Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Spellbound

You have to wonder, after nearly 40 years of disconfirming evidence, what the trick is with tax cuts. Reagan cut taxes, raised defense spending, caused soaring deficits and bankrupted the State. People with lesser incomes began to be left behind and the profits of the wealthy started to soar unimaginably, proving the fantasy of rising tide and supply side.

Yet every Republican since has sought the same and their gullible, lower-class share of the electorate acquiesces, fooled or hypnotized into submission. Their faces are defensive or vacant. Perhaps muttering "yes, master" they dutifully do as beckoned. Under Trump, their "populist" president, the same thing is happening. Mesmerized, they fall in line.

These idiotic white people voted themselves down the river, into servitude.

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Unenlightened Times

The real heritage of America is The Enlightenment. It's a tradition of rationality, moderation and inclusion. It's based on individualism, progressivism, practicality, personal responsibility, openness, optimism, compromise and the acceptance and welcoming of dissent. Our real heritage is the opposite of everything Republicans stand for. 

Christmas, Time in Hell

Christmas at the White House is suitably Trumpian this year--gaudy, ostentatious and tasteless--with an ice palace theme befitting its queen, Melania. Hearts are frozen hard among the hangers-on, elves serving the new administration of doom. 

Nothing has been done by them but to push to benefit the rich and hurt everyone else--not that this is new, of course. Trump, surprised by his own win, turned to the "think tanks" of Republican horror who supplied him with bogus ideas and political hacks.

No doubt they will gather around and watch It's a Wonderful Life and mock George Bailey, a selfless and impractical man. He is not a true entrepreneur and the movie is sentimental tripe to Republicans. They might be far along by next Christmas.

The rich might be locked into their hegemony forever. Republicans, too, have their dreams.

Monday, November 27, 2017

Universal Suffering

Roy Moore and others like him are known, by the Calvinist doctrine of the Perseverence of the Saints, to be higher beings whose earthly presence is an accident and an interruption in their beatific existence. Their feet barely touch the ground and they await with impatience their heavenly destiny. 

Misdeeds by such superior entities are trivial blemishes on their divinity. Ignore their errors and consider instead your own inescapable course by comparison, that the rest of us are fated for destruction and "intended" by God, from birth and before, for disenfranchisement from holiness and salvation.

Practical, political disenfranchisement is nothing in this scheme but part of the sad, illusory escapade of mortality so don't worry about it. Misery was always our determined end. Roy, Jeff Sessions and their companions among the elect are committed to ensuring our misery. It's God's will and our due.

Sunday, November 26, 2017

The Happy Harpy from Potomac Bend

Speaking of contempt, how much worse (better) can it get than sending Callista Gingrich to the Vatican as the representative of the most powerful country on earth? As an efficient act of bilateral degradation and debasement, it's genius. The Pope is probably appalled. Donald was elected with the help of Catholics, however. Aren't they proud now? Her adultery isn't disqualifying in my opinion. It's that she slept with Newt at all.

Show of Contempt

Only by viewing Trump's administration as a sweeping show of contempt can you see its logic and coherence. The contempt results from a ruse by the rich to weaken and destroy the federal government, the only thing standing between them and total social control. Finally their "opponents" will be effectively disempowered. Average citizens rely on the government to guarantee their rights. Rights are for rich people, it turns out, in the view of the rich.

Saturday, November 25, 2017

Manson Family Values

Charlie Manson was a product of Appalachian neglect and abuse and a fan of manipulation--a charismatic, narcissistic leader obsessed with race. He asked his followers to obey his wishes and submit to him and secondarily to his idiotic and patently delusional beliefs. 

This is Republicanism, a cult which crushes individualism, requires obedience and adherence to irrational doctrines and instigates murder by remote control, looking on as the killing and chaos unfold. Manson expected personal loyalty above all, as does our president. 

