Hunter S. Thompson would've known what to say...

Where's Hunter when you really need him? Dead, of course. And dear readers if you're not aware or have never heard of the man, check IMDB for Johnny Depp and back up a bit. Mr. Depp and earlier Bill Murray played him in movies and the former was a friend of the man. What I'm saying is that I'm old enough to know H.S. Thompson through his WORK instead of the shade that was Depp's and Murray's version of the man. Mannerisms, chicanery and the ever present cigarette holder aside, the man was a gifted writer and the preeminent "gonzo" reporter from 1960 through to his death in 2005. 

Nowadays he'd be pilloried for his prose. He simply didn't care about political correctness. He considered it the last defense of the indefensible and a bastion of cowardice. Me too. While the concept is laudable, it's the uneven application that puts my Fruit-of-the-Looms in a twist. I believe that's the prima facie reason Democrats have lost their way. They left behind the working man/woman for the faux Elysium of diversity, equity and inclusiveness. Again, nice concept unevenly applied. 

Hunter Thompson's words dragged us to the well of naked and unadorned truth and held us down by the neck until we slurped. He answered all the questions as great reportage is want of and more. He shined the light of a lava lamp seasoned by his acerbic wit and served up with a heapin-helpin of guffaws. As was always with Hunter, the fun was the context of his reporting and his drive to discover the truth no matter how twisted or convoluted the path. The things he loathed were many. The things he loved were many too.

During his time no one deserved his ire more than Richard Milhouse Nixon. He was relentless right up until the POTUS double peace signed the country before fucking off from the White House for the last time on Marine One. While Nixon's accomplishments were historical, it was his tomfoolery that cost him his job. It can be said that even Nixon knew when to leave. Trump has no such filter nor moral center. He would have had his co-conspirators shot before allowing them to testify. Or at least sent to Guantanamo hog tied and ball gagged.

We could use Hunter now. Unfortunately he was an original and did not come from a mold. His was a singular voice of his generation. With civil rights, Vietnam, Nixon and Wall Street he had fertile ground to plow. And he did so with aplomb. We miss you Hunter. If you haven't already insulted our Maker, maybe you could wrangle a name out of him for your replacement. We need them bad. Send them soon. Send them now.

A particular kind of madness...

 It takes one to know one, right? Is that why crazy goes unchecked? The crazies looking out for one another. That figures. Now that the Trumpian White House v2 is coming what are we to look for that might tip the rest of us off that the neuroses is reaching critical mass? 

Maybe Trump will start by firing someone and have them marched out to the south lawn and really fired. Maybe he'll try to burnish Jeff Epstein's reputation and claim the whole thing was a witch hunt perpetrated by Nancy Pelosi and George Soros. Or more likely give blanket immunity to the traitors that stormed the capitol and tried to overturn a national election by force.

No, you say. Preposterous you add. Well he's already tried flying Matt Gaetz through as Attorney General. I mean really people? What did you expect? There is no other way. To serve the Trump, you have to bend the knee, kiss the ring and flush any self respect down the drain. Oh and yell, "Murica!" really loud and repeatedly.

Such is the state of our malaise. Heads filled with Trumpian dogma. I use little bags to pick up dogma out of my backyard. I used to flip it over the fence with a shovel till the neighbor complained. Some people have no sense of humor. Anyway, if you had a shovel in D.C. what would you do with it? I know what I'd do but then I'm a little crazy, remember?

The Undead and Other Nuisances...

So now the orange haired wonder is starting to babble openly and not just at his rallies. Hmm, better have him tested. I'm thinking when it's all said and punned, he'll be dead by his own hand. He will have dangled himself off his golden crapper. He will be watching Kamala's first State of the Union address buoyed by the roiling success of her first one hundred days. 

His brand now diminished the only outlets open for his blather are the tabloids. After the election, he retired as promised to his villa in Venezuela where he suffers rolling blackouts. He had his golden throne moved from Trump Tower just before the NY taxing authority seized the building along with a good portion of his remaining assets. They were not as large as he claimed. The new owners scooped up the property at the ensuing tax sale. It is now the world headquarters for a chain of dollar stores.

