Categories
politics Queer

Impeachment

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I am sitting in the hot sun, drinking espresso on the terrace of a perfect beaux-arts terrace. The French alps tower around me. Specifically, Mont Blanc glistening like a fancy frosted desert, a choppy blue glacier advancing to its right, over our heads tiny humans paragliding, spin and plunge.

Sadly, there is trouble in paradise, my serenity smashed to pieces whenever I open Facebook.  I am not forced to open Facebook, my fingers with their virtual muscle memory… like billions of others, slide over the smooth face of my smart phone and hit the pale blue F.  Instantly I am plunged into transatlantic, liberal hand wringing and chest beating.

They scream, ‘Impeach Trump!’ Facebook posts from disillusioned liberals/hillarybots. ‘Impeach him now!’  Their unrealistic expectations give me daily pleasure.  These are not, on the whole, dumb folk spewing liberal dogma.  I’m concerned they genuinely believe impeachment is possible. I’m sad these highly intelligent, motivated folk can’t put their energy into the search for a credible and charismatic democratic alternative to fight Trump in 2020.

Am I alone when I ask:  Is Trump good for the USA?

He behaves like a deranged, megalomaniac… a south american despot you say.  Yet, Americans might remind themselves that there are those of us who live outside the USA in countries the USA has royally fucked over or whose elections and way of life America has meddled.  To those who have endured the chaos of American intervention Trump is the last of a long line of equally despicable Americans presidents… including the holy cow, ‘No Drama Obama’.  Unlike the others, Trump is merely treating the USA as the USA has treated the rest of the world.  He is crude and greedy, he intends to take what ever he wants and will share the spoils with those prepared to cut him in on the deal.

Trump is good for America if Americans are willing to take a good hard look at their behaviors these past few decades.  Their collective racism, their xenophobia, their greed.

To impeach a president takes a huge amount of effort and determination, it requires consensus in both houses.   My British friends fail to understand if Trump were to be impeached/removed/assassinated… there will be no snap election, no variation on Theresa May’s rig the vote.  The four years the American people voted for must be played out and there is an order of succession if anything were to happen to Trump.

The succession: Trump, Pence the vice President and then Paul Ryan, leader of the house.  Each more terrible than the last.

Most of my ‘friends’ on social media are fully engaged with the trump drama, the trump conflict, and desire nothing more that the easy resolution of a mini series.  They are looking for a perfect denouement, a canny plot twist that will somehow give them the President they desire, the happy ending proving they were right all along.

Crazy liberals cannot bring themselves to admit what is happening all over the world:  the people are tired of the status quo.  They are bored with democracy, they are addicted to intensity.  They are focused on their smart phone, the television and the endless news cycle that feeds them divorce, terrorism, murder and larceny.

Let me say that again:  the people are addicted en mass to intensity… however it can be served by whomever can deliver the strongest dose and Trump delivers, day after day.

All Americans treat vulnerability as a opportunity.  If you are sick or find yourself on the wrong side of the law… Americans will fully exploit you.  Trump’s Attorney General is filling his own private jails with black and brown men guilty of possessing small amounts of weed, their sentences are non negotiable.  Trump is sacrificing the land, the resources therein, from sea to shining sea… he will let you foul the water and the air.  By slashing and burning he is making everyone fight for what they believe knowing most will not fight but simply retreat.   He is the Goth, the Visigoth, the Vandal.  He is well-known in history… he is the black cloud hanging over the advent of the dark age.

Trump is the most American of Americans.  He lingers within the psyche of the nation.  He is born out of Manifest Destiny, slavery and mass incarceration.  Until Trump was president only the few challenged America’s despicable countenance.  Liberals, democrats and progressive were cautious critics of the very same USA Trump now fairly represents.

Those who say they hate Trump refuse to challenge the systems and institutions that put him into power and keep him in power.  They blindly accept the dominance of their military industrial complex, they accept the word of law.  They rarely challenge their own ingrained prejudices interpersonally they criticize internationally.

Trump’s supporters will not turn on him.  They blame the establishment for interrupting him, they blame the FBI.  They think little of the police and the rule of law.  They watch Trump battle dark forces and his fight (absurd to the rest of us) confirms their worst fears about the USA.  A president who can’t speak freely without every newspaper misreporting, who can’t hire and fire without scrutiny, a leader they wanted to lead them away from modernity, back to mythical greatness.

If anything happens to Donald Trump… and it will eventually.  His people will take up arms and start gunning for those they see as hindering their dream.  Some dream of wax fruit and paper leaves, their garden of Eden.  Their Eden will not include uppity black people demanding apologies, trans toilets or gay marriage.  Women will earn less than men and keep their mouths shut when their husbands need to beat or rape them.

It is, of course, the lie of simplicity they crave, the unprompted simplicity the people of this tiny French village understand.   Uncoupled from their second screen, planting black currents, walking their dogs down verdant mountain paths.  I don’t know how Americans will ever find their way back, back home.  To a place where they can live without fear.  Fear of sickness or another taking what they have.   How will they get back to something honest and kind.  I don’t know.  How will they ever live without their crippling addiction to intensity, shame and resentment.

The further I get from the USA the more I am inclined to believe civil war is inevitable.

Categories
Rant

Deficit Ramble

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Quiet days on the ranch. Occasional parties. Trips to Van Nuys. Writing and preparing.

The election approaches. Everyone buying into it like it’s a real event.

Mitt Romney this and Paul Ryan that. Obama in the polls.

The more the right talk about, manifest socialism… the more the people will investigate. A self-fulfilling prophesy. The ill-judged Romney 47% remark seems to have hit a chord.

What sort of chord?

What does this random remark mean to those currently unemployed, underwater, disenfranchised?

