Politics

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

When We Were King*

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If only we had sane, country first politicians in office who could run a functioning Congress that could take strategic advantage of the economic woes and geo-political fallout from the heavy-handed bullying and uncivil friendships that China has brought upon itself.

Yeah… if only.

Twenty years from now, if not sooner, when the dollar is no longer king* and the sole international currency of choice and, leveraging all the secrets it has stolen during the past decades from all our previously leading sectors, China has become the world’s leading economy and has manned a military base on the moon strong enough to thwart our dreams of space dominance, we’re going to be kicking ourselves in our bloated and ignorant political butts for missing this window of opportunity.

Or something like that…

Mr. Xi has been trying to stabilize relations with Washington, apparently pressed by China’s economic troubles and a desire to reduce Beijing’s diplomatic isolation. “We have a thousand reasons to grow the relationship between China and the United States, and none at all to ruin it,” Mr. Xi told American lawmakers in Beijing recently.

But with mutual distrust running deep, any easing of antagonism between the two sides could be tenuous.

Behind Public Assurances, Xi Jinping Spread Grim Views on U.S., New York Times, November 13, 2023

*non-gender specific

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…

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A bad day for clowns…

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Clown collage element vector

A good day for Democracy.

Democracy – 2 | Clowns – 0

UPDATE: What’s Einstein’s definition of insanity again? >> House Is Paralyzed as Jordan Fails in Third Bid for Speaker

Image courtesy of Reuters

The House has been without a leader for more than two weeks, and Jordan has twice failed to secure the 217 votes needed to claim the speaker’s gavel as he has faced opposition from Democrats and more than 20 of his fellow Republicans.

Jordan suspends bid for US House speaker, backs McHenry, Reuters, October 19, 2023

#🎉

FLASHBACK: Rep. Jim Jordan accused of participating in OSU sexual abuse cover-up by ex-wrestler

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?

An Expression of Love

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Don’t worry, my relentless efforts to completely overpower you politically is nothing more than a love-like expression… 😘

The actual exercise of physical violence substitutes for the psychological relations between two minds, which is of the essence of political power, the physical relation between two bodies.” He wrote that “all foreign policy is the struggle for the minds of men.” Genuine political power couldn’t be forced on people. It was complex, organic, unquantifiable. Elsewhere, Morgenthau compared it to love.

The Book That Shaped Foreign Policy for a Generation Has More to Say, NewYork Times, May 9, 2020
Virtually as soon as it was published, Hans Morgenthau’s “Politics Among Nations” became one of the most influential books of the 20th century. Credit…Associated Press [Via the New York Times]

#alonetogetherexpressingourlovepolitically

United States of Me

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The egalitarianism typical of human hunter-gatherers is interesting when viewed in an evolutionary context. One of humanity’s two closest primate relatives, the chimpanzee, is anything but egalitarian, forming hierarchies that are dominated by alpha males. So great is the contrast with human hunter-gatherers that it is widely argued by palaeoanthropologists that resistance to being dominated was a key factor driving the development of human consciousness, language, kinship, and social organization. . . [WIKIPEDIA]

While I’m loathe to give credit to the hardcore Silicon tech bros due to so many of them having a bent toward misogyny and authoritarian ideals, which also made Trump so appealing to so many of these tech nerd dictator-wanna-bes, a la Peter Thiel, however, one of their ideals that somewhat sort of does appeal to me is a their striving toward a kind of hyper-freedom/ individualism, a striving so much so that some, again a la Peter Theil, are working to create these technology island havens of sort where each island would be governed autonomously as its own country and where, it seems to me, the island owners could proclaim themselves king or queen.

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