Friday, November 24, 2017

Blackened Friday

America's annual consumption orgy, known as Black Friday, is today and the mask is off. Whatever innocence remained to the American Dream as represented by the opportunity to improve one's life it is gone, reduced to shameful exercises in indulgence without a hint of social and ethical awareness. 

Trump has seen to the last shreds of the pretense that America stands for anything. We have come to rest at the lowest of common demominators, scrambling for control of resources. America no longer represents hope, optimism, enthusiasm, generosity and real dreams but only cynicism and compulsion. 

Thursday, November 23, 2017

What a Turkey

On Thanksgiving a person should feel thankful and peaceful and forgiving. In that spirit I want to say to Donald Trump, our dolt of a president, I forgive you. You are obviously too stupid to do your job. It's not your fault. I blame the idiots who elected you. 

Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Republicans and Collectivization

I have made the point before that Republicans are commies because they believe in the transcendence and inevitability of the class struggle and are simply trying to win. Also I noted that Republicans are proving Marx right by causing untenable concentrations of capital which will lead to a fatal, inevitable economic meltdown as foreshadowed in 2008.
 
A further aspect of Republican totalitarian perfidy is the consolidation (collectivization) of everything they can get their hands on through the economically unjustified corporatization of formerly decentralized industries and occupations. These corporations are now, more efficiently since Citizens United and the advent of Trump, the de facto government.

Parallels with other totalitarian regimes are all around. Choose your favorites. When I was a child family farms were still viable, if not prospering. Groceries and department stores were multifarious and the owners lived in the community. Similarly with pharmacies and many other businesses of every kind. Republicans blindly favored consolidation and scale.

Larger businesses have been buying influence in Washington for decades, leading to ever increasing collectivization, reducing choice, competition and sometimes overall efficiency. America produces food with extreme efficiency, narrowly viewed, for example, but fails to capture the externalities and social costs of pollution and environmental degradation.

We then throw away 40% of what we produce. These kinds of irrationalities exist throughout the system, defended, backed and encouraged by Republican ideological intransigence and aggression. Republicans also have their gulags, disproportionately incarcerating black men who resort to antisocial behavior because of deprivations created by Republicans. 

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

Lost Horizon

America's edenic time is at an end. It was always a reality tinged with illusion. Now it is an illusion tinged with reality. Soon it will be nothing but an illusion, existing only in the minds of men, and so separated from reality it will become lethal to its inhabitants. Say goodbye to Shangri-La. We were lucky ever to have glimpsed it.

Monday, November 20, 2017

Factual Content Warning

Conservatives, I know it worries you that your children might be damaged and corrupted by explicit factual material. I don't blame you--reality can be pretty hard core--but some of us have an unfortunate addiction to it we are unlikely to shake.

Producers of explicit factual content might be persuaded to rate and label their product to protect the minds and formation of your youngsters and teenagers. Nakedly factual subject matter could then be suitably packaged for their protection.

Sunday, November 19, 2017

The Fallacy of Republicanism

Normally I am loathe to accuse anyone of being anything. I try to stick with behaviors. I don't typically accuse Republicans of being liars, for example, I accuse them of lying. If unsure I keep in mind the example of some of America's corporate elite, the CEO's of all of the major tobacco companies, each of whom testified under oath, before Congress, that they believed nicotine not to be addicting. 

That was in 1994, the year of the beginning of the remaking of the American State by the hideous Gingrich gang. I can't tell you that those CEO's are liars because I can't see into their cynical, compartmentalized, greedy psyches but I can tell you that it is untrue that nicotine isn't addicting. When people give up their individual responsibilities, however, through identification, what then? 

Republican Congressmen have lined up shamelessly to lie about healthcare, taxes and everything. What goes on in their sick souls, who knows, but these are lies as surely as any about nicotine and they are motivated to lie as were those CEO's. The nicotine lies were more directly for personal benefit, the lies about taxes and health insurance more lies of cult-like, doctrinal obedience. 
 