The Venezuelan police said he was on his golden toilet and the silk rope he had around his neck from the night before got picked up by his state-of-the-art autonomous vac system. The bot was passing by the bathroom and snagged the rope yanking him off his thrown in mid grunt. When the security team arrived they reported hearing a rhythmic thumping and squealing sounding like the Supreme Bloviator defiling another hamster. The local pet stores are sold out.

The vac was thumping against the door to the bathroom tethered to the lifeless form on the other side of the door. The Donald will be found blue lipped and bug-eyed lying face down in his own pee. His come-over lolling back in forth still attached behind one ear with a piece of tape. Before the darkness reclaims him, he scrawls upon the Italian marble floor, I wo...

Ivanka will identify the corpse by the Lil' Devil tattoo on his ass. Jared's cock cage will become infected having lost the key in 2019. Uday and Qusay will lock themselves in the powder room of dollar store tower's penthouse and attempt to snort their way through a pound of coke in one sitting. The coke will be laced with fentanyl yet they still do not die! They will however shit their pants and fall back in it.

We're running out of rope, sir...

I told someone, hell I told everyone that all we had to do was give Trump all the rope he wants because as sure as the sun is a ball of fusion he will eventually figure a way to hang himself. Little did I know that we would have to prevail upon rope making companies worldwide to meet the demand. Which illustrates my point, the rope is but a metaphor for just how far people will double down on the delusions of a madman.

Niccolo Machiavelli said that liars will always exist as long as people are willing to be lied to. Nuff said. If we all had bullshit meters turned up to eleven and had license to deliver one precise blow to the side of the head of any and all who deserve one, the world would be a sore place indeed. Open hand of course. We don't want damage. Rather a good jostle of the cogs, cams and gears of the mind. The brain is but a muscle and prone to atrophy as well.

Proof of this is at every Trump rally and I'm not picking on the boss but rather his minions. Hitler would have been nothing without Himmler, Goebbels and Goering. They were his co-conspirators along with many more unsavory characters. There were no small actors in his troupe of banal evil. No one survived Nazism unscathed. It was the rank and file German, the downtrodden suddenly transformed with purpose and a clear enemy toward which to hurl themselves. Jews were easy targets. The rest of the world didn't stand a chance.

All empires exist to invade, impose and extract by any means necessary for the glory of a king, queen or nation and sometimes all three. They invade and sublimate the inhabitants in order to extract any and all wealth to fill their coffers. Empires are expensive to run even with absconded goods and slave labor.

Ideas both good and bad take time to settle and take hold. The ground has to be fertile and the root stock ready. And we have to know that the bad ones are working just as hard to thrive. So it's up to each of us to caucus with the angels of our better nature and seek the right choice. Our way of life is at stake.

God is a skeptic...

Otherwise why would "it" have thrown us a bone? He/she doesn't believe in us. It created us, right? The simple question for me that I proffered time and again in Sunday school was, "Why?" Why are we special? And for what? A pass to an eternity that any sane person would consider an absolute bore three days in? Oh look, it's manna for breakfast, lunch and FOREVER! Wait a minute, where's the pulled pork, Jesus? C'mon, that was so five centuries before you, man. Demon possession does not spoil the meat. Lemme at the grill, I'll show you. 

(Quick aside, I got spanked when I was ten and claimed I had no interest in a place without peanut butter. I felt Paradise was sorely out of touch with my needs even back then.)

Wait a minute, whadya mean we don't have to eat? What else is there? Rolling along 24K sidewalks on Segways singing "His" praises for ETERNITY? No friggin' way. There's gotta be more to the mystery than advertised. Otherwise this party is going nowhere and I'm not interested. Take your hymnal and your finely tuned deafness elsewhere. Have a nice eternity. I'm going where there's bacon. You can trust bacon way more than a priest. Just ask a choir boy.

