Monthly Archives: November 2017

The Daily Poop   (2017Nov29)

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PussyTrump

Wednesday, November 29, 2017                                              11:21 PM

The Daily Poop   (2017Nov29)

After Trump retweeted anti-Muslim videos and one ISIS propaganda video, Sarah Sanders told reporters Wednesday morning, “Whether it is a real video, the threat is real”. I presume she means the threat of one Dutch teen beating up another, while a third makes a video—and that is a threat, don’t get me wrong.

Both the Dutch and the British governments lightly castigated Trump later today—they’re not from ‘round here, so they don’t know—that only excites him. I think, as a TV celebrity, Trump came to conflate criticism with popularity—or perhaps even ratings. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the pants?

Is it all distraction to pull our eyes away from the ‘Tax Cut’ bill? They really wanted to pass that pile of dung before anyone smelled it. Sorry, GOPs, too slow—the news is out—and even 49% of Republicans polled don’t like the idea of giving the super-wealthy what little they don’t already have—and putting the rest of us in debt to do it.

But Trump’s week has been phenomenal—even for him. He’s started to rave quietly to people in the White House, questioning reality like the senile old man he is. And to hear him sound off on the harassment-claims avalanche—like a little choir boy—who doesn’t have sixteen accusers of his own. Sometimes, the newspeople just stop, look at each other, and start laughing—then they get all flustered and start mumbling about professionalism.

We must sympathize with them—politics used to be downright serious stuff—words too—even facts, sometimes—but now…. How can anyone maintain a serious attitude when discussing the daily poopings and upsets of the world’s biggest, richest baby?

Trumpbaby2

Heedlessness   (2017Nov26)

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hunter-s-thompson-v3

Saturday, November 25, 2017                                          11:40 PM

Heedlessness   (2017Nov26)

On the recent PBS documentary, “Rolling Stone At 50”, Hunter S. Thompson says something to the affect that American voters crave a ‘used-car-salesman, lie-cheat-and-steal, win by any means and destroy all others’-type of autocrat. Thompson offered as proof: the reelection of Richard Nixon to his second presidential term—the one Nixon won by an historic landslide—the one he would be forced to resign from, a year-and-a-half later.

If the average for expelling unfit presidents, whose campaign committed felonies, is roughly one-and-a-half years then we should be getting close to ejecting the present Fool-in-chief. Remember, patience is a virtue. In the meantime, I think it important to drill down on our national schism between Red and Blue.

Firstly, it is important not to make this a purely political division. Blue prevails in urban areas and Red in rural—there is an element of culture (or at least environment) at work here, as well. The people in the Red states are not naturally ‘conservative’ any more than those in the Blue are ‘liberal’—there is a healthy mix of both in every state, Red or Blue.

Then again, words like Liberal and Conservative have become the dogs that spin-doctors wag. Yes, they have literal ‘dictionary’ meanings—but in common usage, they are merely flavoring to whatever group is being fed the BS.

Here’s another word whose meaning is oft overlooked:

heed·less         [ˈhēdləs ] -adjective

showing a reckless lack of care or attention.

““Elaine!” she shouted, heedless of attracting unwanted attention”

synonyms:  unmindful, taking no notice, paying no heed, unheeding, disregardful, neglectful, oblivious, inattentive, blind, deaf

Heedlessness is often used to demonstrate power, as in—“I don’t care about your excuses, just get it done.”—a sentence that no one but a blowhard would ever dream of saying to another person. These blowhards that ask for 110% effort and total loyalty—are the same people who never really make one’s acquaintance, or remember one after one’s immediate usefulness has past.

America courts heedlessness, almost as a virtue. Freedom of Speech means we can all say what we want—and no one can stop anyone else from saying anything. Implicit in that is the need to be able to ignore what some people say—if you disagree with or despise the words of another, the only way to avoid losing your temper is to ignore what someone else says.

Naturally, in a perfect world, we’d all just debate our differences into oblivion—but that will never happen. People will always have differences—the point of politics is to build a consensus towards a compromise, leaving all parties equally unsatisfied. But, even if politics succeeded in doing that, all those differences which people have would remain—we would simply have integrated our differences into a patchwork that was fair for everybody.

