I'm a Pro at Crastination

 As I sit here on a Friday morning watching Thursday Night Football a phenomenon comes to mind that I believe does not receive its proper attention. I believe this partly because now that I am past the years when I had the physical capacity to participate in most sports, I think there should be new ones. Not to say we need to invent new ones, I just think things we already do should be viewed as sport. To give you an example of one at which I believe I have surpassed amateur standing, let's talk about crastination. Forget about amateur crastination, I want to talk about professional crastination. There oughta be a league!

Using myself and today as a tailor-made example, I see plenty of resorts lined up for this day before I get to my last one, the pile of marking I have to do. And if I may wax metaphorical, I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping, while my guitar gently weeps. I look at my bed and I see it needs sleeping, while my guitar gently weeps. I look at my house and I see it needs keeping, still my guitar gently weeps. I look at my thoughts and I see they need... deep'ning? Yes and still my guitar gently weeps. 

I'm pretty sure my guitar's gonna be gently weeping all day today. I'll do up the dishes, probably throw on a load of laundry, sweep the floor, maybe even wash it, dust, I've been meaning to try a new broccoli and chicken casserole, that'll require a trip to the market for supplies, and hey, just got a letter from Mom, maybe that means Korea Post is cooperating with Canada Post again and I can write her back. But things like these "first resorts" would only qualify as amateur crastinating. I can do better than that. As a pro, I have plenty of second resorts, third resorts, and even beyond that could be applied before arriving at my last resort, my work that needs to be done.  

It's been a while since I've done maintenance on my computer. Also, staying with technology, I have to find out the password for my NON 5G wifi so I can use it on my new 4G phone instead of only using data. My computer and my old phone use the 5G, for which I know the password. And while I'm at it, I COULD go to a Samsung maintenance center and just get a new battery and get my sim card, along with all of my phone information, put back onto the old phone since the new phone can't do a lot of the things my old phone could. And, of course, this would require answering all the emergency messages from all of my regular websites telling me that there was a sign in from a new device, and changing, and recording the changes of, every password that must be changed. Then I'd have to write down, and promptly misplace, all of the new passwords. Afterwards, I'd try, and undoubtedly fail, to return the cheap-ass, low quality, probable knock-off of a phone I bought for what seemed like a fantastically low price. And since I bought my phone in Pyeongtaek, and since I also visited a doctor in Pyeontaek for pinkeye, twice, and got medicine, twice, that didn't work, twice, I could go in for round three. That's been making sleeping and waking up a bit harder and messier for a few months now. 7 different eye drops and 5 kinds of pills and it's hanging in there!

I could go into Seoul, the place I do my banking because they have a special place for foreigner banking that offers tellers who speak English well. My new credit card isn't working and I'm getting messages from the credit card company, in Korean, that I can't understand. I KNOW I COULD put them into Google Translate, but that is one of the many things my crappy new phone can't do. The reason I want to do this is because the chair I have, that I am sitting on now, is hard on my lower back and since I am working from home and using it an awful lot, I really want to get a good computer chair. One MADE for long-term use. Like a gamer chair. The best place to get something like that in Korea is online. But my card doesn't work. To make matters more of an ordeal, cuz that's the way she goes, my card is fine. It's just a complicated card certification and registration process that most sites in Korea require for credit card usage, and I am nowhere near proficient enough in the Korean language to tackle that. So I could go all the way to Seoul to get the bank teller to do all that for me. I could also study Korean, but that would probably qualify as a second to last resort. 

While in Seoul, I could get some dental work done. Or maybe a massage. Might help my sore back. I'll definitely visit the foreign food stores and probably have a beer at some regular places with the regulars at those places. My shoes are wearing out too so I probably should go to some areas, and they are by NO means easy to find for a guy with wide feet like mine, where they sell shoes made for non-Korean sized feet. 

Friends could be visited, sights could be seen, trips could be taken. For a pro, Covid shouldn't limit that crastination much. 

Orrrrr... I could write a long blog post, leaving all that constructive crastination undone like the consummate professional I am. And now for the highly strained segue into the topics I am following that necessitated a chest-unburdening blogpost today, I've noticed some other pro crastination that might not be viewed as such. 

While I am right behind the American drive to oust the current president and replace him with almost anyone, and, make no mistake, I see Joe Biden as fully fitting the bill of "almost anyone," I have concerns. My concerns are the same ones I've had for Canadian politics and world politics since the time, somewhere late in my university days, I really began to understand politicking for the professional crastination it actually is. Maybe it takes a pro to recognize a pro. At least that is my seemingly negative, but in actuality, highly optimistic political point of view. Let me splain. No, is too much. Let me sum up.

There are two courses for humanity - harmony or doom. I believe, maybe against all my better judgment, and definitely against signs the world over, that we are destined for a world in which of necessity we practice principled, scrupulous, meritorious behaviour across the board. I foolishly believe that this is possible through cooperation. Maybe the best word for it I've heard is "Ubuntu."

Compare the meme above to the American teacher who used the "chocolate scramble" to illustrate savage capitalism and how it compares to refined and orderly socialism. The selfish, who want more than everyone else, and more to the point, who think they DESERVE more than everyone else, are the only disappointed students when chocolates are handed out evenly. Outside the classroom a highly concentrated form of capitalism is practiced in which people are directly and indirectly killed for the "chocolate" of the world's wealth. Yet, the fear of the far more civilized system has been fostered by politics over the years. That has, indeed, been one of its main purposes. Just say the word "socialism" and Americans, like so many Pavlovian dogs, think of Russia, China or Venezuela, countries where socialism is blamed for drastic failures. They won't think of Scandinavian countries, Canada, or even THE U.S.A., where socialist principles have succeeded. It's probably the word. Maybe Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez could get elected if they formed a new political party called the Ubuntu Party. Any state that chose them would be called a "green" state. 

Sadly, it seems that in countries with the most wealth, greed is more prevalent, and politics, with its primary purpose of protecting the opulent classes and thereby legislating division, is an impediment to our international evolution. Regardless of whether we have the monstrous leadership of Trump, or the monstrous-light leadership of anyone else, the problem is the system. Voting is supporting the system, thereby perpetuating it and keeping us from doing what we should be doing. Voting IS professional crastination. And what I see coming in a couple of weeks is something that may have been cleverly planned for years for all we know. Trump will be crushed and America will give the credit to the vote, something that had been evolving out, and rightfully so. 

Is it possible that after Americans suffered through the presidency of Bush the younger, who they didn't vote in, and a long string of disappointing leaders before that who did so little of what they'd promised, that the whole country was losing faith in their "democracy" and their votes? And, as you can tell from my quotation marks, I think they were right. In the past 4 elections, voter turnout has been around 55%. Or at least, that's what we're told. No possible way of verifying that, but let's move on. No matter how that was divided between the ruling parties, let's say 27.5% Republican and 27.5% Democrat, if just two thirds of the 45% of non-voters decided on ANY third party, like the Ubuntu Party, or worse, some wildly popular private interest party, the Chinese American party or the Marijuana Smokers of America Party for instance, that party would have a great chance to win! And that is absolute disaster for the politicians from the two parties who've ruled the U.S. for so long. Why do you think the Chinese Communist Party puts people in jail for practicing Falun Gong? It's too popular. And for that matter, why do you think so many Chinese people are living in Canada? Watch out for the Chinese Party of Canada. I'm not kidding!

So would it be absurd to suspect that the Dems and Republicans collaborated to save their careers? They needed to re-establish faith in the vote (and while at it, maybe have a villainous presidency during which many of the bills the opulent class paid so much money to be turned into laws are hammered through) so wouldn't it be a good compromise to let the GOP have 4 years of Trump's shoring up of all the corporate legislation and tax breaks and whatnot, while in exchange creating heroes of the mediocre at best Democratic reps that will follow, all while re-legitimizing the vote and the fake democracy that postpones the evolution of America into the proper democracy the majority has longed for since the country's inception?

How many people on the supreme court? Nine. Did you know that Trump, a president who received a reported (and again there's really no way we should believe this) 46.1% of the popular vote, and again that's of the 55% who voted, so that means 25.3% of the voters in the U.S., has put 3 of them there? Let's assume quite accurately that all three of them will do exactly what he wants, with a quarter of the actual U.S. voters' support, he's now got a third of every supreme court decision... for LIFE!

To make matters worse, here's what I think happened: Bernie Sanders supporters, who really WERE the deserving winners of the DNC vote and probably the presidency in 2016, got pissed off when Bernie got shafted by the Democratic party, a party that proved their NON-democratic nature by overlooking the clear favourite for their party leadership and using "SUPERcandidates" to try to force (gender equality?) a woman into the Whitehouse. So many of the angry Bernie supporters either didn't vote, or gave their mutinous party a big fuck you by voting for Trump, who, come on, let's face it, has no possible chance of winning. This and probably a little Russian interference won the day for Trump. Or, didn't, but with the electoral college...

Even though this year Bernie AGAIN was the true Democratic rep, he got shafted again all because of the national blind spot when it comes to this scary word, socialism, and Biden won't do as well as Bernie would have, the same thing won't happen again and Biden will still win. And still, in my opinion, in a crushing landslide. But all this will do is postpone the proper trajectory of American politics further. I think the time has come to vote on ideas, not people.

Now immediately, like so many Pavlovian dogs, people will jump to the proper arguments: "Why, that's just not cost-effective." "Not everybody will be represented and that's CLEARLY not a problem with the current system. ahem." "It's logistically not possible!" Ummm yes, it is, yes, it is, and yes, it is. Again, all of these arguments were established long ago to protect the prime objective of politics: to maintain the rule of the opulent class. But all of these arguments have been rendered spurious by technology. 

