Why can't the world give peace a chance?

 

I suppose that from our perspective, much of what is happening in the world makes little sense. Why can’t people just learn to “live together” or "give peace a chance," as if we know anything about that in the current political climate here? 

You have North Korea that is ruled by a paranoid boy who seems to think people want to take his toys away. Kim Jong-un, as mentioned before, enjoys a lavish lifestyle full of the perks of absolute power while the poverty rate in his country is 60 percent. If he wanted to keep his lifestyle, nobody outside North Korea would care overmuch what he does as long as he signs a peace treaty with South Korea, but Kim probably knows that when he has no external enemy to excuse the country’s poverty, the people will start looking for other explanations for why they are forced to live like animals.

Russia is another country that is only interested in “peace” on its own terms. It could have joined the rest of Europe and the West after the fall of the Soviet Union to promote "peace" and “world order,” but it chose to view itself as an “outsider” with its own separate interests and not be a “good neighbor." Russia could have joined the EU and made NATO an anachronism, perhaps to change its name and mission to reflect a changed defense posture, say against nations that do not share the West's "moral" interests. 

Instead, Russia chose to provide rationalizations for the continued existence of NATO. Putin is less concerned about security issues than reconstituting the former Russian “empire,” and its actions in Ukraine only mean that it can’t be trusted to be a reliable "peace" partner.

Russia under Putin sees itself as more the “natural” ally of another authoritarian state with similar desires to run roughshod over other countries' interests, particularly in the South China Sea. China isn’t asking for anyone’s permission to build military bases on artificial islands or unilaterally claiming “rights” to potential mineral deposits. It isn't even giving a Taiwan a "choice" if it wants to be a part of something "bigger." 

So why does China covet Taiwan so much? Why is it so intent on incorporating it? Because Taiwan has a “highly developed market economy”? Does it see Taiwan as a “threat” because it serves as an example for the mainlanders that “democracy” actually could work for them? If China actually does invade and annex Taiwan, how will the people who have grown up in a state of relative free speech and freedom react if these rights are curtailed? If mass protests occur, how will the Chinese government respond? Xi Jinping is obviously just as power mad as Putin, and Taiwan’s existence induces as much paranoia as Ukraine does for Putin.

But wait, who is that "white knight" riding in to save the day?  Could it be French president Emmanuel Macron--facing a near collapse of his government from opposition to his proposal to increase the retirement age from 62 to 64 which most people know is necessary for a government pension system already in deficit, but who don’t want to feel the pain “yet”--deciding to play the “statesman” again, this time hobnobbing with his pal Xi. Of course Macron has tried this before with Putin to convince him to call off the invasion of Ukraine—but here we see the “gulf” between reality and fantasy…

 

 

…with predictable “success” in stemming war. Macron apparently made a backroom “deal”—or at least in his mind he did—with Xi that China would not arm Russia in its aggression against Ukraine, and in “return” he promised to put out a typically arrogant French statement that Europe should not follow the U.S. lead in protecting Taiwan, without saying explicitly that he favored allowing China to invade Taiwan, but he might just look the other way; of course this sign of weakness was not seen in the light he had hoped it would be. Perhaps not surprisingly, many European leaders expressed exasperation at Macron’s jelly-spined naiveté in accepting Xi’s empty “promises” to reign-in Putin in exchange for aiding China’s naked power play at decoupling  Europe from the U.S. on foreign and economic policy.

The French still have this goofy idea that they are “superior” to everyone else (forgetting they have “competition” for that “title” with the British and Germans), at least “culturally.” I visited Paris once when I was stationed in West Germany, and under the Eiffel Tower was some hamburger stand for the tourists; I ordered a “Whopper,” which of course looked exactly like the Burger King version. I was “corrected” in my pronunciation—“whop-pare.” Well, if the French are going to steal an American cultural “icon,” then maybe they should show it some respect by pronouncing it “correctly” themselves.