Additionally, we believe in Democracy—we believe it is very important for the majority to hold sway. It becomes easy to confuse majority opinion with actual fact—since both hold equal importance in America’s value system. Even requiring a unanimous jury verdict to condemn a man to death is a form of democracy—and that vote holds the power of life and death. Any scientist will tell you that stating an important (proven) scientific fact has no such power over our daily lives.

I have personally witnessed over fifty years of obfuscation by greedy business-people, pushing back against the plain facts as presented by Rachel Carson, Ralph Nader, and a cast of thousands of well-meaning researchers whose only miscalculation was the amount malfeasance, smearing, and even violence they would face from those greedy, cold-blooded, ransom-their-heirs’-planet assholes.

Being willing to indulge in journalism that merely legitimizes their flimsy tissue of pushbacks, we end up looking like we’re actually that stupid—that we can’t see through their greedy defense against plain truth. Yet, at the same time, we wait for each of the fighters to fall—like tobacco did, like coal did, like asbestos did—we wait for the full weight of history to crush their greedy pretense to ‘alternate facts’. We know it will happen—we just don’t know how many lawyers will retire off of each battle before ‘simple fact’ is permitted to turn to some new front.

Thus, media conglomerates stretch the principle of ‘hearing both sides’ to include the most self-serving, misleading, and hypocritical voices on the same screen as knowledgeable folks who are only there to speak the truth as they know it. It’s a very subtle judo, that’s not-so-subtly destroying our confidence in what we know—and thereby, the fabric of our democracy.

While the media faux-nobly upholds this ‘objectivity’ they’ve concocted, while con-men use false majesty to pretend that their egos have real worth, while Free Speech is fast becoming a ‘caveat emptor’-situation with regard to listening, and while autocrats stir up emotional frenzies to distract from the lack of plain justice and decency—I’m still waiting for everyone to remember.

Remember that information has a source—the only way fake news can fool you is if you don’t check your sources. Remember that the world is not your friend—some facts will be other than what you wish they were. Remember that democracy requires an informed electorate—we ignored the reality of our politics and half of us didn’t vote. Now we have the ‘president’ such lazy neglect deserves—a cross between a senile moron and an enemy agent, hell-bent on destroying the federal government from the inside—from the top, no less.

I get it. We thirst for distraction—we want videos and games and VR and concerts and sports events—we want beer and wine and booze and pot and speed and coke and opioids—we want talent contests, hot-dog-eating run-offs, star searches, dancing with stars, and bickering ‘real’ housewives. Nobody wants to face the dreary challenges of practical politics—the nuts and bolts of programs that will truly improve citizens’ lives, make us all safer, give us all more opportunity.

And the politicians certainly don’t want that! They want things as they are—where one’s public persona is all the fitness required to be given enormous authority and responsibility—where even squeaky-clean idealists can be smeared, one way or another—and where you can invent and stand by your own truth, reality be damned. They don’t want practical politics—that’s never been part of the equation—that’s never been what the game was about.

But a grassroots movement could create pressure to address practicality. We could start complaining that we don’t want any candidate who wastes time criticizing an opponent—or makes vague claims about very detailed, technical issues. We want candidates who brag about their support staff’s CVs, who release white-papers with detailed, in-depths plans to alleviate some unfairness, red-tape, or neglect in several issues—not just one (because the world is too big and fast these days).

We want candidates who will go after the big fish—and we shall know them by the amount of money the fat cats spend trying to destroy him or her. This world is on the express train to tomorrow—it’s changing faster than we can keep up with—it’s more complicated than any one person can even grasp—it’s coordinated to keep all the food and fuel and power distributed to all the people on a regular, non-stop basis. The world is a mighty machine that must be kept ticking smoothly—or we all die.

Now, if you’re a religious type, who hears ‘we all die’ and figures that’s ‘just the way (huh) God planned it’—you can pretty-please just go fuck yourself. The rest of us are going to live the hell out of our lives—and plan futures for our children and our grandchildren—and, should the fucking world come to an end, we will be too busy living to notice, until five full minutes after the Apocalypse. So, if you have faith in such bullshit—keep it to your god-damned self.

