The 2018 Debate

I have recently spent time considering what this 2018 political season will be focusing on. Disappointingly, the target is likely to be the usual…manipulating emotions. Trying to appeal to reason is a righteous pursuit, but like choosing good eats, taste usually wins out over nutrition. It’s all about motivating those only marginally paying attention.

Those of us who are continually dumbfounded by the three ring circus performed by the Trump Administration are nearly in a panic over our desire to bring some normalcy back to American governance. Motivation to neutralize Trump is a given and flipping Congress is the answer.

Starting with the Woman’s March in January 2017 to the teen’s marching for gun control this spring (and all the exhaustion in between), the Democratic candidates need only get out in front of the bandwagon. I’ll be joining with time and money.

Now what about the Republicans? 

The Obama hating, Fox only, Trump loyalists are solid, but they really only represent a minority of the electorate in most districts, including those districts which are generally deemed Conservative.  What are Republicans going to use to detract and deflect attention away from The Donald? What are their big tickets for firing the emotions of the Center Right?  I’ll tell you one.

Like the rise of dormant Cicadas, the debate over abortion will once again take center stage.

You might recall that during the 2016 national election the issue of abortion was barely touched. Trump and those running on his lead didn’t need it, or perhaps even want it given Trump’s history on the subject. They instead conjured the specter of rabid immigrants, “crooked lock-her-up Hillary”, and fake non-Fox news to marshal the troops. They had a tsunami of bogus social media hits to fire up the faithful (with a little help from das Comrades).  It obviously worked.

Not so easy this go-around.

The reason Republicans will fall back on their Old Faithful is that there is little else. Even Fiscal Conservatism has tanked under the massive deficits the Republicans have passed. Also, it is because Conservatives have successfully molded the abortion debate into a slam dunk. To date they have won the war of verbal identification and you can expect they’ll be going back to that bank for further withdrawals.

Democrats had better pay attention because this issue electrifies too many people who vote on this one purely emotional issue without regard to health, safety, Economy, and every other issue critical to functioning government.

Even in the general discussion the camps on both sides routinely refer to it as “anti-abortion” and “pro-abortion”.  In that debate the Democrat has lost even before reaching the podium. The fact is that everyone is “anti-abortion”.  No woman gets pregnant because she wants to have an abortion. 

The Right to Life people don’t want that fact brought into the debate.  The reality of a common purpose, essentially the overall reduction of abortions, is antithetical to what Right to Life supporters are actually (often unwittingly) pursuing: the righteous satisfaction of emotional confrontation. 

Republicans politicians know this and have been cashing in on it for decades. Democrats better begin understanding that it works.

Democratic candidates around the Nation need to stop ignoring this issue. They should embrace the issue pointing out that the conflict and lack of dialogue itself is the most “pro-abortion” aspect of it. Right to Life supporters are more than equally responsible for unnecessary pregnancy terminations.

Democratic candidates need to respect the tragedy of abortion and recognize that those choosing to oppose abortion personally have a legitimate emotional reaction to it. They also need to support common sense restrictions on abortion such as limiting non-health related abortions to the period of non-viability (currently the first two trimesters or 6 months).

Perhaps then Conservatives (especially Christian Conservatives) might begin to accept that legally penalizing abortions has never worked from the time humans first figured out abortions were possible. Rather they only restricted abortions for poor women, who either accepted their fate or went to back alleys to terminate the pregnancy and possible themselves.

They also might drop their inane arguments against contraception or their hypocritical judgments opposing sex generally. Both deserve a big Charlie Brown GOOD GRIEF!

If Right to Life Conservatives want to make a difference and reduce the number of abortions then they should start working with those who want to provide education, health care, and contraception to young and poor women. Progressive Democrats better get ready to provide that olive branch or be the victims of mindless manipulated emotion.

Lacking Faith

The “War to end all wars” reached its conclusion in November 1918 and was ratified by treaty on June 28, 1919. In less than 20 years the world would be embroiled again in a conflict exponentially greater and deadlier.  Since WWII ended there has been no world alliances fermenting military conflict for 72 years and counting.

There is no single reason for the disparity in what happened then and what happened since. However, there are consistent themes that provide important explanations for that disparity, and also for many regional violent engagements that have occurred since 1945. Donald Trump, for whatever reasons, embodies one today.

The outstanding difference between the aftermaths of the two World Wars of the last century was the treatment of vanquished. After WWI penalties and punitive controls were mandated, designed to restrict the losers (primarily Germany) from gaining military and economic strength. After WWII the losers (primarily Germany, Italy, and Japan) were aided by the Allies to strengthen their economies. This was accomplished largely through the support of regulated free enterprise.

