Decades ago, I worked in NY City, an experience burned into my memory that I’ll never forget.  During that time, I became very familiar with Trump, his egomaniac behavior, and how he was viewed by others.  When I was there, Ed Koch was mayor of NY who served from 1978 to 1989.  I knew that Koch was a very popular mayor even after several scandals consumed his last term.  I also knew that Trump was hated in NY, especially by the business community who mocked his cheesy business tactics and tacky taste in his buildings.  What I didn’t know was that  he and Koch feuded regularly during that time.  There were several occasions where Trump offered to finish city construction projects or waive his real estate fees.  He reneged on all of those offers when Koch refused to put Trump’s name on the projects including the skating rink in Central Park.

The depth of Koch’s hatred of Trump wasn’t really known until a number of papers, including essays written by him in the 80s and early 90s surfaced in 2017.  Here are some sweet tidbits:

“I wouldn’t believe Donald Trump if his tongue were notarized.”

“Donald Trump is one of the least likable people I have met during the 12 years that I served as mayor.  It is incomprehensible to me that for some people he has become a folk hero.”

“Trump obviously considered himself to be my friend at one time, and because of that, or because he gave or raised $70,000 for one of my mayoral campaigns, he expected something in return. He never got it. And he thought that was disloyal.”

Koch also recounted an experience of a friend who was going to have a meeting with Trump.  A London merchant who knew Trump predicted what would happen:

“Ten minutes into the meeting the phone on Trump’s desk will ring. He will answer it and say, ‘You offered them $40 million and they turned it down? Offer them $60 million.’ He will then hang up and resume his meeting with you.”

“That is exactly what happened.”

I have known what a horrible human being Trump was and is.  It is incomprehensible to me why ANY person would believe any words coming out of his mouth, much less do business with him.

Do you think Ted Cruz sounds like a delusional lunatic?  Do you, like me, sit slack jawed while listening to the nonsensical tirades of Screwy Louie Gohmert?  Well, I’ve got a piece that will help you understand how we got here.

This is actually from last year, but I re-read this piece from the Washington Monthly and thought it would be a good reminder of how ultra-conservative ideologues went crazy, destroying politics in the US as we knew it.  Most interesting? They did it by adopting tactics used by the Communists in the 30s, 40s, and 50s.  The result is that they have now vilified you, me, and everyone else with whom they disagree, using ever more desperate tactics as demographics and common decency move more and more against them.

One of our readers suggested an edit to the name, and with a little modification to that, I agree.  So, read on, dear friends.

More reports have emerged of more abuse of athletes at Ohio State by a sports doctor Richard Strauss, and those reports now total a staggering 1,429.  A wrestling referee has stated that he reported 300 cases of this abuse to Jim Jordan, (R)-Ohio, who was then an assistant wrestling coach at the university.  Jordan, of course, “has no recollection” of this hailstorm of reports over 17 years.  His lack of knowledge of such a pervasive case of sexual abuse doesn’t pass the straight faced test, not even close.

So, in these days of labeling and name calling fostered by Trump, it seems a label for Jordan might fit.  One who allows, and even fosters sexual abuse of innocent people is often called a pimp.  So, Jimmy the Pimp seems an appropriate label for Jordan, and it rolls off the tongue almost as easily as Moscow Mitch, the name for Mitch McConnell coined by none other than Nancy Pelosi.  So, it could be a good label for our friend Jim Jordan, who loves attacking anyone and everyone who is trying to hold Donald Trump to account.  Maybe some of his own medicine is appropriate.

One of the lies Trump and his sycophants repeat ad nauseam is that simply because of him, the economy is “booming” and growing like “never before in US history”.  That’s complete bullshit of course, and NO economic performance number supports Trump’s boasting.   Trump’s greatest accomplishment has been fortunate to have followed Barack Obama who bucked huge political obstruction to kick start the economy by pumping billions into rebuilding industries and extending unemployment benefits to out of work Americans.  Anyone who has studied Economics 101 knows that a key tool for bringing an economy out of a downturn is INCREASING government spending to get people back to work.  Obama fought the Repubs tooth and nail, and succeeded.  Trump is the beneficiary of that courage, as our economy is simply on the same trend line established by Obama policy.  In fact, Trump is trailing behind some measures established by Obama because of his idiotic trade war.

Here are a few examples:

US GDP Growth

S&P 500

Job Growth

Remember when Trump promised 6% GDP growth?  To bring coal back? To increase manufacturing jobs?  None of those promises have been kept.  None.  Essentially, the economy has continued its up and to the right trend more in spite of Trump rather that because of Trump.

Even though it’s denied by Trumpists, truth does matter.  And the truth is that the economy left by Obama is strong enough to so far resist Trump’s destructive infestation of the White House.

