Today I read a report of the involvement (I suppose we can’t call it collaboration) of Facebook and Twitter in Russian attempts to destabilize the U.S.A. Of course Twitter, like so many of its clients, is trying to evade responsibility for the content of twitters. The article quoted an expert’s opinion that “Twitter functions more like a broadcast network. People say things and everyone can hear it. When false informaltion is stated, people can jump on false statements and challenge it.” Note that she said “false statements,” not mistaken statements, and “false statements” are very often the malicious and are the same as LIES. And I must ask: does no one bear responsibility for creating and spreading lies? Broadcast networks can be held to some extent accountable for creating and/or spreading lies, though Fox and the limbaughs get away with a great deal. But twitters, with their option for anonymity can spread lies with no adverse consequence to the liars. This anonymity is the mask behind which internet trolls lurk, along with Russian agents and anyone else up to mischief. I do not know how we can go on if liars cannot be detected and face no adverse consequences. The blessings of democracy are too often used to subvert it. We have pushed “freedom of speech” beyond any reasonable limit and opened a way for the sick and the malicious.
24 IX 2017: Podex maximus?
I saw in a news report that footballer Sean McCoy has given voice to the feelings and pereption of most of the nation when he tweeted: “It’s really sad man … our president is an assh-e.” He might have made his observation more palatable to Trumpy by saying that “our president is the biggest asshole.” But of course such a term is not fitting to the dignity of Trump’s office. So let’s fall back on Latin and call him “Podex maximus.”
Doesn’t Trump remind you of Nero?
23 IX 2017: The dotard on the campaign trail: God, Flag and Football
Trumpy is down in “the great state of Alabama,” as George Wallace used to call it. He is campaigning for one of the tweedle-dum/tweedle-dee misfits running there for the U.S. Senate. Of course, he cannot limit himself to this silliness, but has to air his opinions like so much dirty laundry while he makes his pitch.
He wants the football barons to fire any player who fails to ‘respect the flag.’
I hate this flag cult – it is as morbidly sentimental and mindless as Cohan’s “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” Of course, pseudo-patriots like Trump can’t stop mentioning the flag, and are keen to burn any flag-burners, but they say nothing when the flag is degraded and insulted by its use in commerce, sports, and other unsuitable venues. Some years ago I was out walking near the Univ. of Notre Dame a couple of blocks away from where during the week earlier there had been a big used car sale on the campus. I saw something colorful being blown across the dust of the road, and found that it was one of the small U.S. flags used to decorate the tent at the used-car sale. A silly slice of life, but it made a profound impression on me.
Trumpy also wants to bring good old extreme violence back to football. Well of course! His favorite sport is professional wrestling. Everybody knows that though the wrestlers bash and gash and slam each other, no one is really hurt. Right? And Trumpy assumes that football is just the same. Come on, they’re not really hurt that bad!! I suppose Fox Schmooz does not report the very alarming discoveries of brain damage to football players.
The proven causal connection of football to brain damage is already seen as a potential threat to the multi-billion dollars industry of the NFL. Just wait until it becomes an issue in the colleges and universities that also exploit players and derive so much of their revenue from football. And when it filters down to the high school level, the fat will really be in the fire. We will see outrage, anger, and denial, denial, denial. Parents, grandparents, and whole communities and states find much of their identity in games played by teen-age boys with a football. A criticism of sacred football is, in fact, far worse than any “disrespect for the flag.”
22 IX 2017: Getting fat on homophobia
Allow me to correct myself. In a recent post I spoke of “agitators public and private who live for homophobia.” On reflection, I believe I should have written “who live BY homophobia.” You see, many who are made frantic by Fr. Martin are afraid of gays (“homophobia,” strictly speaking) and, consequently, they hate gays. They have been manipulated into this by the centuries-old tradition of anti-gay rhetoric. Now this rhetoric is the work of people who live by homophobia. Politicians seek the votes of the simple and frightened (“Lions tigers and gay marriage, O my! Lions and tigers and gay marriage, O my!”). Moreover, backroom webmasters, TV reverends, and reactionaries of all kinds unite in exploiting this homophobia to conjure up political and financial support for their latest whims, crusades, and scams. Pity those who live in homophobia; shame on those who live by homophobia.
21 IX 2017: Who left the door open at the White House?
Someone left a door open at the White House and Trumpy got out. I saw a headline that said: “No other U.S. president has talked to the UN like this before.” There are good reasons for that! This embarrassment lately inflicted on our now notorious country is bad enough, but far worse is the peril that comes when a thoughtless big-mouth lets his emotions run riot on the internantional stage. Putin & Co. have achieved through this one election what decades of cold-war effort sought for in vain. The U.S. is now disabled, maybe even crippled.
19 IX 2017: Church Militant
So the Theological College across the road from Catholic University has withdrawn its invitation to Fr. James Martin to speak to its alumni. It seems this was done not in response to pressure from the bishops, but at the behest of agitators public and private who live for homophobia. Theological College has never been known for critical or independent thinking, but their caving in to losers (to use President Trump’s word) with homegrown websites and maniacs that shriek over the telephone suggests that T.C. has just about hit bottom. I looked up the “Church Militant” website and found it packed with 1950s re-runs of various kinds. Like Car Talk, they have a Shameless Commerce Division called STORE, and you can buy yourself a cool tee shirt there or a Church Militant coffee mug.
14 VIII 2017: Platitudes can’t prove he’s not a Nazi
Trump will have to come up with more than the placebos and platitudes of his two statements about Charlottesville to show he is not a Nazi. The first statement was worse than none, and the second statement was just boiler plate. I believe that he made his declaration with tongue in cheek. He was reciting formulae and platitudes so banal as to cause no problem for the alt-right, leaving them to believe that “Trumpy had to say something out of Sunday school so as to calm the squeamish, but we know he’s still on our side.”
What could Trump do to make his denunciation of racism and violence credible? He could clear his own house of crypto-Nazis. He could get rid of Steve Bannon, his Ernst Roehm, and Bannon’s minion, Sebastian Gorka, and get rid of Stephen Miller, the Joseph Goebbels of the Trump Whitehouse.
If Trump would rid himself of these and other deplorables his declaration might become credible.
9 VIII 2017: “Fire and fury …”
People seem unable to find a model for Trumpy’s new slogan, “Fire and fury,” and conclude he came up with it on his own. My take may be far-fetched, but I am reminded of “sound and fury, signifying nothing,” and Shakespeare used this phrase to describe “a tale told by an idiot.” But what if the President of the U.S. is an idiot?
25 VII 2017: Harangue from Der Führer at BSA Jamboree
Trump recently provided another glimpse of his ignorance of/disregard for American democratic institutions when he tried to turn the Boy Scouts’ Jamboree into a Hitler Youth rally.
24 VII 2017: Sons of the Old South
Two sons of the Old South clearly regard the pistol/penis as the solver of problems and key to success. It’s reported that Rep. Blake (“The Fatted Calf”) Farenthold of Texas blames female senators from the Northeast for the repeal/replace fiasco. He is so frustrated because “If it was a guy from south Texas, I might ask him to step outside and settle this Aaron Burr-style.”
Then Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama is using bits from the footage of the shooting at the Congressional Baseball practice to parade his enthusiasm for the Second Amendment,” the lead-in on the campaign ad reading: “A Bernie Sanders supporter fires on Republican Congressmen.”
What do you suppose is the IQ of these boneheads and what do they think is the IQ of their constituents??