Category: Magical Thinking

Bad Things Often Happen When People Show Up Because They Believed “A Story”

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Storytelling can be like a super power. Take Donald Trump telling a mob of racist, bigoted followers that the election was stolen from them. That’s a story. Pure fiction. And yet, a fiction propelled that mob into deadly action. Seditionist, treasonous action. If Trump — after setting the mob in motion — had suddenly chuckled into the mic “Heh heh, no, I’m just fooling ya, folks — I lost that election fair and square, now all of you get in your cars and go the hell home!” — they wouldn’t have listened to him. The truth would have disappointed them. The story, on the other hand…

The Insurrection At The Capitol happened because a shitload of people accepted bullshit as truth. Frankly, I don’t care if they were “fooled” by Trump. We ALL heard what Trump said before the insurrection began. We all heard what he said in the weeks beforehand. But only a few of us got into our cars or — like Jenna Ryan, the pathetic real estate agent from Texas who got on her private freakin’ jet and flew halfway across the country in order to DO something terrible because she believed a story!

Why is it usually white people begging for a Mulligan because they got duped by a con man? Probably the same reason it’s usually white people running the con. Although, in Jenna’s case, she isn’t even looking for a Mulligan. She expects to be forgiven immediately — to be pardoned by the president since, to her, she wasn’t just doing her “patriotic duty”, she also was answering to God! The highest authority of all — creator of the universe — wanted this pathetic woman to fly to Washington, DC and take part in a melee. In other words, she expects to be forgiven because she believed a story.

In my experience here in America? It’s ALWAYS white people doing that. Yes, yes — all human beings are open to being charmed into evil by a charismatic smile. But, white people just seem better at creating nonsense and then accepting it as gospel truth.

These people showed up because they believed a story.

These people showed up because they believed a story.

These people showed up because they believed a story.

These people showed up (in Salem, at the witch trial) because they believed a story.

The Holocaust happened because people had long believed (and accepted as truth) a story that Jews deserved to die because “they killed Jesus”. That never happened. Neither did the virgin birth or the three wise men from wherever or the star of Bethlehem. It didn’t. It is pure, unadulterated fiction. “The Jews murdered Jesus” is as reality-based as a piece of crime fiction yet it has transcended Jesus’s message of “love thy neighbor as thyself”. Stone cold fact — if born-lived-and-died-a-Jew Jesus were to return from the dead and hear about all the Jews who were murdered in his name — because of a story about him that wasn’t true — and stood in stark contrast to who he was and what he lived his whole life for? He’d be mighty pissed off about it.

Ah, but… if given a choice between believing the truth or believing a story, we know for a fact which the majority of people will choose. It’s literally incalculable the number of people — Jews or otherwise — whose lives were cut short because the person murdering them “believed a story”.

What I Learned From Growing Up In The Holocaust’s Shadow

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

I was born in 1959, 14 years after the death camps were liberated. I grew up in an upper middle class Jewish suburb northwest of Baltimore, MD. I had at least one Hebrew School teacher with a number tattooed into her flesh. We did not shy away from what had just happened to us. We did not avert our eyes in shame except to tell ourselves “Never again”. And to justify our resolve to NEVER passively participate in our own genocide ever again, my community taught the Holocaust to little kids like me the moment they felt we were capable of understanding: the world hates you because of what you are. The sooner you learn this, the safer you’ll be.

I, for one, have never forgotten those lessons. I have never forgotten the look in every German eye as they gazed upon their Jewish prisoners. Forgive and forget?

Not possible. Well… history says it is possible — if not to entirely forgive and forget, then at least to do business with. It’s kinda like “Forgive & Forget Adjacent”. Hey — mea culpa! I’ve owned not one, but two autos made by Audi. And Audi has much to be ashamed about. “When Audi was operating under the name Auto Union, it struck a deal with the SS, by which more than 3,700 inmates from Nazi concentration camps were put to work for the company.” Further — “Another 16,500 laborers — not interned in concentration camps — also were made to work for the car company in the Saxon cities of Zwickau and Chemnitz, in addition to 18,000 at a plant in Bavaria where more than 4,000 died…”. In the end, “Auto Union merged with Volkswagen, Audi’s parent company, in 1965, dropping the original name in 1985 after a merger… a decade ago, Audi paid millions into a fund set up by the German auto industry to compensate Nazi slave laborers and their descendants.”

I can comfort myself, I suppose, by telling myself “Well, at least they tried to do the right thing in the end”. As comfort goes, that’s pretty cold. But, what allowed American Jews to “forgive” the Germans — to stop seeing them all as ex-Nazis in hiding — was that, it appeared, the Germans stopped seeing Jews as concentration camp inmates — as cockroaches deserving of such treatment. That’s surprisingly hard to make people understand — people who’ve never been looked at as a cockroach because of what they are. It’s not an affect. It’s a straightforward, brutally honest communication from, in essence, one person’s soul to another. “Because of what you are, you are less than me“.

All animals, it seems, communicate in myriad “unspoken” ways — via body language or simply by “looking at” others a certain way. A little fish doesn’t have to literally hear “I’m going to eat you” to appreciate how loudly it’s being shouted by a big fish’s eyes. It’s there. All the little fish has to do is “read it”.

Forgiving and forgetting IS possible. There CAN BE constructive dialogue between diametrically opposed factions — but not if one of those factions (or both) look at the other with contempt. Nothing constructive can happen if one group sees the other as “cockroaches”. That’s not something most humans can really hide. Even when they try to? It’s pretty phony.

