MADNESS LURKS-IN THREE ACTS-CHIM, CHIM, CHER-EE!

Some times you see things that stop you in mid step.

Not sure I can explain why about this, but such is our world today-inexplicable.

a relationship

in three phases

     While staring at the Pacific recently, players walked on to my stage and provided a short drama. What do you think is going on?  Suggest dialogue if you wish.

    

dedicated to-

(the party of your choice)

   Frequent readers have seen my reference to the wild turkeys that inhabit our ridge. The other day they seemed to strike a political pose. Again, supply your own captions.

tumbling for the russians

    The new acting DNI (Director of National Intelligence) has never collected, gathered, or analyzed intelligence. He is a Trump ass kisser. As this fascist regime continues to plunder 244 years of history, tradition, protocol and law, loyalty to the illegitimate president is all that matters. Tell the truth, especially when it veers from Trumps delusional thoughts, and you are out. 

     This White House is increasingly under the control of Putin. It is undeniable they did what they could to rig the 2016 and are busy working on this year, but the mad president and his sycophant Moscow Mitch are doing what they can to bury the truth. 

     Is it time for a coup by Generals and Intelligence chiefs?

the democrats in pursuit of....

just what exactly?

   I grew up a political junkie. My parents had worked in government and been involved in political campaigns, so it's probably in the DNA.  But I also enjoy it all. Once I thought politics was our undeclared national sport. Though it has gotten weird, of late.

    I covered several Presidential campaigns and many national political conventions. By the time I came off the campaign trail, the conventions had become pre ordained coronations and then devolved even further into simply staged political shows. Well, that could change.

    As a kid I watched in rapt attention as delegates gathered with uncertainties about who would be seated, what planks of a platform would be adopted and what candidate would emerge and who he, in those days it was only a he,  would choose as a running mate. It was great unscripted-true reality television.

    I covered the change in the process, beginning when Gary Hart and George McGovern engineered a revolution in the Democrat party nominating process, taking the power away from party pros, bosses and the smoke filled room and giving it to delegates via a process of primaries and caucuses. The Republicans adopted their own form of delegate voting.

     Well, kids, it is possible the Democrat Party will have an  unresolved gang fight when they gather in Milwaukee. It's the Super Delegates-the big foots of the party-who could bring the hammer down on or lift up one of those who are presently dicing up each other in the series of faux debates.

     A couple of quick thoughts about the debates. Most of them are horrid, not truly debates, engineered to be television spectacles, and frequently presided over by "moderators" who would be more at home on the world wrestling stage.  

     And shame on the Democrat candidates for taking the low road and emulating the rat bastard winner of the sordid show from the Republican 2016 campaign. 
    The D's are so eager to gain advantage, a point or a fundraising opportunity, they think nothing of making mince meat out of those with whom they share the stage, one of whom is likely to survive to be the standard bearer with the mission of stopping the rise of Trump fascism and halting the ascent of a dictator. 

     advice to candidates

    Boys and girls, point your verbal weapons at the liar in chief and tell us precisely how you will make things better, and leave the bludgeon work to the vile narcissist who will likely attack you for being the original snake in the garden, presuming he knows that story. 
     Trust us, we can decide for ourselves about each of you. You need not destructure your party kindred. It is unseemly. You look petty. You loose your cool. It is not visionary. And you are feeding the evil orange king with material to play back. Focus on the mad would be dictator and his hellish fog full of felons. 

help wanted-a real national chair

      I can't help but wonder how things would be different if the Democratic National Chair was good at his or her job. I  reflect on Chairs who seemed to have control and influence, like Frank McKinney or Paul Butler from Indiana, or Scoop Jackson from Washington, or Larry O'Brien from Mass., who did two terms and was such an operator Dick Nixon's team was undone when they tried to steal information from his office. Remember Watergate? Probably the strongest that I had a chance to watch was Bob Strauss from Texas. If Strauss were the chair he would have all of the Democrat would be presidents on the carpet and maybe even cleaning the toilets, for behaving as they are.

      As Judy Woodruff of PBS said, the possibility of an undecided race going into the convention is the sort of thing journalists dream of. True, that. And then a political operator chimed in, it's the sort of thing a campaign operator dreads. True, that too! Stay tuned.

       I'm only sorry that someone, not unlike one of the "old pros" from the old days, is not the chair. 

      These are strange times, like pages from a dystopian graphic novel. It's as though Oliver Stone has assumed divine powers. It's hard to believe.
       
