Random Political Thoughts Part 11

Corporations don’t want to do away with government, they want to BE the government.

At least Romans didn’t actually vote for Nero.

If capitalists are so smart and government so inefficient, why do the capitalists keep loaning governments money? And if capitalists are smart and politicians incompetent, why do the capitalists pay the politicians so much money to work for them after they leave government?

They say the first million is the hardest, which means our last three Republican presidents never did any hard work.

Why does climate change denial exist? Because Republicans will never admit Democrats got something right.

We don’t find the truth because we are not looking for it. We live in a post-truth world. Democrats do not look for truth but only see the lies of the Republicans and vice versa. What we need to start seeing is the truth in others and ourselves. What we need to stop looking for is what divides us.

What makes people more upset than waking up to find reports of fifty people shot dead by a lunatic? The suggestion that some restrictions on guns should result from it.

If you accept dishonesty in yourself you accept it in you politicians. By demanding better of yourself you will in turn demand better of those who represent you.

There are basic values and principles underlying all human interactions, even in the political sphere. There are laws of conduct to adhere to even when confronting your greatest fears. Honesty and integrity can and should be appreciated even in those who hold beliefs different than our own. And honesty and integrity should be demanded of those who agree with us as well. We need to stick to issues rather than insults, and we must not judge the many by the actions of a few.

Redistribute the power and you won’t have to worry about redistributing the wealth. Once you give each man, not each dollar, an equal say, wealth will flow naturally to those who earn it as well as those who need it.

If politicians know nothing about how business is run, how come they’re offered seven figure salaries after leaving office and six figure speaking fees in front of corporate execs? I’d rather have a career politician than one who uses his time in office as a launching pad for his corporate payoff.

The problem with handing out trophies to children for participation is that you end up with adults who think they can argue global warming with atmospheric scientists.

There are a lot of bad people trying to mess with our minds. They want you to hate because they want to divide and conquer. They want to confuse you with misinformation so that in the end you feel hopeless and powerless, and afraid. They are bigger, smarter, better equipped and better funded than any group you belong to. It’s no good trying to outsmart them. There is only one thing we can do to thwart their plans. We can refuse to hate. We can refuse to play the game they want us to play. Our one weapon is love, the only thing within our possession that can overcome the hopelessness, powerlessness, and fear.

I don’t think it is a good idea to permit the people who own our government’s debt to own the lawmakers who are responsible for that debt. Any banker or mobster is eager to get others in their debt. Debt it too freely given. It was encouraged as a way to extend the lifestyle that normal circumstances wouldn’t have allowed. The fact that the working class does not have enough buying power to buy back what they produced led to a need to give them loans to keep the system going. But that only delays a problem that will only get worse the longer it goes on. In the meantime, the system we created (or was foisted upon us) permits morons to drive care the wise would never think they could afford. But when the moron’s time runs out, it be the frugal person who did without that will be stuck with the bill.

If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing. If you have no one nice to vote for, don’t vote.

A civilization falls when its citizens mutually agree to abandon responsibility.

If you cannot find a politician of integrity, intelligence and common decency to represent your values, perhaps it is time to seriously question your values.

Random Political Thoughts Part 10: The All Russian Hacking Edition

1. Remember how Russia was definitely hacking France’s election and then the whole story was disproven and forgotten once the U.S.’s chosen candidate won? That’s what would have happened here if Hillary would have won.


2. If the history books are written, they will say the 21st Century was home to two of the greatest episodes of mass delusion humanity has ever known: believing that global warming is a hoax and believing that Russian hacking was real. I say “if” history is written, because either of these mass delusions are capable of ending human existence on Earth.


3.You’d think with the sanctions against Russia President Trump signed into law that Putin would have released those pee-tapes by now.


4. The story goes that Vladimir Putin is blackmailing Donald Trump with video of Trump engaged in twisted sex acts with Russian Prostitutes. As if Trump could ever be shamed or his supporters ever love him any less.





5.Try this experiment: Turn on MSNBC, and every time they use the words Russia or Russian, change the words to Jews. This will give you some appreciation of what it was like to live in Nazi Germany.


