Thursday, December 01, 2016

Thank you, America


"Fascism should more properly be called 'corporatism' because it is the total merging of corporate and state power"
 
Benito Mussolini, 1927 

Are we there yet, Daddy?

Oh yeah, kids.  We're there. You'd better fucking believe it.

Murray as Thompson
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A tip of the hat and a heartfelt expression of gratitude is in order for the inmates of Idiot Nation. You folks have made my job so much easier. For the people whose vocation  it is to call attention to the desecration of the American experiment in democracy, it will be a long time before any one of us has writers block. Of course, although the pen is indeed mightier than the sword,  it could very soon turn  into  double-edged pen. It's only a matter of time before people like us are stomped down upon hard. Wait for it.

Irony of ironies: As impossibly corrupt and incompetent as George W. Bush was to the foundations of this once great republic, by this time next year, we-who-bother-to-pay-attention will find ourselves nostalgic for the contemptible  little thug. Honestly, even during Dubya's reign of grotesquerie and terror, I never dreamed it would get this surreal. What is coming is no mere constitutional crisis; what is on the bleak horizon is a fucking constitutional meltdown. Remember, you read it here, boys and girls!
 
At the conclusion of the classic 1980 cult film, Where The Buffalo Roam, Bill Murray (portraying Hunter Thompson) proclaimed: "It still hasn't gotten weird enough for me". Thompson committed suicide in February of 2005, weeks after Bush's second inauguration. I only wish he could have lived to see the rise of Donald J Trump. I can imagine him saying, "Okay, this is weird enough, thank you very much".
 
Jeff Sessions
In the hours following the worst electoral catastrophe in this doomed nation's history, it was almost endearingly pathetic to read so many posts out on the internet (not to mention personal email messages to me) from those whom obviously hadn't been paying attention, vainly attempting to quell our fears. "Don't worry", they said, "He'll surround himself with good people!". Right. He's already put into positions of power Steve Bannon and Jeff Sessions, two avowed white supremists. If fact, two decades ago the Alabama-born Sessions was denied a judicial appointment because the members of his own party felt that he was too vile a racist for the position. Today this man is Attorney General designate. I kid you not.

FUN FACT: When one is judged to be too bigoted for the tastes of the GOP, that person has set one hell of a new standard. And you think that the comparisons to the rise of the Nazis eighty-three years ago are too over-the-top?
 
During the campaign, Trump promised his moronic base that, once he was in charge of things, there would be no more corporate lobbying at the executive level of our government. In the days following the election he announced the appointments of these same lobbyists to run and control the very federal agencies that they have dedicated their careers to destroying. And the shit storm hasn't even begun.
 
To all of my friends who naively cast their lot with Trump (and, believe it or not, I have more than a few of them who did) do you still honestly believe that sending this sociopathic asshole to the White House was a particularly neat idea? Here's a little something you can take to the bank, folks: By July 20 of next summer, which will mark the six-month-point of this new administration (with forty-two VERY LONG months left to go!), every one of you will realize that voting for Donald Trump was the stupidest thing you ever did in your lives. I promise you that. This could very well be the point of no return. These freaks will be looking for their own Reichstag Fire as an excuse to suspend the Constitution. The Patriot Act was merely a grim overture.

This is going to end very badly. How's that for understating a foregone conclusion? Its all over.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
 
SUGGSTED READING:
 
Waiting for the Barbarians
by Chris Hedges
 
This needs to be read by everyone:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/waiting_for_the_barbarians_201611271

 "The rebels will be our hope."
 
In the meantime, get used to living in a nation in ruins.

AFTERTHOUGHT:

Some within the extreme right are now heralding the news that a constitutional amendment outlawing the burning of the flag is just around the corner.

Disclaimer:
Although  it is my belief that flag burning is a constitutionally protected expression of free speech, I always felt that it was a really idiotic, infantile form of protest.

At the moment this proposed prohibition takes effect, I won't be able to burn enough of them. In fact, my plan is to burn them publicly - in front of my house (I live on a busy, two-lane highway which should make things rather interesting). Now would be a dandy time to invest in companies that manufacture American flags. People will be buying them just to burn them. I'm serious.

