Post- Mortem

 

~Paraphrasing Ali Velshi~ The most powerful person in America is not Donald J. Trump, it's you.

 These are tough times for progressives and democrats in America. There was a red wave this past week, and everyone in democratic circles are scratching their heads and trying to figure out why. Even the winners seemed a little shell shocked by the scope and magnitude of the outcome. 

I'm not, and if you are a student of American history, or if you pay attention to the psyche and mindset of the white majority population in America, you would not be either.

Frist, let's stop with all the talk about white working class and economic angst, and democrats not addressing their concerns. (James Carville, and Bernie Sanders, old white men themselves, will never get it.)  If you gave a lot of these white working class voters a million dollars, and in order to keep it they would have to have voted for Harris, your money would have been safe. They still wouldn't have done it. It has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with identity. Kamala's race and gender made it damn near impossible for her to win. Her opponent, at times, was acting like he wanted to lose, and he still beat her by a country mile. Performing fellatio on a mike at a rally, declaring that immigrants are eating cats and dogs, threatening political violence against his enemies, is not a winning message, but it worked for trump because it was never about the message. It was always about the people who are running. Plain and simple. 

As Americans we never like to hear this, because we like to think of ourselves as somehow being above bigotry and ignorance. We believe that this experiment in democracy is complete, and that we have created a perfect union. We have not. Take a look around you. Look who we are sending back to Washington. Not only Trump, but all of the slimy loathsome self-serving politicians who thrive in an environment of hate and division. Trump is the face of it, and he made it cool to hate without having to act like we are the haters. We channeled our hate through him. That's who we elected as our next president. A man who has spent his entire political life dividing people, and demonizing those who look different and who he perceives as being less than. This includes not only ordinary citizens, but military service members as well. The people who served in his administration and know him best told us who he is, and we still chose not to believe them. Why?  Because deep down most Americans ( I can say most now based on  the election results) know that we are no different than he is.

 I feel bad for black women who truly thought they had allies with white women. That their solidarity of sisterhood, united in their fight for reproductive freedoms, would be enough to beat the tyrant in waiting at the ballot box. It was not. At the end of the day, whiteness and fear of others comes first. Trump knew this, and he used it to his political advantage. 

A few years back a white women who worked for me told me that she might be coming into work a little later for a few days. She told me that she had to renew her parking privileges at a garage that was much closer to our place of work. And until then, she would have to rely on someone else to drop her off.  In the meantime, she couldn't park in a garage that was farther away. She just couldn't take the chance of walking a longer distance to work. Center City, Philadelphia (by all accounts the safest part of anywhere in the city), was just too dangerous for her. 

I thought about my former co-worker a lot during this election cycle. When those scary dark and ominous trump commercials of young brown men were running over and over, I knew that they would have their intended outcomes. Talking heads on cable television and political pundits were saying that there is no way Americans (especially suburban white women) would embrace Trump's message of fear and division. They were wrong. Harris and her message of joy, hope, and not going back, was never going to work with a majority population, whose fears and prejudices were a much more motivating factor in how they voted. 

I will let Elie Mystal's quotes close this post.

"America deserves everything is about to get. We had a chance to stand united against fascism, authoritarianism, racism, and bigotry, but we did not. We had a chance to create a better work for not just ourselves, but our sisters and brothers in at lease some of the communities most vulnerable to unchecked white rule, but we did not. We had a chance to pass down a better safer, and cleaner world to our children, but we did not. Instead, we chose Trump, JD Vance, and a few white South African billionaires who know a thing or two about instituting apartheid...America did this. America, through the process of a free and fair election, demanded this.. And America, as a collective, deserves to get what it wants."

These next four years will be interesting. And I will be hear for it. Hopefully, so will you. 

     

  

Three days and counting.

 

" I live in a crazy time" ~Anne Frank~ 

Just three days to go, and Americans are bracing for the election of a lifetime. It's hard to believe that Donald J. Trump could be elected as the 47th President of the Unites States, but here we are. 

