A few thoughts on the gentle art of Irony....

 

  "Well, that's ironic." I hear this expression frequently and it is almost always used to express how one aspect of a situation seems to negate or cancel another.  How ironic it is to note that every time I take my car to the carwash, it rains shortly thereafter.  It wouldn't be much of a leap to believing that washing my poor little car actually CAUSES it to rain or snow.

Irony is a part of life on a daily basis, it seems. And, that is fine by me.  But, as an observer of people and their views on life and living, it also occurs to me that there is a point beyond which a simple 'irony' becomes more than that.  

  Here's an example of what I am trying to explain:  Donald J. Idiot is doing every possible thing he can think of to overturn the presidential election.  His 'elite' team of legal aces, led by the Clown Prince himself, Rudy Giuliani, have filed over FIFTY law suits trying to do this.  It is one of the most brazen  attempts to stage a 'coup d'etat' that has ever been tried in this country.  Of course, none of these suits has gotten any traction in courts of law.  They are boldly and unabashedly frivolous, and the Idiot's lawyers know that when they file them. (and hopefully there will be some accountability for this after the dust settles)   There is simply no doubt whatsoever that the Idiot is doing this.  It is not only illegal to foment a coup d'etat in America...and, I suspect most of the rest of the world.....it is immoral on multiple levels.  All federal employees, which is what the president and all federal politicians are, of course, take an oath to defend and protect the Constitution.  Attempting to pull-off this coup is in direct contravention of that oath.  Our country was founded on the principles of democracy as laid out in the Constitution, and attempting to subvert or otherwise defeat the will of the people is an attempt to dominate the political system by illicit and immoral means.  It may not be an obviously violent attempt, but the result is the same.  And, one could easily argue that it is psychologically violent to take away peoples' freedom against their will. 

Defender of the Constitution...how's that
for IRONY?

    So, here we are and it turns out that the asshole who is screaming that the election is rigged and was stolen from him....is the very one who has been blatantly trying to steal it from the American people. Now, that is beyond, way beyond, mere irony.  He knows, without any shadow of a doubt, that the election was fair and utterly free of fraudulent voting...but, his game is, and has been all along, to tell the biggest lie possible. It's the old number kids used to use on each other: "Liar,liar, pants on fire." But, in this case it has fooled approximately two-fifths of the American people into believing the liar is telling the truth and the ACTUAL truth is false, i.e. Fake News.  This is what I am tempted to call an 'ultra-irony', and the scary thing is how easily the Idiot has pulled the wool over so many millions of peoples' eyes.  He just kept hammering the idea that, "You shouldn't believe the fake news media and what you see and hear...you should believe ME."  After four years plus of this incessant bullshit, it's little wonder that it finally gets traction...or at least it has with the more gullible among us.

  The Big Lie is a concept that was largely perfected by Dr. Josef Goebbles and Adolf Hitler.  They knew that there are some simple rules to follow and if you do it will turn any idea of what is factually 'true' on it's head.  This is an invaluable asset when you are trying to convince the world that you are the Bringer of Truth....despite the factual reality being the complete opposite of that. I have written about the Big Lie previously and will not lay out all the principles behind it here and now. I suggest you google it if you really want to delve into it. But, what I can tell you is that the primary strategy it revolves around is the sense that lying with boldness and enthusiasm is at the core of it all.  There is this idea that if you are going to lie, tell a whopper.....the bigger the better.  And, when you have your 'big lie' out there, stick to it, embellish it, exaggerate details, do all you can to build the sand castle as big and as high as you can....because it will eventually become 'the truth', at least in the weak minds who are already listening to the steady stream of lies that any wannabe autocrat must tell. 

  Unless you are a socio-political ostrich, you already know that the Idiot lies as easily as falling off a log.  And, he not only does it with seamless aplomb, he does it so much that it becomes an anomaly when he actually tells the truth.  I suspect that he does that carelessly, or by accident, on the rare occasion when he does. The man just loves to lie. You can see that when he's caught-up in spinning a whopper, like the time when he used a Sharpie to modify a weather forecast map, in order to prove he was right when he said the storm in question could hit Alabama (which it would not).  So, there he is holding this graphic and it's so perfectly clear that he just added the line on his own, so he could be 'right'.  It's classic Donald the Brat.  He is so compulsive about being 'right' in any given situation that lying about it, even when it's perfectly obvious that is what he's doing, is just as easy as opening his yap.

  We are now living in a society wherein a significant portion of the population has been duped into thinking up is down and down is up.  And, these people are so sure that they are in the right when they repeat the lies fed to them by the GOP...and especially the Idiot...that they are willing to threaten a full-blown Civil War.  The great irony in this is that we did that already and they don't seem to remember that it didn't work out so well for the people who were willing to commit treason against the United States in order to have a wealthy few maintain slavery.  In fact, historians now estimate that approximately 750,000 Americans died in order to settle this question of whom we should be as a country and society.  Of course, it was Texans who first brought this up...this time....and, my first inclination is that we might be better off without them.  But, no, we need to keep the entire family of states intact....even the ones with petulant attitudes.