Isn't it fair to call people liars when they have voluntarily opted out of their individualism and degraded themselves through conformity, identification and obeisance while they falsely claim the opposite, that they are paragons of freedom and independence? I don't think so. We still can't judge people, only behaviors, even when they abdicate their individualism, consciences and humanity. 

But we can judge the movement, the evil entity of their allegiance, the virtual repository of the mortgages on their souls, the Republican Party. I therefore declare the Republican Party to be an evil organization built on ambition and greed and unfit for any socially constructive purpose. The Party is a fallacious composition incapable, on balance, of producing anything resembling goodness or truth.

Friday, November 17, 2017

Even Dotards Have Rights

By the way, I want to make it clear that, by my criticisms of Trump, I in no way deny or diminish the civil rights of dotards. Dotards have rights too. 

Trump and the Aroma of Salvation

Once and for all, evangelical Christians are not holding their noses while supporting Trump but breathing fully and deeply of the aroma and stench of his Trumpness. It is important to understand this. Otherwise the extremity of the perversion and degradation is lost, together with the full severity of the threat to civilization.

Evangelical Christians are in love with Trump because he has been so obviously chosen by God in the most extreme degree. He is both a billionaire and a piece of shit. Since Trump is so catastrophically undeserving, depraved and incompetent it's impossible that he achieved his position through his own character and efforts. 

It can only be the will of God. Trump is therefore a massive rebuke to the false doctrine of good works and evidence of the arbitrary nature of salvation. Trump was "saved" in spite of himself, a more unworthy person being unimaginable. In addition Donald reeks of the end-times, which idiotic fundamentalists candidly long for.

Who knows, evangelicals are so incomprehensibly sick they might believe Trump to be the Second Coming or its herald at some level of consciousness. After all, Trump is a law unto himself and a living repudiation of every earthly standard of decency. Turds are many and mighty among Republicans but there is only one Trump.

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Everybody Knows This is Nowhere

We've arrived. Our destination is reached, our desires realized and our consciences archived. Who knew it could be so easy. All we had to do is sell our souls. They weren't worth much, it turns out. At any rate, they were had cheaply.

Monday, November 13, 2017

The Truman Show Delusion Delusion

People who think they are living in the Truman Show aren't deluded. We are living in a Truman Show. People who think they aren't living in a Truman Show are deluded. 

It isn't even a good Truman Show. I might condone it if it were a healthy, harmless, humane and attractive parallel-place but it's sickass. The producers are the super-rich.

Some day, when we outlive our usefulness, they will pull the plug, douse the fires, turn out the lights and leave. Some day, inevitably, the world is going to get real on us.

All of the lies will fall away and we'll see reality again. The "set" might still be habitable but it isn't going to be nice. Livable is what it will be at best. The producers don't care.

They aspire to be gods and they will decamp and ascend with their cash. Remember, in America wealth is inerrancy and holiness--the godless fatalism of Puritanism. 

Saturday, November 11, 2017

OK Stupid

I have a surefire, money-making plan for a Republican dating service patterned on their prevailing populism and available for crowdfunding on Nonstarter. The dating site will be called OK, Stupid

Candidates, as prospective dates are known, are assumed to be lying about everything. Attention and interest, I suppose, will flow to those who lie most outrageously, promising impossibilities.

My behavioral studies show that the outlandishness of the overt misrepresentations, once uncovered, will not be noted or disqualify candidates from dating, ongoing relationships or anything else.

Friday, November 10, 2017

An American Responsary

I envision a day when America's Kochist elementary schools will engage in morning drills involving a teacher and student call-and-response, followed by the singing of a stirring hymn, The Poor Will Be With You Always.

Teacher: Healthcare is for those who work hard for it or are born rich and not others. They don't deserve it and we can't afford it!

   Students: Yes, we can't!

T: Security, in retirement, is for those who put away heaps of money and no one else. They don't deserve it and we can't afford it! 

   S's: Yes, we can't!

T: Police and the military are there to protect productive citizens, not criminals and scum. They don't deserve it and we can't afford it!

