Trump

Guns, God, Greed: From Chapter 2: God’s Plan

He hated sitting through the meetings with these bible-thumpers, not because they didn’t adore him, they did.  He had bought some of their adoration.  But because he couldn’t trust them.  He couldn’t trust them because these people really believed what they said.  For this reason they were dangerous to him as The Leader.  He accepted them out of necessity.  They were a business deal.  They didn’t seem to understand that he didn’t answer to them, but he did.  It was this that bothered him so much.  And so, as they rambled on he acted interested.

“Sir.  It is truly a sign that the end-times are here, and I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.  Sir you are in the service of God and Jesus Christ himself.  We have worked hard in a world which is dead-set against the Lord’s followers.  And now it will all change.  The wicked shall weep, sir, and the Lord’s children will reap their righteous place in heaven.  All because of you, sir, all because of you…”

The Leader sat soaking in the diatribes against modern society.  He heard them but he didn’t listen to them.  He found them pathetic and they didn’t seem to notice.  This irritated him further.  One after another leader spoke.  The Catholics were worried about the abortion issue.  The protestants were angry at the secularization of society.  The Foundation for Our Father leaders, though, they had a plan.  He was interested.

“Sir.  We are from The Foundation for Our Father or ‘FOF’ for short.”  The well-dressed, oddly calm man handed The Leader a large folder.  It was very neat and organized.

“We at FOF have watched as this country has been overrun with secular ideologies and…let’s say ‘those without Christ’.  And we have watched as our founding father’s intentions have been infested with so-called progressive thought that has no other intention but to undermine this country’s founding religion, Christianity.  Sir, this country is sliding into an immoral, pluralistic ethic that has been weakening the very pillars of our democracy. Sir, what I’m trying to say is, that we have a plan that we have spent the past nine years working on and we believe we can win our country back.  But we need your help.”

Guns, God, And Greed: From Chapter 1: Guns

His minions would always lower their heads and slink back to their slimy, dark corners.  That’s where he like them best.  He realized something that the rest of them didn’t.  He was their weapon.  Without them they were defenseless, useless.  And he realized that a weapon is more than a tool to kill.  It represented more than death.  It was a principle. 

Guns are mankind’s fears materialized.  A gun can give a man the feeling of power but in reality a gun is a weakness.  A gun will make a coward feel courageous.  They are said to be a practical necessity but they create the impractical reality of violence.

A gun is far and beyond its grey, cold exterior, its butt-handle and reinforced barrel.  It is more than its trigger assembly or its pin mechanism.  A gun is the culmination of man’s imagination coupled with his weaknesses.  It is a dangerous mechanism that brings man’s first enemy, death while the very same man argues that it is life-saving, security-making.  A gun is the lowest commonality of man coupled with his gravest desires for power.

Although he had never held a gun in his hand he imagined that the feeling would be easily addictive.  He imagined that it would feel good because deep down inside everyone knows what it is capable of; what it is made for.  A gun is a hand-held atom bomb made by monkeys cowering behind rocks.  He was always amazed at the ingenuity but was more amazed at humanity’s commitment to our own suicide.  But he was willing to accept suicide as long as it paid.

“I am your weapon.  I am their doom.  Don’t ever forget that.” He reminded his minions, and paused before turning and walking out of the room.

He walked down the corridor to his room and turned on the T.V. where he would sit for the next four hours.

A Grinding Start

This is the start of writing about the future while watching the present roll to a grinding start. Over the horizon there are the hoards and behind them walking away is their leader. He, and they, will never be mine. The future is binary now. Stay here and fight or move away and be forced to watch. Actions cease to have impact.

We have landed where we land; it is what we do.

And while life will go on those majority will be forced (have forced themselves) to accept the unadulterated humanity that will now stand erect with pride; a pride that stems from rank ignorance and arrogance of being so.

