Lady and the Trump

    Barron Trump, fourteen year old son of Donald and Melania Trump, has Covid-19.  Donald, asked about it on the way to his helicopter, said breezily, "He's doing fine."  He switched topics in a hot second to the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Judge Barrett.  "Amy's doing a great job," adding, "Barron's doing fine, Amy's doing fine."

     Son infected with a deadly disease, the father, naturally, flies to Iowa for a political rally, wouldn't you?  In such a circumstance I would stay near my son (safely, of course), but I'm not a father nor am I a responsible world leader with problems to deal with bigger than the health of one teenaged boy who happens to be the only person my wife cares about.

     Unlike the President's bold optimism about his own Covid-19 experience, First Lady Melania Trump wrote (or had written by someone) an essay relating her own rough time with the disease.  She said it hit her all at once; fever, chills, an overall slam bang level of crappiness we don't hear about, usually, from any politician or politician's spouse.  One gets the impression she actually thoughtfully endured this, that it made her reflect on human suffering.  I will not judge her unfavorably in this respect, especially since she made note of the high quality care she and her family have gotten, recognizing the privilege of receiving such medical assistance while most don't have it.  Her husband, by contrast, acts as if his medical treatment for Covid-19 just sort of happened, that apart from his numerous doctors doing "an excellent job," there's no difference between what he experienced and what any MAGA hat-wearing Covid patient might experience.  

     Melania Trump, too, is a mother dealing with her child who's afflicted with a disease.  Mothers understand this state of mind.  

     What's striking about the First Couple's different public responses to their individual bouts with the pandemic is how one person, the woman, the mother of a child now afflicted with the virus, offers the most human and candid confession, while her husband acts like he had a great time while he was sick.  

     Donald Trump's obvious breathing difficulties (visible on video during his Mussolini-like balcony appearance the night he returned to the White House from the hospital) belie the President's version of the truth: he no more enjoyed or easily got through not being able to breathe properly than anyone would.

     At a rally, he asked the audience if any of them had gotten Covid.  Some yelled out, indicating yes.  Trump smiled knowingly, adding they don't have to worry, they won't get it again (a debatable statement since it's not known for sure as of this writing if that's true or not).  

     Trump projects surface confidence about the virus but I suspect that the moment it was decided to transport him to the hospital he felt like shit, maybe even thought he was going to die.  Melania Trump, at least, is honest about how she felt, how it gave her some bad hours and days.  In her written account, she offers no sunny viewpoint about Coronavirus.  Now that her young son has it, she's terrified and anxious, I expect, and with an unsupportive husband in denial about the lethality and debilitating nature of Covid-19.

2020 has been a booming year for coffin sellers in the United States.

     Trump's companion in evil, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, has resisted making a stimulus deal with the President, thus denying an additional giving out of (probably) $1,200 checks to Americans hurting evermore in an economy wrecked by Washington's and Wall Street's crushingly destructive response to the pandemic.  

     Pelosi's rationale for not accepting Trump's and the Republicans' 1.8 trillion dollar proposal is she doesn't want to give the President a victory, even a minor one, before the election on November 3.  The idea is to get Biden in there so that a stimulus can supposedly happen after Inauguration Day, January 20, 2021, three months from now, with thousands more Coronavirus cases and deaths and evictions.  Homelessness in California, Pelosi's state, has risen to record highs, but her $25,000 refrigerator is stocked with expensive ice cream.  She's Marie Antoinette in the form of a harridan willing to let the country burn economically, even as her state has burned.

     Trump, Pelosi, McConnell, both Houses of Congress, have screwed the American people harder than the American people have ever been screwed.  Still, we're expected to vote for some of these fuckers.  It's a privilege to vote in this alleged democracy, or so we're often reminded.  In Saddam Hussein's Iraq voter participation was total.  The ballot was shown to the voter, the poll worker watched as the voter marked on the only possibility.

     "I'm a Saddam man!"

     Choice: you, the voter, can support Saddam Hussein, or you can go to a stifling prison and maybe never come out.

     Our system is still better than the former Iraq's (a country, I point out, supported wholeheartedly and materially--included with chemical and biological weapons--by the Reagan administration), but the corruption infecting both Democratic and Republican Parties in the U.S. consists of the same thing: too much money, too much influence by corporate interests.  

     These parties of Pelosi and Trump are helping plutocrats destroy us.  It is pointless and stupid to continue to support this system by voting for these parties, but we'll continue to do it, as we go down the drain, stomped on and mutilated by psychopaths like Trump, who can't even bring himself to say one word of concern about his sick child, and Joe Biden, who vows to veto Medicare For All if or when he's President, and during a pandemic.

