The squirrel of time buries the nuts of tomorrow and eats them yesterday

 The late great Ambrose Bierce said a cynic sees the world as it is, not as it should be. So I wonder if it has occurred to anybody out there that Donald Duck's current machinations are the culmination of several months of groundwork involving the television networks - how to keep Amuricans glued to the election coverage after the election's over. This may be their last chance to cash in on Trumpelstiltskin and it seems unlikely that it would be an accident.

I'm just sayin'. With the right perspective everything can make sense.

popgoestheweasel

 Watch the bar. It keeps dropping. Used to be people said, "Anybody'd be better than George Bush." Now it's "Anything's better than Trump." That's our new democratic process. That's how we choose pur president. Put a Republican in who makes the next guy look good. Just keep lowering the bar. What could be more American? Kids are told anybody can be president in the U.S. and darned if it ain't so. (anybody but a strong people's advocate like Ralph Nader, Eugene McCarthy or Bernie Sanders). Next it'll be anything's better than Biden and so it will go God only knows where. You would think Trump is the crud on the bottom of the barrel but best not to underestimate the force of gravity.

President should be the grreatest American we've got. Not the worst. Sharpest tool in the shed, not the dullest. It shouldn't be terribly hard to select a group of such individuals and draft one of them into service. He/she doesn't want the job, too bad. If this country can draft rabble into battle, then it should at least draft elite for government. Then the rest of us can just get on with our lives. sometimes monarchy desn't seem like such a bad idea. They got 'em side by side in England and it was the elected guy who got sucked into bombing Iraq.

if you vote, don't gripe

 

An urgent message to all potential voters: don't do it. If you keep acquiesing to this game, democracy will never get well. Look at the brilliant choice we have before us and see the farce. Boycott the election. Say Hell no, we won't go! (to the polls) If not now, when? Stop and never vote again until public service is not a pathway to wealth, until the president can actually be the peoples' representative, not the system's figurehead for us to focus our frustration and blame on. End Citizens United, eliminate the Selectoral College and draft citizens into public service. Everybody may have to go to Washington but not war. Politics, like coaching and Boy Scouts, attracts the worst elements of society. Why keep letting the worst people we have run the show? With a draft at least it will be random instead of just dumb. If Americans refuse to line up like cattle no matter who the hell they have to vote for it will scare the Raisinettes out of the establishment and it's the only thing that will. The time is now. Just do it. Not!

it's all jus' balderdash

 

Now that it's a pie fight, the Good Republican Romney is decrying the loss of civility. What really bugs him is that civility took the curtain with it and now the rabble can see more clearly than ever that a troupe of clowns postures in front of us for our stamp of approval in determining our fate. The master doesn't mind his peers seeing him naked but it just don't feel right if the slaves do. All Mitt's “colleagues” are strppin' down and parading down Main Street with Lindsey Graham's rattling buttocks (Graham Crackers) leading the way, shouting, “Look at us, pathetic fools from all walks of life, see how we look without trappings. Now you can vote for my big, fat belly or my shriveled legs,” like they just don't care anymore about pretending to care about issues. Kind of like the time ol' Cap'n Cook dropped his guard along with his drawers and got caught takin' a dump and the natives seen he warn't no god and ever'thing changed. Yep, all this probably makes it harder for the Mitt to prance around feeling like ruling club still means sumpin to anybody but the members.

just dessert

 

I don't understand the solemnity. For the current president, it's like the ideal Christmas. He got exactly what he asked for. Either that or they just tricked him with false positives into vacating the White House before he loses the election. Either way it's a win-win.

on demics

 

It occurs to me I never have liked demics – academics, epidemics, and covid-19 ain't the only pandemic – there's the cyberdemic, going viral for quite some time – been known to suck people's brains right out their head, in extreme cases replacing it with a solid mass called blockhead, also associated with peanuts. When's the CDC going to deal with that? We're engulfed in a polidemic, infected people unable to think so they practice thinking by thinking about politics and sometimes this builds up and spews out and we all have to hear it, about the Republican'ts and the Demic-rats and this is how it spreads, no mask can stop it; and it's horrible, aiggh, the horror. There's the policedemic spreading slowly and insidiously among the masses masquerading as an antidote to crime, wealth the only truly effective vaccine. If we must have a pandemic, give me a frying pandemic and some good old breaded shiners. Or some frying pandemonium. That's all I need. I suggest some new demics – how about a fundemic just for a start – why can't we ever get one of those? WelI, I suppose if we ever did, they'd get that under control right quick.

