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I No Longer Trust You

Nov29

This is an expansion of something I did as a series of posts on BlueSky.

Occasionally, I think about the poet, Renee Vivien, and what LGBTQ people went through to live as themselves in the past. Second photo is a copy of one of her poems called Prolong The Night. Its words shout to me of the pain that existing in patriarchal cishet society must have carried.

Make no mistake but conservatives are coming for all LGBTQ people. You won’t save yourselves by throwing trans people under the bus first. Now that he’s elected, Project 2025 is loudly proclaimed by his entire administration as their guiding document. If they win, the idea of freedom dies.

I used to believe that Americans were better than this, that they’d try to rise above this hate, these lies, this violent murderous intent that oozes from every corner of the GOP. But I no longer believe that. Even those few that voted against Trump still harbor that ugly hatred of LGBTQ people.

But I’m reminded of the voyage of the MS Saint Louis, a passenger vessel that, in 1939, with more than 900 Jews aboard, was turned back by the United States to Europe. Those people were taken in by other countries than Germany but it didn’t matter because Germany overran France, Belgium, The Netherlands, and more, and many of those 900 still ended up in concentration camps and died. America turned its back on those refugees and then incarcerated its own Japanese-American citizens. I wondered if America had changed since the 1940’s and I now have my answer. You have not and I have no faith in any of you anymore.

I hadn’t planned on being laid off in Dec 2023 but I was, and forced into retirement because, as the saying goes, the same people that want us to work until age 70 are the same ones who won’t hire us after age 50. And while I still run rings around younger software engineers, I’ve been forced out.

So I’m working towards a different career, with a different goal – enough financial stability to let me leave this rotting corpse of a nation and settle myself elsewhere. To those of you choosing to stay and fight, may Inanna bless you, protect you, and save you from what’s to come. I no longer think America is capable of avoiding an era of darkness that could put both Stalin and Hitler to shame. And I expect trans people to be just the first of many sacrifices on the altar of fascist scapegoating.

But as for me, I am tired. Years and years of this only to watch Kamala Harris and the entire Democratic Party turn their backs on us during the final weeks of the election have proven to me that, just like in the 1930’s, Americans will turn us in to the fascists as soon as they demand it. Americans have always been fundamentally moral cowards and they still are.

If you’re cisgender, I now automatically no longer trust you. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Hakeem Jeffries, Seth Moulton, Colin Allred, Sherrod Brown, and so many more have proven to me that you’re never to be trusted. That you’ll turn on marginalized people if it’s your path to power. Do I trust a few cisgender people? Yes, I do, but they’ve been there for me. I’ve seen what they’ll do versus your own silence when all you needed were words to fight back. You don’t have the guts to fight back tooth and nail, when the violence really begins because you couldn’t even muster words when that was all that was needed.

So don’t come into my comments proclaiming that you’re different, that you can be trusted, that you’ll protect us. Because I know, with certainty, that as soon as the fascists point their guns at you, you will turn on us again. LIberals are joking that half of America turned out to be people they wouldn’t trust with the location of Anne Frank. Well, sad to say, Anne Frank wouldn’t be safe with you liberals either, and you just proved it.

All that Democrats had to do was fight back in September and October of 2024, yet you didn’t. You kept trying to change the subject. You kept trying to gloss over the existence of trans people. You wouldn’t stand up for 0.6% of the population. Hey, to the rest of you LGB people? They won’t stand up for you either. You’re a Jew? You’re just 2.4% of the population and they won’t stand up for you either. In fact, Trump might just deport you all to Israel, to help hasten this “end times Armageddon” madness on the right.

But in the end, I now know you’ll turn tail and run, hide, or do anything except protect those targeted by the far right. Don’t object because your actions, or rather, your lack of actions when it could have mattered, have already convicted you.

There’s A Lot of FAFO Happening In America Since The Election

Nov20

A little review of the sort of things happening in America now that Trump won and so many people voted for him.

In the first week after the election, people were searching for “what is a tariff” but after a few days of that, Americans, with their usual hindsight, began researching “can I change my vote”. No, you damned fools, you can’t change your vote once submitted. You get to live with your stupid choices.

Speaking of living with stupid choices, here’s a sample of what’s happening. And notice that the guy who voted to “kill Obamacare because it sucks” but whose life depends on the ACA, still blames Democrats that Republicans gave the ACA the name Obamacare.

These people who voted for Trump voted for outright cruelty, they voted for a rapist, a convicted felon, a liar, a fraud, a thief, an outright racist, a man so stupid he thought you could nuke a hurricane, and then these Trump voters wonder why decent people want to have nothing to do with them?

FAFO – that’s short for Fuck Around, Find Out. 76 million Americans fucked around and are now all going to find out, when Trump repeals the ACA, when he cuts Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

But here’s a really good one. Employees bemoaned when their boss said no Christmas bonuses this year. They got upset so he held a meeting. He explained that he is the one paying the tariffs, not China. And he needs to buy supplies from China right now because nobody in America makes those supplies at all and once the tariffs start, his production costs will rise.

