Saturday, January 30, 2021

1984 Redux

Lately I have begun feeling like I am living in some vaguely comedic, sci-fi version of 1984.  Or maybe it’s just America 1850 revisited, only this time around it is republicans doing the threatening, rather than Southern Slavery-adherent Democrats.  In any case, it no longer feels as though I am living in the America I knew, grew up in, and loved.  See, I did live through a lot of shit in my country.

Think of it:

  • ·       1930s –full-on depression resulting from the all-out greed of the stock brokers of America. Money was hard to get at best, and my mum had to work really hard just to keep us in a flat with some food on the table;
  • ·         1940s – filled with War (remember that WW II thing), but at least there was work, and, therefore, a bit more money for food;
  • ·         1950s – post-war war, Korea, the beginnings of Vietnam, that Cold War thingie. Still, nobody was bombing us;
  • ·         1960s – OK, got some heavy duty war in Vietnam, triggering lots of anti-war protests all over the country, but especially in Washington;
  • ·         1970s – Vietnam finally winding down, but heavy duty political turmoil, and republican crap (remember that President, oh what was his name, oh yeah, Nixon, resigning in 1974?)
  • ·         1980s – finally some calming down, although then we got St. Ronald of Reagan in the presidency.  Remember St. Ronnie . . . yeah dumb as a pet rock, and he actually believed in that Laffer curve stupidity. Can you believe that?
  • ·         1990s – We calmed down a bit. No actual wars, well aside from the war that never ends in the Middle East. Just some Clinton fun and games. Remember Big Bill Clinton, a president who demonstrated he could multi-task—yeah, get a blow job, while speaking on the phone to a government colleague.  That’s the stuff great men are made of;
  • ·         2000s – Ahh, the Shrub years. Nothing to see here folks, just a few fake wars in the Middle East to demonstrate that we were better than Daddy at putting those nasty Iraqi’s down.  Yeah, Shrub . . . such fond memories. Remember his evil-doer Dickie-Bird Cheney shooting someone in the face, just cuz?
  • ·         2010s – first a really good man, Barack Obama, overseeing a reasonable period—you know, standard turmoil worldwide, but actual decency in the White House, followed by President Doofus, who reintroduced us to the world of STUPIDITY. Trump made all prior idiots, like Reagan, look like absolute geniuses. Clearly the dumbest man in the universe, who seems to have triggered this new period of comedic, sci-fi-1984.

So, why 1984? Remember Orwell’s novel? 1984 has been characterized as a social dystopian novel. 1984 was published on 8 June 1949 as Orwell’s ninth and final book completed in his lifetime. Thematically, Nineteen Eighty-Four centers on the consequences of totalitarianismmass surveillance, and repressive regimentation of persons and behaviors within society. Orwell, himself a democratic socialist, modelled the authoritarian government in the novel after Stalinist Russia. More broadly, the novel examines the role of truth and facts within politics and the ways in which they are manipulated.

Big Brother (Donald trump??) the leader of the Party, enjoys an intense cult of personality despite the fact that he may not even exist (hahahaha). Nineteen Eighty-Four has become a classic literary example of political and dystopian fiction. It also popularised the term "Orwellian" as an adjective, with many terms used in the novel entering common usage, including "Big Brother", "doublethink", "Thought Police", "thoughtcrime", "Newspeak", "memory hole", "2 + 2 = 5", "proles", "Two Minutes Hate", "telescreen", and "Room 101"

Yeah, we could be describing America, 2016-2020, right?

And the “comedic”?  Well, Donald trump has been providing our late night comedians a daily dose of comedy material. He seemed to either act out, speak, or tweet something so terminally stupid on a daily basis that it could only be described as “comedic”. I mean, he invented a new word . . . coeveffe . . . how many politicians give you such material? He seems not to speak English very well, although we are not aware that he speaks any other language either.  Maybe he never learned to speak until he was 40 or 50.