Cheerio! Pip! Pip!

19 Comments:

At 12:17 PM, Blogger BarryWolk said...

Funny you should say that Hunter Thompson committed suicide as Hunter himself called everyone he knew to tell them that the CIA was going to 'Suicide' him as he was about to reveal secrets about JFK's killing by having a press conference about the Kennedy assassination a few days hence!

Hunter supposedly shot himself to death while his son was in the house with him and I can tell you now that virtually every father on earth would NOT kill themselves with a gun while their children are in the house... not ONE! Plus Hunter was on the phone with his wife asking her to come home when the phone went silent and a shot rang out.

Otherwise I agree 100% with your blog's conclusions, Tom.

 
At 12:31 PM, Blogger Mozart1220 said...

I am missing George Carlin more than ever right now.

I find it amazing that after calling the Obama's "Classless" and Obama himself a "dictator" we now have Trump who disregards the rules and the constitution with ease, and his wife (# 3 and counting)is a stripper and porn star.

The ONLY solace I get from all this, is since the GOP now controls the entire government, they won't be able to blame Liberals from the inevitable disaster awaiting us.

But they will TRY, and at least that will be entertaining.

But as someone who depended on Obamacare and soon Social Security disability, I fear there is a "Bad Moon on the rise".

 
At 3:40 AM, Blogger Jefferson's Guardian said...

Yes, Tom, "[t]he rebels will be our hope." Our only hope, actually. Never forget that.

We're in for the fight of our lives...

 
At 6:53 AM, Blogger Mozart1220 said...

Barry, I went to school with a kid who's dad shot himself in the Boy's bedroom as the boy was walking in the door from school.

I don't know anything about Thompson's situation other than I loved his writing. But saying no Father would kill himself around his children is incorrect.

 
At 2:06 AM, Blogger Majormajor said...

"We are Socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions."

Adolf Hitler
May 1,1927

 
At 8:42 AM, Blogger Tom Degan said...

Chuck, your complete and total ignorance of history is almost heartwarming.

 
At 11:19 AM, Blogger Majormajor said...

Tom

Just providing you a quote like you did with Benito.

 
At 12:23 PM, Blogger Tom Degan said...

Chuck: The "socialism" of Germany of the 1930s and the "socialism" as represented by Bernie Sanders are two entirely different things. To attempt to equate the two (as you are obviously trying to do) is not only intellectually dishonest, it is quite reprehensible.

Luke: To compare America of 2016 to the Nazi Germany of 1938 is absurd, and I'll be (as I have been in the past) the first to say so. Having said that, comparing America today to the Germany of the late winter of 1933, in the weeks leading up to the moment that Hitler came to power, is not only fair - it's unavoidable.

 
At 12:33 PM, Blogger Tom Degan said...

From the mind of Josef Goebbles:

"We enter parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons. If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and salaries for this bear's work, that is its affair. We do not come as friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come."

Another quote you guys would do well to remember.

Welcome to Idiot Nation

 
At 12:42 PM, Blogger Paul said...

Sorry Tom, how Hitler came to power in 1933 has no resemblance at all to how Trump won the election. Reread your history of the state of Germany in 1933. The conditions are not even similar. What was Germany's economy then? What is America's economy now? Hitler started grabbing power in the late 1920's. The only similarity is the people voted for Hitler and Trump, but Hitler's vote was something totally different than how Trump won his vote. Here is my post from yesterday to give you more to disagree with, and read my posts since the election. The question is how in the hell did Trump win? My answer is in those posts.


They Are Still Crying
The liberals, especially the liberal bloggers, are still crying. It's been weeks since the election, yet, the crying gets worse. From cries of a rigged election, Trump being an illegitimate president elect, recounts in multiple States, and of course claiming Trump is Hitler. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad and a waste of time. They are exactly what they claim Trump would be, if he lost the election. They sure know how to bitch and cry. They sure know how to spread their hate.
Claiming Trump is Hitler is the worse insult to those who died, or survived the Holocaust and the other millions who died because of Hitler.
To bad they don't know what to do besides cry and hate. Let's hope Mr. Schumer knows how to do more than cry and hate. Lets hope Mr. Schumer is smarter than Reid, or Pelosi. I don't think so, because the Democrats just put Pelosi back in leadership.
Recounts won't work crybabies. Calling Trump Hitler won't work crybabies. Lessons you should have learned from Bush II, but hate rules your thinking, not logic, or how to actually stop Trump legislation. Stopping Trump isn't about making your hate public. It didn't stop Bush, in fact, you idiot liberals (Hillary Clinton) went along with and voted for the Bush agenda of lies and killing innocent victims and you still called Bush Hitler.

