I started this blog a couple of years ago for two reasons.  One was to shut my old high school friend’s, Anne Mitchell Whisnant’s, big yapper pestering me to do so ;-). The other, to give me further platform to placate my need to yell maddeningly into the great void about the horror of my own countrymen selling my country for scrap to a carnie madman born of an inbred plutocracy and seductively wrapped in a  monstrous bible-flag hybrid amalgam sentient skin around a Cletus Kassidy-level serial killing narcissist.   But I’ve found myself so disheartened and overwhelmed with the developments, or should I say “lack of”, over the last couple of years that I’ve lost my voice, so to speak.  Nobody gives a jack fuck.  Nobody.  I have grown hoarse for screaming and warning and have sadly  taken to the hypnotic and helpless, though sickly entertaining stare of watching bodies one after the other self-immolate in seething service to a demon of their own design.   If people insist on burning themselves alive and continue to refuse the water to save them, what can one do?  Then again, when said burning bodies set the rest of the house on fire and STILL nobody gives a fuck, well…how do you deal with that?  Anyone?  Bueller?

The appropriately named Carnage could not be a better nom de asswipe for one Donald J. Trump, America murderer.  That’s not a typo, kids.  I didn’t leave off the “n”.  Donald Trump IS a murderer of the highest order.  And given a different societal birth and status, he most assuredly would have been a literal one, I’ve no doubt.  Then again, can one be called a murderer if one allows said murderer to gut themselves while smiling into the face of the madman they have invited to do so?  To paraphrase John Prine, “A question ain’t really a question if you know the answer, too.”  Yeah.  Guess not.  But what DO you call the person you invite to murder you?  Apparently, here we call it “Mr. President”.  At any rate, Trump would have made a helluva different movie had he been in the Dan Aykroyd role in “Trading Places“. 

Two things happened today of huge, ground-swelling historical significance.  One of these was not here in America and was foreseen and braced for over some time:  BREXIT has finally taken effect.  The second, and arguably the more horrific, if not just the most anguished, is that the Senate, during the impeachment trial, voted to not allow witnesses during Trump’s impeachment “trial” in essence, ending the impeachment process.  In one fell swoop the American Senate washed their hands of Trump’s crimes, then did Pontius Pilate one better and gave him the throne completely, rather than a shitload of lashings.  Yeah.  Those things happened today and I’m feeling  the words fall flat even as I type them.

Let me try this again.  Today.  In the new cradle of democracy, in the very HEART of our nation’s constitutional body, at the very central node for all things America ever has and would ever be, at the nucleus of the machine that controls and gives birth to the very laws that give us our breath and sustenance…  At this command center of freedoms came the greatest blow to freedom that I believe our country has EVER given itself.  Not just willingly, but gleefully.  And far from overwhelmingly, which I’m not sure makes it better or worse.  But by a “vote” of  51-49.  Today, the scribes of our country knowingly and purposefully argued that one of the greatest crimes against our country would not only go unpunished, but that no one would be even given the opportunity to raise one hand against it. A trial was held and NO WITNESS WILL BE CALLED.  None.  NONE.  First, there was no trial, and then there was a trial, and then there was none…or something like that, my apologies to Donovan.  Not a single person will be allowed to even speak FOR, let alone against, the president in a trial about the president in the very chamber that allows the president to even fucking exist.   Today, law would not be practiced by lawmakers in the law factory of the one fucking country where law is held the most sacrosanct fucking thing in the world.  Well, next to Jesus and queer-bashing, anyway.

It’s Official: John Bolton Won’t Testify Against Trump, and Neither Will Anyone Else

If you were looking for an exact moment to declare Democracy officially dead in America…you have your moment. THIS is the nadir…the fulcrum. Ground zero of the long-coming impact over the last years since 9/11. THIS marks the true death of our nation as a free country. As a republic. Today, we officially swore our allegiance to dictatorship. And that is no fucking joke. Today, we embraced servitude and plutocracy over freedom and self rule. Today, we openly embraced, not just tolerated, our subjugation to demagoguery.  Today, we sold ourselves out, not for 30 pieces of silver. But for the right of others to take all the silver they want, whenever they want, however they want.  

Today, we betrayed ourselves and earned the destruction to further come.  And yeah, it will.   Trump will be reelected. Our country will deteriorate deeper into madness and tailspin into a crumbled decay of past glory.  Today, we opened the door to the rest of the modern world taking over where we left off. Today, we saw the exact moment of the fall of Rome and welcomed in the Dark Ages, again. And we fucking LOVED it! 

How are the streets not swarming?  How are windows not being shattered and stores not being looted, dumpsters set on fire?   How are the streets clear and functional, weather permitting?  How are people standing in line bitching about the spelling of their names on their goddam coffee cups like it’s a regular fucking Friday before a goddam Super Bowl?  How are people downloading fucking commercials two days before said commercials are supposed to televise?  WHAT IN THE FUCKING FUCK IS FUCKING HAPPENING HERE!!!!!

I can’t.  I just can’t.  I just cannot bear another day of this madness.  I really cannot.   Did no one see what happened today?  Do we really just not fucking care in the least what happens anymore.  Do you not realize what we did?  We elected a king today.  We.  Elected. A.  King.  Right in the heart of “No More Kings” Grand Central Station.   Right there in the very chamber where we stab the beasts that threaten our democracy with dictatorship, we gave the gilded key to a gilded solipsist on a gilded throne.  Almost literally.  Almost.

