Tag: Trumpism

Where Does Donald Trump Think This Is Going? That’s What I Want To Know…

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Thought experiment: you’re a Trump (chill — it gets easier after that). Yes, you’re a sociopath (so no worries about a guilty conscience) but you’re not entirely oblivious of reality. You see the walls closing in. You know the stone cold Truth of what you did and why: you’re a Trump.

You know who you compromised and how. You’re wily as hell. You’re a criminal. You’ve gotten away with being a criminal your whole goddamned life. Your whole family are criminals. It’s your brand.

You may not be the sharpest tack in the box (more like the dullest) but, to your credit, you’ve turned being a go-to money launderer for the Russian mob into a hail Mary shot at paying down every debt you have (and that’s a lot of goddamned debt). You’re the most successful schoolyard bully maybe of all time.

But even you know there are limits.

You know enough never to cross Vladimir Putin. Or Mohammed bin Salman. They’ve got receipts. Oh, boy, do they have receipts…

They say bark, bitch and you bark. You’re a Trump.

You know how the realpolitik is here because you’re sitting at the very middle of it all. You’re a lesser criminal playing with real criminals. You’re in waaaaaay over your bloated orange head. Your mental faculties, never great to begin with, are fading.

But — you’ve had an iron grip on this from the beginning. You have to sign off on everything — as always — even if you haven’t got a goddamned clue. You’re not just A Trump, You’re Donald Trump.

That’s the background.

Now the doors to the private residence close — you feel good that this time your private security detail (not those by-the-book Secret Service humps) swept it for mics and found everything that’d been planted. You can talk freely with those you trust: your blood.

You sit there — the Donald — surrounded by The Junior, The Feckless One, The Idiot (Eric) and My-Son-In-Law-The-Jew. In here, truth gets spoken. That doesn’t mean there aren’t lies and lying. That’s part of the Truth here. These are criminals in the midst of a vast criminal enterprise. Stock must be taken — especially now because the “Tower” is under heavy assault and it may not survive.

What does Donald say to them all — knowing what they know? He’s going to tell the boys he never stuck his dick in their sister? They know better. Donald knows they know better. You lie in THIS room at your peril (unless it’s “Oooh, daddy — you’re the best!”)

Then Donald, saying what he had to say, stops talking. The others start up. What do THEY say to each other?

What does one Trump tell another Trump if that other Trump is losing faith in the Big Scheme? Do the Trumps honestly believe this is survivable? Do they honestly think they can lie their way to safety as Washington’s professional diplomats come together to be the inside force that finally stops Trump’s presidency?

I really do want to know what Ivanka tells daddy about their collective future. Where does Ivanka think daddy’s grandchildren are going to grow up? Is Ivanka really feckless enough to not see how this ends for her? What goes through Eric’s mind, I wonder. Supposedly, Eric’s the least horrible of the bunch. He’s smarter than portrayed on SNL. As HE sees the walls closing in, does HE begin to think in terms of pure survival?

The Trumps didn’t commit one or two little crimes then land by all sorts of odd coincidence in the White House. The Trumps have committed treason.

To be fair, I’m sure “treason” never flashed before their eyes as they started down this road. Money flashed before their eyes. A Trump Tower Moscow which they coveted — that flashed before their eyes. Those things are what caused them to be traitors.

Whatever.

How, I truly wonder, do the Trumps think this psychotic side show on steroids will end? What’s their best case scenario?

Better yet — what’s their worst?

Tell me that story, daddy. I’m all ears…

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It ISN’T About Politics, Part II: Even For Republicans It Isn’t Always About Politics; Sometimes It’s About Criminal Conspiracy…

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Dear MSNBC, CNN & The Whole Rest of The MSM:

Yesterday I ranted at you for ascribing everything the Democrats do to “politics“. It’s not true. Some people, when they take an oath of office, actually take their oaths seriously. To assume everyone does what they do for political reasons is to assume every one of those sincere oath-keepers is full of shit.

No, it’s not true. Both sides do not regularly violate their oaths.

