Three weeks into his administration and Biden is already a "loser" to this Fox News addict

 

I received a letter from my Fox News addict family member, and he was raring to go with Fox News’ latest post-inauguration propaganda. Nothing particularly new, but just more “confident” in his “facts.” Of course those of us outside the Fox News bubble know that the likes of Carlson, Ingraham, Hannity, Bartiromo, Pirro and the numnuts on Fox & Friends pass on their own personal “opinions” as “facts” to the gullible, only occasionally referencing a number out of context or some conspiracy theory from a “reliable” outside source. I mean, goddamn, everything he wrote was so easily debunked that I felt it was my duty to at least try to get his “facts” straight, even if I knew it was a lost cause anyways. Here goes:

Joe Biden: If you look at Joe you can’t possibly think he won the presidency legitimately. Stayed holed up in his basement bunker during almost the entire run for the White House. When he did leave his bunker it was to an empty gym in his home town with not enough people to fill the half dozen chairs, only Fake News Media and he did not answer any questions.

Aside from the fact that Trump has trouble answering troubling questions, on his Fox News appearances his “questioners” just let him ramble on endlessly, never once interrupting to ask him to “explain” a particularly egregious assertion. I pointed out that Joe Biden was trying to set the example for being safe during the pandemic that Trump refused to do to the detriment of over one-half million people in this country. Trump’s mostly maskless rallies were merely an example of the stupidity of the majority of his supporters. South Dakota’s fool governor is responsible for that state having the highest, or near highest, positivity and death rate per 100,000 people in the country—and she expresses absolutely zero contrition about all the people who have died in her state because of her failure to mandate any restrictions. Oh yeah, over 12,000 people have died of the virus in Tennessee, and I suppose that is just their dumb luck.

When he went to Georgia to support his two candidates running for the Senate, less than 200 people showed up at his rallies.

And your point is? As far as the relative effect of either Biden or Trump on the Georgia runoffs, it is clear that Trump’s psychotic behavior after the election was the deciding factor for on-the-fence Georgia voters. He more than anyone is responsible for what happened there.

How do you think he received 80 million votes in the presidential election? You know it was bought and paid for by Big Tech the Left Wing Liberal News Media (Fake News) and his Mega Donors.

He seems to be unmindful of the fact that Fox News viewers are not representative of the country as a whole. Believe it or not there are a lot of people who either despise Trump, or believe he proved himself beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is unfit to be president. Trump’s votes were also way inflated for the same reason the Biden vote count was, and there is reason to believe that absent of increased mail-in ballots, many older Trump voters would have stayed home while younger Biden voters would have been agreeable to stand in line and have their voices heard. It is also frankly amusing to be “schooled” about all those alleged Biden “mega” donors, since it is common knowledge think that the Republican Party has been in the pocket of “big business” for at least 150 years. This “big tech” accusation is just right-wing anger about Facebook and Twitter “flagging” false far-right conspiracies that endanger the public wellbeing.

His first day in office, shut down the Keystone Pipeline 11,000 jobs lost and many more affected, those who support the pipe line everything from materials, fuel, lodging, food and everything that requires assistance.

In regard to the Keystone XL Pipeline, Biden is merely abiding by rules and court orders ignored by Trump in regard to environmental regulations and Native American treaty rights. Let’s be clear about the facts, since facts do matter to those outside the Fox News bubble.  TransCanada, which owns and operates the pipeline, has been equivocal about how many jobs will actually be created in the U.S. Before the shutdown, there were only 1,000 workers on the project, and the company made plain that the jobs created would be temporary, with one crew working for a few months on one section of pipeline and replaced by another crew, which would also only work for a few months on another section of the pipeline, and so forth. When completed, there would be only 50 permanent employees working the pipeline.

After Biden shut down construction, TransCanada began a PR campaign to restart the project, now claiming that 10,400 jobs would be created, in which 8,000 would be union jobs. But that is a con job, since the original labor estimate still holds; only a fraction of the total labor force would be employed at any given time, and their jobs would only last a few months. And let’s be clear about this: TransCanada is profiting from this, not the U.S.; most of the oil going through the pipeline is for export to other countries.

His new green deal: Shutting down oil, natural gas and coal productions. Not only does this eliminate jobs, it ships our need for fossil fuels to other countries (OPEC) to produce them, and do you really think Russia and the Middle East countries producing theirs are concerned about climate change? What a bad decision—loss of jobs and more undesirable climate pollution. Already Biden had caused a real problem with getting rid of the fossil fuels in this country, loss of jobs and not one New Green Job to replace them with.

I don’t understand all this paranoia about “green” energy—it’s going to happen sooner or later, and if you give a damn about future generations the “sooner” the better. These complaints are just short-sighted right-wing political BS. I’m sure he’s heard all the lies being told about what happened in Texas, but he was not told by Fox News and Republicans in the state who are responsible for the disaster is that Texas created its own energy grid to avoid abiding by other states’ regulations, and refused to “winterize” its power stations. 85 percent of the power failures there were related to fossil fuel breakdowns—not the wind turbines. As far as job creation is concerned, the whole point of “green” energy is that it is self-sufficient and does not require constant feeding by polluting fuels, and is relatively low-maintenance. And let’s not forget that electricity generated by hydro power is also “green.”

Tell me how great BLM and Antifa gangsters are—now they are stating they want to burn Washington DC down. You sure have great pals.

My “pals”? Whatever. I see here that he is buying into QAnon conspiracies intimated as possibly “true” by Carlson. After what happened on January 6, it is more than a bit hypocritical to buy into the absurd lies about BLM and Antifa wanting to “burn down” Washington DC. For what reason would they want to do that? The insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol were certainly clear about their intentions to overthrow the election on behalf of Trump.

The pandemic plan left for Biden: Do you not recall the two vaccines that were being administered to the front line workers and elderly? Woops, the politicians snuck into the vaccine lines and pushed ahead of all the others. He pushed endlessly to get a vaccine in less than 10 months something that has never been done so quickly in the world!!! Trump’s administration had over 900,000 people vaccinated per day. Biden’s great pandemic plan: To wear masks, social distancing and wash hands. Something from the Trump plan.

I guess he must be talking about Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, who was one of those Covid-19 science-deniers, but decided to skip in line to get vaccinated anyways. Currently 1.7 million people a day are being vaccinated in the U.S., so I wouldn’t brag about Trump’s botched rollout of the vaccine. And I wouldn’t brag about Trump’s handling of the pandemic. First off, Trump was “desperate” that a vaccine be created because he had botched the pandemic response and hundreds of thousands were dying—it was his “magic” bullet to save his ass.

Trump really had nothing to do with the “speed” in which the vaccines were created. The only thing his administration did was shave a few months off the approval process. Moderna was racing to keep up with the German company Pfizer, which was operating on its own schedule, and it was a race not just to get a vaccine out, but who could profit from getting their product out first. Let’s also remember that it was the CDC that provided the guidelines for mask-wearing and social distancing, not Trump. Trump didn’t take the virus seriously, nor did Fox News opinionators. Biden is tackling the problem head on, while Trump had his head in the sand—and you want me to take what you say seriously because of a laughable change in the narrative?