Meanwhile Iran is just as intractable as it was 44 years ago. It is another country whose existence requires "enemies" to maintain its “legitimacy.” Thus it was more proof of the absolute incompetence of Trump’s foreign policy (if it can even be called that), to provide this “legitimacy” by foolishly cancelling of the nuclear deal with Iran. Regardless of how it was being overseen or if Iran was “cheating,” it at least gave Iran an incentive to re-enter the world with “better”—if not “good” behavior. 

Instead, Trump gave Israel the green light to restart it “shadow war” with Iran, and in the aftermath of mass protests following the killing of Mahsa Amini, the Iranian “grand council” of ayatollahs who never themselves supported the nuclear deal and saw their power slightly threatened by the protests, thought themselves perfectly "rational" to find scapegoats for it from outside the country, Israel and the U.S. in no particular order.

Like any ruling government faced with unrest due to a failing economy from international sanctions, no desire to share power with the people, and opposes any weakening of religious law that would allow  people to speak or even dress “freely,” Iran’s leaders engage in wagging the dog conflicts. It has been mainly employing its proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Iraq to launch attacks on Israel. 

Although Israel has been accused of being too "eager" in its activities against Iran, to be “fair” Israel does have a legitimate interest in acting on its own in light of these attacks and the probability that Iran will eventually develop a nuclear weapon now that it, like everyone else, has abandoned “diplomacy” in the wake of Trump’s actions; as we have since learned, Trump is like a child who when he doesn’t win or doesn’t want to play by the rules, just breaks everything and walks away, leaving behind others who don’t want to play with him anymore because he’s such a creep.

Yet before the Iranian revolution, the country did at least have diplomatic relations with Israel from 1950 until 1979. Iran has since not been a positive player for peace in the Middle East, still not recognizing the legitimacy of Israel and bent on its destruction, supplying arms to its regional proxies, including providing the missiles used in a recent mass attack on Israel from Lebanon. It also could be said that this plays into Israel’s hands, since as much as the country desires peace, it gives it an excuse to continue to try to take out Iranian military targets and personnel, since Iran is now seen as its principle threat to its existence.

The U.S., of course, can blame itself for Iran being more of a threat to world peace than it needed to be. 9-11 came at a convenient time for George Bush, with his approval ratings dipping below 40 percent; although the attack was orchestrated by Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Bush saw it as an opportunity to restore “family honor” in Iraq. In fact, Saddam Hussein saw Al-Qaeda as much a threat to his regime as the Shiites were, and this meant it was the enemy of Iran, with whom Iraq had been fighting and off-and-on border war.

Thus Iran had its hands full dealing with an enemy other than Israel. Bush, as we would discover, invented false justifications to invade Iraq, and today a weakened Iraq is no threat to Iran and the latter’s foreign adventures can now focus on Israel and U.S. interests.

I suppose, however, that the U.S. doesn’t exactly have an unblemished record, despite its claims of acting with a “moral” purpose. It’s actions in the Central America over the centuries had nothing to do with “morality” but to insure that they were safe havens for U.S. businesses to set up shop and exploit the natives. As Marine General Smedley Butler stated almost  a century ago,

I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it… I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916.

And of course this country spread around the gift of democracy and market capitalism in places where it just didn’t seem to work, like almost anywhere in the Middle East, by forcing it down people’s throats, by military force if necessary (almost always so). This country has spent almost its entire history without having a foreign invader attempt to impose its will on it by military force, so we can only “imagine” what people in places like Ukraine are going through—or in the past Vietnam, El Salvador (actually, still), and today Iraq, Libya (that place is still a mess since Gaddafi left the scene), Syria, Afghanistan or wherever we stick or noses without the people’s “consent.”

But at least we can say our intentions were “good,” which we confidently claim is not to be said of other bad actors on the planet.

Is this country (and the world) on the "Eve of Destruction"?