      I repeat, is it time for a coup by Generals and Intelligence chiefs?

another reason to 
look up

   Often during our trip to Scotland and Ireland someone would watch as I was shooting and ask, what I was looking at. When I told them I was fascinated by the chimneys no one really knew how to respond. Sometimes it was a nod of the head, or a repeat of what I had just said "Chimneys," and frequently a version of "oh,..."

     In my California, we don't see such a scale of chimney.

    And documenting these Scottish and Irish versions I couldn't help but think of the sweeps of London singing

      "Up where the smoke is
        All billered and curled
        'Tween pavement and stars
        is the  chimney sweep world."

     Chim, chim, chimney, chim cher-ee!

    See you down the trail.

Descent Into The Dark Ages

   We are witness to a battle of forces. Enlightenment and ignorance vie now for the soul of the of the United States.

    It's true the contest is as old as the wash of the sea against the mountain, but it has come to this cultural age with a rapier and bludgeoning reality. In the balance is whether the democratic republic will survive.

       The rule of law, the balance of power of three branches of government, and a belief in ideal and principle are at stake.   
       Donald Trump is not the cause, he is the challenge. Trump is the poster boy for the war between knowledge and ignorance, between self interest and the common good. 

CLARITY ON COMING HOME

       
       These last months I have sought to avoid the American disease. I hope the posts from Scotland and Ireland have provided beauty and relief. Ahead in this post is more of that, but first we need, finally, to return home and see it with clarity. 

     It seems improbable, and the potential is tragic, but this American nation is on a glide path to becoming a clone of what we have always derided as Banana Republics, where a strongman or dictator rules by force, demands fealty and where the law is disregarded. It is mind blowing. 

THE AFFLICTION

    This is harsh, but this affliction has been spread by those who voted for Donald Trump, those who support him still and the cowards who have enabled him in the US Senate.
    This is far beyond partisan politics, make no mistake about that. This goes to the core of who and what the United States is and will be.
    The discontent and broken politics that enabled Trump to become a minority President, aided by Russia, has only begun to receive the volume of attention and research that will play out over decades. But our immediate focus is the immediate crisis. 

    We are watching an erosion of Congressional power and a destruction of government by law and tradition. 

• WAR POWERS-There has always been a tilt over "war powers." Who controls those terrible powers, the President or the Congress. Trump's unilateral and unadvised decision to abandon allies and give Syria a green light is a signal of how egregiously this man acts. In normal times there would be more than whimpering from a fully vested Senate. Congress has been weakened by the Republican complicity with Trump's abuse of power. They are ceding what is a constitutional role in the balance of a federal government and in this area of "war powers" they have displayed cowardice. 
• ECONOMIC INFLUNCE-Congress is losing ability to guide economic forces and trade. Trump's tariff wars leave the deliberative body of our government on the stoop. The Republican majority is complicit and appears undisturbed by another sign of lost power.
• LEGISLATIVE CAPACITY-Trump has written more executive orders than any President and the Senate leader, McConnell, "Moscow Mitch" to millions of voters, just belches approval and does nothing to seek an end the deadly cancer of legislative deadlock. In fact he is a proponent of that evil tool that undermines the very intent of the legislative branch. McConnell and the Republicans are participants in the intentional weakening of the "blocking mechanism," the advice and consent role which is intended to keep a President honest and prevent the rise of an imperial or autocratic dictator.
• CHECKS AND BALANCE-McConnell's hand in hand behavior with the White House, and his statement about cooperation with Trump during the Senate Trial will be considered one of the most shameful and wretched abuses in the history of the Senate and the United States. That and his loathsome and vile racism in trying to subvert Obama's presidency, because he was black, will last as the McConnell legacy in history, but in the interim it has helped to undermine the traditional role of the US Senate to be a Check and Balance on the other branches of government. The Republicans are complicit in the destructive racism and they are cutting their own throats and attempting to do so to future Senates. The "trial" without witnesses and the pre-declared acquittal, despite an oath, to God and to the nation, to be fair makes our senate look like that of North Korea, or Putin's Russia. For show only. McConnell would be run out of Washington if the Senate Republicans had ethics, conscience and were not also white nationalist racists, or if they had the courage of Mitt Romney. 