For 3+ years now, we have watched Donald Trump and every Republican in Congress violate their oaths of office. The deal is, you take the oath, you uphold the Constitution. You don’t do it selectively like you do with your religion. Your religion is entirely make-believe.

Our Constitution doesn’t work that way (though, to be fair, we did make it up; we invented the Constitution and we can change it as needed).

When Mitch McConnell announced that he wouldn’t give Merrick Garland so much as a hearing, that was 100% political. It had no basis in the Constitution. When Democrats objected to Brett Kavanaugh, there was ideology at play — absolutely. But Kavanaugh’s political affiliation isn’t what Democrats believe makes Kavanaugh unqualified. It’s his penchant for sexually assaulting women and lying about it.

That’s NOT a political disagreement, it’s a moral disagreement. It’s disagreeing with the idea that a man, reliably and consistently accused of serial sexual assault does not belong on the SCOTUS.

When Republicans stand with Trump in the face of blatant criminality — behaviors and actions so terrible that Republicans can’t even argue facts; they have to argue process — they’re not standing with him out of pure political tribalism. No, when Republicans stand with Donald Trump, there’s something OTHER than politics at play — there’s criminal complicity.

That’s the MSM’s giant, economy-sized blind spot. They’re determined to ascribe the GOP’s rabid defense of Trump as Republicans defending their standard-bearer. Well… kinda yes but mostly no — it’s worse. Donald Trump, though not a lifelong Republican (he may have registered as a Democrat but that was political expedience at play, not political ideology), epitomizes Republican “thinking”. It’s all pig at the trough all the time. It’s a cynical approach to the Constitution.

Violating it is a given. The trick is to insist, when caught violating it, that you were following the letter of the law (even as you were raping it).

Republican “thinking” (such as it is) rests on conservative values. Conservative values — as the name says — want to CONSERVE. But conserve WHAT, you may ask? Conserve the future? That’s a contradiction of terms.

Save the present? Okay, we can freeze right now in place. Why would we want to do that? Why are we freezing now and stopping the future from happening? Hmmmmm… is there something in the past that conservatives actually want to conserve?

Indeed there is — there’s something in the past conservatives want to conserve: THE PAST. Conservatives want to make the past our new present and our eternal future. It’s right there in their name. And the past American conservatives want to conserve is the past where THEY — white, Christian men — were the ones in full, unequivocal control. THAT is what conservatives — and therefore Republicans — want to CONSERVE.

So — normally, for Republicans, it IS always about politics and the Republicans’ need to control even how we talk about politics. “Both Sides Do It” journalism is pure Republicanism. They know they’re intentions are corrupt. If they can paint the opposition with the same brush — even if the opposition’s version of corruption is at a fraction of the scale — then “Both Sides Do It”.

Bernie Madoff’s a mega thief who stole billions. Jean Valjean stole bread because of hunger. To the conservative way of thinking, both men are thieves. Both Sides Do It.

Look at how the Republicans are trying to undermine the investigators of THEIR crimes — “It’s the investigators who are criminals! Both sides do it!” Republicans insist. Oh, the irony (both sides don’t do irony by the way).

Trump’s defense of Putin’s criminal behavior? We do it too — Both sides do it!

Quid pro quo? Both sides do it — get over it!

No — both sides DON’T do it and never did. Both sides do NOT commit TREASON to hold onto political power. Both sides do not stand with a man they KNOW FOR A FACT is a traitor.

Republicans do however. And, for once — it ain’t entirely political. In this instance — it’s because they’re CO-CONSPIRATORS. To a whole host of crimes including election fraud, obstruction of justice and treason.

I’ll say it one more time: It AIN’T about politics.

WE Alone Can Fix It

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

The Big Lie that helped bring us the Age Of Trump flows from that wellspring of bullshit — Libertarianism. “I alone can fix it” is laughably absurd.

But, as much as some of us roared the first time Donald Trump spewed those words, some in the crowd — their ears perked up. They, too, think they alone can fix it, having convinced themselves that Ayn Rand was a genius who saw the rugged individual inside of them that ached to be a Master of His Own Fate.

