He'll get away with it, you know. All of it. He always has. No one has ever really held him accountable for much of anything. The closest call he ever had with real accountability was back in 1990, when he nearly bankrupted one of his shitbag casinos in AC, and as part of the bailout the creditor banks put him on an "allowance" of $450k -- per month.
And so he never learned anything from his many failures and stupid excesses, because why should he? There's never been any reason to. Just like the Wall Street wizards who lawn-darted the economy a decade ago, looted the wreckage, and still had the balls to insist on their performance bonuses. We don't hold rich and/or powerful people accountable.
Well, Bill Cosby and Jeffrey Epstein might beg to disagree with that. There are always exceptions. But they are notable precisely because of their scarcity.
And this impeachment trail farce. Right out in the open, like whaddaya gonna do about it, same as it ever was. Ol' Moscow Mitch, he didn't even bother with the pretense of a reach-around, the thin veneer of fake comity and moderation. In what trial court does the jury foreman declare his intent to work with the defendant and the defendant's counsel throughout the process and to acquit the defendant before the trial even starts? And what jury pre-emptively decides that they don't need to call any witnesses or demand any evidence that might prove the defendant's guilt?
More importantly, what sort of diseased society is okay with all of that? We may just be too far gone at this point, seriously, as a functioning republic or democracy or however you want to term it. This is pure despotism, right here. That's all there is to it. And an incredible percentage of people seem to be okay with it, or inexplicably apathetic to it.
The fix is in, and nobody will or can do anything about it. Not his party, because they're all in at this point, counting on cheating, suppression, and pig-blind stubbornness to carry them over the line. Not the opposition party, too intimidated to fully commit to what they've started, yet seemingly not understanding that if they fail and he stays, they're all targets. They should be setting up an ad hoc committee to investigate and draft more articles of impeachment right now, ready to load soon as this dog-and-phony show is through.
The media certainly won't challenge them, long as there's a buck to be made selling tickets to the circus. The librul media helped him in his ascent, every filthy, corrupt step of the way. He may be dumber than a bag of rocks, but intelligence and cunning are two different things, and the ability to read people and spot the most credulous, dull-witted saps in the room is a by-god bona-fide skill.
If you really think about it, the main ability required to screw people over, lie to them constantly and poison their brains, is just a willingness to do it and stick to it. Never relent, never break character, never admit guilt or defeat. There will always be people who want to believe the lies, and there will always be people who will ingratiate themselves to your cause and assist with it, in order to capitalize on the opportunity.
So it comes now to the people of this fair land to sack up, show up, and hold them all -- there's that pesky word again -- accountable. Like the impeachment, and even the crimes that led to the impeachment, it is an all-or-nothing proposition. It is not enough merely to remove Trump; a Democratic president with the House and Senate as is will be hamstrung and obstructed at every opportunity, with no small amount of assistance from the agitprop fiends at Fixed Noise.
The Republicon party has to be removed from power at every possible point, at every possible level. Period. They are nothing more now than a malevolent, destructive force that wants only to sow discord and wreak havoc. That is not an exaggeration. You want this bullshit to end, they have to end. There is no other way.
Frankly, I think voting is pretty much a waste of time. You're either outnumbered by the bastards, or cheated and no one does anything, or you win, but your guy gets prevented from doing much of anything regardless, and is mostly undone within months after leaving office anyway. It historically changes very little, and as Emma Goldman famously put it a century ago, if it did change anything, they wouldn't let us do it.
Having said all that, you should still vote anyway. Not because of any moral or patriotic duty, or any of that flag-humping, group-chant nonsense. Do it because it's the practical thing to do, because of game theory -- if you don't show up, things will definitely not improve, but if you do show up, not only is there at least a small chance of improvement, but the odds go up in direct proportion to participation.
You have the ability to increase the odds. The proof of that is if you didn't, if there really was nothing to be done regardless, they wouldn't keep investing so much in cheating and suppression. You don't need to cheat at a game that doesn't matter in the first place. Again, let math and logic and reason demonstrate what mere "patriotic duty" apparently does not.
And after all that, after all the fine thoughts and good deeds, he still might win again. There's actually a pretty good chance of it. What then? I wish I knew the answer to that.
Back in my wild youth, I did have my quieter moments when I read philosophy and economics, classics, things like that. I probably had a grip at the time on philosophy about like Otto in A Fish Called Wanda, but being older and hopefully a bit wiser now, it comes back around with more heft. Re-reading the Stoics, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and Seneca and such, is a good reminder about understanding what we can and can't control, and adjusting accordingly for ourselves.
