“Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise,” said founding father Benjamin Franklin hundreds of years ago, and wound up on a hundred dollar bill. This sound advice has become trumped up doublespeak in a post-truth milieu.
B&C has always been about confronting delusions, eclipsing adages, and setting sayings straight. Government policies crush personal efforts. Blackguards stifle safeguards and usurp power. Trillions in federal debt will cause rampant inflation and decimate personal savings and purchasing value. While science agrees regular sleep decreases stress and improves stamina, diet, economy, exercise (esp. bicycling), genetics, habits (esp. drugs and smoking), and worry impact longevity more. Pandemics erase precautions reasonable people take. Wisdom is an amalgam of anticipation, experience, forethought, intelligence, judgement, knowledge, logic, manners, memory, perspiration, proactivity, and repetition ascribed to those who burnt candles on both ends when viewed with 20/200 hindsight.
How should government be run? Who has such arrogance to ask? Do citizens still have a right to be informed and shape? Shouldn’t someone with sense say what must be said? So many ill conceived decisions come out of Congress, constituents often figure they could do better themselves in a chamber scrape. Constitution calls for public service and taxpayer representation, as much anachronisms as jingo flags unfurled across a partisan landscape. Had evolved into either blind ideologies or influence pedaling. Lately it’s printing trillions of dollars, sticking into own pockets, tossing hostile dictators some bones, upholding deals with patronage directors, and vowing workers token pittances never delivered. If this continues, nation has no future. And, as goes America, so goes world in which no one is secure.
Face it: Besides conducting business crucial to life, government bilks wage earners, keeps them in line by enforcing laws they themselves don't follow, and writes omnibus bills less read and more wordy than Labann’s volumes full of arm twisting, blatant kickbacks, and pork barrel proposals. Such a sweet deal, but for whom? Pigs at the trough of late, GOP finds ever nervier ways to cheat and dominate, never serve interests efficiently or solve issues equitably, a situation you don’t need Bernie Sanders to substantiate. A century ago same could be said of Jim Crow Democrats, same mentality under another name, switching affiliations according to number of voter registrations. Largest voter group is independent and unrepresented, proving disgust with party platforms. Democrats today are restorationists, so recent victories spell more of the same. Hustlers misinform, but political parties apply mind control, brainwash with propaganda aimed at ego and fear, and conflate anecdotes into trends to falsely convince. For them pride yields profits and terror quells rebellion. Nation’s history has been a litany of oppressive policies favoring richest few.
During last half century Americans only prospered as a whole when Democrats had control of both Congress and executive office. Republican administrations resulted in economic recessions and illicit discriminations. Conservatives describe everything leftish as communism - including moderate majority mainstream - and reject change, improvements, progressive ideas, realignments, regulations, social spending, taxes, and whatever redistributes wealth from callous greedy to innocent needy. Unlike Trump, few can easily take out billions in loans and never repay. Relief checks reward lenders. You can bet your collection of music on CD and 3D videos on DVD that many homeless wretches never seek a handout or rather trade last dollar bill for some chemical thrill readily available. Many of them are mentally ill and not specifically responsible. Society can't ignore them any more than reckless industrialists who dump toxic wastes or terrible products on unsuspecting populace.
Worst part of trickle down stance wasn’t that it was a boldfaced fraud, but it made more billionaires than ever. Nation bears 788 or so billionaires, too many to avoid inequality becoming a catastrophe. About 10% of residents, 33 million of total 329 million, live under umbrella of millionaire households. In stark contrast, 43 million subsist below poverty line. Since wealth is a finite resource, every billionaire (inc. Trump) means that 50,000 families fail. Somewhere on earth someone dies every 3 seconds from poverty, 14,400 per day. Global poverty is as bad as any pandemic. Due to effort, faith and luck, 75% of Americans get by on an annual median income of $32K. Households need at least $25K per year after taxes to manage with basic connectivity, food, insurance, shelter and transportation. That leaves between $6K and $7K for retirement savings (as IRA code suggests), lifetime savings of $250K to $280K, provided you ride a bicycle and skip luxuries and vacations. That’s retirement pay each year for every ex-presidential couple. Some elder abuser or nursing home will wheedle it all away when you’re too feeble and old to deal. Increasingly more choose to earn less lest they be victimized by work stress or make targets of themselves and what they possess.