Biden can’t even complete a sentence when reading the answers from a Q-card, but he is the leader of this country, in bed with China and who knows how many others.

Seems to me that Trump not only had “trouble” reading off cue cards, but he couldn’t pronounce “hard” words like “diversity” (“diversary”), names of countries: Namibia (“Nambia’) or names of well-known historical figures—pronouncing  Ulysses “Ulucious”. OK, maybe that isn’t fair, because anyone can mistake an “origin” for an “orange.” And who has Trump been in “bed” with? Not our allies, but with Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un—and Xi Jinping until Trump found it politically convenient to accuse China for his botched pandemic response.

INSURRECTION: You will see within a few days of this Fake Impeachment that it will all be dropped, especially when the present leaders Biden, Harris, Palosi (sic) and Shummer (sic), oh and our favorite of all Maxine Waters are shown with the reckless press clippings they have been featured in, should they be IMPEACHED?

Fake impeachment? It was ten votes from conviction. All those people he mentioned—in context they said they were “fighting” for the people of this country, not trying to overturn constitutional government to save one pathetic man. I don’t even know why this is worth talking about more. As they say, a “picture” speaks a thousand words. By the way, why does he think that Fox News has fallen behind in the ratings to CNN and MSNBC? Because people realized they were not getting the true facts of what happened on January 6 from Fox News. The truth is that Fox News is the de facto “fake news” channel.

That was technically the end of the letter, but before he mailed it out he felt compelled to add a lengthy P.S.:

By the way, who was the last president to do their job and not take a Salary. Were there any before Trump?

What else? Well, first of all it is not certain that Trump actually did anything that most people would define as "work," and secondly he did receive a salary, he just “donated it”—or so he claims. Knowing how corrupt he is, that can’t be verified unless we see his tax returns. George Washington, Herbert Hoover and John F. Kennedy all donated their salaries. Trump’s golf trips cost taxpayers “conservatively” about 50 times his total presidential salary.

There was also something snuck in there about Trump “creating” so many jobs because he is such a “great” businessman. Besides me pointing out that Trump left office with the economy in worse shape than he found it in, he had to be kidding with Trump’s history of bankruptcies. Only Trump could drive a casino business into bankruptcy. Trump failed at a dozen attempts to sell a “brand name” consumer product. He has major debt issues because regardless of his “expertise” in real estate, he is a terrible businessman. He ignored advice to invest in the stock market, instead using whatever profit his real estate generated to keep his head above water. And let’s not forget his “empire” was inherited from his father; he didn’t “build” it himself. Right now Trump has $500 million in short-term debt and the last bank that would loan him money, Deutsche Bank, doesn’t want anything more to do with him. And what else is on the horizon now that he has to hand over his financial and tax records?

I almost forgot! Biden stopped the building of the southern wall, another 5,000 employees out of job, also the support groups, don’t know how many. Plus mega millions of dollars paid to the contractors for cancelling the wall contracts.

Is he talking about the money Trump stole from the Defense budget? And what about the border wall? What was left after the replacement slats were constructed? Untold millions in taxpayer dollars have been wasted in attempts to construct barriers in isolated areas that were inaccessible to both migrants and border patrol agents. National refuge and forest areas were destroyed needlessly by the construction of what were essentially “access trails” just to establish staging areas for equipment. It has been pointed out that not only were these attempts at wall constructions unnecessary, the construction of these remote access trails actually invited foot traffic from migrants. As usual with the Trump administration, there was no intelligent “planning,” just the need for “optics” to satisfy an uninformed “base” fueled by paranoia and bigotry.

We sure have a real loser in the White House. All this in only three weeks!!!

Well, at least that was three weeks more than he gave Barack Obama.

Teetering on the precipice of the fact-based world, looking into the abyss

 

This country certainly has a way with molding and shaping “reality,” especially at times when it has to take a hard, deep look at itself. The 2017 shooting in a Thornton, CO Walmart—where a white man named Scott Ostrem killed three “random” people who all just happened to be Hispanic—was mentioned in one account of yesterday’s Boulder mass shooting, and indicated that the “motive” of Ostrem is still “unknown.” With all the demonizing and dehumanizing of migrants by both sides of the media divide, I’m sure that there will be those in the media who will still be “befuddled” by the “motives” of another El Paso-type shooter. On the other hand, the media easily reached the conclusion that the Atlanta spa shootings were a “hate crime” against Asians, despite the clear evidence of the mental instability of the shooter who associated his difficulty with remaining “true” to his religious “faith” with his “addiction” to the “massage parlors” that offered “illicit” services on the side, which also happened to be associated in his mind with the people providing those “services.” On the other hand, we may have to wait awhile to find out what Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa’s motives were in yesterday’s Boulder shooting, since it would mean revisiting that “stain on our national conscience.”

But this country of diverse peoples and beliefs seems incapable of actually possessing a “national standard” for what passes as facts, or even what passes for lies. Remember in 2020 when a district judge in New York, Mary Kay Vyskocil, bought the claims of Fox News attorneys that the “general tenor” of Tucker Carlson’s show should be “obvious” to viewers that he is not “stating actual facts,” but “engaging in exaggeration and non-literal commentary.” Well, that may be true for people who do have an appreciation for “actual” facts, but as I have shown several times now in the past few months, I know for a fact that at least one Fox News addict takes everything that is said dead seriously and for “actual fact.” And the events of January 6 haven’t stopped Donald Trump from passing his paranoid election conspiracies as “fact,” or prevented Fox News from continuing to provide Trump and his familiars with a soap box to spread a steady stream of blatant falsehoods and paranoid nativist fantasies.

And speaking of election conspiracies and fabrications, it is now being reported that Sidney Powell, who promised to “release the Kraken” to prove election fraud in Pennsylvania beyond a shadow of the slightest doubt, is now herself employing the claim that “everyone” should have known that those pages and pages of “evidence” were just a gag, mostly just stuff she found on various right-wing conspiracy websites, with a few “affidavits” from crackpots just to make it all seem “credible.” Of course it doesn’t exactly “help” her case that she made no effort at the time to suggest that she was engaging in harmless “theorizing.” Powell is currently facing a defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, and even for someone on the lunatic fringe, Powell has been forced to come face-to-face with the reality that facts do “matter,” and unfortunately she spent months claiming to everyone who listen—including eager Fox News hosts who are just as guilty as she is—that she had the “goods” on “massive” election fraud, and anyone who said otherwise was lying and “defaming” her character.

According to CNN, Powell was only “sharing her ‘opinion’ and that the public could reach ‘their own conclusions’ about whether votes were changed by election machine.” Furthermore, according her defense attorneys, “Given the highly charged and political context of the statements, it is clear that Powell was describing the facts on which she based the lawsuits she filed in support of President Trump.” Now wait just one damn minute here: first she is only expressing an “opinion” that “everyone” should judge as such, but then you turn around and say that her election fraud claims were based on “facts”—or at least the “facts” as Trump saw them? Powell and her attorneys seem to be pushing a narrative that suggests that her “facts” were actually not her own, but that of Trump, which of course seems to follow the line of defense of many of the January 6 insurrectionists. 

