A woman protestor shimmied up a flagpole on capitol grounds in Columbia, South Carolina, and took down the Confederate flag. Today it went back up, flying proudly and hated for a new phase of what will probably be the last weeks of its life. Governor Haley declared the flag will come down regardless of the result of upcoming South Carolina legislature debate.
Confederate flag backlash and support has ranged from nostalgic to irrational, with pundits making nonsensical comparisons and suggestions. Rich Lowry of The National Review said, "The Confederate flag didn't kill the people in that church in Charleston." He may as well have said, "Why punish cloth?"
Pro-Rebel flag worshippers point to its historical merit and its honoring of Confederate soldiers, but from the other side we hear comparisons to the flag designed by Adolf Hitler: black swastika in a white circle against a red background. That flag, the argument goes, represents a regime that practiced evil and degrading policies against millions of people. True, but a comparison of the Confederate flag to the flag of Nazi Germany misses the difference in scale and political policies carried out on respective populations. The Confederacy continued enslavement of African-Americans in its territory, but did not exterminate them, as Nazi Germany did to its "undesirable" peoples and those they conquered in World War Two. Yet, Jonathan Capehart on MSNBC said the Confederate flag is as bad as the flag of Nazi Germany. At this point I must shift my cognitive faculties from the issue and determine what's worse: flag displays, or slaughtering people?
Rich Lowry, God love his simple rhetoric, is right: the Confederate flag did not kill the nine people in Charleston. Dylann Roof, the killer, did not fire a gun that extended a Confederate, or any other flag, written over, perhaps, with the word Bang! He fired real bullets, with murderous intent, wasting and terrorizing innocent and peaceful people. He was influenced in his beliefs by white supremacist philosophies judging blacks and other minorities in America to be the real problem. He had a thing for the Confederate flag, too. Pictures have been repeatedly broadcast of Roof posing with it. That flag, for many, represents rebellion, a rebel spirit, but it also represents an extinct nation that split treasonously from the United States in 1861, leading to a civil war fought by President Lincoln to join the country back together, with freedom for the slaves a secondary concern.
In the American Civil War, hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides fought and died under the banners of both of their respective flags. The North won, its flag regarded more and more over the decades as a cult object, like the Confederate flag was and still is by the losers. The U.S. flag, since World War Two, has come to cover the world along with the military units bearing it in the current planetary-wide zones created by minds in the Pentagon. The U.S. flag flies over the base at Guantanamo Bay and flew over Abu Ghraib Prison, places of torture and no equal justice under the law. The U.S. flag accompanied American troops in the Philippines in the early years of the twentieth century, when waterboarding Filipino guerillas by Americans was common practice. Under the U.S. flag, Americans pummeled Vietnam, killing millions of people and practicing chemical warfare.
American campaigns under their flag against non-American humanity, including Native Americans, is far longer a subject than I can write about here. The U.S. flag didn't torture terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, but that flag, like all flags, is a symbol. Some symbols inspire hatred and loathing, as the U.S. flag does in many parts of the world. The woman who ascended and descended the pole in Columbia, who faces charges for doing so, sees that symbol as hateful, and no government building or piece of government property should display it. I agree, or, as cable news people like to say, I don't disagree.
The Confederate flag in this time, flying on government property, is inappropriate; it offends black citizens and voters as well as many others, but an additional layer, one of dubious judgment, has opened in response to the Confederate flag controversy. The TV show The Dukes of Hazzard had a fast car called General Lee, featuring a Confederate flag on its roof. Makers and distributors of model cars of General Lee have come under fire for selling this toy with the hated symbol. Walmart has purged products with Confederate flag imagery, including a Confederate flag handgun holster.
Most absurd have been suggestions that Gone With the Wind be banned. It takes place in Georgia, there are many slave characters, Plantation-owning Southerners are depicted sympathetically, there's a famous crane shot showing wounded Confederate soldiers in a courtyard with Scarlett O'Hara wandering among them in an overwhelmed daze, the image ending with the Confederate flag flying vigorously. Apart from the impossibility of totally banning works of literature and cinema, accompanied always by a ban making a work more sought after than ever (To Kill a Mockingbird, for instance), it's stupid to believe that preventing people from seeing Gone With the Wind will improve America. The Dukes of Hazzard, though a lesser work of art than Gone With the Wind, is, like the epic 1939 film, very popular. Censorship, in the grand scheme, doesn't work, and the censors always end up seeming like ninnies.
Still, I'm in favor of that flagpole climber in Columbia, like I'm in favor of the Iraqi man who threw his shoes at George W. Bush. The Confederate Flag and Bush have both presided over a great uncounted number of unnecessary deaths.
Vic Neptune
Monday, June 29, 2015
Sunday, June 28, 2015
New Horizons, a space probe launched in 2005, nears Pluto and its moons. I get excited whenever a world is about to be seen up close for the first time. Other planets, asteroids, comets, moons, are real places, ancient in the billions of years, like Earth. They are nature in the raw, as is the black vacuum of space. No human has yet seen details of Pluto's features, but sixteen days from this writing the remote object and its moons, will spread through humanity's information storage and retrieval systems, becoming a known, at least by sight, phenomenon.
A few years back some astronomers decided to change Pluto's designation as a planet to "minor planet," along with Ceres, the largest asteroid. This upset a lot of people, I think, because in school we were taught the layout of the Solar System: nine planets, including the little one way out there with the radically tilted orbit around the Sun. It crosses inside the path of Neptune sometimes, making that blue gas giant temporarily the outermost planet. After the Pluto designation decision, Neptune, eighth planet from the Sun, became outermost planet full time.
Pluto's smallness played a role in its downgrade to "minor planet." There are many moons in the Solar System larger than Pluto. Still, before the downgrade, a moon of Pluto, Charon, had been discovered. Years later, four more moons, much smaller than Charon, have been seen, named, and plotted. Close views of these raw, natural little worlds and their "minor planet" are impending. Could it be the astronomers who changed Pluto's status will have to rethink their views once the Plutonian System is revealed?
It should be evident I'm with the Pluto-is-a-planet party. Since I'm always proud of my nation's peaceful accomplishments, I'm pleased that an American, Clyde Tombaugh, discovered it in 1930.
The public backlash against downgrading Pluto's status struck well-known astronomer Neil DeGrasse Tyson as startling and even ridiculous. What he and other like-minded astronomers didn't realize is that changing designations or names of things after the fact doesn't always work smoothly.
When your friend, call him Bill, decides to be known by a different name, Dirk, you and others who've known Bill as Bill will tend to have a hard time calling him Dirk. Bill's new acquaintances, however, if he introduces himself as Dirk, will always know him by that name. No one in my family and none of my old friends call me Vic. Likewise, if you're taught that Pluto's a planet, you won't embrace a designation change.
This argument over terms, by me and by the astronomers who started it in the first place, will seem stupid once Pluto and its moons can be seen for what they are: beautiful, strange, cold, and mysterious worlds moving in their own rhythms for longer than the beginning of evolution of eyes to see them.
Vic Neptune
A few years back some astronomers decided to change Pluto's designation as a planet to "minor planet," along with Ceres, the largest asteroid. This upset a lot of people, I think, because in school we were taught the layout of the Solar System: nine planets, including the little one way out there with the radically tilted orbit around the Sun. It crosses inside the path of Neptune sometimes, making that blue gas giant temporarily the outermost planet. After the Pluto designation decision, Neptune, eighth planet from the Sun, became outermost planet full time.
Pluto's smallness played a role in its downgrade to "minor planet." There are many moons in the Solar System larger than Pluto. Still, before the downgrade, a moon of Pluto, Charon, had been discovered. Years later, four more moons, much smaller than Charon, have been seen, named, and plotted. Close views of these raw, natural little worlds and their "minor planet" are impending. Could it be the astronomers who changed Pluto's status will have to rethink their views once the Plutonian System is revealed?
