“It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear. And from our shores, we — you know, it could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We’ll see what happens. Nobody really knows.”
— President Donald J. (for Jackass) Trump on COVID-19 in 2020
Ken Burns said that understanding, and perhaps more importantly, coming to grips with American history requires an embrace of its contradictions. Our nation’s past is littered with many dark periods, counterbalanced as they are by lasting victories over adversity. He says, “The binaries that we set up are the biggest trap, whether they come from the left or the right.” Dare say he’s correct. Neither side at any one moment can claim a total monopoly on the truth. And politics is simply history in real time, so it would be wise if we all could internalize some of this learned equipoise. The screenwriter Matt Bird, in his excellent book “The Secrets of Story,” describes great drama as often stemming from an irresolvable dilemma between two opposing and incompatible positions. He talks about complex characters facing simple, distilled problems (“High Noon” or “Casablanca”) as more compelling than simple characters tackling one adventure after another (“Fast and Furious” — part whatever). And that in the end there is usually a bending in one direction or the other. A temporary deflection. Not as a permanent solution, mind you, for as we know life goes on and more problems emerge after the credits roll. I think this model works well for thinking historically. It’s never really over, you see. The good guys don’t win in perpetuity (or like “Rocky” lose — though in losing, he won), otherwise you wouldn’t have sequels (“The Empire Strikes Back”). I find this useful for trying to understand why it took us 58 years to get from Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) to Brown v. Board of Education (1954), despite Justice John Marshall Harlan’s lone dissent in the former being the very foundation for the latter (Thurgood Marshall called it his “Bible”). After all, “justice delayed is justice denied,” as has often and aptly been stated.
But that’s all in retrospect. Prospectively, we must fight and fight honorably! Ironically, fight hard or “we won’t have a country left” (another boomeranging Trump quote). And we must fight the hardest when the stakes are at their utmost, especially when the opposing side will give no quarter. In the classic example, compromise with Nazis was proven not feasible, just ask Neville Chamberlain. Or else ask his karmic opposite, that humorless, sodden, Red Scare-bully Joseph McCarthy. History settles up eventually, one way or the other. So when one side declares the contest a zero-sum, winner-take-all proposition and will stop at nearly nothing to prevail, then the gloves must come off. And we are living in one such period but on several fronts. Yes, it is once again “High Noon.” Putin’s Russian war machine in Ukraine has gone all-in. Similarly in Israel, Netanyahu is on a path that allows virtually no compromise with the Palestinians. He feels he can win it all (he can’t) or else he will die trying. Except for the unjust methods, they each would have some fair point to make about their own security. Alas. And here at home, Trump and his incel-goon-squad are shredding our Constitution for their own perverted ends. There’s no lie they won’t tell. No election they won’t rig or else falsely contest. No citizen they won’t smear. No opponent they won’t prosecute. No amoral hack they won’t promote to the highest level. No settled science they won’t undermine.
Trump, between terms, blocked bipartisan efforts at immigration reform. Why? Because this was his premier wedge issue. His “birther” brand. The one with which he could divide the country and provoke confrontations that fit perfectly into his long-planned overreach on executive power. In yet another spot-on characterization, with Trump “cruelty is the point” (that is, when it isn’t vanity and/or greed, though often all three in combination). But, as Matt Bird says, the full story doesn’t end there. When cruelty has become the point — as the despicable actions of ICE and the absurd obfuscations/propaganda coming from Trumpf, SS Miller, ICE Barbie, Bondi, Hegseth, et al. have proven — then they have fully lost their moral legitimacy (do they care?) and must be met with equal strength, based on those founding principles of truth and justice. In short, these lying, bullying fuck-wads must go, and, as Nick (Sheldon Leonard) in “It’s A Wonderful Life” put it, “through the door or out the window!” Via the courts. At the ballot box. In the public conscience. From the legitimate press. All of these. The ICE agents must be de-masked (and, ideally, raw-dogged). And this utter fallacy of “absolute immunity” must be thoroughly challenged. Because the Proud Boys are no longer “standing by,” they are in the streets of Minneapolis and are wreaking bloody havoc, just as they did to the cops at the US Capitol on Jan 6.
America is undoubtedly a land of major contradictions. We have the highest levels of scientific innovation yet we have crumbling infrastructure. We make billionaires seemingly by the millions (often with government grants for tech and pharma), but they don’t want to pay another dollar in taxes despite massive income disparity. We have more guns than people and we collectively mourn the frequent mass shootings, but we are somehow hog-tied by an totally warped (and recent) interpretation of the Second Amendment due to the NRA and the gun lobby. The Trump administration uses antisemitism as a bogus pretext for assailing universities, all the while harboring neo-Nazis and white nationalists under his broad umbrella of uber-douchebags. Hell, they’ve even found images and slogans on US government websites (including for ICE recruitment) like “Trust the Plan” (QAnon slogan) or “We’ll Have Our Home Again” (Proud Boys anthem). Remember the globalist cabal and the pedophile rings and George Soros and the Jewish space lasers? Yeah, these assholes eat, shit and breathe antisemitism. That fucking call is coming from inside the house. The pandering is just caked-on orange make-up and cheap cologne to cover Trump’s flagrant hypocrisy, which is fully a design feature of his operation. Oh, and never mind that numerous Jewish people worldwide, including citizens of Israel, believe that Palestinians deserve civil rights and a fair deal in Gaza and the West Bank. I’m guessing that nobody is falsely labeling them as supporters of Hamas. It’s a false binary.
We are a nation of immigrants yet somehow want to rid ourselves of immigrants. We have a supposed free press but one of our major broadcasters, in FOX News, is a reflexively dogmatic propaganda machine for the Right, and our so-called president is trying to bully and sue all truth-leaning outlets into submission. We have a beautifully articulated statement of equality in our founding document yet don’t apply it to the impoverished, people of color, women, gays, etc. We have local, state and national elections to determine our political course, but it is bastardized by extreme partisan gerrymandering. We are stuck in thrall to billionaires, lobbyists, and corporate interests. And unelected groups/persons massively influence policy with their toxic “purity tests,” like the Federalist Society or that monomaniacal dweeb Grover Norquist, the marauding tax crusader. Why the fuck is that guy deciding anything?! He looks and sounds like an assistant manager at Applebee’s and probably eats there regularly! But whether on guns, reproductive choice, climate change, tax policy, voting rights or immigration, the orangey Death Star that is Trump 2.0 — including the Roberts Court and the Vichy Congress — has run the damn tables on progressives, we must concede. But didn’t that evil-fucking-orb get blown to smithereens at the end of the movie??
Trump is exactly like a black mirror. In him are reflected all the worst impulses of mankind. That dark triad of (malignant) narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy but with really bad skin and hair thrown in for the visuals. He’s a vulgar philistine, speaks at a 6th grade level and is utterly devoid of joy (unless you count joy in cruelty). He cares not a lick about theater or the arts, yet must slap his tired-ass name on the Kennedy Center, just to “own the libs.” Ha-ha! Stupid prick. All this as he opportunistically rides the coattails of Christianity while simultaneously shitting all over Christ’s message. He has been a pox on our body politic for ten long years now. Perhaps we have at last found a worthwhile human use for Ivermectin. Right up his fat and fascist ass!!
DUMP TRUMP 2026….!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Great Exudations 