You know, I was halfway through writing a big piece that boiled down to "What if Donald Trump was a raging liberal who promised to do all the things I want? Would I be just ashamed to support him at this point?" I stopped because it was all so, so fucking obvious.
But I really want to know from Trump voters: Does any of this embarrass you? Any of the shit with Michael Flynn and Russia? Any of the ridiculous things Trump says, like threatening to "destroy the career" of a state legislator? Any of the ludicrous comments and promises he makes? His complete lack of understanding of the way the government actually functions? His complete lack of knowledge about the United States's relationships with other countries? The disastrous and unnecessary military mission in Yemen? The fact that he is literally doing the things he said he was going to do, like tearing families apart? The demonstrable lies? Does any of it make a dent with you?
I stopped, too, because I realized that it doesn't. And that reasoning with most Trump voters is like running a flea circus. You can fool people into thinking the fleas are doing tricks and acrobatics, but it's just fleas being fleas. Whatever frame you put on it, they're gonna do whatever the fuck they please.
Whenever we face the joke of a presidency we're forced to endure right now, we're not merely facing the pumpkinheaded doom goblin at the top. We're facing all of his supporters who are unmoved by any ethical lapse, any law broken at this point, even the Constitution itself. So we either have to write them off as a mad tribe that has taken over the temple and hope they orgy themselves to death or we have to reason with them, however terrible it might be to walk up to a group of convulsing idiots and ask them to listen to your insights you got from watching CNN.
The takeaway from the blog post was going to be that I'd like to think that I'd be embarrassed. I'd like to think that it would matter even if President Stumblefuck McBleedingheart was going to tax the wealthy more and rein in Wall Street and get rid of money in politics and spend shit-tons on infrastructure and alternate energies and make reversing climate change a top priority and attack poverty with education and jobs programs and on and on. If he was as dumbly evil and evilly dumb as Trump, I'd like to think I'd be able to say, "Yeah, but, holy fuckballs, man, can we just impeach him already?"
Shame is a powerful tool. We need to deploy it more and make Trump's ardent supporters feel like outcasts for denying reality.
2/09/2017
One of the Stupidest Talking Points on the Right: Democrats Started the KKK
Yesterday, Texas Senator and a man who looks and sounds like the creepy neighbor who jacks off thinking about banging your mom, Ted Cruz, appeared on Fox "news" with burned-out bulb Bill Hemmer. They were talking about Senator Elizabeth Warren being shut down by Majority Leader Mitch "Neck Scrotum" McConnell for daring to call racist fucksack Jeff Sessions a racist fucksack by reading a letter from Coretta Scott King that said, in essence, "That Jeff Sessions is one racist sack of fuck."
Snarling with that look like he's smelling shit on his upper lip, Cruz exclaimed that Warren's attack was "slanderous" and that Democrats always call people "racist" when they don't agree with them. Then the Republican tossed out this: "The Democrats are the party of the Ku Klux Klan. You look at the most racist — you look at the Dixiecrats, they were Democrats who imposed segregation, imposed Jim Crow laws, who founded the Klan. The Klan was founded by a great many Democrats."
Many others have used this talking point to tar Democrats whenever a Republican or a racist conservative or a Nazi is losing an argument. Indeed, I regularly get idiot messages and bullshit memes about how Democrats supported slavery and Democrats started the KKK. But, you know, the facts are that it was more a regional thing than a party thing. Somehow, Republicans and racist conservatives and Nazis think that they can prove some nonsense about how liberalism is actually hate or some such shit. (And they always leave out the Compromise of 1877 that made all federal troops pull out of the South in return for Republican Rutherford...you know what? Google that shit.)
But even if Ted Cruz is right, so the fuck what? The Klan was started 150 years ago. There was always a split in northern and southern Democrats. By the time the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed, with Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater opposing it (and winning states in the south in the election), the Democratic Party had shifted pretty much completely, with the last vestiges of the racist side, the Dixiecrats, changing parties or dying out soon after. By the time we get to Reagan's election, and he campaigned on an explicitly racist platform, the then-called Reagan Democrats, the whites that had formerly voted Democratic, completed the transformation of the parties.
How the fuck is this talking point even valid? What does it succeed in doing? 50 years ago, the Democratic Party, for the most part, said a hearty "fuck you" to the white south that still to this day hoists its Confederate flags and celebrates a time when they could keep blacks separate, if not all the way back to when they were enslaved. And those motherfuckers are sure as shit ain't Democrats. (Yes, some Democrats are still conservatives who pander to the racist whites in their states or districts.)
Jesus, it's like Republicans and racist conservatives and Nazis (by the way, you know who kicked the actual Nazis' asses? A Democrat in a wheelchair) want to pretend that shit never changes. And if that was true, then they better talk to their president right now because does Trump realize that Russia wanted to wipe the United States off the map back in the 1960s? Oh, and 50 years ago, there was no fuckin' way some Cuban named "Cruz" would have been elected to the Senate from Texas. Oh, and Republicans 50 years ago were not all bugfuck insane. Hell, about half the Republicans in Congress voted for Medicare in 1965. How about bringing that shit up whenever Paul Ryan talks about gutting it like a snitch in the prison shower?