Where that emphasis did not occur, such as in Eastern Europe, resulted in the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union and is prima fascia evidence of what best controls authoritarian adventurism and tyranny…prosperity.

The lesson of the two World Wars, the evolution of Germany, Italy, and Japan, and the protracted and failed conflicts in North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, and Afghanistan are confirmation that Donald Trump and the hawks he has surrounded himself with are the embodiment of historical ignorance.

Ironically, they, along with the Republican Party, also show a pitiful lack of faith in the one human endeavor they view almost religiously, namely Free Enterprise.

The Iran “Deal”, an agreement known as the JCPOA, was designed to put nuclear weapon development on hold in Iran. It also allowed economic development in Iran without foreign impediment.  That aspect, Iranian economic growth, was a main factor Trump (with the brain of a small weasel) used as a reason to scuttle the deal. I believe just the opposite to be true.

If nuclear weapons are to be viewed as unnecessary two things must occur. There can be no legitimate threat of nuclear attack and there must be a powerful economic interest by a nation’s population to resist conflict.  Evidence Australia, which was well along the path to building nuclear weapons. It ended its development lacking both those motivations.

Iran, an educated nation by Middle Eastern standards, has shown a drift toward moderate behavior in its internal governance even during the short period since sanctions have been lifted, evidenced by the reelection of Hassan Rouhani as President, even with the active resistance of the hard line Islamic faction supported by the current Ayatollah.

Nothing neutralizes radical religious belief more than prosperity.

Over a 12 year period of growing prosperity there would be more likelihood of a Iran losing interest in developing nuclear weapons. However, a nation with reasonable resources and allies (like oil and Russia) and a destitute population, use to sacrifice, would have fertile ground for unification against a common external enemy.

Trump's actions will only harden radical control over the Iranian people. If the US wants a true nuclear free Middle East it should start by requiring the participation of Israel in denuclearization.

Instead Trump looks to North Korea as his path to adoration while trashing the Middle East.  To the chant Nobel Nobel Nobel by his uneducated, uniformed, and misguided followers, he said, “…what did I have to do with (bringing peace) to Korea?….How about everything”. Whatever happens in North Korea over the decades will also depend on prosperity, but it isn’t going to happen during Trump’s watch.

Kim Jong-un might agree to many things, especially if it results in the removal of the American military from the Korean peninsula.  What we won’t see is any on the ground verification of whatever North Korea might agree to.  If Donald Trump wants to take credit for “everything that happens” it will be justified by the disgraceful way this buffoon of a President can be manipulated by his own narcissistic ego.

The Korean Caper

Foreign policy from the American perspective, in the era of Trump, requires the merging of two often incongruous points: what we see and what we know. It begs the question, how reliable are our eyes and ears?

Yesterday we saw a form of détente being exercised between North and South Korea. Today we will hear about a significant role the US (and more specifically D. Trump) played in putting together what is being billed as the end of the 70 year old Korean War. Such an accomplishment, with additional overtones of reducing future armed conflict on the Korean peninsula is of a level that starts Nobel Peace Prize speculation.

We also saw Mike Pompeo pictured with Kim Jong-un last month. What was going on there? It all looks so…well, progressive. This is made especially true following the reintroduction into the American fear machine of nuclear holocaust, made particularly vivid by videos of Hawaiian citizens running amuck in paradise.

Okay then…so what do we know?

We know that North Korea has survived for three generations as a fully authoritarian regime. Kim is viewed by the majority of North Koreans essentially as a deity, as was his father and grandfather.  We know that even with a compromised economy it has been able to successfully develop both nuclear weapons and delivery systems. 

We know that since the end of military conflict in the early 1950s the US has been the target of national hostility, loathing, and a useful tool for North Korean national unity. America is to Kim what the Jews were to Hitler.

We know that Kim is 35 years old (or 34 or 36 depending on the source) and it is reasonable to believe that he has every intention of keeping his job until death, as has been the family tradition.  He could easily have 50 years left to his term, so whatever game he may be playing you can assume it’s the long game.

We also know he is ruthless, given the public assassinations and known political gulags. Benevolence is not in his wheelhouse. Just ask the Warmbier family. It is meaningless that he likes to listen to electropop or watch basketball.

We know that the Trump administration has demonstrated a type of political pragmatism that more resembles pinball ambiguity than pinpoint precision.  The haphazard turnover in Administration leadership is nowhere more evident than in the State Department with the Tillerson efforts to completely dismantle it like an unprofitable corporate acquisition.

