As you watch military vehicles and equipment deployed against American civilians throughout the country, you may ask yourself, “Why have we degenerated into a police state?” The answer is quite simple: it’s the only future people in power could imagine.

I grew up thinking my country was imperfect but on the road to improvement with each passing year. I stopped feeling this way at the turn of the century. In fact, a majority of Americans for the first time in decades felt the country was on the wrong path according to polling in 2000.

In early 2001, I decided to make a career change and looked at options as my savings ran out. Because I like to write, a friend suggested I think about public relations and gave me a ticket to a conference Edelman PR was having for their clients that week. I attended the future trends’ speech on the event schedule and listened in rapt attention at Edelman’s experts presented their opinion on what the aughts held for America. Here’s the gist of what they told their clients:

‘Based on all of our polling data, we’re in for a very turbulent decade. Women’s rights, gay rights, minority rights, income inequality and the environment will move to front and center in the American conversation. If our numbers are correct, and we think they are, the 2000’s will make the 1960’s look like the 1950’s. Companies and brands that are seen as standing against this progress endanger their own survival.’

I decided to pursue a short career in advertising instead but the speakers that day left me oddly hopeful about the future. I’d only recently discovered that America was not a meritocracy (I’m a slow learner), and I thought anything that might bring about more equality would be a good thing, especially if the corporations weren’t going to stand in the way of it.

I temped for a few months before landing a job at a small advertising agency. Our biggest client was Cantor Fitzgerald’s E-speed, located at the top of the World Trade Center. In August 2001, I got to take a vacation from my lower middle class life to join my recently retired father at a lawyer’s house for the weekend on Long Island. It was surreal weekend. Michael Eisner arrived in a helicopter, so he “can laugh at all the people suffering in traffic,” and that’s all I’ll say about him. Paul McCartney was the epitome of grace, class and kindness, a Hapsburg whose wife was Carla Bruni’s aunt was there and Colin Powell showed up for brunch on Sunday. I did what I normally did in these situations, which is sit and listen to my betters discussing the state of the world.

The outlook was grim. China, which had just taken and dismantled one of our reconnaissance aircraft, was a prime topic of conversation, along with the decline in US manufacturing base, and climate change was understood as something coming but not to be worried about until the 20s since we’d likely run out of oil soon after anyway. The only time I spoke was to say the real problem was income inequality as the average person feels like they no longer have a stake in a society built for the super rich. “If they ever knew how much money we really had they would kill us,” said one of the European wives in response. Income inequality was a future problem that would have to be dealt with; but not by them. Same went for social security solvency, collapsing public education, health care and climate change. They were all cans to be kicked down the road.

The next week planes destroyed the World Trade Center and blasted into the Pentagon. I got a call on 9/12 from a friend whose wife was the undersecretary of State for Central Asia who told me they thought there might be a nuke in New York harbor.  Soon after there was an anthrax attack a few blocks from my upper West Side walkup. The world changed.

The social upheaval worried about by the nation’s elite would be put on hold for the next two decades as Americans accustomed themselves to unreasonable searches, taking their shoes off at the airport, Middle Eastern cities on fire, legalized torture and fake reality TV that emphasized pettiness in eliminating people from the group. Americans’ belief in their country popped up above 50% for the first time this century as we invaded Iraq and then dropped back down.

Life moved on. The government wasn’t going to do jackola about climate change and so after a brief stint as a working screenwriter, I started project managing utility scale wind projects in hopes the “market” could fix climate change. Fracking became a thing and so the elite breathed a sigh of relief oil wouldn’t run out and cancelled the production tax credit that kick-started the renewable power industry. I looked for a new job.

I spent several months selling body armor for a genius inventor/businessman. He’d worked on some interesting renewable techs in the 90s and aughts. He, and thousands of others, calculated that crowd control would become increasingly important in the years ahead as the system would surely begin to break down.

We attended the AUSA convention, where an ex-female cop who was his business partner and I took turns alternately wearing the lightweight trauma suit and beating each other with nightsticks for the benefit of uniformed generals and government buyers from around the world.

We went out to lunch with a woman who’d worked at a black site in Iraq and was tied into a lot of private military companies. I listened to her say Obama was a traitor for drawing down Iraq and how desperately she and private military companies craved money after they’d gorged themselves on cash playing reindeer games on Iraqis. Did she foresee societal breakdown in the near future? Absolutely. Was there a solution to these problems? In her mind it was cracking down harder.

The reality of what is coming down the pipe environmentally, economically and politically at us sent me into a mortal panic and I joined a protest to protect treaty lands from exploitation by a hydro-carbon company at Standing Rock.

When I got home from the weirdest experience of my life, a friend’s father who was in his 80s wanted to speak with me. The old man had been part of a film crew in China during the cultural revolution. He said “the ruling class in any system wants things to continue as they are but get better for them personally. They cannot imagine changing the way things are and so when the system breaks down their only solution is to kill perceived enemies of the system.”