Powell and her attorneys seem to want it every which way but credible. Like the Fox News attorneys in the Carlson case, they claim that the “plaintiffs themselves characterize the statements as ‘wild accusations’ and “outlandish claims.’” These denunciations of Powell’s fraud assertions thus support “the defendants’ position that reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact.” Oh really? There seems to be an awful lot of “unreasonable” people in this country then. A poll released by the R Street Institute on February 11 revealed that 67 percent of Republican voters still believe that the election was “stolen” from Trump. All those people who stormed the Capitol—of course they believed the claims of Powell and Rudy Giuliani that Dominion and Smartmatic voting machines were “rigged” to alter the vote, as well other mail-in vote “irregularities” that were never demonstrated to be based on any facts. Even recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia were not enough to “convince” Trump, Powell or anyone else in that lunatic orbit of the “awful truth.”

Although Trump “distanced” himself “officially” from Powell’s schemes, he thought well enough of her to consider appointing her as a “special counsel” to investigate alleged election fraud, and you know that Powell was eager and ready to “prove” that she wasn’t the crackpot that people with a mite of common sense were certain she was. How much more “evidence” do we need to show without any shadow of any doubt that Powell knowingly pushed a narrative that she knew full well fell far short of even the minimal standard of evidence in a court of law, yet continued to deliberately defame Dominion and state election officials by making these charges? If Powell is not guilty of knowing and deliberate defamation as she claims, then the law has no purpose to even exist.

But we shouldn’t be at all surprised by any of this. A significant portion of this country is fed a steady diet of paranoid fantasies and conspiracies which they accept as “fact.” The line between “opinion” and “fact” is blurred, and facts are often only what people want them to be. Powell certainly knew this; and it wasn’t like Powell was “new” at this game—she had made numerous appearances on Fox News in prior years engaging in far-right conspiracy claims, and she was a more than willing participant in Trump election fantasies. She and Giuliani pressed their claims as “facts” in dozen of state and federal courts; for that alone they should be disbarred from ever practicing law again. But also we should remember that they were enabled not just by Trump and Fox News, but by millions of people who believed their lies because they wanted to believe them. This is a country teetering on the precipice of the fact-based world, looking into the abyss of a fascist (or Trumpist) future.

Three weeks after the coup attempt, Republicans seem just as eager to allow the fascist white nationalist and QAnon fringe to control its destiny

 

Should we pity or just feel disdain for people who are brainwashed by the likes of Fox News and other right-wing “news” outlets trucking in dangerous propaganda? Sean Hannity is professing that he doesn’t know if it is “safe” to be vaccinated against the Covid-19, although the way he said it the other day sounded like playacting. What kind of message is that sending to his viewers gullible enough to take him seriously? This is not being a responsible purveyor of needed information for the public welfare—this is irresponsible behavior that will kill people, and all because the likes of Hannity think that being “contrary” is good for ratings. I mean, they can’t actually believe half of what they say, can they? Even Art Bell was honest enough to admit that half the stuff that was talked about on his “Coast to Coast” radio show was “bullshit.”

I finally received that letter from the Fox News-addict family member since the events of January 6. I was curious to know about how he “explained” that event, but no such luck; not a single hint of his thoughts on the matter, just a few lines of paranoia about Joe Biden and the Democrats. Perhaps he knew deep down that this was wrong and just not “explainable.”  I wrote back suggesting that he take time off from watching Fox News and watch some reality-based news for a change, and that life was short, and if he was honest, he’d probably hadn’t noticed any real change in his life, good or bad, that could explain his dislike for Barack Obama and fandom of Trump.

Of course there is an “explanation” for that, if you read between the lines. For example, he blamed Obama exclusively for Benghazi, while Hillary Clinton bore no responsibility whatever for what happened, despite the fact that Obama had given her free reign to do little but promote her egomaniacal self, and it was known that she did not get on well with Ambassador Christopher Stevens (because he was a man?), which may or may not explain the lack of security at the U.S. compound. Was this belief primarily based on the fact that one of these people was black, and other white? Probably, although he would try to rationalize it in “cultural” terms. Personally, I’m still waiting for that report explaining what Vince Foster knew that was so awful it compelled him to commit suicide (note that I did not say “allegedly”); it isn’t a “conspiracy theory” to want to know the truth about the Clintons’ involvement. I guess you can tell I am no fan of Hillary, who if she had been elected in 2016, would have only told about 20,000 lies.

But I don’t want to discuss that any further, because that is yesterday and we have to deal with today. One of the most absurd talking points going about Fox News these days is that while Donald Trump often talked and behaved irrationally, his policies were nevertheless “sound,” and while Joe Biden may appear “normal” and “boring,” his executive orders demonstrate that he is an “extremist.” Then there is Maria Bartiromo predictably spouting nonsense—“admitting” that far-right elements had been planning to disguise themselves as National Guardsmen on Inauguration Day, but only just as Antifa members dressed-up like Trump supporters during the January 6 riot to make those “peaceful” Trumpists look bad.

And then Tucker Carlson warned his wing-nut viewers that efforts to take far-right domestic terrorists and QAnon fanaticism seriously by law enforcement was in fact an effort to “silence” dissent and take away your “freedom of speech” rights—and all this is called “dictatorship”; the truth of the matter is that Fox News has been doing three things that are destructive to the maintenance of a democracy: propping-up and enabling a corrupt “strongman” (Trump), convincing its viewers that the election was “stolen” and thus enabling the belief that the democratic process only “works” if their candidate wins, and to twist people’s minds with alternate “facts” that are simply made because they are contrary to accepted reality. Oh, and let’s throw in “justifying” Brown Shirt violence as “patriotic,” too.

Meanwhile, the usual suspects on the far-right side of the U.S. Senate are still pushing election fraud conspiracies and insisting that Trump should not have to face the music at all for inciting the attempt to overthrow the government that he so richly deserves. I hope that the impeachment managers call some of those insurrectionists as witnesses, because you know that there are 150 guilty-as-hell Republicans who fear being “outed.”  

One of those people is QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is even more “out there” than we thought.  Let’s recall what QAnon is, according the BBC:  “At its heart, QAnon is a wide-ranging, completely unfounded theory that says that President Trump is waging a secret war against elite Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media. QAnon believers have speculated that this fight will lead to a day of reckoning where prominent people such as former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will be arrested and executed.” Greene herself doesn’t seem to have any particular problem with people being “executed,” mainly Democrats. CNN reported that on her Facebook page in 2018 and 2019

In one post, from January 2019, Greene liked a comment that said "a bullet to the head would be quicker" to remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In other posts, Greene liked comments about executing FBI agents who, in her eyes, were part of the "deep state" working against Trump. In one Facebook post from April 2018, Greene wrote conspiratorially about the Iran Deal, one of former President Barack Obama's signature foreign policy achievements. A commenter asked Greene, "Now do we get to hang them ?? Meaning H & O ???," referring to Obama and Hillary Clinton. Greene replied, "Stage is being set. Players are being put in place. We must be patient. This must be done perfectly or liberal judges would let them off."