6. Within the Russian hacking narrative are just enough absurdities to make conservatives believe liberals are out of their minds. I can’t help thinking the Reality Winner and the Pokemon Go stories were added as an inside joke by the deep state. Or more likely, as a means of driving a wedge still further between the two sides in the never ending game of divide and conquer.


7.What do Trump and Hitler have in common? Neither is a puppet of Russia.


8. Their chosen candidate defeated, Democrats have made good on their promise to leave the country and have moved to Fantasy Island, where nothing is ever their fault because Putin did it.


9. I hear Milton-Bradley is coming out with a board game called Clutin. It’s like Clue, where you have to guess the murder weapon and where the crime was committed, but Putin is the only suspect.


10. I won’t believe your allegations until they are corroborated by unnamed sources.





11. Putin: because it was hard to use ISIS as an excuse for our out of control military budget when we’re arming them.


12. BREAKING STORY: Kevin Bacon tied to Russian hacking.


13. American oligarchs are accusing Russian oligarchs of influencing our election. That’s like Al Capone accusing Bugs Moran of muscling in on his turf.

14. I do not blame liberals for hurting after their defeat but I do blame them for their willingness to abandon reason and morality in order to make the pain go away.


15. The day the Washington Post accuses Russia of a crime that has actually been committed—take for example, their shitty reporting—is the day I give them credence.


16. America likes Russians like it likes blacks: self-effacing, stereotyped, stupid, or dead. If we had our choice, Yakov Smirnoff would be Russia’s president. (Perhaps Yakov Smirnoff is not dead, but I’m pretty sure there hasn’t been a sighting outside of Branson in twenty years.)


17. If one of your Clinton supporting friends starts going on about Russian hacking, it is best to insert your wallet in their mouth so that they do not bite off their tongue while having their fit.


18. Just to be clear on matters as they now stand: if you look at puppy pictures you are betraying your country. Cat pictures are still okay for the moment. Stay tuned to MSNBC for further updates.


19. The reporting done on the Russian hacking story has led me to a deeper appreciation of the journalistic skills of Hedda Hopper and Rona Barrett.


20. We have reached a point where we trust those secret agencies—that sold weapons to Iran secretly and then used the profits of those weapons sales to import drugs into the inner cities, the profits from those drug sales going to buy weapons for terrorists in Nicaragua—more than we trust the people who exposed their crimes. This is not hyperbole. If anyone wishes to argue the specifics, I’d be more than willing to do so. And this is just one instance of what our intelligence agencies do on a regular basis. And yet so many of us swallow the Russian hacking narrative sold by unnamed sources despite the warnings of the very man who exposed the Iran-Contra story.


21. The presumption, unproven by the way, is that Russia engaged in the same kind of behavior as every other nation in the world. No evidence points beyond that and yet we have Morgan Freeman saying we are at war with Russia. The U.S. tapped Angela Merkel’s phone, and she’s an ally so you know we’re doing way worse to our non-allies. Did German directors make clips saying they were at war with the U.S.?


22. Not a word from Morgan Freeman about paper ballots, not a word about voter ID, not a word about black voters being scrubbed from the voter rolls. Instead, he says “We are at war”. And should we go to war with Russia, should we survive victorious with a habitable planet, will you then say something about gerrymandering, voter suppression, and campaign finance reform, Mr. Freeman? Because you have been silent so far.


23. It seems our propaganda machines have done too good a job. We’ve managed to stage uprisings in other countries while keeping our own populace ignorant and indifferent. Now that our intelligence agencies seek to stir its own citizens for an uprising in our own nation, they find it impossible to rouse us from the torpor they have lulled us into.


24. If you have heard a political idea mentioned so many times you accept it as inarguable fact and yet cannot say who formulated the idea, it is likely the product of some propaganda machine.


25. If two years ago you would have told me the Russians helped Donald Trump become president by using Pokemon Go to influence voters, I would have told you you were crazy. I'd say the same today, but I would have said it two years ago, too.


26. Remember, the President does not have the power to declare war, only Morgan Freeman can do that.

Random Political Thoughts Part 9

Good news Republicans: you don’t have to like Al Gore to accept the reality of climate change.

I think it's time we accept the fact the media has a profound mental illness and stop trying to react to the narrative it spins.