  There has been an obviously racist--a gen-you-wine white supremacist--based on his words and deeds of the last several decades, inhabiting the Oval Office since 2016.  He has deceived about 40% of Americans into believing his constant lies and his fantasy vision of what America will be as he continues to rule over it.  He is reliably and demonstrably MENTALLY ILL. Whether he is a malignant narcissist or a plain vanilla psychopath, a sociopath, paranoid, sadistic, a sexual predator....none of that really matters at this point. What DOES matter is that we had one of the cleanest and best conducted elections ever and we voted him out by over 7 million votes.  That is what matters now.  

   We need to manage the coming speed-bump on Jan. 6th...one last chance for some despicable GOPs to try and subvert the will of the people....and, then get the Idiot finally out of the White House and out of our hair.  He needs to slide steadily toward irrelevance.....fade like a hitch-hiker with bad vibes in the rear view mirror....relieved that he is finally out of the car and regretting that we ever stopped to pick him up.

  And, then, God willing, we can get on with the business of creating a more, much more, fair, and a kinder society as well,  where Americans can once again act like the good guys instead of the malevolent Assholes in Black Hats that so much of the rest of the planet sees in us now. Perhaps the ultimate irony in all of this is the fact that we came out of World War II regarded as a nation that was willing to make huge sacrifices in order to fight and destroy the forces of evil at large.  And, now we are seen...by much of the rest of humanity....as greedy, self-interested, bullying, dangerous and--to add insult to injury--they see us as mostly OBESE AND RUDE, boorish assholes that they now make fun of. 

  How's that for irony?  

  And, it's not who I want to be.  You too?

  

The Headlight at the end of the tunnel....

 

   I have always enjoyed that expression, i.e. "...the headlight at the end of the tunnel...."  Maybe it's because it can go in any direction.  It can be the freight-train that is coming to run you over, or it can be the angel that is coming to show you the path to the other side because you are dying and need a guide.  It can be a good thing or bad, up to you and your imagination.  

   In this case, however, it's not good.  It is a reference to the fact that people predicted years ago that the Idiot was going to make a hash of his office and especially of leaving it.  He's such a truculent and just plain nasty piece of work; how could it really be otherwise, eh?  Now that he, on some level, recognizes that the American people out-voted his Kool-Aids and the other fools who actually think he's awesome--talk about having the wool pulled over your eyes--ol' Donny the Brat is going to have a prolonged tantrum of epic proportions.  He will do all the harm he can, not merely to those he sees as his enemies and as disloyal to him, but to Americans at large.  It is everybody's fault that he's been rejected, and he means to make us all pay for that. 

  So, we start with inflicting as much financial pain as possible....on EVERYBODY.  Well, okay, maybe not the uber-rich...but, certainly everybody else.  It is crystalline by now that he doesn't care about anybody but himself, so if he can cause as much pain as his office and his monstrous ego are capable of causing.....all good.  We knew this was coming and now we need to find ways to hunker down and make it to January 20th when the asshole will no longer have the immense power of the presidency to wield.  He's going to commit all the mayhem he can, so batten the hatches and put on your gumbie suits (the orange marine rescue suits) ; it's going to be rough sailing for these few weeks.

"How did it ever come to this?"

    Knowing something bad is happening doesn't make it any easier in most cases.  It just removes the aura of surprise and can make it a little easier if we can do something to prepare.  For most Americans who have lost their unemployment, however, there is not much to be done.  The somewhat paltry stipend has been all that stood between many millions of Americans and being destitute.  It's not their fault that this pandemic has landed on our doorstep.  In fact, if one is to be perfectly honest, it is the Idiot's fault that it has been so much worse than it could have been....if it had been dealt with according to scientific guide-lines....and, yet, he's willing to let the people who are suffering already suffer at even more dire levels because, hey, what does he care anyway.  He's so enmeshed in his ego problems around becoming one of history's biggest LOSERS, that he cannot be bothered to do much outside of playing golf and tweeting his mal-contentment.  Poor little Donny is such a victim.  

  He makes me nauseous at the very sight of him.  I used to be able to tolerate his slimey, orange visage much better than I can now.  He's infected my mind with his despicable, whining lies.  The great irony in all of this is that he could have done any number of things to begin rehabilitating his image after the election.  He could have learned to pretend that he actually gives a flying fuck about people suffering.  Hell, there must be a few people left who would still believe him if he faked it well enough.  But, no, that is not something he could ever do as long as he is self-convinced that the election really was stolen from him.  As with so much of his mental illness, it is not difficult to spew out opinions that land on susceptible peoples' weak minds and infect them with exactly what he has: i.e. a world made out of lies, delusions and fantasies.  