  

Not a lot makes me “happy” these days as the future looks dimmer thanks to a society that becoming increasingly ruled by extremists—mostly from the right, but also certain “liberal” activists who practice their own brand of fact-free oppression. At least I can say that I probably won’t live long enough to see the worst of it, like this country devolving into a fascist authoritarian state that some people in this country want now because they think it will protect their “culture.”

Still, one thing is making me happy this week: the Warner Archive Collection is releasing the pre-code classic Safe in Hell on Blu-ray; now why the hell don’t they release the Gable/Harlow classic Red Dust on Blu-ray? Hell, Warner has the rights to the Robert Redford film The Candidate and that has only seen a full-frame DVD release now long OOP. Now I’m unhappy again thinking about all that; I’m not exactly a “kid” anymore, although sometimes I think like one, I admit.

Back in the proper mood, Republicans are back to their old tricks of disenfranchising voters they don’t want going to the polls, or changing election processes to insure that their guy has the best chance of winning, or in the case of Montana, insuring the best chance that the other guy doesn’t. It’s same old thing: in states like Georgia when it “flips” in both the presidential and Senate seats, state Republican lawmakers and the governor scramble to pass laws that they hope prevents that from happening again; to hell with the will of the majority of people. Republicans don’t believe in “democracy”; they believe in power, and how to best serve their corporate masters.

Texas, of course has also passed laws to make it more difficult for certain groups to vote; apparently Republicans want to “stave-off” what happened in Georgia from ever happening in “their” state. The governor, Greg Abbott, and his attorney general have both shown their hand that they don’t respect the rule of law anyways, by attacking a Hispanic prosecutor and promising to “pardon” a white supremacist who was convicted of killing a BLM protester in "self-defense."

But Ron DeSantis already has that covered in Florida; although a court struck down part of a law as being too broad making it a crime to conduct protests in “groups” of more than a couple people and made it easier for police to arrest people who might just be “hanging out” to see what is going on, the state still basically allows people to “express” themselves with a gun when they are “threatened” by “dangerous" left-wing talk, which DeSantis is doing his best to ban entirely, at least in schools. 

Of course DeSantis' hatred of free speech extends even to the Disney corporation, which angered him by criticizing his anti-free speech and gender-identity laws; DeSantis is now fighting to remove Disney’s autonomy at its Disney World location and force a new governing board on to it to make it more “friendly” with his own bigoted attitudes.

Maybe a few people my age remember the comedy skit show Fridays, but if not the show’s best moment was the Rocky Horror Picture  Show parody, with John Roarke’s Ronald Reagan in the Tim Curry Frank-N-Furter role; he presents a figure covered-up like a mummy which he claims is his greatest “creation,” the “ultimate” conservative. But after unwrapping it, the “ultimate conservative” is revealed to be a Black Panther rebel, who informs the shocked conservative partygoers that this is what they have really created with their hate-talk and history denying:

 

As if we need more of that, but that is what Trump, DeSantis and Abbott have wrought with their openly race-baiting and fascist talk. Maybe some of their supporters just like to whine and pop their mouths off without really understanding that what they sow, they will eventually reap. They think things are “bad” now? Wait until “nature” joins in the fray full force, and then people will really hating each other, and it won’t be for merely racial or ideological reasons; everyone will be for themselves, because they have forgotten how to work together.

In the meantime, stupid is as stupid does. Joe Biden's cognitive abilities have been in question for forgetting a word or two, as most of us do when we reach a certain age. But how is that worse than Trump slurring over words? Note in his speeches these days he seems to be talking in slow motion, as if he needs to take a moment to remember a word or find a replacement if he can’t remember it. On the other hand you have people like Jim Jordan, Matt Gaetz, Majorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert who would be better off taking a few moments to think about what they are saying, although it seems unlikely that they are capable of understanding that what they say is fit only for an insane asylum, not in the real world.

