Trump

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.

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

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.

Visit www.markgowan.com for more writings

Excerpts from The Trump Diaries: Criminal Use of the Law

When Donald Trump became president many of his previous immoral acts were called into question.  His answer was that he had done nothing illegal, he just knew how to game the system.  Unfortunately, he was correct. The Trump administration is often applauded for its dismissal of political, social, and cultural norms and traditions by his supporters, but this is a dangerous precedence because law is supposed to be based upon and acceptance of political normalcy.

With Trump and other wealthy individuals, law is a weapon wielded to undermine these norms that have been put into place to protect the public in order to open avenues for corporate profits. These profits are nothing more than legal thievery plain and simple; public monies given to corporations through subsidies and even bailouts for corporations that have done nothing but cheat their way to the profligate profits that they pay their executives and their shareholders, and now the politicians that they support.  The reliance upon public funding through subsidies and tax breaks has a long, sordid history and one that has been for the most part, hidden from the public eye but has, over time, been made legal.

The conservative movement, now headed by Donald Trump and his administrative cronies, are much more than a political movement.  They are a plutocratic movement whose sole motivation is authoritarian politics put into place to destroy the very thing that they claim to stand for: a fair free market economic system and the government that was put into place to create laws in order to protect people and not plutocrats. 

Visit www.markgowan.com for more writings

Excerpts from The Trump Diaries: A Fascist is a Fascist

Since Trump’s taking office in 2016 there has been a slide into fear and loathing by rational, thinking people.  This fear and loathing is not unwarranted, as any thinking person can realize that his taking office signifies a dangerous trend in this country.  It is fair to say that the Trump administration has fascist tendencies if the traditional definition of fascism is used. 

The use of and belief in certain ideologies, especially political and religious, is the cornerstone of what was once considered radical conservative thinking but is now the norm for the conservative movement.  Unfortunately, the conservative movement is based upon a platform which empowers ignorance, creates fear, and will most likely, if left unchecked, lead to a corporate-fascist government if all is taken into consideration.

Trump has shown that he is more than willing to resort to more than just the symbols of violence, invoking violence against political rivals, the news media, his implied and direct support of white-supremist groups, and invoking the military against legal protesters.  

The goals of the conservative movement seem clear.  First, to dismantle the system of government as put forth by the constitution and replace it with a corporatocracy, and secondly, to destroy any opposition to the first goal.  If Grover Norquist’s claim to want to drown the government in the bathtub is true[i], then his attitude begs the question: what will the government of the United States be replaced with if not with fascism?  If fascism is the future of the United States, let’s at least call it what it is.

 

Visit www.markgowan.com for more writings

Truth in Poetry: 15

Problem: Trump and the Republican Party

Trump and the 20% or so of the American population that adulates him is not a new problem in the United States.  Of course, there are racist issues, xenophobic tendencies, conspiratorial thinking.  But there is also utter sociopathy, paranoia, fanaticism, and just pure, unadulterated greed.  There is also stupidity.  There is not ignorance, because ignorance is self-correcting. 

            This brings us to the problem.  Trump was allowed to take office and those who support him, support him knowing who and what he is.

            In order for Donald Trump to have taken office, there was a decades long movement to undermine good government policies.  The undermining of these policies has allowed for a minority to take control of this country.  This is part of the problem.  In a functioning and fair, and healthy governing system, Donald Trump would not have stood a chance.

            However, there will always be the fringe minority, the “deplorables” of any country.  These people are the cost of a civil society but the majority must not let them overtake the country.  People who support Donald Trump have no place in a civil society, and yet to be civil, there must be a place for them. This is the catch-22.  However, all opinions must be allowed, but all opinions cannot be considered respectable, much less accepted.

            Religion, fear, and greed all play a part in the debacle that the Republican Party has become, and in the once unthinkable idea that someone such as Donald Trump could become president.  While we cannot rid our society of people who would stand in the way of social and political progress, we must never, ever let them become philosopher kings.

Solution: Civil Responsibilities, Individual Responsibilities, Realism

            It would be much easier to simply state that education is the answer.  It would be much more comfortable if we could just make policy changes in the government, or regulate the billions of dollars that unconscionable corporations and individuals poured into both political parties for dubious reasons.  But these solutions, however much they are needed, are short-sighted for this particular problem.

            A solution to Donald Trump is more opaque, less ideological perhaps.  The United States has something very good, worth fighting for.  But we must always keep that in mind.  We often get derailed.  We often lose track of what it is that is important.  With that in mind, we must concentrate on changing anything and everything that allowed for Donald Trump.  This ranges from accepting everyone’s opinion (which we mustn’t do), to “agreeing to disagree”.  This includes calling out and facing people who would undo those ideals this country supposedly stands for.  This includes holding people responsible, especially politicians and religious leaders who allowed this atrocity as well as those who would undermine the basic ideals of the concept of democracy.