And sci-fi?? Well, it is my best understanding that a republican office holder thinks that lightning is actually laser beams being thrown at the United States from a Jewish outer space enterprise.  I assume that is why Mike Pence invented the US Space Force, so as to counter those alien Jews.  I mean, c’mon folks. How much more “sci-fi” can we get?

And so, we now live in this alternate universe of Truthiness.  Republican office holders now are allowed to say anything they want, and are not held to things called “Facts”.  Thus, they can make up stuff like a child predator ring operated by Hillary in the basement of a pizza parlor that has no basement.  Or that Ted Cruz’ dad was responsible for the JFK killing.  Or that Mexico is actually paying for Trump’s border Wall. Or that you can and should drink bleach to eliminate the COVID virus from your system.  Or that it’s perfectly ok to have your kids on the official government payroll.  Or that no one on the republican payroll can or should be held to account for encouraging insurrection (or “erections” for that matter).  Or that the term “Unity” actually means allowing republicans to say or do anything they want and simply smiling at them. Go along to get along is now the official motto of America.  Oh and it’s ok to threaten Democratic office holders with death by beheading or maybe just shooting, just cuz they’re Democrats. Yeah, that’s a common feature of this “Unity” thing.

And so, this world I now inhabit is, I now think, simply a dream state introduced into my aging brain just to keep me amused.  TV shows are apparently not enough. I evidently am never actually awake any longer. I simply occupy this weird-space.  Every once in a while one of my kids calls to ask me if I’m ok, and I always say, “Sure, why not. It’s better than the alternative”.  And then I go back into my dystopian dream state and listen to the latest republican Truthiness.

Truthiness now rules the entire globe, and, with that Space Force, maybe all of outer space also. Our new world is complete, and Mike Pence has gone to live on Saturn I am told.

Tuesday, January 26, 2021

Deep State Stuff

 I guess I should have realized sooner. One of the many things I have learned observing Donald Trump and his colleagues over the last four years is that he lies a lot. But, even more important, he actually routinely gives away his game in advance. That is, whenever Trump tells you about some nefarious scheme his opposition is doing or planning, that nefarious scheme is something he is already doing, or planning to do shortly. Every time.

 So, then what are we to make of all these “Deep State” pronouncements by Trump and (mostly) his close associates (like QAnon). And what, you might ask is the “Deep State”?  Well, the term refers to a conspiracy theory (QAnon’s main specialty) involving secret elements operating in government and business that actually rules our country. From Wikipedia:

The deep state is a conspiracy theory which suggests that collusion and cronyism exist within the U.S. political system and constitute a hidden government within the legitimately elected government. Author Mike Lofgren believes that there is "a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process", or consider the deep state to encompass corruption prevalent among career politicians and civil servants.

The term was originally coined to refer to a relatively invisible state apparatus in Turkey "composed of high-level elements within the intelligence services, military, security, judiciary, and organized crime" and similar alleged networks in other countries including Egypt, Ukraine, Spain, Colombia, Italy, Israel, and many others.

So, Trump and/or his associates have been reporting to us on a parallel government structure that actually rules America.  The implication, of course is that we ordinary Americans have no idea who actually rules our Land, but that a nefarious structure exists that combines elements of both elected representatives and private interests to make decisions out of the eye of the public. That decisions are made routinely that are never reported to the public by any of the official news outlets—you know . . . the Fake News Networks like the New York Times.

So, apparently, we are being governed by a cabal of mostly evil people to enrich themselves and allow evil ways to be carried out—you know like that child predator ring Hillary was operating out of the basement of that Pizza Shop that apparently has no basement.

I routinely simply dismissed these rantings as Donald Trump at his most ill-imagined brainstorming. But now I think that maybe Donald Trump and his cohort of gangsta wannabees were simply describing the governance structure they were planning, or perhaps even operating within the Trump Administration.  And that the deep hysteria after the election was mostly about the fact that their actual “deep state” carrying-ons was going to be exposed, or, simply, disemboweled. i.e., destroyed.

