Fake News – frustratedboomers

World Class Bullies and Where They Live

by Roxanne Tellier

Last week I wrote about local bullies, and those that terrorize the citizens that elected them locally and nationally. More often than we might have thought, those elected bullies, unsated by the billions they suck from their people’s coffers, opt to extend their reign indefinitely. When they do so, they morph from being barely restrained autocratic bullies, into full-fledged, unrestrained, dictators.

Let’s look at a shocking reality: based on the definition of a dictator being a ruler of a land rated “Not Free” by the Freedom House[1], there are currently 50 dictatorships in the world. There are 19 in Sub-Saharan Africa, 12 in the Middle East and North Africa, 8 in Asia-Pacific, 7 in Eurasia, 3 in the Americas, and 1 in Europe.

From Afghanistan to Yemen, and 48 places in between, these monsters hold the power of life and death over millions of human souls. Dictators not only do not love the people that put them in power, they don’t even see their people as human. Men, women and children are just numbers to be juggled, creatures to serve them and to be subjugated.

We can reel off the names of some of these men (and they’re all men;) Putin, Xi, Ortega, Maduro, Kim Jong-Un, el Assad, Erdogan … what they all have in common is the need to not just dominate others, but to crush them, to own their very souls. They are cruel, world class bullies, who have perfected what they likely began in the school yard … insulting, hurting, threatening others who are weaker, smaller, less powerful and more vulnerable. They seek to destroy any vestige of freedom or pride in anyone who dares try to stop them.

North America’s 24/7 ‘breaking news’ media has kept us soaking in the bullying actions of Putin as he wreaks hell on Ukraine. But even as we gaze upon the horrors of Mariupol being pummelled into dust, dictators around the world have not stopped their assault on their own people.

As The Atlantic said recently, in an article entitled, “Dictators aren’t Pretending Anymore,”[2] autocrats now openly steal elections, stage coups, and invade other countries.

In the February 2022 Freedom House report on the state of democracy in the world, they stated that the world has entered the 16^th consecutive year of what the political scientist Larry Diamond has termed a ‘democratic recession.’

“Democratic institutions and civil rights deteriorated in 60 countries, with Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Tunisia, and Sudan experiencing especially precipitous declines. At the beginning of the democratic recession, about half of the world’s population lived in a country classified as “free.” Now only two out of every 10 people do, while four in 10 live in “partly free” nations like India, and another four in 10 live in “unfree” nations like Saudi Arabia.”

In most of the last century, the enemies of democracy embraced the use of political violence, seizing power at the point of a gun. However, in the last few decades, dictators have generally first come to power democratically, winning seemingly free and fair elections, which they used as a jumping off point to concentrate power into their own hands, and eventually manoeuvred into a situation in which they could no longer be removed from office by democratic means.

In the last few years, however, there has been a return to violence, with the number of military coups worldwide jumping to seven. Over the past year, Myanmar, Sudan and Mali, military officers have used force to install their leaders into dictatorship positions.

The slow weakening of democratic norms, the slide into ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative reality’ has allowed those in high positions to kick away the illusion of a democratic legitimacy, and behave as ruthlessly as they wish. Laws meant to stop powerful people from abusing their power and authority have been so attacked and bowdlerized that it is increasingly unlikely that, even in a democracy, any elected official need fear an overlong prison sentence, if a sentence is given at all.

As we witnessed on January 6, 2021, social media worked alongside former president Trump and his enablers to ramp up allies when they attempted to overthrow the results of the free and fair 2020 election. More than a year later, Trump is preparing to run again, in 2024, despite laws that forbid anyone who was involved in an insurrection from seeking public office. And if he’s elected again, the path will be clear for him to ascend to dictatorship in the United States.

(*Section 3 of the 14th Amendment prohibits anyone who has violated their oath of office, by engaging in insurrection or aiding in a rebellion, from running for federal office.)

Canadians had a near miss this January with another sort of coup, an epidemic of full-scale bullying, when the Trucker Convoy blasted and blared their way into the news, and the downtown heart of Ottawa, with a headline concern of “Freedom” and a much longer manifesto that demanded, in small print that their supporters would never read, that all of the current federal government step down and be replaced with a governance of their convoy leaders’ choice.

These attacks on democracy are far too close for comfort. The enemy is not just on your wide screen, the enemy is at our gates.

Putin has attempted to keep NATO and other countries friendly to Ukraine at bay by holding the threat of nuclear war over our collective heads. Many fear that appeasing his appetites at this time will merely sacrifice Ukraine, while enabling him to then continue gobbling up the rest of Europe. Certainly, it would appear that he is determined to win at any cost.

“In June 2020, Putin signed a decree—the Basic Principles of the Russian Federation’s State Policy in the Domain of Nuclear Deterrence—that specifies two conditions under which Russia would use nuclear weapons. The first is unsurprising: “The Russian Federation retains the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear weapons and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies…” But that sentence ends with an unusual statement: “… and also in the case of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons, when the very existence of the state is put under threat” [emphasis added].

In his February 24 speech, Putin echoed that unusual language to describe his Ukraine invasion. The United States, he claimed, was creating a hostile “anti-Russia” next to Russia and in Russia’s historic land. “For the United States and its allies, it is a policy of containing Russia, with obvious geopolitical dividends,” he said. “For our country, it is a matter of life and death, a matter of our historical future as a nation. This is not an exaggeration; this is a fact. It is not only a very real threat to our interests but to the very existence of our state and to its sovereignty” [emphasis added]. Putin has defined the current situation as one in which, in line with the principles of its deterrence policy, Russia retains the right to use nuclear weapons.” [3]

That’s some world class bullying, right there.

But does all of this sabre-rattling lead to the conclusion that the only way to stop a bully is with a bigger bully? That would depend on how we define our systems of justice.