That's how I think of religion. We're raised in it. Steeped in it. Redeemed by it. Absolved of our wickedness weekly when faithfully attendant and paying your 10%. Even the Good Book says you have to maintain in order to enjoy the fruits. And that was the source of my first rub in Sunday school. Salvation is supposed to be free but then there's the actual transaction between the stick of damnation and the dangled carrot of paradise. Wait, you said what? Oh that's gonna cost ya. Then the stick comes down and beats you and the carrot to a pulp. Like Job, just for shits and giggles.

That's just not me anymore. I've lived too long. Seen too much inside and out of the church walls to believe in a "just" God anymore. Like Mr. Palahniuk conjured so succinctly in his book about the existential threat of self awareness, Fight Club where the lead character clarifies, "God's a kid with an ant farm." Spot friggin on, that one. 

What's important is the person beside me. Be they friend or foe. They're what I'm about when in the world moment to moment. Being with that person or people listening and being present. What else is there? Life is either action or memory. Memories are paltry compared to the actual experiences but they do serve as way points marked along a trek. Memories also come in different denominations. Some are are like the rarest of jewels, sensual and soul stirring.

As for my personal beliefs, I defer to the epic, the big picture in minor detail. My heirs can sift through the detritus for worth and value. I'll be onto the next thing whatever it is. The afterlife must be okay because the dead haven't bothered to come back with pictures or an updated brochure and besides, the living don't really want to know anyway.

Where do they find these people?

I've lived long enough to see one president assassinated, one fall from grace and hold up double peace signs before departing on Marine 1 for obscurity. Then saw his second in-command exonerate him while stumbling through his one term. Then a submariner peanut farmer who built houses for poor people (with his own tools), the great and fallible yet always entertaining Ronnie Reagan and then Clinton getting impeached for getting his brass polished in the oval office while on the clock. Talk about multitasking! Then came Dubya. Okay maybe we should table his tenure for different tirade. 

After that we came up for air, embraced the angels of our better nature and put a mulatto in the big chair. A place where no blackish man had gone before. Except maybe to fix a squeak or a tear in the upholstery. We did ourselves proud. We did good. Those that hate him still hate him for actually being way better than they expected.

Then came Trump. He who parlayed bloviation into political gold. Who knew? C'mon, I'm not always the brightest bulb in the fixture but really? What am I missing? These people make shit up about so much so often that you'd better not stand close for fear of being covered in it yourself. Now that the law has caught up with this asshole, his minions are doubling down with righteous indignation beating their breasts and blaming the very system they created. Go figure.

One ass-hat whose name rhymes with Sebastian Gorka had the temerity (he has a camel-back full of the stuff) to take offense at a direct question about the evidence presented at Trump's arraignment. Rather than answer the question he began berating the journalist even questioning their language skills, "You don't speak English, do you? Obviously you don't because you haven't heard a word I said." 

Which was nothing more than a feckless diversionary tactic. Knowing that, the reporter kept calm and let Gorka blather on about weaponized injustice like a pimple-face kid that memorized a brochure for the John Birch Society. If you can't answer honestly, call the questioner mean and stupid and a homo brain and promise to have them beat up. One thing's for certain he is definitely invited to the Trump Towering Inferno Christmas party this year. Rudi will not be invited. Unless he brings his own liquor!

I have it on Q authority they're trying out some new uniform designs for the future. Gorka's will no doubt invoke a Himmler-esque Darth Vader vibe paired with Goering's jodhpurs and jack boots. Either way, you just know it'll have one of those long zippers up the back so he can make a quick costume change. 

Just in case

When the truth fails...

Okay, I have to admit something. I live in Florida and I'm a conservative. This is not something I am proud of right now. Of either one. But I digress too soon. First we need a little context.