In Europe the people are storming the palace. Austerity for what? Debt, deficit, bankers… as explosive as any Molotov cocktail to a modern European .

What is this debt? To whom do we owe the money? How did we get there in the first place? And why should we pay it back?

Unfortunately, if you rely on network nightly news programs for your information about the economy, you are likely to be misinformed about the main causes of the current deficit: in order of importance, the economic downturn, the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 34 percent of the 2010 deficit and 28 percent of the 2011 deficit can be attributed to the economic downturn.

The Bush tax cuts dwarf all other policy changes, costing the country an estimated $375 billion this year, or 24 percent of the deficit.

Newsweek: “the tax cuts were by far the largest, adding up to $2.3 trillion over 10 years.” Forty percent of the tax cuts’ benefits went to people earning over $500,000.

With cumulative spending of over $1.2 trillion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the post-9/11 military escalation rounds out the list of top deficit culprits at 14 percent. (The cost could reach up to $4 trillion, including future veterans’ expenses.)

The news media under report or simply ignore the truth about the deficit instead concentrating on entitlements as the main culprit for the obscene debt.

The myth of the deficit is perpetuated by both parties, Republican and Democrat. It is very unlikely that the truth will ever be revealed by either Democratic incumbent or Republican Nominee.

If Obama wins in November he will have to re-calibrate his Presidency. He’ll have nothing to lose.

He may do what the loyal people of the USA have held onto both good and bad about their friendly President… that he is in fact the ultimate dog in the manger… an unchecked liberal, a gay loving entitlement loving…. muslim socialist… ready to launch the USA into the groovy 21st Century?

I’m not holding out much hope… but hey. I hope I’m wrong.

There’s always the deficit to worry about.

Categories
Health Immigration Rant

Fuck You Paul Ryan

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“Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.”

Oscar Wilde

Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney are dark side muppets.

They inhabit a world where only the mercenary survive.

They have no interest in the beautiful world around you unless it can be used to make more money.

They think conservation is for losers.

They will mine every last piece of coal, sell every last drop of oil, catch every fish, chop every tree without consideration for you or your children.

They have scant regard for other humans unless they have achieved what they define as success: huge amounts of money and power.

They believe in slavery.

In their dark world you will be enslaved with huge personal debt as soon as it is reasonable to impose it upon you.

So obese you’ll be unable to defend yourself, or run fast enough from crazed, gun-toting children high on prescription meds.

You will have no option but to eat cheap gmo food that causes rampant obesity in you and your family.

Your local school will be stripped of funds so your children remain uneducated and unable to intelligently question their plan.

They will teach your kids, when they can get away with it, the debunking of a thousand years of empirical scientific evidence in favor of ridged adherence to the bible.

You will fear being sick and die long before you are expected because of the appalling health care system that they proudly tell the world is the very best.

Finally, you will live in toxic shame inspired by Christian‘morality’.

If you ‘fail’ the system by becoming unemployed they will demonize you, your peers will accuse you of laziness. You will be encouraged to blame brown people for your misfortune.

Ryan and Romney will achieve their aim by frightening the oppressed proletariat with dishonest bogey men: the deficit, the end of the traditional family and foreign terrorism.

They will succeed as other tyrants have before them.

The people are simply too fatigued to fight their lies and mythology.

Complicated and realistic solutions have been long abandoned in favor of easy and inchoate sound bites.

I had a dream last night that I was fucking Paul Ryan.  After I ejaculated I pulled my cock out of his ass… but it was no longer a penis…. It was a crucifix… Covered in blood shit and cum.

Finally, I rather like the new, gamine Miley Cyrus. A world apart from the generic valley girl she once was. What the hell is all the fuss? Proof (if you needed it) that people don’t really like celebrating individuality. Preferring the homogenous mass.

Categories
Death Gay Love

Gaping Hole

Nothing.  Nothing to say, write or comment on.  In my own head.   Do you know that feeling?  When life is so overwhelming?   I could not sleep last night.  Perhaps it was the cheese again.  Must stop eating cheese before bedtime.

It is easy to look over ones life and just remember the things one has lost rather than what one has found.

I am going to New York this weekend.  Staying on 10th street again.   Comfortable.

It seems like for the past few months I have made one bad decision after another.   If only I could tear myself away from the self-loathing.  To love myself enough to give the man I see occasionally in the mirror..a break.  Do you think that is possible?

I just made a huge pot of black coffee and drank it all.  Friends arriving from London today.   Dinner with Toby last night.  Saw Please Give with Katherine Keener.   It was a lovely film.  Very New York, very sad.   I shed a tear at the end.

Did I ever tell you that for a short time I was friendly with Katherine Keener?   She has a lovely house in Santa Monica, beautifully decorated with really well-chosen furniture.  She has the most amazing taste.

I tell you what is happening in my head.  I feel as if I am in some terrible competition.  A competition that I can never win because it’s not my game.   I am not like ‘them’ so I can’t win.    I feel very unsafe.  Not like I was going to die because that would be easy.  To know for sure the time and place of ones own death.

Unsafe, because I want something so badly knowing that it can never ever happen.    That something is not a person or a thing or a place but the peace of mind that has eluded me for so long.   I have learned that nothing can fix me.  Nothing can make it better.  Maybe a more complete relationship with God but to have that relationship with God I must remove the lead cap I am wearing that keeps me in the dark.

I sat in a room yesterday morning with 70 men who all looked so fucking miserable.  Every man in there just trying to make sense of what and who he was.   today, I have no idea what the answer is.

To wake up with no answers is a terrible thing.

The little dog is sleeping.   He is waiting for me to pull on my pants and take him for a long walk.  I used to think that if I could just keep on going, keep the momentum then everything would be ok but I have nothing to look forward to right now.

Just a gaping hole where a life should be.