 

I figured out what it is about Donald Trump that some people like: he doesn't patronize the general public with the illusion that we mean something to the government beyond supplying the labor. He doesn't put a happy face on governmemt. He puts the ugly face on it that fits it.

Peaceful protests are supposed to be allowed in this country to show we have freedom. Show the whole damn world that we're free to walk around in the street and wave our opinion around. Yeeha! With a permit of course. Protests are a valve that lets off steam so we don't get too riled up and rebel. Trump sees a peaceful protest in Washington and he says I have a Bible in my hand so get the %#@& out of my way and has them tear gassed. People are then appalled at this violation of our right to protest. But that's not what it was. It was a demonstration that we have no such right. If we did, we wouldn't have undemocratic elections. We can't even protest with our ballot.

We are taught to revere the war dead and the government pays lip service to this concept – not because it reveres the war dead but because this puts a good face on more war dead for the next time. Governments care more about the dead than the living. So much so that they specilaize in making one out of the other wholesale. But hey – here's a medal for you. All this tomb of the unknown soldier and stuff – it's to keep us lining up for more. Donald Trump just doesn't get that war is a sacred cow. He apparently doesn't care if the myth gets perpetuated or not. He says dead soldiers are losers and suckers. What part of that is inaccurate? They took the bait. If this viewpoint could get out there and grow, why it might be the first baby step toward that much- advertised dream of ending war. But right now, even by thoughtful people, these opinions are seen as damning. Yep. It's all well and good to be “liberal” as long as you keep that sabre rattling. We don't want too much truth.

Of course this is all common sense to the common folk. We just never heard it from a president before. Doesn't make him a great man or a good president or even a terrific pedophile but it may be the key to his appeal – why it didn't hurt him to diss John McCain. I don't expect to miss Trump – I certainly hope I don't – but I think there are some things about him I'll miss.

 

Democracy these days is nothing more than a battleground where corporations fight over the wealth produced by the masses. What's the difference if it's an American corporation or a Russian one?Corporations inhabit their own global nation. As do the masses.  If you vote, don't gripe.

pretty cold however you look at it.

 

It occurred to me that a lot of words we use represent abstractions, ideals to be striven toward which have no actual foundation in the world. Justice seems a good one. We've all been hearing it or saying it for years – “with liberty and justice for all” - such brazen malarkey. Even the concept of justice requires oppression – a higher power presiding over us meting out punishment or reward. Yet this is the pinnacle of society's hopes. We assume it our birthright and justification for all manner of violations. This word keeps the rabble confused and on an endless scavenger hunt, trying to locate it so we may stand under and be subjected to its purifying power. You, too, can receive justice, my son.

Lately the search has been refined. Now we're looking for “social justice.” Many of us still searching for the regular kind must look up from the old quest and move to a new one, having received no instruction for how to tell one from the other. Just my luck, now I'll probably find plain old justice. I wonder if it still works. But hey – maybe I can pretend it's social justice and nobody will be the wiser.

One useful ability would be to recognize crumbs when we see it. Crumbs from the giant cake eaters above us who need not waste their time searching for justice, lacking any need of the stuff. It's not for them. They strive for real things. To them it's just ice.

