Sunday, March 24, 2019                                          6:35 PM

Watch Your TV Show   (2019Mar24)

There’s a running cliché among today’s politicians: ‘We can’t get anything done if we don’t get elected (or re-elected) first’. They devote huge amounts of time to fund-raising phone calls. They basically have to buy in to the popularity-contest aspect of politics—and tell themselves that Election itself is axiomatic.

If, however, we remember that everyone is replaceable, we can imagine a candidate that cares more about what he or she stands for, and plans for, than whether or not they get elected. Wouldn’t it be funny if a candidate won on the issues alone—sans PR wave, sans stadium rallies and hat sales?

How, you may ask, would they rebut attack-ads without any media budget? They wouldn’t. They would tell reporters it wasn’t true (or was true) and hope that people saw a smear-job when one was aired. They would use the Internet and Facebook to make public statements and forward policies, for free. Voters would say to themselves, “At least this person isn’t wasting millions on worthless commercials”.

Would they lose? Sure. They already have been losing—although, on that score, I’d have to say our third-party candidates are all one-trick ponies, equally unprepared to address the problem of modern democratic self-governance. But the real question is: Would they always lose?

Can people learn to look at the results after elections, instead of focusing on the empty campaign rhetoric before elections? Why even have campaigns, when everyone knows that rule one is: ‘Say anything—no one expects you to follow through’?

I have to laugh when I see pundits on cable discussing what the voters will be sensitive to, or averse to, from Democratic candidates. This after half the country didn’t vote, a quarter voted for a pervert, and slightly more than a quarter voted for HRC, who ‘lost’ anyway! How can anyone look at Trump and, with a straight face, say that any Democrat is too far in the other direction? Or, for that matter, how can any democracy led by Trump claim any judgement at all in its voters?

Voters? More like little children, being lied to and led down the primrose path to destruction. America’s success has made its people lazy and ignorant—and America’s rich and powerful are corrupting that success into a sleazy money pit we’ll all be screaming to emigrate from, soon enough. Go on, go back to watching your TV show. What do you care?

Thursday, March 14, 2019                                                3:30 PM

Entitled To   (2019Mar14)

If I harbor bigotry deep in my secret self, I need to remember that I am no better or worse than those whom I condescend to. Whatever disdain I have for others, I had better be prepared to feel that same disdain for myself, at some point. If I feel entitled to impose on others, it is only a matter of time when I’ll find myself being imposed upon against my wishes, or even my consent.

In other words, if I find myself a Trump supporter, cheering on his willful ignorance and code-word hatreds, I must be prepared for him to be impeached, for he, and his family and friends, to all go to prison, and for Democrats to take control of political power for the next year or two.

But do not fret. The Republicans survived Nixon, Iran-Contra, opposition to Women’s Lib, Civil Rights, Gay Rights, and most other humanitarian memes, Dubya’s ‘Whoops’ War, the 2008 Financial Disaster, and Nazis in Charlottesville. People will forgive Republicans anything—they save their bitterness for Democrats’ failings.

Pussy-Grabber himself will ultimately fade from our daily lives—only to be replaced by even more insidious evils and more unconscionable elitism. The world moves ever forward, in its good—and its bad.

The only thing that really excites me is the possibility of someone who can make voters support a positive change—against all the partisan lie-mongering and media over-dramatization and late-night comedians’ glib dismissals—to fire the minds of all voters, at least enough to get them to show at the polls every year for the next ten years—‘appointment politics’.

Not like Trump—not with crowd-pleasing, simple-minded shit from a bull—but with algorithmic goals meant to better everyone, in spite of all news-items and conversational currency bouncing from day to day. Plans for workable and enforceable transparency in government, plans to rein in corporate entitlement—and replace with workable regulation and enforceable compliance—particularly in Finance and Petroleum. Maybe even a National Board of Science that can settle down some of this pesky, flat-earther-level, willful ignorance. I don’t know…. psychotherapy for the Trumps? There’s a lot of good waiting to be done—waiting for the greedy status quo to take their hands off our throats.