I am not going to get into the litany of reasons why this man, a convicted felon, should never be seen anywhere near the White House again, I think that it is all well documented. (He should have been prosecuted and sitting in federal prison for what he did on January 6th.)  Although, I must say, that he is adding to that list every day.  The 1939 Nazi style convention in Madison Square Garden. The relentless attack on immigrants and people who are different. Openly bragging about his white skin, and mocking Kamala's ethnicity. Calling for the execution of Liz Cheney by firing squad, threatening mass deportations of people he doesn't think should be here.  Finally, and most importantly, not one single policy position that will make your life or mine any better. Not one. Oh wait...yeah, tariffs.

I am not going to  play pollster or prognosticator and dare try to guess the results on Tuesday. I'm bad at this stuff. I never thought that America would elect a black man with a funny name, and they did it. Twice. I never thought that someone like Donald Trump could be elected president, and he was.  So I honestly don't know what to expect. My gut instinct tells me that America will never elevate a black woman to the highest office in the land.  Heck, they wouldn't elect a white woman who was also more qualified for the position than Trump. The sexism is that strong. Throw race in the mix and you see where I am going. Most people who are voting for the felon will not be able to articulate a reason why. They will make all kinds of excuses for voting for him, and not one of them will make sense. They just know that Kamala is bad.  

I give Trump credit, he figured it out. His us against them fear mongering campaign is working because Americans are afraid of change.  The logic goes like this:  Trump might be a terrible human being who plays on our worst instincts, but at least he looks like us. He can't be that bad. He will protect us from the brown scary people who are trying to take our country from us. There is nothing he can say or do that will change that thinking in the minds of fifty percent of the voters in America. That man he shot on 5th Avenue had it coming.  When he says that he would like to be a dictator for life like his pals, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un,  the Wall Street Journal declares that he does not have the attention span to carry out his agenda, and then endorses him.  Republican politicians are on cable news shows every night translating what he meant when he literally said something else.  

This collective form of cognitive dissonance has infected a majority of white Americans.  Mr. Trump is hoping that it will be enough to place him in the most powerful position on earth once again.  He will be free to carry out project 2025, and play dictator while the sycophants around him feed his ego. Republicans will most likely control both houses, and the majority of the Supreme Court is made up of  obsequious hand-picked loyalist who have abandoned the rule of law for political reasons. 

This is what we might be facing come the morning of November 6th.  

Just know that whatever happens, I will be here. Maybe not as much as I would like, but I will still be posting when I can.    

Thank you field hands for always checking in with your comments and insights. 

Vote!        

Thirty One days!

 Oh chile! There has been a lot going on in these Divided States of America since my last post. 

I guess you all saw the Vice Presidential debate. The Ivy League Hillbilly was trying so hard to do an image makeover. Both men were so nice to each other that I thought they were going to hold hands and sing Kumbaya , My Lord at the end. The Hillbilly was trying his damnedest to  out nice the coach. It almost worked, too. Almost. With all due respect to folks like Abby Phillips who was having a meltdown over at CNN about the way the coached performed, the coach did just fine. Yeah I get that the Don Rickles face when the Hillbilly was telling lie after lie was a little off putting, but for the most part, the Coach held his own. CNN was shocked to see that the polls were split on how the two men performed.  I am not sure what they were expecting, but I digress. 

So the one and only thing that I want folks to take from the Vice Presidential debate is this: The Ivy  League Hillbilly refused to say that the felon lost the last election. Think about that for a minute. That alone should be disqualifying for him to hold the office of the second most powerful person on earth. And yet, that's exactly what happened. And now we are all left wondering what will happen if the felon losses a close election. Or worse, what if he wins? 

My heart goes out to the folks in North Carolina and parts of Georgia and Tennessee. This last storm was not a joke. Not so fun fact: It was heading right for us here in our little part of the world in North Georgia, and then it made a shift to the East.  There are a lot of nice things about living in the South. Hurricanes and tornadoes are not included.

The felon, true to form, was trying to make political hay out of this latest tragedy. He blamed the Bien administration for not doing enough for people in red states. Of course his lies were easily debunked by the governors of Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. This was all just projection on his part. Because, if you will recall, the felon himself tried to hold back federal relief from California after the deadly wildfires out there because they didn't vote for him. Think about that. The president of the United States withholding aid from fellow Americans for political reasons. And yet, that is just what the felon did when he was president.  There is no bottom with this guy. 