 

And now you've got people saying black lives matter. Which obviously, if you have to say it, they don't. But there it is anyway, a perfectly reasonable, humble statement, hard to argue with in any sensible way and then here comes the blue lives faction, equating black people with Smurfs. No wonder black people are pissed off. Not that I'm saying anything against Smurfs, you understand. Hey – maybe the Smurfs are pissed off. What do you get when you combine black and blue? You get bruised, that's what. And by the way, who are these people talking to? Not the best and the brightest, I'll tell you. You got to be pretty stupid if people mattering is big news to you. Even if they matter only to themselves.

I never saw a sign saying white lives don't matter. You got a white life? I'm sorry. But you just got to get on with it.

revelations

 

I've been thinking for awhile that Donald Trump becoming President of the United States of Addiction was a harbinger of absurdities to come because very simply, if that could happen, anything can happen. And it certainly has been. That seemed to be the moment we stepped over the line and down the rabbit hole. Good and evil are not entities but one trend seems to be the rise of stupid. Stupid dominates “the media” and having poured into peoples' eyes and ears, it frequently pours back out their mouths. And proudly so, proud to be an orifice for spewing digital thought. It reminds me of a line from The Flight of the Phoenix leveled at the main character - “You have made ignorance a virtue.”

But then I remembered that stupid has been romping about since the hayday of George Bush. That was when Americans started to seem able to swallow and parrot any illogical, nonsensical malarkey if it came to them from on high. Jabberwocky like “George Bush (the man who presided over the only foreign attack on the continental U.S. in over 200 years) kept America safe,” went absolutely unchallenged by anybody with a large audience until, ironically, the current dufus pointed out how ridiculous that claim was. I personally almost went insane from hearing men say, “I'm sure glad Al Gore wasn't president when that happened.” Why??? Because he would have handled it worse?

So now I'm thinking 2000 marks the rise of stupid in the U.S. A lot of people thought O'bama meant a fresh start but apparently that was only an intermission.

Interestingly, all this stupid lies solely in the realm of subjects covered by “the media.” Politics has become a battleground for a dependant, wage enslaved, voyeuristic people who live the same day and even the same tv shows and now already decided football games, over and over again with no risks and no glory, deprived of real combat in life and sorely in need of it. Probably with no new football, manly men will become even more invested in their political beliefs to carry them there. Say what you want about peace, it can be found only in victory. The Klingons are us, not the Federation.

In all the important intellectual areas, the personal, independent thoughts and experiences that can't be covered on the web, people still speak and behave normally. As nature intended it. She always wins in the end.

So it's not that Americans themselves are more stupider these days. They just say more stupider thingaroos and are louder bullhornier so other people more hear it. It's the peopler times we virate in. It's a game.

options

Imagine that through some paranormal device you've seen into the future and learned you would be killed by police within 24 hours. You'd try to avert it by making yourself as safe as possible. Probably just stay in your house until the time passes. But if you happen to be black, there's nothing safe about that. So you think, “I'll go someplace with lots of people. I'll just stay in Denny's, eat all my meals there, drink hot chocolate in between... nope, nope, that won't work. Then you think, “I'll walk around town....no, ... hey I know. I'll go jogging like white people do. That'll keep me safe. Then at night I'll sleep in my ... no...

I'm curious if the stimulus check, purported to aid the rabble, is anything other than another bank bailout funneled through the rabble since much of it will be either deposited in a bank or pay a mortgage. Am I missing something here?

In an incident peculiar to the time, I'm at Thomas Lumber because I now have ample time to work on the porch. I'm in the big lumber barn getting some tongue-and-groove and a guy backs his diesel truck to where the exhaust is pouring out right where I'm standing. He leaves the truck running as he gets out and goes about his business wearing his health mask.

This is the human and this is why he is doomed.

What a strange place is the dream world, though not stranger than this one that gives birth to it. This morning I was dreaming I had a pearl necklace and donald Trump demanded to know whence came the pearls. I said they were taken from another necklace to make this one. He wouldn't believe it, said no way, that can't be done. Then we were trying to talk over each other, him saying it's impossible, me saying I saw them do it. Had the phone not rung, I never would have remembered this episode. And because the phone rang in this world, it remains unresolved in that one.