No use looking for the "door of perception", it either doesn't exist or defenseless in keeping the narcissistic and nihilistic rule-breakers out

 

I was on the bus sitting across from an older (than me) black male wearing a cap that indicated that he was a Vietnam veteran. We noted how someone a few rows back had her phone cranked up loud and was shouting into it. We chatted a bit about the “old days” when people obeyed the rules, not just the posted rules about using headphones and being mindful of other passengers on the bus, but that of the common rules of civilized behavior, in which people were self-aware of how their actions affect others, and act in accordance as they would expect others to. He observed that younger people didn’t “respect” anything anymore, which was interesting in the fact that people often demand “respect” even when they are acting disrespectfully.

The veteran was a bit on the conservative side, which I could sense when he dismissed climate change as not “real”; In order to stay neutral I observed that it was hard to see changes in the climate from one day to the next. But I also had to agree that if the world did need “fixing,” I had no confidence in the current generations to do the “fixing.” Noting my own age, I recalled in the Sixties and Seventies it was about “love.” “peace” and just trying to get along. With that generation came many so-called “liberal” beliefs and such beliefs remain held by people of that generation.

But today, the younger generations seem more infused with narcissism and nihilism. Even so-called “progressive” beliefs are nothing more than their self-victimizing obsessions, the MeToo “movement” being an example. There in the office building I work in there is a tenant which I will just say is on the extremes of gender victim politics, and every time I am forced to go in there it I feel as I am the one who is the victim of abuse. All those posters and placards with accusations and broad assumptions about so-called male culture—not a society that I recognize as the one I live in.

And now we see as for Amber Heard, who was found guilty of defaming Johnny Depp in the U.S. trial, the UK has to supply its own “documentary” in support of the claims by the now openly “bi-sexual” Evan Rachel Wood and others seeking to shift blame for their past behaviors and failures to achieve the fame and fortune they sought when they collaborated with Marilyn Manson, who qualifies as “low-hanging” pickings for those who need scapegoats.

Wood, whose film career is on the skids because people are now skittish about working with her, instead of being honest about herself insists on proclaiming herself a “victim” of Manson’s alleged predations. I mentioned a story that appeared in Jezebel over a decade ago in which Wood—who falsely claimed she moved from California to Tennessee with the son she had with Jamie Bell before ditching him, because Manson was “threatening” her—had claimed she was into “very edgy” activities, much as Manson was well-known for.

Manson dropped his own defamation case against Wood because it was a waste of money with a California version of Aileen Cannon who favored Wood who was overseeing the case, but Bell proved to another judge that Wood had at least in his case did make false claims against Manson—including a fake FBI letter—and received custody of his son, which Wood has since tried to portray as being something she “gifted” to Bell.

It is all so surreal. The UK documentary is called “Marilyn Manson Unmasked,” but one might rightly ask why no one is interested in the true motivations of Wood and co-conspirator Ilma Gore who sold pieces of her skin to buyers who bought the space on Gore to place a tattoo over (yeah, I know, stupid)…

 

 

…who is obviously into those “very edgy” and “adventurous” activities like Wood is, and that Bell was ditched because he was not into—or more likely, he was used by the bi-sexual Wood (just as the bi-sexual Heard used Elon Musk for his sperm “donations” and eventual millions in child support, conveniently ignored by the media) until she didn’t need him anymore. This was discussed in that story from a decade ago about her “break-up” with Bell 1 , which I originally encountered in the gender news website Jezebel, and it also appeared in People.

Interestingly, it appears that Wood and her representatives went on an Internet sweep to have the story removed, and the only one I found with the direct original quotes was in the above link to the website Celebitchy, which Wood and her representatives apparently hadn’t yet found to demand removal of this evidence that this narcissistic, self-serving character without an once of personal responsibility was making accusations that were not to be trusted.

But that is the world we live in now. Self-involvement and narcissism were inevitable bi-products of the social “experimentation” of the Sixties. What Aldous Huxley called the “doors of perception” in a book of the same name, meaning creating a world cleansed of evil thought and action, to “abolish our solitude as individuals”—meaning narcissistic behaviors—to  “atone us with our fellows in a glowing exaltation of affection and make life in all its aspects seem not only worth living, but divinely beautiful and significant.” 

With minds thus cleansed, a “heavenly world” would be created “of such a kind that we could wake up the next morning with a clear head and an undamaged constitution—then, it seems to me, all our problems (and not merely the one small problem of discovering a novel pleasure) would be wholly solved and earth would become paradise.”

