Not Even A Mushroom Cloud Will Make Them Doubt The Narrative

 

It is hard to admit that you were wrong. It is harder to admit you were wrong on a very serious subject. Even harder to admit you were wrong when the group you belong to was wrong, because it means you will have to go against the crowd. It is harder still to admit you were wrong when doing so makes it obvious that a group you felt superior to was right. That is the kind of blow to the ego very few of us are willing to endure.

For the reasons stated above, people who fell in line with the Russiagate narrative are never going to admit they were wrong, not even to themselves. They will never permit themselves to consider that all their emotional energies were diverted from opposing Trump on any issues of substance into being unwitting dupes to the unelected deep state that has a self-admitted goal of complete global hegemony. Russia was the next nation on their list, and so the propaganda campaign had to be kicked into high gear. Democrats, this time, proved to be the subjects most useful for this purpose.

Hillary Clinton embraced the by-now debunked lie that Russia hacked her e-mails in order to save face and have someone to blame for her failure. Blame and Hillary do not coexist very well, so she was an easy sell. The Democratic Party cottoned to the Russiagate narrative because it meant they didn’t have to do a post-loss post-mortem to see what they had done wrong. A party every bit as beholden to moneyed interests as the Republican Party has no interest in contemplating what it might need to do for voters other than virtue-signaling. The media, perhaps, found it easiest of all to go along with the story of Russia interfering in the U.S. elections. For one thing, it absolved them from doing any actual journalism on their own: they just had to repeat the assertions from anonymous sources they were being flooded with on a daily basis. For another thing, they never had to take accountability for what they reported: They could take an accusation — say Putin having video of prostitutes peeing on Trump — speculate on what Putin might be making Trump do to keep the video hidden, and then move on to the next “bombshell” when the previous one had proven to be a dud. Lastly, Russiagate was a HUGE moneymaker for the establishment media. As Executive Chairman for CBS News said about Donald Trump — and which was doubly true for all establishment news outlets regarding Russiagate: “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.” For a while, Rachel Maddow was flying high doing nothing more than quoting from the Steele Dossier the way Joel Osteen quotes The Bible.

And of course, all the neo-cons went along with Russiagate because it advanced the agenda that they first put into practice with the invasion of Iraq. All those ghoulish demons from the pits of the Republican Party slithered over to join with the Democrats to blame Russia for what the American people and both their corrupted parties did to themselves. And the Democrats welcomed them with open arms like some prodigal son. This unification with what they once considered all that was evil they now called “bipartisanship”. “How could we be wrong when even our worst enemies agree with us?” In this way, George W. Bush was no longer a villain but became one of the good guys, like something out of a poorly written professional wrestling script.

People in an emotional state are easily manipulated. That is why those who were crushed by Hillary’s loss fell for Russiagate like a hungry trout for a well-tied fly. That’s why anyone who wasn’t emotionally invested didn’t. Anyone who was able to go to bed the night before the election because they didn’t think the survival of Western culture relied upon Hillary’s victory saw the Russiagate narrative for what it was: a lie, an excuse, a call for increased tensions against yet another country, a joke, pathetic.

Biden has had time to give us a good idea of what a Hillary Presidency would have looked like. Both being obedient servants to corporate power and the military, there is little difference one’s influence could have made. Hillary might have been more full-throatedly supportive of the military industrial complex, but without the 4-year buildup that was Russiagate, it would not have been as effective. Indeed, tying Trump to Russia was a stroke of (evil) genius on the part of those who dictate our international politics.

But like I said, it is hard to admit you’re wrong when you have so much emotionally invested in a narrative. I know I am not going to convince anybody to change their mind, let alone admit their complicity in a lie that quite possibly could be more damaging than any other lie told in human history. The only people who will read and relate to this are those who already know the truth. But that does not mean I can’t make the lie sit a little less easily in some people’s minds. I can still remind them that people other than Trump supporters, paid Russian trolls, and useful idiots can hold a position contrary to their own. I can still make self-delusion hurt a little bit.