            This also includes facing realities.  As a country we must face certain realities that are beyond ideological beliefs.  We must realize that ideologies fall short, and that reality is what counts.  While we may want “things to be different”, we must agree on a direction, how we want them to be different.  In short, we must decide on what kind of society we want to live in, and then work (not wish) our way towards that goal.  We must give up John Locke and look towards John Stuart Mill.

            Donald Trump is a wakeup call.  His followers have always been here and unfortunately those sorts of people will always exist.  The rest of us allowed this to happen because of apathy, or laziness, or indecision.  We allowed this because we were too caught up in our own personal battles.  We were too busy buying the latest gadget or checking our “feed”.  We turned our heads instead of facing reality.  We got what we deserved: the Republicans and Donald Trump.  The Republicans, Donald Trump and that ilk are correct about one thing:  freedom does not come free.  But none of us can be free from our responsibilities to never allow another Donald Trump.

Truth is Like Poetry: 11

Problem: Fascism and Dictatorships

Unfortunately, this particular problem is apropos to the times that we are currently living in.  In 2022 Vladimir Putin is attacking the Ukraine and Donald Trump seems to be gearing up for another run at western Democracy.  These two individuals are typical examples of what fascism and dictatorships are.  And a further unfortunate truth is that they are not, and have not been alone.  Throughout history there have been fascists and dictators that have wrecked and ruined otherwise civil societies.  That’s what fascists and dictators do; they do it to further their own, selfish ends.

The ultimate problem of fascism and dictatorship ought to be apparent.  But the problem that fascism and dictatorships stem from is deeper.  Typically, they take power by promising and fear-mongering.  The basis of fascism and dictatorship is the same: groups of people within society that are fearful, ignorant, or are generally unhappy with the society that they live in.  These people tend to be a faction of the minority (in a Democracy) in a given society.  They feel their “rights” have been suppressed in some way or that they have been unjustly represented (in a representative government)

The other side of civil unrest is civil apathy, and this too allows for fascist and dictatorial ideas to come to fruition and grow.  As apathy towards politics grows so do the chances for fascist and dictatorial ideas gain traction.  It is often in the dark, un-visited corners of our societies that these ruinous ideas are born.  And so it is with apathy towards the politics of one’s society.  If few pay attention, then a few will do as they will.

Solution: *Eradication of Poverty***, re-implementation of separation of powers

            The solution to government overthrow by those who would disregard civil societies is not a simple one, nor is it one that will last without close attention by citizens who want civil societies.  There must be, of course, consequences for those that would be dictators as there should be for those that would have fascist tendencies.  However, it is the strength of any civil society to allow for voices and viewpoints from all sides.  This is why it is important to allow even violent voices a place. 

            However, the true eradication of these tendencies would be in eradicating the reasons that they come to exist.  Poverty has been, throughout history, a breeding ground for revolution because poverty is often the result of unfair and unjust government policies, greed, over-reach.  With this in mind, the eradication of poverty is necessary in order to undermine the need for, or the belief that there is a need for a fascist and/or dictatorship.  With poverty eradicated, there must be a voice for citizens in the government by which they are a part of.

            Government itself can lend a helpful hand to undermining fascist/dictatorial movements.  But like these movements, government itself has been, or allowed itself to be, part of the problem.  The founding fathers of the United States borrowed concepts from their forefathers, and their forefather’s forefathers when they introduced the concept of a governing citizenry.  Whatever form of government that a society takes upon itself, that government must be able to be held accountable.  One of the best ways to do so is to separate powers, sequester the chance for a government to allow fascist ideas to breed, or dictators to manipulate.  Donald Trump is a perfect example of what can happen when powers are separated in theory only rather than in reality.  He is the dark and foreboding face of apathy and governmental greed and the ignorant masses that follow dictators and fascists.

A Civil Society

In New Hampshire, armed idiots chased the governor elect away.

Ted Cruz is leading a group of Republican traitors, trying to fight the results of the recent elections. Mitch McConnell gives them his “blessings”.

No warranted evidence for any of their allegations has been produced, and our current president tried to change voter results in Georgia and an ongoing health concern is still, still a political debate.

Most of us turn our heads in disgust with some egging the upending of our country on for religious or other ideological reasons. Gun sales are up and fear and loathing are at an all-time high while rational and critical analysis and thinking are at an all-time low.

It is time for us as a nation to ask some simple questions:

What kind of society do we want, and how do we get it? How did we allow our society to come to this point?

It is time for us to look past the platitudes and bumper stickers and realize that a civil society does not come free and that unfettered freedoms do not equal a civil society.