The Monster is Loose
A funny thing happened before the Christmas holiday. Donald Trump admitted that he not only has had the vaccine, but he has also had the booster. The crowd’s reaction was interesting to say the least. Avid readers will recognize Mary Shelley as the creator of Frankenstein. The story is easy enough to remember.
As on the money as that analogy seems at first blush, I’m not certain this is a Frankenstein situation. Trump didn’t so much create this monster as much as he simply fed it and released it from it’s cage. He recognized it when he decided to run for president. Say what you want about him, but he recognized the anger that was there and plugged into it. People will make the obvious comparison with dictators and demagogues of the past. They’ll make the obvious and lazy connection to Adolf Hitler. Sure, there are parallels there, but one can always find parallels when they look hard enough for them.
The parallel I draw is not necessarily with Germany but with the French Revolution. He doesn’t fit any particular individual in that scenario. What he has done is take advantage of his place as an outsider. The country is not in as extreme a situation as France was, but there are similarities. People are smart enough to see how things are slipping away. They are largely incapable of pointing the finger where it belongs. They see education costs rising. They see wages stagnating. They see other costs going up like health care costs and housing costs. One party has been really good at pointing fingers away from them. It’s the immigrants’ fault. It’s women’s fault. It’s those LGTBQ+ people’s fault. It’s ACORN. It’s Black Lives Matter. It’s Antifa. It’s critical race theory. It’s the war on Christmas.
What Trump didn’t figure is that once you get people started on a lie, they will follow that lie to its illogical conclusion. They will keep latching onto alternative treatments that don’t work. They’ll keep resisting the obvious. They’ll keep looking for scapegoats and when they don’t find a new one they’ll start pointing the finger at you.
That was seemingly going on in France at the time. The people were dissatisfied and they wanted new leadership. New leadership came in and they didn’t like them either. So, they kept revolting and they kept replacing until they stumbled into Napoleon. The funny thing is that I don’t think that’s what they had in mind in the beginning, but they did so much damage that is who they ended up with.
In that sense, I’m sure there is a comfort in someone that hates the same people you do. There is a certain amount of comfort in that hate. I can offload my failures and my insecurities onto those who I hate. The problem is that same person who helps us to point the finger either has no ideas to fix anything or actively doesn’t want to fix it. They want to fund raise off of it. They want to rob you blind while they are getting you to look at the “other”.
Well said, Nick. Well said.
1The cure, Nick? If only more Amerikkkans actually served in an operational/combat position for a few months. Those positions are always severely understaffed. A person learns to appreciate everyone. Gender? Culture? Meh. Believe me “to only” have the privilege of a black female transgender or anyone watching your back.
Main reason I do not comprehend the alleged ‘fiscal conservatives.’ People ARE our greatest resource, yet they will not make the investment(s) necessary.
2I’ve been saying for years that we’re 1 crop failure away from a Great Shortening.
3The wealth disparity is worse that what it was in France in 1789.
Bait and switch gets them every time.
4Say what you want about him, but he recognized the anger that was there and plugged into it.
When I think of Trump I don’t think of Germany or France during their violent eras. What is more apparent is that he picked up valuable lessons on how to make money with pro wrestling.
Fake villains. Fake heroes. Fictitious storylines. Staged, showcase violence. The audience knows it is all fake but they don’t care! Their emotions are real and so is their money. They cheer and rage and hold up signs and never think twice about history except what they imagine happened.
If I could interview Trump I would ask him about that, and what he was thinking when he first discovered it. He isn’t really smart about anything but he is very cunning and, more importantly, completely uninhibited about applying what he learned from his involvement in in pro wresting and right wing media.
5The Washington Post this morning has an interesting article about Ted Koppel’s visit to Mt. Airy, NC. “The veteran newsman and “CBS Sunday Morning” contributor explains how a seeming puff piece about “The Andy Griffith Show” turned into an unsettling snapshot of an angry America.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2021/12/29/ted-koppel-mayberry-cbs-sunday-morning/
6Thank you sharing TexasTrailerParkTrash. I suppose that article touches on part of the problem. When you are plugged into something that doesn’t exist it becomes harder to conduct ourselves in a way that is connected to any sort of reality. Lies have to build on lies and that house of cards is destined to crumble at some point.