Let me ask you this: If the election is challenged, and it will be, no matter how big a landslide, and the decision reaches the supreme court, which by then will have 3 Bushes, 2 Obamas, a Clinton and 3 Trumps, what do you think will happen? Let me also ask you, given the mockery of democracy that supreme court stacking, not to mention house and senate stacking, super-candidates, the electoral college, massive under-representation, and perennially impotent candidates have made, what kind of a world class professional crastinator do you have to be to put off the comprehensive system reboot that is so drastically overdue? 

And don't be mislead by the above, the majority of the political decisions made that are horribly against what the majority of people in today's "democracies" would vote for, if they could, are made without the knowledge of the people upon whom those decisions have the greatest effect.  

This pro crastination is extended year after year by a small number of filthy rich scumbags who just want it to continue until they have claimed all of the resources of the world for themselves... at the vast expense and most likely the demise of the rest of mankind and possibly even the planet. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm going to glory in the embarrassing defeat of that turd sandwich who is the current president, but what I'm not going to be happy about is people breaking voting records and being encouraged by what they can do with their vote when they get the better leadership of Biden/Harris in the Whitehouse. This will further put off the even stronger encouragement in what they can do with their vote if it were properly placed on issues and not highly flawed people. 

But... maybe someday the world'll get around to it. If the greedy take that long to destroy the whole world. I guess we'll see...

I told the blogger above that I'd done a similar experiment and had to access my old blog to post it for her. While doing so I got a bit nostalgic and started reading old posts. I actually found a blog entry of mine from 2006 that I think I should tack onto the end of this. Yeah, I've been blogging for 14 years! I actually DID the Hershey's Kiss experiment with my HUFS classes too and got very GOOD results meaning most weren't selfish and realized that if they worked together, they'd get unlimited Kisses. Here's the post: 

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Progress?

Okay, time for another serious entry. I've been bombarded by messages all month about this topic from all sorts of sources so that it's been on my mind constantly and I'm starting to see that almost everything relates to it. Recent news stories all have a bit of it. Recent blogs I've been reading contain it. TV shows I've been watching. Even an e-mail I got from Kasia had this little story about a wise woman.
"The Wise Woman's Stone" A wise woman who was traveling in the mountains found a precious stone in a stream. The next day she met another traveler who was hungry, and the wise woman opened her bag to share her food. The hungry traveler saw the precious stone and asked the woman to give it to him. She did so without hesitation. The traveler left, rejoicing in his good fortune. He knew the stone was worth enough to give him security for a lifetime. But a few days later he came back to return the stone to the wise woman. "I've been thinking," he said, "I know how valuable the stone is, but I give it back in the hope that you can give me something even more precious. Give me what you have within you that enabled you to give me the stone." Author Unknown
Those are ALWAYS author unknown stories! Probly because the author wasn't selfish enough to publish it for personal profit.
My topic today my little cheeky monkies is selfishness. Or really selflessness, and how the further we "progress" as a species, the further behind we leave it. And before you cast any stones, I'm thoroughly guilty of selfishness myself. I count it as my worst vice, yet am perfectly happy to try to practice selflessness passively. I'll do unto others... if the opportunity should arise.
Excuse me whilst I wax religious: The golden rule is not so much a trite tidbit of advice we should think of occasionally, but a commandment that, being golden, should be foremost in the lives of good people. I believe there is a golden rule in all religion that is pretty much the same, and indeed this is a sentiment I have found to be innate in all good people religious or not. No matter how it's said, "Do unto others as you would have done unto you." is the answer to all the world's problems. If we could all just DO it, we wouldn't need Heaven. Or for that matter, Hell. Or Nirvana or Valhalla or Enlightenment or the thousand virgin party or whatever.
I found Kasia's wise woman story to be a pretty good test of how good a person I am. And I failed miserably. If a person is able to even imagine the woman being happier to have given the stone to the man than the man at having received it, that person is well on his/her way to being good, heavenly, enlightened, or whatever. While I was reading it I was saying, "No, no, no! What kind of a jerk asks for a gem from a woman who is kind enough to offer him food? He doesn't deserve the gem!" I found myself thinking, "How phony is this? What woman would part with a valuable gem, much less give one to a stranger?" I was even guilty of thinking, "HAH! Of course it's a WOMAN who gives the MAN the stone! And a WOMAN who sent it to me! Womanly wiles! Delete, delete, delete!" I certainly am not enlightened enough to understand how the woman could be the happier of the two after giving away something so valuable. What did YOU think when you read it? More to the point, what do you suppose led you to think that way?
I was recently watching 20/20 on my beloved AFKN and there was a story of a middle school teacher in the States somewhere who did a little social experiment in her classes. She divided her students into groups and gave them a jar full of Hershey's Kisses. She gave the jar to one member of each group and told him/her to take as many as he/she wanted and to pass it on. After all members got the same chance, the number of Kisses left in the jar would be doubled and they could do it again. So if they had six Kisses left, the teacher would give them six more and they could pass the jar around again. The teacher said that none of the groups had any remaining Kisses and most groups had one or more members who got no Kisses at all. The group members were thinking less about doing unto others and more about what they would have done unto them.
Now it could be argued that if they had thought long-term and stretched it out for several rounds, they could all have several jars full of Kisses and that THIS is the more selfish thinking. I disagree. I think "get all you can NOW" is the worst kind of selfishness and that's what is killing our planet. And, with all due respect to my American buddies, I haven't heard about this test being successfully replicated in other countries around the world. But then again, maybe it could be. What has brought us to this point? And can whatever has brought us to this point be accurately called "progress"?
Anyone ever heard of Martin Frobisher? He was an English explorer who visited the arctic in Elizabethan times. He found the "savages" living there to have some very "crude" and "uncivilized" customs. For instance, they had no concept of ownership. Anyone could borrow anything from anyone else, including wives, without being expected to repay it. Frobisher's crew had a field day with this custom. They took all kinds of Inuit goods and inventions like furs, kayaks, sleighs, mukluks etc. with no concern about how well the people could survive without them. They even picked an Inuit man, kayak and all, out of the water beside the ship and brought him back to England where they GAVE him to the queen as a present. He was treated like a well loved pet. Elizabeth enjoyed watching him hunt swans on the Avon in his kayak. He eventually died, (of a COLD for crying out loud!), far away from his family and his "uncivilized" land where many of his friends and family died off due largely to inequities in trade with the British.
The other natives in Canada had no concept of ownership when white men arrived either. Over the years they sure have smartened up haven't they? While I was living in Thunder Bay about 10 years ago, my neighbour, a native guy, unlocked my bike and took it. His wife had their car. I was almost late for work when he returned with the bike. I was really mad and told him he could borrow it any time but he had to ask me first. He challenged me to a fight because he thought I was saying he had stolen it. If I wasn't late for work, I may have taken him up on the fight offer. But I didn't. I just took the bike and rode it to work. I was late. Then one night my roommate and I were having a noisy party and guess who came over to complain about US infringing on his house owner's rights?
And then there's Ann Coulter talking about how some 911 widows are complaining about government officials, police, firefighters etc. all for personal gain. It seems to me if Ann Coulter is buying up 1.5 million dollar condos and 1.8 million dollar homes, maybe she's complaining about these women for her own personal gain. If she really just wanted to get her message out; if she really believed in it; if she really wanted to be like Jesus; she wouldn't charge for the books and may even leak the stories out like the story of the woman and the stone: author unknown.
The lyrics of an old song written by Kerry Livgren of the group Kansas come to mind.
Progress! We are marching backward,
Progress! as the captains of our fate.
Progress! We are marching backward,
Progress! We destroy and annihilate.
I'd better write a letter to my Gramma, or give some money to the poor, or send my sister some wedding cash, or do something nice in complete anonymity for somebody else today. I'm gonna try to give someone a precious stone. I think that's what the signs are telling me.

And here's the Hershey's Kiss experiment post.

Toxic Positivity

"Toxic positivity." 

 I love that! I will use that term. I've been calling it the "Well-at-least" mentality. Teaching ESL in Korea it goes something like this: They take your benefits-Well at least I have my pay. They cut your pay-well at least I am not overworked. They double your workload-well at least class sizes are small. They triple class size-well at least they don't micromanage. They micromanage-well at least I still have a job. The school burns down or Covid 19 hits-well at least I can teach from home. You have to learn dozens of new technical skills and programs for no extra pay-well at least my hours will go down. Your hours go UP-well at least I have partial autonomy. They need you to account for every minute of class time or they don't get government funding-well at least I still have partial autonomy. They don't like your minute-to-minute account and change it completely-well at least I still have a job. They tell you online teaching isn't effective-well at least I can still teach with a mask on. You catch Covid anyway-well at least I can teach from my hospital bed. You die-well at least I had decent medical coverage. You didn't have decent medical coverage-well at least I'm dead and don't have to worry about it any more. They bring you back from the dead because they finally realize how desperately needed good teachers are-well at least NOW they'll surely give me a raise! They don't give you a raise because as a zombie teacher you don't have good union representation, although neither do the human teachers, let's face it-well at least I had a good dirt nap and I still get my base salary. You have to take a 25% pay cut... same reason: no zombie union-well at least the cost of brains is reasonable. The cost of brains rises as more teachers are resurrected and your pay is not indexed accordingly-well at least I can still pull in a paycheck here in Korea. The Korean government enacts a long list of zombiphobic and costly conditions, certificates and government dox needed to keep working-well at LEAST I'm not teaching ESL IN CANADA!

Some people are incorrigibly positive. But sometimes their positivity can be toxic like a positive diagnosis of Covid. So if you have any "friends" who test positive for positivity that is positively toxic, you might want to let them know. They aren't helping anyone by accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative MENTALLY. That doesn't make the negative go away. I can't tell you how many Facebook posts I've seen about how we should all just eliminate negative people and negativity from our lives. Pretend it's not there. Act as if. This is exactly the attitude the bad people of the world who create all the bad problems WANT us to adopt. Imagine Superman going to his fortress of solitude every time somebody mentioned Lex Luthor. If we're all forcing ourselves to be positive in the face of overwhelming negativity, the bad guys win.

