Trump Opens the Racist, Xenophobic Gates of Hell

A white Kansas man screaming, “Get out of my country,” opened fire on a trio of men at a bar in Olathe, Kansas, killing one and seriously injuring two others. The two men who were the object of the shooter’s ire were Indian engineers who worked at a technology company.

This past December in Michigan, a white U.S. military veteran shot a store clerk of Indian descent in the face because he thought the man was a terrorist and member of ISIS.

On a recent United flight out of Chicago, a white man was tossed off the plan by the crew after verbally attacking a Pakistani couple with racist remarks about bombs in their luggage.

Welcome to Trump’s America. The above incidents are only the most recent in a string of racist attacks in this country on people who “look Muslim.” Our Dear Leader has opened the gates of racist, xenophobic hell and every angry redneck, PTSD suffering veteran, mentally ill gun owner and self-described patriot feels they have the green light to save ‘Murica from the terrorists by shooting first and asking questions later. Too stupid and blinded by bigotry to be able to discern the difference between someone from the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia or Africa, who could be Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, Bahai or evangelical Christians, our volunteer army of dangerous racial purists are ready to jump to any conclusion and blast away.

Folks, this is just the beginning. As long as Trump is in office, these incidents will continue and grow ever more violent. And Muslim’s, real and imagined, aren’t the only target. Racist, anti-sematic attacks are also on the rise across America, from graffiti to cemetery vandalism to physical assaults, and the only reason for this is the virulent bile that escapes from Donald Trump’s mouth.

America is in a state of rapid decay. We are walking in the footsteps of the German’s in the 1930s, unable to push back against the growing landslide of hate and thugishness rolling over everything in its path. I hope I am wrong, but I have serious doubts that we, the people, can work within the system to bring about change before our total collapse. The Republican Congress won’t impeach Trump. What is left but the power of the people? Tell me.

Grandma and Grandpa, Let’s Be Honest. Republicans Don’t Care About You.

I am as happy as anyone with the turnouts at Republican Congressional Town Halls being held around the country (for those Republican reps who had the courage to hold one). Constituents are expressing their anger and frustration with conservative ideologues more interested in their billionaire donors than the people who elected them to congress. Seeing corporate lapdogs like Mitch McConnell, Joni Ernst, Chuck Grassley and Tom Cotton get verbally pummeled by angry Grandmas is truly heartwarming.

But, and you knew there had to be a “but,” why did so many of these same people think at one point in time that McConnell, Ernst, Grassley or Cotton were going to work for them when they never had in the past? The Republicans now in congress are the same band of money worshipping, democracy hating corporate toadies they always were, the only difference is Trump is president. Where were the cries of “Do your job” when they spent eight years obstructing Obama? Or when they wasted millions of taxpayer dollars and congressional time chasing the fictitious Benghazi boogieman?

I’m glad Americans are finally getting angry at Congressional Republicans and their destructive agenda, but they need to get a firm grasp on WHY they are angry and start rethinking their choices at the voting booth. Grandma, Republicans don’t want to help you because you have so little to offer them. They may say the love Jesus and apple pie, but they don’t love you. They do love the Koch brothers, and General Electric and off shore tax havens, but constituents? Pffft. So please, the answer is crystal clear: Stop voting for Republicans.

Trump Fans To The Rest Of America: SHUT UP!!!

During the presidential campaign, Trump said, "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters." At the time, it was treated as typical Trump hyperbole, another “People love me” boast from a man who has no idea what “love” is. Today, however, this turns out to be one of the most accurate statements The Donald has made.

If you spend time on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any other major site that posts political articles, you will undoubtedly have run into a Trump supporter in the comments section trying to defend their president. They are usually angry, emotional and devoid of any evidence supporting their rant. One woman responded to a comment I made about Flynn resigning after his Russian fiasco by writing, “Hillary Clinton is the one who should be in jail. SHUT UP!!!”

There are two common characteristics at work here. First, at least since the start of the congressional Benghazi hearings, Hillary Clinton has become a focal point of conservative ire, a Dark Lord Sauron-like figure embodying the twin evils of liberalism and feminism. I am not a huge fan of Hillary, but the hatred directed at her by the poorly educated right is in a realm of unreality that borders on madness. Any suggestion that Trump or members of his administration should be held accountable for their actions is routinely met with some form of a “Hillary, too” remark.

The other common feature of my right-wing troll’s comment is the use of all caps, “SHUT UP.” She’s angry. They’re all angry. Even though their hero won the presidency, they will not abide any criticism of Trump or his actions, and want you to know that whatever your complaint is, you’re WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. Of course, they never offer any factual rebuttal because there is none. Like Trump, they want you to cower in fear not at their knowledge, but at their righteous anger, their God-approved surety in their cause.