My biggest takeaways from Holocaust School were —

  • The Holocaust might have stopped — but only for now.
  • Jew hating is hard-wired into a lot of people
  • Even people who don’t act like they hate you — if you look into their eyes? They hate you
  • Never turn off your “Spidey senses”; if they tingle? It’s for a reason; REACT
  • The only way you can ever trust that a non-Jew might not despise you for being a Jew? They never look at you like you are a cockroach

Anti-Semitism — like racism and beauty — are entirely in the eye of the beholder. It’s never up to a racist to say whether they’re racist or not. How the hell would they know? They’re RACIST ffs! Ask the racist’s victim, ask the misogynist’s victim, the bigot’s victim, the anti-Semite’s victim: “Do you feel hated because of who or what you are?” If there’s even a scintilla of “yes”, that hater is whatever the hated says they are. Hate after all is an active verb.

It is perverse that, already, a big part of our conversation — in the shadow of a seditionist insurrection — is “can we forgive and forget so as to move past it?” White people, it turns out, hate having to EVER take ownership for their shit. Can’t we just forgive, forget and move on — like they did already? The problem with saying yes Not only do these scumbags now look at you like a cockroach, now they look at you like a stupid cockroach.

Trust me: that makes it worse.

When Magical Thinking Kills

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

That would be now. Officially. A member of the Capitol Police Department died this morning because one of the seditionist marauders attacking the US Capitol at Donald Trump’s command crushed his skull with a fire extinguisher. As we’re learning, many of these terrorists have now TURNED ON Trump because, last night, Trump was forced to make a robotic statement separating himself from the violence. They could have looked past Trump’s robotic speech; previously, they would have celebrated it — seeing the code that celebrated them embedded within. But, as Trump’s sedition army swarmed the US Congress, they BELIEVED that they were part of an actual PLAN. They believed something substantive was happening — and they were a vital part of it: the literal overthrow of the United States government.

Except Trump had no plan. He was using these mooks for a piece of self-serving Bullshit Kabuki. And they — they now realize — are being hung out to dry. Because there was no plan.

Never, ever, EVER.

The news media wants us to pity these fools the same way they wanted us to “understand” their racial hatred as economic concern. Damn, but it sucks to always be so far ahead of the news media. Apparently they’re on the same “inoculation schedule” with vaccinating us against bullshit as the Trump admin is with inoculating Americans against the coronavirus. They ARE the virus! And Donald Trump — and the rest of his Republican co-conspirators and enablers — they are the SUPER SPREADERS.

As we know from watching Americans succumb and die all around us, not wearing masks while standing in close proximity in closed, indoor spaces spreads this killer disease and yet, tens of thousands of Americans continue to do that very thing, believing nothing bad could possibly happen to them — because Magical Thinking will ward off the pathogen. Unh-unh. Viruses need our cells in order to make more viruses. They see us as cheap-ass sex motels. The more available we make the “rooms”, the more they like it — and the more they check in.

It takes no “magic” to understand the difference between a “glancing” blow” from the virus (walking past someone asymptomatic, both of you masked) and a full-on viral load — one maskless person spewing their infection right into your face because YOU are maskless. Not only will you probably get sick — unless you’re really, really lucky — you’re going to spread the virus to others until the second YOU start wearing a goddamned mask.

Magical thinking never makes anyone thinking it smarter. Take that to the bank.

Let’s be real, religion relies on magical thinking. That’s as opposed to spirituality which doesn’t. Just about every religion demands that its adherents believe at least a little bit of magic in order to make that religion’s explanations for the world make sense. Hard core Christianity relies on its adherents buying wholesale the idea that a deity can breed with a human to produce a “man-god” capable of dying for all of humanity’s “sins” — which, if they accept as absolute truth, will spare them from every dying. Christianity isn’t selling “Do unto others”. Who cares about that? Christianity’s sales pitch — its genius — is selling a way to beat death.

If you are willing to accept this mythology we’ve invented, the church says, we will guarantee you eternal life. BUT — you have to buy all the way in to get that eternal life. You can’t question any of the mythology, its rules, its logic, its bizarre inconsistencies, its factual history, its language even. If you do any of that, the magical “you won’t ever die” spell gets (magically) broken. And you’ll only ever have yourself to blame.

So, you’ll go to hell.

The problem with this example isn’t so much “Christianity” as the people who hijacked Jesus’s message early on and then pretended that THEIR message was Jesus’s.

If we consider how many Christians Christianity has killed — because one group thinks the pope is infallible while the other thinks “what pope?” — it makes it hard to see how Jesus has influenced much of anyone’s “thinking”. Never mind their “doing unto others”. The church understood early on — as religious institutions had before and since — if you want to sell a religion, you need some serious sizzle. Even if it’s all sound effects — because there’s literally no steak — that works for religion. Smoke plus mirrors equals belief.

Meanwhile, here in the real world…

We could use way more doing unto others. There’s no magic to it. There’s just the doing of it which, frankly, can be hard.

Way harder than thinking magically. That thinking magic is real. That things happen “just because”.

On Wednesday, we experienced first hand, live on our televisions, how terrifying magical thinking can be when set loose on the rest of the unsuspecting world. That was magical thinking firing a shot across our bow. If we don’t respond — squashing that magical thinking — it will spread, as magical thinking does (Google the classic work “Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds”). These Trumpanistas — former and current — see or have seen Trump as a literal man-god — it’s there in their social media.