But Republicans soldier on in their own idiotic way. Tennessee’s own RNC chairman admitted it was a “bad look” to younger voters that two black state legislators were expelled for protesting the inaction after the Nashville mass shooting, especially since the white legislator who joined them was not. In Montana, Democratic Sen. Jon Tester announced he was running for re-election in 2024, which angered Republicans who hoped to flip his seat. The state legislature passed a law that was only due to effect that particular Senate election and no other afterward. The election will now only allow the top-two vote getters in the primaries, and no third-party candidates will now be able to run. Republicans hope that Tester will not be able to win “this time.”

Two black Democrats in Tennessee ousted, but MTG and other Republicans were not during their disrespectful outbursts during Biden’s State of the Union addresses. Montana changing election laws to prevent a Democrat from winning reelection. DeSantis running roughshod over free speech rights and Disney for partisan political reasons. Texas and Georgia passing election laws meant to make it more difficult  to vote for already disenfranchised legitimate voters. Shorter voting times and dates, and you think that right-wing business owners are going to let likely Democratic voters take time off to vote, unlike, say, office workers?

The cynicism never rests in this country. Democratic legislators in Louisiana and North Carolina recently switched parties to give Republicans “supermajorities” that are veto-proof. North Carolina’s Tricia Cotham was called upon to resign her seat instead, since she was accused of shamelessly conning voters in a largely Democratic district to win election. There is limited options to recall her, and she is daring constituents in her district to “vote her out” in 2024. How much were these ex-Democrats paid off to do this, or were they just power-mad con artists following their “conscience” and gave the finger to those who thought they voted for someone else? 

Why are people dumping on Kamala Harris for merely PR “misfires” that are mostly spitballs compared to the nuclear blasts by far-right Republicans? Biden has low approval ratings? Maybe it is just voters way of saying he should retire and let someone with more “vigor” run; a majority of voters don’t want Trump or DeSantis—or any Republican, given that the Democratic candidate has won the popular vote in seven of the last eight elections.

When Republicans mess things up, voters always come running to Democrats to save them from themselves, although they are usually only given two years to do it, before the mid-terms, and unlike the time that FDR was given to fix things, that is only enough time to put a band aid on a broken arm. It happens all the time in this country: Republicans screw things up like the weakening of banking regulations passed by Democrats in the wake of the “Great Recession” that itself was a result of the weakening of New Deal regulations to combat unsound banking practices that helped bring about the Great Depression. In 2018 Trump weakened the Dodd-Frank law and what happened? You have the recent bank failures that were a direct result of Trump’s stupidity, and you have a Republican majority in the House that will of course cry in pain to anything the Biden administration does to “fix” the problem.

It sure is tough to keep things “sane” these days, but there we go again. We really know, deep down, who is responsible for this, but into the rabbit hole Republicans leads the mindless into, who have little idea of the consequences of their support of certain fear-mongering politicians who believe they have a “mandate” for destruction. It seemed that the country had avoided allowing these potentates of perversion to guide them into perdition in 2020 and 2022, yet it appears that Trumpism/fascism is far from “dead.” 

Even an ex-president with a decades-long history of activity of questionable legality who finally may reap what he has sowed is not enough to bring second thoughts or even shame to people who still seem to be mesmerized with the sky-is-falling rhetoric that only offers paranoia and scapegoating as the “answer” to all problems…

…oh hell, what’s the point? The unholy trinity of Russia, China and Iran only seem to have destruction of world order on their minds too. That Barry McGuire song “Eve of Destruction” is more relevant now than it was in the 1960s:

 

 Man, I’m just going to watch a movie.

Texas still the filicide capitol of country, especially if you are the mother, "insane" or not

 

There was a recent post on CNN’s website which advised people that if know anyone like Nashville mass-shooter Audrey Hale with “suicidal” issues, to contact the provided hotline number. Although that would be good advice for most people who are feeling suicidal, that really wasn’t the case with Hale, since her intention was not that she wanted to die, but she knew she probably would be killed during her rampage, and she wanted to take out as many as people as possible before that happened. 