Post World War II there were consequences for Hitler and his party. But the process of the Allies seeking justice in response to the atrocities of Nazi Germany were intended to establish a precedent that they hoped would prevent war crimes from ever occurring again. We’ve seen, in Putin’s criminal actions in the Ukraine, that the rules and laws will not stop a determined warmonger.

Nonetheless, democratic systems of justice, and criminal sanctions are not bullying; they are the way societies are governed, in order to protect all members of nations.

Without a crystal ball, I cannot say what will happen next in the Ukraine/Russian war. I do feel though, that whether we are ready to admit to it or not, we are already part of the launch of World War III.

“As Russian troops advance toward Kyiv, democracy is no longer the only game on the global stage. And so the coming decades won’t just pit democracies against autocracies in key territorial battlegrounds like Ukraine. They will also pit the defenders of democracy against those who blatantly reject the supposed decadence of popular self-determination in the sphere of ideas.” (The Atlantic, Feb 2022)

[1] https://planetrulers.com/current-dictators/

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/democracy-crisis-autocrat-rise-putin/622895/

[3] https://thebulletin.org/2022/03/read-the-fine-print-russias-nuclear-weapon-use-policy/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=MondayNewsletterPost03102022&utm_content=NuclearRisk_ReadTheFinePrint_03102022

Smile Damnit. Smile!

by Roxanne Tellier

To be honest, I haven’t much enjoyed the last five years or so. I’m not just talking about politics, though, if there was ever a time in which it became apparent how much politics affects every aspect of our every day lives, this was that time.

I’ll bet even your grandmother learned how to use the “block” function on her Facebook page.

Almost imperceptibly, the world sustained a seismic fracture, dividing families, communities and nations into camps. On one side, those who believe in equality, and that everyone has human and civil rights. On the other side, those that SAY they sort of agree with those precepts, in theory – but have their reasons for why they really don’t. And, like door-to-door proselytizers, they’d be happy to bend your ear for hours on end, to let you know exactly why they don’t agree with what you’re saying. In progressively louder sentences.

I think the last eighteen months of COVID just did me in. It was the final straw. Eighteen months of fear, uncertainty, deprivation, and doubt. Eighteen months of never being sure what day or month it is. Eighteen months of not being able to come together to celebrate birthdays, weddings or anniversaries. No parties, no musical events, no theatre. And, perhaps the cruelest of all, no chance of gathering to bid a final goodbye to the loved ones we lost.

How could so many people that we love have died, and been buried, with so little recognition or fanfare? Some days, an old friend’s birthday circled on my calendar fills me with anxiety, as I wonder – did they make it through this year? Or were they one of the many who left our ranks with little to no fanfare?

Mustn’t grumble, we’re told. Yes, it’s all hard, but complaining won’t do any good. No, it won’t. Complaining won’t change a thing. It won’t bring back our dead, or our equilibrium.

But.

I’m sick of being expected to simply assimilate this decade’s horrors, compounded by all the crap that the Powers That Be rain down upon the masses, and just smile, smile, smile.

Smile as climate change burns one half of the planet to a cinder, while the other half drowns in torrential rains and melted ice caps.

Smile while our rich cities become unaffordable to the middle class, and smile as the city’s elected officials send hordes of police to evacuate and destroy the homeless camps that are filled with their fellow citizens, citizens who are financially unable to live in the cities they built with their toil and taxes.

Smile while the rich get richer at the expense of the poor, because only the wealthy can afford to run for leadership roles, get elected into power, and once in place, be relied upon to act to shore up laws and regulations that benefit the wealthy at the expense of the common people.

Smile while federal and provincial leadership is so badly handled throughout a once in a lifetime global pandemic that, while half the city goes mad struggling to figure out how and where to get vaccinated, the other half holds anti-mask, anti-vax, super spreader rallies in the downtown core, unimpeded.

Smile as an orange madman’s most important legacy seems to have been his ability to teach his followers (in the US and Canada) two new commandments:

call anything you don’t like or want to believe ‘fake news’, and,
should anyone expect any accountability or ‘adulting’ from you, double and triple down on your ‘rights’ while denying any responsibility for your acts.

It feels like there’s no one and no thing making much effort any more. Thanks to the internet, we live in a world where we’ve never been so aware of evil people and deeds, of corruption, of fraud, of social media voyeurs with a sadistic bent, of sickness, death and horror – present or impending – occurring on a global scale.

And yet, for the bulk of the population, rather than act, it’s a time to double down on escaping into the soothing waters of social media, where one can bathe in an uninterrupted stream of whatever turns your crank, until the day the grid topples.

Apparently, it’s never the time to fight to change what seems an inevitable slide into the abyss. There’s something good on television, it’s too hot/cold/rainy out there, and what does it matter anyway? It’s not like anything I do can change the world, right? No, I’ll just stay home. And maybe sign this petition. It’ll be fine.

There is little to no response to any suggestion that our actions might have brought about the mess we are leaving to our heirs. The ability to feel remorse and/or shame seems to have been genetically modified out of our systems. Or have we just passed the buck for so long that we no longer remember what happens when we’re the last one’s holding it?

Our legacy of little horrors only begins with the hoards of useless and unrecyclable junk that broods in our basements and attics. Our children will live with their memories of a better planet. Our grandchildren will never know the world that baby boomers took for granted.

And I say to myself …. Where’s THEIR Wonderful World?

I will be honest; I don’t know where we go from here. The bus is on fire, and we may have missed our last chance to turn it around.

But I’m tired of smiling, and pretending that what we see happening around us, isn’t happening. That way madness lies.

All that’s left is to prepare in the way Maya Angelou advised, “Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between.”

And Then I Wrote

by Roxanne Tellier

From time to time, people have accused me of ‘hating’ Donald Trump irrationally. But really, there’s nothing irrational about me hating the guy. I admit it, I despise him, and everything he is, has been, and currently represents. So should any free-thinking lover of progress, freedom, individual and civil rights, and most of all – democracy.

