Jill Stein? Let Me Think About It
I was eating Cheetos last night while listening to a Louis CK comedy concert from 2013. My beverage was water, so it wasn't an entirely unhealthy ingestion experience. I walked around my office, listening to Louis and laughing often. My moves back to the Cheetos decreased to a tighter orbit as the minutes passed. There is something in those unnaturally colored orange things that brings them into my mouth, making me a reactive beast.
Invented in 1948, Cheetos may be the result of alien technology recovered from the "Roswell Crash" of a UFO the previous year. Re-engineered snack food from Tau Scorpii. I've wondered lately about weird unnatural colors, like the lime green hue of Mountain Dew, invented originally in 1940, but re-invented in 1958, eleven years after the saucer crash that created the C.I.A., Defense Department, Air Force, and The X Files.
Acquaintances and friends of mine who've been and are Mountain Dew drinkers all seem to have a need for it. It looks like something leaked from an engine block, but that doesn't give its adherents pause. Like chemically orange Cheetos, toxic waste green Mountain Dew pulls the minds of its addicts into its bubbling pool of unwholesomeness. Some of the aliens on The X Files have green fizzing blood that, when exposed to air, gives off fumes poisonous and fatal to humans.
I'm reminded of how public perceptions and misconceptions about radiation, knowledge derived from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, led to the idea of radiation making people "glow." In fact, there is no glowing when a person is exposed to a large or small dose of radiation. There is cellular mutation. Cancer can result. Living in the vicinity of nuclear weapons experiments, as did Native Americans in New Mexico when the first atom bomb was tested on July 16, 1945, proved to be an effective way of making innocent people suffer long term with brain tumors and other cancers, while also ignoring their government-caused plight in later decades.
Nuclear bomb testing, practiced by the Soviet Union, the United States, China, and even today by the giggling little dumpling Kim Jong-Un, polluted and still pollutes the world. I read somewhere that everyone has plutonium in their bodies from atmospheric nuke tests. Is there more cancer than there was in the fourteenth century? I don't know, but when J. Robert Oppenheimer famously said, on viewing the first atom bomb test, quoting the Bhagavad Gita, "Now I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds," he may as well have said, "Now I'm continuing the U.S. government's long project to wipe out Indians, using a new weapon."
I'm shifting gears to Donald Trump's "pivot" to a new immigration promise that also touches on his tactic to try to convince African Americans to vote for him. The change in his campaign, wherein Paul Manafort left to go suck some dictator's cock, involves Kellyanne Conway as campaign manager and Steve Bannon as campaign "CEO." If Trump were to add a KKK advisor, he could name him the Trump Campaign's Exalted Cyclops.
In any case, Trump now says he wants to build a wall, yes, but he's flip-flopped on the deportation plan of rounding up and ejecting eleven million undocumented immigrants. That plan was how he started his campaign last year; it's what first attracted his racist followers. I can imagine what some of them are saying (I admit I don't actually know any Trump supporters, who at least have been willing to admit they support him; and, interestingly, I haven't seen any Trump yard signs):
"He can't be serious," the Trump supporter grates. "This must be a ploy to woo moderates."
It does seem to be a ploy to woo Latinos, just as his appeals at rallies lately to African Americans have represented a shift towards recognizing the existence of a large minority voting bloc. His rhetoric, though, is so offensive (true to his character), that he sounds like he's trying to do Black voters a favor:
"What in the hell have you got to lose?" He's cited high unemployment in the African American community, "lousy" neighborhoods, high incidences of crime, the targeting of Black youth by the police, lack of educational advancement; he's basically said, "Your lives suck, you're at the bottom of society in this shithole country, how could you do worse? Vote for me! Throw the dice! You have nothing to lose. You have nothing!"
African American Dr. Ben Carson, a Trump supporter and former presidential candidate, couldn't possibly feel included in this racism from the orange-skinned man because he, one of those who periodically goes on cable news to explain Trump's slander, threats, and lies, has lots of money, a nice house, and doesn't give a shit about Black people; if he did, he wouldn't be a fucking Republican.
Watching Trump "become serious," reading speeches from teleprompters, not going "off script" for a few days at a time, supposedly makes him "presidential," at least in the eyes of some.
In Wisconsin, ACT testing (one of the ways high school kids show their knowledge to the people at colleges who select students to attend) has dropped in quality in the last year. Wisconsin's now ranked twenty-ninth in the country. This may seem inconsequential, but Governor Scott Walker's priorities are not with education. Wisconsin's kids are getting dumber, or rather, they're being exposed less and less to quality information by teachers paid less and less and appreciated in the same way that Donald Trump appreciates Black voters.
On the other side, Hillary Clinton has campaign ads that air regularly, but they're all about how much Trump sucks. I know he does, I've known it for many years. What's great about you, Hillary Clinton? Her involvement with the Clinton Global Initiative, as shown in more released e-mails from her time as Secretary of State, show likely influence peddling. The Sultan of Bahrain, for instance, made a large donation to CGI, and got himself a short meeting with Mrs. Clinton. Soon after, Bahrain received a large boost in military hardware from the United States. Coincidence? Maybe so. Clinton's surrogates make it out that there's nothing to this kind of thing. It's like politicians and lobbyists. The pond got corrupted a long time ago, Washington, D.C. was built on a swamp, Trump is far more corrupt than Hillary Clinton, Mountain Dew brings in lots of money and people love it, John Boehner, like Trump, is also the color of Cheetos, what's the big deal, Vic Neptune?
Bahrain, with Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations and the U.S., has been bombing Yemen. The Clintons' organization saves lives, and helps take them. That's a big deal.
Vic Neptune
Thursday, August 25, 2016
Saturday, August 20, 2016
Will the Promised Land Be a Green Screen?
When I was a kid I was enthralled by a scene in Cecil B. De Mille's 1956 remake of his own silent version of The Ten Commandments: the parting of the Red Sea by God, acting through the Prophet Moses, assisting the escape of the Jews from the pursuing Egyptians. With no religious education, I didn't know the underlying theology of the story of how the Jews, captive in Egypt, are rescued by a strange outcast, Moses, an Egyptian holy man who uses the power of God, his staff acting as an intermediary focusing divine power through a human agent.
The film aired, and still airs, on Easter Sunday, a peculiar association, since Easter concerns Christ's resurrection. Most years in the 1970s I waited eagerly for the moment when, late in the film, the waters open to admit the fleeing Jews, Moses (played by a young Charlton Heston made to look grizzled and windblown) standing on a promontory, staff held outwards, clouds roiling in the background. The parted waters resemble two rough and flowing walls, held back by supernatural willpower. When the Egyptians enter the "valley," the waters collapse on them, chariots overturn and men and horses scream.
I discerned in later years that backwards editing was used to make the waters seem to flow upwards into a waterfall position. An editor, acting under De Mille's instructions, I suspect, played God in that shot.
This effect, not computer generated but reflective of the knowhow of top flight special effects artists of the 1950s, seized my attention every time I saw it. One disadvantage in watching that film on Easter Sunday on network television was the lengthy time slot, around four and a half hours in the 1970s; now five hours, since TV networks have given more and more time to advertising.
I saw The Ten Commandments on DVD a few years ago, all three hours and forty minutes of it. I'm even more impressed with the film, overall, than when I was a child. It suffers from De Mille's heady and stilted dialogue, where everything, since the subject derives from Biblical (weighty) sources, must supposedly be presented as ponderous and grave. De Mille's 1949 Biblical epic, Samson and Delilah, although lighter in tone in spots, suffers from the same kind of pretentious unintentionally humorous humorlessness, with the great Hedy Lamarr providing personality and pulchritudinous delight as the anti-heroine.