One last thing: There is another reason why Republicans and racist conservatives and Nazis want you to think that Democrats are the party of the KKK. They're saying none-too-subtly that non-white people are stupid because they support Democrats. See, Republicans can't be the racists, despite all the plainly racist policies they want because there is this one racist thing that they're not guilty of. It's a fuckin' low bar they've set for themselves and they barely crawl under it.
Oh, and let's not forget which party's candidate was literally endorsed by the KKK just last year, which, according to my math, is a fuck of a lot closer to now than 50 years ago.
Snarling with that look like he's smelling shit on his upper lip, Cruz exclaimed that Warren's attack was "slanderous" and that Democrats always call people "racist" when they don't agree with them. Then the Republican tossed out this: "The Democrats are the party of the Ku Klux Klan. You look at the most racist — you look at the Dixiecrats, they were Democrats who imposed segregation, imposed Jim Crow laws, who founded the Klan. The Klan was founded by a great many Democrats."
Many others have used this talking point to tar Democrats whenever a Republican or a racist conservative or a Nazi is losing an argument. Indeed, I regularly get idiot messages and bullshit memes about how Democrats supported slavery and Democrats started the KKK. But, you know, the facts are that it was more a regional thing than a party thing. Somehow, Republicans and racist conservatives and Nazis think that they can prove some nonsense about how liberalism is actually hate or some such shit. (And they always leave out the Compromise of 1877 that made all federal troops pull out of the South in return for Republican Rutherford...you know what? Google that shit.)
But even if Ted Cruz is right, so the fuck what? The Klan was started 150 years ago. There was always a split in northern and southern Democrats. By the time the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed, with Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater opposing it (and winning states in the south in the election), the Democratic Party had shifted pretty much completely, with the last vestiges of the racist side, the Dixiecrats, changing parties or dying out soon after. By the time we get to Reagan's election, and he campaigned on an explicitly racist platform, the then-called Reagan Democrats, the whites that had formerly voted Democratic, completed the transformation of the parties.
How the fuck is this talking point even valid? What does it succeed in doing? 50 years ago, the Democratic Party, for the most part, said a hearty "fuck you" to the white south that still to this day hoists its Confederate flags and celebrates a time when they could keep blacks separate, if not all the way back to when they were enslaved. And those motherfuckers are sure as shit ain't Democrats. (Yes, some Democrats are still conservatives who pander to the racist whites in their states or districts.)
Jesus, it's like Republicans and racist conservatives and Nazis (by the way, you know who kicked the actual Nazis' asses? A Democrat in a wheelchair) want to pretend that shit never changes. And if that was true, then they better talk to their president right now because does Trump realize that Russia wanted to wipe the United States off the map back in the 1960s? Oh, and 50 years ago, there was no fuckin' way some Cuban named "Cruz" would have been elected to the Senate from Texas. Oh, and Republicans 50 years ago were not all bugfuck insane. Hell, about half the Republicans in Congress voted for Medicare in 1965. How about bringing that shit up whenever Paul Ryan talks about gutting it like a snitch in the prison shower?
One last thing: There is another reason why Republicans and racist conservatives and Nazis want you to think that Democrats are the party of the KKK. They're saying none-too-subtly that non-white people are stupid because they support Democrats. See, Republicans can't be the racists, despite all the plainly racist policies they want because there is this one racist thing that they're not guilty of. It's a fuckin' low bar they've set for themselves and they barely crawl under it.
Oh, and let's not forget which party's candidate was literally endorsed by the KKK just last year, which, according to my math, is a fuck of a lot closer to now than 50 years ago.
2/07/2017
Trump's Willing Victims: The Poor, Dumb Bastards of the White Working Class
I know we're all supposed to be freaking the fuck out over Donald Trump's mad desire for as much Putin dick as he can take. And I know we're suppsoed to be fact-checking the shit out of the administration's magical list of "terrorist attacks" that the horror-loving media supposedly didn't cover adequately, which can only mean "left out a call for a lynch mob," since the list contains some of the major events of the last couple of years. But there's an article that's stuck in my craw, something that is especially enraging in this time of an open spigot of anger.
Over at CNN's website, there's a piece titled "Trump gives America's 'poorest white town' hope." It's about Beattyville, Kentucky, a town that's on the ass end of nowhere in Appalachia and a place that used to rely on coal mining until that dried up sometime in the George W. Bush administration (and, no, it wasn't mean ol' white-hating, tree-huggin' Obama that did it). And these dirt poor fuckers, addicted to opioids, racist up to their tits, and utterly reliant on the government for welfare, health care, and most of the jobs in the area, believe that Donald motherfuckin' Trump is gonna be their savior.
The whole article is a look at how liberal policies, you know, shit that was done by Democrats, have pretty much been the only things keeping the townspeople alive and how goddamned deluded they are to that fact. For instance, "Beattyville residents want jobs, especially ones that pay more than the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. They think if anyone can bring jobs back, it's Trump." It's so blindingly stupid and counter to everything that Trump and Republicans talk about. You know what's one way to make sure that you don't get a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour? You raise the goddamned minimum wage, you know, like most Democrats want.
On and on the article goes. We learn that "57% of households receive food stamps and 58% get disability payments from Social Security." And since hope is something that knows no rationality, "'I hope [Trump] don't take the benefits away, but at the same time, I think that once more jobs come in a lot of people won't need the benefits,' says [25 year-old Amber] Hayes, who currently receives about $500 a month from government assistance. She's also on Obamacare."
