The Morning Of The Day Before, Again

 January 29, 1933

Statue Advertising Restaurant, Northern China

(John Woo, Reuters / 2016)

(This is originally from Sunday, January 19th, 2016.  This history still applies.)

Sunday
(Sh'vat, 5785, for those who do.  Note: The 1933 [Gregorian] calendar is the same as that for 2025.)

Poet Sarah Teasdale dies in New York City after an overdose of sleeping pills. She is most commonly remembered for "There Will Come Soft Rains" (aka 'War-Time'), published in 1920.

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound...

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

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On January 29, Edouard Daladier, French centrist politician, was asked to assume position of Prime Minister and form a new coalition government, which would last from January to October, 1933.

In 1938, Daladier was again a minister in (yet) another coalition government in France, and with extreme reluctance supported the 1938 Munich agreement to cede the Sudeten portions of Czechoslovakia to Germany, and (presumably) avoid a general European war.

Returning to Paris after the agreement was signed, Daladier expected hostile crowds, but was instead warmly cheered. A combat veteran of the Western Front in WW1, Daladier understood: The Great War had been such a monumental bloodletting for the world, a fall of European empires and whole ways of life, that few people wanted to see new monsters on the horizon.

However, Daladier understood that Munich was nothing but appeasement. He had no illusions about the ultimate intentions of Hitler and the nazis -- to him, Munich only delayed what he saw as an inevitable war. 

Seeing the crowds cheering his arrival -- to the man on the street, war over Czechoslovakia had been averted! Yay! -- Daladier turned to an aide and said sadly, "Ah, these morons".

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German Chancellor General Kurt von Schleicher had resigned on January 28th. The recently re-elected German President, Paul von Hindenburg, had to appoint a replacement who could form a new government. On January 29th he offered the position to Franz von Papen, who refused.

von Papen had already been Chancellor from June through November, 1932. The possibility of another civil war in Germany between the extreme right and extreme left was growing, and von Papen had tried and failed to resolve tensions. On January 29th he suggested to Hindenburg that Hitler be named Chancellor -- because, he explained to the old Field Marshall, Hitler could be controlled.

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The Weimar Republic had survived the 1919 civil war between the Center-Right and the 'Spartikus' Left (which became the German Communist Party, the KPD) only because the Center begged the German army to crush the Leftists.

That bargain linked the survival of a moderate democratic republic to army support -- meaning the officer class, heavily linked to Prussia's landed nobility -- part of the same mixed bag of conservatives which had always been on top under the Kaisers. 

The 1929 stock market crash (Thanks, America! Didn't see that coming!) resounded around the world. By 1932, the Depression had kicked Germany's people to the curb. The most significant aspect of Germany's politics was how most people gravitated to one extreme or the other in the country's political spectrum.

Times were desperate; there wasn't much of a Center left to hold. On the Left were the KPD and Red Front. On the Right were a number of nationalist / conservative parties. The nazis (NSDAP) were the most radical.

Something usually glossed over in summary histories about Weimar in 1932 is the backstage maneuvering by the same traditional conservative layers of German society, attempting to maintain a grip on power. 

In April of 1932, a national election was held: Hitler ran against Hindenburg for the Presidency of the German Republic -- and while the nazis made gains in the Reichstag, Hitler wasn't popular enough to beat the Old Man.  

National elections for Reichstag deputies saw support for the nazis rise to 37% : with the KPD, they were a majority party. Anyone who wanted to govern in Germany's parliament would need their support (Remember, however -- Hitler's stated position was to eliminate all political parties in Germany, except his own).

In May of 1932, the moderate conservative government was frightened there would be an eventual revolution from the Left -- enough that General Kurt von Schleicher, and a previous Chancellor, Franz von Papen, held secret meetings with Hitler to offer a proposal. 

In order to keep the KPD and the nazis from fighting in the streets, the brownshirts and SS had been banned from holding public rallies and marches. von Schleicher told Hitler the ban would be lifted -- also, the Reichstag would be dissolved, and new elections called. The then-Chancellor, Heinrich Bruening, would be dismissed by Hindenburg.  von Papen would replace him... and Hitler would support von Papen's conservative nationalist government. 

Conservatives were just as frightened of Hitler and his NSDAP as they were the KPD. This attempt to appease Hitler -- they would have a real 'seat at the table' -- was really about neutering the nazis and bringing them under control of the moderate conservatives. 

Hitler agreed, only in order to have the ban on nazi public appearances lifted. Bruening was dismissed; von Papen was named by Hindenburg as Chancellor. However, Hitler had no intention of being co-opted into von Papen's government, and said so -- that he considered it a 'temporary measure'.

When the political situation continued to deteriorate through 1932, Hitler claimed to be the only political figure who could hold the Republic together. He requested a meeting with President von Hindenburg so that he could demand to be appointed Chancellor. In a humiliating session, the old Field Marshall treated Hitler like the ex-Gefreiter (Lance Corporal) he was, and refused Hitler's demands. 

The entire episode fed into Hitler's general delusions of power. Being Chancellor became the only outcome he would accept, and made it impossible for the conservatives to offer him anything less.

The nazis and KPD continued fighting in the streets. Hitler and leading nazis (mostly, Goering and Goebbels) kept pushing von Papen and the conservatives: only Hitler could unify the country and control the Communists and political-Left parties. 

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von Papen kept pushing Hindenburg, and von Papen said he would become vice-chancellor. The nazis would have only two of 7 cabinet positions; non-nazis in key government positions would contain Hitler. Finally, faced with continuing Right vs. Left violence, Hindenburg sent for Hitler and offered him the Chancellorship.

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On January 29th, 1933, the New York Times ran three separate articles about events in Germany.  The first looked at European stock markets, saying “apprehensions [are] generally felt over the fresh evidence of Hitler’s influence in the German situation.”

The second article summarized events in Germany, stating that Hindenburg was seeking a coalition government -- and that Hitler could only be made part of it through a guarantee that his power, and the nazis', would be limited.