 

Greene also composed commentary on Nancy Pelosi:

"She's a traitor to our country, she's guilty of treason. She took an oath to protect American citizens and uphold our laws. And she gives aid and comfort to our enemies who illegally invade our land. That's what treason is. And by our law representatives and senators can be kicked out and no longer serve in our government. And it's, uh, it's a crime punishable by death is what treason is. Nancy Pelosi is guilty of treason."

Greene also wrote on her Facebook page that Pelosi “will suffer death or she'll be in prison for her treason." Greene was also caught on video harassing Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg, calling him a “coward” for supporting gun control legislation.  Greene’s response to these demonstrable facts about her questionable sanity was typical of the worst kind of hypocrites: it was all “fake news” from “the enemy of the people.” She denied any responsibility for what appeared on her Facebook page, and even for her own violent comments. She hypocritically denounced “all violence,” but only critiqued that allegedly from Antifa and BLM—the groups which she blames for the violent attempt to overthrow the government of January 6. If anyone is guilty of “treason,” it is those people who incited that insurrection, and Greene is near the top of that list, just below Trump’s culpability.

Who could vote for such a person? The 14^th District in Georgia is 85 percent white and largely Protestant “Christian”—and people don’t understand why more and more Americans do not take religion seriously? In The New Yorker, Charles Bethea wrote “On Facebook, she (Greene) posted a picture of herself holding a rifle next to images of Omar, Tlaib, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, below the words ‘We need strong conservative Christians to go on the offense against these socialists who want to rip our country apart.’” One local Republican said that while he opposed her racist, violent rhetoric and would not vote for her, she would likely be elected because “Poor white people in the countryside, who’ve been ignored by both parties for years—they expect nothing from the federal government”—which is just an excuse, because these “poor white Southerners” have been voting Republican for at least half a century, so why would they expect anything from the government? Of course they will vote for the “white candidate” and the one who is most “bat-shit crazy” rather than just your run-of-the-mill Republican.

Bethea talked to one small group of women who attended a Greene campaign rally; besides showing an interest in “learning” more about this “Q” thing, they agreed that Democrats are so “hateful” because “they’re controlled by Satan” and then nonsensically “That’s right. They want to control everybody else. They want to control people with fear. O.K.? They’re wanting to control people by their pocketbook.” What exactly is meant by all of this is not clear, and if you ask them to “explain” what they mean, they would doubtless be at loss to do so; watch any of Jordan Klepper’s videos of his adventures in Trump World, and you will discover how shockingly ignorant many Trump supporters are, motivated solely by petty personal grievances that have nothing to do with reality. What does seem “clear,” however, is that they only care about their own sad little lives, they never look at the “big picture.” When they talk about “control,” what they really mean is their “unhappiness” that their racist and white nationalist beliefs are not more forcefully translated from words to action; it is they, in actuality, who seek “control” on white nationalist and racist terms.

Republicans just don’t “get it” the way Democrats do; Democrats know that progressives and “socialists” don’t have anywhere else to go if they want to have any say in policy, while Republicans at the moment are allowing themselves to be controlled by Trumpists and the far-right extremist, white supremacist fringe. Again, where else do these people have to go if the party just untethers this barge? So what if the extremist fringe elements decide to form their own political party? When people see what their “platform” is untethered from the phony platitudes of the Republican Party, people will likely think twice before voting for a “party” that they are not prepared to explain what their “plan” for the country is, which one suspects will be like one of those crazy neo-Nazi maps where different parts of the country are “set aside” for pure-white Arians.

And even if such a third-party arises, they should take heed of what happened when Republican Teddy Roosevelt founded the Progressive “Bull Moose” Party in 1912 "to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics.” He actually received more votes than Taft in the 1912 election, but end result was not only the loss to Woodrow Wilson, but many progressive former Republicans switched to the Democratic Party. Of course we are looking at a much different dynamic here, with “traditional” conservative Republicans having to make a choice between their “ideals” and fascism, and only weeks after the attempt to overthrow democracy in this country by Trumpist/fascist forces, they seem now more receptive to allowing Trumpism/fascism to control the destiny of the party because of the total absence of moral credibility.

The rats may be getting off Trump's sinking ship or going down with him, but that still leaves behind forces that even another Trump may not be able to control

 

Yesterday we saw Donald Trump addressing what was essentially a white supremacist “convention”—exhorting them to march on the Capitol building, and put the fear of the Devil into Democrats and “courage” into the spines of Republicans, to aid in his quixotic quest to remain in office. These people were not “patriots,” they were a vile mob of domestic terrorists joyriding on Trump’s fascist bus. Perhaps it was only “coincidental” that police “guarding” the Capitol were understaffed and unprepared, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that they allowed the mob to just walk through the police line outside the building—which suggested that some of them were in “sympathy” with the mob.

Once the mob gained entry into the Capitol, they did not behave like mature adults with real concerns, but like frat boys in a beer-soaked party. If they were “serious” about their complaints, maybe they would have just gathered together in the rotunda and started chanting “stop the steal”; instead, they just rampaged the halls with Trump and Confederate flags, committed vandalism and theft, and posted pictures of themselves sitting in Nancy Pelosi’s desk. These people didn’t care about maintaining the rule of law and democracy; they just showed us what happens when the rule of law and democracy is undermined by a president who has never respected either—rather seeing both as the “enemy” in his ongoing battle against being viewed as a “loser” in business, politics, and as a human being.

Since then, we have seen some Trump supporters scurrying around like rats on Trump’s sinking ship, and others deciding to get out while the getting out is still good. After the mob had been cleared out, Sen. Lindsay Graham announced that he had tried to be friends with Trump and support him through thick-and-thin, but after the attempted insurrection, he exclaimed “Count me out. Enough is enough.” This is a man who had called Georgia’s secretary of state on Trump’s behalf to “persuade” him to criminally overturn the vote. But apparently it is true that a picture tells a story, or a thousand words. People try to hide behind their silence, or claim words are not the same as deeds, but the actual visual evidence that words do really mean something is a truism that even a sycophantic supporter like Graham could not face. Still, we must give “credit” where credit is due, since there were others, like Senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and most of the Republicans in the House, who decided to go down with the ship instead of supporting democracy and the rule of law.

