Diversionary Tactics

Vice President Richard V. Cheney watches the September 11 attacks on New York City in his White House office on a live television feed on Sept. 11, 2001.

As I resume writing in this blog after a years-long absence, it is the twenty-second anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. A recent Newsweek story focused on current viral songster-sensation Oliver Anthony. The Jewish Anti-Defamation League accuses him of promoting “anti-Semitic 9/11 Conspiracy Theories.”

I am painfully aware that many highly significant videos made on 9/11 and formerly posted to YouTube have been scrubbed over the past eight years or so, since government officials begged social media channels to do some censoring of dangerous speech for them. But I can point out that Oliver Anthony has a playlist link called “Videos that make your noggin get bigger;” where the supposedly offensive material is posted.

I’d hazard a guess that, here in the USA, most of us are just about unable to distinguish “anti-Semitic” from “antiseptic.” We’re, most of us, not very worldly here, nor do we pay much attention to the language that we use. Sometimes, being a language stickler, I find some certain type of sloppy tendency in our use of language to be annoying. For instance, one of my pet peeves is that somehow, the phrase “one of the only…” has become commonplace. But you can’t have it both ways, scribes and pundits! Something is either unique, therefore, “the only,” or else it is uncommon, so “one of the few.”

Something similar occurs with the frequent use of “anti-Semitic.” Using dictionary.com, one finds the primary definition of “Semitic” to be: “a member of any of various ancient and modern peoples originating in southwestern Asia, including the Akkadians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs.” Secondarily, it means, “a Jew.” This latter, kidding aside, is the commonly-accepted meaning of “Semitic” here in the USA, but… that’s a bit misleading, don’t you think? A bit too… exclusive?

One of the most valuable things you can own is a word. Or, a phrase, such as “conspiracy theory.” “Conspiracy theory” is owned by the Central Intelligence Agency, though anyone is encouraged to borrow and use it — “royalty-free.” A book titled Conspiracy Theory in America by Lance deHaven-Smith explains how the term was invented by the Agency to slur skeptics of the Warren Commission, whose job was to convince the American public that it was a “MAGIC” assassin’s bullet which felled President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, TX on November 23, 1963.

What, exactly, has Oliver Anthony done to earn the ire of the ADL? Well, he has dredged up material which many probably never took note of, even twenty-two years ago when they were current events. This material reminds us, or reveals, as the case may be, of the existence of five men spotted in Jersey City, celebrating the strike on the North Tower at the World Trade Center, then the South Tower, apparently by airliners. These men were “dressed like Arabs,” according to the reports. A tenant in a building adjacent to the parking lot where they were laughing, high-fiving, and videotaping each other with the burning WTC tower in the background, called the police.

Long story short, these men and others were arrested by police. Some of the arrestees, later nabbed near the George Washington Bridge, had a lot of cash and even some explosives they were hauling around. One of the officers spoke on camera about one of them stating, while riding in the squad car, “We are not your enemy. The Palestinians are your enemy.”

The five who became known as “The Dancing Israelis,” which Oliver Anthony is now taking heat for reminding us about, were held for, evidently, quite a while, perhaps up to 71 days or so, by some accounts. They were identified as Sivan Kurzberg, Paul Kurzberg, Oded Ellner, Yaron Shimuel and Omar Marmari. The story becomes murky after their apprehension; ultimately, they were deported back to their home country — Israel — on passport violations. Some have claimed their release was on the orders of Michael Chertoff. The men were reportedly identified, before their release, as being agents of Israeli military intelligence.

ABC News and Fox News’s Carl Cameron (believe it or not) were the two television channels which reported on the Five Dancing Israelis. Fox tried a follow-up by interviewing an FBI agent. The agent said, “Evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It’s classified information.” Hmmm.

Newsweek informs us, in their article linked above, that, “”dancing Israelis,” which is a term used by people who claim the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad was behind the attacks, that the ADL disputes those reports as “false.”

“The most common ‘proof’ cited is the false claim that five Israeli Mossad agents were arrested on 9/11 by police who observed them filming and celebrating the attack,” the ADL wrote on its website.”

“‘False’ claim?” Really? Is this based on a technicality or something? Some of the men were agents, perhaps, not of “the Mossad,” whose motto at that point had long been, “By deception thou shalt do war,” but of some other intelligence/espionage department of the Israeli government? Or, were all the reports at the time simply lying to us?

Nor were these the only Israelis arrested around this time. There were two hundred other spies attempting to penetrate sensitive US installations under the guise of being “art students” trying to peddle artwork. 140 Israeli spies, aged between 20 and 30, had been arrested since March 2001, while 60 more were arrested after September 11. Generally posing as art students, they visited at least “36 sensitive sites of the Department of Defense.” “A majority of those questioned have stated they served in military intelligence, electronic signal intercept, or explosive ordnance units. Some had been linked to high-ranking officials in the Israeli military. One was the son of a two-star general, one served as the bodyguard to the head of the Israeli Army, one served in a Patriot mission unit.” Another, Peer Segalovitz, officer in the 605 Battalion of the Golan Heights, “acknowledged he could blow up buildings, bridges, cars, and anything else that he needed to.”

