No, Trump is not Hitler. He is a Grave Threat to American Unity.

   As readers of this blog know, I am not an admirer of Donald Trump. He is vain, cruel, narcissistic, arrogant, and just possibly off his rocker. He makes a mockery of Jesus's command to love God with all your heart and all your might and to love your neighbor as yourself. His Republican buddies seen to not realize that the teachings of Ayn Rand are much closer to Satan than Jesus. At no point does Jesus preach rampant individualism, egomania, avarice, or hatred. God in his Commandments has stated that there shall be no gods other than Me. This includes capitalism, communism, and "the market". In short, I don't like the guy. The behavior of many his followers (certainly not all) is appalling. But I do not think that Trump is another Hitler. I do thing that he is a grave threat to the unity of the federation that is the United States of America.
     I have several reasons for believing Trump is not another Hitler.
     1. Trump just doesn't have the necessary skills. Hitler was an authentic political genius. He had the ability to inspire a mighty nation and bend it to his will. The fact that he used his genius for evil does not change this. Trump just might be a genius also, but if he is a genius, it is in self promotion, not leading a mass movement. He inspires much hatred and very little love. His support is broad but only an inch deep. As of this writing he has been President for less than a week and things are already showing signs of falling apart. It will get worse for him rather quickly.
     2. People who think Trump is another Hitler confuse the definitions of nation and state.  A state is a sovereign political entity under one government whose lines you can see on any decent world atlas. The United Kingdom, Canada, India, and Indonesia are examples of states that include more than one nation. A nation  is a group of people who share, or believe they share, a common culture, history, language, ethnic background, literature and symbols. For example, the United Kingdom is a state. England, Scotland, and Wales are nations. (Great Britain is just the name of an island). Quebec is a separate nation included in the state of Canada. A country can be both a nation and a state, like France, Germany, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.  Kurdistan is an example of a stateless nation that bleeds into the boarders of three states.
     The problem in the United States is that people believe it is a nation when it really is a confederation of nations under one state. Don't believe me? The Civil War was really a war between  nations that had very little in common with one another. Today, there is very little uniting, say, Massachusetts and Mississippi other than a common national state. They hate each other. There is no way in Hell that Massachusetts will allow itself to be taken over by fundamentalist Christians imposing their version of Sharia Law. Efforts to impose secularism on Mississippi and Alabama have met with constant, unceasing resistance. Why? Because Massachusetts and Mississippi are parts of very different nations that have very little in common and in fact despise one another! We cannot even agree on the definitions of such basic concepts as freedom, liberty, patriotism, and what the flag means. War and Peace? Health care? Racial Relations?  Forget it.  Chicago is part of a third nation. Los Angeles is part of yet another. Same with New York, Seattle, and Denver. Hell, Miami is a nation of its own! The idea of someone placing the entire United States under fascism is laughable. The reason Hitler came to power was that Nazi Germany was a very homogenous nation-state with a strong culture of conformity. Even someone with the evil genius of Hitler could not unite the U.S.A. by the force of his will. Even if he wanted to, Donald Trump would not even come close.
     3. Donald Trump's supporters  just don't have it in them. Many (certainly not all!) of Trump's supporters are sullen, indolent, and ignorant. A belief in unearned privilege based on race or religion debases a people of  its character and breeds decadence. Look at the Confederate States of America. White South Africa. Northern Ireland. Saudi Arabia. Are these or were these healthy societies? Whites in America are suffering the same social pathologies that blacks suffered a generation ago. Crystal meth and OxyContin are the new crack cocaine. Births out of wedlock have  reached the same levels that blacks in the ghetto had thirty years ago. The late Eric Hoffer in his classic book on mass movements states that The True Believer is willing to make unbelievable sacrifices and subsume his whole self to the cause. This does not look like America in 2017. Not even close. If things turn bad, people are much more likely to turn on Trump than to follow him. Will his successor be good or bad? We don't know.
    I don't think we do not have to worry about a fascist takeover of America. We do have to worry about America breaking up into its component nations. Yesterday, California Governor Jerry Brown fired a warning shot across Trump's bow. He essentially said that he will not put up with Trump's shenanigans and to remember that California could be an independent nation in its own right.  Some people have already had the idea that California could secede from the left, much as Texans have often talked about seceding from the right. Indeed, what do we have keeping us together? Not much. The Constitution. Inertia. A belief in American Exceptionalism based on a world that no longer exists. That's about it. Colin Woodard in his excellent book American Nations said it best, in the last paragraph on the United States in his book:

      "But one thing is certain; if Americans seriously want the United States to continue to exist in something like its current form, they had best respect the fundamental tenets of our unlikely  union. It cannot survive if we end the separation of church and state or institute the Baptist equivalent of Sharia Law. We wont hold together if presidents appoint political ideologues to the Justice Department or the Supreme Court of the United States. or if party loyalists try to win elections by trying to stop people from voting rather than winning them with their ideas. The union cannot function if national coalitions continue to use House and Senate rules to prevent important issues from being debated in the open because members know their positions wouldn't withstand public scrutiny. Other sovereign democratic states have central governments more corrupted than our own, but most can fall back on unifying elements we lack: common ethnicity, a shared religion,, or near universal consensus on many fundamental issues. The United States needs its central government to function clearly, openly, and efficiently because its one of the  few things binding us together"

So far, Trump and his GOP buddies have done everything to flout national unity. I would add gerrymandering, the continued existence of the Electoral College because of inertia and the idea that people who live in rural areas are "Real Americans" and city dwellers our not, Citizens United, and the dirty tricks that have been indulged in since Nixon, what they charmingly call "ratfucking". The horrible truth is that the United States will not turn fascist because the union will break up long before this happens. To prevent this from happing, Trump must stop or we must stop Trump. We still have time, but it is running out. Quickly.

  If we continue to indulge in the worst side of our natures, the USA will break up. We will become much less than the sum of our parts. Much more vulnerable to  external threat. That would be a tragedy for us and for the world.

Don't Worry- Donald Trump Will Obey Orders.

     First off, what do we know about Donald Trump? He made his fortune using OPM- Other's People's Money and not paying it back  He has filed four bankruptcies, (or is it five?). He once lost almost a billion dollars in a year and has been sucking off the tax writeoffs ever since.
    Second- what do we know about money? That it is just a concept. That it is not backed by anything. Money only has value if the person you give it to has confidence that he can spend it somewhere else. If people lose confidence in the value of their money, it becomes just so much toilet paper, only less absorbent.
    Third- what do we know about China? They owe their prosperity by exporting huge amounts of cheap manufactured goods without restraint, destroying tens of millions of  Americans' livelihood. They have lent us $TRILLIONS$ so we can continue to buy piles of their cheap crap to keep them afloat.
     If Donald Trump tries to Make America Great Again by cutting off the flow of Chinese imports, China will retaliate my demanding payment of the trillions America borrowed  from them. Then President Trump will do what he does best- default. That's right. The United States of America in Default. The good old USA not paying its bills. See what happens Mr. Tea Party, when the world no longer accepts dollars for payment that have been made worthless by the Huckster in Chief. We Americans take so much for granted. Wait until you get a taste of anarchy.
     This will never happen.
      Hey folks, Wall Street, the Pentagon, the CIA, official unelected Washington, and Silicon Valley have WAY too much at stake my allowing America's Most Beloved Reality Show Star to play Russian roulette with their fortune (and our future).. A couple of goons will get Trump in a dark room and tell  the Donald the facts of life. The Donald will obey. He has no choice. Of course, the Con Artist in Chief probably already knew this.
      All the poor working class white people will have their hopes crushed. Again. The factories will not be rebuilt. The "jobs" will not be coming back. They have been gone for 40 freaking years now. I really don't think most of Trump's white supporters will care, as long as they all can continue to look down on all those black and brown people. It is never about economics. Its about class privilege. It was the same during the Civil war, when an army of starving poor whites fought like demons so they could feel themselves better than black slaves. It will be the same today. Trump just might try to build that wall. Many might be deported, or continue to get locked up, or get their skulls cracked. Yep, (white) America will cheer, at least those who have not succumbed to despair. Just don't expect any jobs. Or America to be great again.
     So America, go shopping! If you can afford it. Have a six pack of beer!  It seems that we continue to not have the moral fiber to make the transformative changes America most desperately needs. The rest of us not transfixed by The Donald Trump Show will continue to rely on the Holy Sprit for strength and fortitude. Its not like we can rely on our fellow Americans.            