Of course, Huxley’s book suggests that first you have to “see the light” by first taking hallucinogenic drugs, then having thus “seen the light,” you can perceive the world in a “new light” and act accordingly. This was all hogwash, and as critics of the book have pointed out, such thinking that inspired the “counter-culture” of the Sixties was naïve enough to allow by the Eighties a “counter-movement” of far-right conservatism with little strength to push back against it. It was like a federal forest land that could not protect itself when it was there for the taking by Trump’s “drill baby drill” friends.  

The “reality” is that human beings share more in common with wild beasts with their quest to establish their own “territory” and to fulfill their own immediate needs with no thought to how their actions effect the future, just moving on into the territory of another, until nothing is left.

What is happening in the world at large has no meaning for today’s generation, because it is outside their sphere of interest, and they must invent their own “reality.” As we have seen in the past election, morality, ethical, truth, knowledge and “human values” are totally meaningless (in other words, nihilism) to many if not most people in this country, and there is no evidence of a younger generation rising up to the challenge to a country gone wrong. 

In fact, the anti-DEI is not only a movement whose biggest proponents are those who have negative racial attitudes as discussed here 2 it is itself a reflection of how self-involved narcissism of the truly privileged has been in a process since the 1980s and its own “selfish” generation, begetting more of the same until it has become the dominant political force today.

The generations since then only needed only a “leader” who, abandoning any semblance of civil behavior, who “spoke” their “language,” someone they could viscerally connect who turned their selfish desires into reality. All that was required were the creation of scapegoats (hence anti-DEI and anti-Hispanic immigrants) as covers—not necessarily justifications—for selfish and self-deceiving ends. Such people have stereotypical thoughts that would be described as demeaning or dehumanizing, but it is the “others” who have do the “changing,” not themselves.

For example, McDonald’s is being sued by a far-right group for its Latino and Hispanic college scholarship program, yet nothing is said about the mainly white legacy and donor near-automatic admissions policies of universities, where applicants are six to seven times more likely to be admitted than other applicants.

This country has changed, not just in the fact that we live in a world where most cannot look beyond their own personal universe surrounded by a poisonous atmosphere at the exclusion of others, sharing only the “safety” of their common views, whether fact-based or not (mostly not). But it goes beyond even that: what was once consider “civil” behavior is regarded as a “privilege” and not a “right.” Nothing can be taken for granted, save uncertainty.

Take for example the Seattle Central Public library, which is little more than a “tourist attraction” and a daytime homeless shelter, where some people conduct their “business” as if the library is their “home.” Old rules are meant to be broken once there is no threat of enforcement.

I’m sure many of us older people remember a time when the librarians enforced “quiet” or you were asked to leave if you had insufficient self-control in doing that. Today, being “quiet” puts you in harm’s way; you simply open yourself to abuse. Ever notice how if you are in a wide-open space like this…

 

…people talking is less bothersome than people talking in more enclosed areas, like a bus or library? I was on the 9th floor of the library trying to write when another individual arrived to sit around the corner nearby. He immediately began making loud grunting noises, completely mindless that he could be heard on the other side of the floor. I asked him to keep it down and he made some threatening suggestions if I “bothered” him again. Now, you would think that “normal” people would think to themselves, “I have been told I am too loud, and being a civilized human being, I will try to be quiet, since this supposed to be a library where people expect to have a quiet reading and work experience.”

But no, because people who don’t go to the library for those reasons—rather, say, because security guards chased them from corners or entrances because they were “disturbing” office workers—they need a “safe place” to conduct their activities. And yes, the Seattle Central Library is such a place, where any activity is allowable if the cop-wannabes who work inside  deem it “politically-correct” to do so.

So this person continued to make a racket moving and banging things around. I hoped he would stop, but it appeared that he had other motivations. This was confirmed when I got up and looked through the book shelf and observed that this was all deliberate because all the while he was doing so he was looking to see if I would appear around the corner with a smirk on his face.  When he saw me peaking at him through the bookshelf, he immediately got up and started with the loud tough-guy threats; it is so easy for people to play bully when they are big and young and target someone who is short and old. I simply returned to my seat as he approached close to me, faux tensing-up and balling his fists in a pose meant to imply physical threat.

Someone contacted the cop-wannabes and two officers came running, which I personally found ridiculous, because I knew what was going to happen. No, they didn’t come to “protect” me from him, but him from me. The guy returned to his table when he saw them, and the officers talked to him first and apparently chose to believe his story that he was the one being “bothered.” The officers approached me and accused me of course of being the source of "problem" in its entirety; perhaps it was because I just “looked” like a “troublemaker.”  