We know that child-like rhetoric has been Trump’s response to North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic successes. We also know that Trump is playing a short game (a fact that’s essentially true for most in American politics), and given his erratic behavior toward the legal woes he faces, it’s likely his preference is a very short game.

So if what we see doesn’t mesh with what we know, where does that take us?

Here should be the givens: Kim Jong-un is not going to denuclearize his regime. It is a carrot that will never get within a yard of the donkey’s nose. It makes absolutely no sense for an authoritarian government to give up the only ace in its hand.

What Kim wants is the US out of South Korea, expand his relationship with China, Russia, and, probably, Vietnam to keep the US out of the Yellow Sea and much of the Sea of Japan. He wants reduced influence by the US over South Korea and he can wait years, maybe decades to make it happen.

 By normalizing relations (trade, exchange etc.) with South Korea and dangling unification along with denuclearization he is hoping to get South Korea to be the landlord to evict the Americans.  Trump, with his game limited to a couple of years at best (maybe far less…go Mueller), will jump on any bandwagon which he thinks will make him a candidate for Nobel status.

As incongruous as it might appear, it may end up being the right course of action.

The only weapon I believe to be useful in undermining Kim Jong-un’s iron hold over the North Korean people (& policy) is prosperity.  Perhaps in post-Trump America we can figure a way to be a leading force in advancing North Korea’s economy instead of the continual militarily adversarial position we have taken for 70 years.  

It is obvious Korean unification will never happen until the two Koreas look essentially alike. Let’s work toward making them both look like South Korea.

Letting Flicka Rest in Peace?

The phrase Beating a Dead Horse is 150 years old, and for good reason. Despite the brutal image it creates by current standards, its relevance (and resilience) lies with the reality that everyone has engaged in the futility of pursuing something that cannot come to be. 

For those challenged by obvious similes, its origin comes from the pointlessness of vigorously attempting to make a horse move after it has expired. Anyone not pleading guilty to occasionally engaging in this human foible I believe your UFO is double parked.

The problem clearly is due to the beater not being able to recognize that the horse is dead. So is the case with my fixation on something that appears so perceptible to me yet seems to gain no traction in the court of public opinion. 

Once again, for the fourth time over the past two years, I am writing about Donald Trump’s mental illness.  Will it be just another sweet nothing sent across desert air or worse, the flogging of a poor animal who only wants to graze in the great beyond?

For anyone who has experienced, first hand, the behavior of someone with a Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and possibly researched that disorder in order to deal with the relationship, they should be able to see that Trump is so inflicted. Furthermore, they should understand, with reasonable ease, the actions he has taken and confidently predict those actions yet to be inflicted on a weary nation. It explains everything Trump.

Anti-Trump pundits and supporters alike run an entire gamut of explanations on why this man has done what he has, why he acts the way he does, and what motivates has actions.  “He’s a liar”, “he’s a tell-it-like-it-is businessman”, “he’s immoral”, “he’s a counter-puncher”, “he’s a racist”, “he’s a Conservative patriot”, “he’s an authoritarian”, “he’s a family man”, “he’s a womanizer”, “he’s a deal maker”, “he’s ignorant”, and so on.

The commentators we hear daily are like doctors who reflect confidently on the symptoms that are causing distress but never touch on the underlying disease.

NPD is not new, and although Narcissistic behavior is common, a Narcissistic Personality Disorder is not. The disorder creates in the inflicted individual behaviors they can’t control.

NPD is as much defined by the impairment created by the behavior as it is the characteristics.

Here is a common list of characteristics of NPD which you can retrieve from multiple sources. This list comes from Mayo Clinic’s website:

Has an exaggerated sense of self-importance

Has a sense of entitlement and requires constant, excessive admiration

Expects to be recognized as superior even without achievements to warrant it

Exaggerates achievements and talents

Is preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance

Believes they are superior and can only associate with equally special people

Belittles or looks down on people they perceive as inferior

Expects unquestioning compliance with their expectations

Takes advantage of others to get what they want

Has an inability to empathize or recognize the needs and feelings of others

Is envious of others and believe others envy them

Behaves in an arrogant manner, coming across as conceited, boastful and pretentious

These characteristics (which all need not apply to be considered having a NPD) are not the most important aspect of the disorder. The real problem is that reality for the NPD patient is almost entirely subjectively resourced.  A person such as Donald Trump does not view the world external to himself as having objective truth.

More telling than the countless untruths and inane actions are the many small absurdities such as denying the crowd size of his predecessor’s inauguration or saying he created the phrase prime the pump. It is the reason a person with an NPD cannot admit that they are wrong, because to do so would contradict their subjective understanding of truth.

This I believe makes Trump a far more sympathetic individual than the Progressive pundits like to describe him. However, I also believe it makes him far more dangerous and heightens the necessity to remove him from office.