I might even argue that it’s irrational to LIKE the guy, since, no matter how hard you search, you are unlikely to find even one moment of his life, or one action that he has taken, that has been in service to anything other than himself and his ego.

What’s to like? Go ahead, throw a dozen things you like about him at me, and I’ll knock them back to you with a rebuttal quicker than the most expensive ball player could do in his entire career. You may not agree, you may not believe me, you may call it ‘fake news, ’ but at some point, and in the fullness of time, even his most devoted and loving acolyte will be soundly and permanently disabused of the idea that trump’s got anything but contempt and disdain for anyone but himself.

You don’t even have to take my word for it. At last count, pretty much all of the current best sellers listed in the nonfiction section were written by people who were, at one time, not only colleagues of the man, but counted themselves as faithful and loyal friends, even family. Right up until the day they were booted out the door, and trump told the press that he never met them, might have seen them in passing in the hall, but that he’d always considered them weak, stupid losers that he – as a form of noblesse oblige – had deigned to allow to sit in his regal presence for a short time.

The walrus-moustachioed John Bolton, formerly the late, unlamentedNational Security Advisor of the United States, is the latest ex to literately spill the tea on his OrangeNess, ripping off the title The Room Where It Happened from the hit musical Hamilton, perhaps hoping that a little bit of the musical’s hipness would rub off on his tome.

The funny thing about Bolton is not that extravagant and clearly well-loved moustache, it’s that he’s disliked equally on both sides of the political scene. And while we’re all happy to snicker over the revelations the books has produced, despite it’s not even being available (supposedly – I’ve already got a pdf of it) until Tuesday, most people are planning to avoid actually BUYING a copy. The libraries will serve as the greatest resource for his wordy work, I have heard.

People resent that Bolton dragged his feet when asked to contribute to the pre-impeachment discovery sessions, waiting until offered a cool $2 million to tell the world what he really should have said then – that the president had not only committed the crimes with which he’d been charged, but several other impeachable offenses that the Democrats had not added to their suit. In fact, he was pretty snippy about the Dems not having done so, despite the fact that he had not actually given them any of the requested information.

Some would say that Bolton screwed Americans over twice – once as a trump appointee who failed to ‘tell all’ when his country needed him … and now as a very well-paid author of a ‘tell all.’

He’s joined the rogues gallery of cowards who laboured under trump, took his money, and then spilled their guts when their hearts were broken. Eventually pretty much every one of his handpicked, adoring cadre will have their own moment in the author spotlight. And these aren’t the ‘never trumpers’ .. they’re the die hard fans for whom he could do no harm.

History offers a plethora of examples of presidents who’ve clashed with their staff, but this is an extraordinary deluge of those who once grovelled at his feet and kissed the ground upon which he walked, who are now expecting us to believe that they’ve had an epiphany since being bounced from the White House. NOW they realize that he’s incompetent, incapable, and, yes, as bad as his critics said he was. NOW they want us to believe that they thought he was just fooling when he told them straight out that he was a snake.

Having bought back the souls they sold to trump to secure employment, they are now happy to resell their souls for a chance at political redemption, along with the fat advances they’re receiving from publishers. And the public eats it up.

In 2020 alone, we’ve had Bolton’s book, along with a tome from Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig titled A Very Stable Genius, and a book written by trump’s niece, Mary L. Trump, whose axe to grind is titled Too Much and Never Enough; How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.

Last year saw six books, from everyone from Jim Acosta to Anonymous, Victor Davis Hanson, James Poniewozik, Rick Reilly, and Michael Wolff, which joined the thirteen books published in 2018, and the eighteen penned in 2017.

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who stood by while trump cut taxes on the rich, demanded an expensive and nonsensical border wall, and who turned a blind eye to cruel practices designed to hurt Muslims, immigrants and Dreamers, yet nevertheless managed to release his “The Way Forward: Renewing the American Idea, “ in which he revealed that trump knew nothing about governing and operated on ‘knee-jerk reactions.”

Omarosa Maningault Newman, Trump’s former communications director for the Office of Public Liaison, and his token African American female, left us with “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House,” in which she revealed trump as a racist with no aversion to repeatedly using the “N-word” as he slimed people of colour behind their backs.

The list goes on and on …. Anthony Scaramucci, Sean Spicer, James Comey, Hope Hicks, H.R. McMaster, even convicted presidential campaign adviser Roger Stone – all have profited from their association with trump.

Tell all’s about trump are nothing new. In 1993, Harry Hurt III published “Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump,” an unauthorized biography that used parts of trump’s first wife, Ivana’s, divorce deposition to describe his cruelty.

“The part of the book that caused the most controversy concerns Trump’s divorce from his first wife, Ivana. Hurt obtained a copy of her sworn divorce deposition, from 1990, in which she stated that, the previous year, her husband had raped her in a fit of rage. In Hurt’s account, Trump was furious that a “scalp reduction” operation he’d undergone to eliminate a bald spot had been unexpectedly painful. Ivana had recommended the plastic surgeon. In retaliation, Hurt wrote, Trump yanked out a handful of his wife’s hair, and then forced himself on her sexually. Afterward, according to the book, she spent the night locked in a bedroom, crying; in the morning, Trump asked her, “with menacing casualness, ‘Does it hurt?’ ” Trump has denied both the rape allegation and the suggestion that he had a scalp-reduction procedure. Hurt said that the incident, which is detailed in Ivana’s deposition, was confirmed by two of her friends.”

At some point, even the most fervent supporter has got to see that there is indeed something about trump, and it’s disgusting. Just ask anyone who has been in his presence for more than – how long did Scaramucci last, eleven days?

So it’s not just me, is what I’m saying. And I’m gonna keep on hating trump – rationally or irrationally – for as long as he is resident on this planet, whether that be as president or, hopefully, in good time, as a long-term political prisoner.

……………………………………………….

I caught this 2019 ideaCity talk on YouTube last week, and was just blown away. I hope those who cherish democracy, and who have been wondering if there’s any hope for the planet, will take some comfort from Marie Henein’s calm, yet passionate, defence of democracy, and the free speech that enables democratic nations. This one’s a keeper.