  A perfect example of this is QAnon.  Here--as I have pointed out previously--you have one of the least believable conspiracy theories that has been created in modern times.  You might have to go back to the days of Ptolemy and his contention that the Earth was the center of the Universe, in order to find a more dubious theory.  To remind you: QAnon is the idea that the world is being run by a cabal of liberal and satanic dems who....ahem....EAT BABIES.  They first molest them, and then drain their blood to make life-extending potions of some kind...and then they devour these poor, wee, defenseless souls.  

  The evil creatures who do all of this are...wait for it....people like Oprah, Tom Hanks, Hillary Clinton, and all of the Democratic leaders in congress. Clearly, you really need to put on your tin-foil hat and start rocking back and forth, sucking your thumb, in order to believe something this ridiculous.  And, sure enough, it is now gaining followers at an apparent rapid rate. Two Qs have been elected to congress and will be there in January. 

  This is where I just want to say: Are you fucking shitting me?  How can ANYBODY be that incredibly STUPID?  People who believe in QAnon should have to wear warnings on their clothing: "I am a QAnon believer.  WARNING: stupidity is as catching as Covid!"  In fact, in so very many cases, stupidity actually is lethal.  I can give you endless anecdotes where someone got themselves killed just by being dumber than a sack of pounded thumbs.   It happens all the time. 

  If QAnon and the fatuous bullshit that the Idiot is pedaling about the stolen election, were actually true, that would be bad.  But, having supposedly functional adults believing that democrats dine on wee babies is so far out there in Idiot-ville that one can hardly make a start on understanding why people choose to believe such crap. 

  This will be Donald J. Trump's final legacy: he was the worst president America ever had and he was easily the most dishonest and corrupt politician of the 21st century.   He will be a chapter unto himself in the history books because historians will be debating and dissecting his presidency and his personality for generations to come.  Future students of American politics and history will find it difficult to understand how it came to pass that such a dull-witted and flawed human became the holder of the highest office in the land.  They will wonder what the hell we were thinking...and, they'll cast about for theories about the conditions that led to this sorry state of affairs.  

  In the meantime, hunker down, pull the shades closed and get into a 'waiting it out' mode of being.....because it's going to be a long 24 days.  Just take solace from the fact that we did succeed in voting his sorry ass out of office and that will not change.  

Moving on.....soon?

 

    The news continues to have stories about how the Idiot is going to have his sycophants in congress overturn the election results.  Of course, each of these stories holds that this is a fool's errand and that there is only the very slightest chance that anything like that could actually work.  That doesn't bother Donny-boy; he's so out of it at this point that it's reasonable to question whether or not he actually understands how far out in la-la land all of this is.  I don't believe he does, in fact.

   There are crises happening all over the place.  Just when we feel able to take some solace and have some hope because not one, but two vaccines have been approved and are being distributed as I write, and congress has finally approved a stimulus package after nine months of dragging their heels....we find out that the Brits have a new strain of the Covid-19 virus that is much, i.e. 70%, more transmissible between people.  Oh, joy!   Now we can bite our collective nails until we find out if the existing vaccines are as effective on this new strain.  

  Then there is the fact that this pandemic is right out of control.  Hospitals in parts of the country are right at the point where they will be forced to ration care for sick patients.  They are struggling to keep enough staff uninfected and working, to have room in their ICUs, and to simply cope with the avalanche of newly infected patients arriving on their doorsteps.  It's a living nightmare in more and more parts of the country.

  In addition to this rather daunting fact, the lines at food distribution sites are literally MILES long.  The aerial video of cars snaking up and down large parking lots and on out into the streets are stunning. More Americans are now food insecure than at any time in modern history.  I haven't any ability to know how dire it was in the 30s during the Great Depression, but, it is bad now and getting worse as the second surge, some would say THIRD, is happening.  People are being begged by doctors and pundits to avoid travel for Christmas and write this year off....in hopes of a better situation and more people surviving to be there next year. 

  As if all of this isn't dire enough, the economy is acting schizophrenic.  Some people are making a killing as the stock markets continues to defy any connection to what is actually happening on the ground, and others.....LOTS of others....are either about to get evicted or going into serious indebtedness to pay for essentials without a job.   Numerous economists are not optimistic about where the economy is headed as we muck on through this nightmarish time.  

  And, the Idiot cannot be bothered to deal with any of it.  No, he is just plain checked-out at this point. He's way too busy trying to steal a job that he apparently has little desire to do.  He is demonstrating for the umpteenth time that he just wants to be the Big Kahuna....never mind any responsibility or duties that might entail.  The simple truth is ol' Donny-boy doesn't care about any living person besides himself.  This is so amazingly clear at this point that it makes me wonder why his Kool-Aids don't seem to see it.  More likely is the idea that they DO but that they have it all explained away for then by the lesser idiots on Fox...or, these days, NewsMax, or OAN.

Such an unhappy child........

   Articles are popping up left and right conjecturing as to whether or not the Idiot has lost it.  Is he nutso?  Oh, fuck yes!!!   But, the issue is: how far around the bend is he now, and what can be done to make it less dangerous for us and the entire planet?

