As The World Burns

          

            As the planet combusts under the oppression of an unforgiving global climate crisis, 1,600 people died in Europe last week in their 104º heat wave; ice bergs continue to melt, raising ocean levels and drowning low lying islands and beaches; oceans heat and increase storm strengths, bleach coral reefs, increasing disease in plants and animals, spreading pathogens more easily and quickly in the warmer waters; old growth redwood forests are burning, and we run out of water in the drought-ridden and over-populated southwest that we need to extinguish wildfires and take care of a thirsty growing population, Republicans, and a certain Democrat or two, continue to deny there is even a climate issue. They vote against doing anything about anything.               

                    If it is not about giving tax cuts to the top 1%, gerrymandering distracts to favor themselves, or taking voting rights away from minorities, or healthcare rights away from women, the GOP is not interested in passing any legislation.

Their party (cult) has no platform, no policies.  Their only goal is to obstruct Democrats from getting helpful legislation passed in order to make Democrats look ineffectual, or worse, so they can blame Democrats for all that ails the US so they can win back Congress and the WH.  They count on voters not doing their own research.  They just continue to repeat their lying campaign rhetoric.

It is so expensive to run for office, (Thank you, SCOTUS and Citizens United decision.), politicians spend a huge proportion of their time dialing for dollars.  And they must pay back those big coal and oil donors, who are responsible in large part for the heating planet, and oh, big Pharma, too, of course, by decreasing or erasing their tax bills. It’s all pay to play in America, never mind that we are killing ourselves.

I don’t know why Republicans seem to feel that they, their children, and grandchildren are above it and will not be affected by this emergency.  It’s the theme of the movie, “Don’t Look Up.” 

A disaster looms, and yet, people, especially politicians, go about their mundane, myopic lives, chasing money and power, ignoring scientists’ warnings, as they are wont to do in disaster films.  

As we used to say, (from the old TV Chiffon Margarine commercials), “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature!” Or to fool with Mother Nature, in our current crisis. She always wins. And She is, apparently, fed up with the human species, which is, I’d say, the most destructive species that ever evolved.

What is the Republicans’ Plan B? Do they plan to ride Elon Musk’s rocket to Mars and stay there? And what is an even bigger mystery to me, is how do they convince people who are not worth billions to vote for them? They are voting against their own interests or really, voting for their own death sentence.

I think we can blame social media, maybe not completely, but quite a lot. It allows lies and conspiracies to travel around the globe before we can get our proverbial pants on. 

It’s not clear, but Jonathan Swift, (17th-18th century Anglo-Irish essayist, satirist, and political writer), may have started the concept of lies getting around faster than the truth, rather than Mark Twain or Winston Churchill, to whom those sentiments have often been attributed. 

Swift wrote:  “Besides, as the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…”

As the saying, (Ecclesiastes 1:9) goes, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

Humans have been, apparently, lying and cheating since we first evolved. The Bible says Adam and Eve even dared to lie to their all seeing/all knowing creator about the apple and blame the snake.  Not that that story is to be taken as more than a metaphor, but people still scapegoat to get out of trouble.

It’s just that with all of us around the world connected now, lies take purchase more easily and have a far greater staying power as they continue to go around and around, increasing in size and weight, as a snow ball does rolling down hill.

Social media is terrific and terrible at the same time, the worst and best of times. Personally, for instance, I don’t know how I got along before the internet (and google).  Britannica Encyclopedias took so much work and they could never be completely up to date or cover everything you wanted to know. And the dictionary and Thesaurus I carried everywhere, when I was younger, eventually fell apart. 

Now everything we need, (don’t need and/or don’t know we need,) is right at our fingertips. But, it comes with a big price, the ubiquitousness of mendacity, as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’s Big Daddy used to rail.  Or as he said, “There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odor of mendacity… You can smell it.  It smells like death.  Mendacity is a system in which men live.”

I have family (Evangelical Republicans) who still think the former guy, Trump, (TFG) is POTUS and that he is a good guy who was sent by God to save America.  Save America from democracy, it seems.