     On can be excused for saying the party of Lincoln is like those pathetic urine soaked, white, old sots in all the bars of the world. They've lost their character, or "spine" and are too frightened to fight back as the Trump White House does what no other has done; obstruct congress, defy subpoenas, pervert the justice department, and take this nation off the rails that have guided us since the inception. The Trump party, the Republicans he controls like a mob boss, have aided and abetted the deliberate and intentional dismantling of what we used to call the "greatest nation on earth." Republicans were once patriots. Now they are a cult. The best of the old party have fled and are repulsed. 

      We have become a laughing stock, and a great concern to allies and the world. 
      People with education know this. People who are brainwashed haven't a clue.
      Millions of Americans have neither studied nor learned the significance of the Constitution, nor are they aware of what history has taught us about our 244 year experiment in government.

      When the impeached Trump took to the cameras at the White House to begin his vindictive rage and screed of revenge, the Republican Party and those who support the malicious narcissist became his accomplices. 
     When we watched the petty little tin god madness and nation embarrassing brutishness, someone on his staff should have shut it down or given him a headlock and rushed him away. But more importantly, Republicans should have joined the chorus of those who decried the un-American behavior reminding him this is how Putin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Amin, Kim, and other tyrants and mad men behave.
       Senate Republicans and Trump's sycophants have helped to fire a decorated veteran, a devoted public servant, a good man and his brother, who were cashiered simply because he told the truth. 
       They are also parties in the resignation of a distinguished and praised Ambassador who was the target of a slur and destroy campaign, because she told the truth.
      Truth has no place in the life of Donald Trump and no place in this Republican party and apparently is of no value to those who support this unfit and unhinged incompetent. After the Republican acquittal it is like watching a mob boss, or worse.
      The intrusion in the Stone sentencing is a frightening  extension of his dictatorial ascendency. Trump's lies would be laughable if they were not so malicious and so damaging.      
      It hurts that so many of his cult don't realize they are deceptions. They get their news from a propaganda channel and their ideas from a highly paid propagandist, liar and Russian mouthpiece, Sean Hannity and/or his sordid host colleagues who are laughing all the way to the bank. 

HISTORY HAS SEEN THIS BEAST

      A couple of years ago I was challenged by some, including conscientious friends, who said I should go easy on comparing the rise of Trump White Nationalism to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany in the 1930's.  
     It should now be clear we are indeed watching the rise of a fascist movement. Trumpism condones the breaking of law, dispels any belief in "party philosophy or principle" and is loyal not to ideas and concepts, but to a man, who like the German Furerher is delusional and quite simply insane. As in the 1930's we are watching this cult being fed by deceit and ignorance. 
    There is a chilling similarity in the under current and foundational principle of occult or fantastic fantasy pseudo religious manipulations. 
    The Nazis tried by force to co-opt some of Christianity but moved into creating the myth of Aryan supremacy by borrowing from Armanism and Ariosophy.
     The rise of Trumpism was charted by Steve Bannon who is a self avowed "Primordial Traditionalist," a system of belief  created by a French Occultist Rene Guenon. Guenon, like Bannon, had been a Catholic, who became a Free Mason, who then became a Muslim and an observer and proponent of Sharia Law. 
      Both Nazism and Trumpism have views of final justice, restoring "traditional" values, end of age motivations, and destroying those they label as enemies of the state.  
     You can't make up something so bizarre. Donald Trump likely never had a deep thought in his life, but Steve Bannon knew that Trump could be "used" to mobilize the same anger, disenchantment, racial and ethic hatred, to bring about "the change" the world needed. 
      You delude yourself or are burying your head in the sand if you deny that Trumpism has become a political cult.
     
     Perceptive scholars, historians and journalists have made this case. Pulitzer Winner Bob Woodward, the first to seriously write about this administration entitled his book Fear-Trump in the White House. He said then the nation ought to be worried. The record since validates that. 
     There is no measure that finds the man who was a tax cheat, fraud, swindler, serial sexual predator, liar and racist has helped this nation. His most fervent advocates will point to his putting right wing judges on the bench, which has a lot to do with the approval of the pissy panted Republican sycophants. But close examination of the incompetence of some of those judicial appointments should set off another round of nightmares and dread. He is devaluing and weakening this nation as he builds a cult of followers.

      We must ask why do they want incompetent but ideological people on our courts? What do they want approval to do? Contravene the judicial process, roll back sentences for criminal associates, do away with Roe. V Wade, undo Brown Vs The Board of Education, begin to limit  guaranteed, until now, liberties and freedoms, deport whomever they wish, mandate the teaching of lies and distortions like those that come from the mouth of the new monarch, give corporations free reign to foul the air, water, land, rape resources, give advantage to only the wealthy and do nothing about common need?

