my way of thinking. And Sam Vaknin points out repeatedly that there is an important distinction between conditioning & addiction.

 

Tristan Harris, who worked for Google as a “Design Ethicist,” was one of those “social engineers” who helped to design the bells & whistles so-to-speak that help addict people to these social media platforms. Fortunately for those of us who care about these matters, Mr. Harris’s conscience got the better of him & he resigned from Google & began to spread the word in the hope of helping people wake-up from these harmful technologies. And when he spoke about how the feedback of “likes,” emojis, etc. trigger the lowest part of our brain-stem, our reptilian brains, I sat up & took notice. You see, Vaknin, Harris, & others have pointed out that human nature is ruled more by fear, anger, violence, & chaos (my paraphrasing) and this is why, the social engineers, or more precisely, the Mark Zuckerbergs & other top CEOs of these tech corporations deliberately chose the engineering models that they did i.e. by appealing to the lowest common denominator in humans, you ensure the widest possible audience to exploit or addict.

 

Furthermore, Vaknin informs us that addictions can be overcome but conditioning is much tougher to combat. One of the tools they use in their social engineering of us is the employment of envy in the construction of these platforms & it’s a pathological envy. They quantify envy with “likes,” “retweets,” etc. Then they leverage our envy to motivate us or cause us to adopt some course of action which they want to steer us towards.

Think about it!

 

In brief, they weaponize envy & even more so, they have weaponized aggression. Reflect on all the posts on Facebook attacking Hillary Clinton which were part of the massive PR campaign by Cambridge Analytica that was hired by Steve Bannon leading up to the presidential election of 2016. And they knew from all the personal data they had mined via Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc. just who to bombard with all their negative propaganda. Trump never would’ve become president were it not for this sophisticated & vicious psychological weaponry.

 

Continuing on, Vaknin also informs us that people confuse jealousy & envy. Jealousy motivates you to constructive action i.e. diet, exercise, etc., but pathological envy causes you to see the other as a source of frustration i.e. I can’t be like you so I will seek to destroy you. Are you beginning to realize just how anti-social these “social media” platforms actually are? Talk about Doublespeak? “All social media encourage aggression via their algorithms & via the way they foster interactions.”
(Emperor Nero’s top hit as Rome burned)

 

[I want to remind you again, my imaginary reader, that the overwhelming majority of this is almost verbatim by Vaknin but I’m being lazy & not using quotation marks nearly enough. I get so few readers that I don’t really give a damn anymore about following the “rules.”]

 

Facebook et al, encourage peer aggression, bullying, black humor, & brutal honesty. And these platforms encourage repeat compulsive use. And perhaps most significantly, aggression, envy, & hatred are the key emotions that encourage repeated use.

 

Conversely, “All psychological studies have shown or proved that Love does not encourage repeated actions or foster addiction.” These platforms were designed with Pathology in mind so it’s no wonder they’ve become platforms for hate speech, bullying, & fake news (Trump & White Supremacists, White Nationalists, etc.)

 

Pursuing this further, Twitter has capitalized (my phrase) on the fact that aggressive speech acts are much shorter than positive speech. It isn’t merely coincidental that Twitter was originally limited to 144 characters. The brevity was chosen to encourage negative speech which addicts people & motivates them to keep using the platform (is it any wonder that Trump has taken to Twitter like a Duck Dynasty Klansman?) [my question]

Trump Tweeting on his Throne of Tyranny

 

Vaknin goes on to point out that non-aggressive speech acts are a bit longer than aggressive ones i.e. love letters are effusive. I can attest to this, I once wrote a love letter to a girl in London that was something like 80 pages long (I was trying to persuade her to come to America).

 

“Social media” is the most asocial platform ever and has created an unprecedented wave of withdrawal & atomization. And those who have aggressive tendencies gravitate towards social media & enhance the toxicity. In short, it’s a self-perpetuating feedback loop, a negative filter which attracts, amplifies, & connects likeminded aggressive & dangerous people.

the social media’s role in domestic terrorism

 

This application is known as the “Network effect.” Let me remind you that as Vaknin stated earlier, this is only one of several different models that Zuckerberg could’ve used to launch Facebook but he purposely chose the Network effect because it was the most addictive (my paraphrasing). In other words, he knew it’d grow the fastest, become the most addictive & hence make him far richer than if he’d chosen a less harmful model. And the fuckin’ bastard has the audacity to still claim that he just wants to bring people together!

 

This “conversation” which I stumbled across on You Tube absolutely blew my mind because not only was it so illuminating but it was also the first time someone had ever broken down the mechanics so-to-speak of this world-wide phenomenon that I consider a social plague every bit as deadly as the bubonic plague that killed a third of the European population from 1340 to 1400.

 

Professor Vaknin continues to open our minds by informing us that we have numerous ways of organizing social interaction & poses the question; “Why did social media choose Networks rather than hierarchy or curated conversations with editors or moderators, for example?”

 

Before social media came on-line, we had other ways of interacting on-line in the cyber-world which had nothing to do with Networks i.e. forums. We were brainwashed by social media to believe that the only way to interact with others was through the Network model, it’s NOT TRUE!

Just bringing people together like G.E.”s “Bringing Good Things to Light” i.e. Nuclear weapons

 

It was purposely chosen because it’s the only model that has the Network Effect which leads back to Epidemiology (Epidemics). An epidemic is an infection sociological, psychological, or emotional. There are 20 to 30 existing models for on-line social interaction. They chose the only model that is self-replicating, self-duplicating & invades your DNA (your psychological DNA) and alters your brain via neuroplasticity and conditions you which later addicts you.

 

This has created a shared psychosis, mass hysteria, cults, including teenage death cults and it has created new types of role-models. It can be used for positive results i.e. Wikipedia which started as a Network model but became a cesspool of aggression, misinformation, slander & libel. But when Wikipedia went back to being curated, it went from three million editors to 60,000 because people were no longer interested i.e. they want the chaos & the aggression.

 

The professor continues; “Facebook, Twitter, etc. have maliciously & malevolently designed their algorithms for the destructive nature of people. But this (fortunately) is a self-limiting virus like the plague, etc. because the virus needs to leave some alive or it wipes itself out as well.

 

This has pathologized two billion people (Facebook’s members). I am reminded of the quote; “A Capitalist will sell you the rope to hang himself with.” These social media zombies (my phrase) swap their delusional world in the social media for reality & this is the definition of psychosis. (see Trump & “Reality T.V. i.e. “The Apprentice”)

 

By-the-way, I hope you’ll forgive me for a bit of bragging here but I never became a fan of “reality T.V.” I watched maybe one episode of perhaps the first “Reality T.V.” series; “Survivor” I believe it was called. And I said to my wife, this is crap! What is it telling us? Lying, backstabbing, cheating, etc. is the way to succeed. No thanks! And I never watched a single episode of “The Apprentice.”

Vaknin continues; “There’s never been a case in human history of a group so large, going psychotic (sick) except maybe Nazi Germany? And we can’t predict what will happen. However, there are some glimmers of hope; About 20% of people have left social media & some have even gotten rid of their “Smart” phones. And there are retreats where you can’t have your digital devices. There’s also a new diagnosis in the Physicians’ Desk Reference manual i.e. “Internet Addiction.”

Trump idolizes fascist leaders & his rallies feed his ego (his 4th of July military rally)

 

“The epidemic of the social media is reminiscent of zombie movies (note my reference to them as the Walking Dead).” There are groups of people who live within their worlds of multi-player games & teens who prefer to interact with other teens exclusively through social media. The amount of face-to-face social interaction among teens has dropped by 70% in the last 10 years. (and if this doesn’t worry you, you are part of the problem, not the solution—my words)

 

The bad news continues; Teenage dating has dropped by 63% & the number of sexual encounters between teens has dropped by 50%. Now this is probably good news for those of you who believe overpopulation to be the greatest threat to our survival & those “good Christian fundamentalists” among us?

Trump’s “Christian” values i.e. “Grab them by the pussy.”
Onward “Christian soldiers” Hear no evil. speak no evil, see no evil.
The “Christian” devaluation of women as purely sexual objects you can do what you want with.

 

Consequently, we have the social trend or reality that has boggled my mind since the first time I witnessed it i.e. groups of young people who seemingly are together, will walk into a pub for example but they don’t speak to one another except through their smart phones. Or, they are totally disengaged and are “communicating” with other friends who aren’t physically there.

The “Selfie” president, Selfish, Sadistic, & . Sick!

 

Or consider another disturbing trend i.e. “Selfies.” I’m going to skip this section of the “conversation” and simply say that the word “selfies” says it all. This “social media” is supposedly about “socializing” and connecting with others yet “Selfies,” reveal the truth i.e. it’s more about egocentrism & hence, just helps to further isolate us from one another.

 

Sorry if I burst your bubbles, all you “social beings.” Not really! Wake-up and smell the damn coffee you walking dead simpletons! Zuckerberg & his crony Masters of the Universe are “socializing” you into human lemmings who they can march right off the cliff into oblivion, or at least, docile servitude for the rest of your lives.

 

“Social media encourage Regression i.e. as we develop, we invest in others emotionally, etc. but social media causes us to regress into ourselves with primitive, baby-like defense mechanisms.” (see Donald Trump)

all hail Little Lord Fauntleroy, leader of the Free World

 

Incidentally, here’s more proof of just how monumentally unfit Donald the Draft Dodger is to inhabit the oval office; Another little minor “side-effect” of the stupendous “social media,” is known as “splitting.” And how appropriate because Trump is definitely a split-personality if not a Sybil with 16 or more personalities?

 

In this little toddler, would be emperor’s pea-brain, you’re either with him or against him & he throws his royal tantrums daily whenever someone dares to point out that the emperor wears no clothes i.e. he’s pure, unbridled greed, hatred, & jealousy.

 

In respect of “full disclosure,” I must remind you that the other coward, the Alfred E. Newman occupant of the White House, George W. Bush, also divided America into the equally simplistic & stupid dichotomy of; “You’re either with us or you’re against us.” But hey, no big deal, right? He just lied us into a totally unnecessary war with Iraq that only killed 5,000 or so American soldiers & approximately 100,000 Iraqis not counting of course all those who were maimed & those who fled their country.Several thousand American soldiers died in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died & Bush jokes about it? This is how to corporate fascist elite really feel i.e. their deep sense of Patriotism

The “Golden Calf” worshipped by the good, ol’ boys

 

Of course, this all just proves how serious Trump was about “draining the swamp,” in Washington D.C. Yep! All you deep-fried Twinkie eating simpletons who believed Trump’s racist dog-whistles & have been salivating ever since, may eventually catch on as your food stamps, the modicum of health care you get, your subsidized housing, etc. is yanked away that it was your Grand Wizard, Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan, who fucked you yet again, not the poor Hispanics fleeing the drug lords or the Muslims fleeing religious persecution. But then again, as Einstein said;

 

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”

Welcome to the world of Facebook & Trump

I despair though because Trump is clearly a vile low-life and yet no matter how despicable his behavior i.e. grabbing women by their pussy, or how crass the words that come out of his mouth, a third of the American public worship him? It’s clear that we have a national emergency when such a huge segment of our population glorifies such a detestable human being.

 

It’s prima facie evidence of how television & the movies & our pathetic public education system has failed us. And this essay is like spitting in the wind especially in post-literate America but at least my conscience is clear because I’ll never give up the fight to waken my fellow Americans from their mental & emotional lethargy.

 

Returning to the subject of the negative psychological aspects of the social media, another factor is called “splitting.” This boils down to simplistic “either or” thinking or rather reacting i.e. you’re either my friend or my enemy. And this is Trump in spades. His daily tirades & tantrums at every perceived insult clearly reveals that we have a pouting, third grader in the oval office. Also remember George W. Bush’s stupidity with his declaration; “You’re either with us or you’re against us,” in reference to the “War on Terrorism.” And social media caters to the most primitive defense mechanisms, behaviors, and traits in people. As Dr. Vaknin points out; “Therefore, there is no difference between social media & the tobacco industry who purposely put nicotine in tobacco to addict people.

tobacco industry’s top CEOs lying to Congress (see also Oil Industry, Banking industry, etc.)

 

And the nightmare gets even scarier i.e. social media adds to a lack of impulse control. Remind you of anyone? If you thought of Trump, give yourself a pat on the back. Again, all one has to do is turn on their television any time of day & any day of the week to witness our adolescent president in action.

 

Mr. Vaknin informs us that addictions can be treated and overcome but conditioning is much harder to overcome. And no, I’m not trying to paint some grand conspiracy, that’s Trump’s forte along with his paper of choice, The National Enquirer & his mentor, Alex Jones. But the effects of all this social media conditioning are destroying us as a nation & greatly amplifying the dangers to humanity.

 

Perhaps the core threat to our continuation as a species is the fact that humans are social beings & the social media has tapped into this powerful fact. Some of us are slowly waking up to the sinister manipulations of us by Facebook, Twitter, etc. and have stopped using the social media altogether but tragically, the majority of people couldn’t & don’t even want to contemplate life without their social media.

 

Do you think I’m exaggerating the power of social media? I invite you to observe closely for a single day people with their smart phones out in public, at home, in school, etc. I contend that they’re every bit as addicted & conditioned by their smart phones/social media as a hardcore heroin addict, meth user, etc.

 

As social beings, the most frightening thing for us isn’t lack of food, shelter, weather, etc., it’s being ostracized, excommunicated, or to not belong. Vaknin points out that people would rather die than to not belong. And when I reflect back on my life, I can see that I too have been looking for a sense of belonging or acceptance my whole life. My writing reflects that as well. I write in the hopes of being heard, in my desire to be understood. And hopefully this doesn’t sound too pathetic but the older I get, the more isolated I feel. As I stated earlier, I joined Facebook under the delusion/illusion that I would connect with others but the overwhelming majority of the 3,000 friends I collected on Facebook, couldn’t bother to even write a single word in response to the thousands of posts I submitted or the hundreds of essays that I wrote & posted. And here in the so-called “real world,” we’re not allowed to talk about politics in pubs or taverns so please tell me, where in the Hell are we allowed to honestly communicate with each other or how are we supposed to exchange ideas, console one another, & work to stop all this madness?

 

Vaknin cites a few examples of how critical our need to belong is from history i.e. Socrates & the Catholic Church’s power of excommunication which they wield like a club over the heads of their flock (my description). If you know a bit about history, you may recall that throughout history, the Church & the State have often vied for power over the people & sometimes they have joined forces to keep people submissive to their power. In my naivete & ignorance, I asked Noam Chomsky awhile back for an example of when the Church & State had united in their suppression of the public & he replied; When the Roman Empire officially adopted Christianity as the state’s religion.

 

Think about that for a few minutes. The Inquisition, the Holy Crusades, the Salem Witch Trials, the Christian missionary’s conversion of natives, etc. etc. etc. And in today’s Trump world, we witness the “Christian” fundamentalists who support Trump no matter what he says or does even though he’s like a poster boy for every cardinal sin there is because they too want the reins of power. These hypocritical “Christians” salivate at the thought of making America a Christian nation with them in charge/control over every aspect of our lives from what we can watch on T.V., how we dress, whom we can love, what we can say, etc. As someone quipped; “The American Taliban.” No, I’m not exaggerating, I wrote my first book on the subject & it’s truly scary. They are tickled pink with Mike Pence being in the role of our vice-president because they know how quickly he could become president were Trump forced out of office for any one of the hundreds of crimes he’s committed.

Trump knows all about witch hunts, he learned from his mentor, Roy Cohn, McCarthy’s right-hand man

 

Well, are you thoroughly depressed yet? Sadly, there’s more to come my friend. Returning to the subject of our fear of being excluded from any of the social groups to which we belong, social media does just this i.e. if you don’t play by their arbitrary rules, you are cut-off for a while. For example, I once included a picture of a beautiful young, hippie chick in a sample of a fantasy novel I have been working on for several years.