Many leading intellectuals in Germany had serious misgivings about any government that might include Hitler -- “a straight Parliamentary government headed by [him]... is not envisaged in sober-minded political quarters.”

The third article was a long piece on Mussolini, Stalin, and Hindenburg. Hitler was only briefly mentioned; the article spoke of Hitler's "extreme policies", and inferred that he and the nazis were not the future of Germany in the same way that Mussolini and his fascists, and the Soviets under Stalin, appeared to be.

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Monday, January 30, 1933

Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of the Weimar Republic.

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When In These Coarse Current Events

 Ein Mensch Ist Kein Tier
(Originally from December, 2016; somewhat updated.)

Denn wie man sich bettet, so liegt man
Es deckt einen da keiner zu
Und wenn einer tritt, dann bin ich es
Und wird einer getreten, dann bist’s du.

As you make your bed, you must lie in it
No one else makes it so, only you
And when someone kicks, it will be me
And when someone gets kicked, it will be you

--  Kurt Weill / Bertold Brecht; "Meine Herren, Meine Mutter Prägte",
(aka, 'Denn Wie Man Sich Bettet') from Rise And Fall Of The City Of Mahoganny (1931)

Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht; Berlin, 1930

In less than a month, a person who wants to be dictator of America will be elevated to Chief Executive of the Federal government -- a person who easily displays his prejudices through a spiteful, narcissistic, adolescent public character which no American now living has ever had to suffer, twice, from an elected official at that level.  Everyone knows what to expect, and the level of apprehension is palpable.

(A friend notes, "Are you referring to [The Duce] or Musk? They both think they are The Leader, and they're both spiteful, narcissistic, and adolescent." Ha ha ha. Ha.)

The apotheosis of such a person, such a known quantity, leaves many people around the world profoundly uneasy. Already, co-Pepsodent Musk has spoken: "Only AfD [the neo-nazi political party] can save Germany", and The Duce has AfD leaders join him at More-Lego, photographed wearing MAGA hats and grinning for der Cameras, na schon? Ja!

An energetic, animated Pestident-elect with neo-nazis

just some average persons at More-Lego, 2024

The Duce's inauguration is expected to be a show of hate, a celebration of triumph -- as he swaggers into Washington, carrying in his wake "decayed roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin ... vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, [and] pimps...". 

The inauguration balls have been paid for by Tech Bros - Jeffy, Sergey, Marc; Zuck; Sammy; Peety; Larry -- all eagerly stepping on each other's faces to be first to give One Million Dollars! each to The Duce's inaugural fund. 

Maybe all this money helps pay the inaugural costs; maybe not. He may use this money however he wants -- as a gift, a bribe ... but, never mind. This is what it's like to be Duce. How fun!

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I keep thinking about the Juvenal quote: "Yesterday, they were scoundrels and ruffians. Today, they rule our lives. Tomorrow they will wind up as keepers of the public lavatories.".

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A friend noted that many have just switched off, a turning inward as response to eight years of societal upheaval, recent political events. They suggested we focus on a balance with a wider universe. That we keep family and friends close, and reduce our connections wherever possible to things which nurture us.

For the moment, I've switched off. I don't know how to get through the next space of years -- just retired; living on a fixed income; in my mid-seventies. I have a sense of blood in the air, and I hear a voice that says be ready to run.  I don't have it in me to become a refugee; can't make for the border, much as I might like to. And I have physical limits to the forms my resistance might take.

I do know I can't live with the predations of this fat, waddling, malignant narcissist the way I did the first time. I can't get up every morning and reflexively check the BBC or Guardian UK for an honest reporting of what he did while I slept.

Any insight I possess about what to do is subjective. We each live with one foot in the Cosmos and one foot on our dirty linoleum floor. I may have my own answer to basic questions but they only apply to me. I'm not arrogant enough to believe they'll work for anyone else.

Some time ago, a friend mentioned that the Dalai Lama was allegedly asked by a person who just bumped into him (at a hotel, or some public venue) what he felt the central tenet of Tibetan Buddhism to be. The Lama is supposed to have replied, " ' Just do your best.' "

I'm not a Buddhist, but I take the Lama's observation to suggest that Existence is too complicated for any person to say why they Are, and what the end results of their thoughts and actions will be. Be kind; act with compassion. Do the best you can. I'd like to aspire towards that -- so; works for me.

And, as a comparative comment on purpose and values, Albert Camus was at least an Agnostic. He believed in the fact of humankind's existence. For him, that fact was the only justification needed to make a demand for a better world -- and he wrote it in Occupied France, when the nazis still had their boots on the back of humanity's collective neck.

I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning. But ... it has no justification but humanity; hence we must be saved if we want to save the idea we have of life. 

With your scornful smile you will ask me: what do you mean by saving humanity? And with all my being I shout to you that I mean not mutilating us, and giving us a chance for the justice that humans alone can conceive.     

(Resistance, Rebellion and Death, 1944)

Humans deserve Justice on all levels works for me, too.

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America is about to collectively leap off a cliff into unknown political, and social, territory.  I don't believe it's a time to turn inward; we need to listen to the voice in the pit of our stomachs which says Fuck this; I vote No; you don't do this shit in my name, and we need to act. Collective is good -- in fact, essential -- but, now what?  Kleiner Mann -- was nun?

It's a real conundrum, deciding how you live your values. Everything I hear on podcasts or read online is a variation on "This analysis will explain why we lost" -- more circular argument over who was right and who controls the party, or academic analysis about what the election demographics means. I'm sure that will make a number of professional political wonks feel better, or at least useful.

The sense I get is of a vast, collective indrawing and holding of breath, as we wait for The Thing We Know Is Coming to happen. After it arrives, the values of The Duce and his pack of Orcs will be on full display. 

Then, we will have to do.  Our discussion, our focus needs to be around what. That's where our values will be reflected -- now, and for the rest of our lives. 