I'd go a step further and submit that negativity is something that is not much danger to the wicked, but a good man is easily undone by just the hint of negativity. I couldn't help but notice the fly on Mike Pence's head during the vice presidential debate. It reminded me of a verse from the book he and his master, in the WH, DJ Trump are fond of holding up as their guide. Of course I'm talking about the Bible, and the Wuhan House, and Dumb Jagov Trump. 

Now, I'm not going to tell you that I'm a Bible scholar and that the verse Ecclesiastes 10:1 jumped immediately to mind. But have you ever heard the saying, "A fly in the ointment?" This verse is where that saying comes from. I think. 

An ointment or perfume or, as I found out first hand while trying to make beer with my friend Mike, a batch of home brew can be completely ruined by a tiny fly. And so can the reputation of a man that is known for wisdom and honour. These words were spoken by Solomon, a man known for wisdom and honour. He oughta know. I found some online commentary that went as follows...

"Solomon seems in these words to be prosecuting what he had said in the last clause of the preceding chapter; showing how much good one foolish action may destroy, what evil may result from it, and how a man, otherwise famed for wisdom, may thereby lose his reputation. So most interpreters understand the verse. “The wiser or better,” says Bishop Patrick, “any man is, so much the more cautious ought he to be in all his words and actions, if he mean to preserve that credit, esteem, and authority in the world, which give him great advantages for doing good. For, as dead flies, though very small creatures, falling into a pot of ointment,” and abiding and being putrified in it, “corrupt that precious composition, and turn the perfume into a stink; so doth a small error or miscarriage blemish him who was highly valued for his discretion and virtue.” And this comes to pass, partly, because all the actions, and consequently the follies of such men are most diligently observed, whereas the actions and follies of persons known to be ignorant and weak are generally disregarded; and, partly, because of that envious and malicious disposition which is in the minds of too many, and makes them quick- sighted to discover, and glad to hear, and forward to declare, the faults of such as, by their greater eminence, outshone and obscured them."

I don't need to tell anyone that people enjoy finding fault in good people. It's practically a sport for some. It has carried many a talk show from radio to TV and now to the internet. The second phenomenon is what I'd like to concentrate on and it was why this particular verse and saying came to mind for me. "The actions and follies of persons known to be ignorant and weak are generally disregarded." Again, I'll go further and say that the disregard is directly proportionate to the ignorance and weakness. 

Which brings us back to his infectious eminence Donald Trump. "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters." I believe he could. His colossal ignorance and weakness has led to the spread of Covid 19 throughout the country and throughout the Whitehouse and here's the triumphant video Trumpsplaining THAT:

Believe it or not, that video above had 900 likes and 300 DISlikes when I accessed it! This is what I'm talking about, folks. The description of the "ever-upbeat" medical team, a team that seemed to have been infected with Trump's disease themselves - not the Covid, the compulsive lying, as they hyperpositively described his condition to the media; all the vigilant Trumpsters posting thumbs downs for anything on Youtube that includes negativity about their hero, true or untrue; the rally-goers and Whitehouse staff who obediently go maskless at his behest; the people who have caught Covid, possibly from HIM, distorting facts about their acquisition of Covid 19 and their condition in hopes of protecting the presidud; and most tiresome of all, the proselytizers trying to get clear-thinking people to drink the Kool-Aid they can't undrink themselves. 

This phenomenon has puzzled me among others for almost 4 years now, but I think I'm getting to the bottom of it. As mentioned before in this blog, I believe overinvestment coupled with severely unchecked and tragic pride won't allow people to admit they're wrong about Trump once they've gotten too far into the pitfalls of supporting him. I have actually said that perhaps the only exit strategy for these poor souls infected with Trump-induced hubris would be if he caught Coronavirus and died. And not long after I said that, wouldn't you know it, Trump caught the Covid! 

Now I knew there would be one of two outcomes: He'd die and open up said exit strategy for the many people entranced by his hypnotic powers, or he'd survive and convince the Trumplings to disregard the blatant stupidity which brought it on, but acknowledge the awesome power of one who could overcome the terrible virus, what, with helicopter-to-hospital service and top of the line healthcare that they are paying for, thus becoming a douchebag of epic proportion. And you know, I am starting to think it actually worked!

By far the most fascinating part of this whole anthropological spectacle is the mind-bending concept that the Trumpists exhibit when confronted with all of this. They believe, they actually believe or have bargained themselves into believing, many of them KNOWING who this shitheel of a man is, that he is the good man in the Bible verse, the ointment who can be ruined by the fly! THIS, my friends is toxic positivity on another level, and it's all around us. 

Think of the monumental task that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have on their hands. They have to overcome this! That is, they have to get people who are trapped by their own self-love, to vote for them. In other words, they have to convince these Trump tweakers to love them more than themselves! In a way it's good that America is still too scared of the word Socialism to allow Bernie Sanders to be president because if it WERE him up against Trump, Bernie, an actual GOOD person, all it would take is a little fly to ruin his campaign and Trump would win again. As it is, I don't see the ointment purity in the Democratic opposition, so it'll take a lotta flies to send forth a stinking savour. 

They may have caught a break in the debate between Trump and Biden, however. And they may have caught ANOTHER break in Trump getting hopped up on Amaze-adrill or whatever that drug is and blathering on about how great a leader he is and how the Covid was a gift from God. Regeneron. The only drug known to be promoted by a president. Oh, wait, other than hydroxychloroquine. But whether he is a drug pusher, an addict, or a snake-oil salesman, it only ADDS to his ignorance and weakness, and in turn, the general disregard for his ignorance and weakness. All Trump would have to do, as a sort of foil to the whole frequency pass, is just once say he was wrong, or weak or stupid. Then he would get an INfrequency pass! We saw signs of that when talk show slaggers and political opponents started cranking out words of support, prayers and wishes for a speedy return to good health when Trump recalcitrantly stumbled his way into a poetic case of Coronavirus. Maybe he's saving humility for a last, last, last resort? Nah, not our Trump!

If Boris Johnson were to drop an F-bomb, would it be a big deal? Really? Did any of you hear about this when it happened? But if the QUEEN were to suddenly say, "Boris Johnson is a spectacularly ignorant FUCK!"... can you imagine? There'd be books written about it! The tabloids would have a heyday! There would be collector plates sold on the Home Shopping Network and spoons immediately forged at the Royal Mint to commemorate the occasion! 

Are you understanding this? The more indecent a person is, the less we think of their indecency. It's almost like a frequency pass. I will share a particularly salient anecdote from my youth. In grade six, I went to John Knox Memorial Christian School. It was the one year I lived with my grandparents, so it was the only year of private school I ever attended. It was no better than public school, but I imagine it was more expensive. At any rate, my teacher was Mr. Koehne, pronounced Koona. You KNOW this is a true story because I could NEVER make up such a name! A name that so fantastically befit his personality and teaching style. Mr. Koehne was a disciplinarian. Mr. Koehne had coffee breath and a silver chalk holder. Mr. Koehne always wore a shirt with sweaty armpits and a tie. Mr. Koehne loved the Lord. 

The school was reputed for being strict. I remember the entrance interview I went to with my Grandmother during which the principal, I forget his name, warned, "We run a tight ship here." Probably his way of making my Grandmother think there was a chance in hell (or heaven) they'd turn down her money and not allow me to go there. That was the first time I'd ever heard that phrase. They asked if I knew what it meant and I said I did, but didn't learn until I started attending the school. 

Mr. Koehne would write your name on the board if you did anything wrong. ANYthing. Every name or number was a detention at lunch. Lunchtime was hockey time otherwise I doubt the gravitas of the ritual would have been so great. Especially in winter when we had an actual outdoor hockey rink in the school parking lot! If you did something else wrong, he'd put a number beside your name. I loved hockey so much that I don't think more than one or two times I ever had a number beside my name and even then it was never more than a two or three. But there was a guy in my class, again with the names, Jim Duck, who was a notorious bad boy. He was always at the top of the list of names on the board. Usually his offence was doing something funny, which was against the rules and presumably the will of God. I can clearly recall his number being over 50 at one point. Yet, every time he was told by Mr. Koehne that the number after his name was going to be increased by one, Jim would utter a loud, "WHAT?!" Always. One day he was doing something wrong and Mr. Koehne said, "Jim, I'm putting your name on the board." Inevitably there came a loud, "WHAT?!" Mr. Koehne increased the number by one. "WHAT?!" Another increase of one. "WHAT?!" even louder. An increase of one even larger and darker on the board. "WHAAAT?!" Mr. Koehne carved a digit on the board so vehemently that the chalk broke, but rather than bending over to pick it up, he simply depressed the top of his chalk holder and another length of chalk emerged. "WHAT?!" The faces of the other students in class were showing the pain Jim should have been feeling. Mr. Koehne added TWO to Jim's total!!! Then, one of the funniest things I think I've ever seen happened. Jim did something that elevated him to a place up at the top of the comedic hall of fame in my mind with the likes of George Carlin, Jonathan Swift, Matt Groening, David Letterman, Tom Robbins, and the Coen brothers. He silently, but with the skillful replication of a Shakespearian thespian, mouthed the word, "WHAT?!" 

Well the whole class went crazy! This encouraged Jim Duck and he threw a few MORE silent WHATS at Mr. Koehne each more hilarious than the last. Soon Mr. Koehne was writing OTHER students' names on the board for laughing at Jim Duck. I wasn't laughing, I was crying! This was one of the times I got a number beside my name and by the time the laughter and chalk dust had settled, this was also the time Jim Duck's 50 was reached. A record I doubt has yet been broken even if Mr. Koehne is still teaching at John Knox Memorial Christian School.  