“Here’s the three things that I noticed happen. The democratic dialogue has been replaced with a digital screaming match. Our ideas of democracy began to unmoor from liberalism, and the concept of democracy was suddenly equated with populism. Or as some authors have called it, we see the rise of Illiberal democracy. And thirdly, caught in the eye of the storm were many of the values and freedoms so essential to reconcile the success of the democracy with the protection of minorities, of the marginalized, of those who did not have the majority vote. “

Democracy and Freedom of Speech – Marie Henein

Beware of Darkness

by Roxanne Tellier

It’s a long weekend, and here in my little corner of the city, it’s sunny and warm, with just a gentle breeze ruffling the ferns. My ‘regular customers’ – the little birds, Blue Jays, and squirrels – have already been by for their morning treats and have now gone off to hide from the local felines.

The local cats that I find myself hiding from are the hardcore cultists on social media. who – despite knowing that I have nothing but disdain for their claims – are still driven to send me memes and videos about conspiracy theories and their hero, trump. It’s like trump spawned an army of gaslighters to back up his prodigious stream of nonsense. I am besieged.

I am beset with anti vaxxers, anti Bill Gates-ers, the ‘plandemic’ true believers, the Mike Flynn apologists, and the swarms of cabin fevered, badly coiffed anti-COVID-ers, all of whom have chosen trump’s murderous and genocidal BizarroWorld over science, truth, or reality.

I am hammered nonstop by these fanatics, and it’s making me crazy. I don’t want to be the bespectacled school marm, doomed to constantly interject that, “actually – that’s not at all true.” I don’t want to be the stern, uncompromising maiden aunt ‘with no sense of ha ha’ that I’m accused of being when I don’t find mis/disinformation presented as truths, funny. And I don’t want to be the Chris Hedges of the conversation, whose every observation reeks of doom and gloom.

And I really don’t want to be the person that points out that someone that YOU may hold dear, has actually gone batshit crazy, and needs an intervention. I don’t have your history with that person, so I don’t see them with loving eyes – I see them without the rose-coloured glasses … and your dear friend or loved one is behaving irrationally and irresponsibly.

Mostly, I don’t want to ever feel that I did anything to hurt another human’s health, by adding to the complete confusion that has come along with the concerted efforts of trump’s re-election efforts, fueled by the trolls and Russian based troll farms that are spreading these lies, meant to lure people out of lockdown and into danger.

Anyone who thinks that they are alone in despising the changes done to their everyday lives by this pandemic needs to check their narcissism; if there are two or three people somewhere unaffected and giggling, no one has time to dig down deep enough to find them. And anyone who believes that their ‘rights’ include the possibility of infecting others is abjectly and irredeemably selfish. As the saying goes, the right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.

In crisis, our characters are revealed; we are not what we claim, but what we do. If you are portraying yourself as a people-loving, hippie type, but you use your hippie cred to disseminate a meme about how America was ‘in the middle of a pandemic in 1969’ but “Instead of shutting everything down, and ruining people’s lives, they held Woodstock,” you are spreading the ‘fake news’ gospel. You are claiming that the current coronavirus pandemic is a product of the media spreading unnecessary fear and panic. But you’re being sneakier than trump or his gang, in that you’re wrapped in a peace flag, in an attempt to appeal to that gauzy nostalgia loved by baby boomers.

Sneakier still, the group you are teasing with the memories of heady freedom, complete with ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’ are the group deemed most vulnerable; seniors, often with multiple comorbidities. The Woodstock meme is the pied piper of pensioners.

(In fact, Woodstock took place months after the first season of the Hong Kong flu had ended in the United States, when it was believed that the virus was gone. )

And even after the truth is exposed, and the premises of the memes are debunked, those people prone to spreading misinformation tend to really double down. They will not be denied. They’ll arm-wrestle you to the ground in defense of their beliefs.

In truth, we’re all confused. We’re all hating being locked in and away from our loved ones, and we’re all starved for contact, and for some real, unbiased information, something we can pin our hopes and our futures upon. We want a return to what we used to call normal, even though that normal recedes further into the distance with every passing day.

A call to arms, like the ‘plandemic’ video misinformation, or like the Woodstock meme, gives us the false hope that all we have to do is be brave in order to be able to take some acceptable societal measures, like reopening the cities.

Is it really necessary for anyone to remind those people how many of the previously ‘brave’ now lie in coffins in the ground? We have over 5700 Canadians dead to date. Based on the current numbers, we’ll have over 100,000 dead Americans by next week. Perhaps a little less ‘bravery’ is in order.

…………………………………………………………………………………………….

On a lighter note, I can’t help but feel that President Obama’s wonderful speeches yesterday, delivered virus free to American graduates, were like opening a window and letting the clean, sweet May air flow into the house.

Words of optimism, of hope, of pride in oneself and in one’s nation, without a single whine or brag – ah, it’s been a long, long time since we heard such kindness. In all of 2020 so far, at least we had that hour.

In that spirit, let’s take a little ‘prance’ down the Memory Lane of lively, happy, bubble gum pop songs with no agenda beyond making us smile. Everybody dance!

1910 Fruitgum Company … Simon Says

Bobby Sherman Easy Come Easy Go

Friend and Lover Reach out of the Darkness

The Archies Sugar Sugar

Tommy Roe Dizzy

The Ohio Express Yummy Yummy Yummy

The Partridge Family – I think I Love You

Enjoy the rest of the long weekend!

American Monkey Court as Must See TV?

Who knew a Judiciary Committee could become Must See TV?

Is there any way the House Judiciary Committee attempting to publicly lynch FBI director Peter Strzok can take their act on the road? It’s not every day the world gets to see a complete institutional meltdown in Washington, DC.

