No, Trump Did Not Inherit A Mess. We Have That To Look Forward To.

Since taking office, Trump has said on more than one occasion that he inherited a mess from President Obama. I have run across Trump supporters in comment sections repeating this absurd assertion, once again proving that Turmpland is a fact-free amusement park where you can believe any old thing you want. The earth is 6,000 year’s old? Sure. Dinosaurs and people coexisted? Okay. There’s no such thing as human-influenced climate change? You betcha. Barack Obama left Trump a country in the midst of economic ruin? Why not?

I am not a huge Obama fan, and I believe some of his decisions during his tenure were misguided and not in the best interests of America BUT, for Trump to claim Obama left him a mess simply flies in the face of reality. And let’s also try and be honest about President Obama’s tenure. During his eight years in the White House, the man was faced with a Republican congress that tried, and in many cases succeeded, in thwarting the President’s policy agenda at every turn. The fact that Obama got as much done as he did seems amazing based on his relentless opposition in congress. And the economic mess that George Bush left behind (remember 2008?) put Barack in a hole before he even started.

What Trump actually inherited is a country with an economic expansion that was the third longest on record; an economy that had been adding jobs every month for the past six years; and a federal deficit that had sharply declined from a high of 9.8 percent at the height of the last recession to 3.2 percent last year. In addition, worker wages have been climbing for the past four years and the median household income jumped 5.2 percent in 2014-2015 (the last years records are available).

This isn’t to say everything was rosy when Obama left Washington. Unemployment, income inequality and sluggish growth remained problematic, but has anyone heard from Trump solutions to these issues that don’t involve massive program cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy? No, the mess is currently underway and will only get worse over time. Trump’s plan for the economy will work just as well as Bush’s did, with huge, untenable deficits, declining jobs and wages falling further behind the rising cost of living.

The one who is going to inherit a mess is the president following Trump.

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.

Give Trump A Chance? You Don’t Need A Crystal Ball To See The Problem With That.

Someone on my Facebook page responded to a derogatory post about Trump by writing, “This is the most ridiculous thing ever. Give the man a chance. He hasn’t even been inaugurated.”

I generally refrain from responding to comments like this on FB, because it is an exercise in futility. Trumpites live in an alternate reality where logic and reason as we know it do not exist. Since this is my blog, however, I can write what I damn well please, so there.

Under many circumstances, I might agree with the commenter, but we’re talking about Donald Trump here, and that’s a whole different ballgame. It’s different because we already know Trump all too well after months and months of campaigning and debates. We know for certain he is a habitual liar, and seems a true believer in Hitler’s observation that, “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.”

We know Trump has no interest in facts, science or the constitution. He has demonstrated this on numerous occasions by skipping important intelligence briefings, condemning the well-established fact of climate change as a hoax, and by harassing and, in some cases assaulting, people who openly disagree with him.

Based on recent comments and tweets, we know that Trump has no problem with starting a new arms race with Russia and trade war with China. What kind of a fool thinks those are good things to do or will help our country in any way?

With state electors abrogating their duty to be the last line of defense against a tyrannical leader in America, we have no choice but to give Donald a chance, so the FB commenter will get his wish, to everyone else’s detriment.

Bill Maher made the observation that watching Trump in action is like watching a three-year old play with a loaded gun. You already know things are not going to turn out well.

The Dangerous Consequences of Designer News

For all of the amazing, wonderful things the Internet brings us and allows us to accomplish, the election of Donald Trump lays bare a darker side of the digital world. I’m not talking about the Deep Web (although that is pretty dark), but the proliferation of what I call “designer news” outlets and the influential role they play in today’s political arena.

In the wake of Trump’s election victory, you can find numerous interviews with his supporters on Facebook and other sources. To no one’s surprise, they are cringe worthy revelations of just how poorly informed Trump voters are, but further, how lost they are in a parallel universe of false facts. How did they get so bamboozled and befuddled? Designer news.

As the Internet has grown, so has the number of so-called news outlets. You would think that having more news sources would be a good thing, but that really isn’t the case because I’m not talking about “objective” news programs, but designer news tailored to a viewers preconceived ideas of reality. To be fair, the “news” on the Internet runs the ideological gamut from socialism to fascism and every “ism” in between. However, one group has had a particularly powerful influence on the political landscape in American — the far right.

Trump’s surprise triumph in November brought to light just how pernicious and persuasive the conservative megaphone has become over the years. From Glenn Beck’s “The Blaze” to Breitbart to the Drudge Report to FOX News, conservative voters have myriad sources for their daily news intake beyond the corporate media, and myriad opportunities to have their bigotry normalized and their worst fears justified.