You’re a cry baby when you protest statues that glorify those who oppressed your ancestors, but you’re a patriot if you cry about those statues being taken down.

Once we realize that communication is not combat but the sharing of opinions and perceptions, we will all be happier and together make a better future. Your opinion, everyone’s opinion, matters. You don’t have to dominate, just speak your mind respectfully and listen openly.

I would go so far as to say capitalism is a religion, but I’m afraid capitalists would latch onto the idea and demand tax exemption.

Let me explain it to you in a way you might understand: I consider Muslims my neighbors and friends, but I do not wish to live under Sharia law. Similarly, I consider most capitalists I know to be good people, and yet I do not want my entire society to function according to the laws they dictate.

There are some who claim that Donald Trump has killed truth, but the fact is its lifeless body was already cold by the time he arrived on the scene. It had been beaten senseless by claims of Weapons of Mass Destruction, had countless stab wounds by phrases such as No Fly Zone, collateral damage, and preventive war. Media consolidation and the repeal of the fairness doctrine dug the hole for its burial and for-profit media filled in the grave.

No, what Donald Trump has done to make many so angry is not kill the truth, but burst the fragile bubble of illusion we were in that permitted us to go about our business and avoid confronting the lies we were being told.

If you have heard a political idea mentioned so many times you accept it as inarguable fact and yet cannot say who formulated the idea, it is likely the product of some propaganda machine.

I have worked in an office and I have worked in a union factory, and I have noticed in a union shop I never felt compelled to laugh at a joke my boss made if it wasn’t funny.

Dictatorial nations censor the press, capitalist nations bog it down with so many commercials and fluff that you’ll never even notice when the actual important information is slipped by you. And censoring, they do that too.

A problem with the consumer society we are living in is that it gives people what they want, not what they need. The very glut of available wants to be satisfied distracts us from our needs. It gives us sugar water instead of water. It gives us “grandma’s recipe” cookies instead of grandma’s cookies, which grandma works overtime to pay for but does not have time to bake.

A question for proponents of small government: if a child grows up thinking society doesn’t care about him, what makes you think he will care about society?

Telling people not to go to non-mainstream media sources is the same as telling them not to eat at non-chain restaurants or buy food from local farmers. 

We are no longer a nation capable of waging wars for victory but only for profit. Victory is unacceptable because that would mean an end to the gravy train. We no longer have any desire to rehabilitate criminals because they would leave the prison industrial complex that is a money-making machine. We no longer seek to cure the sick but rather introduce new patients into the system by inventing new illnesses  and producing new drugs to help manage them.

The Democratic Party is like an aged whore who thinks she needs nothing more than a little makeup to get voters to pledge their faithfulness, but it is merely a delusion brought on by the advanced symptoms of venereal disease.

If a person does not quote often from the sources that inspired deep thought within him, then there are no deep thoughts to be found within such a person.

A nation not open to debate is a doomed nation.

Is it going too far to suggest that those who own our nation’s debt should not also own the lawmakers who are responsible for that debt?

A nation that uses violence to suppress the rights of people in other nations will inevitably do the same within its own borders.

Mainstream Media's Love/Hate Relationship With Donald Trump

It’s funny how those who don’t believe a word the mainstream media says are so influenced by it. They believe the media is biased against Donald Trump while seeming to forget it was this same media that for decades helped make Trump the celebrity he is.

Let’s start back in the early 80’s and the amazing success of Donald Trump’s book, The Art Of The Deal. It was one of the bestselling books of the decade. Books don’t become bestsellers without the help of the media, especially ones that are ghost-written. Random House invested heavily in it, using its connections to get Donald Trump on all the TV talk shows. Donald Trump became a celebrity and the media sold his story.

Because that’s the narrative the media sells us: a celebration of the wealthy and the American Dream that we could all succeed if we were just smart enough (like, presumably, Donald Trump) and hard-working enough (again, presumably like Donald Trump). You have to have the guts to think big, too. Thinking big is in the end what separates the winners from the losers.