 

I don't give a damm about what motivated Trump supporters.

Oh Boy, not again.
The New Yorker once again printed another lengthy "think piece" on What Motivates Trump Supporters. This poor, good soul attended numerous Trump rallies, interviewed a lot of his fans, and like a good liberal, desperately tried To Make Sense Of It All. Being a Good Liberal, he really tried To Keep An Open Mind. Tried Really Hard as a matter of fact.
     Pardon me if I don't give a rat's ass.
     You see, if you were to put Jesus Christ, Moses, Mohammad, Confucius, Buddha, Plato, and Freud into a room and told them to put together a moral code for humanity, they  would come which much the same code we have now. The one we learned in kindergarten. Love your neighbor as yourself. Self Sacrifice is good. Greed and selfishness are bad. Do onto others as you would want them to do to you. Everybody has an immortal soul. And so on and so forth.  We all know the moral code. It is ingrained in our souls.
    Donald Trump, his supporters, and the corporate bastards who are ruining this country, have chosen to ignore this morality. We all know what is Good. These people have chosen to ignore it and do Evil. They have chosen to behave like spastic schoolchildren. Look how naughty we are! I'm as racist and stupid as I wannabe!  Why should I give a damm about what their motivations are. They are Evil. Period.  In a world where Jesus and anyone who has thought about the power of love, these people have chosen to hate. Yes Jesus loves them. He will give them every chance. But His patience will not last forever.