Monday, March 11, 2019                                        2:50 AM

Taken Advantage Of   (2019Mar11)

Notice how the media and the Republicans are already poisoning the well of the Democrats’ field of 2020 presidential candidates? They show poll figures that purport to overwhelming support of the ‘moderates’, Biden or Booker. They ‘explain’ that the country is afraid of going too far left.

I call bullshit. First of all, any constituency that can vote in Trump has lost all credibility in terms of judgement or moderation. Secondly, if the Dems roll back the recent Tax Bribes to the Rich, they can spend trillions on infrastructure and social services like health care—and it won’t be very much different, economically (except for a few moping billionaires and CEOs).

I kid, of course. The trouble with Democrats is that they will actually take responsibility for the national budget—and roll back those new tax-cuts without spending as much in the left-ish direction. And the Republicans will have no trouble depicting any plans to pay for liberal programs as an attack on Capitalism. (It’s ridiculously easy to be the bad guy.)

But let’s discuss it. AOC suggests taxing billionaires on their net worth. I can hear the wheezing laughter of old white men in their leather club chairs—yet consider this: 99% of the people in this country live on their net paycheck. Their salaries virtually are their families’ net worth—and they certainly get taxed on it.

There is nothing that says Capitalism is required to be unfair. Why should the super-rich’s assets remain undisturbed just because they have more than anyone else? In a way, this is actually stupid. So why do we laugh at AOC’s notion? Not because she’s wrong—but because the rich make the rules in this democracy.

It’s bad enough the fat cats have all the power of money. Why do we insist on voting only fat cats into all the authority of elected office, as well? Do we like being taken advantage of? Is that it?

Sunday, March 10, 2019                                          5:29 PM

Day After Women’s Day   (2019Mar10)

I been thinking about how many ways women have had to fight. They had to fight to wear pants. To smoke a cigar. To own property. To inherit property. To have a job. To vote. To walk alone in public. To have a bank account. To get fathers to financially support their own deserted children. To get this job-women-can’t-do; to get that job-women-can’t-do; to get the other job-women-can’t-do.

You’d think men would be embarrassed by their terror at the thought of female agency. You’d think men would have the sense to include women in their ruling over the earth—two heads always being better than one—and a heterosexual pair being among the most deadly powerful examples of that aphorism. But men are people—and that means we are fucking idiots.

Look at the current Congressional Hearings on changing the military’s code with respect to male superior officers who use that code to get away with rape, etc. Now, if you’ve seen even one tenth the amount of action movies I have, you know how the U. S. military invariably emphasizes its Honor, especially during training and indoctrination.

So where is the honor in sexual assault? How can any soldier commit it? How can any of the others abide it? So, is the ‘Honor’ stuff bullshit—or is it poor training and indoctrination?

And how can we trust these animals to protect us—when they don’t even protect their own? It’s just common sense. But you watch that hearing and you’ll see an ocean of minutiae and a phalanx of obstructors ready to explain why you’re wrong to worry—but that’s just par for their course, isn’t it?

And, No, I am not bashing the military—I’m bashing the corrupt government mismanagement of our military. When the military was told to go diverse, they went diverse—they are not the problem. They just need a strong voice giving them orders—orders manifestly based on human dignity.

And wouldn’t it be wonderful, if we had such a thing in our government, as well? Wouldn’t it be incredible to have leaders who told big business and the banks to wait and see, to have leaders who told refugees: the more the merrier, to have leaders who told us what we needed to hear, trusting us to understand the difference between a scary problem and the person who points the way out.

A leader like that might finally give women their last victory: agency over their own bodies. Ooooo…Scary! Maybe next International Women’s Day….

Sunday, March 10, 2019                                          1:44 PM

God Loves You   (2019Mar10)

The God that you believe in loves you dearly and has infinite mercy. But there is an important problem here on Earth that only you can fix. I’ve never discussed your God before, because I don’t pretend to know anything about God. But there are tons of people who will tell you about God until they’re blue in the face—as if they knew more than you or I.

There are biblical scholars that know more about the bible or the torah or the quran, but that doesn’t make them God experts. The plain fact is that no one is a God expert. Also, no one has returned from the after-life with a clear description—so no one can lay claim to After-Life expertise, either.