 

I believe it was a very tastefully done picture. It was a young woman standing on a rock by the ocean with her arms outstretched as if she were welcoming the new day. She was tan & had long dark, flowing hair and it showed her naked butt. And this was a violation of Facebook’s policies so I was cut-off for 30 days, I believe? Yet, pictures of people murdered by bombs, terrorists, etc. and countless other horrific scenes are no problem? Correction; I had to go back & look up the picture I’m talking about, it wasn’t her butt that was revealed, it was a side view of one of her breasts. I know, how shocking? But Trump’s misogynist insults about women & his behavior at beauty pageants, his buddy, Jeffrey Epstein, etc. is all fine as far as the “Christian” fundamentalists are concerned & Facebook’s guardians?

 

For me, one of the most pernicious aspects of the social media is their deliberate “dumbing-down” of their members. Intellectual matters are only rarely posted but “Selfies,” cute kittens, what people ate for dinner, etc. make up the majority of the posts. Keeping everything light & simple makes it easier for people to click that “like” button & speeds up the feedback loop that brings in more suckers & more customers for the corporations buying our data from Facebook & makes Zuckerberg richer.

 

Analogous to this deliberate dumbing-down it its customers i.e. Facebook members, is the fact that throughout history, the Church tried to keep its flock ignorant as well. For centuries, only the priests & royalty were taught to read so it was easier to control the public. Slaves in America were forbidden by law to learn how to read. And I argue that while it’s not a clear-cut case of conspiracy but the corporations who are the de facto rulers of America, also don’t want their average workers to be “too well educated,” because they often stir up the other workers to unite & form unions, etc.

 

As Vaknin points out, Facebook members soon internalize the message i.e. if I keep it simple & don’t use big words, I’ll be more popular and get more “likes.” This forces you to hide your true identity as I learned after wasting thousands of hours trying to reach people on an intellectual level. Moreover, if you’re empathetic, you have to hide that as well. If you’re a critical thinker, you must avoid revealing it.

 

I truly began to realize what a fool I’d been after Obama left office because if I dared to point out some of Obama’s hypocrisies i.e. never prosecuting the Wall St. wolves who destroyed our economy, his illegal & immoral drone warfare, etc. people who I had somewhat of a connection with, would send me nasty messages asking me to not include them in my posts, etc.

 

Yep! If you point out hypocrisy, contradictions between words & behavior, etc., you soon find yourself persona non grata. Obama is now put up on a pedestal as if he were a saint or something. And especially now with that miscreant Trump in the White House, people have buried every dirty deed of Obama’s. Don’t get me wrong, I hated all the racist attacks towards Obama—-Trump played a large part there as well—but I’ll never forgive him for his grand betrayal especially when he had such an overwhelming mandate as he took office.

 

Social media essentially rewards denial, denial of our better natures & it encourages our dark sides, our aggression, our regressive aspects, & our infantile personalities. Again, consider the occupant in the oval office, the bloated & bellicose baby throwing his daily fits. Is it any wonder that he can’t go a day without tweeting his verbal bile? Twitter is the perfect tool for such a lizard-brain racist & hate monger. In brief, Facebook & the other so-called social media is the breeding ground for narcissists & psychopaths. It forces you to fight with yourself i.e. the more you suppress the real you & join in the superficial & shallow, the more popular you are. I want to insert another fact from history here; if you look at military dictatorships around the world, whenever they take over a country, one of the first things they do is shut down the universities. Why? Because as the students become educated, they begin to share their knowledge with their countrymen & they begin to resist the dictators. And the powerful do the same with the media. Don’t tell me you haven’t seen Trump follow this same game plan here in America?

 

And this internal war or strife that many of us are experiencing is causing dissonance in our minds & our spirits. This is reflected in the growing levels of anxiety we are feeling. As Vaknin tells us, the minute you post a “selfie,” your anxiety level goes up because you are vulnerable i.e. what if people don’t like my picture, etc. When teens were asked if it made them feel good being on social media, 47% of them said No, it makes them feel bad. Of course, this begs the question, then why in the Hell do they stay with it? Obviously, they’ve become conditioned.

 

I feel that a brief description of “cognitive dissonance” would be useful at this point;

 

Psychologist Leon Festinger first proposed a theory of cognitive dissonance centered on how people try to reach internal consistency.2

He suggested that people have an inner need to ensure that their beliefs and behaviors are consistent. Inconsistent or conflicting beliefs lead to disharmony, which people strive to avoid.

 

In other words, the deeper we go in our study of the “social media,” the more evident it becomes that it is anything but socially engaging or helpful to us. In fact, it is making the world a more unsocial or asocial place. Just what we need as we’re facing our extinction via global warming or the ever-looming threats of a nuclear exchange & we have that smiling, Big Mac viper in the White House alienating our allies & kissing ass to the world’s despots & dictators.

Trump’s heroes (murderous dictators) & Trump’s gangbanger pose

 

The professor continues; Most of the behavior on social media is robotic i.e. it doesn’t give meaning, it merely gives pain or pleasure (my interpretation). You push a button & get a result and the more you push the buttons, the more results you get (Conditioning). Social media is simple, it’s anti-complex. There is no world for social media, it is the world! There is no reality outside it, they live in it.

 

These are simulated people, they live in the Matrix. Social media is their reality, bits & bytes are their atoms. Their families are their peers. They perceive reality to be unreal & they perceive unreality (social media) to be real. Can you spell Trump?

 

Social media is designed to deter intimacy & intimacy reduces the need for addiction. Wow! I can testify to this my friend. When I first met my wife, from day two i.e. our first date, we spent every night from then on, together. And as our relationship & our love grew, I spent less & less time getting high and getting drunk with my friends. Because Jeri didn’t put any chains on me, I wanted to be around her more & more. It felt so natural, healthy, & normal being with her. I could talk to her and felt I was always heard.

 

Dr. Vaknin says that Intimacy is the biggest addiction and I say, Hallelujah brother! Facebook competes with intimacy. (it’s a faux intimacy) You’re either intimate or you’re on Facebook. Intimacy simply consumes too much of your time & you don’t have time for other addictions.

 

Above all, “Facebook & Twitter rely on loneliness & atomization, schizoid, separated, hermits, recluses, nerds, socially inept & unable to bond people. Remember the guys who created these social platforms i.e. the nerds who became the prototypes of modern hip or cool. (my phrasing) Intimacy is the biggest threat to social media so they atomize individuals.

Need I say anything?

 

This theory refers to “the tendency for society to be made up of a collection of self-interested and largely self-sufficient individuals, operating as separate atoms”.[2] Therefore, all social values, institutions, developments and procedures evolve entirely out of the interests and actions of the individuals who inhabit any particular society. The individual is the ‘atom’ of society and therefore the only true object of concern and analysis.[3]

 

The facts are that you’re a shameless liar defending a habitual liar & sexual predator.

[A fact is a statement that is consistent with reality or can be proven with evidence. The usual test for a statement of fact is verifiability — that is, whether it can be demonstrated to correspond to experience. Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scientific facts are verified by repeatable careful observation or measurement.]

In other words, the self is supreme. We only have to listen to ourselves, forget everyone else. Reminds me of the “Greed is Good” speech in Oliver Stone’s first movie called “Wall St.” And those of you around my age may remember Reagan’s celebration of Greed when he declared the 1980s the “Me Decade.” And once again my imaginary reader, this is precisely what we don’t need in this fragile state we’re all in. We need true social dialog & cooperation. I don’t mean to sound like an alarmist but if we don’t get our shit together and soon, those phony Christians may just get their wish i.e. Armageddon.

 

Furthermore, social media is built-in obsolescence on steroids (my phrase). Social media expires much faster than any product. The minute you post a tweet & the minute it’s been liked, 24 hours later it’s dead. And you need to renew the product & post another tweet. {see our Twittering Tweedledum in the oval office} These are the only manufacturers in the world who have made you their employee. The users are its employees. When you use social media, you generate the “Content.” And they sell your “content” to advertisers. Social media is supposed to be a “communication platform” but you do the communicating & they reap all the profits (my point).

 

And what really blew my mind & angered me beyond words was when I discovered that Facebook own the rights to our communications i.e. our “Content.” So, all the writing I posted on my Facebook page trying to explain complex issues, facts, historical knowledge, etc. etc. etc. was the property of Facebook and they can/could use it anyway they wanted. Yet we hear these corporations scream about their “intellectual property rights.” Yeah, their rights are all that matter, not ours!

 

Facebook continuously encourages people to share their thoughts, feelings, memories, etc. under the pretense that they’re fostering closer intimacy between its members when all the while, they’re selling our content to advertisers who use it in their attempts to sucker us into buying their products. We truly are a nation of Suckers & P.T. Barnum would be oh so glad to see what’s become of us. P.T. Barnum was the founder of the Ringling Brothers Circus & promoted hoaxes—probably Trump’s inspiration for his conspiracy theories—and P.T. Barnum is famous for declaring “There’s a sucker born every minute.” Clearly, Trump’s “base” is the three-ring circus clowns he’s suckered into cheering for their own demise i.e. taking away their food stamps, their jobs, etc.

Trump definitely is Public Enemy #1

 

Though Trump himself is more suited to the role of a Carnival huckster boasting & attracting suckers with his outrageous claims & devious techniques for robbing them blind. And it’s painfully obvious that Trump supporters are deaf, dumb, & blind because they so willingly go along with whatever he says or does no matter how perverse or illogical. They are literally the lambs happily marching to their slaughter. And as Dr. Vaknin also points out, these social media platforms are built for instant gratification like drugs. So, intimacy isn’t a direct threat but the real threat is that you’ll find someone through Facebook & will no longer use Facebook.

 

Specifically, Facebook & its competitors need your eyeballs i.e. your attention and your girlfriend, other social media platforms, T.V., etc. are all a threat to their domination of your attention. Case in point, Facebook won’t allow Google to crawl their database because that would take your attention away from Facebook for a portion of your attention. And Trump clearly needs all our attention all the time due to his massive insecurity & inferiority complex.

 

This faux intimacy that Facebook & others peddle to the unwary carries with it on the flipside, the constant risk of a large dose of pain i.e. you post a “Selfie,” and 3 out of 10 people may tell you how ugly you are. So, how in the Hell can you expect intimacy from these imaginary “friends?” Hence, users learn to interact on very superficial levels—to reduce their exposure to painful responses—and members become very pain averse. Social media has exponentially amplified the amount of negative social interaction and again, I can personally attest to this as well. Unfortunately, I spent way too much time responding to personal attacks on my character. We are such a misinformed & ignorant society as a whole that much of what I shared with people on Facebook was so obscure to most of the Facebook universe, that many people thought i’d just made the stuff I said up. And Trump is exhibit #1 as to why we need to banish “Selfies.”

 

Not to brag but to rightfully speak up in my defense, I have conservatively spent over 50,000 hours in approximately a 30-year period of avid reading, research, watching of documentaries, etc. in the areas of political science, history, philosophy, classical literature, etc. but because most of this knowledge isn’t common knowledge, many critics dismiss me as a troll, fabricator, etc. Therefore, the old adage of “What you don’t know can’t hurt you” is clearly a pernicious lie. Exposing yourself on Facebook by expressing your opinions, etc. can easily result in your being attacked by over 20,000 people at any given moment. And clearly, it’d take a very healthy ego or self-image to withstand this powerful an assault.

 

In conclusion, my central thesis is that Facebook plays a significant role in leading us down the path to fascism because it is all about corporate power to manipulate not only our choices in the marketplace but also in the voting booth. The G.O.P. has obviously shown that their love of power far outweighs their patriotism & remain silent as Trump trashes our society because they don’t want to lose their jobs. They use voter suppression, gerrymandering, rigging of election machines, & even turn a blind eye to the Russians hacking into our election system. Republicans should hang their heads in shame & move to countries where there is no pretense of freedom & democracy.

 

When I began writing this essay, I planned on incorporating the new documentary, “The Great Hack,” released on Netflix a few weeks back. But I realized that it would become too lengthy & most people wouldn’t even be able to sit still long enough to read the first part so I’m going to delve into the political part of Facebook’s crimes against humanity in a second essay which I’m going to title; “The Road to Fascism Part Two.”

Before I get into the meat & potatoes so-to-speak of my conclusion, I want to provide you with a few links by some people who played an integral part in the social media assault on democracy. Some of you may think me a fringe critic with my own agenda for whatever nefarious reasons so if you’re not afraid or too lazy to do a bit of homework unlike Donald Duck, check these critics out:

 

 

 

 

 

If you managed to find or make the time to watch the above video clips, I’m sure that you’ll agree that I haven’t exaggerated the very real threats to our survival as a democracy & as a species in the big picture. Okay, now for the connecting of the dots in terms of fascism:

Again, I can’t assume that everyone who might read this essay will be familiar with who Mussolini was due to our pitiful public education system so here you go.

Twin sons of different mothers (Trump & Mussolini)

For those of you who don’t know much about history, in the end, the citizens of Italy revolted against Mussolini & hung him for all to see in the public square. Remember; Pride cometh before a fall & Trump’s constant bragging is going to mean quite a fall for this low-life.

 

was Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Italy from the fascists’ takeover of state power in 1922 until 1943, and Duce from 1919 to his execution in 1945 during the Italian civil war. As dictator of Italy and founder of fascism, Mussolini inspired several totalitarian rulers such as Adolf Hitler.[2][3][

 

Mussolini’s foremost priority was the subjugation of the minds of the Italian people through the use of propaganda. The regime promoted a lavish cult of personality centered on the figure of Mussolini.

Some argue that Mussolini didn’t actually say the following quote but for the sake of this essay, I feel that it summarizes my point nicely;

““Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.”

 

And if you deny the truth of this statement in today’s America, you most likely are a member of Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan. I have been studying the rise of the corporate state for over 30 years but of course if you prefer to believe in Alex Jones, Donald Trump, & the National Enquirer, you probably haven’t read a single book in your life and therefore, my facts will totally escape you. Here’s Alex Jones, Trump’s friend & reliable source of facts;

Moreover, the Supreme Court’s ruling “Citizens United” handed down in 2010 effectively sold American democracy out to the corporate or fascist powers that be. Because corporations are no longer restricted in terms of how much money they can “donate” (bribe) to politicians. This has been described as the unleashing of “Dark Money” because corporations can hide their “donations” and not risk being boycotted by an informed public or having their hidden agendas to fuck their customers & the American public in general. One might argue that this was the opening of the door to the fascists taking over of our government. By-the-way, reflect on how tenaciously Trump refuses to release his tax information. He never tires of bragging i.e. lying about his prowess as a businessman so why does he refuse to reveal just how much money he is worth if he’s so proud of being a “billionaire?” Could it be that it’s all a grand lie he uses to dupe his White Supremacists & fellow fascists into believing he knows what he’s doing?

 

I used to have a blog called “Corporate Cockroaches,” but it was stolen out from underneath me so I’ve started again & my new blog is “The Cockroach Conspiracy.” And I have long argued that like cockroaches, when you turn the light on, they scurry for dark crevices & places to hide. And this is clearly indicative of corporate America. They strive to hide their profits, how they made their money, etc. because they know that we, the public, would tear them down if their crimes were revealed. They buy politicians with “donations,” because the politicians write the laws that can hurt or help them. This is the de facto state of democracy & we’re only deluding ourselves if we think otherwise.

 

Consider if you will if this is what our soldiers, sailors, airmen, & Marines have been fighting for, getting maimed for, & dying for around the world for the past century? Could it be that we have over 900 military bases around the world—and God knows how many secret or “black sites” —to support the corporate or fascist agenda of ruling the globe?

 

Fascism is the antithesis or the opposite of Democracy but the powers that be know that if they were honest & called it what it is, we’d revolt. So, the charade of our being defenders & promoters of democracy is vital for them to maintain. And the relatively recent phenomenon of the “Social media,” has proven to be a very effective weapon for corporate America in its decades long propaganda campaign to keep us dumb & hence easier to manipulate.

 

And let me remind you once again that no, this isn’t just a variation of an Alex Jones grand conspiracy. This is an agenda of the major corporations to ensure their continued profits & control over the institutions that were established to promote the general welfare of the public against the corporate interests.

Corporate power is like the elephant in the room that no one dares to mention because it would spell economic as well as political suicide for any who dared to. They’ve been getting away with their crimes against humanity, their gutting of true democracy, etc. for so long that the majority of us accept it as a law of nature or just the way it is.