I can't tell you what became of Jim Duck. I hope he's a highly paid comedian. The point of this salient anecdote was that the Friday of that week I saw Mr. Koehne talking with Jim Duck privately. The next Monday, Jim Duck's name wasn't even on the board never mind his FIFTY! The shitter was that every other student's names AND numbers remained unchanged! Jim Duck got a frequency pass and the rest of us got jack shit! In fact, the better behaved students were the ones who tended to be more closely watched and would get their names on the board for lesser offenses that Jim would get away with. I see a lot of Jim Duck in president Trump. The difference is, Trump doesn't make me laugh.

Trump pays more for sex than he does in taxes. No biggie. He spreads a new virus that he knows is deadly and has been recorded as saying as much. Ah, we'll let it slide. He has made mockeries of conflicts of interest and emoluments clauses. Well, he's special. He encourages Americans to break laws, he threatens to break presidential rules and protocol, he has an ever-growing list of associates in legal entanglements, he has committed crimes he'd be indicted for if not a sitting president and acts that he'd be impeached for... if he were not the president (ask Bill Barr about THAT masterpiece of spiralspeak!), and he's exhibited the cretinous, numbskullery that rivals the lowest of his supporters while disparaging OTHERS as "low IQ individuals." The guy has built up the biggest fudge factor, frequency pass, call it what you will, that I have EVER seen! If he publicly revealed the launch codes and locations of all the nuclear weapons in the US, or, God forbid, launched any of them, about a quarter of the population would be spinning clever webs of deceitful forgiveness at the moment we are all vapourized. Can there BE a more highly toxic positivity?

Compare all of that to Obama's tan suit. And Bernie Sanders scareword socialism. There are people who are more concerned about both of these than the Biblical plague of flies in the indefunkable Trump ointment! It's one of the most incredible things I've ever seen!

However, there IS another exit strategy for the poor fools who are enabling the presidential positivity. And we all know what that is. Although he has threatened NOT to honour the results of the election, a sort of heads I win, tails you lose strategy that his fatuous followers are sure to believe is as savvy as his business strategies of borrowing money and not repaying it, or just not paying taxes, if he loses, he's gone. He doesn't have the power to squat in the Whitehouse, he only THINKS he does. With the adulation of so many contributing to his already titanic ego, he believes he deserves not just 4 but 8 or 12 or 16 more years as president! As long as it keeps him from being Leona Helmsleyed. 

If you are an American reading this post, break the toxic positivity. Vote NO for Trump. A vote for Biden is not a YES vote. Let's not kid ourselves. Biden will not fix the US. He won't even unfuck what Trump has fucked. This is the state of affairs in the US. But he WILL be better than 4 more years of the toxic positivity presidency. And maybe Trump WILL be out of the picture in 4 years and the chance of avoiding one of his spawn from oozing into the Whitehouse will be eliminated too. Maybe after 4 years of Biden/Harris, the US will be in a position to right itself. If you've ever heard the fable of the scorpion and the frog, it will help you understand Trump. He's a scorpion. The scorpion stings the frog HALF WAY across the water killing both him and the frog. With Trump you'll just have to go down with the sinking ship. But as you do, you can bet you'll be told that it's a good thing! Or Trump will go on TV and say, "Well, it is what it is."

One Good Thing About Trump

Yes, you read that title correctly, there may be one good thing to come out of this administration of terror, at least for me, and it is the extra learning it has forced me into. Trump talks about maintaining forest floors, I now am a qualified Ministry of Natural Resources officer. My forest Roomba (patent pending) is being tested in the northern Canadian wilderness as I type this. Trump talks about herd mentality/impunity/developed/immunity, or whatever he said/meant, and I'm now a licensed immunologist. Incidentally, am I the only one who, with my nine-year-old sense of humour, heard (or herd) Donald Trump say "turd" there? Here's the video, you be the judge.

So call it what you will, turd mentality, herd immunity, but coupled with the Woodward tapes in which he clearly shows he knew the dangers of the virus, but didn't care, could this have been his plan all along? And I just have to add here, you're president, you're engaged in all manner of shady dealings and chicanery, "SURE person who brought down president Nixon with tape recordings, I'll agree to a taped interview." What kind of a schmuck... but then again, check my last post. If Dunning and Kruger had a love child... THAT, would be Donald Trump, your turd mentality.

But can we get back to herd immunity? Even with the rosiest of Trump-supporting scenarios, that's advocating a couple/few million deaths! Avoidable deaths. Dare I go as far as to say murders? If you can wrap your head around that, it's not such a huge leap of logic to assume he might also have a plan to implement this herd immunity in blue states before November 3rd and red states after, is it??? "Is that how you plan to win the election, Mr. Trump? Do you mind if I record your answer?" "Not at all Mr. Woodward. Now, if you think THAT'S bad, wait'll you hear my plans to eliminate immigration..."

HEY! Another benefit just came to mind! TWO! TWO good things might have come out of this presidency! I have a lesson on tag questions coming up and it has just occurred to me that Trump has provided all the examples I need. "Trump couldn't possibly have intended that... could he?" "Trump isn't a sociopath, is he?" "Trump didn't call the 15-year-old daughter of Michael Cohen a 'piece of ass...' did he?" And you know I could go on. It's sadly apropos to say, but, God help me, now Trump has me researching the middle east. Along with rocket science, brain surgery and learning Korean as a second language, the middle east is an intellectual challenge that few are up to. Even during my knowledge thirsty youth, which inevitably trundled its way into alcohol thirsty middle age, I don't think I was up to it. Now I'd just be happy to get the gist. But it helps if you would like to understand the ludicrous concept of Trump's latest campaign stunt, the UAE and Bahrain "normalization" show! Is there a better example of a political nonsense word than "normalization?" Well, today I want to try to talk about what it means. Not what that whole political dog and pony show want us to THINK it means, but what it literally means. In order to do that, we need to do something I, and Inigo Montoya, are fond of doing: we need to go back to the beginning. Well, no, check that. Sorry, Inigo, but probably, "Let there be light," was the beginning. Let's go back to - let's call it earlier. 1967, when an old fella like me, was a newborn baby. When Canada was only 100 years old. When the Queen was still pretty hot.

Huh? Not bad eh? I bet I know what Trump would say if he saw this pic. The queen! A piece of... ugh, I can't say it! I've just always thought of her as too queenly. I know Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward were not immaculately conceived, but the Queen has always carried with her, in my mind, a sexless image. I know my Mother was pretty when she was young too, but... let's move on, shall we?

The 1967 6 Day War was a massive military success for Israel. Oh yes AND God. Israeli forces killed over 20,000 troops while losing fewer than 1,000 of their own. Israel seized the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria. 

The reason? Because they're God's people of course! That land belongs rightfully to them, not the people who've lived there for centuries. Oil, natural gas, shipping routes in the Straights of Tiran FOR those resources, air supremacy, and the "big stick" in an area of the world in constant military and economic competition had NOTHING to do with it. I'm laying the sarcasm on pretty thickly but you can see why nobody in the area was too thrilled about this aggression. The UN Resolution 242 was drafted and immediately accepted by Egypt and Jordan due to its clause that called for Israel to vacate the territories acquired in the recent conflict. But to this day, that has not happened.

Israel claims the war was an act of pre-emptive self-defense, not annexation in the name of God, which has become known by the term, "Zionism." Many have debated this and some call it "complete fiction." Here is a well-written account. Sounds like complete horseshit, doesn't it? Maybe if the gods of Power, Resources and Riches were added...

The total thrashing of a Goliath by a David, is an attractive promotional prospect for religion. Was Defense Minister Moshe Dayan a modern day Joshua? Was he a hero wielding the sword of God? How else could such a resounding defeat have taken place? 

Volumes have been written on the religious and social implications of such an unexpected and thorough victory Israel scored. How did it affect the Muslims? The Israelis? The American Jew? The evangelicals? Even the Mormons? Here's an account of that. 

It is thought that one effect of the war was the secularism of Muslim countries and the relaxation of strict, harsh rules abruptly ended and reversed course to well into radical dogmatism. This, in turn, is believed to have led to the rise of Muslim extremist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS. Just read the article above. State nationalism is now frequently cast as pro-Western and retrograde, while Islamism is often cast as revolutionary and patriotic, while the opposite was true before the 6 Day War. Amongst Jewish people Zionism was a bit of a lost cause that was raised from the dead by the 6 Day War. And its influence spread well beyond the Jews as I have written about before in this blog. Proxy wars in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, all over this area that I prefer to call Pipelinistan, are raging and the reasons that people are given for them are very much like religion. No way we'll ever know, just gotta believe what we're told.

The religious zealots closer to home, we'll call them the evangelicals, also breathed new life into their cause via the 6 Day War. They were seeing signs of the end. A righteous abandonment of mankind by God because of our wicked ways. What else could we see? But then a glimmer of hope. The Jews returning to their "homeland!" It was a sign prophesied to pre-empt the second coming. The Jews returning to their homeland meant Jesus was coming back! 

Even the Mormons were affected! There is still division, but some believe in the return to Jerusalem as Joseph Smith did, others think the treatment of the Palestinians has been indicative of ungodly occupation. And therein lies the conflict for most anybody who studies the Middle East. It looks very much like the Jews were blowing Joshuan trumpets while they set about one of the most unlikely military defeats, and not just defeats, but comprehensive defeats, the likes of which a GOD might just absolutely influence! But to others the time since that war has diminished the godliness of it and laid bare the unholy underpinnings that prove the absence of any benign deity. 

So what the hell bro? I'm sorry to be flippant, but after all this religiosity, what the fucking hell, bro? 

If I could answer that question, I wouldn't be writing a blog that will be read by a dozen people. At best. But what I CAN shed some light upon, what this little history lesson has been leading up to, is the abject frivolity of the Donald Trump nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize. 

