Category: Politics

The election that will result in the worst President that this country has ever seen (a confident prediction, even before he officially begins his term), has many mysteries. Why were the polls were so horribly wrong? What was the actual impact of the Russian hacking? Why did Comey and the FBI wait until the last minute to reveal information they had possessed for many weeks? And so on.

But one mystery that has been bothering me lately has to do with the voters that actually voted for Drumpf . That almost certainly were going to vote for Drumpf regardless of the various external forces. And I’m not talking about the idiots who didn’t have a freaking clue. Those incredibly stupid fools who got trotted out on The Daily Show (and other such outlets), being interviewed and revealing they had no idea what was wrong with their candidate: unconstitutional promises, lack of human decency, bigotry, a complete lack of ethical behavior, or even simple good manners. No idea, and even if they considered these offenses, simply didn’t care. See no evil, hear no evil.

No, there’s nothing to be done for those imbeciles. “Against stupidity, the gods themselves strive in vain.” It is the other component of the electorate that voted for Drumpf that have me completely mystified. I am talking about the significant numbers of intelligent, informed and even (generally) well-meaning votes who voted for Drumpf anyway. The men who have wives and daughters, yet who, despite his unbelievable crudeness with respect to women, voted for him. The wives and daughters themselves, who, knowing his misogynistic contempt, voted for him. People who voted for him, yet were fully cognizant of all the shortcomings I listed above: bigotry, lack of ethics, etc.

These are people who under normal circumstances would have never even considered a person of such despicable character. And I know some of these people, personally. Hell, I’d bet good money that several of them are related to me. People who, were they to meet Donald Drumpf in person, would almost certainly be repelled by his lack of decent behavior, his crass manners, his dishonesty, his immature, childish bullying. The man is so disgusting that his very presence would be an affront to these people. And every action he has taken, both before the election, but especially after, would be anathema to almost everything these people stood for.

Unless that thing was Change. Coupled with distaste bordering on outright hatred for Hillary Clinton.

But even given that motive, it is an unfathomable mystery to me that any of these otherwise decent, intelligent, educated and informed citizens actually brought themselves to vote for Donald Drumpf. There were alternatives. A third party candidate, or even simply abstaining (courteously). Anything besides pulling the lever for the most notoriously unqualifed and abhorrent person to ever seek, let alone win, the Presidency.

There is, as they say, no accounting for taste. But surely to God there must be an accounting for flagrant disregard of the every sign and portent he provided to his supporters.

I wish this could be explained. The vacuum of reasoning that allowed this result to happen is perhaps the most frightening aspect of this moment in time. It seems to signal a deeper wrongness, a cognitive dissonance between the obscenity in front of us and our better angels, a mental barrier that borders on cultural psychosis.

So, like Bob Seger sang, I’m working on a mystery without any clues. In the dark, with winter closing in.

© 2017 Chuck Puckett

The fact is, I am no longer concerned about mere ideology: statism vs. states rights, left vs. right, etc. It has now become simply a matter of the irrational and completely unacceptable behavior by the man the Electoral College will elect as POTUS. It has become a terrifying existential threat, and I am in no way employing hyperbole, at least not from my personal perspective.

The array of Drumpf’s Cabinet choices stands as powerful testimony to an implicit agenda that should make every American tremble. Ignore for a monent whether you favor or oppose “active government involvement.” If a Department of Education exists, then shouldn’t the appointee at least support public education? If the EPA (a Nixon creation) exists, does it make sense to name as its head a client-denier and a man who has never said no to the fossil fuel industry? Who has actively supported less regulation of specific toxins? Does it make sense to load up the Cabinet with recently retired generals, and in particular, the DoD, which has, almost without exception, been headed by a non-military man  since the founding of the Republic? A Labor secretary who opposes unions and raising the miniimum wage? A HHS secretary who has been the most active opponent of not only Obamacare, but essentially all forms of health subsidies? Rick Perry for Energy? The man who was unable to remember the name of this department when he tried to list the three departments he would get rid of as president. He had been vowing to get rid of the Deaprtment of Energy all during the primary season.