I was told to leave this guy alone and if I didn’t like the noise he was making that I could either move or leave the building—the latter which they were going to make me do if I didn’t do the former in two minutes.  If this guy felt compelled to employ physical force like he was some “gangsta,” then it was my “fault” for “provoking” this behavior. It's always the same at the library now: what people my age remembered as the “rule” are now creating “problems” in a space where such rules no longer exist.

When people are punished for insisting on common law rules where they were once enforced diligently, it signals to rule-breakers that their behavior is legitimized and they can do what they want. It’s like after the pandemic during which paying bus fare was suspended for six months, now years later Metro still has a problem with forcing free-loaders to pay fare, yet people who simply do the “right thing” must sit there and be quiet and wonder why they have to pay while these other people are allowed to ride free. I emailed Metro about this and was told that drivers were told not to insist on fare payment to avoid physical confrontations with the non-payer. The scourge of non-payment has forced Metro to introduce fare payment inspectors at the end of March. We’ll see how that “works.”

This is where we are at now in this society. I was basically told that if I continued to insist on rules being enforced, then I should look elsewhere. Of course the question then is where, exactly? Whose is the greater threat to society—the guy who can’t control his inner demons, or the guy who is napping? In the library or city streets, it the guy napping, of course.  Frankly, I wish half the people in this country would silence their various hypocrisies and just take one long “nap” so they would stop bothering people who wish to enter the “door of perception” to reflect on the world as it was “meant” to be. But what good would that do? People would have to be awake to realize the evil they have allowed to happen.

After dismal loss to Eagles, the question is "Now what"?

 

So the Packers’ season ended abruptly with a dismal 22-10 loss to the Eagles in the Wild Card playoff round. Can’t really blame the defense too much, despite forcing zero turnovers but keeping the Eagles’ offense in check enough to give the Packer offense a chance. Perhaps Jordan Love was still suffering from elbow and hand issues; after going seven-straight games without an interception, he “made-up” for it by tossing three in this game. Add a fumbled kick return leading to a short-field early touchdown, that was 4 to 0 on turnovers. Add a loss on downs, make that 5 Packer turnovers to none for the Eagles. And a missed 36-yard field goal didn’t help. Probably the Packers worst game of the year.

As mentioned the last time, the Packers offense really didn’t appear to be as “explosive” as it was last season, at least in the passing game. The Packers running game was efficient enough in several games to be all the offense they needed. But let’s be honest: Outside their division, the Packers had a pretty lame schedule compared to last season. And let’s be honest about this: if you are going to pay a quarterback based on a decent half-season $55 million-a-year, you should assume he has that kind of talent to win you games with his arm. Now, granted, Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers (like this year) didn’t have great games or years every time, but at least you knew that when they were “off,” it was an anomaly, and it wasn’t their “usual” play.

But with Love, we don’t really know yet if experience will result in high caliber play—and not necessarily “HOF” type play—like his predecessors. Maybe that is asking too much. Maybe teams are so desperate for a “franchise” quarterback, they are willing to pay anything if that quarterback “looks” like he’s the “best available option.” I suppose the Jaguars thought that just because Trevor Lawrence completed a lot passes and managing to play .500 ball the past two seasons, that was sufficient “proof” that it was best not to let him go and just pay the guy the “market rate,” But Lawrence was hurt much of this season, played mostly terrible, and had a 2-8 record as a starter. You pay a guy $55 million-a-year for a 22-38 W/L record as a starter? And no playoff appearances?

It isn’t that I don’t think the Packers have an immediate “future,” but they do need to consider the fact that Love has not often played well early in games this year, and simply making up ground only to lose to “good” teams is simply not good enough. The Packers seldom appeared to open games in “dominant” fashion against even bad teams, so in retrospect this season was not an improvement over last season, and it is just a “wait and see” what happens next season.

Racist targeting of migrants is “easy”; fixing what is really wrong with this country won't be, since what is wrong starts at the top

 

Oh look at those pretty fences there now, except that they were not needed this time for the electoral vote count, because, you know, “liberals” actually believe in democracy:

 

Anyways, since white women are “special victims” in this society, it was easy for some House Democrats to take up on Joe Biden suggestion of “bipartisanship” with Republicans—and likely in the Senate and Biden’s pen hand—and pass the Laken Riley Act, which claims to target illegal immigrants who commit violent crimes, but in fact is being used to vastly expand the injustices of Bill Clinton’s personal “bipartisan” 1996 immigration “reform” law. 