I understand that sounds like overly-dramatic hyperbole, but if you don't understand that we are living in a moment of high drama and historic import -- then good luck.  The question -- Quo Vadis? -- stands.

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Your Holiday Steerage Update For Third Class

 We Had A Good Run 

I've noticed a binary spectrum developing -- with friends; commentors and analysts in the media -- about the arrival of the nazis in January. It's one perspective, or another; there's not much middle ground.

One Perspective: Things won't be as bad as you think. "You got a lot of hyperbole going, there -- and and and and; y'know, that kind of thinking is; well it's just not helpful, that thinking. You're frightening people, you're scaring people. You know that? Scaring them. And no matter how much you hate the Trump people, don't call them nazis. That's an incorrect use of the term -- and why don't you capitalize 'nazi', as a Noun? Thought you knew better. Look: You're being a downer. It's a difficult time; if you can't be supportive, just shut up. Shut up."

The Other Perspective: It is exactly as bad as you think (a group that includes Mary Trump, who is in a position to know whether her uncle is a fascist and dead serious, or not). It's tough, playing Cassandra in a room full of people who want any reason to feel less afraid. And, Things could be even worse than you imagine.

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Now It's Done

So, I'll just say it: The United States of America we know is done. It's over. 

That long, persistent idea of a nation -- the one backed by the Constitution, that we studied in school; chronicled by Ken Burns in so many films; the place where we and our families were born and lived; the nation we volunteered (or were drafted) to serve; the place we counted on to be there every morning when we woke up because, at least here, there were limits. Most of us were Safe.

But, 'Safe' depends upon your race, gender, economics; choices; your place in the pecking order of society: George Floyd was not safe. Matthew Shepard, Jazzlyn Johnson, Pauly Likens were not safe. The children at Sandy Hook were not safe. The children abused by the team doctor at Ohio State, or in Catholic churches across America, were not safe. The families of Flint, Michigan (still) drinking lead-tainted water were not safe.

Even so -- in other societies, other countries, there might be armed troops in the streets; identification checkpoints. The press may be censored, muzzled. Mail and communications, monitored. Warrantless searches or raids on homes; arrest and imprisonment, or worse, for opposing the government. 

But in America, we had a Constitution. Our history rested on being a nation of laws. Until, we weren't.

We've always had crazy politicians -- but they were fringe, cartoonish characters, creeping around in the margins. The people we elected to keep America on an even keel (and stay out of our hair) spouted typical Democratic or Republican nonsense. 

But they would never allow The United States to become unstable and unpredictable, like those dreck countries in Asia or Africa, or dictatorships like Russia or China; North Korea. 

This was the United States of America, for fuck's sake; we're better than that. Until, we weren't. 

49% of people casting a ballot in the election voted for a demagogue. A fascist. He told everyone during the campaign what he would do, and showed everyone (as if the previous nine years weren't already proof) who he is. People voted for him with full knowledge: This is what Trump is. And they did it anyway.

49% of the United States put a gun to our collective head -- grinning a manic grin, shouting MAGA !!! MY LIFE FOR YOUUUUUUU !!!! -- and pulled the trigger.

1/20/25 is a red line in the calendar of history: Where we, Americans, ended. Please take note.

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Pass The Last Of The Schadenfreude, Please

As you sit down with family and friends over the next month -- consider all the others in past history who suspected they were on the edge of catastrophe, collapse; war; oppression; penury; mass suffering, but gathered together anyway: Peasants of Europe before the Hundred Years' or Thirty Years' wars; the Irish before the Famine; the French before financial collapse and Revolution; the Weimar Germans on Christmas Eve and over Hannukah in December, 1932.

And now, We, The People.  Us.  We're on the edge of... we don't know. We only know it will be bad.

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Americans sat down to Thanksgiving on Tuesday, November 20th, in 1941. On the 26th, by proclamation, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established it as a national holiday. Eleven days later, Japanese carriers reached their designated positions northwest of the Hawaiian Islands and launched the attack on Pearl Harbor.

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"Trumplandia, 'Tis For Thee"

So, our country, with its long and fabled history, much bad and some good, is finished. That America will not exist after 12:00 Noon on January 20th, 2025. "The United States" will be only a label.

Its new Owners should call it Trumplandia, because it won't stand for anything but the twisted, unquenchable greed and violent misogyny and narcissism which will run our lives from this point forward.

Someone once noted that the American Story is one cliffhanger episode after another. The Great Depression was an example: the worst financial collapse in U.S. history. It could have been the end of our Constitutional Republic -- but, at the last minute, we got FDR. It was the New Deal, and a global war, which lifted America out of it. 

The American story remains: How will they get out of this one? And, What next?

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Leave The Hopeism At Home, Yo

We have never had a dictator become President, not to mention controlling both Houses of Congress and a majority of That Court, before. Never in America have our politics -- our very lives -- been so openly and cynically manipulated by technology. Never have so few arrogant theocrats and technocrats spent billions of dollars so openly, to force their desires on so many.

Democrats, the political Left, will push back. Citizens will fight. It may be possible that this is a four-year, seminal period which America will emerge from battered but wiser, as if struck with a terrible disease and surviving.  It may be that We, The People, endure, fucked over as usual by wealth and power, but that in the end We Get Out Of This One. Maybe. 

We seem to have so much stacked against Us, The People. One thing is true: The shared idea of a nation we've had to carry us this far -- right up to January 20, 2025 -- is going to have to fundamentally change when and if we come out the other side of this. The bullying, the lying and violent greed of the Right needs to be kicked to the curb -- but Neoliberal Happytalk and Hopeism on the Left won't work, either.

When you have this very technocratic, 'Third Way' neoliberal approach, and sprinkle in some anti-corporate, anti-billionaire populism... then you're a rudderless ship. You're not communicating what you are about -- and when you don't have a North Star every single person can point to and say, 'this is what the party is about', then your enemies can portray you as whatever they want.

       --  Hasan Piker, 'Pod Save America'; November 27, 2024

America can't be ruled by a dictatorship -- whether by an individual, or the Proletariat. It isn't the way in our Culture-- as opposed to our Society, which changes more rapidly and dynamically.

