Tag: conservatives

Twozdaz Wandering Political Thoughts

It’s a tale of two worlds. It’s the best of times, it’s the craziest of times. It’s a world defined by facts and reason where people come to share discourse about serious problems based on the evidence presented, and it’s a world where a powerful elected official shows serious problems with reality.

This makes it all hard to write. I want to rage about Trump’s insanity. But that’s the problem: he is sick. He should not be in a position of power. He should be retired to somewhere safe, where he can rest with medical care. Trump constantly trolled President Joe Biden as sleepy Joe, always claiming that President Biden was too old and feeble to be POTUS. Well, here we have an expanding body of empirical evidence that Trump’s grasp on reality is as thin and untenable as a cobweb.

Between his psychobabble Tylenol announcement, antifa EO, and his UN speech rife with falsehoods, Trump has blown out any perceptions that he shares the same reality as the great majority. Acting on some fabricated form of history and facts, he makes speeches, boasting about ending wars without naming them, claiming to save thousands of lives, chides others for being ignorant, oblivious to the ignorance which he displays. Whereas before, he was laughed at in his UN speech, this outing found a silent audience; they heard and saw how sick he is. Unless you’re Trump or a MAGAt, you don’t laugh at the sick. Yet, Trump probably saw and heard awe for how great he was. In his mind, they were silent with respect for how brilliant he is. That’s how disconnected he has become.

Tragically for U.S. citizens and the rest of the world, the GOP and Trump’s enablers gleefully go along with his madness. It serves their purpose for him to push his alternate reality unto everyone else and upend science, medicine, logic, truth, and history.

MAGAts seem too mired in their own hatred or alternate reality to raise their voices. This shows again and again through FAFO stories about how shocked they are to be victimized by the person and policies they support. They pretend Trump is religious, despite his history of conning, lying, cheating. They pretend he is fit and strong and muscular, even though pictures show an unhealthy, obese individual. They pretend to hear brilliant insights when he speaks, even when he incoherently rambles. They pretend that he’s religious, sent by God, although he’s committed adultery, paid for sex, has been indicted and convicted of crimes, and shuns the poor and sick while hoarding money.

Most of the wealthiest 1% seem addicted to greed and just keep grabbing whatever they can, regardless of what happens to the other 99% of the population. They’re just looking out for number one; number one is them.

Useful tools like former Fox News are broken individuals who like having attention, power, and position. They’re in over their heads and know it, but that’s okay, because Trump supports them. They’re all going for an ugly spin around the toilet bowl.

Project 2025 participants in Trump’s administration want to break the world. They’re the most dangerous, because they’re organized and serious. They want to create a crucible for cheap slave labor where the wealthy and powerful will flourish with little moral challenge to their ways. Where they can claim their one true god guides their cruelty, hatred, and bigotry. Where white men rule with a few exceptions as salve to prove to themselves they’re not racist, not sexist. They won’t be happy, nor satisfied. But they will be in power. In control.

Concerned only with themselves, bankrupt of morals and empathy, power and control are what they seek. They do not care who they hurt, who is used, or what laws are broken to do it. The ends justify the means in their minds.

This is nothing new. Acting on avarice, greed, and hate, others have peddled lies and misinformation to mislead otherwise good people in order to advance themselves. History shows that’s happened in the United States before. It’s easy to dupe people by drowning them with fake information, especially when it’s what they want to hear, and especially when the wealthiest control most of the media, and the wealthiest are willing to go along with the scheme. The difference now is that a deeply disturbed individual, Donald J. Trump, now commands them.

That is what we must face and overcome.

2

Munda’s Theme Music

A cold night surrendered to blue skies and warming sunshine. It’s 62 F now. The sun is promoting a high of 76 F. It’s said that we’ll see 81 F tomorrow. This is Munda, May 5, 2025 in Ashlandia. This is spring in Ashlandia.

Our trip last week gifted us a few things. One, my sciatica kicked in on Saturday. Too much time in a car seat. I’ve been dealing with it off and on since I was 20. I can usually feel it developing and head it off with stretching exercises. My early warning system failed me this time. I didn’t medicate but my wife suggested a Salon Pas. I slapped that thing on. I couldn’t believe the ensuing burning. I was in a recliner watching telly. The heat grew so intense, I pulled the patch off. On a whim, I popped it on my belly.