Getting back to the real world—it has a thin rind of fragile life all over its surface—and we have lain an even thinner, more fragile layer of technology over that—it is ironic that the machinery of humanity’s world is both titanic and flimsy, indestructible yet delicate.

Everyone knows that machines need order to function efficiently—but we avert our eyes from the obvious—that humanity needs organization, too, if it is to enhance society with machines. For one thing, this sovereignty thing, that hangs on—and stymies the intended role of the United Nations—that is a huge waste. And who do these boundary lines profit? Dictators, arms manufacturers, smugglers, and hate-mongers—that’s who. And don’t start whining about the UN—if you don’t like the UN, start another one—just don’t oppose global unity because “the UN’s broken”, you lazy ass.

I’m waiting for us all to get wise to these salesmen-politicians, selling us a story instead of governing (never mind governing well) and start paying heed, instead, to people with credentials, people without a dog in the fight—even when those people say stuff that threatens some fat monopoly’s bottom line. I’m waiting for us all to pay heed to the clock that’s still ticking—that one that the GOP tells you doesn’t exist—environmental impact.

I’ll tell you a little secret—some of the filthiest-richest people on Earth make their money by being the most toxic, the most destructive, and the most unethical. If you ever wondered why we’re still discussing environmental issues fifties years after the first warnings were made—that’s why. And that’s another thing we have to heed—Capitalism was great stuff (as far as it went) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—but it has metastasized into something dark, cruel and hungry in this new century—and we have to start punching back at what is now a tiny enclave of people, each with more money than is good for one’s mental health.

Hunter-s.-Thompson-2

Let the Creeps Do It   (2017Nov21)

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Sunday, November 19, 2017                                            5:21 PM

Let the Creeps Do It   (2017Nov21)

I don’t know who underestimates public intelligence-levels more—the politicians or the media. When the pols tell us that ‘making the rich richer and raising taxes on everyone else’ will make our lives better—it’s not new. But it is more threadbare than ever before—‘trickle-down’ economics (AKA “Piss on you!”) was defensible, barely, as a new theory. As an old, fully and luxuriously debunked theory, ‘trickle-down’ economics is a worn-out tune on an out-of-tune fiddle. Or are we expected to forget about Dubya’s last year in office?

That’s the pols—ugh—mean and stupid is a bad combo. Then there’s the media—getting together a panel, pretending that Trump is a real president—with fully thought-out policies and a well-reasoned agenda. Then they pretend that the Republic party is an entity—instead of an organized-crime front for all the big ‘mostly-legal’ corporations we once saw as servants, rather than masters. Nowadays, our goods and services providers tell us how it’s going to be.

And when I say us, I mean not only we consumers—but the government that once protected us from rampant tycoonery. It’s a little late now—but if we could regain control of the legislature from the rich, that would be a good thing.

But let’s talk impeachment—I hope they take Senator Franken’s Polaroid and use it to remove him from the Senate. That would open the door to doing the same thing to Trump—if acts prior to taking office are actionable, and if one lady’s testimony and a photo are sufficient—well, we’ve got a president who’s famously confessed on tape, and twelve women testifying that he wasn’t lying about his behavior, just to impress Billy Bush.

No, when the Donald was bragging to Billy-boy about how much he enjoyed the ‘perks’ of fame (and bragging to Stern how much he enjoyed the ‘perks’ of owning a teen beauty pageant) Trump was being entirely frank. Far more frank than when he called all twelve of his accusers liars.

[Note: I didn’t publish the preceding quickly enough—a second accuser of Franken, while he was in office, has come forward—which makes the previous reasoning moot. However, the whole ‘glass houses’ thing is still totally in effect—in a world that even pretends to ethics.]

I’m so tired of critiquing the buffoonery of a goon who should have never been made president—there’s more than enough, in his first nine months, to have the entire country surrounding the Executive Mansion with Tiki-torches. I can’t believe Trump, of course—but what I really can’t believe is these creepy little legislators, hiding in their offices, dodging questions about all this questionable (some might say treasonable) incompetence and malpractice.