Is anyone else crying right now?  Anyone?  Anyone at all?  Anyone showing any king of emotion about having given away our democracy today?  So simply and so easily?  THIS is what we’re going to allow?  THIS is the path we want?  We desire THIS?  For the sickest, most disgusting, most nefarious of all of us, we are willing to allow this prima nocta against our liberty so this monster can bloody his fist just for the sick pleasure of it?  For the sake of cowards and thieves to continue their cowardice and thievery unabated, we drove the last nail into liberty.  And not one person today said a goddam thing.  Not one.  I mean, in real life.

I’ve lost friends and family over the last three years.  I’ve been questioned and accused and mocked.  I’ve been ignored and belittled and ostracized.  And I don’t mean ALL of it from the usual shit I do.  I mean specifically because of Trump’s presence in the White House.  And I have grown numb and voiceless from it.  I don’t have the eloquence of George Carlin or the balls of Bill Hicks or the nuance of Jon Stewart.  But goddam it, what the fuck already?  Do you need such powers of persuasion to simply point out a smoldering pile a shit so other people don’t step in it?  How the fuck was I to know I’d get bitch slapped while they decided to lie down in said pile of smoldering shit and rub in on their faces like a twisted parody of the mud scene in Python’s “Holy Grail”. 

God bless America. America is dead. Long live…whatever the fuck this is. But it damn sure ain’t that.   I don’t know what America can do after today.  Oh, I know WHAT it’ll do.  Same shit, different day.  Gorge, purge, repeat.  Whatever the pleasure or avarice.  It will suckle at the teat of inept complacency and double down whenever someone politely pokes them to “mind the gap”, bitches.  And when it does get sucked down onto the tracks and looks down to see itself severed at the knees, I’ll be goddam if I’m gonna cry on THAT fucking day or offer my hand.  Go fucking bury your faces in the coming Coliseum spectacular Sunday, folks. Nothing to see here but the dissolution of your government right from under your fat, retarded feet.  But what about those Doritos commercials, huh!? Funny stuff!  Funny stuff.  My apologies to John Prine.

That smug indifference.  

If this man is not hung as a traitor to not just his country but to mankind and civilization in general, then America is a failed experiment in democracy. Seriously.

Fostering, indulging and promoting fascist tyranny at a level that would have Joseph Goebbels asking him to “tone that shit down a skosh” can only illustrate how far America, and Americans, Christians and Conservatives specifically, have devolved, devoured and detoured our nation in a most disgusting and criminal manner. I’m not speaking metaphorically here in the slightest. If Nazi commanders and politicos were deserved of high treason and the penalties associated with such, including death, there is absolutely NO argument as to why Donald Trump, his administration, his party and his zealot horde should not be treated with the same punitive justice. None.

His criminality, while beyond imagination, is not beyond reproach. That a cult of similar minded hatemongerers champion him leaves little room for absolution on his part and much to malign on theirs. Believe me when I say with unwavering indefatigable resolve that Donald J. Trump has satisfied, in action, voice and merit, all that is required to convict him of hate crimes, treason, malfeasance, misuse of office, dereliction of duty, incompetence, misappropriations, ineptitude, rape, sexual assault, association with known criminals, theft by deception, theft by taking, hate speech, criminal consortium both foreign and domestic, money laundering, defrauding the government, fraud, violation of First Amendment Rights, false imprisonment, child slavery, abduction, kidnapping, misuse of government property, witness tampering, intimidation, etc. No joke. No hyperbole. Not laughing.  Not now.

History will no doubt look at this period as the critical mass of America’s democratic implosion, a “J-Curve” of overindulgent id that led to the peracute plunge of our societal aptitude and functionality as a free state. That we, the fallen, will in no way have any sway in the matter of that perception will fall on deaf ears and unseeing eyes, much as they are now, as the entire developed world continues growing and developing around us, while we sink deeper and deeper into this mire of our own making. We will/have become the laughingstock of the world, an also-ran in the columns of “great civilizations that could have been”, while all of Scandinavia, China, Japan and a few other hold outs usurp our former roles and functions as leader(s) of the free world.

Watching proud idiots piss away their own rights, sell out their own country and abandon their own faiths to throw in with a pilfering narcissist and his vacuous cohorts and his lecherous family for their own guilty pleasures affords me little hope of a return to sanity and cohesiveness in America. What W. exploited and exposed, what the election of Obama then woefully instigated, has only led to a mass suicide pact with no more than what amounts to these slack-jawed simpletons’ united efforts to endorse aggressive ignorance and willful hate, simply for the fun of it. Simply for the bloodlust satisfaction of their twisted, hateful minds.

The rings of Vietnam-era “love it or leave it” punctuate anew as a euphemistic non-sequitur du jour renewed in the venom of today’s neo-fascist, aka, the American Conservative. How little the Right truly understands about country. About patriotism. About self. That they fail to do so under the banners of God, family and country only serve to underscore how truly ironic and pathetic their platitudes of stupidity, misbelieved as rites of vindication, are. Laughable, if they weren’t so woefully and scarily real. Hilarious, if they didn’t results in the sickness the proliferates wildly in real time, real world America.

