For most of my life I was an enabler. Still have to fight it. We have enabled Donald Trump (the “real” Trump?) Ho. We have enabled his pretend presidency. He has raised gullible children.
I haven’t been alone. Cared for his feelings while he defecates on the American Dream. Impeach him one day and enable his leaving on a red carpet and a military gun salute “not to make him mad?” Present him with a list of those who voted for impeachment? Come on! I trust he will not be allowed a flyover on inauguration day, as I earlier protested.
Good parenting is called “natural consequences.” How dare him play nasty on the American Dre
I’m going to quit writing awhile, if I can. Too much going on and I’m too revved up for sensible conversation. You know that story I was pretending to write about the 2020 election? I don’t need to write any more in order to discover what kind of story it turned out to be. It is/was a horror story.
Somehow Bob Woodward’s book FEAR came into my hands without seeking, and I feel nauseated to find how stagecrafted Trump’s election was, how encouraged and how others modeled him like clay into being elected. He switched from being pro choice to pro life among other positions just for the pleasure of what would become his base. From the beginning his behavior was guideded and shaped by skillful goal oriented individuals who exercised their skills at manipulation in a behind the scenes dishonest game. He doesn’t seem to believe in anything except winning at the role adopted for him by behind the scenes despicables. All were surprised their games worked (backfired? farted?) and they succeeded in presenting the United States with a pretend president who had to be watched cafrefully. Letters were surreptitiously removed from his desk before signing in order to protect our country from him, etc., after he became the first president with unpredictable temper tantrums and irrational proposed actions.
So, I’m aggravated with news media for calling the “leaks” unpatriotic for trying to keep him from irreparable international harm, when they’re not only risking their jobs but trying to offset Trump’s rampant impulsive tantrums and elevator basement morality. By the way, anyone heard from the evangelicals recently?
And I do turn the tv off when the young “miracle worker” sells his gadget that will mechanically tell you that the best is yet to come for you, you are blessed with unanticipated good things in your future–sight unseen, of course. That one’s a money maker, all right, maybe run for president in 2024. Anyone heard from other evangelicals recently?
Sorry, hate to leave you with discouraging thoughts. I’ve set my card table up in my bedroom to facilitate drawing, collage making and poetry writing. I’m going to try and let my blog writing cool off a bit. Peace.
A president recklessly sacrificing the lives of his citizens for nefarious reasons? Or making up conspiracy theories against democracy? Might there be a law against starting a war in order to hurt the incumbent (and America?) Or assassinating citizens or non-citizens abroad? If not, there ought to be. [I confess to wondering how Epstein died in prison].
Our AG thinks presidential powers should not be limited. Do we think that efforts by elected officials to blatantly attack our democratic underpinnings is okay? WHAT BALLS! I can imagine a future during which our ineptitude to set limits on our leaders’ retaliations or threats against subserviant appointees is blameworthy and cowardly, if not dangerous. We also need to put in writing the protocol of when it’s permitted to appoint new Supreme Court occupants, with nothing left to assumptions of fair play.
And would it be too much to ask for a mandatory vetting of presidential candidates? –Perhaps also while in office or running for office? What’s good for the goose is…
The following is one paragraph from a g-mail addressed to “Nicola,” evidently a mass mailing error from a worthy cause.
“Some Indigenous Peoples refer to ‘Thanksgiving’ as the ‘National Day of Mourning.’ It is a day founded in a myth about this country’s origin–one that reframes a long history of attempted genocide as a friendly feast. This year many people are mourning loved ones lost to Covid, as well as state and vigilante violence. For some of us, this will be a different ‘Thanksgiving’ – one with limited contact due to Covid precautions. This is a time to mourn, reckon, fortify.”