Conquistadors made landfall near St. Augustine in 1565 and shortly thereafter... aw hell, you know what happened and the natives didn't have a say much less a chance. Florida has entertained its share of villainy and prosperity in equal measure. From the aforementioned Spaniards to the Brits to pirates to slavers, to common profiteers, St. Augustine was just the tip of the spear with regards to what men will do in the name of king, queen, country or company when really it's always just about the money.

Fast forward to now and it doesn't take a degree to understand that this place, like most of America, either by way of the sword, bullets or the common cold succumbed to Manifest Destiny. I'm guessing the Timucua had never heard of herd immunity. Back then we spelled genocide another way--progress. 

Now a pudgy malignancy named Ron DeSantis, our current gov, has become a darling of the Tea Party cum neo-Nazi MAGA hat wearing set that have infected, nay, subverted the GOP. The Republicans are no longer the standard bearers of conservatism but rather a brutish bug-eyed buffoonery normally associated with survivalists, lynchings and Trump rallies. Bobert, Taylor-Green, and Gaetz are but minions. Blindly supportive, loyal to a fault, cultish and mostly lacking in any walking around sense.

They either cannot nor will not stand right-wise to the truth. Rather the truth is buried under a flurry of denial and misdirection and capped off with a two ton slab of certainty. And people loooooooove certainty. Goes right along with their notions of right and wrong. They like things tidy. Neatly wrapped in sanctity and slathered in dogma with a side of damnation. 

Personally, I think they've lost their way inside Donald Trump's colon, can't tell up from down and apparently not one of them brought a flashlight. Or any walking around sense. But I have not lost mine. My conservatism is intact. Theirs is a barrel of rotting fish left on the dock in August. If we would just kick it off so the bottom feeders could appropriately deal with the contents, we might all sleep better. 

Till that day comes, DeSantis will continue to take a cue from his progenitor and lie about anything and everything that he deems worthy to perjure himself for as long as it makes him look presidential. Like he said, "The future of America is at stake!" Heck, even a blind pig finds an acorn once in awhile.

DeSantis is proof of concept for the neo-GOP and their corporate handlers. Remake local governments into fiefdoms for the party. Control the spin into a downward spiral and blame the Democrats when anything gets wonky. They are the bringers of all things terrible. To socialize with a Democrat is to ladle the steaming contents of Das Kapital into your lap without benefit of pants or even a dinner napkin. Even if they are your beloved family members and neighbors you must demean, deride, demonize, deplore and blame them for all our country's woes.

If by chance the Democrats manage to lose again, I know DeSantis will celebrate by grabbing his own ass with both hands so he can fuck the remaining oxygen out of the room. There's a whole lot of smoke in the DeSantis household but not one friggin mirror. This is what we get in Florida's GOP owned state house and gov'nors mansion. More of the same. A grandstanding wind bag who'll spend taxpayer dollars to redistribute immigrant families to other states and blame the Democrats all while making friends in low places everywhere. Lord help us!

It's the crime, er uh the climb, baby...

Alright already!  President Good Brain is officially a loser!  I say, Godspeed for that cumquat color coiffed carpetbagger!  Now it's time for him to dance with the Southern District of New York and answer for his talents.  But politics being a bloodless sport [insert wink here] we here in the real world will have to carry on while he bangs the drum for reinstatement while trying to plug all the holes in the Big Lie.

I'm thinking CPAC has a gold-leaf lined glory-hole somewhere off to the side where a coterie of only the most ardent supplicants kneel and pay for the privilege to hear a loop of his best snark thrown at the poor, the immigrant, every liberal and Mike Pence [who will never be forgiven]. You'll need to ask a German national of a certain age to understand the implications for the future. 

For me, I remember when you didn't touch the flag with your bare hands.  This guy gropes, smooches and dry-humps the flag on stage and the very folks who drilled into my soft head that the flag was as sacred a symbol as Jesus on the cross gave that POS a standing ovation.  So for this guy, the only mountain he hasn't climbed yet is the last one. The one where the reward is sitting at the right hand of God. Jesus better watch out. You can imagine the latest speech in his ongoing usurpation campaign...