     The difference between a Trump Rally and a Hitler speech to the masses is that Hitler spoke with intelligence, eloquence, and a lofty purpose, though evil and insane. He gave Germans a kind of faux religion and vision. The Aryan Riech-Make Germany Great Again. 
      Trump is a bloated reality television figure saying the same old lines, prompting the same old chants, blathering the same old lies, fanning the same old racism, and acting like everything but Presidential and executive. He goes before his loyal and, with a low brow but toxic mendacity, merely trolls for praise and applause in which he preens and struts and puckers like a sick, evil man from history. The bully boy who would be king.
      Hitler was deadly serious and demanded loyalty and his followers acted like a zealous, hateful, destructive movement,
       Trump too demands loyalty. He is there to bask in the limelight, to absorb all of the attention. He feeds lines to trained dogs who bark and growl on cue. He is an idiot and so, I am moved to say, are his loyal who chant back. But they too act like a zealous, hateful and destructive movement.
       Hitler's people may have been sold a kind of northern myth about a Reich that would rule for thousands of years.
       Trumps people can't trouble with concepts of thousands of years or mythic vision, they are angry, or feel betrayed, or are racists, xenophobes, or simply losers looking to get even. They want to "shake it up" without possessing a real knowledge of what it is they want to shake up, or how it  even works, or how to tell they are being swindled and hustled by a con man who has done nothing else in his life, but cheat and lie.
       I find the great irony to be that so many who believe Trump is sent here by God have never bothered to spend time researching Steve Bannon's vision, that Donald Trump is playing. If you have any curiosity about this vision of Primordial Traditionalism look it up.  Joshua Green wrote a definitive piece in the July 2017 Vanity Fair.  
     Sadly, doing research or study is beyond the desire of many voters. The Trump campaign counts on that and the loyalty of his followers, who would never challenge their leader. Cultish compliance. 

     They've seen him for going on 4 years. No amount of logic, reality, facts or truth will dissuade them. And like far too many million other US voters, they just don't know much.
      Way too many voters are ill informed. They get their info from perhaps one or two sources. As a young reporter I heard Walter Cronkite, then CBS Anchor and "the most trusted man in America" tell an audience if he was the source of their news and information, they were not fully informed. He, and others in that age, urged people to read newspaper(s)-at least two-to listen to radio and watch more than one television news program, to read magazine(s) and Cronkite urged people to read research and academic publications as well as books. We were better informed, when we had those kind of admonitions and sources.
     The sources we all rely on now have downsized. Once America was informed by newspapers and legitimate broadcast news organizations, but that has morphed to swill being piped through social media.  
      Far too much information is fractured, fragmented, not well sourced. 
      Far too many people don't understand how government is structured, or even the difference between a county councilman and a US Senator. We have become an idiot nation, unconcerned about history and its significance or the implication of our own hedonistic stupidity. Steve Bannon and Brad Parscale, the director of the Trump 2020 campaign, count on that.
     It is no wonder so many follow a reality television star but couldn't tell you what the First Amendment is, what it delineates or where to find it. 
    They can chant "lock her up" but how many of those chanters know about the Japanese internment. 
    Do you think many or even any at his rallies could tell you what is kristallnacht. Do you think Donald Trump could tell you?  Do you think any of them have read about Primordial Traditionalism?

     Trump's nation probably knows nothing about the 15th Amendment and see nothing wrong with Republican efforts to suppress votes. They worry not about how the Russian government tried to rig our last election and that "Moscow Mitch" has done everything he can to block election security, but they can be convinced hoards of illegals, or people of color might be voting.
      Cynical and sinister types around Trump understand this and they exploit it. You should read the Atlantic piece on deliberate manipulation of fact and truth and the role it will play in the Trump nation this election year.  
      Like conspiracy theories, Trump lies can thrive when people fail to have grounding in fact, history and knowledge.
The Trump supporters are easily manipulated, but so are  many other low information US citizens. 

      So what can be done.
      Well, you can be like some and hope that Trump chokes on a chicken bone. 
      Or you can be like those who fantasize that a new Booth, Guiteau, Czologosz, or Oswald will appear. 
You can hope that Melania does a Lorena Bobbitt, or you can pray that Donald Trump has a Saul of Tarsus conversion experience, or you can simply pray for him, or you can just worry and make yourself sick and depressed.
      Millions of Americans are suffering a kind of Trump depression. Shouldn't that tell us something?

MAD AS HELL AND NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE?