Our system is breaking down. The regime knows the can can’t be kicked much farther down the road.  Propaganda, fear and innuendo can only do so much. The bloated worms feeding on the carcass of our constitution know they only have a few months left to pull the trigger.

The machinery is all in place, built and paid for with your tax dollars right in front of your faces for the last two decades. All that remains is for an evil, unimaginative man to flip the switch.

It doesn’t have to end this way. Step in from the ledge, America. There are rational paths through the morass of the climate emergency, collapsing infrastructure, systemic racism and income inequality which do not require killing anyone. The future is going to require teamwork, organization, capital and shared sacrifice. The future is going to require you to view your fellow citizens as neighbors instead of competition.

If the elite can’t imagine a better future, we need to find a new elite.

Walls Come Tumbling Down – The Style Council

It’s been almost 2000 years since the Roman Empire executed Jesus. This year millions of self-proclaimed Christians attended worship services in the midst of a pandemic, confident God will protect them or, worst case scenario, they die and go to heaven.

For the overwhelming majority of Christians, there is no Christianity without the resurrection. The promise of everlasting life is what keeps them coming back to the pews, week after week, century after century.

There are 64,766 words in the four books of the Gospel, almost 9000 words shorter than The Catcher In The Rye, and more than 12,000 words shorter than Harry Potter And The Sorcerer’s Stone. Each book of the Gospel tells the same story from a different author ranging from Mark, just the facts, to John, who adds song and dance numbers. Mark ends his book with a cliffhanger (Jesus’ tomb is opened and his body is missing), while Matthew, Luke and John highlight Jesus’ resurrection 3 days after his death and teaching from beyond the grave.

Was Christ’s intent to have us report to a building once a week, worship a statue of his tortured body and fork over money to men who guilt trip us about sex? I’m no theologian but I doubt that was the goal. Same goes for free market economics, colonialism and racism.

Christ’s only two commandments are straightforward: love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. If mankind took those commandments as a starting point we’d solve most of our problems. If a person is hungry, share your food, If someone is sick, care for them. If someone is blind, help them see. If someone sins against you, forgive them.

But for most people, the sole attraction to Christianity is eternal life. Some think all that matters is they believe in God, even in their last minutes, say the magic words and, poof, they’re in heaven chilling on a cloud eating their favorite food in between fucking supermodels. There’s another group that approach life as if it’s a checklist for what they need to do and not do in order to get into heaven where they hang out on a cloud with a  mob of all their favorite relatives and their dog that died in fifth grade.  The dangerous group are the ones close to political power in the United States that believe they are “chosen” and can therefore behave like selfish beasts who will either get to skip death through “rapture” or survive the Second Coming – they are wrong on all counts.

Churches throughout history have served the interests of the powerful as they fleeced their flock with promises of an afterlife. Caesar himself couldn’t have come up with a better method of societal control than the crucifix behind every altar: look what happened to the Son of God when he tried to bring justice to the world and crossed the powerful, better to just sit in your pew and wait for the afterlife.

Jesus without the resurrection is generous, honest, forgiving, fearless and righteous. He sacrificed himself to save us in this world, not the next.

What would happen if we followed Jesus in life instead of death? We’d get more Martin Luther Kings and less Jerry Falwells for starters. We could fulfill Jesus’ intent for us to build a more just, equitable and loving life.

If you truly believe in the resurrection, what have you got to lose?

Be brave. Be kind. Be just.

Here Comes The Sun – George Harrison

Grown ups in the media have wasted America’s time for the last three years comparing Trump to various historical figures: King Cyrus and Andrew Jackson by the right, Hitler and Nero by the left. Both camps are wrong. Trump is a work of fiction to his audience and himself, an empty vessel wrapped in lies.

Who is he? A real estate developer? A mobster? A Manchurian candidate? A Tyrant? An entire cottage industry has grown up around defining who the President really is. Trump is not a creation of Putin, Fox News or even Roy Cohn, he is a creation of Warner Brothers.

Donald J. Trump is Elmer J. Fudd.

Trump would have been eight or nine years old when the Looney Tunes’ “Hare Brush” short was released, an impressionable time in a young mind.  In that six minute and fifty-four second animated film we see the blueprint for Trump’s life:

Elmer J. Fudd’s office door identifies him as the president. Donald J. Trump is the President.

Elmer J. Fudd is a millionaire. Donald J. Trump is also a millionaire who’s claims of  billionaire status remain unproven.

Elmer J. Fudd owns a mansion and a yacht. Donald J. Trump has owned a mansion (he sold it to a Russian oligarch) and a yacht (he sold it to a Saudi Prince).

Elmer J. Fudd Enterprises, a conglomerate of multiple Fudd companies in different industries is headquartered in the E. J. Fudd Building, a skyscraper. The Trump Organization, a conglomerate of multiple Trump companies in different industries, is headquartered in Trump Tower, a skyscraper.