7Louis XIV died and France was practically broke. The new king was underage and a spendthrift regent took over and made it so bad that it took one whole day’s wage to buy a loaf of bread. When common folk couldn’t eat, not just the poor folk, that caused a rebellion. We are spoiled, most of us sleep inside at night, eat every day and so on. We need to be reminded occasionally that our ancestors worked hard – and voted – to get all this and we need to carry it forward, not just rest on our laurels.
8“the obvious and lazy connection to Adolf Hitler.”
Even that’s too much work for me. I’d compare Trump to the Blob, or maybe a $Blob$ that blubbers his way around the country, sucking all the money out of people, but letting them live so he can return for more later.
If we don’t freeze and send him north on a heavy lift cargo plane soon, the poles won’t be cold enough to keep him safely sequestered in permafrost, given the rate of global warming and glacier melts.
9Monsters yes, but you’re just noting the symptoms and superficial appearances [eg- hordes of mini-monster MAGAots].
Over-simplifying the underlying ‘genetic engineering’ that has long been very carefully conducted by a shadowy cabal of RW masters.
This cabal has been working diligently for many decades. The Abbotts, the DeSantis’s, even tRump, are merely their catspaws, carefully controlled and manipulated to the cabal’s totalitarian ends. Yes, a fascist masterplan little different from that of Hitler and the rest.
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Speaking of monsters, more information is coming out about how our very own Senator Rafael Monster Cruz was a key player, among hundreds of lesser others, in the January 6 Rethuglikan attempted coup d’etat against our democracy and President Biden.
Cruz, Gosar, Gaetz, Bannon, Navarro, Eastwood, Roy, the rest of the coup d’etat planners, even the Trump Crime Org, were in it up to their scalps.
We cannot survive as a nation when
traitorous vermin like this go unpunished, and actually prosper, after trying their utmost to overthrow the legitimate government of the United States.
The January 6 House Committee, DoJ, AG Garland, et al., had damned well better produce some criminal indictments very soon.
Time is running out, given the upcoming 2022 elections, which themselves are likely to unfold as a rigged farce.
10The Democrats, and Obama, blew this in 2010 [a very critical election that defined redistricting]; and have done little to correct the damage since.
The Rethuglikans have been steadily compounding that damage every year since, and have been largely unchallenged and unimpeded by the Democrats in any coordinated or effective manner.
Sandridge @9 after the long awaited ‘block buster’ Mueller Report apparently went straight to file #13 holding my breath seems unhealthy. Unless the DOJ under Garland starts taking actual action soon my already low expectations are about flat lined.
11I’m going with Robespierre. Robespierre tapped into the anger of the French people, created villains to hate and send to the guillotine. Eventually, someone made Robespierre the villain, and suggested he be given the same free haircut he gave to so many others.
So, too, with Trump. Now that he’s said vaccines are OK, they’re starting to make Trump a bad guy ready to be condemned as another Soros-funded Communist Nazi (or whatever epithets the MAGGATs are using these days.)
12Americans are unhappy because their (perceived) top-end lifestyle is perceptibly eroding.
13The corollary to the true statement that we need “five earths” for every human to have our PHYSICAL standard of living implies another truth: Americans need to back off on how much energy and resources we use, both rich and poor.
Fewer yachts, and fewer land yachts.
Fewer mansions, and fewer mini-mansions.
Simpler food, and simpler clothing.
We can’t keep up with the rich, and the really poor can’t keep up with Americans, and now we have the Internet to prove that. So they will fight to get the stuff we have, but can’t keep.
Gloom and doom OR shrink your expectations. Skip restaurants, long trips, fancy junk. Downsize from the big pickup. Sell the big house.
Or else. Your choice.
Jane & PKM @11, Yep, I share your underwhelmnedess, all one has to do is imagine the two Parties roles reversed. There would be special stormtrooper details picking up the slack from the regular LEOs, rounding up every Democrat and librul with even a sniff of possible support for such an uprising. The jails would be jammed with libs [ones that made it that far], and special high volume kangaroo courts set up to unclog the regular ones.