It seems fairly clear that the actual Trump “deep state” was a cabal including:

·         Donald Trump;

·         Donald Trump’s family, especially Ivanka, Jared, and Junior;

·         The main members of Fox News, but mainly Sean Hannity, and perhaps even Rupert Murdoch personally;

·         Mitch McConnell, and the extreme right wing cast of the Senate.

There are likely other members of his cabal, including right wing monied interests that stand to benefit from Trump executive orders, high level staff appointments, and other actions of Trump's government. We have seen little evidence that he has included our military, although he seems to have caused almost the collapse of our legitimate foreign services under Pompeio.

And this is perhaps the main task facing Joe Biden and his public cast of characters now at work trying to dismantle the Trump fake government.  I assume it is a bit like attempting to remove all elements of the Mafia currently hidden within our government.  Everywhere you turn now, one finds Trump appointees who have been actively working to sabotage legitimate United States Government policies. The State Department seems especially hard hit, with Trump appointees even hard at work trying to destroy elements like our Voice of America—why? Oh, because they have been committed to legitimate facts, and Trump doesn’t do facts.  And what was his thing with the United States Postal Service, which DeJoy has been trying to destroy?

Everywhere you turn, Trump’s cabal was hard at work trying to dismantle our government and substitute a private sector approach (think Betsy Devos and her hard press to fund private schools over public schools).  Now whether all this work by Trump and his family of gangsta’s was part of a massive plot to eliminate the participation of the public sector throughout our economy, or it was simply ineptitude by Trump and his amazingly incompetent staff of appointees is hard to tell.  Trump’s “Deep State” is really little more than a gang of thieves trying to enhance their own personal interests at the expense of the American people. I guess you could call that a “Deep State”, but it seems to me more along the lines of a supremely incompetent state staff of pseudo-government operatives.  See, “Deep State” suggests a cabal of evil-doers who are remaking our state into a complete autocracy of an older sort—like those days of absolute monarchies, or perhaps Russia at its worst. But in reality, we wound up with a ragtag motley crew of incompetent evil-doers who mostly had no idea what they were doing.

Even their last, failed attempt at a violent overthrow of our Republic never had a chance because they really do not know what they are doing.  It was a revolution of Idiot-Malenfants, sort of akin to letting your nasty schoolyard bully five year old's go out into the streets armed with guns and no guidance by adults, but an admonition to “take over the world kids, It’s your turn”.

My now greatest fear is that this motley crew will be taken over by evil-doers with functioning brains, and that they will try again, perhaps this time using the actual powers available to them, that is further gerrymandering, voter-denial efforts, and other intimidation efforts in an attempt to bring power back to their cabal in 2022. Look for it folks. The evil-doers never actually give up, with or without Donald Trump. They always have Ted Cruz standing by in reserve.

Saturday, January 23, 2021

 

Photoshopping the World

I use Adobe Photoshop. I have used Adobe products for several decades now and love them.  In the olden days, I owned a Nikon 35 mm camera that used actual film. Remember what 35 mm film was??? I bought a camera just prior to our move to New Delhi, India.  For a kid born in Brooklyn, and raised in Manhattan, India was an exotic land, and called out to me to record our lives there. I began by using both 35 mm slide film and black and white film.  I would have the film processed back in the US of A. I would send the film back via the APO to Kodak and receive from Kodak my slides, which we looked at in awe in New Delhi.  With the black and white, I would again send on the film and receive back a contact sheet showing the B&W pictures in slide size on a sheet of glossy paper.

It was all great fun and defined what I now know as “photography”.  Because I had no dark room, and digital systems did not yet exist, what you took with your camera was pretty much what you got on film.  Now, lest you scoff at our primitive approach to photography, I got a lot of really fine pictures, both in color and black and white.  See a few below. The first is my take on that iconic Taj Mahal at full moon and at first light. For the full moon, I had my camera on a tripod and took a ten-minute time exposure. Yep ten minutes. A few people who wandered by actually looked into the camera, and they said, “oh, you’re taking a picture”. But, because it was a ten minute exposure, they didn’t even show up.  And then there is the Taj at first light. Another amazing sight.



