Black Friday Black Ink

Trump has a fool-proof plan to stop immigration from Mexico into the US.

He will make the American people more impoverished than the Mexican people, then there will be no reason for them to come North for opportunity. There will be no opportunity.

According to conservative myth, if everyone in the US would just "work hard", then everyone could be a millionaire. Well, first of all, I have yet to see a rich person who really works hard, or earned what he/she has by hard work.

Second, the math doesn't work. The total household worth in the US is currently about $84.9 trillion. With the vast majority of that concentrated in a few hands. However, if equally distributed, each person in the US would have approximately $245 thousand.

Now, while certainly more that most people have, that doesn't approach millionaire status. No, the only way there are millionaires is that some people grab more than their share. That's Capitalism. That's how it is set up. Capitalists like to talk about the "winners" in the system. What they don't mention is that the system depends as much or more on there being losers.

Trump has said, in a conservation and economy move, they won't begin EVERY cabinet meeting by burning a cross.

What is going to be proper protocol in the Trump White House?

Do you take your white hood off as you step into the Oval Office, or do you leave it on?

Dear Republican voters.  I am willing to bet you right now, that a year from today, there will be no Wall; there will be no Muslim registry; there will be no significant change in the War on Terror; there will be no change in US crime rates; there will be no significant increase in jobs, particularly high-paid factory jobs; and there will be no Republican health care plan.  What there will be is a flow of billions of dollars into the pockets of Donald and friends; a crashing economy; attempts to limit freedom of speech and freedom of the press; diminished US stature world wide; and an increase in inequality.  Are you willing to bet?

Bottom of Form

Wednesday Morning Kick Off

Poor and working class whites who vote Republican are always surprised when they lose benefits under Republican rule. What they swear they heard during the campaign was that those things would only be taken away from blacks and 'spanics.

Want to know what modern Organized Crime looks like?

Take a glance at the Trump transition team.

A Republican voter named Ray
Shakes a fist at the sky in dismay.
He's wailing and gnashing,
His world has come crashing.
They are taking his healthcare away.

I love it when Tea Baggers try to sound smart. In a comment on a friend's blog, a TB created the word, "equivilate" to express the attempt to make two completely different candidates sound similar.

A not-yet-a-president threatens and jerks around the leading news outlets in the nation, and they take it?

WTF. Why didn't one of those supposedly intrepid reporters stand up and say, "How DARE you threaten us?"

Where are Ben Bradlee, Edward R. Murrow, and Walter Cronkite? Can you imagine them putting up with that from the puffed up Orange Orifice? We deserve better from our press than this.

Oh, the irony of Donald complaining that the press isn't treating him fairly.

Come on, NPR. Since when is screaming accusations at the press called, "airing grievances"? Trump's only grievance is that some, certainly not all, but some of them reported the truth about him some of the time.

We have just been taught again, that about half of America has no use for people who think.

The Church of the Latter Day Republicans

I had a wonderful retired businessman friend named Skinny Grooms.  He taught me a lot about life in business, and the business of life.

One of the things he used to say was, “When you see a situation which you just cannot understand, look for the money.”    I have found that to be a great truth.

A couple of years later, a waggish friend of mine appended the extension, “…..if the money doesn’t explain it, look for the BJ, it will be one or the other of those two.”

For today, however, let’s stay with Skinny and his dictum.  While Skinny was addressing American business practices, I have found that the same rule can be applied to religion and politics as well.  And it can particularly be applied at that strange three-way intersection where Big Business, Religion, and Politics all meet--the crossroads of greed that is the Republican Party.

And, please, don’t try to say that the Republican Party isn’t all about money because, “So many poor white people vote Republican.”  As Sinclair Lewis said, those poor white people have been taught by a cynical media to see themselves not as impoverished, but as “temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”  In a party that denies both climate change and evolution, of COURSE the members can be deluded into thinking their millions will be arriving any day now.  Clear, rational thinking is not encouraged among the rank and file ‘Pubbies. And, this year, who can blame them for thinking, “If a guy as dumb as Trump can make billions, I’ll have mine soon.”

However, there’s one way of looking at the current Republican coalition which can yield both fright, and hope.  The Republican Party now slouching toward Washington looks more like a religion than a political organization.  It requires blind obedience from its members; it expects acceptance of certain “gospel” tenants without question or examination; and it operates strictly on a “we/they”, “communicant/ apostate” model of duality.  You are either a member of the church, or you are deservedly damned to hell.  A hell they have under construction, and which is NOT being built by Union Labor.

That’s the fear part—an American Taliban run amuck and given power.

The hope part is that built into the very fiber of the religion model of politics as practiced by the Republicans is the disintegration of the party.  As religions grow, and pull in disparate groups, they begin to become internally unstable, and the major denomination soon splits into competing, viciously competing, smaller denominations.  Think, Roman Catholics and Protestants, the various branches of Lutherans, the competing Presbyterian factions, the Baptists of many colors, even the Sunni and Shi’a Muslims.  Religionists never hate anyone as much as they hate their slightly different thinking brothers and sisters.

Right now, the Republican Party is made up of three primary strains.  The traditional Republicans of country clubs and Episcopalian piety.  The group made up of the various stripes of white supremacists, white nationalists, NRA paranoids, and haters of government in any form.  The strange bedfellow mix of Catholics and Evangelical culture warriors who will “hold their nose” and vote for anyone who promises to ostracize gays and outlaw abortion.