 

Trump “won” the presidency because of the asinine electoral college system which allows a candidate to win even though they lost the popular vote. And he “won” because of the sophisticated/skillful machinations of Cambridge Analytica which I’ll delve into in part two. And he won because of the lack of moral integrity on the part of the Democratic party i.e. their sabotage of Bernie Sanders’ campaign.

 

I realize that this is all extremely depressing but does that mean it’s okay for us to bury our heads in the sand & proclaim that there’s nothing we can do about it because it’s all just too vast & complicated? Is that what you’ll tell your children or your grandchildren when they find themselves living in a giant gulag or Fortress America? H.G. Wells, one of the first science fiction writers, summed it up nicely in a quote from over a hundred years ago;

 

“Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.”

 

If you dare to be honest with yourself, you’ll see that Trump is making Fascism our reality!

 

The ball is in your court my imaginary friend & my imaginary reader.

 

—Rob DeLoss, Gold Beach, OR August 17, 2019 (one day before the sixth anniversary of my dear wife, Jeri’s passing)

The Love of my Life, Jeri Ellen DeLoss & me.

 

P.S.  Sorry, I almost forgot to mention that the social media is a powerful tool being used to “win the hearts & minds” of the American public. Do you recall the U.S. Army’s campaign in the Vietnam War to “win the hearts & minds” of the Vietnamese people? This was the introduction of what they called “psy ops” (psychological operations) i.e. we, the citizens are the enemy of the corporate elite & they will stop at nothing in their agenda of absolute or total control over us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Politics of Resentment in Post-Literate America

 

 

 

We are living in a very dangerous time because just when we need a well-informed citizenry more desperately than perhaps any time before in our history, we have a moron in the oval office throwing gasoline on the fire.

“Christian” Supremacists new version of Morality & Ethics

 

Trump’s rallies i.e. his non-stop public spectacles staged to boost his ego on his never-ending carnival of self-aggrandizement, are resembling more & more Hitler’s speech at Nuremberg. Of course, Hitler focused primarily on the Jews who were German citizens while Trump’s venom & vitriol is more generalized i.e. Mexicans, Muslims, women, or anybody not a member of the Duck Dynasty Klan.

Fortress Amerika!

 

What really troubles my soul is that this centuries-old tactic of blaming the victims of the elite continues to be effective & obviously Trump’s “base,” has no historical memory. The automatons who worship the ground that Trump walks upon are completely oblivious to his blatant manipulation of them. How in the Hell can they find “common cause” with a supposed billionaire—who refuses to release his tax returns because they most likely reveal what a charlatan he is—who has screwed thousands of people who have worked for him?

Beware of Cults of Personality & Authoritarians!

 

I believe a key insight into this dreadful phenomenon lies in the politics of resentment. What do I mean by this term? Quite simply that what unites Trump’s fan club is a hatred & burning resentment towards all who aren’t like them i.e. poor, white, working class born in America people.

 

You see, all dictators, oligarchs, demagogues, etc. throughout history knew that the best way to distract their citizens from the ugly realities of their lives was to blame the “other.” And again, the “other” can be any group you choose i.e. Mexicans, Muslims, Jews, Blacks, gays, handicapped, etc.

The bigger the lie & the more often you repeat it, it becomes truth.

 

It seems to be almost axiomatic or reflexive for people to blame their fellow victims rather than the power elite who are actually the ones responsible for their deprivations. I have been observing & writing about this tragic state of affairs for decades now & I never will understand it. I guess it must be human nature to deny or ignore one’s own responsibility for not informing oneself & participating in the democratic process & to blame those even worse-off than yourself for your inability to feed your family, have adequate healthcare, put a roof over your family’s head, etc.?

 

I am continually baffled that my fellow citizens can’t seem to comprehend the obvious fact that it is the rich who pass things like NAFTA which rewards the corporations for closing down their plants in the U.S. & going overseas where they can pay workers far less than they have to in the U.S. i.e. minimum wage which is an employer’s way of saying that they’d pay you even less if they could but the law requires they pay at least the minimum wage (some rap artist pointed this out).

 

Naturally, but sadly, the overwhelming majority of Americans allow themselves to be buffeted back & forth like a cork floating in the high seas. The 1% own the mass media & have been manipulating public opinion for decades i.e. the liberal bias in the mass media—common sense tells us that those who own the media aren’t going to allow serious criticism of their propaganda to be heard on the very stations, magazines, radio, etc. they own. Why? Because this would threaten the very power structure that helps keep them in power.

The “Liberal Media”

 

And yet Donald, the Magnificent is a master at using the media to sell his brand i.e. himself, to the world. He got something like several billion dollars of free advertising as he campaigned to become president while Bernie Sanders received a small fraction of the media’s attention. Why? Because Trump is basically a “shock jock” and knows that the more outrageous, nasty, racist, etc. he is, the more attention he’ll get. And the kicker is, after getting so much free publicity from the national media, Trump turns on his benefactors & calls them “fake news,” etc. Where would Trump be if it weren’t for the so-called fake media?

the truth behind the Trump brand/logo  

 

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see Trump’s game plan, and his smug mug & Cheshire Cat trademark smirk says it all i.e. you really are a nation of rubes & oh so easily duped by my huckster rap. This is a good place to share a quote from the great Bertrand Russell with you;

 

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid … Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.”

 

Take a few moments to really chew this thought over if you will. To my mind, this quote encapsulates the core of the problem we’re all facing whether we acknowledge it or not. As long as we remain apathetic or unwilling to expend the energy to inform ourselves, the rich & powerful will continue to have their boots on our necks.

 

If you expect to be treated fairly without being willing to do your homework i.e. inform yourself, you are asking for what never has been nor ever will be. All of human progress in terms of lifting up the lives of ordinary men & women has only come about due to serious & prolonged struggles against the wealthy. They clearly enjoy their status, privileges, & wealth and will not willingly or easily give these “perks” up.

 

And this is what I am talking about when I refer to “post-literate America.” For example, I allowed myself to get sucked into the Facebook world even though my gut told me from the beginning that Facebook was basically a forum for teenage girls. I can’t tell you how many thousands of hours I wasted on Facebook writing lengthy responses & essays on many of the critical issues facing us in today’s world only to get a rare reply of a sentence or two. And once emojis were introduced, I didn’t even get a sentence but more often than not, a happy face.

 

Do you seriously think we’re going to mount a serious revolution for our freedom with emojis? In other words, if we can’t even be bothered to take the time to write a few sentences to each other in camaraderie or support of one another, what chance do we have of making any progress?

 

A couple of years ago, it dawned on me that since we’re clearly such a materialistic society i.e. we only value those members of our society that can prove their “worth” by pointing to their wealth, material possessions, celebrity, etc., quantification seems to reign supreme. So, it occurred to me that I should perhaps attempt to quantify my knowledge? By-the-way, before I met my lovely wife, Jeri, I had several relationships with girls/women whom I loved deeply & whom I believe loved me deeply but they invariably ended because they were afraid that I wasn’t “ambitious” enough.

 

This reflects just a part of the high price I’ve paid over the years. I too used to believe that the word “ambition” solely referred to how much money a person was “worth.” Then it dawned on me, Aha! True, I’m not “ambitious” in the usual sense of wanting to become financially wealthy but I am ambitious as Hell when it comes to becoming as knowledgeable or as wise as I possibly can.

 

Conservatively, over the last 30 years, I have spent roughly 50,000 hours reading the classics & modern classics in history, politics, philosophy, literature, etc. & unlike Donny the Liar & Denier in Chief, I can back it up. I have collected approximately 10,000 books in my personal library & have made copious notes in several hundred of my books. I have listened to radio programs on politics, collected thousands of articles, written a couple hundred essays, many of which are 20 to 30 pages or more, written a couple thousand pages on two major projects so far, read magazine articles, etc.

 

In the notes I have made in the blank pages of my books, I either copy passages that I feel are important, verbatim or I paraphrase them & often write someone’s name whom I remember having an argument with about the subject or whom I would like to show the passage to. I have also developed my own, crude symbology of stars, hearts, triangles, etc. in an attempt to show the value of said passage.

 

I hope that you, my imaginary reader, believe me when I tell you that this isn’t merely me imitating the braggart in the White House but my attempt to establish my bonifides. Continuing on with the twin pillars of this essay i.e. the politics of resentment & post-literate America, there are countless studies, polls, etc. confirming how anti-intellectual America has become over the past 50 years & even further if you read the classic by Richard Hofstadter, “Anti-intellectualism in American Life.” I basically dissected this book because I went through it with a fine-tooth comb so-to-speak, twice.

 

I went through this American classic the second time because I used it as a sort of skeleton outline in my on-going magnum opus; Truth Against the World. This project has become a work of gargantuan proportions & I’ve broken it down into three separate books. I still have a lot more to add but the first book in this series is titled; “The Christian Fundamentalists War Against Secular Humanism.”

 

Speaking of which, these so-called “Christians” personify a major portion of Trump’s & America’s politics of resentment. In a nutshell, these faux “Christians” are resentful & angry that they aren’t accorded the power & prestige as a sort of American Taliban. And to prove just how hypocritical they are, how else can you explain the fact that they staunchly support & defend Trump who is the embodiment of the Seven Deadly Sins? In brief, they prove how shallow their “Christianity” is & how meaningless Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” is to them.

 

We moved a lot as I was growing up but I always sought out & attended the local church wherever we went. I knew next to nothing about the differences between denominations. I simply enjoyed the experience & Sunday School. But somewhere around the age of 14 or 15, the hypocrisy just became too brazen. And at the risk of sounding grossly overly simplistic, I believe the Sermon on the Mount & the Commandment to do unto others as you’d have them do unto you, is all we need to practice.

 

Embarrassingly, we are known the world around as being one of the most illiterate nations on Earth, most notably among the so-called “advanced” nations. Many Americans openly brag about not having read a single book in the past year. Moreover, it’s become common knowledge that Trump won’t even bother to read the daily briefings that are so vital for the leader of the world’s most powerful nation.

 

Instead, Trump is noted for his watching television several hours per day & most conspicuously, “FOX News,” which any student of modern history knows should more accurately be referred to as America’s “Pravda.” (Russia’s version of the New York Times i.e. their paper of propaganda)

 

I must admit that I never cease to be amazed at the level of spectacular ignorance & utter inability to even formulate a single, coherent sentence by Trump. But somewhere deep inside I can’t help but wonder; Is this really a master act of deception on the part of Trump to distract us from his & his craven cronies consistent unraveling of our democracy?

 

In other words, is it humanly possible for someone to be so glaringly stupid in just about every sentence that comes out of his mouth?

 

In conclusion, I’d like to share with you a portion from a transcript of my favorite, alternative news station, “Democracy Now!” which I have been following for the past 20 years—nearly from its beginning. This is Wayne Barrett, who followed Trump’s infamous rise more thoroughly than any other journalist:

 

You know, he has made a career—when I say I don’t know why he’s never been prosecuted, maybe the prime time that he could have been prosecuted was at the time of his downfall in 1990 and ’91. Well, you know, the banks kept him alive, as he was too big to fail. So, they kept him alive. But I wrote in the book—he certainly didn’t sue when I said it—I didn’t say that he had made—submitted false financial statements to the bankers to get a billion dollars in personally guaranteed loans. I said he submitted fraudulent ones. Right? And I lay out a case for that in the book. He was engaged in completely defrauding the banks, and the banks knew it. OK? And they were giving him the loans anyway. So, they kept him alive. But even more so than that, the House Banking Committee wanted to do public hearings about it; the banks wouldn’t cooperate. The district attorney of Manhattan was a big friend of Donald’s. Donald was his second-biggest giver. Robert Morgenthau’s second-biggest giver was Donald Trump. Donald was the chairman of the Police Athletic League, which was Morgenthau’s biggest charity. So, he was extremely close. He hired—Andy Maloney was the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District. He hired Maloney’s brother. Right? Rudy Giuliani was the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, and we know how close they got. I wrote a whole story about how their relationship developed. I was at Rudy Giuliani’s first fundraiser when he decided to run for mayor, and there’s Donald at the main table. He’s the co-chair of the first Rudy Giuliani fundraiser for the mayorality in 1989. So, his relationships with prosecutors and the fact that the bankers—they were embarrassed by what they had done; they didn’t want any investigation of this. So, the combination of the two gave—gave them a pass—gave him a pass.

 

https://www.democracynow.org/2016/7/5/wayne_barrett_on_donald_trumps_broken

 

 

In brief, everything about Trump is a fraud and always has been. You could say that he is our greatest “flim-flam president.” And by “greatest,” I mean he represents the worst of the worst in terms of human qualities!

 

—Rob DeLoss, July 19, 2019 Gold Beach, Oregon

 

Addendum

 

Clearly in a “culture” as post-literate as ours & in which many Americans brag about not having read a single book in the past year, some even boast that they’ve never read a single book in their lives, it’s easy to manipulate their emotions as Trump obviously does. And willful ignorance & violence go hand in hand when people are looking to blame others for their misfortunes. Personally, I believe that Trump’s walking dead knows that it’s the rich who have fucked them but they don’t know where to focus their anger towards the rich or it just seems so impossible to take them on & that too is why they prefer to blame people of color.

 

Moreover, people seem to have a penchant for violence & chaos and Trump allows them to vent their anger on a regular basis which is satisfying for those of low I.Q. So, a rightful resentment toward the 1% is transferred on to the poorest victims of our society & they don’t have the power to fire you like your boss does.

 

Trump is the most audacious liar I’ve ever heard of & he even tells his zombie followers to not believe their own eyes or ears or any of the media but only to listen & believe his lies. And what is truly frightening is the fact that this dunce has the power to start a nuclear war & denies the reality of climate destruction. Trump hasn’t “drained the swamp,” but rather he is tearing down the structure of our government with every person he has appointed in his cabinet & etc. So, when your Social Security checks stop coming along with your pension checks, & etc., remember, you asked for it with your blind submission to that vile creature in the White House who I’m sure will be crying crocodile tears for you as you seek shelter on our mean streets!

 

Yep! The world-wide economic collapse of 2008 which crippled the world & from which we still haven’t fully recovered was largely due to deregulation of the financial markets & Trump is deregulating everything he can get his hands on so as to further enrich himself & his butt-buddies. Oh well?

What I imagine the inner “mind” of Trump to look like (Hieronymous Bosch)

The Christian Supremacists Pact with the Devil

 

 

Admittedly, my use of the word “Devil,” is sensationalistic but in today’s America, The National Enquirer appears to hold more sway than The New York Times with Trump automatons so this should appeal to their sensibilities?

 

Many of our fellow citizens have clearly fallen under the spell of the Charlatan in Chief & I feel sickened unto my soul at their blindness. And I sympathize with their righteous anger because I too, have been screwed-over countless times in my life—I’m 66 years old—by the government but even more so by the corporate giants which I refer to as the Corporate Cockroaches.

Trump defenders will undoubtedly spin this as proof of the witch-hunt against Trump

 

As far as I’m concerned, the key difference between myself & many, if not most, of Trump’s supporters is the fact that I have been paying serious attention to politics for well-over 30 years & I understand how the 1% who are truly running the world, have duped so many into believing it’s an elite cabal of liberals who are behind our troubles. (though there is an element of truth to this to some extent but the reality is it’s an amalgamation of greedy, self-interested forces, liberal, conservative, & numerous other perspectives)

 

If you’ll just take a brief survey of Western history, you’ll see the horrific history of what happened when the Church & the State worked together i.e. the individual got fucked royally (pun intended). And this is why our Founding Fathers were very clear about the importance of separating Church from State. Sadly, far too many Americans today either never learned the critical lessons of world history re: this matter or they simply don’t give a shit & are willingly ignorant on the subject?

substitute all the amoral/immoral acts of Trump for the word “Satan”

You see, my imaginary reader, when the power of the church i.e. Christian evangelicals & their steady encroachment into the halls of political power on the local, state, & federal levels over the decades, is united with the power of the government in the same spheres of influence & control over our lives, the overwhelming majority of citizen activist groups/organizations are steamrolled over.