The implied but unspoken shadow of the narrative of the winner who thinks big, of course, is that the rest of us are losers who think small. Those of us who sacrificed wealth for other pursuits, well, we were not the story the media was interested in advancing. The cop who protects his community, the fireman or the nurse who saves lives, the average person working hard doing jobs that needed doing, the mother staying home to raise her children—that wasn’t what the 80’s were about. The 80’s were all about Alex P. Keaton, the Yuppies that were transforming our world, and the do-it-all moms. You were nothing unless you were busily climbing that ladder of success, sacrificing all lesser aspirations upon the altar of wealth.

And so it has remained to this day. Professionals are no longer judged by their talents or their accomplishments but by their wealth. People are no longer appreciated for what they contribute to society but by what they can extract from it. Donald Trump has created casinos and luxury hotels, hardly the things that made or will make America great. They in fact contribute nothing to the common man, but as noted before, the common man no longer counts. At least not with the mainstream media.

The common man is the person who gets voted off of Survivor. The media now celebrates the snake who looks out for himself over the person capable of building a fire, finding food, or helping people live in harmony. The media is busy selling a narrative of a dog eat dog world where we all have to be ruthless and relentless to not only triumph but merely survive. And Donald Trump has long been their poster boy, even if they had to fudge the narrative a little and make him appear more than he truly is.

Which is why they gave him his own “reality” TV show, The Apprentice. There he could be himself and advance the idea that everyone needs to be in competition with one another, the stakes being all or nothing. It is a story repeated throughout the new breed of competitive shows. No longer do we watch singers perform on television merely for the performance, we now need to watch them compete against each other on American Idol. Gone are the days of Julia Childs and her cooking show. The knives are out as chefs compete in a game exhibiting sadistic behavior in Gordon Ramsay Hell’s Kitchen. The boss gets to berate the people who work for him, it’s part of the fun of the show and one of the perks of being a winner and not a loser. The boss is always a winner, the rest fight among themselves to see who will be the one non-loser.

People no longer have appreciation for the art of dance. Those who work all their lives to reach physical perfection are not spotlighted. Instead we watch celebrities compete against each other in Dancing With The Stars. People are not given stories of romance and love, instead they are force-fed The Bachelor, wherein marriage is not a sacred contract but just another competition reflecting the values mainstream media exists to propagate: capitalism and survival of the fittest.

That’s what makes sports so elevated in our country, the fact that it is all about the competition, all about the fact that there are winners and losers. We are being taught that nothing matters if no one wins and no one loses.

I turn on the History Channel and I see Pawn Stars, where owners of a pawn shop compete with people coming in to sell historical items of some worth. It’s not really a competition, since the owners of the store always end up on top. It is, however, the lesson the media wishes to perpetuate: that it is our duty to get the best of our fellow man.

You see, it’s the MSM that made you like Donald Trump in the first place. You have come to accept cruelty, underhandedness and lack of cooperation as being a sign of the successful human being. This is what the media’s been selling and this is why you like Donald Trump so much. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that those who watch mainstream TV most like Donald Trump best.

The mainstream media has been shaping the way you see the world all along and you don’t even realize it. Most of the values you possess are because of the mainstream media. Ordinary people don’t support a person like Donald Trump otherwise.

But the mainstream media who loved Donald Trump the capitalist has turned against Donald Trump the politician and you have sided on the media’s creation rather than the creator. You see and sense the nastiness and propaganda involved in the media. It is unmistakable to anyone actually willing to think about it rather than simply be controlled by it.

It is useful to note that in refuting the mainstream media you are still clinging to its value system it has instilled in you. With that in mind, let us look into the reasons behind the media turning on Trump the way it has.

One reason is that he was the only presidential candidate other than Rand Paul to say the U.S. should not be involved in nation-building. He opposed our involvement in Syria and suggested there was no reason to view Russia as an enemy. That was a big no-no.

The MSM has always supported the Military Industrial Complex and such a message was counter to the narrative that is their mission to spread. Hell, when they aren’t running their advertisements (Northrop Grumman) interviewing their experts, allowing PSYOPS to work for them, then they are owned by a military contractor (NBC).

