Donald Trump

Should he stay or should he go?

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President Trump Returns from New

Anyone who has spent even the slightest miniscule of moment in time around here knows what I think about that question…

However, after listening to most of the Supreme Court hearing yesterday (yeah, I know, I know… I need to get a life obvs) but be that as it may, it didn’t take long for me to realize that it isn’t even going to be close as to how the Supremes are going to decide — Trump will not be denied ballot access by them. Even the left of center Supreme ones were unable to contain their skepticism of the argument before them, either of that argued by the lawyer representing those heroes bringing the suit, or of that by the one arguing for the state.

Justices across the ideological spectrum expressed skepticism about several aspects of a ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court that Mr. Trump’s conduct in trying to subvert the 2020 race made him ineligible to hold office under a constitutional provision that bars people who have sworn to support the Constitution and then engaged in insurrection.

Supreme Court Justices Appear Skeptical of Arguments to Kick Trump Off State Ballots, New York Times, February 8, 2024

Actually, I do have ever so slightly mixed emotions about the argument myself, especially since Trumpadump was never convicted of insurrection by a court as far as I know; although, he was certainly convicted by his words and deeds in the court of common sense, at least the one governed by yours truly.

What miffed me most about yesterday’s hearing, besides the fact that the ruling will not go the way of common sense, was “Justice” Alito’s argument, or line of questioning, concerning his concern that if the Supremes were to rule that Trump is to be denied ballot access nationally, that the ruling could cause serious national strife (my words poorly paraphrasing his).

For one, as long as Trump continues to breathe, he will cause strife, nationally and beyond, just by continuing to breathe, so what’s a little more on his account, especially when it’s for such a worthy cause?

For two, why should such a concern even be considered in regards to the constitutionality of the case before them, or of any case for that matter?

I mean, if we allow such emotional concerns to govern our rule of law, if we are concerned that a constitutional ruling might cause harm, then obviously the parent(s) of a family struggling below the poverty line should be allowed to steal from the local X-Mart to feed their malnourished children, right?

I mean, now there’s some strife that is being faced by far too many families nationally, yet if a parent were to be caught stealing to feed their family as often as Trump has been caught for all his countless illegalities, then 9 times out 9, that parent will go straight to prison – even more so if race is factored in. Right?

Right?!

Anyway…

#joestrummersghostforpresident

Post-Donald

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gray tombstone on grass in yard
Photo by Juan Vargas on Pexels.com

You know how it goes: every once in a while someone will ask: knowing what you know now, if you could, would you go back in time to assassinate Hitler? Or something to that effect.

To be honest, I’m a lover not a fighter so I would probably defer the time travel assassin role to someone a bit more inspired than I. But I’m pretty sure if I could go back in time I woud take a mulligan and redo high school and not be as lazy and unmotivated as I was the first go around. Such lost potential there, that’s for sure.

Anyway, why we’re on the subject of maniacal dictators, I can’t help wondering more and more if some time in the future we won’t be asking the same, unsatisfying time travel question about Trump.

I hope not. I pray not. I hope and pray that an act of God takes out the Hitler wannabe before there is even the chance he’s “voted” back into office. I mean, how many Big Macs does one have to eat before the plumbing finally clogs up for good?

And if those hopes and prayers aren’t answered, as a back up I hope and pray that as a nation we are smart enough, and motivated enough (although at this point in time I don’t have much confidence in either), to not vote for him in such numbers that even as big a liar and a cheat as he is that he feels so demoralized that he doesn’t even try to claim the election was rigged.

Yeah, I know, I know… wishful thinking.

Speaking of wishful thinking… now while of course I do not condone assassination or murder of any sort, except through due process of the law obviously, but I can’t help also wondering, as hated as The Donald is by so many people around the world, and as extreme and unpredictable as we humans have become, if there isn’t someone out there right now planning on taking the self-loving, disadvantaged-people loathing wannabe dictator out so as to not allow another Hitler to terrorize the planet.

Do you think?

Just wondering…

Not condoning…

Or hoping or praying or wishing…

And I promise I wasn’t crossing my fingers either when I typed that…

Or my toes.