Add to these choices the nomination of Rex Tillerson, the man who received from Putin the highest civilian honor Russia has to bestow, a man who has closer personal ties to Putin than almost anyone in the West, as Secretary of State?? This is an all-out assault on the workings of the federal government at every level.

Then there’s Drumpf’s refusal to attend the daily presidential intelligence briefings (“I’m too smart”). And then to simply dismiss the CIA’s assertion that Russia was actively involved in working for Drumpf’s election via cyber-attacks, an assertion that had the CIA’s strongest possible confidence level, as “ridiculous, nobody knows after the fact who did the hacking.” I, and almost all tech-oriented people, are very well aware that, yes, tools absolutely exist that can detect who did the hacking.

His endless tweet storm, which is what we are obviously going get in lieu of press briefings. His personally attacking SNL, Boeing, union heads, and anyone else who has expressed opposition or pushed back on his actions. His breaking four decades of a “one China” policy without apparently even noticing what a diplomatic blunder that represented. Or worse, not giving a damn. And now his shady connections to Turkish strong man Erdogan, positioning himself to be ready to extradite the rebel leader Turkey wants back.

The component of outrage that is represented by his business conflicts, and the absurd way he plans to “take care of all that”, that’s almost petty in comparison to all the rest. Which is amazing, when one thinks of the scandal this would represent if it were the sole blemish we had to deal with. It’s the sort of thing that would normally lead to resignation or indictment.

All of this, and whatever each new day is going to bring, makes me cringe in horror. I find it difficult to even breathe sometimes, when I attempt to contemplate the totality. So, no, ideology is no longer my concern. We are so far past such niceties as to make that discussion seem laughably pedantic.

When China has already begun flying nuclear bomber sorties over the South China Sea, and Putin continues to move his armies and missles around the borders of Eastern Europe, I think the the term “existential threat” is completely justified.

© 2016 Chuck Puckett

I will call them Trumplanders. They live in a special land, unlike the humdrum factual world we live in. They live in a world of Newly Found Magic, where Down is Up, In is Out, All is None, and Evil is Good. Where everything is bigly fantastic and huge. Their landscape is non-Euclidean, non-Linear and non-Sensical. The rest of us, peering in, might think it a Heironymous Bosch nightmare scene, but those who live in Trumpland see only rainbows and lemon drops. And the wicked witch’s castle is waaay over there, out of sight, her flying monkey thugs waiting like the Luftwaffe, eager to swoop and punish.

Trumplanders are all, like “Oooh, it’s time to get payback on the Liberal Elite!” You know, those who have somehow managed to make the lives of these common folk miserable. Never mind the uncountable billions of dollars condensed into a 1% who truly hold power, who actually have the capacity to either make their lives bearable or horrid. Who have chosen, and will continue to choose, horrid.

Most of us out here in the hinterland of the real world stand verklempt as we view the Trumpland that is unfolding before our continuously flabbergasted eyes. Even faster than the outrages we were daily presented with during the election, Trump’s outrageous actions during the transition occur like endless uppercuts to the jaw, making us reel back in disbelief. Appointing a climate denier as EPA Administrator. Secretary of State to be the head of Exxon, a man who received from Putin Russia’s Order of Friendship medal, their highest civilian honor. When the CIA revealed that Russia most definitely hacked the DNC and other institutions so as to favor a Trump election, Trump retaliates by dissing the CIA and dismissing the report. But that makes perfect sense to a man who has refused to attend the daily Presidential intelligence briefing. Why? He says he is “too smart” to be bothered by this daily irritation.

What can explain the behavior of this lunatic America has elected, by a signicantly lower popular vote than his opponent? He follows no norms of behavior that civilized people exhibit. He reacts like a spoiled child to the slightest provocation. He rails at Alec Baldwin and SNL because they ridicule him. He is driven solely by his ego and his anger. He praises only those who toady up to him, kiss his ring and feed his ego. He lashes out furiously at the slightest criticism. What could cause such irrational behavior?