Okay... Israel had plans to annex the west bank. The UAE agreed to "normalize" relations with Israel if they didn't. What a wonderfully nonsensical political word, "normalize!" We'll see what it means in actuality in a minute. So the UAE says NO! Don't destroy the Palestinians who are living there, we'll make a treaty with you to avoid violence! Looks like a peace treaty, doesn't it? Looks like Trump was a catalyst, doesn't it? Well he was, but in the exact opposite way you might think. The UAE was not coerced into doing this by Trump's superior negotiation skills. As he would like the world to think. As might be worthy of a Nobel Prize. No, the actual thing that is happening here, the real meaning of "normalization" is the UAE is acquiescing to dignify and honour Israel's claim to all that land they illegally captured during the 6 Day War. 

Most Arab nations have held that they will never do so because the Palestinians, an Arab people, were wronged by it. But the UAE changed their minds. Now what could have led to that? Hmmmmm.... Could it have been an advantage in the stalemate that has kept constantly warring nations from just having it out and killing each other? If you look at the details of the 6 Day War, you will see that the intricacies were like two frightened teenagers who the whole school wanted to fight, but were grasping at reasons not to. Israel decided to invade Damascus. Syria appealed to their treaty with Egypt and the Gamal Abdel Nasser govt to protect them. Jets were shot down. Nasser did nothing. It made him look weak. But he maintained that it was only if Israel tried to take over land that they would defend Syria. Then it looked like Israel was planning to do so. Egypt reluctantly moved troops to Syria in hopes of avoiding a scuffle neither Israel nor Egypt wanted. It worked! Israel laid off. It should have stopped there, but these are big-headed dictators we're talking about here. Nasser, pumped up by his successful show of strength (show being the operative word) decided to cut Israel off from the Straits of Tiran, a key shipping canal between the Sinai Peninsula and the Arabian peninsulas, through which Israel imported oil from Iran. Understand that this is where the masks come off. This is where the politics falls away and reality shows itself. Iran is the arch-enemy of Saudi Arabia. And if you want to talk proxy wars, Iran is backed by Russia and some other usual suspects and Saudi Arabia is backed by the U.S. and some other usual suspects. This WHOLE thing is about, (BIG HUGE SURPRISE) MONEY! Oil, and as I blogged about extensively, and as the world knows so little about, natural gas. Gazprom is up there every year with Microsoft and Amazon with the richest companies in the world. It's a Russian natural gas company and Putin is openly secretly its main shareholder.

I know. This is ridiculously complicated. But if we just go back to the F-35's. Oh, did I forget to mention those? Yeah this PEACE deal that Trump hopes to get a Nobel for, includes fighter jets that could upset the delicate balance of power that has kept the Middle East relatively peaceful for so long. Shit, I forgot to mention that. Oh, and also, Israel has long since been engaged in a treaty with the United States to maintain that delicate balance of power and NOT give weapons or money to any nation in the area that might upset it. Speaking of upset, you can imagine how Israel feels about the idea of those F-35's going to the UAE especially knowing how air superiority was what led to their Davidic win over the Goliath of Egypt and the other nations in the 6 Day War, which was a monumental upset!

What happened? Is there anyone who can explain this? Well as it happens, there is a perfect explanation for it all. And it's far from Nobel Peace Prize material. WHAT A HUGE SURPRISE! There is an expert on the Middle East named Vali Nasr who teaches at Johns Hopkins University. He was asked about what was happening with this "normalization" show. He gave a perfect answer. It has been removed from Youtube because it was so perfect. But here it is on a Facebook page. He says this will change nothing. It only formalizes diplomatic, military and intelligence ties that have been an open secret for a long time. Trump desperately needs a foreign policy victory. North Korea, China and Iran haven't worked out. This will be a popular victory with evangelicals in the US as well. Netanyahu wrote a book in which he stated that he doesn't want to give up land in exchange for peace with Arab countries. Now Bahrain and the UAE can be added to Egypt and Jordan as Arab countries which are okay with Israel's land grab in the 6 Day War. And the UAE? Well they get F-35's. 

So if you think this Nobel Peace Prize nomination was a political stunt that was orchestrated close to election day, you'd be right. The guy who nominated Trump was the same guy who nominated him last time. You know, when he got a broner for Kim Jong Un diminishing the chances of dangerous conflict between North Korea AND TRUMP. "I'm gonna bomb North Korea. No I'm not. I just averted disaster, gimme a Nobel Prize." Now he's basically saying, "I created this peace and cooperation that already existed. Gimme a Nobel Prize." 

Now Trump is talking at his rallies like he's won a couple of Nobel Prizes. In fact, he's been nominated twice. Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini were also nominated, so it doesn't mean much. But he is telling people it does and they're believing him. And who is this guy who twice nominated Trump? Christian Tybring-Gjedde is a far right (surprise surprise) Islamaphobic Norwegian politician. He once equated hijabs to KKK hoods. He thinks that people immigrating to Norway is his county's biggest problem. He probably loves Trump's wall. He's as big a fan of Putin as he is of Trump. He is probably kissing Trump's ass to get a spot in his cabinet because he wants to leave his country where everybody hates him. 

And as if to put the cherry on top of this absurdity sundae, guess who else was just nominated. Yup, Vladdy Poison-Your-Political-Opponents Putin. Putin the war criminal. 

What a whacky world!

And now it turns out there are MORE weapons in store for the UAE as this article attests. Aside from F-35's, they'll get Reaper drones and Growler jets. So you could look at this as the UAE and Bahrain maintaining "peace" in their countries, or, as the article views it, just better enabling themselves to (decidedly UNpeacefully) beat down any insurrection. Also, something I read about but forgot to mention in the article, this gives Trump a better position in case he plans to bring Iran to the bargaining table in the future. And if future talks fail, it may have increased the likelihood of military conflict with Iran. 

I'm not sure I qualify, but I'd like to nominate Trump for an Ignoble War Prize. But, in the attitude I so reluctantly, but often adopt, AT LEAST I'm reading more.

Ignorance Is Bliss

We've all heard the old saying, "ignorance is bliss." I remember my salad days when I was teeming with ignorance and yet I had the confidence of a learned man. Incidentally, but not without import, I hope you read that word in your head with a solid second syllable. You know how if you are not a Phillistine. Learned shall not henceforth be read mentally or orally, unless expressedly otherwise advised, as a monosyllabic word. Perish THAT mispronunciation! Unless I'm just jabbering about something I learned at school, or somewhere our genuine educations take place, well then it's just a lowly one syllable word. But when it's used to indicate intellectual prominence, one must humbly deign the word a poly-syllabic notoriety.

But back to the point, I'm not sure "and yet" were the proper two words in my second sentence. "And so" might have been a better couplet. It seems almost as if, no, check that, it seems exactly as if the people with the most confidence are the numbskulls who know the least about that in which they seem to hold such unassailable certainty. Anybody ever heard of the Dunning/Kruger Effect? Ask that question to a room full of people and it's only the smart ones who'll say "yes" honestly. The other smart people will say "no" honestly. And the blissfully blessed will say, "Hell yeah I know what that means! I wrote the freakin' book on the lemming cooter effect!" Or some such stab at scholarly parrotry. When challenged with, "It's not the 'lemming cooter' effect, it's the Dunning Kruger effect. You really haven't heard of it, have you?" They will not only NOT admit to their ignorance, they will take your challenge as, well, a challenge, and double or triple down on their ersatz erudition. "You callin' me a liar boah? You think just cuz I had two parents with the same last name BEFORE they got married, well yer better'n me ain't ya? You think just cuz you got on that high fallutin' shirt 'n I don't...? You think that I'm dumb cuz I ain't got as many teeth as y'all ain't ya?"

To be clear, this is a woman from northern British Columbia, Canada speaking these words, having no excuse but admiration for her southern U.S. patois.

The Dunning Kruger effect is something I see more and more as accountability dies a cyber death and people can say whatever the shit they want with all but complete impunity from those who might stand some chance of correcting them. So long as they do so on the sites and venues where they feel safe to let their fatuous flags fly! And it seems almost as if, no, check that, it seems exactly as if the people with the most confidence in their confidence are people who are in positions of power the very mention of which invoke an earnest respect for one who has risen to those positions through distinguished behavior, intellect and unimpeachable wisdom. World leaders, CEO's, doctors, lawyers, television news anchors and reporters, good GOD even the narratives you hear from everyday folks on the street, because that's what our words have become since we need to watch them so carefully, even those narratives can't be fully trusted. Regular people now speak in "narratives" and people who used to have to EARN our respect have more often than not fallen into rather than fought for and earned their positions of power. This is a sad fact of life most of us have not yet strayed far enough from our media misled, sports, video game, music, work and self-imposed responsibility stupors to realize: people don't earn riches and power any more, they inherit them. For the most part. Rags to riches is dead. Class mobility is a thing of the past. The owners of you and I have been ordained. And as sickening as it sounds, as much as this world has worshipped capitalism and rising to the top through hard work, cunning, ingenuity and enterprise, these lucky motherfuckers are receiving the dreaded SOCIALISM we've been brutalized with as if it were the hammer and sicle of Communist (or socialis) Russia. They're being GIVEN FREE SHIT! A LOT of free shit! So much that there is no hope that they can fail even if they are lugubrious, priveledge-addled half wits. They hold the reigns of our future. Yeah! And you know a few of them. Not most of them because, we're not in their club and can't hope to be, but we know some on the perifery who hope to gain entrance to the anonymity of the big boys' club. Wannabe's like, you guessed it, Donald Trump. By his NON anonymity, you can easily guess how close he is to securing a place in this club. Even as president, he's just a wannabe. And as such, he's the perfect example of this Dunning/Kruger effect. Anything he says that he isn't trained to say by his well paid handlers is pure stupidity, yet he is so often called smart! He's probably lost more money than any man alive, yet we think of him as a billionaire business whiz who's laughing all the way to any bank he's not suing or being sued by over defaulted loans. He just can't seem to realize, through ignorance-spawned confidence, that people are laughing at him, not with him. Ironically enough, both the ultra rich he wants to join up with to rule the world, and also those he considers to be far beneath him.