Perhaps we need to experience a cruel and vicious politics, to feel unsafe in our own land, in order that We, The People will reject it -- now or ever again. 

Yesterday, they were ruffians / Today, they control our lives /

Tomorrow, they will be the keepers of the public lavatories.

--  Juvenal

Trump and his toadies, the pack of Billionaire tech Bros, do not care about you, or me, or anyone but themselves. America is their social engineering laboratory, now -- and they are literally drunk, gibbering with delight at their power. Americans, as Eeelon said, will "endure hardships". Oh, they can't wait.

I've been rereading various histories of France under the Occupation. I'd recommend it.

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It reminds me of the 1993 film from a Steven King novel, Needful Things: The devil (Max von Sydow) comes to Castle Rock, Maine, opens an antiques / curios shop, and in selling various enchanted items to town residents, sets them murderously against each other. It ends in chaos, flames; madness and death. "Hey," Lucifer tells J. T. Walsh, who calls to confess he's just killed his wife, "These things happen."

There's a scene where von Sydow, his face a manic grin, grips his hands together -- shaking with glee as he literally feeds on the energy of the evil he's set in motion; 'Ave Maria' plays in the background. A few townspeople, including the police chief (Ed Harris), fight back. Castle Rock is ravaged; people are dead, shaken, the damage done; but the devil is finally forced to leave.

Von Sydow's Satan -- Looking Very Much Like Good Ol' Fred Trump

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Shaking with glee at their perceived power: Perhaps this is where Trump and his Orcs are now. It may be possible that this moment, before they've even swaggered into the White House, is the Zenith -- that it all begins to fall apart for them from here. 

There's no way we can avoid what they intend to do. That the seeds of eventual failure are being sowed, now, can be a comforting prospect. Earlier today, I heard Mary Trump telling Molly Jong-Fast, "We'll get through this".  Maybe. 

Lee Miller's photo of a local nazi leader and family, having committed suicide, 1945;

One can only hope this is the future of our Fabled Leaders

We'll see.

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November 11th

 Absent Friends

You know who they are.  

And none of us went to Southeast Asia for this shit.

Mozart: Concerto For Clarinet and Orchestra; 2nd Movement, Adiago

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Absent Friends

You Know Who They Are

Last of the Old Unit just got a little smaller.

Mozart: Concerto For Clarinet and Orchestra; 2nd Movement, Adiago

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Dawn Of The Dead

 The Envy Of The World 

In The Newsroom series, there's an episode where the fictitious ACN network covers the 2012 elections. Before airtime, Charlie Skinner (Sam Waterston) , president of  the news division, asks for everyone's attention in the studio. On overhead monitors, Skinner shows a series of still photographs.

This is China -- people having their picture taken pretending to cast a vote [in a facsimile of an American polling station]. In India, they're waving [American] flags and having viewing parties of the coverage... In South Korea, they're watching an electoral map... Our elections are the envy of the world.

ACN was fictional. The photographs being shown were not. Our elections have been seen as a symbol of an America continually reaching for an ideal form of union, of society. It's the right to vote in a fair election, where We, The People, elect politicians who are supposed to move us toward that ideal society. Supposedly. Ideally.

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.

Hell:  San Francisco's Tenderloin, 2019.  It's no different in 2024.

At this juncture, my cynicism compels me to say Blow it out your ass, man; just walk six blocks downhill into the Tenderloin and tell me how ideal it all is. Check out the corrupt, money-fueled, Fuck-The-Peasants viciousness of our Tech Bro Oligarchs and our Gang-Of-Six justice system and tell me about perfection. 

Fair point. But both are true: America's elections are expressions of reaching for an ideal, and the priorities of many politicians being elected reflect corruption and degeneracy.

The majority of those narcissistic politicians are attracted to one political party -- and while we should keep that in mind, it's not entirely the point. That is worse.

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Stuff You Already Know

Votes in each municipality, county, and state are tabulated and results 'certified': election officials attest that all processes necessary to confirm those results were performed. Some Presidential elections have had questionable voting results -- but the overarching fairness, accuracy and impartiality of our elections has been a bedrock assumption in America for generations.

 In Presidential elections, state results drive the Electoral College process; Electors' votes, recorded on Certificates in each state, are delivered to the Congress. The Vice President accepts the Certificates before a joint session, reads the results, and the Senate certifies the totals.

That long chain of certifications -- cities and towns, to the states; to the Congress -- is a legal requirement, but mostly a formality, an afterthought, because of course we have rules and checks and balances. Of course it's fair. We're all Americans, for god's sake.

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After The Scalia Court appointed "Lil' Boots" Bush as leader in 2000, the Thugs wanted to ensure Forever Republican Rule. One method would be elimination of votes cast by Liberals, under the guise of "election integrity". Suddenly, the Thugs claimed voter fraud was epidemic.

Fat Karl, "The Architect": A Boot, Smashing Into A Human Face, Forever

Over the next twenty-four years, Red states adopted draconian and exclusionary ID requirements, purged voter rolls, created obvious gerrymandering; and groups were founded to organize voter suppression efforts. Funding for many of them came from the Kochs, and a half-dozen other Bundist billionaires.

"Election integrity" was the backdrop for Trump's absurd, delusional claims about the "stolen" 2020 election, which culminated in the January 6, 2021 attempted coup.

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The Third Reich Tiki Room At Charlottesville.

Death Cult  

The political and religious Right in America is a delusional death cult. Donald Trump is its figurehead -- a corrupt, narcissistic con artist. The cult has absorbed the GOP; it is the Republican party now.  It intends to force America to become a white supremacist, fascistic and theocratic state. Project 2025 details how that will happen.

On The Walkway To The Pavilion; Jonestown, Guyana; November 1978

But first, Trump must be elected. Or something. He was running against Biden, and LaCivita and Cheung -- The Smartest Guys In The Room -- told Trump yes, Leader; the election is in the bag. You are the strong, the all-wise. Trump smiled, and strutted, and preened and played golf -- taking mulligans, cheating; always the top score when he played on his golf course.