What do you say to Amber? Do you tell her that believing that Trump will create more jobs is as much a fantasy as Hillary Clinton's murders? Do you say that, if the Affordable Care Act is repealed, she's fucked, as she is if Paul Ryan's budget, with cuts to government assistance programs, gets passed?
They believe that Trump is some kind of demi-god who will magically create jobs and make their lives better. "'I believe he wants to take care of us, the little people,' says [a] gas station manager. 'I think he's going to quit giving money to all these other countries and take care of America. I truly do.'" No, you dumb shit, he's gonna give the money to himself, his family, and his friends. If a few coins drop on the floor for you to scrounge for, well, there you go.
And who knows how to change their minds. The death of coal mining jobs has also meant the death of any hope for union involvement. So all they've got is prejudice, talk radio, and alienation. And drugs. You can't forget the drugs. Goddamn, Mitch McConnell told Beattyville residents to their faces that bringing jobs to eastern Kentucky was "not my job" and they still voted for him.
Essentially, the people of Beattyville are refugees living in our country. They are utterly dependent on the government. They have been abused and abandoned by the forces of capitalism. And they exist in an area of deep poverty and crime. The kindest thing we could do for them as a nation is buy their houses and land and relocate them to somewhere where there are some fucking jobs. Because you're not gonna shit out a new industry that'll make Beattyville boom, unless there is big time investment in tourism (truth be told, it's in a goddamn beautiful area).
Coal is done, as I've said, as everyone who isn't a fucking maniac president has said, including the coal companies. It's either been lapped by natural gas or automation has taken over for the miners.
But for the poor who voted for Trump, you are going to be punched in the face repeatedly by your own fists. And you'll come running to Democrats to help you, and we will, 'cause that's who the hell we are, and then you'll run right back to the racist pricks because that's just who the fuck you are: ungrateful, uneducated bastards who have been brainwashed so thoroughly that you don't realize who is stabbing you and who is trying to get your wounds healed, willing victims asking, "Please, may I have another" as the knife is twisted in your gut.
Over at CNN's website, there's a piece titled "Trump gives America's 'poorest white town' hope." It's about Beattyville, Kentucky, a town that's on the ass end of nowhere in Appalachia and a place that used to rely on coal mining until that dried up sometime in the George W. Bush administration (and, no, it wasn't mean ol' white-hating, tree-huggin' Obama that did it). And these dirt poor fuckers, addicted to opioids, racist up to their tits, and utterly reliant on the government for welfare, health care, and most of the jobs in the area, believe that Donald motherfuckin' Trump is gonna be their savior.
The whole article is a look at how liberal policies, you know, shit that was done by Democrats, have pretty much been the only things keeping the townspeople alive and how goddamned deluded they are to that fact. For instance, "Beattyville residents want jobs, especially ones that pay more than the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. They think if anyone can bring jobs back, it's Trump." It's so blindingly stupid and counter to everything that Trump and Republicans talk about. You know what's one way to make sure that you don't get a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour? You raise the goddamned minimum wage, you know, like most Democrats want.
On and on the article goes. We learn that "57% of households receive food stamps and 58% get disability payments from Social Security." And since hope is something that knows no rationality, "'I hope [Trump] don't take the benefits away, but at the same time, I think that once more jobs come in a lot of people won't need the benefits,' says [25 year-old Amber] Hayes, who currently receives about $500 a month from government assistance. She's also on Obamacare."
What do you say to Amber? Do you tell her that believing that Trump will create more jobs is as much a fantasy as Hillary Clinton's murders? Do you say that, if the Affordable Care Act is repealed, she's fucked, as she is if Paul Ryan's budget, with cuts to government assistance programs, gets passed?
They believe that Trump is some kind of demi-god who will magically create jobs and make their lives better. "'I believe he wants to take care of us, the little people,' says [a] gas station manager. 'I think he's going to quit giving money to all these other countries and take care of America. I truly do.'" No, you dumb shit, he's gonna give the money to himself, his family, and his friends. If a few coins drop on the floor for you to scrounge for, well, there you go.
And who knows how to change their minds. The death of coal mining jobs has also meant the death of any hope for union involvement. So all they've got is prejudice, talk radio, and alienation. And drugs. You can't forget the drugs. Goddamn, Mitch McConnell told Beattyville residents to their faces that bringing jobs to eastern Kentucky was "not my job" and they still voted for him.
Essentially, the people of Beattyville are refugees living in our country. They are utterly dependent on the government. They have been abused and abandoned by the forces of capitalism. And they exist in an area of deep poverty and crime. The kindest thing we could do for them as a nation is buy their houses and land and relocate them to somewhere where there are some fucking jobs. Because you're not gonna shit out a new industry that'll make Beattyville boom, unless there is big time investment in tourism (truth be told, it's in a goddamn beautiful area).
Coal is done, as I've said, as everyone who isn't a fucking maniac president has said, including the coal companies. It's either been lapped by natural gas or automation has taken over for the miners.