Like that law, it also targets “noncitizens”—which is to say anyone who is a legal resident but not a U.S citizen—but now subjecting them to deportation for merely being charged with “petty crimes,” meaning that police, ICE agents or racist neighbors who merely feel “unsafe” can make faked charges leading to arrests and put those brown-skinned people in the deportation line.

In voting against the Act, Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal pointed out the injustice in promoting a law that would put even innocent people in jeopardy on the basis of false accusations without the right to due process, but for Republicans, as reported by the New York Times who only see “criminals” like Rep. Mike Collins, anyone who isn’t a “citizen” who commits “minor-level crimes,” needs to be “off the street. These criminals are getting bolder and bolder while our communities become more unsafe.”

The racist hypocrisy is more apparent with the claim by Rep. Tom Emmer that “This bill is more than just a piece of legislation; it’s a return to common-sense American values.”  You know, like the “common sense” values expressed by Trump and Republicans after 59 people were killed and hundreds wounded in the Las Vegas mass shooting in 2017, or the El Paso mass shooting in 2019 which of course Trump’s racist rhetoric against migrants had nothing to do with. What did Republicans do about it? Nothing, of course, except to claim that there would be less mass killings if there were more guns on the street. It’s an “American value” to have a gun and use it once in a while.

Notice how quickly Trump and the media swiveled from the New Orleans terrorist attack by a man with an ISIS flag posted on his vehicle to suggesting that such attacks would “end” if the border is sealed, as if migrants committed the act. The man who did conduct the attack was a former U.S. Army soldier and a U.S. citizen, just like the man involved in the terrorist attack in Fort Hood in 2009. Ok, so yes that illegal immigrant who claims he was “drunk” set fire to a woman on a New York subway, a horrendous act among hundreds that happen every day. But that never happens on NYC subways, right? But the culprit was already under arrest when a 67-year-old man was found burned six days later on the subway system.

We are also told that a week ago someone who witnesses claimed was a Hispanic woman in Seattle made an “unprovoked” attack on a man, punching him and stabbing him once before simply walking casually down the street; the victim spent a day in the hospital and was released, and the suspect has not been “found,” and it seems that what her “ethnicity” was is no longer “clear.”  But again, it’s not like stabbings are “unusual” occurrences in Seattle 1.

Yet Trump and his supporters act like all crime would end if we just “closed the border”; they even think that the “scourge” of fentanyl would end, forgetting where it actually originates from and its domestic demand for all illegal drugs. Chinese online “pharmaceutical” companies who deal directly with U.S. “customers” through commercial delivery companies are quite clever on what to call their “new” wonder drug next after it is put on a U.S. “banned” list. If the “demand” is high enough, we should remember that fentanyl was first created as a new, more powerful “painkiller” in the U.S. back in 1959. Someone can probably figure out how to bring “manufacturing” back here again.

But what you worry? Even the so-called “liberal media” is running scared. Forget that migrant labor is largely responsible for the avoidance of a recession during the last four years, that GDP has grown because of it, and Social Security is remaining “solvent” for at least a couple more years longer than it would have. And sorry, Thom Hartmann, raising wages isn’t going to bring anyone back to working in poultry plants—it’s just going to raise prices. Of course the “natives” will actually have to come back, like they didn’t when the Bracero program was ended in 1965.

We found out in 2019 how even “progressive” populists promote racist ideas that don’t “fix” the problems they imagine. Months after ICE thugs invaded those Mississippi poultry plants that resulted in 680 arrests of suspected “illegals,” one reporter who visited the sites noted that employees (most of them immigrants) still working at them had observed greater efforts at, but the continuing difficulty of, finding and retaining “native” replacements, many of whom quit soon after being hired because they simply did not like the work, or were fired because they were not motivated to come to work on time or every day.

Of course why would they? OSHA lists poultry plants—similar to other food production like meatpacking—as places where there is “exposure to high noise levels, dangerous equipment, slippery floors, musculosketal disorders and hazardous chemicals…biological hazards handling live birds or exposure to poultry feces and dusts which can increase risk for many diseases.” And you wonder why employers can only persuade undocumented workers to take unfilled jobs?

The truth doesn’t matter. The Wall Street Journal reported that Mark Zuckerberg, now unashamedly sucking-up to Trump, is ending "fact-checking" on Facebook and Instagram. According to the WSJ, it is now "OK" to make demonizing and dehumanizing false claims about migrants because limiting such content based on lack of facts is "out of touch with mainstream discourse." It isn't hard to read between the lines there: lies are on the same level as truth in this country now. 