So at the very least, don't despair, but prepare. Think about what specific aspects of your life will be adversely affected by the return of this demented old wet-brained pervert. It could be something concrete like your access to decent health care, or something more abstract, like the sinking realization that this country has a very deep sickness in its collective soul right now, and it simply may not recover in your lifetime. Maybe never.
All the people and things that we care about eventually come to an end. Toxins build up, systems break down, parts corrode and fall into disrepair. You can treat it and maybe prolong the inevitable, but sooner or later the bill comes due. The people who yap loudest about how much they supposedly love their country, refer to it as a living thing, as she or her, often seem to be the ones causing the most damage. The old gal is taking on some serious water these days, and the people who have the most power to help seem intent on drowning her.
So each of us really needs to consider the odds, and what our responses are to various scenarios. Maybe you decide you've had it, you don't want to leave but you can't stay anymore to continue watching the controlled demolition, helpless and mute. How do you move on? Maybe it's time to get your passport in order, see what the emigration requirements are to various places. Just in case.
For me, it's still a bit cathartic to vent and complain about the whole lot of it, but it's a very small part of my daily life, and I do and engage in other, more constructive things. I'm sure most of you do as well, and maybe it's healthier for us all to do more of those things and less of this thing.. I think we all need to find ways to insulate ourselves from the penumbra of pro-wrestling madness from these people, as well as to assure ourselves of the ability to just keep going with our jobs, families, money and health issues, all the things that we are all affected by to some degree, and can be made worse if we let ourselves get demoralized by the bastards.
There are some things you simply cannot get around -- the monopolies you pay each month for all your utilities; the needs for food and shelter and love and culture -- but we have choices about what we read and see and where we spend our money. Instead of bitching about the New York Times just drop them like a sack of manure, and don't look back. Instead of complaining about CNN having the teen rapist Alan Doucheowitz or the liar Kellyanne Con-Way defiling our teevee screens one more fucking time, just cut CNN loose. They're fucking useless anyway. Instead of griping about why no one is doing anything about climate change, look at what your contribution to that is, and reduce it by ten percent, then another ten percent.
If enough people do these things, all of which are within their power, things will change. A big part of it is the gatekeeper corporate media, whose vested interest is to get you riled up about shit you can't control, and hey while you're here check out our ads for cheeseburgers or boner pills or a big gas-guzzling truck to take your mind off your tiny dick. I stopped watching all teevee news, except for local weather, and that's one sure way to clear your head. I can't recommend it enough.
I don't necessarily agree 100% with the concept of amor fati -- to love or embrace whatever fate has in store for us, but you get the idea. If the fate of the country is Trump getting re-elected and ramping up his agenda, knowing he can get away with literally anything now, I don't think it's necessary or even wise to simply embrace that, or even passively accept it.
But we should prepare for it, not only because of how it will enable him and his henchmen to continue killing off this country, but because of what it clarifies about the citizenry. Blame the electoral college or the media or Russian Fakebook nonsense or whatever, but the fact of the matter is that there are enough people here who are okay with all of it -- they either actively support it, or are simply too goddamned lazy to get off their asses and do their job as citizens.
The 2016 election posed a conundrum to the engaged observer -- did the result reflect what the country had become, or did it reveal what it has always been? It seems to be a large measure of both, now infused and empowered with technology and authoritarianism and incoherent rage.
We can laugh at those dorks in Richmond yesterday, with their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle camo-drag and their dick substitutes positioned in often comically dangerous places. Look at the photos of these morons, you wouldn't hire any of them to sweep your front porch. They're useless and they know it. Their biggest enemy is not Antifa, it's hardening arteries and sodium benzoate.
But they won. They marched with masks and .50 cal sniper rifles and even grenade launchers, through the streets of a state capital, defying laws and challenging authorities to do something about it. Their intent is to set up "sanctuary counties" where people can have whatever weapons they want, and the sheriffs won't enforce the laws.
And no one did or will do a goddamned thing about any of it. You think these assholes are up on it now, you wait until their boy skates on impeachment, tells Schiff and Pelosi to go fuck themselves in the SOTU speech, and openly cheats his way to re-election.
The beauty of it is, if everyone just ignores all that and shows up anyway, we can beat them back. Always remember, there are more of us than there are of them. We just have to stop dicking around, herding cats and worrying about what MoDo and Bobo and the rest of the slop-ed losers think about anything. They are trying to demoralize you. Stop letting them.