But while the MSM’s allegiance to the MIC is an incredibly important reason for them to oppose President Trump, it is a problem that can be worked out. Those who supported a non-interventionist position in Trump’s circle have been weeded out and replaced with generals and neo-cons. Trump has been hamstrung by a Russian hacking story that’s been playing non-stop for over a year and the only time he can get the media on his side is to bomb another country, at which point the media drools in ecstasy at his presidential moment.

So if it is not Trump’s isolationist stance that turned the media against him, then what was it? Perhaps it is because he has ripped the mask from the entire narrative they’ve been selling for decades now. The story has always been that while the road to success was rough, it was a game with fair rules that ultimately rewarded the most worthy recipients. The story was that above us ruled men and women who knew better than us and were morally respectable people despite whatever flaws might arise from time to time.

Trump stripped away the illusion that not only are the rich of the world laughably unsuitable to govern us, they are not even better human beings than us. Trump served the media’s purpose as a businessman/celebrity, but the sight of politician Trump was just too jarring, the contradictions between reality and the fantasy they had to spin too great to be reconciled. So they had to turn against Trump in order to preserve the image of our nation and economic system they’ve worked so hard to maintain.

Trump’s election also removed the last delusions the MSM clung to that politicians were anything more than the servants of the incredibly rich and powerful. Trump was now the face of America’s politics, and, while true, it was an idea too horrible for the media to allow. All the makeup, special effects, and CGI in the possession of the media could no longer hide the truth of what our nation had become.

You see, as much as the media loves to sell dog-eat-dog capitalism, it also realizes it must maintain a feeling of shared purpose, at least when it comes to promoting war. It’s had this difficult and contradicting story it had to sell, that we were each of us in it for ourselves and at the same time all needed to band together under the flag and violence that united us all as Americans. The stories were two completely different ones which were never to intersect. And then all of the sudden Trump jumps out of his adventure story of raw capitalism and jumps into the fairy tale story of pure politics. The gears did not mesh, it was as if anti-matter was introduced to matter. It blew both narratives to hell.

If only Trump had been black, or a woman, or a little bit more reserved in his speech. The media could have worked with that. But the truth goes against everything the mainstream media exists to promote. They have to close the curtain so the people can once again believe in the mighty Wizard of Oz, have to put the mask back on The Phantom Of The Opera so we can forget the ugly truth.

But it doesn’t work that way. What has been seen cannot be unseen. As much as the media wants to blame Russia for what has happened, it is the media itself that is being revealed. Eventually, even the Trump supporters will realize the media narrative they’ve been living with their entire lives has been a lie. Trump’s failure, inevitable and ugly, will show Americans the lies of the mainstream media. The orange genie is out of the bottle now, and there is no getting him back. Even football, the great distractor of the masses, is no longer effective for shutting out the truth. Surely that was the media’s Maginot Line.

The Monkey Is On You

When all the rationalization has died down, when the alleged importance of Benghazi and death panels have been forgotten about, one truth will remain to haunt you: you have voted for a monkey. When Hillary has received her just desserts, either in this life or the next, there will still be the undeniable evidence of what you have done.

You cannot evade responsibility for this, it is on your shoulders. Sure, you hated Hillary, you hate the corrupt government we have had for many decades. You hated the trade deals that sent jobs to other countries and left large factories abandoned and cities gutted of their economic hearts. You witnessed wars that were supported by both parties that did no American any good, and you have seen our society’s morals disintegrate.

You have seen everything your father, grandfather, and great grandfather fought for trampled underfoot by forces that have no interest in you or the things you valued, and so you decided to do something—anything—in order to shake things up. The problem is you did not react in a mature fashion, you reacted like a six-year old throwing a tantrum. And you justified it because there were a lot of others doing the same. It felt good to be in with a group of children who were throwing their food around the lunchroom, not caring about the poorly-paid lunch ladies who would have to pick up after you.

You cannot say this was a rational decision based on the long-term interests of not just your segment of society but of Americans as a whole. You know deep in your hearts and cannot deny that the administration you elected is going to dismantle every safety net program that helps the poor, the sick, the elderly, all of those who realistically are not capable of taking care of themselves. You know that the environment of this and every other country is going to be raped for whatever short-term economic interests can be harvested from it, taking from your children and the children of others what we all hold so very dear. Whatever platitudes Donald Trump spoke regarding unfair trade deals, you know—must know—that he is one of them and not one of us. The evidence is overwhelming that when the opportunity to make a buck by manufacturing product overseas, Trump never hesitated. For him to argue against unfair trade deals on the campaign trail did not make him the champion of the working people, it made him a hypocrite. It made him a politician. You should have run away as quickly as possible.