  Well, one measure that seems to already be in place is the military brass speaking up and reminding us that they will not be available to storm into major American cities and confiscate voting machines...and then stage new elections, subject to a result that is pleasing to His Royal Asshole.  Several high-ranking general officers have made this clear....no U.S. military will carry out his fascist agenda.  

  On a practical level, it's unthinkable that the targeted states would accept this assault on democracy, and neither would the rest of us.  This is marching in the streets time if he thinks he can do this. 

  This brings us to the idea he is preparing to enact: have members of congress lodge a complaint on Jan. 6th, when the legislative branch of our government is due to give their final stamp of approval for the election.  Then, somehow, not sure how, but one way or another a miracle will happen and congress will declare that Donny is the winner of an election that he lost by SEVEN MILLION votes.  The Idiot is too intellectually challenged to understand that the election has been decided and is a done deal.  The purpose of the process on Jan. 6th is more of a final rubber stamp. But, rest assured, the Idiot is not going to accept that. It is just more of him acting like a spoiled little brat because he didn't get his way.  After four years of abusing his office, abusing the American people, and anybody else he decided not to like....he finally persuaded over EIGHTY MILLION of us to make any effort necessary to vote his sorry ass OUT.  And......it worked.  We did.  Did he really think anybody outside the circle of fools who drank his Kool-Aid liked him?  

  Donald John Trump is a loser.  In fact, he's making his place in the history of American politics look even worse than it would be otherwise.  Had he the necessary class and decency, he could have just said, "Hey, I gave it my best shot. But, the people have spoken."  Nah, way too difficult for his pathetic sense of entitlement. 

   The truth here is not an 'alternative fact'.  It is just a plain and simple TRUTH.  He can come around to that realization one way or another but, a fact is a fact and it's not going to change because it's not to his liking.  Of course, poor Donny, the professional and pathetic victim as always, will just have to do it his own way.  Sadly, he's the only one who could change it and come out of this looking halfway decent....but, you and I both know that he'll do it the worst possible way. 

It's just who he is, eh.

Somewhere there is a village that is wondering where the hell their idiot went.

Mental Illness is as mental illness does.....

 

   To paraphrase a line from Forest Gump.....if somebody is even very sick with any kind of mental illness, and they never act out on the insane thoughts that bombard them, it really doesn't matter all that much.  It may matter to them that they are uncomfortable and having a hard time staying connected to the present, a well-grounded sense of inhabiting the 'here/now' is missing and that can be terrible for some people. Others just kind of slide on through.  When my father first started having clear symptoms of dementia, which eventually became full-blown Alzheimers and killed him at age 73, the truly painful aspect of it was for us, his family.  He was in a kind of distorted la-la land and often didn't know where he was or whom he was speaking with.  

  But, when a person who is hosting a full cast of deranged personality traits decides that they are going to act on them, well, Houston we have a problem.  For the next month, that is where we are.  The Idiot has still not come around to conceding or even admitting that he lost the election.  In fact, he hosted a meeting on Friday for a cast of bad actors, i.e. Michael Flynn, and Sydney Powell, most notably.

  Michael Flynn was just recently pardoned for his legal transgressions.  He lied to the FBI and about meeting with Russians, etc.  Well, ol' Donny-boy made all of that go away, and now Flynn is apparently feeling empowered to come out of the closet as a full-blown autocrat.  He is suggesting to anybody who'll listen that the Idiot needs to declare martial law, use the military to go into just the states that voted for Biden and are so-called 'swing states', and confiscate the voting machines, stage a new election, and make sure that this time the results are for the Idiot.  In other words he is openly espousing that the president has the right to simply steal the election....because, hey, he's the fucking PRESIDENT.  

He actually is openly planning to steal another four years.
Nah.....

   Sydney Powell is a crack-pot lawyer who was so far out in ding-a-ling territory with conspiracies about how the election was stolen that even the Idiot's team distanced her.  I mean, they are dedicated to lying but when you start down the road of fantasizing that the Venezuelans had a role in making sure the Trump votes were discarded and replaced with Biden votes...you are pretty far gone.  She's a whack-job, pure and simple, which, of course, makes her the perfect choice to advise the Idiot on how to steal the election he never even came close to winning. 

  You hear the reports, you see what is going on and it all just seems surreal.  How can this really be happening at the very highest levels of our government?  What went wrong?

  But, actually, it's not complicated.  Donald J. Idiot has been telling us for years that  it would come to this.  He has repeatedly said, and even in '16 said it as well, that the only way anybody could beat him would be if the election was rigged.  He dropped the idea in '16, because he won.  Now that he's had his ass handed to him on a platter, he is furious.  His mental illness situation will never allow him to come around to accepting the will of the voters.  He just cannot embrace the fact that he is now one of the great losers of American history.  He will go down in the books as the president who went off the rails and refused to concede, despite having lost by over SEVEN MILLION votes.