One possible interpretation of the anger Trump fans feel is that their faith in their leader is beginning to weaken amid the daily stories of his unhinged behavior, and as their pride and devotion continue to come under attack, they lash out instinctively like wounded animals at their enemies. The other interpretation is that they are imbeciles. Either way, I expect the anger to continue ratcheting up the longer Trump stays in office.

Falling Further and Further Down the Rabbit Hole

Is anyone else questioning reality? Is anyone else asking how things in America could spiral so totally out of control in what is historically faster than the blink of an eye? Our country slipped from the enjoyably reassuring and positive (if less successful than hoped for) Obama administration into the Mariana Trench of political dysfunction and ineptitude. After electing the first African American president, an accomplishment many of us never thought we’d see in our lifetime, we suddenly fell into a dark canyon of seething, writhing white reptiles determined to take us back to the Pleistocene age.

How surreal is it? Somehow, Donald Trump became president of the United States. Donald Trump, a man who unquestionably represents everything that is, and ever was, wrong with America. Greed, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, you name it, it’s part of Trump’s DNA. The man is a walking medical chart of every ailment from which America suffers. His repulsive behavior knows no bounds. He is tacky, unsophisticated, unworldly, lacking intellect, wit and empathy. Every public situation in which he finds himself is awkward and uncomfortable. Even his wife finds him reprehensible.

Yet here we are, struggling to cope with a situation that thriller author Tom Clancy probably tossed out as too unrealistic. Who would believe the plot? A narcissistic man/child millionaire grows tired of the entertainment biz and decides to run for President of the United States, and wins. What? Wait, what about all that “checks and balances” stuff and the beauty of the democratic process and the will of the majority, blah, blah, blah. That’s all it is. So much ink on parchment paper. We thought it meant something, but obviously we were wrong.

And the icing on our surreal Cake? The downfall of the Trump administration may come courtesy of the true dark lords, our intelligence agencies. Trump has chosen to go to war with the CIA, NSA and others in that community, and that could ultimately prove to be the biggest of his many, many mistakes as president. The Russian debacle is the one scandal that could bring Trump and his administration down, and it is clear that the intelligence community is not on Donald’s side on this one, and further revelations could actually push Republicans in Congress to act against Herr Trumpenstein. So sane America find itself in the position of cheering for the spooks, whose undemocratic and unconstitutional efforts have had us screaming “foul” in the past, to dethrone the nut job who slipped into the White House while we were looking the other way.

Hold on to your seats, because as long as Trump is president, we’re going to keep falling down that hole.

Poor Bill Moyers Thought the Mainstream Press had Grown a Backbone

The great Bill Moyers wrote an article in Salon today lamenting the fact that he had initially praised CNN for announcing it was going to ban pathological liar Kellyanne Conway from appearances on the network, but then reversed itself within a day. I feel Bill’s pain, but like the Cowardly Lion, the sycophantic mainstream press still hasn’t found the wizard to give it the courage it needs.

The American mainstream press has been a propaganda arm of the government for a very long time (recall the virtually unanimous support for the disastrous Iraq war) the problem today is that the Trump team isn't playing by the old rules, and it's disrupting a once cozy relationship. Past administrations and presidents lied all the time, but it was done with civility and decorum that was acceptable to the networks, so it was okay. With Trump and his administration, there isn't that thin veneer of reasonableness to slide lies by unquestioning interviewers. The Trump buffoons are up in your face with lie after lie after, forcing the networks out of their comfort zones. As Moyers clearly points out, CNN and the others want badly to play along, to let the game continue has it has for decades, but Trump and his minions are far too dull-witted and ideologically zombified to understand the rules of the game. The mainstream media is being forced to fight back, not because it really wants to call out the administration's lies or it has some new-found zeal for exposing the truth. Panicked, CNN almost called a time out, but then decided it wasn't ready to call off the game.

The Magic Train to Trumplandia

A class of giggling, fidgeting fourth-graders stands in line waiting to board the magical train for a tour of the kingdom of Trumplandia. Soon, a blond woman bearing a striking resemblance to Kellyanne Conway, addresses the children through a megaphone.

“Hi, boys and girls. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy school day to visit Trumplandia.”

“We didn’t have a choice,” says a boy in the back.

“Thank you,” continues the tour guide. “What a good looking group you are. So the train is here and everyone can climb on board.” The woman stands next to the train conductor for the tour. “And off we go.”

The train traverses terrain representing the varied geography of the United States. As it crosses an arid Southwest desert, it slows down and comes to stop at a very high wall.

“So children,” says the guide. “Does anyone know where we are?”

“A bathroom?” asks a girl with a ponytail. “Because I have to go.”

