Friday, January 31, 2020                                          6:19 AM

Throwing It Away   (2020Jan31)

Democracy requires a modicum of common sense—not much, but some. I see now that the United States of America has exceeded its quota of assholes. We no longer have a sufficient number of people intelligent enough to execute a public office, rather than abuse it.

The Impeachment power should work without any problem. But when the President is an asshole—and the VP is an asshole—and the Attorney General is an asshole—and every Republican Senator is a righteous asshole—well, even our beloved Founding Fathers could never have imagined such a corrupt, fucked-up pack of crooks being elected into office, by the People.

The Democrats, usually the still, small voice of reason (comparatively) are being joined by a disillusioned Russian gangster and a nuke-crazy, war-monger Republican who didn’t get the memo about ABL (Always Be Lying). Which means that even the craziest Tea-Party zealot, should they be afflicted with chronic honesty, is having trouble singing along with the choir, at this point.

Unfortunately, as I’ve said, we’ve exceeded our quota. Our ratio of decent citizens to assholes has tipped over to equal that of the rankest, third-world, war-torn ass-end of the earth you could name. This is only partially due to the fuck-ups with ‘public education’ and ‘student-loan-slavery’. It’s mostly due to Americans becoming gigantic assholes, disrespecting all the social justice and enlightened inclusion our forebears worked so hard for, sacrificed so much for.

And we assholes are just throwing it away. O, and we’re letting them fry the planet too—but who cares?

Thursday, January 23, 2020                                              9:53 AM

Things Heard In Passing CNN:   (2020Jan23)

“After all, many of these Republican Senators will be hearing this information for the first time.” (If these Senators have refused to stay current on an issue they don’t like—right up until ‘D-Day’—that’s on them. Dereliction is no Defense.)

“The House Managers had better not be too derogatory—they’ll need at least some of these Republicans to vote with them, eventually.” (This reminds me of back when the ‘deplorable’s didn’t like their new nickname—too on the nose. We don’t need to sweet-talk the Republicans—we’ll be lucky if we can shame them into voting their conscience.)

In general, Democrats have been criticized for being too unfeeling towards the Republicans—calling them bigots, dupes, idiots. But I feel that they are equally at fault, for giving us good cause to describe them as bigots, dupes, and idiots. We would not be so rude, if those words were not so accurate.

Likewise, “Democrats have been trying to Impeach Trump since he took office.” That is only true because, even as a candidate, Trump was a confessed con-artist and pervert, and entirely unfit for the office. Democrats didn’t so much ‘run against him’ as beseech voters not to be so fully taken in by an obviously amoral creep.

And intelligence reports concerning Trump’s cabal’s connections to Putin and the GRU pre-dated Trump’s inauguration. So, it’s pure spin to complain that Trump has been under scrutiny his entire presidency. Yes, we’ve wanted to see him gone since day one, but—again—Trump, Barr, McConnell, et. al. are equally at fault, for giving us good cause to need Trump impeached and removed, from day one.

The Republicans would like to portray this Trial as the high-tide of some Democrat frame-up. That would be so much easier if they could refute any of the points on the House Managers’ timeline.

And still, CNN talks about “Is anyone listening to the Democrat’s message, yet?” That is such bullshit. They somehow equate ‘professionalism’ with lacking the balls to confirm an obvious fact, just so long as a single yahoo under the sun debates the point.

There is a distinction between preference and proof. You can belong to the Flat-Earth Society—but that only proves something about you—it doesn’t prove your preference.

Monday, January 13, 2020                                                10:44 PM

Indebting Our Young Collegians   (2020Jan13)

Armchair politicians like to snipe at Clinton’s Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell policy, here in the future. Back then, it was radical, it was the best he could get, and he took it rather than let it go.

This idea that our elected government is something we should gossip about and re-hash, rather than something which we are informed about, or not, is a very entitled, viewer-centric concept of our elected and appointed officials. That kind of perception makes it easy for the loudest voice to steer the narrative—and is hardly how civilized, intelligent people conduct themselves.

Infotainment, in general, is a Capitalist scourge that runs counter to every ideal but profit. It has empowered the corrupt and the dishonest—so long as their job title is newsworthy, any nonsense they spout will be repeated and legitimized by the media. I can think of one very prominent example.

America should not be falling apart, economically and socially—that’s just poor leadership. We should be flowering with innovation, welcoming immigrants, and daring to reach for challenges equal to that of our ancestors. We should not be under the sway of senile fat-cats—we should be taxing them. We should not be indebting our young collegians, we should be empowering them. When did America re-institute fucking slavery?

Tuesday, January 07, 2020                                                6:19 PM

Every Damn Day   (2020Jan07)

C-SPAN2 is underutilized—Non-Americans would have fits of laughter if this was streamed as a comedy series. The more partisan the Republican, the more hilarious the character is. It’s not that they are all poseurs—it’s that they are all so awkwardly, transparently poseurs.

We must admire the effectiveness of the Doubt Factories—they have paralyzed reform of any kind, in our nation for nigh-on fifty years, maybe more. The drawback is that our Conservatives are now living in a fact-denying bubble. All their unacceptable truths are blamed on the Left Wing Democrats, who are ‘just making it all up’.

It allows Republicans to speak idiocy with a straight face. Worse, it allows Republicans to become too comfortable with denying uncomfortable truths. The number and importance of denied facts has accrued to a startling dogpile—which now includes: defending a treasonously criminal POTUS.

These SenatoTrumpers have crossed the line. Their rabble-rousing might have worked in a darker time, say the 1930s, but I have been annoyed. If I have to be annoyed, so do these soft-soaping, hypocritical pick-pockets infesting our federal government.