The Committee were weighing in on Strzok, who was part of both the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, and the possibility of Russian interference in the Trump presidential campaign in 2016. Like any sane person, Strzok believed that Americans would see through Trump’s obvious flaws, and vote for Clinton.

Unlike anyone thinking straight, he shared some of his thoughts about both matters with his mistress, by texting them to her on his work phone. And there’s the rub.

While his sentiments were echoed by a goodly portion of the Republican party themselves during the campaign, (“Trump is a f**king idiot. What the hell happened to our country?”) the party line since Trump’s ascension to the throne has always been that these personal, and basically pillow talk texts between Strzok and his lover, were proof of a deep conspiracy within the FBI to stop Donald Trump from being elected president.

Apparently the need to keep this conspiracy a secret was so dire that the FBI then let Trump get elected to the presidency. Now THAT is sneaky!

Chair of the committee Bob Goodlatte and Jerrold Nadler battled it out over what questions could be answered. The bellowings of ‘point of order!” “your point of order not taken, sir!” bounced from side to side like the bouncing ball that once led moviegoers into a rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” and just when you thought they would come to blows, someone brought up how Steve Bannon had stonewalled the committee on Russian interference, and maybe he should be brought back and made to tell the truth. A very long and boring vote then took place, that lead us nicely into Rep Louis Gohmert leading a pearl-clutching chorus of ‘have you no SHAME, sir!” over Strzok’s pornographic texts to his mistress, while Rep Bonnie Watson Coleman yelled at Gohmert, “You need your medication,” and then back into Trey Gowdy’s only apparent point – that Strzok had gone straight from disliking Trump to wanting him impeached before he’d actually gotten the presidential gig.

Strzok acquitted himself extremely well, and was able to shoot a few truth grenades into the obviously partisan Monkey Court. “The proposition that [bias] is going on and that might occur anywhere in the FBI deeply corrodes what the FBI is in American society, the effectiveness of their mission, and it is deeply destructive.”

As late night comedian Stephen Colbert put it, “it was like ‘A Few Good Men,’ but with even fewer good men.”

Not THAT is Must See TV.

Meanwhile, at the NATO Summit in Brussels, Trump lay on the floor and tantrumed. One pundit remarked that it was, “the usual Trump; a stream of incoherent sentences. The allies looked the other way as when the old uncle gets nuts.”

And then, as usual, he held a press conference where he declared that the problem he had created had just been solved … by him.

It was a moment when the world watched the Emperor parade before the planet without a stitch of clothing.

During Trump’s official visit to England, an inflammatory radio interview he had given kicking sand in Theresa May’s face before driving a knife into her back was released as he and his entourage were dining in state, at her estate.

As The Guardian reported, ” Donald Trump hailed Boris Johnson as a future prime minister, accused the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, of doing “a bad job” on terrorism and said there had been too much immigration in Europe in an incendiary interview that raised questions about the decision to invite him to Britain.

A day before the US president was due to have bilateral talks with Theresa May, Trump used an interview with the Rupert Murdoch owned Sun, to endorse her principal Tory rival just days after he resigned from the cdabinet in protest at her Brexit policy.

Trump described Johnson as “a very talented guy” for whom he had “a lot of respect”. He claimed he was not trying to pit Johnson against his host, but added: “I am just saying I think he would be a great prime minister. I think he’s got what it takes.”

Awkward!

Predictably, once he had to defend his trash talk in May’s face, he backtracked on every word, calling it ‘fake news.’ Pity the whole thing is audio taped, and we can judge his words for ourselves.

While the baby Trump blimp sails over London’s streets, he and his entourage prepare to take the Trump Too Outrageous! Tour on to Scotland, before what is sure to be a sickeningly ingratiating secret meeting with Russia’s Putin.

Let’s just hope he doesn’t give away any of the ‘good’ American states, as he puppy dog wriggles in the joy of grovelling at his Master’s feet.

Tilting the Mirror

There’s a conspiracy theory that’s been around for a few years now, in which people believe that CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) experiments have caused the world to shift into an alternate reality, a parallel universe. They claim that the organization was warned of the possibility by physicist Stephen Hawking, but that the alarm was ignored .. and now, here we are, somewhere other than where we should be..

Some days … most days! … it really does feel like our reality has been tilted just a little sideways. There is an enormous difference in the way I thought and wrote in 2016, as opposed to the way I do now, in 2018. We are living in interesting times that often do resemble a universe like our own, but upside down and backwards. It leaves me feeling a little like Superman’s friend from the fifth dimension, Mr Mxyzptlk, or like I am living in BizarroWorld.

How else can you explain the Chicago Cubs winning their first World Series since 1908, and Donald Trump‘s election to the presidency? Nothing has made sense for years – up is down, black is white, and Dollarama delisted not one but two of my favourite deodorants. There is no justice.

Perhaps you are feeling ‘the Mandela effect,’ something which you might have come across on line, or in a group of friends, when you encounter people who believe and will bet their last dollar on their insistence that something happened – although all evidence shows that it never did.

Examples of the “Mandela effect” include believing that Nelson Mandela died in prison in the 1980s, and swearing that the comedian Sinbad played a genie in a 1990’s movie. Oh, and that the “Berenstein Bears” were really named the “Berenstain Bears.”

If you believe this theory, then Trump’s assertions of Muslims cheering in the streets after 9/11, or of terrorist attacks on Sweden, or any of the six plus lies he spews a day, are all true .. in his own universe. Just not in ours.

Of course, this is just a wild theory, meant to protect our fragile minds from cracking under the strain of living through the disaster of the Trump administration and the end days of capitalism. According to both French economist Thomas Piketty and German economist Wolfgang Streeck, society is on the verge of collapse due to the worst form of socioeconomic inequality in capitalism’s history. Which sort of trumps Trump, if you will.

With just eight multi-billionaires owning the equivalent amount of capital of half of the global population, we could be in for a world of pain, If and when the next major global financial crisis strikes, perhaps as a consequence of trade wars and excessive national debt.

