Author Archives: themiddlewaythrough

A Street Gang Mentality

22 Sunday Mar 2020

Posted by in Change, Coronavirus, Ego, Guns, Human, Making Sense of Guns, Revolution, Trump-Hole

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The Renaissance came after the Dark Ages because people had started to engage in critical thinking and using something that became known as the scientific method. The natural result was to grow away from the teachings of The Church at that time, because the results science was getting threatened the validity of the Church itself, the authenticity of its edicts, and its iron grip on power.

Now the United States has a leader who is in a position of power he neither earned, nor deserves. And like the church, he is so frightened of being wrong and losing power that he is willing to put countless lives at risk just in order to appear as if he isn’t wrong.

And so, here we are centuries later slowly sinking back into the same dark abyss of magical thinking, selfish prayer and quack ‘cure-all’ medicines. We are again leaving behind rational observation and thought as we bound head first into cults of personality and brand identity, as if they offer something more substantive than a street gang mentality and some Second Amendment bumper stickers.

The “S” Word

13 Friday Mar 2020

Posted by in Brain Droppings, Democratic Socialism, Dingleberries, Fear, Healthcare, Open mind, Politics, Sameness, Trump-Hole

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As usual, I am having trouble with the fact that Donald Trump’s base of support would eat a shit sandwich if he said it was a big brown chicken nugget.

As Agent Orange spitballs ideas such as paying people who don’t have sick leave, massive financial stimulus packages, and other socialistic methods to help patch the smoldering wreck that was his ‘beautiful stock market value’, I can’t help but wonder why no Republicans are screaming about Trump’s sudden socialist shift. I mean, this is obviously going to taint the free market.

Just to be clear, right now the biggest difference between Bernie’s version of socialism and Trump’s is that Bernie’s would actually be part of a cohesive plan, and not part of some knee-jerk, radioactive act of desperation.

In the world of material worship, socialism is an old testament god that may only be summoned in the event of an apocalyptic event. Specifically one that threatens the wealthy, as well as us lowly serfs.

“What did you just say?!”

What will it take?

09 Monday Mar 2020

Posted by in Corruption, Politics, Trump-Hole

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It wasn’t impersonating a journalist who is disabled.
It wasn’t being recorded on a hot mic saying he grabs women by the pussy.
It wasn’t rumors of a pee tape.
It wasn’t sleeping with porn stars.
It wasn’t suspicion of Russian aiding him in his election.
It wasn’t being named in an indictment that his personal attorney is now serving time for.
It wasn’t campaign finance violations.
It wasn’t firing the FBI Director.
It wasn’t kids in cages, or separating families for the crime of seeking asylum.
It wasn’t withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement.
It wasn’t travel bans.
It wasn’t a lackluster and deadly non-response to Hurricane Maria.
It wasn’t trying to appoint judges who were demonstrably unfit for the bench.
It wasn’t tariffs that are crippling our own farmers.
It wasn’t hiding politically sensitive information on national security servers.
It wasn’t the Mueller Report showing plenty of collusion, if you were one of the handful of people who read it.
It wasn’t getting impeached, and having someone from his own party vote to remove him from office.
It wasn’t making money off of the Secret Service who are forced to pay his company to stay at his properties in order to protect him.
It’s wasn’t the golf trips have cost the country well over $100,000,000 and counting.
It won’t even be his botched handling of a growing pandemic.

No, Trump only cares about money. He inherited a booming economy and has been taking credit for it since he walked through the door. But, now that it is teetering on a massive decline, he won’t be able to resist the urge to manipulate things to save his cash. The fear of a bad economy in an election year would probably be enough. But let’s face it, he doesn’t care of someone else goes broke, just himself.

If anything is gong to bring him down, it will be something to do with money.

a pale rider

27 Thursday Feb 2020

Posted by in Coronavirus, Healthcare, Politics, Spirituality, Trump-Hole

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I work in IT. And I have always felt that if your tech department is doing a really good job you don’t really see them around much. And, that’s actually a good thing.

But some people don’t always think so. Some people start to wonder what these techies do all day. Because, when everything is working certain people sometimes forget that things are there in the first place, and that there may actually be competent people behind them who keep things functioning.

Unfortunately, when all you care about is cutting costs, it can be easy to ignore the fine details. Besides, they just make things messy, and they only slow the necessary cuts. Just rip that bandaid off!

The thing is, eventually emergencies happen. And, in every life a little rain must fall. But, that’s also when you get to see where that roof you’ve been neglecting is leaking from.

Emergencies always exploit the weaknesses created by aggressively rapacious mismanagement (And remember, never underestimate the lengths those responsible for that systemic damage will go to in order to hide their culpability).

And that’s just doing tech support in most small business these days! HAHAHA! Could you imagine if that happened on a bigger scale? Like, if the President of the United States did something stupid like partially defunding the CDC, and hamstringing its ability to respond to something like a worldwide pandemic. And then to really F- things up, he puts a science-denying religious zealot in charge who would much prefer to take up snakes against us sinners, than to have to coordinate a scientifically based, global health effort meant to save our eternally damned asses.

The Election Threat – Part 347

21 Friday Feb 2020

Posted by in Conspiracies, Corruption, Fear, Patriotism, Politics, Trump-Hole

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*Sorry for the mid-post edit. But by some snafu of editing, two paragraphs switched places.

—

Yesterday’s news reports were saying that U.S. Intelligence officials had recently briefed Congress on Russia’s current efforts to re-elect Donald Trump. When it became known that this briefing had already happened, the president went, well… ape-shit.

And no, not because he was upset that a foreign power would have the gall to try to intervene in a U.S. election (like his 44 predecessors would have done). Nope. This guy got pissed because other parts of our government now have this damaging information. And also because (and this part can’t be understated when it comes to Trump), one of those people was Adam Schiff. A man who clearly appears to terrify Donald Trump because of his sheer tenacity.