That Conservatives and Christians have to invent their own demons in order to look brave fighting them is no great surprise or mystery to those of us well past the need to explain life in monosyllabic grunts and pointed gestures. That such intentional and egregious ignorance obfuscate the hand of reason and stifles the rule of intelligence DOES give cause for more than just concern. It elicits downright panic, much in the same way a visually challenged two year old being handed the flight controls to an overbooked DC-10 would. To quote that famous line uttered by Brando at the end of an aptly appropriate “Apocalypse Now”: “The horror. The…horror.”

Trump should be hung from a gallows on the National Mall in front of his crying horde, gnashing about like rabid feral hogs in an uncooled fire pit. And I state this as far more than just gratuitous vengeance porn. It is the actual justice deserved for such a monster. A tyrant. A dictator. A non-contributing foul malodorous rust-stained carbon husk. It SHOULD be justice achieved. It SHOULD be the endgame for actions of such vapid sinfulness that only a sadistic mind on the level of the Marquis himself could have envisioned.

America is indeed living out the Marquis de Sade’s most passioned and disgusting treatise on the open exercise of vanity and the profane IN REAL FUCKING TIME. This observation should not be lost on anyone with half a wit or an ounce of empathy left in their weary and downtrodden bodies. Those not aligned with this evil are now but beautiful naked children, chained and tortured, raped and sodomized for the gluttonus pleasure of a few beasts at a festival of grotesque Dionysian proportions. So grandiose in its indescribably horror as to cast ill shadow to Caligula and a daring gauntlet to Idi Amin or Kim Jung-un, awaiting the final orgy of blood and blasphemy as the end of our leaderless empire draws nigh.

Fuck you, Trump. Burn in fucking hell, you blithering shitstain on the taint of history. Fuck. You.

A high school girl who refused to complete a history lesson about Islam has finally lost her court case alleging that the class went against her Christian beliefs and the Constitution.

Caleigh Wood challenged a history lesson on “the Muslim World” and her parents backed her up, ultimately suing the school when her grade on the assignment was affected. The lawsuit continued despite the fact that her grade in the class wasn’t impacted. Now, she has finally lost. It’s likely, however, that she will appeal the well-grounded decision.

The federal court found that the curriculum didn’t endorse a specific religion and didn’t compel the students to profess any particular belief.

I used to be a Christian. Truth be told, I still am. No, there is no God. No heaven. No hell. No angels. No golden mansion on streets paved with gold with a golden throne surrounded by all my dead friends and relatives who just so happen to be at JUUUUST the right ages that fit my memory and comfort level best, regardless of THEIR perspectives and similar wonts. No, that’s just silly comic book stories. And I’m not “spiritual but not religious” either, since I’ll be damned if I can understand the difference other than level of smugness. But there IS a code that outlines and defines being a decent, good, moral person of sound judgement and principled ethics. And that code is/was clearly proffered by Jesus Christ, real or not, fairy story or not. It doesn’t really affect the message nor the meaning. As Shakespeare said, “a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet”, so do the beatitudes and parables and lessons lived and taught by Jesus hold just as true if Jesus weren’t Jesus. Call them whatever you like, ascribe them to whomever you wish, living, dead or fictional, it changes nothing really. And THAT is the secret evident in what is Christianity, forever lost upon those that should ascribe to it most: Christians.

American Christians are totally lost. When I say I used to be a Christian, I mean CHRISTIAN. Baptized. Born again. Came under the power of the Holy Spirit at a faith healing. Camped outdoors in Camp Agape in Jesus ’84. Youth retreats. Youth groups, sometimes twice a week at two different churches. Choir. RA’s. Pot lucks. Greek orthodox raised, Baptist bred, Catholic school/mass for 3 years, Charismatic Christian for 2 years. Methodist youth groups. Church of Nazarene via fosters. Jehovah’s witness upstairs renters. Synagogue with a couple of friends for good measure.

And brother, I lived it hardcore. Believed it hardcore. Knew it hardcore. Read all 12 volumes of the Bible Story twice. Read Pilgrim’s Progress half a dozen times. Learned the books of the bible backwards and forwards, thanks to Mrs. Walker in 4th grade Sunday School. Played piano in church by special request. Even preached some sermons while still in high school during a period between pastors. So believe me when I say that Christianity in America, John Pavlovitz and the like aside, is more than dead. It is the living dead, virulently animated but soulless in a twisted, horrific, bastardized version of terroristic proportions. It is become the very demon it has believed itself above and anathema to. Well, not so much become, as it always has pretty much has been (Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, Missionaries to the New World…I’m looking at you), but, shall we say, EVOLVED. Or rather, malignantly distorted into a version that would Christ to return would see him quickly recrucified, 2019 style. Which is to say, literally nailed to a cross Medieval style, as that has become the norm again.

This article brought to mind a particular instance in my nascent evolution away from theism and the warmth of my Christian heritage towards the coldly clinical truth of atheism– When the thought that Christianity and religion in general was the diabolical force (and farce) that William Golding purported it to be was a new and very uncomfortable but clearly obvious reality to me. My inconvenient truth, as it were.