It should be evident I'm with the Pluto-is-a-planet party. Since I'm always proud of my nation's peaceful accomplishments, I'm pleased that an American, Clyde Tombaugh, discovered it in 1930.
The public backlash against downgrading Pluto's status struck well-known astronomer Neil DeGrasse Tyson as startling and even ridiculous. What he and other like-minded astronomers didn't realize is that changing designations or names of things after the fact doesn't always work smoothly.
When your friend, call him Bill, decides to be known by a different name, Dirk, you and others who've known Bill as Bill will tend to have a hard time calling him Dirk. Bill's new acquaintances, however, if he introduces himself as Dirk, will always know him by that name. No one in my family and none of my old friends call me Vic. Likewise, if you're taught that Pluto's a planet, you won't embrace a designation change.
This argument over terms, by me and by the astronomers who started it in the first place, will seem stupid once Pluto and its moons can be seen for what they are: beautiful, strange, cold, and mysterious worlds moving in their own rhythms for longer than the beginning of evolution of eyes to see them.
Vic Neptune
Saturday, June 27, 2015
It's not easy to think about something else when you have shampoo in your eye.
I didn't intend a few days ago to watch twenty minutes of C-Span. I had neared the end of my desire to pass through the fifty or so channels in my cable package, brain distracted by personal life thoughts, putting off doing a few things that needed doing that day. Ted Cruz, however, was on the Senate floor, fulminating against the U.S. Supreme Court's 6-3 decision in favor of upholding the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Fascinated, I couldn't press on to another channel until I'd heard the man--like me, an American citizen born in Canada--speak and shout through a spiel so gravid with impassioned paranoid rhetoric it seemed a brood of demonic spawn were verging on breaching from his mouth.
Ted Cruz (Texas Republican, Latino ancestry, presidential candidate, McCarthyism practitioner) has one thing going for him as a public figure: the natural ability to speak, more as an entertainer than as a level-headed servant of the people--which he is not. Charlatans, though, do have their believers. A key power source fueling a crooked politician's engine is the gullibility of supporters acting from fear-based impulses supplied often by the same twisted motherfuckers they vote for.
Cruz would've flourished as a seventeenth century witch-hunting New England Puritan. His attention-getting speaking style hinges on pointing to the problem, or "problem." Aided by his buzz saw voice, he then builds a volcano of warning words leading to a spew and steady flow of invective at his target. We're in a lot of trouble, people, because the Supreme Court has chosen to uphold an unconstitutional law that aims to, God help us, prevent poor Americans from dying for lack of affordable health care.
Cruz employs an old propaganda technique Josef Goebbels would've regarded as a first grade exercise: turn a positive into a negative by covering the truth of the matter with a rational-seeming argument many people will believe even though it smothers their best interests.
Cruz represents Texas, a state with lots of poor people whose lives can improve with the benefit of not having to worry about rich lawyers and politicians removing affordable care only to replace it with the nothing Republican lawmakers have for them. When Cruz fired volcanic bombs at this latest humane decision by one of the three branches of U.S. government, he reflected the viewpoints of his fellow Republicans, whose motto in regard to affordable health care may as well be, "Kill the poor."
If you have no money to pay a doctor's bill, or the cash to cover a visit to the emergency room (one of mine a few years ago, when I had no insurance, cost $1,200) you are fucked. Mitt Romney, when he still lived in the delusional cloud convincing him he would win the presidency, said in 2012 that people without health insurance have the "option" of going to the emergency room. These lucky people, I suppose the rich man thought, don't have to suffer their maladies alone in their homes when there are ambulances and hospitals.
Sometimes, the American political situation, especially its protracted campaigns, seems like a movie, but unfortunately Romney, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, are real people representing "interests" that, like the Devil, employ lies to make it seem to some like we're all better off when tens of millions of people have to go into debt to save their own lives.
The day of Cruz's speech, a typically smug Fox News Channel business show host used an expression that's becoming a right wing cliché: "No one is dying in the streets," referring to those needing health care so badly they're like cardboard pieces and empty soda bottles blown around on the concrete. It's generally true, though. Poor sick people don't die in, or rather on, the street, but they die in apartments and houses because they're unable to afford a medical specialist's attention. How many Americans have been unhealthy, and sliding towards death for the past decades and centuries of no affordable health care law? Osama bin Laden would've been pleased to kill even a hundredth of that mysterious vast number of ignored Americans of which I was one.
Fuck you, Ted Cruz.
As I watched the Senator from Texas and presidential hopeful speak twice in twenty seconds of his hope that "every word of Obamacare be repealed," I thought, "Every word, Ted? Including the word, care?"
Amazingly not out of breath, he finished, and I pleaded out loud at the TV set: "Please Jesus, come back to Earth and exorcise the demon from this man!"
Vic Neptune
I didn't intend a few days ago to watch twenty minutes of C-Span. I had neared the end of my desire to pass through the fifty or so channels in my cable package, brain distracted by personal life thoughts, putting off doing a few things that needed doing that day. Ted Cruz, however, was on the Senate floor, fulminating against the U.S. Supreme Court's 6-3 decision in favor of upholding the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Fascinated, I couldn't press on to another channel until I'd heard the man--like me, an American citizen born in Canada--speak and shout through a spiel so gravid with impassioned paranoid rhetoric it seemed a brood of demonic spawn were verging on breaching from his mouth.
Ted Cruz (Texas Republican, Latino ancestry, presidential candidate, McCarthyism practitioner) has one thing going for him as a public figure: the natural ability to speak, more as an entertainer than as a level-headed servant of the people--which he is not. Charlatans, though, do have their believers. A key power source fueling a crooked politician's engine is the gullibility of supporters acting from fear-based impulses supplied often by the same twisted motherfuckers they vote for.
Cruz would've flourished as a seventeenth century witch-hunting New England Puritan. His attention-getting speaking style hinges on pointing to the problem, or "problem." Aided by his buzz saw voice, he then builds a volcano of warning words leading to a spew and steady flow of invective at his target. We're in a lot of trouble, people, because the Supreme Court has chosen to uphold an unconstitutional law that aims to, God help us, prevent poor Americans from dying for lack of affordable health care.
Cruz employs an old propaganda technique Josef Goebbels would've regarded as a first grade exercise: turn a positive into a negative by covering the truth of the matter with a rational-seeming argument many people will believe even though it smothers their best interests.
Cruz represents Texas, a state with lots of poor people whose lives can improve with the benefit of not having to worry about rich lawyers and politicians removing affordable care only to replace it with the nothing Republican lawmakers have for them. When Cruz fired volcanic bombs at this latest humane decision by one of the three branches of U.S. government, he reflected the viewpoints of his fellow Republicans, whose motto in regard to affordable health care may as well be, "Kill the poor."
If you have no money to pay a doctor's bill, or the cash to cover a visit to the emergency room (one of mine a few years ago, when I had no insurance, cost $1,200) you are fucked. Mitt Romney, when he still lived in the delusional cloud convincing him he would win the presidency, said in 2012 that people without health insurance have the "option" of going to the emergency room. These lucky people, I suppose the rich man thought, don't have to suffer their maladies alone in their homes when there are ambulances and hospitals.
Sometimes, the American political situation, especially its protracted campaigns, seems like a movie, but unfortunately Romney, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, are real people representing "interests" that, like the Devil, employ lies to make it seem to some like we're all better off when tens of millions of people have to go into debt to save their own lives.
The day of Cruz's speech, a typically smug Fox News Channel business show host used an expression that's becoming a right wing cliché: "No one is dying in the streets," referring to those needing health care so badly they're like cardboard pieces and empty soda bottles blown around on the concrete. It's generally true, though. Poor sick people don't die in, or rather on, the street, but they die in apartments and houses because they're unable to afford a medical specialist's attention. How many Americans have been unhealthy, and sliding towards death for the past decades and centuries of no affordable health care law? Osama bin Laden would've been pleased to kill even a hundredth of that mysterious vast number of ignored Americans of which I was one.