De Mille, contrasted with today's filmmakers who attempt historical epics, had style and a degree of restraint not apparent in, for instance, the latest Ben-Hur, a remake of a remake. I haven't seen this film, but from the trailers it looks as CGI-saturated as the remake of The Clash of the Titans. In the 1950s, crowd scenes in epics required large masses of people in costume. The 1959 Ben-Hur had a naval battle, a spectacular chariot race, and the wide scale grandeur and realistic feel of filmed locations impossible to achieve, yet, with today's green screens.
I don't like to be old-fashioned for the mere sake of it, but there is much in old fashion that works, like punctuation and correct spelling. I'm for new fashion, too, and the avant-garde; that which hasn't yet been tried or thought of. Remaking Ben-Hur as the latest CGI marvel will just give way in a few years to more advanced CGI. De Mille's final film, The Ten Commandments, though utilizing the latest (for the mid-1950s) visual effects, doesn't derive its greatness from those fascinating moments. The special effects act as accents, assists, to a film that's grounded in story, acting, directing, editing, cinematography; in a word, filmmaking. Whether the new Ben-Hur is also grounded in the essentials that make a good film remains to be seen. I'm willing to give it a chance, but the way it's been packaged in the trailers makes it look like an action-fest with a hollow core.
Films need not be Pop Rocks.
Vic Neptune
When I was a kid I was enthralled by a scene in Cecil B. De Mille's 1956 remake of his own silent version of The Ten Commandments: the parting of the Red Sea by God, acting through the Prophet Moses, assisting the escape of the Jews from the pursuing Egyptians. With no religious education, I didn't know the underlying theology of the story of how the Jews, captive in Egypt, are rescued by a strange outcast, Moses, an Egyptian holy man who uses the power of God, his staff acting as an intermediary focusing divine power through a human agent.
The film aired, and still airs, on Easter Sunday, a peculiar association, since Easter concerns Christ's resurrection. Most years in the 1970s I waited eagerly for the moment when, late in the film, the waters open to admit the fleeing Jews, Moses (played by a young Charlton Heston made to look grizzled and windblown) standing on a promontory, staff held outwards, clouds roiling in the background. The parted waters resemble two rough and flowing walls, held back by supernatural willpower. When the Egyptians enter the "valley," the waters collapse on them, chariots overturn and men and horses scream.
I discerned in later years that backwards editing was used to make the waters seem to flow upwards into a waterfall position. An editor, acting under De Mille's instructions, I suspect, played God in that shot.
This effect, not computer generated but reflective of the knowhow of top flight special effects artists of the 1950s, seized my attention every time I saw it. One disadvantage in watching that film on Easter Sunday on network television was the lengthy time slot, around four and a half hours in the 1970s; now five hours, since TV networks have given more and more time to advertising.
I saw The Ten Commandments on DVD a few years ago, all three hours and forty minutes of it. I'm even more impressed with the film, overall, than when I was a child. It suffers from De Mille's heady and stilted dialogue, where everything, since the subject derives from Biblical (weighty) sources, must supposedly be presented as ponderous and grave. De Mille's 1949 Biblical epic, Samson and Delilah, although lighter in tone in spots, suffers from the same kind of pretentious unintentionally humorous humorlessness, with the great Hedy Lamarr providing personality and pulchritudinous delight as the anti-heroine.
De Mille, contrasted with today's filmmakers who attempt historical epics, had style and a degree of restraint not apparent in, for instance, the latest Ben-Hur, a remake of a remake. I haven't seen this film, but from the trailers it looks as CGI-saturated as the remake of The Clash of the Titans. In the 1950s, crowd scenes in epics required large masses of people in costume. The 1959 Ben-Hur had a naval battle, a spectacular chariot race, and the wide scale grandeur and realistic feel of filmed locations impossible to achieve, yet, with today's green screens.
I don't like to be old-fashioned for the mere sake of it, but there is much in old fashion that works, like punctuation and correct spelling. I'm for new fashion, too, and the avant-garde; that which hasn't yet been tried or thought of. Remaking Ben-Hur as the latest CGI marvel will just give way in a few years to more advanced CGI. De Mille's final film, The Ten Commandments, though utilizing the latest (for the mid-1950s) visual effects, doesn't derive its greatness from those fascinating moments. The special effects act as accents, assists, to a film that's grounded in story, acting, directing, editing, cinematography; in a word, filmmaking. Whether the new Ben-Hur is also grounded in the essentials that make a good film remains to be seen. I'm willing to give it a chance, but the way it's been packaged in the trailers makes it look like an action-fest with a hollow core.
Films need not be Pop Rocks.
Vic Neptune
Friday, August 19, 2016
Birds of Prey
President Obama vacations while Trump/Pence visit flood-stricken areas of Louisiana!
Unlike President Bush's infamous flyover of Hurricane Katrina-devastated New Orleans, which, as dismissed by a Fox News commentator, happened "a long time ago," Obama's brazen lack of compassion for thousands of displaced Louisiana residents reminds the same Fox commentator of his "doing the wave" with Raul Castro at a baseball game in the wake of ISIS attacks in Brussels.
Obama, tone deaf to suffering, shown on Fox today driving a golf cart (the only vehicle presidents are allowed to drive, I guess). Trump/Pence, meanwhile, shown on the same channel shaking hands in the sunshine with people taking time from their losses to meet men who will fix America. Trump, the misogynist/racist/bigot; Pence, the anti-abortion extremist so unpopular in his home state he had to accept a job offer from the most loathsome man in the country.
I noted a lack of standing water on the ground in the Trump/Pence clips. Their arrival, via Trump's 757, in Louisiana, was the easiest thing they could do to generate a sense in those who don't think much that they care about people displaced from their homes. Trump, a vehement opponent of Syrian refugees finding safe haven in the United States, cares nothing for men, women, and children fleeing their country's five year old civil war, a conflict contributed to by Russia, whose oligarchs, some of them at least, may be the Republican candidate's business partners. I heard George Will, a formerly staunch Republican until Donald Trump came along, say that Trump's refusal to release tax returns has to do with his Russian ties.
Maybe so; in any case, Paul Manafort resigned from the Trump Campaign. Arch-demon attaches himself to the Devil's fortunes, finds it a bumpy ride, jumps off before the train crashes. Maybe Ukraine will take him back.
I find it strange now that I never saw, except for the mock cabinet meeting photo from Trump Tower, pictures of Manafort and Trump together. Maybe I've forgotten any I saw. Whatever the truth, the two standing together smiling doesn't stick in my memory. Trump, Melania, and the Clintons standing together and smiling at the Trumps' wedding looks in my mind's eye like a still from a conspiracy-themed documentary.
Due to evidence of Trump's long-term ambitions to be president, related by his friends and business acquaintances, I don't accept as true the theory that he entered this shitstorm to ensure Hillary Clinton's victory, and also to obliterate the Republican Party. Trump's political ideas lack sophistication. He's pro-America (the white variety), pro-strength projection, nationalistic, fascistic. Born in 1946, son of a capitalist with German ancestry, sheltered from harsh realities due to wealth and the draft-dodging tricks of privileged 1960s youth, he's never experienced need, desperation, or danger. His politics, therefore, amount to a set of viewpoints easy to maintain, because never challenged by real world conditions.