 

Moreover, in today’s “connected” world via the power & scope of the Internet & the myriad so-called “social networks,” it’s very easy to spread fear, hate, & lies. And if we won’t, don’t, or can’t take the time to check out the validity of the claims by those trying to sucker us into their web of deceit, we become just more cannon-fodder for the morally bankrupt.

 

Believe it or not my friend, I do wish that I could offer you a simple method or answer to this complex state of affairs but unlike the con-man in the oval office, I won’t insult your intelligence as he does day-in & day-out. Sadly, in this crazy world of ours where the quantity of our “wealth” is just about the only thing that matters when it comes to our public “influence,” I am only wealthy in terms of the amount of time, energy, & love I have expended in my life-long pursuit of knowledge.

 

And yeah, I know that some of you, especially you die-hard Trump fans, will dismiss me as just another elitist & were this not so absurd, it’d be amusing. Yeah, me the elitist? Single parent (my mom), multiple cruel step-dads/mom’s boyfriends, drunkenness & violence throughout, piss-poor public schools, hundreds of Mickey Mouse dead-end jobs in factories, pumping gas, flipping burgers, etc. , standing up to the U.S. Army & refusing to allow them to send me to Vietnam even though they wanted to make me an officer, scoring at the 11th grade, sixth month level in reading when in the sixth grade but never given the opportunity or the encouragement to rise to my intellectual abilities. Yep! Obviously, I am just another one of the elitists that the humble Trump detests.

a dear friend who helped me emotionally weather the storm while AWOL from the U.S. Army

 

So, you decide for yourself, are you going to use your “common sense” which so many of our fellow working-class citizens love to proclaim, or are you going to continue to believe the perhaps billionaire—we’ll never know for sure because he’ll never release his tax returns—or is there the slightest possibility that I could be telling you straight-up?

“Christian” Supremacists new version of Morality & Ethics

 

Sorry if I get side-tracked & veer off course a bit but like our recently anointed Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh, I too like beer & I’m drinking beer as I write this. Yeah, there used to be a modicum of decorum, civility, or just simple decency but with the illegal insertion of Trump as the symbolic head of our government, all that has vanished out the window & the bar has been lowered to such an extent, that it’s about as difficult to step-over that “bar” as it’d be to step over the proverbial line in the sand.

 

I mean, seriously people? A president who brags about grabbing women’s pussies & getting away with it & a supreme court judge who was rammed-through the confirmation process under a very dark cloud of not being that different from the commander-in-chief when it comes to matters of morality? To say nothing of the assorted other despicable excuses for human beings that made up the Trump cabinet & keep getting replaced by more of the same.

 

How any of these self-proclaimed “Christian Supremacists,” or politicians or corporate spokesmen, etc. have the audacity to stand-up in front of television cameras on the world stage & defend this cabal of amoral human cockroaches, defies incredulity.

 

I stopped calling myself a Christian when I was about 14 years old. The hypocrisy just became all too obvious & in hindsight, I am glad that I did because I can proudly disassociate myself from all those wolves in sheep’s clothing who kiss Trump’s feet like spineless slugs.

 

In a nutshell my imaginary reader, the powers that be, the power elite, the status quo, or however you may care to refer to them, have used a tried but true strategy of divide & conquer. Yeah, this is a military term & tactic and is very appropriate because they, the 1%, have been conducting class warfare against the rest of us throughout recorded history.

 

Of course, they deny this vehemently & get all bent out of shape, stand up on their hind-legs spitting & foaming at the mouth in self-righteous indignation whenever accused of this. And it doesn’t take much effort to see the three clubs they wield with usual success i.e. God, Guns, & Gays. Trump merely added Mexicans & Muslims to the recipe & roughly a third of our fellow citizens swallowed the poison whole.

 

And even though I gave-up on Christianity as it is preached in most of America’s churches & not practiced in public & certainly not in politics, I can remember my Sunday School lessons like Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.” In my agnostic/atheist humble opinion, anyone who has a kind heart can see that the Beatitudes summed Christianity up in a nutshell and oh, so beautifully.

What part don’t you understand?

 

Yet it never ceases to amaze me & depress me at the same time how many of these “Christian” fundamentalists, Dominionists, evangelicals, white supremacists, Klansmen, Neo-Nazis, Alt Right, etc. seem to honestly believe that they are Christians?

 

I’ve never really been that much of a “pot-head,” and in fact, many of my friends over the years have been amused & amazed at how long a quarter ounce of pot can last me i.e. usually a year or longer. But I am proud to identify myself as an old hippie because it was very simple, and yeah, naïve of us but we basically believed in peace, love, & dope (the natural dope such as pot, peyote, mescaline that wasn’t adulterated by greedy & unscrupulous drug dealers).

 

We viewed “drugs” as a tool to help in our enlightenment & we cared about one another, the environment, justice, equality, freedom, truth, etc. —not that different from what our founding fathers believed in & tried to establish in our Constitution & our form of government (and yeah, I am aware of the hypocrisies & contradictions).

 

I for one, would love to see a Renaissance of those idealistic values of the hippies, the student protestors, the dope smokers, the non-conformists, the radicals, the wanderers of the 1960s and I am 100% in favor of the proposed “Green New Deal” that is drawing more & more of us like the Pied Piper of Hamlin towards a Shangri-La, a Paradise Lost. Excuse me, it’s the literature major in me. But what do we have nowadays, if not  our dreams?

 

“Reality T.V.,” which gave us the likes of Trump and the glorification of lie, cheat, steal, backstab, whatever it takes to win. Are these the values of Jesus? And how in the hell can Mike Pence stand up there next to Trump & believe he’s still a Christian? No, it’s as clear as the nose on your face, these faux Christians will & have sold their souls and any semblance of decency they may have had. Why?

 

Because of their lust for power. They are every bit as fanatical as the worst of the “Muslims” who claim to be Muslim but commit terrorist attacks. And like those phony “Muslims,” many of the American Taliban, gladly commit their own versions of domestic terrorism in the name of their god, who more honesty should be acknowledged as the Anti-Christ.

 

Isn’t this a pitiful state of affairs when an avowed non-Christian has to remind you “Christians” that you’re not behaving very Christ-like? I deliberately used the term “devil” in the title of this essay because to me, the words “devil,” “Satan,” “Lucifer,” etc. are really synonyms for evil and evil in my book is all that hurts, denigrates, physically attacks, humiliates, rejects, attempts to silence, shames, judges others, fears, intimidates, discourages, etc.

 

I could go on and on and on but I believe my point is clear? I believe down to the marrow of my bones that all of us who clearly have love for our fellow human beings in our hearts, are the truly righteous. I don’t want to rule over others & I sure as Hell don’t & won’t let anyone rule over me though I do have to appear to play along with this evil system.

 

In conclusion my friend, there is so much more that unites us than divides us. These divisions are grossly exaggerated & are used by the 1% to keep us divided so they can more easily control us. Why? Quite simply, for the wealth of the world. We have been indoctrinated our entire lives—for me, since 1952—into believing that there was a vast conspiracy of evildoers out to enslave us or kill us i.e. the Communists, the international drug cartels, and currently, terrorists.

 

And no, I’m not denying the existence of nor the destructiveness of these forces but, if you’ll do a bit of research, you’ll discover that each of these bogey-men have been used to keep us in line & paying our taxes, and dying or being maimed in the perpetual war system that has existed my whole life. Communist Russia has/had something like seven countries under its “control.” America has over 900 military bases around the world & who knows how many secret bases? Don’t believe me, check out Chalmers Johnson for yourself. America has been financially supporting, training the secret police of dictators, & often sending in our special forces & our regular army to back bloody dictators for decades.

 

Too much to swallow? Check out Major General Smedley F. Butler of the U.S.M.C. (United States Marine Corps) if you think me full of shit and spend just ten minutes reading his quotes re:  his tenure. And here’s probably the most bitter pill for you to swallow? America, manipulated by the transnational corporations that President Eisenhower warned us about in his farewell address i.e. Beware the Military-Industrial Complex—he wanted to include Congress in this unholy alliance but was persuaded to leave it out.

 

The data, the information, the knowledge, the truth, the wisdom is all available for any who seriously care & are willing to search for it for themselves. I have spent conservatively, 50,000 hours in my pursuit and no, this doesn’t mean that I have the corner on the truth but it does mean, that I am light-years ahead of fuckin’ cold-blooded mercenaries like Trump!

 

Rob DeLoss, Trinidad, CA (April 19, 2019)

Trump Telling it Like it Isn’t!

 

 

 

I was watching a video clip recently of Michael Moore being interviewed about his new film, “Fahrenheit 11/9” and a couple of things he said, really hit home with me. He said that he had interviewed the notorious S.O.B. (my description) Steve Bannon, the hatchet guy who was probably the key factor in saving Trump’s failing presidential campaign near the end?

 

And when Moore asked Bannon why the republicans just keep kicking the democrats asses (my paraphrasing), Bannon replied; “We go for the head-shot & the democrats are having pillow fights.” And it struck me like it did Michael Moore that here it is in a nutshell, the raw, ugly, painful truth. 

 

So, that being said, I’m notifying you here & now, this essay is going to hit hard, maybe even below the belt so-to-speak at times. I’m sick to death of being advised to play nice, be civil, etc. and especially now that we have such a vile, crude, corrupt, greedy, habitual liar & braggart in the White House.

 

Just how fuckin’ stupid are all of you who believe in this con-man who has lied & bullied his way to the top of a house of cards? In the last few days, it’s been “revealed” that Trump isn’t the great success he keeps telling the world that he is & this cracks me up because it’s long been known by those who have been paying attention that this is perhaps his most outrageous claim & boldest lie!

and this is only a fraction of his failures!

 

If your pussy-grabbing low-life is so successful, why has he always refused to reveal his tax returns? Is this your idea of “telling it like it is?” If he is such an honest, “tell it like it is” guy, why did he have the White House refuse to release something like 90,000 pages of Kavanaugh’s record when he was working for George W. Bush? If he’s such a successful businessman, why did he file for bankruptcy four times because he failed at the casino business which is an amazing feat in itself? Why have so many of his business ventures failed? 

 

You know, it just dawned on me, he should market Trump Kool Aid because his base has definitely drunk long & deep from this well of swamp juice. Here’s just a few of his failures which he just glosses over when they fail, like the lawsuits he loses but still claims victory in. Trump airlines, Trump beverages, Trump: the Game, Trump Casinos (even when daddy bailed him out), Trump magazine, Trump Mortgage, Trump steaks, Trump’s travel site, Trump’s comms company, Trump Tower Tampa, Trump University, & Trump vodka to name just a few of his many failures.

 

Sadly, what so many of you Trump-aholics haven’t caught on to is the fact that the vast majority of what appear to be his real estate properties aren’t in fact owned by him, no, those who own them pay him for the use of his name. And his name is everything to him & is why he gets so defensive & aggressive to all who cast aspersions on his “good name,” i.e. his brand. This is why he can’t ever stop singing his own praises, even as president of the U.S., he’s a constant pitch-man, con-man, hustler trying to convince the public that he’s a success when he’s an utter failure on every level. 

 

For those of you who pride yourself on having “common sense,” doesn’t it occur to you that the age-old wisdom/maxim that those who are truly talented at something, don’t go around bragging about it because they know that people who know them & their work, already know it. The braggarts are always those who are the most insecure & almost always full of shit! 

 

Tragically for America & the rest of the world because of the damage Trump has already done & God knows how much more, Trump’s true success is his ability to lie, exaggerate, deny, confuse, & never apologize. He learned this from his mentor, Roy Cohn, one of the slimiest creatures to ever crawl out of that swamp that Trump swore to drain but has actually restocked. And another mentor of Trump’s is the Nazi Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, who followed a simple formula i.e. lie & never stop lying, repeat the lie ad nauseam and gradually, the public will accept it as truth or fact. And the bigger the lie, the easier it is to get away with it.

Roy Cohn, taught Donald deny, lie, attack ad infinitum!

 

And this is why the recent revelations that one of Trump’s most treasured lies i.e. that daddy only loaned him a mere million dollars and that he paid him back with interest won’t matter either because the Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan fan club won’t believe that daddy actually gave him over $400,000,000 and that they both defrauded the government of hundreds of millions of dollars in a wide variety of tax scams. Of course, this is all part of the plan and why Donny Duck continuously attempts to discredit the media, especially the New York Times newspaper, because they print the ugly facts that could wake people up but which don’t matter if you’re from zombie-land.

Steve Benson / Creators Syndicate

 

And again for you simpletons who probably didn’t even graduate from high school, because your Fuhrer tells you to ignore everything you read, see, & hear except what he says, is an age-old technique of authoritarians, fascists, & tyrants. And you claim that you’re proud Americans? What do you think your fathers & grandfathers fought WWII for?

 

It’s truly frightening and depressing that a blatant fraud such as the girly-man Donny has duped so many of you into believing his bullshit! The Duck’s “success” such as it is, has been almost entirely dependent on Daddy War-bucks & the assistance of the Italian American mafia in New York & New Jersey whom his mentor, Roy Cohn, introduced him to and his new benefactors, the Russian mafia & their boss, Putin, who have bought/invested hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars of Donny’s “real estate holdings.”

 

This duplicitous would be tin-can dictator has retained a small army of lawyers throughout the course of his “business career,” because he is constantly being sued for fraud, failure to pay workers, sub-contractors, etc. etc. etc. and you actually believe this guy is your champion? Jesus fuckin’ Christ! I believe he has had something like 4,000 law suits filed against him. Yep, clearly a guy who “tells it like it is.”

 

Here’s a specific example of your leader’s business integrity, he hired several hundred “illegal” (though I hate the term) Polish construction workers to do the demolition of a building he was going to turn into one of his casinos. The workers were so poor that they lived on the construction (deconstruction site) and they were promised a whopping $4 an hour for their work but the Donald cheated them out of even that paltry wage. How would you like to be fucked like that? Would you still sing the Dick-head’s praises?

 

And speaking of “deconstruction,” how appropriate because that is precisely what this Creature from the Black Lagoon is doing to America i.e. he’s deconstructing our entire government, all the checks & balances, every program that was established to help those of us not born with a silver spoon in our mouths, and he’s eliminating even more of the regulations on the financial services companies that brought us to the brink of total economic collapse & which I contend we are still suffering from, and the complete elimination of all environmental regulations so the oil spill that did so much for the south part of the U.S. with the billions, if not trillions of gallons of oil that contaminated the Caribbean for decades if not centuries to come, etc. etc. etc. So, if you think the crash of 2008 wasn’t so bad, just wait until the next one. Yeah, it’s going to be great fun & you’d better get your sleeping bags ready because you’ll soon be joining those poor souls living on the margins of this so-called society & civilization. The super banks, “too big to fail,” have gotten even bigger & continue to give themselves obscene levels of bonuses as they suck the blood out of our economy.

 

Yeah, just keep burying your head in the FOX “News” bubble and when your children, your wives, your husbands, all your loved ones die slow, excruciating deaths & have no health insurance thanks to the Duck Dynasty, you can sleep comfortably knowing that you supported the dictator who made it possible. When he takes away your food stamps, your social security, your Medicare, Don’t worry, be happy, Donny made America great again, but the great is for the 1% who pay no taxes, ship the decent paying jobs overseas where they can pay workers $2.00 per day and don’t have to worry about health, environmental, pollution, etc. regulations, not you or I you simpletons! Yeah, this is your American Idol, the moron who flip-flops constantly even within the same sentence he turns around and denies having said what he just said, even though it’s on tape. Yes,  it’s all an elaborate Democratic conspiracy against him. And when you wear your “maga” hat in public, you’re in fact wearing a dunce cap for all the world to see.

 

Well, sorry to disturb your “common sense” again but, if the democrats were capable of such complex conspiracies, why aren’t they the ones in power? I hate to break it to you—No, not really!—but probably the overwhelming majority of you Trump Walking Dead are FOX “News” watchers. And the fact that they have been allowed to get away with this charade or façade of being a “news” organization for over 20 years proves how truly stupid we are as a nation. Moreover, FOX isn’t even the worst of it, Donny Darko is a fan of Alex Jones, you know, the guy who claims that the horrific murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School was all a hoax. And Donald Duck also believes in The National Enquirer, that rag that anyone with more than a third grade education has always known is only good for one thing i.e. to line the bottom of your bird’s cage.