  So, here come the crack-pot ideas about how he can turn it all upside down.  He is the kind of person who would rather knock over the checker board than continue the game and admit losing. And, the very idea that he called a meeting in the oval office with two very flaky people...arguably two of the flakiest in his entire sphere of influence.....to discuss declaring martial law is just stunning.  His niece, Mary Trump, the clinical psychologist who grew up with him and wrote the book, "Too Much, Never Enough" has warned repeatedly that there is NOTHING he will not do if it looks like it might turn the election around.  

  At this point, he is really, practically speaking, out of legal options.  The votes have been certified by all of the states and that has been certified by congress.  It is over.  Officially, there is the final approval on Jan. 6th.  And, there is, of course, a rumor that some sycophantic congressman will try to block the whole process by making a formal complaint.  But, the odds that this can succeed in stealing the election for the Idiot are remote, to say the least.  And, let's be realistic here: if some kind of end-run, spectacular upset were to take place, Americans by the millions would be in the streets and it would never be an acceptable outcome.  

  The Idiot lost.  Nothing will change that despite how much the GOPs wish it were otherwise.  Over the course of the last four years, the Idiot has managed to both harm and insult so very many people that he became his own worst liability.  He's a nasty and very unlikeable person unless you are one of the 'little idiots' who drank the Kool-Aid and can't discern right from wrong anymore.  He's a racist, sadistic and crude piece of shit (not to mention criminally dishonest, misogynistic, predatory and simply stupid man) ....and, that is a vast understatement.

  But, despite what we know is true, and despite the inevitability of a new administration arriving on January 20th, the Idiot plows ahead with bold ideas and hinky plans for stealing it all.  He actually believes, apparently, that he can just reach out and take it, in plain sight...and, that nobody will do what is necessary to stop him.

 

What does pure evil look like?

   

    It looks a lot like Stephen Miller, Trump's closest adviser and lackey.  I have spent most of my seventy-five years looking at people and our society with regard to ethical matters.  This is to say that I have made ethics a focus and even majored in the philosophy of ethics as an undergraduate at Penn State.  In the course of doing that, and one of the principle reasons I did so, I encountered a remarkable soul.  His name was Dr. Ernst Hans Freund, and when I knew Dr. Freund he was a professor emeritus of philosophy (emphasis on ethics) about to retire.  He was in a place in his life that made him willing to depart from the abstruse and lofty realm of formal philosophy, and deal with an undergrad veteran who was just looking for some real-world answers that would make living more meaningful and doable, i.e. me.  

  Dr. Freund was willing to read my ramblings and suggest places to look for further insights.  My quest was to discover and to gain a functional understanding of what is required to be an 'ethical' person.  I wanted to understand how 'selfishness' and 'selflessness' interact with each other.  And, I needed to know when a person is being simply 'self-interested', and what is to be accomplished by striving to practice 'selflessness'.  Each week I would write an essay and then sit in Dr. Freund's office and listen to his thoughts on my thoughts.  Of course, his views were informed by a life-time of philosophical endeavor.  He had been a student of philosophy in university when the Nazis came to power and it soon became apparent that Germany was now a dangerous place for not only Jews ,but for Quakers, Social Democrats, Communists, gays, and anybody who didn't sign-on with the new order of Hitler and his henchmen.  Dr. Freund was a Quaker--that is the source of his family name in fact, which means "Friend", a term for Quakers.  And, he immigrated to America in time to avoid being swept up in the Nazi web of death and terror.

   In our peregrinations....love that word, eh.....Dr. Freund led me to explore views that eventually all began to form a kind of philosophical constellation that would serve me the rest of my life....although I didn't understand that at the time.  A few years later I would become an initiate in a Sufi Order and set foot on the path that I have followed ever since.  A pivotal principle of Sufism is the knowledge that love, harmony and beauty are the core of all we do and all we seek.  This triumvirate is even referred to as, "The Only Being" in the Sufi invocation that is used as a kind of over-arching umbrella for understanding life.

  In my time with this remarkable man, I also learned what constitutes a working definition of 'evil'.  Without getting too complicated and wound-up in the world of concepts, let me say that 'evil' is largely and more easily understood as a gauge of the impact a person's actions have.  If you intend to harm others, by any of almost infinite means, you are setting foot on the path of evil.  It can also be fairly and simply defined by stating its antithesis.  Evil is the embrace of hatred over love, of violence over peacefulness, of selfishness that deprives others, and....do you really need me to continue?  Evil is one of those qualities in life that fits very neatly into the, "...you know it when you see it", category.  It has a particular feeling to it, and it even has its own stench.  By this I mean that evil has its own 'atmosphere', and one becomes immediately aware on encountering it in a given situation.  There are, of course, more subtle variations on the theme of evil, but, for the most part, it has such a distinct presence that a sudden encounter with it can even make a person feel panicky or even nauseated, or just un-grounded and very uncomfortable.  The subtle variety eventually makes its presence known via a very distinct feeling that 'something is wrong here'.  