While shaking our heads in disbelief, it’s not inappropriate to give these “useful idiots” a moment of pity — before moving forward with purpose to punish the shit out of them. Most everyone else resisted bullshit’s tug. They need to learn better how to resist. A prison cell may not be the best teacher but, for right now, it’s all we got.

We need to punish magical thinking when it oversteps its place — the heads of those thinking it. Belief in bullshit is, unfortunately, a protected thing. Practice of that bullshit in the public sphere however is NOT protected — especially when it kills other people.

That’s magical thinking’s bottom line: it’s bullshit. I understand how hard a habit bullshit is to break. My habit almost killed me.

We cannot let the bullshit habit of these magical thinkers to kill one more American.

Next: “When Dumbass Coup d’Etats Fail”…

Why Do Some Christians Hate Being Forced To Reap What They Sowed?

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

As an atheist, I wonder frequently why so few Christians follow Jesus. That is, they belong to a church — but their church sees Jesus the way McDonald’s sees Ronald. He’s a mascot. He’s the “Do Unto Others” bait that they switch with “Do What We Tell You To Do — Or Else!” Institutional Christianity has no use for Jesus beyond his being a mascot. Jesus didn’t invent Christianity after all, Paul did. If Jesus were to rise from the dead and see the violence (much of it anti-Semitic!) that has been attributed to him, supposedly “inspired” by him and belief in him? His head might literally explode.

Religion gets to make up its rules as it goes along — and change them when they become inconvenient. That’s not a criticism, it’s just a fact. If science could play by those rules, it probably would. But, it can’t. Science relies on rigor. It needs the math to add up and check out. Consistently. Science, for instance, understands that there’s no magic. The carbon we pour into the environment today won’t disappear just because that’d be more convenient for us. Pandemics don’t disappear just because we want them to either.

And, every time we meet with a friend — even with masks on — just because we’re convinced neither of us has or will give the coronavirus to each other? We’re gambling. We’re playing Russian Roulette (ironically) with a pathogen.

Our sister sight Mulligan Jesus, has suggested that lots of Christians (if inside their own minds) see their Bibles more as a smorgasbord line than a book on which to base their lives. How’s the adultery looking today? Fresh? I’ll overlook the fact that I shouldn’t do it then “because it’s so fresh!” How about greed or pride or any of the other sins that practicing Christianity is supposed to “cure one of”? All available. All waiting to be piled onto my plate. That’s why they adore their “Pick N Choose” Bibles — why pretend to follow rules you think are stupid — or that might could get in the way of you having a good time, doing whatever the hell you want, and getting whatever the hell YOU think you’re entitled to?

That’s the dirty, little secret every one of these Christians (as opposed to “followers of Jesus”) carries around in their tiny black hearts: they don’t believe IN God, they believe they ARE God. Gods, you see, don’t “do unto others” because no one — they believe — is good enough to “do unto them”. Gods do whatever the hell they want. Or, that is, they think they can.

With the Republicans coup attempt, we are witnessing this behavior writ large. Republicans long ago reimagined themselves as “The White Guy’s Party”. They cannot abide the idea of Black people, brown people or women having authority over them (never mind governing). And just as these Christians pick n choose what they “believe in” from their Bibles, they pick n choose what laws from our Constitution they want to follow (if for the moment). You know — like someone who thought they were “God” might do.

“The Party Of Personal Responsibility” is always first to avoid it. Quick thought experiment — if Barack Obama (or anyone in his administration) had said what Michael Flynn said last night, inciting sedition against a winning Republican presidential candidate, what do you think would have happened to him? Kinda makes one think the whole “Party of Personal Responsibility” thing was always horse shit. Ain’t that shocking…

The Catholic Church protecting child molesters didn’t exactly surprise anyone — except for the extent of child abuse and its acceptance within the church. And is anyone truly caught off guard when scumbags like Jerry Falwell, Jr. get outed for the frauds they are? We all recognize that religiosity breeds deceit because it breeds judgment. If you perceive yourself to be more “God-like” in your behavior while others are “demonic”, you’re probably going to cast all your actions in the best possible light (regardless of the truth).

The reason so many “devout Christians” hate to reap what they sow is because they never intended to reap it. They expected someone else to get suck with their diseased crops. You know — like the man they think God “made” president — Donald Trump — always does.

I bet if Trump spoke the words “Do unto others”, he’d actually burst into flames — or melt like the Nazi at the end of “Raiders Of The Lost Ark”. That’s why he’d say — under his breath to protect himself: “…before they do unto you.” That’s the Trumpist’s creed.

Polling Didn’t Miss The “Secret Trump Voter” Because He Doesn’t Exist — Unless You Count Russia

~ A L Katz ~ 1 Comment

To try and explain how polling coulda missed the call in 2016 so badly, the news media & its chattering class invented the false narrative of “the secret Trump voter”. How else to explain the unexpected bump in unexpectedly enthusiastic Trump voters and the concurrent disinterest of Democratic voters in 2016? It must be a mysterious, magical person harder to find and pin down than Bigfoot. It couldn’t possibly have been, say, the result of a highly successful Russian disinformation campaign plus a degree of data manipulation inside vulnerable voting machines. Oh, did I just go all “conspiracy theory”?

Excuse me while I put my receipts on the table.