When I give them facts and links to statistics and information, I’m told it is “fake news.”  Still, with all that has happened and even with TFG out of office, they remain loyal to the cult leader.  

Yesterday, a family member, who was messaging me to join a “Boycott Biden club,” asked me, when I told her who the lying grifter TFG, is and always has been, if I only get “filtered news?”  Filtered news.  They actually think the lies and conspiracies they are fed daily are the truth. So, when told facts, info, or news, they think it’s all lies.

What a mess TFG has made of our country. Granted, mental illness and mendacity have always been with us, but never have I seen such a prevalence of both, nor seen the insane lies so proudly and publicly proclaimed. 

They really think they are spouting truth to save our country from Democrats, who, of course, are blood thirsty baby eating pedophiles, and communists.  They cannot understand that they are helping usher in autocracy and fascism.

What TFG has done, other than nearly over-throwing our democracy with violence to install himself as dictator, is made it acceptable to be a crazy conspiracist.  He taught his cult to play victim and to try to rid the country of the godless left by whatever means.  He has made being ignorant and/or brainwashed and wearing a hat to declare it, acceptable, and in those circles a badge of honor.

As Catherine Fahringer from the Freedom From Religion Foundation said, “We would be 1,500 years ahead if it hadn’t been for the church dragging science back by its coattails and burning our best minds at the stake.”

They do not know what they do not know and if we tell them what they don’t know, they will, if they still could, burn us all at the stake for heresy. Well, today, they can just throw us into old growth forests.

Jocosa Puella

July 26, 2022

When Neighbors Don't Realize They Have Neighbors

I want to keep peace with neighbors and get along.  Doesn’t everyone?  Mostly I am friends with neighbors and have keys to most of their homes and vice versa, in case of anything.  So, I don’t want to complain too much. Everyone has a right to party now and then. 

I just want people to be aware and thoughtful of others.  Not much to ask, seems to me. I was raised to think of others before myself.  My dad was annoyingly over the top about it, too.  

Even so, I’d rather have someone aware of others around them, and courteous, rather than obnoxiously and unconsciously loud and invasive in my space.  This is a crowded city.  And we are all on top of each other. We have to do the best we can to be respectful of each other.  It’s fishbowl living in LA.

  My neighbors are now having an apparently uproariously funny party right under my windows this evening.  I’ve explained a few times that when they are in their yard under my windows, they might as well be in my living room and office. Do they forget or just not care? Their patio, their right? 

I had neighbors in that same back cottage next door years ago who were members of a band. They would come home after a gig at 2 or 3am and play live music till dawn on work nights. That was a fun time. 🤨 

I tried to reason with them and they told me I was jealous because they had a social life and I didn’t. 😳 The only way I got them to finally stop was by leaving an anonymous note at their door, as if it was from a group of their neighbors. 

The note said, if you don’t stop playing live music all night, when you go to sleep at dawn, we are going to begin pounding pots and pans and screaming in front of your door.  Hey.  It worked. 😂 At least it got them to finally take the band and move out. 

These current tenants work in TV, not music.  The young woman in the couple just finished writing This Is Us.  No loud music.  Just loud voices and loud laughter.  They seem like a nice group of people.  I never saw the show, but I heard it was funny.  

So, maybe they are practicing their humor over there. My neighbor is a very sweet girl. She is just loud, has the worst and loudest jarring laugh, and seemingly has no boundaries.  She walks over into our back area to call her cat. Never asks.  Just trespasses.  I say nothing. Again, peace has its price.

And basically, I grew up in a party, so I don’t mind hearing laughter and cheerful babbling outside my windows.  My parents were party animals. 🤣 They had parties right under my bedroom windows on their back patio, too.  Voices and laughter were soothing white noise for me. I could sleep through most of that.  Hearing the warm, friendly voices outside, so close made me feel secure.  

But, when I want to work and don’t really know the people, it’s a tad tougher. I feel invaded.  I had to close my windows and now it’s hot in here.  The owners of the property moved out of their front house, and I thought it would be a lot more quiet.  