Fuck you, Ted Cruz.
As I watched the Senator from Texas and presidential hopeful speak twice in twenty seconds of his hope that "every word of Obamacare be repealed," I thought, "Every word, Ted? Including the word, care?"
Amazingly not out of breath, he finished, and I pleaded out loud at the TV set: "Please Jesus, come back to Earth and exorcise the demon from this man!"
Vic Neptune
Friday, June 19, 2015
Incomprehensible.
The word's been used by some politicians and pundits to describe the latest American mass murder. A white twenty-one year old with a bowl haircut, dead eyes, and a forty-five, shot and killed nine black adults in a church in Charleston, South Carolina. News media spinning followed, with Fox News Channel the most color blind. Jeb Bush said he can't comprehend how this could've happened. For some, possible motives center around the young man's mental health and a desire to harm Christians. The crime occurred in "a house of worship," suggesting to those who can't imagine what it might actually have been about, a level of hardcore evil operating on a spiritual playing field.
Massacres in schools and in a movie theater, at an outdoor political rally in Tucson, must not have the same spiritual weight as slaughter in a Bible study group meeting in a church, right? Bullshit: all of them were equally terrible, their perpetrators--mentally ill or not--dangerous freaks with guns.
After his arrest in North Carolina, this latest freak spoke bluntly to authorities, offering his reasons clearly and without ambiguity. He wanted to start a race war. He's a white supremacist. He hates black people.
It took him an hour to start shooting. In custody, he said the people in the study group were so nice to him he started having second thoughts. Maybe so, but perhaps he was also screwing up his courage to start murdering people and it took about an hour for his brain to lock in determination with his trigger finger. He killed a pastor and a South Carolina state senator, the latter murder qualifying as assassination. There's much debate now about whether or not to call this atrocity domestic terrorism. South Carolina, too, doesn't recognize hate crimes. It's also the only state flying a Confederate flag over its capitol building. That flag, unlike the flag of the country South Carolina belongs to, has flown this week at full mast. This morning, South Carolina's former Governor Mark Sanford--the Appalachian Trail hiker and Argentine mistress fucker--was asked by a cable news anchor about the Confederate flag flying in total indifference to the Emancipation Proclamation and Lee's surrender at Appomattox. Sanford replied, "That opens a Pandora's Box." In other words, South Carolina's many nostalgic racists must have their feelings respected.
Anyway, it's preferable for some to believe the killings represent an attack on Christians who happened to be black.
I was in South Carolina, a rather beautiful state, in 1999. My girlfriend and I were headed to a state park near Myrtle Beach where we planned to camp for a few days. Driving in a rented Dodge Neon on two lane roads, approaching the Ocean, we began to notice the same four-sided yellow roadside sign appearing about every quarter- to half-mile:
CHURCH
The shrubs and trees would then give way to a view of a little church. Then, around a bend or two another sign:
CHURCH
This happened at least five times in under two miles. From this, I concluded that South Carolina is not lacking in churches. Sixteen years later I heard about a bastard with a gun killing nine in a church attended mainly by black people. The killer, a self-admitted racist, chose that church to start his "race war," in that city, where the first shots of the American Civil War were fired.
His dead-eyed face is all over the news. Is he a domestic terrorist? Did he have political motives for killing those people? If he sought to start a race war, then yes. Were his victims terrorized? Yes. Whether or not he'll be declared, like Timothy McVeigh, a domestic terrorist, it's sobering to realize he's managed to kill more Americans than ISIS has thus far. I regard him as a stone cold murderer who should face a firing squad, but the news media, in their traditional way, has him in another role. When asked in a courthouse video session whether or not he's employed, the killer replied, "No."
The truth is, he's currently employed as a celebrity.
Vic Neptune
The word's been used by some politicians and pundits to describe the latest American mass murder. A white twenty-one year old with a bowl haircut, dead eyes, and a forty-five, shot and killed nine black adults in a church in Charleston, South Carolina. News media spinning followed, with Fox News Channel the most color blind. Jeb Bush said he can't comprehend how this could've happened. For some, possible motives center around the young man's mental health and a desire to harm Christians. The crime occurred in "a house of worship," suggesting to those who can't imagine what it might actually have been about, a level of hardcore evil operating on a spiritual playing field.
Massacres in schools and in a movie theater, at an outdoor political rally in Tucson, must not have the same spiritual weight as slaughter in a Bible study group meeting in a church, right? Bullshit: all of them were equally terrible, their perpetrators--mentally ill or not--dangerous freaks with guns.
After his arrest in North Carolina, this latest freak spoke bluntly to authorities, offering his reasons clearly and without ambiguity. He wanted to start a race war. He's a white supremacist. He hates black people.
It took him an hour to start shooting. In custody, he said the people in the study group were so nice to him he started having second thoughts. Maybe so, but perhaps he was also screwing up his courage to start murdering people and it took about an hour for his brain to lock in determination with his trigger finger. He killed a pastor and a South Carolina state senator, the latter murder qualifying as assassination. There's much debate now about whether or not to call this atrocity domestic terrorism. South Carolina, too, doesn't recognize hate crimes. It's also the only state flying a Confederate flag over its capitol building. That flag, unlike the flag of the country South Carolina belongs to, has flown this week at full mast. This morning, South Carolina's former Governor Mark Sanford--the Appalachian Trail hiker and Argentine mistress fucker--was asked by a cable news anchor about the Confederate flag flying in total indifference to the Emancipation Proclamation and Lee's surrender at Appomattox. Sanford replied, "That opens a Pandora's Box." In other words, South Carolina's many nostalgic racists must have their feelings respected.
Anyway, it's preferable for some to believe the killings represent an attack on Christians who happened to be black.
I was in South Carolina, a rather beautiful state, in 1999. My girlfriend and I were headed to a state park near Myrtle Beach where we planned to camp for a few days. Driving in a rented Dodge Neon on two lane roads, approaching the Ocean, we began to notice the same four-sided yellow roadside sign appearing about every quarter- to half-mile:
CHURCH
The shrubs and trees would then give way to a view of a little church. Then, around a bend or two another sign:
CHURCH
This happened at least five times in under two miles. From this, I concluded that South Carolina is not lacking in churches. Sixteen years later I heard about a bastard with a gun killing nine in a church attended mainly by black people. The killer, a self-admitted racist, chose that church to start his "race war," in that city, where the first shots of the American Civil War were fired.
His dead-eyed face is all over the news. Is he a domestic terrorist? Did he have political motives for killing those people? If he sought to start a race war, then yes. Were his victims terrorized? Yes. Whether or not he'll be declared, like Timothy McVeigh, a domestic terrorist, it's sobering to realize he's managed to kill more Americans than ISIS has thus far. I regard him as a stone cold murderer who should face a firing squad, but the news media, in their traditional way, has him in another role. When asked in a courthouse video session whether or not he's employed, the killer replied, "No."
The truth is, he's currently employed as a celebrity.
Vic Neptune
Thursday, June 18, 2015
On Sunday, Flag Day, Jeb Bush announced his candidacy. The fake ignorance professed by Florida's former governor has ended. He's running. His official sign says so: Jeb!
The sign's purpose points to Jeb Bush's reluctance to be identified with his older brother and father. Bush '16, as a sign, would remind voters of the blood link between fresh Jeb and that's-so-eighties-and-nineties George Bush and that's-so-Iraq-War George Bush. Jeb, if he gets elected, may continue in the family tradition and bomb the Middle East, but if he does, he will carry on with Obama's war policies. The exclamation point after Jeb could represent the point of an explosion's impact and the rising dust cloud.