Ayn Rand died in poverty on the public dole. So much for rugged individualism and “I alone can fix it”. Those are literary conceits — and, in the hands of Ayn Rand, horribly written literary conceits on top of it. I bet she even sucked as a typist.

As we all know about Trump, he couldn’t even “fix” his own election alone. Russia did that for him.

If the Democrats really want to draw a clear distinction between their message and the GOP’s (not that there’s any similarity between the two), they could focus in on the nonsensical Republican belief that “I alone can fix it”. What pretty much every single Democrat is already touting, the Democratic message is “WE alone can fix it”.

If I were running for office — that’s how I’d explain what needs to happen. For starters, we need to stop seeing a president as a fix-all. Great leaders — not fixing anything alone — know how to get the best from everyone around them. Great leaders don’t pilfer from the people supporting them (claiming credit for their ideas), they embrace the ideas — not just giving credit but demonstrating how the more ideas we get from more places, the better and more inclusive our problem-solving will be.

This is a rare moment in modern American history. For all the pride Americans take in the benefits of citizenship, too few accept the responsibilities that also come with being an American especially the responsibility to vote. Suddenly Americans want to vote. Suddenly Americans feel the tug of responsibility.

If the trend lines started in 2018 continue, the American electorate is pretty much woke. We’re paying attention as never before.

Americans, being Americans (with a very short attention span), this won’t last. We’re racing toward a resolution of Trumpism. Too many people who know the Truth are stepping forward now. 2020 will absolutely be a referendum on Trumpism — and it will be turned out utterly and completely. But, in the moments just before Americans revert back to deep-seated apathy, we can change how they think about being an American.

I would tell my fellow Americans that their being “woke” is essential to our health as a republic. Before they revert though, they need to pay attention for a little while longer. How we resolve Trumpism — how we go forward — how we think of “us” — how we think of The Rule Of Law — how we think of the taxes we pay and what we expect that money to do FOR US (not in spite of us) — all of these things need to be on the table.

Especially the last thing — how we pay for fixing us.

Americans view paying taxes the way they view death. A terrible, terrible inevitability. We believe our tax dollars buy us nothing except an army and a lot of useless bureaucrats.

I would attack that idea first. I would remind every American that we are the greatest experiment ever in human SELF-GOVERNMENT. We do this. WE.

If every tax-paying American were given a statement that showed where every penny of their tax dollars went — including things useless and things useful — they might not be happy (not at first), but they’d start to feel a little more in control. At least they’d understand their relationship to the government in practical, day-to-day terms they could actually relate to.

It’s a thought anyway.

America’s motto is not “I alone can fix it”. It’s E Pluribus Unum. From many, one.

That’s our strength. It’s our saving grace, too.

The Trump Presidency Is A Clinic On WHY We ALL Should Want To Live Bullshit Free

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Donald Trump and his presidency have unleashed a golden age of bullshit upon the land.

We know for a fact that if Donald Trump — or anyone supporting him — opens their mouth, what follows will almost certainly be a total lie. After 3+ years of living inside this nonstop maelstrom of nonsense and fuckery, you can feel our collective weariness just by walking outside your front door.

We felt it the night Trump “won”. We knew we’d crossed over from the reality we’d all lived in — and taken for granted — to a whole new space where not being able to discern bullshit from reality was the point of the exercise. Look at how long it’s taken the MSM — who spend their lives to digging for the truth (in theory) — to even realize that maybe the reason Trump is so chummy with Vladimir Putin is because Putin owns Trump.

Our MSM still hasn’t gone all the way to that realization — but they can see it from their houses. That’s a huge improvement.

We all endure and even tolerate staggering amounts of bullshit in our lives. Never mind other peoples’ bullshit — if we all looked squarely at our own and nothing but, we’d have plenty of work ahead of us — if we wanted to live bullshit free.

