I saw in the news that some absurdly rich people are about to spend thirty million dollars on commercials for Trump. Well, that pig does need a lot of lipstick. I see that the manager of this effort is one Chris LaCivita, the man behind the “Swiftboad Veterans for Truth” of 2004 and one of America’s top liars — Trump’s kinda guy. I thought the lying swiftboat veterans and their puppeteer would be hopelessly disgraced by what they had done. But no! I don’t know what has become of the lying veterans, but Mr. LaCivita is doing prospering and now back on center stage. I find it amazing that champion right-wing liars and cheats get caught again and again, but keep coming back, rather like televangelists who can outlive any scandal. Of course, scandal is in the eye of the beholder. The rich right-wingers who employ people like Mr. LaCivita have only contempt for integrity, and are probably champion cheats themselves.
31 VIII 2020: Dare I ask?
Dare I ask these questions?
How much are the pickup-trumpers and the antiPatriots being paid to cause trouble?
I’d bet dimes to dollars that a lot of these people are not provoking violence just for fun or to parade their stubborn ignorance. Somebody’s paying.
Why does the Republican Party keep silence while Trump is provoking violence?
Oh, I think I know the answer to that one. The GOP has long been the part of the wealthy, the worried, and the witless. They’re just keeping to script under Trump’s energetic direction.
Why can’t the Black Lives Matter movement rein in the vandals and professional rioters who are disgracing the movement and playing into Trump’s hands.
I’ll guess. Like the police unions, the BLM people, indeed the black community in general, are afraid to openly criticize any of their members. The cops themselves know who are the sadists, thugs, bigots, and psychotics in their ranks. They lose all credibility with their a-cop-can-do-no-wrong attitude. So too, the black community knows, even if they will not identify them, who are the crime prone and the eternal adolescents in their society. Is the black community going to allow unchecked pseudo-demonstrations and out-and-out riots to halt their current struggle?
21 VIII 2020: Boycott Trump?
I read that people from Trump’s seraglio are trying to get special privileges for Trump at Twitter, the argument being that his Twitter account is unlike those of other Americans because he uses Twitter as President to communicate with the American people. What about those of us who do not have a Twitter account? We’re missing out on these presidential messages.
I wrote to the U.S. Archives and then to the White House in an effort to find out whether Trump’s tweeties are considered state documents and, if so, whether they will be preserved in the Archives in the form in which they were first sent or they would be edited to remove misspellings, bad grammar, obvious stupidities, and lies. I received in reply a lot of run-around and “that’s not our department.”
And now his tweeties are going from offensive to revolting. So I have a proposal. A recent essay made the point that Trump’s call for a boycott of Goodyear, though a bizarre thing for a president to do, is habitual for Trump, part of his lifelong standard operating procedure. So I want to suggest that we all boycott Trump’s tweeties, that is, just don’t read them and ignore the media reports about them. If we continue to read them, we are colluding with a madman and exposing ourselves to a lot of intellectual and ethical obscenity. Of course, the media will continue reporting his tweeties because the media love atrocity stories — reporting Trump’s atrocities is easier than finding out the real news. But in doing this they are playing right into the hands of a blowhard whose working assumption is “There’s no such thing as bad publicity!” So let’s see if we can get a movement going against his free publicity.
20 VIII 2020: Steve Bannon, fallen angel?
Was Steve Bannon a thief before his association with Trump, or did Trump deflower him too. No one who comes into close contact with Trump can remain clean, we know that. Indeed, I don’t think Trump would let anyone get close to him who is not nearly as dirty as he. Anyway, all the time that Bannon’s been posing as a Catholic and trying to take over the intellectually disreputable Dignitatis Humanae Institute in Italy he was being funded by stolen cash.
I’ve always thought that the Wall would make a lot of money for someone, but I was thinking of contractors with bribes in their hands. But Steve got the jump on them with his scam. And what a fool he has made of Trump!
17 VIII 2020: Nuts and Saboteurs
Nuts: I’ve been reading about Marjorie Taylor Greene, a racist and Qanon enthusiast who won a Republican primary in Georgia and is likely to win the coming election to the House of Representatives. She was swept in by a “perfect storm”: racist, Qanon, Republican, and in Georgia. Any one of these could assure a nut-case of election in any Confederate state.
Some Republican members of the House have expressed their dismay at having a loony- bigot-demagogue in their ranks, but they are, in fact, inured to this, having put up with the ill-named Freedom Caucus for all these years. And there are others. Is anyone crazier or sleazier than Devin Nunes, Coach Jim Jordan, or Louis Gohmert? I think Ms Greene is part of the Republican anti-feminist plan to quell feminism by electing foolish women.
Saboteurs: I’ve read about the USPS and its new Postmaster Louis DeJoy. His only imaginable qualification is that he will do whatever Trump tells him. Trump admits to a plan to tilt the election in his favor by sabotaging the postal service, and Louis DeJoy is his saboteur. Of course, he is only the latest of Trump appointees who have been chosen to collaborate in the subversion of the departments over which they are placed. When the day comes, I hope to see not only Trump prosecuted, but also all of his saboteurs and wreckers like DeJoy — Trump could not have done so much vandalism without these little women and men.
