BROKEN

 

Broken, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, could mean “violently separated into parts,” or “damaged or altered by or as if by breaking,” or “having undergone or been subjected to fracture, or “not working properly,” or “being irregular, interrupted, or full of obstacles,” or “violated by transgression: not kept or honored,” or “disrupted by change,” or “bankrupt.”  This certainly can be deduced from a balkanized Republican Party rendered incompetent by  factions who claim to represent the will of (some) "people," but in fact chaos and ethical and moral corruption are their principle "accomplishment."

This country certainly is "broken" both in the political and social sense. Everyone has their interpretation of who is most at fault; I would say that politically, it is the party that is least willing to “compromise” their non-existent “principles” with the will of the majority of the country, that being of course the far-right, while in the social sphere certain groups that style themselves as "left" are no less dangerous than "culture warriors" on the right, unwilling to “compromise" its "principles" to the strictures and judgments imposed upon them by such things as "facts" and "due process."

It  is certainly arguable that  Democrats' willingness to compromise (too much so in the opinion of some) makes it a party of governing. When Republicans are in power, they either reward their corporate benefactors with tax breaks and deregulation, and take a sledgehammer to anything that helps working people in the name of "budget restraint." The reality, of course, is that the far-right has no interest in governing; they are just hoping to make people believe the "other side" is worse than they are so that they can convince other sociopaths to vote for them.

One thing that does seem to have "broken" with "reason" and not complete stupidity is that the biggest foreign enemies to MAGA Republicans are our allies, while actively supporting dictators who think elections don't count if they don't win (like Trump). Not that this is anything "new" of course; the U.S. has been doing that for a century in Central America. But what is "new" is the absolute brazenness and unthinking behind it, fueled by absurd conspiracies. Republican George Bush counted on allied support following 9-11; today, to the allies the U.S. looks more like  Russian stooge and dictator Orban's Hungary, controlled by far-right nationalists. It also appears that French President Macron is taking over the leadership role (such is what happens when  one feels "disrespected" by Putin), even to send in French troops into Ukraine in an "advisory" role.

Your history books tell you about how Republicans promoted the "red scare" and viewed Russia as the principle enemy for what it did inside this country. Republicans rarely supported wars to fight the "red menace" overseas, or for that matter even against the Nazis. Today we see a spineless Mike Johnson gifting the murderous dictator Putin (yes, now how many of his opponents have died under "mysterious" circumstances?) by withholding aid to Ukraine due to House hypocrisy on border legislation (which they really don't want in an election year), Republicans, it seems, were less against dictatorships than they were against “socialism” as a concept for public welfare and an attempt to “equalize” society, which of course they opposed in this country, and still do. 

Rather than do that, the Republican Party chooses to stand for nothing, merely wielding its power to smash things just because if you are not their "friend," you are their "enemy,"  like a playground bully will smash your toys just because they don't like you. In red states, elections are something that must be tolerated once every two years, but otherwise are just a minor inconvenience for Republican's authoritarian impulses, since the people who vote for them (almost all white) seem to think everyone else doesn't "count." I mean look at Texas; non-Hispanic whites are in the minority, yet from the "outside" you would think no one exists (let alone has rights) but them.

So the mindless far-right authoritarians  are determined to undermine democracy in this county because they do not disguise the fact that they are the pawns of our external enemies, and only wish to be contrary against the needs of the people they claim to "represent." In its place it seeks to establish one-party rule, and to do so it will shatter every principle this country ever stood for since its founding.

But the onset of authoritarian rule isn't the only thing a broken system has created. The Alabama State Supreme Court has ruled that embryos in-vitro are “human beings” and if "killed" the parties involved can be sued for or charged with "murder." It is reported that doctors and the "owners" of the in the state are confused by this ruling, since the “owners” of the embryos no longer have control over their “property.” Anyone who thinks that conservative courts are biased toward men should think again; this ruling leaves men who have even a casual encounter with a "date" can be responsible for "child support" at conception--a backdoor way by anti-abortion conservatives to give  women more time to "think" if they want a child or not while they "collect" even if they have a job.

This is what happens when you have a far-right US Supreme Court which decides that it doesn’t have to listen to what the majority of the country believes is settled law and their rights. Those 53 percent of white women who voted for Trump in 2016 and not "one of their own" only have themselves to blame, since he added three extremist judges to the bench who made this possible. I’m not sure they learned any lessons, because the same percentage of white women voted for Trump in 2020, although there was a significant enough decrease in support from white men. One suspects little will change this year.