   S's: Yes, we can't! 

T: Elections are for people who own property, not for losers with no stake in the State. They don't deserve it and we can't afford it! 

   S's: Yes, we can't!

And so on indeterminately, depending on the endurance and creativity of the instructor. 

Donald's Asian Victory Lap

It's a little late for a victory lap but it is the anniversary of Trump's glorious win and in keeping with Asian traditions Donald is feeling the love and seeing his own greatness manifested in parades, pageantry, mouth-flapping and bravado. Evidence of his actual accomplishments is rare. This is in keeping with the ways of China and Russia. 

Stalin and Mao falsely tried to tout successes to conceal their failure even to keep people alive. They had bigger goals in mind, remaking societies, than the welfare of inconvenient hordes of citizens. Healthcare, anyone? Trump has shown only one skill, shooting off his mouth in futile attempts to distract from his feckless, chaotic and shameful rule.

Donald is a pig. He lusts for power and he's indifferent to the sufferings of the citizens supposedly in his charge. But he isn't an ideologue. He is only fixated on himself. The "idea" people are behind the scenes. Empowered by a leveraged, gerrymandered and illegitimate election, Donald is a tool. And he's an opportunist and a self-aggrandizing oaf.

However painful it isn't a bad idea to relive the horror of Donald's election on its anniversary. It either isn't what we are or we deserve whatever calamity awaits us, a potentially Maoist kind of social and economic web of lies and a rationalized descent into murderous, opaque, misrepresentative government and totalitarian, oligarchic, anti-democratic rule.

Thursday, November 9, 2017

Another High Tech Lynching

Clarence Thomas was run through the system fairly, emerging victorious with the help of his white supporters who were thrilled to hire him to hold a lantern, mow the lawn and pick up trash at the Supreme Court. The vigilantes were on his side. Bill Clinton was deemed unfit for his role by Republicans, infuriated at his victory, not because of anything he did, apart from winning, but for what he was and what he represented, a blow to the treasonous forces of minority rule.

Clinton was the target of the vigilantes, who declared "open season" on him. Whitewater was an invention, a smoke screen and and an excuse to begin the persecution. "Investigations" expanded everywhere from there, illegally and with the benefit of heaps and mounds of Mellon cash. Hillary is in line for the same treatment, as the primary focus for Republican hatred, never mind that whatever she did it was Girl-Scout material in relation to the crimes of George W. Bush. 

The objective, of course, is to distract from a Republican president whose innate criminality and incompetence make Bush's look like nothing. God help us if we have another terror attack. We haven't yet recovered from the last episode of Republican rule. And Trump is laying the groundwork for the next recession and financial collapse, deregulating and deprofessionalizing everything. His trigger finger is itchy but the public is wary because of past adventurism.

All he needs is an excuse. Hello, Rocket Man. 

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

In Vitro, Veritas

Examine closely the Republican obsession with wombs. It's a Freudian field-day. How to abstract from that the many issues of mommy-lust and daddy destruction? Of repressed desires and regressive fantasies? 

Isolate Republicans in a test tube and you get all the nasty elements of the fear of life and the loathing of the self, of unowned aspects of human nature and the projection of those onto innocent people and existence itself.

Republicans continue to see their unacknowledged weakness and suspected depravity in others and in the world at-large. Watch them fester in their test-tube environment and, voilà, the evil is seen to be within. 

Just the Hacks, Ma'am.

How do you know a hack? Examples are easy to find. Choose any conservative "think tank" and consider its output. The liklihood they will conclude that tax cuts on the rich are bad social and economic policy is nothing even though it is true.

Hacks have sold their souls. Immediately it's apparent that hack-dom reaches high levels. The Supreme Court is populated by right-wing hacks, on the one side. Hacks gave us Iraq. Bush inherited people who had some knowledge and sense.

