Tag Archives: Politics

Our Wrong Track World

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I’m not a Royalist nor a Conservative, Republican or Democrat. These systems of rule have all been garbage. Their argument is fatuous: “Better than the alternatives imposed in Russia, the Middle East and developing nations.”

The problem is that, as flawed as it’s been to have old white men dictating misogynistic racist doctrines, the chaotic track we’re spinning down now looks an uglier thing. The lunatics are taking over the asylum – or at least they think they have – and they don’t give a damn about anything except personal monetization.

Libertarians and Anarchists will transform back into Nazis and Fascists because that’s what they are. Empathy dies. Hubris blooms. Terror reigns. Every being for itself. Fuck the rest.

Get me on the starship now.

Governing Those Who Hate

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Apparently, 73 million people voted for Trump. We know that the 1%ers are a big part of that, given their insidious lust for money, but that still leaves 68 million hateful ignorami in our midst. Fear and ignorance drive this horde, denying rights and freedoms to anyone with a different way of life.

For those who think that we all just have to sit down and talk, I encourage you to read Wajahat Ali’s Reach Out to Trump Supporter. That should cure you of that delusion.

To understand these people, one only has to paraphrase David Attenborough’s forward to Cameron’s To the Furthest Ends of the Earth on the nature of explorers: Trump supporters (explorers) are not, perhaps, the most promising people with whom to build a society. Some might say that these people become Trump supporters precisely because they have a streak of unsociability and need to remove themselves at regular intervals as far as possible from their fellow man. In other words, these people tend to be self-centered jerks.

And so what do we do with these hate-filled loons? The knowledge is there and they won’t read it. Instead they call it fake and lies. They will not listen. This is not a case of separate bubbles of perception. This is a hateful, ignorant group who will not engage. Time could work, if not for this collapsing world. Our chances are becoming nil to zero. Could they be given a time out or something? Maybe we could come back to them in a year?

And for those who think that we all just have to sit down and talk, I encourage you to read Wajahat Ali’s Reach Out to Trump Supporter. That should cure you of that delusion.

President Trump & “The Plot Against America”

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Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America chronicles the possibility of Charles Lindbergh, American hero and Nazi sympathizer, defeating Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1940 election, leading America into isolationism and violent Antisemitism. Most striking of all about this alternate reality is its similarities with today’s Trump America: “…when they turned on the news, they were devastated by the speed with which everything dreadful was happening.” (329) In the book’s postscript, Roth reprints Lindbergh’s speech against involvement in World War II on September 11, 1941:

The subterfuge and propaganda that exists in our country is obvious on every side. These war agitators comprise only a small minority of our people, but they control a tremendous influence. Against the determination of the American people…they have marshaled the power of the propaganda, their money, their patronage. The Jewish people’s greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.

Trump, identical to Lindbergh, refuses to address the hate and violence that stems from words like these.
And instead soldiers forth, blind and naked, leaving us to wonder where this reality, not as alternate as most would like, might lead.

The Precedence of Trump’s Silent Treatment

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So-Called President Trump’s refusal to answer questions is nothing new. The Precedence of Trump's Silent TreatmentCharlton Heston nailed this role beautifully in Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine. The Precedence of Trump's Silent TreatmentAs did Tom Cruise in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia. The Precedence of Trump's Silent TreatmentWell, as have many young folks from time immemorial.The Precedence of Trump's Silent Treatment

DuVernay’s Documentary “13th” Needs To Be Seen

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Ava DuVernay’s Academy-nominated documentary 13th exposes the intrinsic flaw of America’s 13th Amendment. DuVernay's Documentary "13th" Needs To Be SeenNeither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

While abolishing slavery is well and good – how did it ever happen in the first place?! – the amendment allows for the practice to continue through the penal system, a system that systematically incarcerates black males in America, a population that, only 4% of the overall population, accounts for 40% of prisoners. Black ManDuVernay outlines America’s dismal history of discrimination and servitude, citing Jim Crow laws as well as the systematic targeting of black leaders such as Angela Davis and Black Panther Fred Hampton.DuVernay's Documentary "13th" Needs To Be SeenPresidents Nixon, Reagan and Clinton are all indicted for the role in the morass as well as So-Called President Trump. Most insidious of all is the monetization of the mass incarcerations – corporations such as WalMart and Time Warner directly profiting from these policies – as well as the understanding that another iteration of the racist laws awaits us all. DuVernay's Documentary "13th" Needs To Be SeenDuVernay’s film needs to be seen. Okay, so what are you doing? Watch it now!Institution is not a building but a method

Happy Holidays, if I Don’t See You

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Hey, happy holidays if I don’t see you! I hope your fast goes well. Happy New Year’s, Valentine’s and Easter too. I hope that this new president doesn’t depress you or global warming and these terrorists, yeah, I hope they cut it out, and people, you know, get a fair wage for their work. Happy birthday too, and I hope your mom’s funeral isn’t too bad and that cancer of yours gets better. I mean, if I don’t see you.*

(*-Original concept, Edward Emerson)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: the Anti-Trump

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Ranting isn’t enough. Neither is reason nor wit. We need more. We need vision. We need fury. We need the Anti-Trump. antitrumpWhile the comedians do try – Bee, Colbert, Oliver, Noah – they always fail in looking for a laugh, such as Trevor Noah’s recent quip to alt-right spinster Tomi Lahren’s stating, “I don’t see color”: What do you do at a traffic light?trevor-noah

Elizabeth Warren is on the right track: Trump is not draining the swamp, nope. He’s inviting the biggest, ugliest swamp monsters in the front door, and he’s turning them loose on our government and our economy.elizabeth-warrenBut her rhetoric is too measured, too precise. The Anti-Trump must stare into the hateful void to find the words to break the spell.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie seems to have the right stuff: The election of Donald Trump has flattened the poetry in America’s founding philosophy: the country born from an idea of freedom is to be governed by an unstable, stubbornly uninformed, authoritarian demagogue. chimamanda-ngozi-adichieNow is the time to confront the weak core at the heart of America’s addiction to optimism; it allows too little room for resilience, and too much for fragility. Now is not the time to tiptoe around historical references. Recalling Nazism is not extreme; it is the astute response of those who know that history gives both context and warning. (The New Yorker Magazine, Nov.30/16)

Yes, now is the time.

Blitzer & Co: Heads Must Go

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They talk. And talk. And talk. And they don’t say anything. They just talk. Blitzer & Co: Heads Must GoAnd talk some more. That’s it. They don’t say anything real. They are wrong. They are right. They are in between. They just go one talking. And talking.Blitzer & Co: Heads Must GoCan’t they be removed? Or at least replaced? Maybe Trump could fire them.

Blitzer & Co: Heads Must GoAt least he could get that one thing right.

Ice Friday: Hannah Arendt’s Thinking

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When everybody is swept away unthinkingly by what everybody else does and believes in, those who think are drawn out of hiding because of their refusal to join in is conspicuous and thereby becomes a kind of action.IMG_4879In such emergencies, it turns out that the purging component of thinking is political by implication. The manifestation of the wind of thought is not knowledge; it is the ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly. And this, at the rare moments when the stakes are on the table, may indeed prevent catastrophes, at least for the self. (From The Portable Hannah Arendt)