I have an updated volume of Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World which includes his 1958 essay “Brave New World Revisited” in he which examines the similarities between the world related in his novel to that of Nazi Germany. He notes that “Hitler's aim was first to move the masses and then, having pried them loose from their traditional loyalties and morali­ties, to impose upon them (with the hypnotized con­sent of the majority) a new authoritarian order of his own devising.”

Sounds “familiar,” doesn’t it?  Any Jordan Klepper video will tell you that:

 

 Huxley goes on

 

Let us see what Hitler thought of the masses he moved and how he did the moving. The first principle from which he started was a value judgment: the masses are utterly contemptible. They are incapable of abstract thinking and uninterested in any fact outside the circle of their immediate experience. Their behav­ior is determined, not by knowledge and reason, but by feelings and unconscious drives. It is in these drives and feelings that "the roots of their positive as well as their negative attitudes are implanted." To be success­ful a propagandist must learn how to manipulate these instincts and emotions. "The driving force which has brought about the most tremendous revolutions on this earth has never been a body of scientific teaching which has gained power over the masses, but always a devotion which has inspired them, and often a kind of hysteria which has urged them into action. Whoever wishes to win over the masses must know the key that will open the door of their hearts." . . . In post-Freud­ian jargon, of their unconscious.

Huxley observes that while Hitler’s “theories” on race were incomprehensible and despicable drivel, his ability and knowledge of the people he was delivering that drivel to through speech was uncanny. Is it that difficult to believe that Trump learned some “lessons” from Hitler? Haven’t we been told that Trump’s former wife, Ivana, stated that Trump kept a book of Hitler’s speeches that had been given to him by a “friend”—one who made of point of saying he was not Jewish as Trump had claimed as a way of “defending” himself—in their bedroom for nighttime reading?

Why shouldn’t we believe that Trump is privately contemptuous of his supporters when he knows he can say the most ridiculous lies and they believe him? The only other explanation is that Trump is a pathological liar who lives in world that isn’t real, as his supporters appear to do anyways. Of course even many in the mainstream media stupidly follow Trump’s lead to “explain” why people support him—thus those who are not ignorant about what is going on in this country should now be skeptical about what they are being told in even in the “liberal” or “moderate” media (meaning CNN) if it “justifies” what Trump is doing to this country.

But as long as he can keep his people “focused” on the brown-skinned “vermin,” they won’t spend too much time thinking about all those other things he is—or isn’t—doing, like “fixing” the real “problems” he keeps insisting didn’t exist when he was president the last time. Sure it is easy to deport those millions because they are easy to kick around and the Hispanic community won’t take to the streets to protest because it is itself divided and full of people who are racist against those “ugly” little indigenous people.  

It will only be later when people say “Wow, what happened to all those jobs we were promised, or why didn’t my pay go up, or why are prices going up instead of down, or why are same people who commit most of the crimes in this country still committing crimes?” People have been asking that since 1965, and the only people who saw any “improvement” were those billionaires.

Of course, MAGA types were stupid enough to believe any of that in the first place. Trump’s deportation and tariff plans if implemented fully will reduce domestic production and the peripheral jobs (including white collar jobs) that depend upon those “illegal” jobs being filled. Hell, just close whole businesses because they cannot operate on the margins without “illegal” labor because nobody wants to make it legal to bring any of those “vermin” here, because they might actually stay long enough to have kids who can vote in our elections and have that “say” that they otherwise are not allowed to have in this country.

Yeah, as I pointed out a few posts ago about Clinton’s “brave new economy,” the new “tech” economy does not really improve said economy or create long-term jobs at all (where do you think all those “call centers” with frustratingly unhelpful “customer service” agents who speak in funny accents are located at?)—and those new “data centers” in rural areas only create temporary jobs and reek environmental, water and electrical grid havoc on poor and rural communities. And of course Elon is more interested in sharing American space secrets with Russia and creating jobs in China than he is in the U.S., which seems to be against what Trump promised but is being pushed aside by his "co-president":

But you know what? What? Trump’s short-sightedness and purposeful ignorance is like an infectious disease, and people do not know what they have is a disease. Trump “unchained” is making both himself and the country look ridiculous and out of control not just with his cabinet picks, but also on the foreign policy side, with his desire of sending “shit-hole” Puerto Rico out to sea while adding Greenland, Canada and Panama (or at least its canal) to his list of personal playthings, whether they like it or not.