Elmer J. Fudd pretends to be crazy to escape legal consequences, Donald J. Trump pretends to be crazy to escape legal consequences.

Elmer J. Fudd uses deception to shift the blame for his crimes onto Bugs Bunny. Donald J. Trump uses deception to shift the blame for his crimes onto his opponents.

Elmer J. Fudd was arrested by a Special Agent from the Treasury Department for Tax Fraud.  Donald J. Trump also commits tax fraud. He has yet to be arrested.

That’s a single short film our President must have watched as a child. But the similarities extend throughout the Looney Tunes golden era of the 40s and 50s.  Take for instance, 1943’s “To Duck Or Not To Duck”: Elmer Fudd participated in a professional boxing match against Daffy Duck, then assaulted Ducky Weeze, the hypeman, ref and announcer, at the end of the fight. Donald Trump participated in a professional wrestling match which ended with him assaulting Vince McMahon, the hypeman and announcer.

The basic plot of most Elmer Fudd cartoons is a lone white man of considerable means battling against either a black duck or gray rabbit who was up to that point minding their own business. He gets particularly enraged when either the black duck or gray rabbit enter his home and enjoy the benefits of modern American life. Sound familiar?

The good news is that Elmer J. Fudd fails in almost everything he does, just like our President. The bad news is that our President is Elmer J. Fudd with nuclear weapons.

That’s all, folks.

We’re raised to be passive observers, to sit and watch. We’re currently watching our constitution and democratic rights shredded before our eyes.  We’re sitting around and waiting to see what happens next. It’s our nature as Americans, even if we don’t realize it.  Our school systems were designed to produce obedient factory workers patriotic enough to die on the battlefield.  A small minority participates in sports, the arts and student government,  while the rest sit and spectate from the bleachers. We then graduate, get a job and distract ourselves at night watching made up stories. Participation is not encouraged but fandom is.

A fan is a devoted spectator. The word derives from fanatic: a person with excessive enthusiasm and intense, uncritical devotion. Corporations want to generate more fans because excessive enthusiasm and intense uncritical devotion are a great way to separate suckers from their money. A sizable chunk of our economy is built around fans. Sports, music, comics, movies, television and videogames all branch out into different media worlds as source material to help sell billions in consumer products. Social media is driven by fandom.

A favorite activity for fans of any type is shit-talking, both to build up their own allegiances and to tear down the opposition because fandom is a group activity and groups create enemies for cohesion.  Jimmy Hendrix versus Eddie Van Halen, Broncos versus Cowboys, Star Wars versus Star Trek, Marvel versus DC, Christianity versus Islam, Call of Duty versus Battlefield, Mac versus PC, Biggie versus Tupac are the kind of ridiculous, meaningless antagonisms of fandom. Fans need hate to balance the love – it has always been that way: fans of the yellow and green chariot teams fought pitched battles in ancient Rome; 2000 years later, soccer fan clubs committed multiple atrocities in the Yugoslav succession wars.

The best American novel to address fandom is Fredrick Exley’s A Fans’s Notes, about the black hole of depression of being a Giant’s fan and realizing that you’re a spectator in life as well as sports.  Fandom can be a dark thing, when a yearning for group cohesion is built around a fake idol. Plenty of authors and creatives have touched on it, from Steven King’s Misery to John Travolta’s new film The Fanatic.

John Lennon, Selena and other celebrities have been killed by their fans. One of Jodie Foster’s fans nearly assassinated Ronald Reagan. When fan clubs go awry, we call them cults: the Manson family, Jim Jones’ Peoples’ Temple and the Branch Davidians.

Donald Trump, at his core, is a fan. He’s constantly telling us he is a fan of various sports teams, dictators, hydrocarbons, right-wing journalists and the military.  He behaves on twitter like a fan: shit-talking the opposition, critiquing media and celebrities, making ludicrous claims and trying to fire up his fellow fans to literally kill the opposition if/when the need arises.

A fan now runs the game. His fanclub has gone awry. It’s time for the rest of us to quit being spectators.

Blitzkrieg Bop – The Ramones

Our nation’s constitution and our planet’s life support system are crumbling under the control of a tyrannical minority. It is time to put faith into action. It is apocalypse now.

The United States was founded to keep us free of religious wars and despotism. The founders knew the biggest threat to our republic was a wannabe tyrant with foreign backing. The protections they crafted against this are the constitution, separation of church & state, and the rule of law – all of which, coincidentally, are under attack by the Trump administration.

Our morally bankrupt, financially and sexually compromised Congress will not obey its oath and impeach despite clear evidence the President has committed multiple felonies, conspired with foreign powers against the American people and further violates the constitution each day he prevents legislative oversight of the executive branch.