We live in a country with people who have broken heads, who can’t think straight because their minds are filled with hate and paranoia. Marjorie Taylor Greene is off with her anecdotal evidence of the "crime wave" set off by migrants waiving around the only useful piece of "evidence" she found, which of course necessitates a white female victim. Of course picking one example out of thousands of people murdered by US citizens is hypocritical and cynical, but apparently this plays on the fact that most Americans have become indifferent to crime--unless of course it is committed by someone who isn't "one of us," and that makes it "more" bad.

I mean let's face it: Republicans have picked migrants at the border to run against and are aiming all their cannons in that direction. The media of course provides cannon fodder with imagery portraying  asylum-seekers as vermin, not as human beings fleeing US-aided violence in their home countries, people who just want a safe place to make a living, and who every economist says will add to economic growth in this country. But no one listens to anything "good" one might say about these people; they just look too "foreign" and ugly, they don't them in their neighborhoods. Besides, they don't have this waiting for asylum seekers at any location that isn't facing the pathway from Europe:

If you want evidence of the dehumanizing of a whole group of people in this country, you don't have to look any further than Los Angeles and the surrounding county.  Both are 50 percent Hispanic, yet in films set in the city, filmmakers seem to go out of their way to make sure you don’t see any of them anywhere. Hector Becerra in an LA Times story notes that Latinos have a hard time even getting “clichéd supporting roles” that are common for black actors—“the wise or wisecracking guides for white protagonists.” 

Actor and musician Rubén Blades said “The industry thinks we’re foreign. We’re culturally excluded.” He went on to say that “It’s not something that just happened. They don’t usually hire a white or black actor to play the stereotype. They use Latino actors to play the stereotype. This reinforces in the minds of the bigoted their bigotry.” Yeah, but you won’t see anyone on CNN  be allowed to tell you that; it would suggest they are “human” and not that “vermin” crowding at the border that the network doesn't attempt to differentiate itself from Fox News and neo-Nazis like Laura Ingraham.

The self-destruction of a broken America is not surprising given that many have not learned any lessons from history (you know, "CRT" stuff). This country is on the brink of ruin, perhaps not of the physical variety that beset Germany after WWII, but of a psychological and institutional kind. Recently in Scientific American—hardly a left-wing publication—Bandy Lee, a forensic psychiatrist and president of the World Mental Health Coalition, described the psychosis linking Trump and his supporters to this destructive purpose:

The reasons are multiple and varied, but in my recent public-service book, Profile of a Nation, I have outlined two major emotional drives: narcissistic symbiosis and shared psychosis. Narcissistic symbiosis refers to the developmental wounds that make the leader-follower relationship magnetically attractive. The leader, hungry for adulation to compensate for an inner lack of self-worth, projects grandiose omnipotence—while the followers, rendered needy by societal stress or developmental injury, yearn for a parental figure. When such wounded individuals are given positions of power, they arouse similar pathology in the population that creates a “lock and key” relationship.

"Shared Psychosis--which is also called “folie à millions” [“madness for millions”] when occurring at the national level or “induced delusions”—refers to the infectiousness of severe symptoms that goes beyond ordinary group psychology. When a highly symptomatic individual is placed in an influential position, the person’s symptoms can spread through the population through emotional bonds, heightening existing pathologies and inducing delusions, paranoia and propensity for violence—even in previously healthy individuals. The treatment is removal of exposure.

Trump’s 2020 election defeat left him a “broken” man psychologically:

Destructiveness is a core characteristic of mental pathology, whether directed toward the self or others. First, I wish to clarify that those with mental illness are, as a group, no more dangerous than those without mental illness. When mental pathology is accompanied by criminal-mindedness, however, the combination can make individuals far more dangerous than either alone… the symbolic nature of violence and how it is a life impulse gone awry. Briefly, if one cannot have love, one resorts to respect. And when respect is unavailable, one resorts to fear. Trump is now living through an intolerable loss of respect: rejection by a nation in his election defeat. Violence helps compensate for feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy and lack of real productivity.

Salon noted in December that Trump also suffers under a delusional “God” complex, claiming he is “The Chosen One,” although more likely the one portrayed in the 1977 Kirk Douglas horror film that predicted Armageddon unless “the chosen” was stopped (“funny” how today we seem determined on mindless self-destruction). Trump, his carefully-crafted “celebrity” image of himself smashed to bits by the exposure of his true self, now boasts of having “divine” power and “secret knowledge” he can’t exactly tell you at the moment because anything less leaves him exposed as broken man grasping for any lifeline to keep him drowning in his own criminal folly. 