The 4 Levels Of Bullshit

Level 1: Incidental Bullshit

  • Your 5 year old asks if there’s Santa Claus; you say yes.
  • It’s 6 am.  You have to get up.  You don’t want to.  “Five more minutes,” you tell yourself – you won’t be late.  Bullshit – you know damned well you’ll be late.  You do it anyway.
  • “One more spoonful of ice cream won’t matter to my diet/diabetes.”
  • “Why did you look at me funny when I took one more spoonful of ice cream?”
  •  “Have a nice day” (no matter who says it, no matter why).

Incidental Bullshit is water off a duck’s back.  Life’s just too short to get too hung up on this kind of low grade truthiness.  It’s petty mostly.  Meaningless and forgettable.  However:  This is the ‘shit’ that ‘happens’.  It just does.  What are any of us going to do about it?  Nothing.  Moving on…

Level 2: Tolerable Bullshit

  • Your 10 year old – who’s starting to figure things out – asks if there’s a Santa Claus; you say yes.
  • Your bff always brings a bottle of red wine when she comes over – except you drink white wine.  What kind of guest is that?  You could say something, but you don’t; you’ll keep the peace instead.
  • You both know damned well whose turn it is to clean the bathroom – but you do it better anyway, so…
  •  “I love you” said under duress.

Tolerable Bullshit will challenge you occasionally – is it actually tolerable?  Small doses – no problem.  More than that?   It could easily start to feel just like bullshit.

Level 3: Red Flag Warning Bullshit

  • Your 20 year old asks – for real – if there’s a Santa Claus.
  • “I don’t have a drinking problem.”
  • “My phone’s battery died.  No, really – I swear it!”

You know it in your gut – it ain’t right.  It doesn’t add up or it just plain smells.  This is the bullshit that leaves a mark – or worse.  Deal with it now – you’ll probably be okay.  Ignore the warning and this bullshit will likely morph into –

Level 4: Utter Bullshit

  • “I alone can fix it.”
  • “No collusion.”
  •  “I don’t deserve to be here”

This is the stuff that kills.  It changes lives forever.  And it’s bullshit.

My worst example of utter bullshit was believing it was my fault that I was sexually molested when I was 14. I kept that secret for 45 years — denying it even as it ate at my insides every day. That secret — and even keeping it was bullshit — came within literal inches of killing me.

My bullshit became so convincing that I honestly thought no one would care if I died — that the insurance money would eventually assuage my family’s deep psychic would. Talk about utter bullshit.

We live in an atmosphere that’s equally toxic. We have grown adults refusing to acknowledge what more and more Americans understand is horrifyingly true — that Russia has taken over this country. Evidence of treason and obstruction of justice and election fraud and treason ffs mounts every day. It is bullshit on steroids to deny what mountains of evidence make damningly clear.

Who the hell wants to live like this?

Except a Trumpian, I mean…

Don’t Blame Conservatives For Being Troglodytes – Fear Of The New Is Hard-Wired Into Them

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

It’s not a mystery what any self-proclaimed “conservative” wants.  As their name says, they want to “conserve”.  The question – what do they want to conserve?

You can take “the future” right off the table.  You can’t conserve what doesn’t exist. 

Not only do Conservatives not want to “conserve” the future, they’d like to avoid it altogether if they can.  They don’t want to know about it and they don’t want to think about it.  They definitely don’t want to prepare themselves for it – because then they’d have to think about it.  And if they had to think about the future, they’d have to change.

And THAT ain’t happening.

Progressives – for comparison’s sake – want to “progress” – just as their name says.  Considering as you can’t “progress” into the past (that would be “regress), Progressives not only think about the future, they actively pursue strategies to deal with it.  But, I digress…

Conservatives have no interest in the future.  Their interest in the present is as a bulwark against the future.  Whatever change has already occurred – their first choice is to roll it back if they can.  If circumstances make that too complicated, conservatives are willing to cut their losses and move on.  But wherever progress has made inroads, conservatives see a long-term project.  Whether it’s abortion, immigration or LGBTQ rights, though conservatives may act as if they’ve accepted reality, they will continue to plot against it. 