“This is Donald Trump’s hugely magnificent border wall. Look at the size of it. Of course, this is a simulation, but someday this 1,900-mile barrier will allow you and your children to sleep safe at night knowing those “bad hombres” from the south are dying of starvation and horrible diseases in a place you’ll never have to worry your beautiful young minds about. Doesn’t that make you proud of your president?”

“My dad calls him the Liar in Chief,” says a suspiciously tanned boy in the back.

“Let’s move on, everybody. Hey, we’re headin’ north. And here we are at beautiful blue Lake Tahoe on America’s West Coast.”

“Where’s California?”

“California? Never heard of it. There’s no California in Trumplandia. So now, let’s swing up to one of President Trump’s favorite states, Montana. Oh my gosh, look. There are cowboys and skinheads and militiamen all working together to make America great again. They all carry the most important symbol of American freedom. Who knows what that is?”

“A flag?”

“No, silly. A gun. We only have the freedoms we have because of guns and how they shoot and kill bad people. No one wants bad people in America. Right?”

“Who are the bad people?” asks a frightened looking girl.

“Ah, so sweet and naïve. Honey, there are so many bad people all around us it’s hard to keep track. There are the liberals and socialists, of course, and the Muslims and union leaders and scientists and environmentalists and pollsters who lie and…oh, just too many to list. But you shouldn’t be afraid, because President Trump is keeping all of those bad people out of America with his wall and immigration ban and general antagonistic attitude. He is so very smart.”

“My dad says our goldfish is smarter than Trump.”

“Your dad might need some remedial reeducation classes. Look everyone. We’ve taken a big dip south to the Bible belt, a very, very important region of the United States. Within this great swath of the Midwest and south live the real red, white and blue Americans. Just look at all the empty storefronts, all the white families enjoying endless seasons of welfare and true blue patriots flying their confederate flags proudly in support of their fearless leader’s call to Make America Great Again. I’m all tingly.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Oh my boy, never give in to physical weakness. Be strong, like your president. I’ll bet you didn’t know that President Trump was a member of a semi-final team in the World Series of Beer Pong in Las Vegas, Nevada. It’s true. We should all strive to be that dedicated and focused. Remember the heroic sacrifices of the survivors of the Bowling Green Massacre.”

“But—“

“Look. Look, everybody. We are heading up the Eastern Seaboard to Washington, D.C. There’s the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial and the newest statue honoring one of America’s greatest living patriots, Steve Bannon.”

“What’s he doing?”

“Drinking beer in his pajamas. What an inspiration to us all. Well kids, that ends our tour of Trumplandia. President Trump was hoping to stop by and say hello to all of you, but he had some very important tweets to dictate. Being president is an awesome responsibility. Any questions?”

“Why—?”

“Oh gosh, we’ve run completely out of time. It’s been fun having you all. Don’t forget, on your way out grab your goodie bag filled with Trump property discount coupons, the latest products in Ivanka Trump’s collection and big game hunting tips from Eric and Donald Trump Junior. Bye now.”

Beware the False Flag Event

Here’s the storyline: An immigrant enters the United States from a Muslim country.  He is able to acquire weapons, and also makes an explosive vest. He goes to an event or a Christian church. Once there, he opens fire and sets off his vest, killing and maiming dozens of innocent men, women and children. That night, Trump gives an emotional televised address to a shocked nation. In his speech, he tells the American people that this event would never have happened if his ban on Muslims entering the U.S. had been allowed to stand. His supporters are energized while detractors are left trying to counter an emotionally charged argument with dry facts and numbers.

How convenient, right? The event just happens to bolster Trump’s view that every Muslim is a potential terrorist and would like nothing more than to kill Americans. He tried to keep us safe, but was thwarted by activist judges and naïve liberals. Now some of us might say the timing of this event is too good to be true, and we might be right. It could be a false flag event.

What is a false flag event? It is an act of violence or sabotage that appears to be perpetrated by an enemy, but which was actually planned and carried out by the aggrieved party to further a desired agenda. A good example of a false flag event was Operation Northwoods. In the early 1960s, communist Cuba represented a huge thorn in the side of the United States. Agencies within our government drafted a proposal to stage hijackings and bombings of American civilian airliners in air space between the two countries in order to gain public support for an attack on Cuba. The plan was never carried out, but it is a well-documented case of how to stage a false flag event.

False flag operations have been around at least since the height of the Roman Empire, but there are many recent examples, as well. In the late 1800s, Spanish controlled Cuba was becoming too rebellious for the likes of America’s sugar, tobacco and iron industries and something needed to be done to quell the uprising. At the time, President McKinnley was not interested in a war with Spain, but on February 15, 1898 the USS Maine exploded and 266 U.S. sailors lost their lives. No one actually knows what caused the explosion, but the incident was used by the press and large corporations as a way to force McKinnley to go to war with Spain.