And then, as noted, I would periodically use black and white film to record scenes I encountered. Here is one of my favorites, recorded in an Indian village in the mid-1960s. A little child, sitting on a charpoy bed, with a hookah nearby.  That child is now in his mid-50s, assuming he made it that far.


And then the digital world arrived, way after my return to America.  B y then I had probably taken 3,000 to 4,000 pictures and had a nice collection—remember the 1960s rebellion here about the Vietnam War, continuing well into the 1970s? That was the stuff of pictures. Here’s a war protest group outside the White House.


So many protests, so little time.  Right about this time, I also acquired a darkroom. What’s a darkroom, you might ask? Well, a darkroom was where I processed my film, producing black and white prints. No I couldn’t do color. For that, I still relied on good old Kodak.


And then, I acquired my first digital camera, spelling the end of 35 mm film. And, hard on the heels of digital cameras came digital software, spelling the end of my darkroom antics. Now the early versions of digital software photo manipulation was relatively crude. But I could process pictures on my recently acquired personal computer, and I could print out those pictures. All pretty amazing stuff.

And then, the software began its ascent (descent??) into the netherworld, where pictures began to no longer represent what the mind’s eye actually saw, but rather what the mind wanted you to Imagine.  Manipulation became the name of the game in digital photography. And there were no longer any limits on what one could pretend to have “photographed”.

How about a picture of two holy men, posing (NOT) on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.


The ability to “photoshop” things that do not exist is now limitless, and the term itself has taken on a somewhat negative turn. I used to participate in things called Art Walks. Art Walks are events, where folks, patrons of the arts, can walk from shop to shop, or gallery to gallery and look at the artsy creations of local artists, sip some wine, maybe enjoy some food, and even perhaps, make a few artsy purchases of the observed art. I would display my digital art on a table or two in the gallery I was privileged to use, and folks would stroll by my table, admire some of my digital art, and often, inquire, “how did you do that?” See, I employed a combination of straight digital photography with Photoshop digital manipulation. I often placed an “oil painting” imagery on one of my pictures, so that the resulting image vaguely resembled one that had been oil painted. But as soon as I mentioned Photoshop, the response often came back, “Oh, you photoshopped it”. The intent of that comment was, “I see, you didn’t really create anything artistic. You let Photoshop do the work”

I even got to the point that, when asked, I would reply, “well, I use the Adobe Magic Wand. I bring an image up onto my PC screen. Then I wave the Magic Wand at the image and the Adobe Wand creates something interesting on my screen, which I then print.” See, it’s all magic.

For one showing, I created an Image for fun, trying to promote the show in advance. I spliced the statue of Michelangelo’s David into a picture of the gallery we were using the Art Walk. See what you will see if you attend our Art Walk???


All in the spirit of good fun.

So gradually, over time, the old concept of photography morphed into this newer world of Make Believe. Now what does any of this mean?

Well, in olden days, if we viewed a water color, or an oil painting, it was clear that we were viewing an image that had been created in the artist’s mind. That image might exist in real life, of course, but it did not need to so exist.

But if we viewed a photographic image, we knew that the image being shown actually existed somewhere in real life.  Photographs revealed reality.  Now, with digital manipulation, photographs have diverged from reality. If we see an image on screen or on paper or canvas, we can no longer be certain that image represents some reality somewhere.  That image is also in the mind of the “artist”. 

If we attend an Art Walk, it perhaps does not matter whether any of the pictures displayed there are real in any sense. It is only important that they are in some way pleasing, or entertaining.  But if we see an image on TV, or in a book or newspaper, and we are asked to believe that image is reality, well, we can no longer be sure.  Now, we must examine who produced that image and ask whether the person is trustworthy.

And if the picture is accompanied by a written story, we can no longer accept that the story is true. Again, we must look to the source and validate.