They were also from TV/film, and had movie screenings at night on their driveway with what sounded like a Dolby Sound system.  I texted him one night to ask if he could possibly lower the volume by one decibel, (you know like down to 10 from 11?), so I could hear my TV.  Apparently, he felt I was raining on his crowd pleasing parade over there. He texted back that when he hit the lottery he was buying our building and blowing it up.  🤣

He’s a prop master who works on huge projects, making many props at home in his garage studio.  And he restored his 1928 house himself, too. I was basically living in a construction zone daily for years, often with nightly parties, too. But, he is such a nice, generous, and helpful neighbor, (if you overlook the noise), I just coped as best I could. He even gave me a noise-canceling headset. It canceled nothing.  But, it was the thought that counted. I guess.  😬

Then he and his wife had two kids in a row.  To say the kids were loud is a huge understatement.  Nice kids, too, though. But, I don’t remember ever crying or screaming that much at their ages, or smashing things.  My dad, who didn’t allow us to impose on others, would have knocked me into the next week.  But, again, after they moved, I expected a lot of quiet.  So much for theory. This is noise pollution central. There are worse things.  🧐 All considered, I don’t live in Ukraine.

It’s now the next day.  I survived. I just turned up music, closed windows, put on fans, and then turned on TV and turned up its volume, too. I guess we all have our defense mechanisms to survive living in the city.  

Not much I can do about helicopters, sirens, loud muffler-less cars, etc.  The fireworks, as I mentioned in my last blog, were loud. But, it doesn’t seem like they went on as long as they have in previous years.  Maybe after all the upsetting SCOTUS rulings recently, people lost some of their glee for patriotism and exploding things? 

Jocosa Puella

July 10, 2022

Things That Go Boom

     It’s July 7th.  Bombs are still exploding over LaLa Land. I was especially fond of the one that went off, what sounded and felt like, a matter of feet from my bedroom, at 12:50 this morning. 

After I got my heart started again, and climbed from the floor, back into bed, I was so grateful I don’t live in Ukraine. And then I felt even worse for the Ukrainians. Putin is an evil, monstrous terrorist. But, that is another topic.

Is giving people heart attacks in the middle of the night a sign of American patriotism?  Is that celebrating the birth of our democratic republic?  And do we still have a republic? 

The guys who are trying to get rid of all their leftover fireworks from the 4th seem to think they are still celebrating freedom. Freedom to blow up things.  And maybe they just like to hear things go boom!  Is that a guy thing? And why a late at night thing? Early this morning, that bang had more of a ring of revenge to it. But for what and against whom?

The love of things that go kaboom makes more sense to me.  They are probably the same guys who take the mufflers off their cars and race around our residential streets as though they are in a competition with other muffler-less drivers for their lives. Between those ear-splitting drag racers, the ubiquitous helicopters and sirens, it’s a wonder we aren’t all more sleep-deprived.

Probably, also, the same guys who are constantly flipping over cars in our streets.  I did read that deaths due to car accidents are on the rise. Is it that deafening (male?) speed-demon urge, or is it due to our devices we can’t seem to put down for a minute, even while driving, possibly on top of sleep-deprivation?

Those drivers and midnight firework bomb throwers are probably, also, part of the 54% (130 million) of 16-74 year olds in our country which has a below the equivalent of a 6th grade proficiency in literacy and reading, (per US Dept. of Education).  

Our country has been dumbed down to make it easier for the greedy and power hungry to get US citizens to vote against their own interests and to give them tax breaks, or no tax bill at all. I have known people who were poor, but felt one day they, too, would be wealthy, argue angrily for tax cuts for billionaires. Sucker born every minute?

Donald Trump being the consummate con man, convinced his brainwashed “suckers” that they were right to hate, bully, and even murder those who don’t look like them, have different skin tones, speak other languages, or belong to a different religion, etc.  He and his GOP henchmen convinced them that those “others” were trying to “cancel their culture.” And meanwhile, while they were distracted blaming those others, DT and GOP were stealing their money, their rights, and installing an autocracy.