*Dearest reader: I admit I am guilty of using what Professor S.I. Hayakawa referred to as “snarl words” in this article. Snarl words are “highly connotative language that often serves as a substitute for serious thought and well-reasoned argument.” I further admit I have done so in order to provoke an emotional response rather than a substantive debate. If I felt substantive debate were possible on this issue I would have refrained from such behavior. I honestly believe there is no way of arguing this subject with believers without provoking an emotional response. Please note that I am at least upfront about this and that it is a form of arguing that I normally find offensive.

Home Alone: A Real Life Story

Once upon a time there was a boy whose parents had to go out of town. The boy, a young teenager, did not want to go with them and asked his parents if he might not stay home. He promised them that if they let him stay home not only would he behave, he would clean the house up while they were gone. Now the step-father didn’t trust this kid as far as he could throw him. As long as he had known the kid he had never done anything for anyone other than himself. But the mother for some reason could not see the obvious flaws in her child. Perhaps it was because the father was always berating him and she felt it was her job to support him. Whatever the case, the dad weakly protested but ended up giving in to the mother like he always did, just as the mother always gave in to her child.

So they left the spoiled child in charge of the household, and predictably, the moment he was in charge, he invited all his miscreant buddies over to “take care” of the house. The idea was that if he took good care of his buddies that they would in turn help with the house. It was flawed thinking but flawed thinking never stopped an immature teenager from doing anything.

The kids had one hell of a party, and made one hell of a mess. The liquor cabinet was immediately raided, the entire store of groceries for the month was eaten or else wasted in a food fight, and many precious family heirlooms were broken in the mindless reverie. When all the food and the liquor were gone, the kid’s friends started looking through the parents’ dresser drawers to find some money so they could order a pizza and get some adult to buy them beer. And sure enough, they found various stashes of money, some stored up for a rainy day, some being intended for the kids’ education expenses, and other amounts intended for charitable contributions. There was even a pile set aside to help pay for helping take care of grandpa when he was no longer capable of taking care of himself. These kids didn’t care about anyone but themselves and their immediate pleasures, and the kid who lived there didn’t mind because his buddies thought he was cool and he really didn’t care about grandpa or charity anyway.

They took it all, every bit of loose change, and everything that could be converted to cash in order that they could have one hell of a party, because they couldn’t see anything beyond their own short-term selfish interests. They even found the mom’s credit card, and racked up more debt than even they realized.

They got high, and they got drunk. They didn’t give a f*ck. They had cheap sex with lewd young women on the parents’ bed. They broke things just because they could. They peed in places other than the bathroom because it wasn’t their house.

The only problem was, they were having so much fun, they forgot the parents would eventually find out. They did. They came home a day earlier than they were supposed to, not that it would have mattered much one way or the other. The place was wrecked and there was no way these kids were ever going to repair the damage they had done, let alone make it cleaner than before. Arriving home and assessing the situation, both parents were able to see the son for what he was. The mother, who loved her son because he was hers, finally realized what she had allowed him to become. She realized the damage that had been done because of her foolish trust in a son who had never exhibited behavior worth putting her trust in.

The father gazed upon the devastation caused by this spoiled child and his delinquent buddies and it finally dawned on him how he had tolerated his bad behavior and his wife’s denial for too long, that he himself had been complicit in allowing the boy’s bad behavior because he did not want to make tough choices and be the adult the other two needed in their lives. He had always been content to meekly suggest that the mother might be wrong, but he never really communicated with her on an adult level, resorting instead to childish putdowns of the child. He timidly tiptoed at the edges of the issue while avoiding the obvious problems that needed to be tackled head on.

But in the end the parents realized they must never again leave their house in the protection of an immature and narcissistic individual. The day is coming, and it won’t be long, when even the most apologetic of voters—er, parents will no longer be able to ignore the behavior of their spoiled, selfish president. I mean son.

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. 