      Here are a couple of things you can do. 
     --Face the facts. Racists, nationalists, and xenophobes have been a strain off fabric in this nation since the beginning. They've had their moments. Once the Democratic party was the party of racists. 
      --The idea of populism and nationalism have come and gone.
      --Not all of those who voted for Trump are racists, nationalists, xenophobes or haters. He attracted those who were at the end of their wits, felt over looked and forgotten, unemployed, struggling to get by. He made them think he would take care of them. 
      --Democrats can and should pay attention to these people, listen to them, hear their pain and respond with sincerity. If Hilary would have listened to philandering Bill, she may have spoken to those voters and now she could be preparing a re-election. 
      --A candidate should address those who voted for Trump in key counties and townships that swung the electoral college and ask:
         if the coal mines have been re-opened, 
         if their factory jobs have come back, 
         if they have a new health care plan, 
         if their families are free from the fear of an opioid epidemic, 
         if their kids are going to college, 
         if they must choose between a house or car payment and medicine.

LIKE SUN TO A VAMPIRE

TRUTH CAN KILL TRUMP

       Unless you are a right to life advocate, a right wing evangelical with a belief in judgment, a lover of Russia, a one-percenter, a nationalist, or a white supremacist, Trump's record is his weak spot. 
       His supporters will cite the economy, but the cycle began long before he moved in. The Market, high though it is, is of no solace to the millions being squeezed by lack of benefits, cost of insurance, or being one paycheck from being homeless. There was more growth in Obama's years than in Trumps.
      He has been a failure in Korea, the Middle East, he's abandoned allies, made the world less secure, walked away from Climate Accords, allowed Iran to restart a nuclear weapons program, voices Russian propaganda, gave Russian spies critical and sensitive information, has been called an idiot by a revolving door of military and national security professionals, is destroying the State Department, Justice Department, EPA, run up the highest deficit ever, lies about building the wall, lies all the time  about everything.

     










If we want this
madman, would be king, out of the White House, the nation needs to pay attention to facts, reality, the truth and talk about it.  
     We need not let the media, who chase his every diversion, divert us from what is so. Trump and his mob understand the "bright shiny object" diversionary tactic. They, like Leni Riefenstahl, the Nazi filmmaker and Joesph Goebbels the Propagandist, understand manipulation of public attention and image.

WANT TO BE A KING KILLER?

      The Democrat party needs consensus, needs to gear itself to the center of this nation-working people of every color, ethnicity, belief and identity. Jobs, health care, climate, education and well being.  
      It needs to be a kind of bifurcated campaign. The Democrats should define themselves and not allow the Trump characterization be focus. They should fight back.
      The Democrats need to hold the mirror of reality up to Trump and not allow his excesses, his failures, his lies, venality, incompetence and unfitness slide from the public view.
       The candidates should stay on message--their plan for all Americans. Other organizations can take the lead on playing Trump back to America. 
      Whoever emerges as the Democrat ticket will be better than Donald Trump, less destructive than Donald Trump, will put the climate back on the agenda, will be more prudent than Donald Trump, will listen to advisors, will pay attention to national security and intelligence chiefs, will not dis them in public, will not attack the judiciary, and they will not be lining their own pockets while serving, or will not be setting up their children, and will not be Putin's stooge, will not "fall in love" with Kim, will not behave as a traitor,  will not abandon allies, or be a practicing racist and white nationalist. 

      So Democrats, unless you want 4 more years, get your house in order. Back whoever wins the nomination. 
      America is sick. We are sick of Trump and his deceit and dictatorial aspirations. He is poisoning our way of life, our decency, our government, our sense of who we are. Our children need to learn Trump is not "normal" and his ways are vile, aberrant and criminal.  
        We can and should talk about that. 
        In 2016 the majority (millions more) voted against his "highness." The power is in the vote, at every township level in the nation. That is the task. That is the cure. That is the light to keep us from plunging into the new dark ages.

   I welcome your comments and thoughts in the responses below. This is something we need to share and talk about. 

ENDING WITH SOMETHING SWEET

    Adare in County Limerick is one of the prettiest place in Ireland, which suffers no shortage of beauty. 

  And Adare is a village with the traditional thatch roof cottages and buildings. We found them mesmerizing.

   The Earl of Dunraven, who played an historic role in building the village, is commemorated in the village hotel.

    A lovely park reflects the verdant beauty of Adare.

   And Irish friends in a good room, make for a good day.

    See you down the trail.