So – if Conservatives can’t conserve the future and grudgingly conserve the present, that must mean what they REALLY want to “conserve” is THE PAST.

And THAT is the crux of the matter.  What Conservatives want to conserve is what was.  Not necessarily what REALLY was, but how they imagine “it was”.  Keep in mind – these are all White, Christian Men (mostly) that we’re talking about.  The “then” they so desperately want to conserve is a “then” where THEY had all the power & money.  The “then” Conservatives want to conserve is a time when THEY had total cultural and political hegemony.

The 1950’s were nicer and all but the time frame American Conservatives really have in mind is the 1850’s – antebellum America when everyone not European White knew their place.

If you sat most American Conservatives down on Tara’s front porch, had Prissy fanning the sweat from their brow while Mammy put a cool mint julep in their hand, those Conservatives would feel right at home.  They’d wonder why anyone would want to change this.  And then they’d put their feet up.

Unchallenged Lies Become Truth – That’s Why EVERY TRUMPIAN LIE Has To be Called Out

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

No revelation here: It is way, WAY easier to sell Americans bullshit than it is to take that bullshit away from them once they’ve acquired a taste for it.

H L Mencken got it right: no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence or taste of the American public. Maybe our problem is Americans (conservative ones especially) have a religious bent that distorts their thinking right out of the gate.

For reference’s sake, consider how insidious religion is – and how (and when) the religious begin shoving their religion down young throats and into young minds. The point of the exercise is to undermine any capacity for analytical thought.  Accept what we tell you as truth.  Nothing else matters.

Did a sky god really have unprotected sex with a teenage human virgin to produce a hybrid man-god put here to die for human sins tracing back to a supposed first woman who ate a piece of forbidden fruit at the behest of a talking snake?  That’s a soupcon of the bullshit you have to accept to be a fully practicing Christian (in the eyes of fully practicing Christians).  Proof that you’re “faithful” is that you will willingly spit all this nonsense back as required – and then insist that you use it every day as the basis for ALL your “thinking”.

There are people among us who start their day accepting that great buckets of bullshit are true – and then they start making decisions based on it.  It’s not unlike being captain of the Titanic, seeing that you’ve hit an iceberg, but pressing on nonetheless for New York as if nothing had happened. Most bullshit is denial of what is.

These people accept lies as truth – as their starting point.

Selling more lies to people happy to buy lies is easy.  That is what Donald Trump & the Republican Party is really good at.  They know their base are rabid Magical Thinkers to whom Trump is a business genius simply because he says he is – and the word of a liar is good enough for them. 

We (our Main Stream News Media) began to normalize Trumpian bullshit in earnest the instant they stopped challenging Trump on his “Mexicans are rapists” pronouncement.  The instant that stopped, Trump succeeded in normalizing his racism.  “Mexicans are rapists” was no longer cause for his campaign to end.  Racism was now “just how Trump is”.

There is no safe amount of bullshit.  All bullshit has the potential to kill you – even the incidental bullshit we all live with every day (“Five more minutes of sleep won’t make me that late…”) can build up like plaque in a vein.

And just like plaque in a vein, that first bad cholesterol lipid that sticks to the vein wall is a problem – because a second bad cholesterol lipid will stick easily to the first lipid.  Blockage – and potential death –  is just a matter of time and more lipids.

Never mind the exhaustion.  Either we fight back or we start looking over out shoulders.  The end could come at any moment otherwise.  And that end does not have to be.

That end cannot be.  Let’s start fighting back one lie at a time. Let’s start by calling them all out – screw anyone who has a problem with it.  They’re gulag bound anyway.

Dear Stephanie Ruhl: FFS, Hon – Stop Giving Our Lying Scumbag POTUS The Benefit Of The Doubt!

~ A L Katz ~ Leave a comment

Hey, Steph – sorry to call you out like this but today you said & something so egregious that it demanded comment.  Frankly, this applies to lots of your fellow journalists; they need to listen up, too.