Losing At A Not So Trivial Game

Since 2,000, the Democrats have lost the presidency to George W. Bush and Donald Trump. I’ll just pause for a moment while you contemplate the degree of losertude required to accomplish such failure. George Bush could not win at Who’s Smarter Than A 1^st Grader, while Donald Trump shouldn’t even be allowed in the same room as children. If either one of them was to be on Dancing With The Stars, he’d be the first one to be voted off. If they were on The Dating Game, they wouldn’t be picked even if the third contestant was Richard Speck and the woman doing the choosing was a nursing student. If the two of them played Trivial Pursuit, they couldn’t beat your cat.

Go ahead, imagine for a moment how that game might go down, imagine Trump and W. sitting around a dinner table, you might as well throw in Sarah Palin for good measure. True, Sarah lost in 2008, but it was only because the nation was in the midst of a financial meltdown the likes of which we have not seen in nearly 80 years.

First of all, you know one of them is going to call it the Genius Edition and none of the others is going to correct him (with the possible exception of your cat). Imagine too the conversation as they struggle to pronounce words and names such as pharmaceutical, isthmus, Medici, Diogenes, and Francois Mitterand. You can just hear Palin massacre the name of Charlemagne and Trump correcting her with something even worse, can’t you?

Imagine the response you’d get to a question like “What black author wrote Another Country and Nobody Knows My Name?” Or “What U.S. president declared ‘The ballot is stronger than the bullet?’” Or “How many stripes did the flag first called The Star Spangled Banner have?” Or “What was stormed in Paris in 1789?”

Just close your eyes and it is easy to visualize them studiously avoiding the categories of History, Arts And Literature, Geography, and Science And Nature, hoping instead to get lucky with a Sports or Entertainment question.

And you just know, two hours into the game, that when they are on Roll Again and they roll a 4, they’re still going to have to count it out to get to the other Roll Again. Of course, long before then, they’ll already be blaming others for their abysmal inability to get a single slice of pie. Sarah will be accusing the creators of the game of being Ivy League liberals while Trump will be saying the answer is not right while providing no evidence that he even understood the question. It will be accompanied all the while by W.’s patented idiot chuckle as he sits and grins and time after time grabs the die, believing it is his turn when it is not. And should one of them whine their way or connive their way into a slice of pie, they’ll put it in sideways and you’ll end up the next day trying to pull it out with a pair of tweezers, all the while cursing their names.

Now imagine losing to that.

Imagine being on the side that actually knew many of the answers to those questions and yet losing to the others in election after election.

If you were laughing at the earlier descriptions of Trump, W., and Sarah, I’m guessing you’re not laughing now. Doesn’t that warrant a long, hard look in the mirror? Doesn’t that make you stop dead in your tracks and question your most basic assumptions of the world you are living in?

You can blame other people, I suppose. You can blame all the people who voted for Donald Trump and call them stupid and evil. You can hate people who didn’t see things your way and hope they all die and have their jobs exported or eliminated by technology. It sounds a lot like the very thing you say you oppose, but you could do that. You can blame the Russians, it’s quite tempting, although I don’t see how even Putin would find Donald Trump someone he’d want with keys to a nuclear arsenal. You can blame the Bernie Bros, assigning them a label in order to stereotype and denigrate them.

There’s a lot of things and people you can blame for the fact that Hillary Clinton lost, for the fact that Democrats are consistently losing to candidates that look and smell like something that just crawled of your toilet. But winners don’t blame others, losers do. Winners take honest stock of what they’ve done wrong in order that they can stop doing that and do something better. I haven’t seen a single hopeful sign of that happening.

Oh sure, Democrats have unveiled a new game plan. As I recall, they also had a game plan in 2,000 and 2,016, too. They had boatloads of strategists, advertising agents, propagandists, spinmeisters—whatever you want to call them—figuring out how to best project their candidate in order to match with focus groups in ways that would connect (I could have probably phrased that better to sound more like those kind of people, but I have rejected walking down that path even if only to understand and mimic it). Democrats spent $10 for every vote for their candidate, and still couldn’t win against a meaner, cruder version of Uncle Buck.