Virgin births are overrated. He's only half Jewish! How do we know he wasn't just the spawn of some one-night stand with a Roman soldier. We all know women love a uniform. The place was crawling with them. I have a gardener named Jesus. I'm just saying, do we really want a savior from some no-name shit-hole in the middle east with all his minor miracles, a fish in every basket... fake news, people!  

Wouldn't you rather have an extremely successful world class real estate developer with great hair from the greatest city on Earth to lead you into the light?  

Your call.

A brave new whaaaa...

I quit.  Specifically, I quit reading the newspaper.  Cold turkey.  Blackout on the daily read and wrangle.  Guess what, my blood pressure dropped back into normal range too.  Coincidence?  Maybe.  Or maybe eating right and going to the gym helped.  I mean, it did before I stopped reading the paper.  Anyway, it was the constant gyre and gimble in the wabe that got to me.  The POTUS is this the POTUS is that sort of stuff.  The POTUS is.  And that's all there is till next time.

Even so, I am still perplexed.  In the history of the realm, our greatest presidents moved the country with their words in a positive direction together.  Think Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, Kennedy, Reagan and even Obama.  Theirs was a voice of reason and of binding together.  That cannot be said of the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.  A man who placates neo-Nazis and white supremacists while blaming the left for calling him out and being the left.

Knowing that Trump will go down as an aberration and not a harbinger gives me comfort.  He has served as I predicted and has not deviated from the course I believed he would chart during his tenure.  That of blowing up MY party [Republican] and dividing the nation through segregation, exclusion and demonization.  As long as the economy holds, the country is his oyster.  And he came to shuck.  This has always been his way.  The zebra cannot change its stripes.

His too is the way of all populist despots.  Pump up your base by feeding their fear and prejudice with nostalgia.  Promise them Nirvana and pillory the naysayers.  Call them sore losers.  Losers!  His is ever thus a world of bluster over substance.  Of prenuptial and nondisclosure agreements and a plurality of barristers.  Of patting himself on the back because well no one else can do it as well as he can.

His presidency will be remembered as one of deepened deficit spending leading to even deeper national indebtedness and environmental degradation while reassuring us that it's going to be so good, tremendous and beautiful that we'll become sick of it. That last part he got right.  Even now some of his minions have begun to question their decision in following such a man.  To that I say, about damn time and pass the barf bags.

The world's worst hangover...

The morning after is coming.

Half of our countrymen [and women] have partaken in a bit too much of the T-rum-punch.  I'm talking about that elixir of deliverance they believed would reorder nature and send us all in the way-back machine to a version of America more pure, more moral and definitely more white.  The core of his supporters are the angry disenfranchised post-industrial fodder of our hollowed-out heartland. And Evangelicals. They've had honey poured in their ears and are just a little too happy to feed their babies to the beast.

Recently, I heard a reporter traveling through that same heartland asking Trump supporters what they think about the job the POTUS is doing.  With few exceptions they intoned that he was doing what he promised and putting money in their pockets because "he alone" could do these things.  They are punch drunk.  Not the sappy I really love you man type of drunk but more the blood-eyed-frothing-at-the-mouth-crazy-enough-to-kill-you-if-you're-not-onboard-the-Trump-train-to-Hell kind of drunk.  Who says evangelicals don't drink?

The hangover will be intense and there will be little relief save for clarity and aspirin.  Some will reach for hair of the dog while others will swear off voting altogether.  I'm hoping Phizer will come up with a version of Antabuse for stupidity.  They should setup carts in front of polling stations and dispense it free of charge.  Side effects may include but are in no way limited to improved hygiene, better posture, moving into the right lane when someone flashes their lights at you in rear-view mirror, clarity about your fiancee', finances and less carbs. 

Even without such a panacea some will see themselves for the first time, own up to their mistake and be better for it.  My fear is that too many will curse the light and double down.  For them there will be no tonic nor elixir save for more disgust and disillusionment.