     

Vic Neptune

      

     

       

     

Money Makes Bad Men Seem Good

      What if the news mediascape, so replete with falsities and failures to explore the depths of truth, is effectively fiction, a combination of facts, imperfect interpretations, and disinformation?  Fiction not in the form of novels, short stories, films, but a type twisted to serve oligarchs and paid lackeys seeking to deceive us into believing in enemies who are not our enemies, while they are the worst of our enemies?

     Early twentieth century masters of propaganda (advertising) passed on techniques developed by governments (fascist, democratic, communist), perfected over decades by intelligence agencies and military-industrial complexes of many nations, to the point of fiction dominating our news (i.e. "reality") intake.  

     I do not refer to Trump's "fake news."  To some, the current President sounds dependable as a truth-teller when he shouts down some report, accusation, poll, or editorial slant as "fake news," but, as with the ease of saying "fake news," anyone can receive a quick lesson on how to operate a fire extinguisher and then put out a fire set by a fireman training a group of novices, while firefighting skills require time, effort, and risk to acquire.  Saying "fake news" about a large portion (the political content) of the vast information universe generated by humanity, convinces millions of people to be skeptical, but Trump doesn't say that most of the news is based on imaginative interpretations driven often by motivations pushed forward by profit-making interests for the amassing of power--and the powerful are the greatest liars.

     Five years ago I first saw Michael Cohen, former Vice President of the Trump Organization and former personal counsel to Donald Trump, interviewed on MSNBC.  All I remember from that broadcast is Cohen's unwavering insistence on his boss's integrity, competence, and worthiness to be President.  He seemed like a well-paid but fanatical devotee of a billionaire businessman who, in my view, couldn't possibly really be such an exemplar of integrity and goodwill.  

     Since I didn't believe Cohen's verbal sketch of Donald Trump, I remained unconvinced but convinced I wouldn't vote for the Republican (who had been a Democrat) in November 2016.  I was, however, impressed by Michael Cohen's ability to make his case.  Any objection to Trump's words or actions coming from the MSNBC host were flattened by Cohen, a steamroller relentlessly undeterred from relating his case: that Donald Trump is a great man, he will defeat Hillary Clinton, he will be a great President.

     Only a few years later Michael Cohen, faced with a prison sentence for tax evasion among other offenses, told "the truth" about his former boss to Congress during the time of the Robert Mueller investigation into Trump's alleged collaboration with Russians to steal the 2016 election--a long fiction believed in by numerous Democrats and a huge complement of the news media.

     Cohen, among other things, predicted then that there wouldn't be a peaceful transition to power if Trump would lose the 2020 election.  He later wrote a book, out this year, called Disloyal: A Memoir The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump.

     After the book was published, Cohen's daughter, Samantha, age twenty-four, was interviewed by Vanity Fair.  CNN also took an interest in her story since she knew the Trump family.  The first time she met Donald Trump she was fifteen.  Seeing her from a distance, Trump said to Michael Cohen, "Look at that piece of ass!"  Cohen said, "That's my daughter."  

     A normal person would apologize, of course, but when he was introduced to Samantha he asked for a kiss on the cheek and said in a few years he'd be dating her friends.  Nonsensical talk, perhaps, nothing Trump actually intended to carry out, but why the fuck was he saying this to a fifteen year old girl?  Why the fuck, too, was he saying this in the presence of her father?  

     Samantha Cohen, who, in the CNN interview from last month, comes across as a sane and sympathetic figure, said her father would spend ten hours a day with Trump.  He would be browbeaten by him.  Her father reported feeling bad witnessing Donald Trump, Sr., often belittling Donald Trump, Jr.  Samantha says her father was a different person away from his job, treating his children and wife with care and compassion.  He was, however, run ragged by Trump, sometimes kept from family gatherings, on call at all times, even during vacations.  

     This account of hers didn't enlighten me on something I've long known: Donald Trump, past and present, is a piece of shit.

     Michael Cohen, though he participated in many questionable activities (as a party, for instance, to the Stormy Daniels hush money payment, which led him to lie about her husband's adultery to Melania Trump), also comes across, from his daughter's (granted, biased) words, as a sympathetic figure, due mainly to his public mea culpa.  From him we've gotten a Trump administration member who's actually admitted wrongdoing and regret for his bad professional choices.  Other former administration members, like the Defense Secretary, General Mattis, have revealed their own Trump stories in written accounts, but without admitting their own guilt (as a warmonger and war profiteer in his case).