In1933, Hitler’s Nazi party was on the verge of gaining enough seats to install Hitler as a defacto dictator, but the outcome of the upcoming elections was not certain. A week before the elections, the Reichstag, which housed the German parliament, caught on fire and was destroyed. Hitler used the event to blame communist terrorists for the fire and was swept into power. Most historians agree that the Nazis either started the fire or encouraged a deranged man to do the deed so they could blame the communists.

There are other examples, including the bogus Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 that President Johnson used to dramatically increase America’s presence in Vietnam. Some false flag events are speculative, like Pearl Harbor and the events of 9/11, while others are well documented. The point is, false flag operations have proven to be useful tools in garnering public support for unpopular government actions.

All of that considered, would anyone put it past the morally bankrupt Trump administration to stage an event to further its dark agenda?

A Divided Country Under Incompetent Leadership

It truly baffles me that there are millions of Americans who seem to live in an alternative information universe. They voted for Trump, somehow convinced beyond all human understanding he would make a good president. If you read their comments on Facebook and other sites, they believe Obama was a horrible president who did nothing for eight years. They believe the lies of Trump’s surrogates without requiring any facts or verification.

Of course, racism, misogyny, ignorance, etc., all play a part in this, but I am still stunned that people who live in my country, live in my city and neighborhood, can be convinced that Santa and the Easter Bunny are real and the earth is only six thousand years old.

How is it that as a country, we voted for Obama twice, and then turned around and handed the presidency to an imbecile like Trump? Can a country be schizophrenic? There certainly is no national consensus on what the “common good” is or how to interpret the Constitution, so how can we possibly mover forward with any kind of national agenda? Millions of Americans can’t even agree on the most basic facts and because of that, Donald Trump sits in the White House.

A big part of the blame has to go to the growth of the conservative media over the last 35 years. FOX News, conservative radio loudmouths like Limbaugh and Imus, and online whack jobs Brietbart, Alex Jones and Matt Drudge, among many others, provide safe places for bigots and religious fanatics, confirming their worst fears and stoking their anger. And the mainstream media must also share blame for failing to challenge the status quo in its thirst for profits and audience share.

How is it possible to change minds when the two sides cannot agree on what is a fact and what isn’t? Our divisiveness is destroying this nation, just as it almost did when Abraham Lincoln was president. Unfortunately for all of us, we don’t have a Lincoln at the helm of state, but a self-centered, mentally ill man/child. The odds of unification in this day and age are not good.

The GOP’s Long Fight To Destroy Government From The Inside Is Coming To Fruition

“It must be nice to be a Republican Senator sometimes, because you get the fun of breaking shit and the joy of complaining the shit you just broke doesn’t work.”

John Stewart

So much truth here it hurts. I doubt anyone knows the specific day or meeting years ago when a Republican politician had an epiphany and addressed his fellow conservatives:

“Ladies and gentlemen, why are we Republicans? We are Republicans because we believe big government is inherently evil, yet here we are serving the very monster we want to destroy. By doing our jobs well and with honor, we enable big government to thrive, which is exactly what we don’t want. So I say to you, we must stop helping the machinery of big government run smoothly and start throwing sand in the gears. It’s really simple. Our incompetence as elected officials will be living proof that big government is by its very nature doomed to failure. All we have to do is act like incompetent boobs and our point is made for Mr. and Mrs. American public.”

For at least the last 30 years or so, Republican elected officials and appointees have worked tirelessly to prove that government is bad by pointing to the chaos that they themselves created, as John Stewart makes clear. And it works. A Republican runs for office, tells voters that government is bad, gets elected, fucks up everything, then runs for reelection on an anti-government platform (all the while enjoying the government perks of being a congressperson).

And now there is Trump. Mr. “The-government-screws-everything-up” is without question the most incompetent president of all time, yet his supporters voted for him, and still expect him, to fix things in Washington. Fix things. The man is breaking everything he touches and blaming everything and everybody else but himself, and his people can’t see the obvious. When it all comes crashing down, and it will as long as Trump is in office, it will be somebody else’s fault. Another failure of big government.

Feeling Shell-Shocked After Trump’s Week-Long Blitzkrieg Of Insanity

Trump has only been president for a week and I am already starting to lose focus amid his blitzkrieg of insane policy decisions and ludicrous lies. You tell me, what’s worse:

Close Trump advisor Steve Bannon, an avowed racist, Nazi sympathizer and anarchist, has been added to the National Security Council, while the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were essentially demoted.

Trump’s Muslim immigration ban includes seven Middle East and African countries, but does not include Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Azerbaijan where, coincidentally, Trump has business interests. And in case you’ve forgotten, 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has pushed the minute hand of the “Doomsday Clock” two minutes closer to midnight (11:57) and to the possibility of a civilization-ending catastrophe.