Is the job of governing so odious that we allow the most cretinous pests exuded from law school to hold power—just so we don’t have to?

*******************************************

Enough with the negativity–let’s hear some music:

A Little Moore   (2017Nov15)

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Wednesday, November 15, 2017                                              5:32 PM

A Little Moore   (2017Nov15)

If the Trump campaign had been a thrilling novel written by Tom Clancy, Jack Ryan would have exposed Trump as a Russian mole—in the nick of time—and Trump would have been hauled off to jail, while HRC went on to ‘build on Obama’s legacy’.

I think we can all agree, now—with the exception of Congress, apparently—that we’d all have been better off if the story had had that happy ending. Unfortunately the American people, in their infinite wisdom, ignored all the ‘Ryan‘s out there, and now there’s a mole in the Oval.

So it is no great surprise that Trump supports Moore in the midst of Moore’s disgrace. After all, if a guy loses an election—just because he’s a hypocritical letch and a liar, with a shady past—then how did Trump himself slip through this horrifying quality-control?

But—to return to the mole in the Oval—it’s important to do a head count, at this point, I think, because it is not just Trump tearing this country down, step by step, under Russian direction—it’s also the over-a-dozen-other cronies in league with Trump (and Putin) within his administration and within his own family.

Which is another weirdly blatant slap-in-the-face to anyone who cares about those silly ‘rule’-things—why does Blotus’s family get offices in the West Wing? Why is ‘qualified’ a dirty word all of a sudden? Is ‘experience’ really such a black mark against a civil servant? Why are there literally hundreds of empty desks in our state department?

For that matter, why couldn’t he be impeached merely for having the idiotic narcissism to claim that ‘trolling on Twitter’ was his ‘presidential style’? Is that disgrace, alone, sufficient grounds—or is it necessary for a president to be convicted of a crime to be impeached? Is not incompetence—mixed with delusion—and don’t forget the ignorance—a crime itself, in a President of the United States?

Well, let’s suppose that is, ultimately, the upside of all this travesty. Next time, people, beware—your thoughtless, half-serious vote for an idiot president is a cancer on the country—one that can’t be cured for a full 1,460 days after inauguration. Perhaps, given the timidity of Congress towards the overgrown brat-in-chief, we should rather say it ‘won’t’ be cured—for surely they could find a surfeit of cause, if they chose to see it.

And, felicitous too, it would seem that Congress, having glossed over Trump’s unfitness and questionable character, just FTW—has decided they have one sleazy gang in Washington already—they’re not going to give cover to Moore. They already have a little more than they bargained for—with the mole in the Oval.

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The Limits of Machinery   (2017Nov13)

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BoucherAllegoryOMusic

Monday, November 13, 2017                                           2:16 PM

The Limits of Machinery   (2017Nov13)

We always stop short. ‘Good Enough’ is humanity’s motto. Then, we orate about ideals and justice and truth—as if we weren’t constantly focused on ‘good enough’—as if we don’t settle for that, every time.

When a man or woman loses a job to a machine, do we tell that person, “Hey, you get paid forever now—and you don’t have to work anymore!”? No—we don’t do that. That would be crazy—right?  So, what responsibility do we have to that unemployed worker? Should everyone just keep on doing their jobs until they are replaced by a machine—and pretend that it’s not happening?

Sure, today—it’s no big problem. Right this second, the job market is still a real thing. At one time, people said the same thing about camera film, or TV antennae. And film and roof-antennae don’t do much business anymore. But (you riposte) those are just consumer goods—they change all the time. Jobs is jobs.

And you’re right—consumer goods are the most ephemeral aspect of a consumer society. But the entire thing is a construct—it is based on assumptions. “People need to work” is one of those assumptions. It implies two things: (1) People need to work to make a living—and (2) People need to work or nothing would get done. For all recent memory—and history—this assumption has been a fact. But what if you take away the last part—and you’re left with only the first part?