Because the objective world is constantly contradicting the subjective world Donald sees as truth it is inevitable that he will become increasingly paranoid. We have already seen this evolution taking place. He will perceive conspiracies everywhere affecting him directly, instead of those he frequently observed in his past from a distance. 

As I predicted a year and a half ago, those closest to him would be targeted first. So it has been unceasingly. Worse than that is the likelihood that those wanting to keep their positions will give him no counsel. It is a tragedy that Republican lawmakers are unwilling to address the lunacy that parades before them in their desire to retain power. Such neutralizes the effectiveness of our Constitution.

There is no good outcome from his remaining in office, as someone with a NPD simply cannot accept an objective reality and therefore cannot accept his own dysfunction.

It is imperative that Congress is flipped from Republican control at the end of this year, that Mueller presents his case sooner than later, and then, perhaps, I will see Flicka rise to her feet and take another run around the track.

Are Conservatives That Stupid?

In his public response to the recent win by Democrat Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania, Paul Ryan said Lamb won because he “ran as a Conservative”. Among other things, Ryan said Lamb was “Pro-life”.  He also said that Republicans cannot afford to be “massively outspent as was the case with these two candidates” (a wink to his donor class).

Further, Ryan claimed that had Donald Trump not gone down to “campaign” for the Republican Saccone, the victory for Lamb would have looked more like a landslide. What in the hell is that saying? Does Ryan love Trump that much to so blatantly mislead?

Every Conservative Republican should feel insulted right down to their Don’t Tread on Me bumper stickers.

The fact is that Saccone forces outspent Lamb 2 to 1. If you count just money coming in from sources outside the individual campaigns, Lamb was outspent 5 to 1. Thirteen million dollars was spent by Republicans in that race portraying Lamb as a bleeding heart, Liberal, Nancy Pelosi Democrat. Per Ryan, Conservative Republicans saw through that tsunami of Republican spending to see the “Conservative Champion” that Lamb truly was, instead of voting for the actual Republican…right.

Impressively (as far as I’m concerned), Ryan definitively has given “Pro-life” a new definition for Republicans. 

Conor Lamb openly and actively supported “Pro-choice” and Roe v Wade while also stating his choice, were he a woman, would be not to have an abortion. So let it now be proclaimed that if you oppose abortion personally and want that decision to be freely chosen by you, not by government legislation, then you are Pro-life!

Opening the door to the fact that no woman gets pregnant because she wants to have an abortion would go a long way toward finding middle ground between militant positions. Such would reduce far more abortions than punitive laws and restrictive health care. Everyone wins. Good for you Paul.

The first I heard the talking point that “two Conservative Republicans” had been running in PA’s 18^th Congressional District was on Fox & Friends at 6:15am the morning after the election.  I then saw that talking point popping up among Republican spokesman and politicians everywhere.  Because it is so ludicrous on its face you have to ask the question: what in the blazes is going on? Who’s in charge of what?

If they wanted to avoid the reality that they have an unstable, angry clown in the White House, they could have simply pointed out one fact: that Lamb was a better candidate. Rather than trying to adopt him. The Trump mantra that Republicans will believe and accept anything given to them degrades anyone who believes in legitimate Conservative issues.

When Trump rallies the faithful at one of his tabernacle-style gatherings he is simply saying over and over; you are all my “Mikeys” and you’ll eat anything I feed you. I want to think that’s not true. 

With the prophetic words of a young Loretta Lynn; “I may be dumb, but I ain’t stupid”, perhaps Conservatives will begin to educate themselves and not accept Republican leadership or Fox News treating them like idiots.

Donald is the New Dennis

Once again the reporters of current events are treating Donald Trump like he is President, as opposed to man who is playing President. Nothing says that better than a South Korean delegation on the front lawn of the White House making an announcement about a meeting between Kim Jong-un and Trump (which apparently does not definitively include the South Koreans). An announcement our Secretary of State obviously had no advance warning of.

Yet the analysis I have seen thus far has wallowed in meaningful speculation. Really? How many times can a person be kicked in the ass before it is felt? The only thing meaningful about this announcement is how consistent it is with the lunacy of this Presidency.

The White House has been reduced to that of a giant circus clown car. No matter how many ridiculous, slap stick, or even scary things emerge from it, there always seems to be just one more.

It is understandable why Kim Jong-un might be described as a nut-case, but that, at the very least, would be short sighted. He is the inheritor of a nation of 25 million people which the world has allowed to devolve into a giant cult.  Through decades of indoctrination, he, his father, and his grandfather have been elevated to deity status.  The use of a perplexing and bizarre interpretation of Marxist Communism has essentially been talking points to support their autonomy.