We can know only what our senses tell our brains. God and the after-life, by their very definition, have no evidence—so they are unknowable. You can have faith in God, but you cannot know God. Therefore, everyone and anyone who talks with ‘authority’ about God’s will—is fooling themselves or (far more likely) fooling you.

We face the unfortunate evidence that what attracts many to ministries is the ‘authority’ vested in them by ‘Godliness’—used by religious leaders the world over, to prey upon innocence, inveigling others into sex and terrorism.

How can I stop them? How can we? Aside from having ‘god’s backing’, religions are also performing the vast majority of our charity-work, helping the homeless and feeding the hungry every day.

I just wish I could tell everyone that, by and large, your priest or preacher is just a human being, trying to make their way through this life, fighting with the same demons that attack us, subject to the same weaknesses.

They do not love you. Only God loves you—and it is in God alone you should put your faith. Your own conscience is not inferior to anyone else’s–don’t let others define Goodness, for goodness’ sake. You were born knowing.

Sunday, March 03, 2019                                          7:18 PM

Come Off It Already   (2019Mar03)

The list of the confessed, the convicted, the security-risks, and the nefarious connections among Trump’s campaign inner circle, paired with Trump’s well-documented history as a litigious scofflaw and a bigot—all make it outlandishly desperate that Republicans based their rebuttal of Cohen’s testimony on simply calling him a liar—a crime he has already confessed to committing at the president’s behest.

This is the point where the old strategy of ‘deny everything’ begins to jump the shark—where they must split the hairs of Cohen’s dishonesty while pretending Cohen wasn’t acting as Trump’s professional liar. It also raises the bar for insulting the public’s intelligence.

Still, the media have decided that nothing is insulting to the public’s intelligence, if only it’s sensational in its stupidity. There was a time when both the media and the Republican party would have conceded the obvious by now—if not long before now.

Yet they speak of a possibility of a veto against Trump’s spurious ‘emergency’, rather than being well into the impeachment proceedings. I wondered why, but then I knew: the crowded cast of characters, the countless crimes, the uncountable lies, the complications of foreign involvement and probable treasonous activity, the interference of Russian agents and Republican efforts to social-engineer Hillary’s public condemnation—there is more plot to Trump’s  ‘presidential’ crime than there is in all the seasons of ‘Thrones’.

Hassan Minaj’s “Patriot Act” just did an episode on Trump’s Cabinet’s attack on Civil Liberties. Trump is not alone in his efforts to dismantle our democracy and end our freedoms. And hate must be a strong motivator—we can only hope that the following Administration will work nearly as hard to undo all the damage. Sadly, they will have a much harder job rebuilding than was Trump & Co.’s job of just torching everything they could reach.

Worse, the vile horror that is Trump distracts us from an equally threatening situation—a Democratic party that is only slightly less flawed than the drooling pigs presently seated at the table. We are tempted to assume that the opposite of Trump is Good—but just because the Democrats oppose Trump doesn’t mean they’re offering a coherent vision of America’s future.

Green Deal?—Fine. But you don’t get genius-points for finally recognizing scientific findings from the last half-century of warnings. Fighting climate change will be more about diplomacy than technology—global cooperation and unity will be vital. Simply accepting the overdue reality is an abysmally small first step.

And what’s with this crowded field of candidates for 2020—is this a frickin’ Dickens novel? If the Democratic Party is an organized group, don’t they feel as if deciding on a platform, and choosing the best among them to represent it, would be an excellent demonstration of their ability to unite and organize the nation? Or do all politicians simply start campaigning these days, as soon as the fundraising potential appears?

If all those war-chests got passed down to the remaining candidates, as each drop-out left the race—then one could make the case that this was something other than the monetization of politics. But that is not what happens. Whoever raises the money, keeps the money—if I’m not mistaken. And suddenly we’re polling the dollars spent, instead of the voters’ minds.

We had tough restrictions on money in campaigns for centuries—should we be worried that the Citizens United decision was immediately followed by the election of a historically total scumbag to the presidency?

I dunno. It’s dawning on me that, whoever wins, you and I will lose—until people start getting mad about dishonesty again, like they used to.