A planet full of people—all of whom need to make a living—and that same planet full of machines—doing all the work. No, it’s not happening today—time will pass—tomorrow will be like today—but. Aren’t we tired of ‘good enough’? Aren’t we tired of seeing all the progress go to the rich—and virtually none to the race of man?

Computers are weapons—we all agree on this—but few of us seem to fully grasp the meaning of it. In effect, today anyone with a keyboard and wi-fi can have the intelligence and the destructive power of a sovereign nation. Teams of hackers can do even worse things—and no one seems in a hurry to jump-start American kids’ white-hat-hackers clubs (a la the digital scouts) to prepare them for a future of cyberwarfare.

Beyond national security and all that popular jazz, however, is the lag-time between the wealthy and the rest of us—regarding our entry into ‘cyberversality’. All the info and tech that helps the rich and powerful—that stuff gets implemented yesterday. The info and tech that helps the rest of us—oh, sorry, that stuff is proprietary—an invasion of privacy. (Meanwhile, how did you get my email address?)

And now that cyberleaks and iphone videos have revealed a bit too much about our reality, debates on the meaning of truth reveal themselves to be attacks on truth, by another name. These people have no shame.

BoucherAllegoryOPaintg

Yeah, Sure, Let’s Talk About It   (2017Nov03)

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New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton

Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks to the reporters at United Nations headquarters, Tuesday, March 10, 2015. Clinton conceded that she should have used a government email to conduct business as secretary of state, saying her decision was simply a matter of “convenience.” (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Friday, November 03, 2017                                              5:01 PM

Yeah, Sure, Let’s Talk About It   (2017Nov03)

The campaign ended a year ago. Hillary Clinton hasn’t worked in government for a long time. But, yeah, if that’s what you want to work on—to focus on—then, by all means, let’s all waste our time talking about that.

Donna Brazile, in her new book “Hacks”, de-emphasizes the fact that Bernie Sanders was a life-long Independent—and switched to Democrat just to run for president. If the then-DNC people felt they were more rightly on the Hillary Express than the Sanders Sidetrack, one can hardly blame them.

And if Trump is so ready to stir the pot over the Steele dossier, he can explain why most of it has proven true, after further checking by lots of investigators and journalists. Republicans set that MI6 investigator on the trail, then sold the deal off, mid-invesht, to the DNC-campaign’s oppo-researchers. Show us evidence that HRC made use of that dossier—or even knew what was in it—then, we have something to talk about.

And I’m sorry, but that’s my BS-limit. I can’t dignify the Uranium thing by repeating the long-accepted, well-known truth about that deal—that would just encourage them to keep repeating the well-dismissed lie. And don’t blame me for this post being dreary—the motherfucker can’t utter one syllable without lying. If he wasn’t president, we would have stopped listening way long ago—we only listen now because we’re afraid this asshole is going to kill us all.

Vote for The Non-Rich   (2017Nov02)

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foundingDoc_02

Thursday, November 02, 2017                                         3:14 PM

Vote for The Non-Rich   (2017Nov02)

Listen—we need taxes. And when things are tough (I think ‘now’ qualifies) we have to accept that increased taxes are a short-term hassle to get a long-term gain for everyone. And tax reform of any kind should start with a discussion of what taxes are being spent on, specifically. Any random tax-cut ‘reform’ is simply money being spent on large businesses and wealthy people—that’s where that money goes—and splitting hairs on TV all day doesn’t change that.

The United States has a total gross national debt of about $20 trillion. Large corporations make billions every year—in large part because America provides them with a civilized, efficient, law-abiding place to do business—and provides them with a diverse, well-educated work-force to draw upon.

Whenever the Republicans lower taxes, they weaken our country by increasing the national debt—and the deficit. Reagan’s tax cuts and increased military spending increased the national debt—Clinton’s tax increases and decreased military spending shrank the national debt. We are at a point where we traditionally have elected Democrats, to curb the predatory Republicans and put our house in order—but we lost our damned minds and elected the Clown instead.