There’s a reason they don’t allow Free Speech in many other countries—if a little guy like me gets really annoyed, he might just bitch on his blog—every damn day—for the rest of his life. And who knows? Someone might read it.

Sunday, January 05, 2020                                        3:10 AM

Don’t Get Me Started   (2020Jan05)

As a child, I had a skewed notion of what the world was like—I was assuming that it all, pretty much, matched our house and our family dynamic—and later on, our TV shows. My context of ‘the world’ has been broadened ever since, almost daily.

I know now that I can write nothing about which people will fail to have strong views. Anything I say will loved by some, hated by others—though my purpose is merely to avoid tedium or banality.

I started writing out my personal opinions and posting them on my blog several years ago. I had a great deal to say, at first. Now, I find it hard to say what I mean. Years of expressing myself have taught me that what I want and what is true are two different things—just as what I write may differ from what you read.

I’ve been thinking big-picture, you know? That thing with Viet Nam and the Pentagon Papers coming to light—all of us learning that the government had been sending boys to die over there, without any belief that their sacrifice would have value.

It was shocking and disgusting—our government failed spectacularly in their main job: to serve the people—and got thousands needlessly killed, maimed, and wounded in the process. Not to mention the pile of money they could just as well used to make a bonfire.

Nowadays, of course, when they tell us the same thing about Afghanistan and Iraq, we hardly blink an eye. It’s no different—it’s just as shocking and disgusting—it’s just not a surprise anymore.

Likewise, women couldn’t vote until the 19^th Amendment was ratified in 1920, one hundred years ago. Why (or How) women were seen as fit to raise children, but too feeble-minded to cast a vote, up until 1920—is hard to figure.

Nevertheless, women’s legal rights did not suddenly become equal to men’s. Margaret Sanger opened a birth-control clinic in 1916 and was promptly arrested, charged with ‘distribution of contraceptives’. Our ‘Comstock Laws’ lumped contraceptives in with dirty pictures and sex toys—and the birth-control and family-planning movements were major legal opponents of those who supported Comstock laws.

The 1950s discovery of the birth-control pill transformed the debate into a business transaction, giving contraceptives a reformed reputation among true capitalists. In the 1960s, it suddenly occurred to men that baby-proofed women might be fun. And by the 1970s, women had had it up to here.

Then you had Ruth Ginsburg and her 270 laws-discriminating-by-sex she got overturned, repealed, whatever. And I just watched a movie about the lawyer lady “Saint Judy” who, just recently, fought to have our Asylum Courts recognize ‘Women who fight for women’s rights’ as valid refugee-status claimants. This ended a terrible ‘dead-end’ for women at risk, but it is not the end of fatuous laws that enforce gender inequality (or binary-gender identities, for that matter).

You see where I’m going with this, right? Our government starts wars for no damn good reason—that’s insane. Our government has tried to shackle women for centuries—and still resists their full equality—and that’s also insane.

The Catholic Church, it turns out, has been normalizing and promoting pederasty, in addition to spreading the faith, in every Catholic country on Earth—for centuries. Apparently, forcing celibacy on people is unnatural—and invites a certain type of mental-health issue into those unnatural ranks.

The movie “Spotlight” made clear that pederasts have always been—and still are—in every Catholic Diocese, domestic or foreign—and that local civil authorities sometimes became entangled in the conflict between reputation and scandal, helping the church hide this corruption.

I remember being under the nuns’ care during childhood CCD classes—and encountering a priest or two after the children’s masses. They were definitely a hinky bunch, but my interactions always involved fear of cruelty—the clergy of St. Martin of Tours were really mean. Nobody ever made me feel like I was being intimately accosted—with our nuns, it was more like being attacked.

It’s odd to look back on that terror and think, I was one of the lucky ones—it’s ironic without being at all funny. Catholic priests, sadly, are not even the whole story. Sandusky’s Second-Mile scandal, and USA Girls Gymnastics Dr. Nassar’s scandal, make it clear that anyone teaching, training, or working closely with young people, as a profession, need (and should expect) much more monitoring by a third-party—a quality control, if you will.

To me, it all paints a picture of a society dumb enough to poison the Earth until we all die. We’re not done yet, no—but we’re well into it. Besides Greta, nobody seems to give a fuck—which makes us suicidally stupid. The only realistic public figures in our time are two teenagers, Malala & Greta. Ms. Yousafzai has actual grown past her teens, fighting for women’s right to education.

My problem is that these institutions, these pillars of our society, are all garbage. We continually try to push aside or abuse women, to ignore or abuse children—when women and children are the only things that have any real value (and I’ll grudgingly include men). Our TVs try to tell us that we got nothing more important to do than lay back and stare at the screen.

These ‘heads of state’ who make the Middle East a sandbox for their wargames and power-grabs and terrorist recruiting—and their opposites in the ‘free world’—love to point at a military ‘outbreak’ and shout, “Look! This takes precedence! Forget about everything else, until we’re done shooting—or talking about shooting.”

So don’t get me started on habitat-loss or population-doubling or acid oceans or economic-inequality—we are extremely close to proving that, as a group, as a species, we are too stupid to live.

If only we didn’t waste all our careful planning on profits and threat-scenarios, we might come up with some real great ideas—what with all the computers and new tech and all. But money and arms are all that matter, right? The ones with all the gold make all the rules?

And what about us patient liberals? Are we supposed to feel good about being right, when the proof is the whole world joining Australia in general conflagration? Are we supposed to respect people that lie to our faces? Are we supposed to watch news that promotes these liars? Why should we participate in this riot of ignorance and irresponsibility?