As my last post stated matter-of-factly, what the hell is wrong with people being given free shit? It's what America and most countries have as the motivation that keeps all those mice running on those wheels that power those nations. People wanna get rich. The BAD part of capitalism. But people also wanna give their kids easier lives by making THEM rich without all the back-stabbing, deceit, and scumbaggery. The GOOD side of capitalism. Ahem. The majority of the good intentions that have been sacrificed at the altar of the god known as Mammon have been justified by this one loophole. And you can't fault it, really. People will fight, fuck, chisel, con, pilfer, fenagle, you name it, they'll do almost anything after looking into the eyes of their little babies and seeing that innocence. Imagine if you not only were the heartless Mandalorian bounty hunter that stumbled onto baby Yoda, but the parent who had given birth to that adorably innocent, cute, powerful, cuddly... well you can say the same about any kid. We can all understand that protective instinct. Hell, I bet even Donald Trump was a cute kid! No Yoda, but... I myself might have sworn to provide for him through thick and thin no matter what kind of a douchebag he turned out to be, and unconditionally supported him with all my means, if I, (spiritu sanctu the power of Christ compels you) were his father. When you give it a good think, it's really quite something how innocence has so often been the catalyst to its opposite!

So don't come down on the rich too hard for wanting to give their kids easy lives. Did I just say that? At any rate, back to Mrs., hang on, how do you write the plural of Mr.? Mr.s? Hmmmmm.... Anyhoo, misters Dunning and Kruger. So Donald Trump is the example, too easy, I will use to illustrate the Dunning/Kruger effect. Is he, a man many believe to be the veritable antichrist, the apotheosis of this effect? Well, no. The Dunning/Kruger Effect has an upside. Our whole world situation has an upside. Though there ARE scientists from Sweden who say global warming has gone past the midnight mark and we should all enjoy our last few years on Earth before we all taste the flaming hot kiss of global destruction, uh, there is still good news. Though the cream has sunk to the bottom and the top has been occupied by undesirables in every government, corporation, bank, and stock exchange in the world, don't dismay! Watch the following vid:

Okay. I admit, this is a bit of an old vid. The makers probably still didn't know about the education ministress who is an absolute character out of Harry Potter,

or the newly appointed postal reprobate...

But still, the main point of the vid must not be lost. Confidence comes from ignorance and ignorance is drawn to confidence... that comes from ignorance. This in a friggin' nutshell, is the perfect explanation of the Trump phenomenon. Now, how come I, a lowly nobody, might be the first person to lay this out for you? Oh sure, you've thought of it, but haven't put it into words, but what in Sam's Hill, Hell's blazes and Dickens' dick has kept the rest of the SMARTER people from figuring this out? Well, I've got a theory. I think there are plenty of minds who worked this out long before my feeble, vodka and ginger ale-limited mind did. But they are all probably working on books and don't want to release any spoilers. I, on the other hand, am not writing a book, so there you go. Maybe I should write a book...

My original point was going to be how it's easier to be a Trump supporter than not. For instance, if I were to say that "Keep America Great Again" spelled Donald Trump if you rearranged the letters, Republicans ERVERYWHERE would be printing it on T-shirts, caps, truck bumpers, front lawns, internet memes in the months it took them to realize it wasn't true. Oh to be that ignorant! Perhaps a better example is one I covered in my last post. The insistence that the Coronavirus isn't all that dangerous. Not even 10 thousand people have died from it alone. There are comorbidities. Let's get out there! We need to get back to work and back to school! Don't be afraid! (at least not of this very specific fear. Stay afraid of the good fears, but...) Don't be sheep! (well... at least not in this specific instance...) It's ludicrous, isn't it? And it takes but a meme to convince thousands. Even just that one word, "comorbidities," well, that sounded pretty learny, and all that other shit is shit I already (have been trained to) believe in so shit yeah! I'll buy THAT T-shirt! If only there were a meme that could de-program that zeal as easily!



Ahhh, but there's the rub! De-programming the overinvested is a difficult thing. This overinvestment may be the very component of ignorance that has lead to its ubiquity. Ignorant people don't want to be wrong. They dread that as much as the rest of us. But that dread is far behind their collective dread of research. Learning. Fact checking. Even in this day and age when you don't have to do nerdy things like go to a library to be educated and informed, you just need to judiciously surf the ever increasing volumes of information on the internet, but... porn. I gotta say, and there's no UN cringy way of saying this so I'll just blast it out? Come on! Bad blogger! Bad blogger! How much porn does a person need? Honestly! Shouldn't there be plenty of time after, uh, using the porn sites, to find one's way to a news site or an educational post? Granted, there are the various junk sites out there that pass themselves off as educational, but are really fueling the idiocracy, but doesn't everybody have a fighting chance to traverse the labyrinthian cyber world unsullied? If nothing else, shouldn't ignorant people have a website or two where they could at least learn about their ignorance? For goodness's sake, literally, wouldn't it be beneficial, for the good of all mankind, if we could just convince ignorant people that they are ignorant, and that's fine? In fact, as the title of the post implies, or outright states, people who aren't ignorant actually ENVY you! You have a LOT going for you, could you just stop trying to be intellectual; voting; engaging in internet arguments way over your heads; making memes; sharing false information; and running for office? Please?

The very words "ignorant" and "ignorance" are burdened with negativity that in my opinion is a little harsh. "Don't be ignorant," we say. "That's just plain ignorance." The assumption by the person uttering such statements is that it is a deficiency and a character flaw to have ignorance or be ignorant. Yet how many of the smartest people ever haven't wished they'd never become so? “The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” ― Bertrand Russell He's one of the most quotable guys ever isn't he, old Bert? For my money one of the smartest.

Alexander Pope gave us a gem that is oft partially quoted:

“A little learning is a dangerous thing.
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring;
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.”

Too many of us are drinking shallow draughts and getting intoxicated. Isn't intoxication a state of bliss? Whereas, if you drink largely at the Pierian Spring, (the location of the Muses who inspire all great art and science and a fountain of knowledge), you will receive knowledge, but it comes at the price of sobriety. So if you're not ready for it, just have a little. Leave the thinking to the hard drinkers of knowledge. Being an intellectual lightweight is only shameful when you pretend to have the alcoholic capacity of a true bacchanalian boozehound. So know your limit and stay within it. No shame in that.

Albert Einstein said, with obvious allusion to Pope, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot."

Confucius said, and I believe this nicely puts my point into a tight package with a lovely bow, "Knowledge without practice is useless. Practice without knowledge is dangerous." It's not the ignorance I question, it's the practices I've listed. Memes. Trolling. Becoming president. I think there is one great thinker who sums up my point with intellectual acuity that is difficult to top. And it's not George Carlin this time, although he DID say, "I'll tell you what the government DON'T want: they don't want an electorate capable of critical thinking. THAT'S what they don't want." It's part of the danger of knowledge. He went on to say, "They want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation." Those are the people I'm talking about, with envy, today. There's nothing wrong with being one of those people. Nothing. So long as you...

Is The American Dream Partially Socialist?

It's the end of August. The whole month has been the hottest and wettest/most humid of the summer, but I'm not complaining. We've had record Monsoon rainfall, a coupla huge storms, but I'm not gonna bellyache. Covid 19 limitations are messing up free time and work. I had two months off, but with travel restrictions, didn't really do much in the way of vacationing. Along with the blood sugar battle, I've had conjunctivitis for a few weeks. Five different kinds of eye drops and it still keeps hanging on. Conjunctivitis what's your function? Makin' eyes goopy and sticky and itchy. Conjunctivitis how's that function? I'm easy to get when yer wearin' a mask and touchin' yer face.

Still and all, I'm not going to let that get me down. I'm seeing positive signs. At the risk of sounding George R.R. Martinesque, FALL is coming. I've given up rationing the air conditioning because I know I won't need to pay for it much longer. Might as well get a bit of a jump on the cool. Remember in childhood how we loved the first days of summer vacation because we had the longest stretch of the year before we had to go back to school? I'm feeling right now like a kid at the end of the school year who knows the teachers are all just walkin' it in now and we're all just living for the bell. We don't have to do any more assignments or tests. The teachers' curriculums are completed, so now we're getting a lot of movies and fun classes. Some of my favourite teachers are just asking, not making us write essays, just asking what we're going to do for the summer. Our former jailors are now being kind to us. We've served our time. Freedom is at hand! I've got a similar sort of feeling right now.

Oddly, the weather is not getting warmer, it's getting cooler, and work is not coming to an end, it's just getting started again. But this IS in adulthood, a time of year that makes me as giddy as the early summer did when I was a kid. Though I AM starting work in a couple of days, and actually have a workshop tomorrow, I feel like Papillon poised on the cliff with a crude and questionable floatation device ready to plunge to liberty or death. Liberty from what, you might ask. Well aside from the stuff in the first paragraph, there are other hardships in Korean summer that make the completion of it feel to me like surviving some Herculean trial every year I'm here.

Mosquitoes. Now I dunno if you can add Covid to the other deadly shit these abortions of creation carry, but they're plenty annoying without it. I've said it before, mosquitoes are my albatrosses. Or I suppose, to give the Ancient Mariner accurate allusion, my eels. The day I can look at a mosquito with appreciation for its nature and not pure disgust - that's the day I'll find instant enlightenment or have my arse raptured right off this planet. I don't see that day ever coming though. You can talk about the biological wonders of their construction and reproduction and flight and all that, but I fear I will see them as superfluous vermin till the day I die. And the small, fast, Korean mosquito that understands silent stealth and camouflage, they're that much worse.

Add to the agita caused by the mosquitoes, packing any compost garbage in ziplock bags or else suffering a deluge of fruit flies a few days later. Throw an apple core into an open trash receptacle at your own peril! Fruit flies will find it and once you have them, it'll be a lengthy battle to get rid of them. Lesser pests like drain flies, water worms, and some others - they will all soon die icy and poetically retributive deaths! YEAH!