Now these predatory hucksters are all over the media—earnestly telling you that by making the rich richer, we all get rich. No wonder no one cares about public education anymore—they need some real idiots to listen to that tripe. Anyone with a lick of sense knows that, if you have too few rich people with too much money—and way too many people with too little money—well, the answer is not to give more money to the rich. How stupid do they think people are?

Oh, and I love how Paul Ryan was saying, “We’re not going to cut the taxes on the millionaires…” so reassuringly—as if we ought to be glad they’re not getting a big break, instead of being mad that there’s no increase in their taxes while they hold 90% of all the revenue. How do these people manage to fight so earnestly-seeming, even when they know they are abusing their offices?

The wealthy make all the rules. The wealthy have all the power. Capitalism has become a mass of slowly-tightening strips of wet leather, squeezing us to death in the hot sun of changing times and conditions. We can’t even rebel against them properly—without our message being appropriated and even monetized by the media conglomerates. But we don’t have to like the rich. We don’t have to take them seriously (since when has a man with a loaded gun been required to make sense?)

And we can certainly vote for non-rich people. I suggest we all vote for whoever has the least money—and vote them out again if they become too well-off. That ought to put a crimp in political wheeling and dealing. If we kept up a heavy turnover, we could even have a few sessions of Congress filled by people who know what real life is like for the rest of us. They may disagree with our politics, but at least they won’t be rich fuckers. I’m sick and tired of rich fuckers.

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America’s Greatest Weakness   (2017Nov01)

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Wednesday, November 01, 2017                                              7:27 PM

America’s Greatest Weakness   (2017Nov01)

Today Trump said of the rent-a-truck terrorist, “We have to get tougher.” I’m unclear as to what we are supposed to get tougher towards. Excuse me for wondering what we can do about a 39-year-old Uzbek immigrant of seven years—who suddenly decides to travel to New York City, rents a truck, commits heinous, unspeakable vehicular homicide and assault on twenty strangers, hits a school bus, and jumps out of the truck with a BB gun shouting, “God is great!”

I believe one of New York’s Finest then immediately shot the guy. Someone tell me how you get tougher than that? Or faster? Insanity is such a thorny issue that we like to steer clear of it—preferring to speak in a criminal or political context. Yet were not these the actions of a madman?

Yes and no. In harsher places all around the world, including Uzbekistan, there is some wildness of culture—a clinging to a patriarchal fundamentalism that has never heard of such flighty ideas as ‘inclusion’ and ‘honest modern-day biology’—never mind ‘educating girls’ or ‘gay marriage’.

To such, we ‘first worlders‘ are not to be envied—we are demonic infidels who scorn the true faith (provided them by their Byzantine-minded village elder(s)). And that old fool may be some miserable, ignorant senior, more interested in his own power than anything else—but he has been the font of all their lore, since most of them had learned to talk.

We who have been blessed to be born in America often see no great difficulty in considering ourselves entirely free and equal—but, for those born in oppression, to embrace those ideas is akin to jumping off a cliff. Even many American-born shrink from true self-determination—it is no small thing to take complete responsibility for one’s life and deeds.

It cannot be purely political when a man goes berserk, as this terrorist did—there is madness there, too. Else how could anyone do such a thing? Yes, male Eastern European immigrants of a particular age group seem particularly vulnerable to Jihadist brainwashing—but that still doesn’t make that entire demographic automatically suspect. Remember, it takes a person who is unbalanced enough to be taken in—to the point of mass murder/suicide—by the indoctrination—regardless of where they’re from. These attacks are undeniably terrible—but there are still thousands of Uzbek-Americans who are just like you and me (American, that is).

Besides, the regular, old, rich, white guy who shot up Vegas, mere weeks ago, had a far greater body count—and he was from Florida or someplace. I simply cannot believe that Trump—supposedly an American, supposedly the leader of America, has just called for an end to inclusion. Did I really just hear an American president say, “Diversity is a nice idea—but it’s just not working.”—have I truly lived long enough to have my ears sullied so? Has this fucking idiot perused the census? America is diversity, Donald, you fuckwad—and its greatest weakness has always been goons like you, who refuse to accept that.