     Samantha Cohen spoke of First Daughter Ivanka Trump, the President's favorite, as an "icy cold" woman who ignored her, looked past her when they'd be in the same space.  By contrast, Samantha's friendship with Tiffany Trump (they attended college together) was strong until Trump's presidency, when the younger of his two daughters made nice with her father after years of estrangement.  Samantha, convincingly, says that Tiffany's friends in college and in California, where she grew up, were Black, gay, Latino.  Samantha and Tiffany, both of them Millennials, interacted with a variety of people without judgment, but now, Samantha says, Tiffany just pretends to believe the Trump administration's rhetoric, going along to get along.

     Throughout the interview, Samantha Cohen comes across as a genuine person.  I can't say the same for Ivanka Trump.

     Points of view add up in spite of their individualities to what Philip K. Dick referred to as koinos kosmos, the shared reality, that which we agree upon, as in 2 + 2 = 4, an equation even Trump would find difficult to declare as fake math.

     Could it be a determination of the heart, of feeling and emotions, which leads us to recognize one story as truth, another as fake?  I believe Samantha Cohen, in that ten minute interview at least.  When she was a child her father worked strenuously for a rich businessman who now drops bombs on people in Asia.

     The news is packaged.  The truth isn't; it grows through the seams.  Not even skilled propaganda pushers like CNN, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, The New York Times, Donald Trump, or the Joe Biden Campaign, can steamroll the minds of everyone, even though their jobs of distributing bullshit compensate them with the millions of dollars denied ordinary everyday truth tellers.  

Vic Neptune

     

           

     

     

     

Kamala!!! Mike!!! A Voting Housefly!!!

      I didn't intend to watch it but a friend texted me, spoke of her enthusiasm to check out the debate between Senator Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence.  My friend noted, "I DO find her entertaining."

     Since politicians aren't giving Americans anything after having screwed us all year, they might as well be a source of amusement.  The debate gave us that in the form of a six-legged animal landing on Mike Pence's white hair and staying there for a few minutes.  He talked without knowing there was a fly on his head; no one told him about it.  The fly may have been wondering why the strange snow white surface wasn't cold.  Pence himself is a cold man.  He shows most animation when he's lying.

     About the fly, my friend texted, "The fly was sitting on shit and is my hero."

     Still, Pence held himself together throughout the debate, while Harris shifted a lot, spoke much too expressively with her hands and arms, didn't have much to offer when talking about justice, an area of expertise on which she should have a good grasp.

     Not naming him but mentioning the specific amount of time to the number of seconds George Floyd was asphyxiated on camera by someone she backhandedly referred to as a "bad cop," Kamala Harris, former San Francisco D.A. who was in the habit of not prosecuting "bad" cops, called for the Minneapolis murdering cop, Derek Chauvin, to be prosecuted.  It's not likely she would have done so had the same thing happened in San Francisco a dozen years ago.  Like Amy Klobuchar, former D.A. of Hennepin County (where Floyd was murdered), Harris let cops get away with criminality; it's the way things are done in America--a Biden presidency isn't going to change it.

     She spoke of the Biden ticket's commitment to banning choke holds by police, but that won't take away the military gear granted to them by Biden and Obama; cops will still treat the citizenry in times of protest as adversaries rather than people with legitimate beefs against a system of governance that's screwing them in the ass while enriching tycoons.

     Kamala Harris's credibility problem runs deep.  She pretends to care about ordinary people, playing often on the "little girl from Oakland" story.  Her autobiography's book cover shows a picture of little Kamala with a pout on her face, looking at the camera.  A cute picture marred by the fact that this kid will grow up to persecute African-Americans, punish people for smoking pot, ally herself with Wall Street interests, support the decades-long occupation of Afghanistan with all of its killing and exploitation, support Israel's execrable activities against Palestinians, will rise in the ranks of a corrupt political party lacking any semblance to a well-functioning organization offering decent policies to ordinary people.

     She seeks Mike Pence's job.  She knows what Mike Pence is, a functionary of the state, someone who goes along to get along (like Kamala).  She knows Mike Pence compromised his soul decades ago, for she did the same.  