But the Democrats have revealed that they have found their problem and are working to improve it. It was not that there was anything wrong with their platform, it was that they weren’t doing a good job of communicating their message. $1.2 billion dollars on campaign funding for Hillary’s campaign. Able to buy the most brilliant and evil story tellers. Those guys who sell diabetes to children and cancer to smokers, they could not sell your product.

The Democrats say they have not been doing a good job of getting their message out, the obvious implication being that George W. and Donald Trump were masterful communicators. Let’s face it, the Democrats don’t want to change their product—and let’s face it, product is the right word—they want to change the packaging.

The Democrats won’t change, they can’t change. They can’t change because they are a corporation that exists only to make a profit for its shareholders. If a candidate is good at selling the product that shareholders want to sell, they’ll make a lot of money. If someone actually questions the mission statement they’ll be out the door without a severance package.

The Democrats can’t win, either. They can’t win because they are only a diluted version of the Republicans. They are Bud Light compared to Bud, and most people, if they like drinking mass-produced fizz-water, will choose the real thing. Changing the name to America isn’t going to make it more palatable, nor does it make it a real alternative.

It doesn’t matter to the shareholders whether the Democrats win or lose, because they own the competition as well. If the Democrats win, they’ll make money, but if the Democrats lose, they’ll make more. And all those micro-breweries trying to provide an alternative to the big guys? They’re systematically being squeezed off the shelf or bought out. So much for choice.

But the game goes on, until enough people refuse to play it. Donald will continue to “accidentally” move his pie three spaces instead of two and get away with it because that’s the rules that have been determined. The precedent has been set, the game has been crooked for so long there are no rules anyone adheres to anymore. Trump is merely the most grievous example of a game we should never have agreed to play.

We should have walked away a long time ago, insisted on more accountability, insisted someone with integrity be allowed to hold onto the rule book. But as long as we were able to get our slice of pie, we allowed it to happen. But now all the pieces of pie have been handed out, some people having more pieces than will ever fit in their pie while others, smart and hard-working though they be, have nothing. Like the Wheel of Samsara, still the game goes on.

We Are All Responsible For Donald Trump

A lot of people are angry over the election of Donald Trump. Millions are fearful and depressed. Others are actually over the moon with excitement that their chosen candidate has won. Some, who voted for Trump in a “let’s see what happens” mode, are waiting to see what is behind curtain number three. Many are already experiencing buyer’s remorse, which is typical of any voter after an election. One is never so optimistic as when buying a lottery ticket or voting. We have to be irrationally optimistic, we’d never do it otherwise.

What very few of us seem to be is reflective. Donald Trump has brought out the reflexive in all of us, we’ve taken our cue from him, so that we merely respond to stimuli rather than question how best to respond. It’s hard, when your initial impression is revulsion, to want to probe the matter further. It’s not our natural response to sniff the curdled milk a second time to figure out what made it go bad.

So instead we now live in a world we’ve suddenly come to realize we don’t understand. The world we thought we knew has hit an iceberg and sunk in front of our eyes. And yet our response to the tragedy is to stay aboard the Titanic, or else to build a ship of identical design. It’s not the ship that’s to blame, or those who were piloting it, it is the iceberg’s fault, that giant orange iceberg.

Denial is a natural response to an unpleasant reversal of fortune. When we choose denial, we shut down our intellects, from whence comes the unpleasant facts, and rely instead on emotions. Hence all the anger, the fear, the sadness. Hence all the irrational beliefs and unfounded accusations. We are like a sleeper who, while still in a dreaming state, hears his alarm clock and attempts to weave the sound into the pattern of his dreams because he does not want to go to work.