There have been plenty of other mass killers who have been killed themselves by “suicide” or by police, but here it appears that we are being asked to feel “empathy” for the killer—and that certainly suits Republican lawmakers in Tennessee who would rather expel two black Democrats for joining protesters against the state’s inaction.

But Tennessee isn’t the only the state that has a difficult time deciding how the deal with “non-traditional” child-killers, not even close to the worst—that would be Texas, an issue I’ve spoken about before. The case count now includes that of an 18-month-old boy, Cedrick Jackson, whose body was found in this Dallas County landfill in 2019…

 

…and his aunt was charged with his murder. In 2020, Krystle Concepcion Villanueva stabbed and beheaded her 5-year-old daughter. She claimed “insanity,” believing that her daughter had “been replaced by clones and had to be killed to bring back her real family.” Like in most such cases not involving a white female defendant, a jury didn’t believe her story.

In 2022 in Harris County, 7-year-old Troy Koehler allegedly “drowned” in a washing machine, but his parents were arrested for his murder, their case not aided by text messages that indicated they wanted to “kill” him over various “infractions”—including by hanging from a tree (the father’s idea), or baking him in the oven (the mother’s idea).

And then there is the case of Noel Rodriguez-Alvarez...

 

…a 6-year-old boy who is currently missing while his mother, Cindy Rodriguez-Singh, and her current husband fled to his home country of India with her six children who had been living along with Noel in a shed “lent” to her by a sympathetic neighbor, which police found in this condition:

 

Noel was born three months premature and had developmental issues. His father was deported to Mexico before he was born, and his mother—who has an “extensive” criminal history and apparently knew how to “work” the child welfare system—interpreted his condition as him being an “evil” child who was just too much trouble. 

When his uncle reported his disappearance to police, the mother first claimed that she had given the boy to his natural father, and then that she had “sold” him in a market. When police were skeptical, she decided to flee the country to avoid answering more questions she didn't want to answer.

The authorities believe Noel is dead, and have sought his mother's extradition from India. This of course is in contrast to the case of Sky Metalwala in Bellevue, Washington, whose mother after more than a decade still walks free despite the belief that she not only knows where he is, but that she killed him.

History tells us that unlike most cases of murder (especially of children), if the perpetrator is a woman, there is a good chance she might actually get away with it in Texas. Here’s a rundown of some old history:

1984: A nurse named Genene Jones was convicted of administering a deliberately fatal dose of a drug that caused a 15-month old child’s heart to stop.  Reports at the time implicated Jones in the deaths under suspicious circumstances of anywhere from 40 to 60 infants that she came in contact with. But we’ll never know for certain, because Jones was fired from several nursing positions by suspicious hospitals, and after her conviction for just one of the deaths, those hospitals that had employed her destroyed their records concerning Jones activities, apparently an attempt to avoid culpability.

1986: Juana Leija tossed six of her children over a bridge, two of whom drowned before rescuers arrived. Apparently prosecutors were familiar with the Mexican tale of the “weeping woman,” an indigenous Indian who was left by her high society husband for a more “suitable” mate, and subsequently went mad and tossed her children into the river. The defense claimed that Leija’s was an act of “love” so that they could escape abuse from their father, a claim that was based on the testimony of the mother alone.  Leija received 10 months probation. As often is the case, a male is always at fault, whether “God” or mere mortal. Beyond that, the murders make no reasonable sense.

1991: Diana Lumbrera was convicted of murdering six children under her care between 1976 and 1990. She claimed that a mother-in-law had put a “hex” on her and the children.

1995: Claudette Kibble was convicted of killing three infant sons, one each in 1986, 1988 and 1990. No motive was given for the murders.

1999: Tina Cornelius threw her two infant children off a cliff.  Neither she nor her attorney were quick-witted enough to use a postpartum insanity defense, and decided upon a “I see dead people” tale. In this case the jury decided that the story, not the perpetrator, was insane.

2002: Dee Perez shot to death her three children, wounded her husband and then shot herself.