The news media allows that Russia (vaguely) “influenced” election 2016. That’s nice. What the hell does it mean? Influenced HOW? In what ways? In ways that directly impacted the election’s OUTCOME? If that’s the case, why isn’t the news media rushing into the breach? The very “idea” of a hostile foreign government — Russia’s especially — having any influence whatsoever on a free and fair American election should ignite everyone’s hair. In point of fact, it HAS ignited everyone’s hair. The strange thing is, most of America’s news media doesn’t realize it.

Instead, as they rush around, they wonder why they’re so hot and sweaty — and why their hair feels like flame. But then, our news media can normalize just about anything Donald Trump does. They normalized Mexicans as rapists and pussy grabbing as just something a “different kind of POTUS” says and does.

The response to Russia in any way influencing any American election or politician should have been a giant, “W-h-a-a-a-a-a-t????? We need to know more about this! Has anyone notified the FBI?”? That should have been the response to current GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy when he infamously entered a meeting of GOP leaders during the 2016 GOP convention and announced out loud “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump”. Instead of saying “What? Get the FBI on the phone!”, then Speaker Of The House Paul Ryan famously replied (it made the Washington Post FFS!): ““No leaks. . . . This is how we know we’re a real family here.”

The secret Trump voter was Russia. Still is.

Can you hear the argument? Too complicated! Oh, really?

It’s been well documented again and again how easy it is to hack into voting machines connected in any way to the internet. It’s also been well documented how all the big voting machine makers in America are, curiously, owned by Republicans who refuse to disconnect their voting machines from the internet and who resist to the death the very idea of Americans using far safer hand-marked ballots.

There’s ample evidence that computerized voting machines can be made to flip votes in real time so that a voter voting Democratic at the machine ends up voting Republican when their vote hits the tabulator. That’s not a bug, it’s the design.

Honest people invite transparency. Not a one of these people is honest or transparent. As the Who song says, “We won’t get fooled again”.

If the “secret Trump voter” really exists, news media, please produce them. No doubt there is one or two. One or two “secret Trump voters” didn’t throw Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania to Donald Trump in 2016. Neither did a wave of them. That is, the news media can’t produce those people. They can’t interview them — not in the numbers required (even on a small scale). But we’ve seen hackers break into voting machines. We’ve seen people TESTING internet-connected voting machines and finding that the machines CAN be manipulated into flipping votes.

Hmmmmm… so, one argument has “mysterious people” causing it and the other has something mechanical and testable. I see why our news media has chosen to insist the “mysterious people” argument is true.

The great head-scratcher in 2016 was “how did the polls get it so wrong?” Sound familiar. We’re going to learn that almost all of that “wrong” the polls got it wasn’t. It was the criminal manipulation of voting machines. Here we are, again, scratching our heads. That is, the press is scratching its head because it, to this day, refuses to aggregate the Donald Trump story.

It should be assumed that a guy notorious for lying and cheating (and those notorious for lying and cheating on the liar and cheater’s behalf) will lie and cheat before they attempt to do anything honestly. Donald Trump, after all, has learned that cheating pays far better than being honest. And since he’s never had to pay the price for cheating, why wouldn’t he cheat first since it’s so efficient? Same goes for Mitch McConnell.

Anyone hearing Mitch argue on Trump’s behalf knows that Mitch couldn’t give a rat’s ass about logic or reason or the Constitution. And, hey, back in September 2016, Mitch was the guy who refused to let us, the American people, in on the little secret that Russia was “influencing” the election on Trump’s behalf. Mitch knows damned well that Paul Manafort gave Oleg Deripaska (via Konstantin Kilimnik) the proprietary polling data on Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan (plus Minnesota) that the GRU then turned into weaponized propaganda that showed up on the personal Facebook pages of (mostly) Black, Democratic voters in (can ya guess?) Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. Mitch REWARDED Russia by lifting the sanctions on Deripaska — the sanctions put on him FOR SUBVERTING OUR ELECTION!

When Joe Biden takes the oath of office as POTUS, one of the first things that he and former prosecutor Kamala Harris will do is reconstitute the Department of Justice as a DEPARTMENT of JUSTICE. One of the first things a revived DoJ will do is ask all the as yet unasked questions about 2016.

When we start putting Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, Devin Nunes and the rest of the Boys In The Bund under oath — grilling them for hours on end the way they grilled Hillary Clinton over Benghazi — they will break down and accuse each other of all kinds of nastiness. It’s what criminals do when they realize they’re cornered and they don’t want to eat prison dinner for the rest of their days.

One of the little secrets they’ll give up — if I had a ranch, I’d bet the whole thing — is that the only “secret Trump voter” who exists is named Vladimir.

Think of all these Republican players — Trump, McConnell and the Senate Republicans, Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz and the House Republicans and the Right Wing Money standing behind them all — and their various motives. They’re not the same. Nunes, Jordan and Gaetz have staked their future to having Trump in office.

That’s not the same now for the Senate Republicans. They’ve finished the work of hijacking the judiciary especially the SCOTUS. From the RW Money & Mitch’s point of view, they’ve put up a fire wall between themselves and any attempt to turn America “socialist”. The courts will stop the Progressives. To the Senate Republicans, Trump is now a handicap. Every time he opens his bloated orange lie hole, it’s a problem.

