I heard this statement on a morning news show today. It was a thought voiced by a Mr. Rossenberg(?), a hired talking head who's opinion is respected by the hosts of the show because well, they asked him to swing by to toss some more barbs at Trump and the three ring Republican clown circus the "Orange One" runs now.
The quote refers to, and I am only assuming here as I was busy doing morning domestic rituals, ..... uh, the quote is in regards to Maine's Secretary of State plan to to toss Trump off the Republican primary election ticket on March 5th this year.
His point I think was that all this saber rattling and threats of denying Trump a chance to run is counter productive. Trying to kick Trump out of the Maine Republican Primary is only enhancing Benedict Donald's image among his rank and file GOP drooling fans. It makes an already convoluted and extremely complicated political season that much harder to navigate for the slobs on the ground like me. If this was his point, then I am with him.
The court battles, the political games, and the unfathomable stubborn loyalty of Donald's base will not change in any meaningful way unless Ex-President Spanky McLiarFace is beaten at the polls in the General Election in November. Everything so far is nothing but political theater in front of an audience of frightened Alligators who will turn any event or claim against their leader into more fodder to bolster their blind allegiance to the sleaziest politician of my lifetime. Beat him in November and anything after will be gratefully anticlimactic and hopefully throw him under the bus of American bad choices.
I grew up with politics a part of many family dinners. Along with the obligatory glass of "California" wine and cigarette smoke, I was exposed to political discussions that often left family members with hurt feelings, angry moments to get over, and me with confusion rattling around in my brain until I was , uh, I guess somewhere around age nine or ten. I had learned by that time to not lead with my chin, as the age of the debater mattered naught. Open your mouth and you were fair game. No mercy, no special treatment of the innocent child. Consequences were handed out quickly to the weak.
I remember one of the first successful contributions I made at the dinner table was when I asked my father why he did not vote. Joe, my oldest brother added his stamp of approval with, "Yeah dad, why?" I knew I was safe from the ever eager reprisal Joe loved to heap on anyone he considered weaker than himself.
My father said it was because he had spent most of his adult life in the US Air Force. He felt allowing politics into his mind only made serving his country that much harder. He was hired to protect the country, the Constitution and do what his commander in chief wanted within the confines that it not go against the oath he took when he joined up in 1929.
Not voting for over 30 years simplified the work he had to do as a high ranking officer. Politics was for civilians. Defense of those politics, no matter which side they favored were his obligation to protect. Some years later when I was of protesting age, he supported my participation in the protests as the one thing he felt the proudest of protecting. He might not agree with much I believed in, but he damn well was going to support my right to do it. That, he said, was the sole reason he made the military a career.
His reticence in joining in political debate around the dinner table did not really change even after he had retired. He was quicker to address blatantly stupid comments made without thinking, but overall, he keep his mouth shut unless provoked for an answer.
I think he would agree with Mr. Rossenberg(?). Politics is nothing but comic drama until it becomes a tragedy. One way to keep the tragedy easier to handle is not feed it with unnecessary bullshit.
I learned a lot by listening to my father stay silent. I sometimes I wish I had been able to be more like him in that respect.
Happy New Year and please keep it 'tween the ditches........ They are deeper and steeper than ever.
____________________
Once again I am impressed another word that when Googled, opens up so many possibilities that I end up wasting my precious "Screwin the pooch" time sampling song after song until I realize an hour has passed. Shit, It only took me 45 minutes to write the flippin post .... Oh well.
Here is the original song from a record one of my brothers had in the 1950's. "See You Later Alligator" , by Bill Haley and the Comets was the perfect tune for a six year old me. I stole it from my brother and wore it out on my Donald Duck record player.
It was also a tune that helped the then "New" music called Rock n Roll solidify its grip on the short hairs of American music. It was highlighted in the movie "Rock around the clock", a nonsensical movie tribute to the new music White Kids were being ruined by. It was "race music" gussied up for white folk consumption. And white folk sucked it up in huge quantities.
7 comments:
I can see this going on for quite a few years.
Your constitution says plainly Trump is not allowed to run. Fear of his Red Shirts is palpable hence the idea he should be allowed to run. Threats of violence are increasing dramatically as election nears. Apparently Republics are backing him out of fear. They voted to acquit him when he was impeached out of fear. Fascism is now embedded in your country.
Dora - The movement Trump heralded in may last, but I think defeating him at the ballot box takes the wind from their sails and then we just watch the MAGA Movement turn into good ole boys standing around the local country store arguing hard to deny their defeat and who should shoulder the blame.