15 VIII 2020: The crazies are running the asylum
I had thought that the only big magazine we had to worry about was the one Stormy Daniels had used to paddle our President’s butt by way of foreplay. But I just read that a federal court of appeals has declared unconstitutional the California law that forbids ownership of high capacity magazines to any but the police. So, if I can’t buy a magazine that holds 30 or more rounds my god-given 2nd amendment rights are being violated, and not only my gun rights, but even my right to defend myself when, as so often, I am threatened by crowds, especially crowds of children in schools.
Collective insanity drives one more nail into America’s coffin. Has any other country ever destroyed itself to maintain a delusion of security and to provide big magazines to cheer up a lot of men who can no longer always get it up?
Too many movies, that’s what I think. Housewives have seen it on film, and they know all you have to do when you feel threatened is empty a couple of magazines into the thugs and rapists. And the guys! They are itching to defend their little aluminum-siding castles down to the last magazine. Meantime, they brag to the other guys about their gun collections and feel a hint of a hard-on when they do.
No wonder the Home of the 2nd Amendment is The Land of Unhinged Violence too.
14 VIII 2020: Doesn’t have to be Mt. Rushmore
Mr. Trump’s bid to have his face carved on Mt. Rushmore has encountered a lot of opposition. I’ve made my views on the matter known, so there’s no need to say more about it.
However, a brilliant idea has come to me. Let’s put Trump on Stone Mountain in Georgia along with Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and their horses. That monument was supported by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and by the newly-revived Ku Klux Klan. The Klan had its inaugural meeting on the top of Stone Mountain with flag, Bible, and 16-foot burning cross.
What a good fit! The Stone Mountain monument is said to be the largest bas-relief sculpture in the world, the perfect site for megalomaniac Trump. It displays the constellation of segregationist heroes, so it would be fitting to put Trump, who ran on a segregationist platform, up there as well. Problem is, think what you may of them, Lee, Jackson, and Davis were men of education and refinement, and I reckon they would be unrecoverably embarrassed to have Trump in their midst.
But if we cannot manage to get Trump onto Stone Mountain, I think we should have a look at some of the ancient bas-reliefs that display the savagery of Assyria’s kings, and see if there is a way to squeeze Trump onto one of them. The museums that preserve these sculptures might object, but we can’t please everyone. Indeed, even Trump will be unhappy at not having centerstage on the relief, but think how he will be thrilled to be in the company of those strongmen of absolute power and cruelty.
10 VIII 2020: Mt. Rushmore
I understand Mr. Trump thinks his face should be carved on Mt. Rushmore along with Washington, Jefferson, T. Roosevelt, and Lincoln. Why not? Mt. Rushmore is an eyesore anyway, that shows contempt for the beautiful countryside all around it, rather like the initials that people carve into scenic wonders or holy buildings. It is a garish display of America’s megalomania and political idolatry that can’t be hidden. The presidents on Mt. Rushmore, I understand, were chosen to represent the country’s birth, growth, development, and preservation. I cannot say anything against Mr. Lincoln. But one might view Washington as representing acceptance of slavery, Jefferson as representing the plundering of North America, and Roosevelt as representing jingoistic imperialism. What, then, would Trump’s face represent? Deceit, immorality, criminality, cruelty, racism, headlong self-aggrandizement, and utter indifference to the welfare of the people. But in fact, whatever their faults, the presidents on Mt. Rushmore were well-intentioned leaders who can be seen to represent generations of Americans of good will. America’s diversity could be asserted by adding Trump, for he can represent all that’s wrong about America. His face could also serve as a warning to future generations of what can happen when citizens vote with their fears and not with their minds.
4 VIII 2020: Can the United States be a democracy?
The Trump Era has brought to attention the extent of the willful ignorance, gullibility, and insanity that I had always feared were there, but tried to ignore. Trump has been like an ultra-violet light that reveals what is less evident under ordinary light.
The answer to the question “Can a government of the people, by the people, and for the people long endure?” would be “It depends on the people.” A viable democracy requires a people that is well-informed, that abhors deceit in private and public life, and that is duly suspicious of candidates’ use of fear tactics, whether xenophobia or any other kind of “scare,” red-scare, slave-rebellion scare, the Pope-taking-over scare, women-taking-over scare, science-scare, and simple fear of the other. The people must insist on unreserved obedience to the country’s laws. The people must place first the “general welfare,” must be zealous for the common good.
I do have to wonder if the U.S.A. has any hope of measuring up to this.
31 VII 2020: Republican Party Motto
The motto of the Republican Party was always unofficial, but now that Trump has completed the corruption of the Party, it is planned to make the motto official. The Republican Party exists to guarantee the prosperity, security, and immunity of America’s plutocrats. How can they be so successful in a democracy in which the vast majority of citizens are not plutocrats and whose best interests are not at well served by a plutocratic regime? The simple answer can be found in the Republican Party Motto which is:
There’s a sucker born every minute.