And then we come to the written word itself. Can we believe what we read? Well, turns out, it depends . . . Depends on what precisely? Well, for one, it depends on who is saying/writing what we are reading. And it depends on the believability of the source material. If it is a newspaper, we might need different standards for the New York Times, than for the Daily Mirror, or the Independent Tribune.  If it is TV, again different standards apply to “Fox News” than to the Public Broadcasting Companies, or even MSNBC, CBS, et al. We know TV “news’ is more opinion than “news”, but even there some opinion is more fact-based than others.  Listening to Hannity, et al, on the Faux News Network is akin to listening to Trump Directly.

And so the world went on with its various sources of written, spoken words and imagery. And then came social media. First came Compuserve, a network where folks could send messages to one another without recourse to the telephone.  Then came the Internet and the World Wide Web. And rushing to fill the nonexistent vacuum came Social Media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and all the media wannabees.  And suddenly, we were presented with a vast array of pictorial and written information, on topics covering the world at large.  And now the word has been “photoshopped”. No longer can we simply believe what we read, because it is on TV, or on our PC screens. Now, everything we read is up for grabs.  Even if the subject is a legitimate source of inquiry, Facebook, et al, do not even pretend to any standards of fact. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg barely pretends to “truthiness”. He admits (almost) anyone and anything to coexist on his platform, because he has such high regard for the First Amendment, but even higher regard to the money he derives from companies and other moneyed sources wishing to lie to us on Facebook.  As a result, we can and should believe nothing we read on Facebook and others of that ilk, without first validating the sources, and the information being presented.

Unfortunately, in this new world of make believe there is no “artistic” standard we can apply, as in “Oh yeah, what he says is pure bullshit, but he says it with such artistry . . . pure poetry. Nope. Instead, we are left with pure garbage to sift through, and we must . . . MUST verify everything we now read, independently of the source.

And having recently concluded a vital election during 2020, the source of all the material thrown at us during that election, and since then is vital for us to understand.  Voting, as it turns out, is a vital function to preserving democracies. Yes, we all need to vote, definitely, in all of our elections. But we must vote intelligently. That is, prior to every election, we must obtain information from sources we trust, and we must try to validate even those sources. The entire future of our nation will continue to rest in our hands. So, beware of this new world of Photoshopped words. Trust but verify are our new watchwords.  Maybe someday, we will be able to believe the written word again. But just not now. There are too many con men (think Sean Hannity) trying to deceive us. Be an intelligent guide to what you read.  Your grandchildren’s future depends on it.

 

Sunday, January 17, 2021

So, What Do They Want?

Thinking a lot about the Trump MAGAHeads and their treasonous mob scene at our Capitol last week.  There seems no question about Trump’s role, and in fact the role of various right wing Congressional perps and some of their religious right wing pastors.  To avoid losing the leadership of America’s government, the anarchists of the Far Right in America decided to overthrow the government. Their ultimate intent is still unclear, but it points to a true intended coup d’etat. To be fair, it was kind of a weird coup attempt, since its nominal leader was the actual current head of the government they were attempting to overthrow.  I guess, this was a virtual coup of a futurist sort? They were overthrowing a government not yet installed. And their titular leader was the guy actually in charge of the current government. So, a little confusing, but perhaps think of them currently as true anarchists, who wanted to destroy the existent government, republican and democrat alike. Maybe, what, kill off all the current house and senate members?  That part was never made clear, although they did bring along guns, ammo, some handcuffs, and I think some teargas.

My guess is that this was a test, really a sort of prototype coup, to test the waters so to speak.  They were perhaps thinking that if they could demonstrate some progress and avoid the worst consequences (everybody dead) maybe they would then have some data to use in designing the real coup, after President Joe and Veep Kamala actually took charge.  And if they lost a few of their thugs during this test, then so be it. Stuff happens, and you can’t win a coup without some losses.

Now, it was most interesting that, after urging his goon squad to march on the Capitol and do some violence, the Thug-in-Charge, you know, Trump, immediately retreated to his bedroom in the White House where he could watch it all on TV, and doubtless have a Big Mac.