The following is not an excuse, just some of my thoughts about the occurrence of prejudice in the world, throughout history. People say, “No one is born prejudiced,” and that is true to some extent. Since I have a blind side like almost everyone, I have probably been racist in my thinking and behavior at some point, but not very much so. On the farm I played with a little black boy down the road until my visits were not facilitated. A black woman who ironed for us was the person who told me there was a word for “the day before today” and a different one for “the day after today.” I remember playing at the home of some black folks who I now think must have been our sharecroppers. I remember once visiting a black church with my father, and I had a black family sleepover at my house in Atlanta when the Mule Train passed through on its way to Washington in the late sixties. In college I was a member of ADA and we traveled to hear Martin Luther King speak. (We had to wait a little because there was a bomb scare). But I have learned through reading that we all have something genetic that makes us culturally prefer those who carry our own genes. It’s called kinship selection. The “us-them” dichotomy can be seen everywhere. Social experiments with school children have been done in which the children were divided into those with blue eyes versus those with brown-eyes and pitted against each other. The hostility that crept up was shocking. You may have noticed that Trump has been riding that regrettable fact. That would have been a “Us vs. Them” tendency, which is atop or under the kinship preference process, which seems to be atop an even more basic primitive, archaic tendency which involves the ancient widespread valuing of our own genes. This tendency resurfaces when folks are asked who of several people they would save if they could save only one of their family versus five, say, unrelated. I’ll be quiet now. I was on a rant. Blame it on self-quarantine. But it does point to the fact that we as humans have a problem we need to work on if we hope to have a more just and lasting world. (I know, preachy and it’s not even Sunday).
Finally made it back before the election. (The Classic and Gutenberg were dueling and not everyone had that problem, but I hope it’s smooth sailing now.)
We were going to see what kind of diary this was going to be. When I heard Trump talking about moving out of the country I had hopes he was ready to move on, in which case this would turn out to be an adventure diary/novel.
Then I read the article in November’s Harper’s magazine called “The Enemies Briefcase — Secret Powers and the Presidency” (p 53-57) by Andrew Cockburn, in which William Barr fortified by a legal opinion the legitimacy of George H. W. Bush’s attack on Panama without congressional approval. During the Iran-Contra scandal Reagan’s minions underwent rehearsals for mass roundups of “subversives.”
Among others, a conservative young lawyer named William Barr was assigned the task in the CIA’s legislative office of designing accommodation measures to keep Church Committee investigators away from its most important records. An article in Politico in June warned that in the event of a national emergency on the grounds of national security, the president would have more than 120 statutory emergency powers at his disposal.
Ignoring the above concerns (didn’t the courts find fault with calling the need for a southern “wall” due to an emergency, in retrospect?), I have to wonder if Trump could rein in his paramilitary troops even if he wanted to. They’ve been practicing. What’s their payoff?
Trump will be concerned about the prospect of Prison if he should lose. EXCEPT that Attorney General Barr has said the president has the power to pardon himself and his friends. (I assume this covers his family, too.) I might see him high-tailing it to a dictatorship, except for the danger to the current dictator, and Trump’s knee-jerk tendency to play “Gotcha.”
Unless we’re VERY LUCKY, I’m thinking this could turn out to be a tragedy instead of an adventure or comedy.
I know that hate can make one a hateful person, but the news that the vacancy on the Supreme Court has just been filled inches me pretty close to it. It seems there’s no mercy in politics; possibly never was. A little power can sure rot the soul, if there is one.