I hate to be pessimistic but damn.
Kid gloves aren’t called for here, what’s needed are the special stainless steel mesh gloves [chainmail] we use offshore when handling those really nasty fishies capable of taking your fingers or hands and limbs clear off.
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RepubAnon @12, I’m all for those ‘whole head haircuts’ for those stinking traitors, Trumpies, MAGAots, etc. Real close shaves for the lot, slice ’em and dice ’em.
I used to make occasional comments about my side biz, importing budget priced guillotines [available with high-quality 6150, M390, H1 steel blades]… overstocked right now, sure would like to move some inventory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine
14https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knife_metal
@ Sandridge #14: Reminds me of an old joke:
A Bishop, a Nobelman, and the royal engineer are the first in line that day at the guillotine.
The executioner says: “Bishop, do you want to go facing down, or facing up?”
The Bishop replies: I want to be facing up so I can die looking at heaven.”
They strap the bishop in, the blade drops – but gets stuck halfway down.
“A Miracle” everyone cries, and the Bishop is freed.
Next comes the Nobleman, who, given the same choice, says:”I, too, want to die looking at heaven.”
They strap the nobleman in, and, again, the blade sticks halfway down. The nobleman is unstrapped and sent to work as a peasant on a farm.
Finally, the Royal Engineer’s turn arrives. Given the same choice, says:”I, too, want to die looking at heaven.”
They strap the Royal Engineer down, and are about to release the blade when the engineer says: “Wait, I see the problem – try some sandpaper on the guillotine’s blade guides first…”
15Jane & PKM @11, Forgot to mention, don’t want to sound too critical, the January 6 coup d’etat attempt has actually resulted in many indictments, trials, even convictions and sentences. But so far just leetle MAGAotty fishies, no big ‘uns.
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16Ormond @13, Jeez, ease up on at least some yachts.
Us sailor-type yotties use very little diesel fuel in a sailboat [mine ~20-30gal/yr feeding the Yanmar aux], and a solar array [and mebbe a wind gen] are going a ways towards reducing that. Considering that one of the freest alternative energy sources around, wind, moves eight tons of vessel at a good clip [and the wind is abundant here].
And mine was meant to replace the rancho manse and a couple land yachts as my domicile, plan on hold now though.
RepubAnon @15, Urk… We details-orientated perfectionists jes cain’t hep it…
17RepubAnon @15, Around here just the humidity would stick the guillotine. My steel doors are tight.
18It’s been running 70-100% RH for months, and very little rain. The air temps have been 75-85 almost every day for months [even into the 90s last week], with a few short-lived cold fronts once in a while. It’s 70/90 right now, might get to 68/100 by 7AM, w/fog. Ain’t complaining though.
No effing such thing as climate change-global warming though.
Ormond @ 13: I agree, but Americans are currently not much in favor of “the common good” whether it’s our own society or the rest of the planet. We–and a lot of the rest of the world–are drowning in “stuff.” We want bigger, better, fancier, newer “stuff,” whether or not we have any need for it.
We’re far enough from the Great Depression that nobody remembers the hardship first-hand, so we have mostly abandoned the lessons we learned there. We live on credit, often well beyond our actual means. We have forgotten our great-grandmothers’ creed: “Use it up; wear it out; make it do, or do without.” Consumerism drives our national budget. It’s not sustainable, but we don’t seem to care.
Yes, we need to downsize our lives, but nobody seems willing to consider living more simply for very long. We start to feel deprived when we see other people still living large. Short of living through another disaster like the Great Depression, how do we make a virtue out of having less, so that other people can have anything at all? I wish I knew.
19Monster loose? Yup.
Wrestling analogy a good one? Yup.
Almost all the analogies anybody ever threw up against the wall in this magnificently perilous salon de beaute to see if they’d stick, trying to somehow explain, or…..somethin.
All of em are true to one degree or another.
So many ways to look at the things done by repugnantcans.
Brother Sandridge, and quite a few of us before, points out the decades of time and untold gazillions of dollars invested to get what they want.