Joe McCarthy’s protege, proponent of trickle down, and puppet president Ronald Reagan constantly pops up on lists of nation’s most famous, because every ugly resident loves a criminal precedent who succeeded. Easy to pick People of the Year, winning team of Aunt Kam and Uncle Joe. Hard to pick Scourge of the Year, a tossup between any Trump political antic and traumatic COVID pandemic. While boasting of an 18% edge in a 2020 Gallup poll, Trump couldn't beat 21% undecided and won't ever tie Jimmy Carter's 29 time
record as most admired American; it’s something of a cruel joke to all who Agent Orange so grossly offended that he’s even appended. Most polls of historians place Trump below James Buchanan among worst on lowest quartile. Throughout his short stint in politics, his approval ratings hovered below 40%, final 34%, the lowest a president ever defended. Only Nixon exited lower, at 24%, after escalating war, flipping out, and resigning in disgrace.
B&C dabbles in poetry and wordplay not serious policy and theology today. Can barely muster discipline to perform safety procedures that delay disease, while COVID-20 mutation has already appeared in England. According to the CDC, COVID is twice as likely to infect and thrice more likely to kill non-Caucasian peoples except Asians, who are half as likely to contract but equally as susceptible to die along with elderly and other high risk groups. This genetic bias might be explained by bioengineered weapons. Yet deplorables go about without masks in defiance, straddling 2 parking spaces in rude contempt for everyone. Those who seek opinions that validate their positions will more likely be deluded or disgruntled. But all inquiry is inextricably interlinked; there's no way to divorce stupidity from what experts say, especially among Dunning-Kruger morons whose illusions of superiority interfere with self awareness of abject incompetence. A
half baked essay by late novelist John le Carre is as close as you'll ever get to a historically accurate assay. Truths have already been redacted from every news story. Dig as you will, anything of value lies beneath tons of overburden. Pointless details get relentlessly piled atop nuggets of wisdom that affirm a life’s entirety. William Butler Yeats was right, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity,” but isn’t that because decency demands cool cooperation and patient compromise?
Any cat with a Cheneyer grin, megalomaniac within, and orange skin must be a slimy alien symbiont totalitarian. UFO extraterrestrials must be consummate vermin. No human is so happy hollering into an echo chasm of conceited sin. Only a malignant narcissist demands so much self esteem strokin’. Analyzed by psychologists, Trump’s interminable speeches over 20 years reveal an amoral, anti-environmental, autocratic, biased, bullying, conceited, criminal, denialist, divisive, elitist, fascist, greedy, low class, lying, misogynist, narcissist, nationalist, paranoid, racist, rambling, sadist, sanctimonious, self absorbed, treasonous xenophobe who’s dismissive of citizens with disabilities, doesn't know what statesmanship entails, has no domestic or foreign policies other than raid federal treasury and strike unholy deals with worst adversaries, and only respects those who prey upon “losers” given his long history as casino owner and cruel landlord who cheated lenders, profited off the suffering of others, and suborned gaming addictions and sex trafficking. Extremism on multiple fronts earns him interminably long lists of denouncements and intensely packed paragraphs. Ego, fear, greed and hate are all Don the Con has ever dealt in. Such scams work because scoundrels discover what people have already convinced themselves of and elaborate upon their delusions, where all betrayals begin.
Big Mac Donald is a chronic liar and flattering cad who cared for no one but himself as he stuffed his pockets between 250 golf outings (most on record for a sitting POTUS), a raucous racketeer, and short billed cawing crow (genus and species Corvus brachyrhynchos). His planned news network will bugle lies and subjugate fools. Can't let this aberration continue to dominate every conversation with a quarter billion internet posts to date. It’s just his way of erecting another wall to hide his heinous crimes against humanity behind, yet may prove worse than traitorous sellout and vile greed, since he smears democracy itself. Everyone knows presidency lost luster during 43's decade, but 45’s tenure undermined America’s self determined way of life. Augurs ill for entire planet if autocrats do whatever they want, electors get ignored, while formidable task of ridding Congress of corruption goes unattended.
In Dan Partland’s biopic Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump, senior psychologists analyzed a plethora of actions, announcements and appearances to diagnose his antisocial, paranoid, sadistic tendencies.
His documented 20,000 lies confused, gaslighted, and pushed supporters remotely into violence without remorse. They'll never acknowledge how he regularly cheats on golf, taxes, and wives and overlook his bribery schemes that sell pardons to felons. QAnon ignores his actual suborning human trafficking while accusing honest officials of the same. If his alleged genius IQ is really 156, then he ought to understand why he was the only president in over 2 centuries to be impeached twice, a record you can be sure he's proud of. Voters were all too willing to dump Trump and replace with any face, kick can down road, not learn an important lesson.
