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.

It's Kamala, bitch!

I'm pretty sure I'm preaching to the choir when I say, "Asshats! Every one of them!" Now apply that liberally on any itchy spot you have. Chances are it will offer no relief nor do I claim it will. But it is something to do till the January after the election when we can finally say good riddance to _ _ _ _ _ (insert favorite bowel obstruction here) and say hello to tomorrow. 

Now either you fall one way or t'other but all can freely apply the aforementioned tincture to their aperitif. If you're a Trump minion then you have my condolences. Naaaaaah, fuck you people! You idiots would sell us out to Putin and every tyrant on the planet just because your boy works for gawd and, he is stroooooong. He took a bullet in the ear then told Jesus he had to go 'cause Prezeedint Trump done stole my heart. 

Joe Biden is no perfect man nor president. None of them were. I don't believe we'll ever see one and I pray we do not. The real deal will gain a following that will make a Trump rally look like a sideshow at a county fair in a shit-hole country. Along with cotton candy and the smell of ripe livestock, the real deal politician will know how to drop a deuce, polish it and make you think it's gold. Trump only got half of us with his bullshit. The rest of us called him on it and continue to do so. His minions still thinks he's "the shit." I couldn't agree more. He is THE shit. All other shit just doesn't compare.

The real deal he/she will not stop until the world burns. Here's the rub, I can't blame the leader. I think leaders can be like children from uber rich families. No one has ever told them no and survived. So they surround themselves with sycophants because that's their people. Bow down and all will be fine. Rise up and you're fired! He admits as much by his fawning over Musk's talent for dealing with trade unions.

Make no mistake Trump followers are in a cult. It's hard to get through to folks that have fallen into a cult. Because the rest of us are just wrong, right? Just ask a member of Jehovah's Witness. We can try prayer or interventions but no one gets out of a cult unscathed. It will take a long long time for America to get over Trump. But we have to. He's poison on a stick. He's a taffy monster. You pop him into your mouth and he tastes great. You start to chew and then the taffy monster eats you!

Nowadays we are all giving the short shaft to each other. We'd rather demonize and insult each other than try to understand. Understanding takes time and effort. I find both ends of the political spectrum devoid of will in this regard. Adherents to either side would rather warn each other about the guns they keep loaded and at the ready. In every room in the house! You know, just in case some murdering drug muddled gender fluid illegal from Guadalupe wants to read something funny to our kids!

Immigrants schmimmigrants

The borderlands are fraught. Should we adopt the xenophobic route and continue putting up walls or just let 'em all in? Tell me, what's your answer for people trying to survive? Is it, go back to where you came from and fix your own damn country? Or is it, you poor souls let me get you some soup and citizenship papers?

In my time so far on this earth, I've born witness to the silly bullshit for brains attitude we aim at immigrants. I know the refrain, I don't have a problem with those that come here LEGALLY. Okay lets start with legal. Columbus was an illegal immigrant. Ask a native American how they celebrate Columbus Day. You'll get an ear full. At least a puzzled eye roll. In hindsight the natives should have slaughtered us on the beaches and scuttled the ships. Might have delayed the invention of the iPhone.

In the digital age I think it's safe to assume that none of us has any patience with any current solution offered up as a fix. As far as murder, rape and general mayhem committed by illegal aliens, get a grip people! Most folks are killed by people they know so you really should be a whole lot more anxious around your friends than any schmo that enters the U.S. without paperwork. 

 My question is this, where's the kindness? How do we as a country, the greatest the world has seen (so far) with the full set of tools at its disposal--end the crisis along our southern border? How about opening up an Ellis Island in the sand? How about knocking down those fucking walls (which all migratory animals will applaud) and create a chain of Ellis Islands along the border. Create funnels instead of walls to freedom. Make tax payers out of 'em in the process. Sure, they can't vote but who cares? They work for cheap till they make citizen. Then it's like joining a union. You get to pay dues (taxes) the rest of your life and you could get a piece of the good life.