I had decided in college that I would expand my knowledge in as many areas as I possibly could, to take advantage of the education afforded me, and took as many classes and electives not just within my discipline of biology and medicine, but well outside it, as I could: philosophy, music, religion, history. Even angling and karate, though I never got credited for those. One of my favorite of these courses was “History of The Middle East”, a start to finish course jam-packed with all things Middle Eastern, which included, of course, a healthy few weeks on Islam.

Now, even with my upbringing and personal affectation towards Christianity, though challenged and in doubt at the time, I had always been able to segregate, as it were, the sacred from the profane. Education and faith, while not strictly mutually exclusive, were something that I could abide in equal tolerance if not fully conjoin. When one did force the other into question, I rode that bitch out as far as I could then, if still unresolved, put it in the “save it for later/more info needed” category and moved the fuck on.

I couldn’t resolve the dinosaurs/creation thing so I just let them coexist for as long as I could until I WAS able to reason through it in time. My faith was not threatened nor did my education nor my ability to reason suffer. There WERE answers, whether or not I could determine them, to explain these things. After all, the pyramids stood for no reason anybody could as yet could fully explain but yet, there they were anyway. The knowing of it was just waiting there to be uncovered.

I didn’t need craziness and idiotic conjecture to stand in for it in the interim. If alternative views as regarded my faith were proffered, I never took offense or abused the messenger. I tried to assimilate it immediately or just let it simmer on the back-burner until I could either cook that stew all the way or finally turn it off and toss it with the rest of the garbage. But that sort of tolerance and investigative reasoning is not the Christian way…apparently. Christianity does not endorse or weather logic or truth or encourage a thirst for real truth. I got a good dose of this reality during that Middle Eastern course.

We had a mid-term. Pretty much a huge portion of that test, obviously, covered Islam. As in the HISTORY of Islam. Its roots. Its principles. Its effect on the world stage, in politics and in culture and in the people as a whole and individually. The basic tenants and how it compares against, is influenced by and influences other religions. You know. LEARNING. But the Bible Belt boys and girls in Auburn, Alabama were having none of it.

After the tests were returned, my professor, a pretty smart and really cool guy, had to spend the bulk of an entire class addressing idiocy and vitriolic stupidity because so many students took it upon themselves to leave messages chastising him and wrote critiques admonishing Muslims, Islam itself, Mohommed in particular and praising their lord Jesus Christ, the one true God. These mini diatribes were written ON the tests in protest about lessons in HISTORY about HISTORY in a HISTORY class and in an HISTORICAL context. Apparently, or at least my impression was, this had never happened to the professor much, if at all, in the past…on account said college curriculum in an institute of higher learning wasn’t a cult of forced servitude but a HISTORY class about HISTORY. Things that happened, are happening, and the effects of said happenings. It was then that I saw, laid bare, the frailty of religion and Christianity in particular. It was a tenuous sham built on nothing but vague puffery and bluster, a cheap and lazy attempt to explain the difficult to comprehend and to control the weak for more nefarious means.

Why? Because it has no foundation based in reality. It isn’t real. It’s as believable but as the fairy tales it mimics, though far less innocuous, with nothing but the strength of the deliverer to give it life and purpose. Unlike facts and science, it has no set meaning, no set purpose, other than that which is morphed by the one or ones championing it. It mimics the life of that which is real but is just sheer façade. Christianity is the Pinocchio of reality. It is a hollow shell full of pretense and promise that can never deliver beyond what the deliverer brings to it, with no hope of becoming the thing it really long for. It is fraught with the wispy fragility inherent in fiction, waiting to be discovered for the fraud that it truly is, trying its best to deter that from happening with cruel threats and vainglorious promises of reward.

It is the whole concept of FAITH that protects religion, for there is no better protection from a lie other than avoiding exposure. What better way to have a lie lay hidden than to discourage the truth from ever being sought in the first place? It’s much harder to find something if you never go searching for it. To question faith, and religion by default, is to bring shame and sorrow, even plague and eternal damnation upon yourself. Not to question it is to bring all the greatest glories one could imagine.

Go one step further and proclaim faith as the equal to truth and you have now an (almost) foolproof scam ready to be used for whatever purpose the user would have: power to control without question, punish with impunity, steal without effort by tricking the victim into giving freely. Fortunes can be amassed. Worlds can be conquered. Whole societies or sects can be single handedly, and “justifiably” annihilated, all at the whim of one’s faith. The usages are endless with such a power, as HISTORY has proven. As America’s NOW continues to delineate. As Trump and his sycophantic worshipping “Christians” champion this vulgarity with brazen demagoguery that would make Nero puke.

How weak, how pathetic, how fragile one’s reality to attack with such ferocity even the most minor of perceived threats! Islam and Christianity share this fragility in spades. What is their true message? Is there even one anymore? How is that it always seems to benefit the most enraged? The most insulted. The most offended. The most weak. The most impotent and the most cowardly. How random the application of the laws and tenants of said religions. How alternative the meanings. How hypocritical the applications and teachings.

Christians don’t even bother with exhibiting ANY of Christ’s teachings anymore. The ONE thing that is persistent as it is consistent is the message of Christ, the very reason for being a Christian, the very reason the religion exists. And yet, Christ is the ONE thing missing from Christianity. Instead, what we have is some haphazard promulgation of esoteric nonsensical judgements; a conglomeration of cherry picked premedieval Draconian, OLD Testament logic used to separate, not join. To condemn, not comfort. To injure, not heal. To kill, not resurrect. To accuse THEM. To EXCUSE one’s self.