His defenders have rushed to explain that Jeb! harkens back to the 1990s, when John E. Bush ran for the governor's mansion in Florida. It's plausible, I guess, if you want to ignore Jeb's brother's record and the impact it now has on Republican minds. They're acutely aware of how fucked up Iraq is. They blame Obama's withdrawal of most U.S. troops a few years ago, leaving a vacuum where competence supposedly ruled. Obama himself must've been affected by Iraq's example when he postponed the originally proposed troop withdrawal date from Afghanistan. Now, though, most Republicans don't look upon the 2003 invasion of Iraq, ordered by Jeb's brother, as having been a good idea. Yet, many of these same politicians and right wing thinkers don't want to make the connection between the U.S. failure of the Iraq War and the rise of ISIS. Instead, they insist "we won the Iraq War." Like we won in Vietnam.
Considering that Jeb, exclamation point or not, has foreign policy advisors, like Iraq War hard-on Paul Wolfowitz and other neo-conservatives who convinced themselves taking and holding Iraq would be easy, it's likely the candidate believes in military interventions. Such enterprises, of course, are profitable for the arms industry. All out war with ISIS, and whatever comes after them, can keep the war machine bonfire going until Jeb is done abusing the world, followed by the next asshole, and so on.
Jeb! reminds me of what I would say if he were running away from me: "Jeb! Come back here!"
Or, if I haven't seen him for a long time: "Jeb! How ya doin?"
Or, it simply means he's the next punch in the face masquerading as a peace-bringer to the Middle East.
The day after Jeb announced his big deal in Miami, Donald Trump spoke before a crowd of "thousands," by his own estimate, in Trump Tower in Manhattan. More reliable estimates put the audience at about 300, many of them, as revealed by some honest to God investigative journalism by The Hollywood Reporter, extras hired from a casting agency by the Trump Campaign. They were paid fifty bucks apiece to cheer for Donald. It's like a man paying people to pretend they're his friends. Is that sad? In Donald Trump's case it's certainly funny.
His extemporaneous speech amounted to an unfiltered spewing of shouted words, claims, exaggerations, accusations, boasts. He announced proudly his net worth: 8.7 billion dollars. He claims he will self-finance his campaign, which, if he does, negates my idea of him requiring multi-billionaires to back him (as written about in my June 7, 2015 entry). Forbes magazine counterclaims that Trump's true net worth is 4.1 billion dollars. If so, as shown with his psychological need to bribe "supporters" to cheer him, Trump must've felt the need to double the figure, adding a few hundred million--not too much to seem implausible.
Implausibility suffuses the possibility that a psychopathic egotist could become President of the United States. Still, some cable news pundits point out that Trump says "what people in bars say." Ordinary Americans, in other words. They speak their minds, not barring their language with political correctness. Trump, then, is the voice of common men and women.
In bars I've heard a variety of talk: intelligent, boring, stupid, incomprehensible. Trump's views, though not incomprehensible, tend to be simple-minded, like his "solution" for defeating ISIS: smash them, Hulk not like them, Hulk destroy.
As a genuine presidential candidate Trump appeals to idiots--he has their vote wrapped up. For Trump, the world isn't complex. In dealing with other nations he believes in pushing in and being unavoidable, making him thoroughly America First in his thinking. Even so, he says, "America is a hellhole," a "third world nation." During his June 15 speech, he lamented America's lack of military ambition, citing admirably the People's Republic of China:
"They're building a military platform in the South China Sea! Can we do that? No, we can't!"
Does he realize an unmoving sitting duck of an installation is hardly necessary if another nation has these things called aircraft carriers?
For those who don't think beyond the thin first surface of reaction, an idiot-user like Donald Trump might seem like fresh air. Indeed, his "honesty" strikes some as an antidote to the tortured phrases of Jeb Bush, Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton trying to answer simple questions. Trump, then, will be the chief entertainer in Race To The White House 2015, and, if he gets renewed, 2016. As such, he will distract the news media from serious issues. All he has to do is speak typical Trump and news networks will cover him and discuss his blather. Herman Cain, pizza czar and, for a time, frontrunner among Republican presidential candidates in 2012, was a joke less obvious than Trump. When asked anything about the state of the economy, Cain would reply, "Nine nine nine," referring to some never revealed super-plan to save America, and also sounding like the German word for "no."
Where Herman Cain was Dada, Donald Trump is Surrealist. With the orange hair drooping all over his head and his too-small-for-his-face mouth he resembles an orangutan's ass. The capitalist orangutan lopes about, its Donald-behind shitting on everything and everyone, paying special attention to journalists who must cover him in this infotainment age, because they're trapped in his jungle. An ideal blending has occurred: corporate-owned news networks and the corporation that is Trump. Everybody's fucking each other. Ratings and making shitloads of money is all that matters to these people. Hence, the 2016 presidential year will show, finally, next November, who, our next president, will have been willing to eat the most shit.
Jeb!
Donald$
Hillary...
Bernie?
Vic Neptune
The sign's purpose points to Jeb Bush's reluctance to be identified with his older brother and father. Bush '16, as a sign, would remind voters of the blood link between fresh Jeb and that's-so-eighties-and-nineties George Bush and that's-so-Iraq-War George Bush. Jeb, if he gets elected, may continue in the family tradition and bomb the Middle East, but if he does, he will carry on with Obama's war policies. The exclamation point after Jeb could represent the point of an explosion's impact and the rising dust cloud.
His defenders have rushed to explain that Jeb! harkens back to the 1990s, when John E. Bush ran for the governor's mansion in Florida. It's plausible, I guess, if you want to ignore Jeb's brother's record and the impact it now has on Republican minds. They're acutely aware of how fucked up Iraq is. They blame Obama's withdrawal of most U.S. troops a few years ago, leaving a vacuum where competence supposedly ruled. Obama himself must've been affected by Iraq's example when he postponed the originally proposed troop withdrawal date from Afghanistan. Now, though, most Republicans don't look upon the 2003 invasion of Iraq, ordered by Jeb's brother, as having been a good idea. Yet, many of these same politicians and right wing thinkers don't want to make the connection between the U.S. failure of the Iraq War and the rise of ISIS. Instead, they insist "we won the Iraq War." Like we won in Vietnam.
Considering that Jeb, exclamation point or not, has foreign policy advisors, like Iraq War hard-on Paul Wolfowitz and other neo-conservatives who convinced themselves taking and holding Iraq would be easy, it's likely the candidate believes in military interventions. Such enterprises, of course, are profitable for the arms industry. All out war with ISIS, and whatever comes after them, can keep the war machine bonfire going until Jeb is done abusing the world, followed by the next asshole, and so on.
Jeb! reminds me of what I would say if he were running away from me: "Jeb! Come back here!"
Or, if I haven't seen him for a long time: "Jeb! How ya doin?"
Or, it simply means he's the next punch in the face masquerading as a peace-bringer to the Middle East.
The day after Jeb announced his big deal in Miami, Donald Trump spoke before a crowd of "thousands," by his own estimate, in Trump Tower in Manhattan. More reliable estimates put the audience at about 300, many of them, as revealed by some honest to God investigative journalism by The Hollywood Reporter, extras hired from a casting agency by the Trump Campaign. They were paid fifty bucks apiece to cheer for Donald. It's like a man paying people to pretend they're his friends. Is that sad? In Donald Trump's case it's certainly funny.
His extemporaneous speech amounted to an unfiltered spewing of shouted words, claims, exaggerations, accusations, boasts. He announced proudly his net worth: 8.7 billion dollars. He claims he will self-finance his campaign, which, if he does, negates my idea of him requiring multi-billionaires to back him (as written about in my June 7, 2015 entry). Forbes magazine counterclaims that Trump's true net worth is 4.1 billion dollars. If so, as shown with his psychological need to bribe "supporters" to cheer him, Trump must've felt the need to double the figure, adding a few hundred million--not too much to seem implausible.
Implausibility suffuses the possibility that a psychopathic egotist could become President of the United States. Still, some cable news pundits point out that Trump says "what people in bars say." Ordinary Americans, in other words. They speak their minds, not barring their language with political correctness. Trump, then, is the voice of common men and women.