And speaking of tariffs, Nissan, in bright red Tennessee, laid off 9000 workers just a few days after the election. Trump’s policies will hammer them, despite assembling their cars in the US, because they import the parts from Japan. Sorry suckers, I mean MAGA, you voted for this, so you deserve to get every single horrible thing Trump promised to happen to you!

It’s even affecting families.

Relationships all over the country are strained because 76 million of YOU PEOPLE voted for a human monster.

It’s a lot of people finding they aren’t welcome around decent folks these days.

Kids are even telling parents off.

Women are divorcing husbands now, because they voted for Trump and Trump and the GOP want to do away with no-fault divorce.

And those of you who claim you voted for Trump because of “the price of eggs”? Fuck you. Trump has no plan to reduce costs and his tariffs and deportations will cause inflation to skyrocket, especially in terms of food. Who did have a plan to tackle grocery price gouging? Kamala Harris. But you couldn’t bring yourself to vote for a Black woman, could you? You voted for a monster who can’t even smear bronzer on his face right.

Oh! One more thing about tariffs – they’ll cause the foods we import, like coffee and chocolate, to skyrocket in price.

Hillary Clinton was being nice when she called you people “deplorables”. You are all truly 100% human garbage. You’re human garbage. You’re scum. You’re exactly how Nazi Germany happened. And if there is a God, when you face him, I am 100% sure he is going to say “I never knew them” and turn his back on you just as you turned your back on millions of at-risk Americans.

May every one of you Trump voters burn in hell.

P.S. Even the Bible, if you ever bothered reading it, tells you that just “confessing the name of Jesus Christ” does not save you. You’re outright told that the demons in hell confess that name and it doesn’t save them. So no, Billy Graham and all those evangelical pastors lied to you again and you fell for it, as usual. So when I say “may you burn in hell”, I’m quite confident that your stone cold, dead hearts will burn in hell and not arrive at the pearly gates.

Trump’s (And Putin’s) Goal Is To Destroy The Federal Government

Nov14

Trump selects Robert F Kennedy Jr to lead HHS, top US health agency

Trump appears ready to select Robert F. Kennedy Jr to head HHS. Nothing in your grocery stores can ever be trusted to be safe ever again.

I’ve been thinking so bear with me here. I said years ago (2015, when Trump first ran) that he was Putin’s man and that Putin was trying to engineer the same strategy against the US that the US had engineered against the USSR – support dissatisfied factions within the US, fund them, arm them if need be (easy in the US), and try to shatter the country into independent states (Balkanize it).

The goal, in my opinion, is to remove the United States as a nuclear threat on the world stage without an open war. The weapons lesson from the USSR is that the rest of the world will pressure small independent states to give up any nukes on their soil. That’s what happened to former states of the USSR.

Why does that come into play right now? Trump is nominating absolute morons to head government departments, plus Musk is leading a group whose goal is to cut 2/3rds of the government’s work force.

What does that mean? It means that the federal government will ultimately be viewed as incompetent and untrustworthy at anything. And what does that accomplish? Blue states, like California or New York will likely respond with their own agencies for environmental, food safety, labor, and other issues. But if the blue states do that, where will they get the money? They’ll threaten to stop sending federal taxes to Washington. And if they do that, then the “United” part of the United States is effectively over.

From there, it’s a short step to declaring outright independence because those states won’t need Washington anymore. In fact, if I were Putin and California declared its independence, I’d be among the first to recognize it. And then I’d whisper in Donny Numbnuts ear to “let them go” and “rule over the part that loves you”. California might even play the China card, forming a defense pact with China against Washington.

And from there, you slowly but surely end up with a denuclearized, Balkanized North America. Nobody would want a nuclear armed Wyoming. Nobody in their right mind would want a nuclear armed Missouri or Arkansas. And even as right wing as it is, Texas might see this as their shot at getting out from under Washington once and for all. The northeast would likely secede and form immediate ties to Europe and Canada.

We already know Michael Flynn plans to get rid of all but one of the 17 US Intelligence agencies. The United States will be effectively blind in terms of intelligence even if Trump does leave office in four years. And remember, Trump has already, since being elected, questioned whether the 22nd amendment even applies to himself.

In 2016, I said you were watching the death of America. Now we’re watching the corpse being eaten by maggots. Stop thinking this can be saved. It can’t. The future is going to lie in the blue independent states of North America, and most of the red states are going to be third world hellholes.

Conservatism Is A Tool Of White Male Patriarchy

Oct1

I’ve not written here in this blog for years, but I suppose I should start again. So here are thoughts from today.

Everything about American conservatism (and by extension, Libertarianism, which is a distinctly American creation) is aimed at conserving white male supremacy.

It always has been. Those of us raised with those “values” foremost in our lives have had to undergo deprogramming processes, because yes, inflicting that on people is a kind of programming.