The answer is that Donald Trump is a sociopath, pure and simple. What does that mean? That he is empty, void of any moral or ethical consideration. That he makes no action that is not intended to make HIM the victor, and anyone else, by definition, utterly defeated. There is no nuance, no proportional response. It means that only adoration is allowed. Those who oppose him are understood not as philosophical opponents, but as threats to his very being. Those he opposes, he crushes and humiliates, rather than make any attempt at compromise or finding common ground. They are twirled like puppets, voodoo dolls whom he has somehow convinced that the pins he is sticking them with are in fact soothing acupuncture.

This sociopath is so utterly concentrated on himself, that he has no love or regard for anyone or anything else. That includes America, writ large. Donald Trump is not making decisions based on what is good for America, or motivated by his love for America. He is incapable of such feeling. The good of the many is a concept completely beyond his ability to embrace. He is not going to suddenly, or indeed, ever become even vaguely “Presidential”. He is only going to continue to act solely with his personal interests in mind, the rest of the world be damned. And unfortunately, as President of the United States, the rest of world could very well be damned.

Trumplanders could care less. They are content in their Bubble of the Beautiful, completely happy to bask in the orange glow of Trump. As adorers, their symbiotic relationship with Trump is complete. And just as Trump is not going to ever gain a modicum of decency or diplomatic behavior, Trumplanders are not going to suddenly emerge into enlightenment, at least not in time to turn back the tidal wave of damage that is looming over our nation.

So, does there exist some path out of the hell that is being constructed around us? The Left doesn’t have the numbers to do anything but offer a slight puff of resistance. Without active help from the GOP, those efforts can have no meaningful effect. But will anyone in the GOP be willing to stand up and have the guts to help save the nation? Or are they so enamored of their new power, and chance to suck at the enormous teat being dangled before them, that they will sell the nation, and the world, down the fiery road to perdition, all for a bit of corruption all their own?

There are indeed a few signs of hope here and there. John McCain and Lindsay Graham have made clear they will lead an investigation into the Russia hacking findings by the CIA. And McCain has indicated that Exxon CEO Tillerson will receive a deep scrutiny. He is not at all happy with Tillerson’s ties to Putin, whom McCain calls a bully, a tyrant and a murderer. The point is, not everyone is a sociopath. Many of these men and women truly love their country. Eventually, we can only hope that true patriotism will exceed the lust for money and power.

We can never hope, however, that Trumplanders will ever have any such realization. Not until the dust blows in from the dystopic desert that will form the backdrop to their shattered expectations. Not until Trumpland itself collapses under the weight of its false prophet.

© 2016 Chuck Puckett

In a recent episode of “Marvel’s Agents Of Shield”, a show that I confess I really enjoy, three of our heroes are subjected to some sort of quantum-mechanical explosion. As a result, the three are thrown into an inter-dimensional rift, from which they can see and hear their compatriots, but no one can see or hear or interact with them. They are “out of phase”; the people in our regular world have no way to know they still exist, nor can they contact them. As an added threat, over time, the three in the rift are being drawn further away, and the voices from the real world get fainter and fainter. In fact, unless they can escape, they will be sucked into a nether region from which there can be no escape.

Oddly enough, this situation came to mind when I saw the results of a post-election Public Policy Poll that was just published today. This mind-blowing set of figures reveal the following surreal results, reflecting an Alice in Wonderland world view that is completely at odds with normal reality.

• Since Obama has been president, the Dow Jones has risen an astonishing 11,666 points. However, a full 39% of the people who voted for Drumpf believe that the Dow Jones has gone down.
• During the same time, unemployment has dropped from 7.8% to 4.6%. 67% of Drumpf voters, however, believe that unemployment has risen.