Having condensed what hundreds of investigative reporters disclosed about 4 years of Trump’s example, must conclude civility was bled from nation’s beautiful, best and brightest, never mind crimes he's committed, how much he stole, lust for power, and perversion of truth. “Despite the constant negative press, covfefe” (COVid For Election Fix Expected), Trump tweeted, and wanted 75% of Americans to catch COVID, erroneously thinking that would achieve herd immunity; 75% of his associates complied and contracted, including personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who nevertheless quaffed an exclusive medical cocktail then partied at Mar-a-Lago maskless out of quarantine with guests who paid to see no-show Trump. You can't make such stuff up. Mar-a-Lago was once a national park until The Man of Steal extorted from former owner for less than half its value. No one becomes immune to influenza, which is why you need annual vaccinations. Took a big resurgence in November to knock a little sense into heads of masses to wear their masks and wash more. Trump’s solution to these embarrassments is to defund PBS and dismantle legitimate Press. What did nation expect from a naked self proclaimed emperor? No one in media has ever been as maniacally determined to misinform with utterly disreputable nonsense. Reveals a dire degree of desperation to grip engineer’s position on gravy train.
Captain Outrageous figured he was being clever by tapping into social media, like Arab Spring, to galvanize loner and loser discontent and portray himself as a Herculean hero cleaning Augean stables of federal and state governments thereby restoring power to the people. Backfired. Heroes don’t suddenly appear to shoulder impossible tasks. Followers imagined this billionaire bully to be a fresh outsider on a cleanup mission, which was daft wishful thinking. They flung open henhouse door to a wolf. All online commentary ever does is raise hackles and resentments. It doxes whoever tweets, infers preferences, and reveals flaws. The less you say, the better your reputation, as Labann can attest.
The Bible itself and subsequent history prove, if anything, that messengers get crucified, not autocrats, dictators or monarchs, who wear a mask of divine rights. Outsiders aren’t allowed into that clique until they destroy civilization, rebuild from scratch by whipping slaves thus deprived, and rewrite script before they die, thought of as the unlikeliest of scenarios. Anyway, next ruler erases all traces of you.
“Trump’s basic message has always been ‘I love you, and you love me, and we all hate the same people... I am suffering for you,’” said
Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild. “In Trump, they have found the paranoiac in chief of the conspiracist sphere.”
Trump called presidential salary ($570,000/year including expenses) a trifle to be refused (not donated), then collected half a billion alone in hotel fees from secret service while on golf junkets at his own resorts. Who knows how much else? Politicians only care about power that money buys, much of which comes from lobbies and political action groups. Couple Trump will leverage their $240,000/year retirement to continue his relentless attack against civil rights, common sense, decency, democracy, inclusion, race, reason, tolerance and women while promoting progeny into office in order to pull strings and wield power. Demented rubes will continue to follow evil incarnate down a dark alley into dirty deals. Accepting a pardon means admitting guilt and removes right to avoid self incrimination, something prosecutors should apply to compel damning testimony. Trump has already drafted precluding pardons for himself and family.
“To announce loudly that you accept the proclamations of the Church of Trump, no matter how false, contradictory, or exaggerated, is to identify yourself as a member of that faith community; to deny them is to risk excommunication... Among the Trump faithful, acknowledging the actual outcome of the presidential election is apostasy.” Adam Serwer, in conservative slick
The Atlantic, 10 December 2020.
Goal of autocracy is to supplant acquired knowledge, earned erudition, learned facts, and studied reason with loyalty oaths to the point that all conversations and decisions follow preset patterns that consolidate control, enslave masses, and purge dissenters. Conservatism is a virulent contagion that addles minds, stifles imagination, stokes fears, and sucks in all demographics through ego boosts, empty promises, and protection extortion. Prophets of doom live short lives of misery. Who needs panic porn they spout? But that's what bad leadership brings about. Everyone needs to do their own job instead of being a useless lout. When lazy recipients of federal largess look for heroes to make lives tolerable, they get victimized by villains. Columbus went from paragon to pariah overnight, as will Trump, though he exposed a vicious fascist movement hidden behind rightist establishment.