Mores the pity because they're good people who've simply bought into a lie from a professional liar because they need so desperately to believe in their convictions. And therein lies the essence of the problem, that of emotion over thoughtfulness. Beliefs over facts. It's what Hitler used to rally his nation. We know how that turned out.

Despots have always had that working in their favor--the ability to move their base in the direction of and sometimes beyond the firey gates. No one is safe. Just ask a Jew. Or a native American. Or a Bosnian. Or an Armenian. Or a Uyghur. I could keep going but... belief is more powerful than facts.

Something going around...

Regarding the hubbub around the removal of Confederate monuments, can there be a better example of history revised proving that history is mutable under scrutiny?  As an American by birth and a Southerner by geography, I am neither a fan nor hater of such monuments.  But why not contextualize them instead of hiding them?  Make an addendum.  We learn things by addition and once a thing is learned it is darn near impossible to un-learn.  Especially after being mythologized.  Johnny-Rebs rule 'round heunh!

Fans of the Confederate battle flag always opine that it’s heritage instead of bigotry.  This is the same argument about the Civil War being waged over state’s rights.  And it was.  But, the linchpin of state’s rights was precisely the maintenance of slavery.  Everything else shows up reflected in the rear view mirror and objects may appear much farther away than…

Why not add a ring of empty slave manacles to the base of every Confederate monument?  Add a placard explaining why the war was fought and why we lost and America won!  And don’t the victims of slavery deserve to be honored as well?  Wasn't it their tears, sweat and blood that consecrated the ground around every plantation in the South for over two hundred fifty years before the war that abolished the practice?  Or was their blood not red enough?

But seriously, some southern men of a certain age are like an inebriated Kentucky colonel with his pants down around his ankles chasing a young Nubian princess promising, "It's all good, everyone loves white meat." Like anyone wants to hear nor God forbid see anymore old whitey bullshit.

The South indeed has to atone but I can argue that the country has even more to answer for starting with  native Americans.  I believe the only polite thing to do is to allow them to go first.  Start at Jamestown and enumerate the treaties we broke [all of them] along the way to where we stand today with regards to the first peoples--the first Americans.  Do that, then we can talk about reparations for slavery.  That's only fair.  Hey you, back in line!

If the sins of the father are visited on his children, shouldn’t we take better care for the sake of our own?  So why not honor the sacrifices of the victims?  We owe history and the future the truth.  Warts and all.  It's a bitter pill for southerners but one that has to be taken.  Bottoms up!

The thing of it is...

In order to shoot down stupid, you have to come loaded for bear.  And not for one of those cute and fuzzy Alaskan browns or that tundra trotting Coke swilling polar version, I'm talking Ursus Maximus.  The kind a nuclear weapon would just annoy.  Okay, I might be gilding a Lilliputian but stupid is the gift that outlasts the Energizer Bunny.  We might put up our hands now and then and say, "No more, please, I'm full."  But then we surrender, "Mmm why not, maybe just one more scoop."

A coworker had a phrase that fits, "Shit's good if you like it."  The statement is repulsive but nonetheless spot-on.  Social media bears this out.  A smarter fellow than I once said, "Folks would rather be rallied than edified." That alone nails Trump and his minions.  He shows up, pounds the podium for ignorance and the facts lose every time.  Proof enough?

Facts aren't divorced from fallacy. Hell, they've never even met. Fallacy is slathered on everything like butter on hot toast. Facts are like fiber. Good for you and gluten-free. Fallacy is like gluten, stretchy and sticks to everything. Like your beliefs.

Maybe news organizations should treat the truth like cold medication. Flavor it with cherry overtones and more than a hint of Everclear. The taste would be palatable and we'd get a good night's sleep believing we'd done some good. Smartened up a bit, triangulated, delved into the deep end and came up with the truth. Figured it out. Done edified our bad selves. But that's just the dextromethorphan talking.  Nighty-night.

Come sun up it will be screw the fiber and more gluten, please.  Facts lose every time.