For those of you who haven’t completely abandoned concern for the truth or facts, and no, not Kellyanne Conway’s “alternate facts,” and if you can spare the time away from your Kardashians soap operas, etc., you might look up what used to be called Russia’s main newspaper, Pravda. It literally means “truth” in Russian. You see, FOX “News” is America’s Pravda i.e. state propaganda voice. It was crystal clear during the George W. Bush administration & FOX leader, Roger Ailes, you know, your friendly sexual predator just like Donny Duck, Kavanaugh, etc. etc. etc. sent the White House their daily talking points i.e. the propaganda outline for the day to just repeat ad nauseam to the mindless viewers who took it as gospel truth.

And sadly, I have to admit here that The New York Times, you know, the bastion of “liberal thought & opinion” in America was equally guilty of beating the war drums for the invasion of Iraq and we, even you, should all be well aware by now of how great that turned out i.e. the creation of Isis & just one bloody mess after another guaranteeing that we’ll never run out of terrorists to go after.

 

Yeah, I know, terrible me, I’ve been so nasty, mean, etc. well, tough fuckin’ shit! We’re circling the drain and I’m sick & tired of playing nice-nice with all these corporate cockroaches and all the morons who kiss their asses even as they’re being kicked to the curb by the same cockroaches.

 

Take an honest look at the vast wasteland that stretches across America in between the East coast & the West coast, the towns that are now ghost towns. The rust belt as they call it. Yep! The wonders of the “free market” where the rich are free to fuck us all, commit fraud via their corporations as standard business practice but if you or I write a bad check, we go to jail. And they, every great once in awhile when busted, don’t even have to admit guilt and it isn’t even on their record, they pay a relatively small fine when compared to the profits they made committing their crimes and they return to doing the same shit.

 

We’re fast becoming one of those “third world” nations we’re so fond of looking down on & we blame the immigrants because the Duckmeister tells you it’s their fault. No, you morons, the fault is the corporate cockroaches at the highest levels of true power who don’t give a fuck about America or its citizens but pretend to so you’ll go or you’ll allow your children to go fight & die in their constant wars to make themselves ever richer. What a bunch of suckers!

 

So for every one of you ignorant fuckin’ assholes who proudly defend Trump, don’t come crying to me when you join the ranks of America’s ever expanding homeless who are treated like ghosts & garbage in this shallow, hollow land we proclaim as the land of freedom & democracy, because I won’t and don’t have one ounce of sympathy & it was your willful ignorance that allowed this to come about!

The girly-man has duped his base into believing he’s fighting for them i.e. the giant tax break that goes to the uber rich & has inflated the national deficit which they will use to defend their need to cut food stamps, health care, Social Security, etc. for us, the 99%. Mark my words, you’ve been suckered by a snake-oil, con-man. The corporate cockroaches love Donny boy!

–Rob DeLoss, October 6, 2018   (Trinidad, CA)

 

P.S.  And for those of you who still claim that Trump is telling it like it is, you are clearly brain-dead & belong in an Alzheimer’s unit because you might wander into traffic & dent somebody’s car with your blockhead. Jim Jones would’ve loved having you as a member of Jonestown.

 

 

“Reality T.V.” and Trump-world

 

 

 

I believe the disturbing phenomenon of “reality t.v.,” coincided roughly with the equally disturbing introduction of what’s called “FOX News?” I’d like to begin by stating up front that I may be guilty from time to time of “lecturing” but sadly, I’ve learned that I can’t take for granted what so often seems like common wisdom. In fact, the older I get, the more I feel like a living anachronism.

 

These sinister forces began to creep into our culture roughly 20 years ago & I believe that the T.V. series “Survivor” was among the first, if not, the first of these “reality t.v. shows?” I watched perhaps two or three of this series with my wife & was immediately struck by its crassness or celebration of the worst in people I.e. backstabbing, lying, cheating, etc. In-other-words, win by any means necessary. I remember saying to my wife, what is this teaching our children, this is unhealthy, etc. I never watched it again nor any of the plethora of other “reality t.v.” programs that followed. Yeah, I know, many will probably dismiss me as an elitist snob, etc. Well, I wear that label as a badge of honor especially in this time & day where we have a reality t.v. show host as our president who is a national disgrace & embarrassment.

 

Before I proceed, here’s something to mull over; Trump’s supporters represent roughly a third of the American public, and coincidentally, approximately a third of our citizens also deny the Holocaust ever happened, & as of three years ago, roughly 32 million Americans are “functionally illiterate.” If you’re not one of Trump’s fans who has completely shut-off the rational side of your mind, reflect on the hundreds of times you’ve seen Trump address the public & his bumbling efforts to put together a single, coherent sentence. Moreover, he’s stated publicly many times his aversion to reading & that he doesn’t care to read the daily presidential briefings that all our other presidents read & knew was of critical importance. If this doesn’t worry you, congratulations, you are definitely one who has drunk the Kool Aid of our Jim Jones in the oval office.

 

Yes, this is very snide or sarcastic of me but I’m not really that far off the mark I.e. like Jim Jones, Trump has repeatedly advised his “base,” to ignore everything written about him or said about him if it doesn’t come from him. Yet, that isn’t even possible because we have tons of videotape of his public comments & he’ll deny having said what he said the very next day. It’s all a vast, left-wing conspiracy designed to make him look bad. If it weren’t all so serious & dangerous, it’d be laughable but it’s not! I remember how they labeled John Kerry a “flip-flopper” when he was running for the office of the presidency, Donny flip-flops often within the same sentence that just came out of his mouth, or at most, two or three “sentences” after whatever garbled string of words he let flow.

 

Trump has been seeking the approval & acceptance of what’s sometimes referred to as “the New York City Cultural or Intellectual Elite,” for decades, don’t forget that New York City is his hometown i.e. where he grew up & where his dad & he built their crooked, real estate empire. Naturally, they—the New York “elite” have shunned him because of his obvious ignorance & disdain for culture & intelligence as well as his crude, crass, & contemptible opinions & behavior over the decades. He now seeks to destroy their credibility like a boy seeking revenge for being bullied or socially ostracized. By-the-way, New York City is considered the intellectual capital of America & has been for quite some time because it is where the overwhelming majority of American publishing corporations are located. And, the New York Times has long been dubbed, “The Paper of Record” because they were the paper that represented the highest standard of American journalism. In brief, almost all the other major newspapers in America take their lead from the New York Times i.e. their lead stories are basically reprinted in the other major papers across the country.

 

Notwithstanding, there is a sliver of truth to Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan’s label of “fake news.” But “fake” isn’t the correct adjective to use, no, cowardly or sell-out would be more appropriate adjectives to describe the mainstream media. It’s really quite obvious, we are down to five or six megalithic corporations that own perhaps 95% or even more of our media (television, radio, magazines, books, newspapers, etc.) and they are certainly not going to allow serious critics of “our” media to be heard because it would undermine their business i.e. hurt them financially by causing them to lose advertisers which are their bread & butter.

 

As far as “journalistic integrity” is concerned, the American media have clearly betrayed the U.S. public because they have largely ceased to act as a watchdog on the government & the corporate interests. They more accurately should be referred to as “lapdogs.” And this again is why it’d be laughable if it weren’t so deadly serious that we have a “president” who is clearly proud of being an anti-intellectual. Trump is, if we are to believe that he’s actually a billionaire—who knows, he refuses to show us his tax returns—is part of that 1% who keep on reaping the lion’s share of the tax breaks & most notably the trillion & a half dollar one that he gave himself & his cronies just recently. My intellectual hero, Noam Chomsky, & his co-author, Edward Hermann, wrote the modern classic on how “our” media system really operates, it’s called “The Manufacture of Consent.”

“The” classic if you’re interested?

 

Here it is in a nutshell;

 

“ The essential ingredients of our propaganda model, or set of news “filters,” fall under the following headings: (I) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (~) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and “experts” funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) “flak” as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) “anticommunism” as a national religion and control mechanism. These elements interact with and reinforce one another. The raw material of news must pass through successive filters, leaving only the cleansed residue fit to print. They fix the premises of discourse and interpretation, and the definition of what is newsworthy in the first place, and they explain the basis and operations of what amount to propaganda campaigns.”  https://chomsky.info/consent01/ 

 

You see, my imaginary reader, the conservatives started a myth decades ago there’s a “liberal media bias” & poor conservatives have been unfairly attacked & criticized roughly ever since the New Deal was established. And the New York Times is the bastion of liberalism in America. Yeah, right! That’s why the New York Times beat the war drums for our invasion of Iraq every bit as strongly as FOX “News.” Every time I hear FOX referred to as news, it almost makes me nauseous. For all you Trumpsters, if you weren’t so blinded by Trump’s dog whistle politics of hate, fear, & racism, you might begin to realize that FOX is truly the epitome of “fake news.” And FOX “News” is where Donny, the girly-man with small hands, gets his “facts” daily along with Alex Jones who claims the massacre of those schoolchildren at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a hoax to name only one of his most egregious & shameful ‘news stories.” And don’t forget that Donald Duck also relies on The National Enquirer to keep him up to date on the latest happenings. 

 

Let me share with you another actual fact, not an alternate reality “fact” from Kellyanne Conway’s warped mind i.e. Russia’s national newspaper “Pravda” (Russian for “truth”) was Russia’s official newspaper from 1912 to 1992 when it was sold to a private company but still retains the name. The Russian people were well aware though that it was the government’s propaganda tool & was used in an attempt to manipulate their minds/opinions. Well, FOX “News,” is America’s version of Pravda but sadly, far too many Americans aren’t aware of this. And it’s so depressing that they aren’t aware. How FOX has been allowed to get away with this sham for 20 years again reflects the cowardice of “our” media’s owners & reveals that the almighty dollar is the only thing they are loyal to. And for-the-record, I hold the left-wing media in America partly to blame as well because every time they refer to FOX as “news,” they’re only helping to legitimize this dangerous farce.

“Alternative facts”

 

Here’s the brick & mortar of what real journalism is supposed to be, you determine for yourself whether FOX “News” gets anywhere close to this;

 

“…. the principles of truthfulnessaccuracyobjectivityimpartiality, fairness, and public accountability, as these apply to the acquisition of newsworthy information and its subsequent dissemination to the public.[1][2][3][4]

 

To return to the connections between “reality t.v.” and its contribution to the rise of the Duckmeister, a “clear and present danger” to not only America, but the world as well, here are some more thoughts for your consideration. I read & dissected a classic titled; “Anti-intellectualism in American Life,” by Richard Hofstadter, years ago & it was mind-boggling to say the least. Seems we’ve had a long & ignoble history of anti-intellectualism almost from the very beginning of our nation. They used to be called “nativists” & today, they’re Trump’s “base” with their mantra of “America First,” etc. And there have been movements such as the “Know-Nothings” that were proud of their ignorance as well.

 

One only has to consider the climate deniers to realize the real danger these people represent. Of course, they prefer to not look into the corporations & individuals who are funding all the propaganda behind the denial. And like Donny, science is only theory & is akin to opinion and since everybody has an opinion, and all opinions are equally valid, the 99% of the world’s scientists’ “opinions” aren’t any more valid than the Duck Dynasty Klan’s opinions. Makes perfect sense, right? Yeah, if you inhabit the alternate universe of Trump, Kellyanne, Sarah Huckabee, et al. where facts aren’t facts but only suggestions or theories. Let’s ponder this a bit? The laws of gravity aren’t scientific facts so, just because you jump out of a tree, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you will always fall.

 

Moreover, electricians, engineers, nuclear scientists, medical doctors, mechanics, etc. etc. etc., don’t need to follow “scientific facts” because they’re just theories & we don’t need to follow those speed sign warnings when we’re driving on dangerous, winding mountain roads because they’re not facts, they’re only suggestions. How open-minded, democratic, & liberating of the Trumpsters. Thanks guys!

 

Admittedly, I am not of Trump’s world of delusions of grandeur & self-righteousness and call me a stubborn Irish mule but I will continue to believe in the world of science, not superstition & Alex Jones’ absurd “reality.” Here is a snippet regarding “reality t.v.” that I feel is pertinent:

The Ugly Reality

 

 

“…. are intended to humiliate and/or exploit participants. They make stars out of infamous (well known for some bad quality or deed; wicked; abominable) personalities. The actors are untalented or unworthy of fame. They glamorize vulgarity & materialism. “Sound like anyone you know? In other words, with the advent of “reality t.v.,” the powers that be in Hollywood have lowered the bar of basic decency to the lowest common denominator. And for-the-record, I said from the beginning of this sick phenomenon, something seems mighty strange here i.e. people watching an artificial medium (t.v.) to see “reality?” Seemed to me to be a collective stepping through the Looking Glass into Alice in Wonderland.

 

Continuing on this merry-go-round of American progress, almost every time I get in a conversation with a Trump supporter, it doesn’t take long at all for them to repeat the mantra; “I like Trump because he tells it like it is.” I never ceased to be amazed at how consistent this remark is from Trump loyalists. Is it something they put in their Kool Aid? Let’s reflect on this, So, if Trump asserts that Big Foot is real, that we have the bodies of aliens in Area 51, the landing on the Moon was fake, etc. etc. etc. he’s telling it like it is? Remember, he’s a staunch supporter of Alex Jones, FOX “News,” the National Enquirer, etc. Tell me again who’s in touch with “reality,” and who’s not?

 

Believe it or not, I will concede that I do understand to some extent why so many have fallen prey to Trump’s fear & hatred tactics to manipulate them and I even have a bit of sympathy, well at least for those who aren’t physically or verbally assaulting the rest of us. You see, the powers that be, the status quo, the power elite, or however you prefer to label them, have indeed been very clever in an extremely critical respect i.e. they have succeeded brilliantly in keeping us focused on the government’s failings & betrayals of us. But, the ignorant (remember, ignorant simply means “uninformed”) public fails to realize that the corporate cockroaches—the behemoth corporations—actually pull the strings of the politicians all the way up to the presidents. And most importantly, if it weren’t for “our” government subsidies, tax breaks, etc. of these corporate cockroaches, they’d go out of business. So, keep the rabble distracted & divided and scapegoating the victims of the crony capitalists, and the song remains the same. What saddens me to the marrow of my bones is that so many of us don’t remember the simple fact that we all bleed red when we’re cut, we all put our pants on one leg at a time, & we all want our kids to grow up in a better world, a world of equal opportunity, true justice, freedom, & a clean environment.

Only thing we have to fear is fear itself!

 

Let me review & perhaps add a bit here; If you recall in the blurb about “reality t.v.,” materialism is one of the hallmarks or “values” of a good “reality” t.v. star. Obviously, this is Trump in spades —pun intended—this moron who was an instant millionaire not because of any intelligence or talent on his part but because daddy gave it to him, struts the world stage like a self-made man. Yet, he managed to go bankrupt four times, lose his glorious gambling “empire,” be cut-off from any more loans from America’s “super banks,” and be saved by Russian gangsters who bought large chunks of his apartments & condos to launder their dirty money.

 

Donald, the Dick, has failed in every way that is humanly possible i.e. financially, socially, intellectually, & morally yet a third of the American public, including millions of self-proclaimed “Christians” think he’s the greatest thing since sliced-bread? Maybe it’s true, maybe I’m the one living in an alternate world? Oh yeah, for you “Christians” who love your furher, while I definitely don’t call myself a “Christian,” I do seem to recall something called “Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount & the simple guidelines he laid out for being a true Christian. Guess that just escaped your mind & your spirit?

 

Of course, those who don’t remember the lessons of history or more likely, never enjoyed history in high school, the frightening parallels between Trump & the most heinous dictators from the past as well as the present, can’t disturb your glorious dream of Donald, perhaps America’s first Fascist president, saving us from “fake news” and the liberals? But for those of us without the political as well as the moral blinders on, it’s damn hard not to notice the frightening delusions of grandeur that Trump entertains. [some deny this quote was from Mussolini but I feel it’s appropriate; “Fascism should more rightly be called Corporatism because it’s a marriage between government & corporations.” 