And so he never learned anything from his many failures and stupid excesses, because why should he? There's never been any reason to. Just like the Wall Street wizards who lawn-darted the economy a decade ago, looted the wreckage, and still had the balls to insist on their performance bonuses. We don't hold rich and/or powerful people accountable.
Well, Bill Cosby and Jeffrey Epstein might beg to disagree with that. There are always exceptions. But they are notable precisely because of their scarcity.
And this impeachment trail farce. Right out in the open, like whaddaya gonna do about it, same as it ever was. Ol' Moscow Mitch, he didn't even bother with the pretense of a reach-around, the thin veneer of fake comity and moderation. In what trial court does the jury foreman declare his intent to work with the defendant and the defendant's counsel throughout the process and to acquit the defendant before the trial even starts? And what jury pre-emptively decides that they don't need to call any witnesses or demand any evidence that might prove the defendant's guilt?
More importantly, what sort of diseased society is okay with all of that? We may just be too far gone at this point, seriously, as a functioning republic or democracy or however you want to term it. This is pure despotism, right here. That's all there is to it. And an incredible percentage of people seem to be okay with it, or inexplicably apathetic to it.
The fix is in, and nobody will or can do anything about it. Not his party, because they're all in at this point, counting on cheating, suppression, and pig-blind stubbornness to carry them over the line. Not the opposition party, too intimidated to fully commit to what they've started, yet seemingly not understanding that if they fail and he stays, they're all targets. They should be setting up an ad hoc committee to investigate and draft more articles of impeachment right now, ready to load soon as this dog-and-phony show is through.
The media certainly won't challenge them, long as there's a buck to be made selling tickets to the circus. The librul media helped him in his ascent, every filthy, corrupt step of the way. He may be dumber than a bag of rocks, but intelligence and cunning are two different things, and the ability to read people and spot the most credulous, dull-witted saps in the room is a by-god bona-fide skill.
If you really think about it, the main ability required to screw people over, lie to them constantly and poison their brains, is just a willingness to do it and stick to it. Never relent, never break character, never admit guilt or defeat. There will always be people who want to believe the lies, and there will always be people who will ingratiate themselves to your cause and assist with it, in order to capitalize on the opportunity.
So it comes now to the people of this fair land to sack up, show up, and hold them all -- there's that pesky word again -- accountable. Like the impeachment, and even the crimes that led to the impeachment, it is an all-or-nothing proposition. It is not enough merely to remove Trump; a Democratic president with the House and Senate as is will be hamstrung and obstructed at every opportunity, with no small amount of assistance from the agitprop fiends at Fixed Noise.
The Republicon party has to be removed from power at every possible point, at every possible level. Period. They are nothing more now than a malevolent, destructive force that wants only to sow discord and wreak havoc. That is not an exaggeration. You want this bullshit to end, they have to end. There is no other way.
Frankly, I think voting is pretty much a waste of time. You're either outnumbered by the bastards, or cheated and no one does anything, or you win, but your guy gets prevented from doing much of anything regardless, and is mostly undone within months after leaving office anyway. It historically changes very little, and as Emma Goldman famously put it a century ago, if it did change anything, they wouldn't let us do it.
Having said all that, you should still vote anyway. Not because of any moral or patriotic duty, or any of that flag-humping, group-chant nonsense. Do it because it's the practical thing to do, because of game theory -- if you don't show up, things will definitely not improve, but if you do show up, not only is there at least a small chance of improvement, but the odds go up in direct proportion to participation.
You have the ability to increase the odds. The proof of that is if you didn't, if there really was nothing to be done regardless, they wouldn't keep investing so much in cheating and suppression. You don't need to cheat at a game that doesn't matter in the first place. Again, let math and logic and reason demonstrate what mere "patriotic duty" apparently does not.
And after all that, after all the fine thoughts and good deeds, he still might win again. There's actually a pretty good chance of it. What then? I wish I knew the answer to that.
Back in my wild youth, I did have my quieter moments when I read philosophy and economics, classics, things like that. I probably had a grip at the time on philosophy about like Otto in A Fish Called Wanda, but being older and hopefully a bit wiser now, it comes back around with more heft. Re-reading the Stoics, Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and Seneca and such, is a good reminder about understanding what we can and can't control, and adjusting accordingly for ourselves.
So at the very least, don't despair, but prepare. Think about what specific aspects of your life will be adversely affected by the return of this demented old wet-brained pervert. It could be something concrete like your access to decent health care, or something more abstract, like the sinking realization that this country has a very deep sickness in its collective soul right now, and it simply may not recover in your lifetime. Maybe never.