This appears to have upset the president to the point that he felt he had to shit-can the Director of National Intelligence. Again, not something any of his 44 predecessors would have done, for fear of how the American people would have perceived a move like that. However, Donald Trump has never indicated that he actually cares about what roughly 59% of the country thinks because they don’t agree with him. And his world that’s enough. To him, they are now nothing more than pesky impediments to his need to rig the scales.

So Trump had a hissy fit and then simply replaced the Director of National Intelligence with the next in a long line of temporary and disposable sycophants, all of which are sure that they alone are special to him.

This kind of news can really send my mind in a million different directions, none of which are good. And certainly not if you are like me, and prefer your country maintaining some autonomy in this world.

This is serious shit. This kind of national betrayal goes way beyond just “conservatives finally get to own the cucks”. This is the kind of crisis that has large swaths of the American population suddenly looking at one another, wondering who’s going to be the one to step forward and lead us all this worsening juggernaut of ever-worsening strife.

Last night as the evening news was broadcasting this latest development in our national crisis, one part of my brain began to go into alarm mode. Yet at the same time my parental instincts were awakened to the danger, and began to actively search for a more comforting interpretation of this reality to portray to my children.

For me, that’s the biggest crime President Trump has committed. He has threatened my family’s safety and security simply because he had no self-control or moral compass, and now he needs to protect his own extremely thin skin.

He’s Got Corruption On The Run

19 Wednesday Feb 2020

Posted by in Corruption, Moscow Mitch, Patriotism, Politics, Revolution, Trump-Hole

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Yesterday, Donald Trump showed the world just how focused he is on corruption. And never before have a U.S. president’s actions been so illustrative.

We might have doubted how focused on corruption he was when he sent his neighborhood buddy and newly anointed personal lawyer and fixer, Rudy Ghouliani to Ukraine to uncover the deeply hidden evidence of corruption that only someone like Rudy could identify. But, despite our doubt and his having one of the best intelligence organizations in the world at his fingertips, Trump intuitively knew that only Rudy could produce this kind of evidence he needed.

However, yesterday when Donald Trump decided to pardon Rob Blagojevich, Bernie Kerik, and Michael Milken, he was showing the world just how devoted he was to corruption. Trump was resigned to the fact that, despite the deep lessons that he and Susan Collins knew that he had learned during his impeachment, it was necessary for him to forge on and continue to work on corruption in ways that only he alone could.

Don’t for a minute believe that this is somehow a real world equivalent of the mass breakout of Death Eaters from Azkaban. This is a carefully orchestrated summoning of individuals with unique talents, who are now indebted to Donald Trump, and who will help him get done what he needs getting done.

Don’t be fooled by this flurry of seemingly crazy and unrelated pardons, it is by no means a smokescreen for the upcoming pardons for Roger Stone and Michael Flynn. It’s just a happy coincidence in Trump’s personal crusade with corruption. Nor is this some sort of public celebration of his exoneration by Mitch McConnell’s Senate. And it most definitely isn’t a giant middle finger to the millions of Americans who have always been able to trust that in America no one is above the law.

Excellent

18 Tuesday Feb 2020

Posted by in Conspiracies, Moscow Mitch, Patriotism, Politics, Putin, Revolution, Trump-Hole

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Why do I feel like Mitch McConnell is the kind of guy who has been harboring a deep, poisonous resentment ever since the third grade when he ended up being the only boy in the town’s history who didn’t get invited to the Sadie Hawkins dance.

One day years from now as he lay dying, he‘ll probably even get to have his own little villainous Rosebud moment as he drifts off…

“See Mary Lou! I showed them. I showed them all.”

Caution

16 Sunday Feb 2020

Posted by in Conspiracies, Politics, Putin, Revolution, Trump-Hole

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I have been thinking this over for a while, and like many others, I have arrived at the belief that we need to prepare for what will undoubtedly be the most dangerous election season in American history. And we should also be prepared for the fact that whether or not Trump loses the 2020 election or he terms out four years later, I see no evidence that Donald Trump would ever relinquish any sort of power. Certainly not willingly, and certainly not without a fight.

What makes me think this? First off, there’s already no reason to believe he will act like everyone is hoping he will act if he loses the election. When has he ever acted like other presidents would when the stakes were high? Why should we expect him to start doing so now that the stakes are at their highest?

There are so many things that have already surfaced in the news about Trump that if a any normal citizen had done them, they’d have been prosecuted without question. We also know that it’s quite possible there are sealed indictments out there waiting for him right now. And we also know that he knows that too!

So with that as my framework, I simply considered everything I know about Donald Trump’s behavior in situations where there is some societal norm expected of him but his ego’s been bruised. I thought about how his machine functions when they need a patsy to discredit an unfavorable event for Trump. I then added 2 + 2 and asked myself, “Do I think Donald Trump would ever do anything at all where he would put himself in legal peril, of any sort?”

That was all it took for me. Seriously, give this a try.

And I want you to remember that his supporters have already created an environment where he is essentially exempt from any accountability while he remains the president. We also know that he will disavow even his oldest friend, and without hesitation scapegoat a hero in front of the world. Top that all off with the fact that he is not only being allowed to violate societal norms with regularity, but his supporters are encouraging it more and more with each previous breach.

I think we are in for an incredibly dirty, and extremely dangerous election season at the very least. Because I know there is nothing that Donald Trump wouldn’t be willing to try in order to escape responsibility for any action he takes, all while defending his rights to have acted as he did.

There is nothing he has ever said or done that would indicate he is capable of willingly walking away from power. And always remember how willing his supporters are to hurt others with impunity.

Too many people believe this is still about just an election.