The Blog Fodder - I won't deny Fascism is running strong in this country at the moment. But sadly, it is not new here. It raised its ugly head 90 years ago and was a movement much larger than what is going on here at the moment. Fascism will never leave our country, given the political system we have constructed. It will rise and fall. I hope it will soon be in the rear view and go back to hiding in cowboy bars,, Wall Street bistros and basements of churches.
I am past being afraid of anything he or his asshole rank and file might do. I am though, very mistrustful of our justice system which has been corrupted from day one. Let the people vote and live by the result.
\\The Blog Fodder - I won't deny Fascism is running strong in this country at the moment.
That is... false narrative of Putin's propaganda.
What is fascism? That is some populistic and voluntaristic regime in Italy... and in many countries of Europe exactly.
Not very famous for anything.
That is Nazism... that did all that crimes and massacres. That then was thrown into SAME box... and became called "fascism". DELIBERATELY. For the sake of political fight and propaganda.
And Nazism.
Have very strict and bounded to Historical chain of event reasons.
Like Threaty of Versales. Growing Might and messianic intentions of Soviet Union. And many other...
Do USA today RESEMBLE Nazi Germany of 30th years???
Well... do you know that peace from Mark Twain?
Running For Governor
by Mark Twain
A few months ago I was nominated for Governor of the great state of New York, to run against Mr. John T. Smith and Mr. Blank J. Blank on an independent ticket. I somehow felt that I had one prominent advantage over these gentlemen, and that was--good character. It was easy to see by the newspapers that if ever they had known what it was to bear a good name, that time had gone by. It was plain that in these latter years they had become familiar with all manner of shameful crimes. But at the very moment that I was exalting my advantage and joying in it in secret, there was a muddy undercurrent of discomfort "riling" the deeps of my happiness, and that was--the having to hear my name bandied about in familiar connection with those of such people. I grew more and more disturbed. Finally I wrote my grandmother about it. Her answer came quick and sharp. She said:
You have never done one single thing in all your life to be ashamed of--not one. Look at the newspapers--look at them and comprehend what sort of characters Messrs. Smith and Blank are, and then see if you are willing to lower yourself to their level and enter a public canvass with them.
It was my very thought! I did not sleep a single moment that night. But, after all, I could not recede.
I was fully committed, and must go on with the fight. As I was looking listlessly over the papers at breakfast I came across this paragraph, and I may truly say I never was so confounded before.
PERJURY.--Perhaps, now that Mr. Mark Twain is before the people as a candidate for Governor, he will condescend to explain how he came to be convicted of perjury by thirty-four witnesses in Wakawak, Cochin China, in 1863, the intent of which perjury being to rob a poor native widow and her helpless family of a meager plantain-patch, their only stay and support in their bereavement and desolation. Mr. Twain owes it to himself, as well as to the great people whose suffrages he asks, to clear this matter up. Will he do it?
I thought I should burst with amazement! Such a cruel, heartless charge! I never had seen Cochin China! I never had heard of Wakawak! I didn't know a plantain-patch from a kangaroo! I did not know what to do. I was crazed and helpless. I let the day slip away without doing anything at all. The next morning the same paper had this--nothing more:
SIGNIFICANT.--Mr. Twain, it will be observed, is suggestively silent about the Cochin China perjury.
[Mem.--During the rest of the campaign this paper never referred to me in any other way than as "the infamous perjurer Twain."]
Next came the Gazette, with this:
WANTED TO KNOW.--Will the new candidate for Governor deign to explain to certain of his fellow-citizens (who are suffering to vote for him!) the little circumstance of his cabin-mates in Montana losing small valuables from time to time, until at last, these things having been invariably found on Mr. Twain's person or in his "trunk" (newspaper he rolled his traps in), they felt compelled to give him a friendly admonition for his own good, and so tarred and feathered him, and rode him on a rail; and then advised him to leave a permanent vacuum in the place he usually occupied in the camp. Will he do this?
Could anything be more deliberately malicious than that? For I never was in Montana in my life.
[After this, this journal customarily spoke of me as, "Twain, the Montana Thief."]
I got to picking up papers apprehensively--much as one would lift a desired blanket which he had some idea might have a rattlesnake under it. One day this met my eye:
THE LIE NAILED.--By the sworn affidavits of Michael O'Flanagan, Esq., of the Five Points, and Mr. Snub Rafferty and Mr. Catty Mulligan, of Water Street, it is established that Mr. Mark Twain's vile statement that the lamented grandfather of our noble standard- bearer, Blank J. Blank, was hanged for highway robbery, is a brutal and gratuitous LIE, without a shadow of foundation in fact. It is disheartening to virtuous men to see such shameful means resorted to to achieve political success as the attacking of the dead in their graves, and defiling their honored names with slander. When we think of the anguish this miserable falsehood must cause the innocent relatives and friends of the deceased, we are almost driven to incite an outraged and insulted public to summary and unlawful vengeance upon the traducer. But no! let us leave him to the agony of a lacerated conscience (though if passion should get the better of the public, and in its blind fury they should do the traducer bodily injury, it is but too obvious that no jury could convict and no court punish the perpetrators of the deed).