In bars I've heard a variety of talk: intelligent, boring, stupid, incomprehensible. Trump's views, though not incomprehensible, tend to be simple-minded, like his "solution" for defeating ISIS: smash them, Hulk not like them, Hulk destroy.
As a genuine presidential candidate Trump appeals to idiots--he has their vote wrapped up. For Trump, the world isn't complex. In dealing with other nations he believes in pushing in and being unavoidable, making him thoroughly America First in his thinking. Even so, he says, "America is a hellhole," a "third world nation." During his June 15 speech, he lamented America's lack of military ambition, citing admirably the People's Republic of China:
"They're building a military platform in the South China Sea! Can we do that? No, we can't!"
Does he realize an unmoving sitting duck of an installation is hardly necessary if another nation has these things called aircraft carriers?
For those who don't think beyond the thin first surface of reaction, an idiot-user like Donald Trump might seem like fresh air. Indeed, his "honesty" strikes some as an antidote to the tortured phrases of Jeb Bush, Barack Obama, or Hillary Clinton trying to answer simple questions. Trump, then, will be the chief entertainer in Race To The White House 2015, and, if he gets renewed, 2016. As such, he will distract the news media from serious issues. All he has to do is speak typical Trump and news networks will cover him and discuss his blather. Herman Cain, pizza czar and, for a time, frontrunner among Republican presidential candidates in 2012, was a joke less obvious than Trump. When asked anything about the state of the economy, Cain would reply, "Nine nine nine," referring to some never revealed super-plan to save America, and also sounding like the German word for "no."
Where Herman Cain was Dada, Donald Trump is Surrealist. With the orange hair drooping all over his head and his too-small-for-his-face mouth he resembles an orangutan's ass. The capitalist orangutan lopes about, its Donald-behind shitting on everything and everyone, paying special attention to journalists who must cover him in this infotainment age, because they're trapped in his jungle. An ideal blending has occurred: corporate-owned news networks and the corporation that is Trump. Everybody's fucking each other. Ratings and making shitloads of money is all that matters to these people. Hence, the 2016 presidential year will show, finally, next November, who, our next president, will have been willing to eat the most shit.
Jeb!
Donald$
Hillary...
Bernie?
Vic Neptune
Sunday, June 14, 2015
I've been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Netflix. I saw the series when it was first on from 1997 to 2003, missing some episodes now and then; later, watching the whole series on library DVDs and missing some episodes due to terrible condition of a few of the discs. Videotapes get made fun of these days; they're antiquated, one has to rewind which involves waiting, one of the worst conditions inflicted on humanity, so God (Steve Jobs) invented the iPhone. But videotapes have at least one advantage over DVDs: if you drop a videotape--protected by an outer plastic shell--the tape isn't harmed. Drop a DVD and scratches and dinks appear, causing stoppages during play, skips, pixilation flowerings like abstract paintings. Library DVDs get checked out by a variety of people, some of whom don't realize it's damaging to touch the disc's playing surface. Add drops to that to carpets, rugs, and hard floors all across town and what happens is the condition of the library Buffy the Vampire Slayer set I tried to watch a few years ago.
Now, Netflix provides through an iPad screen a beautiful, clear vision of the show I've decided is my favorite of all shows.
The writing, the characters, the action scenes, the acting, amount to a perfect example of what a TV show can be if a creative genius (Joss Whedon) is left alone to make the show he needs to make, with a lead actress, Sarah Michelle Gellar playing Buffy, who combines old style Hollywood screen charisma with modern full spectrum acting ability. The show is Shakespearean in the sense that it depicts a full range of experience, mingling comedy with darkness, as in life. A complete range of dramatic styles is on view. Whedon even wrote a musical episode with all the actors doing their own singing and dancing, and it wasn't incongruous since the musicality afflicting them came from a meddling and stylish singing demon.
This month I've gotten two visits on this blog from the Netherlands. Hello, and thank you. One of my favorite bands, Clan of Xymox, comes from the Netherlands. I've been mesmerized by their moody, beautiful layered music since I first heard them in 1990.
Vic Neptune
Now, Netflix provides through an iPad screen a beautiful, clear vision of the show I've decided is my favorite of all shows.
The writing, the characters, the action scenes, the acting, amount to a perfect example of what a TV show can be if a creative genius (Joss Whedon) is left alone to make the show he needs to make, with a lead actress, Sarah Michelle Gellar playing Buffy, who combines old style Hollywood screen charisma with modern full spectrum acting ability. The show is Shakespearean in the sense that it depicts a full range of experience, mingling comedy with darkness, as in life. A complete range of dramatic styles is on view. Whedon even wrote a musical episode with all the actors doing their own singing and dancing, and it wasn't incongruous since the musicality afflicting them came from a meddling and stylish singing demon.
This month I've gotten two visits on this blog from the Netherlands. Hello, and thank you. One of my favorite bands, Clan of Xymox, comes from the Netherlands. I've been mesmerized by their moody, beautiful layered music since I first heard them in 1990.
Vic Neptune
Saturday, June 13, 2015
Sometime in the 1980s I read in one of Robert Anton Wilson's books about Timothy Leary running for president in 1968, a year so violent and hallucinogenic it could be a graphic novel adapted into a summer blockbuster. President Johnson had aged a few decades since starting the Vietnam War and he lacked, I think, the energy to run again that year. Eugene McCarthy acted as a vote-sucker on Vice-President Humphrey, who may have otherwise been able to defeat Richard Nixon. The Democratic Convention in Chicago, replete with aggressive cops, a hardass mayor, and the surrealism of literary giants like Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Jean Genet, reporting on the chaos of an event not dominated by the anointing of dead Robert Kennedy.
Leary got the Beatles to write a campaign song; we still hear it in TV advertisements divorced from the original context: "Come Together."
It's a good, freaky song. It would take hippies to believe such sounds could overcome mainstream America to the extent that a controversial drug philosopher like Leary had even a remote chance of becoming president. How would President Leary have run America? I assume he would have decriminalized all illegal drugs and attempted to halt the U.S. war machine's activities in Southeast Asia. He would've been opposed at most if not all levels by Congress. The truth is, people don't want to come together, to feel the pleasures of shared agreement. Contention oxygenates the blood of the nation. The circle of life is peaceful, makes sense, then it sucks again.
I met a stuck-in-the-wrong-time hippy who went by the name Hippy; I guess because as a holdover from the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was so rare a bird by 1991 he had to name himself by a label, like someone now calling himself Grunge. I met Hippy, a grubby wanderer-type in his mid-forties, in the company of Mark, an amiable fellow I spent a few weeks hanging out with that
Spring. Hippy took out a medallion at the end of a thong, a dirty metal peace sign, explaining how he believed in non-violence, "because I'm a hippy."
Mark responded, "I believe in non-violence because I'm a human being."
"That's cool, that's cool." Hippy seemed unaware of Mark's mockery of everything he said. He asked about a female friend of ours he'd met at the previous night's party. He took her natural friendliness and spacy demeanor as demonstrating an interest in himself.
"Hey man, you know her number?"
Mark told him seven false digits and we left Hippy as he wrote on his palm.
Now, Leary's idea of coming together could jibe with the interconnectedness of social media; yet, where are today's war protests?
Where is Hippy? He's about sixty-five now if he's alive. American culture is more open now than it was in 1991 or 1968, but not in a good way. Transparency makes the teenager's calls registered at the NSA seem as if they're as important as most hippy activity wasn't in the time of J. Edgar Hoover.
Maybe that's what Timothy Leary wanted to destroy: governments with their toys.
Vic Neptune
Leary got the Beatles to write a campaign song; we still hear it in TV advertisements divorced from the original context: "Come Together."