In Mitch’s head, I believe this thought occurred: “Hmmmm… I wonder if there’s a way to get rid of Trump — we can tolerate and manage Biden — while holding onto power in the Senate (so we can manage Biden)…”. Keep in mind, Mitch knows that voting machine makers Diebold, ESS, Dominion are all contributors and part of the Republican brain trust. He can get them on the phone any time he likes.

I believe Mitch looked at the approaching train wreck — losing the executive AND the Senate and decided enough was enough. He could tolerate losing Trump but only if he could hold onto the Senate at the same time.

It would be as easy as typing a line of code to sway Republican Senate races while leaving Trump’s tallies alone. “If x is the case then y happens”. At every fifth Republican vote tallied, add another vote. Silently, each time the tabulator counted another five Republican votes, the tabulator would, instead, say it counted SIX votes.

Without a paper trail to catch the glitch, no glitch would seem to have occurred. In time, five votes becomes six, ten becomes twelve, fifteen becomes eighteen and twenty becomes twenty-four. Multiply that times five: each hundred voters produces an additional twenty.

A thousand real voters produces an additional two hundred non-existent voters. A million produces 20,000. I don’t know if you’ve been following the vote counting but 20,000 votes has been the difference in plenty of races this cycle. I think it would behoove the Democrats — with the DoJ operating the way it’s supposed to — to ask a simple question: is there any correlation between the number of Republicans who voted AGAINST Trump but FOR the endangered Republican Senator?

Sure, plenty of people used to vote split tickets — in the past. That doesn’t happen much anymore. We’re a bit more “tribal” these days.

If there’s a big split ticket difference in Republican voting in states where a sitting Republican Senator suddenly won and the vote Trump got? Do not assume right off the bat it’s some mysterious voter you can’t physically produce. Instead, look to the voting machines. Pop the back. Root around inside its guts.

If I’m just being crazy here, so be it. It won’t be the first time.

But, if I’m right?

Add one more set of charges to the long “To Do” list the new DoJ has in its hands.

Our news media loves a good false narrative because false narratives are easy. To get to the truth, you have to step outside the box so as to find the perspective necessary. If you won’t make that trip, you’ll never see the truth. Instead, to explain strange things, you’ll invent magical people — and then broadcast it and call it “news”.

The Best Thing One Can Say About Originalism Is That It’s Total, Utter Nonsense

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Antonin Scalia — the King of Originalism — should have taken originalism to the grave with him. Not that the worms deserve either. Intellectually, originalism is the quintessential make-it-up-as-you-go-along, “White Guy” argument. “But the rules! But the rules!” says the one who wrote the rules, then broke them repeatedly then got upset when others threatened to write the rules instead. Even on its surface, originalism stinks. Scratch that surface and you unleash a whole sewage system of awfulness.

Never mind the fact that the King of Originalism, Scalia, set originalism aside to write the decision that will most define him: Bush v Gore. Not only did he set originalism aside to write that bit of flaming horse shit, he made Bush v Gore a one-time deal. It followed no rules then made itself unique — all in one neat, corrupt, decision.

Originalism insists the Constitution is stuck in time; therefore so is America. If not for those nasty amendments, America would still be a bastion for rich, white, Christian land owners. Like in the 1780s. The opposite view sees the Constitution as a living, breathing, dynamic document (designed) to serve America’s living, breathing, dynamic population. You know, what that famous Republican president called “Government OF the People, BY the People and FOR the People.”

Originalism is about controlling the mythology and pretending it’s the law. It’s Magical Thinking written in lawyer font.

It’s about pretending words say things they don’t.

It’s all about cynicism.

The only correct response when some right wing nitwit hauls originalism onto the table is “Oh, shut up”. The goal is to make you chase them down their rabbit hole because that’s what originalism is: a damned rabbit hole.

“Oh, shut up.” See? Easy!

Breaking News: Having Experienced COVID-19 For Himself, Trump Reveals His New, Trump-Style Health Care Plan: It’s Called “TrumpCare PICK-AN-ORGAN”

~ A L Katz ~ 1 Comment

Finally – a health “care” plan that thinks like Donald Trump does — and “takes care” of people the same way. That is, it picks their pocket with one hand while taking their temperature with the other. Or it behaves like a super spreader’s super spreader.

Donald can relate to COVID-19 — now that he’s had it. Now that the coronavirus has paid the very house call he dared it to. Why, having feared for his mortality, suddenly Trump has gone all George Bailey and suddenly wants to make the world a better…– Oh, puh-lease! Who are we kidding? Donald Trump will always be “It’s A Wonderful Life’s” Mr. Potter — except a kajillion times worse and a far, far bigger asshole.

Speaking of assholes — the problem with normal health insurance is you end up paying to insure stuff that probably doesn’t need insuring. Like your asshole. Or your gall bladder. What are the odds either will go bad on you. Hell, you probably don’t even know what your gall bladder does (hint — it doesn’t gall you). So, how could you miss it?

With “Trump-Care ‘PICK-AN-ORGAN”, you’re in “full control” of which organs you insure and which you’re willing to gamble on. C’mon — when was the last time you gave a flying crap about your spleen? Hey — better question: when was the last time your spleen gave a flying crap about you?

Who wants to pay for health care YOU won’t ever get — or “might not” ever need?  Only a schmuck pays for other peoples’ healthcare, amiright?

Think of it THIS WAY:  You have lots of organs.  What are the chances any will ‘go south’ on you during your lifetime?  Your lungs?  Probably not — unless you smoke.  Your kidneys — You have two — you’re playing with house money.  Your heart?  Well, okay — that one could be a problem but at TrumpCare, we assume you don’t have a heart so what are we even talking about?