It’s a programming that teaches that poverty is a moral failing and not the inevitable result of capitalism, in order to defend capitalism from charges of cruelty. It’s programming that has to constantly chant that women must be submissive, because if women being submissive were the natural order of things, it wouldn’t have to be indoctrinated into women their entire lives. It’s programming that requires scapegoats, to distract young white men from realizing that wealthy elites are picking their pockets too, just not quite as hard as they’re picking everyone else’s pockets. People of color, Muslims, LGBTQ people – anyone different enough that the wealthy can rapidly build a program (note that word) of easily disseminated but believable lies against is useful to the wealthy elites as a scapegoat to divide working class people.

“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” ― Lyndon B. Johnson

Even “economic conservatism” is part of this preservation of the white patriarchy by ensuring that wealth already ill gotten is not to be attacked for being either an expression of too much greed or outright cruelty to those it was taken from. Note that I make a distinction between traditional economic conservatism and what I call “fiscal efficiency”. Government often is not the most efficient at its use of available funds to accomplish a task. The expanded Child Tax Credit that was enacted during the pandemic is a good example. It got money into the hands of families that needed it, lifted many children out of poverty, and avoided creating a large government agency to attend to that task by using information that the IRS already had to directly send checks to those families. Finding efficient ways to help government function isn’t limited to economic conservatism so it’s not part of that ideology.

We have a long road to travel as a nation but we have workable blueprints in front of us from other nations. We know that there are multiple different kinds of healthcare systems that are both more financially efficient than the “free market” and that ensure that everyone has coverage. Even Adam Smith noted that healthcare is not a normal consumer good.

And while I despise capitalism, I’ve not yet seen a working example of pure socialism or communism that works in a manner that makes any sense to me. So for now, I support the the concept of social democracies with tight regulation of economies, harsh limits on upper income levels, and the creation of national wealth funds. I completely support the 100% taxation of any assets that any individual has over $1 billion dollars. All such assets don’t have to be sold off but instead could be transferred to a national wealth fund to subsequently feed government budgets from dividends, stock sales, etc. If the size of such funds is problematic, they could be divided into multiple funds that have to compete with one another. There’s a lot of details to work out but other nations have national wealth funds that contribute to the overall good of the nation so why can’t the US?

In short, I’ve never seen one aspect of modern American conservatism that isn’t laser focused on preserving white male supremacy. Every aspect of conservatism has at least one side effect, if not more, that is beneficial to white male supremacy. Modern American conservatism, since at least the 1960’s, has been nothing but a tool of a primarily white fascist elite and with every passing year, that becomes more and more obvious.

The Southern Strategy Is Real

Apr11

The Southern Strategy is real and I have the proof – a PDF of a May 17, 1970 NY Times article where they interviewed Kevin Phillips, the man who created the Southern Strategy for Richard Nixon.

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Kevin Phillips, the man who created the Southern Strategy

Here are some sample transcribed quotes from the article.

Kevin Phillips said, “All the talk about Republicans making inroads into the Negro vote is persiflage. Even Jake the Snake [Senator Jacob Javits] only gets 20 percent. From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don’t need any more than that … but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.”

Another quote from the article and this quote is FROM 1970!!!

“He doesn’t dismiss liberal fears that there is a potential for fascism in the new conservative majority. ‘The popular conservative majority now taking shape, like past popular movements, is vulnerable to aberration. With its important component of military, apprehensive bourgeois, and law and order seeking individuals, there is a proclivity and over-reaction to the liberal engendered permissiveness and anarchy of the sixties. This is a danger the administration should watch carefully.'”

The above comment is acknowledgement that they (Nixon and Phillips) were deliberately choosing to appeal to fascist tendencies in order to win political battles in the US. The GOP became a party of WILLING fascism in the 1960s when Phillips created the Southern Strategy and Nixon accepted it as his tool to power.

Read the entire article. It’s shocking, especially in light of the current presidency and where the Southern Strategy has brought us after 50 years. These ideas and more were also expressed in his book, The Emerging Republican Majority, written in 1969.

However, by 2006, Phillips seems to have realized just how dark a turn the path he laid for the GOP had become. In American Theocracy, the NY Times described his writings as:

“He identifies three broad and related trends — none of them new to the Bush years but all of them, he believes, exacerbated by this administration’s policies — that together threaten the future of the United States and the world. One is the role of oil in defining and, as Phillips sees it, distorting American foreign and domestic policy. The second is the ominous intrusion of radical Christianity into politics and government. And the third is the astonishing levels of debt — current and prospective — that both the government and the American people have been heedlessly accumulating. If there is a single, if implicit, theme running through the three linked essays that form this book, it is the failure of leaders to look beyond their own and the country’s immediate ambitions and desires so as to plan prudently for a darkening future.”

The Southern Strategy is real. The historical documents prove it. The man who created it now seems to recognize he created a monster. And the monster of the GOP, Donald Trump, is now destroying our nation while Republicans sit by unwilling to lift a single finger to stop him.