Pope Francis has condemned Trump’s immigration ban on Muslims.

The Trump administration is moving forward with building a wall across America’s southwest border even though a) Mexico will not help pay for it like Trump promised, b) experts agree that a wall is impractical and will be ineffective and c) there are major issues of property rights involved with the project.

The president and his minions continue to lie about, threaten and belittle the news media, with a recent Trump tweet accusing the New York Times and Washington Post of delivering fake news and being dishonest. Once again, no proof of these allegations has been produced.

Leaders of France, Germany, Canada, Italy, The Netherlands, Mexico, Iran, Scotland and many other counties (as well as the U.N. and the Pope) have denounced and condemned Trump’s immigration ban on Muslims.

Trump continues to insist there were 3 to 5 million illegal voters in the last election, but has yet to provide a shred of evidence to back up his claim and appears to be basing this assertion on a single tweet.

The president adamantly maintains that waterboarding, and other universally condemned forms of torture “absolutely work,” without providing any proof and despite volumes of studies that arrive at just the opposite conclusion.

On a number of occasions, Trump has stated that violent crime in America has been increasing, but statistics from the FBI show that violent crime in the U.S. is near historic lows and that citizens today are safer than at any time in the past 45 years.

And that’s just one week, folks. God help us all.

It’s Gut-Check Time For The Mainstream Press

The dismal dawn of the Trump era begins with a mainstream media at war with itself. At the same time that some big news outlets are defiantly and publically calling out Trump’s lies, others are quietly slipping back into their more traditional roles as standard bearers for the status quo.

Like all big American businesses, the loyalties of the mainstream news media are not with the readers or even the subscribers, but with the shareholders of their parent companies. The corporate media is a profit driven enterprise, and staking out what are considered unpopular or antiestablishment positions is not a good business strategy. Trump, however, is still an enigma in the eyes of the press. Yes, he is president, but he lost the popular vote by nearly three million ballots and is intensely disliked by a lot of Americans. And he is obviously crazy.

But old habits are hard to break. The mainstream news media has been the lapdog of wealthy elites, America’s intelligence organizations and the military/industrial complex since the end of World War II, and you don’t just turn your back on your oldest supporters because there’s a lunatic in the White House.

Case in point. In a recent interview with ABC News anchor David Muir, Trump repeated a well-worn lie that two people were shot in Chicago while Obama was giving his farewell address on January 10.  The political point of Trump’s lie is to underscore the out-of-control violence in Chicago and Obama’s failure to curb crime in his own hometown.

Two reporters from the Chicago Tribune investigated Trump’s claims and surprise, found they were not true. However, ABC News edited these false claims out of the televised interview and only included them in a written transcript on the ABC News website. For reasons that can only be guessed at, ABC essentially let Donald off the hook.

This is a tipping point for the American mainstream press. Will they have the courage to continue calling out the lies of Donald Trump and his administration or will they fall back into old patterns of cowering from the truth and covering up for the rich and powerful? Only time will tell.

America’s New Path Leads Directly To Mordor

Those of us who worry about upcoming events more than we should know intellectually that our overwrought reactions to stressful situations are unnecessary, and that ninety-nine percent of the time everything works out just fine. But there is that nagging one percent…and Donald Trump.

Trump is the rare case of an experience that turns out to be worse than you could ever imagine. A nightmare come true. Every morning brings headlines of new  horrors from opening up national parks to oil drilling to “alternative facts” to a president more concerned about crowd sizes at his inauguration than governing the country. Americans are living in a worse case scenario, a dystopian reality that was once the stuff of Tom Clancy novels and George Orwell’s imagination.

We were warned many times in the past. Sinclair Lewis, Aldus Huxley, Orwell, Gore Vidal, Margaret Atwood and many others raised flags throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first century about the real possibility of a totalitarian take over in America. You won’t find it mentioned in many American history books, but this country narrowly escaped a fascist coup in the 1930s when a cabal of elites (including George Bush’s grandfather) hatched a plan to use the military to overthrow FDR and establish a government modeled on Nazi Germany.

It can happen here and now it has. Today we live in an oligarchy that could slip at any moment into a totalitarian regime. Our status as a democracy is in question around the world, and foreign leaders are clearly alarmed and anxious as they monitor the actions of an American president unhinged from reality. Everything that makes us a supposedly democratic society is under threat, from a free press to freedom of assembly to the ability to hold elected officials accountable, and is being eroded by an insecure, mentally unstable president and his enabling administration.

Donald Trump is as bad as it can get. He represents everything that is antithetical to what was once the world’s most admired democracy. If he is allowed to remain in office for the next four years, our country will end up having far more in common with Mordor than Oz.

How Should America Deal With A Mentally Ill President?