At present, single issue protest movements do a good job of bringing issues such as unjust treatment of asylum seekers, climate change and wholesale attacks on women’s rights to light but will fail to alter policy. Battling against police, ICE or other government agencies over single issues is counterproductive as the agencies are merely executing an agenda delivered from the top of government, protestors rack up felonies which will affect their voting rights and prevent them from taking part in a future mass movement. Single-issue protests can be criminalized and defeated in detail. The country is rotten from the top down. we need to go after the head, not the hands – we do that with a national election in 2020.

The 2020 election is a little over 14 months away. There are four possible outcomes to the election:

• Trump wins a legitimate election and remains in power.
• Trump loses a legitimate election and concedes defeat.
• Trump steals the election through voter suppression and hacking.
• Trump loses the election and will not concede.

I know we’re all going to work towards outcome 2 but the President and the cabal around him have shown in both word and deed that options 3 and 4 are far more likely. That will happen in just over 14 months. Unless an immediate mass movement arises to stop it in 15 months, our Republic will tumble into the abyss.

We the people are entitled to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The Declaration of Independence states that when a government becomes injurious to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, it must be removed.

If I were to dream a protest to save us, it would be this:

Three million men and women assembling in Washington DC, dressed in white, singing as one while walking a giant circuit passing by the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court and Arlington Cemetery 24 hours a day. Everyone would take an eight-hour shift. Brass bands from around the country would play and march with us in the day. At night, we we’d walk in silent prayer with our flashlights and we’d cover Washington’s stone facades with projections of our Rights as well as Life, Liberty and Happiness. We would walk this circuit strengthening our bond as Americans until, like Jericho, the walls of corruption fall.

The protest would begin if and when the administration loses the 2020 election and refuses to relinquish power.

How could we build such a protest?

We’d need an all-encompassing movement to protect our freedom of speech, assembly and religion. Peace, Truth, Compassion, Generosity, Humility and Forgiveness are the beating hearts of most faiths and they would serve as good guideposts on the road forward. 90 percent of Americans have some form of faith and they all guide us toward similar virtues. Faith doesn’t have a good track record with governing but it does have a good track record seeking and securing rights. Faith should be a building block of any movement: faith organizations have deep ties within their community and nationally, they have experience feeding and moving people from one place to another, they’re not looking to physically fight anyone and, most importantly, they’re all called upon to set aside part of their life for a greater good. We need a greater good.

For the sake of argument, let’s call this movement Concord, which means harmony among peoples. Concord could not be affiliated with any political party or candidate.

Concord should be run by those who do not seek power and would refuse it if offered to them.

Concord’s goal would be restoration of the constitution and our full Bill of Rights.

Concord’s demands would be the immediate resignation of the Trump administration to be followed by a Truth and Reconciliation committee.

Concord’s methods would be non-violent mass protest.

Concord would wear white because it is the color of pilgrimage, it will show our blood if violence is used against us and we take from our opponent the only color he holds dear.

Concord would reach out, through its members, to unions, civic groups and non-governmental organizations.

People want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. People want to feel solidarity with their neighbors. People want to do good. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a history-changing event that brought us together as a family? Admittedly, this is a family with an uncle waving around a loaded pistol but, hey, once we get it out of his hands, it will be a great bonding experience.

There are inherent dangers. The most obvious danger is violence wielded by an illegitimate regime and its armed supporters. Over 65 percent of all non-violent revolutions succeed, only 5 percent of violent revolutions do. The regime will attempt to transform Concord into something it can beat through violent provocation. This is where strict adherence to non-violence will play a role.

Truth and Reconciliation is a carrot to limit violence. We’re offering the easiest possible out – escape from criminal prosecution in return for the full public airing of the truth followed by retirement from public life. Bring all the corruption to light.

It won’t be easy. Concord’s greatest challenges would be logistical: toilets, food and accommodations for an extended protest involving millions of people. This will require a massive, well-organized volunteer labor force. Concord would also have to build out medics, communications and legal services. The movement would need liaisons to coordinate strike actions with unions, professional organizations and civic groups.

Hopefully I’m wrong and we have legitimate elections with accepted results next year. If not, it would be useful to figure out how to restore our constitution and republic in the least dangerous way. No one is coming to rescue us from our national descent into hell but we can save ourselves.

Long live the republic.

The Beatles – Revolution

You may remember I wrote about China’s 19th Century Taiping Rebellion several months back. For those who think putting Trump in the White House was the most successful intelligence operation in world history: fasten your seatbelts because he was only one piece of it.

As a refresher, mid-19th century China was the target of colonial powers Britain and France trying to penetrate their market. Britain flooded China’s heartland (the Yangtze valley) with opium, rents skyrocketed, ethnic tensions escalated, private mercenary armies proliferated and a militant, nationalistic end-times bastardization of Christianity sprang up that demonized the central government. Sound familiar?

Those ingredients led to the bloodiest civil war in human history with 20-40 million dead. After the war, colonial powers sliced up and exploited pieces of China for a hundred years. It is my opinion that our geopolitical rivals, Russia and China, have been working towards a repeat of this scenario within the United States for two decades.