Anyway…

Regardless of all the hopes and prayers and wishful thinking, there will indeed come a day when we live in a post-Donald world (assuming he vacates an oxygen-breathing state before one of the narcissistic billionaires discover a “cure” for aging and death like they are trying so hard to do), I can’t help but wondering yet again if there is anyone out there megalomaniacal enough to curry enough favor with all the whacky cultists to assume The Donald’s role as King of the MAGAtes.

It seems like his daughter has evolved into a semi-state of sanity and is no longer interested in throwing her diamond-studded tiara into the despotic ring.

How about Junior, the Cocaine Kid, does he have what it takes to be as world-destroying as his father? I’m guessing not, despite any sincere effort he may make.

EriK? LOL, am I right!

Or maybe it is that The Donald is just a one-off? And that when he goes, so goes the threat to the world’s oldest democracy…

And to the rest of the world.

I hope so anyway…

And pray…

And wish…

#votelikeyourlifedependsuponit

#becauseitdoes

The Sad Colossus

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An unprecedented number of undocumented Indian immigrants are crossing U.S. borders on foot, according to new data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. What has been a years-long increase in migration has now developed into a dramatic spike.

From October 2022 to this September, the 2023 fiscal year, there were 96,917 Indians encountered — apprehended, expelled or denied entry — having entered the U.S. without papers. It marks a fivefold increase from the same period from 2019 to 2020, when there were just 19,883.

What’s behind the rise in undocumented Indian immigrants crossing U.S. borders on foot, NBC News, November 14, 2023

Maybe it’s my First World (Are we still allowed to show regard for numbered worlds? Correct me if I’m wrong, but First World used to identify the United States and countries aligned with it, Second World identified the Soviet Union and countries aligned with it, and Third World identified countries not aligned with either the United States and the USSR. Of course, with the demise of the USSR, there was a Second World no more, and with ideological alignment no longer a factor as it once was, the Third World came to be a term that referred to non-industrialized, poverty-stricken countries; consequently, First World came to refer to the opposite. So… I guess writing it out like that has helped me to answer my own question: In this stressful day and age where sensibilities are quite frayed and sensitive, I would have to say the answer is… I guess the answer depends on the audience. I guess some would say hell no numbered worlds can no longer be regarded, you unwoke ogre! And I guess others would say hell yes they can, you fragile little snowflake! Anyway… call me what you will, be it an unwoke ogre or a fragile snowflake, just don’t call me late to dinner.) privilege, or just plain ignorance of the global plight of others (I haven’t been to a so-called Third World country since the Nineties), but it amazes me that so many people from around the world are still risking their lives to immigrate to these less than United States…

With all its division and dysfunction…

With all its mass killings and all the other forms of unimaginable violence that one could imagine…

With all its rascist, homophobic, anti-intellect trumper cultists frothing at the mouth to turn it into their narcissistic megolomaniacal cult leader’s autocratic utopia of hateful sweeping raids, giant camps and mass deportations.

I mean, how bad must it be in a country for someone to risk their and their family’s lives to emigrate from it by any means necessary to live in another country where more and more each day everyone’s life who lives here, be they here naturally born, naturalized, documented, undocumented, is at risk just by living here.

It seems no where is safe from the hate and violence.

Sheesh, just look at today’s news with the threat of violence in the Senate and an actual physical altercation in the House…

I mean, W.T.F., over.

I use to be proud of how many all over the globe wanted to come to this country to pursue the American Dream…

Americans by choice, not by chance…

Now I’m only saddened by it.

THE NEW COLOSSUS

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

- Emma Lazarus

#icomplainbecauseicare
#godblessamerica
#andeverywhereelse

Cue the Rocky theme song…

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Boxing gloves clipart, illustration psd

The ultimate nepo baby, George Dubya Bush and his Good Ol’ White Boy (mostly) Club O’ Iraqi War Criminals drove me from the once honorable (if you go back to Lincoln anyway) and still somewhat sane (at least before unrecallable Reagan) Republican Party, and Trump, the antepenultimate nepo baby, of course coming just before his first two nepo offspring (and not counting Eric, who would, or the other two (as far as we know) burgeoning and relatively unknown (thank god) offsprings), and his dangerous cult drove me, not only from politics as a whole, but from any engagement online with anyone who might be maga-inclined, meaning I stopped posting entries here and I deleted all my social accounts.