Fake news is a hot topic right now, but for millions of Internet news consumers, there is no agreement on what is fake and what is actual news. Again, watch interviews with Trump supporters and you’ll discover that real news for them is whatever they read on a conservative site. Hillary Clinton is a cold-blooded murderer. Millions of illegal immigrants voted in the last election. Obama is a secret Muslim. This is the kind of “news” conservative sites offer, and loyal viewers accept as true, and that helped convince angry hordes of white voters to believe Donald Trump was their savior.

There is no easy answer to this problem. The Internet should remain a free and open source of opinions of all kinds, and I’m certainly not in favor of censorship, but when you have a sizable population under the thrall of liars and misinformers, the problem needs to be addressed. Yet it all comes back to one’s perception of reality. What will it take to change a person’s concept of reality when objective facts aren’t enough?

Forget Alt-Right, it’s Alt-Reality We Need To Worry About

There’s a lot of discussion on various political sites about the term “alt-right.” Many see it as a clever euphemism for “white nationalists,” and as an attempt to obscure the odious nature of those who claim the title. I would agree with that on the surface, but the fact is there is a much larger “alt” universe at work within the conservative world movement, and is it has been there since the very beginning. I call it “alt-reality.”

At its very core, conservatism (nationalism, fascism) is built on alt-reality, a myth, or many myths, that run counter to the historical, scientific and moral progress most of us understand to be true. The alt-reality of fascism is the myth of Aryan superiority among races, that the white race is God’s chosen people and all others must kneel in obedience and servitude. The white nationalists who now populate the Trump administration hold very similar views, but do a better job of hiding their true beliefs behind euphemisms, code words and the complacent media.

The alt-reality of today’s far-right conservatives is an ideological construct, an imagined world that never actually existed in the past and has crashed and burned in failure during every historical incarnation. Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” is a perfect example of using an Orwellian phrase to construct a history that never existed. What is the definition of “great?” Was it the 1950s when the tax rate on America’s wealthiest individuals was near 90 percent, and millions of African Americans lived under Jim Crow laws completely at odds with the American Constitution? Was it the 1940s when, at the same time the U.S. military was fighting the Nazi war machine, American industrialists were doing business with Hitler? Or the 1930s when a cabal of multi-millionaires (including George W. Bush’s grandfather) was plotting the overthrow of the American government to install a fascist regime?

“Make America Great Again” is nothing more than a product slogan designed to inspire blind nationalism and knee-jerk hostility toward all of the imaginary enemies who have conspired to bring this country down. Trump is the product that has been sold to white Americans who have been convinced they are victims of immigrants, African Americans, liberals and the elites who look down on them. The fact that Trump is a card-carrying member of this list doesn’t seem to register. Alt-reality lives outside the boundaries of what the rest of us consider known facts and rational thought and because of this, there can be no constructive debate, let alone agreement, on the issues.

Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and many others were, like Trump, initially successful in selling the nationalist fairy tale to a desperate, vulnerable populace who were more than receptive to the idea that they were the master race destined to regain their lost power and prestige. The problem is like every fairy tale, there has to be an ending, Alt-reality cannot sustain itself indefinitely against real human progress. At every point in history, our forward momentum has been attacked, challenged and ridiculed, and every time it ultimately triumphs, although the price paid is often high.

History assures us that the reality of human progress will ultimately prevail over Trump and his minions, but we will have to endure some very difficult times ahead thanks to those who succumbed to the allure of a distorted, perverted fairy tale. There will be a price to pay, and unfortunately, all of us, regardless of what you believe, will end up paying it.

When America Looks In The Mirror, It Sees The Face of Donald Trump

Donald Trump is without question a despicable human being. The latest revelations of his demeaning rhetoric towards women are being rightly condemned by just about everyone across the political spectrum. Yet this is only one in a long line of horrible comments by Trump objectifying women, and only now are many of his staunchest supporters speaking out against him.

The bar has been lowered so far for The Donald, that it was only when his fans had to actually dig into the ground to push it below the surface that any complaints were raised. Conservatives and evangelical Christians are just fine with sexism, misogyny and suppression as long as you use the right terms and phrases. “Grabbing them by the pussy” is not correct form and thus, objectionable. When you get down to it, it is really only semantics that separate the rest of the conservative pack from Trump, and no one should forget that.

Ask yourself, how can someone who believes that a wife should be subservient to the husband criticize the substance of what Trump said? How can a person who insists a woman should not have control over her own body call out Trump for his comments? The bluster and indignation from the right is as phony as a Trump apology and the only real concern on the part of the Republican Party is that their candidate can’t stop handing Hillary more ammunition.