 

I’ll start with the superficial, out of respect for Emperor Trump. Simply do a Google image search of your idol & note his striking poses not unlike those of Mussolini, another popular fascist leader during WWII, you know, that trivial episode in our history where we fought against the Nazis & the fascists who Trump thinks contain many “good people.” And our fearless leader (who sadly couldn’t participate in the Vietnam war because of bone spurs) seems to have a real affinity for dictators & despots while insulting & alienating our “allies.” But don’t forget, these aren’t facts, because the Duck denies them. No worries, Donald will save the day, or will he? Could his colossal ego & ignorance be the wet-dream of Mike Pence and the “Christian right’s” desire for Armageddon & the Apocalypse to come about?

 

I have been concerned about the “Christian” fundamentalists for over 30 years & the fact that we now have one as our vice-president, is very spooky. My first book is about this scary phenomenon & as many have observed, the thought of Pence taking over in the not unlikely scenario of Trump being led out of the White House in chains, would be a nightmare surpassing any of the Freddy Kruger movies. Why? Because quite simply, Pence would surely set about in quick order of turning America into a “Christian” Taliban nation but with our nuclear arsenal, it wouldn’t take but a tiny spark to make their dream a reality.

good little lemmings

 

You might doubt my assessment of Trump’s ego? Okay, fair enough, but have you heard of his overwhelming obsession of having a military parade in Washington D.C.? The news headline the other day said that the original cost estimate of $12 million has now been updated to over $92 million dollars. And maybe, just maybe, you might wonder why we need or rather, our fearless leader wants this parade? Well, when he was in France recently, they had one and if you research it, he’s actually wanted one from the day he took office. Again, let me remind you of Donny’s admiration of dictators & his boundless ego. Yep! I can just picture him now, standing on some elevated platform with that Mussolini smugness as the troops file by & salute El Duce!

 

We can’t afford to fix our infrastructure, pay our teachers a decent salary, offer health care to our citizens, etc. but there’s always money available to stroke Donald the Dick’s ego & keep on feeding the military/industrial complex.

 

Continuing on, this “intellectual snob or elitist” whichever term of derision you care to choose, came from a single parent, my mom, who worked two or three jobs as my brother & two sisters grew. I got 40 cents a day for lunch when I was in high school & basically raised my brother & sisters i.e. made them do their chores, their homework, get to bed on time, fought their battles against bullies, etc. Yeah, I really had it easy compared to poor Donny. Oh yeah, you may choose to dismiss my criticisms as mere jealousy of Donald, the billionaire populist who speaks for all the downtrodden Americans. If you go that route, all I can say is that you are clearly a member of the Walking Dead, Donald’s constituency. Oh yeah, it took me 14 years to earn my B.A. in English literature because of not knowing what I really wanted to study, financial difficulties, and lack of discipline but I did it and I proved all my “friends” and “family” wrong. But far more than this accomplishment, I am proud of the conservative estimate of at least 49,000 hours I’ve spent over the last 30 years or better informing myself on matters of politics, history, & philosophy primarily. Yeah! I’m light years ahead of that mental midget in the White House and I challenge anyone to a mental competition! (except Noam Chomsky)

me & the Love of my Life, Jeri

 

Throughout my adult life, and especially since my confidence in my intellectual reasoning skills began to grow, I have heard the mantra of “All you need is common sense.” And it became very clear that this was a standard put-down of all us “bookworms,” etc. It was inferred that we were so book-smart that we were complete idiots and didn’t even know enough to come in out of the rain. Well, I eventually realized that this was a common defense of those who felt academically inferior because they had unfortunately been the victims of shitty teachers. I have realized slowly though, that I do in fact have an ample supply of “common sense,” and I have surprised myself as well as several of my friends who were/are carpenters, mechanics, plumbers, etc. over the years. Because I am humble & know what I don’t know in many of these trades, etc., I’m not afraid to ask what may appear to be stupid questions. And from time to time, I have surprised my skilled tradesmen friends with some of my suggestions for solving a seemingly unsolvable obstacle in a project we were working on. So, yeah, call me a braggart, but unlike your babbling buffoon of a president, I and everyone else I’ve ever met, know that those who feel the constant need to keep telling people how wonderful, how brilliant, etc. they are, are full of shit!

 

By-the-way, the next time the I.R.S. tells you that they’re going to audit you, tell them that you refuse to give them your past tax returns like your buddy Donald has done. See how long before you’re sitting in prison. Remember, he’s telling it like it is!

 

Believe it or not, I am getting close to winding this up but it’s hard to do because there’s just so much evidence & so many examples of this brain-dead & soulless miscreant’s trail of human wreckage, & although I have little to live for since the passing of my soul mate, Jeri, I do still care about & feel the pain of the billions of suffering souls around this planet due to the ugly greed of “people” like Donald Trump.

 

If I were forced to narrow down to its simplest form, the danger of Trump, I would have to say it’s the deadly combination of his ignorance & his arrogance. And because of the position of power that he holds, we should all be trembling unto our death (I believe this was Kierkegaard’s phrase?) This vile creature that walks upright like a primate but is more like a cold-blooded reptile or spineless crustacean, haunts my waking hours and if he doesn’t haunt yours, your children & your grandchildren will reap the consequences of a world which allowed such a creature from the Black Lagoon to become president of the United States which, don’t get me wrong, has a very long, and immoral history of which I’m deeply ashamed!

filling the swamp of moral decay

 

The mendacious, malicious, miscreant, megalomaniac (a person obsessed with their own power) creature known as Trump, is a reality that unfortunately, we have no choice but to deal with. And no, he’s not an aberration, he’s a symptom of a dark, underlying force not only in America, but around the world. Trump has made it okay for the worst in human nature to rear its ugly head & although I’m not a religious person, God save us from the likes of him!

so much for “Christian” Virtues!

 

Addendum

 

The American Press stands on the shoulders of the giants from our past i.e. Walter Cronkite, dubbed “the most trusted man in America,” Edward R. Murrow, who broadcast from London through the entire 56 days of what was dubbed the Blitz—the continuous bombing campaign with the aim of completely destroying London. I.F. Stone, called the “conscience of Washington” for his amazing investigative journalism in which he poured through the official documents/reports/etc. of D.C. to find the nuggets of truth often buried in thousands of pages of the Congressional Record & many other government documents. And George Seldes, perhaps the grandfather of modern free press, who lived through WWI & interviewed everyone from Lenin to Mussolini, covered the Spanish Civil War & often just barely escaped being captured by the fascists.

the grandfather of muckrakers i.e. truth tellers!

 

In fact, as I’m writing this, it’s very pertinent to the subject of Little Lord Fauntleroy i.e. Donny, born with the silver spoon in his mouth. Why? Because Trump’s number one mentor without a doubt was the infamous Roy Cohn who represented countless mobsters on the East Coast who just coincidentally became “business associates” with Trump & Cohn was Joseph McCarthy’s right-hand, hatchet man i.e. totally ruthless in destroying peoples’ lives with baseless, smear campaigns & assorted dirty tricks. And it was Edward R. Murrow who had the balls to go after McCarthy and his witch hunting tactics on his nationally broadcast CBS news program, “See It Now,” which led to McCarthy’s censure.

Roy Cohn, lawyer for the five largest mafia families in New York

 

Furthermore, it’s a sad fact that I feel I must remind far too many of my fellow Americans of what facts are. Trump walks around gloating because he has suckered so many of our citizens into believing whatever he says. Reflect on this truth if you will, “alternative facts” didn’t build the Golden Gate Bridge, put an American on the Moon, or find a cure for polio, no, these & countless other wonders were accomplished due to good old solid, scientific facts, mechanical, electrical, engineering, biological, chemical, etc. verifiable facts. And the fact that Donald, like the oil corporations have managed to confuse the general public to such an extent with the billions they’ve spent on their covert propaganda campaign to plant the seeds of doubt regarding climate change, is truly frightening. My hero, Noam Chomsky has been dubbed “Perhaps the most important intellectual alive,” by The New York Times but he often smiles & reminds his audiences that they leave out, the Times goes on to ask, “So why is he so often wrong?” Chomsky is on a list of the top ten most quoted people in Western Civilization which includes Plato, Aristotle, & the Bible and he’s the only one alive.

 

Excuse me for going on about Chomsky but I can’t honor him enough & again, it really saddens me that the overwhelming majority of Americans don’t even know who he is, including many self-proclaimed liberals. But, Chomsky says the two greatest dangers facing humanity are climate change & the threat of nuclear war. And we have this proud moron in the White House doing all he can to eliminate every regulation holding back the major polluters & he openly asks, “What good are these nukes if we can’t use them?”

 

No, my friend, what’s far scarier than this delusional dip-shit is the fact that a third of the American public are so blinded by his fear & hate rhetoric that he probably could get away with shooting someone in broad daylight on 5th Avenue in New York City? And the fact that people actually believe this delusional, would be American Caesar, shows that they are the ones who don’t have common sense.

Compassionate Conservative Christian “values”

 

—Rob DeLoss, August 31, 2018 Trinidad, CA

 

EARLY WARNING SIGNS OF FASCISM

  1. Powerful and continuing nationalism
    2. Disdain for human rights
    3. Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
    4. Rampant sexism
    5. Controlled mass media
    6. Obsession with national security
    7. Religion and government intertwined
    8. Corporate power protected
    9. Labor power suppressed
    10. Disdain for intellectual and the arts
    11. Obsession with crime and punishment
    12. Rampant cronyism and corruption

A true patriot will point out the relevant warning sign of approaching fascism when engaged in a conversation/debate with a Trump supporter.
 

 

 

 

 

Trump’s War Against Journalists

Trump’s War Against Journalists

“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

                                                    —Thomas Jefferson free press

For those of you who may have never heard the term, the “fourth estate,” it’s a reference to the press or what we call the media in today’s world. The founding fathers of our form of government knew only too well the dangers posed by a government not kept in check by a free press. And they strove to establish as many checks & balances on possible corrupt & tyrannical government leaders by specifically including freedom of the press in the first amendment to our Constitution. It’s referred to as the fourth estate because to the framers of our government, it was every bit as important as the three major components or centers of power in the U.S. i.e. the Congress, the Legislative, & the Executive branch (the presidency).

The press’ central purpose is to serve as a sort of watchdog on the other three branches of power. Tragically, the press has almost completely abandoned their duty & nowadays basically serve as stenographers to those in power. And you might care to note that with the passage of the “Patriot Act,” right after 9/11, they effectively gutted just about the entire Bill of Rights—and hardly a single congressional member bothered to even read the Patriot Act before signing it. In my opinion, Congress is mostly an empty chamber full of cowards just seeking power, wealth, & privilege by sucking up to the corporate cockroaches. And this underscores how shallow & hollow our favorite myth of we’re fighting around the world to defend & promote freedom & democracy. Liberty and Patriot Act

I believe that Trump’s time as the boss i.e. authoritarian leader on the “reality show” The Apprentice, fed his ego to such an extent that he internalized the illusion as reality & if you dare to challenge or criticize him on any of the thousands of lies, distortions, myths, alternate facts, etc., his fragile ego can’t handle it & that’s why he launches into his childish & ignorant tirades via Twitter.

Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan is a spoiled brat who was born with the proverbial “silver spoon” in his mouth. He has deluded himself & millions of others that he’s a self-made man & a huge success. If he actually were anywhere near what he claims to be, why won’t he reveal his tax returns? Could it be that they’d show us the truth i.e. he’s a charlatan who knows that Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, was so right. In brief, the bigger the lie & the more frequently you repeat it, it eventually becomes accepted as truth. Donny boy’s tax returns would also reveal the numerous times he failed in his business ventures & was bailed-out by the mafia here in America as well as the Russian mafia. And the “Christian” right-wing fundamentalists love Donald Duck because they believe he’s going to push forward their agenda of destroying the last vestiges of the separation of church & state. So much for the “family values” they are so fond of pontificating on ad nauseam. quote-if-you-tell-a-lie-big-enough-and-keep-repeating-it-people-will-eventually-come-to-believe-it-joseph-goebbels-383851

The ties that bind these hypocritical “Christians,” and Donald, Darling of the KKK is their fervent belief in authoritarianism. These evil faux “Christians,” believe husbands rule over their wives & rule absolutely in the family. And they believe that compassionate or empathetic people are weak & need to be removed from the government and actually harm their children by “sparing the rod.” And Donald the Dumb-shit, like all petty tyrants (most husbands in the “Christian” evangelical movement), can’t handle any questioning of their authority or criticism of their actions. In case you forgot or don’t know it, the KKK has claimed that they’re good Christians throughout their horrific history of lynchings, racism, & bigotry. cjones09132014

Moreover, Hitler & the Nazis claimed to be good Christians as well & like Hitler, Trump is trying desperately to silence his critics in the media & wants his voice to be the only voice his Walking Dead base of supporters  hear. The Nazis burned all books they felt might be a threat to their power & Donny boy is attempting to silence all his critics with constant ridicule, dismissal, & outright lies. The Duck knows that he doesn’t have absolute power yet, so he has to wage a steady war ideologically against the press for his hidden agenda of undermining their authority.

Donald the Deceiver doesn’t want his celebrity cult worshippers to think for themselves. And I despair that America will ever outgrow its long history of anti-intellectualism (see Richard Hofstadter’s classic on the subject). But you’d have to be willfully ignorant to not see how we celebrate our ignorance in America & idolize violence & wealth. How so many of Trump’s supporters can believe that this supposed billionaire gives a rat’s ass about them & isn’t a part of the ruling elite who have fucked us all for so long, is beyond my comprehension. WillieFox

I’ve been pleading with others for most of my adult life to read the serious works of political science, history, philosophy, etc. so they could develop their critical/analytical thinking skills. And my words have usually fallen on deaf ears. And speaking of reading, I recently re-watched the classic movie based on Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” & a connection came to me regarding the thesis of this essay. Bradbury was basically saying that when people can no longer read books because it’s against the law, they lose their collective & individual memories and are much easier to control. maxresdefault

Well in the present dystopian society we’re living in, reading, especially the Classics is mocked, dismissed as elitism, and FOX “News” has been allowed to pose as a news channel for nearly 20 years now with barely any protest. FOX “news,” if people had any historical memory, is basically the American version of Russia’s major newspaper “Pravda,” which means Truth. It’s the fear & hate channel not unlike George Orwell’s nightmare world in “1984.” Is it any wonder that Trump gets his news from FOX “News” and watches several hours of T.V. per day? 47_190609_0

For those of you who haven’t drunk the Kool Aid & are concerned about our slide into a fascist state, I urge you to read a couple of classics on illiteracy in America; “Illiterate America” by Jonathan Kozol, & “Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Postman. And finally, if you doubt my assertions about Trump’s authoritarianism, you might do a bit of research for yourself & check out his respect for Putin, Duterte, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, Saddam Hussein, Erdogan, Bashar al-Assad, & Gaddafi. And no, the Dunce in the White House isn’t alone in his hypocrisy & betrayal of the soldiers who have fought & died for the supposed principles & ideals we stand for, here’s a list of “Friendly Dictators” that I bet you didn’t know we have trained, financed, & often sent our military forces to protect: 


Abacha, General Sani —————————-Nigeria
Amin, Idi ——————————————Uganda
Banzer, Colonel Hugo —————————Bolivia
Batista, Fulgencio ——————————–Cuba
Bolkiah, Sir Hassanal —————————-Brunei
Botha, P.W. —————————————South Africa
Branco, General Humberto ———————Brazil
Cedras, Raoul ————————————-Haiti
Cerezo, Vinicio ———————————–Guatemala
Chiang Kai-Shek ———————————Taiwan
Cordova, Roberto Suazo ————————Honduras
Christiani, Alfredo ——————————-El Salvador
Diem, Ngo Dihn ———————————Vietnam
Doe, General Samuel —————————-Liberia
Duvalier, Francois ——————————–Haiti
Duvalier, Jean Claude—————————–Haiti
Fahd bin’Abdul-‘Aziz, King ———————Saudi Arabia
Franco, General Francisco ———————–Spain
Hitler, Adolf —————————————Germany
Hassan II——————————————-Morocco
Marcos, Ferdinand ——————————-Philippines
Martinez, General Maximiliano Hernandez —El Salvador
Mobutu Sese Seko ——————————-Zaire
Noriega, General Manuel ————————Panama
Ozal, Turgut ————————————–Turkey
Pahlevi, Shah Mohammed Reza —————Iran
Papadopoulos, George ————————–Greece
Park Chung Hee ———————————South Korea
Pinochet, General Augusto ———————Chile
Pol Pot———————————————Cambodia
Rabuka, General Sitiveni ————————Fiji
Montt, General Efrain Rios ———————Guatemala
Salassie, Halie ————————————Ethiopia
Salazar, Antonio de Oliveira ——————–Portugal
Somoza, Anastasio Jr. ————————–Nicaragua
Somoza, Anastasio, Sr. ————————-Nicaragua
Smith, Ian —————————————-Rhodesia
Stroessner, Alfredo —————————–Paraguay
Suharto, General ———————————Indonesia
Trujillo, Rafael Leonidas ———————–Dominican Republic
Videla, General Jorge Rafael ——————Argentina
Zia Ul-Haq, Mohammed ———————-Pakistan

 

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html

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

Smedley D. Butler, War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America’s Most Decorated Soldier  

So yeah, be sure to hang your flags on all patriotic holidays & forget the gross hypocrisy & the millions of lives lived in desperate poverty or killed by the soldiers following orders from the corporate cockroaches. Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan is preparing the American version of the gas chambers. Onward Christian Soldiers! b1eb9a1fb3a801a093ee07e7435c8bc3

—Rob DeLoss, April 29, 2018 in Trinidad, CA

A Clear & Present Danger

Clear and present danger was a doctrine adopted by the Supreme Court of the United States to determine under what circumstances limits can be placed on First Amendment freedoms of speech, press, or assembly.”