2003: Deanna Laney crushed the skulls of two of her sons and seriously injured a third's back with rocks—on Mother’s Day of all times. Laney claimed that God instructed her to do this, and who is to question the word of God? Unfortunately, the Devil often masquerades as “God,” and sometimes the “devil” is the killer herself. Other people, like jurors who claim to be Christian, apparently did not know the difference. Laney was acquitted of murder by reason of insanity.

2003 Lisa Ann Diaz drowned her two young daughters. She claimed that “evil spirits” and “germs” were going to kill her and her children. She was found not guilty of anything by reason of insanity in 2005. How can this be judged “normal” behavior for even a lunatic? Most people under such a delusion would try to fight the “evil spirits,” not kill their children. A year later, the apparently too attractive for the judge in her case to resist Diaz was freed to roam the streets again, having conned a jury and a judge with the dumbest of lies.

2004: Dena Schlosser killed her infant daughter by cutting off her arms. She was found not guilty of murder for—what else—reasons of insanity. She was back out on the streets within four years of the crime.

2005: Angela Camacho and her live-in partner were convicted of killing and decapitating the three children under their care—after which they washed themselves and had sex. The woman received three life terms; the man was sentenced to death.

2006: Valeria Maxon murdered her infant son, claiming that he was the “Antichrist.” Declared “legally” insane, she was sent to a psychiatric hospital. She escaped and has been on a “most wanted” list since 2014 (last "updated" in 2021).

2007: Gilberta Estrada hanged herself and her five children, one who survived. Why? Who knows.

2007: Andrea Roberts, whose privileged life by all reports was untroubled by the tribulations most of us experience, shot her husband and two children while they were asleep, and then shot herself. A “suicide” note was found, but offered no explanation for her actions.

2013: Guadalupe Ronquillo-Ovalle murdered her husband and three children, then killed herself. No apparent motive.

Oh wait, say the informed, you forgot the most “famous” of these Texas cases. No I didn’t, I just saved it for last. In 2001, Andrea Yates drowned her five boys in a bathtub. She was convicted of murder in her first trial, but the verdict was vacated merely because a psychiatrist had “mistakenly” referred to a “Law & Order” episode that did not exist at the time of the murders (the program eventually did air such a show, predictably making the killer the real “victim”). In a second trial, Yates was found “innocent” for “reasons of insanity,” which apparently was aided by revelations of restraints by her health insurance policy for mental health care and alleged improper drug prescriptions.

But was this responsible for those "voices" that told her that her children were growing up “evil” because she could not raise them “properly”? If this was the case, why didn’t she kill herself instead, since she was the one "responsible" for this? In the meantime, Yates seems to believe that she is better off in a state mental institution for life, which apparently the state of Texas must think is a “cheaper” option than providing the "care" they should have provided her before in light of her alleged mental health state before she killed her sons.

Well, I guess you’ll notice that all, or nearly all, the perpetrators here are women, and the victims children. One thing that is usually forgotten is that mothers have power over young children, although many seem to think that it is the other way around. Another reason is that unlike for men, all too often people search for “reasons” why women commit such acts, because it isn’t in their “nature.” In fact statistics show that mothers are more likely than fathers to kill young children, especially infants. And yet we are less likely to put an “evil” motive on such acts for mothers as we would do for fathers.

Why is it in Texas of all places do we see such cases in abundance? Probably because mothers are the most likely to be allowed to use the “insanity” defense, and occasionally actually win “acquittal” from “sympathetic” jurors, especially if they are white and have a “good” story the media will buy. 

So while the mainstream media focuses mostly on crimes committed by men, under the radar screen we see how “power” is played-out between two “victimized” groups—women and children, and how one of those groups claims to be the more “victimized” than the more obvious vulnerable who have no "voice" because the current state of politics in this country deems it so.