Can anyone imagine what would happen if Trump’s hot mic comments were uttered by Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama? Yet as of today, Trump is still the Republican presidential nominee. Our institutions are failing us, our “leaders” are not leaders at all, but tools of the one percent, and our democracy is dying. Donald Trump is the abomination born of nationalistic greed and hubris, the spawn of anti-democratic chauvinism and American exceptionalism. Conservatives pretending to be aghast at his remarks are his long-time enablers now swimming in a cesspool of hypocrisy. Far from an aberration, Trump is the true face of America in 2016, the candidate we deserve.

Ever Feel Like You’ve Known Donald Trump All Your Life? You Have.

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Since Trump became the Republican nominee for President, there has been a spate of articles psychoanalyzing The Donald, with many professionals agreeing he is clearly a narcissist and possibly a sociopath. I do have respect for the psychologists who have brought to bear their many years of experience to categorize the man, but you and I already know him by a much more common moniker: “The Asshole.”

John, come on, are you just being rude? No, well yes, but no. We all know or have known Donald Trumps throughout our lives. He is representative of the assholes we come into contact with at work, on the roads and at large family gatherings. Think about the time you were having dinner with your wife and a coworker’s name came up in the conversation, and she said, “That asshole?” You’re talking to a neighbor in the apartment complex and you complain about the constant noise, and he says, “Must be the asshole in 4B.” You’re attending the big game at your hometown stadium, but the guy in front of you keeps standing up and yelling at the top of his lungs, and you’re thinking, “What an….” That annoying human being, in every case, is Sir Trump.

Donald Trump is the person who…

You never want for a group project.

Cuts you off in traffic, and then gives you the finger.

Takes more credit than he deserves for a successful project.

Looks for a reason not to leave the waitress a tip.

Laughs when someone trips.

Pulls into the parking spot you’ve been waiting for at Costco.

Takes the last cup of coffee and doesn’t make a new pot.

You will surely have your own additions to the listing of habits of your typical asshole. And I’m not even going to the misogynistic, racist tendencies of the man, although there are certainly correlations here, too. What I’m saying is that in some ways, Donald Trump really does represent the common man, but that thin slice of humanity known familiarly as the “common asshole.”

Tomorrow’s Headlines Today

Trump Campaign Hires North Korean President Kim Jong Un as Campaign Advisor. Public Executions Promised.

Experts Baffled by Sudden Extreme Spike in Trump Polls

Mexico Agrees to Pay for Wall to Keep Trump Out

Kaepernick Admits to Sitting On Toilet and Not Standing Until Done. FOX News Explodes With Indignation.

DEA Refuses Once Again to Remove Flintstones Vitamins From Schedule I Drug Category.

Vice President Nominee Mike Pence Blames Ice Cream-induced Brain Freeze For Moment of Clarity and Compassion

Citing Immigration Restrictions, Jesus Cancels Return Indefinitely

Melenia Trump On Why Clinton Unfit to Hold Top Office: “No one who dresses like my grandmother can president.”

New NC Voter ID Law Requires Genealogical Evidence of “White Purity”

Crazed Fan Stabs Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards Twenty-seven Times, Sets Him On fire and Throws Body Into Grand Canyon. Doctors Say Guitarist Will Continue Touring Within Days.

Trump is the Republican Party Stripped Naked

I find the hair pulling and garment rending by the Republican establishment over Donald Trump becoming their presidential candidate hilarious and totally disingenuous. You would guess from all of the wailing that Trump had somehow betrayed the Republican Party’s core values or insulted Ronald Reagan, but that’s not what’s going on here. Most of Trumps ideas and ideals are straight from the Republican playbook (“The Art of the Lie”) and probably differ little from Rubio or Kasich or McConnell. So why is Mr. Combover despised by so many in his own party?

Republicans are upset with Trump because he dared to break the golden rule of conservatives campaigning for office: Always talk in code. The Code is a laundry list of words and phrases used by Republicans to convey their true values to the faithful without coming across to the rest of us as obviously racist, homophobic, misogynistic or cruel. For instance, when a politician talks about those who have become dependent on welfare or “the takers” or welfare queens, they’re talking about African Americans. If they talk about people attacking America’s core values, waging war against Christmas or East Coast elites, they’re referring to liberals. And when they talk about almost any issue relating to women, the real message is “we must maintain America’s patriarchy at any cost.”

Trump, however, ain’t playing that game. He has thrown away the codebook and blurts out what every racist, misogynistic, homophobic American wants to hear in one and two syllable words. No more talking in code for Trump. He’s going to tell it like it is, and his fellow Republicans are outraged because their horrible, hateful values are now on full display in every Trump speech and interview.

Trump is the Republican Party naked, revealing every ugly blemish, every deformity, every open sore and it is a truly an ugly spectacle. Mainstream Republicans don’t hate Donald for what he says, but for how he says it, and in the end, it might be the one positive thing to come out of Trump’s run for the White House.