Election long over, lame duck wouldn’t concede. He just couldn’t accept another loss, tried to overturn 74 electoral and 7 million popular votes, 4% of a record 180 million votes tallied, not even close. After last campaign Trump claimed to have won 2 elections, when, in fact, he’s never earned any popular consensus, only one crowded primary by a narrow margin. Lost popular vote to first women ever to run for president, then to a moderate gentleman, all the more galling. Concerned citizens didn’t vote for Biden, they voted for “Bye, Don. You’re fired.” Democrats should have objected to states he carried, where fix was rigged in GOP’s favor by disenfranchising urban voters, forcing them to vote in person, gerrymandering districts to promote rural supporters, and removing poor from rolls. Conservative judges in appellate and circuit courts did everything possible to limit absentee ballots, democratic liberties, and legitimate voting rights. Those who claimed he still had a path to victory cited past frauds as hopeful examples. In those cases, counts were tight, hundreds apart not tens of thousands. In 2000, Bush’s own brother in Florida canceled ballots legally cast to beat Gore by a few hundred. "The Ham-bugler" has been a loser in every electoral and legal maneuver. After arm twisting of 150 local officials, blatant coercion, illegal attempts, and legislative conspiracy, his challenges fell flat in 80 court decisions.
On behalf of American public and Republican party "The Plague President" ceded the House, Senate and White House, disgusted 75% of citizens, drove Dow industrials down 60% (with rapid regain upon election results), enflamed Neo-Nazi extremism, lost 9 million jobs, mismanaged COVID killing one citizen per thousand (including 750 of his rally attendees) while trying to exploit and profit politically from it, put 30 million families at risk of being evicted from homes, then ludicrously described his 4 years as, “The greatest first term in presidential history,” Distributing tarnished Medal of Freedoms to political allies Jordan, Limbaugh and Nunes (no way on par with previous recipients Neil Armstrong or Walt Disney) demeans yet another institution among many he's already trashed. Football coach and former supporter Bill Belichick refused MOF from him. Blame the few who benefitted, knew all this, and shamelessly enabled him.
“Trump and his Republican enablers have normalized corruption and nepotism, degraded public discourse, invited foreign involvement in US elections, abused presidential pardons, deepened racial divides and politicized the bureaucracy in ways rarely seen in American history. Trump's refusal to concede after a clear loss is sweet music for autocrats across the globe and a stain on American's reputation. But his effort to subvert democracy has failed.” Timothy Frye, CNN broadcast, Dec. 22nd, 2020
A military or Supreme Court coup d'tat, as in banana republics Trump vilifies, might have negated results or War Powers Act delayed, if constitution didn’t exist and too many weren't willing risk prison sentences. Don’t think masses would stand for martial law; widespread civil unrest would break out, much to delight of neocons, who profit from conflict. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, himself under investigation for securities fraud, filed a SCOTUS lawsuit to invalidate results on behalf of a POTUS known to hand out pardons for such loyalty. What a shameless ploy! Hundreds of pages of filings offered no evidence just pure conjecture, yet withheld claims of actual voter fraud, since multiple recounts already disproved and that would be perjury. Hard to prove false counting in swing states, where they relied on verifiable paper ballots that can be rechecked and were. Only states that allow computer voting were vulnerable, such as Texas, where the Angry Creamsicle prevailed. After GOP routinely upheld state sovereignty, conservative hypocrisy wanted to pit one state against another. How can Texas tell Wisconsin how to conduct polls? Even though they stocked Supreme Court with allies, justices voted unanimously to reject Paxton’s suit according to the constitution they are bound to uphold.
In an action not seen since foreign invasion in 1812, insurrectionists armed with handguns and rifles waving confederate, MAGA, and nazi flags planted explosives with molotov cocktails in reserve, and set up a gallows to symbolize lynchings of nonwhite citizens and Obama reformers while they stormed Capitol Building. This clash that claimed six lives was directly incited by president, his adult children, personal lawyer, and several legislators, who thereby committed felonies broadcast live. Seems almost inconceivable. Hoover’s FBI would have already arrested all of them; so far, 70 conspirators have been charged. No democracy exists without inconvenient participation. If you’d rather not learn issues, identify candidates, investigate results, and prosecute traitors, you might be happier under a dictator or oligarch, though you might get whacked upon suspicion or whim.