You have to know that William Barr is only too happy not having to be around  to “explain” why he did nothing while the seat of the nation’s democracy (Trump’s White House certainly isn’t) was under siege by an attempted coup orchestrated by the “boss” he had for two years sought to make more dictatorial and more immune from accountability. Meanwhile, Chad Wolf suddenly remembered that immigrant children in cages were not his only area of “concern” as head of “Homeland Security,” and actually had the gonads to call on Trump to denounce the domestic terrorists he had personally sent out on a search and destroy mission. An hour after this unforgivable act of disloyalty, Trump withdrew Wolf’s nomination as permanent head of the DHS, which was just as well, since a Democratic-controlled Senate is not going to approve him anyways, and because he has been ruled to be illegally holding his position in the first place is the least of the reasons.

Meanwhile, Fox News doesn’t know what direction it wants to go on after the attempt to overthrow democracy by the very people it has provided sustenance to on a daily basis. On “Fox & Friends” MAGA fanatic Pete Hegseth defended the mobsters, claiming that their actions only exposed “what the left has done to this country”—and not, say, Trump. Brian Kilmeade, who the day before was still giving credence to election conspiracies, was today asserting that “Since November 3, or when we got the verdict by November 5, the president’s behavior has been terrible”; naturally he didn’t mention the fact that all of this could have ended very quickly had not he and most of the rest of the Fox News crew been sycophantedly supportive of his election fraud conspiracies for the past two months.

Fox News was also promoting human superspreader Rep. Matt Gaetz's conspiracy theory that antifa had "infiltrated" the rioters and were the real party responsible for the violence. But this was debunked by a facial recognition software company that stated that it had actually identified two neo-Nazis and a QAnon supporter, and by the right-wing newspaper The Washington Examiner, which quoted a right-wing journalist and "expert" on antifa and BLM, who said that antifa was not equipped to coordinate such a mass protest, and there had been no Internet "chatter" about any involvement in the protest. 

An Examiner reporter at the scene also tweeted that “I didn’t see any BLM or antifa all day and I’ve walked through the crowd a few times.” But Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity kept peddling that conspiracy theory, and I know that I am going to be asked "what about that?" in the next letter from my Fox News addict family member.

Then there was Tucker Carlson, hypocritically trying to put a “human” face on the insurrection, putting the focus not on the action of rioters but on the woman who was shot and later died; Carlson didn’t mention that she had been in the military for 14 years, was identified by family members as a pro-Trump fanatic, and this happened because she refused police commands to stop trying to break through a door. If anyone was truly responsible for her death, it was the person who said the following:

Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and that’s what this is all about. To use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal. Today I will lay out just some of the evidence proving that we won this election, and we won it by a landslide. This was not a close election. I say sometimes jokingly, but there’s no joke about it, I’ve been in two elections. I won them both and the second one, I won much bigger than the first. By the way, does anybody believe that Joe had 80 million votes? Does anybody believe that? He had 80 million computer votes. It’s a disgrace. There’s never been anything like that…Our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun. My fellow Americans for our movement, for our children and for our beloved country and I say this, despite all that’s happened, the best is yet to come…So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the Capitol and we’re going to try and give…But we’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.

Unfortunately, even the “strong” Republicans were forced to flee this effort to instill “pride and boldness.” Yes, Trump did provide these thugs the “go-ahead” to create havoc, but it is also a fair question to ask in light of what did happen is did Trump unleash forces that even he cannot completely foresee or control. Thus the danger of Trumpism is not just the man himself and his completely irresponsible behavior, but the violent mob mentality that he nurtured and unleashed, and will likely survive him no matter if a prison cell is his next destination. 

Another concern is if the “Trump media” has learned anything from this, and for the most part, the answer is probably a resounding “NO.” It will claim to oppose violence “in all its forms”—but mostly the “liberal” variety—and continue to irresponsibly promote the kind fake “socialist” and racist conspiracies that feed into ignorant fears and paranoia, and lead to actions by such elements as we have just witnessed, and may only be "grounded" for a day for not behaving like good little—what did the tone-deaf Ivanka Trump just call them? “American Patriots”?—but otherwise are still a loved part of the “family.”

It's no good trying to talk sense to a Fox News addict

 

I received another letter from “home,” and it was more of the same. This is the last time I’m going to indulge my Fox News addict family member here, because it’s like a dog chasing its tail; it makes absolutely no sense, but some people have to find a way to expend that pent-up “energy.” I mean really: he wants to talk about the same things over and over again, only with a slightly new “angle” or something he heard someone on Fox News say, nothing that really illuminates the issue at hand at best, and at worst merely serves as yet another dodge to avoid facing uncomfortable facts.

Joe Biden, in bed with the teachers’ union who are his big supporters—won’t open schools because the unions say it is Covid-19. The private schools and Catholic schools have no problems being open and teaching the students in-house. How about the Keystone pipeline Biden shut down. We all know it is  all political and the garbage of climate change as the reason.

Gasoline is up from $2.29 to $2.99 per gallon and a barrel of crude oil is just a buck or two from doubling in price since Biden has taken office. Good news—yes?

We all know all construction jobs are temporary jobs, but where is Biden’s plan for right now—non-existing for the 11,000 who lost their jobs? Future maintenance of the Keystone  pipeline of 50 people to clean the interiors and inspect for problems—they are called troubleshooters, The non-existing jobs assembling solar panels would possibly 400 to 500 dollars a week—there are no jobs available and if they do become reality they will be made in China who will be the low contract bidder. What job will be eliminated get the $1500 weekly needed to take care of their families.

Well, he left me with quite a bit to unpack there, but while it isn’t hard when you live in a reality-based world, it certainly is a chore to explain how the world works to someone whose beliefs are dictated by personal prejudices and invented “facts.” Attacking unions is a right-wing hobby (yeah, they really “care” about working stiffs), and I do agree that many children learn better from “in-school” teaching than by the “remote” method, but I don’t think anyone should be second-guessing policy when public health and safety is at issue.  Catholic and private schools are “for-profit” institutions, so I wouldn’t put them up on a pedestal of “virtue.”

In regard to oil and gas prices that they are due for a correction upward is inevitable. Prices plummeted during the pandemic because fewer people were driving their POVs either to work or “play.” Many—and probably most—office employees were working “remotely,” and there were no restaurants and movie theaters open. People either stayed home, or they went out jogging or riding bicycles for “amusement.” But with pandemic restrictions being lessened in some states, more people are going to get into their POVS and hit the road. Saudi Arabia among other oil-producing countries reduced output because of the lack of demand, and there is every reason to believe that oil and gas prices will stabilize once production is ramped-up again. “Logic,” of course, defies some minds.

As for the Keystone pipeline project, it has been a boondoggle for one country: Canada. As I mentioned before, those 11,000 jobs number is just a PR stunt by TC Energy (TransCanada) to get this thing jump-started again. Only 1,000 or so would be employed at any given time, and only to work on a section of pipeline for a few months before they would be replaced by the next crew. Those 50 “permanent” jobs? TC has been “coy” about that (as in everything else about the project), but they will likely be filled by Canadian citizens employed by TC. The pipeline is to go first to a refinery in Nebraska, then to the Gulf of Mexico, giving TC a more “warm weather” way to export its oil year-round to countries not named the United States.