There's a video of a wounded Syrian child "going viral" worldwide. A little boy, a bombing victim, sitting in an ambulance, head bloody, looking bewildered, young enough to have had his entire life backgrounded and foregrounded by warfare in a country bombed by Russia, the United States, Turkey, by the Syrian government itself, terrorized by ISIS and other groups. For some, perhaps, this is a first shocking look at what warfare looks like when children are involved (which they often are). The image, shown on CNN yesterday, wasn't accompanied by any commentator remarking that the United States does this same wounding and destructive thing to children in Yemen and other nations. We're supposed to find it horrifying if Russia does it, while the lack of introspection into our own criminality goes without research and without remorse; after all, what is there for us to feel guilty about? Everything we do is great; we're the greatest country, Joe Biden said so at the Democratic National Convention, a gathering characterized by vigorous patriotism and patriotism's dark brother, pride in military prowess, the same projecting strength that makes small children sit with bloodied heads in ambulances.
What's Trump really doing in Louisiana? Did he go to Flint? His "consoling" trip to flood zones comes at the beginning of the new stage of his Campaign called, "Let Trump be Trump." He cares about (American) displaced people, you see. He also plays golf and owns golf courses. Most of these rich motherfuckers, Obama included, play golf. It's not a story, especially when the current president is on vacation, just as members of both houses of Congress are also on vacation. They boogie out of Washington in August. In August 2001, Bush received the notorious presidential daily briefing warning that Osama bin Laden was planning a major attack in the United States. He drove his golf cart well, but he couldn't drive the country until 9/11 popularized him, saving his ass by elevating him to a war president, helping create this godforsaken world we now live in, where security, mass surveillance, nationalism, militarism, jingoism, and the degradation of language and warping of truth, rule our lives and shape our thoughts and beliefs.
In a sense, the president is always on a golf cart or hitting a white ball into the sky, an artificial green land underneath his feet, receiving reports from the actual spacetime continuum, where chatting with Donald Trump in a flood zone means one moment of meeting a celebrity, before not going home, because that isn't possible.
Vic Neptune
President Obama vacations while Trump/Pence visit flood-stricken areas of Louisiana!
Unlike President Bush's infamous flyover of Hurricane Katrina-devastated New Orleans, which, as dismissed by a Fox News commentator, happened "a long time ago," Obama's brazen lack of compassion for thousands of displaced Louisiana residents reminds the same Fox commentator of his "doing the wave" with Raul Castro at a baseball game in the wake of ISIS attacks in Brussels.
Obama, tone deaf to suffering, shown on Fox today driving a golf cart (the only vehicle presidents are allowed to drive, I guess). Trump/Pence, meanwhile, shown on the same channel shaking hands in the sunshine with people taking time from their losses to meet men who will fix America. Trump, the misogynist/racist/bigot; Pence, the anti-abortion extremist so unpopular in his home state he had to accept a job offer from the most loathsome man in the country.
I noted a lack of standing water on the ground in the Trump/Pence clips. Their arrival, via Trump's 757, in Louisiana, was the easiest thing they could do to generate a sense in those who don't think much that they care about people displaced from their homes. Trump, a vehement opponent of Syrian refugees finding safe haven in the United States, cares nothing for men, women, and children fleeing their country's five year old civil war, a conflict contributed to by Russia, whose oligarchs, some of them at least, may be the Republican candidate's business partners. I heard George Will, a formerly staunch Republican until Donald Trump came along, say that Trump's refusal to release tax returns has to do with his Russian ties.
Maybe so; in any case, Paul Manafort resigned from the Trump Campaign. Arch-demon attaches himself to the Devil's fortunes, finds it a bumpy ride, jumps off before the train crashes. Maybe Ukraine will take him back.
I find it strange now that I never saw, except for the mock cabinet meeting photo from Trump Tower, pictures of Manafort and Trump together. Maybe I've forgotten any I saw. Whatever the truth, the two standing together smiling doesn't stick in my memory. Trump, Melania, and the Clintons standing together and smiling at the Trumps' wedding looks in my mind's eye like a still from a conspiracy-themed documentary.
Due to evidence of Trump's long-term ambitions to be president, related by his friends and business acquaintances, I don't accept as true the theory that he entered this shitstorm to ensure Hillary Clinton's victory, and also to obliterate the Republican Party. Trump's political ideas lack sophistication. He's pro-America (the white variety), pro-strength projection, nationalistic, fascistic. Born in 1946, son of a capitalist with German ancestry, sheltered from harsh realities due to wealth and the draft-dodging tricks of privileged 1960s youth, he's never experienced need, desperation, or danger. His politics, therefore, amount to a set of viewpoints easy to maintain, because never challenged by real world conditions.
There's a video of a wounded Syrian child "going viral" worldwide. A little boy, a bombing victim, sitting in an ambulance, head bloody, looking bewildered, young enough to have had his entire life backgrounded and foregrounded by warfare in a country bombed by Russia, the United States, Turkey, by the Syrian government itself, terrorized by ISIS and other groups. For some, perhaps, this is a first shocking look at what warfare looks like when children are involved (which they often are). The image, shown on CNN yesterday, wasn't accompanied by any commentator remarking that the United States does this same wounding and destructive thing to children in Yemen and other nations. We're supposed to find it horrifying if Russia does it, while the lack of introspection into our own criminality goes without research and without remorse; after all, what is there for us to feel guilty about? Everything we do is great; we're the greatest country, Joe Biden said so at the Democratic National Convention, a gathering characterized by vigorous patriotism and patriotism's dark brother, pride in military prowess, the same projecting strength that makes small children sit with bloodied heads in ambulances.
What's Trump really doing in Louisiana? Did he go to Flint? His "consoling" trip to flood zones comes at the beginning of the new stage of his Campaign called, "Let Trump be Trump." He cares about (American) displaced people, you see. He also plays golf and owns golf courses. Most of these rich motherfuckers, Obama included, play golf. It's not a story, especially when the current president is on vacation, just as members of both houses of Congress are also on vacation. They boogie out of Washington in August. In August 2001, Bush received the notorious presidential daily briefing warning that Osama bin Laden was planning a major attack in the United States. He drove his golf cart well, but he couldn't drive the country until 9/11 popularized him, saving his ass by elevating him to a war president, helping create this godforsaken world we now live in, where security, mass surveillance, nationalism, militarism, jingoism, and the degradation of language and warping of truth, rule our lives and shape our thoughts and beliefs.
In a sense, the president is always on a golf cart or hitting a white ball into the sky, an artificial green land underneath his feet, receiving reports from the actual spacetime continuum, where chatting with Donald Trump in a flood zone means one moment of meeting a celebrity, before not going home, because that isn't possible.
Vic Neptune
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
On November 9 I Hope I Don't Write a Post Called We're Fucked
Poor Paul Manafort. Donald Trump demoted him (or, in the language of bullshit, gave him a new special role in the campaign). Manafort's efforts to make Trump a more conventional candidate failed. If Manafort ever believed he could succeed at making Trump, convinced of his own superiority, into a candidate cooperative with the Republican Party and willing to "play by the rules," (not seem demented to rational-thinking people) he, Manafort, must be tragicomically confident in his abilities to promote degenerates to high office. He is, after all, the one who helped Viktor Yanukovych gain power in Ukraine, and who lobbied on behalf of despots. Trump is just Manafort's latest raise-high-the-scoundrel project. Alas, Manafort's Ukrainian-connected past, with its unaccounted-for 12.7 million dollars, came to light; although I doubt that's why Trump pushed him to the background.