     I shouldn't be amazed, but I am amazed at how some people can look at Pence and Harris, Trump and Biden, and believe in them.  Pence with his white hair, resembling a bust of some general, perhaps, who ran the occupation of Nicaragua in the 1930s.  Expressionless, heart operating usually at thirty beats per minute.  Cracked ideas about religion, a lapsed Catholic but retaining the guilt and sense of Original Sin.  Trump, a Christian fraud lacking any real knowledge of the Bible or its teachings, especially the more humane ones.  Joe Biden, frail, not really all that religious as far as I can tell.  He doesn't, at least, make a noise about it.  He is, though, destined to lose his shit in office, if elected.  Like Ronald Reagan during his last year or two in office, Biden is soon headed for a land of mental fog guaranteed to be covered up by the news media as thoroughly as Franklin Roosevelt's time spent in a wheelchair.  

     A Washington Post article, "Joe Biden's campaign, summed up in one simple gesture," written by their fashion editor, Robin Givhan, exemplifies the willful blindness of mainstream news media journalists and pundits regarding the former Vice President.  On October 5, 2020, the same day Trump checked himself out of the hospital, having conquered Covid-19 (if you're one of those who believe that kind of shit), Joe Biden answered reporters' questions on the tarmac of the Wilmington, Delaware, airport before boarding his plane for Miami.

     I watched the video accompanying the article.  Biden stands about three or four feet from the front rank of reporters.  They're all masked.  Background jet engine noise makes everyone talk loudly.  I really think that politicians use machine noise to obscure language, to make the process of understanding painful.  Trump's press conferences usually happen with his helicopter's turboshaft engines idling in the background.  This creates a sense of tension as information is supposedly conveyed, but it just sounds like the Hieronymous Bosch factory Trump would secretly like to put everyone in.  Have you ever had a meaningful conversation with someone in an environment of machine noise?

     Anyway, the jet engine noise, according to Pulitzer Prize winner Robin Givhan (she did win the Pulitzer in 2006, but she won't win another for writing this shit article), caused Biden to get a bit too close (in this Covid-19 era) to the reporters.  In dashes Dr. Jill Biden, intrepid wife (and nurse?) of the Democratic nominee.  She performs "the gesture" of Givhan's article title by saying "Move back," and

pulling him back from the reporters to a more acceptable social distance.  

     Robin Givhan:

     "Biden apologized for his spatial indiscretion and then carried on with his thoughts about the importance of following the science in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

     'An entire campaign was summed up in that simple gesture--and by Biden's response to it."

     Givhan makes a big deal out of Biden saying "I'm sorry," noting that Trump is incapable of uttering these words.  I'll grant her that.  Trump's never saying sorry practice is a long-practiced philosophy of asshole pig capitalist businessmen who rise to the top by climbing over even their family members.  That most journalists have ever expected Trump to behave like a normal human being just goes to show they're often shitty at their jobs, not very perceptive, and maybe not bright, either.

     When Biden says, "I'm sorry," it's obvious he's addressing the apology to his wife, i.e. his handler, the one who keeps the closest eye on the fact that he's not all there.

     Biden didn't notice he wasn't socially distanced from the reporters.  For me, when I'm out in public, this is an awareness popping off in my head automatically.  For an old man losing his shit, it's a lapse we should also expect from someone who, in pre-Covid days, often got into women's and girls' spaces, sniffing or playing with their hair.  Biden's a touchy-feely guy.  

     Robin Givhan concedes that "Jill Biden proved she's a fierce guardian of her husband--able to keep a watchful eye on him while he conducts retail politics...she's doing her best to body-block a virus.  There was visceral emotion and power in her tugging on his arms."

     If you watch that minute-long video, I'd be surprised if you would interpret Dr. Jill Biden's actions in the same way.  "...doing her best to body-block a virus."  Take note, writers; this is how you write when you're going for a Pulitzer Prize.

     I'm done making predictions.  I don't know who's going to win, but it won't be the American people.  Just a week ago I predicted Trump would win, based on his cash cow status with the Democratic establishment and corporate news media.  Fundraising off of Trump and the consequent making of great ratings have made "the Donald" a golden egg-laying politician for people like Nancy Pelosi and CNN's top man Jeff Zucker.  Trump was selected President, by those who actually run the country, in 2016 for this purpose.  I can't prove it, but it's damned convenient for the wealthiest people in America to have an ugly and grotesque leader acting as a scapegoat distracting ordinary Americans away from the fact that Trump is just one of many rich scoundrels driving this country into a deep hole, on purpose, for the last forty years; a bipartisan screwing of the poor and middle class.

     That the fly in the room chose to land on Mike Pence's head instead of Kamala's doesn't mean she isn't also a spiritually empty, deceitful sack of shit.

Vic Neptune