The Nightmare that is Donald Trump

Donald Trump is a despicable human being. With the maturity of a nine-year old and the vocabulary to match, Trump proves day in and day out he is the ringmaster of the current GOP circus masquerading as a Presidential campaign. As if anyone with an IQ over 70 needs additional proof, here are some headlines from Trump supporters on /r/The_Donald subreddit.

If @tedcruz was elected president, his wife would be the sixth lady.

ViveLaFrance Breaking: The end of Ted Cruz >> Washington Times confirms accounts of multiple @tedcruz mistresses as accurate.

Hillary is afraid. Donald has destroyed the career of everyone who has attacked him. She should be afraid.

You can bet your dick that if this scandal was happening to Trump, everyone and their god damn mother would be reporting it and censoring it would be absolutely out of the question. Fuck the MSM.

I would expect to find mini-rants like this in a ninth grader’s notebook or on a restroom wall. The grammar and punctuation mistakes and crude humor only emphasize the fact that Trump supporters are truly the poorly educated he claims to love. Even the few Republicans I know claim they won’t vote for the Donald.

Trump’s success so far has made America the laughing stock of the global community, which is probably something his followers would take pride in. Like a nightmare you can’t wake up from, the petulant man-child from New York City is seizing on the misplaced anger of less educated citizens to stoke his ego and legitimize his bigotry, and it looks as if he will be the Republican candidate for the Presidency. What a world.

Trump Taps the Rich Vein of Anti-intellectualism in America

Donald Trump loves him some poorly educated people. Of course he does. They make up the base of his supporters. Scammers, con artists, grifters, they all love the poorly educated because they are the easiest marks, the ones who, even knowing the 3 shell game is rigged, will play anyway.  On a larger scale, that same mentality explains why poorly educated Republicans continuously vote against their best interests in election after election, and why Southern red states are at the bottom of the list in every measure of economic viability and livability.

Anti-intellectualism is as American as apple pie, and Donald Trump has found that vein to tap, and it’s a rich one. Intellectuals are haughty Europeans sipping lattes and smoking pipes. Real Americans like to get their hands dirty and resent what they feel is the condescending attitude of the educated class. God, guns and guts are what America is all about, and Trump knows that mentality all too well.

Even the escalating language about “punching protesters in the face” and the real violence often seen at Trump rallies used against protestors is cleverly designed to appeal to the “poorly educated” and their Wild West delusions. Trump knows his supporters are sick and tired of whiny liberals and their political correctness. Debating issues is for wussies. Sometimes a fist to the face is the only way to settle a debate.

 

Trump recently said he could kill someone and not loose any support, and I think he’s right. Trump’s great triumph already is that despite being an elite billionaire from Gotham, he has become the emblem and icon of the poorly educated whites in America, the hideous representation of their frustration, anger and helplessness that this country is changing in ways they don’t like. Donald Trump is a master manipulator of people, using this talent to lead the Republican field of Presidential candidates. Will it be enough to win him the White House? These are strange and uncertain times.

Hate America? Vote Republican.

Where do we as a society draw the line between far right wing ideology and mental illness? How have we gotten to the point in the United States where we will have a presidential election featuring one candidate who straddles that grey line, who makes Elmer Fudd look like a Mensa member, and who, if elected President, will almost certainly drag our country into the depths of despair?

Think about a President who would condone the actions of the American terrorist who killed three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado. Think about a President who doesn’t believe in man-made global warning and who’ll do nothing to reduce our toxic emissions, and may even push to increase them. Think about a President who doesn’t accept the separation of church and state, and actively pushes an agenda to make America a Christian theocracy. Think about a President who prefers war to diplomacy and sees violent intervention as a strategy of first choice. And finally, think about a President who does not understand or care about our Constitution, and who will think nothing of violating it in the pursuit of creating an ultra-conservative/fascist government.

Our system of governance in America is broken. Next November, we will likely have a choice between a Wall Street-endorsed establishment Democrat and a borderline mental case. This is what we’ve come to, and to all of the liberals and progressives who are in denial, who are certain Cruz or Carson or Trump could never win the White House, all I can say is wake the fuck up. Our elections are rigged and have nothing to do with the will of the people. If the one percent and the Deep State want a Republican to win, a Republican will win.

Although I’m not Harold Camping predicting the end of the world, I think America is at a crossroads. Should any one of the Republican candidates prove victorious next November, it will herald the end of the United States as most of us know it. Our country already has serious problems that need to be addressed, from income inequality to campaign finance reform to a crumbling infrastructure, and the only thing I can say for certain is that if a Republican is elected President, all of those issues and more will only get worse.