Trump, humiliated by his loss in 2020, seeks reelection for one and only one reason: revenge upon the country that in the most public fashion “humiliated” him in 2020. While he puts migrants on the border to the forefront to conceal his aims, he hasn’t exactly made it a “secret” that he intends on continuing his efforts to annihilate public healthcare as one of his first orders of business as a one-day “dictator.” But as rulings from his past judicial picks indicate, the effects of his previous dictatorial rule will live on even if he isn’t reelected this year.

But the brokenness of this country is not simply of the political kind led by sociopaths who have harnessed the psychosis of a vocal and committed minority of sociopaths, but of the social variety as well. The other day outside the OHM “dance” club (people don’t actually go there to “dance” to hip-hop music), there was a drive-by shooting in which one person was killed and two injured. I was waiting at a bus stop where some older white woman and a black security guard were talking about it as if they were completely clueless about “why” and “who” does these things in Seattle; hypocrisy abounds. News reporting, film and television never talks about the fact that in this country, over 50 percent of homicides and violent crime in general is perpetrated by black individuals, about three times the rate of their percent of the population—and probably would be higher if it wasn’t for all those mass-shootings by white people. Instead of being forced to account for their “own house,” there is the judgmental blame game (now its blaming migrants in Chicago and New York) or media presentations of “See, we are normal people just like you, White America. It's those "illegals" who are doing all those "bad" things.

Hypocrisy and conceit, of course, goes well beyond race:

 

Isn't it funny how such "successful" people actually weaponize some of those "traits" of alleged "unsuccessful" people to make them so? Of course it is always useful when a self-loathing Supreme Court justice hires a white female clerk…

 

…who forgot she once texted a colleague that "I HATE BLACK PEOPLE ... I hate blacks. End of story." But that’s OK, because somewhere deep inside the “soul” of Clarence Thomas, there is a white neo-Nazi hiding out. But we shouldn’t feel too sorry for Crystal Clayton, since this was first reported in 2017, and it didn’t hurt her career prospects as she continued to find jobs with conservative organizations and judges (some of whom we may conjecture "secretly" shared her views).

We are told by cultural theologists that women have been “powerless” in the past, and many suggest that is still true. But the truth is that what we see now is women flexing their “muscle” with the “power” that the courts and mainstream media has given them, and in many cases abusing that power, like a cannon expectorating grapeshot indifferent to friend  and foe, which is why most of the their victims are “liberal” men who feel they have no “choice,” guilty or innocent, to “submit” as comic and former senator Al Franken felt compelled to do over a high school-level prank that a photo was taken of decades ago. In California, they passed a law based on the false claims of Evan Rachel Wood to make it more difficult for an accused to defend themselves against said lies.

And is the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard story finally settled yet? Of course not. While Depp has been getting good press of late, Heard is hiding out jobless in Spain. I mean, that's no good, even if Heard is living high on the hog off someone's else's money while her "friends" do her dirty work. Isn’t anyone interested in where she is getting her money from these days? She hasn’t had a paying acting gig in years.  

We know that Heard is bi-sexual; while there is evidence that she was abusive in all of her personal relationships (including with a Mexican soap opera star, Valentino Lunus, who said Heard eventually became abusive not just to him but to his mother), with men her “relationships” appear to be parasitic, and once she drained the blood from her victims she discarded them. According to the Musk biography, this high school dropout came on to him pretending to be fascinated by his space endeavors and that led to a relationship. But after she got him to pay some of her “donations” in her name and convince him to contribute sperm for in-vitro fertilization she suddenly became a raging nutcase, with Heard, wanting the "blame" put on Musk for things going "wrong," locking herself in a room and claiming that Musk wanted to attack her, when she was told that no one was going to touch her, but to just get the hell out of their lives.

But the mainstream media isn't interested in supplying information that makes them look more foolish, as the news that the informant that Republicans relied so heavily on to its case against Hunter Biden and his father was recently arrested for falsifying the "key" evidence has done. So instead of that, a news site under Disney’s umbrella, Vice, which periodically produces “documentaries” in its series called “The Nine Lives Of (fill in the blank of some celebrity)” that details “The rise, fall, and rise again of our favorite cultural icons”—has taken upon itself to bring the Depp/Heard case out of mothballs one more time with new conspiracy theories about social media and alleged hidden "evidence," which of course isn't supposed to include that tape of that pool scene where Heard's sister is being asked where she got all those bruises from.