A glimpse into his black heart might turn you to stone
Nah, just kidding.  But, it should set off your 'creep alarm'

    So, my purpose this morning...and, thank you for being patient and sticking with me here....is to ask each of us to rekindle our awareness of evil.  I am hopeful that just doing this will enhance our ability to resist it, to counter it, to 'out it'.  Doing this has the ability to largely disarm it, to render it less able to permeate all it touches with its distinctly malodorous aroma.

  Ever since he popped-up on the political stage, as a Trump sycophant and apparently one of the Idiot's top advisers....Stephen Miller has caught and held my attention.  For whatever reasons, dating back to his upbringing and his journey through the educational system, Stephen Miller has acquired an attitude that has alarming aspects.  He is determined to cause as much pain for refugees and immigrants as he possibly can. It isn't completely clear if this was his very own idea, or if he got it from elsewhere, but, Miller is the one who pushed the Idiot to adopt it....thereby inflicting such pain and distress that it would serve as a deterrent to others who might contemplate coming to America. 

  I am not interested in citing here a laundry list of the ways in which this man has inflicted his ideas on others.  He's had the president's ear from the outset and it seems clear that the Idiot likes what Miller offers him for advice. Otherwise, he'd be gone, gone, gone....just like the sizeable crowd of other advisers and operatives who ran afoul of the Idiot's wishes.  I am more interested in the energy that Miller brings to the table.  I also find it somewhat curious that he bears such a stark resemblance to Dr. Josef Goebbles, the Nazi propaganda minister.  Ironically, Miller was born Jewish, but if appearances are at all significant, Miller is kindred spirit.  

  I wrote sometime back that the Nazi uber-monster, Reinhard Heydrich, was a perfect illustration of evil manifest in a human being.  There is a film clip of Heydrich coming out of some meeting, and, as he moves toward the camera and then slides on by, he fixes the lens with his gaze and it's one of the few film clips I have ever seen that runs chills down my spine.  His is the gaze of pure evil manifest.  If Mephisto has walked the planet in pseudo-human form, this surely is a glimpse of him.  

  Aside: At a national knife show where I was displaying my work, a client pulled something out of his 'man purse' and proffered it to me.  I removed it from a satin bag and found myself looking at a gold-plated letter opener, with sheath.  The sheath was emblazoned with black enamel runes of the SS, and the knife itself had a human skull on the pommel with rubies in the eye sockets.  It was creepy enough...and then I turned it over and saw the engraved inscription.  It was a gift from Reinhard Heydrich to Heinrich Himmler on Himmler's birthday.  I almost dropped it on the table.  The energy contained in this little 'memorabilia' was palpable and it was enough to take my breath away.  Here, right in front of me, was a personal item gifted to one of the most evil men who has ever lived, by another who could easily vie for that title.

  This is the exact same energy that emanates from Stephen Miller.  Every time that he is interviewed on the t-v, it re-impresses me how malevolent and just plain creepy he is.  He states things in a way that would be offensive even  if he was sharing a recipe for muffins.  He is clearly hostile toward his interviewers, and one gets the feeling that he would order them incarcerated if he was in a position to do so.  This is right in line with the idea that the Idiot could just tell the Supreme Court to over-turn the election and they would bow to his will because he put three of them there.  They voted unanimously to reject this idea that millions of votes should be tossed out just because the Idiot said so....and offered no credible evidence of any fraud.  The 'fraud' was the Idiot himself finally showing the entire planet that he could care less about democracy and that he craves being a dictator.  After all, dictating is what dictators do and how cool is it that people obey them....either out of fear, as in Putin's Russia..or out of delusion, like millions of his followers who have imbibed the Kool-Aid and believe every lie that comes out of his wee, funnel-shaped yap.

  This is a time for all people of conscience to really pay close attention to what is happening to our country.  This election has offered some hope that we can make it through to the other side....of the pandemic, of having a mentally-ill wannabe dictator in the highest office. But, unless we exercise our right to participate--via voting, and acting out loudly whenever possible--we will see the slime-wads of the senate...yes, I am referring to you, Moscow Mitch....destroy much of what has taken three generations and a dozen presidents to build.  Working people, and all minorities across the nation will find that they are being repeatedly marginalized and excluded from having any say at all in how the country responds to the dire challenges in front of us,  The pandemic is really just a distraction from the Climate Crisis, income inequality, food insecurity, education for the rich and indebtedness for the rest of us.  None of this will work out well for the 'little people', as long as the greedy sycophants like McConnell, Cruz, Graham et all have their way in congress.

  Step one, I most fervently hope, will be winning both congressional races in Georgia.  Failing to do so will set the stage for another four years of McConnell doing everything in his considerable gate-keeper's power to screw the working people of America.  Don't believe me, just take a good hard look at what he's done at every turn in the road.

Bearing down on 300 thousand dead....