On September 10, 2001, The Washington Times, the newspaper owned by self-proclaimed Korean Messiah and major Republican political donor in the US, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, published a report on an Army War College analysis of foreign covert actors on the world stage. Its assessment on the topic of the Israeli Mossad’s capabilities: “Wildcard. Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act.”

The head of the Army War College at that time, Alan Sabrosky, stated publicly in 2006 that “it is 100% certain that 9/11 was a Mossad operation.” But, my guess is that we should not discount the roles of Saudi Arabia in supplying operatives to play hijacker parts, nor of Pakistan’s ISI in funneling money toward the operation… nor of the members of the George W. Bush Administration in diverting all but eight fighter jets away from the North East Air Defense System System (NEADS) to far-flung parts of the world on military training exercises, not to mention making sure no fighters took off from Andrews Air Force Base to defend Washington, DC, even though the “Flying Pentagon” plane was spotted circling overheard.. It’s a book chapter just trying to take into account the actions of our own Federal government under Bush & Cheney in arranging for the success of the operations and trying to cover up their role afterward. Study up on the “Iran-Contra scandal” of the 1980s to see highly complex, illegal partnerships along these lines, involving the same nations and the same political actors, the Bushes and their circles. There is also evidence of various US corporations with a heavy vested interest in the “opportunities” presented by the effects of the “shock and awe” 9/11 produced in the collective American psyche — but don’t get me started!…

When it came to 9/11. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when asked what it meant to him, apparently couldn’t resist blurting out, as his first words, “It’s very good.” He apologetically then corrected himself, saying it wasn’t “very good,” but it would generate sympathy for Israel.I don’t believe Israel alone perpetrated the 9/11 attacks. But his statement reflected perfectly Israel’s interest in their success. Netanyahu was also caught on tape reassuring his colleagues, “Don’t worry about the Americans because it was so easy to outmaneuver them in obtaining what Israeli leadership desires.

We could assume the five men arrested in Jersey City (which Donald Trump, catering to bigoted fans, of course, claimed were “thousands of cheering Muslims”), were simply moving men. They were, after all, employees of Urban Moving Systems. Three days after the catastrophic events of 9/11, the owner of that company, Dominik Suter, fled the country — back to Israel. A young American who had worked at the company was quoted in follow-up stories as saying that the Israelis staffing the place taunted him with remarks to the effect that they were going to own his country. There were also the police reports and a photograph which showed the remarkable imagery which had been painted on at least a few of their vans, which was useful in helping police spot their suspects that day.

Notice anything unusual?

William Casey was the name of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign manager. Once Reagan won the office, he made Casey the head of the CIA. A Reagan employee named Barbara Honegger made public a note she had made during a meeting with Casey in attendance. According to her, Casey stated, “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

The long-running disinformation program, otherwise known as Operation Mockingbird, has made a lot of progress, as far as I can tell. And how could it be otherwise, in an age of information overload, where information mingles with incidental misinformation, a la the gossip fence, and disinformation, the lifeblood of politics, particularly so for the G.O.P., which I now realize stands for “Government Overthrow Party.”

I found it interesting that the Newsweek article chose the following phraseology: “[the playlist] features a discussion with {Richard] Gage, who has described himself as a ‘9/11 truth leader,’ [he, in fact, led Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth for many years] about whether a Jewish businessman took out an insurance policy before the attack from which he may have profited.” The “Jewish businessman” is actually known as NYC property mogul Lawrence, or Larry, Silverstein.

The Twin Towers in the World Trade Center complex, originally nicknamed “Nelson” and “David” after the Rockefeller brothers who commissioned the building of the WTC, were, by 9/11, “white elephants,” barely able to maintain 50% or higher occupancy rates. In other words, they were basically half-empty buildings with a troubled legal and financial history.
The buildings were considered toxic, not just financially due to the high vacancy rate, but literally, with an estimated several thousand tons of their construction content being asbestos, the source of asbestosis, causing chronic cough, mesothelioma, pulmonary fibrosis, and cancer. The buildings tested 112,000 times above the legal limit, once such limits were established.

By the mid-1990s, this situation had become a pressing dilemma for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which had always been the management entity for the complex. Port Authority officials knew they couldn’t demolish the towers due to the release of asbestos upon the city that would have entailed. Already faced with an estimated billion-dollar bill for asbestos removal, the Authority knew the towers could not be dismantled in sections to scour out the asbestos because that would multiply that already-staggering cost, and inflation had made even the $1 billion dollar price tag now attached to the Towers twelve times the buildings’ original cost of construction in the 1970s.

The Authority tried to get their insurer, Affiliated FM, to cover the asbestos removal/abatement costs. But the company refused, and won a lawsuit in mid-May of 2001, settling the matter on the basis that the Port Authority’s claim against them did not involve the contractual obligation to cover “physical loss or damage.”