The ingenious closing sentence had the effect of moving me out of bed with despatch that night, and out at the back door also, while the "outraged and insulted public" surged in the front way, breaking furniture and windows in their righteous indignation as they came, and taking off such property as they could carry when they went. And yet I can lay my hand upon the Book and say that I never slandered Mr. Blank's grandfather. More: I had never even heard of him or mentioned him up to that day and date.
[I will state, in passing, that the journal above quoted from always referred to me afterward as "Twain, the Body-Snatcher."]
The next newspaper article that attracted my attention was the following:
A SWEET CANDIDATE.--Mr. Mark Twain, who was to make such a blighting speech at the mass-meeting of the Independents last night, didn't come to time! A telegram from his physician stated that he had been knocked down by a runaway team, and his leg broken in two places--sufferer lying in great agony, and so forth, and so forth, and a lot more bosh of the same sort. And the Independents tried hard to swallow the wretched subterfuge, and pretend that they did not know what was the real reason of the absence of the abandoned creature whom they denominate their standard-bearer. A certain man was seen to reel into Mr. Twain's hotel last night in a state of beastly intoxication. It is the imperative duty of the Independents to prove that this besotted brute was not Mark Twain himself. We have them at last! This is a case that admits of no shirking. The voice of the people demands in thunder tones, "WHO WAS THAT MAN?"
It was incredible, absolutely incredible, for a moment, that it was really my name that was coupled with this disgraceful suspicion. Three long years had passed over my head since I had tasted ale, beer, wine or liquor or any kind.
[It shows what effect the times were having on me when I say that I saw myself, confidently dubbed "Mr. Delirium Tremens Twain" in the next issue of that journal without a pang--notwithstanding I knew that with monotonous fidelity the paper would go on calling me so to the very end.]
By this time anonymous letters were getting to be an important part of my mail matter. This form was common
How about that old woman you kiked of your premises which
was beging. POL. PRY.
And this:
There is things which you Have done which is unbeknowens to anybody
but me. You better trot out a few dots, to yours truly, or you'll
hear through the papers from
HANDY ANDY.
This is about the idea. I could continue them till the reader was surfeited, if desirable.
Shortly the principal Republican journal "convicted" me of wholesale bribery, and the leading Democratic paper "nailed" an aggravated case of blackmailing to me.
[In this way I acquired two additional names: "Twain the Filthy Corruptionist" and "Twain the Loathsome Embracer."]
By this time there had grown to be such a clamor for an "answer" to all the dreadful charges that were laid to me that the editors and leaders of my party said it would be political ruin for me to remain silent any longer. As if to make their appeal the more imperative, the following appeared in one of the papers the very next day:
BEHOLD THE MAN!--The independent candidate still maintains silence. Because he dare not speak. Every accusation against him has been amply proved, and they have been indorsed and reindorsed by his own eloquent silence, till at this day he stands forever convicted. Look upon your candidate, Independents! Look upon the Infamous Perjurer! the Montana Thief! the Body-Snatcher! Contemplate your incarnate Delirium Tremens! your Filthy Corruptionist! your Loathsome Embracer! Gaze upon him--ponder him well--and then say if you can give your honest votes to a creature who has earned this dismal array of titles by his hideous crimes, and dares not open his mouth in denial of any one of them!
There was no possible way of getting out of it, and so, in deep humiliation, I set about preparing to "answer" a mass of baseless charges and mean and wicked falsehoods. But I never finished the task, for the very next morning a paper came out with a new horror, a fresh malignity, and seriously charged me with burning a lunatic asylum with all its inmates, because it obstructed the view from my house. This threw me into a sort of panic. Then came the charge of poisoning my uncle to get his property, with an imperative demand that the grave should be opened. This drove me to the verge of distraction. On top of this I was accused of employing toothless and incompetent old relatives to prepare the food for the foundling' hospital when I warden. I was wavering--wavering. And at last, as a due and fitting climax to the shameless persecution that party rancor had inflicted upon me, nine little toddling children, of all shades of color and degrees of raggedness, were taught to rush onto the platform at a public meeting, and clasp me around the legs and call me PA!
I gave it up. I hauled down my colors and surrendered. I was not equal to the requirements of a Gubernatorial campaign in the state of New York, and so I sent in my withdrawal from the candidacy, and in bitterness of spirit signed it, "Truly yours, once a decent man, but now
"MARK TWAIN, LP., M.T., B.S., D.T., F.C., and L.E."
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