The Laugh is on Us

What follows is an article by the "Atlantic."  Like most of the articles by this particular publication it is well written and well reasoned.  I am posting it for your consideration and speculation.

The thrust of the piece is that America is not nor has it ever been a democratic state.  If one defines democracy as rule by the people, the 51% that is, then the Bill of Rights itself is an undemocratic instrument.  Does it not protect unpopular speech from censorship by the government that presumes to represent the people and unfamiliar religions from discrimination by the majority - the 51%, that Jefferson believed need to be watched?  The Supreme Court, with no accountability to the people and a kind of absolute power more reminiscent of a ruling aristocracy, is an undemocratic institution. 

The Founding Fathers devised the Electoral College in the firm belief that the people, the majority, the 51% were not to be trusted to elect their president. The writers and signers of the Constitution believed that the tendency of the 51% might be to elect people with “talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity”; in other words the people would have a tendency to sweep dangerous demagogues into office and the Electors were there to prevent that catastrophe.

Question: Come December 19th when the Electors vote - hardly the independent minded people the Founders imagined, more like party sycophants - will we be witnessing the greatest irony in the history of the modern world; or a cosmic joke, the punch line to which we are not yet privy? You decide.

The Electoral College Was Meant to Stop Men Like Trump From Being President

A Dark Tale

It is the Saturday after Thanksgiving in 2016 and the shock of having elected the most dangerous, ridiculous and moronic man in history to the highest office in the land is beginning to wear off.  Now we must deal with the dark tale he is producing around his cabinet and assorted hangers-on.  So far in a horrible parity of Snow White he has managed to put forward Sleepy, Ben Carson a proposed pick for HUD Secretary; Goofy, Jeff Sessions for Attorney General; Dopy, Reince Priebus for White House Chief of Staff; and Grumpy, Steven Bannon for Chief Strategist – whatever the fuck that means.

Sleeping together endlessly in a frozen inertia are a media silenced by extortion – held for ransom, limited access to the most powerful man in the world – and sniveling about the diversity of Trump’s cabinet rather than expounding the perilous inexperience of same; along with a public lulled to sleep by apathy and the idiotic belief that if they do nothing or the wrong thing long enough someone better then they – that is to say lacking in all human frailties – will step out of the wilderness to lead them. The Evil Queen – a bastardized version of patriarchal power – sits confident in the knowledge that at least the status quo of hierarchical authority, a facile and tatter beauty, has been maintained in the greed and avarice that sustains class, race and gender privilege.

This is where we are as the end of the year speeds toward us with the sickening knowledge that soon a monster, a con man, a sociopathic narcissist will take possession of the greatest office and bully pulpit in the known universe.  Accordingly, on Thursday some gave thanks for this sorry state of affairs, I suppose.  Some gave thanks for the people who will stand against Trump and his malignant band of dwarfs; people like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and other veterans heading to Standing Rock in December to support our First Nation.  Some gave thanks for Social Networking and the Independent Press for as long as they exist until Trump sets net neutrality alight along with Free Speech, the Department of Education, Religious Freedom and so much more to create the greatest conflagration of human and civil rights in the history of our Republic.  Some just slept unable to be awakened by anyone’s kiss – or kick.  They slept peacefully, carelessly and obliviously under the spell of tryptophan with no interest other than afternoon football and a slice of pumpkin pie. 

These are the people we must worry about, I am afraid.  These people who have through profound resignation unquestioningly accepted the bitter fruits of the system and are now in a permanent brain-death sleep.

The Intercept

Let me say to begin with and without equivocation, don't let the political establishment, of either  party, or the shills in the mainstream media convince you that alternative journalism is the same thing as false journalism.  For the most part ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN and certainly Fox are propaganda machines not news sources.  They embarrassed themselves mightily during the election.  First, by promoting a man who is now determined to shut them out; secondly, by being smugly wrong about everything; finally, by refusing to own the nightmare their arrogance and blatant stupidity has helped to engender.  With the exception of a handful of people – Maddow, Melber, Hayes, O’Donnell and the Williams boys, Brian and Pete, to name a few of the best – journalism died with Cronkite.   