This isn’t Jesus. This is the pharisees and the elite that had Jesus killed. Jesus was the iconoclast. The hippie. The socialist. The tired and poor. The meek. The jailed. The immigrant. All these things…LITERALLY. And yet Christians feel empowered to the point of orgasmic rapture to rail against EVERY SINGLE ONE of these aspects of Christianity. Every. Single. One. Hypocrites, all.

Christianity is afraid. Afraid of anything that could expose it. Even those things that have nothing to do with it, no desire to even entertain the idea of intersecting with it. Christianity is afraid, yes, but Christ was not. Christianity today accepts nothing that isn’t it already. It’s morphed its message to embrace the very things it was meant to protect the faithful from: avarice, hate, prejudice, fear, bigotry, judgement, bloodthirst.

Christ accepted all. Christianity today would prefer to cajole and accuse rather than to listen and proffer assistance. Christ sat with the sinners. Ate with the outcasts. Lived with the unlivable. Gave when he had nothing. When he had LESS than nothing. Condemned not. Admonished not. Accused not. Judged not. Offered light and hope and forgiveness without condition, even if his audience refused or ignored or tortured, or even killed him. Even THEN, he proffered forgiveness, to his dying breath: “Forgive them father, for they know not what they do”. Absodamnlutely. And THAT Jesus, real or not, story or not, lesson or not, would STILL do it today. IS doing it today. “For as you do this to the least of your brethren, you do it to me.” He taught this, in his words AND with his actions. He would not understand a DAMN thing going on right now in his name.

The girl here that lost her lawsuit, and her parents, in this article IS Christianity today. Proud in its ignorance. Defiant in its stupidity. Unforgiving in its brashness. Unwavering in its hypocrisy. Yes, Christianity in America IS dead. It is become another beast altogether. To worship and herald the closest thing to the foretold Antichrist yet encountered, the vile and disgusting Donald Trump, is to expose one’s life as a lie and one’s faith as absolute bullshit. If you are a Christian who has supported and continues to support this demonic hellspawn of sentient greed that is your “President”, then you are forfeit in your faith and can only pray that your nonexistent God will forgive you before you die. Because in YOUR world, you WILL join Satan in hellfire for all eternity. Sadly, in my world, the real world, you just going to die a fucking asshole who fucked up shit for the rest of us so badly it may never recover.

Following a cult of personality as blindly and as dangerously as any terrorist, with the same fortitude and vigor in the FAITH that your vile and destructive hate will be rewarded is just as sick and disturbed. Trump, like all malignantly narcissistic sociopaths, doesn’t know and doesn’t care. They only see themselves, only care about themselves. They are eager to allow themselves to be crowned emperor of whatever the fuck just as long as they are emperor of whatever the fuck. For its part, The GOP has sold all it is and has stood for to cater to these ignorant monsters that now form its base. It’s easier to fool the already fooled, to strong-arm the already weak-minded. It’s more profitable to embrace the treason inherent than to take a principled stand against totalitarianism and plutocracy. The GOP are nothing but simpering cowards, yipping like a herd of Chihuahua’s from the comfort of their owner’s smoke-soaked Buick.

There is absolutely no difference today between a Christian America and an Islamist terrorist state, politically speaking. In truth, if the Conservative Right DID get their way, it would be EXACTLY the same as their Muslim counterparts: Complete with public stonings for the intellectual “elite”, hangings for the homosexuals and the like, forced servitude and torture for the blacks and immigrants and pretty much the same with an added sexual deviance spin for women.

THIS dystopia is the America envisioned by the Evangelicals that hold sway over the proud man-child pissing and preening in the Oval Office. THIS is the America every Trumpkin and Red MAGA donning douchebag is frothing at the bit to unleash. THIS is the America that today’s Republicans have sold themselves for in order to maintain a fleeting charade of power for a degenerate and Dionysian indulgence of vice and avarice. The LAST fucking thing they want is a goddam History lesson that foretells their downfall and penance to come.

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The numbers show Trump lost the shutdown and Pelosi won

“…perhaps the ultimate diss to Trump is what Fox News polling discovered. Voters think that Pelosi is better than Trump at “Washington gamesmanship” by 6 points, according to the latest Fox News poll. That has to hurt for Trump who is said to “relish” the gamesmanship with congressional Democrats.” — CNN

I don’t like this. People are exuberant/pissed for all the wrong reasons here.

Oneupmanship shouldn’t be the political rule du jour.  Thanks to almost three decades of amoral, agenda-driven pundits (mostly right wing), weak-minded, weak-spined politicos (mostly both, but mostly the Right) and a voting mass devoid of character, purpose and ethics (pretty much everybody, but, again, mostly the Right) this is now how we do what we do in America.  It’s not supposed to be (solely) a gladiatorial spectacle, at least not without a firm goal in mind to serve the welfare of the people.  But it is.  I don’t see an out here.  Then again, I’m also a professional cynic.  Then again, again, I’m also usually right.