 
At 12:47 PM, Blogger Paul said...

Quotes taken out of context means little. I could take single quotes from FDR which make him sound no better than Stalin, not to mention some of his unconstitutional, illegal actions. Same goes for Lincoln, and how about the founders we worship who created a slave nation?

 
At 9:03 PM, Blogger JOYCE CLEMONS said...

Luke, I know Tom is not a Democrat,but as to the Democrats, I wish they would do the autopsy before the corpse gets wangy.

 
At 11:50 PM, Blogger Majormajor said...

Tom,

That's odd, I never mentioned Uncle Bernie's name.

 
At 9:24 PM, Blogger School Brook said...

Well ya know, Dege, there is one other possibility that could surface and that is the very real possibility that after the evil clown retires and the circus is over in four short years that our Democracy will correct itself, we will elect a more realistic candidate and things will start to drift back to some semblance of normalcy. Yeah...that's it.

 
At 6:01 AM, Blogger W.D. Shirley said...

and people still will not study the Constitution, Tom, not even to understand what is happening. The Framers were damaged goods, men who felt that wealthy white men should control society while women stayed home to spit out babies, blacks were partly human and children were property. Our beloved Framers fucked their slaves to produce more slaves with lighter skin and therefor better for House Slaves. We admire their business acumen, which is so like Trump. Mr. Bees appears not to have read the Constitution since 7th grade... he still refers to our Plutocracy as a "democracy" in spite of the venom spread on the concept by our founders... they hated the idea of democracy! But it's a great red herring to toss out from time to time to convince the illiterates in the population that they have some say in the selection of a government... total lack of understanding of the Electoral College...The Party selects the members of the College according to how loyal they are to the Party. The Constitution does not require them to pay the slightest attention to the Popular vote, which appears to be a sort of national poll to see how well the propaganda machine is working. The few hundred Party loyalists are the ones who pick our President. The fact that the slave fuckers wrote this system up does not mean it is fair, reasonable or democratic in any way, it's the way they wrote US out of the USA.

 
At 1:25 PM, Blogger BarryWolk said...

Joyce: An autopsy? I know it would be helpful for the Dems to understand the needs and wants of their base better, however, let's not EVER forget that Hillary received over 2,850,000 more votes than trump, which shows that they were doing something right in 2016. Don't believe the reThuglican propaganda that the Dems lost the election in a landslide cuz THAT didn't happen.

BTW: Hillary received the most amount of votes (with the sole exception of Obama in 2008) of any President in our nation's 240 years of voting history! Which means that she got more votes than ANY other white guy who EVER ran for President!!

Also, W.D. Shirley said that a "few hundred party loyalists" determine who is President, and I'm not disputing that point but it takes LESS than a few hundred... 270 to be exact (538 divided by 2 plus 1)!

 
At 7:14 PM, Blogger School Brook said...

Well, of course WD is correct. It's not a pure Democracy like in some ancient golden age Greek time but rather a representative democracy. But the sad fact is that didn't matter a bit with this last election with the poor choices all around. I recall a poly Sci 101 class at my very liberal university requiring that I acknowledged the De Toqueville idea that the electoral college was there as a safe guard against just the very thing that happened this past election. Against having the populace elect a crazy guy, a Hitler, or maybe a Trump. In this case the safeguard failed. Or did it? Corporatist Hillary or oligarchic fascist Trump. I'm left wondering which would be worse. Either way we lost but I still have faith that people can lean government policy toward their favor. Sure it may take a world war or something but all is not lost as long as we keep trying.

 
At 7:32 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

duuuuu watt planet u from

 
At 7:33 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

duuuuu watt planet u from

 

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