Well, call me Steve if I wasn’t surprised by the results. I suffer belly bloat. That Salon Pas patch remarkably reduced it. So I did it again yesterday. Same result. I was truly astonished and impressed and put another one on today. Only drawback from the patch at this point is hair. Yes, I’m a hairy boi. Getting that patch off required scissors and delicacy. The end result was a belly Brazil.

That’s my side. My wife could hardly get out of a chair on Friday night. She’d been complaining about pain and using different methods to address inflamation and pain. Epsom paths. Salon Pas. Valtaren. Red light therapy. Bed rest. Diet. But her weakness scared me. She’s better today but related that when we were on vacation, she worried about getting out of the bathtub. Fortunately, handles were available. Here an home, she reported a similar problem.

Her problems dig into my psyche as my sister peppers me with updates on Mom. “Mom is really debilitated. She’s confused about dates and other things.” Mom went and stayed with sis. “Mom said that she had to pee. Then she stood and began peeing. I went to help her, asking her what she needs. Mom said, I’m going to fall. I dropped everything and rushed over and caught her, keeping her from falling.” There are good answers about what to do but none are simple. Guilt spreads through me because I seem to recover. My sciatica did a quick and silent goodbye while Mom and my wife both endure. I can do little for either.

Politics again inspired The Neurons for today’s music. A conversation with my wife was the catalyst. She was reading about Conservatives complaining that the root of all of today’s problems in the USA is letting white women go to college and having the right to vote. Apparently, all those women going to college are getting liberal arts degrees and daring to think, and college screws up their thinking.

Like, WTF, seriously? Do those men really believe that? Pretty damn galling to that these people, these obviously sexist and biased shallow thinkers, think they have the right to deprive others of rights.

Included in the responses was a woman being interviewed. She said she could never vote for a woman to be POTUS. Because of hormones. What? Yes, because of hormones. If they’re going through menopause, their mood will change and they’ll go off and start a war.

The male interviewer responded, “But haven’t all the wars been started by men so far?”

The woman went wide eye and still. The video ended.

Talking about this thread of crazo thinking, we remarked, so many people underestimate others’ contributions. Maybe they learn and forget.

And that encouraged The Neurons to begin The Who and “Eminence Front” in the morning mental music stream.

Drinks flow
People forget
That big wheel spins, the hair thins
People forget
Forget they’re hiding
The news slows
People forget
Their shares crash, hopes are dashed
People forget
Forget they’re hiding

h/t to Americansongwriter.com

Off to drink more coffee and employ my neurons in some writing. Hope your energy is up and pulls you safely through another day. Here’s the music. Cheers

1

Wenzda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

Time Magazine offered us insights into how world leaders reacted to Trump’s tariffs.

Reading of some intelligent responses to what’s the madman in D.C. is doing was uplifting. The excerpt from Sweden had me head nodding.

Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said in a Wednesday statement that Sweden is “well prepared for what’s happening now.” At the same time, he underscored: “We don’t want growing trade barriers. We don’t want a trade war. That would make our populations poorer and the world more dangerous in the long run.”

“Free enterprise and competition have laid the foundations of the West’s success. That’s why Americans can listen to music on Swedish Spotify and we Swedes can listen to the same music on our American iPhones,” Kristersson said.

Ulf Kristersson clearly gets it. He sees what the trade war and tariffs would do to the global economy and why that’s probably a bad idea.

Jealously bites me in the ass. Why can’t we have an intelligent and capable person like that leading us in the United States?

Yes, I know that this is a thumbnail sketch of Ulf Kristersson. He’s conservative. While he’s reasonable about tariffs, he might harbor strange, dark view about other matters. At least he seems to have principles. That’s more than I can say about conservatives bending their knee to Trump.

0

Frieda’s Wandering Political Thoughts

I read a headline out to the my wife.

Why the American consumer is fed up

“That’s CNN,” I add for her. “I know why I’m fed up but I want to see if CNN knows why I’m fed up.”

This is an Analysis by Harry Enten. I don’t recall the name. Doesn’t mean much for me. I may have read Harry Enten’s work before but didn’t realize it. I’m often ignorant in that way.