The candidate has added two players to his hellbound theater of the absurd: Kellyanne Conway as campaign manager (she has no experience doing this) and Stephen Bannon in the never-before used role of "campaign CEO." Sounds impressive, if this were a board game. Bannon is high up in the Breitbart organization, a news media outlet along the lines of TMZ (trashy entertainment news) mixed with a right wing political perspective. Bannon is "anti-establishment," a friend of Trump's, and according to one former employee of Bannon's, "a jerk [who] yells a lot." Pictures of the man show a cross between David Lynch and Robert Redford, not that that means anything.
Trump, reportedly, has been "very unhappy" in recent weeks, a news item that made me happy. He's felt closed in by his handlers, unable to break out and be himself. Now, according to insiders, under the new management, we'll get to see and hear "Trump being Trump."
Have we not experienced this already?
I suspect that Trump's call for building a wall that Mexico will pay for in order to keep out criminals and rapists was a taste, early on, of the real Donald Trump. With his first press conference, announcing his candidacy in June 2015, he revealed himself as a racist, a demagogue, a braggart, an utter clown, and a master manipulator of the news media.
Some in the news have wondered, "Why Bannon?"
Bannon's merger with Trump's grotesque dickishness makes sense if Trump's ambition includes further forays into news media and reality television. Rumors of a future Trump TV network suggest a key role for someone like Bannon. Trump TV, if it comes to being, will wed the lies of Fox News Channel with the gutter slander of right wing talk radio, plus Trump's special entertainment-based bravado, in which utterly ridiculous scenarios, like Trump and Ivanka sitting at a table with minor celebrities, trying to impress "the Donald" with their business sense.
Today, a still photograph was released by the Trump Campaign showing a "high-level" meeting in Trump Tower. The big table, with all four sides occupied (Manafort far away from the boss, indicating his shrinking importance), was a mockery of a White House Cabinet meeting. This meeting took place a few hours before Trump's first national security briefing, a courtesy given to candidates of both parties since it was initiated by President Truman in 1952. Truman, remembering bitterly how twelve days went by during the first weeks of his presidency before he was informed of the nuclear bomb-related Manhattan Project, wanted Eisenhower and Stevenson to get a sense of what they were heading towards, without getting sideswiped by vital information upon assuming office.
No candidate has ever said what Trump said today about the candidates' intelligence briefing. Interviewed by a young blonde woman from Fox News before the briefing, Trump, wearing his serious grump face, lips pouting, piggy eyes alert and indicating instant readiness to eject verbal shit from his mouth, said he doesn't trust U.S. intelligence, based on their past record--Iraq, the Middle East, "a total powder keg." Trump would have us believe he knows more than the intelligence community.
We don't know what Trump was told at his briefing, but he did bring Chris Christie with him. I hope the information conveyed dwelt heavily on Russian cyber threats, given Trump's encouragement of that kind of thing. I hope they told him a lot about Ukraine, too.
What we can infer from "Let Trump be Trump" is a candidate who will proceed to behave more abominably than ever before. The low points of this election cycle, I predict, are ahead of us, not behind. If I'm right, Republican dignitaries like Paul Ryan will be faced repeatedly, relentlessly, with having to speak on camera, condemning Trump's words but not his candidacy (nothing new there). What will be different is Ryan and others' loathsome descent into the pull of their party's death spiral, the monster causing it skipping away freely at the end to form his own media empire, bringing in fresh money to make him at least somewhat as rich as he claims to be.
Vic Neptune
Sunday, August 14, 2016
Is Donald Trump Paul Manafort's Greatest PR Challenge?
The more I read about Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager, the more I like him (sarcasm). He's advised corrupt leaders in the Philippines (Ferdinand Marcos) and in Ukraine (Viktor Yanukovych), collecting millions of dollars and gaining lucrative business ties by making human-shaped piles of excrement look like noble world citizens. It's appropriate, then, that Trump is his current project. The two seem like an ideal team for an old man buddy comedy: the brunette, the more tactful of the two, covering often for his golden-haired loudmouth friend, both of them, nonetheless, horrible people, the best that can be said about them the possibility there won't be a sequel.
Paul and Don Fuck America, coming this November.
It's appropriate, too, that capitalism, as practiced by some of the shittiest human beings on the planet over the last century, should result now in candidates (Hillary Clinton included) who operate on an international business level, fulfilling the ambitions of multi- and extra-national corporations, none of which are run at the top by people who give a shit about America.
Manafort's non-American activities helped get pro-Putin Yanukovych (now in exile in Russia) elected. After Yanukovych's overthrow in 2014, in Manafort's former office in Kiev, Ukraine, someone found a knee x-ray signed by the ousted president. The two were tennis partners.
Turning an x-ray machine on the Trump Campaign would possibly reveal a web connecting the candidate's advisors, including Manafort, with Russian interests, which is to say Bashar al-Assad's interests and Vladimir Putin's. Trump's encouragement of the Russian hack against the Democratic National Committee and his further goading of Russian intelligence services to find the "missing 30,000 e-mails" of Hillary Clinton, revealed the candidate as a man unashamed of his own flirtation with treason. Why would Trump be concerned about being regarded as a traitor? Surely he remembers American journalists' general reluctance to brand Scooter Libby a traitor for selling out a CIA official? Libby, Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff, after a long case and trial, merely paid a 250,000 dollar fine (he's a millionaire) and got disbarred, not electrocuted, as was done to traitors as recently as the 1950s.
Trump didn't commit treason, but he talked along its edges, as he did by suggesting "Second Amendment people" might do something about Hillary Clinton. He's an instigator. You remember them from school days. They were the children who created trouble on the playground and in the classroom, but rarely felt the teacher's fury, the yells vented upon those who were seen doing the fighting.
Manafort has also represented dictators Jonas Savimbi and Mobutu Sese Soko and tried to represent Somalia's Siad Barre. His firm, Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly, lobbied for the governments of the Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Nigeria. Manafort and his associates seem to be attracted to human rights abusers. Trump no doubt fits right in with Manafort's worldview; that of helping those who murder and torture and profiting from such governments and personages by making them palatable to foreign investors. This is not necessarily just a Manafort thing; it's an American thing. U.S. foreign policy (especially during Reagan's time) in Latin America is a history of atrocities, coercion, mass murder, coddling of dictators.
I've seen Manafort on Meet the Press, Fox News, MSNBC, CNN. No one on television gets into his evil background. Given his connections to Ukraine and Russia alone, I suggest that Trump's crush on Vladimir Putin resonates with Manafort's own interests; that Trump's desire to become president has something to do with strengthening Russia at the expense of NATO and the United States, as the post-9/11 world enters a new phase of authoritarianism requiring freshly beefed up authoritarians, with even Hillary Clinton getting in shape for that role.
Vic Neptune
The more I read about Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager, the more I like him (sarcasm). He's advised corrupt leaders in the Philippines (Ferdinand Marcos) and in Ukraine (Viktor Yanukovych), collecting millions of dollars and gaining lucrative business ties by making human-shaped piles of excrement look like noble world citizens. It's appropriate, then, that Trump is his current project. The two seem like an ideal team for an old man buddy comedy: the brunette, the more tactful of the two, covering often for his golden-haired loudmouth friend, both of them, nonetheless, horrible people, the best that can be said about them the possibility there won't be a sequel.
Paul and Don Fuck America, coming this November.
It's appropriate, too, that capitalism, as practiced by some of the shittiest human beings on the planet over the last century, should result now in candidates (Hillary Clinton included) who operate on an international business level, fulfilling the ambitions of multi- and extra-national corporations, none of which are run at the top by people who give a shit about America.