It's a good, freaky song. It would take hippies to believe such sounds could overcome mainstream America to the extent that a controversial drug philosopher like Leary had even a remote chance of becoming president. How would President Leary have run America? I assume he would have decriminalized all illegal drugs and attempted to halt the U.S. war machine's activities in Southeast Asia. He would've been opposed at most if not all levels by Congress. The truth is, people don't want to come together, to feel the pleasures of shared agreement. Contention oxygenates the blood of the nation. The circle of life is peaceful, makes sense, then it sucks again.
I met a stuck-in-the-wrong-time hippy who went by the name Hippy; I guess because as a holdover from the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was so rare a bird by 1991 he had to name himself by a label, like someone now calling himself Grunge. I met Hippy, a grubby wanderer-type in his mid-forties, in the company of Mark, an amiable fellow I spent a few weeks hanging out with that
Spring. Hippy took out a medallion at the end of a thong, a dirty metal peace sign, explaining how he believed in non-violence, "because I'm a hippy."
Mark responded, "I believe in non-violence because I'm a human being."
"That's cool, that's cool." Hippy seemed unaware of Mark's mockery of everything he said. He asked about a female friend of ours he'd met at the previous night's party. He took her natural friendliness and spacy demeanor as demonstrating an interest in himself.
"Hey man, you know her number?"
Mark told him seven false digits and we left Hippy as he wrote on his palm.
Now, Leary's idea of coming together could jibe with the interconnectedness of social media; yet, where are today's war protests?
Where is Hippy? He's about sixty-five now if he's alive. American culture is more open now than it was in 1991 or 1968, but not in a good way. Transparency makes the teenager's calls registered at the NSA seem as if they're as important as most hippy activity wasn't in the time of J. Edgar Hoover.
Maybe that's what Timothy Leary wanted to destroy: governments with their toys.
Vic Neptune
Friday, June 12, 2015
Is it easy being Vic Neptune?
There are times, like now, when I can't concentrate. Thoughts knock around in my brain unable to land and send out roots. I attribute this to long-standing mental conditions established by DNA combinations at conception. In 1998 I began a novel I never finished called The Accelerated Man. I wrote it longhand, accompanied by illustrations drawn in my primitive style. It was about a man named Xavier Compton, doing spy work on the largest moon of Uranus, Titania, in the twenty-third century. His enemies in the Titanian government get an agent of theirs to dose him with a mentally disabling drug, propelling his mind into ever more frequent phases of uncontrollable hyper-cognition. When in these frames of mind he's brilliant, but no one can understand his ideas. He figures out the corrupt nature of the Titanian government in the space of a day or so, identifies all of the players correctly, but can do nothing effective about it because from society's perspective he's nuts.
The Titanian Health and Human Services Department ships him back to Earth, where's he put in a controlled but pleasant sanitarium in Kentucky. Compton's handlers in the Earth-based intelligence agency keep him an eye on him from a distance at first, but manage to infiltrate a female agent into the sanitarium, posing as a suicidal schizophrenic.
That amounted to about twenty-five pages, then I gave up on it.
I could write an entire synopsis of The Accelerated Man, making it up right now and maybe over a few more sessions, but I don't want to. For one thing, I've found in my own case that figuring out everything in advance kills the actual writing of a novel. I need the spontaneous moment of branching off from what I'm thinking should come next. A random thought, a quick unplanned glance at something outside, may enter what I'm writing. It could be that my mind's general whirling condition finds attractive the random thing used in an essay, a blog post, a movie, a collage. People walk on beaches picking up driftwood and stones. These objects catch their eyes because they're interesting and beautiful, but they're also pushed up onto the sand by random oceanic movements. These beach people, whether they think of it or not, embrace randomness, something they may not do when buying a stock or a car.
I had read some of British author D.M. Thomas's Russian-themed novels around the time I began writing The Accelerated Man. In one of them (I think it was Ararat) I learned of Soviet persecution of some political dissidents using involuntary commitment to psychiatric wards as a means of control. Haloperidol (Haldol in pharmacy lingo), an anti-psychotic drug with distracting and even disabling side effects, was injected into these Soviet dissidents, giving them enough physical and psychological turmoil to deal with, that plotting or speaking against the official system was contained.
What a brilliant idea! Got a problem with someone? Just fuck him up with (legal) drugs and claim he's mentally ill.
At least ten years after The Accelerated Man I watched Robert Rossen's 1964 film Lilith, starring Warren Beatty and Jean Seberg. It takes place at a sanitarium out in the country somewhere, remote and beautiful, with a lot of patients with various brain chemistry problems. Seberg is a young woman who attracts the attention of the new employee, Beatty, brought on as a counselor. She's paranoid schizophrenic, something made fully apparent to the viewer far into the movie. It's one of the best psych ward movies ever made. I was struck by its resemblance (the sanitarium part) to my abandoned novel. The male/female roles were reversed, but the movie's eerie atmosphere, shot in black and white, captures the feel of mental illness in an institution, with days and nights gelling into a timelessness so oppressive it can only be called time made elastic and unyielding, a patient's life delineated by doctor appointments, medication handouts, and ceaseless condescension by those "helping."
Is it difficult being Vic Neptune?
Not always. This, like anything involving creative effort, whether it's making music or love, brings a gratification at the end for me when I realize I added another brick to the edifice of my fucking ego.
Vic Neptune
There are times, like now, when I can't concentrate. Thoughts knock around in my brain unable to land and send out roots. I attribute this to long-standing mental conditions established by DNA combinations at conception. In 1998 I began a novel I never finished called The Accelerated Man. I wrote it longhand, accompanied by illustrations drawn in my primitive style. It was about a man named Xavier Compton, doing spy work on the largest moon of Uranus, Titania, in the twenty-third century. His enemies in the Titanian government get an agent of theirs to dose him with a mentally disabling drug, propelling his mind into ever more frequent phases of uncontrollable hyper-cognition. When in these frames of mind he's brilliant, but no one can understand his ideas. He figures out the corrupt nature of the Titanian government in the space of a day or so, identifies all of the players correctly, but can do nothing effective about it because from society's perspective he's nuts.
The Titanian Health and Human Services Department ships him back to Earth, where's he put in a controlled but pleasant sanitarium in Kentucky. Compton's handlers in the Earth-based intelligence agency keep him an eye on him from a distance at first, but manage to infiltrate a female agent into the sanitarium, posing as a suicidal schizophrenic.
That amounted to about twenty-five pages, then I gave up on it.
I could write an entire synopsis of The Accelerated Man, making it up right now and maybe over a few more sessions, but I don't want to. For one thing, I've found in my own case that figuring out everything in advance kills the actual writing of a novel. I need the spontaneous moment of branching off from what I'm thinking should come next. A random thought, a quick unplanned glance at something outside, may enter what I'm writing. It could be that my mind's general whirling condition finds attractive the random thing used in an essay, a blog post, a movie, a collage. People walk on beaches picking up driftwood and stones. These objects catch their eyes because they're interesting and beautiful, but they're also pushed up onto the sand by random oceanic movements. These beach people, whether they think of it or not, embrace randomness, something they may not do when buying a stock or a car.
I had read some of British author D.M. Thomas's Russian-themed novels around the time I began writing The Accelerated Man. In one of them (I think it was Ararat) I learned of Soviet persecution of some political dissidents using involuntary commitment to psychiatric wards as a means of control. Haloperidol (Haldol in pharmacy lingo), an anti-psychotic drug with distracting and even disabling side effects, was injected into these Soviet dissidents, giving them enough physical and psychological turmoil to deal with, that plotting or speaking against the official system was contained.
What a brilliant idea! Got a problem with someone? Just fuck him up with (legal) drugs and claim he's mentally ill.