All the people and things that we care about eventually come to an end. Toxins build up, systems break down, parts corrode and fall into disrepair. You can treat it and maybe prolong the inevitable, but sooner or later the bill comes due. The people who yap loudest about how much they supposedly love their country, refer to it as a living thing, as she or her, often seem to be the ones causing the most damage. The old gal is taking on some serious water these days, and the people who have the most power to help seem intent on drowning her.
So each of us really needs to consider the odds, and what our responses are to various scenarios. Maybe you decide you've had it, you don't want to leave but you can't stay anymore to continue watching the controlled demolition, helpless and mute. How do you move on? Maybe it's time to get your passport in order, see what the emigration requirements are to various places. Just in case.
For me, it's still a bit cathartic to vent and complain about the whole lot of it, but it's a very small part of my daily life, and I do and engage in other, more constructive things. I'm sure most of you do as well, and maybe it's healthier for us all to do more of those things and less of this thing.. I think we all need to find ways to insulate ourselves from the penumbra of pro-wrestling madness from these people, as well as to assure ourselves of the ability to just keep going with our jobs, families, money and health issues, all the things that we are all affected by to some degree, and can be made worse if we let ourselves get demoralized by the bastards.
There are some things you simply cannot get around -- the monopolies you pay each month for all your utilities; the needs for food and shelter and love and culture -- but we have choices about what we read and see and where we spend our money. Instead of bitching about the New York Times just drop them like a sack of manure, and don't look back. Instead of complaining about CNN having the teen rapist Alan Doucheowitz or the liar Kellyanne Con-Way defiling our teevee screens one more fucking time, just cut CNN loose. They're fucking useless anyway. Instead of griping about why no one is doing anything about climate change, look at what your contribution to that is, and reduce it by ten percent, then another ten percent.
If enough people do these things, all of which are within their power, things will change. A big part of it is the gatekeeper corporate media, whose vested interest is to get you riled up about shit you can't control, and hey while you're here check out our ads for cheeseburgers or boner pills or a big gas-guzzling truck to take your mind off your tiny dick. I stopped watching all teevee news, except for local weather, and that's one sure way to clear your head. I can't recommend it enough.
I don't necessarily agree 100% with the concept of amor fati -- to love or embrace whatever fate has in store for us, but you get the idea. If the fate of the country is Trump getting re-elected and ramping up his agenda, knowing he can get away with literally anything now, I don't think it's necessary or even wise to simply embrace that, or even passively accept it.
But we should prepare for it, not only because of how it will enable him and his henchmen to continue killing off this country, but because of what it clarifies about the citizenry. Blame the electoral college or the media or Russian Fakebook nonsense or whatever, but the fact of the matter is that there are enough people here who are okay with all of it -- they either actively support it, or are simply too goddamned lazy to get off their asses and do their job as citizens.
The 2016 election posed a conundrum to the engaged observer -- did the result reflect what the country had become, or did it reveal what it has always been? It seems to be a large measure of both, now infused and empowered with technology and authoritarianism and incoherent rage.
We can laugh at those dorks in Richmond yesterday, with their Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle camo-drag and their dick substitutes positioned in often comically dangerous places. Look at the photos of these morons, you wouldn't hire any of them to sweep your front porch. They're useless and they know it. Their biggest enemy is not Antifa, it's hardening arteries and sodium benzoate.
But they won. They marched with masks and .50 cal sniper rifles and even grenade launchers, through the streets of a state capital, defying laws and challenging authorities to do something about it. Their intent is to set up "sanctuary counties" where people can have whatever weapons they want, and the sheriffs won't enforce the laws.
And no one did or will do a goddamned thing about any of it. You think these assholes are up on it now, you wait until their boy skates on impeachment, tells Schiff and Pelosi to go fuck themselves in the SOTU speech, and openly cheats his way to re-election.
The beauty of it is, if everyone just ignores all that and shows up anyway, we can beat them back. Always remember, there are more of us than there are of them. We just have to stop dicking around, herding cats and worrying about what MoDo and Bobo and the rest of the slop-ed losers think about anything. They are trying to demoralize you. Stop letting them.
6 comments:
The New York Times yesterday had yet another Cletus Safari about how the Democrats had "abandoned" the WWC. I still never understood, if this is the case, why they would turn to an obvious grifter and fraud like Trump. I think part of it is the decline of the group consciousness fostered by old school unions, which despite their obvious flaws (racism, sexism) could arguably have helped educate their members a little better??? Or am I naïve. Is, as has been argued, Trump simply what America REALLY IS?
And you do point out a danger of the "Sanctuary City" movement. It can be turned on the left by equally committed right wing nuts. "We don't care what the law says. We stone homos in Jefferson Davis County, boy!