Harry Enten began, ‘Americans just feel like they can’t catch a financial break. You know the feeling. You go to the grocery store, you look at the prices and you want to channel your inner Vince Lombardi: “What the (heck) is going on out here?”’

I read that to my wife and subject her to my opinion. “He’s a little wrong on that. I know what the heck is going on. It’s inflation, protecting profits, supply and demand, tariffs, among other things.” Yes, I’m in a quarrelsome mood. That often takes place as I read the news in 2025.

The analysis continues.

“Worst of all, it feels like it’s only going to get worse. There’s a very good reason for that: Americans may, in a way, get taxed more when they go to buy things – more than they have for a long period of time.

“No matter what some people will tell you, tariffs are, in fact, taxes. When you combine the potential tariff rates that the Trump administration could impose on us, the consumer, with the inflation that raged out of control coming out of the pandemic, it feels like things have gotten away from us.”

That earns an eye roll from me. “Yes, no kidding.”

“Take a look at a recent report from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. It estimates that under President Donald Trump’s proposed tariffs, the effective tariff rate will be 8% in 2025. That’s so high that it would go off the page if you were charting tariff rates over the last 55 years.”

“Yes, but those are facts and history. Trump deals in prejudices and myths,” I tell my suffering wife.

She relates a story abut Wall Street. “This says that men working on Wall Street are happy with life under Trump because they’re free to sexualize women again.”

I grunt dismay and keep reading the CNN analysis. Prices are going to go up. Yes, no kidding. I read aloud, “Keep in mind that an estimated 25% to 30% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck.” Right, I know.

Of course, what I’m doing is validating my opinions. Experts tell us that’s one reason why politics are so divisive these days. While I’m reading this, people reading Red State read nothing about prices and tariffs. They’re busy writing up Trump’s glory, how great his cabinet is doing, and demonizing Democrats. Their targets these days are Fetterman, Pelosi, and Walz.

I finish the CNN article and resume my doomscrolling. Arctic ice has shrunk to a springtime record low but don’t you dare talk about climate change. Non-U.S. citizen Elon Reeve Musk is trying to buy votes in Wisconsin. Ohio is further narrowing what can be discussed in classrooms. Looks like it’s gonna be another quarrelsome day.

More coffee, please.

0

The Full Agenda

Project 2025 has been on display enough that the gist has been assimilated.  Led by wealthy individuals and the Heritage Foundation, they pursue a theocracy dominated by white men. Women’s rights will be diminished, if not outright stripped. Black men will be tolerated as long as they toe the white line. If you think you’re something other than male or female as it says on your paperwork when born, forget about it. Your shall be male or female, as their god intended.

Under Project 2025, remember, too, that work is good. As they sit in homes and offices fantasizing about the American world, they want children back in the factories. Women, however, should be at home, giving birth, sexually gratifying their man, keeping the house clean and cooking and baking up a storm, cuz that’s what Jesus wanted.

Because, besides being about money, power, and their rights, it’s about forwarding their religion, even if they don’t practice it. They’ve gone from practicing what would Jesus do to what would Donald Trump do?

That’s what they pursue if Donald J. Trump is elected as POTUS this year.

What’s interesting about this is the cosmic political background.

On a Quora post, someone answered the question about whether Trump will win by pointing out that the conservative base is elderly, and they’re dying. The conservative base is also rural, and the rural population is shrinking. The young are leaving those small towns and agribusiness zones because the future is less than bright. They want adventure, education, or more meaningful jobs than what’s being offered in those little towns.

Bottom line for the conservatives, i.e., the GOP, that their potential base is getting smaller.

They’ve recognized this. They’ve countered by first, gerrymandering to favor conservative voters. Second, by making it harder to vote. Like Musk and Trump, they push the fallacy that mail-in voting is fraught with fraud. They insist the only safe solution is paper ballots with in-person voting with people presenting their government issued identification.

In doing so, Trump, Musk, and the GOP ignore the facts. That’s nothing new for them. They loathe facts. Facts often show how backward their thinking is.

But going on now, took, are several pincer movements to make Project 2025 feasible. The GOP has been attacking public education for some time. They’ve been doing this mostly through voucher programs but also by making it more difficult for teachers to teach. They challenge them wherever and whenever possible. Back in the early Tea Party days, the GOP went after the history and science textbooks. Advances and positive contributions by anyone but conservative whites, mostly men, was systemically removed from what was being taught.

