Dark and Difficult Times
(sorry for the lack of alt text - every time I add it the HTML nazis get nasty and nitpicky. It did read "Lady Liberty got laid and now she's got a terminal case of the pox")
I was glued to the radio all day on Wednesday and listened as a certain some one took the podium and made his acceptance speech.
All humility, graciousness, bridge building and bucket loads of lofty idealism.
Izzie was not convinced.
It was so amusing, actually sickening to hear a man who has spent most of his life and certainly the last 18 months striking matches and pouring petrol everywhere - the human Molotov Cocktail and now he's donning the fireman's hat and is going to save the planet. As some previous commentators said - Trump isn't running for President, he's running to be Batman.
I wonder how long it will take before the Real fear mongering rage filled hissing snarling Donald Trump will return to true form.
Such a lowlife shameless charlatan bully is now being richly rewarded for his appalling behaviour. I suspect that even he is astonished to have gotten so far. What is so worrying is that his ego is just far too enormous to ever allow him to seek out and take advice from people who are smarter than him and who might actually compensate for his total lack of competence.
To find so much rage, malice and incompetence together in some one on the cusp of so much power is truly frightening.
I woke at 6am in order to do the new morning ritual for November. Thirty uninterrupted minutes of squiggling just after waking with no music, no radio and no distractions and only the voice of the inner serpent for inspiration (and of course the main character Mephistopheles who has been busy assisting a ghost writer on his autobiography "The Art of the Steal")
It was at 10am I got my first fix of the election score. The Donald was about 10 seats ahead of his rival. No surprises there. I figured it would be a fairly close race since voluntary voting adds to the volatility.
What disturbed this serpent - on Wednesday I darkened the door of a McDonalds and the television was showing the CNN election coverage. At that stage the Donald was at 132 seats and Hillary at 104.
The woman who brought me my coffee and toastie glanced at the screen and was positively jubilant. She wasn't even from the United States but did a high five. I responded in kind with a toast to The Trainwreck.
She was surprised I should think that and proclaimed that if Hillary had got elected she would have led the world to war and Izzie ever so innocently asked along the lines - and so you don't think that Donald wouldn't do that and what makes you think that she would and that he wouldn't.
She insisted that the Donald was the safe pair of hands and that Hillary was the warmongering monster but had no actual facts on which to base this claim. Izzie had to wonder - was it the lack of Coke Zero in the serpent diet that causes this lack of understanding?
It got positively scary when I heard the same comments from two customers in another store a few hours later when the result was known. Hillary would have nuked us all. I asked what made them say that.
Hillary's twitchy index finger - that's news to me. Oh that's because the mainstream media here don't tell us the true facts.
Who would have ever thought that Rupert Murdoch would have been so biased against the Clintons?
I can understand why lots of folks didn’t like HRC. She is often smug and patronising and has Malcolm Turnbull's "born to rule" attitude. But for all that she is actually competent and astonishingly cool in the most stressful situations. She was especially impressive in those feral excuses for presidential debates. But it is not mere dislike but visceral hatred and loathing accompanied by accusations of warmongering and psychopathic tendencies which seem far more applicable to the Trumpet. And that's here in Oz too. I suspect this attitude is especially common amongst the born again Christians such as the Hillview horrors.
Why is everyone so acutely aware of the speck in their neighbour’s eye while being completely and blissfully oblivious to the log in their own?
It seems almost impossible to find a reasonable explanation for such a level of revulsion since just about any discussion on the subject even on political cartoons forums quickly degenerates into irrational ranting and accusations. More heat than light and hate than hope and those are the places that are supposed to be the neutral meeting grounds where logic, reason and a sense of humour prevails.
So there’s the Donald Devotees, the Hillary Haters and those folks who just wanted to give two fingers to The Establishment because they are sick of being at best ignored and at worst ridiculed by the very people who have benefited from all the globalisation, innovation and disruption.
By far the most logical and coherent explanation for the votes falling in Trump's favour that I have seen so far is an article written in March this year
I found it from listening to the The Religion and Ethics report on the radio this morning and was hoping they would put up a transcript by now.
Left parties the world over were founded to advance the fortunes of working people. But our left party in America - one of our two monopoly parties - chose long ago to turn its back on these people’s concerns, making itself instead into the tribune of the enlightened professional class, a “creative class” that makes innovative things like derivative securities and smartphone apps. The working people that the party used to care about, Democrats figured, had nowhere else to go, in the famous Clinton-era expression. The party just didn’t need to listen to them any longer.
And along came some one who did listen (for his own nefarious motives of course) and offered them an alternative place to go and the rest is history.
Feeding on genuine grievances for one's own evil purposes is an excellent tactic for all aspiring despots. It has a tried and proven track record ;)
Hillary Clinton made the fatal mistake of disregarding those she disagreed with and dismissing them as ‘deplorables’. She now gets to repent at her leisure.
In a country where a CEO can earn more than 300 times the income of the most lowly paid worker (who is probably no longer even on the payroll but subcontracted out to some dodgy labor hire company) it is hardly any wonder that so many people are seriously pissed off. It turns out that the calculations are based on the median worker which makes the disparity between the highest and lowest even worse. What on earth could a CEO be doing to justify earning in one DAY what the plebs get paid for a YEAR of wage slavery?
It turns out that the ratios in the USA are the worst in the world
Maybe we need to bring back a bright shiny new incarnation of the Soviet Union to keep the boss bastards honest. As long as the communist threat existed the boss goblins could not get away with such abominable behaviour. But since the fall of the Wall and “The End of History” they have been gloating and pushing the plebs to breaking point.
But it's an ill wind that blows no good ;) Margaret Atwood and Stephen King are going to do very well on the royalties front and the Canadian migration website has apparently been crashed for most of the day.
Welcome to Gilead!
And now in this time of darkness, the prophet of Doom has departed this mortal coil. We will have to walk the valley of shadows alone.
Once again another musical legend bites the dust.
When Trump's Tower of Babble has long crumbled to dust, the Tower of Song will live on.