Why allow an unstable clown to terrorize Americans with ridiculous post election disruptions? Anarchists and pyromaniacs want world to burn so their suicides drag others down. With humans you get gifts and waste, jewels and jokers; goal is to encourage less of one and more of the other. Otherwise civilization and sustenance nosedive. Would have posted this sooner but for weeks of disbelief at “what next” from this decomposing jack-o-lantern, who thrived upon disrespecting anyone who wouldn't kneel before him. What's to keep Putin's Puppy from selling state passcodes and secrets, when he cowered DOJ and FBI directors and obligated SCOTUS justices? What of penalties for libel, perjury and sedition? Shouldn't lawyers who suborn such nonsense be disbarred for life, and senators who support be impeached or recalled? How about restoring FCC rules that prohibited fake journalism and foul propaganda? “Words matter, and the power of life and death is in the tongue.” asserted Senate Chaplain Barry Black, after reconvening from riot and running for their lives Congress confirmed electoral decision for Joe Biden at 3:42 AM, too late on purpose for working stiffs to follow and rejoice in a smooth transfer of roles.
By inciting armed insurrection, mounting relentless challenges, and refusing to concede, Trump raised an additional quarter billion allegedly for legal defense, likely pocketed along with untold amounts from federal treasury. Who’s really paying for all these specious lawsuits? It’s just another way to transfer obligatory taxpaying into private pockets. Any wonder why deficit has doubled? His reckless accusations agitated 25% of nation with assault weapons and mental disorders, who serve as his most loyal minion. Fomenting civil disruption and overthrowing constitution is the very definition of sedition, an extremely serious capital offense punishable by death, because even noncombatants die during civil wars. It’s all a facade to continue with impunity capitol atrocity, oversea sellout, plunder of treasury, self-evident treason, but will be about as ineffective as his xenophobic barrier against Latino intruders.
Is The American Dream caught between social equity for all or unbridled prosperity only few can achieve? Equal opportunity and pay - irrelevant of age, creed, gender, orientation, and race - honors sanctity of nation’s 4 Freedoms. Too liberal a society for your avarice or tastes? If you don't like how things are run, you have options: Fight back as prescribed by law, hide in a hole or some remote backwater, run for office, or self exile elsewhere. Wrong to let yourself be duped or sold, you can always choose to do nothing or the opposite; don’t have to justify your reasons to anyone. However, if you act irresponsibly someone pays a price, often those you love or you. Calls came out for coming together, healing nation, but promoting fascism has no place and putting aside partisanship for sanity’s sake only welcomes worse transgressions. Nazis are not good people; they embody every known evil. Red states exist because residents there don't get along with customs on chaotic coasts where arrivals and departures run riot. Trump's family has already escaped to gated Florida estates where they’ve bought executive homes after fleecing the gullible and oblivious, but communities rushed to exclude them from cabals, country clubs, and cliques.
Many say they want honesty, yet recoil in hypocrisy when truths are told. Everyone’s bombarded relentlessly with rank misinformation and ruthless propaganda upon which they feel compelled to be bold. As if assailed by a cult, see up to 20 unsolicited emails daily of conservative codswallop under different names - GOP Times, Independent Press, Patriots News, Red Right Press - with links to dozens of bogus stories with nonsensical headlines and ridiculous fabrications that don’t convince, rather call underlying intent into question. Only the guilty drive so hard deceive. Pure absurdity, you’ll never get it in real mail, since that would constitute fraud punishable by fines and imprisonment. Carriers refuse to deliver such mendacity. USPS has been under assault, because as a government agency they enable voting, which minority party wants suppressed. Republicans only succeed when disenfranchised don’t show up and only supporters are permitted to vote. Freedom of speech imposes a duty to assume responsibility and report factually. All that tyrants need to succeed is that good people say nothing, so tacitly permit them to proceed.
“An electro cruiser coasted towards the exit and turned on
Peaceful Valley Boulevard. ‘People make the difference,’ read a billboard above a long line of idling cars... Who’ll be the one to lead this world? Who’ll be the beacon in the night? Who’ll be the one to lead the nations and protect God's creations? Politicians gathered for a summit and came away with nothing to decide...” Neil Young, Le Noise, 2010
Digging up the dead with a shovel and a pick. It’s a job, it's a job. Bloody moon rising with a plague and a flood. Join the mob, join the mob. It's all over, it's all over, it's all over. And there's a leak, there's a leak, in the boiler room. The poor, the lame, the blind: Who are the ones that we kept in charge? Killers, thieves, and lawyers. God’s away, God's away,
God's Away... On Business.” Tom Waits, Epitaph Records, 2002