Big capital, government and the military would ascend to full control. That would work out well for the privileged, who could afford to hole up in comfort, but life for the masses would be miserable in a polluted, brutish world.

On some level, we are all aware of this inequity, this imbalance of the playing field, this looming Armageddon that we are unable to prevent, and that unease we feel translates to how we interpret current events. If it is in our nature to double down on our core beliefs, we may have to deal with a shocking amount of cognitive dissonance.

Fear of losing what we have always perceived to be true can be incredibly painful. When our truths are challenged, we will push back, unable to hold two truths in our minds simultaneously. That’s when you hear the screams of ‘fake news!’ and see the undermining of science, actual corroborated truths and facts, and respected journalism. It is easier to shoot the messenger than to absorb new information that contradicts our long held viewpoints.

But yelling ‘fake news!’ every time you hear something you don’t like, doesn’t make it fake. It just makes it contrary to what you want to believe.

Some of our most deeply held values may stem from our upbringing, and the unconscious ethics we’ve absorbed from our families and our peers. Much is drummed into us by our choice of media, especially as it has evolved in the last two decades.

We are the product of our environment, of what we are born into, and of what we choose to surround ourselves with when the choice becomes our own. It’s fascinating to unravel the gymnastic moves that minds can make when they are asked to confront how they came to a point of view or decision. Kind of like the new math meets the Kama Sutra – fun to watch until someone loses an eye.

How we name and sort concepts may depend less on reality, and more on innate prejudices. What we believe about others and their behaviors may have more to do ourselves and with what we have been lead to believe, than what those other people are actually likely to be thinking or doing.

In these days of divisiveness and bitter words, of anger and a sense of disconnect that threatens to bring countries to an emotional or physical civil war, it’s important to remember that it is only by coming together that societies flourish.

‘A rising tide lifts all boats.’ In 1933, Roosevelt’s “New Deal” brought America back to prosperity by utilizing the federal government’s power to help the weakest amongst them. In 1964, Lyndon B Johnson tried to do something similar, with his vision of a Great Society, the main goal of which was the elimination of poverty and racial injustice.

” He applauded the nation’s wealth and abundance but admonished the audience that “the challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of American civilization.”

It has always and ever been the coming together of a people that enriches and ennobles them, not outbursts, divisions, anger and threats. A true leader does not divide to conquer, but rather, brings all together to prosper.

This time we are living in will pass. History will record what happened in these days of discord, and pass judgement on all of us, for what we did or what we failed to do. Some will continue to rail against what they do not want to hear or believe, while others will sadly put their ideals in the bottom drawer and carry on, diminished.

But thee and me, and all of us, we will still be here, and all of the harsh words and deeds we aimed at each other will lie around us, like the husks of dinosaurs, or the steam that rises off a dumpster fire, fetid and festering.

The mirror tilted once – it can tilt again. But what will it reflect? A brave new world, or a desolate landscape of broken dreams?

Thinking About Thinking

Ain’t I a wonder, and ain’t you a wonder too!

Or so we’ve been led to believe, by all of our ‘likes’ and ‘loves’ on social media, which is where we go to show off our funny, pretty, and intelligent sides. It’s where we go to get our ‘strokes’ of approval, to find out who’s doing what, and it’s where some of us go to air our opinions and beliefs, and to challenge the opinions and beliefs of others.

“(As of August 2017) For the first time in the Pew Research Center’s surveys, more than half (55%) of Americans ages 50 or older report getting news on social media sites. That is 10 percentage points higher than the 45% who said so in 2016. Those under 50, meanwhile, remain more likely than their elders to get news from these sites (78% do, unchanged from 2016).”

There really isn’t anyone moderating what we say on Facebook. Oh, the book of face would have you believe that, like McDonalds, “we do it all for you,” but anyone who’s been slapped with a three day suspension for uploading a picture of a woman breastfeeding would disagree. No one seems to really know what FB will decide is pornographic or unseemly. Even Facebook itself is unable to provide a hard and fast policy, since it changes with whatever the loudest voices declare to be currently correct.

And Facebook’s acceptance of Russian payment for the placement of ads that ultimately swayed voters in the last election – well, that’s for the courts to decide, but I’d say that might be considered a Russky Bridge too far.

What is indisputably true, in the world of social media where reputations can be made or destroyed in the space of a tweet, is that there aren’t many grown ups in the room.

And the barrier that might have once existed between terrestrial media and internet social media is gossamer fine.

Because it’s that kind of world, now, where the highest rated radio and TV shows are filled with loud, opinionated, and often grossly under informed ranters who toss the red meat of controversy to the most rabid of listeners who will wait, slavishly, by their phones, in order to add their own voice to the cacophony, and be part of the fun. It’s a world where a reality TV host gets to be president. It’s Idiocracy.

How did we get here? Well, I’d say the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) played a very large role in this slide into mis and disinformation. Created in 1939 to license and renew the license of broadcast stations, the FCC did not originally have the power to censor what was aired. Until the 1950’s, most people got the bulk of their information from radio, and news was sold strictly as news, not entertainment. However, then as now, radio stations needed advertisers to keep in business, and the Commission worried that station owners would be influenced by their advertisers, and by what the conservative owners might decide to pass off as truth.

And so, the Mayflower Doctrine was put into place by then FCC chairman Larry Fly, “fearing a further commercialized, conservative-biased and corporate dominated medium.” The Doctrine declared that broadcasters have “an obligation to allot a reasonable amount of time to treatment of controversial issues and that they have an affirmative duty to seek, to provide representative expression of all responsible shades of opinion.”