Manafort's non-American activities helped get pro-Putin Yanukovych (now in exile in Russia) elected. After Yanukovych's overthrow in 2014, in Manafort's former office in Kiev, Ukraine, someone found a knee x-ray signed by the ousted president. The two were tennis partners.
Turning an x-ray machine on the Trump Campaign would possibly reveal a web connecting the candidate's advisors, including Manafort, with Russian interests, which is to say Bashar al-Assad's interests and Vladimir Putin's. Trump's encouragement of the Russian hack against the Democratic National Committee and his further goading of Russian intelligence services to find the "missing 30,000 e-mails" of Hillary Clinton, revealed the candidate as a man unashamed of his own flirtation with treason. Why would Trump be concerned about being regarded as a traitor? Surely he remembers American journalists' general reluctance to brand Scooter Libby a traitor for selling out a CIA official? Libby, Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff, after a long case and trial, merely paid a 250,000 dollar fine (he's a millionaire) and got disbarred, not electrocuted, as was done to traitors as recently as the 1950s.
Trump didn't commit treason, but he talked along its edges, as he did by suggesting "Second Amendment people" might do something about Hillary Clinton. He's an instigator. You remember them from school days. They were the children who created trouble on the playground and in the classroom, but rarely felt the teacher's fury, the yells vented upon those who were seen doing the fighting.
Manafort has also represented dictators Jonas Savimbi and Mobutu Sese Soko and tried to represent Somalia's Siad Barre. His firm, Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly, lobbied for the governments of the Dominican Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Kenya, Nigeria. Manafort and his associates seem to be attracted to human rights abusers. Trump no doubt fits right in with Manafort's worldview; that of helping those who murder and torture and profiting from such governments and personages by making them palatable to foreign investors. This is not necessarily just a Manafort thing; it's an American thing. U.S. foreign policy (especially during Reagan's time) in Latin America is a history of atrocities, coercion, mass murder, coddling of dictators.
I've seen Manafort on Meet the Press, Fox News, MSNBC, CNN. No one on television gets into his evil background. Given his connections to Ukraine and Russia alone, I suggest that Trump's crush on Vladimir Putin resonates with Manafort's own interests; that Trump's desire to become president has something to do with strengthening Russia at the expense of NATO and the United States, as the post-9/11 world enters a new phase of authoritarianism requiring freshly beefed up authoritarians, with even Hillary Clinton getting in shape for that role.
Vic Neptune
Wednesday, August 10, 2016
How Much Longer?
Does Donald Trump know that his statement at a Virginia rally, "Hillary wants to abolish--essentially abolish the Second Amendment," is untrue? Clinton, like President Obama, the latter too frequently and inaccurately blamed for being an opponent to the right to bear arms, has never publicly expressed animus towards any Amendment in the Constitution. During the Obama Administration, gun sales and profits for small arms dealers in this country have been healthy in their unhealthy ways. Fear that "Obama will take our guns away" contributes to gun buying. Gun massacres increase gun sales due to this fear, as some Americans truly and pathetically believe the lies told them by the NRA and politicians, like Trump, who benefit from gun lobbying and the money and influence it generates.
Whether Trump believes in the veracity of his accusation against Clinton, a "shoot from the hip" comment based on the Republican candidate's feelings rather than on facts, his next comment at the August 9 rally drew the most attention:
"By the way, if she gets to pick, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know."
The Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, with his usual Trump-related lifeless look of buyers' remorse slowly aging his face, characterized the candidate's remark as a "joke gone bad," making it seem as if Trump failed to deliver a good punchline to a quip about the assassination of Hillary Clinton.
Condemnation from the Right of Trump's appeal to murder was about what I expect from a political class that's proven its inability to stand up to immorality and fight for people who deserve help. Trump hasn't visited Flint, Michigan, hasn't commented on the poisoned water crisis caused by that state's Republican government, is too much of a shit to care about it. He's typical in this regard of GOP lawmakers. Ryan and other politicians still supporting Trump--there have been a few defectors among the large GOP hive mind--are reluctant to take a stand against their man, nominated just last month to be their opponent against Hillary Clinton. Trump, meanwhile, continues to behave like the boor he is--not a surprise. Even when his "campaign" received face to face conversation time with the Secret Service, which ironically protects Trump, too, no one on the Right has said, "This is fucking unprecedented," which it is. Trump denied the Secret Service spoke with his campaign, or with himself. He lies all the time, I don't believe him, so, like Ted Nugent, Trump, since the words above came from his mouth, has had to explain himself to those who swear to protect high-ranking politicians like Hillary Clinton, who is in greater danger now of being killed by a fearful gun nut stoked by the words of a man too irresponsible to be in charge of anything.
Today in New York, a man climbed several stories up Trump Tower using suction cups. He was pulled through a knocked out window, finally, and we've been assured by news reporters that Donald Trump, in Florida at the time, was in no danger. No shit, how could he be?
An NYPD official said, "The guy doesn't appear to be here to do anything evil."
If only America, and the news media, could realize that the same can't be said truthfully about the man whose name adorns the building climbed by the suction cup man.
Vic Neptune
Does Donald Trump know that his statement at a Virginia rally, "Hillary wants to abolish--essentially abolish the Second Amendment," is untrue? Clinton, like President Obama, the latter too frequently and inaccurately blamed for being an opponent to the right to bear arms, has never publicly expressed animus towards any Amendment in the Constitution. During the Obama Administration, gun sales and profits for small arms dealers in this country have been healthy in their unhealthy ways. Fear that "Obama will take our guns away" contributes to gun buying. Gun massacres increase gun sales due to this fear, as some Americans truly and pathetically believe the lies told them by the NRA and politicians, like Trump, who benefit from gun lobbying and the money and influence it generates.
Whether Trump believes in the veracity of his accusation against Clinton, a "shoot from the hip" comment based on the Republican candidate's feelings rather than on facts, his next comment at the August 9 rally drew the most attention:
"By the way, if she gets to pick, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don't know."
The Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, with his usual Trump-related lifeless look of buyers' remorse slowly aging his face, characterized the candidate's remark as a "joke gone bad," making it seem as if Trump failed to deliver a good punchline to a quip about the assassination of Hillary Clinton.
Condemnation from the Right of Trump's appeal to murder was about what I expect from a political class that's proven its inability to stand up to immorality and fight for people who deserve help. Trump hasn't visited Flint, Michigan, hasn't commented on the poisoned water crisis caused by that state's Republican government, is too much of a shit to care about it. He's typical in this regard of GOP lawmakers. Ryan and other politicians still supporting Trump--there have been a few defectors among the large GOP hive mind--are reluctant to take a stand against their man, nominated just last month to be their opponent against Hillary Clinton. Trump, meanwhile, continues to behave like the boor he is--not a surprise. Even when his "campaign" received face to face conversation time with the Secret Service, which ironically protects Trump, too, no one on the Right has said, "This is fucking unprecedented," which it is. Trump denied the Secret Service spoke with his campaign, or with himself. He lies all the time, I don't believe him, so, like Ted Nugent, Trump, since the words above came from his mouth, has had to explain himself to those who swear to protect high-ranking politicians like Hillary Clinton, who is in greater danger now of being killed by a fearful gun nut stoked by the words of a man too irresponsible to be in charge of anything.
Today in New York, a man climbed several stories up Trump Tower using suction cups. He was pulled through a knocked out window, finally, and we've been assured by news reporters that Donald Trump, in Florida at the time, was in no danger. No shit, how could he be?
An NYPD official said, "The guy doesn't appear to be here to do anything evil."