I borrowed the title for my essay from the movie of the same name with Harrison Ford as the star of the film. With Trump’s mind-boggling press conference performance last week, it has become clear for all to see, except for the willfully blind of course, this guy is obviously a can or two short of a full six-pack. And his incessant berating of the press is of concern for many like myself who fear what may be ahead for us if Trump succeeds in muzzling the free press.

That is to say, Trump represents a sort of apex of the forces threatening our national well-being & by extension, the well-being of the planet because of our military & economic power. The confluence of the far right “Christians’” political agenda & the secular, “free market conservatives” has reached its “promised land.” Trump clearly chose Mike Pence as his vice-president in order to win the support of the massive Christian Right and it doesn’t bother the hypocritical “Christian” Right that Trump is just about as far from a Christian as it is possible to get unless he were an avowed Satanist.

Just as the Christian Right has been screaming for freedom to have prayer in public schools, the freedom to outlaw abortion in America, the right to censor books in our schools, to censor T.V., movies, etc., to control women’s bodies, etc., those free market fundamentalists have been calling for the complete elimination of all laws that regulate their business practices and having to pay a single dollar in city, state, or federal taxes. You may feel that I’m exaggerating here but if you had been following these forces as I have over the past 30 years, you’d see that I’m definitely not exaggerating.

As far as these “religious” believers are concerned, Secular Humanism is their number one enemy & it’s synonymous with drug-induced, wild, pagan orgies worshipping the Devil. For their supposed “clean” minds, these guys are pretty out there. And their ceaseless pursuit of power over the rest of us is always hidden behind a call for religious freedom & a plea that the rest of us stop waging our war on religion.

On the other hand, their crime partners in business have long whined that they are being stifled & can’t compete against the rest of the world economically because of all the oppressive government regulations that hold them back i.e. workers’ rights, health & safety on the job, etc. The Great Depression which threw one out of every four workers in America out of a job & forced millions of men to wander the country in search of work and split-up millions of families, the Savings & Loan Scandal which happened under that darling of the liberals, Jimmy Carter & was allowed to go on unabated under Reagan and which cost us, the taxpayers; “ In 1996, the General Accounting Office estimated the total cost to be $160 billion, including $132.1 billion taken from taxpayers.[2][3]

The deregulation of S&Ls in 1980, by the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act signed by PresidentJimmy Carter on March 31, 1980, gave them many of the capabilities of banks without the same regulations as banks, without explicit FDIC oversight.

Yep, good ol’ Jimmy Carter, the simple country boy and good Christian. Of course we must’n forget good ol “Kenny boy” as that other devout Christian, George W. Bush liked to call him. And Kenny boy appreciated his buddy Georgie, the Coward from Crawford so much that he allowed Georgie to fly around the country on Enron’s private jet for his political campaigning for the presidency.

“While all this was occurring, the US Government and other public agencies continued to advocate for Enron, threatening poor countries like Mozambique with an end to aid if they did not accept Enron’s bid on a natural gas field. Enron was so intertwined with the US Government in many people’s minds that they assumed, as the late Croatian strongman Franjo Tjudman did, that pleasing Enron meant pleasing the White House. For Tjudman, he hoped that compliance with an overpriced Enron contract might parlay into an array of political favors, from softer treatment at The Hague’s War Crimes Tribunal to the entry of his country into the World Trade Organization.” http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=2279

Of course when Kenny boy & Enron were circling the drain, Bush claimed that he hardly knew Ken Lay, you know, another one of those “Christian” values i.e. abandon friends as soon as they’re in trouble. And you might recall that in one of the presidential debates when Georgie was asked who his favorite philosopher was, he said, Jesus Christ. My point here is that Enron represented just how dangerous it is when corporations & the government are so intricately intertwined that it’s hard to distinguish between where one’s interest leaves off and the other’s begins i.e. Goldman Sachs and it’s role in the world-wide economic collapse of 2008 & it’s overwhelming presence in our Treasury Department. Oh yeah, Hank Paulson, is another good “Christian,” a Christian Scientist.

Enron, Tyco, Global Crossing, WorldCom, Xerox, etc., what do they and so many other corporate cockroaches have in common? That belief in the free market, well in their definition of the free market which is government subsidies for their research & development but not having to share their profits once that research starts paying off i.e. the invention of the Internet mostly paid for from funding by the Pentagon & the research done at M.I.T., tax shelters, tax breaks, all our infrastructure that we, the taxpayers pay for i.e. roads, highways, bridges, airports, ports, police protection, military protection overseas as they’re invading one country after another so they can steal their natural resources, etc. all in the name of freedom. Yet when it comes to paying their taxes, their money is invested in the Cayman Islands, etc. and isn’t subject to being taxed?

Of course when the corporations that I mentioned above and oh so many others, get busted for fraud, theft, lying, massive pollution of our ecosystem, etc. every now & then, the first thing we hear out of their mouths is that, “Oh, it was just a few bad apples.” Yeah, and coincidentally, when those T.V. evangelists get busted for stealing their congregations’ donations, living like jet-setters, paying prostitutes, etc., yep, “just a few more bad apples.” (Jim & Tammy Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, etc.)

Evidently, these aren’t aberrations in business or in the religion industry, no, they’re sadly the norm. And in my opinion, this is why our founding fathers made sure to have a separation of Church & State because they knew from history & from being students of the Enlightenment:

The Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason;[1] in French: le Siècle des Lumières, lit. ‘the Century of Lights’; and inGerman: Aufklärung, ‘Enlightenment’)[2] was an intellectual movement which dominated the world of ideas in Europe in the 18th century. The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on reason as the primary source of authority and legitimacy, and came to advance ideals like liberty, progress, tolerance,fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.[3][4] In France, the central doctrines of les Lumières were individual liberty and religious tolerance in opposition to an absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of theRoman Catholic Church. The Enlightenment was marked by an emphasis on thescientific method and reductionism along with increased questioning of religious orthodoxy – an attitude captured by the phrase Sapere aude, “Dare to know”.[5]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

Our founding fathers were landowners & men of great wealth and sadly, slaveowners as well but moreover, they were also men with a great love of learning. And obviously, Donald Trump is a mental midget or not even in the same galaxy as them when it comes to intellectual prowess. Here’s a fragment of U.S. history that you may or may not be aware of;

“During the War of 1812, British forces entered Washington, D.C., burning the Capitol building and the 3,000-volume library inside it. Writing to Samuel Harrison Smith in September 1814, Jefferson expressed his particular distress at this loss: “I learn from the newspapers that the vandalism of our enemy has triumphed at Washington over science as well as the arts, by the destruction of the public library with the noble edifice in which it was deposited.”1 Recognizing that it would be difficult for Congress to replace the library that had been lost, given the war and the difficulty of procuring items from Europe, Thomas Jefferson offered up his large personal library to Congress.” https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/sale-books-library-congress-1815

Now normally I’m not a betting man but I’d be willing to bet you that if Trump has any books in any of his homes/apartments, they are probably Reader’s Digest Condensed Books & a collection of every magazine that has his picture or name mentioned in it and oh yeah, The National Enquirer. But all kidding aside, the so-called Christians that have jockeying for position & power within our political system for decades if not longer, have always felt that our secular government’s respect for intellect & belief in public education for all our citizens was a threat. Why? Because they are so insecure in their professed beliefs and people, like our founding fathers, who appreciate the wisdom that comes from a deep study of classic literature, history, philosophy, political science, theology, etc. aren’t so easily manipulated into belief in the authoritarianism of much of theological belief. And just as those televangelists & pastors of the mega-churches who want blind faith, the majority of organized religions see it as their holy duty to do everything they can to undermine public education.

Unfortunately for us as Americans and for the rest of the world again by extension because of our military empire, Trump, the Babbling Baboon & Buffoon who has conned his way into the White House won in his appointment of Betsy DeVos as our Secretary of Education. And DeVos represents those two sinister forces of which I speak i.e. the phony Christian whose goal is destroy public education & the free market fundamentalist who married into the Amway Corporation, you know, the legalized Ponzi scheme sanctioned by the government. Betsy knows absolutely nothing about public education, and neither she nor her children have ever attended a public school. She is clearly a part of that Christian far right organizations that have been steadily working against public education in the U.S. for decades.

Furthermore, Betsy’s brother is none other than the infamous, Erik Prince who heads one of the largest mercenary contractor agencies in the, well it used to be in the U.S. but then Erik felt the need to move to the U.A.E. (United Arab Emirates) because he & his organization, Blackwater, were under investigation & indictment for war crimes. You see, Erik is the perfect embodiment of John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” in that he loves killing Muslims in the service of the lord and making a pretty penny while at it.

Please excuse the interruption but I need to return to the separation of church & state issue briefly. While I confess (pun intended) that my study of history has been piecemeal i.e. I haven’t studied it formally in college but rather on my own by reading a variety of histories but my contention is that some of the most calamitous times in human history were when the church & state worked in unison i.e. the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Christian missionaries spreading their faith around the globe, etc.

Undeniably, America’s unequivocal support for Israel both militarily & politically has been the source of much of the tension in the Middle East and with our completely unnecessary attack & occupation of Iraq, we have stirred-up a hornet’s nest that is not likely to subside for decades. There is much debate on our motivations for invading Iraq but I feel that one would have to willfully ignorant to deny that oil was perhaps the overriding reason for it. Of course there’s also the geopolitical strategy of having a “foothold” in that region of the world & naturally “our” leaders trot out the tired, old worn-out pretense of, “We’re bringing democracy & freedom to them.” But it’s important to not lose track of the fact that many, if not most, in the Christian far right were also cheering & pushing for this modern day crusade for Christ.

Perhaps this is a good point at which to remind you of dear, old Georgie, the Coward from Crawford’s enabling of the Christian Right when he was in office?

The concept of the faith-based initiative, a political idea put forth by George W. Bush (in the United States), involved the U.S. federal government giving money to religious organizations in order that they would do the government’s work in caring for the poor, endangered, and troubled. Bush claimed that these initiatives could somehow work more efficiently than regular government agencies, an assertion that remains unproven bullshit. In order to implement this program, an executive order established a new government agency, the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI), soon after Bush’s inauguration.”  http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Faith-based_initiative

In other words, Georgie, like Donny, just ignore the U.S. Constitution whenever it suits their agenda. That document to which all politicians, military personnel, etc. swear an oath to protect & uphold against all enemies foreign, and domestic, is simply cast aside whenever it’s not politically expedient to these craven bastards! Yet strangely, we often hear them pontificating in front of the cameras as to how deeply they respect the rule of law & order? Isn’t that interesting? In other words, whenever our laws are inconvenient for them, they can simply disregard them but if you or I try disregarding the laws, well, I don’t have to tell you what happens to us. So by signing this “initiative” into law, Georgie Dubya scored a helluva lot of brownie points with his hypocritical “Christian” base just as Donald of the Duck Dynasty Klan is busy doing now. Why do I use the word “klan” in describing Donny, the girly-man with the small hands? Because the KKK and the skin-heads are besides themselves with joy in that they’ve finally got one of their own in the White House & they too, consider themselves good Christians. This by the way, is also what Charles Manson had hoped for & was trying to instigate with the murders he ordered in the 1960s. He was salivating at the thought of starting a race war in which the poor, oppressed whites would rise-up and slaughter all the blacks & other undesirables which he feared & detested.

To return to Georgie’s & Obama the Oreo’s “faith-based initiative,” these good “Christians” now ensconced in various departments of our federal government, had this to say;

The second head of the department, Jim Towey, in a session of “Ask the Whitehouse” dated November 26, 2003, stated in regard to a question about pagan faith-based organizations:

“I haven’t run into a pagan faith-based group yet, much less a pagan group that cares for the poor! Once you make it clear to any applicant that public money must go to public purposes and can’t be used to promote ideology, the fringe groups lose interest. Helping the poor is tough work and only those with loving hearts seem drawn to it.”[13]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_Office_of_Faith-Based_and_Neighborhood_Partnerships

Of course, “pagans,” another code word for Secular Humanists, couldn’t possibly care about the poor, the suffering, the destitute homeless, etc. because they’re too busy indulging in orgies & dancing naked in the woods at midnight like some of my ancient, ancestors, the Druids, the original tree huggers. No, we’re suppose to rely on the good-natured, “Compassionate Conservatives” whom Dubya proclaimed the Repubican party to be, for not only our physical well-being but also our spiritual well-being. I mean, isn’t it obvious how deeply they care about us? Okay, I know that I’m getting side-tracked as per usual so I’ll try to wrap-up this “digression” to a certain extent.

On the other hand, we are in serious danger once again thanks to the free market fundamentalists. Let me first introduce you to Brooksley Born, who graduated at the top of her class at Stanford Law School and whom Bill Clinton interviewed for the position of attorney general in his cabinet. He felt she was too boring though so he appointed her as the head of the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission), a little agency with little authority & even smaller respect among the financial superstars like Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan, & Larry Summers—all die-hard, free market fundamentalists. Greenspan had served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve under five presidents & was a rock star in economics so-to-speak. And Greenspan was an unabashed devotee of Ayn Rand, the Queen of Selfish, a libertarian who was an ardent free market champion and opponent of regulations. She was noted for her philosophy “Objectivism,” (because they object to everything except what makes the wealthy wealthier, sorry my pun) “the central tenets of it are strong self-reliance, the right of the rich to ride roughshod over everyone, and a hatred of those who take government money.” If you’re around my age, you might recall Reagan’s denunciations of what he called “Welfare Queens” i.e. an imaginary black woman who drove her Cadillac to the welfare office to collect her checks. If only the public knew of Ayn Rand the welfare hypocrite who for the last eight years of her life collected Social Security & Medicare benefits because she was dying of lung cancer but they kept it a secret.

Of course, anyone who has been paying attention to politics over the last several years is clearly aware of the hundreds, if not thousands of ways the politicians, who speak for the wealthy, have been attacking all the programs of the Social Safety Net that FDR enacted to help the vast majority of the public who had suffered so terribly during the Great Depression. In fact, the con-servatives have been waging a steady war to destroy them ever since they first came into being.