   

   Sometime in the next day or two, we will pass the daunting milestone of having over 300 thousand Americans dead from Cronavirus.  I remind you that the total, due to all causes, of dead in World War II was just over 405K dead.  If the experts, i.e. science-oriented people like Anthony Fauci, are anywhere near correct in their projections....we will blow past the WW2 total sometime not too far off, perhaps in January even.  Yesterday, setting another new record for a daily death-toll, more Americans died than died on 9-11.  And, yet, this daunting fact doesn't seem to have the impact on people that one would think it might.  Most have become somewhat numb to bad news, is the only conclusion I can draw from this. We are sleep-walking through this...and the fact that the political arena is fraught with conflict and astonishing assaults on our very democracy, doesn't help either.

  Americans, and, I can only observe us, not Europe or the rest of the planet....have kind of thrown up their hands and said, "WTF?"  I do see more people here in rural Maine at least conforming to the supermarket and WalMart stipulation that you need to wear a mask if you want to shop there.  A month or two ago, it was very common to see mask deniers in both stores....now, not so much. But, about a quarter of those who are clearly doing it just so they can shop for essentials...wear the mask under their nose and some even  under their chin. Obviously, this defeats the whole point of wearing it in the first place. C'mon people, this isn't really that difficult or such a terrible imposition on your personal freedom.  That is just a  bullshit idea that the GOPs have pushed so they can conform to what the Idiot wants.  He is still putting himself at crowded events, even a rally in Georgia yesterday, and few of the people who come to grovel at his feet are wearing masks.  How stupid is that?  I'll tell you: it's stupid enough to get you or your family members KILLED...as in fucking DEAD.

   But, hey, we wouldn't want you to compromise your right to infect others.  I confess that I have been guilty of wishing that all of these mask refusing, big crowd loving fools would get the virus and find out for themselves how much fun that is. That is not very kind of me, but, I have a very hard time with people who seem to want to embrace stupidity.  Some folks are born dumb.  It's what life has given them as a challenge, I am guessing.  But, others have a choice, and, yet, they still choose to do things and say things that are not only inane and stupid, but not even true.  Until you have had a first person experience of trying to have a respectful and intelligent....at least reasonably so....conversation with one of the Kool-Aids, it is impossible to understand how this voluntary stupidity is so debilitating.  It renders a person unable to think with any kind of clarity at all.  Once you leave the world of science and a fact-based real world that you live in....all bets are off.  As a biology professor I had in college said, "Now we're getting to some very mushy ground."  He was referring to students willingness to project and conjecture based on a casual perception, as opposed to keeping things grounded in demonstrable facts.

  When you are speaking with someone who is absolutely unwilling to accept the idea that there is a profound difference between a fact and a lie, it is impossible to arrive at any grounded conclusions....other than the fact that your speaking with someone who is clueless...about anything. 

  Now we have the state attorneys general of 17 states joining together to support and sign-on with the Texas AG--a corrupt piece of shit himself--in a suit that is demanding that SCOTUS simply over-turn the vote in four swing states where the Idiot lost.  There is an idiotic argument being put forward that,"...somethin' ain't right in those states....so dear Justices, please throw out millions of votes because we just would really like it if you did".   It is so idiotic that it buggers belief, and yet, there it is, being put out there as if it were a legitimate legal argument. It is not.  What it is, is an ill-conceived and ill-prepared, and stupid attempt to achieve the end of our democracy in one fell swoop.

Indeed, you will be wanting to look behind you, Donny.
The light you see at the end of the tunnel, is a bus-load of attorneys-general coming for you.

  I have a high level of confidence that the supreme justices will toss it aside as soon as they are ready to issue an opinion.  The Idiot's campaign...led by that legal genius Rudy the Clown Prince....has filed over FIFTY suits, and they are batting zero.  Well, okay, they had one minor decision go their way but it was inconsequential.  So,  ALMOST zero.

  The simple fact remains: a lot of very capable people worked their asses off to make this election transparent and fair...and, despite all the challenges, it was.  The only 'conspiracy' that has emerged is that of the Idiot's campaign's efforts to sabotage the entire process and to steamroll democracy into a flat, greasy spot on the pavement under their feet.  The Idiot himself began preparations to do this years ago.  He, as usual, telegraphed his moves by saying that any election that he lost had to be rigged....because, as we all know....Donald J. Trump is no loser.  

  Oh, yes, he is.  And, not only did he lose the election, he lost it by a definitive and substantial margin.  He's not just a loser, he's a seriously disabled head-case and is doing all he can to leave a legacy that will note that fact....as in FACT....for all time.  

  Time is running out.  The Idiot is not merely between a rock and a hard place...it's beginning to squeeze him and that is going to get a whole lot more painful as he realizes that he's lost the protections afforded him by the office of the president.  State AGs are already well into preparing investigations and charges against him as the evidence of his dirty past is dragged out into the light of day.  He's going to be examined and re-examined until it is apparent that he has always been a grifter, a con, a crook and a liar...about damn-near every-fucking-thing.   

  So, come out and play, Donny-boy.  We have been waiting for you.  