But for the poor who voted for Trump, you are going to be punched in the face repeatedly by your own fists. And you'll come running to Democrats to help you, and we will, 'cause that's who the hell we are, and then you'll run right back to the racist pricks because that's just who the fuck you are: ungrateful, uneducated bastards who have been brainwashed so thoroughly that you don't realize who is stabbing you and who is trying to get your wounds healed, willing victims asking, "Please, may I have another" as the knife is twisted in your gut.
2/03/2017
The Red Trunk Project: A Small, Good Thing That Could Become a Huge, Life-Changing One
Hey, teachers and parents out there in the rudiverse:
You're tired of hate and lies of our leaders, especially about people from other countries. You need just a little something to grasp onto, something that is innately good, that only the most churlish and ignorant would have a problem with. So how about something for your kids that'll make 'em grow up to think of themselves as citizens of the world?
When my pal Kevin first told me about his idea for the Red Trunk Project nearly two years ago, it sounded awesome. It's one of those things that's so simple but gives you that profound sense of rightness almost immediately.
Here's how it goes: School kids in another country, like, say, Hanoi, Vietnam, working with a team of educators and researchers and videographers, fill a red trunk, you know, like the kind people used to use to travel on ships and stagecoaches, with all kinds of stuff that represents the kids' daily lives and their culture. While on the site where the kids are filling the trunk, the team from the organization is making videos, creating a book, and interviewing those involved. All of that becomes part of what goes into the trunk.
Now, here's the cool part: The trunk is brought back and the materials are translated into a bunch of different languages. This just ain't for American kids. The idea here is that children in a class in another country, say, in Argentina, get the trunk from Vietnam. And kids in Vietnam might get one from the United States. And kids in the United States might get one from Ethiopia. And on and on it goes.
So kids get to hold and work with the actual material items that children across the globe encounter or use on a regular basis. I mean, c'mon, if you were 8 years old and you opened up a trunk filled with stuff from the Australian outback, your little mind would explode. There's a huge difference between looking at something on a screen and holding it in your hands.
The creators of the Red Trunk Project have come up with lesson plans and ideas for how to integrate this into classrooms. In fact, they've got a pretty comprehensive approach to using the trunks, including things like Skyping with the kids who put the trunk together.
Check out the videos (that sexy Jon Hamm is even in one of 'em). Check out the website. And donate to help it grow (tax-deductible, people).
There's your little piece of hope in a seemingly hopeless time. If a whole bunch of children in our schools learn that children around the world play and go to school and have families and are real people and not abstract images on the news, then maybe there's a chance to knock down a wall or two. We gotta start somewhere.
And, besides, as I told Kevin when my little kid brain took over, "It just sounds like a blast."
You're tired of hate and lies of our leaders, especially about people from other countries. You need just a little something to grasp onto, something that is innately good, that only the most churlish and ignorant would have a problem with. So how about something for your kids that'll make 'em grow up to think of themselves as citizens of the world?
When my pal Kevin first told me about his idea for the Red Trunk Project nearly two years ago, it sounded awesome. It's one of those things that's so simple but gives you that profound sense of rightness almost immediately.
Here's how it goes: School kids in another country, like, say, Hanoi, Vietnam, working with a team of educators and researchers and videographers, fill a red trunk, you know, like the kind people used to use to travel on ships and stagecoaches, with all kinds of stuff that represents the kids' daily lives and their culture. While on the site where the kids are filling the trunk, the team from the organization is making videos, creating a book, and interviewing those involved. All of that becomes part of what goes into the trunk.
Now, here's the cool part: The trunk is brought back and the materials are translated into a bunch of different languages. This just ain't for American kids. The idea here is that children in a class in another country, say, in Argentina, get the trunk from Vietnam. And kids in Vietnam might get one from the United States. And kids in the United States might get one from Ethiopia. And on and on it goes.
So kids get to hold and work with the actual material items that children across the globe encounter or use on a regular basis. I mean, c'mon, if you were 8 years old and you opened up a trunk filled with stuff from the Australian outback, your little mind would explode. There's a huge difference between looking at something on a screen and holding it in your hands.
The creators of the Red Trunk Project have come up with lesson plans and ideas for how to integrate this into classrooms. In fact, they've got a pretty comprehensive approach to using the trunks, including things like Skyping with the kids who put the trunk together.
Check out the videos (that sexy Jon Hamm is even in one of 'em). Check out the website. And donate to help it grow (tax-deductible, people).
There's your little piece of hope in a seemingly hopeless time. If a whole bunch of children in our schools learn that children around the world play and go to school and have families and are real people and not abstract images on the news, then maybe there's a chance to knock down a wall or two. We gotta start somewhere.
And, besides, as I told Kevin when my little kid brain took over, "It just sounds like a blast."
2/02/2017
Democrats Should Resist, But Everything That Happens Is on Republicans
Let's get rid of one part of this in short order: Democrats in Congress should be resisting Trump every step of the way. That includes pushing hearings to crisis levels of antagonism, voting against every unqualified candidate, and, of course, filibustering his Supreme Court picks. It shouldn't even be up for discussion. They will lose and lose, but Democratic House and Senate members would be fundamentally misreading their marching, chanting, raging voters if they fail. As for the fear that Republicans in the Senate will get rid of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations, you can be sure that the moment that Democrats do refuse to allow a vote on whatever right-wing nutzoid Trump tries to shove down America's throat, skeevy powermonger Mitch McConnell is gonna change the rules with his disturbing semi-grin that's a middle finger to his opponents. It's a question of when, not "if" on the filibuster.