Then, suddenly, Biden dropped out -- and supported Kamala Harris, a younger, charismatic Black woman whose campaign solidified and hit the street within thirty-six hours. 

Everyone had expected a long, nasty public bar fight within the Democratic party if Biden left the ticket, but it was an astounding transition without any visible friction. And after just two weeks, polls and the vibe on the street are saying it's a much closer race -- possibly, a down-ballot Democratic Trifecta; the Presidency and both houses of Congress.

(Whether you like Harris or not; or see the election as Americans being fooled by a bourgeois political elite into voting for a non-fascist neoliberal -- a large number of people appear grateful, overjoyed at feeling any hope for the future in Harris' candidacy. Blame it on human nature, I guess.)

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Trumpo, Magic Murder Clown; August 8, 2024

Political Seppuku Will Be Televised

In Trump's hour-long self-parody whatever, broadcast from the Florida Reich Chancellery last week, he appeared old, muddled, and pale -- unbelievably, he wasn't wearing his signature skin bronzer. He took questions from the press but said nothing new; it was the same repetition of themes (immigrants, crime, economic collapse), grievances, victimhood, and lie after lie -- but his voice was up an octave; his throat was tighter. In addition to seeming confused, he sounded frightened.

Trump's pathological narcissism won't admit he could lose. His multiple criminal indictments have been dismissed or delayed, but aren't gone. Unless he returns to power, it's possible he will die in a prison infirmary, like Bernie Madoff.

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The death cult was jubilant, celebrating: after fifty years, they are within inches of fulfilling their dream of controlling America -- once Trump is elected. The agendas of dozens of Rightist political and religious organizations are in Project 2025, and they all want those agendas realized.

This Photo Makes Me Ashamed To Be Over 70 Like Nothing Else Can.

Through the falling snow, they can see the spires of the Kremlin. They've taken all but a few thousand yards of that city on the Volga. So much is at stake. The anticipation of victory, revenge, domination for the glory of somebody's god, after so long is palpable. 

 -- then, suddenly, Kamala Harris' Morning-Star rise. Trump is apparently disintegrating. In the blink of an eye everything has changed: the death cult leaders are angry, confused: What do you mean, we're losing??

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Your Continuing Freedom May Be In The Hands Of Bubbah

My concern is that, if Trump loses, the death cult feels risking a second coup is worth it -- What have we got to lose?? Trump will support it -- he approved the coup planned in 2020 -- but the stakes are higher in this election. The death cult may feel they'll never have as good an opportunity, and pull out all the stops. Trump has to win or his world collapses.

The 2024 coup would follow a path similar to the 2020 claims of election interference and fraud. But before, Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell filed 70 separate legal actions, trying to overturn Biden's win. All seventy were dismissed for an astounding lack of evidence -- That Court wouldn't even hear an appeal on so flimsy a case. That can't happen this time.

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In early June, Rolling Stone reported that a Republican county election official in Georgia, who has worked for prominent election denial groups, filed a lawsuit to allow them the discretion to refuse to certify election results based on nothing but their judgement.

On August 4th, Rolling Stone also reported "nearly 70 pro-Trump conspiracists are serving as election officials in key battleground counties" across the U.S., and were ready to attempt a "mass refusal to certify their county's election results" in November. They have no proof of fraud being planned, no defined threat; they just know it will happen. So they want to refuse certification, in advance, and yes, this is as insane as it sounds.

States do have rules to resolve election disputes -- but after results are counted and certified. It provides a baseline for an investigation. But Georgia's Board of Elections has voted to provide county officials in Georgia with the power to launch "reasonable inquiries" into election integrity -- before vote totals are certified -- and what 'reasonable inquiry' means was not defined. 

I Understand That The Film "Bubbah Ho-Tep" Was Released 

On The Same Date As The November 2016 Election, But That's Coincidental. Right?

Some states have regulations which prevent or mitigate these situations. But if voting results in several counties are not certified, the statewide results can't be, either. This gives the appearance of substance to charges of fraud where there is none. It's Alice-through-the-looking-glass logic.

One of the legal actions will find its way on expedited appeal to That Court -- where the Gang of Six will do their duty to an Opus Dei god and find in favor of Donald Trump. As they already have. Twice.

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If Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are elected on November 5th, it's not over.

The death cult has come too far to lose. There is even some possibility (who knows how much) that, if Trump's return to power can't be forced through a Supreme Court decision, proponents of a violent attack on the government -- the Michael Flynns, Eric Princes and their mercenaries; Steve Bannons and Roger Stones -- may act. And then we are in truly uncharted territory.

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I Lift Up Mine Eyes To The Hills, Not Disposed To Mercy

 Yet One More Barking Rant To Begin An End-Times Laugh Riot Week

Mikey Johnson Reminds: Church Attendance Is Mandatory

This Might Replace Rodin's 'The Thinker'

This post seems incomplete, like two relatively unconnected essays thrown up on the wall which stuck, barking about the Middle East, and the omnipotent, they-are-always-with-us Rich. You may think this is low-hanging fruit, but it's not.

Not that it's important; if this blog's observations had any impact in the public discussion of serious issues, then this post would have more meaning. But, it's only unsourced opinion by one individual with no agency beyond their own existence. 

I am as singular as, and no more important than, any of the dead uncovered at Pompeii whose names we'll never know, all events and actions and experiences in their lives -- for what? -- unknown, lost.

Some of my observations offered will, in all probability, cause the few readers of this blog to say yeah, eyeroll, whatever the fuck, but this is what happens here in downtown Earth. Be well.

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   I Have Wanted To Say This

Listen to me:  Fuck all you motherfucking fucks; you murdering fuckers you.

The Middle East's history is woven in the interactions of generations -- families, clans, tribes; all part of religious sects, now become modern political movements and governments. This geography is steeped in misogyny, cruelty; art, science and spirituality; and blood feuds millennia old.