At least ten years after The Accelerated Man I watched Robert Rossen's 1964 film Lilith, starring Warren Beatty and Jean Seberg. It takes place at a sanitarium out in the country somewhere, remote and beautiful, with a lot of patients with various brain chemistry problems. Seberg is a young woman who attracts the attention of the new employee, Beatty, brought on as a counselor. She's paranoid schizophrenic, something made fully apparent to the viewer far into the movie. It's one of the best psych ward movies ever made. I was struck by its resemblance (the sanitarium part) to my abandoned novel. The male/female roles were reversed, but the movie's eerie atmosphere, shot in black and white, captures the feel of mental illness in an institution, with days and nights gelling into a timelessness so oppressive it can only be called time made elastic and unyielding, a patient's life delineated by doctor appointments, medication handouts, and ceaseless condescension by those "helping."
Is it difficult being Vic Neptune?
Not always. This, like anything involving creative effort, whether it's making music or love, brings a gratification at the end for me when I realize I added another brick to the edifice of my fucking ego.
Vic Neptune
Sunday, June 7, 2015
It may be clear by now that I'm not particularly fond of politicians. The reasons for this, though complex and originating deeply in my history of observing the world since becoming an adult, are nevertheless simple: I don't like it when people talk around the truth, when someone avoids answering a question using a variety of practiced verbal tactics. Cable news journalists often get exasperated trying to get a politician to say "yes" or "no" to a question the politician doesn't want to answer because he or she is reluctant to alienate ordinary constituents and especially the behind the scenes people who fund their campaigns quid pro quo style.
Thus, I understand why most politicians can't speak plainly, unless they're mouthing clichés and slogans, but I also grasp the meaning behind their lies and dodges. They're looking out for the interests of the rich patrons and lobbies keeping them alive in the political arena. Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin never mentions his benefactors, the Koch Brothers, or how those Kansas multi-billionaires changed a Democratic-leaning state into a right wing playground. If you've seen The Wizard of Oz, you'll probably recall the fearsome projected green visage of Oz "the great and terrible," scaring the shit out of Dorothy and her companions. This is the politician, what we look at instead of the "man behind the curtain," revealed when the plucky little dog Toto pulls it aside with his teeth, showing that the "wizard" is a manipulator, a con man screwing with people's minds, ruling by fear. The Koch Brothers and other men like them behind the curtain are the real enemy, their politicians and lobbyists merely their slaves, but loyal servants given powers beyond ordinary citizens' capabilities.
This makes me wonder about a likely presidential candidate named Donald Trump. Trump is rich, no doubt about it. When he's in a big cityscape he can fly in his personal helicopter from rooftop to rooftop and never touch shoe bottoms to the pavement walked on by the people he claims to care about. His flamboyance, massive ego, and idiotic provocative statements gain him attention every time he broadcasts the steam from his reptile brain. I remember several years ago his feud with comedian, talk show hostess, and actress Rosie O'Donnell, who had criticized "the Donald" on TV. Trump went after her every chance he got. He even called MSNBC one morning to fulminate against O'Donnell. The anchor carried on a conversation with him as he rode in his helicopter, never betraying to the camera how totally fucking weird it was that Trump bothered to bitch about O'Donnell while speeding above over New York.
I'm Donald Trump and I've got something to say!
The head of MSNBC had every right to also say, We don't care. Go fuck yourself.
It's possible Trump believes his own crap. All the years I've seen this guy, watched his mouth moving, listened to his convictions, I've grown more convinced he's genuinely in love with himself. I don't doubt his business acumen--after all, he's far more successful at the money-making racket than I am. He's a capitalist, he's what Americans should be proud of, right? His ability, though, to handle a far more difficult job--the presidency--should be questioned by any sane American not a friend of Donald Trump's. His relatively low financial worth, too, compared to the Koch Brothers and other politician-buyers, means that Trump will require a benefactor or benefactors. The idea that a self-absorbed asshole in the habit of putting his name on his buildings could suppress his ego for the sake of much richer benefactors is both funny and unthinkable. The pond he rules works well for him; the bigger stage of the presidency would include many unknowns, making him very uncomfortable and prone to stupid decisions.
Does Trump know he can never handle the presidency, or the ascent sponsored by men who could buy him and everything he owns? Let's assume now he knows he can't be president. Why will he run, if he runs? It's an attention-getter for one thing. Even Carly Fiorina enjoyed some attention when the number of Republican money-and-power-slaves for 2016 was few. Declaring a presidential run gets the candidate airtime, for a little while. Even if Trump declares he isn't running, it'll bring him the attention he requires, news media vampire that he is.
When asked about world issues, about ISIS, about Obama's actions or inactions, and other "stories" trivial and not, Donald Trump makes direct statements. He seems to be the opposite of the kind of bullshitting politician I complain about above. He's vague, of course, about how he would deal with ISIS, but his answers are forceful, like the boom of artillery, though he indirectly reveals how little he knows about the Middle East. His simplistic answers remind me of George W. Bush's dumbest-kid-in-kindergarten moments.
Thus, Donald Trump also talks around answers, and it's a problem when journalists don't ask him, "Why do you want to be president? What is declaring a run really all about for you? If you win, are you willing to kill lots of people?"
So far, Trump is just a boor. Give a boor the authority and means to slaughter people with impunity, and, unlike Barack Obama--an intellectual who slaughters people with impunity--we'll have a callous jackass doing it, reminiscent of when brainy Bill Clinton was succeeded by George W. Bush.
Vic Neptune
Thus, I understand why most politicians can't speak plainly, unless they're mouthing clichés and slogans, but I also grasp the meaning behind their lies and dodges. They're looking out for the interests of the rich patrons and lobbies keeping them alive in the political arena. Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin never mentions his benefactors, the Koch Brothers, or how those Kansas multi-billionaires changed a Democratic-leaning state into a right wing playground. If you've seen The Wizard of Oz, you'll probably recall the fearsome projected green visage of Oz "the great and terrible," scaring the shit out of Dorothy and her companions. This is the politician, what we look at instead of the "man behind the curtain," revealed when the plucky little dog Toto pulls it aside with his teeth, showing that the "wizard" is a manipulator, a con man screwing with people's minds, ruling by fear. The Koch Brothers and other men like them behind the curtain are the real enemy, their politicians and lobbyists merely their slaves, but loyal servants given powers beyond ordinary citizens' capabilities.
This makes me wonder about a likely presidential candidate named Donald Trump. Trump is rich, no doubt about it. When he's in a big cityscape he can fly in his personal helicopter from rooftop to rooftop and never touch shoe bottoms to the pavement walked on by the people he claims to care about. His flamboyance, massive ego, and idiotic provocative statements gain him attention every time he broadcasts the steam from his reptile brain. I remember several years ago his feud with comedian, talk show hostess, and actress Rosie O'Donnell, who had criticized "the Donald" on TV. Trump went after her every chance he got. He even called MSNBC one morning to fulminate against O'Donnell. The anchor carried on a conversation with him as he rode in his helicopter, never betraying to the camera how totally fucking weird it was that Trump bothered to bitch about O'Donnell while speeding above over New York.
I'm Donald Trump and I've got something to say!
The head of MSNBC had every right to also say, We don't care. Go fuck yourself.
It's possible Trump believes his own crap. All the years I've seen this guy, watched his mouth moving, listened to his convictions, I've grown more convinced he's genuinely in love with himself. I don't doubt his business acumen--after all, he's far more successful at the money-making racket than I am. He's a capitalist, he's what Americans should be proud of, right? His ability, though, to handle a far more difficult job--the presidency--should be questioned by any sane American not a friend of Donald Trump's. His relatively low financial worth, too, compared to the Koch Brothers and other politician-buyers, means that Trump will require a benefactor or benefactors. The idea that a self-absorbed asshole in the habit of putting his name on his buildings could suppress his ego for the sake of much richer benefactors is both funny and unthinkable. The pond he rules works well for him; the bigger stage of the presidency would include many unknowns, making him very uncomfortable and prone to stupid decisions.
Does Trump know he can never handle the presidency, or the ascent sponsored by men who could buy him and everything he owns? Let's assume now he knows he can't be president. Why will he run, if he runs? It's an attention-getter for one thing. Even Carly Fiorina enjoyed some attention when the number of Republican money-and-power-slaves for 2016 was few. Declaring a presidential run gets the candidate airtime, for a little while. Even if Trump declares he isn't running, it'll bring him the attention he requires, news media vampire that he is.