The point is, Trumpanistas are too smart to INSURE organs they don’t need to — or are worth the risk NOT to insure.  And that’s why they (and everyone! will love “TrumpCare PICK-AN-ORGAN”!

LUNGS

07_Organs_Lungs_Front.pdf_1600x

Odds are nothing will happen to either of em.  But you want to play it safe — so we offer options to allow YOU to decide:  Insure Neither Lung, One Lung or Both Lungs!

See?  Easy!  Now, of course, the trick is, if you insure just one?  Ya better hope like hell you insured the correct Lung — the one that’s gonna be needing insurance…

LET’S TALK INTESTINES!

human-intestines-sciepro

If you’re like the average Joe, you have LOTS of this stuff inside ya.  You have intestines to spare.  In fact, you have so much intestine you even have two kinds (I know — weird, huh?)   But do you really need to insure both?  Do you really need to insure ‘ALL’ of it?

And what about your APPENDIX?  You don’t even use it — hell you haven’t used it in millions of years.  Only an idiot insures something he can’t use — amiright?

I KNOW THAT’S MY LIVER BUT WHAT THE HELL IS THAT ‘GREEN’ THING?

cartoon-of-human-liver-and-gallbladder-vector-7563173

The Truth is — Outside of your heart and lungs, your stomach and your anus, you haven’t a clue how any of your plumbing works.  You know you HAVE a Liver and you remember somebody lecturing you once about alcoholism while you were passed out in a drunken stupor but that was so long ago.

Be that as it may — This is probably you:  “What in hell’s name is that green thing — and please don’t say I have one…!”

Yeah, you have one all right — and it costs a BOMB to insure it — IF you insure it…

YOUR SPLEEN — 1-2-3-ANSWER QUICKLY:  ‘WHAT’S IT DO?‘

human-spleen-visceral-surface-synthesizes-antibodies-53319933

Not a goddamned clue, amiright (and “The spleen ‘spleens’ ain’t it”)?

Here – we’ll even show you a spleen and point out all its bits.  Does THAT help?  No?

And you want to insure this WHY?

AND THEN THERE’S THIS ORGAN…

cerebro-humano

Insuring brains is expensive.  In fact, it’s SO expensive, you’d have to be crazy to pay the freight.  So why bother.

TrumpCare ‘PICK-AN-ORGAN’: ‘Hey — look at all the money YOU just saved!’

In “War Of The Worlds”, A Pathogen Saved Us From Martians — Just Like A Pathogen Will Save Us From Donald J. Trump

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

It’s not hyperbole — Donald Trump is a democracy-destroying monster utterly resistant to normal reason and legal logic. In HG Wells’ “War Of The Worlds”, Martians take over Earth, easily crushing our feeble human armies. What saves our bacon in the end? Pathogens. Germs. Not even fancy ones. The monsters’ bodies succumb to the same ordinary Earth germs our immune systems handle with ease. Oh, what a delicious irony: Covid-19 is serving the same exact function right here, right now. Except the unstoppable monster this pathogen is saving us from is Donald J. Trump.

It’s weird how unstoppable Trump has been. His ability to avoid responsibility for a lifetime of criminal behavior is, well, otherworldly.

But then, so’s his monstrous destructiveness.

Trump the Monster has laid waste to our faith in the election process. He’s gobbled up money and trampled on rights like Godzilla trampling Tokyo. He’s incinerated our reputation abroad and, with a swing of his bloated orange tail, sent the rule of law flying.

Unlike in Wells’ story though, OUR news media has been slow to respond as this particular monster emerged from his pod. In Trump’s case, he rode down a gold escalator and roared how Mexicans are rapists and, if you’re famous, you can do anything to women — including grab their pussies — because “they’ll let ya”. Whereas our news media should have shot that right down — and kept firing until the monster was dead — instead they put down their weapons and followed the monster to the next part of town he wanted to destroy. Then watched him do it.

In a sense, our press is the equivalent of the Wells story’s military: our last line of defense was defenseless. Good thing we have coronavirus to save us.

Trick question: what kind of an idiot thinks he can “negotiate” with a pathogen? Anti-vaxxers and Trumpanistas all think they can outrun something they can’t even see.

As Donald Trump proved, no, ya can’t.

Donald Trump brought his Covid-19 infection upon himself. While he truly deserves whatever the pathogen does to him — having made himself (and so many other Americans) completely vulnerable to it — we need Trump to survive. We don’t need him to feel good at the end of the day, we just need him alive.

Donald Trump must absolutely face the music. He needs to be fully compis mentis while we fully investigate him (which we absolutely will), indict him (for ALL his crimes), try him, convict him, sentence him and punish him. Hell, I’d even vote for shocking the bastard back to life each time he flatlines. If we could keep Trump alive for a hundred years — just so we can keep him miserable and in prison — we should do it. It’s no less than he deserves.

According to one news source, Trump wondered aloud yesterday, Friday, before they transported him to Walter Reed if he was going to go out the same way his friend Stan Chera did — dying because of Covid-19. That’s not a guy experiencing “mild symptoms”.

That’s a man suddenly facing his own mortality.

Dear American News Media – Stop Acting Like The Dance Band On The Titanic

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

The Dance Band on the Titanic went down with the ship. America, like the Titanic, is sinking. The difference is we don’t have to. Our ship of state can still be saved.