Comedian Don Rickles inadvertently summed it up on his first album, a live recording of his heckling standup routine in Las Vegas, which I heard in 1969: "What's your name, sir -- Habib? ... You got to laugh about people, Habib. I've met you before, haven't I? That's right, you hung my uncle." 

Rickles' joke was a rough equivalent of the history of Palestine and Israel, which was just 20 years old, then. It hadn't even been a year since the 'Six-Day' War, where Israeli troops occupied the West Bank, the Golan, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai.

The casino crowd on the Strip laughed at Don's joke -- but Habib might easily have pointed the same joke at Rickles ("Yeah; didn't you hang my uncle when you took his house and orchards?"), and few would have understood. It was all happening so far away, and Vietnam had everyone's attention. Including mine.

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Everyone knows what happened in Israel on October 7, 2023. It was more than a massacre by Hamas; it was an obscenity. And everyone knows what happened next in Gaza, and what is still happening; more monstrous brutalities. War crimes were committed and are still being committed.

And all the participants -- Hamas, Hezbollah; Islamic State, Iran; the Houthis, the Saudis; the IDF, the Israeli government; the United States government; Netanyahu, Biden; members of Knesset and Congress -- are guilty.  No one is clean. 

I condemn every threat, every act of violence, of thuggery, viciousness; every calculated political decision allowing more violence and more suffering to continue: No one is clean. To argue that one side is more monstrous, more brutal than the other, is the comparative mathematics of lunacy.

It has to stop. The maiming and the killing, the abuse and enforced suffering. Stop bombing, stop launching rockets, stop seizing territory, stop starving refugees. You are all complicit. And questions of land, of statehood, of security, can't be addressed so long as anyone raises their voice or a hand in any way against any Other.

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During the 2006 Israeli incursion into southern Lebanon, I wrote a post on a still-new Daily Kos, then republished it here six years later during another spate of regional violence. You may consider its conclusions simplistic and naive. I would argue the horror in Israel and Gaza passed beyond nuance, rhetoric and sophistication long ago.

There is a point where the amount of death and misery is so great that nothing matters, except that it ends. And damn anyone willing to sacrifice more children, use all the blood-feud deaths of generations, to justify more violence.

... look into that child's eyes. ... Look at the expression written there: Where are you taking us? Why are you doing this? What will happen to me?

Will you tell them, when you put your pistol to their head, burn them alive, drop your 500-pound bomb on their encampment, kill their siblings and friends in front of them, that it's for a greater good? For the glory of a faith? Because your wife or husband, brother or sister, your parent or cousins or friends, were killed and revenge demands that now this child's life has to end?

I do not care about the political or religious "dimension" in all this. I swear to you because I know: a dead child is an utterly final answer to all the puking, screeching human argument justifying our species' ability to commit murder. It all must stop -- followed by a final resolution to all questions of Palestinian statehood and Israeli security. Period. 

No one is clean; and It has to end. Stop killing the children, then make peace --  because the alternative is nihilism and obscenity, the blood-feud, forever. Agree and then act. It really has to be that simple, because every other convoluted attempt at peace has twisted around the axle of pride, history and hate. Enough.

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   Bring My Car, And Be Quick You Fucking Proles

I'll just say it: American / Western society is essentially owned by a vicious, arrogant layer of wealth -- call them the 0.001 % -- principally Old Wealth, maintained in the same families for generations. I've actually been around these folk, a bit, and they are just as venal and clueless, as well of course I should have this as I wish it arrogant, as if you'd lifted a cultural stereotype from a comedy-of-manners and dropped them into Real Life. They truly exist.

They own multiple homes, in neighborhoods which, if you don't live in them, you'd better have a verifiable reason to be there. They move in a cyclical progression from home to home, seasonal vacations at resorts and private hotels. Their children attend preparatory schools, a tight circle of European and American universities; eventually, sliding into sinecures at law and investment firms. They are members of clubs we wouldn't be allowed to join. They do not know how to build a fire, make coffee, set up a tent or cook a filet of sole: they hire others to do that sort of thing.

Most families know (or are at least aware of) each other. They intermarry. Their children grow up with each other. They are supported by accountants, financial and investment advisors, personal assistants, tax and estate attorneys, physicians and surgeons, tailors, chefs and valets. Their children walk in comfort and anonymity along the same private, manicured paths as their predecessors in generations before them.

Within their class, maintaining their family's fortunes is the critical priority ("You don't love it as I do," Lord Grantham explains to his cousin as they regard Downton Abbey. "But I am merely a steward of all this"). There's also a certain amount of social Darwinism between players, a jockeying for position: It's Edith Wharton and John Cheever with a touch of Voltaire (see "Discrete Charm Of The Bourgeoise", and The Ruling Class).

They tolerate the Zucks, the Musks, the Jobs' and Bezos' and Thiels and Andreesens; all the Tech Bro billionaires, as nouveau riche arrivistes; pool boys, waiters and office workers who somehow struck it rich. Not the right sort -- no history, no breeding- -- but, they can afford to live well, and, if the past is any guide, eventually they and their money will disappear. Or, they'll be around for a few generations and finally become acceptable. 

They have serious class solidarity: depend on it.  Even if Claus von Bülow appeared to have attempted to murder his wife, members of their class might disapprove, but would "support the side", "maintain common cause" against a greater mass of humanity: We are the Owners, and Fuck the Peasants (see 'The Draughtsman's Contract').

These persons are not accountable under any law in the same way, or to the same extent, that you or I are. They don't wait in line, don't submit to passport control or customs checks; aren't required to appear in court for all but the most serious charges (if they appear at all). They are anonymous to all but each other.

And collectively, they own you whether you believe it, accept it, or not.

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   You Are Pwned -- A Dream Coda

Years ago, I had a dream which stands out in memory -- because I don't often dream with details that I recall so completely. 