Sure, he said things other politicians would never say, but that was not because he was honest and principled, it was because he had no boundaries and no shame. It was nice to hear him say many of those things most politicians keep quiet about because both sides are complicit, but you had to realize there was no honesty behind anything he said. What he said that pleased you one night, he would say the opposite the next night in another city. He would say anything, literally anything, in order to see what resonated with the audience.

But you heard what you wanted to hear and you put the best possible spin on the rest. You projected your hopes and your fears on him, in the same way liberals did with Hillary Clinton.

They—Clinton supporters—saw only what they wanted to see. But you knew better. You saw the liar behind Clinton’s façade, you knew better than those liberals who voted for a fraud. Only you were no better. You simply voted for a fraud that spoke your language. You believed because you wanted to believe. You believed despite all the warning signs. You chose to ignore or interpret those instances when he made fun of the disabled and the former prisoners of war. You are responsible, no one else.

But the responsibility most heavily and undeniably weighing on your shoulders, is that you have permitted the final veil of decency and maturity to be stripped from the political process. Sure, it was more or less a charade, but there was still a standard candidates needed to adhere to. Yes, it was a weapon the media used to keep politicians in line with or else ruin their careers if deemed necessary, but it is a basic element necessary for a civilized nation, and you tore it away. You threw away basic human decency, manners, self-respect, every standard your parents tried to instill in you, because you enjoyed the way the monkey made monkeys of those you disliked. You stooped to a level so low it’s debatable whether our nation will ever recover.

This is the role model you hold up for your children. They are watching you and modeling themselves after the way you behave. This is what you tell them is acceptable behavior. And this is where you will have to start lying to them and becoming a hypocrite—the very thing you despise—because you will try to tell them it is okay for some people to behave like this but not others. You will try to explain that it is okay in certain situations or for certain reasons to abandon good manners and basic respect for others but not in others. And every time you point at a person behaving badly you don’t approve of, they will think it is because they are not of the same color or share the same political beliefs as their daddy and mommy. Morality will mean nothing to them. Fairness will mean nothing to them. They will accept hypocrisy just as you have.

I know why you did it. I know that the hypocrisy involved in politics had gotten to the point where it needed to be exposed. But it needed to be exposed by a man of principle and integrity, not by a monkey. There are men out there like that, you should have found one. And if there was no one out there of real integrity and honesty who supported your principles, then it is time to seriously start questioning your principles. Perhaps, just perhaps, your principles cannot be championed by a man of integrity who speaks truthfully. Perhaps they can only be uttered by a fuzzy-thinking narcissistic primate who cares more about establishing himself as the alpha-monkey than he does about dealing realistically with the issues our society faces.

Let me speak to you in a language you understand: responsibility. Donald Trump has none, you know that and I know that. He has never been responsible to anyone in his life, he is driven only by ego and a desire for wealth. If you have evidence to the contrary, please share it with me and I will give it consideration. It is not because I disagree with his politics (I still don’t know where he stands on most issues) but because every bit of evidence I have seen thus far indicates that he is completely uninterested in standing for anything. All I ask is that before you blame me for my biases you first look into your own motivations.

Responsibility. Hopefully, you and I share a deep appreciation for the word and the idea. It is a burden adults are willing to bear, it is what makes us adults rather than children. If you have voted for Donald Trump, you are responsible for what you have done. You cannot blame Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama. You cannot blame Rachel Maddow or Oprah Winfrey. You did it. You.

As my mother used to say and I’m sure yours too, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. In that spirit, let me say that if you have nobody nice to vote for, don’t vote. You have four years to explain why you thought voting for a draft-dodging, tax-evading, cripple-mocking, egotistical, vulgar, immoral, money junky who has never shown the slightest interest in the well-being of others. I would like to hear an honest explanation that does not involve blaming others, I really would.

P.S. I didn’t vote for Hillary.