Turning the page on Trump.....

 

   I am having strong pangs of desire.....a craving to write about something--anything--other than the Idiot. He is such a disgusting person--hardly qualified for the term 'human being'--that I am getting desperate to watch him fade to nothingness in the rear-view mirror.  

  But, here's the rub:  it is like encountering a potentially dangerous animal in the wild. Rule number one is: don't turn your back.  The threat you can see is less dangerous than the one you ignore.  It's readily apparent that he is keenly focused on doing as much damage and causing as much chaos and pain as possible in the time he has left in the Oval Office.  He's not merely your run-of-the-mill asshole; he's a very special, world-class idiot asshole...and, make no mistake, he is dangerous, particularly because he is still in a position to use the power of the presidency to cause havoc. Until noon on January 20th, when he is officially kaput, he can still inflict immense damage, including starting a war with Iran or who knows? There is a reason he has just fired career Pentagon advisers and replaced them with un-qualified sycophants.  And, what are the odds there is anything like a benign reason for doing so?

                               To see more faces in this state of rapture, look at Leni Reifenstahl's 

                               Triumph of the Will, a movie about Hitler at the Nuremburg rally.

  As uninformed and as obtuse as he is, he still has a boat-load of slyness and guile.  He's getting more insane as this debacle unfolds and his feverish mind is working overtime to come up with new ways to harm to our democracy, the next administration and the American people.  Like Adolf Hitler, Trump wants to hurt the people who let him down....as he sees it.  He may be unwilling to admit that he got clobbered in the legitimate voting, but, he's well aware that he lost and he's going absolutely off the deep-end trying to find a way forward that won't leave him with a legacy as one of history's mega-losers.  His niece, Mary, a PhD. psychologist, who wrote a book about how and why he is dysfunctional....has warned us that he will not go lightly into that good night.  Rather, he will do all he can to inflict as much pain as possible on those who--in his warped mind--betrayed him.

   His legal campaign to up-end the voting results in swing states has been a freak show, starring Rudy, the Clown, Giuliani and a few other incompetent and equally insane/stupid actors.  His speeches have become more whining grievance rants than anything resembling a coherent argument for his case.  He whines and he shouts, gesticulates, wheedles and implores....all intended to fire up his base of Kool-Aids to what end we do not know.  But, it 's not a good sign that so many of his base are radicalized to the point of carrying AR-15s and AK-47s to protests.  

  It's not clear how an armed conflict with whomever they fear would accomplish a damn thing.  In fact, it would almost certainly be disastrous for them...not their opposition.  These mostly pudgy and unfit lower middle-class 'radicals' would cut and run if they ever had to confront a body of troops, either state or federal, who were properly armed and trained to deal with 'social unrest'.  They like to dress-up, get all 'tacti-cool', and some of them even run around the boonies on the weekend and act like soldiers.  Despite many of their number being vets, (most of whom, were just in the military and never saw actual combat. Recall that only 1 out of 12 soldiers are actual combatants, the rest support them), they do not, by any realistic yardstick, constitute a viable 'revolutionary force'.  They're just idiots who think the Big Orange Idiot is their Fuhrer.  

  I have seen a regular army infantry division in action. They put on a periodic display at Fort Benning of all that they are capable of bringing to the fight...and, if it doesn't make you cringe as you wish to never be on the opposite side, then you're not really paying attention. On the positive side of all this is the fact that our army and marine brass have already expressed the position that they will not accept any orders that pit them against the civilian population of the United States.  They refuse to act as enforcers for the Idiot, in other words. He may think he's enough of a pocket dictator that he can call governors and tell them to override the popular vote....but, he's now finding out that his power has some very distinct limitations and people are not going to break the laws just because he says so.

  And, so today we see a report of these armed idiots protesting outside of the Michigan Secretary of State's house, shouting obscenities and 'Stop the steal' while she decorates her Christmas tree with her four year-old daughter.  Aside from this being incredibly stupid and ineffective...it clearly shows how far outside the realm of reality these idiots are.  Do they really think any-damn-thing is going to change because they are making inane threats?  How stupid do you have to be to think this?  Answer: about as stupid as the woman, Melissa, Carone, who put on a mind-numbing clown show testifying for Rudy at the 'panel' event in Michigan a few days ago.  You watch and you shake your head, in disbelief that anybody could be so stupid....and, so self-righteous at the same time.  She was arrogant, but it was an empty bucket, based on her airheaded ideas that proved she knew the election was stolen from the Idiot.  Amazing. Her claim to fame going forward will be that she was so brazenly stupid that she got the attention of the writers at SNL, and they did an opening skit in which Cecily Strong played Carone.

  It's unlikely that any Trump supporter will ever read this blog, which is clearly intended to hammer their amazing disconnect from reality and anything close to the actual, factual TRUTH.  But, just on the outside chance that some poor bastard does, here is something you should copy down and have a skilled fiber person make into a needlepoint for the living room wall:  THE IDIOT LOST....by A LOT.