They do not understand that it is they that cause history to repeat itself. And if they did they would call it progress. Now we must live in a world where we don’t belong. We have to watch as we sink back into the muck of evil and greed while the dazed and confused watch monkeys dance on the fire of their own destruction.

And So It Begins

Where is the hope in this? it is nothing new; it is no surprise, except one: that the past disappears so readily; that history is forgotten so happily. Sometimes it is as if our words do nothing but dissipate into space, bouncing off asteroids and nothing else.

The cycle of evil starts (yet again) with hope and hope is brought down like a giraffe by invading marauders. Then there will be a tiredness and those that can will ask the same question: “Why can’t we do better than this?!”

And then, they too begin to forget who we are at our core, and plans are made. Plans are made and belief is born, and evil is forgotten, and days are sunny. And so it begins: guns, god, and greed reborn, rise up wanting more and hopes are dashed by gluttony with a smile on its face.

The world has time but we don’t. And the world has time but we don’t.

Ten Principles of Concentration of Wealth and Power

Noam Chomsky: Requiem for the American Dream

  1. Reduce Democracy (protect against public influence on policy)
  2. Shape ideology (keep the young from believing in democracies)
  3. Redesign the economy (more power to financial institutions)
  4. Shift the burden (reduce tax burden away from the super-wealthy)
  5. Attach solidarity (keep people separated and selfish)
  6. Run the [governmental] regulators (businesses [financial institutions] control business regulation
  7. Engineer elections (allow unlimited money into government)
  8. Keep the rabble in line (disallow democratization of the public)
  9. Manufacture consent (consumeristic society rather than a thoughtful public)
  10. Marginalize the population (take political voice away from the general public)
     

    Do not kid yourself. This is where the United States is at. No longer are we a nation to be proud of. Rather, we have joined the infamous dictators that we once turned away from.

    This is a place…

    This is the country I live in. A place where the majority of people want Donald Trump as president. A place of fear, stupidity, and arrogance. A place where the semblance of civilization is about to disappear. This is a place where the government will be torn down with cheers from the self-righteously stupid.

    This is a place where with a resounding hurrah progress has been stomped out and the old wheeze out a smile as they watch their children’s future burn in a blaze of sorrow and disbelief. This is a place where even some young people misled and sometimes simply mean-spirited, jump into the fire willingly.

    This is a place where hope is replaced with spite, revenge and greed. This is a place where understanding is killed and a statue of ignorance is adored. This is a place of god and religion, and empty-eyed adherence to even emptier ideologies. This is a place where the bible will replace science and art, and progress and logic, reason and rationality. This place is a theocratic corporation because this is who this country is.

    Republican Pieces of…Poor Politicians

    https://www.axios.com/2024/09/19/lindsey-graham-electoral-vote-change-nebraska

    Republicans are (again) trying to overturn the public desire for progress in many areas by playing a dirty game.  Lindsay Graham among others is playing fast and loose with the concept of the electoral college, this time in Nebraska.

    As it becomes obvious that Kamala Harris is on a political roll on all fronts, a sign that the public endorses her as the next leader of this country, Republicans dismiss this and other signs and move forward with legal moves to change the way our political leaders are chosen, and often take away the chance for people to have their votes count in that process.

    While this cannot be surprising, it cannot be dismissed.  Republicans have gone above and beyond in showing their willingness to cheat using law.  They continue to warrant their heinous and unjust acts by leaning on the law.  This move, successful or not, is just another example.

    Donald Trump is losing but we must remember that this does not mean that Kamala Harris will take the presidency or that the US political system is out of the woods.  Trump has shown his willingness to overthrow and to thwart public desires for the direction that this country will go in.  He knows he has a chance because he is working within a corrupt system.

    To dislodge the dirt that has come to clog up American politics we must do all that we can to limit Republican control in Congress.  This starts with disallowing Trump into the Whitehouse.  While the presidency may or may not simply be a figurehead, it is an important figurehead.

    Do not let pathetic politicians such as Lindsay Graham and many others disavow their promise to do what is right for this country.  We the people must force them to do what is right for this country.