As might be expected, Kim Jong-un is seriously ruthless. His gulags and assassinations are notorious. He appears to judge the condition of his nation’s people by the extent to which his authoritarian rule is sustained.  He is, by all reasonable international standards, a bad dude.

It also appears that he is fascinated or even loves Western culture.  Exposed to the West during his early school years in Switzerland, he is not as blind as the vast majority of North Koreans. Yet I question that he might now view the West as one might a carnival sideshow.  His fascination with Dennis Rodman is a good example.

Not only did he court the attention of Dennis Rodman and allowed Dennis into his inner sanctum, but he also publicly acknowledged their relationship. Why? Could it be because Dennis represented the peculiar extreme of American Sport’s eccentricities?  I think so. I also believe it to be entirely possible that Kim Jong-un sees Donald Trump as the Dennis Rodman of American Governance, maybe even as a kindred spirit.

For Trump to elevate Kim Jong-un to that of an international foreign leader is no small deviation from 64 years of American foreign policy. Americans may think that this “bold” move on the part of the Trumpster is just our way of solving the problem of having nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula.  It is far more likely that Kim is playing Donald like the marionette he is.

What is North Korea without nuclear weapons? A blacklisted, third world nation unable to compete in the world, except in displays of synchronize human movement.  More importantly, what is Kim Jong-un without nuclear weapons? Ditto. There is no denuclearization of North Korea on the horizon…period.  Kim’s ride up the escalator at Trump Tower is his first victory. There will likely be more with the great “deal-maker” President we now have in charge.

What makes Trump so predictably a loser? It can be wrapped up in the answer he gave this week to a reporter. When asked what made the apparent moves by Kim Jong-un happen, he answered quickly (for him) a truthful one word answer. He said “me”. He actually believes that bombastic remarks like “fire and fury”, “little rocket man”, and “I’ve got a bigger button” can change the course of international relations.  Someone with a Narcissistic Personality Disorder could not believe differently.

Simply put…Donald Trump is the new Dennis Rodman…minus the piercings.

There is a Forest...Really

We are currently immersed in the glacier pace of evolving political history. It is difficult to sense the motion or be confident of the direction. However, when current events are finally viewed retrospectively, with much of the minutia filtered out, the obvious nature of what is happening will become clear, and likely in stages.

It is easy to see this when applied, for example, to something like slavery.

Slavery was a fully acceptable part of life, chronicled as an ordinary matter of fact in such illustrious publications as The Bible. Yet as society progressed the onerous and detestable nature of slavery was eventually met with anger, then sorrow for its tragedy, then regret that it ever occurred, and finally befuddlement. Today we are generally perplexed on how human beings could have felt and acted as they did.

However slavery is a low bar in illustrating this human peculiarity. The same can be applied to many less obvious things such as child labor or religious freedom. Some things we still are trying to immerge from like racism or torture.

On a less universal level the same could apply to the insane proliferation of firearms in the United States. The manic desire of those who want to maintain this insanity has pushed the response to this behavior well into the ‘anger’ zone.

With slavery this ‘anger zone’ required a horrific Civil War to move it to the sorrow, regret and befuddlement stages. Hopefully that won’t be necessary with guns, but a future generation (already living) will surely look back and say “how were they so damned stupid?”

On an even smaller scale we are currently experiencing the same evolution with the placement of Donald Trump as President of the United States.

We had two Presidential campaigns in which the vast majority of supporters for both candidates and those who like neither assumed the outcome was inevitable.  Of course it wasn’t.  However, that was a single event. Like flipping a light switch, there was an assumption that even though the color or intensity of the light emitted by the Donald was unknown, we would at least be able to see what was going on.

Not so fast. When Trump began his administration by first engaging the Press and Public with extended energy devoted to the size of his inaugural crowd, the near future should have had some clarity. It did not. Trump continued to be considered a blank slate, even by his detractors, so the view of his behavior and policies was served up to intellectual discourse. 

As Southerners engaged the Country 200 years ago in the economics of slavery instead of its repulsive reality, the critics of Donald Trump have willingly cavorted among the trees of American politics unable to see the forest that surrounds them.

Have we even begun to get to the anger stage?

Once in office, Trump began to hire the most unqualified and (as proven evident) incompetent people to assume senior positions in our Government.

He placed his completely unqualified, inexperienced, and (frankly) immature son-in-law to handle personally our Nation’s most sensitive foreign relationships, a fact that would be deemed too ridiculous for a comedy sitcom. His daughter, his caddy, his bodyguard, a cluster of bungling billionaires, and talk show personalities were all given the keys to the castle. Every American should be mouthing the words “are you kidding me?!?!”