Democrats can spin this easily. They could say they won't vote on things until the Muslim ban is halted. They could say that they won't vote for Trump's Supreme Court picks because a majority of Americans don't think he should be able to do so. They could stand up for the judiciary as Trump keeps ignoring court orders.
Democratic voters are already fighting. They are mightily insulted and want active rejection of all things Trump. These are flames that should be fanned by Democrats in Congress until Republicans start to feel the residual heat and are afraid of getting burned.
That's because, on some level, many Republicans realize that they own this presidency and its actions. Oh, sure, sure, they're fine going along with a great deal of dirt that Trump does. Except for the pathetic, neutered goat bleatings of John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and a handful of others, Republicans are either conspicuously silent or hee-hawing in support of the Muslim ban, and they're drooling at the prospect of getting Scalia II on the court. But we're now just two weeks into the Trump administration (insert your own retching sound), and we've got a Benghazi and multiple foreign crises. There's only so long that you can keep your head in the sand until you just suffocate.
Actually, it's unfair to compare the disastrous raid on al-Qaeda in Yemen to Benghazi. What happened at the consulate in Libya was an unexpected event. The Yemen raid was an American plan that had been rejected by the Obama administration and then approved by Trump despite the lack of intelligence that might have prevented all the deaths that occurred, including a Navy SEAL and several children. In other words, Trump's first military test was a clusterfuck of fail. And not a single hearing has been scheduled nor have you heard a peep from Republicans.
And you might not, ever. You might not hear them say how utterly absurd it is that Trump is treating the president of Mexico like he's a gardener who cut a shrub at Mar-a-Lago too short. You might not hear them even whisper that agitating China is just dumb. You might not hear them wonder why the hell Trump is pissing on our relationship with Australia, one of our most reliable allies in the world. You might hear them cheering on another useless war, this time with Iran, because that'd just fulfill a dream they've had since 1979. You will hear them crapping themselves over any threat that's Muslimish while clamming up over domestic terrorists like white supremacists and Breitbart's staff.
Still, we know that not only are Republicans cowards, but they're liars and hypocrites who would dance on the corpses of dead children rather than admit their ideology has failed. They'd rather learn to breathe sand than lift their heads and walk upright because they're gonna get to kick sick people off health insurance, discriminate against LGBT Americans, and force women into back alley abortions, the trifecta of quotidian cruelty they're begging to inflict.
So how do we get through to them? Because, see, we don't have two years to wait for the congressional midterms. Hell, all we need is one terrorist event in the United States, and Trump will declare martial law because he's too dumb and deranged to know any other way to handle it.
Two plans: the first is already happening. Inundate the offices and phone lines, especially of GOP representatives. Make their lives miserable with people registering how angry they are. The reps, even in gerrymandered districts, are more vulnerable than most senators. We gotta get people running against them. Put these assholes out on the curb. And make the rest beg for mercy.
And our activism has to target people who voted for Trump. Yeah, I know, I know, they're loathsome racists or racist-adjacent. But there are a hell of a lot of them who are regretting their votes - the wayward Bernie voters, the "take him seriously, but not literally" idiots, and the ones who realized that maybe getting into a war with Mexico is a little worse than Hillary's emails.
Mostly, it all depends on the constant action of Democrats and non-aligned progressives. Make sure Republicans know that they will be held to account for what they do, not just Democrats. This is on the GOP. Make them pay.
Democrats can spin this easily. They could say they won't vote on things until the Muslim ban is halted. They could say that they won't vote for Trump's Supreme Court picks because a majority of Americans don't think he should be able to do so. They could stand up for the judiciary as Trump keeps ignoring court orders.
Democratic voters are already fighting. They are mightily insulted and want active rejection of all things Trump. These are flames that should be fanned by Democrats in Congress until Republicans start to feel the residual heat and are afraid of getting burned.
That's because, on some level, many Republicans realize that they own this presidency and its actions. Oh, sure, sure, they're fine going along with a great deal of dirt that Trump does. Except for the pathetic, neutered goat bleatings of John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and a handful of others, Republicans are either conspicuously silent or hee-hawing in support of the Muslim ban, and they're drooling at the prospect of getting Scalia II on the court. But we're now just two weeks into the Trump administration (insert your own retching sound), and we've got a Benghazi and multiple foreign crises. There's only so long that you can keep your head in the sand until you just suffocate.
Actually, it's unfair to compare the disastrous raid on al-Qaeda in Yemen to Benghazi. What happened at the consulate in Libya was an unexpected event. The Yemen raid was an American plan that had been rejected by the Obama administration and then approved by Trump despite the lack of intelligence that might have prevented all the deaths that occurred, including a Navy SEAL and several children. In other words, Trump's first military test was a clusterfuck of fail. And not a single hearing has been scheduled nor have you heard a peep from Republicans.