Looming on the horizon, the great adventure story – or tragic epitaph — like the “moving finger,” will have writ on November 3rd the fate of the United States, give or take a few weeks to months., with a harbinger of things to come sprouting Election “night”. Undoubtedly the Proud Boys are “standing by” as suggested by our president. Recent developments include a shameful debate performance with our president interrupting Biden more than 120 times; the revelation that our president said that the pandemic was good in a way, since he didn’t have to shake so many disgusting hands—AND—upon discharge from Walter Reed Hospital October 5 after three days treatment for covid 19, our president assured the American public —with more than 1,024 of us having died on Oct. 2, — plus more than 210,000 of our citizens now dead and dying after 71/2 months without a federal response effort— that they should not be afraid of the virus. Those supporters who have lost loved ones due to the virus while taking his advice about the uselessness of wearing masks and social distancing could be having second thoughts about the whole situation; freedom to die, as many attending his wakes—I mean rallies—discovered: At least 12 people who attended a Rose Garden ceremony for President Trump to officially announce the nomination for Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court have tested positive for coronavirus. An ex-staffer reports the president cares about nothing but himself, which gives him good standing among the world’s dictators. BUT THE PEOPLE, THEY THINK HE LOVES THEM! –Because of being raised in abusive homes or from a lack of a more healthy role model? Well, they’ve got Pence and McDonnell and Barr and Rudy to emulate, also. I am reminded of The Boy Who Cried Wolf and the Emperor Has No Clothes fables. Our president has maintained that Black Americans have mainly themselves to blame in their struggle for equality, hindered more by lack of initiative than societal impediment. Greg Miller of the Washington Post also reports that our president has muttered that Jews “are only in it for themselves” and “stick together” in an ethnic allegiance that exceeds other loyalties. (Imagine that! Sounds somehow familiar…). You may know this reference, but I didn’t: brennancenter.org Protect the Election—“Hidden in Plain Sight: Racism, White Supremacy, and Far-Right Militancy in Law Enforcement,” containing an exploration of 123 instances across the United States. Our president’s record of shameful federal tax filings and attempts to inject a new member to the Supreme Court contrary to tradition, along with playing footsie with Putin and calling our military names, not lifting a hand in response to Putin paying bounties on our servicemen’s lives and insisting on unmonitored chats with Putin leaves me speechless though not unable to write, thank goodness….. I can’t think of anyone to share the guilt of the president sacrificing our children to the economy with (without adequate funds for school safety) than Betsy DeVos. Threatening to cut off funds for schools who don’t skip to his beat… Meanwhile, the closest I can come to humor today is “Swamp Thing” in the Oct. 5th issue of The Nation. While I pride myself on not overt name-calling (can’t remember a thing), I had to laugh out loud at the full page version of Mitch McConnell on page 27. It’s frameable, in my opinion, and by artist Ryan Inzana…
Plans were for this true tale to appear weekly, but the plot is unfolding so rapidly that this early chapter is necessitated. Reminder: The story will end Nov. 3 or later, in 2021, either as an adventure tale, a tragedy or an epitaph.
On this early autumn day of wildfires, pandemic, senate stonewalling, Barr pouting that congress was rude and interrupted him, it appears the president is getting bolder and bolder in his allegiance to authoritarian disdain for democracy. Meanwhile, every administrative puddle is being piddled in.
Our president refuses to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if Biden wins, and threatens to override the FDA concerning early release of the vaccine.
Educational decisions; states’ rights abuses; freedom of speech attacks; “selling” leadership positions (as in the post office); failure to support our troops by denigrating them and failure to admit or oppose Putin’s paying for the scalps of American soldiers through bounties; political misuse of Trump’s pardoning power; sexual assault; misrepresenting facts (otherwise known as “lying,”); giving the military a portion of the coronavirus funds authorized for economic relief; championing white supremacy; fueling confrontations between segments of American citizens; putting and keeping children in cages; wanting protesters to be charged with insurrection; so pathetically immune to the truth that he gives himself an A or A+ on his handling of the corona virus plague which has already taken the lives of more than 200,000 Americans; and canceling funds for racial tolerance training, saying it is “Un-American.”…..
The days are ticking by until the denouement — 39 days to go if my math is correct. “We’ll put them down very quickly,” he said of any protesters (whom he calls rioters) on election day.
I’d really like to see a survey of why some Americans actually want to vote for Trump–not lying, but telling the truth, if they know it. . NEXT CHAPTER: What if the election is close and contested?
Catxman dances, Catxman spins around, leaps ....... // I sing a song, a song of hope, a song of looove -- a song of burning roses. / Synthesizer notes. // (c) 2021-22
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