If only America, and the news media, could realize that the same can't be said truthfully about the man whose name adorns the building climbed by the suction cup man.
Vic Neptune
Tuesday, August 2, 2016
He Would Become Commander-in-Chief By Disrespecting U.S. Troops Wounded in War?
When even Sarah Palin's son-in-law, a Medal of Honor recipient, urges Donald Trump to apologize to the Khan family, it should be obvious that the concept of human decency can flow from a relative of one of the billionaire's battiest supporters, the incomparable former Governor of Alaska, who, it must be said, also has a son who served in the Iraq War, unlike Trump, whose children have never worn military uniforms, like their father, who received during the Vietnam War five draft deferments in spite of being in good (physical) health.
Shitting on the Khan family, who lost their son in the Iraq War due to his heroism that saved lives among others in his unit as well as civilians, wasn't enough for Trump, regarding military matters pertaining to the fortunes of those who actually fight the wars ordered by others.
In Virginia yesterday, Donald Trump at a rally was approached by a man who gave him his Purple Heart copy. He has a real one, but Trump, I guess, merits a copy of the real thing--he is, as is becoming increasingly clear, a copy of a real human being. Copy or not, the real test came when we got to see and hear what Trump did with this gift:
"You know," Trump said, "something very nice just happened to me. A man came up to me and handed me his Purple Heart. He said, 'That's my real Purple Heart I have such confidence in you.' And I said, 'Man, that's like big stuff. I've always wanted to get the real Purple Heart.'
"This was much easier," the psychopath concluded.
My first question: Did the veteran tell Trump the Purple Heart was actually a copy? He told an NBC journalist exactly that before the rally. If he did say to Trump the medal is a copy, the candidate then lied about it being genuine.
My second question: When I heard Trump's remark about how he "always wanted to get the real Purple Heart," and that "this [way] was much easier," why did I yell at the TV, "YOU SICK FUCK!"? I've never been in the military, never wanted to be in the military. I'm opposed to the War on Terror, anti-war in general. I think America's militarism since World War Two has been and is a tremendous problem for the world. However, recognizing, because I have an imagination, and relatives who have served in the military, including a great-uncle who fought in the Battle of the Bulge and made it to April 1945, when he was shot by an adolescent German sniper; recovered, but had permanent nerve damage in one of his arms, and was a Purple Heart recipient, I'm appalled to the center of my morals by the glibness of this disgusting parasite holding a Purple Heart and acting as if he's been given it for something he deserves. Unlike Captain Khan or Sarah Palin's son-in-law, Trump has not and never will put his body and life on the line for his country. He will, however, trivialize actual sacrifice, as we saw with his maltreatment of Mr. and Mrs. Khan. Now, he's added another category of people he's willing to piss on: wounded veterans, of which there are many.
Trump seems to have entered the gravitational pull of an abysmal spiral. His insane old man behavior this past week shows someone getting worse, not better, as the Republican faithful have been hoping for. Even Chris Christie denounced Trump's attack on Mr. and Mrs. Khan. He hasn't yet told Trump to go fuck himself, nor has John McCain, who has a Purple Heart and was also shit upon last year when Trump bizarrely attacked the Senator for having been captured during the Vietnam War.
"I like people who don't get captured," the idiot candidate said in the summer of 2015, and for a little while, pundits thought Trump had destroyed his chances by attacking the sacred subject of American war heroism. Not so, as we came to see. Women, minorities, Muslims, Gold Star Families, Ted Cruz's wife and father, high-ranking military men, Angela Merkel, people who fight for their country and get shot, blown up, dismembered. Trump hates a lot of people.
But he likes Roger Ailes, the recently fired Fox News president. Ailes is under scrutiny for having sexually harassed numerous women at Fox, including former news anchor Gretchen Carlson, who's filed a lawsuit against him. Others, not well known like the former Miss America, Carlson, have consistent independent stories about Roger Ailes' proclivities. He likes to have women dress up in lingerie and dance for him; by itself just fine, if it's by mutual consent, but when coerced it looks like the fulfillment of the fantasies of a sexually predatory, and rich, creep. He received forty million dollars in severance pay. Such is the way of capitalism.
As I pointed out in my previous post, Trump's surrogates are having a hard time figuring out what to say convincingly about their man's daily grossness. It must be a difficult morning wake-up for some of his surrogates. Lie in bed waiting for the snooze alarm to sound for the third time. Gotta go to work and defend the indefensible. Is this really a career boost? Am I about to be told by Jesus to change my ways? When I check the latest tweet from Trump am I going to continue my research on painless suicide methods? Will I vote for Hillary Clinton?
Vic Neptune
When even Sarah Palin's son-in-law, a Medal of Honor recipient, urges Donald Trump to apologize to the Khan family, it should be obvious that the concept of human decency can flow from a relative of one of the billionaire's battiest supporters, the incomparable former Governor of Alaska, who, it must be said, also has a son who served in the Iraq War, unlike Trump, whose children have never worn military uniforms, like their father, who received during the Vietnam War five draft deferments in spite of being in good (physical) health.
Shitting on the Khan family, who lost their son in the Iraq War due to his heroism that saved lives among others in his unit as well as civilians, wasn't enough for Trump, regarding military matters pertaining to the fortunes of those who actually fight the wars ordered by others.
In Virginia yesterday, Donald Trump at a rally was approached by a man who gave him his Purple Heart copy. He has a real one, but Trump, I guess, merits a copy of the real thing--he is, as is becoming increasingly clear, a copy of a real human being. Copy or not, the real test came when we got to see and hear what Trump did with this gift:
"You know," Trump said, "something very nice just happened to me. A man came up to me and handed me his Purple Heart. He said, 'That's my real Purple Heart I have such confidence in you.' And I said, 'Man, that's like big stuff. I've always wanted to get the real Purple Heart.'
"This was much easier," the psychopath concluded.
My first question: Did the veteran tell Trump the Purple Heart was actually a copy? He told an NBC journalist exactly that before the rally. If he did say to Trump the medal is a copy, the candidate then lied about it being genuine.
My second question: When I heard Trump's remark about how he "always wanted to get the real Purple Heart," and that "this [way] was much easier," why did I yell at the TV, "YOU SICK FUCK!"? I've never been in the military, never wanted to be in the military. I'm opposed to the War on Terror, anti-war in general. I think America's militarism since World War Two has been and is a tremendous problem for the world. However, recognizing, because I have an imagination, and relatives who have served in the military, including a great-uncle who fought in the Battle of the Bulge and made it to April 1945, when he was shot by an adolescent German sniper; recovered, but had permanent nerve damage in one of his arms, and was a Purple Heart recipient, I'm appalled to the center of my morals by the glibness of this disgusting parasite holding a Purple Heart and acting as if he's been given it for something he deserves. Unlike Captain Khan or Sarah Palin's son-in-law, Trump has not and never will put his body and life on the line for his country. He will, however, trivialize actual sacrifice, as we saw with his maltreatment of Mr. and Mrs. Khan. Now, he's added another category of people he's willing to piss on: wounded veterans, of which there are many.
Trump seems to have entered the gravitational pull of an abysmal spiral. His insane old man behavior this past week shows someone getting worse, not better, as the Republican faithful have been hoping for. Even Chris Christie denounced Trump's attack on Mr. and Mrs. Khan. He hasn't yet told Trump to go fuck himself, nor has John McCain, who has a Purple Heart and was also shit upon last year when Trump bizarrely attacked the Senator for having been captured during the Vietnam War.