He is now calling for a day when law enforcement can do whatever the hell they want to rid our streets of crime. In other words, a Purge. Just like the movie.  And if you think it's too far fetched, think again. This is the guy who wanted to shoot protestors in Washington D.C. during the George Floyd protests. Nothing is too grotesque or repulsive for the felon, and he is sending all kinds of signals to let us know what's to come if he is given another shot at the White House. 

Meanwhile, it's still a fifty fifty race. That, to me, is the most shocking thing about this election season. After all we have seen and know about the felon, fifty percent of you are still willing to vote for him and put him back in office. Racism is a powerful thing. Credit to the felon for figuring it out. Half of you will surrender your freedoms as long as the person taking them away looks like you do. Germany 1933.

And as for you Negroes who think it's cool to be contrarians and vote MAGA because you didn't get enough attention when you were kids. You better start rethinking your position. I saw the images of that brother getting curb-stomped at a MAGA rally in Saginaw, Michigan, and like the rest of you in the black delegation, I said to myself: serves him right.  I am not sure why you all think that you are any different than those Haitian immigrants and brown people that the felon and Ivy League Hillbilly have been demonizing over the past few weeks. To them, we're all the same. Trust me on this one black MAGA, you're not special.  At the end of the day, you're just another n word to them. Just like all the rest of us. But as the old black aunties would say:  You keep doing you, boo.  

Vote! 

         

 

it's not so sunny in Philadelphia for the felon.

"They're eating the dogs, the cats!"  That was the former president of the United States parroting wacko right-wing talking points in his debate with Kamala Harris last night.  As Americans, we should all be embarrassed that we allowed this man to become the leader of the free world. The fact that his cult still do not realize that the emperor has no clothes is baffling to me. I mean I get it, they are not the best and brightest that America has to offer, but surely they have eyes and ears. Surely they see what the rest of us saw last night: A lunatic ranting and screaming lie after lie, while his opponent on the debate stage  beat him like a runaway slave.  (Figuratively speaking.)

The felon was complaining about the moderators to his base, and he tried to blame his cluelessness on the moderators who fact- checked him when he went off the rails. (Killing new born babies? WTF?)  He is now threatening to pull ABC's broadcast license if he ever becomes president again. Honestly, if that debate was on Newsmax the results would have been the same. Harris was on her game, and he did not see it coming.  Blaming the refs because your jump shot stinks is not the way to go. Donald, maybe next time you should prepare for the debate instead of running around in the right-wing echo chamber and surrounding yourself with sycophants and cult members. 

Neilson is reporting that sixty seven million people watched the felon make a fool of himself last night. And even though he is crying a river about how unfair ABC was to him, he had five more minutes to talk than Vice President Harris. Sadly for him, objectively speaking, he still got his ass kicked. 

The debate was in my hometown of Philly, so I am going to use a Rocky quote to end this post: " You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life".  But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving".

The felon can't be moving that well today.  

 

 

The switch.

 

One of my favorite songs of all time is Copacabana by Barry Manilow. (Don't judge) Yes, I love Barry Manilow.  Anywhoo, there is a verse in that song that I keep thinking about every time I see the felon holding a presser or giving a speech. "Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl, but that was thirty years ago when they used to have a show, now it's a disco, but not for Lola, still in the dress she used to wear faded feathers in her hair. She sits there so refined, and drinks herself half-blind. She lost her youth and she lost her Tony, now she's lost her mind."

The felon's shtick has gotten so old, that even some of his MAGA faithful are starting to be turned off. He is like that comedian with the same old cringy and grown-worthy jokes. They used to be funny to some people, but now nobody is laughing at them anymore. 

I was watching his press conference the other day, and dare I say it? I actually felt sorry for the felon. The lies, the desperation, it was all, in a word, cringeworthy. This Harris/Walz ticket has really thrown the felon and his people for a loop. The guy is clearly shook. Harris and Walz are sucking up all the oxygen, and are now, officially, the cool kids on the block. They drew twenty thousand people in Arizona last night, and it was one hundred degrees outside. Standing room only. Meanwhile, the felon is having a hard time finding enough people to fill a venue in...wait for it.. Bozeman, Montana. The same slurred speech, the same sloppy takes and lies. It has to be getting old, even for the MAGA cultists.  Now that he is officially the only really old guy in the race, it's putting the focus on his mental acuity and stamina. 