    Excerpts from The Trump Diaries: The Pathetic and Proudly Stupid

    Americans come from a long line of fearful, foreboding theocrats that probably make up a majority of the population.  And that is a problem. they demand that everyone bow down to their particular form of idiotic beliefs and that more so, these beliefs become the law of the land.  Trump and the Republican party have worked hard to make sure their wishes come true, and have had only one thing to say: yes.

    The probability that Trump himself is even remotely religious is small and if he is, he is at best the cafeteria-style believer if he thinks of it at all.  It would seem that Trump and his followers would have to face the actual truth of the matter at some point, but Trump and his cohorts don’t worry about that because they can simply create “alternative-facts” and sell them with a little Jesus juice on the side. 

    This is all to say that the Republican-Christian-nationalistic machine is in full force.  It eats the gullible and pisses out rightwing fanatics with a love of guns, god and greed. 

    There’s a rumbling in the background and if we put down our phones we can almost hear the chanting. 

    “Give up critical thinking for Christ!” is the mantra that they yell and that din that is getting louder and louder them on their way to the Whitehouse.

    Excerpts from The Trump Diaries: The Few, The Proud

    The term, military-industrial complex, was made famous by Dwight Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell speech..[i]  Since then Eisenhower’s fears have become a reality in more ways than one.  First, the sheer amount of money spent on military undermines government’s stated purpose of taking care of its citizens.[ii]  Furthermore, the military is now a tool used to indoctrinate and capture America’s delusionally religious and its poor.  Since the fifties, the religious and nationalistic rhetoric used by the conservative movement has been used to create and stoke a tribalistic corporate war machine.

    While flags wave in the front yards of the working class, opportunities that would have otherwise actually helped economically are pulled out from under them while the industries that support and supply the military continue to get richer.  Visit any impoverished area and what becomes apparent is the presence of military enlistment programs and churches, the two often working together.  The poor have become nothing more than indoctrinated, cheap labor for the endless wars created and waged by the corporate complex itself.[iii]. This is not a governmental problem, as Trump and the Republicans claim, it is a corporate/autocratic problem led primarily by Trump and the Republicans.  

    The only difference between Eisenhower and the Republicans now led by the Trump administration is that Trump simply accepts as a good Eisenhower’s fears.  Eisenhower’s worries concerning a growing military-industrial complex has now mutated into an industrial-military complex.  The marine motto: the few, the proud… still rings true, but the few and the proud are now the richest in 1%.


    [i] https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/military-industrial-complex

    [ii] https://borgenproject.org/the-relationship-between-the-military-and-global-poverty/

    [iii] https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2021/ProfitsOfWar

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    Excerpts from The Trump Diaries: Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest

    There is an anti-intellectual trend in America but the reasons are interesting.  Donald Trump’s first cabinet, while not the cause, certainly sealed the deal.  The turning point was not when it was clear that Donald Trump as a blatant liar, that was expected of most politicians although Trump took this to new and pathetic levels.  The turning point happened with Kelly Ann Conway’s remark.  When pressed during the interview with Chuck Todd to explain why [Sean] Spicer would “utter a provable falsehood”, Conway stated that Spicer was giving “alternative facts”.  

    This was the invitation for every rightwing conspiracy and opinion to consider itself on equal grounds with logic, rationally thought-out speech, science, and intellectual expectations.  Every opinion became an “alternative fact”.  In other words, if the facts didn’t fit your ideology, it was the facts that needed to change.  This, of course, opened the door to the religious right as well.

    Anti-intellectualism is nothing new in America, being centuries old, but the expectation by Donald Trump and his minions to be respected intellectually as equals no matter what the facts are, is.  They stand toe to toe with Christian nationalism for this reason perhaps?  Donald Trump the Republican party, and its cronies offers simple, ignorant answers to complex problems: “I know best” replaces the more sound “I don’t know”.  And “I am right” trumps objective reality.

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