And you might not, ever. You might not hear them say how utterly absurd it is that Trump is treating the president of Mexico like he's a gardener who cut a shrub at Mar-a-Lago too short. You might not hear them even whisper that agitating China is just dumb. You might not hear them wonder why the hell Trump is pissing on our relationship with Australia, one of our most reliable allies in the world. You might hear them cheering on another useless war, this time with Iran, because that'd just fulfill a dream they've had since 1979. You will hear them crapping themselves over any threat that's Muslimish while clamming up over domestic terrorists like white supremacists and Breitbart's staff.
Still, we know that not only are Republicans cowards, but they're liars and hypocrites who would dance on the corpses of dead children rather than admit their ideology has failed. They'd rather learn to breathe sand than lift their heads and walk upright because they're gonna get to kick sick people off health insurance, discriminate against LGBT Americans, and force women into back alley abortions, the trifecta of quotidian cruelty they're begging to inflict.
So how do we get through to them? Because, see, we don't have two years to wait for the congressional midterms. Hell, all we need is one terrorist event in the United States, and Trump will declare martial law because he's too dumb and deranged to know any other way to handle it.
Two plans: the first is already happening. Inundate the offices and phone lines, especially of GOP representatives. Make their lives miserable with people registering how angry they are. The reps, even in gerrymandered districts, are more vulnerable than most senators. We gotta get people running against them. Put these assholes out on the curb. And make the rest beg for mercy.
And our activism has to target people who voted for Trump. Yeah, I know, I know, they're loathsome racists or racist-adjacent. But there are a hell of a lot of them who are regretting their votes - the wayward Bernie voters, the "take him seriously, but not literally" idiots, and the ones who realized that maybe getting into a war with Mexico is a little worse than Hillary's emails.
Mostly, it all depends on the constant action of Democrats and non-aligned progressives. Make sure Republicans know that they will be held to account for what they do, not just Democrats. This is on the GOP. Make them pay.
1/31/2017
Trump Breaks All Contracts, Including Those Made by the United States
How is any of this a surprise, all this that's going on now, all that Trump is doing, all this tearing families apart and shipping refugees back to places where they may be killed and dicking around with the lives of children and sick people and the elderly and fucking with different countries, like everything is just a prisoner to whatever the dementia-fucked synapses in Trump's brain can acknowledge while Steve Bannon, with his whiskey breath and scabby face and semen-sticky hands, whispers into his ear, "This, this, this"? How could anyone not have known that, so very quickly, we'd be where we are now, with the country as close to genuine upheaval as it's been since the late 1960s? Once Trump was elected, we were going to get here as soon as his stubby fingers could scrawl signatures on the documents.
We're in this place, this America, right now because of something that Trump has done his entire life. The man couldn't give a fuck about a legitimate contract unless it's with someone who can crush him. Trump has fucked over the little guy repeatedly. Ask the Trump University plaintiffs. Ask any of the dozens of contractors and small business owners who worked for him. Trump and his lackeys more or less ripped up the agreements they made, daring people who couldn't afford it to take them to court. Shit, right now, contractors on his DC hotel, which Trump owns in violation of its lease, have filed liens against it because Trump's organization hasn't paid them.
Unless you have deep pockets and a shitload of time, Trump will fuck you like an obese, deranged weasel on a raccoon corpse in the middle of the road. Trump goes after the defenseless. He is a sixth-grade bully who thinks he's tough because he can make the second graders cry. Except now he gets to do it to people by the tens of thousands. And if he's not stopped, he will get braver and braver until he's putting liberals on a raft in the ocean to send us to Cuba while his idiot hordes hoot and holler in approval, Paul Ryan cowers, and John McCain and Lindsey Graham put out a statement about how that's just not right, all while people drown.
For, indeed, what has been the through-line in Trump's first week or so of fuckery? It's been that agreements don't matter. For instance, whatever you think of NAFTA, Trump's cavalier attitude towards a legitimate treaty has gotta make allies nervous as hell. But luckily it's only Mexico and those people are all rapists and drug lords anyways.
Immigrants and refugees who jumped through every hoop and did everything they had to were denied entry to the United States. People holding onto green cards were not allowed back in. Visas were canceled. These are contracts, too. The people who made them with this country based their lives on the idea that the contract would be honored. They gave up their homes and sold their businesses and spent all their savings to get here. They started school or arranged medical care. None of it mattered. Donald Trump told the world that we can renege on our agreements without any cause.
(Side note: Fuck you if you think that Trump's order makes us safer. Fuck you if you're such a coward that you can say, as cretinous little excrement smear Sean Spicer did today, that a 5-year old could be a terrorist. The only way Trump's ban or pause or whatever goddamn lie word they want to use instead of ban makes any goddamn sense is if he stops all immigration, from every country, because of some fundamental flaw in our vetting process. Except that would mean white people would have problems and his merry band of Nazi ass-lickers couldn't allow that to happen. So the whole thing is a lie, just a plate of racism bullshit coated with a security sauce.)
Why should any country trust us right now? Why would anyone invest in this country if there is a chance that, on a whim and a tweet, the goddamned president could wreck a company's stock and ban its employees?
On the left, our humanitarian sense of decency is offended. On the right, Jesus, I guess you fuckers don't believe in capitalism anymore. If we can't unify over this ban, an insult to our national identity, which sure as fuck ain't white and European and never fucking was, then we may as well just break apart now. Why not? The Constitution is just a contract that Trump will ignore.