• In the immediate wake of the election, protests against Drumpf’s election spontaneously arose in major cities all across the nation. The vast majority of Americans understand that these protests were in fact spontaneous. But 73% of Drumpf voters believe that they only occurred because George Soros paid “professional protesters” to stage them. It is only necessary to consider the vast coordination and logistics challenge to arrange to hire these 1000’s of protesters, all across the country, and to do so the day after the election, to realize how insane such a proposition is. But a full 73% of Drumpf voters take it as gospel. Note that the poll is reporting what voters believe. Non-Drumpf voters almost universally believe these protests naturally occurred. Non-Drumpf voters understand implicitly how the election result would naturally shake people to their core, and impel them to react somehow, protesting in the streets in many cases. Drumpf voters instead create a false reality where that was only possible if George Soros paid for it.
• A full 40% of Drumpf voters believe that Drumpf actually won the popular vote, in spite of essentially blanket coverage that shows Clinton winning the popular vote by more than 2.5 million votes.
• 60% of Drumpf voters believe that millions of people voted illegally for Clinton. Millions. Just consider the amount of fraud that represents. Did you vote? Did you stand in line and present your voter ID and sign the registry? Do you realize how impossible it would be for literally millions of people to vote illegally? Especially given that all these polling places are manned by 1000’s of poll workers, most of whom have been doing their work diligently for years.
• Here’s an amazing finding: a full 29% of Drumpf voters, almost a third, don’t think California’s votes should even be counted in the election. It is very difficult to construct any valid reason for such an exclusion. Difficult, that is, except for a third of those who voted for Drumpf.
• Another “opinion” that is very revealing is this: 59% of American voters believe that Donald Drumpf should definitely release his tax returns. Ask Drumpf voters? 59% of them say “No, he doesn’t need to release them.” The extent of Drumpf’s potential conflict of interest is already astounding. And even though he is exempt from pure “conflict of interest”, the Constitution clearly puts him in jeopardy for receiving emoluments (ie, bribes) from foreign powers. It is one of the two explicitly named offenses for which a President can be impeached (the other is treason). Drumpf’s actions since the election clearly imply that he is already skirting with these crimes. His tax returns would reveal unequivocally what business connections might be involved in such legally incriminating activities. Drumpf voters don’t want to know. See no evil, hear no evil.

Trumpland is a very strange landscape indeed. In this inter-dimensional cone of silence, this undiscovered country, no hint of objective reality can affect the inhabitants. They swim in a world of self-enforcing fabrications, untouched by such standards as “facts” and “numbers.” The upstart, the horrible consequence, is that we can be sure that there will be no short-term negative reaction from this pool of absolutely true believers. Drumpf can continue to make insane appointments all across his Cabinet, renegeing on virtually every campaign promise he made. He can fail to build his Wall. He can back-pedal on Obamacare. He can prove himseld a faithless a coward, failing to implement all the vows he made during the election season. And his followers will almost certainly ignore all of this, choosing instead to shout their approval, to Drumpf and each other, deaf to the real world in their heavily fortified Cone of Silence.

It will only be when the jobs continue to bleed, and not return, and when their own health care and Medicare come under attack and disappear, when the national debt explodes while the 1% scrapes the cream off the top; then, at long last they may look out from their interdimensional rift and suspect the awful truth.

The problem is, it will not just be these masses of self-hypnotized dupes who fall into the netherworld. All of us will have been sucked into Hell.

© 2016 Chuck Puckett

Just a quick note to urge everyone to not back down, to fight the good fight, to obtain and maintain a fierce commitment to oppose the insanity that a Donald Drumpf presidency represents.

Like Saturday Night Live and Alec Baldwin, we have to continuously keep the hammer slamming on the point. Drumpf cannot withstand a constant barrage, his egomania is too thin-skinned not to shatter into thousands of contradictory shards. He’s shown that over and over.

We need to urge the media to call him and his cronies out, to confront them with the lies and exaggerations they have ceaselessly trotted out. Their tactics would do Goebbels proud, and might very well succeed with the masses, unless massive opposition rises up to deny any such victory. Contact all media outlets and demand they call a spade a spade, and never let his outrageous actions and words to ever appear even faintly normal. Because if we allow this abomination to become the new normal, the road back to decency will grow very difficult.