"I like people who don't get captured," the idiot candidate said in the summer of 2015, and for a little while, pundits thought Trump had destroyed his chances by attacking the sacred subject of American war heroism. Not so, as we came to see. Women, minorities, Muslims, Gold Star Families, Ted Cruz's wife and father, high-ranking military men, Angela Merkel, people who fight for their country and get shot, blown up, dismembered. Trump hates a lot of people.
But he likes Roger Ailes, the recently fired Fox News president. Ailes is under scrutiny for having sexually harassed numerous women at Fox, including former news anchor Gretchen Carlson, who's filed a lawsuit against him. Others, not well known like the former Miss America, Carlson, have consistent independent stories about Roger Ailes' proclivities. He likes to have women dress up in lingerie and dance for him; by itself just fine, if it's by mutual consent, but when coerced it looks like the fulfillment of the fantasies of a sexually predatory, and rich, creep. He received forty million dollars in severance pay. Such is the way of capitalism.
As I pointed out in my previous post, Trump's surrogates are having a hard time figuring out what to say convincingly about their man's daily grossness. It must be a difficult morning wake-up for some of his surrogates. Lie in bed waiting for the snooze alarm to sound for the third time. Gotta go to work and defend the indefensible. Is this really a career boost? Am I about to be told by Jesus to change my ways? When I check the latest tweet from Trump am I going to continue my research on painless suicide methods? Will I vote for Hillary Clinton?
Vic Neptune
Monday, August 1, 2016
He Will Crush ISIS by First Attacking a Gold Star Mother
For several days I've wanted to write something in this blog, but a simultaneous desire to not comment for a while on my nation's political schizophrenia overtook me, so I left town for the weekend, read a Nabokov novel (Glory), and watched several hours of The X Files.
In Philadelphia, the Democratic National Convention last week looked like it was produced by professionals, a striking contrast to the previous week's Republican clown show in Cleveland. Trump, who boasted in advance about how extraordinary the Cleveland show would be, afterwards distanced himself from the Convention (a week-long fear-based bitch-fest sloppily put together with an overarching doom message). Trump, clearly, was embarrassed by how it turned out. He had much to do with its result, of course, since so many GOP bright lights didn't show, and it's difficult to find Hollywood luminaries willing to come out as Republicans. The danger in doing so, as Scott Baio and Antonio Sabato, Jr. proved, is in being provided a forum to air the kinds of views heard from the mouths of callers on Rush Limbaugh's radio show. Sabato, interviewed by ABC after his Convention speech, insisted Barack Obama is a Muslim. "Barack Obama," Sabato said, doesn't sound like "a Christian name."
Would he say the same of Ishoa? I don't know, but judging from Sabato's demonstrated level of intellect, I suspect he would insist Ishoa is also not a Christian name, even though that's the actual Aramaic name of the founder of Sabato's religion.
Sabato's argument smacks of foreigner-fear. I guess that Italian ancestry is in the clear as far as he's concerned, and Scott Baio is as American and Christian as George Patton's dick.
One of my gripes against Trump has to do with his spoiling of political discourse in America. Not that it was intelligent before he came along; now, though, it's utterly inane. Moe Howard hitting Curly on the head with a wrench conveys more directly expressed intellectual depth than most of what I hear on cable news whenever hosts, hostesses, and guests discuss Donald Trump with Trump's mouthpieces, or, as they're usually called, surrogates.
Last Thursday, the final night of the Democratic National Convention, when Hillary Clinton appeared on stage to accept the cheers, another speaker, accompanied by his wife, who didn't speak, made the biggest impact of all. Mr. and Mrs. Khan are the parents of an Army captain killed in the War on Terror. They, and their late son, are Muslims, originally from Pakistan. Under Donald Trump's draconian ideals, they would not have been able to enter the United States.
Mr. Khan's eloquent denunciation of Donald Trump was highlighted by his question, "Have you even read the United States Constitution? If not, I will gladly lend you my copy." He took out a pocket Constitution and held it up to great acclaim. It was stirring to see an arena full of people responding to plainly spoken outrage from a man whose son sacrificed his life for his country. Mr. Khan, speaking of that sacrifice, drubbed Trump with the words, "You have sacrificed nothing."
Trump, of course, responded (via tweets). He seemed baffled by the idea that he never sacrificed anything. He pointed to his buildings, the "thousands and thousands" of jobs he's given to people. His role as a successful American businessman also came up somewhere. In describing Trump's response here, the word obtuse comes to mind. Anyone with a heart and a discerning mind can realize that describing a notion of sacrifice as devoting time to business, missing meals with family, and also linking sacrifice with self-aggrandizement (putting up buildings, spending money, hiring and firing, and, in the real world outside Trump's propaganda about himself, hiring workers and stiffing them), and then comparing it with losing a child to war, amounts to a man (tweeting in his golden tower) who may be the essence of evil.
Trump went further. As he demonstrated earlier this year with Mrs. Ted Cruz, he has no qualms about spitting bile at other men's wives. For some weird reason, it bothers Trump that Mrs. Khan appeared on stage next to her husband, but didn't say anything herself. She later said, in an interview, that the death of her son is still a very raw thing in their lives, and she can't even look at his picture, yet.
Mr. Khan has been interviewed several times since Thursday. His reactions to Trump's evil remain consistent and well-expressed. He said Trump "has a black soul." Though not a scientifically precise description, anyone who understands human feelings, yearnings, compassion, can appreciate the meaning of such a statement coming from someone who really knows what it's like to lose a son in war; who really supports his adopted country, the very same United States Trump seeks to dominate with his characteristic lack of empathy and hard-headed cruelty, all carried out, as we saw with his poorly executed Convention, with incompetence and whim-based directives.
Enter the surrogates, earning their paychecks as Trump's defenders on the news stations. One of them said Mr. Khan used the pocket Constitution during his speech "as a prop," adding, "He doesn't know what Mr. Trump has read or not read." The surrogate insisted Trump has read the Constitution. Really? All of it? Like he's read his "favorite book," The Bible? Is this the same reality where Trump "wrote" The Art of the Deal and all of "his" other books, and didn't, as evidence shows, have ghost writers compose them? The same reality in which Trump had nothing to do, he insisted afterwards, with the Convention's planning, even though there's overwhelming evidence he did?
One of my favorite films, The Whole Wide World, is the story of one of my favorite writers, Robert E. Howard, who created Conan the Cimmerian, Solomon Kane, Kull of Atlantis, and many other characters in a huge number of adventure stories, weird and historical. He lived only thirty years, killing himself in 1936. In the film, dealing with Howard's only serious romantic relationship, he tells his girlfriend, Novalyne Price, about the political world of the future. Inspired by Roosevelt's New Deal, she has optimistic views, but his perspective is dark as he compares America to the late Roman Empire, the increasingly cruel and horrible arena spectacles, the mounting depravity of rulers, the decay mounting as time passes, so that after a while things that seemed beyond the pale are now acceptable.
Is that a correct perception of today, at least in broad detail? I think so. I know that scene in the film resonated with me when I saw it in the late 1990s, before the War on Terror, before Guantanamo Bay and "torture memos", before the Iraq War and Abu Ghraib, before 9/11, before the circus of Sarah Palin and the mirror maze of the 2015-2016 election cycle. As Howard puts it in the film (based on a book by Novalyne Price, so maybe he really said the above), it's a display of increasing decadence, itself a symptom of a long fall (and transformation) of a civilization. Talk at the Democratic National Convention of this being an "American century!" disturbed me with its broad implications. There are many high-level participants in the American century project; some called Cheney and Bush, others called Clinton and Obama. Trump, it looks like, is the buffoon ejaculating on everyone, willing to burn the world to a crisp so long as his ego isn't damaged.