Speaking of guys in the race, Kamala has picked hers.   As someone who actually knows Josh Shapiro, (Yes, I'm name dropping) I was a bit disappointed. I mean who is this Walz fellow? But then I watched his speech at the Temple University rally in Philly, and I was like...good pick, Kamala. I tweeted this right after I watched him: Walz is that dude you meet at an airport bar, and you almost miss your flight because of him. Instant chemistry and likeability. As my sister would say: He is good people.

Not so much for the felon's VP pick. JD is scary, and, yes, weird. So much so, that even though you know it's probably not true, you almost want to believe that couch story. The thought of the vice president of the United States getting his rocks off on a Rooms To Go catalog is not something I ever want to think about again. Ever.

So we're off. The race is on to November. Expect it to get really ugly from here. The felon is trying to stay out of jail, and winning is the only hope that he has. The switch by the democrats has really thrown the felon for a loop. He was hoping for Uncle Joe, instead he got younger, darker, Kamala. The ugliness started already. The felon has already injected his racist birther like challenges to his opponent's racial identity.  And his post election plans are already in place to thwart the wishes of the American people by any means necessary. The Russians and Elon Musk will do everything in their powers to make sure that happens. What this all means is that if Kamala Harris wins, she better win by a lot.  If you think January 6th was bad, wait until you see what happens this time.

In Manilow's song,  Lola could only sit and drink herself half-blind. Not this aging lounge act. He will be doing a lot more than drinking and lamenting his losses. He will be kicking and screaming right to the bitter end.   

Shots fired.

 I have to be very careful with this post, because the next person I want to see in my Ring Doorbell camera is the Amazon delivery person with my tennis bag, and not a Secret Service agent.  

Anyway,  the felon is always comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln, and this past weekend he almost got his wish in ways that I am sure he did not want. For the record, I do not in any way condone political violence. I am a win at the ballot box, not by the bullet kind of guy. I do think it's ironic, though, that the man who has introduced a level of mean spiritedness never before seen in our politics is now the object of our pity.  Also ironic, is the fact that the shooter is not one of the people he likes to demonize, but a young man who looked just like all of his supporters in the crowd. He could have been one of their sons.   

My hero, Malcolm X, would have called Saturday's event in Butler, Pennsylvania, a chickens coming home to roost moment. I call it America's gun culture and politics of hatred and division coming together in a way that was inevitable.  It's sad that one of the felon's supporters had to lose his life. (As of me writing this post, he has still not reached out to personally offer his condolences to the man's family.)  

The felon was lucky this past Saturday. He has hinted that the experience has changed him. That's left to be seen. I suspect that he will be back to business as usual really soon. He will be back to sowing seeds of division, and demonizing all those who are not a part of the MAGA cult.  The cult is already fundraising off the tragic event, and  the felon was more concerned with getting a good picture of himself and making sure that his shoes (can't have the world seeing those lifts) were on in the aftermath of the tragedy. 

In closing, let us all hope that the rest of this political season will be a peaceful one. 

*Pic from AP images  

 

    

The old man and the felon.

 

   I watched what was promoted as a Presidential Debate by CNN Thursday night, and it was painful. The old man, in spite of all his accomplishments, and the obvious successes of his administration, could not convey that to the American people. First, because he is old, and second, he has a stuttering problem. His handlers and the paid DNC consultants should all be charged with political malpractice by the millions of people who support the old man. Whether you think it was because he was out campaigning the day before, or he had a cold, his voice was not ready for prime time. (We could barely hear the poor guy for crying out loud!) And they crammed him with too much information. You could see the information overload freezing his bran in real time. This is not how you win an election and save democracy.

  The felon, on the other hand, was in his wheelhouse. Telling lie after lie unchecked, and having his way with the CNN anchors, the old man, and most importantly, the truth. I was embarrassed for America. When your Presidential Debate is reduced to which one of the candidates has a better golf game, and whether one of the men on stage actually had sex with a porn star while his pregnant wife was at home expecting his child, you might just have a problem. The truth is, the felon should not have been out on that stage in the first place. He should be in jail, just like the sycophants who support him, and are members of his cult. (FYI, Steve Bannon will be reporting for lock up on Monday) But here we are. Oh to be a wealthy powerful white man in America. Just think, you can literally have a bunch of Supreme Court Justices in your pocket, and avoid having to own up to your misdeeds because a Judge you appointed is beholden to you.     