America’s news media can’t be blamed for Donald Trump. Fred and Mary Trump deserve that credit (oh, that we could go back in time and tie Mary’s tubes while also delivering a good, swift kick to Fred’s family jewels). But Donald Trump’s resiliency — the fact that he’s still POTUS and not a federal prisoner — THAT falls almost entirely on the news media and their remarkable inability to convey the story in front of them. The story they themselves have reported.

As we stand here today, Donald Trump is the first person EVER to run for re-election as POTUS having been IMPEACHED — for cheating in the very election he’s running in.

That’s not a small thing. It’s a huge, HUGE thing. And yet, our news media never reminds its news audience that THAT is the context in which Donald Trump is running for re-election. He does it — overtly cheating — having already been impeached for cheating!

But, not just cheating — committing TREASON while cheating.

The news media — what else can we conclude? — has accepted and normalized not only cheating but treason. It’s now just another facet of “Trump’s a different kind of potus” — that toxic confection the news media keeps feeding itself to explain away Trump’s lawlessness. No, he’s not “different”, he’s a criminal. He’s always been a criminal — and it’s always been there for all to see because the news media itself reported on it!

Among the stories our news media can’t seem to 1) get straight or 2) comprehend is Christopher Steele and the dossier of raw intelligence he put together and then desperately tried to get into the right hands. As an example of what I’m talking about — if (as our news media does) you simply assume that Chris Steele’s dossier dropped from the sky by magic — it’s easy to dismiss. It could just as easily be the work product of a crank.

Except it’s not. If we trace the story back to how we GOT TO the Chris Steele part of the story, we suddenly discover not only that there IS a story but there’s a story that the news media has already reported on — and seemingly forgotten. As the 2016 Republican primaries got under way, every Republican who wasn’t Donald Trump hated and feared Donald Trump. That included Republicans who supported Jeb Bush’s campaign.

Among them was The Washington Free Beacon (financed by hedge fund magnate Paul Singer). They funded oppo research into multiple Republican candidates but their research on Trump proved the most compelling. The Beacon hired the firm Fusion GPS — a commercial research and strategic intelligence firm founded by two former Wall Street Journal reporters. One of them, Glenn Simpson, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on August 22, 2017. The committee — under Republican control, don’t forget — was attempting to undermine the Steele Dossier’s integrity by undermining the integrity of those who hired Steele.

Why was Chris Steele hired in the first place, the Committee wanted to know — assuming, I guess, that they could imply something nefarious where nothing nefarious existed? Simpson explained how, after Fusion was hired, they did their due diligence. They got their hands on every piece of PUBLICLY AVAILABLE material on Trump that they could — newspaper articles, magazine pieces, radio interviews, TV shows — everywhere Trump’s name appeared or was spoken. They went to Amazon and actual book stores. They combed the internet. They even went to the public library.

What Fusion found — in publicly available material that anyone (including the press) could just as easily have found — convinced them that Donald Trump was likely a criminal who laundered Russian mob money through his (now bankrupt) Atlantic City Casinos. They saw other possible connections between Donald Trump and Russia, too. They were so concerned, in fact, that they sub-contracted the research out to the Westerner with, perhaps, the connections inside Russia — former head of MI6’s Russia Desk Chris Steele.

Did you follow that, American News Media? Publicly available material suggesting Trump’s likely criminality is what motivated the Steele hire. That means anyone — any journalist — could have, at any time, have done what Fusion did: the due diligence.

By the time Fusion got to Chris Steele, the Free Beacon had stopped funding the work; Trump had become the presumptive nominee. Steele’s work was paid for by Marc Elias, the lawyer for the D.N.C. and Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign. That doesn’t in any way disqualify it. Steele — with his excellent connections inside Russia — had no idea who was underwriting his work product.

Ah, but Trump says… The Republicans say. It’s like reporting what the iceberg says. “Go ahead — hit me! I promise nothing bad will happen to ya…”.

The Titanic’s dance band was great at dying nobly. For the purposes of argument though, what if Sam, the band’s talented sax player, possessed knowledge that could have saved the ship? What if Sam — in a previous life — had worked in a shipyard, building ships and new of a way that might stem the flow of water into the six forward watertight compartments that the iceberg exposed. What if another of the band — Val, the Violinist — recognized that if he could get the passengers to rush to the back of the ship, it would aid Sam’s plan and, perhaps, save them all? And what if all the others in the band immediately pitched in to do whatever they could to help.

Our news media has knowledge that could save our ship of state from sinking. They know the iceberg we’ve hit — they’ve reported on it. They also know how the ship works. How its engines work. While, like with the Titanic, time is short, our news media can still stem the flow of water into our tanks. Or, in this case, the flow of bullshit, propaganda and disinformation.

For starters, the news media needs to stop running around the deck like Chicken Little. They need to see themselves as PASSENGERS on this vessel with a rooting interest in not sinking. They need to stop seeing this story from the iceberg’s point of view — or the ocean’s. They need to see it entirely from the passengers’ point of view — because that’s who’s going to suffer the consequences.

Donald Trump & the Republican Party are our democracy’s iceberg. In collusion with their Russian friend, they intend to sink us and raise a Jolly Roger over the remains. That isn’t crazed left wing lunacy. It’s all been reported by our press. You’d think our press wouldn’t be so reluctant to read their own stuff.