And it was a good thing I did…

Read more

Disenranted

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pexels-photo-62376.jpeg

It used to be fun, and, quite frankly, quite therapeutic to release a rant or two around here back in the good ol’ days.

Any guesses to as when I’m referring to the “good ol’ days?”

Yeah… exactly.

BCET

Before the Catastrophic Era of Trump

But now, in these far less than good ol’ days…

One rants at one’s own risk.

Literally…

Read more

The Kraken has left the building…

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Papagallo no.15 la Piovra Russa Anno VI by Augusto Grossi (1835-1919), a cartoon depiction of Europe in 1878, using caricatures and monster kraken. Original from Library of Congress. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.

A lot of mindboggling, dangerously silly things happened in the Trump aftermath that made it hard to look away… this human clown perhaps was the most riveting and embarassingly entertaining of them all.

Image courtesy the New York Times

Few defenders of Mr. Trump promoted election fraud theories after his 2020 defeat to Joseph R. Biden Jr. as stridently as Ms. Powell. In high-profile appearances, often alongside other members of the Trump legal team, she pushed conspiracies involving Venezuela, Cuba and China, as well as George Soros, Hugo Chávez and the Clintons, while baselessly claiming that voting machines had flipped millions of votes.

Sidney Powell Pleads Guilty in Georgia Trump Case, New York Times, October 19, 2023

Yup, gonna be a lot, and I mean a lot, of Kraken jokes floating around the webosphere today…

#smh

UPDATE: Just noticed in the featured image, courtesy of Openverse, that the kraken has Russia written across its forehead. Coincidence?

This is a no brainer…

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Pun intended.

Comparing George Orwell’s “1984″ to Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” Postman then added that, “What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared that the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.”

Social media offer us two choices: Orwell’s hell, or Huxley’s, MarketWatch, September 7, 2022

I’m Team Huxley all the way.

People will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. – A. H.

Anyway…

I can thank Donald Trump for at least one thing: That is, being the impetus behind my decision to abandon just about all social media and forsake you all here at my website.

For the most part I’m a better man for it because Trump and all his idiotic minions cultish worshippers political supporters were driving me on the fast track to dark, warped places I had no desire to visit.

However, two years or so on, I do miss journaling* regularly here.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to re-engage with it like I used to.

But I’m trying.

At least I think often about trying.

Anyway…

I don’t really blame social media for all our societal ills like so many do.

As I see it, we will always look to blame who/whatever we can for the ignorant/dumb things we do that only we, ourselves, can possibly be responsible for doing.

Such as hating.

Or not accepting the truth.

Or even avoiding the truth.

Et cetera.

Et cetera.

Besides, we have allowed technology to debase and dumb us down at least since the invention of the printing press.

And there’s no turning back now.

And once our A.I. Overlords are in complete control, brains will no longer be optional.

They will be unnecessary.

Superseded.

Yeah…

Pun definitely intended.

*I still cannot reconcile myself to the word “blogging”.




How could something so violent and callous happen?

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The details suggest that while the military put strict rules in place to protect civilians, the Special Operations task force repeatedly used other rules to skirt them. The military teams counting casualties rarely had the time, resources or incentive to do accurate work. And troops rarely faced repercussions when they caused civilian deaths, [such as the deaths of 80 Syrian women and children].

How the U.S. Hid an Airstrike That Killed Dozens of Civilians in Syria, New York Times, November 13, 2021

I mean, that there is the stuff of Clausewitz, you know, the famed military strategist also known as the God of War…

In his masterpiece, On War (1832), Clausewitz had warned against the “kind-hearted” fiction that a nation could wage a war “without too much bloodshed.” Not only was it useless, but morally reforming war could exacerbate its evil. “Mistakes which come from kindness are the very worst.” Treating the carnage in war as a sin for which to atone or—worse—a blemish on the most beautiful activity in life was something like a moral error. “It would be futile—even wrong—to try to shut one’s eyes to what war really is from sheer distress at its brutality,” Clausewitz explained. Concerns about how gory and gruesome the commitments to intensity could become were petty. “The fact that slaughter is a horrifying spectacle must make us take war more seriously,” he allowed, “but not provide an excuse for gradually blunting our swords in the name of humanity.” As he observed, “Sooner or later someone will come along with a sharp sword and hack off our arms.”

