Organized Crime

     The approaching end of a year encourages a psychological phenomenon characterized by a person's growing need to accomplish deeds.  The New Year brings an optimistic belief that new habits can be acquired and practiced regularly.  The efficiency of these goals, enacted or not, depends upon the determination and discipline of the individual, plus some luck.
     In President Trump it's obvious he wanted to get something "big" done before year's end.  His accomplishments as Chief Executive have thus far consisted of selecting a nominee (Gorsuch) to the Supreme Court, an act of choice probably consisting of some consultations with advisors, the coming up of a short list, and a pick by the "decision-maker," hardly a demonstration requiring much intelligence.
     Trump, it's been revealed in the last few days, had doubts early this year about Gorsuch.  Trump can never be absolutely certain of another's loyalty, someone outside his family.  The family depends upon Dad to deliver cash-wise (as in the new Tax Bill's repeal of the Estate Tax, which will benefit Trump's children enormously).  As long as the money's coming, Trump's children and current wife will never speak badly of him.
     Other Trump accomplishments include mass slaughter of human beings in Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iraq, Syria; the alienation by militaristic threats and tightening of embargoes towards North Korea and Iran; demonstration of a willingness to support a child-molesting Senate candidate over a man who successfully prosecuted one of the white supremacists who bombed a Birmingham church in 1963.  The latter candidate, Doug Jones, winner of the Senate race, was claimed by Trump to be "weak on crime."
     I have to wonder about the cognitive abilities of some of my fellow Americans, those who don't seem able to realize that a man who prosecuted a murderer of children is not "weak on crime," but Trump's man, Roy Moore, who doesn't respect separation of Church and State, is anti-Constitutional in so many other ways as well (rejects all Amendments past the Bill of Rights, including the one that freed the slaves) is somehow "strong on crime."  Moore, if his adult accusers aren't slandering him, molested and sexually assaulted teenaged girls in the 1970s and 1980s; in the words of the illogical, he's not weak on crime.  Although, in reality, he is likely a violent criminal--what's more, a violent criminal supported by Trump and Trump's former propagandist Steve Bannon.
     Violent criminality, though, is a longtime practice of the American government.  Trump's announcement to move the capital of Israel to Jerusalem, with an accompanying relocation/building of a new U.S. embassy has set that region on fire; Palestinians have protested, been killed, shot at by Israeli security with non-lethal ammo.  Some crap comes out of Trump's mouth, people die.  That's quite an ability to be proud of.
     The U.N. voted overwhelmingly to condemn this idea of a move to Jerusalem, prompting U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley to act like the asshole she probably is by saying that the Trump Administration may cut off aid to all the countries who voted for this resolution to condemn the U.S. for proposing the insane idea of using Jerusalem as Israel's capital (a move supported strenuously by Democrat Chuck Schumer, so it's bipartisan antagonism towards Palestinians, nothing new).
     Since only nine nations voted against condemning the U.S., this means the U.S. wants to punish most of the world to get its way in satisfying the sadism of people like Benjamin Netanyahu, who wants Jerusalem to be the capital, and who always loves to antagonize Palestinians.
     I found a dead cat on my property recently, a car-hit victim apparently.  I took the cat to the Animal Shelter; a very nice young woman dealt with me.  It was upsetting to find the cat (I love cats) and to feel how stiff it was, its beauty when living in the patterns of the black and white fur.  The young woman at the Shelter was very kind and respectful towards the body of this dead unknown cat with no identification.  Our moment with this unfortunate animal happened in twenty-first century America, a country run by violent and greedy lunatics.  Most Americans, like most Iraqis or Israelis or Palestinians, are decent people.  Our national identity, and those of others worldwide, is maybe the least important thing about being human, but it's the most important thing when those in power in whatever country group us into lumpy categories called American, or Korean, or Russian, et al.
     The overall philosophy of power and government in America can be seen with the Tax Bill, which looks to be a success, soon, for the Republican majority.  This out in the open mass theft of billions of dollars from the American poor and middle class by the rich will break this country, causing perhaps the ultimate gutting of Social Security and Medicaid to make up for the one and a half trillion dollars the Bill will add to the deficit.  On the plus side, for millionaires and billionaires, the Bill eliminates the Estate Tax, will save Donald Trump about a billion dollars (he claims it will cost him money--but, he's a liar), and will further the cause of making wealthy people in America even wealthier, while the rest of the country becomes more Third World.
     People will lose their insurance but the corporate tax rate will drop about fifteen percentage points, so while a poor person dies from want of decent insurance, he or she can marvel that telecommunication companies and war industry corporations are making shitloads of money with net neutrality rules quashed and the war going as strong as ever, killing more poor children in the Middle East and Africa.  As Trump put it in a celebratory moment with his Republican political supporters arranged around him at the White House, "We're making America great again!"
     Making America great again apparently consists of giving the President of the United States a billion dollars instead of arresting him and every other evildoer who made this Tax Bill happen and then putting them in prison for the rest of their lives.
     Who's more dangerous to ordinary Americans?  ISIS, or these homegrown motherfuckers?  Osama bin Laden's dream to initiate the 9/11 attack and then sit back and watch America economically fuck itself is succeeding beautifully.