Power.
We’ve said it and heard it before.
But power fo do what?
Capitalize.
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/12/27/laredo-texas-ethylene-oxide/
It’s kind of a long story.
And it sure as hell ain’t the first of it’s kind.
But everything’s bigger in Texas right?
Sorry for the long-windedness.
20Anti-vax demonstrations – ALL the leaders have been vaxxed .
21To do. Not for do.
22And the apology is for my own long-windedness, not the Tribune-Propublica folk’s.
That’s the kinda story that keeps democracies alive.
Reminds me of my favorite sign in my political science office in college:
To do is to be — Aristotle
23To be is to do — Descarte
To be or not to be — Shakespeare
Do be do be do — Sinatra
P.P. @20, I read that pollution article you provided, partly because I used to work in Laredo sometimes. Apart from Laredo being one of the dustiest, dirtiest, hottest places you can imagine.
Partly because one of my own little grandkids has the same kind of leukemia and has had a tough time. IMO, a leukemia possibly contracted via low-bid pesticide/herbicide use in/on military base housing, where they’ve spent most of their lives. Or maybe powerful air station radars and other radiations, who knows?
The TCEQ has been a bad joke since shortly after the Rethugs took over Texas state government.
That sad EtO pollutant article reminded me of something similar I witnessed in Houston years ago. Note that the various article maps shown clearly indicated the drift patterns of the prevailing winds on the pollutant plumes.
I was verifying that a bunch of expensive electronics equipment was utterly destroyed at a recycling breakers/junk/yard. There was a lot of it, so it took a week or so there.
The large yard was somewhere in Southeast Houston, east of I-45 and probably north of Hobby Field; a mixed residential and business area. There were a couple of large hangar-type buildings, open on the ends, with various breaking machinery, cutting torches, ect.
The steady prevailing SE wind blew tons of nasty dust around and through, the dust containing all sorts of pollutants, heavy metals, lead, cadmium particles, etc.
—Of course, directly across the street, Dead Downwind, was an elementary school and playground… Those kids and teachers were bathed in that polluted dust every hour spent in school [and maybe at home too].
I’d encourage some of you Houston denizens to look up, sleuth out that location [I don’t remember it exactly]. Maybe somebody could do a medical ‘cluster’ study, would be interesting.
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On a different tack, this guy/commenter over on Daily Kos ‘gets it’:
“Captain Frogbert evrgreen
Dec 29, 2021 at 08:06:42 AM
I am so tired of the automatic response of any realistic assessment of what is going on being, “So you have given up.”
No, I have not given up, but if we do not VERY SOON get our fucking ducks in a row, even more Americans will be slaughtered by the oncoming neo-Nazi terrorists than is already all but inevitable.
The days of pretending that voting and phone banking has any hope of turning the tide are over.
They are coming to KILL US. They have told us this over and over and over, in no uncertain terms for at least the last decade. Less than a year ago the tried to kill off the Presidential line of succession so Trump could remain dictator for life. They routinely stand up in public and online asking when can they start the killing.
They are coming to KILL US. ”
“Captain Frogbert slimsan
Dec 29, 2021 at 10:44:01 AM
So was Hitler, who was never more than a corporal before he was Fuhrer.
So were the brownshirts and blackshirts.
We can’t keep pretending that history is not repeating itelf and “It can’t happen here.™”
I’m not talking about violence, but we have to stop letting the media play useful idiot and the government from not taking steps to curtail the coming violence.”
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/12/28/2071576/-Trump-s-ex-adviser-spells-out-2020-election-subversion-scheme
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24!!!
Sandridge, hug that child for me. And every other…
25Hug that child for me.
P.P. @25, Thanks P.P., hugs would be nice but not really an option right now. Last year the little guy caught COVID too, was in the hospital for it. Like in the article, trips to SA for treatments, and goes to the same Corpus Christi Driscoll Childrens Hospital. A special PCS
26[cont, wtf] A special PCS was arranged to get back to CC-NAS closer to family. Then came COVID, their whole family got it. Doing much better now, in the last treatment phase, hopefully. Stuff like that shouldn’t happen to the little ones…
27