When asked about world issues, about ISIS, about Obama's actions or inactions, and other "stories" trivial and not, Donald Trump makes direct statements. He seems to be the opposite of the kind of bullshitting politician I complain about above. He's vague, of course, about how he would deal with ISIS, but his answers are forceful, like the boom of artillery, though he indirectly reveals how little he knows about the Middle East. His simplistic answers remind me of George W. Bush's dumbest-kid-in-kindergarten moments.
Thus, Donald Trump also talks around answers, and it's a problem when journalists don't ask him, "Why do you want to be president? What is declaring a run really all about for you? If you win, are you willing to kill lots of people?"
So far, Trump is just a boor. Give a boor the authority and means to slaughter people with impunity, and, unlike Barack Obama--an intellectual who slaughters people with impunity--we'll have a callous jackass doing it, reminiscent of when brainy Bill Clinton was succeeded by George W. Bush.
Vic Neptune
Thursday, June 4, 2015
Jeb Bush insists he's not a presidential candidate. He once slipped, telling the truth to a reporter: "I'm running for president," and "corrected" himself with the qualification, "...if I run..."
Campaign finance law, taken as seriously in America as prosecuting criminal bankers, allows up to $2,700 per individual contribution to someone who hasn't yet declared a presidential run. Bush has so far received millions in contributions, the price per plate for his dinner speeches far exceeding the legal limit. Thus, he's a lawbreaker. But so what? This is America. He's rich. Who gives a shit? The Federal Election Commission should do something about it, like shout it across the airwaves, investigate, get the U.S. Attorney General's office to prosecute him, but so far it's required the efforts of freelancers to get anyone to give a damn.
Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin has also delayed announcing his candidacy, probably for the same reason as Bush: to fill up the war chest before the big battles ensue.
Rick Perry, though, just announced his candidacy from an airplane hangar in Addison, Texas, big airplane as a backdrop. Perry is a military veteran with three years (1974-1977) in the Air Force, piloting a C-130. I'm glad there's at least two candidates with military backgrounds, the other being Lindsay Graham. The way politicians talk about vets, without doing anything constructive for them, you'd think more would've been willing in the past to put their lives on the line, rather than declaiming about their hoped-for future presidencies when they'll send troops to their deaths.
When he announced his candidacy, Lindsay Graham's chief message, when he wasn't attacking Obama, sounded like the words of a defense contractor thrilled by new business stimulated by the rise of ISIS, the overall wreck of the Middle East, and the lurking menace of the Ayatollahs.
Rick Perry started his speech saying 60 million people died in World War Two. Doom and bombast characterized his and Graham's speeches. Neither one will win the presidency, I predict, because Americans, ever younger and younger, are growing tired of war, of fear-based politics, but they do want the economy functioning properly again. Bernie Sanders, also a candidate, speaks mostly of the economy, of shrinking the wealth gap between rich and poor. To the surprise of news media commentators who dismissed him a month ago, Sanders is bringing in lots of contributions (legally).
Hillary Clinton, another candidate, has slipped a great deal in polls, a recent one showing she's as unpopular now as she was in 2001 when she vacated the White House and complained of "being broke."
For many, Sanders is more popular and appealing than Clinton, because the latter is so obviously full of shit. She spends much campaigning time "listening" to constituents, but we really should listen to her and read her body language.
When Carly Fiorina was in the news far more than she is now, I came up with a slogan (for bumper stickers, signs, or whatnot) to help her out:
I'm Fucked Up For Fiorina!
Last night, bored while trying to get to sleep, I wrote down some more:
Disappoint A Cuban For Marco Rubio
Let Chris Christie Stop Traffic In Your City
Tease Gays For Huckabee
Get Dumber With Scott Walker
Mail Your Shit To Donald Trump
Jeb Bush: The New Face Of Horror In The 21st Century
To conclude with something unrelated, Lebron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers will face the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals. James appears to have proved his one-man king of the court status, elevating the Cavaliers, his former team before departing for Miami (where he and that team enjoyed a great deal of success), to a possible overall victory featuring the prodigal superstar. From what I've heard, Cleveland is a deeply fucked up city with a horrible police department. There hasn't been a title win in Cleveland's history for many decades. Some would say they need this, that Lebron will bring it to them, but will the Cavaliers, even if they sweep the series, fix the bad relations between citizenry and police? If they lose, will there be riots? If they win, will there be riots?
Get fucked up for Fiorina.
Vic Neptune
Campaign finance law, taken as seriously in America as prosecuting criminal bankers, allows up to $2,700 per individual contribution to someone who hasn't yet declared a presidential run. Bush has so far received millions in contributions, the price per plate for his dinner speeches far exceeding the legal limit. Thus, he's a lawbreaker. But so what? This is America. He's rich. Who gives a shit? The Federal Election Commission should do something about it, like shout it across the airwaves, investigate, get the U.S. Attorney General's office to prosecute him, but so far it's required the efforts of freelancers to get anyone to give a damn.
Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin has also delayed announcing his candidacy, probably for the same reason as Bush: to fill up the war chest before the big battles ensue.
Rick Perry, though, just announced his candidacy from an airplane hangar in Addison, Texas, big airplane as a backdrop. Perry is a military veteran with three years (1974-1977) in the Air Force, piloting a C-130. I'm glad there's at least two candidates with military backgrounds, the other being Lindsay Graham. The way politicians talk about vets, without doing anything constructive for them, you'd think more would've been willing in the past to put their lives on the line, rather than declaiming about their hoped-for future presidencies when they'll send troops to their deaths.
When he announced his candidacy, Lindsay Graham's chief message, when he wasn't attacking Obama, sounded like the words of a defense contractor thrilled by new business stimulated by the rise of ISIS, the overall wreck of the Middle East, and the lurking menace of the Ayatollahs.
Rick Perry started his speech saying 60 million people died in World War Two. Doom and bombast characterized his and Graham's speeches. Neither one will win the presidency, I predict, because Americans, ever younger and younger, are growing tired of war, of fear-based politics, but they do want the economy functioning properly again. Bernie Sanders, also a candidate, speaks mostly of the economy, of shrinking the wealth gap between rich and poor. To the surprise of news media commentators who dismissed him a month ago, Sanders is bringing in lots of contributions (legally).
Hillary Clinton, another candidate, has slipped a great deal in polls, a recent one showing she's as unpopular now as she was in 2001 when she vacated the White House and complained of "being broke."
For many, Sanders is more popular and appealing than Clinton, because the latter is so obviously full of shit. She spends much campaigning time "listening" to constituents, but we really should listen to her and read her body language.
When Carly Fiorina was in the news far more than she is now, I came up with a slogan (for bumper stickers, signs, or whatnot) to help her out:
I'm Fucked Up For Fiorina!
Last night, bored while trying to get to sleep, I wrote down some more:
Disappoint A Cuban For Marco Rubio
Let Chris Christie Stop Traffic In Your City
Tease Gays For Huckabee
Get Dumber With Scott Walker
Mail Your Shit To Donald Trump
Jeb Bush: The New Face Of Horror In The 21st Century
To conclude with something unrelated, Lebron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers will face the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals. James appears to have proved his one-man king of the court status, elevating the Cavaliers, his former team before departing for Miami (where he and that team enjoyed a great deal of success), to a possible overall victory featuring the prodigal superstar. From what I've heard, Cleveland is a deeply fucked up city with a horrible police department. There hasn't been a title win in Cleveland's history for many decades. Some would say they need this, that Lebron will bring it to them, but will the Cavaliers, even if they sweep the series, fix the bad relations between citizenry and police? If they lose, will there be riots? If they win, will there be riots?
Get fucked up for Fiorina.
Vic Neptune
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