We're in this place, this America, right now because of something that Trump has done his entire life. The man couldn't give a fuck about a legitimate contract unless it's with someone who can crush him. Trump has fucked over the little guy repeatedly. Ask the Trump University plaintiffs. Ask any of the dozens of contractors and small business owners who worked for him. Trump and his lackeys more or less ripped up the agreements they made, daring people who couldn't afford it to take them to court. Shit, right now, contractors on his DC hotel, which Trump owns in violation of its lease, have filed liens against it because Trump's organization hasn't paid them.
Unless you have deep pockets and a shitload of time, Trump will fuck you like an obese, deranged weasel on a raccoon corpse in the middle of the road. Trump goes after the defenseless. He is a sixth-grade bully who thinks he's tough because he can make the second graders cry. Except now he gets to do it to people by the tens of thousands. And if he's not stopped, he will get braver and braver until he's putting liberals on a raft in the ocean to send us to Cuba while his idiot hordes hoot and holler in approval, Paul Ryan cowers, and John McCain and Lindsey Graham put out a statement about how that's just not right, all while people drown.
For, indeed, what has been the through-line in Trump's first week or so of fuckery? It's been that agreements don't matter. For instance, whatever you think of NAFTA, Trump's cavalier attitude towards a legitimate treaty has gotta make allies nervous as hell. But luckily it's only Mexico and those people are all rapists and drug lords anyways.
Immigrants and refugees who jumped through every hoop and did everything they had to were denied entry to the United States. People holding onto green cards were not allowed back in. Visas were canceled. These are contracts, too. The people who made them with this country based their lives on the idea that the contract would be honored. They gave up their homes and sold their businesses and spent all their savings to get here. They started school or arranged medical care. None of it mattered. Donald Trump told the world that we can renege on our agreements without any cause.
(Side note: Fuck you if you think that Trump's order makes us safer. Fuck you if you're such a coward that you can say, as cretinous little excrement smear Sean Spicer did today, that a 5-year old could be a terrorist. The only way Trump's ban or pause or whatever goddamn lie word they want to use instead of ban makes any goddamn sense is if he stops all immigration, from every country, because of some fundamental flaw in our vetting process. Except that would mean white people would have problems and his merry band of Nazi ass-lickers couldn't allow that to happen. So the whole thing is a lie, just a plate of racism bullshit coated with a security sauce.)
Why should any country trust us right now? Why would anyone invest in this country if there is a chance that, on a whim and a tweet, the goddamned president could wreck a company's stock and ban its employees?
On the left, our humanitarian sense of decency is offended. On the right, Jesus, I guess you fuckers don't believe in capitalism anymore. If we can't unify over this ban, an insult to our national identity, which sure as fuck ain't white and European and never fucking was, then we may as well just break apart now. Why not? The Constitution is just a contract that Trump will ignore.
1/25/2017
Note to Donald Trump: Be a Man
Hey, Donald Trump, President Trump, whatever the fuck you wanna be called,
I don't like you and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't like me, if you knew who I was. See, I want you to fail so spectacularly that you are tempted to resign or take your own life on live TV and video streaming. Anyone who has ever had to deal with a pissy elderly relative knows exactly what you are: a belligerent shithead bullying your way through your episodes of dementia. You're just rich enough to be taken seriously with your mad ranting. And I don't give a fuck how much you suffer because of your mental decline. It won't be enough.
So I'm probably pretty goddamn low on the list of people who should be giving you advice, but here we are. You're the president and I'm one of your subjects...I mean, citizens, and you've talked about returning power to me, among everyone else. Maybe read this on your phone when you're sitting on the shitter, getting ready to pinch out a tight, angry, painful fiber-deprived loaf, before screaming out something idiotic for one of your ass-wipers to tweet.
Let me put this in the gendered language you love because it's so not politically correct:
Be a man.
'Cause right now, you're acting like a little, needy bitch, like a particularly well-pampered Pekingese that demands more petting and more treats. Be a man. A real man. One who doesn't require to be told endlessly that he's the best, the greatest, the biggest. One who isn't compelled to ask for affirmation from people who couldn't give less of a shit about things like the size of your inauguration crowd. I know it goes against your very being and how you've lived your entire stupid life. But give it a try.
You claim that you weren't making fun of reporter Serge Kovaleski's disability, that you were mocking him for "groveling." But you're the one who's groveling now. You're begging for everyone around you to buy into your lies and you despise it when reality intrudes on your well-wrought fantasy world. No matter how long you've done it, it makes you a pussy, a big, wet pussy just throbbing to get fingered and fucked, like all those that you claim you've grabbed, you walking virus.
A real man would have said, "Yeah, fine, I mocked the guy. I apologize and will try to do better." But someone in your life at some point, whether it was your despicable, racist father or your disgusting, verminous surrogate father, Roy Cohn, told you that men don't ever say they're sorry. Those people are wrong and dead. A real man mocks someone, admits it, and then either offers regret or says, "Come and get me."
After winning the election, all you could do was whine and lie. You didn't win the popular vote because of 3-5 million "illegal immigrants" fraudulently voting, as if anyone would go to the trouble of arranging the biggest fraud in history just to jack up the percentages in California. The media lied, you said, and you had an enormous crowd for your inauguration, even though photographs and anyone there who wasn't blind knew the truth. And you're "angry" about the size of the Women's March.