Maybe the Dems see this can’t-beat-’em-join-’em ritual celebration en masse as the only option left, but I think that it’s more likely for the same reason the GOP makes things a contest in the first place, rather than a push for reasoned governing: appealing to the appetites of the masses for self-serving glory over overall societal benefit. Sport. Victor and defeated. Simply clubbing each other the hardest to see who falls first, who can draw first blood, who can get the thrust sign from the masses. This isn’t government. This isn’t healthy. That we on either side cheer and chide, bully or pout is making things worse. But the immediate though sickening pleasure from seeing blood in the water seems to override our higher functions, as it has for some time.

This isn’t college football. Again, at least it shouldn’t be. I feel that this is a sign that there is no going back to government in this country being what it is supposed to be: a tool for the people to live and function in reasoned prosperity, health and happiness mutually furthering each other’s cause for betterment and benefit. No. It’s devolved now into simply a wagering bloodsport for bragging rights and indulgence on the pineal level, stoking the furnaces of schadenfreude and avarice with absolutely no thought as to what benefit or harm said contest would bring. Vengeance for vengeance’s sake.

I am particularly disappointed in the imagery put forth from the Liberal stance, slow-trotting the bases and staring down the pitcher while you round the bases. Yeah, it feels good right now but all you’re doing is guaranteeing that your next big gun gets plunked on the elbow and then all you got is a benches-clearing brawl that leaves the stands cheering in manic bloodthirst while both sides end up with players out for the season and a guarantee that now nobody gets to go to the big show.

I’ve long championed a key defining difference between Conservative and Liberal, Democrat and Republican, as to their character and action when victorious.  Much in the way Patton Oswalt just recently interrupted his usual very acute and precise vivisectional takedown of an opponent in the political arena to step out of character and back into his role as decent fucking human.  When finding out that a right-wing troll that was, for some crazy reason, willing to do battle with the always dominant Patton had a real-life medical issue, Patton took off his gloves and extended a hand in favor:  He assisted in paying the man’s medical bills and inspired others to donate and do the same.  This sort of basic humanity is what we were taught and preached.  At least we used to.

I feel completely certain that ANY counterpart to Patton would have instead tasted blood and gone in for the kill.  And I mean this in general, not this (necessarily) particular example.  A Liberal and Conservative may do battle as viciously as the other.  A Liberal, however, will see his counterpart defeated and downed and help him up.  A Conservative will not just stop but will put his heel on the throat with full weight.  No doubt.  What I’m seeing now is maybe a shift in the Left to the Right.  Maybe not choking the life out of a fallen foe, maybe not hoisting their head on a spear, but a little too much vainglorious gloating and face-thumbing.

It is the Republican mantra now:  serve self and self only.  Period.  Their entire platform is structured towards explicitly self aggrandizing, profit and pleasure.  The REAL kicker here is that at the same time, this is the party with which the disciples of Christ, aka Christians, have fully aligned themselves.  This isn’t conjecture or hyperbole.  It IS Christianity in America now.  Well, the Evangelical hijacking of it, anyway.  There are holdouts of course.  But not enough to define the current religious regime in this country.

Trump is a child. A simpleton. He only understands the gratification from immediate recognition and approval. Like a growing infant that watches his parent’s face while he stumbles around into his toddling years, looking for that grin or laugh so he can repeat his efforts for the same effect. Seems cute enough, but it only appeals to the lowest common denominator when that is ALL you get from what should be a learning process. When you prefer the low hanging fruit of bemusement rather than admonishment or critique for betterment and progress you are doomed to perpetual adolescent immaturity.  Which apparently is just fine by an alarmingly huge number of grown-assed adults that enjoy chiding the newest generation on how spoiled they truly are.

Are they/we not recognizing that blaming said generation for trying to stand up, alone, for themselves to figure out how to make it in a world that will leave them heavily indebted, unemployable and mentally scarred before they’ve hit 21, after we’ve fucked their shit up and didn’t give them the tools in the first fucking place might just be the reason they aren’t as equipped as we’d prefer? Not to mention having the fucking gall to blame them when they have to cowboy the fuck up, again alone, in a world where classroom mass murder is as common as fucking Taco Tuesday. That the self-proclaimed party of Christ and the traditional family seem fully at ease with siding with murderers over the murdered is a little too goddam Lewis Carroll bat-shit dystopic for me.

I expect this self-congratulatory gladiator mentality from the Right. It’s ALL they know anymore. They’ve long sold there souls to whatever demons they embrace and are so far gone they are flat out incapable of grasping any reality anymore. They have devolved fully into a faction that in no way represents what they used to, and what many of their own party still, for some fucking reason, think they believe in: reasoned government with a firm fiscal grip and a fair shake in business growth with ethics rooted in traditional family values. No. Now they are completely, fully and exclusively anti-“whatever the other guys are for whatever reason no matter what forever and always”, regardless of the issue or event. Even if it is something they traditionally would have been okay with or even promoted themselves. If you couldn’t see that during the Obama years, if you still can’t see that very thing in Trump’s current regime, then you have to be one of them. Or you may as well be.

I’ve grown very, very tired of the whole “both sides” thing. Truly I have. Yes, both parties are flawed. Yes, both are self-promoting and self-serving. Yes, both are hypocritical and greedy. But to say that with unqualified equivocation is to believe that all criminals are equal as well. There is a whole goddam world of difference between a cat burglar and fucking John Wayne Gacy. To qualify either with some same-size-fits-all moniker that evil is evil is not to understand, really, anything at all.