I was some kind of mountaineering guide, taking wealthy persons up -- not Everest, but some similar peak. I was "inside" myself in this dream (sometimes dreams allow you see yourself in 'camera view'), looking out on a snow-covered slope -- a right triangle of pure white, from upper left to lower right -- against a sky of deep Cobalt blue.

A man in his late twenties / early thirties stood a few feet in front of me, wearing an orange parka with the hood pulled back. He had a light stubble of beard, curly, reddish-blonde hair, and wore a pair of aviator-style sunglasses. He was completely at ease, smiling, and spoke with an accent (French, I remembered). He wasn't arrogant or emphatic with his delivery, but matter-of-fact, as if describing the weather.

"I will tell you how it is," he said. "My family is thirteen hundred years old. One of my ancestors was  knighted by Charlemagne. We've survived plagues, wars, financial collapse, revolutions, occupation. We've had our black sheep, our idiots -- but mostly, we have made fortunes and passed them down to the next generation. We've been good at it, and lucky. 

"If you can't trace your family back more than a few generations? I don't care. You've always worked for pay -- but maybe you get lucky, win some lottery, and your children inherit that money? I don't care. In one, maybe two generations, it will be gone, absorbed into banks, financial houses, and by taxes. Perhaps my family owns some of those financial houses.

"We own forests and mines. We own companies" -- he waved at me with one hand -- "Maybe you have even worked for us. But some day, you will be dead, and that will be the end for you. Your name will be forgotten, as if you and everyone in your family line before you had never existed. My family will still be here.

"And if that's unhappy for you, if it makes you angry, I don't care," he said, and smiled again. "And that is how things are."

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Reprint Heaven: Brutality

 The Normalization Of The Night World
(From June, 2022: Still meaningful today as it was in the olden times.)

Ken McElroy's Chevy Pickup, Elm street; Skidmore, Missouri; July 10, 1981

My favorite opening in a short story is T. Coraghessen Boyle's 1984 "The Hat": They sent a hit squad after the bear. It's really a story about people caught in a cul-de-sac of life, marginal at best, and not a large Ursine animal just doing its Bear Thing -- but I dare you to pass on reading a story with a hook like that, just to find out where it would lead.

This doesn't have much to do with the little screed which follows. Oh, maybe a little -- I'm in my own corporate / retirement merry-go-round cul-de-sac at the moment, wondering when They will send a hit squad after America; how long the current precarious balance of all things will last. Who knows.

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The population of Skidmore, in Nodaway County, Missouri, as captured in the 1980 National Census, was 437 people.  One of them was Kenneth Rex McElroy, born 1934; according to Wikipedia, the next to last of 16 children, born to a dirt-poor, migrant tenant-farming couple. At age 15, still in 8th grade, he dropped out of school "and quickly established a local reputation as a cattle rustler, small-time thief, and womanizer."

McElroy worked on occasion, stealing and selling to fences when he wasn't; barely drifting along at the edge, smack in the middle of flyover country. He had a reputation in Skidmore as a rough customer, someone you shouldn't cross. 

Reportedly, while working on a local construction site, an iron girder fell and grazed him on its way down; he suffered skull fractures and other injuries. He healed -- but some in Skidmore believed the injuries, particularly to the head, changed him. 

The Grendel Of Nodaway County; His Grave Marker Says, "Fearless... Compassionate"

McElroy was already a town tough, but then he went further: he became proactively vicious and cruel -- someone who went after people, because he could. Because he wanted to. Because it seemed to give him pleasure to do so.

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For the next twenty-plus years, McElroy was the the monster in the Corn of Nodaway County.  He was suspected of stealing "grain, gasoline, alcohol, antiques, and livestock", and was charged 21 times with various offenses. McElroy was helped by a clever, not very principled defense attorney, Richard Gene McFadin.

Reputed to have connections to organized crime in Kansas City, McFadin did the legal work. McElroy terrorized witnesses against him, or members of juries; several times, he put rattlesnakes in the Rural Route mailboxes of his targets. And -- su-rprise, su-prise -- suddenly, witnesses' memories faltered and became hazy, or complainants withdrew charges, or if matters ever got as far as a courtroom, juries hung when some members claimed they just couldn't reach a decision.

Rape, theft; extreme physical violence -- McElroy did more or less whatever he wanted. There is plenty of reporting on McElroy's reign of terror in Skidmore. He was a living Id, untethered and loose.  Some stories leave you shaking your head, wondering just how this violent, narcissistic sociopath was allowed to get away with it all for over 20 years.

Example: McElroy was married to his second wife when he met Trena McCloud, a twelve-year-old girl. He raped her repeatedly. The McClouds told him they wanted his 'attentions' to end. McElroy didn't like that, and so burned the McCloud family home to the ground and shot their dog.

Trena moved into McElroy's house, living there with him and his then-wife, Alice. According to Wikipedia, "McElroy divorced Alice and married Trena in order to escape charges of statutory rape, to which she was the only witness. Sixteen days after Trena gave birth, both she and Alice fled... McElroy tracked them down and brought them back. He then returned to Trena's parents' home when they were away and, once again, shot the family dog and burned the[ir] house down."

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In 1980, McElroy shot the 70-year-old owner of Skidmore's only grocery store, for accusing one of McElroy's daughters of shoplifting. Just --  bang -- shot him. The man survived.  And, McElroy was finally convicted of a crime... second-degree assault. The jury specified the maximum sentence: two years in State prison. 

His attorney, McFadin, had McElroy released, pending appeal -- unbelievable, given McElroy's history of witness and juror intimidation. Predictably, he began harassing the grocer at his home, and any Skidmore citizens he encountered. None of McElroy's previous legal issues had gotten this far -- and possibly, he sensed whatever bully's magic charm of invincibility he may have possessed was disappearing. 

On July 9, 1981, he walked into Skidmore's local bar, carrying a Garand M1 with a bayonet, and threatened to kill the old grocer. Sheriffs were called; McElroy was taken into custody, his weapon impounded -- but again, he was released.