The dems are now in full-blown panic mode, as they should be. The old man's numbers are not good, and they don't seem to be getting any better.  There is talk now of an open convention. "He must be replaced" comes the screams from the talking heads and pundits on television. This, in spite of the fact that his administration is kicking ass by all objective measures. I can understand the fear, though. The thought of giving the felon four more years in the White House is frightening. It's not hyperbole to say that he most likely will end democracy as we know it. It's what he and his Christofascist friends have promised.  You have to take them at their word when they say that they will do something. It's already started. (Google Louisiana and the 10 Commandments, and Project 2025 when you get a chance.)

 The old man has some soul searching to do. Only he knows if he can see this thing through. He sure didn't look like he was up for the job of beating the felon in a debate Thursday night. If he truly believes that the felon is such a threat do democracy, and he has no chance of beating him, he should step aside, and give the dems a shot. That would be the patriotic thing to do. If, on the other hand, he believes that he is up for the job, well then go for it.  Personally, I would vote for a dead turtle before I even consider voting for the felon. The man who said he created more "black jobs" than any other president on Thursday without batting an eye. (Like WTF is a "black job"?)  It just goes to show you who we are dealing with.  If the felon thinks he will win the White House with black votes, he is in for a big surprise. Sadly,  he could very well win it all because of white folks, who don't see the threat because of their shared skin color and the lies. 

Vote!       

Gilead

It's been a minute. I hope that all of you field hands are doing well and thriving while doing your best to survive in this moment that we are living in.  These are crazy times.  America, as we have come to know her, is no more.  And that my friends, is not hyperbole. 

Personally, I have never believed that this is such a perfect union, and I have always suspected that the American experiment is flawed. But I always hoped that the American people were so proud of their country and the idea of its ideals, that they would not allow dark and sinister forces to hijack the perception of the world's greatest democracy. My hope is fading. Amend that. It has faded.  I didn't see America becoming the Republic of Gilead from the Handmaid's Tale.

What really brought it home to me was the knowledge that a Justice on the Supreme Court of America was willing to openly declare that he is a Christofascist who endorsed the actions of the January 6th insurrectionists. Now I am not naive enough to believe that judges aren't political, they all are. They are appointed by presidents who check their political loyalties before selecting them. But in the past they would at least pretend to be impartial and do their best to follow the law, even if they would twist it to suit their own political ideology.  No more. The actions of Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas should scare us all. We should have seen this coming when Alito gave his bitter, resentful, and grievance filled speech to the Federalist Society in November of 2020.  As one writer put it: " Alito's speech is marked by the sense of bitter resentment and grievance of white Christian men that runs through the whole Trumpist fascist movement."  Now, emboldened by the actions of Trump and his allies, the push for a Christofascist takeover is in full effect. Roe v. Wade was just a start. The legislature in Louisiana, for instance, just passed a bill to make abortion pills a controlled substance. Let that sink in for a minute. Soon, there will be laws banning the teachings of certain things in schools and  pushing a far-right version of Christianity down the throats of school children. Wait.. they are already doing that. I see you Texas and Florida. 

There will be more to come.  America will keep going deeper down this right-wing rabbit hole, and when we realize what we have become it will be too late. We will be living out a dystopian Handmaid's Tale, and only mega church preachers and white nationalists will be happy. It's almost here. Google Project 2025 when you get a chance, and make yourself a stiff drink before you read it, you will need one. America will need a  dictatorship style form of government and leader in order to make the new Christian white nationalist nation a reality.  And here is the shocker: almost fifty percent of the voters seem to be cool with that.   

It's scary to think that the only thing standing in the way of all this happening is a shaky 81 year old man with a woman of color on his ticket. (Nothing against Kamala, but no one wants to talk about the elephant in the room: the thought that Uncle Joe could  check out at any minute and  his successor would be a...gasp! Black woman.) Throw in the fact that I have zero confidence in the DNC and their so called campaign experts, and you see where this is going.  Project 2025 could well become a reality. 