He fired them and installed idiots with appropriate opinions on the "unborn." Hacks gave us the Great Recession. They believe in deregulation as a matter of faith. Hacks are immune to feedback and reasoning. It's not about reason or reality.

It's about power. And it's one thing to have a few hacks around, another nothing but hacks.

Monday, November 6, 2017

Does He Know?

Herr Donald's latest international trip is incoherent even by his standards. Suspicion falls on the heavy footsteps of Robert Mueller. Has the Trumpster done anything illegal? I don't think he knows, but assumes he has, and with good reason.

Donald doesn't subscribe to the rule of law. Like most Republicans--blinded by greed or self-righteousness and cynicism--he isn't concerned with legality but what he can get away with. The law, morality and decency are for lesser beings. 

Watch How Republicans Handle a Dumpster Fire

The equivalency industry is heating up. I wish I had stock in it. Trump's supporters, seeing their hero hit dumpster-fire levels of incompetence already, are rolling out their Bush-era emergency kits, trying frantically to protect the party from damage. With Bush they were successful but mostly because he left the country in such an awful, flaming mess it took years just to quell the fires.

Some still smolder. The results of Trump's hideous reign await us so the best money is spent attacking and defaming Hillary and her allies. Only Donald himself can tackle Mueller and, of course, his backers know better than anyone the liklihood he will screw that up. He is a prop though not as predictable as their last one. Bush was putty. Trump is plastic but explosive. One mistake and--kaboom!

They handle him with care but not for the good of the country, protecting only themselves. Republicans are fighting their dumpster fire by starting more fires. That's how much they care about America. They scramble and hype up the Hillary-hate to direct attention away from themselves but nobody is in their class--not when it comes to malfeasance, malign governance and hypocrisy.

Thursday, November 2, 2017

SALAD: The Five Points of Calvinism

1. Shithood: people are depraved, worthless turds at birth and wallow in sin
2. Arbitrary Salvation: God is arbitrary in choosing the "elect" because God is a dick
3. Limited Salvation: those not chosen are unavoidably screwed now and forever
4. Asskicking Grace: the chosen--the elect--are inevitably and permanently redeemed
5. Despair: the result, together with cruelty, of this perverted, fatalistic outlook

Remember, all ye faithful, that God is an arbitrary asshole. Therefore, those who are arbitrary assholes are closest to God's heart and are representative of the Divine Will. 

Go now, and fuck peace. Life is meant to be shit. Such is the inscrutable will of God. 

Jackass: The Sean Hannity Story

No matter how low they go in degradation relating to Trump there is still a hierarchy and room for differentiation among his underlings and supporters. Since it's an ongoing situation there is no known floor. The actors are still alive and humping lampposts for Trump but Sean Hannity would be high on anyone's list of candidates for most depraved and enslaved. 

Circumstances are worsening as Trump's incompetence becomes increasingly obvious and Hannity seems more rabid and deranged in defense of his master. He squirms and grovels in gratitude as Trump toes more closely to traditional lines of Republican treachery, trying to destroy the lives of average citizens while ensuring the increasing hegemony of the rich. 

Abolishing estate taxes is a big deal, possibly forever preventing a return to democratic norms. Denying healthcare to ordinary citizens is a big deal, but Democratic leaders live in a bureaucratic haze of impotence, failing to fight even the most clear-cut battles effectively. Hannity and his faux-media allies become more combative as they recede from reality.

Hannity is the person I most want to track, attack and destroy--an arbitrary choice, but I think we should pick him because he is the most unhinged in relation to his influence. Maybe we can expose him for what he is, a pathetic, desperate, sickass, incoherent lackey and shill. His humanity is hopelessly compromised. He is a bellowing, delusional jackass.

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Real Amateurs Online

Watch as real-life amateurs bare it all and engage in acts of shameless depravity. Hidden cameras catch everything as prominent citizens, ranking bureaucrats, corporate tycoons and elected officials sell their souls for nothing, desiring only immediate gratification. Join West-Wing Webcams today! (charges payable to The Trump Organization)