Now, do we really have to go over the  "evidence" that Heard and her incompetent attorney thought was most "damaging" again? Forget you ever heard those audios; the jury along with most of the rest us saw something odd about that “bruise” on Heard’s arm that allegedly occurred in the same “incident” where her face was cut so badly that blood sprayed across a wall (or was it the refrigerator?). Like the rest of us, the jury saw no damage at all to Heard’s face, which suggest that the “bruise” was of a “random” variety that Heard took at a random time to add to her “collection” that might be “useful” later.  

Of course, Heard showed us these horrible injuries on her face (OK, it's not her, but you get the "picture")...

 

 While JD was doing this:

 

 

And of course there was that “bruise” on her cheek at the TRO hearing; if one looks close, one can see a “zit” postule which typically is surrounded by skin redness, and we would see this same “bruise” six years later in an image taken in Spain:

 

 

So here we go again. Do these people think we are that stupid? While JD is being himself, making himself accessible to fans and participating in charity events, AH is being her usual arrogant, selfish, narcissistic self living off Musk’s “child support” we presume, since he “donated” the sperm for her surrogate-birthed child, so she has even less motivation to “meet and greet” her “fans” who themselves use Heard as a “prop” for their own “issues.”

Why do we find ourselves at this point where facts and evidence are as irrelevant in some circles as due process and innocent until proven guilty? At the Sexual Violence Law Center in the building I currently work, their interest in the “facts” is probably best summed-up by this attitude:

 

The "believe all woman" mantra is always used in the absence of evidence of physical violence, and is the primary "evidence" to determine whether an encounter was "consensual" or not. These people are not so much interested in the truth, but see this as  a political bludgeon to use against men. Some people around here remember former Bellevue police officer Mike Hetle, who was recently convicted in the first degree murder of a black neighbor and after a failed appeal will serve the rest of his life in prison. In 2001 he shot an unarmed Hispanic man named Nelson Martinez-Mendez after a domestic violence call. Hetle blocked his car as he was leaving, and interpreting Hetle's yelling as a demand to see his driver's license, this movement was "interpreted" by Hetle in another way.

But wait, was it "domestic violence"? No. What we learned at the inquest was that Martinez-Mendez's sister--unhappy that he was leaving for California and she would have to pay the rent on the apartment (they at that time shared) by herself--could think of nothing else to stop him but to call 911 and claim that he had threatened her with knife. She admitted it was a lie, but she had to tell the police something "bad" enough to stop him, not stopping to think that he might be put in jail over a false claim and not have a job to pay the rent after all. Or, for that matter, killed. So yes, I am "cynical" about these things.

We shouldn't be surprised to know that the use of the term “violence”—rather than, say, “violated”—is because it is more easily weaponized, especially against high profile accused. Furthermore, we find that the alleged “victims” are usually for “activist” legal firms or organizations are being used to advance an activist agenda, meaning facts and evidence, guilt or innocence are irrelevant; only how the alleged “victim” can used to advance an agenda is what is what is relevant. One may question the psychology involved in advancing cases meant to destroy an accused’ life if it means ignoring contradictory evidence or clearly false claims. But that is where we are at now in society.

Some British media service is launching its own attack on social media; ThatUmbrellaGuy noted that he had received questions that he was invited to answer, which were all loaded and not interested in the facts of the Depp case, just how much money he made from trolling Heard and “scamming” his audience with "false" information about the case. None of the questions, of course, wanted to know his view of either the facts of the case, and the mainstream media coverage of the case which was entirely biased in favor of Heard and its “shock” that Depp actually won his case before a jury that made its decision based on the evidence presented, not influenced at all by MSM propaganda.

Those who claim that the  “influence” of social media and its dastardly plan to reveal to the people what the mainstream media was not doing--revealing the facts to them--is "hypnotizing" the masses to change the course of justice has been proven to be false in the Marylin Manson case, since it depends on state laws and the bias of a judge.

The Manson defamation case against Evan Rachel Wood and Illma Gore—or what’s left  of it—received another blow recently from the clearly biased judge in the case, Teresa Beaudet…

 

…who ruled last week that Manson had to pay nearly $500,000 in the pairs’ legal fees. On the Advocate Magazine website, they managed to come up with these words of “wisdom” from the judge: “Conflicts resolve more readily when human beings can observe each other’s facial expressions and hear the tone of voice of the person opposite them.” 