You’re a talented financial journalist, Stephanie.  Your bona fides there are top notch.  But when you wade into politics, you lose your way.

You say things that betray a troubling lack of perspective.  You seem to believe that in politics “both sides do it”.  Oy.

In a discussion this morning on your air with Rick Stengel re the implications of Trump’s extortionate actions toward the Ukraine, you stopped Rick mid-sentence to ask: “But, wasn’t Trump elected to let Trump be Trump?”  Oy again.  Do you not see the inherent problems in that question – hell, do you not see the inherent problems in that way of THINKING?

First of all – it dives right into the false narrative that Trump is the legitimate president who was legitimately voted into office in a free and fair election completely untouched by Russian influences (or the influence of other countries like Saudi Arabia and Israel).  It ignores the whole context in which election 2016 took place – a context we now know was steeped in Russian money and propaganda all designed to make Donald Trump president despite what the American People wanted.

The Mueller Report was NOT the uber-document on Trumpian corruption and treason.  It’s scope was limited from the get-go – except for the counter-intelligence part of the investigation (which started the whole thing).  Even so, the Mueller Report doesn’t say there “was no proof” that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia regarding Wikileaks, it said there was insufficient proof to convict (a different benchmark entirely) but that the investigators could not complete their investigation because of all the Obstruction Of Justice.

The Report suggested that the Congress remove Trump from office via impeachment so that he could be prosecuted for all the crimes he’d clearly committed.  Remember all those other criminal matters that got spun off?  Some of them are still percolating – the ones, that is, that Bill Barr didn’t squash.

Bill Barr is another apparent blind spot for you, Steph’.  You report on activities that CLEARLY indicate profound corruption in every which way.  You even speak that word yourself.  And yet – each time Barr or anyone else in the Trump White House pushes further into uncharted corrupt waters, your first impulse – even as you point to its outrageousness – is to accept it as the new normal.

Why do you persist in doing that?  Oh, right… because both sides do it.

No, love, they don’t. 

You pointed out a few minutes later to Rick Stengle that most Americans don’t know everything Rick Stengle knows.  You allowed that when Trumps base (with whom you are obsessed) hear Trump get up at the United Nations and lie about how America is burdened by having to pay for the bulk of defending the Ukraine from Russia – they’re gonna think, “Yeah – I agree!”

And then you said this:  “How are they supposed to know the truth?”

FFS, Steph – that’s where YOU come in, don’t you get it?  That’s where YOU – as the Fourth Estate, charged in the Constitution with being the final check on power – are supposed to step forward SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER]

You however insist on giving Power the Benefit Of The Doubt instead.  And therein lies your problem and consequently OUR problem.

Why would you give a liar the benefit of the doubt that he might not be lying this time?  Wouldn’t a more skeptical “journalistic” approach be to assume he might be lying – and demand he back up everything he says until he becomes trustworthy?

Would you, Stephanie, a talented financial journalist give the benefit of the doubt to a financial criminal who you see right through?  Would it not offend you – knowing the absolute truths you know – to give such a fraud “the benefit of the doubt” you KNOW he does not deserve?

Wouldn’t your time on air be better spent reporting on the evidentiary case against him?  What good can come of air time spent framing the story from a lying, corrupt point of view – as if it was valid?  That’s what giving the benefit of the doubt does – it validates because it asks “Okay, but what if this utter bullshit were true?”

It’s not true.  It was never true and never will be true.  It’s like taking flat earthers seriously.  But worse.

It is absurd that even as Donald Trump tries to commit the same crime in 2019 and 2020 that he committed in 2015 and 2016, the bulk of our press still doesn’t get it.  They see the far flung pieces of Trumpian corruption but refuse to connect the dots.

Please try to grasp this concept, Stephanie (it could, some day, make you as good a political reporter as you are a financial reporter): a crime committed right in your face is still a crime.

Stop giving it the benefit of the doubt. Please?

Thanks,

Signed: A Wanna-Be-Loyal Audience Member