In thinking about this mess, I have some difficulty with their ultimate end objective.  Many of Trump’s supporters seem to be borderline anarchists. That is, they are angry with government broadly, and want government out of their lives. All this mask-wearing crap, and these curfews, and “social-distancing” idiocies. Their small businesses closing as a result. Their pubs closing or being restricted.  And all because of some fake pandemic—clearly a deep state fakery invented by the likes of Nancy Pelosi and probably Barack Obama (he’s not even American don’t you know).

But in the final analysis, although I believe these thugs are anarchists at heart, what they are seeking is some kind of absolute control over the undesirables in America.  And by “undesirables” I include folks of color, Hispanics, and Libtards of all kinds, you know those Dem Party Commies.  Whether they hate women is at least questionable, although their nominal Gang Boss, The Donald, is a clear misogynist.  I fail to understand how any woman could support this dude, given his dismal history with women.

So, let’s assume that, at some stage the government comes crashing down around us. What do they intend after all the wreckage is laying all about us, and now everyone is thoroughly pissed? Well, my best guess is that what they envision is an Absolute Monarchy with religious trimmings. That is, they don’t want any more of this endless arguing about what we should be doing, you know, what happens in a Democracy.  Instead, they want a guy at the top who simply says what will happen on any given subject, and then that guy’s henchmen-soldiers, police, sheriffs—step in to oversee his decisions. Anyone who fails to comply with the Headman’s edicts gets ejected from society—either shoved into a jail cell, or simply eliminated.  Their assumption would be that the Headman will begin to issue edicts that reinforce the gang’s thinking—Christian religious compliance on all subjects, people of color begin to work in their “proper” place under White Men, elimination of wages to lazy people (aka welfare) . . . you know, the way God intended.

Now, whether they have advanced in their thinking to consider The Donald as King Donald I, with Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham as Dukes, and maybe idiots like Josh Hawley as a Baron is unclear. I am guessing not, although who knows? When truly stupid people run towards the Sun, who knows what their imaginings include??

I am guessing that they are now examining the results of their first real trial run—call it A Prototype Coup.  With The Donald leaving office nominally on January 20th, they may begin planning for a second run at the Coup Game.  What they may not be thinking about, or at least not thinking about seriously enough, is the role of the Nation’s military, the Governors with their assembled guardsmen and state police, and the federal law enforcement agencies.  I actually still believe that those folks will oppose another coup, of whatever size they intend.  Despite idiots like Michael Flynn who betrayed his military and his country, I think our military leadership prefers a democracy, with actual elected leaders, as opposed to idiot leaders who appoint themselves.  At least that is my fondest hope. I think that we fought World War II to oppose people like the ones currently supporting Donald Trump. We lost several hundred thousand of the Nation’s finest to prevent people like Adolph Hitler and Donald Trump to rule over us all. It is doubtless true that we do not have 100% of our military and our government leaders around the country in support of true democracy. But I believe we have a large enough base that these perps will fail, and that many of Trump’s gang of Nazi Thugs will wind up in Prison or dead.  We may have ugly times ahead, but I still believe that America The Beautiful will prevail.  Let us hope for good times ahead, after the pandemic ends and we can retrieve our lives again. May we look forward to a coming sunrise again. America The Beautiful is going to emerge again.



Tuesday, January 12, 2021

Trump Removal

So now, the Trump Nazi’s are threatening to hold an alternative reality inauguration, you know, one that gives Trump another four (or maybe 20??) years at the presidency. Seems only fair, after all, since he really won in a landslide.  This alternative reality, I understand, is the newest thing. Whenever you don’t like the way something is turning out, you simply declare another, more pleasing outcome. And then you ask your Nazi Thugs to support you by marching on whatever site you wish, armed if possible. And should some innocents get shot, or otherwise killed, well, you know, shit happens.  You just can’t worry about stuff like that.  Life goes on, as you define it.