This is why DT on his campaign trail told his audiences that he loved the uneducated, or was it the poorly educated? It is far easier to convince a non-critically thinking 6th grader that he needs to fear, hate, blame, and scapegoat others than it is to convince an educated and informed citizen. 

It’s also easier to use religion to make people fear and hate the other.  Go figure. Nothing says “God” like hate and fear and guns.  Go figure, too, that his “Christian” followers also put him in the same category with their Jesus, as the Second Coming. Fear and hate sell better than sex, apparently.  

DT got his cult followers to violently act out against their own country to save their country from “them.” Them, the educated?  The brown or black people? Democrats? Progressives?  Women? He got them fearing that if he was not in our White House, they would soon be forced to the back of the bus as they become the irrelevant minority. 

And in the back of the bus, their guns would be confiscated and their “power” and freedom would be robbed from them. The “Christian” SCOTUS is ending access to abortion and possibly to birth control soon, because they want more white babies born. Unwanted, poor, uneducated, easily controlled white citizens.

He and GOP have created very dangerous, heavily armed, under-educated, under-informed,  or completely lied to, mobs.  Take a look around.  Is this the America we grew up loving, celebrating, and thankful to for our freedoms? And I almost forgot to mention the 220 people shot and killed over the July 4, 2022 weekend. Thank God for the 2nd Amendment, NRA, SCOTUS, and the Republican party which protects our right to own, and carry everywhere, weapons of war on the streets of our country.

Is, as we keep being told, America on the verge of its second civil war? I’d vote to let the south and other brainwashed and/or ignorant states to secede this time. Why stop them? The blue states support the red states.  We will save a fortune and get our rights back. I think it’s time to say farewell and tell them not to let the doorknob hit ya where the good lord split ya on your way out.  And, oh, take your Christofascist form of repression with you. Thanks. 

Jacosa Puella July 7, 2022

Don't Agonize, Organize.

Been thinking what I want to say about the dangerous insanity of this current SCOTUS. What can one say? So many things, mixed with outrage, flood the mind. And, also, words become hard to form with tears flowing from your eyes and smoke billowing from your ears. I needed a few days. Crying with protestors in the streets after that ill-fated decision to overturn Roe, (after undoing NY's gun law), while I was not actually out there in the streets with them, was helpful. 

We have four justices who should not even be on the court. Let's work on impeaching them for lying under oath during their confirmation hearings as a start. Mitch McConnell, who owes his allegiance ($$$) to Leonard Leo of the Federalist society, a Catholic Opus Dei member, (I think he has placed 5-6 justices on the court, most are Opus Dei?), installed Neil Gorsuch into the seat he stole from President Obama. 

Scalia had suddenly died leaving the vacancy during Barack Obama's last year in office. Obama nominated Merrick Garland. Mitch thought, no way is this black Democratic president going to appoint three justices. So, he created his new rule: POTUS can't nominate a justice to the court within 10 months of a POTUS election. And, go figure, it worked. Dems are just too polite. To understand what a cold, rather heartless rightwing justice Gorsuch is, look up his record. And read, too, how even the other justices think he's an arrogant, patronizing know it all.

 

Then, about five minutes before the end of the reign of Donald J. Trump, (orange Caligula, as I refer to him), Mitch shoved Amy Coney Barrett into RBG's seat when RBG made the unforgivable mistake of dying before Joe Biden could take his place in our Oval Office. Because Amy's a woman and so was RBG, women will be happy, MM figured. A woman is a woman is a woman, to bastardize Gertrude Stein's poem. Of course, women knew that ACB did not smell as sweet as RBG. But, MM got away with it. Again, Dems were too polite. And meanwhile, Amy isn't even qualified to be on the court. She's the least experienced justice in 30 years, I read, (I guess the last least qualified was Thomas 30.). She never tried a case, and her opinions showed her to not care about justice or people's rights. She signed an anti-abortion ad and said she forgot about that, while avoiding abortion questions, just saying precedence is precedence. And she was literally, a "Handmaid" in her Catholic cult, People of Praise, where men make the decisions and women serve the men and God. Sounds like judge material to me.