Let’s start with religion.  The Russian Orthodox Church under the Soviet Union was co-opted by the state. Clerics were generally KGB informants. In the 1980s, Vladimir Putin was assigned to the Fifth Directorate of the KGB, which oversaw religious organizations. Kiril, the current Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, has KGB connections and is close with Putin (and probably has been since the 80s). Western missionaries went to the Soviet Union in the 90s and the Russian Orthodox Church sought protection from the state. Yeltsin signed a law in 1997 which banned religious organization which had not been in the country more than 15 years – pretty much everyone that wasn’t in the Russian Orthodox Church.

Russia faced a demographic bomb. Abortion, drug abuse, emigration and alcoholism were shrinking the population.  The Russian Orthodox Church was rebuilt and expanded with hydrocarbon money to push nationalism, traditional values and Russian exceptionalism.  The Russian state and church move in lockstep – repressing dissenting opinions, and building Russian cultural power.  Political and religious repression of minorities and homosexuals escalated each year under Putin’s leadership.

Russia’s version of Christianity is, like all versions, influenced by local history and culture.  The Tsarist imprint runs deep and God serves as a stern father, rather than a forgiving one, which happens to coincide with American evangelical Christianity.  The Russian church (and state) found the right sympathetic ear, targeting Evangelical adherents in successful online and offline influence ops.

American Christian evangelical leadership succumbed to Russian influence in the same manner as the NRA – money, sex and an easily manipulated cultural inferiority complex.  The Russians appealed to their racist and apocalyptic agenda, a useful tool in the kit for American self-destruction.

Russian online propaganda seeds and reinforces evangelical belief that Trump is divinely chosen to carry out God’s plan.  Hong Xiuquan, leader of the Tai Ping rebellion, claimed he was Jesus Christ’s younger brother. Like Trump, Xiuquan was a lazy, lifelong underachiever. Unlike Trump, he was not head of state nor was he backed up by Russian intelligence, the folks who invented the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The goal is to literally demonize opponents to create an uptick in mass violence. Russian penetration of social media companies allows them to directly incite those who fit the profile. We can observe the results of this campaign by the right wing obsession with civil war and the extreme violence called for by so-called Christians and their preachers.

China has been quite upfront about its desire to own and control American assets from ports to pork processing, flipping the script on an ex-colonial power. China is less upfront with its involvement with opiate addiction in America’s heartland. China supplies most of the fentanyl, MDMA and synthetic cannabinoids in the United States. These drugs have killed tens of thousands of Americans.  The Department of Homeland Security has considered labelling fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. China, a surveillance state which knows the identity of every person who looks at the “tank man” photo and locks up people in possession of secret Bibles or Korans, feigns ignorance and an inability to stop this poisoning of Americans.

The profits of the drug trade, human trafficking and money stolen from home by Chinese and Russians is then laundered into U.S. assets, corrupting local politicians in much the same way colonial powers subverted the Chinese emperor’s authority in the 19th century. Mitch McConnell and his wife Elaine Chow would have fit right in colonial Shanghai – a regionalist politician selling out his country’s transportation and shipping interests to one colonial power (China), while simultaneously weakening the legitimacy of the central government by assisting another colonial power (Russia) in an attack on the electoral system.  The Senate Majority leader was rewarded with millions of dollars through his Chinese shipping magnate wife, dark money contributions and an aluminum plant courtesy of a Russian oligarch.  The President and his family have extensive business dealings in both China and Russia, so extensive his son admitted before the election that the lion’s share of their business came from Russia.

After 18 years of war and reliance on private military contractors, the U.S. is awash in mercenaries. Dozens of companies rent out veterans’ war-fighting skills and, like China after the opium wars, employ them to protect private business interests. Transnational organized crime groups (Russian and Chinese) round out the same kind of rogues gallery that existed in pre rebellion China.  All of them profit off chaos.

Donald Trump should not expect help from his colonial masters as his regime collapses. It’s in Russian and Chinese interests that his fall be as divisive and inflammatory as possible, setting a match to the kindling they’ve prepared within our borders. An America at war with itself allows Russia and China to manage their version of international order in Eurasia and Africa without American interference. Their goal isn’t a victorious Trump, it is an America on fire.

The Republican nationalists salivating for civil war in the U.S. should take a few minutes to read up on how it turned out for the Tai Ping and, more importantly, for China.  A century of chaos and exploitation by foreign interests isn’t exactly a great prize for inciting a civil war.

The United States was founded as a reaction against religious wars and despotism.  The founders knew the biggest threat to our republic was a would be a tyrant with foreign backing. The protections they crafted against this insanity are the constitution, separation of church & state, and the rule of law – all of which, coincidentally, are under attack by the Trump administration.

Our enemies want us to fight each other. Be an American and don’t give them what they want. Stand up for the rule of law or you won’t have any.