The journalism professor turned journalist Seth Abramson hasn’t done any original reporting. Rather, he’s aggregated all the reporting that’s been done — all in one place: his three Collusion books. The portrait Abramson’s work portrays is beyond devastating. Like Fusion GPS mining what every other journalist could mine, Abramson demonstrates how journalism is supposed to work. We already know an awful lot about how exactly Donald Trump became POTUS. We know how corrupt Trump is and how vulnerable to blackmail because of it. Our news media reported it.

Our news media can still save the day. All they have to do is adhere to a few basic principles while seeing themselves as citizen journalists instead of corporate journalists. They might as well since anyone who doesn’t go full corporate, access journalist if Trump “wins” (cheats to win actually — which is not the same thing as actually “winning”) is going to end up in a gulag. Here are a few actions they need to take —

  • Stop Normalizing Everything Trump Does. Mexicans still aren’t rapists (despite the news media’s apparently accepting it) and pussy-grabbing is absolutely not acceptable, no matter how rich you are.
  • Access Journalism is stone cold bullshit. Stop running for the next Judith A Miller ‘It’s All About Access” Award.
  • Listen to Maya Angelou’s wise words: when someone (like Donald Trump) tells you (repeatedly and ad nauseum) who they are? BELIEVE THEM!
  • Whatever you have to do to get it, GET SOME PERSPECTIVE!
  • Words matter. A lie is a lie. Call it what it is, not some euphemism. And trust that your audience is at least as adult as you are. Swear words aren’t nearly as offensive as corruption.
  • Both sides don’t do it. That’s you generalizing — and badly. John Q. Citizen under-reporting his taxes is not the same as Bernie Madoff though both are committing fraud. Proportion and scale matter. So does motive.
  • No one does anything “just because”.
  • When you repeat bullshit without saying it’s bullshit, you validate the bullshit. Once bullshit has credence, it doesn’t give it back.
  • Learn to aggregate. Storytelling builds one scene atop another, each scene (ideally) adding information to the information added in the previous scene. It’s monstrously stupid — and bad storytelling — to keep returning to square one, as if you don’t know the very things you’d already reported on.
  • Recognize your Constitutional obligation. Look, you chose journalism. You choose to pursue it, regardless of the myriad challenges and difficulties. Journalism is the one non-governmental job mentioned in the Constitution — as the final check on governmental power. Tasks don’t get more sacred than that. Take yours seriously FFS!

C’mon News Media — career-minded as you are, you still have souls (religious or otherwise). Most of you got into journalism because you wanted to change things. You wanted to tell truths that stopped villains, rewarded heroes and made the world a better place because of it.

Great! Live that ethos, News Media! Report it. Our ship’s going down with all hands on deck otherwise.

Mind you — we’ll be on deck listening to YOU play us out. Glug, glug, glug…

I Grew Up In The Shadow Of The Holocaust And I Feel That Shadow Growing

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

According to Donald Trump, “Jews” are a “nationality”. That’s not the first time a country’s leader has started down that road. Throughout most of Europe’s history, Jews were kept apart. In Venice, Italy, they put them on their own little islands and called that area — where the Jews lived — “ghetto”. That’s where the word comes from.

Historically, when people see Jews as a “nationality”, it doesn’t end well for us.

I was born in 1959, 14 years after the Nazi concentration camps were liberated then grew up in the 1960’s & 1970’s in a Jewish suburb of Baltimore. Pikesville was so predominantly Jewish that “clever people” called it “Kikesville” instead. My public high school was so predominantly Jewish that even the non-Jewish kids took the Jewish holidays off — cos they knew NOTHING was happening in school those days since 90% of the students would be gone.

You might think growing up in a place so culturally Jewish would shield one from the Holocaust’s awfulness. You might think such an awful memory — so close in our rear view mirror — would have horrified my community into a stone cold refusal to discuss it.

We went completely in the other direction. I wouldn’t say we “embraced” the Holocaust so much as we “owned it”. The end of WWII — the end of the Holocaust — didn’t end anti-Semitism the same way the Emancipation Proclamation didn’t actually end slavery.

As my community tends to do, we turned what happened to us into a teachable moment. There were some essential lessons still to be learned. There’s a famous photo of a group of Jews being rounded up in the Warsaw Ghetto by the occupying Nazis –

From the first time I saw the photo, I became that boy in the lower right. I bet a lot of Jews my age did.  We saw and felt that boy’s terror, his helplessness.  His confusion: how can they be doing this to you just because you were born Jewish?  You’ve done nothing wrong to anyone on the planet – yet the planet wants you dead. 

“Never Again” became as integral a part of my “religious education” as chanting the ‘Shema’.  The past hurt.  That was not going to be our future. 

In our guts, my community has always known this was lurking somewhere in the American Character. Turns out, the Nazis were admirers of how racists in America codified and amplified their racism. The Nazi’s method of industrialized murder found significant inspiration in America’s brand of Christo-fascism: slavery

You can’t cram peoples’ heads with tons of bullshit and not expect the bullshit to screw them up. Bullshit always screws people up – cos it’s bullshit. When you cram nonsensical, logic-free, hateful mythology into peoples’ heads, it screws them up. It’s worse when the logic-free, hateful mythology also runs counter to your religion’s core message (and its core messenger).

It sucks being despised because of a total fiction. It sucks worse being killed over it. But that’s what’s coming to America: death & destruction because bullshit.

In fact, “death & destruction because bullshit” is Trump’s entire re-election strategy.