Look. I am skeptical about "laws" and "the State". But they are the best we have to work with in our benighted human state. I think the anarchists are largely deluded if they think their miraculous "I won't obey the laws I dislike4" approach won't lead to many, many worse situations.
Hey Brian:
The Times just can't help themselves, I guess. I gave up on them a long time ago. I honestly think at this point that they are a net liability to what's left of the media ecosystem. They do more harm than good, and their complaisance has contributed directly to the accelerating corrosion of how "news" gets created, processed, analyzed, and disseminated. They have neither the courage nor the incentive to fix the things they know have gone wrong. And half of their columnists should be writing obituaries and book-club schedules for free small-town street sheets.
I used to ignore the periodic "reports" of academic studies in the field of behavioral psychology, where they try to tease out correlative threads of various biases -- cognitive, cultural, observational. All those ways that ivory-tower pinheads try to explain the "logic" behind incoherent groupthink, what we see when the Cletii regale us with their Trump lovin'. I pay more attention to those findings now because they do seem to explain some of it -- but of course, not how to counter it effectively.
In the end, I think ol' Slick Willie Clinton had the best, simplest explanation of it: People would rather be strong and wrong than weak and right. Now, how someone would think a jabbering dunce and admitted draft-dodger like Donald Trump is "strong" in any way is as puzzling to me as it is to you, but we have to admit that he doesn't take shit from anyone, he doesn't worry about the now-useless traits of "politeness" and "manners" the way establishment types do. He fights. He's crazier than a shithouse rat and dumber than a punch-drunk mule, but he does fight.
That's really probably all there is to it -- they know he's an idiot, and they know he's not going to do anything to help them. But the Democrats let their jobs slip away all the same, and at least Trump is willing and eager to say "Fuck you" to every person and thing that annoys his cult members. A Democrat that just shows a similar willingness to punch back, and not worry about what Chuck Todd is going to say about it tomorrow, has a real shot at beating him badly. And I don't get why no one seems to realize it. Or maybe the media just won't cover it from Democratic politicians.
I do see the "sanctuary county" movement as a mirror to the "sanctuary city" one, even if I have a small bit of empathy for the latter. Urban law enforcement organizations have said with some consistency that they simply have neither the time nor the resources to expend going after people just for being here illegally, and that it in fact impedes their ability to arrest violent criminals in those communities, because they don't get reported. But you're right, this is an entirely foreseeable reaction to one group deciding not to address certain politically-tinged laws that they disagree with. And it can always escalate.
Democratic politicians do need to figure out something on immigration, even as rhetorical cover if nothing else. Frankly, I think they could do worse than to simply blast back and remind all Americans -- the politicians who are demagoguing this issue as well as their nasty, cheap constituents, who would rather watch terrified children freeze to death in animal cages than contribute a dime toward their well-being -- who exactly it is that's mucking their dairies, killing and processing the meat they stuff in their faces, changing the sheets in their hotel rooms when they jaunt off to Vegas, doing the dishes and the cooking in the restaurants, and all the other scut-work jobs their own precious children would never do in a million years.
If I were a Democratic politician, I would step up and flat-out challenge them to make good on their goal, and send ICE to every farm and dairy and hotel and restaurant in the country, and throw 'em all the fuck out. See how that goes for everyone. No one has the guts to make such a modest proposal, but if they did, you'd see the tough-talkers tuck their tails with a quickness, as the rotten scumbags who rent them would start yanking their leashes hard.
I mean, who do we all think is, say, cleaning Shelly Adelson's hotel rooms and disposing of all the uneaten cheap food in the casino restaurants? And how does that food get there so cheaply in the first place? And so on. Coming full-circle back to the lowly Times scriveners, maybe one of them can take a break from pumping Cletus' grievance muscle, and crunching some numbers in that realm.
I think a lot of 'murkins would be shocked if they understood how much their ability to afford to take the family to a restaurant or on vacation once in a while depends on the availability of cheap -- and frequently undocumented -- human capital.
The lefty in me wonders if our vaunted lifestyle is "worth" the suffering it requires. At the same time, the hard bitten realist recognizes that "shit jobs" in El Norte might still be better than being a peasant in Guanajuato? People still seem eager to trade one for the other? (American subsidies to industrial agriculture don't help the subsistence farmers, of course)
Life and economics sucks. :(
I feel exactly the same way. I frequently wonder just how much rotten stuff in the world perpetuates simply because most people assume "everyone else is going to do what they do regardless, so I might as well too."
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