I heard someone on cable news say we live in a "post-fact era." That's like saying "post-truth era." If that's truly the case, and Trump's rise suggests it might be, then we're living more and more in what Robert E. Howard described as an arena, where fantasies come to life, dominating thoughts and more and more minds, corrupted by a growing inability to recognize the importance of what is real.
I, for one, believe Mr. and Mrs. Khan and I accept the heroism of their son. Donald Trump and his ratfuck army of apologists, attacking the Khans (and Muslims by extension), want us to believe their own illusions, as if we'll be saved by the made-up crap extruded moment by moment from the candidate's malicious craft.
Vic Neptune
For several days I've wanted to write something in this blog, but a simultaneous desire to not comment for a while on my nation's political schizophrenia overtook me, so I left town for the weekend, read a Nabokov novel (Glory), and watched several hours of The X Files.
In Philadelphia, the Democratic National Convention last week looked like it was produced by professionals, a striking contrast to the previous week's Republican clown show in Cleveland. Trump, who boasted in advance about how extraordinary the Cleveland show would be, afterwards distanced himself from the Convention (a week-long fear-based bitch-fest sloppily put together with an overarching doom message). Trump, clearly, was embarrassed by how it turned out. He had much to do with its result, of course, since so many GOP bright lights didn't show, and it's difficult to find Hollywood luminaries willing to come out as Republicans. The danger in doing so, as Scott Baio and Antonio Sabato, Jr. proved, is in being provided a forum to air the kinds of views heard from the mouths of callers on Rush Limbaugh's radio show. Sabato, interviewed by ABC after his Convention speech, insisted Barack Obama is a Muslim. "Barack Obama," Sabato said, doesn't sound like "a Christian name."
Would he say the same of Ishoa? I don't know, but judging from Sabato's demonstrated level of intellect, I suspect he would insist Ishoa is also not a Christian name, even though that's the actual Aramaic name of the founder of Sabato's religion.
Sabato's argument smacks of foreigner-fear. I guess that Italian ancestry is in the clear as far as he's concerned, and Scott Baio is as American and Christian as George Patton's dick.
One of my gripes against Trump has to do with his spoiling of political discourse in America. Not that it was intelligent before he came along; now, though, it's utterly inane. Moe Howard hitting Curly on the head with a wrench conveys more directly expressed intellectual depth than most of what I hear on cable news whenever hosts, hostesses, and guests discuss Donald Trump with Trump's mouthpieces, or, as they're usually called, surrogates.
Last Thursday, the final night of the Democratic National Convention, when Hillary Clinton appeared on stage to accept the cheers, another speaker, accompanied by his wife, who didn't speak, made the biggest impact of all. Mr. and Mrs. Khan are the parents of an Army captain killed in the War on Terror. They, and their late son, are Muslims, originally from Pakistan. Under Donald Trump's draconian ideals, they would not have been able to enter the United States.
Mr. Khan's eloquent denunciation of Donald Trump was highlighted by his question, "Have you even read the United States Constitution? If not, I will gladly lend you my copy." He took out a pocket Constitution and held it up to great acclaim. It was stirring to see an arena full of people responding to plainly spoken outrage from a man whose son sacrificed his life for his country. Mr. Khan, speaking of that sacrifice, drubbed Trump with the words, "You have sacrificed nothing."
Trump, of course, responded (via tweets). He seemed baffled by the idea that he never sacrificed anything. He pointed to his buildings, the "thousands and thousands" of jobs he's given to people. His role as a successful American businessman also came up somewhere. In describing Trump's response here, the word obtuse comes to mind. Anyone with a heart and a discerning mind can realize that describing a notion of sacrifice as devoting time to business, missing meals with family, and also linking sacrifice with self-aggrandizement (putting up buildings, spending money, hiring and firing, and, in the real world outside Trump's propaganda about himself, hiring workers and stiffing them), and then comparing it with losing a child to war, amounts to a man (tweeting in his golden tower) who may be the essence of evil.
Trump went further. As he demonstrated earlier this year with Mrs. Ted Cruz, he has no qualms about spitting bile at other men's wives. For some weird reason, it bothers Trump that Mrs. Khan appeared on stage next to her husband, but didn't say anything herself. She later said, in an interview, that the death of her son is still a very raw thing in their lives, and she can't even look at his picture, yet.
Mr. Khan has been interviewed several times since Thursday. His reactions to Trump's evil remain consistent and well-expressed. He said Trump "has a black soul." Though not a scientifically precise description, anyone who understands human feelings, yearnings, compassion, can appreciate the meaning of such a statement coming from someone who really knows what it's like to lose a son in war; who really supports his adopted country, the very same United States Trump seeks to dominate with his characteristic lack of empathy and hard-headed cruelty, all carried out, as we saw with his poorly executed Convention, with incompetence and whim-based directives.
Enter the surrogates, earning their paychecks as Trump's defenders on the news stations. One of them said Mr. Khan used the pocket Constitution during his speech "as a prop," adding, "He doesn't know what Mr. Trump has read or not read." The surrogate insisted Trump has read the Constitution. Really? All of it? Like he's read his "favorite book," The Bible? Is this the same reality where Trump "wrote" The Art of the Deal and all of "his" other books, and didn't, as evidence shows, have ghost writers compose them? The same reality in which Trump had nothing to do, he insisted afterwards, with the Convention's planning, even though there's overwhelming evidence he did?
One of my favorite films, The Whole Wide World, is the story of one of my favorite writers, Robert E. Howard, who created Conan the Cimmerian, Solomon Kane, Kull of Atlantis, and many other characters in a huge number of adventure stories, weird and historical. He lived only thirty years, killing himself in 1936. In the film, dealing with Howard's only serious romantic relationship, he tells his girlfriend, Novalyne Price, about the political world of the future. Inspired by Roosevelt's New Deal, she has optimistic views, but his perspective is dark as he compares America to the late Roman Empire, the increasingly cruel and horrible arena spectacles, the mounting depravity of rulers, the decay mounting as time passes, so that after a while things that seemed beyond the pale are now acceptable.
Is that a correct perception of today, at least in broad detail? I think so. I know that scene in the film resonated with me when I saw it in the late 1990s, before the War on Terror, before Guantanamo Bay and "torture memos", before the Iraq War and Abu Ghraib, before 9/11, before the circus of Sarah Palin and the mirror maze of the 2015-2016 election cycle. As Howard puts it in the film (based on a book by Novalyne Price, so maybe he really said the above), it's a display of increasing decadence, itself a symptom of a long fall (and transformation) of a civilization. Talk at the Democratic National Convention of this being an "American century!" disturbed me with its broad implications. There are many high-level participants in the American century project; some called Cheney and Bush, others called Clinton and Obama. Trump, it looks like, is the buffoon ejaculating on everyone, willing to burn the world to a crisp so long as his ego isn't damaged.
I heard someone on cable news say we live in a "post-fact era." That's like saying "post-truth era." If that's truly the case, and Trump's rise suggests it might be, then we're living more and more in what Robert E. Howard described as an arena, where fantasies come to life, dominating thoughts and more and more minds, corrupted by a growing inability to recognize the importance of what is real.
I, for one, believe Mr. and Mrs. Khan and I accept the heroism of their son. Donald Trump and his ratfuck army of apologists, attacking the Khans (and Muslims by extension), want us to believe their own illusions, as if we'll be saved by the made-up crap extruded moment by moment from the candidate's malicious craft.
Vic Neptune
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