Yes. Both parties are shitty because people are shitty. You think the Green Party or Libertarians or whoever-the-fuck has a better shot at avoiding the inherent flaws of men in power (and women…just roll with me here, kids)? To say that Dems are shitty on the same level as the GOP is to equate having your child raped and murdered and buried under a crawlspace under a demon-clown’s torture dome with the also tragic, but not quite as much, event of MeeMaw not being able to find her good necklace on the chifforobe (ask your MeeMaw).  And, yes…it is that disparate.

How fiscally responsible is it to douse a non-existent flame with an ocean of taxpayer money for a symbolic and pyrrhic trophy that is this “Emergency Wall”? At best, it would service to marginally dam an inconsequential stream of tortured and scared refugees with, yes, some of those nasty druggies mixed in. At worst, it is what it actually is: a concrete monument to Republican puffery and self-righteous deism, a necessary trinket to distract their base from any real issue that requires truly nuanced effort and reasoned compromise: healthcare, energy, infrastructure, livable wages, international leadership and unity, resource conservation, ecological management, penal reform, electoral reform, etc. These things are harder and take longer to manage and explain. But flashing shiny trinkets for a quick fix while yelling at everybody to run away from the Mexican Monster is way easier to get someone’s attention. Still after all, isn’t that now the whole reason to be in the politics game anymore? For attention? How else are you gonna make a buck if you don’t get traffic flow to your doors?

Maybe the Dems are gun shy after the Obama years. I can’t blame them/us. Obama did try, very, VERY hard, for a rational, reasoned, mutually responsible and bipartisan approach to true government reform and progress. The GOP and their frothing masses, spurred irresponsibly by the likes of Limbaugh, Hannity and Coulter, were having none of it. As a result, the country suffered a crippled legislature needlessly for eight years, though the economy, foreign diplomacy and day-to-day functioning business and activities continued fairly unimpeded and with economic growth.  The country could at least safely progress without having to worry so much about the next superclusterfuck by a simpleton puppeted by more nefarious and greedy forces.

All this priggish seething on the Right did was lay the groundwork for the too-horrifying-to-be-hilarious realization that a diseased carnie barker sociopath of hellish proportions would be buoyed by a nihilistic mob of zealots and fascists to the throne of rule, usurping power from the masses and feeding it into the dark and starving maw of a vainglorious and hypocritically pious totalitarian plutocracy.  But the Left struck a blow.  Now, for some fucking reason, the more “sane and reasoned” of us seem to think that poking the wounded bear while high-fiving each other is the best thing to do rather than circle the wagons, re-load, steady our resolve and ready ourselves for the impetuous shit-fest most assuredly headed our way.

We can’t change the Right. They have embraced the distilled shittiness they have created and they are just fine, thank you very much, not just living a lie but celebrating that ignorance vociferously and proudly. They are looooong past the point of rescue and without hope of reason or catharsis of repentance to be expected from them, probably ever.

We can’t factor them into our world.  Not anymore. We can only hope to wall them off like a nidus of inflammation or a foreign object from the rest of the body as a whole to minimize the damage. But joining them in their own masturbatory self-immolation for pageant and zealotry is counterproductive to what it is we are and what we should embrace, the same spirit with which Obama was elected: hope and change. It’s not corny and it’s not a joke.

We put a truly graceful, intelligent, mannered, disciplined Renaissance man in the office before we shoved an ass-maggot into the same slot.  We can squash the fucking maggot and try again.  Just because President Obama fought the dragon and didn’t win didn’t mean he lost either. He made his mark and left a promising legacy,  not the least of which is the reality that America still has it in her to work and exist for the right reason:  We…the People.

Tonight, “President” Donald Trump made his first real national address, Nixon style, to declare a state of non-emergency for a non-existent threat for a non-existent reason.  The sad truth is, the wall means jack shit to both Trump and his sycophantic cultists, aka Conservatives. There is nothing unique nor necessary nor emergent about ANYTHING related to this “necessary intervention to preserve the sanctity of the U.S. and her citizenry”. Nope. It’s just the tangible distraction necessary for this denizen of narcissism and incompetence to empower his ego by fanning the flames of good old hate and ignorance in those that form the intractable base of today’s Republicans. Mostly White. Mostly “Christian”. All deluded.

It could have, and would have, been something completely different if Trump had the ability or need to think. But he doesn’t. So the low hanging fruit of a manufactured paranoia against a backdrop of xenophobic scapegoatism is the perfect raison d’être for a nascent emperor wannabe hitting his stride to keep his slack-jawed worshippers focused away from the reality of his malignant incompetence. Dictatorship 101, page one: Distract the masses with false hope of reward peppered with the promised instant gratification of whatever it is they want, then blame “those people” for the reason they haven’t been able to get it until now. Indonesia had the Chinese (and Communists, and women, and gays, etc.) Hitler had the Jews (and gypsies, and gays, and blacks, and mentally ill, etc.) Republicans have the Mexicans (and Muslims, and gays, and blacks and libtards…). Nationalism. Fascism. Isolationism. Whatever you want to call it, it AIN’T America, or American. At least, it wasn’t.