The perfect storm is brewing.  Pack your rain gear and batten down the hatches. We are in for a rough ride. 

Cricket deserved better.

Every now and then a member of the MAGA crowd shows you who they really are. Take the governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, for instance. It recently came to light, by way of her hastily penned book, that she murdered her family puppy, Cricket.  She did it because she could not control its behavior, and in her own words, she "hated" the dog. 

I am sure she thought that this revelation would bring her closer to the rest of her MAGA friends and put her in the driver's seat to be Donald Trump's VP pick, but it backfired. She has been living in a MAGA bubble where being cruel to poor and underrepresented people was fashionable, so she thought that this mentality would translate to animals as well.   

Sadly for her, and her political career,  her calculation was way off. She forgot how much American's love their pets, especially their dogs. (I could have told her. I wrote about this very thing years ago.) Now,  Americans are united in their outrage at her actions. I mean seriously, who murders a puppy?! She tried to rationalize away her actions by saying that she lived on a farm, and that farmers have to make  tough choices between life and death when it comes to their animals. But no one is buying it. We are talking about a puppy for crying out loud. The thing is, the man she has been auditioning for would have probably done the same thing. Cruelty to animals is a known trait of sociopaths. Donald Trump hates dogs, and Kristi Noem knows that.  This little blurb from her book was to  him and the rest of the MAGA base. These folks, after all, believe that cruelty is sexy. The cruelty is the point with them. 

This, though, was a bridge too far. And Noem knows it. Her political career is over. If Trump wins he might reward her with a  position in his cabinet, but that's the best she can hope for. 

Americans will forgive her cheating on her husband with a known scumbag, but not killing a puppy.  

RIP Cricket.   

The Field Negro poll.

Since we are so inundated with polls leading up to this November's election, I figured I would conduct my own internal polling on the subject. 

Here goes: 

Who will you be voting for this November?  

1. Joe Biden

2. Donald Trump.

3. RFK Jr.

4. Cornel West

5. None of the above. 

Please explain why you are voting the way you are.

Much appreciated. 

If the sneakers don't get them maybe some fake photos can.

Age is more than just a number for one candidate but not the other.

 

Joe Biden is old, and he looks and acts his age.  There is no getting around that fact. Americans believe it, and so, I am sure, does his handlers. He jumbles his words at times, and his memory is not what it should be. Donald trump is also old. And contrary to what MAGA world believes (and his gold mirror tells him) he looks and acts his age as well. Maybe even more so than Joe Biden. But, the American media being what it is, a narrative must be spun, and that narrative is that Joe Biden is the older, less capable, and more senile of the two men. 

The thing is, though, no matter how old and senile Joe Biden is, we know that his head and heart is in the right place when it comes to what's best for America. We can look back on the past three years of his administration and marvel at their accomplishments. Bringing us out of the dark chapter of our history known as the time of COVID-19, could not have been easy.  And now, looks at us, we are almost back to "normal".  Almost.

The other guy, on the other hand, does not have his heart in the right place. He does not care about what's best for America. He only cares about himself. He is a declared authoritarian and fascist who will govern like one, and he has vowed to get revenge on his perceived enemies.  The presidency is a get out of jail free card for him, and he will do whatever it takes to get it. The scary thing is, with the help and complicity of the corporate American media machine, he is well on his way to getting his wish. The old guy who has done a masterful public relations job of not seeming to be old, might very well beat the old guy who is not quite as adept and not making public perception his reality. 

Joe Biden held a  press conference this past week where he angrily denounced the latest Special Counsel report which exonerated him but added some Comeyesque editorializing for cheap political points. During that press conference he made a mistake by mixing up the presidents of Mexico and Egypt. It was a never ending story in both right and left wing media for days. (CNN might be still running it as their lead story as I type this.) The other guy mumbles and bumbles his way through endless seemingly adderall induced speeches, and I don't think that they are mentioned even once in the main stream media.  

Sadly, this is the new normal for the American press: They are riding the horse that makes them the most money.  In this case that horse is the one with the jockey wearing the bright red MAGA silks.    

 

Caption this.

 

 

Name the title of this movie. 

And please don't give me pejorative remarks or inflammatory words like, See Tim Jig, or Uncle Tom's Candidate. 

Let's be respectful.....