Suggestions that Donald Trump might not be mentally fit to serve as president have become more frequent after his first five days as Commander in Chief. You might think that this accusation is coming from the fringe on the Left, but that isn’t the case. Just this morning, Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman published a tweet that said, “An American first: a president who was obviously mentally ill the moment he took office. Thanks, Comey.” Krugman is referring to James Comey, head of the FBI, who some believe swung the election in Trump’s favor by announcing an investigation into Clinton’s emails.

Trump’s erratic and delusional behavior since his inauguration should have us all worried. Many Democrats, including myself, have lamented that even if we get rid of Trump, we end up with uber Christian Mike Pence. By voting for Trump, poorly educated racist white voters in the South and Midwest have put America between a rock and a hard place.

I am having second thoughts about this issue, however. I detest everything that Mike Pence stands for, and placing him in the Oval Office would be a very dark day for this country. However, it is becoming apparent that Donald Trump’s mental state is putting this country in grave danger. His delusions about massive voter fraud, his threat to send the military into Chicago to stem crime and his antagonist rhetoric toward China are not the statements of a sane person. I don’t know a lot about Mike Pence other than his odorous political leanings, but if you asked me who I wanted to be in charge of this country’s nuclear codes, I would have to go with Pence. He just doesn’t appear to be as unhinged and impulsive as Trump.

This all raises a lot of questions. Who would determine if Trump was mentally ill and unable to carry out the duties of the president and what would be the criteria? Can Congress unseat a president under these circumstances without going through the impeachment process?  And, considering Trump’s personality, what would happen if it was determined he was unfit to serve, but he refused to leave? It isn’t a stretch to believe Trump and his administration would consider any effort to unseat him a coup attempt.

We are living in unprecedented times in America. Our newly inaugurated president is showing signs of mental illness. The second in command is only marginally better. All I can say is hold on to your seats because we are in for one hell of a ride.

Belligerent Trump Puts All Our Lives In Danger

Many people have thought about it, a few have come out and said it, but the reality is that Donald Trump has a better than even chance of getting us all killed.

Like climate change, good taste and science, Trump does not believe in diplomacy. Even before he was sworn in as president, Trump got under China’s skin over that country’s claim to several islands in the South China Sea. The subject came up again yesterday at a White House briefing where Sean Spicer said, “We’re going to make sure we defend international territories from being taken over by one country.” The implication is that the U.S. is prepared to take some type of military action or embargo to keep China off of the disputed islands. For there part, China says any activity like that could lead to war.

Trump is four days into office and we already have talk of war, not with Panama or Grenada, but with the most populist country on the planet, which also has nukes. Previous Republican presidents Reagan, Bush senior and W all had their wars and, while not “official” Republican policy, there have long been off-the-record sentiments expressed by party elites that it’s a good thing for one’s polls and continued loyalty within the party to be a wartime president. As we saw with George Bush, his approval ratings went through the roof immediately after 9/11 and continued to be high enough to start two wars nobody outside his administration really wanted.

What is so ominous today is that Trump makes Bush look like a global statesman. Where Bush was naïve and impulsive (I go by my gut), Trump is a thin-skinned bully who believes anyone who disagrees with him needs to be taught a lesson. It’s bad enough when you’re on the playground pushing around the skinny kid with a pocket protector, but something else entirely when you start antagonizing countries as powerful as China.

Yet I don’t believe Trump makes any distinction between the two. No one is going to tell him what to do, which includes other countries, his advisors and the American people. Has Trump ever uttered the words “peace,” “cooperation” or “working together” in the context of international affairs? I haven’t heard them. Like other chicken hawks, Trump opted out of showing any true courage by staying as far away from Vietnam as he could, but loves to talk tough from behind the podium.

The problem we as Americans face is that the consequences of belligerence in foreign affairs isn’t simply a punch in the jaw, but the potential deaths of millions of human beings.

The Not So United States of America

If the Trump debacle has taught us anything, it is that the United States is not united at all. Even after one of the bloodiest civil wars ever fought within a country’s borders, after decades of civil rights struggles, after two world wars, after generations of Americans have looked back at the sins of their ancestors, we remain a deeply divided nation.

Throughout the twentieth century, we pretended to be something unique in the world, a large country where people of many races, religions and ethnicities lived together in harmony and worked side by side for the common good. It was wonderfully aspirational, but never a reality. It only worked in theory, as long as minorities, immigrants, women and other groups of non-white males accepted their place in the hierarchy of our patriarchal society. The deep cracks in the foundation of this country, on both the left and the right, were papered over with copies of the constitution that no one had any other use for.

The Trump campaign ripped off the flimsy façade of American exceptionalism, exposing the lingering rot and decay of racism, sexism, misogyny and xenophobia among our country’s resentful middle and lower-class whites. There is one thing that Trump is truly an expert at, and that is manipulating and channeling people’s anger. His skill was evident during the presidential campaign, as he publically buried “political correctness” and gave whites permission to vent their frustrations and hostilities in public for the world to see.