The reality is that NOTHING will satisfy Republicans. Nothing. Just like their Muslim doppelgängers, the Conservative evangelicals that speak for and control the Right will always have something NOT them to blame for anything and everything they wish. The imagination is literally the limit. When you believe in magic and non-existent forces and deities, the ability to delude yourself into absolving yourself of blame and projecting your own prejudices onto your object(s) of hate and fear, you can pretty much accept any excuse to exercise your own demons into a reality of pain and destruction against another. It is the WHOLE reason for the existence of Christianity and its surrogate twin, Islam. Just shrouded in a sugar-coated pill of love and peace to make it go down easy. Blame someone else, real or imagined. Coerce, cajole or downright force acceptance of your ideology, by default absolving you of any crime of hate or evil. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Trump doesn’t give a shit about the wall anymore than he gives a shit about anything other than himself. This is objectively a simple reality inherent in his m.o. It’s just and ends to a means: LOOK AT ME! That’s it. Same shit, same reason, same story. Like a Hallmark Christmas TV movie, it’s the identical script with the identical characters and identical scenarios, just played by different actors in a different setting with a different motive. Or not. Who cares? You’re gonna watch it anyway, dumbass. Cuz it tastes soooo good going down. So, now the rest of us have to swallow this shit. Again. Because MeMaw has to have her fix, we have to suffer along with her because nobody has the goddam courage to change the fucking channel. And the best you can do is choke down some fucking ribbon candy and pray for a sugar induced catatonia. Or the sweet release of death, yours or theirs. At this point, it really doesn’t fucking matter.

REAL progress, real change comes with more effort than manufactured blame. Blame is a regressive state. It belittles, obfuscates and destroys. It does nothing to promote, to build, to attain. Intelligence dictates that assimilation of things that cannot be changed be incorporated into the equation. That’s how science works. That’s how biology works. That’s how math works. You can’t alter the speed of light, so you have to incorporate it to account for stored energy and the very existence of life and the universe. Similarly, you can’t change the biological impetus for the need to survive built into our DNA as solidly as the need to propagate. So you need to find a way to accommodate it, rather than ignore it or try to defeat it. That ability to accept reason and the reasonable is the very essential difference between a Liberal and a Conservative.

A liberal will recognize the need to not just accept for incorporate that which “IS” in order to achieve “that which is not yet”. You know. To grow. To flourish. To move FORWARD. A conservative will fight against this natural order to evolve by not just fighting against the evolution of progress, but denying its very existence! Apply this methodology to ANY equation and you will realize how counterproductive Republicans and Conservatives are to the essence of existence. And why? In order to reestablish some faux reality built from fuzzy memories of a used-to-be that never existed, so they can feel warm and tickly inside? What civilization exists now using this template for success? Ask France how well the Maginot Line worked, if you want to test the hypothesis of building an “impenetrable” wall to keep out the scary people. G’head. Ask ’em.

But you can’t argue with stupid. At least not successfully. Republicans today are stupid. I didn’t stutter. They. Are. Stupid. They deny truths to embrace personally manipulated ideologies that give them false promise. They worship the nonexistent while shitting on reality. To accept that cold comfort would be to put a crack in their imaginative foundation, one that would continue to spread with the stresses of time and weathering of reality. So they allow for none. The reason Republicans are what they are today is because of a very few men that recognized that true Conservativism would die a natural death in a free society, so they usurped the power of ignorance from the ignorant and placated the masses with their own weaknesses. It is why the poor and poverty white masses endorse whole-heartedly a party that is diametrically opposed to EVERYTHING they stand for. Because God. Because guns. Because gays. Because minorities. Because foreigners. The rallying cry of the right is a false flag woven from fears and bigotries, manufactured by corporate entities (ironically, by foreigners, of course) and given to idiots to march into the fray, championing the will of the super-rich with the icons of hate stamped on their banner of Nationalism, ironically the same colors of Patriotism, but in colors that DO run.

Trump is become the distilled essence of that Id, in concentrated black-tar form. Potent as he is malignant. Too vain to be fully evil, in that he doesn’t care enough about actively causing pain to others because he doesn’t CARE about anything. Not his base. Not his party. Not his administration. Not even his family. Not their wants or needs. Not their fears or desires. He just wants to bathe in their adoration, or just their attention, regardless of methodology or consequence. He is buffoonery personified. He is a child. He is an idiot of highest order. He isn’t clever and he isn’t nefarious. He’s no fucking Dick Cheney, my friend. He isn’t even George W. Bush. He’s far too stupid and shallow to be the former and far too vapid and unlikeable to be the latter. He is alone in the world, utterly and sadly. And he has unleashed that pall of malice and ickiness upon the rest of the country, leaving the United States alone and sickly while the rest of the world looks at us with a mixture of vile and pity, like a rabid dog or a ebola patient at the airport.

To me, that is far worse than either of those or any power of evil or injustice to have existed, certainly within the power structure of the United States. He is the coalesced vapors of millions of ignorant, hateful, selfish and vain ideologues, Evangelical Christians and the power elite. He is a blank, formless slate, spineless clay molded into whatever they want him to be, whenever they want him to be it. He is their mirror, their unclothed Emperor flaunting his beautiful robes to a salivating horde of obsequious and soulless robots, slave to their own Pavlovian vices at the sounding bell of vanity, drooling a malicious concoction of jealousy, fear and searing hate. Not unlike a rabid dog. Tonight, Trump rang that bell clear and far and set the Right frothing at the mouth. And like a rabid dog, there’s only one thing you can do. God save the rest of us.