Yesterday I talked about how Trumpists flocked to their latest article of faith that Trump isn’t really impeached because the House hasn’t transmitted the articles of impeachment to the Senate.  There is no basis in law or fact for that belief, but it’s there anyway, virally spreading throughout Trumpland.  During our Trumpist infestation we experienced yesterday that was the recurring theme.  These trends often start as a joke or a hoax, sometimes on satire sites, but quickly morph into viral proliferation by those who desperately cling to anything that supports their predisposed beliefs.  Here’s the Google trend line for searches this week on “Trump not impeached”:

And, as you would imagine, the regions that have the most searches are the red states.  There’s new viral rumor now growing in Trumpland and that is, now that Trump is impeached, he’s automatically eligible to run 2 more times.  That is REALLY stupid, and is completely unsupported both in the Constitution including the 22nd Amendment.  It started as a “joke” in October, but really took off this week, spreading across right wing pages by Trumpists.  Here’s the Google trend line for “Trump can run for third time”:

This kind of proliferation is what makes brainwashing so nefarious.  Many of the Trumpists’ comments during our infestation yesterday were repeating absolute nonsense, Russian propaganda, boasting, taunting, and personal insults.  None of the dozens of comments we received were based in any kind of fact; all taunted; none were even reasonable.

With rampant propaganda proliferated over social media facts or truth no longer matter.  Worse, Trump’s Twitter account amplifies these lies.  Every time he tweets one of his insults, childish taunts, threats, or lies,  it goes out to millions or users, retweeted thousands of times.  In the hands of an immoral politician like Trump, social media is weaponized for the dark side.  You can see it, but can also measure it.  Here’s the search terms “Burisma” and “Hunter Biden”:

These trends follow Trump’s twitter feed and those who support him.  Nobody ever even heard of Burisma, and few were even aware of Hunter Biden until Trump, Giuliani, and the Noise Machine started repeating it.  And, they almost got away with it; were it not for the whistleblower, Ukraine would have announced an investigation of the fabricated Russian story that Ukraine was the bad actor in 2016, and Biden’s chance to become the Democratic presidential nominee would have been destroyed.

Integrity matters, but evil can easily run over integrity because brainwashing works really well.  And THAT threatens our republic more than any outside force.

We know the conspiracy theory pushed by Trump and his henchman, Rudy Giuliani is nonsensical.  Every intelligence agency says it’s nonsensical.  During House impeachment hearings, former US intelligence officer and Russian specialist implored Republican congressmen to stop repeating Russian propaganda that it was Ukraine, not Russia, who interfered in the 2016 election.  The entire story is bullshit, and we KNOW it’s bullshit.

Ever wonder where the story came from and why Trump repeats it ad nauseam?  Well, the Washington Post dropped the bombshell this week that Putin himself planted the story in a private meeting during the 2017 G20 summit in Hamburg, when he began publicly repeating the story.  The meeting, and the subsequent meeting in Helsinki had NO US OFFICIALS PRESENT and there are no notes of the meetings.  We all knew it was stupid for Trump to meet with Putin alone, now we’re beginning to understand the depth of that stupidity.  The Post used interviews with former WH officials to confirm the story.

Let’s recap.  Trump withheld Congressionally appropriated funds to Ukraine to extort the announcement of an “investigation” into Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election using the fabricated story that Joe Biden and his son hunter were somehow involved in Ukrainian corruption.  When caught, he immediately released the funds and claimed what dozens of people saw didn’t really happen.  Then he defied all subpoenas for documents, ordered current and former officials to not testify, and repeatedly lied to the public about what is really going on.  The narrative he uses on a daily basis likely came directly from Putin, a former KGB officer.

Christ on a Crutch.  This is about as bad as it gets while Trumpists scream there is no evidence, no wrongdoing, and all of this is just made up by Democrats.  Sheesh.

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.

Trump sent a wild six page screed to Nancy Pelosi today raging about his well deserved impeachment, accusing her and the Dems of everything from treason to shredding the Constitution.  It’s all 100% bullshit, of course, the ravings of a guilty criminal.  Factcheck has posted an annotated copy of the letter, outlining all of his lies.  You have to hold your nose to read the letter.  The smell is overwhelmingly revolting.

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.

The Russians aren’t backing Trump on his story of getting Al Baghdadi, calling his announcement “propaganda”.  The Russian defense ministry says that Russia was not involved and even doubted that the raid killed the actual Al Baghdadi saying that Syria has claimed several times to have already killed him.  The shifting stories between the Pentagon, the White House, and His Orangeness’ mouth has added a lot of doubt to whether the entire tale is actually true or not.

Typical in Trumpland – nothing is clear, and everything is loud.