Donald Trump campaigned showing a weird attraction to Russia generally and Vladimir Putin specifically, a nation that is careening headlong into authoritarianism. So what does he do? He puts in charge of foreign affairs a man we all saw being pinned by Putin with decorations, as if they were going steady. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

His mentally debilitating narcissism serves up wildly unhinged communications, which much of the Country turns off at the end of the day, as if it were just another reality TV show. The obvious conflicts of interest Trump has tried to make opaque fool nobody. Add to that the long list of resignations, firings, guilty pleas, indictments, foreign intrigue, and one out of every three days spent at a Florida golf club; I have to wonder how the growth of these gnarled trees can be analyzed as if each deserved stand alone scrutiny.

Just step back everyone and look at the forest. It’s really there…it’s big and it’s absurd.

People have not gotten angry enough yet and maybe they need to. It’s the first step. Perhaps that would overwhelmingly reposition Congress such that the insanity can be dealt with. Perhaps the Special Prosecutor will uncover enough indisputable evidence to throw the baggage out. Perhaps the continued meltdown of Trump will cause the rest of the Executive branch to act. Perhaps this is a four year nightmare. As one historian recently put it, regardless of what happens…“it won’t end well”.

One thing I feel for certain. There will come a time in the not too distant future when people will look back on us, who so passively watched or even supported the Trump deforestation, and ask “…how were they so damned stupid?”

My Job is More Important than Your Life

Be frank. The monologues, the dialogues, the tearful descriptions of victims, the calls for action, the finger pointing, and arguments (among others) have become tediously repetitive. One news outlet, in the wake of this recent Broward County shooting, replayed post-mass shooting comments from Speaker Paul Ryan over the past year that were so identical they actually felt comical due to their redundancy.

Although the bulk of the this unique American tragedy falls squarely on Republican Conservatism, one needs to also reflect on why Progressive Liberals are so inept at making changes to restore to health a society ever more handicapped by a killing disease.

Let me reflect on both, but first the problem.

It has become increasingly presented by domestic and international analysts that when it comes to non-lethal violence, virtual or real, the United States is not an outlier.  Whether it is due to anger, passion, greed, mental illness or whatever, bad shit is contemplated or happens everywhere with only minimal variation of degrees.

The US is a big nation, so raw numbers are also large, but when analysts dig deeper, Americans do not embrace violence uniquely. However, when it comes to mass-shootings (4 or more people killed by an assailant with a gun) the US is off the charts in a category of its own. If you add all shooting deaths, including suicides, then America truly becomes an island.

The reason is ridiculously and painfully obvious. Access to firearms, in particular certain types of firearms, allows violent people to carry out their violence with…you guessed it…shooting.  Aren’t you smart! Moreover, they view it as standard operating procedure.

The ramification of this gun violence is far more harmful than the publicized carnage.

The inability to address the social issue continues to lead the nation down a road of prevention as the sole means of dealing with the problem. Ironically, this direction benefits the advocates (and profiteers) of guns since it calls for even more guns to be distributed within the nation to be put in the hands of “good guys” (notice its “guys” not “gals”). Along with that add physical barriers (lock doors, walls, gates, metal detectors), and “procedures” (shooting drills in school, military style presence, e.g.). You end up with a nation of people more stressed, more angry, more afraid, and with more guns. This is a solution?

Republicans lawmakers and the Republican Party as a whole have fought even the slightest attempts to curb gun availability. To think they have done this out of some patriotic adherence to the Constitution should make anyone with half a brain laugh to the point of tears. They have taking this stand for only one pitiful reason: their “grade” from the NRA. They feel a ‘B’ grade or less from the NRA means their election in the Republican Primary is toast…period. They know because in many cases they used that same standard to defeat an opponent, along with the financial support of the NRA. Deaths of children notwithstanding, to Republicans keeping their job is what counts.

But what of Progressives with all their ‘D’s and ‘F’s from the NRA? I believe they just don’t get it.

The constant refrain we hear from gun control advocates is that we need to stop these mass shootings today. They reference the cause of these shootings as inappropriate weapons too easily acquired.  Their arguments are self-neutralizing because they are so unfeasible. They project the target of their efforts as the next mass shooting.  They cannot bring the problem down to earth. Every time I hear the phrase “…so this will never happen again” I literally want to scream.

It is reasonably estimated that there is a gun for every man, woman, and child in the United States. Nothing is going to stop gun violence in this year, this decade, or this generation. We need gun control laws of all kinds, at all different levels of government, because we need it to be a reflection of how we, as a society, feel about the use of guns to carry out our personal anxieties. That attitude which is reflected elsewhere in the world needs to be replanted here.

