Let's Be Nice

     We are a War State.  The President of the United States is routinely referred to by his special title, Commander-in-Chief, as in Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Armed Forces, a man with Ares enveloping him in strong arms, directing his reason, convincing him to wipe out innocent people without consideration for their rights, which amount to nothing when compared to the rights of corporations and those who guide them.
     So far, men have wielded this power.  Women will have their turn and won't hesitate to kill.  Chris Matthews of Hardball, a "tough-talking" news program airing five days a week on MSNBC, had as his guest Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat about whom 2020 presidential race scuttlebutt has moved like a vapor.  Asked the usual question framed like, "Hey maybe you're going to run for president," Klobuchar smiled, resembling a high school English teacher, but one with excellent government-provided health insurance and a yearly salary at least three times that of a teacher.
     She dodged the question.  Matthews remarked that he likes her sense of humor.  Shitty journalist that he is, he will snuggle up inside the rectums of almost any politician.  He complimented her on her Minnesota accent.  He often makes movie references.  I suspect he's seen and enjoyed Fargo, with its woman sheriff speaking with a thick Minnesota inflection.  Klobuchar, like the sheriff, must be, in Matthews' mind, down to earth, the kind of woman who makes her own coffee and scrambles her own eggs.  She's changed lots of diapers.  She knows how to drive stick.  She has a no nonsense approach to judging matters of justice and law.  A Democrat, she respects dead Republicans.
     Klobuchar's exchange with Brett Kavanaugh about his drinking habits "went viral."  She asked if he had blackouts when he drank in high school and college.  He retorted, "Have you?!"  She got him back by sharing with the world her still-living father's struggles with alcoholism, eliciting an apology from Kavanaugh, who probably felt he had to publicly apologize or maybe he wouldn't get the Supreme Court job.
     Klobuchar remarked to Matthews that being president necessitates having a sense of humor.  She talked about civility, obviously referring to Donald Trump, who, whether Klobuchar acknowledges it or not, does have a sense of humor; it's usually at the expense of others--and, sometimes, himself.  He's impolite, lacks the filter that properly raised people have, the thing that prevents them from ejaculating whatever observation occurs to them.  If Klobuchar runs for president in 2019-2020, she'll learn Trump's nickname for her.  Matthews concluded his interview by suggesting she come up with a nickname for him.
     Mushroom Dick is an obvious choice.
     The main focus of the interview was the death of former President George H.W. Bush, who expired, finally, on November 30, 2018, ninety-four years young.  The entire weekend and some of the following two days have been replete with Bush-related programming on cable news and in the rest of the mainstream news media.  As when Ronald Reagan died fourteen years ago, and as when John McCain died last August, the news coverage lied by omission repeatedly for days and nights.                      Bush, in CNN's Chris Cillizza's view, was "the anti-Trump."
     In my view, an anti-Trump is a poor woman who has to work shitty jobs all of her life, has no insurance, maybe is married, but only once, is humble, and thinks and feels for others.  Cillizza, though, thinks in terms of power, for he, like Chris Matthews, is a kiss-ass to power.  America, the great nation that it was, and in some ways still is, has achieved about the same level of self-inflicted slavery in its fourth estate as that of Nazi Germany's Ministry of Propaganda.  To be a journalist in America today, to be well-paid and compensated in the mainstream, means to look away from what's actually happening.  How else to explain the past few days of Bush 41 worship?
     Amy Klobuchar, opposed to Trump, and part of the civility club running Washington and news organizations, had nothing but praise for the elder Bush president, finding eager agreement in Chris Matthews.  She and numerous other politicians, pundits, and journalists spoke joyfully of Bush's gentility, his graciousness, his gentlemanly conduct, contrasting his cultivated behavior with the odious Trump.
     Decorum is the concern of people who don't have real problems.
     Not mentioned by any mainstream figure, at least in my samples of news broadcasts and in the written offerings of corporate news media, are Bush's crimes against humanity; his racism (the campaign '88 Willie Horton ad which Bush never apologized for, as well as his escalation of the War on Drugs, i.e. War on People of Color); his invasion of Panama to arrest his former CIA asset, with the resultant mass murder of around 3,000 civilians; his lies that got the U.S. into the Gulf War, resulting in the utter destruction of Iraq's infrastructure and the killings of, ultimately, over a million people; his participation in the illegal arming and funding of the Contras and his obstruction of justice in the official investigation; his pardoning of six prominent Iran-Contra Affair officials, enabling him to avoid testifying in one of their upcoming, but cancelled due to the pardon, trials.
     You can look great on the surface and still be a nasty son of a bitch with an evil heart that beats on and on for ninety-four years, while hundreds of thousands of hearts have stopped beating because of your deeds, orders, manipulations, lies, and amoral thirst for power at any cost.  That's George Herbert Walker Bush, and in his corrupted spiritual vileness of being willing to snuff out life on a vast scale, smash dreams, and ruin whole nations, he is just like Donald Trump.
     Open your eyes, Amy Klobuchar.

                                                                              Vic Neptune