You know things have totally gone sideways when the fellow who coined Godwin’s Law tells you to feel free to compare Trump to Hitler.
“By all means cite GL if you think some Nazi comparison is baseless, needlessly inflammatory or hyperbolic. But Godwin’s Law was never meant to block us from challenging the institutionalization of cruelty or the callousness of officials who claim to be just following the law. It definitely wasn’t meant to shield our leaders from being slammed for the current fashion of pitching falsehoods as fact. These behaviors, distressing as they are, may not yet add up to a new Reich, but please forgive me for worrying that they’re the “embryonic form” of a horror we hoped we had put behind us.” Mike Godwin, June 24, 2018.
I’m not gonna get into all of the reasons why the events of last week were enough to drive the Pope to drink – I’m sure you’re remembering a few priceless moments when you contemplated either getting started on that heroin addiction, slashing your wrists, or sending Peter Fonda off to the White House for a ‘midnight rendezvous’ with La Famille Trump.
(The thought of the 78 year old Fonda scaling the White House walls, with a dagger clenched between his dentures, gave me a little chuckle, but it scared Melania enough to sic her Secret Service onto the ol’ codger.)
You also have to have had a really good snigger at the draft dodger in chief saying he will commission a new military force – a space force – that he’ll use to militarize space.
Sure! Why not! Those 107 countries who signed a treaty to never weaponize space will be agreeable, I’m sure!
And I’m positive that there will be absolutely no resemblance in look or feel of Trump’s Space Force to the Mel Brooks‘ comedy, Space Balls … none what so ever … oh, who are we kidding? It will be TOTALLY like Space Balls …
Lord Dark Helmet: Who made that man a gunner?
Maj. Asshole: I did, sir! He’s my cousin.
Lord Dark Helmet: Who is he?
Col. Sandurz: He’s an Asshole, sir.
Lord Dark Helmet: I know that! What’s his name?
Col. Sandurz: That is his name, sir. Asshole. Major Asshole.
Lord Dark Helmet: And his cousin?
Col. Sandurz: He’s an Asshole, too, sir. Gunner’s made first class Phillip Asshole.
Lord Dark Helmet: How many Asshole’s we got on this ship, anyhow?
[All Asshole’s stand up and shout “YO!”]
Lord Dark Helmet: I knew it, I’m surrounded by Asshole’s. [Dark Helmet pulls down mask.] Keep firing, Asshole’s!
It’s one thing for this woefully incapable and useless dolt of a president to not know why there is no military in space … it’s another that NOT ONE of his many aides, with long military backgrounds and three and four stars on their lapels, appear to be just as unaware of the treaty. Or maybe they’re just afraid to tell him.
We can say one thing with complete assurance, however …
Meanwhile, I’m getting pretty damn sick of the stylings of mainstream media. I am sick of screaming at the screen as fools prate nonsense for the gullible to digest like unripe corn. Do they actually have people who have read history and politics, who can contradict the lies being t-shirt cannoned to the American people? We know they wear ear pieces; are they not getting fed the truth in real time? Because there’s a lot of days when I seriously doubt the journalistic abilities of those expressing their views on the day’s antics.
I feel like I’m Homer Simpson-ing (Doh! Doh! Doh!) through half of the news coverage on CNN or MSNBC News.
If they aren’t crowing over ‘breaking news!‘ they’re grinding the sexiest new tidbits of outrage into even finer dust. It’s like an enormous circle jerk where the safe word is “porn star.”
And while they’re drilling down into the finer points of some insane indignation, there is an obliviousness to what is going on behind the curtain, and around the rest of the world.
Yes – Melania‘s jacket was a horror show and made her look as culpable as any of the other Nazis running the ‘tender age shelters.” But while we kept that frisbee in the air for 24 hours, the Republicans were proposing to defund Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
Our outrage is valid. Anyone with a modicum of empathy is concerned about the human rights abuses going on at the Southern border. Denying these children the potential of asylum, or of even ever seeing their parents again, is the work of monsters. Of course it is. And our protests forced Trump to actually back down on his cruelty, rather than double down. And that’s a good thing.
But it’s a teensy, tiny thing. The jacket was a distraction. 99% of what Trump forces out between his loose fitting dentures are lies and distractions. There’s no ‘art of the deal’ going on here .. it’s that he’s very good at fooling you with his talent at obfuscation, his devotion to the carny’s law, ‘the hand is quicker than the eye.”
Meanwhile, CNN relies on the rush of panels and ‘breaking news,’ while actually doing little more than regurgitating op eds from the New York Times or The Washington Post, so that they can invite the writers of said pieces to appear on air to pontificate ad nauseum, regardless of ability or suitability, to champion their causes.
Listen, you career Talking Heads with the awesome resumes … . It’s great that, once upon a time, you were in a position of power, or were relevant. However this is now, and your in-fighting and fast talking have become annoying, childish, and a guarantee the channel will be changed. CNN needs to send the minor devil’s advocates of Jack Kingston, Paris Dennard, and Ann Colter off to join Jeffrey Lord in the purgatory of obscurity.
We seem to be revelling in a new age of UNenlightenment, where the goal of the game is to see what depths of ugliness and cruelty can be plumbed. There’s a shocking resentment for the marginalized, and a lack of compassion for those who cry out for our help and our consolation.
My pet theory is that we’re in a period of cultural evolution. Just as, hundreds of thousands of years ago, early humans in Africa split into several groups, (Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, the Denisovans) we seem to be splitting the planet into partisan groups with geometrically opposed philosophies and tenets.
It seems to be playing out in force with how we treat those in need. For a good chunk of humanity, immigrants and refugees represent a terrifying segment of humans, one that those who have enjoyed privilege for so long find an abomination, in fear that they will be made irrelevant. (Spoiler alert: They will. And sooner than they’d like.)
By vilifying those who flee their war torn or violence ridden countries, by denying them amnesty or asylum, we become monsters just as horrific as the monsters the needy fled.
Those that post ugliness on social media, or who scream abuse at those who beg for the scraps that fall off our tables – the people who once dreaded having their “Drunk Uncle” spewing his hatefulness at the dinner table, but now embrace and join him in his most disgusting beliefs – the ‘patriots,’ filled with a fervour that pedestals God, Guns, and a bloated golden calf over, not just outsiders, but your fellow Americans – who embrace not only an acceptance, but a celebration of blatant corruption, constant lies, and zero morality ….
These are the unevolved, those that were able to conceal until now, that they only partially made the leap from caveman to homo sapien.
But when this time has passed, as all time does, we will need to try to find our best selves again, from beneath whatever couch cushion they’ve fallen under, and relearn how to live alongside each other in a civilized manner.
Luckily, it is believed by many that, by 2050, a completely new type of human will evolve. With radical new technology, behaviour, and natural selection, some humans will be well equipped to deal with a life completely different from what our parents and grandparents enjoyed.
This new species will live longer, wait longer to have kids, and will be comfortable with robots and AI being ubiquitous in their world. They will likely spent most of their time relaxing in a virtual reality.
By 2050, many of us will have left the playing field, and this new species will come into play, with life expectancies that will reach into the mid one hundreds.
Fingers crossed for humanity to take the opportunity to live up to it’s full potential, and gave life to the better angels that I hope we all have concealed inside ourselves.
frustratedboomers 