So, is Trump actually in charge of his mind when he invents stuff like that?  Maybe, Is Trump ever in charge of his mind, is an even better question.  I realize that Trump is a Narcissist, and that he lies almost every time he opens his mouth. But the question that keeps forming in my mind is, when he invents some big lie, does he understand that he is lying, and maybe he just doesn’t care about such things as lying?  Or does he have such little contact with reality that he simply says whatever pops into his head to satisfy his ego-demands, and he has no actual concept of such things as truth or lies?

I am drawn to the latter explanation.   I think there is no other sensible explanation for his thousands of lies, big and small alike.

Now, does that mean that Trump should not be held accountable for his lies, because he doesn’t even realize that he is lying?? Or that he cannot be held accountable for his exhortations to his thousands of Nazi thug supporters to riot and destroy or even kill people who oppose them? Well, no, he can and must be held accountable.  But more to the point, I think we are dealing with such an aberrant personality that he can be fairly described as out of control, or perhaps, never in control.  His personality goes way beyond what we think of as “quirks”. His mind apparently is never actually in touch with reality. His mind manages only to deal with his deep ego-needs. Whatever his ego demands, his mind conjures. If those “conjurings” happen to damage people or institutions, he neither knows nor cares.

And that really is why he cannot be allowed anywhere near an office in our government—any office, no less the presidency.  He could concoct war scenes, and he still controls nuclear weapons. So, he cannot be allowed to continue. He is simply too far out of the mainstream of intelligent thinking processes.  Remember that little thought he concocted a while back . . . that he could walk out onto Fifth Avenue, pull out a gun and shoot someone, and his supporters would cheer, raising his numbers? Remember that? Well, he actually believes that.  So, imagine he wants his support to increase, so he suggests that maybe we need to drop some nuclear weapons on someone, Iran for example.  He imagines that would give his Thuggish supporters a big boost, and so they would adore him even more.

Is that really what we want/need as our president? I know that republicans have fallen into some trench lately, and that they seem to hold no moral or ethical principles any longer as a party.  But I also hope that there remain some former republicans (think Colin Powell) in our Land who still retain a sense of National Morality—that we really still are a Land of honorable people who seek the best for our world. I am hoping that those people will begin to assert some control over the crazed utterances of their former party leaders.

So, yes, by whatever means, we need to remove Trump from office immediately, and to forge some guarantee that he can never climb into a leadership position again.  He must be removed people. He is a danger to our Nation and to the World.  He cannot be allowed to continue.

Please folks, come to your senses about this. Trump is dangerous.  His Nazi Thugs are equally dangerous. We have entered the World of 1936 Germany people. Do we really wish to re-enter that world of wholesale Murder? We need to begin to move back to a nation of Law and Order, for everyone, not just the White Supreme beings among us.  

Return to a Sane Country. Please. Before we can no longer return.

Sunday, January 3, 2021

2021, The Pandemic Against Democracy Begins

 So, we’re all sitting around in our socially isolated existence thinking, “when will this nightmare pandemic end? I desperately want to get back to playing golf with my buds, and hoisting a few at the pub.”  Well, it’s coming, it’s coming, say the wise health care professionals who are awaiting the arrival of enough vaccines to kill off the COVID19 virus, just by sheer numbers of immune folks—you know, that “herd immunity” thing.  And then, maybe we can hug our kids and grandkids again, and enjoy a nice family dinner, complete with arguments, or maybe a nice meal out at our favorite restaurant, assuming it is still in business.  Yeah, that will be great. So, 2021, bring on that herd immunity thing. We are more than ready.

But then, in the first few days of 2021, we have some evidence of something arriving that may well make the Pandemic look like a mild case of the flu.  And what is that something? A new virus strain . . . maybe a variant of COVID?  Well, no. It was Louie Gohmert telling his faithful to get out on the streets and protest the election results, violently if necessary.  And then Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and several more senators came along and began yelling about overturning the state electors and objecting to the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. So far, I think about a dozen republicans have decided they will object rather than certify the election results as declared by the state electors.  Yeah, they don’t like the election of Joe Biden, and by God they are not having it. Apparently God herself chose these dudes to determine who the next President of the United States should be.  And no national election, or Board of Electors in that Electoral College thingie is going to get in their way.