See, the GOP knew their elderly, rural, uneducated base was shrinking. The answer, of course, is to re-establish that base. To do that, they politically divide the country. That’s what keeps Trump propped up in the current movement: he is really good at spewing hate and threatening the Democrats. It’s been taken to the point where MAGAts have been quoted as trusting a Russian more than they trust a Democrat. Shit is made up and thrown on liberals, progressives, and Democrats. If something sticks, than that becomes the attack mode.

We’ve seen this in action before. “Shows us the birth certificate.” “Lock her up.” “Biden is too old and feeble.” Now Trump et al is hunting for the handle to attack Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party nominee for POTUS, and her running mate, Governor Tim Walz. They’re trying everything, hoping to find something that sticks.

Meanwhile, the GOP is also working hard to get books removed from schools and libraries, along with any curriculum that teaches anything negative about white people or the history of the United States. Their goal is clear.

When young people currently graduate, they tend to be liberal. So, while the conservative base is declining – death, rural population shrinking, people growing more educated and capable – the liberal base is growing.

Therefore, the GOP must undercut education in order to stop young people from learning. Their goal is to increase young conservative voters, people who will reliably toe the conservative line.

Conservative leadership, abetted by a conservative base, are an insidious group. They do not care about the concept of the United States as a bastion of freedom, justice, and equality. That’s just for the propaganda brochures and videos. They want a power base with themselves in charge, encouraging ‘good old-fashioned hard work’ for slave labor wages while the wealthy grows wealthier. That’s how they see the United States: a grand revenue stream with low taxes for the wealthy.

It’s an old, old story. They’re just adding fiendish twists to it. Just as they knew they couldn’t legitimately overturn Roe v. Wade, with Mitch McConnell’s ‘leadership’, they denied President Obama’s SCOTUS nominees and packed the court with Trump conservative appointees. The greatest issue with that is how those nominees danced around what they would do with Roe v. Wade and then overturned it with the flimsiest possible reasoning as soon as the opportunity arose.

I didn’t provide any links to my claims, but I can find them if needed. Cheers

2

Monday’s Theme Music

Mood: sketchy

Greetings and welcome to Monday, December 4, 2023. Coming up ahead, you’ll notice kinaras, menorahs, and Christmas trees awaiting between the commercial ads, music, and secular lights of the holiday spirit.

Here in Ashlandia, where Ashland’s annual Festival of Lights took place on November 24 and was average, wind pushes around air that’s about 54 F, close to where it’ll be as a high today. Partly sunny, partly cloudy, partly rainy later on. Our mountain snows and mists have evaporated,snow waits though if you take a roads an hour north or twenty minutes south and drive up into the moutains.

Did you read about ex-POTUS Trump’s declaration the other day? “I think if you had a real election and Jesus came down and God came down and said, ‘I’m gonna be the scorekeeper here,’ I think we’d win [in California], I think we’d win in Illinois, and I think we’d win in New York.” h/t Rolling Stone Magazine.

Yes, Trump world Jesus is not a brown, humble man who preaches to love others, not be greedy or worship money, and to help the poor and sick. No, Trump Jesus — guess I’ll just write it Truses — supports lying and hate. He’s all in for the wealthy and the whites and cares nothing for social justice. I’m sure Trump supporters have created or found a bible where this bizarro Truses exists. Facts mean less and less to them; power and authority are what their dogs hunt, or they’d be questioning the morals of a person accused of rape several times, a man of multiple affairs, one who can’t be trusted to tell you the right day of the weak, one who blatently lies about his physical condition.

I can’t decide which is the worst aspect of the support of Trump; that so many give up their values — or that they’re now displaying values that most of the world find abhorrent; that they ignore his constant lying and bragging; that they ignore his history, and also discard much world and US history; or that many of them are now giving up their religious beliefs and throwing away the progress we as a nation made in the last 246 years. And for what? For a warped vision of how a society should act based on bigotry, hate, and prejudice fueled by lies and exaggerations. It makes my spirit ache and my head explode.