If Drumpf persists in redefining “tweeting” as the only news outlet, then we must invade the twitterverse and combat him on his own ground. Launch the attacks, let no insane tweet go unchallenged.

Finally, bombard your congresspeople with calls and emails. Even if you live, like I do, in a hopelessly red state, sheer numbers can have an effect. Demand that cabinet and judicial candidates be examined thoroughly, and that they pass muster with evolved practices. We cannot allow this attempt at American recidivism to succeed unchallenged.

Stand against tyranny and insanity! Against sexism, racism and cultural degradation. Against hatred and bigotry and bullying.

“And Saint Crispian’s Day shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers and sisters
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother.
And those in America now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their lives cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”

© 2016 Chuck Puckett

• Electing Nancy Pelosi, again, was a bad mistake. The Democrats need the “same old same old” like they need the proverbial hole in the head. The times and the situation are drastic; drastic measures are required. This means we need new ideas, new leadership, new voices. Not the demonstrably failed policies that resulted in The Disaster.
• I confess that I have been deeply troubled by the complete lack of intervention by Obama in the South Dakota pipeline travesty. People are being injured, their rights trampled. Water cannons in sub-freezing temperatures and other inhumane tactics are being brought to bear. The mantle of justice is so clearly on the side of the protesters. Even if Trump were to reverse the action, it is unconscionable that the Obama administration not step in and stop this horrible and indefensible use of force.
• So Trump calls up the President of Taiwan, effectively throwing a grenade on decades of delicate Sino-American diplomacy, dating back to Nixon’s visit to China. He is a reckless, ignorant cannon rolling around on the deck of the world. Either he didn’t comprehend the enormity of the diplomatic disaster his phone call represented (which would be a horrifying possibility), or else he did understand, and chose to act completely unilaterally, ignoring the State Department, years of protocol, and the fact that Obama is still President (showing that he doesn’t care anything for international norms, also horrifying). As Sen. Chris Murphy, an expert on foreign affairs, has noted, this is how wars start. In the aftermath, we discover that Trump is planning a hotel in Taiwan. Oh. Of course.
• General “Mad Dog” Mattis, freshly retired from the Marine Corps in 2013, would require a waiver from the Senate to be confirmed as Secretary of Defense (the law requires a minimum 7 years between active duty and serving as Secretary of Defense). Mattis is the ultimate rejection of the tenet, in place since George Washington, that America’s military should be under civilian control. Mattis has been very vocal in his glorification of war and killing. To confirm him as Defense would be a terrible setback to a basic tenet of the American experiment in government.

© 2016 Chuck Puckett

Drumpf continues to careen out of control. Calling up world leaders like they were high school buddies. Telling Pakistan how “fantastic” they were, accepting an invitation to visit, offering to help with whatever problems they have (we have avoided any such statements for decades due to the Kashmir dispute and their possession of nukes). Congratulating the dictator/”president” of Kazahkistan on 25 years of success (he was a dictator for two decades, then elected president with 97% of the vote. Right.) Telling the new British PM to “drop by next time she was in the States.” My God. Maybe they can have pizza together.

He claimed to save Carrier jobs from moving to Mexico. But in actuality, he had Pence not resign the Indiana governorship in order that he could authorize $7M in tax breaks for Carrier, so that Carrier would only ship half of the 2000 jobs to Mexico. The Trumpeters all claim this as proof positive of his campaign pledge to bring jobs back, lacking the wit to realize that no jobs came back from anywhere, that a 1000 jobs left, and not because he punished the offending corporation, but because he gave them millions in taxpayers’ dollars.

He’s started a completely unprecedented (as is everything about this out of control megalomaniac) “Thank You” tour. Instead of focusing on the transition, or receiving daily intelligence briefings, the egotistical Orange Fool is holding rallies everywhere, acting like the campaign was still in progress, but apparently with the sole purpose of touting his win, bashing enemies he’s already beaten, and absorbing the praise of the mindless. He cannot live, it seems, without constant adulation.

