Day 979 This Weird Kabuki Theater I am in
Wednesday September 11, 2019
420 Days until the 2020 election and 502 days until the Inauguration
OMG, I got the answer before I even started.
I watched last night as Dan McCready lost his 27 month Congressional campaign to a faceless guy in a close fought re-do election. The voting was pretty much the same as it had been the time before. Trump came down to North Carolina the week before and held a rally. Maybe, that was enough to push McCready’s new opponent over the top? I don’t know. It got me to wondering, “what happens to these folks once they get into Congress?” All these people who win for the Republicans, I never hear of them doing anything. That’s not entirely true. When they get in trouble I hear from about them.
What about that woman who beat Jon Ossoff for that seat in Georgia? I mean the last I heard from her was during the election where it was revealed that she dyes her nose hair.
The Republicans that win seem to then go on to do nothing except figure out ways to enrich themselves.
Remember Joni Ernst? She was going to make ‘em squeal. The only one that’s been squealing is Ernst. Her last town hall she tried passing off the NRA talking points and got booed. Well, that’s better than the earlier town hall where she had to run out a side door and get whisked away from a mob.
Before I get to the answer let me review the news:
Trump in one week seems to have demonstrated that he is capable of committing five different things any one of which should get a president impeached and thrown out of office. One Congress person on the Judiciary Committee said something like, “You might expect a president to do one of the five, but one president to do all five is not something the founding Fathers never envisioned.” Should I bother to list the five offenses? No, why bother? The man is unhinged, incompetent, a criminal, and incapable. Incapable of being competent, incapable of compassion, incapable of leading. So be it.
John Bolton is out as National Security Advisor. Thank god. But with Trump I’m confident that he can find someone less capable. He always seems to. He has a talent for finding not the best, but the worst.
If someone has done some really heinous things at a state or regional level Trump will pick ‘em to do it for the country.
Ken Cuccineli? After making a hash of Virginia’s anti-abortion laws Trump picked him to do something.
What about that guy from Kansa who proudly went about throwing people off the voting rolls there, and went on to do it across a swath of states? Trump picked him to run a voter something or other.
The list of incompetent, shady, stupid, criminally minded, wolfs-guarding-the-chicken-coop types abound.
Why is this happening?
It seemed to me that I was watching a game where there was something else going on behind the scenes. What I’ve been seeing doesn’t comport with what would – by any stretch of logic – make sense.
Kind of like the old joke (joke?) about the programmer watching their output saying, “This can’t happen.” But it is! (So, therefore it can.)
I worked on a community swim pool. There was a water commission regulation that I couldn’t understand. It made no sense. I finally got to the engineers at the commission. Finally, one of them said, “You aren’t using the ‘L’ word “Logic’, are you?”
And the shackles fell from my eyes! It didn’t make sense because it was senseless. Ah! Truth! It does make sense because there is no sense to make of it.
Jon Ossoff is running for Senate in Georgia. He lost his congressional race to the dyed nose hair lady. How will he do in this race? It’s hard to tell. He’s talking a lot about corruption. It’s interesting. He’s making the case that we have corruption when the will of the people is continually thwarted by the politicians that get elected. How is it that over 90% of the people want gun reform yet it doesn’t happen? How come the majority of Americans believe everyone should get health care yet it doesn’t happen? How come the majority of Americans want our elections to be free from dark money yet it doesn’t happen?
This Ossoff says is the effect of corruption. Wide-spread corruption.
However, we the people can’t seem to get anything done. Why is that? I woke up this morning thinking that we were caught in some weird Kabuki play where we were watching one thing yet another was going on behind the scenes. Lo and behold I found a possible answer.
Before I dove into writing my screed I looked at the news to see if McCready won his seat in last night’s election. He didn’t. There was a news item off to the side entitled, “The Shocking Paper Predicting the end of Democracy.”
Here’s the link:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/08/shawn-rosenberg-democracy-228045
In a nutshell summary:
Democracy takes work and our brains aren’t set up to work that hard.
Boom.
Sad but true.
Let’s continue on.
The article points out that in order for democracy to work you have to be willing to accept other points of view, and people who don’t look like you.
With the free flow of information it’s easy to game the system. Simple answers to complicated questions become popular. Falsehoods are easily repeated and gain credence. ( The most repeated thing on Facebook in 2016? That the Pope supported Trump. It wasn’t true, but it got more exposure than anything else. )
The article points out what has changed and how that affects us. With the rise of social media we no longer have people editing the news. i.e. the big three: ABC, NBC, CBS don’t have the sway they used to. People can go many places to get information. Is the information correct? Who knows? However, this leads people to gather around what they want to believe and it gives rise to populist hateful groups with simple answers to complicated questions.