Banning the sale of certain weapons, restricting acquisition to certain individuals, and beginning aggressive buy-back programs will go further in the minds of young people because it would create a social imperative. That needs to be the goal, gun ownership be damned. There will always be guns…always.

Politicians need to do this so the next generation, often the young children being killed today, can expect that their peers feel the way they do, and that fear is not the driver of their lives.

A Convenient Amnesia

In early 2016 Lindsey Graham, the thoughtful but doggedly Conservative Senator from South Carolina, described Donald Trump as a “kook” and pointedly wrote that he was “not fit to be President of the United States”. He said this after his own prospects for the Republican nomination had dropped to zero. As Trump secured the nomination, Graham announced that his own Party had gone “batshit crazy”.

Make absolutely no mistake about one undeniable reality: Trump the Presidential candidate is exactly the same as Trump the President. The only difference I can perceive is a marginally increased ability to read a teleprompter. Yet for the past year Lindsey Graham (along with 99.3% of Congressional Republicans) has taken no meaningful overt, public stand to reign in the “batshit crazy” we have witnessed for the past 13 months. Why?

It’s too easy to simply discount the negligent ambivalence on the part of Republican lawmakers as self-interest. The desire to retain power by securing seats in Congress has always been a significant modus operandi regardless of Party. Yet the reality that the Public interest is often their best interest as well, could, like olive oil over vinegar, still occasionally float to the surface.

Now, something has changed, yet Donald Trump, with all his mental incapacities, is not the cause. He is merely the tumor caused by this Nation’s long time exposure to a social carcinogen.

The great schism of the 21^st century began with Barack Obama. As a society we are closer to 1860 than we ever have been over the last 100 years.

Obama would likely have never become President had George W. Bush not been the second worst President in modern history. Obama rose to office on a populous wave that was made possible by his own talents and intelligence.  He was not a flaming Liberal and he proved that as President, a fact which would undermine the Democrats in the 2010 election. As a center-left President you would think he could govern as Bill Clinton had, with reasonable support from the loyal opposition. Of course, that did not happen.

 Before the music had faded from the inauguration balls, the famed Tea Party was gearing up to oppose his Presidency. Not oppose what he did, mind you. Rather simply to oppose him. Under the guise of being an army of fiscally responsible patriots, they organized a certain large sub-set of Americans with the classic use of fear…fear of people who were not them.

The laughable hypocrisy of their “fiscal responsibility” has been made obvious by their conspicuous absence during the Republican’s 2017-2018 continuing assault on our National Debt.

No, forget the excuses. The biggest problem with Obama for the Tea Party and their minions was that he was black…and the Republicans knew it. When McConnell stated that the primary job of the Republicans in Congress was to remove Obama from office, he was feeding fish to the seals.

The fears that have pervaded and handicapped America since the mid 1800s, have divided the Nation between White America and Black America, or as Chris Hayes has put it; a Nation and a Colony within that Nation.  We have over the decades chipped away at that division successfully, until the moral imperative to eliminate discrimination became more or less accepted…in theory.

In practice however, those latent fears of losing security (physical, financial, and egotistical) surfaced with a vengeance in 2009, even in the midst of a historic economic crisis. The dark side of American White Supremacy erupted like the angry creature that shot from the space traveler’s chest in the movie ‘Aliens’. An apt analogy indeed, considering that all types of non-European, alien minorities have been combined with African-Americans as outliers in the “Patriotic” White America.

 The Republican’s spent 7 years stoking the fears of their constituencies. They did it by systematically undercutting every move Obama made to affect legislation.  Obama, with his painfully professorial approach to governing, would not or could not rise sufficiently to confront his opposition. In plain language, the lesser educated, Conservative, white males could not stomach the idea that a black man was President, and Republican Conservatism did everything it could to make them feel justified.

This is Trump’s core support and the Republican’s Frankenstein’s monster.

Too many times I would hear reasonably intelligent men state that Obama was the worst President in the history of this Nation. What?!? Pulling us from fiscal collapse, eight years of increasing economic prosperity, ending a disastrous war, leading the world in ecological efforts, leading the world in curbing Iranian nuclear proliferation, and on and on makes their conclusion about Obama as illogical and non-sensical as their support for Donald Trump.

The Republican Party and American Conservatism now operate on pure emotion, as does Trump TV (aka Fox News). You can check your brain at the door when entering the RNC; conspiracies in every branch of Government, roaming gangs of bloodthirsty aliens in little towns everywhere, unending lies from every information source except Conservative talk radio and Fox News, herds of feminists looking to destroy good people and murder unborn babies, Gestapo Liberals ready to enter your home, empty your gun closet, and force you into third world health care, and the underprivileged not knowing their place.