It’s time to wake up. We need to come to grips with the reality of President Trump. We have to understand it so that it will never happen again. And the first step in doing so will be to admit that Trump is not the true problem here but merely the most obvious and obnoxious symptom. Trump is the logical end of the path we have been travelling. We need to stop, look around, assess what we’re doing and where we’re going. Because when you hit the road marker that is Trump, that’s like a blinking sign that says the road’s coming to an end in 500 feet. Best hit the brakes and not worry for the moment whether or not you’ll spill your coffee or be late for an engagement.

I’m not just talking to liberals and leftists, but those who voted for Donald Trump. You too are fueled by emotions, in your case anger and hatred. If that were not the case someone would have put forth a rational reason for voting for a half-baked narcissistic sociopath, and so far I have not heard one. “Benghazi” is not a thoughtful, unemotional argument.

We have done it. We, Democrats and Republicans, and everyone on either side and those unfortunates in the middle, we have created a society in which Donald Trump was able to succeed. Not even Sodom or Gomorrah would have tolerated a man who builds gambling dens by evicting widows from their houses. We have created a society that equates the net worth of a man with his value to society. We worship wealth and fame above all else, or at least have permitted the culture we live in to create such norms.

This is not a good man, Donald Trump is not a Godly man. You conservative Christians know deep in your hearts that Trump does not represent Christian ideals. Wisdom, charity, brotherly love, a life of service, humility, faith, none of these words could ever be used to describe the person you voted for. To suggest that you voted for him because you are a Christian dirties the word and insults the One for whom your religion was named.

People who worried about a corrupt government know he is no moral beacon. You have sought to evict people who enrich themselves on the taxpayer’s dollar but have replaced them with a man whose only goal in his entire life has been enriching himself. You know that to be true.

You who call yourselves patriotic Americans, do you honestly believe I am to look at Trump and see that he was cut from the same stock as Washington and Lincoln? Whereas these men were scholars and thinkers and gentlemen, you have voted for a howler monkey in a suit and red trucker’s cap. If you voted for Donald Trump and have any degree of self-respect, you must be feeling a little cheap and sleazy. Don’t try to hide it, denial only makes things worse.

This is not to slam you. I do not make light of your legitimate concerns. But if because you are lonely you take up with a gold-digging, abusing, cheating, shrew of a woman, I would feel compelled to tell you you are being taken advantage of. Though it may seem to you cruel for me to point out the truth, it must be done or she will lead you into greater misfortunes than befell you before you met her. And Trump is not what you want him to be, need him to be. He is a self-serving egomaniac who needs constant attention. Look through my eyes for one moment and tell me if you cannot see it. I say this not to mock you but as a friend who wants what’s best for you.

Sane societies do not elect psychological case studies such as Donald Trump president. Healthy nations never permit a howler monkey near a microphone, let alone the nation’s nuclear codes. The response to Trump so far, by those who see his flaws, has been an emotional but ultimately impotent attack on the man himself. But if we wish to insure we never again let such an incompetent guide our nation, we have to re-evaluate every single aspect of our culture if we are to come to grips with what is wrong with us. We must question what kind of media we have, one that made him a star before enabling his rise to the presidency. We need to question the churches we go to that somehow see this man as compatible with Christianity. We need to question our nation’s morals and norms if we want to understand why we accepted someone who utterly lacks such standards.

We must ask ourselves many, many questions, and we must do so dispassionately. We must do so without attempting to find easy answers. We must do so without pointing the finger, but rather through personal reflection, asking ourselves how we helped create a society that has sunk so low, so lacking in morality, decency, respect for one another, and even simple good taste.

We must question the music and entertainment industries, must question the examples we set for our children and our neighbors’ children. We must question how we treat those we work for and those who work for us. We must question our relationship to our government. We must ask ourselves what kind of world we want for our children and then ask how we can best meet those aspirations while leaving room for the desires of those who want something different for their descendants.

We must ask ourselves all these questions and more, and we must do so HUMBLY the way an alcoholic must question his life after getting into a car accident while under the influence. Because we have screwed up, we have screwed up very badly. This is a moment for reflection, America. Do not abandon reason for emotion.