Welcome To The Black Parade – My Chemical Romance

As a writer, perhaps the most vexing task is naming characters. You’d like it to mean something for the larger plot but not be too ridiculous or on the nose. The writers of America: The Reality Show, are, in my opinion, lazy.  They don’t even try to hide it.

Look at the cast of characters and the etymology behind them.

Trump is a trick card in bridge. He’s spent his whole life tricking people.

Pence is a plural form of penny. The VP is about as useless as a bag of pennies.

DeVos is a Dutch surname which means ‘the fox’.  Betsy Devos is in charge of the education henhouse.

A bolton is an extra part that is fastened on to a machine with a bolt – an add on. They added Bolton as national security advisor to turn up the heat on Iran.

Mnuchin means rest. The Secretary of the Treasury sits on the President’ tax returns. His act of doing nothing, resting, violates the constitution.

Flynn comes from Gaelic and means reddish. The President’s National Security Advisor got indicted for lying about meetings with Russians, reds.

Kushner means furrier. Furriers strip the valuable pelts off animals, leaving the carcass to rot, which is kind of like stripping off U.S. policy, intelligence, technology and selling it for parts to foreign despots.

Pecker means penis. David Pecker made a living off other men’s penises as the head of AMI and its flagship publication the National Enquirer. He’s also, apparently, a dick.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders is a three fer. Sarah, a biblical name, means princess. Huckabee is a place name from Old English meaning crooked river.  Sanders derives from Alexander which means defender of men. Could there be a better name for somebody who lies like a river to protect crooked men?

Bernhardt is too blindingly obvious. Just say it:  burn hard. David Bernhardt, our Secretary of the Interior and former coal lobbyist, speeds up the burning of our planet.

Conway doesn’t need much explanation as Kelly Ann has been conning her way through life.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the writers of America The Reality Show replace Trump’s legal team with Dewey, Cheatam & Howe or hire Will Kriegverlieren as his next Secretary of Defense.  The writers of our show are not mystery writers, they’re dramatists crafting a morality tale with plenty of foreshadowing.

We, the audience, trained by decades of film and television, are expecting the twist or reveal. The only reveal will be that the truth has been staring us in the face the entire time. Why else would they have named a character Reality Winner and thrown her in jail for leaking to the American public that the 2016 election was hacked?

My Name Is Jonas – Weezer

The guilty parties destroying our civilization and planet will get away with it. The punishment the rest of us will face for their sins is biblical.  Generation X, Millennials, Generation Z and Generation Alpha will be forced to watch life die thanks to the Baby Boomers, at least according to science.

In the Book of Exodus, God tells Moses that He forgives inequity, transgression and sin but that doesn’t actually clear the guilty because God will visit, “the inequities of the fathers upon the children and upon the children’s children unto the third and to the fourth generation.”

A lot of Baby Boomers will already have passed on from old age by 2030, when the UN says that runaway climate change will be locked in. They will blissfully meet their end after living the best life of any generation on Earth.

Baby Boomers grew up with the best public education of any country. They dismantled it so the wealthy could have more money to spend.  Boomers inherited an economy that ranked number one in the world for healthcare and education. Under their leadership, the US ranking for healthcare and education declined to 27th.

When it comes to inequities, transgression and sin, the Baby Boomers elected the avatar of all three. Donald Trump ignored the scientific consensus and accelerated climate change with his obscene push for more hydrocarbon extraction. He is locking us into this death spiral with the appointment of extremist right wing judges who will stymie our attempts at saving ourselves in future court battles. Their choice for President condemns four generations to suffer.

This isn’t to say all Baby Boomers are bad but 53% of them voted for Trump and that was enough to condemn us. They won’t be around to live in the dystopia his courts create. They won’t be around to watch their children and grandchildren suffer from climate change.

There are many “Christians” who will disagree that Trump’s election brought us inequities, transgression and sin for which we must suffer the consequences. I ask them to think carefully about what they voted for: taking services from the poor to give money to the super rich (inequities), persecuting the stranger (transgression) and loading up the country with debt (sin). The consequences of these policies will haunt us for four generations whether you believe in God or not.

Exodus 34:7 read in the present day, as if written for our time, is the Bible’s way of saying, God may forgive you but the world won’t.  There is no magic. There is only causality. Actions produce reactions that can echo through time, affecting your great-grandchildren.

Our four generations left behind by the Boomers are saddled with their ecological, financial and moral debts.  God won’t suddenly appear and make those debts vanish.  Instead, we will be subjected to annihilating punishment for ruining the creation given us.

A large majority of evangelical Christians believe that all of this is okay, because we’re in the end times and it must be God’s will. These people couldn’t be more wrong.  Our creator gave us a brain to figure things out.  Our brains figured out how to put the dead to work for us in the form of fossil fuels. Our brains also figured out, over a hundred years ago, that putting carbon into the atmosphere would alter the climate. We, humanity, made a choice knowing the risks. That’s not God’s will, that’s on us.