But seriously isn't that the promise of America? Work hard, press every opportunity, be bold and damn the torpedoes? Tell me what's more American; some homegrown Jethro bitching about the plummeting price of peanuts on the world market or some hungry person from God-knows-where believing in that promise and willing to risk everything just to get here? It sure as hell ain't for free stuff and soft targets.

Let's open up a real conversation and hear from all parties involved and I'm not limiting it to the two we're stuck with. There's a real and substantive way to handle the question of immigration if we but have the will to find it and the courage to execute it. First, we need to appoint only native Americans to the task. Some will see the irony while others will tremble. That's America. Long may she flounder so beautifully.

I know there's something I'm forgetting. Probably something about infants and bath water.

On becoming a 21st century schizoid man...

The only thing that an autocrat needs to flourish is people willing to be lied to. It's as old as mankind. Our forefathers created a nation founded on universal principles. Their words favored neither color nor creed.  They understood the dangers. They understood the possibilities too. They also understood that the only real defense against tyranny is a well informed and armed populace.

The right thinking among us have learned to better pray. Our country has always been peril. If not from without than most certainly from within. The fringe will always be at the ragged edge of sanity. They sing a siren's song. Go right or go left, it does not matter which, both end in abyss. 

Our nation was designed to be pliant so that it would not break. The Right sees this as anathema to their agenda. They crave the solid distinctions of white against everything else. To them all else is taint and tincture. They want their memories renewed and recast in the light of their own image. Simply put, they want what never was. They crave the familiar distinctions. The ones they grew up with. The ones handed down from one generation to the next bereft of facts but packed with anecdotes and flags. Lots of flags.

The Left sees it differently and therein lies the rhubarb. It is true their fringe is dancing with some sort of Nirvana-esque notion of mankind in harmony with nature and itself. Yes and I have a business in supplying unicorns for such folk. In looking at both sides, it's my take that their adherents operate under the notion that they should reap benefits for their taxes. Not exactly a novel notion but it seems to be lost in the form presented to us. I mean, we SHOULD get a lot more for our money than street signs and promises by politicians, right?

The Left sees the Right as a bastion of bigotry, intolerance and patriarchy. The Right sees them as commies and fags. The Left sees the Right pressing an autocratic xenophobic agenda. The Right calls them commies and fags. The Left sees the Right's party of record diminishing in full retrograde toward a fiery end with an orange-haired idiot holding the reins. The Right calls the Left commies and fags. The Left points out that the Right's emperor is buck-ass naked. The Right flips the Left off and yells, "Prove it!"

If you sense a pattern then you're probably right. If you sense that I might be disaffected by the whole shebang, then you're more than right. You're right on.

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

Friends are always welcome

 Me and the missus, we did it. Turned away from all rabid factions. Covid had it's way with us too and we're still here. For sure some did not make it. Some fell for other reasons altogether. Heart attack, cancer, self-inflicted or whatever. Half of those that died of Covid had already succumbed to ignorance and suspicion long before the virus took them. Their reward was choking to death on what they didn't know. Instead, what they believed was ill suited for warding off contagion. Their faith may have been bigger than a mustard seed but the thing that killed them was microscopic. Strychnine would've been kinder.

We've gotten good at making all of our own meals now. Spend time dreaming of better days ahead. Together. Yes, we'll have two to go, please. Everything has to be portable. We're lightening the ship. Collections put up for auction, extras made scarce, if it hasn't been used in a year, hell, a decade, sell it, give it or Goodwill it! Lighter and nimbler is the aim. 

A hovel on a mountain is the goal. Some place off the beaten. Defensible. It's something we've talked about for years. A cabin in the woods. One with a view or set back in the trees near a brook with trout. Up past where the gravel ends. Down the red clay made hard by us and the neighbors and a scheduled road-grader. Up and up up up then around then down again till where the gravel picks up again. Up one more time then leveling out, you arrive at the gate. 

We are here. We heard your tires crunching gravel. Saw your approach on the critter cams. We're here waiting. Punch the code and come on up. Put it in park and set the brake. Just in case. There's good bourbon and comfort inside. Hurry in, a storm's coming.