Yesterday a friend of mine got caught in a huge traffic jam on a local street.  The cause of the jam? The line of cars trying to get into a Popeye’s Fried Chicken drive thru to buy their chicken sandwich.  Also yesterday, there was a fatal stabbing outside of a Popeye’s fried chicken in Maryland during an argument over…wait for it…a goddam chicken sandwich.

If you’re around a Chick-fil-A around lunchtime in Texas, you will be caught in a traffic jam with hundreds of people sitting in dozens of cars willing to wait for almost an hour to buy THEIR goddam chicken sandwich.  This willingness, though, is in large part owed to conservatives  making some kind of statement in support of Chick-fil-A for their anti-diversity politics and support of Trump.

In the meantime, we’re only a few weeks away from the madness of Black Friday (which now starts on Thanksgiving morning) as millions of Americans stupidly storm into big box stores to do battle with one another to buy a cheap made in China flat panel television which they can neither afford or fit on a wall in their home.

Insanity has now become normalized.  More Americans are engaged in Dancing with the Stars and The Voice than they are in participation in their own government.  They go nuts over shit they read on Facebook and Twitter, while ignoring the real world of what’s going on around them.  AND, our system of consumer protections has been decimated.  Lying about products, politics, people, and policy is now OK and our courts have been packed with ideologies who believe that is just fine.  The President of the United States has amplified this cancer by lying himself over 14,000 times in 3 years.  He’s tweeted over 11,000 times, most of those tweets either lies, attacks against his enemies, wild conspiracy theories, or promotion of his own businesses.  His education department is making it worse by destroying decades of progress in public education and assuring that millions of Americans swim in debt created by a system designed to entrap them for profit.

We are living in the age of lies.  The masses, whose wages have been stagnated for 0ver 30 years and whose education system is broken, now live in a distopian television fantasy world, reduced to fighting over goddam chicken sandwiches, flat panel televisions, and casting meaningless votes for people who have no business dancing on national television.

We are lost, and with few viable government protections left, Trump has accelerated the downward spiral to an outright freefall.  I don’t have a solution for it, and don’t even know where to start.

Last night I extricated myself from a FB conversation.  Yes, it was one of THOSE conversations, started by one of my conservative acquaintances who has become a Never Trumper.  A couple of days ago, he asked what act would turn his Trumpist friends against The Orange One.  The answer (nothing) was predictable; what was shocking was the nonsense they spewed in a continuous stream to justify that.  Intellectually, we all sense that Trumpists are unbalanced and misinformed.  When it’s laid out in plain English on social media, it makes your hair hurt.

One Trumpist would deflect all questions about Trump to Biden and his son, Hunter.  He would simply not address any of the issues about Ukraine or the thousands and thousands of easily disproven lies from Trump.  His source is Sean Hannity and he actually begged me to watch his show to “get the facts” that were going “to bury” Biden and his son.  He would only gloat about how Biden is “cooked” and would not even address the question.  Another Trumpist resorted to immediate grade school name calling and wanted to bet all comers $2,500 that Trump would not be impeached and that he would again be elected president.  He didn’t like I said I didn’t believe I wanted to bet on the level of stupidity of Trumpists.

One Trumpist kept quoting the Bible.  One even quoted Shakespeare, which I found entertaining.  One kept quoting the lies of Peter Schweizer, author of Clinton Cash, one of those fact free “investigative” books that makes people’s brains soft.  One said he would only vote against Trump if “he was convicted of a crime”.  He seemed puzzled when I said that was impossible since DOJ policy didn’t allow a sitting president to be indicted for crimes they committed.

The one who took the cake?  The QAnon Trumpist.  I have never had a social media conversation with anyone as unhinged as this one.  These folks are obsessed with pedophilia, and have this weird article of faith that the “Deep State”, whatever that is, is somehow covering up Hillary’s pedophilia ring that has “pedavores” as members.  I have no idea what a “pedavore” is, and don’t want to know.  This person was so unhinged that even the most Trumpist of Trumpists paused their ranting momentarily, one even saying, “I don’t even know what that means.”  I burst out laughing at that one, almost spilling my Jack on the rocks on my keyboard.

What I learned during this exchange was that to a person no level of corruption, criminality, or misconduct would cause a Trumpist to think again.  The really disheartening lesson was that how thoroughly these people are brainwashed with pure unadulterated bullshit.  We knew that the Hillary nonsense is encoded in the DNA – but right alongside those lies, the lies about Biden and his son have already been ingrained.  The facts have no bearing on these opinions; none.  I have finally given up even trying to talk to these people because I make no progress.  The message framing, as defined by George Lakoff, a linguist and retired professor of language at Berkeley, is perfect.  This message framing hits all the emotional buttons of fear, belonging, and Them vs. Us.  Once that kind of messaging becomes encoded, it’s almost impossible to alter it, and that’s what we’re witnessing.

These people are beyond reach of reason and critical thinking.  The only way they can be beaten is to neutralize them at the voting booth, and that requires the engagement in massive numbers of normal people who haven’t been brainwashed.  That is a huge task.