The result has been an ugly and embarrassing spectacle, not to mention the Trump as president thing. Despite the best efforts of the Founding Fathers, ignorance won the day, and a despot ascended to highest office in the land. Our country is as openly divided as it has been since the Civil War. The next four years could very well determine whether we remain the United States of America.

Thoughts On This Darkest of Days

Watched Michael Moore pump up the resistance today instead of Herr Trumpenstein getting the keys to the White House and the codes to our nuclear weapons. Moore wasn’t easy on us. He called us weak, and we are. We don’t yet have the fire in our bellies that the suffragettes had in the twenties or the civil rights marchers had in the fifties or the anti-Vietnam war resisters had in the sixties. I have a feeling however, that it isn’t going to take long for the anger to reach a boiling point. Trump is beyond ignorant, he is dangerous, possibly mentally ill, and he has surrounded himself with other dangerous individuals who do not understand or believe in democracy.

How far out of touch are Trump supporters? One comment you’ll see a lot is this one: “Get over it. The people have spoken.” I agree. The people did speak, and they chose Clinton to be President by three million votes.

That’s all I can do for today. Need to conserve energy for the next four years.

Melancholy Musings on Inauguration Eve

‘Twas the night before Trump, and all through the land,

people sobbed and they wailed, heads in their hands,

the votes had been counted, yet the winner had lost,

The Donald will rule, at a terrible cost.

Tomorrow is inauguration day in America, and Donald Trump will be sworn is our 45^th President. It is a travesty that we have come to this point, that a man who lost the popular election by nearly three million votes, a man who doesn’t care that a foreign government interfered with our election process, a man who shows open contempt for the U.S. Constitution, a man who admires ruthless dictators, will sit in the Oval Office (or an office in Trump Tower) for the next four years.

One question that stands out for me at this juncture in our history: What will it take to break free millions of Americans from the ideological and cultural walls they’ve built around their hearts and minds? We know they are mostly middle class and poor angry white males who feel threatened by just about everything. It’s vexing because they cannot be reached by traditional methods like facts, reason or scientific data. The only answer I can come up with is that it will have to get so bad for them personally that they will be forced to confront the real culprit — Donald Trump (let’s set aside conservative ideology for now, that’s too big a leap).

Things will have to get terribly, awfully bad, because Trump and his minions are very, very good at diverting their supporters’ already short attention spans with straw men, easy targets (the poor, minorities, immigrants, etc.) and good old smoke and mirrors. I guess this is sort of a required skill to be a successful dictator.  Trump will never accept any responsibility for the chaos he creates.

The sad reality is that even if Donald Trump is impeached or found guilty of a felony, he will be able to convince his supporters that it was somebody else’s fault. And if Donald goes, we get Pence.

Tomorrow will be a dark day for America when everything that was right about this country comes under attack from a cabal of renegade ideologues and right-wing reactionaries. Winning back Midwestern and Southern whites will be a decade’s long project for the Democratic Party, if they even have the will to try. At this point in time, all of our energies need to be focused on resistance and fighting the Trump agenda. Dealing with the problems posed by Red State America will have to wait.

Public Education Enemy #1: Betsy DeVoss

One of America’s defining features, one of the strongest pillars supporting the legitimacy of democracy over other forms of governing, was public education. The idea of government providing a quality education to all citizens, regardless of their wealth, ethnicity, sex, religion, etc., is, in a historical perspective, brand new, a truly brave experiment amidst the vast majority of the world’s countries where education is restricted in one way or another by class, sex, religion or wealth.

The American experiment in education was never perfect. Poorer school districts always lagged behind in results to wealthier ones, racial segregation persisted despite government efforts and educational priorities and funding shifted with changing political ideologies in Washington over the years. Still, we put humans on the moon, won Nobel and Pulitzer prizes, made incredible advances in medical and health care, and ushered in the computer age.

Yet at no time in recent history has public education been so in danger of elimination than it is today with Trump’s appointment of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education.

The groundwork for the DeVos era has been laid by three decades of conservative attacks on public education as a liberal enterprise intent on destroying family values and autonomy. Teachers have been vilified, the arts kicked to the curb as superfluous and even science called into question when it conflicts with prevailing religious beliefs. The result is a national educational system that is underfunded, demoralized and, surprise, surprise, falling behind other countries in many important educational categories. It is the self-fulfilling wish of the American Right.

And now DeVoss steps into the fray, a credentialed conservative who has battled long and hard against public education. DeVoss has been a huge supporter of charter schools, as well as having tax money go to private and religious schools. She seems to approve of any type of educational institution as long as it is not open to the public and supported by public funds. Funny thing is, DeVoss has never attended a public school, never taught or administered in a public school, and did not send any of her children to public school. Who better qualified to serve as Secretary of Education?