Happy Halloween   (2017Oct31)

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Tuesday, October 31, 2017                                               2:46 PM

Happy Halloween   (2017Oct31)

In a few minutes, we will have arrived at November 1st, 2017, as I predicted—less than a year from inauguration, and the first indictments of our President’s circle of co-cronies have been unsealed. Information included in those legal issuances leads us to expect much more to come—and that right soon (if I may reference “The Shawshank Redemption”).

Yesterday Chief of Staff Kelly demonstrated more concern for the Confederacy of the old South than for any practical solutions to a nuclear North Korea—or the sudden loss of our military ally in Africa, Chad.

Rachel Maddow recently speculated that Trump’s spurious addition of the nation of Chad to his third attempt at a Muslim ban—had angered Chad, which until then had been supplying military patrols to three of its neighbors. This included Niger, where four US Special Forces would be ambushed and killed less than a week later—by extremists who have historically rushed to fill the void whenever the Chadians withdraw their seasoned troops. What bothers me most about Rachel’s theory is that no one else has brought it up since. I hate when that happens—then I’m left between being lied to by the media—or—being a conspiracy theorist.

The drug lobbyists recently convinced Republicans to block the DEA from being able to track prescription opioid suppliers—an important step in monitoring the commerce of opioids—which the DEA is now denied. Then, Trump announced two things last week—one, that he would not allow funding to fight the opioid crisis (unless it was swiped from Obamacare funding) and two, that we should remember Nancy Regan—and ‘Just Say No’ to opioid addiction. Trump made no mention of the 90% of addictions that begin with doctor-prescribed opioids—or the reluctance of big Pharma to put the speed-brakes on their opioid ‘gravy train’.

But the above is a mere sprinkling of the mountains of misbehavior demonstrating the ethically vacuous character of our current politics. The nature of our present governance catches one torn between wonder at the pols’ perfidy and awe at the voters’ lack of informed self-interest. The reason the Russian encroachment on our public discourse fails to elicit much fury is that we throw so much bullshit at each other, the Russian bullshit hides amidst the noise of what’s already there.

And honestly, the Russians have only taken the Republican’s tactics to their most extreme. That’s why they worked so well—and that’s partially why the Republicans are so slow to condemn them for it.

I wanted to entitle this post “Fuck You, Putin!”, because we seem finally to accept that those fuckers attacked us. And yet, to be fair,

the Russian people are fine people—though under the thumb of a murdering gangster. Twitter, Facebook, and Google reps are being heard in Congress today as that august body tries to determine the best way we Americans may protect ourselves from online disinformation.

One person said it best—‘Awareness is key.’ Now that we know that Trump’s support was partially a foreign attack upon our way of life, it makes a little more sense that we could elect such a disgrace. I hope the next time some candidate tells Americans his or her political opponent is running a child-sex-slave-ring out of a Midwest pizza-parlor, we’ll apply a little judgement.

I know—Putin will remind us all that the USA was surveilling everybody—even heads of state—even their own citizens—not so long ago. But we had a hero who exposed the whole thing—and America reformed itself. When Russian heroes try to pull off something like that—they end up with plutonium in their tea, or a bullet in the head. It’s not about us being perfect, Vlad—it’s about us being still willing to try. You shove your face in your dystopian sand, if you want you, but we still have hope over here.

‘Awareness is key.’ Just as democracy relies on a free exchange of ideas (hence the protections for free speech and a free press) Online content must include a free exchange of sources. I don’t want to go look up the true author of some quote-meme—and I don’t want to have to assume that they’re all false attributions, either. Online media needs to lump its memes in with the rest of their literature—making plagiarism and inaccurate attribution things that are regularly sifted for, to weed out psy-ops—or just plain ignorance-based—dis-information.

And don’t be fooled by the ‘Freedom of Speech’ ploy—it doesn’t protect against incitement or treason. If everything online can be completely false, why should a sane person waste time with it? We’re not talking about ending open-sourced coding here—or muzzling honest dissent—we’re just talking about some standards being adopted. Cyberland is unreliable enough, with actual code-hackers and such—there’s no need to allow purposefully fake news to pass by unchallenged in social media or other public cyberspaces.