Now, the fact that people like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley are likely planning a 2024 bid for the presidency should not be confused with their effort. Surely, they would not allow personal ambitions to get in the way of doing the right thing for America. No, the fact that 81,283,485 Americans voted to elect Biden and Harris should never be confused with their facts, which mainly are that they imagine a different result could have been achieved in the World of Truthiness that they inhabit.

Now, why do I compare this action with a Pandemic? Well, mainly, it occurs to me that republicans have decided, as egged on by their glorious leader Trump, that the normal rules of our democracy no longer apply to them.  The glorious leader is pressing the Governor of Georgia to overturn the Georgia election results, because in his world of Truthiness, he actually won the Georgia national election by thousands if not millions of votes, if all those dead people had not voted.  Now the fact that the Governor of Georgia has checked and decided that the results as reported were accurate is irrelevant to The Glorious Leader.  His Truthiness Facts are all that matters.

So, is this brouhaha just another of Trump’s figments of his wild-ass imagination, or something more serious?  Well, were it only Donald Trump, I might be tempted to conclude that he was simply falling apart in a final psychodrama, whining and crying as he always does when he cannot get his way.  But then I look at the entire republic party, and begin wondering. Is this thing bigger than Trump?

Something rather dramatic and perhaps even pathetic has happened to the Republican Party over the last 6-12 months. Maybe it has been going on ever since Trump was elected.  And what is that something? Well, I see two things occurring:

1.      The Republican Party now sees actual Facts as irrelevant. They now appear to think and to operate as though whatever they wish to believe is the actual Truth, the very definition of Truthiness (Truthiness is the belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based on the intuition or perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.)  You know—that Stephen Colbert Truthiness.  Republicans seem now to have adopted Truthiness as their underling logic model for everything they say or do. Until lately, this Truthiness thing could be treated as simply a bad joke by Donald Trump. All of his lawyerly efforts to overturn the election results were thrown out of court, quite properly, in some 50 odd cases. Amazingly, the lawyerly fees seem to have been paid by American supporters of Trump who appear to have more money than sense.  That is, the percentage of the donors’ money that Trump did not personally pocket.

2.       But then Republican party leaders, i.e., those elected to office in good faith, began adopting an “anything goes” philosophy of governance.  For example, the political leadership in various Executive Branch departments began telling officials to refuse to cooperate with Biden forces in terms of sharing information about the state of our world.  And others have begun asserting that they may well refuse to approve Biden’s cabinet picks, making his governing ability difficult if not impossible.  Now, I have been observing the peaceful transfer of power from one government to the next at least since the days of FDR and Truman. There have been a number of controversial elections, e.g., the 2000 election of Shrub over Al Gore, when the Supremes had to intervene to appoint George Bush the winner.  But in every case, the loser conceded and the winner assumed control of the government without any interference.

But now, we have active interference by the Republican Party, and promises to refuse to cooperate over Biden’s tenure. Now that is remarkable, because it suggests the actual coming apart of the American system of governance.  And that would be a Pandemic of catastrophic proportions, far worse than COVID19.  The outcome may be determined partly by the results of the Georgia election on January 6th, which determines the fate of the United States Senate. But even should the vote help Democrats take control of the senate, we have no confidence that the republicans will cede the outcome. It is possible that this party has now been so traumatized that the party is effectively dead.  The presence of Neo-Nazi’s/KKK and other White Supremacists now affecting the party may be too strong for the party to resist. Think 1936 Germany folks.

Only if enough moral, thinking republicans begin to move openly to regain control can the party survive, and can we avoid something close to a Civil War Redux. So, stay tuned folks. Are there enough folks, of the Mitt Romney stripe to regain control?  We will see over the next few months. Otherwise, the young at heart may need to consider the need to migrate to some actual civilized Nation.