To return to Brooksley Born, she became concerned about the trading of the OTC (Over The Counter) derivatives that were off the books i.e. next to nothing was known about them aka “a black box” in which over $27 trillion worth of these derivatives was being traded. Brooksley kept appealing all the way up the chain of command, so-to-speak, for the authority to regulate & learn about these derivatives but was ignored & dismissed. She raised such a fuss that Rubin, Greenspan, & Summers clamped down on her hard even though a year earlier her fears were realized;

“In 1998, a trillion-dollar hedge fund called Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) was near collapse. Using mathematical models to calculate debt risk, LTCM used derivatives to leverage $5 billion into more than $1 trillion, doing business with fifteen of Wall Street’s largest financial institutions. The derivative transactions were not regulated, nor were investors able to evaluate LTCM’s exposures. Born stated, “I thought that LTCM was exactly what I had been worried about”. In the last weekend of September 1998, the President’s working group was told that the entire American economy hung in the balance. After intervention by the Federal Reserve, the crisis was averted.” [the crisis was averted because the Federal Reserve commanded the Super Banks to come up with the necessary capital to bail-out the LTCM (Long Term Capital Management) corporation]  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooksley_Born

Yet due to the arrogance of Rubin, Summers, Greenspan and the overwhelming majority of the financial experts, Brooksley continued to be ignored & dismissed with condescending comments inferring that she just wasn’t sophisticated enough to comprehend these complex “instruments.” The final straw for Brooksley came a year later when she was called before Congress and basically told to shut-up and that her agency had no authority to regulate these derivatives. She resigned in protest in 1999 and need I tell you what happened in 2008? And what does our illustrious girly-man with a fondness for twitter and avoidance of presidential briefings have in mind? You got it, deregulate every industry in America and his cabinet picks are just the ones for the job. Are you beginning to take my point regarding Donald as a clear and present danger to America?

More importantly, if the Duck Dynasty doesn’t cause our economy to implode first, he & his hawks are salivating at the thought of attacking Iran, the only nation on his list of seven nations that he’s attempting to ban their refugees from entering America that hasn’t been destroyed yet due to our drone warfare program started under Georgie & expanded under Obama. Yep, these seven nations (Syria, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Iran, Sudan, & Yemen) coincidentally have been bombed repeatedly by us and even though we’ve never been a target of a terrorist attack by any citizens of these countries, Donny says we must keep them out? What does that tell you? Could it be an acknowledgement that if anyone has a right to be pissed-off at us it is the citizens of these nations? And even though 15 of the 19 hijackers who hit us on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia, they’re still our ally and we sell them billions of dollars worth of military weapons.

Perhaps a brief refresher course in why the Iranian people hate America would be appropriate here? In 1953, Prime Minister Mosaddegh of Iran got the outrageous idea that his country should receive a lot more of the profits from its oil than the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. (a U.K. corporation) which changed its name a year later to British Petroleum (B.P.) and because the British & the Americans didn’t think this a good idea, their prime minister nationalized their oil industry. Well, this ticked-off our corporate cockroaches so they sent in our C.I.A. which was just learning its trade-craft of instigating coups, assassinating world leaders, etc. and via bribes, etc. we managed the overthrow of Mosaddegh and installed the Shah who was much more amenable to bribes. Well, he wasn’t such a nice guy so we trained his secret police who terrorized the Iranian people up to 1979 when the Iranians had finally had enough so they had a revolution & the Shah headed for the hills. Well, we being such good guys, more specifically, Henry Kissinger felt sorry for the poor, multi-millionaire Shah whom no one else seemed to want & persuaded Carter to allow the Shah to come to America for medical treatment. And Carter had been warned that if the U.S. allowed the Shah to enter the U.S., the American Embassy in Tehran might be taken hostage but as usual, old Henry could be very persuasive and voila, our embassy’s people were taken hostage and held for over a year. I’m going to go out on a limb here & suggest that gee, perhaps the Iranians have a legitimate right to be angry & distrustful of the American government?

Continuing on but leaving the subject of history & bringing up current events, Trump has already expressed his desire to go back and do over our war in Iraq and take their oil and with that horrific possibility in mind, I want to share with you, a military historian whom I have great respect for:

Andrew J. Bacevich, Sr. (born July 5, 1947) is an American historianspecializing in international relations, security studies, American foreign policy, and American diplomatic and military history. He is a Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies.[1] He is also a retired career officer in the Armor Branch of the United States Army, retiring with the rank of Colonel. He is a former director of Boston University’s Center for International Relations (from 1998 to 2005), now part of the Pardee School of Global Studies.[1]

Bacevich has been “a persistent, vocal critic of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, calling the conflict a catastrophic failure.”[2] In March 2007, he described George W. Bush‘s endorsement of such “preventive wars” as “immoral, illicit, and imprudent.”

Colonel Bacevich graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1969 and served in the United States Armyduring the Vietnam War, serving in Vietnam from the summer of 1970 to the summer of 1971…..He holds a Ph.D. in American Diplomatic History from Princeton University, and taught at West Pointand Johns Hopkins University before joining the faculty at Boston University in 1998.

On May 13, 2007, Bacevich’s son, Andrew John Bacevich, was killed in action in Iraq by an improvised explosive device south of Samarra in Salah ad Din Governorate.[8] The younger Bacevich, 27, was a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army,[9] assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 8th U.S. Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division….. (Wikipedia entry) [excuse the appearance of bragging but Colonel Bacevich was gracious enough to read my lengthy essay, The Politics of Patriotism when I sent it to him last May & he was also generous in the compliment he paid me—not many people, friends included, have been willing to do so]

In short, Colonel Bacevich is far from being the only scholar who thinks that an attack on Iran would be absolute madness & if you haven’t had a chance to watch the documentary, “Zero Days,” may I suggest that you make a point of doing so because it’s very eye-opening in that it reveals that due to the collusion of the U.S. & Israel and the insertion of a malware virus dubbed “Stuxnet,” which went undetected for quite some time & allowed us to sabotage the Iranians’ nuclear power processing plant, they discovered it & duplicated it and they too now can disrupt & destroy our infrastructure (communications systems, power systems, water filtration, etc.). Let that soak in for a minute and try to imagine what that could do to our economy even if only for a day let alone weeks or months. Unless you’re a Trump fan in which case, you’re probably not reading this essay anyway, you realize how seriously ignorant he is and the thought of this egomaniac having the ability to launch us into a war with Iran, China, or whoever hurts his feelings just as easily as he launches into his Twitter wars in the middle of the night, is truly terrifying.

The danger looms because appointments that Donald Trump is making to senior national security positions are installing at high levels of the new administration a predisposition to stoke permanent conflict with Iran, a predisposition that is far more visceral than analytical and that embodies the kind of fervor and hatred that has the risk of leading to armed conflict.” https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/08/trump-and-his-iran-haters/

Undeniably, the powers that be are always plotting new ways or strategies to ensure that the military/industrial/congressional complex never collapses because it is the grand conspiracy behind the two most profitable words in their lexicon i.e. “National Security,” and if you still need confirmation of their hidden agenda, here you go and please note that this was written & published in 1997 and signed into law by President Clinton in October 1998 i.e. they had it ready and were just looking for an excuse to put it into practice. One of the traitors said, “What we need is another Pearl Harbor type event.”

Calls for regime change in Iraq[edit]

Kristol and Kagan advocated regime change in Iraq throughout the Iraq disarmament crisis.[22][23] Following perceived Iraqi unwillingness to co-operate with UN weapons inspections, core members of the PNAC including Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, Elliot Abrams, Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Zoellick, and John Bolton were among the signatories of an open letter initiated by the PNAC to President Bill Clinton calling for the removal of Saddam Hussein.[19][24] Portraying Saddam Hussein as a threat to the United States, its Middle East allies, and oil resources in the region, and emphasizing the potential danger of any Weapons of Mass Destruction under Iraq’s control, the letter asserted that the United States could “no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections.” Stating that American policy “cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council,” the letter’s signatories asserted that “the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf.”[25] Believing that UN sanctions against Iraq would be an ineffective means of disarming Iraq, PNAC members also wrote a letter to Republican members of the U.S. Congress Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott,[26] urging Congress to act, and supported the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (H.R.4655)[27][28] which President Clinton signed into law in October 1998.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century#Calls_for_regime_change_in_Iraq

I know that this is all very depressing & I understand most people’s impulse to want to avoid such knowledge but that is precisely why we have reached this turning-point in World history i.e. willful ignorance & apathy. And that’s why we are saddled with someone the likes of Trump. We can no longer afford to turn our heads and hope that someone else will do the work necessary to stop this madness. And as my hero, Noam Chomsky wrote back in the 1960s when he first started speaking out against the Vietnam War, it is the responsibility of intellectuals to inform themselves & to share that knowledge with others who don’t have the luxury to go to college and to read the important works & to write about them. If you’ve made it this far, I applaud your tenacity & your perseverance and I’m going to start winding-down but first, I have one last example in support of my thesis of the clear & present danger facing us. Some of you may recall dear, old Ronnie Ray-gun’s “Star Wars” program that was completely debunked and supposedly ended? Well, it may have appeared to have ended officially but I got news for you my friends, it didn’t and here is proof of it, they simply changed the name;

W

hen Donald Rumsfeld chaired a commission on space and national security just before taking office in 2001, the precursors for a deluge of spending on new space-based weapons programs were put into place. The commission concluded that to avoid a so-called “space Pearl Harbor” the U.S. must “vigorously pursue the capabilities called for in the National Space Policy to ensure that the President will have the option to deploy weapons in space.”

….These comments echoed the strategy recommended in an unclassified 2003 USAF document entitled Transformation Flight Plan. The latest Flight Plan details America’s right to “full-spectrum dominance”—the control of land, sea, and air, as well as space. According to the document, space superiority includes three main capabilities: protect space assets, deny adversaries access to space, and quickly launch vehicles into space to replace damaged or destroyed space assets…..

Much of this falls under the purview of the national Missile Defense Agency. After investing nearly $100 billion and 22 years into developing a ground-based missile defense system and yielding dismal results, the U.S is setting its sights on launching satellites capable of shooting down missiles. The Space-Based Interceptor Test Bed program — scheduled to begin in 2008 — would launch up to five such satellites…..

AMERICAN ARROGANCE

Senior military and space officials with the European Union, Canada, Russia, and China have all publicly objected to the notion of American space superiority. Last fall, the U.S. voted to block a United Nations resolution calling for a ban on weapons in space. Currently, the only international treaty on the subject is a 1967 agreement, ratified by 91 countries, that bans weapons of mass destruction in space.

“Almost unanimously, the rest of the world is seriously concerned about the direction of the U.S. with regard to military space,” comments Hitchens. “Because most nations hold that no one can own space, a move by the U.S. to try to establish ‘space dominance’ will be seen as highly threatening, and other nations are likely to react in a variety of negative ways.”  http://www.thirdeyemag.com/nonfiction/essays/full-spectrum-dominance/ 

In conclusion, Trump has appointed a Cabinet of climate change deniers, and pseudo or faux “Christians,” who are all in favor of a Crusade against Islam & who want to deregulate every industry in America. Moreover, we have a president who wonders why we can’t use the nuclear weapons at his disposal & has talked about fighting a nuclear war in Europe because “It’s a big place.”

When my dear wife, Jeri and I were on our honeymoon, we were walking in Paris & a reporter approached us along with his camera man & asked if we were American. I said yeah and he said that he was like the Dan Rather of Czechoslovakia & he asked what we thought of Reagan’s proposal of fighting a limited nuclear war in Europe? I didn’t hesitate and said, He scares the Hell out of me and I think he’s a moron.

If this confluence of corporate cockroaches & “Christian” fascists isn’t a Clear & Present Danger to humanity, then I don’t know what is? Furthermore, the rush to Economic Armageddon with the unleashing of the millionaires & billionaires in Dip-Shit Donald’s cabinet who apparently learned nothing from the World-wide economic crash of 2008. Tens of millions of people around the world lost their jobs, their homes, their medical care, their pensions, & their life savings but who gives a fuck as long as the 1% were saved & awarded themselves obscene levels of profit for tanking the world economy.

So, if Donald the Doomsday Dictator doesn’t start a war in Iran or somewhere else in the Middle East, he may cause our economy to self-destruct? And note that Muslims around the world are growing more fearful by the day & believe Osama bin Laden was correct when he warned them that the Great Satan, the United States of America, wanted to destroy Islam. “Our” leaders have played right into bin Laden’s game plan of igniting a world revolution against the West and the stakes just grow higher with each stupid move on the part of our political & military elite.

“Clear and Present Danger” was a test the U.S. Supreme Court devised to help them determine if a citizen had gone too far in protesting against America’s possible entry into WWI or posed a threat to our “National Security” by encouraging Americans to not join the military (my essay could well have landed me in prison in those days & who knows with the ways things are headed under the Tyrant Trump, it could still happen?).

In England, Lord Bertrand Russell was sent to prison for publicly protesting England’s entry into WWI and he went on to become a Nobel Prize winner for mathematics & philosophy. And he became a friend of Albert Einstein who also denounced war & was denied the security clearance to work on the Manhattan Project which may not have been completed before the Nazis’ similar program had it not been for Einstein’s discoveries?

Finally, we have now come full circle because as I’m sure you are well aware, Trump has been on a non-stop tirade against the media in this country & unlike the Supreme Court who silenced individual critics of America’s militarism, Trump has the galactic hubris to think that he can silence our entire free press because they annoy him with their “not nice” questions.

Following this train of thought a bit further, at the time of the McCarthy witch hunts for communists within our government, Hollywood, our press corps, etc., there was a journalist who embodied all that’s most noble & courageous in true journalism, his name was I.F. Stone. I stumbled upon his work over 30 years ago & was amazed at his work schedule & the sheer volume of his research not unlike that of Noam Chomsky’s. In fact, Stone although a royal pain in the ass to the power brokers in Washington D.C., was dubbed “Washington’s Conscience” because he’d cull through the Congressional Record and countless other documents that were available to the general public and he’d find the little gems often buried in thousands of pages of no consequence & his sharp, analytical mind would find the facts of what Congress was really up to, etc.

By way of contrast, today, the magazine, “The Nation” is widely respected as one of America’s greatest liberal or left-wing publications but during those years of McCarthy’s witch hunting for Commies, they wouldn’t hire I.F. Stone because he had been labeled a commie by McCarthy. So much for their “journalistic integrity.” Well Izzy as he was affectionately called by his friends, said fuck-it and he and his wife started their own little weekly paper of four pages. He’d do all the research & writing and deliver them to the post office, etc. while his wife handled all the business affairs, etc. Their paper started out with about 5,000 subscribers and three of their earliest subscribers were Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, & Eleanor Roosevelt. By the time Izzy decided to retire, their subscribers numbered about 80,000.

Additionally, Bertrand Russell was Noam Chomsky’s hero and he has a large poster of Russell on the wall of his office at M.I.T. And Chomsky feared that he too might be sent to prison in the 1960s because of his refusal to pay taxes as a protest against our war in Vietnam so his wife, Carol went back to college so she could support their children should he be sent to prison. About this time, Chomsky & Howard Zinn played a small part in helping with the publication of The Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg i.e. they helped to hide the documents from the government who was in hot pursuit of Daniel Ellsberg and when they were published it unleashed such a shit-storm that the government quietly dropped their case against Chomsky & others.

Last but certainly not least, I’m sure that the Supreme Court which developed that test, Clear & Present Danger just before we entered WWI, could never have imagined in their wildest dreams that America would ever elect a president as colossally ignorant & childish and who would use the presidency to promote his “brand” and further enrich himself.

So, who knows if it’ll be climate change, a nuclear war, or the implosion of our economy that will be the final nail in the coffin of America’s life but one thing is abundantly clear to me, we must empower ourselves & everyone else we possibly can by informing ourselves and that begins with reading Edward Bernays’ book, “Propaganda,” which was the basic template of the advertising & public relations industries that began at the turn of the 20th century along with the new, discipline of Psychology established by Sigmund Freud, Bernays’ uncle!

—Rob DeLoss, Florence, Oregon on Feb. 23, 2017