Having said all of this, anyone who isn’t familiar with the premise of the following article by “The Intercept” might be shocked to know that there is no Santa Claus. I have said before and will say again, Mike Pence is a greater menace then Trump.  The latter is a carnival barker, a buffoon, a cheap stage prop who will stumble about making rambling speeches, showing off his wife and engaging in warped performance art, while men like Pence, Bannon and General Mike Flynn do their best or worst. 

For his part, Pence is a religious fanatic, a zealot of the “My God is the only God” variety.  He practices Christianity with an emphasis on Old Testament values like vengeance, bloodletting and bigotry.  Pagans will be at real risk in his America, as will anyone who doesn’t conform to his constipated moral and world views. 

So, add Pagans, Atheists, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, of course Muslims and many others to the swelling ranks of people for whom the Bill of Rights will be rewritten with the proviso – Need Not Apply.  As our LGBT brothers and sisters may feel the need to step back into the closet, and our undocumented brothers and sisters the need to step deeper into the shadows; women may need to brace themselves for the back alley where people with unclean hands and dirty instruments do surgery that was once safe, and Pagans may need to take off our jewelry while stepping into basements and windowless rooms to perform ritual.

These are the wages of apathy, of forgetting that freedom isn’t free and democracy requires thought, education and work.  For all of those who put party over principle, forgot who they were supposed to be working for or who weren’t paying attention during the election season, welcome to our nightmare, man; welcome to our Gestalt.  How do you like it?

MIKE PENCE WILL BE THE MOST POWERFUL CHRISTIAN SUPREMACIST IN U.S. HISTORY

Talking Back on Twitter

Past the law books and the courts, the lawyers and the judges, the humps we elect to legislate between vacations and influence peddling, there is a kind of justice that none of us can escape. It is the universal balancing of the scales known as KARMA.

We can try to laugh it off, blow it off, buy it off, but like the fella said, "No dice, chump." We are stuck with what we earn.

Talking Back on Twitter

Behold Our Karma

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity ... Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  

What else can I say?  What else is there to say? Sanders supporters can say, I told you so.  I am a Sanders supporter, it goes without saying; but so the fuck what? Never Hillary people can say, we won. To which I say, prove it - now and as time goes by.

We have witnessed the beginning of the end of the two party system, brought about by the arrogance and native carelessness of the political elites.  We are witnessing the fatal embarrassment, and hopefully the demise, of a mainstream media, bloated with money and stagnate of thought.  None to soon, I might add, it all seems to be blowing apart, shaking and crumbling.

In the Tarot deck there is a card called, "The Tower." It represents the war between truth and lies. The tower, the structures we count on, shake and crumble under the weight of our refusal to let go of the latter at the expense of the former. There is a darkness about this card, much like the darkness that is slipping over this country.

To those who voted I say, better luck next time. To those who didn't vote I say, fuck you and may you come to regret that lost vote as bitterly as possible. However, as the religious zealots thank their smug God of vengeance and cruelty, and the bed-wetters who can't adjust to a changing world look to their strong man for the courage they lack, let me say, behold our Karma. It is a whirlwind of our own making, coming upon us with the chill of shock and disbelief. Let us watch and listen, study and learn so that when we pass through it - if we pass through it - we will have stronger brick and mortar with which to build a new tower.

Good Luck America

I am writing at this time to say that I am terrified. It looks like we have a chance of electing the first American Fascist. There are those who prefer this monster to a woman. There are those who consider a pending rape case, albeit civil, and a pending civil Rico case against Trump preferable to the unproven and in some cases fictional charges against his opponents. There are those who considered a vote for a candidate who couldn't possibly win to be more honorable then a vote to protect themselves from a man like Trump. I hope we can all live with what we have done. I have no doubt that we will deserve whatever we get.

V O T E !!!!

If you haven't voted, do so. If you don't, please do your countrymen and women the service of keeping your mouth shut. The next few years, no matter who wins, promise to be difficult enough without people who have invested nothing demanding anything.

From the boys with muskets in three-cornered hats, to the suffragettes in white, to the men and women fighting today against voter suppression, the franchise is the most valuable thing you own. It is more valuable then your stock portfolio, more valuable then your car, more valuable then your home or life insurance. The vote is the bread and meat of this democracy. We can't cry about what our politicians destroying democracy if we are starving it to death.

Vote for yourself, vote for your kids, vote for your grand kids, vote because you can, but VOTE!

All the flowers pictured here are spring flowers. Some joy at the end of a dark season.