                                                                              Vic Neptune
       

     America's Most Dangerous Enemy: Those Who Manage It

     I heard Israel's Ambassador to the United States praising President Trump's announcement recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, a decision unpopular with a majority of human beings.  Trump says it's a move towards peace in the Middle East.  He also once said Trump Steaks "are the world's greatest steaks and I mean that in every sense of the word."
     Along with recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital goes the future building of a U.S. embassy there, a move as popular among Muslims as Caligula's decision in A.D. 40 to have his statue erected within the Second Temple, a project met by vast protests and only quashed by Caligula's assassination the following year.
     Trump hasn't yet referred to the possible future U.S. embassy as "beautiful," as he's referred to his so far theoretical border wall, but it makes sense that in agitating so many millions of people with this decision, his main interest is the construction of an American building, a piece of fantasy national embassy U.S. soil plopped onto the holy city like a pile of hog turds.
     Let truck bombs attack it!  Let the thing be protested!  Let Arab demonstrators get mowed down and tear gassed!
     Trump and those who regard Israel as the second most important nation don't give a fuck.
     I've heard journalists and pundits ask, "Why now?"  Why is Trump pushing this?  To distract attention away from the Mueller investigation?  Mueller is said to be investigating Trump's own finances, something the President referred to as a "red line" Mueller better not cross.  Well here it is, and Trump isn't firing Mueller, so it turns out his threats don't mean much, like when he promised without coming through with it, to sue every woman who came out against him last year with sexual abuse allegations.
     One of these women is suing him for defamation of character.  Trump's attorneys are trying to get this irritant put off until after he's no longer in office.  We can hope he'll have to testify under oath while still President.
     This Friday he travels to Pensacola, Florida, so near the Alabama border it makes it obvious he's campaigning for accused child molester and rapist Roy Moore, the Alabama Senate candidate who stands a very good chance of winning the December 12 special election.  Moore's Bible-thumping cowboy persona, his Second Amendment swagger, his total denial of any wrongdoing when it comes to his behavior with teenaged girls, his insistence on his penis's innocence when it comes to the female half of humanity, appears to have convinced enough Alabamians that he's the right man for the job.
     Trump himself is convinced.  He's essentially said it would be worse for a liberal Democrat like Moore's opponent, Doug Jones, to be in the Senate than Moore, though Trump hasn't mentioned child molestation, thinking back, perhaps, to when he, Trump, allegedly sexually violated a thirteen year old girl.  Rich and powerful men, I've found, are hypersensitive when their own crimes and embarrassments are mentioned.  I once saw right wing pundit and neoconservative warmonger Bill Kristol twist his mouth into a look of disdain and contempt on his sour face when a questioner at some forum asked about how his avoidance of military service doesn't jibe with his promotion of the Iraq War.
     "I'm not going to dignify such a question with a response," Kristol said.
     Roy Moore has been absent from news media direct attention.  He spent two weeks just recently not appearing before the press or at rallies, or even in the shopping malls where teenaged girls might be found.
     Closer and closer to December 12, Mitch McConnell, who seemed so forthright in his offhanded condemnation of Moore a few weeks ago ("I believe the women"), said on Sunday, "Let the people of Alabama decide."  Another way of saying, "I have no opinion of a man accused by eight women of sexual misconduct committed against them when they were teenagers.  A man who made a fourteen year old girl put her hand on his cock should be in the U.S. Senate, if that's what Alabamians choose. Forget what I said a few weeks ago.  Don't you realize by now that Mitch McConnell has no integrity?"
     Should we be surprised that the Republican Party is prepared to seat a child molester within its hallowed chamber?  With their gross tax bill, a giveaway to the richest motherfuckers in the land at the expense of the poor and the middle class, they've decided that giving sick children health insurance is far less important than making sure that Donald Trump, Jr. isn't burdened with the Estate Tax.  McConnell and others in the Senate don't care about children anymore than they care about that fourteen year old girl in 1979 who was forced by thirty-two year old Roy Moore to gratify his lust.
     The Republicans have been this bad, at least in their desires, for a long time.  Fucking the poor was Reagan's hobby, too.
     To expect the Democrats to mount opposition to Republican excess is problematic, unless the Left stops benefiting from a rigged system with Wall Street putting cash into two disgusting and corrupt parties.  These two parties are failures as philosophical systems, for they elevate the cretinous and the stupid above the worthy, holding off evolution for the sake of power and gain.  They're just killers.  It's time to not vote for them.

                                                                             Vic Neptune