Maybe this is just a lot bluster he himself doesn’t take “seriously,” but if it is, what about everything else he has “promised”? Deportation is the “easy” part—just look for anyone who looks “Mexican” and demand their “papers.” But all the rest of that “stuff” that for now is just a lot of media-friendly blurbs that sound “cool” but is more like a stick of gum that tasted good at first but soon wears out its welcome. 

Well, we’ll just say the illegals are the problem for everything until they are all deported, and then we’ll think of someone else to blame it all on, like those “crazy liberals.”

Trump is 78 years old, so it isn’t surprising that he thinks in terms of short-term greed. He has his “legacy” to think about. Being elected by stupid people he knows are stupid was “easy”; after all, they were not “smart” enough to be born into wealth and inherit most of it from his father. 

Of course, Trump’s many branded business failures proves that he wasn’t that “smart” after all, and depended on smarter people to make him look "bigger" by whatever means necessary (like the illegal kind that landed Allen Weisselberg in prison) than he actually was. But then again, Hitler was a failed “artist,” but he could sure “talk," and Trump has proved that his real "talent" is in the infomercial business, where can sell himself.

Thus the future means nothing to Trump, it’s all about what’s good for him now, with no thought to the consequences of self-serving cupidity. Trump says he wants to make the country “great” again, but that is only through his own eyes and how it serves his self-promotion. Others may view things differently, but that is “fixed” by surrounding himself with sycophants instead of truth-tellers.

Is Trump worried about what happens to the planet or the country 10 years from now? Certainly not, because either complete dementia or death will likely catch-up with him before that part of the “future” arrives, and like William Barr, why worry about your “legacy” when you are dead, as long as you have “happy” thoughts about yourself when the end comes? Who will be around to him he is full of it? Probably not the “baby-boomer” generation—the kind that came of age in the 60s and 70s—which is on its way to oblivion along with their hopefulness for a better world.

Today the nihilism and narcissism of the generations that have come afterward will be asking themselves what happened? Why didn’t we listen? It’s like people who hate “old music” because it is just a bunch of songs about love and peace—they only like listening to music about being nihilistic and narcissistic. Maybe there will come a time (which I doubt) that people will ask themselves “why do we think like this?” It will because they didn’t listen, or didn’t want to.

People have been warned, and but by the time of reckoning comes it will be too late. Trump’s drill-baby-drill ignorance is manifest by his demands of Germany and the UK to end their renewable energy initiatives; the leaders of the countries shouldn’t even try to conceal their contempt of this for-the-moment fool. Trump thinks threats and retaliation for imaginary bullying by foreign countries with their own domestic problems but have leaders who are smarter than what we have now makes America "great." It doesn't. Such stupidity brought about our “problems” today, from the racist immigration policies from 60 years ago targeting Hispanics, to allowing China to enter the WTO in the belief that it would turn into a “democratic” country 10 years after the violent suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests.

USA Today columnist Rex Huppke tells us that with Trump’s certification as president, it is time to “declare war” on “stupidity”:

The best thing sensible Americans who oppose him and the MAGA leadership can do is remember that stupidity should be embarrassing. Trump exists in our political sphere because he persuaded people to forget that simple fact. He somehow turned dunderheads like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and, of course, himself – public figures who routinely utter abject nonsense – into people who get taken seriously. Following the New Orleans terrorist attack on New Year’s Day, Trump ranted about immigration when the suspect killed in the attack was a U.S. citizen. That was stupid and unhelpful. For a president-elect and elected leaders who protect him, it should be deeply embarrassing.

Huppke tells us that ignorance and stupidity should not be allowed a way to become “comfortable.” But that is exactly what Trump and his MAGA supporters have done. By blaming migrants for “everything,” they have allowed themselves not to look at their own selves in the mirror and see who is to blame. Some of the fixes should have been "easy" to see, like raising the income limit on Social Security taxes, or investing more in green energy. But we live in a country that is reactive to problems rather than proactive, like waiting for a bridge to collapse before "fixing" it.

Until they feel shame and embarrassment about what they allowed to happen by believing and promoting lies, lunatic conspiracies and paranoid delusions that led to the kind of disastrous policies that Bill Clinton allowed to happen during his administration, the same “problems” that have occurred in differing relative forms from one administration to the next will continue until people realize that what they thought was the “problem” really wasn’t the problem after all, that the “fixes” as enunciated by Trump and the “dreams” of far-right Republicans were always the real problem after all.