So what’s God going to do to save us? Nothing.  God didn’t save his own kid from the cross, He sure isn’t going to save ours from a situation we caused.

If we want to save our planet, we’re going to have to do it ourselves.

End Of The World – R.E.M.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’ve crossed some lines in the last few days.

The rule of law is slipping through our fingers.  The Justice Department obstructs justice for the President.  The Secretary of the Treasury refuses to comply with legal Congressional demands to release the President’s income taxes. The President encourages federal law enforcement to break the law with an offer of pardon. The Senate majority leader, whose wife is also the President’s Secretary of Transportation, refuses to do his constitutional duty. Our Supreme Court is occupied by five conservative Catholics, two of whom believe that the U.S. can establish religion, that are part of a billionaire-funded decades-long conspiracy known as the Federalist Society that seeks to strip Americans of their political, economic and human rights. The majority of the country’s population (almost 2/3) is represented by only one half of one of the three branches of government (1/6).

The President and his propaganda network stoke white supremacy and religious bigotry, specifically targeting sitting U.S. congresswomen following an election season that witnessed mass murder by a white supremacist in a synagogue and a bombing campaign against the President’s critics by one of his supporters.

Secretary Neilson, who has broken human rights laws, resigned her post at Homeland Security because she wasn’t harsh enough. The nation’s immigration policy is in the hands of a 32 year old Santa Monica incel with no Congressional oversight. The President now intends to capture migrants and flood California and New York (who already subsidize red-state America) in hopes of politically destabilizing them.

We are descending into tyranny.

It will become more aggressive and obtrusive each month.  Crisis will be manufactured (as they already have been) to distract from lawless corruption and to incite further division.  Critics in the press will be further intimidated and threatened with jail. The machine will begin indicting political opponents.  Many others have written and warned against this. All the elements are locking into place.

A frequent descriptor of Trump in the media is that he will keep sinking lower and there is no bottom. That is the definition of an abyss, a bottomless pit, an infinite emptiness. You can throw anything into the abyss – your morality, your truth, your civil rights, your property, your human rights and your life. The abyss will not fill up if you stuff the whole world into it.

Power corrupts, which is why the founding fathers restricted the President’s power with Congress and  courts. Even a President with the best of intentions would become a tyrant if there were no check on their power and Trump came to office with the worst of intentions. He is drunk with power.

There is no bottom.

Nobody is coming to save us.  We, our fellow citizens, are all we’ve got.

The last hurdle for authoritarianism is the 2020 election, which they will likely play dirtier than all previous elections. It’s essential that every U.S. citizen you can find vote a straight Democratic ticket to halt the rot. An even Senate, more House seats and more governorships that can be flipped blue will put a wrinkle in their plans.  The election will be contested, that much is certain, but it’s tough to rig a 60/40 loss.

Get involved in campaigns, city council, school boards and non-governmental organizations. Join and participate face to face. Forget Twitter and Facebook resistance as it’s all infiltrated, monitored and designed to make you think you’re doing something when you’re just pushing a button while adding to your advertising profile.  Get involved, stay involved and recognize that anyone that isn’t for Trump is an ally, regardless of their position on single payer or student debt. Our political house is on fire, let’s extinguish the flames before we argue about what color to paint the rooms.

You are all that stands between us and the abyss. Get busy.

The Message – Grandmaster Flash

We live in a country run by people who want to push us over the civilizational cliff. Secretary of State Pompeo last month told the religious press he believed Trump was chosen by God, like Queen Esther, to save the Jewish people and that the U.S. will keep fighting until the rapture. It should scare the shit out of the average American to hear the Secretary of State say something that sounds like it came out of the mouth of the My Pillow guy.

The reality is that the people around President Trump, to include the Vice President, are a bunch of religious hucksters.  They’re all about manipulating God for profit which Jesus railed against in word and deed – Christ was repaid for this with a state execution. Imagine Jesus watching clips of God’s self-appointed representatives like Franklin Graham Jr wishing he could use a gun against Muslims, reading reports of Jerry Falwell and his wife having some kind of sexy business with a cabana boy in Miami, hearing Trump’s religious advisor Paula White demand her followers’ January salaries or face God’s wrath. These pharisees should be praying Jesus doesn’t come back as He’ll likely take a holy shit on them.

I can never tell if they believe their own bile or it’s a psychological self-defense mechanism. In Pompeo’s case, it must be difficult to reconcile the world-ending reality of climate change with his own twenty year record of doing anything the Koch brothers wanted to accelerate it – better to believe we’re in the end times and blame it on God.

Pompeo isn’t alone in his belief that we’re about to face judgement day. There’s a cottage industry built up around Trump being a figure from the Book of Revelations, which is being used to breed obedience and fanaticism.  Even Bibi Netanyahu got in on the act, claiming that Trump was one of the four great friends to Israel in history (ancient and modern) and compared the President to King Cyrus, an insult to all Persians as well as the intelligence of the world.