The Mayflower Doctrine gave way to the Fairness Doctrine in 1949.
“It established two forms of regulation on broadcasters: to provide adequate coverage of public issues, and to ensure that coverage fairly represented opposing views. The second rule required broadcasters to provide reply time to issue-oriented citizens. Broadcasters could therefore trigger Fairness Doctrine complaints without editorializing. The commission required neither of the Fairness Doctrine’s obligations before 1949.” (wiki)

But even that modicum of control was removed in 1989, ushering in a whole new way of presenting information. No longer did radio or TV have to be held to truth – instead, it became permissible for broadcasters to present, higgledy piggledy, views that directly benefited their paid advertisers and corporate owners. it was the beginning of ‘fake news,’ paving the way for owners like Rupert Murdoch to found stations based upon the rantings of radio and TV shock jocks, those highly emotional if often low informed and biased talk show hosts ‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

While this sort of blathering can be very entertaining, and kickstart the hearts of those who either lack their own opinions or love to air their ideas and conspiracy beliefs, it really didn’t do much good for those people who are easily led to often ill informed and hard right theories.

The thing about life is that most of us come to our ideas through our very limited experiences. And yet somehow we believe that our conclusions on goings on outside of our own personal spheres are as valid as those of the people who have dedicated their lives to understanding those events.

Thinking like that is naive, and is what led to America electing one of the most incompetent presidents of their history. Believing that success in business equates to success in government is an enormous lie of epic proportions and horrifically sad consequences. The very qualities that comprise ruthless thinking and lead to success in business are the direct antitheses of the qualities necessary for a wise, compassionate, and humane leader able to put the needs of the Nation before his own.

Why is it so hard for most of us to realize that we don’t have all the answers? To understand that there are people out there who are smarter than us, or who have more information about a topic, or maybe just have that intuitive flash of brilliance that allows them to weigh up an issue, thoughtfully and with ALL of the data considered, and then come up with a solution that actually works for all involved, something that we’ve somehow missed, no matter how long and hard we’ve worried the question?

Why is it so hard to understand that there are very few of us capable of holding every aspect of a quandary in perfect balance for long enough to solve the equation?

Time and again I have seen businesses and governments weigh up a problem with all of their combined brainpower .. and still come up empty. It’s truly infuriating for all of us – the entity trying and failing to find a solution, and those impacted by their lack of a properly considered conclusion in which all of the players needs are considered.

Fr’instance. In British Columbia, homelessness and drug addiction are a crushing burden to those who suffer from these issues. Trying to help and control the realities of how these problems impact upon not just those who suffer, but those who live within a society that bears the financial and legal brunt of these issues, is something that the BC government and policing agencies have to deal with. At this point, a tangle of laws, rights, and ugly reality have created an impasse. There’ seems to be no answer to this question. The result is an uneasy standoff, that benefits and pleases no one.

I don’t have the answer. But somewhere out there, someone does. He or she just hasn’t been asked the right question.

Corporate and political entities are not the only ones that often have a smug belief that they are the only ones with the answers.

Take the subject of phasing out oil powered vehicles vs electrically powered vehicles. Pretty much every driver who is of a certain age has little belief that the demise of fuel will happen any time soon. And yet, the Chinese government is following in the footsteps of countries like India, France, Britain, and Norway, which have already announced plans to ditch gas and diesel cars in favour of cleaner vehicles in the coming years.

I’ve heard all of the arguments, and the cries that trucks and other heavy vehicles will never be able to be replaced by electric or electrified vehicles, for at least the next fifty years.

But it IS gonna happen, and much sooner than those who picture electric vehicles being powered by a trunk full of double AA batteries can conceive. Barring a nuclear holocaust, which would put paid to pretty much all of civilization, electric vehicles will be the only new vehicles manufactured in many countries, as soon as 2021.

When the Fairness Doctrine was tossed aside as though the citizens of 1989 were far more intelligent and civilized than the yokels who’d laboured under these doctrines for the previous fifty years, we ushered in a time when any fool with a platform and a theory could control large groups of people, without any constraints, be they of decency or truth, covering their speech.

The internet and the ubiquitous social media furthered the range of those loud voices, and multiplied the numbers of potential followers their words could reach.

But without any control, or any way to establish rules of argument and debate, the loudest voices tend to be the ones most likely to resort to schoolyard bullying tactics, like name calling, the distortion of truth, and outright lies being repeated until the lies themselves are woven into the fabric of society.

Despite the miracle of the internet allowing each of us to research, in real time, any questionable information presented to us by even the loudest and most authoritative voices, the demand that truth be spoken is often overridden by the Bully Pulpit of those in power.

I’m pretty sure that this is not where the inventors of broadcast media hoped that we’d arrive.

But it is the situation in which we now find ourselves drowning.

Hell to the No to the Fake News

After a week of schizophrenic weather (it’s hot! it’s cold! it’s raining! it’s snowing!) and even more schizophrenic babblings from the Whiner in Chief to the South of Sanity, it was an enormous relief to make the long drive out past the airport to the cozy home of friends Candice and Eli, for the New Orleans themed Fam-Damily Music Jam Fest. Within minutes of arrival I was draped in Carnival beads and being pulled on stage for some musical improv.

It was exactly what I needed. For more than a month, most of us have been following the antics of President Evil, and it’s enough to bring on a nervous tic, if not an ulcer and heart palpitations. I can’t speak for anybody else, but for me, singing clears out all of the cobwebs and leaves me feeling cleansed and refreshed. Maybe it’s having to either remember lyrics or to make them up as you go, or maybe it’s my natural competitiveness and need to ‘play’ with other musical children.

Regardless, it sure took the edge off, in the best way. For those of you who are bored of the political antics of the Golden Wrecking Ball and his band of Merry Incompetents, you can’t possibly understand how tightly wound all these machinations have made those of us who are following this race to the Reichfest. It’s all too much, it’s never-ending, and we cannot relax at any hour of the day or night. We are guitar strings tuned too tight. Something’s gotta give, or we will snap.

I am normally a peaceable, happy person, but lately I’ve discovered just how much rage I have for the blandly evil, those who nonchalantly throw the lives of innocents into turmoil and pain for no more reason than a belief in their own superiority. How angry am I? The next person who shrugs off ANY thing to do with the Orange-Tufted Twitter Flitterer with a casual ‘fake news’ gets it right in the kisser.