Sweat. It ain't the heat, it's the humidity and summer is the rainy season. Clothes take days to dry sometimes here in Korea. You can wave your hand in the air and get it wet. And although there may be health benefits to a four-month wet sauna, I can live without it. Any trip to a location farther away than the corner store requires a bag with a spare shirt, towel and water. I am not kidding! This is why I thank every holy entity for fear of missing one that I didn't have to work for July and August. June was bad enough, and even May is sometimes a challenge. Add to that the extra pleasure of wearing a mask and getting your nose and mouth (and in my case beard and mustache) a mini steam bath from your nose and mouth... well, you can see why I may welcome cooler weather.

But before I start complaining and bellyaching... doo dee doo... I thought I'd tackle a couple more pieces of odd logic I've come across in my cyber travels. Here's the first one. Now, I don't know how long that link will last. I have seen other similar links posted and they've been blocked with the warnings of either "partially incorrect" or just "incorrect," after being fact checked. But if you manage to read the article, what is it saying? Correct me if I'm wrong here, but at its very essence, that article can be summed up by saying Coronavirus/Covid 19 is bad for everyone, but it's only a little dangerous to most of us. It's only super dangerous to less than 1% and most of them are old guys anyways. SOOO let's get back to work. Work is good for everyone, but it's only a little profitable for most of us. It's only super profitable to less than 1% and most of them are old guys anyways.

What? Am I wrong? The over 160,000 deaths in America that have been attributed to Covid 19 are not all JUST from Covid 19. This seems to be proffered, to Americans, as reasoning to be LESS afraid of the virus. It's not THAT dangerous. It's only killed 9,683 people on its own. It's relatively harmless! But let's remember, that's 9,683 Americans. And in a population as large as America, that number might draw comparisons to other things that are considered to be relatively harmless. For instance, the one you just KNOW will come up, (and DID in the article with the HK flu) the flu was associated with 34,200 deaths in America last year. So compare 9600 to 34,000. "We stay working during flu season, don't we? We've been lied to! Conspiracy! Hypocrisy!" Record scratch... Hey wait a minute, did that say "associated with?" Could that mean there are "comorbidities" attached to flu deaths every year too? I think it could. Hmmm... What would some of those be?

A lot of the comorbidities (a word that formerly belonged to the medical community but is a new buzzword amongst Covid conspiracy alarmists) are the same for both Covid 19 and the Flu. If you have heart trouble, respiratory complications, diabetes, kidney trouble, cancer, immune deficiencies, Down's Syndrome, obesity, well, here's a list. I'm not going to go down the list and calculate how many Americans have all of those health issues, but let's have some fun and do just a couple, shall we? Let's start with obesity because I have mentioned it before here, over 70 million adults in the U.S. are obese. That's pretty darn close to 40%. Kids are closer to 20%. Approximately 38.4% of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetimes. 34.2 million Americans have diabetes and 88 million more have pre-diabetes. Again we're looking at the 40% area.

If you go down the list and you are an American who can say you are free from any of these "comorbidities," you are absolutely NOT a member of the majority. In fact, the U. S. of A. is statistically the country MOST in danger from Covid 19! This news provided by the folks who are trying to convince you otherwise. lol. Now I'm certain that it's probably the country that TESTS the most for all of these comorbidities too, so if you want to dredge up that Trumpian gem...

But let's read a bit further in the article. "How do we stop this fearmongering?" it asks. I started picturing an author wearing a tinfoil hat when I read, "... a collapsing economy, used as an excuse to get rid of paper money and usher in a worldwide digital currency that will be controlled by unelected parties who will essentially rule the world and needlessly force vaccines on the entire human population." Unelected parties eh? Already happening. Not just in the federal elections either. And aside from the vaccine pushing, which I admit to being partially concerned about given the HUGE money involved and the constant lobbying to allow drugs to be released to the public with less and less testing, the main concern seems to be about money. A very Republican concern. A LOT of the people pushing this type of agenda are Trump supporters, I'm going to say that now. The people I see posting this crap are Trump supporters and I'm sure the majority, and maybe as near as makes no diff, ALL of the people who believe it, are Trump supporters. The same people who have been telling us for almost 4 years how spectacular the economy is! And to be clear, that narrative didn't suddenly stop with the onset of the Coronavirus. Bezos didn't become the first 200 billion dollar man before the Coronavirus.

When confronted with the prospect of disproving Trump and his sycophants, it's been the experience of comedians, political pundits, reporters and myself that very often, the best course of action is to get Trump to disprove himself. And here is an August 31, 2020 press conference in which Trump starts off bragging, as usual, about the economy. Which is it? Is the economy "collapsing," or is it a "tremendous achievement: Best in 36 years."?

And doesn't he then go on to push vaccines that definitely will NOT be fully tested? And you just KNOW they'll be making drug companies rich!


And, oh, by the way, isn't Trump a leader of one of those "unelected parties?" He didn't get the most votes, he prevailed in 2016 due to the fucked up electoral college. And history will probably show he was also PUTIN a position to become president with some assistance from outside sources.

It's a constant source of amusement to me how Trump and his supporters seem to shoot themselves in the foot contradicting themselves so often and so efficiently that they look like they are staging personal debates when they speak or tweet or post memes or argue online. The timing of this illogical logic is its explanation, folks. We're a couple of months away from the election. This is just a sad attempt to make it look like the president knew what he was doing all along. Trust him. You'll notice that in the above press conference he goes on to slag Biden and talk about defending the beloved citizens of America from violent protests by ending them as quickly as the vaccines will be flogged on them... with violence. He condemns protestors who are marching against things he doesn't like, then later defends protestors who violently marched in support of him, but does he ever mention a plan for his next 4 years? Election promises, a party platform, a recovery plan? Nope. He wants America to trust him. He wants them to believe he's got a great plan when in fact he'll just give a lot more dough to the rich and make the workers of America pay for it... again... but this time under the guise of digging America out of the hole Corona has put them in. That's why they won't let him tell you. But Trump hates being told what to do. Keep an eye and ear open, he'll let the cat out the bag soon enough. He plans to tax your asses off if he's re-elected. This "socialism" of Covid relief packages has got to end!

This leads us to the next bit of illogical logic I encountered this week. It is the common dismissive discarding of the very thing that would be MOST effective in digging the U.S. out of its Coronavirus hole. I say "would" because I don't think it "will" happen. The solution, as it was last time the US was in this position, would be socialism. And I am constantly hearing people ignorantly saying things like, "We can't just give people free shit," when referring to socialism. First of all, that's not what socialism is, it's just what we've been socialized into believing it is. Secondly, and since we've all heard the first argument many times, the part I'd like to focus on right now, why the hell CAN'T we just give people shit? Have you ever thought about that? No? Well let's think about that.

What is the American dream? If you say it's to work hard and pull yourself up by your bootstraps and through innovation and enterprise become richer than you've ever dreamed, I'd say you're only about half right. Why do Americans bust their asses working every day? Why did American soldiers fight in all those wars and why do they still fight today? Ask them. I have met a lot of American soldiers and have yet to meet a single one of them who has selfishly said he or she became a solder to get rich. I've met many OTHER Americans and have yet to meet any (although I know they exist) who do their jobs just to get rich. There's a second part to the American dream that people disregard when they are trying to get you to fear socialism. Everybody wants to GIVE their kids the freedom and financial comfort for which they've worked so hard. "Well we can't just give people free shit!" But isn't that what you all (or y'all) want to do?  Is the American dream partially socialist? Oh my GOD! Say it isn't so!

Here's an example of how business can operate fairly. Call it socialism if you must, but when CEO's and shareholders don't get obscenely unfair shares of profits, companies, and that means workers AND management, companies prosper. Better than otherwise. But try to convince greedy people of this.

Is Trump the Antichrist?

 

I'm constantly nonplussed by the massive respect afforded that hapless, witless, shitless burnout sitting on his usurped throne in the Whitehouse at the moment. For instance, why are so many people so worried about him leaving the Whitehouse when he loses the upcoming election? I understand that he has flouted a lot of rules, traditions, protocols, expectations and duties during his term as president, but do we really think he'll just be able to squat in the Whitehouse? He's made it clear he will not respect the results unless he wins. If he loses, well it's just election fraud and the results are fake. The petulant child he is will not acknowledge the results as valid if he loses, but he won't be able to hold his breath until he gets his way. He'll be bum rushed outta there like a penniless barfly after closing time. Here's what will happen. Won't it?

It seems almost as if supernatural abilities are attached to Donald Trump by a lot of people. Both his sycophantic minions and his greatest detractors are guilty of it! What the actual EFF is going on here? Do people legitimately believe he's the Antichrist? I contemplated that idea and from what I've read, he fit the bill in a lot of ways, but I wasn't sure. It's been a long time since I brushed up on my end times Biblical readings. So I let the internet do some of the work. Here's a guy who did a LOT! It's almost half an hour, but give it a view. It's quite interesting.

The first thing you need to understand is that practically everything written in the Bible about the "antichrist" is from dreams and prophesy. It's predominantly interpretation, not blatant statements, that people use to speak about the antichrist. Even if there was something in the Bible saying a golf-playing buffoon will destroy the world, it would still be open to interpretation.

The above video is well made and the little video snippets link well with the statements, but I did the sword work and found that the Bible verses didn't match up as well as his video clips. Let's go through them one by one.

From the outset, we're a bit mislead. The first Bible verse, Daniel 7:23 says nothing of a future nation with the ability to destroy the world or that its symbol will be an eagle. Nothing. Nothing that could even be interpreted as such. I think maybe this guy is thinking of Nostradamus? Not sure.

But I kept going, not writing him off just yet. The second point he says is from Revelations, about a country with many nationalities and cultures, is not from Revelations, but it IS from the Daniel verse he cited. So he's batting a little less than .500.