The aims and agendas of those three groups are greatly at odds with one another.  Eventually, single-issue voters must somehow be appeased and their demands delivered, or they are liable to march out of the Prom, tearing down the crepe paper banners as they go.  And the internecine warfare is going to be far uglier than anything we’ve seen between the above bunches and their “liberal” whipping boys.  While there will be anger and slashing aplenty, in the end the controlling group will still be the money group.  Money after all, as the above business observation holds, rules.  And money is STILL the grease of American politics.  The billions waiting to be stolen will not be found in KKK rallies, clinic closings, or denying wedding cakes to lesbians.  The billions will win out.

The Church of the Latter Day Republican is splintering.  Watch and enjoy.  And be sure not to be hit by any of the gargoyles falling from the roof.

Afternoon round up, 11/21

Dear Lord, let me live this day in such a way that Donald Trump demands I apologize to him. Thank you.

Have you noticed that the guy who said he was so tough that ISIS, Putin, and world leaders in general, would quake before him is being handed his ass by the cast of a Broadway musical, and a semi-funny TV comedy show?

As he puts on his C in C suit,
Trump dreams of naught but the loot.
All those heavenly bribes
For the crap he'll let slide,
The election, for Trump, bears gold fruit.

Watch how little Presidential vacation days are going to matter to Republicans once Trump's term begins.

As the Trump admin unfolds, it is obvious that we have no obscenities and curses strong enough to address the horrors.

"F" words, "C" words, "B" words, "G-D" words and all of the rest now seem Sunday School tame, and totally insufficient.

Please list below your nominations and constructions for a new vocabulary of words to scream at Trump and his minions.

The REAL headline:

Cast of Musical, HAMILTON, Harassed by Presence of Gay Hating, Constitution Destroying Demagogue.

Right now, to say, "Not all American Christians are harmful," is the same as saying, "Not all mushrooms are poisonous."

While a true statement, if you don't really know your stuff, and aren't positive about which fungus you're picking up, you could end up mighty sick.

Also, some of the largest and most colorful of the mushrooms are the most toxic. Mega churches, anyone?

Let's you and him fight. Explaining the election.

Trump has said he will protect freedom of speech, except for topics he doesn’t want you to talk about, and of people who get under his skin.

On to today’s main topic.

There are people who are saying that the Trump election, and indeed, the general condition of polarized politics in America, can be traced directly to the questions of race, and racial animosity in America.  To an extent that is true.  To a greater extent it is a distraction which is working perfectly to keep most people in America blind to the real questions of a divided people--who divided us, why they divided us, and how that serves a small elite.

The real dynamic boiling below the surface is the dynamic of class distinctions in America.  There has long been the mantra, “America is a classless society,” with references to the rigid class structures of European nations (at least their class structures in the 18^th century), our absence of a titled nobility, and the supposed “upward mobility” possible for people living “The American Dream.”

Every time the questions of class are brought up, “examples” of the poor boy made good, the Horatio Alger myth, are trotted out to prove that any poor person who works hard, can achieve astonishing success.  (With, of course, the underlying assumption that the poor are poor because they are lazy.)  Without going into the absurdity of contemplating whether a man who inherited a bank presidency “works harder” than a roofer, farm laborer, or even fast food server, the fact is, those “examples” are so few as to be statistically insignificant in a 350 million plus population nation, and can be found in most cases to have HUGE factors of luck and happenstance built in—genetic, time and place, or otherwise.

There ARE distinct classes in America.  And, to a large extent, that is by design.  To a larger extent, where class structure is by design or not, exploitation of that structure, and manipulation of the problems of the lower classes IS by design, and is intentional.

More importantly for our thesis today, it was decided early on, and intentionally, by the landed aristocracy that the needs of their impoverished African slaves and those of “poor white trash” were so similar, and would yield to such similar solutions—at the expense of the wealthy—that if those two groups ever recognized their mutuality, control of them would be tenuous at best. Therefore, steps were taken, and continue to be implemented, to place those groups in conflict with each other.  To create a bipolar fear, and to pit the two groups against each other in competition for resources that are kept intentionally scarce.

African American writers and scholars have seen, explained, and told us of this for years, but, of course, so carefully has the animosity been built, that “majority Americans” are unaware of the writings, or simply dismiss them on racial grounds.

A few Anglo writers have presented the tale.  Most recently, it has been excellently shown in the new book, White Trash—the 400 year untold history of class in America, by Nancy Isenberg. She documents the original decisions, and the ongoing work of pitting groups of poor Americans, Black and White, White and White, White and Immigrant, and so on against each other.  And how this dividing creates the lack of political power and will that keeps so many American oppressed and dispossessed.  If “White Trash” Americans understood that the flames of their hatred for African Americans are one of the main reasons they can’t get anywhere in our society, huge political upheaval would result.

To keep this from becoming a lengthy tome, just sum it up this way, the problems of poor people are very similar, in spite of skin color and ethnicity. It is obviously beneficial to the wealthy, the powers (and never confuse the real power in this nation with the people those oligarchs allow to assume office and play at governing), and the top of the pyramid to keep the bottom layers fighting among themselves and against each other, rather than having them look up and see who is really stealing their money and their lives.

If you want to understand how and why Republicans were able to get Angry White Men to vote against their own best interests, and put them in control of both the Congress and the Presidency, you have to understand the history of creating and exploiting racial fears and hatreds in America so that the actual presence and problems of class striation are never recognized nor targeted by those on the bottom.

(And, yes, to a large extent, even the structure and enforcement of our “racial equality” laws through the years have played into the hands of the manipulators of racial divide—but that’s another lengthy blog entry all its own.)