I believe most of Trump’s supporters don’t love the guy, they’re just scared shitless by the alternative…made all too real by the election of a black man as President.

When Republican lawmakers and leadership are asked the question ‘why’- why Donald Trump, why the passive support, why the acceptance – they get a convenient amnesia. They didn’t know, they hadn’t heard, they are unaware, they don’t recall.  They may never remember how they used the darkest part of American society to split that society in two.   

If It Were Only Just Lies

“…can you call it Treason?  Sure… why not.” So Donald Trump described the Democrats and others during his State of the Union speech when they did not applaud during what he thought were universally good pronouncements. 

Forget that Treason is a serious crime that can be punishable by death in this Country. Forget that he doesn’t have even minimally useful mental firepower to understand that the Opposition Party does not credit him with many economic positives (especially those that involve minorities).  Forget that the use of labeling your opponent as “un-American” or “Treasonous” is classic authoritarian rhetoric.

It was inflammatory, ignorant, insulting…and absurd. But it was also telling.  

All these things that involve viewing Trump through a microscope of intellectual analysis continue to miss the point. I find it so frustrating day after day to listen to both opposing and supporting pundits review the behavior of this man. 

I now start almost every weekday watching 30 minutes of recorded Morning Joe and 30 minutes of recorded Fox and Friends (not a healthy activity). I read articles to a fault from every perspective I can find.  I feel at a gut level the chaos that is beyond articulation.

Attempting to stand back and view the dialogue as a whole tells me one important thing: the foundation of the pundit’s, “expert’s”, and politician’s observations and opinions is wrong. They want to apply logic, often in the absence of truth, to try and explain what is happening.

As I have stated at length on several posts to this Blog (starting well before Trump was elected President), the explanation is simple, and you might even say organic (if that term pleases you more). Donald J. Trump suffers from a relatively rare mental condition known as a Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). That fact explains EV-ER-Y-THING!! It is the only logic remaining after the dust settles at the end of each day.

Narcissism is a spectrum we all fall on to different degrees. Someone with NPD falls so high on the spectrum that certain behaviors become almost hard-wired and predictable.  It doesn’t necessarily negate other abilities or talents, and, in fact, can enhance some personal traits we often find attractive, such as confidence, enthusiasm, or congeniality.

To dismiss the fact that Trump has a NPD because such a pronouncement requires professional counseling with the President is sadly misinformed. Not only will a sufferer of NPD not submit to counseling because they cannot accept the possibility of the condition, but also because Trump’s public persona provides more observational data than any psychologist could hope to extract from a one on one meeting with an ordinary patient.

Trump’s detractors label him as a liar. Make that a colossal liar. The Washington Post recently tallied Trump’s “lies” during his first year in the thousands. Politifact has quantified him as the most untruthful individual (of those with a significant volume of entries) in the history of their publication. We have all seen it with our own eyes and ears and now routinely accept it as a new normal. The dogmatic Trump supporters don’t even consider his untruths as anything more than grunts and cheers.

I don’t believe Trump is a liar, not to say he hasn’t used deception from time to time, as many do. The reason I don’t is important. In order to lie, you must believe there is a exterior truth. Truth is not something that exists for someone with a NPD. If you can understand that reality, then Donald Trump begins to become understandable and possibly even predictable.

For an individual with a Narcissistic Personality Disorder truth or facts are not concepts that are exterior to themselves.  As they view both their actions and their thoughts they are forced to refashion external reality to coincide with the conclusions they already arrived at. When actual facts are presented to them contradicting their conclusions they naturally view those facts as incorrect, and even view those presenting the truth as conspiratorially opposing them.

When you think about Trump's use of “fake news”, or his inability to admit a mistake, or refusing to apologize it all begins to make sense.

It should be of no surprise to anyone that the most vulnerable people to Trump’s mental handicap are those, who by necessity, must surround and advise an American President. They must perform a daily kabuki dance of explaining to him he’s wrong by simultaneously telling him he’s right. Ergo the exodus that has left the White House, and continues unabated.

There is one irrefutable reality. A person with a Narcissistic Personality Disorder should not be President of the United States. 

I had a relationship through most of my life with a person suffering from a NPD and I saw how it evolved.  I experienced, first hand, the irrationality and paranoia that overtook that individual.  The need to remove Trump from office is far greater than you may have considered in November of 2016. At the very least…the very least…his power needs to be neutered by a significant change in Congress. Just watching cannot be an option.