The third point from Daniel 11:21 about an outsider who wins the election unexpectedly with fewer followers than other candidates is partially right. I read nothing about an outsider, but a couple verses later it does say "small people" so I think the fewer followers is right. And with fewer followers, a win would be unexpected.

The next verse, I'd like to save till the end. Ezekiel 28:5 is the key to the whole post, so let's put that on the back burner for now.

Daniel 11:23 about the secret alliance with an outside entity and using deception to influence his rise to power is there. Presumably, this is how the A/C comes to power with few followers. Then in Daniel 11:21 it's 50% again. It DOES say he will use flattery to influence, but it is just a guess to say it will be religious groups. It could be rich people. It could be member of the opposing parties. Anyway, what politician doesn't use flattery to influence people?

Daniel 11:21 Despicable character, bad morals. Check.

Rev. 6:2 Obsessed with winning. Nope. Not there.

Rev. 13:2, Daniel 7:4 Mouth of a lion. Yes for Rev, no for Daniel. In Daniel it was a creature like a lion with wings, then the wings were removed and it stood upright and became as a man. However, Daniel 7:4 DOES say it spoke boastfully. Now does that automatically equate to roaring like a lion? It's a stretch.

Daniel 11:24 He will profit uniquely off of the presidency. Nope. Not there.

Daniel 11:39 He will reward those loyal to him with cabinet posts and real estate deals. This was just not even close! Not there at all.

Daniel 8:25 "Make deceit prosper," are the exact words. But isn't that basically the job description of a fucking politician? Interestingly, this verse also includes that he will be destroyed, but not by a human power. Covid? Twitter?  Why didn't this guy use THAT part of the verse? It's easier to fit to Trump.

Daniel 7:25 Intent to make alterations in time and law. Yup. But that really could mean anything.

Rev. 13:3, 16 Whole earth amazed and follow him. And they will wear trademark on foreheads OR on their right hands. Yup.

Daniel 7:20 "Great" and greater things. Not there.

Rev. 13:5 Blasphemy. Yes. Also the verse mentions only 42 months of authority.

Dan 11:25, 28 Feud with the South. Punish them.

Zechariah 11:16 The A/C will desert the flock. He will not go searching for the young that were scattered. That's there. But interestingly, he will be punished for this with a withered arm and a blinded right eye. Does this account for Trump's trouble drinking water and reading cue cards?

2 Thes 2:9-11 Christians will suffer mass delusion and believe his lies. Yup.

Rev 13: 11-12 Nation's most prominent Christian leader will support the A/C. Not there. That'd be too perfect.

Dan 11:44 Reports from N and E make him angry. I'm not going to count this because in verse 33 it mentions the geography of Egypt, Libya and some tribe that is not in the US. So this one doesn't count.

Rev 13:3 Formal attempt to have the A/C removed from power and he survived. This is a BIG leap of symbolism since what is mentioned is that the creature (I think the FIRST one) had a fatal head wound that had healed. Guess it wasn't fatal then. So I guess this is interpreted as a challenge to its power.

Rev 8:10 is not there. It talks about a flaming mountain being dropped into the sea, then the sea turning to blood and a third part (I think) of the sea creatures dying? How do you get a world pandemic from this?

Zech 11:16 A/C doesn't care about sick or dying and will do what's best for himself. Yup.

Rev 6:6 Food shortages and prices go up. It says 2 lbs. of wheat costs a day's wages. So I guess so. Oil stays cheap. Yes. Also, wine stays cheap as well.

Dan 11:33-5 A/C responds to civil unrest with a heavy hand. I didn't really get that, but this might require a lot of detailed interpretation.

Dan 11:31Temple takeover, polluted sanctuary, sacrilege, desecration. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

2 Thes 2:4, Dan 8:25 A/C sees himself as a god or God. yup

Dan 11:37 A/C worships god of border walls - no. God of fortresses - yes. So if you want to make that leap as the narrator does, this is dependent upon that.

Dan 11:32 With smooth words he will corrupt Christians, but those who know their God will not be tempted and firmly resist the A/C. This is probably the clearest of all. YES.

If you look at the red, being the stuff that wasn't just made up or VERY loosely interpreted to fit Donald Trump, you don't have a very compelling argument for Trump being the antichrist. I'm going to make it less compelling now with the verse I said was the key to this whole thing. Ezekiel 28:5 says that the A/C will be a wealthy, skilled businessman who earned lots of money in trade deals. Once again this is Donald Trump being given FAR too much credit. That was a carefully chosen phrase because THAT is how Donald Trump has made his money. Not in trade deals, but by being given far too much credit. Loans.

It started with a huge gift from his old man. Then more loans from elsewhere that, even if invested by a mediocre businessman should have made him billions but didn't. Yet a lot of people give Donald Trump credit for being a savvy, tough businessman. He's put a lot of effort into cultivating this image of himself over the years, but where is the evidence? There are many who say he isn't even a billionaire, although he wants us all to believe him when he says that he is. Who should we believe?

Let's start at the beginning.

That's Friedrich Trump, Donald's grandfather, Fred's father. Died of the flu that is called the Spanish flu but really should be called the Kansas Flu. In 1918, not 1917 when Donald thinks the Spanish flu pandemic took place. And, of course, it didn't end WWII. Family roots in Germany, the family patriarch dying of the flu in 1918... interesting he doesn't know more about these things. Oh well, let's move on.

Friedrich and even his son, Fred, could be thought of as self-made men. Donald Trump was rich before he could even say, "tax evasion." The NY Times wrote that he was a millionaire by age 8. His father, Fred Christ Trump, his hero, could probably be described as a tough, savvy businessman and even respected if you stripped away the sleaziness. Profiteering investigations by the U.S. senate in '54; then the State of New York in '66; father and son sued as a team for violating the Fair Housing Act in '73 for - you know - not being fair with their housing (racism); draft-dodging father; helping his son dodge the draft; arrest in connection with a KKK march in '27 when he was 21 years old; partner (Bill Tomasello) with mob ties; and I'm sure that by the time Donald joined Fred's real estate firm in '68 then became president of it in '71, he had learned some of his old man's tricks. Donald Trump tells us he did anyway.

The story goes, in 1924, Fred's mother loaned him $800.00 to invest in his first housing project. By 1926 he was building 20 homes a year in Queens. Admirable.

Donald Trump's now infamous million-dollar loan story is an attempt to be like Dad and Gramps, but it's a huge exaggeration. 413 million dollars! No wonder he liked his dad! That's almost as much money as he's borrowed from RUSSIA! But let's not get ahead of ourselves. It appears business was much harder than the young Donald had anticipated. If he had just safely invested all the money he was given, he'd actually BE a billionaire today! I suppose it's admirable that instead of just being lazy, he tried his hand at business... but he was not very good despite his reputation. In a couple of decades, the 70's and 80's, he burned through all that money, plus all the money he had borrowed from banks all over the place, and was pretty much an untouchable credit risk. Again I'm jumping too far ahead. Where did he GET the reputation and respect for being a skilled businessman? This is really interesting.

This is absolutely hilarious! Give it a listen.

Notice, this is the Washington Post. Trump hates the Washington Post and calls them "fake news" for things like the following: It's a recording of a "John Baron" trying to convince the Forbes 400 list compilers that he should be on that list. It's laughable, but it might have worked! Just being on this list, and possibly being the son of legitimate rich guy, Fred Trump, (who's to say which was better collateral?) GOT him loans! He got loans from all over the place and used the money to make business deals. When the business deals went bad and the loans strayed into default, the banks couldn't get their money back because he just sued them. This lead to a situation in which Trump is embroiled in 3500 lawsuits as we speak and no bank in America will touch him. Just read the blurb on the book, "Plaintiff in Chief," which was written about Trump's lawsuits. Does that sound like a savvy businessman? Does that sound like the guy you want leading your country? How much creativity or intelligence does it take to formulate a business plan that is: Step 1 - Leverage money I didn't earn to get loans. Step 2 - Buy some shit. Step 3 - Paying back loans, and for that matter, paying taxes is expensive so don't do it. Step 4 - When the American money runs out, there's always Russia. This "business plan" doesn't require intelligence, it requires malleable morality or complete amorality. It kinda sounds like the antichrist, doesn't it?

Here's a detailed look at how bad a businessman Trump is. It's from the New York Times, which Trump also hates and calls "fake news" because they print stuff like this: "A Decade in the Red." If you can't read that link, maybe you've already read your limit this week, most of the information has been reprinted in other sources. The NY Times dug up some of Trump's tax info and found that he wasn't such a great businessman. In fact, and this is taken directly from the article, they printed that, "In fact, year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer, The Times found when it compared his results with detailed information the I.R.S. compiles on an annual sampling of high-income earners." From 1985-1994, Trump lost 1.17 billion. That's more than anyone in the IRS records. So for that decade at least, he was probably the WORST businessman in America.

If you want more info, look up a guy named David Cay Johnston. He's a tax expert and investigative journalist who was assigned by the Philadelphia Inquirer to dig into the Atlantic City casino industry three decades ago. You can read him online or watch him on YouTube. He has some shocking things to say about Trump's financial wizardry. "It's Even Worse Than You Think," is a book about how Trump is ruining America. "The Making of Donald Trump," is another of his books. He calls Donald Trump P.T. Barnum. Here, it's long, but this is a great interview if you want a good indication of Trump's character. Keep in mind, this guy is a Republican.

So, to make a long story short, too late, after the disastrous downfall, Trump somehow made a comeback. This is the Daniel 11 secret alliance with Russia that is still not public record, but there are endless clues that remove all doubt. Donald Trump resorted to Russia for loans and you'd better believe there will be, or already has been quid pro quo.

So, in conclusion, he's not the antichrist, but he IS a scumbag. And if you have any intention of voting for him, you shouldn't. Particularly if you're a Christian. Go to about the 35 minute mark of the video above. But, how many of his supporters will read this, or any of the information contained in this? We'll see come election time...