Jesus, look at how pathetic your bio is on the White House website: "Mr. Trump won the election on November 8 of 2016 in the largest electoral college landslide for a Republican in 28 years. He won over 2,600 counties nationwide, the most since President Reagan in 1984. Additionally, he won over 62 million votes in the popular vote, the highest all-time for a Republican nominee. He also won 306 electoral votes, the most for a Republican since George H.W. Bush in 1988. " Put aside the lie that your lower-third ranked winning percentage of the Electoral College is a mighty victory. Instead, look at that last line. There's been one Republican president since George H.W. Bush. So all you're saying is that you had a bigger electoral margin of victory than George W. Bush. You beat one guy out of dozens who beat you. And you're bragging about it? That's just sad and desperate, like "Look at the rabbits, Lennie" sad and desperate.
Now you're gonna have some great investigation into your delusion that there was fraud in the election (at least in the states that didn't vote for you, right?). And while, yes, your band of merry assholes can't wait to get them some of those sweet, sweet restrictions on voting rights, you know that you're doing this only because you want to prove some fucking worthless point. If one vote in California turns out to be cast fraudulently, even if it was just an error, you will cackle and dance like you just found gold in the Sierra Madres, you dumb fuck.
The PC pundits will tell you to act like a grown-up. But you and me, we don't play like that. We tell it like it is. So be a man. Get over this popularity shit.
And don't worry. We can still talk about how much of a cunt you are.
I don't like you and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't like me, if you knew who I was. See, I want you to fail so spectacularly that you are tempted to resign or take your own life on live TV and video streaming. Anyone who has ever had to deal with a pissy elderly relative knows exactly what you are: a belligerent shithead bullying your way through your episodes of dementia. You're just rich enough to be taken seriously with your mad ranting. And I don't give a fuck how much you suffer because of your mental decline. It won't be enough.
So I'm probably pretty goddamn low on the list of people who should be giving you advice, but here we are. You're the president and I'm one of your subjects...I mean, citizens, and you've talked about returning power to me, among everyone else. Maybe read this on your phone when you're sitting on the shitter, getting ready to pinch out a tight, angry, painful fiber-deprived loaf, before screaming out something idiotic for one of your ass-wipers to tweet.
Let me put this in the gendered language you love because it's so not politically correct:
Be a man.
'Cause right now, you're acting like a little, needy bitch, like a particularly well-pampered Pekingese that demands more petting and more treats. Be a man. A real man. One who doesn't require to be told endlessly that he's the best, the greatest, the biggest. One who isn't compelled to ask for affirmation from people who couldn't give less of a shit about things like the size of your inauguration crowd. I know it goes against your very being and how you've lived your entire stupid life. But give it a try.
You claim that you weren't making fun of reporter Serge Kovaleski's disability, that you were mocking him for "groveling." But you're the one who's groveling now. You're begging for everyone around you to buy into your lies and you despise it when reality intrudes on your well-wrought fantasy world. No matter how long you've done it, it makes you a pussy, a big, wet pussy just throbbing to get fingered and fucked, like all those that you claim you've grabbed, you walking virus.
A real man would have said, "Yeah, fine, I mocked the guy. I apologize and will try to do better." But someone in your life at some point, whether it was your despicable, racist father or your disgusting, verminous surrogate father, Roy Cohn, told you that men don't ever say they're sorry. Those people are wrong and dead. A real man mocks someone, admits it, and then either offers regret or says, "Come and get me."
After winning the election, all you could do was whine and lie. You didn't win the popular vote because of 3-5 million "illegal immigrants" fraudulently voting, as if anyone would go to the trouble of arranging the biggest fraud in history just to jack up the percentages in California. The media lied, you said, and you had an enormous crowd for your inauguration, even though photographs and anyone there who wasn't blind knew the truth. And you're "angry" about the size of the Women's March.
Jesus, look at how pathetic your bio is on the White House website: "Mr. Trump won the election on November 8 of 2016 in the largest electoral college landslide for a Republican in 28 years. He won over 2,600 counties nationwide, the most since President Reagan in 1984. Additionally, he won over 62 million votes in the popular vote, the highest all-time for a Republican nominee. He also won 306 electoral votes, the most for a Republican since George H.W. Bush in 1988. " Put aside the lie that your lower-third ranked winning percentage of the Electoral College is a mighty victory. Instead, look at that last line. There's been one Republican president since George H.W. Bush. So all you're saying is that you had a bigger electoral margin of victory than George W. Bush. You beat one guy out of dozens who beat you. And you're bragging about it? That's just sad and desperate, like "Look at the rabbits, Lennie" sad and desperate.
Now you're gonna have some great investigation into your delusion that there was fraud in the election (at least in the states that didn't vote for you, right?). And while, yes, your band of merry assholes can't wait to get them some of those sweet, sweet restrictions on voting rights, you know that you're doing this only because you want to prove some fucking worthless point. If one vote in California turns out to be cast fraudulently, even if it was just an error, you will cackle and dance like you just found gold in the Sierra Madres, you dumb fuck.
The PC pundits will tell you to act like a grown-up. But you and me, we don't play like that. We tell it like it is. So be a man. Get over this popularity shit.
And don't worry. We can still talk about how much of a cunt you are.
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