There is some argument about how much if any of TC’s petroleum product through Keystone will actually be sold in the U.S. or exported to other countries; but given what happens to most of the oil that ends-up in Gulf coast facilities, it is also likely that most of it will be exported to other countries. At best, those who favor the pipeline, and “fact-checkers,” admit that the only thing they have to “rebut” claims that the U.S. will see no economic benefit from the pipeline is that it is “unlikely” that all of the oil will leave the U.S. This is an important issue, because the U.S. is taking on potential environmental damage and public health risks for the biggest infrastructure project in U.S. history that seemingly solely benefits a foreign country.

So the U.S. will very likely see little benefit economically from this “deal.” This is the truth of Trump’s “America First” unreality. You know what “America First” should really mean? Do you know what being “energy independent” is? It is not relying on a finite source of energy (fossil fuels), but one that is based on what is as “infinite” as the earth is old.  By the way, most parts of wind turbines constructed in the U.S. are made in the U.S.; there are 500 wind-related manufacturing facilities in 43 states, employing 114,000 people, and there should be no reason why we can’t do that here with solar technology as well.  And it’s “clean.” Who has a problem with that, save Fox News idiots and their fans?

Then he sneaks in that thing about a living wage. It’s funny hearing a right-winger talking about how it costs $1500 a week (that’s $75,000 a year) to raise a family proper, but he’s always singing a different tune when it comes to the “others” who apparently do not have a right to a living wage—because they only have themselves to “blame.” Tennessee doesn’t even have a minimum wage law, although it has to “respect” the federal rate of $7.25 an hour. It just seems a tiny bit hypocritical to complain about how $40-an-hour is just barely enough to raise a family (of white people?), yet on the other hand claim that a minimum wage law of $15 is an “outrage” and a “job loser” (for the “others).

You must be aware Biden is all in favor and gives the blessing to Russia to complete their pipeline to Europe (Germany).

The U.S. doesn’t have any cause to stop a Russian pipeline into Germany, because unlike the Keystone pipeline, the oil that comes out of it is directly intended for the consumption of Germany and other European countries. After all, Russia’s economy is in a shambles, and it needs the money bad. Sure, Russia could threaten to cut off supplies in times of stress, but that would be like cutting-off its nose to spite its face. Europe could just buy OPEC oil instead, and it has just as much political leverage as Russia does.

Where is the concern for the Green New Deal and climate change. John Kerry just over a month ago stated we only have 9 years to take care of climate change—FEAR MONGERING!!!

I just can’t understand what people have against “green energy.” It just doesn’t make any sense. Many European countries are aiming for 100 percent “green” energy for their electricity needs. Why is that so frightening  to people here? I just don’t get it. Is it because in their minds it is too closely tied to “radical leftists” and they just knee-jerk oppose it because they are partisan knuckleheads? Now, I admit that some people are so blinded by their white grievance that they can’t look into the future further than the next day, or Sean Hannity’s next show, but when is the “right” time to start being concerned about climate change and energy? Nine years from now? 50 years from now? How about today? Or better yet, how about 20 years ago?

How about the southern border crisis, from January 20, 2021 to March 1, 2021 one hundred eight illegals tested positive for COVID-19 virus in Brownsville, TX? As of two days ago more than 1500 illegals have tested positive  for the COVID-19 virus, and you have to remember not many of the illegals get tested. They are put on buses and shipped anywhere U.S.A. Now about the over-crowding and holding the illegals more than 72 hours. That is all the law allows for illegals. Why does Biden and his cronies, not allow the so-called press access to the facilities that illegals (children) are kept in? Are they in cages or shipping containers?

I should tell him that you can’t on one hand dehumanize human beings as “illegals,” and on the other hand deal in hypocritical “whataboutisms” like you actually “care” anything about them as human beings. Did Trump and Miller ever follow the spirit of the law on immigration and asylum? No, they deliberately undermined it, and the fact they used unabashedly racist terms to “justify” it does not make it more "acceptable." This alleged border “crisis” is exactly what Republicans want it to be seen as because they know it moves the “base” more than any other issue. I think Democrats are playing scared on the issue and right into white nationalist hands.  Migrants have been coming here for over a century to fill labor needs that few acknowledge because it exposes their own hypocrisy. Oh and by the way, 31 million people have tested positive for the COVID-19 in this country, which is about 10 percent of the population. The Brownsville testing found 6.3 percent of the migrants they tested did so positively.  Just throwing out a number without context, of course, is how to frighten paranoid bigots.

Insurrection: January 6, 2021—How many guns were confiscated by the police—NONE—and how many shots fired  by other than police—NONE, but the Capitol police did shoot and kill one lady (a “lady”?) from California. Remember how your far left and fake news lied about the police officer who died, saying he was struck over the head with a fire extinguisher, another lie—DID NOT HAPPEN!!!

Yeah, okay, the insurrection never happened and nobody was killed, except that one “lady” and a police officer. In regard to the insurrection, while it was true that only a few guns were confiscated, that is likely because most of the rioters got away before they could be searched; on social media, many bragged that they had arrived “armed” and were ready for “action.” Those who did have guns confiscated had them out in open, or police found them in vehicles they searched; for example, they found assault rifles, full magazines, Molotov cocktails and pipe bombs; what were those people planning on doing with all of that? Two dozen people were arrested for carrying items that could be used as weapons to cause lethal harm. Many of those arrested later were found to have serious armaments in their homes that they may well have taken with them, but were not caught with at the time.

And you don’t need to have a gun to kill someone; four of the five persons who died during the insurrection were not killed by guns. The woman who did was no “lady,” but a far-right militia extremist intent on causing some damage and she was among those trying to smash through a door despite being ordered to cease and desist. And does it really matter the precise details of how that police officer died, which is still under question? What we do know is that he and those four other persons would not have died had it not been for the riot. You can’t just explain that away, especially with idiot commentary culled from Fox News.

I did take the time to watch some of the liberal left so-called news programs you suggested. I watched CNN and MSNBC. All I got from them was ANGER, RACEISM (sic) and BIGETRY (sic).

Well, I should have known better, but what the hell. I suspect that he didn’t step into the world of reality with an open mind—if he actually did watch CNN or MSNBC, the latter’s whose hosts usually carefully lay out the facts for all but the deliberately ignorant to understand. If he thinks that all you get from CNN and MSNBC are things like “racism” and “bigotry,” either he didn’t actually watch them, or his definition of racism and bigotry comes from the white nationalist and white grievance perspective. Let’s face it: he is so brainwashed by right-wing hate talk that it is impossible to even listen to alternative views that are just as valid from the perspective of (I dare say) of a majority of people in this country, although what passes for “valid” in his case is an extremely relative term.