“I Would Not Take Prisoners.” Tolstoy’s Case Against Making War Humane, Literary Hub, September 10, 2021

Maybe such violence and callousness in the U. S. military is because its 1.3 million or so members are influenced by the violent and callous rhetoric and examples of our societal leaders just as much as anyone else…

Obviously Trump comes to mind with all his many, many examples of violent rhetoric and of his openly endorsing police brutality and of his pardoning convicted war criminals and of course of his incitement of a resurrection against our government.

But if we are going to lay blame on our political leaders for our violent and callous national temperament, then we must hold our cultural leaders equally accountable…

Obviously Travis Scott comes to mind for his incitement of fights and riots and, most recently, deadly stampedes.

Certainly, these are issues for consideration when considering the cause behind such violent and callous behavior by all spectrums of our prism-like society, but so are the violent movies and video games we watch and play, not to mention the violent books we read…

But if we are going to blame external violent and callous influences, which I’m not sure I agree we should be doing, for our violent and callous societal behavior, then where does the excuse of influence end and the responsibility for personal behavior begin?

I don’t know the answer to that, except in my mind it should begin as soon as is viably possible, focusing more on the external influences during the early development years, particularly the influences that poverty, crime, and mental health issues have on childhood development.

Nothing new there. And even if we were to raise all today’s children to be compassionate and ethical, we’re still left with the violent and callous reality of now.

When dealing with such abnormal and illegal misanthropic behavior, it’s obvious to me that our societal organizations that hold the legal monopoly on violence — our military and police forces, for example — should be held to a much higher standard of ethical behavior and face a much stiffer penalty when unethical behavior is committed.

I sure would like to take a look at what our military and police cadets are being taught today at their service schools regarding ethics and codes of conduct.

I have some idea, but it’s almost been 20 years since I was on active duty so I’m sure times have changed.

But while education in ethics and codes of conduct for our magistrates of violence is surely important and must continue, nothing in my mind is as important as the education and examples one receives in the formative childhood years.

For it is then our brains get stuffed with the stuff we base our lives on for the rest of our lives…

Such stuff as our prejudices and stereotypes and how to love and how to hate…

You know, the near indelible and indestructible stuff that one university freshman course in ethics can ne’er overcome.

Yeah…

The Known Knowns of a Known War Criminal

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It’s always magical to be able to throw an asshole’s words back in his face… especially when he is an outspoken representative of so many other assholes.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2003. Photo by Roger L. Wollenberg/UPI

While no one condones looting, on the other hand, one can understand the pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression and people who have had members of their family killed by that regime, for them to be taking their feelings out on that regime,” he said. “And I don’t think there’s anyone in any of those pictures … (who wouldn’t) accept it as part of the price of getting from a repressed regime to freedom.

Rumsfeld: Looting is transition to freedom, UPI, April 11, 2003

#GEORGEFLOYD
#BLACKLIVESMATTER
#RESIST

Killing in the Name

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Waiting for the trump statement to be released declaring the Minneapolis cops who murdered George Floyd to be good people…

Mr. Floyd died after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by an officer’s knee, in an episode that was recorded on video by a bystander, inciting condemnation and protests.

What We Know About the Death of George Floyd, New York Times, May 27, 2020

President Donald Trump seemed to encourage police to be more violent in handling potential offenders during a speech to law enforcement officers today.

“Please don’t be too nice,” he said to the audience in Long Island, New York.

Trump to police: ‘Please don’t be too nice’ to suspects, ABC News, July 28, 2017
Some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses…

#GEORGEFLOYD
#KILLINGINTHENAMEOF
#WAKEUP
#BLACKLIVESMATTER