As for me, I continue to be deeply depressed by every aspect of what is coming. The media, on the other hand, continues to normalize him. It seems that even the so-called “good guys” will simply lay down and wait for the chariot to roll over them. Except for Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, Lawrence O’Donnel and Joy Reid. Thank god for them, and especially Rachel. If the day comes when she stops making the obvious point, I will know the fight is truly lost.

Pelosi was reelected as minority leader, proving that the Dems have no plan or even real intent whatsoever of impeding the coming disaster. Tom Ryan from Ohio had great ideas and fire in his belly, something we desperately needed. Instead, we got the same old same old. Damn it! Why won’t somebody make a real effort to do something?

But then I realize that there’s nothing to do, except hunker down and hope there’ll be something left to salvage when the storm of stupidity and greed passes.

“Welcome to the Soft Parade
All our lives we sweat and save,
Building for a shallow grave
Must be something else we say,
Somehow to defend this place
Everything must be this way,
Everything must be this way, yeah
The Soft Parade has now begun,
Listen to the engines hum”

Jim Morrison

© 2016 Chuck Puckett

In the movie, Inception, a band of sleep invaders experience common lucid dreams, in fact, dreams within dreams, diving so deep into the dream world that nothing can get them out. It is only a physical “bump”, occuring in the real world in which the dreamers sleep, that wakes everybody up. Falling into a tub of water. Or running headling into a wall.

At some point, the poor, deluded slobs who elected Drumpf, most of whom after the election turned immediately back to watching pro wrestling and football, and shooting things, will experience the “Drumpf Bump.” They will waken, look around, and suddenly discover that there are no new jobs for them to march in to work, nor any reduction in the number of immigrants living in their city, and a host of other broken promises. Broken, because they were impossible in the first place.

Worse than that, this guy who was gonna “drain the swamp” has hired some of the worst alligators to ever inhabit those murky waters. A Treasury secretary who was Wall Street’s “king of home repossesion” during the housing crisis, who put more of them out on the street and homeless than anybody else. A Health and Human Services secretary who will certainly work to abolish Obamacare, but who has also adamantly opposed the provisions that disallowed rejection for previous conditions. Who like Speaker Ryan, wants to privatize Medicare, hopefully by next summer. Who denies that women’s health, including birth control, need any special considerations. These considerations will immediately affect the Trumpsters who fell for his demagogic spell.

Other appointments are more evidence of swamp trawling, but most Trumpsters won’t have any clear idea of what these people do, or why it matters. For instance, a Defense secretary who is a retired Marine general nicknamed “Mad Dog”. Another retired general for National Security Advisor who denies that Islam is a religion. And on and on and on.

And meanwhile, the Romneys and the other mainstream GOP figures, people who less than a month ago were screaming that Donald Drumpf was a crook, a fraud, a huckster, and lacking every possible qualification to be President, all these hacks come groveling to Drumpf Towers, looking for a bone, something to gnaw on when the Rape of America gains a full head of steam. It’s amazing how disingenuous and pathetic these sycophants behave. And one has to ask: what sensible person would actually want to be associated with an administration that is guaranteed to go down in history as one of the worst and most corrupt to ever hold power? A sensible person would run as far and as fast as they could in the opposite direction, lie low until the shit flood had passed completely by, then re-emerge, looking for whatever opportunities would present themselves in that bleak and post-apocalyptic landscape.

I confess: I wake every morning with fear knotted in my gut, realizing what real and present dangers every American faces as long as the Orange Buffoon remains the President. Knowing that there is every chance in the world that the Medicare I rely on could very well disappear into a privatized hell within a year. That the health care my children depend on could vanish just as quickly. That the financial system will almost certainly gallop headlong toward another cliff, with nothing to check it, and no one even concerned.

When the Drumpf Bump happens, and the silly geese who blindly believed all the Trumpian hogwash open their sleepy eyes and gaze on the results of his betrayal, it could get very ugly in the Red states.

Or perhaps they’ll just go back to sleep. Or watch television. Until the power company cuts off the electricty.

© 2016 Chuck Puckett