There’s little doubt in my mind that the development of this cult is to prime its members to fully abandon reason and commit violence if needed to keep Trump in power.  We’ll see how that turns out.

Most scholars agree the Book of Revelations is about Roman Emperor Nero and his persecution of Christians.  But let’s say I’m down for a more literal, “we are experiencing the end times now and Jesus could show up as soon as next Tuesday.” outlook on current events.  What could lead me to believe that Donald J. Trump is a representative of Christ on Earth?

Did Jesus deceive on a constant basis? Did Jesus cheat people out of the fruits of their labors? Did Jesus turn away the stranger? Did Jesus strive for money or fame?  Did Jesus despise the sick and the weak? Did Jesus worship worldly power? Did Jesus judge people on the color of their skin?  Did Jesus have three wives he cheated on?  Did Jesus launder money for organized crime? Did Jesus brag about grabbing women by the pussy? Did Jesus register a trademark in his name to run an escort service in the People’s Republic of China? Jesus wouldn’t have done any of that but Donald Trump did all of that and then some.

The President is the living personification of the seven deadly sins.  His behavior and his words are the opposite of Christ in the Gospels – I think there’s a word for that. Still, he could be part of God’s plan.

Perhaps the signs that Secretary Pompeo and his cohort believe point to Trump being God’s chosen seen’t clear to me because I’m not familiar enough with the source material. I heard trumpets are supposed to blow before the rapture and Trump does sound like Trumpet without the e.t.. Trump also means to win with a trick, which doesn’t sound righteous. Let’s take a closer look.

Trump was inaugurated in the first month of 2017.  Interestingly, the first verse of Revelations chapter 17 reads, “I will show the judgement of the Great Whore that sits upon many waters.” Didn’t Trump live in Manhattan, surrounded by water?  Maybe there’s something to this book. I better dig deeper.

“With whom the kings of the Earth committed fornication,” begins the second verse of Revelations, chapter 17.  Didn’t Trump have sex parties with some pretty important people? That could be a sign. I better keep going to find out what’s going to happen.

“I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet-covered beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns,” the third verse reads.  Uh-oh, scarlet is red, that’s the color of Trump’s face, hat, tie and party.  What could the seven heads mean? Could it be the seven authoritarians that cooperate in the global corruption network (Putin, Trump, Xi, Netanyahu, Erdogan, MBS and Bolsinaro), bent on the destruction of human rights as well as free and fair elections?  Nah, probably not. Trump does however, have seven hotels and… oh my, there are ten Trump Towers, which stick up out of the ground like horns. Maybe the televangelists are on to something, maybe Trump is like a character out of the Bible.

On to Revelations chapter 17, verse four, “And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold...”  Okay stop right there. Purple is the color of royalty and Trump does think he’s the king, we’ve covered the red and he loves gold. “...having a golden cup...” there’s the gold again, doesn’t Trump have a golden toilet? Doesn’t he drink from gold cups? “...in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornications.” The filthiness of her fornications is in her hands. That sounds pretty close to grabbing her by the pussy.

Are we getting warmer?

Verse five: “On her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon The Great, Mother Of Harlots And Abominations Of The Earth.” Whoa. I know somebody who wears their name on their forehead (it’s on a red hat) that also ran a modeling/escort agency and has filed to trademark Trump Escorts in China? Care to guess who it is?

That’s only the first five versus of a chapter with the name number as the year he was inaugurated – 17.  A lot of people say Trump’s number is 13, that’s the chapter in Revelations that discusses the mark of the beast people wear on their foreheads.  Isn’t a mark a brand? Isn’t Trump the first President who is a brand? Don’t people wear his brand on their foreheads?  Chapter 13 also tells us the number of the beast is 666. Where have a heard that number before? 666 5th Avenue, a billion dollar bottomless pit in the Trump family.

That’s a lot of coincidences for Trump being around during the end times but unfortunately it’s not as one of the good guys.  There’s even a great subplot in the end times story where the beast deceives everyone into thinking they’re worshipping God when really they’re worshipping the beast, know anyone that fits the bill?  Not boding well for our future but the false prophet does wind up calling down fire from the sky, which sounds like nukes, and we know based on our President’s words that’s he’d be perfectly willing to use them.

Perhaps the cherry on top, NASA released a photo of a black hole, which looks like the eye of God, which is supposed to look down upon the Earth in the end times. Never mind that it’s been there millions of years, we just saw it yesterday. Trust me, it will be incorporated into the mythology.

Our leaders, like the Secretary of State and Vice President, give the impression that they believe they are acting out the end times drama. These are people reconciled to the earth getting destroyed anyway, so if they really fuck up, it all must be God’s plan and they’re flattered they get to play such a big part in it.  In their worldview, global destruction isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. Heaven help us.

Personally, I don’t think there’s anything supernatural about our President. Trump is the character ancient Greeks like Plato predicted would show up in the end times for any democracy: A Tyrant.

Beast And Dragon, Adored – Spoon