Kavanaugh should have been left by the side of the road with a beer keg and a box of Kleenex. Lied and cried and yelled at his confirmation hearing about how much he loves beer. In that confirmation hearing, Beer Bong Kavanaugh's behavior also just screamed Supreme Court Justice material. Didn't it? It had to make you as proud as it made me. What a shocking performance. Witnesses came forward to shed light on his past sexual assaults. Christine Blasey Ford did the right thing to try to save the court and the nation. But, to no avail, and she suffered for it, even having to move out of her home due to threats. And he got onto the court. And who paid off all his very large debts remains a mystery. And another mystery to me, is why didn't Kavanaugh's wife pack up the kids and get the hell away from that snivelly little fool? 

Clarence Thomas, Uncle Tom or Peeping Thomas, as he's been referred to, had a similar problem with his past. Anita Hill was a hero back then, too, but also to no avail. It remains a white man's world, after all, due to gerrymandering and cheating and voter suppression. And few are whiter than that black man.

 

So, two sexual assaulters helped undo Roe v Wade for women who are raped, or are victims of incest, and become pregnant. Even if your doctor says you will die in childbirth, you will be forced to die in childbirth now, or be charged with murder. Stranger than fiction. Life always is. Isn't it? About 30 years after Thomas' confirmation hearing and Anita Hill's testimony, "Gin" Thomas, that lovely MAGA insurrectionist, called Anita very early one morning, demanding that she apologize for the things she'd said about her husband back then. Bit of a delayed reaction, I'd say. I figured Ginni had been tippling all night long, and got more enraged with every drink until she drunk dialed her husband's old nemesis and dumped on poor, unsuspecting Anita Hill.

 

We are losing our democracy and sliding into a theocracy. A theocracy which gives more rights to guns than to women. I still do not understand the guns and god thing or what makes "Christians" think Jesus would be into any weapon. Have they ever actually read what Jesus purportedly said? To me it is an unholy alliance from hell. 

Leonard Leo's long range plan has been to unravel our democratic republic and replace it with a theocracy. And he's been very good at it. He is well funded by Koch brothers and others and because Dems are just too polite. 

Let me amend myself. US is not becoming a theocracy. It is fast becoming a Christofascistic state. QAnon Christofascism. Women in the Jewish religion have the right to an abortion. They believe life begins at your first breath and ends at your last breath. I guess they will have to demand a religious exemption to this Christofascist ban to receive their God given right to reproductive healthcare.

The world is astounded and frightened to see what America, the democratic country they looked up to, is becoming. I think they fear for us and laugh at us by turns. I think the world is still dumbstruck by how uneducated Americans are and how many guns US has, (393.3 million guns to about 330 million citizens.), and how many mass shootings, (at least 250 so far in 2022), and how many children are murdered in their classrooms. How does any civilized nation comprehend, explain, or defend it? 

And I hope those who are applauding that now public funds have to pay for religious schools, too, and that coaches are allowed to pray on the field, enjoy when a Muslim school demands taxpayers support it, and an Islamic Imam spreads his rug out and prays to Allah to bless their games, or asks Allah to kill America, the Great Satan. Or the Church of Satan prays that their team wins. Go Satan!

What a world. I'm back where I started. What can one say about the state of the union today? Stop the world, I want off? My suggestion is that Dems stop being so freakin' polite! And that everyone of voting age, get off their asses and get out and vote in November like their country and their lives depend on it! They do! It's not too late to reverse a lot of the damage done.

 

We can stop our downfall by taking more control of Congress, ending the filibuster, and expanding SCOTUS. While we’re at it, let’s set term limits, too.  This justice for life is not working, either. The generic post Roe reversal poll I read recently, had Dems up by 10 points. We can do this! 

As the phrase, the Afro-American woman civil rights activist, Florence Rae Kennedy, coined, and many, including Gloria Steinam and Rosi Braidotti, quoted, and Occupy Wall Street movement turned into a bumper sticker, said: "Don't agonize, organize!" 