Elites Greed and the People's Cowardice: Two Gaping Wounds in America's Soul

 America is dying do to the elites indifference to the well being of the nation and the average citizen's disinclination to do anything about it. After all, the average Joe knows very well that something is very wrong but lacks either the knowledge or courage to bring about the needed change. So he flails in anger, making  himself look silly, allowing the elites to laugh at him and not change their behavior. So the lifeblood of America drains away, with no end in sight.
     It truly is amazing how indifferent the American elites are to the well being of America. They treat the nation of their  birth as just another company to loot, just another teardown to make room for another McMansion. Hey, the place is dying, so sell it off for the sum of its parts! If the place  dies, so what? We are citizens of the world! We can live anywhere we want! If millions of less fortunate Americans are destroyed by their greed ,cruelty, and corruption  so what? We earned it! We deserve our wealth and everyone else's too. We're just better than you!
    Nobody comments on how the US elites indifference to their  native  land  is quite unique in the world. Vladimir Putin might be a bastard, but nobody doubts he cares about Russia. The Chinese Communists  might be cruel to their people, but they care about the future greatness of China. You get the feeling that the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street or Silicon Valley would not give a damm about the demise of their fellow Americans as long as they  got their money. In euros, of course.
     It is very simple how the elites made their money. They would like to tell you that they made it through brilliant innovation on Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Wrong. Most of their wealth has been simple cost cutting. What has the cost that has been cut? Labor. The 1 percent's  formula for riches? Cut wages through the forces of globalization and stuff it into their own pockets. Its as simple as that. They would like to pretend that it is through their superior intelligence and innovation. But in 2016, Silicon Valley is largely being exposed as an emperor without any clothes. Instead of the flying cars of The Jetsons, we get fancy phones and 140 characters. Steve Jobs is dead. Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have nothing more to offer than hot air. There is nothing big on the horizon, Uber and Snapchat notwithstanding. The Superinnovative Cool  Cats made money the old fashioned way. Through slavery.
    What have We The People done about this? Not much. Sure they get angry. Big deal. My beagle Alfie gets angry when you keep him off the couch. But the duties of citizenship that our Creator demands of us seems to be beyond us. Maybe we lack the intelligence to realize that our oppressors are the cool cats who sit in their jeans on Casual Friday, rather than minorities or Muslim terrorists. You are thousands and thousands of times  more likely to be made homeless my someone sending your job to China rather than being attacked by terrorists.
     Two totally unrelated movies can tell us the extend of the problem. One is "Slap Shot", the hilarious Paul Newman classic about minor league hockey. The subplot in the movie is that the team is going to be disbanded because the towns steel mill is closing. "Slap Shot" was made in 1975, 41 years ago. The other movie is Alan Parker 's Mississippi  Burning"     where the Gene Hackman character tells a story about how his father killed his black neighbor's mule because "son, if you ain't better than a nigger, than what are you." The point of bringing up these two movies? One, is that the betrayal of the working class has been going on for two generations now. Second, it has been allowed to go on because the white working class would rather defend white privilege than fight for a better and fairer world.
     Yes, White privilege exists. Why else would whites pay such a cost to defend it? There is no such thing as "driving while white". No such thing as white ghettos. Whites are privileged in this country in so many ways,it is not surprising that they would go to such great lengths to defend it. There is only one problem. White elites in Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Washington don't give a damm  about  white privilege. Because destroying American white privilege is how they make their money!
     The hard pressed American white male could have responded to this challenge in several ways. One is working to improve their skills. On one hand, this has proven to be no guarantee of a good job. On the other hand, there has been much comment on how females have worked harder to improve their skills while many males have remained passive. Hard times are no excuse for doing nothing, but many whites have done just that. Even better, White American Male could have made common cause with his fellow human beings to create a just society. Didn't wanna do that either. So what did he do? Follow 40 years of  white backlash politicians. These pols would promise to defend, in secret coded words, white privilege and blame everything on black welfare queens. Indeed, make it sound like the only Americans who work hard are  white males. Everyone else is sucking off the government. Of course, these pols turned around and took the money of the white elites as they destroyed tens of millions of jobs!For forty years! Well now. White American Male has seen through their ruse! He has rejected his old Republican buddies! He now has a solution! DONALD TRUMP!!!

Good God.

    Well it looks like America's double whammy  will continue for awhile. Will America survive? Who knows?All I know  is that Jesus Christ has promised us that the gates of Hell will not prevail against His creation. Good thing too. Looks like America might not be so lucky.

Dance with your Donald, Fellow American.  I will put my hope in the Lord.

Democrats Giggle as Fascism Sweeps America.

     Wake up Demmies.

     UPDATE: I wrote this in March. Never have I been so sad to be so right.