All that inspired The Neurons to stick me with INXS and “Devi Inside” from 1988 in the morning mental music stream (Trademark countered). That all come from thoughts that the MAGA-led Republicans, as defined by Trump’s vision, seem engrossed with a vision of hell on Earth. This includes trampling others’ rights, denying progress unless it benefits making more money, and ignoring truth and justice to society’s detriment. I mean, Trump now refers to anyone who doesn’t support him as ‘vermin’. He advocates using violence and imprisonment to limit opposition to him, and goes on hateful screeds whenever someone does say something he doesn’t like, especially if it’s about him, and his supporters applaud or pretend nothing is wrong. Is there any wonder that The Neurons brought up the INXS line, “It’s hard to believe we need a place called hell.”

Here come the man
With the look in his eye
Fed on nothing
But full of pride
Look at them go
Look at them kick
Makes you wonder how the other half live

The devil inside
The devil inside
Every single one of us the devil inside

The devil inside
The devil inside
Every single one of us the devil inside

Here come the world
With the look in its eye
Future uncertain but certainly slight
Look at the faces
Listen to the bells
It’s hard to believe we need a place called hell

h/t AZLyrics.com

I hope you can be strong and positive, and keep leaning forward, at least better than I seem to be doing. I’ve had coffee but I think I need a bit more. Here’s a recording of an energizing INXS concert production of “Devil Inside”. Hope you enjoy it. Cheers

0

Icebergs

I was dealing with an iceberg yesterday. The iceberg in this instance was a story twist; I could see the tip but not the vast majority of it.

That’s what causes writing to be fun and challenging for me. I like seeing the tip of teh story and the concept and then imagining and writing to find the hidden depths.

people and then imagining what’s unseen underneath, discovering bravery and cowardice, honesty and betrayal under that tip.

The same is true with those characters. I often see and begin with the tip. Writing the story reveals the rest of the character’s iceberg. While I begin with a general idea of the character’s traits and their role, more becomes revealed as the story’s icebergs are explored.

Walking yesterday, and watching drivers making errors, I thought about how much we as people are ice bergs. I saw drivers making bone-headed errors in judgement. I had to remind myself that that was just the tip, and it wasn’t a matter of awareness, intelligence, or ignorance, that broad labels that I often misapply. I don’t know what mental, physical, and emotional issues are attacking them, what problems that they’re dealing with through meds, thought, or by fleeing. They might be driving, but we don’t know what’s happening in their brains and bodies.

Most of us are the same kind of icebergs on the outside, a typical bi-ped. Despite commonalities between us, like a body, two eyes and ears, and a head, things are different inside. Inside that head is a brain, and in that body are organs. Lots of chemicals are being produced and are being employed via neurons and neuro-transmitters and receivers.

It all doesn’t work the same, right? Have you seen any of the studies about the right amygdala and its size and activity in people who tend toward being conservative in their political views? Their right amygdala is larger and often more active. They tend to be more fearful, and tend to dislike change.

That doesn’t mean they’re cowards. Being fearful and being a coward aren’t the same.

The study also found that the amygdala’s activity could be shifted, and that shift affected people’s outlook. It all began with the observation that the United States became more politically conservative after the attacks of 9/11. A Business Insider article by Hilary Brueck best states it:

“The hypothesis social scientists developed about this effect is perhaps best summed up in a 2003 review of research on the subject: “People embrace political conservatism (at least in part) because it serves to reduce fear, anxiety, and uncertainty; to avoid change, disruption, and ambiguity; and to explain, order, and justify inequality among groups and individuals,” it said.”

A Yale psychologist, John Bargh, wrote about it in a new book, Before We Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do. Bargh explores how our brain’s responses affect our political views, and how that can be changed. For example, in one experiment, after a baseline about political views was established, an exercise was conducted. In the exercise, everyone was told to imagine they were like Superman. Bullets bounced off them. Fire couldn’t hurt them. They’d survive falls off a cliff without injury, and they could fly.

That exercise caused a dramatic change among conservatives and their responses, but no change among liberals. The exercise enabled conservatives to feel safer and less fearful, which triggered more compassionate and optimistic responses in their political views. They became more open to change, and more hopeful.

It’s something that we should keep in mind as we drive around and encounter one another. It’s not always about facts and logic, intelligence and awareness. We’re all icebergs, and what we see is only the tip.

It’s also something to keep in mind as we write about our characters and their motivations and actions.

Time to write like crazy and explore my icebergs, at least one more time.

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