Instead, we have to do endure the exaggerated self-obsessions of the people who composed these, whose efforts tend to off-put the intended "target" because of the gaslighting hypocrisy:

 

   

After all, the only reason why Jones isn't listed as one of the greatest mass murderers in the history of the world if the top-end number is correct is because first the evidence for it was purposely concealed by a system that didn't want to believe it was true, and secondly because the victims were "only" children.

How a country goes from a civil society to an "acceptable" uncivil one

 

YouTuber Frank Valchiria is keeping us informed on the latest updates on the Tate brothers’ saga in Romania; Andrew Tate is one of those for whom the French have concocted the term “masculinists,” which gender activists in the French media initially coined for people who believe (or rather know by the evidence) that Amber Heard and her ilk are vindictive, narcissistic  falsifiers, and generally anyone who takes the male point of view seriously instead of running over it with a freight train. Not that the Tate brothers give the term a “good” name, but the efforts to railroad them both because of their uber-male opinions (the counterpart to uber-feminism) and their “phone” business leaves a lot of questions about those doing the accusing. 

Prosecutors in Romania have run out of excuses to keep the brothers jailed without charge or evidence of "trafficking," so they have released them from a jail cell to  “house arrest” as long as they keep their mouths shut about their treatment by the authorities. Local media has surprisingly been particularly skeptical about the case against the Tates (certainly more so than what one would expect from fearful American or British media) and there is some suspicion of intergovernmental collusion.

The Tates were arrested after a woman went to the police claiming that she was the victim of sex-trafficking, but the evidence shows that she came to Romania on her own volition without pressure to "perform" in the job she agreed to do, and CCTV footage showed that the woman going out and about without any apparent restraints for a week before going to the police; the other six women involved denied that they were being “trafficked” and seemed genuinely upset that their "jobs" were threatened. 

My suspicion is that the accuser was a paid lackey for some “activist” group or even someone within the DOJ to frame the Tates with false charges of trafficking, since they are technically outside the jurisdiction of those most eager to take them down. Why should we be "shocked" if this is the case? After all, look at the conspiracy of Evan Rachel Wood and her fellow plotters to destroy Marylin Manson for the "embarrassing" tidbits in their past? That’s where we are in the “gender wars.”

Anyways, we live in a world where most of us pick and choose are spots, depending on how life treats us and who’s “pitch” seems less hypocritical. Just because someone may believe they are right, it  doesn’t mean that they are; it may just mean that they are too filled with certain negative emotions to be able to see clearly, or lack empathy for anyone outside their own sphere. Some people are just naturally cruel and vindictive, some just feel the world is against them even as they are being used by people who promote their agendas to make others feel even worse.

Of course there are those who live in their own world of privilege and entitlement, and anyone who attempts to climb the walls of their castle in the sky to annoy them with their complaints is swatted back down to earth. Now, I don’t know how legitimate the recent civil case was against actor Gwyneth Paltrow which ended in her favor, but what seemed to fly over everyone’s head (including the juror who wanted to get her face on television) was that this case likely would never even have been a thing had Paltrow not been the privileged, entitled, arrogant jerk people knew her to be before she put on the sad sack act during the trial, which was just as much playacting as Heard’s “performance.”

Frankly, I was surprised by the fact that most people were taking her side despite the fact the plaintiff was a man much older than her, and that the witness to the skiing accident clearly implied that it was Paltrow who was the one who rammed into him, and noted that she did not linger long to even to see if the man was alright despite the fact he was face down in the snow and unmoving—nor apparently did she make an inquiry of anyone at all of his condition later.

That was the issue to me; it may not be a "crime" as a matter of law (unless, of course, if the man died), but it is a crime in regard to civil behavior. Yeah, anyone would be upset by such arrogant, entitled, insensitive behavior if this happened to them—especially to someone who apparently has an overabundance of indignity.  Instead of examining Paltrow’s behavior at the time and that if she had shown even a whiff of human decency back then, no one would be making hypocritical excuses for her now. Instead, the case centered around who had the “right of way” on the slopes and the character assassination of a short, 76-year-old man. It made me sick, anyways, and if for me Paltow was a “zero” on my radar screen before, unlike for most her “reputation” just went south.