And Rosi Braidotti is right. "Violence, pain and resentment are conducive to paralysis, not to change." Don't go down with the ship, yet. Remain positive and fight like hell. Re-radicalize! VOTE!

Free Time for Equal Time

        The traitorous coup thrower, and would be despot, feels he is not getting his fair day in court. He demands equal time. Just not under oath. He wants hours of free TV prime time to repeat his "rigged election" mantra to rebut the "Russia, Russia, Russia, here we go again" witch hunt. The former guy (TFG) is, apparently, glued to these hearings, (Cheating on Fox News with CNN, I assume.), and it's causing his bloated pumpkin head to explode. 

At a conference in Nashville, hosted by the Faith and Freedom Coalition, TFG said, "There's no clearer example of the menacing spirit that has devoured the American left than the disgraceful performance being staged by the unselect committee." (except for "unselect," it sounds more like Stephen Miller.) 

TFG had only lost his case in 61 courts, after all. Drop in the bucket. He has never been known to let facts, laws, a judge's opinion, (or 61 judges' opinions), or the majority popular vote, or a majority of electors, or the Constitution get in his way. It's good to be King. He knows how to play to his gullible MAGA followers. Lie, lie, lie, and lie some more, double down, rinse and repeat, and keep repeating the lies until the Second Coming. 

His "Christian" followers love him and believe every bit of the word salad that spews from his mouth. He is their savior. What he is, is the consummate con man, maybe the best America has ever seen. I loved when he called the January 6th Select Committee, "con people. They're con artists," he said. Oh, the irony wasted on the irony deficient. 

Malignant narcissists lie and project their behavior onto others. And if TFG was not so dangerous to democracy, America, and life itself, he would be a fascinating masterclass in abhorrent behavior and some of The DSM-5's 157 mental disorders, such as sociopathy, borderline personality and histrionic personality disorders. And who knows? Maybe Mental health workers could coin some new diagnoses after analyzing him. 

We came within 40 feet of throwing our country into "a revolution inside a Constitutional crisis," according to Republican Judge Michael Luttig at the last hearing. Not sure where the mob thought they were going to go with this overthrow of the government after assassinating Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi, and anyone else who got in their way at the Capitol, but in TFG fashion, it was not well thought out. (Maybe it's due to his ADHD, or dyslexia, or Adderall snorting, or dementia, or...? Insurrection by the Keystone Cops. 

And now TFG just wants to tell US about "the good things, the things that we want to hear," about that day. "It's a one-way street. It's a rigged deal." He needs to give his side of the story, so it's fair and balanced and unbiased. And then, victimhood is another sign of malignant narcissism. 

The fourth January 6 Select Committee Hearing airs, nearly everywhere but Fox News, tomorrow 9am till 12:30pm PT. Don't miss a minute. 

Jocosa Puella June 20, 2022

Hang In for the 2nd Edition

        It's 2022. I think I last entered a blog post in 2011? Life certainly does get in the way, between deaths, (and ensuing family feuds), illnesses, pandemics, disasters, natural, and man made, as in Republicans and Donald Trump. 😬 When asked on Twitter what I think is the single biggest threat to the world today, I always answer, Republicans. 

Life has not been the same in America since that lying, orange con man and Putin useful idiot, along with his 24 years younger "Slovene-American" mannequin and alleged ex-model, third wife, descended the escalator at Trump Tower in 2015, to the applause of his paid extras. And then with Putin's help, lied, finagled and gerrymandered his way into our White House. Saddest day I can remember, until his dystopian inauguration speech, anyway. 

But, we lived through those very frightening years, despite all the sleep deprivation due to nightmares. So, tomorrow is the second January 6th Select Committee hearing. It feels like Christmas Eve to me. I'm setting my alarm and recorder. I suppose 7am is too early for popcorn. So, coffee it is with some oranges and toast, too. It is a party, after all.  

