Day 1128 This is Our America – Today
Wednesday October 30, 2019
371 Days until the 2017 election and 456 days until the Inauguration
Sean Spicer is on Dancing With The Stars. He has been described by one of the judges as “a brick with arms and legs attached.” Yet, he survives well past his time to be eliminated. This has been termed “The Sarah Palin Effect,” where that poor girl kept being voted through by a fervent crowd of supporters. It had little to do with her abilities and something, oddly, to do with a “we’ll show you” attitude. “Whom” exactly “they” were trying to show is a mystery, but there was a certain smug desire to do so.
It’s an “evidence to the contrary” attitude, and this kind of attitude permeates our society and our life now. We can speculate as to why or how it happened, but it has and there seems to be no pulling back from the abyss.
Life imitates art, it is said, and art reflects life. So to, do our movies, one of which is The Joker, a very dark take on our life and society, but it may be the best reflection of where we are today.
How many times have I heard “You can’t make this up”? Or “If you showed up in Hollywood with this as a script they’d throw you out of the place!”?
Yet, to semi-quote Pogo, “Here we are.”
Evidence? You want evidence? Okay, here ya go. Picture this:
A scriptwriter walks into the office of a Hollywood mogul and pitches this as a boffo idea for a movie, “A low level criminal who has been involved in various pump and dump stock swindle companies and is connected to the Russian mob is trying to help his Russian bosses corrupt a Ukrainian gas company. At the same time, he has infiltrated the highest levels of the U.S. government and has befriended America’s Mayor in this effort. They get caught, red-handed, and guess what? The right wing conservative media and the Republican members of Congress come to his defense!”
At this point don’t you think he’d be thrown out of he office? Maybe they the Hollywood mogul staff toy with him a bit. They ask him to describe this guy.
“Oh well, he’s kind of a round faced nebbish. He has a pretty good looking blonde hanging off his arm when he goes to court. Who is she you ask? We don’t really know. Maybe a wife or “one of the girls from the club.” What club? Mafia Rave. It’s a bikini clad blue laser club he or his buddy Igor owns. Igor? Yeah, that’s right. Igor. The two of them get caught trying to flee the country to go see their Russian mob money man in Vienna, who is fighting extradition to the U.S, and is directly linked to Putin. Lev, that’s the low level criminal I was talking about, has a business called ‘Fraud Guaranteed.’ It’s out of that account that he pays the former Mayor of New York City $500K.”
“What? You think that’s too crazy? Wait, I haven’t gotten to the good part. This guy is being brought up on charges in the U.S. He really has little visible means of legit support, but somehow he has managed to make large illicit donations to various Republican organizations. He even went to Papa Bush’s funeral! He got a Congressman to write a letter to the State Department to get rid of an ambassador. The president said this woman was terrible. Later, the president said he didn’t know her. That’s inconsistent? Yeah, that’s the point. The president is this guy who was a reality host on TV, who parlayed that into being president and now is cluelessly destroying our government and our standing in the world.
“What do you mean that’s ridiculous. Listen, in this movie the right wing semi-nazi of Hungary comes to visit him and tells him that the authoritarian head of Turkey wants to wipe our allies in the Middle East off the face of the map and the president says okay, thus giving Syria to the brutal regime of Assad, the Russians, Turkey, Iran, and ISIS.
“Too far fetched? Really?
“Could never happen you say? Can I finish?
“Okay, see the president is being impeached. What for? Oh, he tried to shake down the head of Ukraine to give him dirt on his political rival. He threatened Ukraine with the withholding of aid to that country. What kind of aid? Anti-tank missiles. Why did they need them? To stop the Russians from invading the rest of their country. What did the president do? He told the head of Ukraine to work something out with Putin. Why are you laughing?
“Turns out the president of the U.S. did withhold the aid from Ukraine because he wanted dirt on his political rival and because the Russians and the far-right conspiracy folks were pushing this narrative that the Democrats had hidden a server in the Ukraine. Why? Oh, because that way the Russians could say they didn’t interfere with the 2016 U.S. election it was the Ukrainians.
“Why are you crying? Oh, tears of joy. Too funny you say? Okay, well here’s where it gets serious. Yeah, serious. See there’s this impeachment inquiry going on. Why an impeachment you ask? Well, the president is a narcissistic fool and thinks that if you commit a crime in the open it’s not a crime. Actually, he’s a sociopath and doesn’t really see anything as a crime. He has no empathy, doesn’t understand it, and he does everything for himself, and maybe his kids. In reality, he uses his kids to further his own interests. Yeah, his kids work in The White House. Yes, it’s nepotism, What’s your point? He also kept his businesses. ‘Isn’t that illegal?’ you ask? No unconstitutional. But accepting money from a foreign government would be illegal, Did he do that? Of course. He also got our military to stop over at an airport near one of his resorts to gas up and have the crew spend the night at the resort.
“You don’t think this is going to fly? Wait, how about the Vice-President, when he’s not gutting women’s reproductive rights, does things like fly to Ireland where he commutes to meetings everyday by flying across that country to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Why? The pres has a resort in Ireland. So what if it’s on the wrong side of the country?
“Is there more you ask? You bet.
“The House is holding an impeachment inquiry and they call upon a military man with a twenty year record of service, who sits on the National Security staff. He’s an expert on Ukraine, born there. His job is to help correct the record when translators misspell things or don’t know the term used. He’s doing his job one day when the president has a phone call with the president of Ukraine. He’s concerned when he hears the president try to get the president of Ukraine to agree to go on national TV to say they, the Ukrainian government, will investigate the U.S. president’s political rival and if they don’t they wont get the military aid they need to stop the Russians. Our president suggests the Ukrainian president ‘work something out’ with Putin.
“Yeah, crazy huh? This military guy says that he raised concerns about this call and an earlier one. He also noted that some of his corrections didn’t make it into the final transcript. Why? Which ones? The ones that would have made the president look bad.
“But here’s where it gets serious. The right wing press, desperate to keep this president propped up, suggests that the military guy is a spy. Why? He speaks Ukrainian! Well, he’s an expert on Ukraine. They don’t care. They smear him.
“Too much? No one will believe it. Yeah, I know. But …
“Get out and come back until I have a more realistic plot? Okay. You want the working title? Sure
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
371 Days until the 2017 election and 456 days until the Inauguration
PS Recent Kremlin press release
Best sentence! “ The president is this guy who was a reality host on TV, who parlayed that into being president and now is cluelessly destroying our government and our standing in the world.”