Yeah, who needs “facts” and “evidence” when her “feelings” are sufficient to make a “judgment” in a case. We find that this learned judge who started out as a corporate law attorney but  now among other things judges family law (bias alert) who issued forth this completely incomprehensible justification allowing the forging of an FBI letter to be redefined as being "OK" to make false claims to destroy someone’s life since it is  “protected speech” and thus is not illegal:

 

Yes, if you are a man accused by a woman in California, you may well think our justice system is "broken." Now, I’ve already mentioned an article in the now-defunct feminist journal Jezebel about how Wood broke-up with the father of her son, Jamie Bell, because he wasn’t into “very edgy” activities like she was, and more recently she was forced to give-up custody of said son for kidnapping and making false claims. Wood’s mental health issues and faulty memory that seem to be the basis of accusations against Manson were no doubt assisted by this individual…

 

…who The Daily Mail also wondered about the sanity of:

 

This is the kind of person we are not to suspect has some kind of ulterior political motive to conspire with another individual (Wood) to contrive a hoax to expunge, “explain” and protect themselves from their own past inane activities. This conspiracy included a "questionnaire" in which former Manson associates were asked to checkoff anything "odd" that they experienced with Manson, and by their definitions they used this to bolster Wood's accusations so that she wouldn't seem like the "only one" who needed to explain why she was "forced" into being "very edgy." The results of the various supporting accusations by these people can be deduced here:

 

Note that like Judge Aileen Cannon in the Trump classified documents case Florida, the judge in the Manson case seems intent on finding ways to "save" the defendant despite the fact the claims of her fellow accusers have crumbled when the slightest demand for evidence was "requested." That Manson was forced to pay nearly $500,000 in Wood and Gore's legal expenses suggests that the judge believed it "unfair" that the pair be forced to pay attorneys to waste their time on a fool's errand in search of nonexistent "evidence." 

Of course in  California it isn't a "crime" to kidnap a child and defend it with insanely false claims if you are a woman, but given media disinterest in reporting anything that deviates from the "believe all women" narrative, Wood has been allowed to put a selfless spin on the fact she was forced to give up custody of her son to Bell.

Anyways, here in Seattle I am watching a woman on the lawn next to the Seattle Central College, which used to be a "community college" but is now "accredited" to provide Bachelor's Degrees, which it brags that with such a degree you can get a job that pays as well as a janitor in Seattle. She was wielding what appeared to be a plastic baseball bat that little kids play with, hitting something hard attached to some lump laying on the ground. I realized it was a person on the ground only after his/her legs moved.

To be honest, I thought this was just some homeless woman with mental health issues taking out her frustrations on some guy who was trying to ignore her; Seattle is full of such people, and  people walking past mostly ignored the goings on probably thought the same thing. I mean, we give certain groups the "right" to take out their frustrations on other groups in this manner, right?

But then suddenly a group of women suddenly appeared and they started clapping:

 

Oh I get it, this wasn't real, it was a “performance,” with the lump on the ground standing up wearing cardboard butterfly wings that the woman was hitting.

I still had no clue what was going on here, but I did some research and discovered that there is a made-up tale about a “Butterfly Woman” and the mental health consequences of a woman assaulted by soldiers during time of war--although I suspect that they were actually "expanding" their definitions here. Of course no sexual assault was being “performed” and this was more about DV or how a mentally-impaired woman acts; however, what this "performance" more likely conveyed was the "feeling good about feeling bad" syndrome that is best "understood" by those trying to convince themselves and not confused onlookers. 

By the way, this is a video going around the Internet reportedly showing a Muslim girl being beaten for committing some "morality" crime. This is truly horrific, save for one thing: the more I look at this video, the more I'm convinced that this is not a female that is being beaten, and it is thus being used for propaganda purposes, which of course brings out the cynicism in me:

 

There was a time when it was assumed that common sense and adherence to factual information informed public debate, but such things do not matter in a broken world where such things merely get in the way of power and its abuse--even to the extent to which those person who do have those qualities are forced to "compromise" for even a few crumbs that the fanatics are willing to "sacrifice." This year more than any other people need to make the right choice--not influenced by short-term paranoia and fear, and lack of respect for their rights of others both in law and in principle--but in careful consideration of what damage such thinking will result in the long-term.