The first hearing, on the 9th, did not disappoint. I thought the committee, and the former ABC TV executive news producer, James Goldston, did a spectacular job laying out their case against Donald Trump, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and other fools who bought into orange Caligula's lies and conspiracies. 

Like brilliant prosecutors, they are building their case, showing how Trump knew full well he had lost the election. No plausible deniability. And they clearly showed that he planned this for at least a month with the Proud Boys. They showed us that he felt his VP had it coming when the mob yelled and chanted, "Hang Mike Pence!" And he gleefully watched the violence and terror at the Capitol on his bank of TVs in the dining room off the Oval Office. He never called for any help, and let the Capitol and Metro Police fight it out with the out of control mob for hours. 

As officer, Caroline Edwards, who sustained a brain injury that day, said, she was not trained in hand to hand combat. And Trump kept rewinding the video to watch the violence again to relish in all the people who were fighting for him. It would be sad that the ex-POTUS is so deeply insecure, due to being so badly treated as a child, that seeing people commit mayhem and violence in his name made him feel loved. But, I am all out of Fs to give about that cruel, criminal sociopath. 

I feel like I pretty much already knew most of what they were presenting, except Ivanka's actually throwing her demented dad under the bus. That was fun. Talk about mannequins. She looked like a gaunt robot. But, Ivanka has so much more money than her dear old dad, (Thank you, China. Thank you, Saudi's MBS.), she doesn't need to worry about being disinherited. 

But, I hadn't fully realized the amount of advanced planning and number of reconnaissance tours of the Capitol to find the most vulnerable areas to breach the building. I, also, can't wait to see who else in the Republican party was involved in organizing and helping those tours. I think we all have our suspicions, of course, but to be continued... 

And I learned on Thursday that the Proud Boys actually hired a documentarian to record their insurrection. 😳 I don't know about you, but I would think that the first rule of committing an egregious and treasonous federal offense would be to not record it. But, maybe that's just me. 

I hope you will not miss this history in the making tomorrow morning, either. To be continued. 

Jocosa Puella June 12, 2022

Kakistocracy

“Some nation-states have suffered what the Greeks called kakistocracy—government by the worst of men.”
Tom H. Hastings, Ecology of War and Peace: Counting the Cost of Conflict, 2000

I think it’s pretty clear that the US has been a nation in a state of kakistocracy for quite some time now. This term explained a lot to me. For one thing, we now know we aren’t alone in history to put the worst possible people in power. That’s good to know. Isn’t it? No one wants to be alone in misery.

So, we may be stupid, but at least we aren’t precedent settingly stupid. I, for one, would feel far worse if I knew ours was the first and only country in world history to have voted its enemies into power, those who would destroy rule of law and a government of the people and by the people.

And we are in good company with the Ancient Greeks. Besides amazing art and architecture, philosophy and mythology, the Greeks gave us the term, democracy. So, they did know the difference between rule by the people and by the people's enemies.

But, at least, it is good to know that we are not anomalies. We are simply flawed creatures guilty of having what is, probably just an inherited human condition, the desire to vote against one's best interests, or for Kakistocracy, “government under the control of a nation's worst or least-qualified citizens.”

I know there are countless governments in power now and throughout human history that are/were definitely kakistocractic. But, those are/were probably forced upon the people, more than they were popularly put into power. This handing the keys to the car over to the obviously falling down drunk, is more what we have practiced in our elections.

I’ve referred to our current system of government variously as a plutocracy, an oligarchy, a moneocracy, and a corporatocracy. Very often, I simply tell people we are literally living inside Norman Jewison's 1975 film, Rollerball. Maybe even The Body Snatchers.

But, now that I have discovered kakistocracy, the term just seems to sum it up succinctly. Not the why one would do that, but the fact that it has been done.

Now, whether our current kakistocracy is due to mass ignorance, in part from our less than stellar educational system; or whether it’s due to mass hypnosis from the constant din of misinformation that is thrown at us in the corporate-owned media’s planned disinformation campaign, I don’t know. We could, probably, also, blame rigged and/or hacked electronic voting and ballot counting machines. It could, also, be due to the huge cache of corporate election funds spent buying pet puppet politicians who will push their self-aggrandizing agendas.