Then he went on to try to “explain” why he believed I didn’t share his right-wing beliefs, comparing me to my half-siblings who are more plainly Caucasian than my plainly “ethnic” self. Ok, so a college degree didn’t get me a great job, but life has been one adventure after another, and I am doing what I want to do (even if I’ve seen no money from it), which is to write, and Google has allowed me to write any damn thing I want without anyone’s “permission”—1,800 posts and counting. I’m “content” in a fashion, and I have thousands of mostly “classic” films in my video collection to keep my company. I don’t really consider myself to be a “flaming liberal” at all, and I am not one of those “woke” people; I’ll pick a fight with anyone who is a hypocrite, self-serving and uses self-righteous “victimhood” to justify oppressing others, or to gain advantage for themselves, or to have their 15 minutes of “fame.”

I also have no illusions about the world I live in. When I enlisted in the Army, I did finally figure out what was “wrong” with me and that what I experienced even within my own home was a lesson in what discrimination was; the belief was that I was more likely to be “dead or in jail” than to be a university graduate, let alone someone who hasn’t spent more than two weeks out of work since he left school. I realized that everything I knew was a lie when in basic training a drill sergeant asked me “Is that how you fold your socks, you Mexican”? When I told him I wasn’t a “Mexican” he suggested that was how a “Cuban” and then a “Puerto Rican” folded his socks. He ended-up saying “whatever you are”—just not a “real” American like he was, or the rest of my family.  

The drill meant all of those terms to be derogatory, almost racial slurs, and since then I refused to live in a world of illusion. I know what people “see” and what they think. I despise bigoted hypocrites, and I will call them out at every turn; if you have to be labeled a “radical leftie” or “socialist” or some other ridiculous “slur” to see them for what they are, then so be it.

Tennessee definitely not the state I used to "know," but should have

 

Last I week I included on a post about the xenophobia and paranoia behind anti-Hispanic immigration mania an image of Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn and her “list” of what immigrants from south of the border will "contribute" to the country. I don’t give a damn if there are some people who gaslight society over what happened in the past, but the past is present and it isn’t about them anymore. People like Blackburn and Laura Ingraham are today the Julius Streichers of yesteryear, but this time it isn't Jews who are their targets in a public forum seemingly without fear of being contradicted…

 

…they are demonizing and dehumanizing here today Hispanics, which is something the media doesn't have the time to examine. It does of course have time to examine "structural racism" against blacks in regard to medical care in a current series by the Associated Press, but all those tiny coffins I saw being flown to Mexico when I worked at the airport did not contain black infants (or white infants, for that matter). 

Blackburn has been a racist since at least her “birther” days, and this isn’t anything new. What is “new” is that people who once thought of the state of Tennessee as a more “moderate” southern state definitely need to be disabused of that view. Jonathan Tobin of the far-right Jewish News Syndicate opined in Newsweek (it’s apparently trying to attract more “business” this way) that the black state legislatures who were expelled for protesting too much about the now ruby-red state’s Republicans refusal to act in the aftermath of the Nashville mass shooting were guilty of “anti-democratic hypocrisy.”

Really? Only six of the 33 state senators are Democrats, and three-quarters of the state House is Republican. We can surmise the “interest” in “democracy” that Republicans have after their redistricting plan  carved-up Nashville from a reliable Democratic seat in the House of Representatives into parts of three reliable Republican seats, so that only one majority Democratic district remains  in the delegation, the Ninth which includes Memphis. That sounds real “pro-democracy,” doesn’t it? How about this as “pro-democracy,” from a local Nashville television station as reported by The New Republic, which by the way is an “old school” conservative publication:

An investigation conducted before last week’s drama from Nashville-based NewsChannel5 revealed how Tennessee Republicans have introduced legislation with no notice to the public, denied roll call votes on bills, and killed bills on the basis that their side apparently sounded louder in voice votes.“You have committee chairs single-handedly deciding whether bills live or die. Is that democracy?” NewsChannel 5’s Phill Williams asked Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who responded by insisting that there’s no problem.

Yet a problem there is. On the college student ID bill, pushed by the now-expelled Representative Jones, Republican Elections and Campaign Finance Subcommittee chair Tim Rudd gavelled the vote as a “No” before the voice vote was even finished. Such brazenness certainly cuts against the already condescending charges made by some Republicans last week that members like Jones and Pearson were complainers and not legislation pursuers.  NewsChannel5 gave Rudd the opportunity to explain why he killed the bill before even hearing the vote. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rudd said twice, with not an ounce of shame of what was clearly seen on camera.

Another bill, advanced by local students, that would’ve directed high schools to guide students on how they could register to vote, was denied a roll call vote by Republican Local Government chair John Crawford on the basis that the committee had already voted on an amendment to the bill. House rules explicitly state that “a roll call vote shall be taken at the request of the sponsor of the bill or resolution under consideration.” On the voice vote, it sounded to many in the room like the “Aye’s” had won. Crawford, however, deemed that the “No’s had it.”

 “Democracy is dead here in Tennessee as it stands right now,” said House Democratic Caucus Chair Vincent Dixie, who sponsored the bill. Tori Venable, from the libertarian group Americans for Prosperity, told NewsChannel5 how, with the House voice votes, a vote having “sounded one way, [can go] another way,” all by the unchecked discretion of the Republican majority.

Sure sounds like “democracy” is dead in Tennessee to me. Of course if you swing far-right like family members (I use that term with some irony) who live there, “democracy” is only supposed to work for “us,” not for “them.” Politico points out that

Tennessee represents the grim culmination of the forces corroding state politics: the nationalization of elections and governance, the tribalism between the two parties, the collapse of local media and internet-accelerated siloing of news and the incentive structure wrought by extreme gerrymandering. Also, if we’re being honest, the transition from pragmatists anchored in their communities to partisans more fixated on what’s said online than at their local Rotary Club.

Now, I occasionally can be seen walking about Seattle with a backpack which I purchased online with a small “birthday” discount from the gift and collectable section of the store of the university I am an alumnus of. The backpack has the school logo, seen here at Pier 66:

 

Not that it means that much; I suspect that most people here don't see the state as anything more than a country music Hicksville. Not that I knew much more about it myself, spending my time in the bubble atmosphere of college life. I took summer semester courses that allowed me to graduate a year earlier than the people I started out with, which meant that I didn’t take the summers off to get to know the “culture” better.   

To be honest, going to that school didn’t seem to impress anyone on my job searches out here, maybe because they didn’t think I would “fit in” with this “culture”—either that or people had a hard time believing that someone who looked like me could have a college degree at all.  Maybe—probably—it was the latter.

Still, I like to wear the backpack as a kind of –in-your-face thing: yeah, Maybe I’m not from around here,  but not from where you think, or you people are bigger hypocrites than the people from the place I came from, or simply I’m not like you and can you guess what I think about you ignorant assumptions. 

That’s how I feel about these superstars-in-their-own-minds around here  whose  degrees only got them data entry or phone answering jobs. I actually think about things; these other people mark their ballots next to correct ovals so they don’t have to bother with what is happening in this world themselves. But on the other hand, it is fair to say that the right-wingers here are just fakers and wannabes; I’ve seen the “real deal” close up.