     The GOP  is not "imploding".  Repeat. THE GOP IS NOT IMPLODING. Despite itself, it is merely expanding its base. Remember, the  problem for them was figuring out  how to  keep their  racist base appeased while expanding their appeal to others. Marco  Rubio, among others, failed  miserably at this. Well, here comes Donald Trump to save the day! The Donald  titillates  with racial raw meat while expanding from that base. How? By appealing to the voters  legitimate economic  concerns. The very same concerns that  Hillary Clinton  and the  Democrats  have spent decades ignoring.
      Trump will slam Hillary on free trade agreements. Hillary has supported  every single one of these job killing  monstrosities.  Said they would be create  jobs. Said we all benefit from  cheap Chinese crap from Wal-Mart  (where Hillary once served on its board of  directors). Nobody believes  this BS anymore. Except Washington insiders.  Well. there goes Obama, negotiating  yet another one. In secret. Hillary now says she opposes TPP. Yeah, surre.
     Trump will slam Hillary  on Wall Street. She  has taken tens of millions  in speaking fees from  them  directly. She has taken  over $140 MILLION in speaking fees directly from special interests! Did it ever occur to Bill and Hillary  to ease up on the piggishness? Well, expect the Donald to have much fun with this. Stand up to Wall Street? Yeah, sure, Hillary.
     Trump will slam Hillary on Social Security. Trump  understands that people are scared and has decided to exploit their fears by claiming he will protect Social Security. Meanwhile, it is an article  of faith among establishment Democrats  that SS must be  cut, usually  in some Grand Bargain  with the GOP. Nothing  like Useless  Democrats  pissing on the Third Rail of politics.
     Trump will slam from all sides on matters of  war. On one hand, he will  do the standard  right  wing riff of talking tough  and  "making America Great Again". On the  other hand, Hillary has supported EVERY foolish military engagement we get into that manages to be stupid, bloody, pointless. expensive. and unending. Imagine being vulnerable to being called weak and a warmonger at the same  time. A neat trick, unless you're Hillary Clinton.
      Establishment Democrats will spend the fall of 2016 waiting for Trump to collapse, Just like Establishment Republicans spent the fall of 2015 waiting for Trump to collapse. The GOP will stop  imploding and will fall in like with the Donald to save their skins. A demoralized base, having watched Bernie Sanders get mau-maued and "superdelegated" to death  shows no signs of turning  out. The black vote, having helped bury Sanders despite a sterling  civil rights  record,  might not come out  like they did not turn out in 2010 or 2014.
      I hate Donald Trump. I do not believe  his populist rhetoric. I am appalled how totally  unprepared the Democratic Party is to deal with him.

      President Donald Trump.
      Thank you Useless Democrats.
      Have another slice of brie.
                      

Real Life Star Wars. OR Hillary Clinton Lost and I Feel Fine..

      UPDATE: Well, Hillary did not get out of the way. Look what happened
 A so called Bright Side of the Force that has made peace with the Death Star is more insidious, more depraved, more evil than the Death Star itself.
     For even if the Death Star is totally in control, as long as there is a Bright Side of the Force fighting against it, no matter how tiny, no matter how beaten, there is still hope. but if the Bright side goes along with the Dark Side, becomes its junior partner, there can be no hope, because the darkness will eventually consume the light and snuff it out, leaving no hope.
     Today, the world's 65 richest people control as much wealth than the poorest 3.5 billion people. This can be described by the following absurd equation:

                                                                65=3.500,000,000

    This travesty was brought to you by worldwide economic globalization, which is really a system of global economic SLAVERY. In the old days, the slaveholder paid for the housing and food, such as it was, and gave it directly to the slaves. Now, the modern slave is given a small wage, maybe given a government subsidy, and is left to fend for herself. The slaveholders then call this 'freedom' and say that the slaves should be grateful for it. If you think this is a harsh or outrageous statement, you need to look at the math again.

                                                                65=3,500,000,000

       For Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the rest of the establishment Democratic Party, this is just a fine and dandy state of affairs.
     This state of affairs is horribly offensive to any system of morality and decency that humanity has ever devised. Judaism. Christianity. Islam. Buddhism. Ancient Greek Paganism. Secular Humanism. you name it. The current system cannot be morally defended on any level whatsoever.

                                                                65=3,500,000,000

     But  watch Hillary Clinton tie herself in knots to defend the interests of the 65 while pretending to be the friend of the 3,500,000,000.

     Why am I picking on Hillary? why am I not picking on Donald Trump or Marco Rubio? Well, it you read my previous posts, you will see that I already have. They deserve our scorn and disgust. The problem is that there will always be a Death Star, or at least someone trying to build one. There will never be a shortage of would be Darth Vaders. There will never be a shortage of stormtroopers to serve them.The bitch goddess Power will always have a hold on many, if not most souls. The issue is not the quantity of sinners. The issue is the quality of saints. The more overwhelming the darkness, the brighter a pinprick of light.

                                                                   65=3,500,000,000

         How can anyone with even a tiny scrap of humanity go along with that?

         Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are going along with it. Sorry, but the standards for Jedi Knights will always be much higher than those of stormtroopers. Sorry if that pisses Democrats off. Or scares the shit out of them.