Parked In Front Of The Bar; July 10, 1981-

A Reenactment, In Skidmore, For Television Documentary

On July 10, McElroy drove into Skidmore with his wife, Trena, in his maroon-and-white Chevy pickup truck and parked on Elm street, the town's main drag, directly in front of the bar. He went into the town grocery store -- where he had shot its owner -- while his wife waited in the truck.

While McElroy was in the store, a group of Skidmore's men held a quick, impromptu meeting inside the bar. Other residents in the immediate downtown area had seen or were told of McElroy's arrival, and began to gather on the street. There was a sense something was about to go down.

McElroy walked out of the grocery, unwrapping the pack of cigarettes he'd purchased, and got into the driver's seat of his truck. The men came out of the bar and confronted McElroy. Several, apparently, were armed. McElroy, still sitting behind the wheel of his truck, casually lit a cigarette, appearing completely unconcerned.

Suddenly, and for the next twenty seconds -- which I can tell you is an eternity when discharging firearms is concerned -- several armed individuals shot McElroy. He was struck multiple times by .22 rifle rounds (a poor man's gun, for hunting small game, Foxes, Coyotes or other predators) from at least two different weapons. 

Apparently, McElroy took some time to die. He bled out, slumped in his truck. No one made any attempt to help, or call for emergency medical assistance. When the shooting began, Trena had jumped out of the truck in a panic; she was unharmed.

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As investigators worked the crime scene, canvassed, identified and interviewed, every witness to the shooting said the same thing: They didn't see who fired any weapon, had no idea -- as if, collectively, everyone present had suffered a crucial erasure of memory at the same time.

McElroy's wife, Trena, claimed to have recognized one of the shooters -- but they denied it, there were no other witnesses; Trena's testimony alone was not a strong enough case for prosecution. 

The same witnesses told the same story to County Sherriff's detectives, State investigators, and eventually the FBI.  Richard McFadin, the attorney who had helped McElroy to walk free on so many prior charges, said "the town got away with murder". 

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Skidmore's population as of 2020 had fallen to 247.  To date, no one has been charged in connection with McElroy's death. The original DA and chief investigator in the case have retired. McElroy's wife,  his attorney McFadin, and a number of witnesses have passed away. The case is still open. And for almost 42 years, no one who was on Elm street in Skidmore that July afternoon has said a single thing.

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Uvalde.

In America we are witnessing the blowback of a culture awash in guns, in hatred, in insane and illogical ideas about nearly everything, broadcast eagerly 24 hours a day by the political Right's private propaganda stream, its special opinion-makers.

We're watching a country where the political Left is marked by indecision and learned helplessness, by complicity with the same corporate interests and wealthy Oligarchs.

And, the political Right's rhetoric continues to become more shrill, more apocalyptic, by the day -- talk about "taking back" the country, before guns are taken away, before the liberals / gays / unchristian / colored persons and immigrants / socialists destroy America. 

They attempted to overthrow the government of the United States in January, 2021. They want to try again. It isn't guns that someone is coming for; the Right wants your soul.  This isn't hyperbole and it isn't exaggeration.

At the same time, Rightist-dominated state governments and their Rightist governors pass laws they know will be appealed to their Supreme Court, secure in the knowledge that whatever challenge to existing Lib-Socialist law will be taken up, and affirmed by a slate of second-rate, rightist legal hacks appointed for life.  With the fervor of the 'christian' zealots they are, they can't wait for their day, their chance to do god's work.

America and its citizens are being cowed, and bullied. The Right has decided if it wants to burn down your home and shoot your dog, they will. And no one is coming to your aid.

A nation's government which can't govern, a society which can't maintain basic public safety and human rights, is five minutes from being overthrown. Ask the Royal French bureaucracy in 1789. Ask the Duma. Ask the Cambodian government in 1975. Ask the Weimar Republic's Reichstag. 

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In the larger world, Western democracies were more concerned with making money -- making a world safe for the corporate interests, globally: a neoliberal New World Order, wonderful for business and the rising Oligarch class. Not so much for the little people. But, who cared.

The sages of the West believed the assumed stability of a post-WW2, post-Soviet world would be forever. Hitler and Stalin were dead; so was Mao. No one wanted to go back to the world on September 1, 1939. War was a thing we had tamed. Dictators could be dealt with through sanctions, economic coercion. 

NATO was just one method of maintaining the nation-state structure to support corporate business -- but the day of military force had passed, unless something happened in one of the shithole countries: Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia; North and Central Africa; Afghanistan. 

And if it did, said the businessmen gathering at Davos, we don't care. No one is crazy enough to mount a major military conflict to grab territory and resources. This isn't 1938 or 1939, after all.

Trump Is A Fucking Tool.  But, Then; So is Sad Vlad.

But, Putin was crazy enough. He nursed a set of historical grievances which sound as delusional as the disinformation pouring out of the Murdochs' media. After more than a decade of coordinated manipulation and misinformation aimed at the West, Putin pushed the envelope in Georgia, in the Crimea. NATO and the West did little, or nothing. 

Europe was fractured, distracted by Brexit and the fumblings of the UK's Clown-Prime Minister. America was consumed with the predations of its own Clown-leader, then an attempted coup -- and above it all, a pandemic. Putin felt he could take Ukraine. The West could do nothing; the Ukrainians had elected a fucking comedian as their President! And like a bully in central Missouri long ago, Putin did what he wanted.

The stability in the world everyone has taken for granted is over. That of itself is a huge challenge to the neoliberal New World Order.  It isn't clear what will replace it. That it's coming at the same time as effects of climate deterioration are beginning to make themselves felt is rancid whipped cream on the proverbial Shit Pie.

The bullies have always been with us. They've just made it impossible to ignore them any longer. They aren't going away. Like it or not, we are going to have to deal with them individually, and collectively. One way or another.  And how that happens, or doesn't, is the story of the next months and years.

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MEHR, MIT DIE FRAGE:  Hey! Did you notice how many people in this story had last names that began with "Mc"? Pretty wild, eh?

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