Or maybe our kakistocracy can be blamed on the large percentage of American citizens who are simply suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. That’s one of my favorite choices. Though, I think there is not one simple cause, I think it’s clear that it has been a concerted, if concealed, effort by the rightwing “conservative” (whatever it is they think they are conserving, certainly not the economy or the environment or the Constitution), power base to take “their” country back from the fools who they think unjustly stole it from them. They are the reverse Robin Hood. Regardless of where total blame lies for our kakistocracy condition, the electorate put the wrong people at the helm, again. They’re back.

And those wrong people in power are steering US right back off the edge of their flat earth. We veered away from it for a short while. And just when we thought/hoped, that just maybe, if we stuck together, we could affect a sea change, too...

Does anyone in the rightwing notice or care that this country is being controlled by the same mindset that brought us our first Great Depression, those greedy, self-serving, myopic plutocrats who crashed the economy then? Do they ever stop and ponder why we are on the brink again? Don’t worry. That’s rhetorical.

See, here’s the thing. I do think too many here in this country have Stockholm Syndrome. And then there’s those poor people who actually believe they will win Lotto and be stinkin’ rich one day, too. So, they don’t want the government to mess with their future success by taxing them like they do the poor and middle class now.

So, they fight to keep the top 2% of the population, who have more wealth than the bottom 98% combined, from paying their share, which if they paid would get us out of the debt the rightwing brought us, after those on the politically left got us out of it. They do not seem to see that the now rich are rich at the expense of the now poor and the now middle class. They bought the bird in the bush and pie in sky trick. But, the sky is falling and the bush is burning.

And then there’s the Christian connection.

That’s been a real magic, bunny out of hat trick, by the rightwing. They’ve convinced Christians that Jesus would hate the poor enough to give what little they have to the rich. You kind of have to hand it to them for that one. They’re good. Logically, you can’t, on the surface, even imagine that that one would go over. But, it did and continues to work for them.

And they are not even close to what Jesus preached, love thy neighbor as thyself. They are about stealing from thy neighbor to make thyself richer. And yet, it’s the supposed Christian base that, by and large, votes these “worst of men” into public offices. Go figure. Huh?

Can anyone explain that to me? Or better still, can someone, please, explain it to them? The FAUX News that permeates society has left their heads so far up their posteriors that they can’t hear the truth. Can someone free their ears, please?

We all know power corrupts. Thus, we really do know, even if only subconsciously, that those who crave power are the exact opposite of who should be in power. The power hungry sycophant class is too easily corruptible. And those who would do the corrupting, for their own gain, know exactly whom they can corrupt the most easily.

If you would work a man, know his desires and his weaknesses, to paraphrase Francis Bacon. The corrupters know who will sell out their mothers for fame, fortune, and power. And they do know very well how to how to work them.

Those we would have to drag, kicking and screaming, to be in the public and in power are those who should run our government. Those are people we can trust. They don’t want the limelight. They know it’s bad for their complexions. They don’t want the power. They know their rewards are not in material possessions or physical power. Their hearts and minds are above the fray. They know power is an illusion, if not a delusion. They would just rule by law for the benefit of all to live in peace and harmony.

The problem for us is, we can’t find those kind of conscious and solid citizens. They don’t want to be found. They know better. They know they will not be repaid for their sacrifice to serve the people with gratitude and understanding by the masses, but rather with the reward of thrown stones. So, the stone age minds continue to rule this age, too.

So, here we are, stuck again with the bottom feeders, entering by default, into Lord of the Flies time. The criminally insane continue to run the asylum.

When we handed the biggest gavel to the biggest baby bully crying out the loudest for power, we knew we were headed into the waterfall at edge of the universe.

So, hold onto the boat and for dear life, my dears… We are charged with nothing less than keeping the light of sanity shining. We will be back.

You really can’t keep a good “man” down… Good will out in the end. So, keep the faith. And remember what Jesus would do: Have a big fish fry for all and keep the wine pouring.