Democracy around the world is in retreat.
Right wingers are winning elections and taking their countries in dangerous directions. Why?
It’s easier.
That’s why.
You don’t have to think. All that is asked is that you be loyal.
You gotta believe.
So we now have the unifying principle of religion and this kind of politics – Ya Gotta Believe!
If you do, you’ll go to heaven. We will win! Yeah.
Before the internet and social media, when information was edited to eliminate most of the nuttiness, it was done so by people who knew what they were doing. Who cared. Who searched for the truth. Now? The believers have taken over and are running amok.
Imagine if the programmer who was watching their output and saying, “This can’t be happening” Declared that it wasn’t happening and took a sledge hammer to the computer? That’s pretty much the situation we have now. Not only in this country but worldwide.
Okay, what else is happening?
Trump got rid of Bolton. I said that already.
The news is reporting that the CIA had to extract a top level spy in Russia after Trump’s 2016 meeting with Russians in the Oval Office. Why? Because Trump couldn’t be trusted. Remember when the right threw that up about Hillary? Yeah, well they’re silent about Trump. Loose lips sink our ability to get intel. (Hum, need to work on that phrase.) And as far as Hillary goes. How many hours did she sit through idiots like Jim Jordan pontificating and trying to make her look bad? Eleven, wasn’t it? Can you imagine Trump sitting through 45 minutes?
So what is going to happen?
What will happen when Trump is no longer president? Will he be thrown in jail? All the evidence says he should be. But will he?
Will he win re-election? I give it 50-50 odds. Why? I think the Republicans are doing everything they can to rig the elections. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, dark money, working with the Russians to throw the election (knowingly or unknowingly, however there is more and more evidence surfacing that Republicans are bought off by Russians, and others like big money right wingers, the NRA, etc.) vote tampering (I think we are getting there.)
In other news we are denying Bahamians passage into this country after being devastated by a cat 5 hurricane. Well, why not? They look different than us, right? The president has said they are criminals and drug dealers. This is the old migrant caravan argument recycled. Actually, it’s the “they don’t look like us” argument. Hey Stephen Miller can’t you come up with a more degrading and hateful policy than this?
It takes less than a day to sail to the Bahamas from Florida, a few hours by high speed boat. Lemme test this thought out on you. Let’s say a big oligarch from Russia or a state run company from China offers to help rebuild the Bahamas? When you get right down to it. We aren’t talking a lot of money. I mean it would be a good investment for someone who wanted to have access to the U.S. They are closer than Cuba. It would be easy for say Rush Limbaugh to leave his mansion in Palm Beach and zip over to the Bahamas for some action. Better than having to fly to the Caribbean and get caught. While there he might run into, I don’t know, a guy from Russia or China who wants to help. Ezy peazy.
In other other news. I gave a lecture yesterday about some of the places I’ve been. I entitled it “In the Steps of Richard Halliburton.” Halliburton had a big influence on my life when I was learning to read. My mom had me read out loud from his book “The Complete Book of Marvels.” He had stories of his going to exotic places like the Taj Mahal and Machu Picchu. Each story was seven or eight pages long. He asked you to imagine what it must have been like in when the place was in its glory. Or he told a tale of a princess, or a maiden and asked what do you think happened to them? His writing was described by many as “purple prose” and “over the top.” But it captured my imagination and that of a generation between the World Wars. He was one of the most famous people in the U.s. in the 1930s, along with Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. He died in 1939 in a typhoon in the Pacific. He was sailing a Chinese junk from Hong Kong to San Francisco, called the Sea Dragon.
A woman at my talk said her mother was scheduled to hear Halliburton talk when he got to San Francisco. Imagine that?
Oh yes, today is 9/11. The anniversary. And what is our president doing? Well, he’s tried to have a photo op with the Taliban at Camp David. Somehow that fell apart. Gee, imagine that? This president seems to have silos of stupidity. There’s the mean hateful stuff. There’s the incompetent stuff. The criminal. It is staggering.
And in other news, a man has been arrested for doing donuts on Trump’s Bedminster NJ golf course.
He was arrested in an earlier incident where he broke into Tayor Swift’s Rhode Island house.
All I can say is that I like the direction of this fellow’s criminal career. Maybe more people should steal a golf cart and do some donuts? Better yet why not a bulldozer?
Make an impression.
Why not?
There’s more, much more. But this is a tar baby and I must retract my hands before I am covered.
Maybe it is more like the W. C. Fields golf routine with the fly paper?
420 Days until the 2020 election and 502 days until the Inauguration
PS The Sea Dragon
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