But then there are those who put their arrogance, privilege and entitlement out in public every day because they don’t know how to “fake it” and quit trying because no one will believe it anyways.  Take Donald Trump, for instance. After flaunting the law for a half-century, beginning at least with violations of the Fair Housing Act in Trump-run apartments, when the Nixon Justice Department sent black “testers” to Trump properties who were subsequently subjected to discrimination; Trump received “advice” from Roy Cohn and his kill-or-be-killed style, who although known as Sen. Joe McCarthy’s right-hand man during the “red scare,” some claim that Cohn’s own self-consciousness about his homosexual tendencies resulted in an even more “successful” drive to force gay men out of government and the Defense Department.

With the help of Cohn’s “mentoring” before he was disbarred for corruption, Trump spent the next decades lying, falsifying, cheating and believing he was above the law, before being indicted by a New York grand jury for a payoff to porn actress Stormy Daniels to buy her “silence” before the 2016 election, basically using a money laundering scheme with the help of Michael Cohen to conceal the payment. With this indictment in the bag, other grand juries in Trump cases may be emboldened or given courage to indict Trump in their own cases, or out of “fear” of reaction from Trump supporters decide that one indictment is enough.

Some of the early polling on Trump’s indictment seems to suggest that there are many people who would indeed follow him over a cliff—even if he shot that someone on Fifth Avenue. A majority of people believe the indictment is “politically motivated,” but I don’t believe that at all. Trump has been flaunting his immunity in people’s faces for decades and now the crows are coming to roost. Had he shown an ounce of human decency and had at least pretended to be a president for “all people” instead of stoking division in the country and taking as his share the most contemptible elements, he would still be getting a “pass” for his crimes.

But not only was Trump too stupid to understand what he had done to this country (and this includes the 2018 regulation rollbacks that led to the recent bank failures), so too are his willing pallbearers in Congress, like Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Green and all the rest of those Republicans who would burn the house down just to kill a gnat. Ron DeSantis is waiting in the wings to take Trump’s place, and his fascist impulses denying history and social reality would only send this country closer to “civil war” and social unrest in general if he was elected president. Some people in certain parts of the country might think that is a “good” thing; others might say those people should put away their flags and stop pretending to be “patriots.”

Meanwhile, unlike other criminals who have been arrested and charged with felony crimes (34 of them), Trump is being allowed to leave the state and return to Florida, where he is scheduled to give a “speech” to fire-up the kind of supporters who he hopes will rampage all over the country, turning it into a cesspool of what is now “acceptable” behavior; one suspects, however, Trump wallowing in self-pity, making accusations of "racism" against himself, and sleepwalking through the usual litany of lies and misrepresentations will impress only the committed.

That is Trump’s greatest crime which he can only be “prosecuted” for at the ballot box: he has expanded the boundaries of what is “civil” behavior into the realm of “acceptable” uncivil, aided by disinformation, lies and outright falsity. There was a time when people like Trump would been left to the curb as dangerous crackpots; now those with fascist, undemocratic impulses conceal the danger they present with “populist,” nationalistic and extreme-right discursions, rambling on about even the pettiest and nonsensical of conspiracies that make “sense” only to those who don’t want anyone to force them to explain what they are talking about and what facts and evidence they base them on. Once set loose on social media, there is seemingly no stopping it.

So that is where we are at now in this society: either self-obsessed people with an agenda creating crimes that don’t exist, or playacting to fool people into believing no crime occurred (whether actual or accepted social mores), and finally what happens to a society when criminals set the national agenda. This is where we are at, and it certainly seems to be difficult to extricate ourselves from it. People with any sense can pretend to believe that ultimately their view of the world will prevail, but how can that happen when self-involved narcissists who have no regard for truth  or civility are making the “rules”?