And I’m not the only person discovering their inner pugilist …. there’s an entire movement, of politically active liberal men engaged in power lifting, in order to “defend themselves against attacks by far-right extremists, and to intervene in potential hate crimes.”

The #SwoleLeft was started by 26 year old New Yorker, Poncho Martinez, who says: “Trump’s election made it clear that the Democrats are incompetent—that their power machinations are useless when confronted with a different fighting style, and that regular people need to get involved with politics on an individual level and on a daily basis.”

He’s right. Anyone who thinks they can out logic the Prima Donald‘s administration is bringing a knife to a gun fight. There is NO logic in President Pants On Fire‘s team, who grow increasingly more bloated from feeding on the tears and misery of the people of America. There is only a verbal tank rolling forward and crushing everyone in it’s path.

Carefully prepared arguments, complete with annotations, 8 by 10 colour glossies, painstakingly checked and double checked, will be met with the response of ‘fake news.’ And that makes us as helpless as the sword fighter who Indy shot rather than confront.

And here’s a tip for those of you who don’t realize that you’re actually a Hair Gropenfuhrer apologist, despite continually telling your more liberal friends that you can’t stand the guy … if you’re calling an investigation into a confirmed Russian intervention in the last election ‘fake news’ … you’re in Trump’s Reeking Wrecking Crew.

The Orange-Tufted Shit Gibbon and his King of the Whoppers staff coast through all reporting on their misdeeds by repeatedly calling it all ‘fake news.’ Here’s a newsflash, Comrade Trumputin; you may not want to believe in science or facts, and you may not want to hear that people disagree with you, and you may not have noticed that the majority of the world believes you’re a compulsive liar and a malignant narcissistic, but all of those things are TRUE .. which, if it hasn’t been properly explained to you .. is the opposite of FALSE and FAKE.

“Calling something “fake news”, Mr. President, doesn’t make it so, no matter how loud the applause is amongst your acolytes. You seem to believe that the American public can’t see that you are protesting the truth getting out, while not really denying the specifics of the reporting in any convincing way.

Attacking the messenger while not being able to counter the firehose of leaks that suggest very worrisome developments, will not cause the press to blink. Quite the contrary. Reporters are instinctual, and the louder and more vehement your protests, the more we will be inclined to dig.” (Dan Rather)

However, if The Trump of Doom is correct that fake news is the enemy of the people, then he has made himself Public Enemy Number One, through his dedication to the spreading of complete fabrications and outright lies, while offering no evidence to back up his take on what he’s seen on FOX or what he’s heard from some German golfer who knows a guy who knows a guy. We are, in the words of KellyAnne “WrongWay” Conway, to take his tirades and rants, not as mere prose, like ordinary people use, but as some sort of special messages he is delivering from his heart. You know, like that other guy, the North Korean Dear Leader, that is so misunderstood outside of his own country.

No one with any integrity whatsoever will tell you with a straight face that the media is always right. There are facts, and then there is spin, and whether you blow left or right, the same reportage can put the butcher’s thumb down on your side or the other side’s scale. There is misinformation, and there is propaganda; there is a ‘sex sells’ slant, and ‘if it bleeds it leads.” And then there is the $2 billion worth of media attention, about twice the all-in price of the most expensive presidential campaigns in history, that was given to Mr. So-Called-President gratis during the last campaign, allowing him to outline his plans to Make America Great Again.

Tell me, Truthophobic Trump, was that ‘fake news’ as well?

What Hair Hitler and his Bushel Basket of Deplorables call ‘fake news’ is anything with which they disagree, or anything that interferes with their versions of ‘alternative facts,’ or ‘post-facts, ‘ in their post-truth bubble. They’re putting the ‘fun’ back into ‘dysfunctional’ … but only if you’re on the Trump Trolley of Doom.

Dire Abbey has his own personal vision of America, which is apparently a place of carnage, a dumpster fire of cataclysmic proportions, where the citizens flee in terror of one another and certainly from anyone of any sort of colour that is not orange. Which is odd, because it would seem that he has seen very little of the country he represents, beyond the golden toilets of his suites in Mar A Lago or New York city, or as seen through the tinted windows of his private jet. Is this ‘dumpster fire’ visible from his unfriendly skies when he can tear his eyes away from Bill O’Reilly?

His dystopic vision was nurtured on the ramblings of alt-right ‘celebrities,’ and misspelled internet memes, which does, in some horrific way, make him representative of half of the American people. And it is the internet that must bear responsibility for the care and nurturing of trolls and hackers who gleefully terrorize social media like the bullies at a Nerd Prom.

And the bad news is – it’s gonna get worse. Actual ‘fake news,’ disseminated to con consumers into giving up their money to crooks, is now propagated through Twitter bots, and the massaging of demo-and psychographics to find the most vulnerable. Just wait until AI (Artificial Intelligence) gets a hold of advertising! If you think it’s hard to find the truth about products or services now, you’re really not going to like the future.

No, you cannot just call anything you fear or disbelieve ‘fake news.’ That stupid and ignorant slam of all media is nothing but a cheap form of censorship, which full stop puts an end to discussion or questioning in the name of some holier than thou moral positioning.

I won’t have it. I won’t have it from anyone, up to and including Trumplethinskin. I am on a crusade to eradicate the term, and yes, I will defend our right to decide for ourselves, based on careful study and reflection, on what is true and what is false. We cannot and must not normalize the censorship and removal of viewpoints that conflict with specialized, personal interests.

You have been warned. Next time … POW!

” A lie is a non-fact deliberately told as fact. Lies are told in order to reassure oneself, or to fool, or scare, or manipulate others. Santa Claus is a fiction. He’s harmless. Lies are seldom completely harmless, and often very dangerous. In most times, most places, by most people, liars are considered contemptible.” Ursula K. Le Guin, Northwest Portland