Betsy DeVoss will be to public education what John Wayne Gacy, Jr. was to clowns. Her work, like others in the Trump administration, will be to destroy the very institution she will be sworn in to protect and strengthen, and based on her track record, she’ll do it with a smile on her face.

I say Goodbye To Obama With Mixed Emotions

President Barack Obama has given his farewell address to the nation after eight years at America’s helm. As I’ve said in the past, I truly like Obama as a person and there is no other living President that I’d rather have a beer with than Barack. He is intelligent, articulate, compassionate and has a great sense of humor. And I stand in awe of his family and his relationship with Michelle, which has been so loving and true through very difficult times as they endured years of vilification and racist attacks from hateful conservatives.

All of that said, my assessment of Obama’s tenure as POTUS is mixed, and I cringe when I hear supporters trying to elevate his status to one of America’s greatest leaders. The highest praise I have for Obama is that he had the strength to accomplish what he did in office in the face of a hostile, obstructionist Republican congress. Getting the Affordable Care Act passed, his success in keeping the economy growing consistently, his dedication to dealing with climate change and his positive steps toward normalizing relations with Cuba are wonderful accomplishments, especially when you consider the ceaseless opposition of Obama-deranged congress-people.

The biggest disappointment I’ve experienced with Obama revolves around his early promise of “change.” When Barack first campaigned for the presidency in 2007-08, his rallying cry was “change,” and many of his speeches reminded us of the myriad failures of the two-term Bush administration, from 9/11 to the invasion of Iraq to an economy in the tank. Myself and other progressives were inspired by this rhetoric, believing that the Senator from Illinois meant that he was going change course from the horrid policies of George Bush and take us in a new direction. Unfortunately, this did not happen in some very important areas.

The undemocratic, unconstitutional security state set up by the Bush administration after 9/11 remains intact under Obama. The Patriot Act, Homeland Security and other excuses for invading privacy in the name of fighting terrorism continue to hum along undeterred despite the revelations of criminality and overreach by Edward Snowden. And it is reprehensible that the Obama administration has cared far more about intelligence leaks and how to stop them than it has about the intelligence abuses revealed by the leaks. The drone program was expanded under Obama and he has authorized more secret military operations in countries around the globe than any of his predecessors.

While his rhetoric makes him sound like one of the common folk, his actions have often been aligned with the interests of corporate America over what’s best for the rest of us. Despite the devastating effects of the 2007-08 financial crisis on this country’s economy, Obama’s corporate friendly administration refused to bring criminal bankers to justice, and he failed to support any substantive measures to rein in Wall Street. And his support of the horrid Trans-Pacific Partnership has been inexcusable. This secretive multinational agreement is a disaster for the environment and workers, allowing corporations to put profits above all else.

There is more — the Obama administration’s lackluster response to the failed war on drugs, allowing hundreds of thousands of prisoners to rot in jails for non-violent drug-related offenses, his wrong-headed, weak-kneed support of public education, his deportation of more immigrants than any president in history — and it doesn’t paint a picture of the progressive reformer many of us had hoped for.

The question is whether Obama was a good guy who was simply overwhelmed by the entrenched Washington elites or that there is a darker side to the man than his public personae lets on. I want to believe it’s the former, but either way, this is not a president who I would rank among America’s greatest.

Look In The Mirror America And The Reflection Is Trump

It has come to this. In the historical blink of an eye, the United States government will be run by a pack of delusional, reactionary sycophants who will gladly grovel before a modern-day coke-snorting Caligula, who himself lusts after a pouting barbaric strongman. Imagining they will ride grizzlies shirtless together over endless fields of supine serfs, Trump dreams of Putin, armies of Orcs and an all-seeing eye finding and destroying his pathetic, weak enemies.

America is now in the clutches of a soulless narcissist with daddy issues, a Dickensian monster who would gladly provide gruel for school lunches and send children to work in coal mines if it enhanced profits. Trump is the ultimate capitalist writ large, an amoral huckster always searching for the deal, whether he’s working the C-suite office or the Oval Office. Capitalism has no soul, no morals, no impetus to do good. The bottom line is all that counts, and that is the genetic soup out of which Donald Trump slithered.

Centuries of historical whitewashing, nationalistic cheer leading and media propaganda have led us to this moment in history. Trump is the monster that western capitalism created. He is the ultimate icon of the greed, racism and classism that this country was built on, which no one is willing to acknowledge. Trump is America, the all too real face of genocide, racism, nationalism and Christian extremism. Trump is the last great white hope and he will fail. The only question is how much damage he will cause before he meets his destiny.