     When faced with the Death Star that is our current situation, which threatens the very existence of humanity and the planet itself, there can be  no choice but to try to blow the whole dam   thing up. Hillary Clinton, with her "pragmatism", her "no we can't", just distracts us from what we must do. If she gets in , the status quo will continue. Except for some cosmetic changes and maybe a few social issue distractions, the 65 will get even less in number and the3,500,000,000 even more. Just like under any GOP  president. She will continue to use the United States military to enforce the global slavery system, just like under any GOP president. For as repulsive as, Trump, Rubio, Bush, or Kasich or whomever are, I am not worried about them. I am worried that the good people will lose the willingness to fight, for that is our only hope.

     Let me repeat.

       A so called Bright Side of the Force that has made peace with the Death Star is more insidious, more depraved, more evil than the Death Star itself.
     For even if the Death Star is totally in control, as long as there is a Bright Side of the Force fighting against it, no matter how tiny, no matter how beaten, there is still hope. but if the Bright side goes along with the Dark Side, becomes its junior partner, there can be no hope, because the darkness will eventually consume the light and snuff it out, leaving no hope.

      For God's sake Hillary, just get the hell out of the way.

   




  

Go Ahead and Hate Your Neighbor, Because Poverty is Now Next Door.

    It used to be in America that it was easy to hate the poor because poverty was something that happened elsewhere, usually to someone with darker skin than you. This didn't stop the politicians from whipping up fear and hatred, but at least America was prosperous enough to make sure the fear was more theoretical than real, if you lived in the right neighborhood. But now, with the deliberate destruction of the American middle class, poverty is just not for people of color anymore. Your next door neighbor, right here in Suburb Beautiful, could lose his job, his pension, and his savings, and be plunged into poverty. Has that made Americans more compassionate to the poor? Not exactly. In fact, the more people see poverty, the more people hate the poor. And you are more likely to hate people poorer than you if you are a member of the working poor.
      The Tampa Bay Times recently printed an article by political writer Alex MacGillis. He tackles the well worn subject of exactly why the working poor vote Republican supposedly against their own interests , which just happened yet again in Kentucky. Turns out that the working poor, the next to last quintile on the income ladder, resent the government aid that people in the lowest quintile get, because they feel they don't deserve it. Same song, different race. The fact that the poor now in America are much more likely now to be a neighbor or even a member of your own family has not changed white America's hatred in the least. If fact they are doubling down on it. Everyone now has a story about how Cousin Randy won't work because he's hooked on Oxy but still gets a government check. Or how the Joneses next door bought a steak with their food stamps. It doesn't matter if these stories are true or not, they spread like wildfire, much like the stories Reagan told about welfare queens. Everybody says that they don't mind people getting assistance if "they really need it" but everyone assumes that people getting assistance don't need it or don't deserve it. Its the same old story, except the hatred is directed toward your neighbor. Very sad. In a time when everyone in the  bottom 90% is getting squeezed to the limit by the elites incompetence and greed, the working poor are trying to keep their self esteem by looking down on people less fortunate then them rather than showing compassion for them. I, and my fellow lefties, are forever hoping that people will join forces with their neighbor to fight against the common enemy that is destroying us all. And of course we are forever disappointed.
      We are losing because we do not realize that the enemy is Original Sin. You might wonder how the scorned and hated poor people are reacting to their neighbor's cruelty. Well we know one thing: they are not voting. At all. It is obvious these people have been so browbeaten that they do not have the self esteem to fight for themselves. They do not believe that Jesus Christ, through his Passion, Death and Resurrection, gives hope, and most of all, DIGNITY to us all, no matter how poor we are. You do not hate your neighbor if you believe that Jesus loves them and gives then eternal life. Nor do you cave in to despair OR the scorn of a $9.00 an hour Wal-Mart clerk if you believe you are the recipient of Infinite Love. The choice is ours. We can all take solace in the Infinite Power of  Jesus Christ and make a better life for all of us. Or we can believe we are on our own, and let Evil pick us off one by one. It is obvious that too many Americans are taking the wrong path. Soon, the people lucky enough to have a job will too, get picked off.