The problem is that the states of Washington and Tennessee probably had a lot in common back in the day, but have gone in two completely opposite directions, so it isn’t fair to assert that I would feel any better being there than here. If there were people would elect a neo-Nazi like Blackburn to the U.S. Senate, then count me out of there.

Now you may wonder how someone like me wound up spending  any time in a state like that to begin with, although the real mystery is how I managed to make it to college at all, since my life—at least until the time I enlisted in the Army—was destined to nowhere. It was a complicated story which I won’t get into here, although I will say that it left me which a blasé attitude about familial connections, or personal connections at all—none more important than the fact that in their eyes I am a radical socialist who created his own problems, and in my eyes they are simply in denial and out of touch with reality.

I was born in Cleveland, grew-up in Wisconsin before enlisting—more out of “force,” but I didn’t resist; any place had to be better than where I was at. I suppose that the military was looked upon as a kind of “reform school” for me, although the fact was that I never drank, never did drugs, and never hanged out with "bad" people; when I heard Johnny Depp describe his life as a child, I could "relate" to that, except in some ways it was worse.  My half-siblings who were clearly less "ethnic" than I was got all the perks and privileges, and I had to do the "dirty work." They got allowances, but I dare not ask for a quarter. On the rare occasion my mother was in the mood to treat me with a little kindness, it evaporated the moment I asked for something, because I was taking "advantage" of her. Fear made me do things on the “sly,” and my mother never could come to grips with why I was they way I was. 

But in the Army, we were all one big “happy” family, regardless of background or social status, at least on the enlisted side. It was a job, most of time monotonous, sometimes not so, and you learned how to keep things neat and tidy, and you did what you were told to do. In return, you got your “three hots and a cot” with a little pocket change thrown in.

I was always a book reader, and I had a lot of books that were not taken away from me as "punishment" or feelings of malice when I was in the service; I liked movies, and when the Laserdisc format came out, I thought it was “cool” enough to start building my own movie collection. But there had to be something more to life, and as they say the best place to be in the Army is between the place you are leaving and the place you are going. 

One day a new platoon leader arrived, a second lieutenant fresh out of ROTC. I was a sergeant by then and I had all this “book learning” but not that piece of parchment to prove it like this novice did. So I decided that I was going to go to college and get that piece of parchment, like Jack Thompson’s electrician in the Australian film Petersen; those other “educated” snobs weren’t “better” than he was, and he was going to prove it (or at least fake it as long as he could).

The question was where. My parents had by then moved out of Wisconsin after Caterpillar laid-off a bunch of people, and Dad found a new job near Knoxville, so I could get into the university there as an “in-state” student. I was also fortunate that the school liked to show its “appreciation” for one’s “service” to the country; I asked for an application while I was stationed in Augsburg, a Bavarian city which liked to brag about its Roman “heritage” with this statue of Augustus:

 

Although my academic “credentials” were not exactly stellar, I was surprised by how quickly I received a letter of acceptance. By the time I showed up “home” to a place I knew nothing about except that people talked “different,” I was completely over my previous fear. I think that my parents didn’t know what to make of this person who now did as he pleased and who wasn’t on his way to jail or an early grave after all. I recall showing Dad my first college report card; I couldn’t tell if his look of “disappointment” was because I didn’t get straight-As—or because I actually passed all my classes (one “A,” two “B+s” and a “C+”).

As noted I was in a kind of bubble world in school; I didn’t get a “sense” of what the “culture” or politics was, save for that white female student who befuddled people by saying out loud in class that just because she wouldn’t date a black man didn’t mean she was “racist”; nobody could figure out what was being discussed that motivated her to blurt that out. 

I also remember a Japanese-American student making a racially-insensitive observation that didn’t sit well even with the white students; after all, that was their prerogative. While I notice that the University of Washington is pretty much taken over by Asian students, both legal residents and foreign nationals, no southern university like UTK would ever allow that to happen at their school. 

Just in case someone gets the wrong "idea" about me, before I started working for the campus paper I submitted a letter to the editor condemning what I regarded as an antisemitic op-ed written by another student; when it was published, all the "j"s were in lower case, making me look like an idiot. I confronted the "managing editor" who admitted that he was in a "rush" typing it in and expected the copy editor to "fix" his mistakes; he allowed the printing of a follow-up letter to make sure people knew who was at fault. Why didn't the copy editor correct this obvious mistake? But then again, the paper allowed to pass an editorial cartoon by a student depicting an Israeli soldier mass shooting the members of the Nativity Scene.

Besides, Knoxville is not really a “college town,” and Knox County voted for Trump both times. Although I never got the impression I didn’t “belong”—after all, there was room especially made for “nontraditional” student like me—I tended to get the idea that I was a bit of “curiosity” to people, but at least I wasn’t made to feel like a criminal which is the impression I get from many people here.

But that doesn’t mean I never encountered people who had an “opinion” about me that wasn’t favorable.  I worked for a semester as a “paid” reporter for the campus newspaper, and another semester as an unpaid op-ed writer, with vaguely disturbing left-wing leanings. I knew this because one day I wandered into the editing room and observed that someone had disfigured my photo in a caricature of Satan. I remember being on a bus and some old guy was reading one of my commentaries; you could almost literally see the steam coming out of his ears.

There were also the odd incidents of people making inferences as to my “ethnicity”—someone once yelled out to me “Go back to Iran,” another guy wanted to know if anyone spoke “Spanish” to tell me to hurry up with the copy machine, and when I wrote about how when I was walking down the side of a road without a sidewalk that morning and a white woman deliberately tried to clip me with her car (she was close enough to mangle the umbrella I was carrying) someone thought that was “funny.” Still, I did manage to get out of there alright with a degree in Communications, and there were a few people I still have fond memories of. From there it was on` to the “left coast.”

I’ve never been to Tennessee since, but my former care-givers still live there. For a few years I exchanged letters with Dad, and it was always the same: he tried to convince me why the stuff he was seeing on Fox News was the truth, and I responded by telling him why what he was being fed was bullshit—over and over again for years. You can see what I mean here:

https://todarethegods.blogspot.com/2021/03/its-no-good-trying-to-talk-sense-to-fox.html

and here

https://todarethegods.blogspot.com/search?q=fox+news+addict 

It got to the point where I knew what was going to be in the next letter, so when one arrived I set it aside until I had nothing else to do but read and answer it. When I told him that was the reason I had delayed writing him for a couple months, he quit writing, which was just as well. That was end of any communications I have had with “family.”

My folks came from “butternut” western Pennsylvania, although even in “blue” states, all “rural” counties vote Republican. I don’t think they were any more prejudiced than the people generally of that “culture,” but I think it informed their “parenting” of me (Dad wasn’t my natural father, and I was a constant source of obviously misplaced “disappointment” for my mother, who once told me that she wished she “never let you be born”).

To be perfectly honest, they were a natural fit in their new surroundings in Tennessee, and represent the “typical” political and social culture in control there, which I want nothing to do with and despise. Of course they assume I am just naturally “angry” about life, as if that “explains” anything. I am angry about a lot of things, but not about "life."