Enter Larry Silverstein. Working a deal with Lewis Eisenberg of the Port Authority, and in accordance with a campaign pledge made by then- New York Governor Pataki to privatize the problematic World Trade Center (not only asbestos-ridden, but with only about a 50% occupancy rate, to boot) , six weeks before 9/11, the real estate mogul and his partner, Frank Lowy, signed a 99-year lease with the Port Authority at a cost of $14 million dollars.

Then they took out a $3.55 billion terrorism insurance policy on the complex. They sued to collect that sum twice after 9/11. in fact, claiming that, after all, there had been two attacks. He and his business partners won $4,550,000,000 in the court. “Lucky” Larry Silverstein also claimed “negligence” on the part of the airlines for his “losses,” and fought and won a 13-year legal battle decided by Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who awarded the real estate mogul another $97 million.

Many Americans probably don’t realize, to this day, that a third tall building in New York, the 47-story Salomon Brothers Building, a.k.a., “Building Seven,” also came straight down into its own footprint on 9/11, about 5:20 PM, Eastern time.

On-site Reporters in New York had more or less punctuated that day of terror with briefly-mentioned and confused rumors over the course of seven hours that a third skyscraper might have fallen, or might be about to fall… but no one seemed to have known for sure… until Britain’s Channel Four broadcast a report from reporter Jane Standley about 4:57 PM EST stating definitively that this particular steel skyscraper had collapsed. The only trouble came if you actually knew what that building looked like. Behind her, out the window of the room in which she stood, reporting an apparent spoon-fed falsehood, “Seven” could be seen over her left shoulder, still standing. It stood about a hundred yards from the other six WTC buildings, across Vessey Street.

As the British anchorman at his UK desk tried to get further details, the feed from New York vanished from the screen in a blizzard of visual white noise. The building came straight down into its own footprint within about fifteen to twenty minutes afterward. Like the Twin Towers, it plunged into the path of greatest resistance at a nearly free-fall speed, as if meeting no resistance. Fire alone, with the help of gravity, of course, was officially pronounced to us as the sole cause.

The George W. Bush years were awash in corporate scandals and financial malfeasance, the bitter fruits of Republican “voluntary self-regulation.” As researchers were soon to comment, Building Seven housed branch offices of the FBI and the CIA ; the records of the Securities and Exchange Commission (several major financial scandals were primed to explode, defrauding the American public of billions, which soon thereafter did so, Enron, Tyco, Worldcomm, etc., etc.); and an “OEM,” Operations Emergency Management command center on the 23nd floor which Mayor Rudolph Guiliani had installed in 1999. Established in Building Seven’s twenty-second floor only two years prior, his OEM apparently did not perform the very tasks it was ostensibly designed to carry out, at a time when its services were most needed.

In fact, Barry Jennings, of the New York Housing Authority, showed up for a meeting that morning at the OEM. Jennings was the deputy director of the Emergency Services Department of the Housing Authority. That morning, he and a colleague, Michael Hess, New York City’s corporate counsel, had been called to a meeting in Guiliani’s command center.  They arrived around 9:00 AM, shortly after the initial strike of the first airliner on the North Tower, only to find that everyone (for reasons no one has ever explained) had already evacuated the building! — and suddenly — because Jennings saw that steam was still rising from coffee cups, and there were half-eaten sandwiches lying on desks. The OEM personnel evacuated immediately, instead of trying to manage the emergency.

The net result of 9/11 in regard to this building is that the cases for prosecuting some of the most egregious financial crimes of the era were destroyed.

Later the Mayor stated his people were “ordered out” because of a phone call — by some unnamed entity. Years later, when confronted with this fact in public by some activists, he denied he had ever said that. (I know, it’s hard to question his honesty, isn’t it?) In the period after his initial claim, he had come to realize people were rightly asking, if he knew, and he was hoofing it around for news cameras all over the area as seen on television, why didn’t he let any fire chiefs know and perhaps avoid most, if not all of the casualties New York suffered from more than seventy fire stations whose personnel were present at the scene?)  As usual with such slips regarding 9/11, who did the ordering and why, at such an early moment in the day, was never revealed.

Silverstein also caused controversy among those paying attention. Interviewed on camera, recent leaseholder “Lucky” Larry Silverstein stated on camera, as broadcast by PBS on September 10, 2002: “I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, ‘We’ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.’ And they made that decision to pull — and we watched the [WTC 7] building collapse.”

Demolition experts say they are going to “pull” demolished buildings because they apply shaped charges at angles to support beams from the base of the building. As these cutter charges shear the steel, the beams come apart, sliding down at lateral angles with the weight of the severed uprights pulling down the floors they had previously supported. This physical transaction pulls the supports inward, causing the exact kind of straight-down fall witnessed as Building Seven transformed from a 47-story skyscraper to a two-story pile of rubble in a mere 6.6 seconds.

Once the researchers of the 9/11 Truth movement seized on Silverstein’s comment, the latter realized he had made a mistake and said no more except through spokesmen who tried on for size the spin-meme that “pull it” was not a use of the traditional demolition jargon at all. Silverstein, you see, meant “pull the Fire Department’s search and rescue contingent” from the building, they told us. If you believe them, it is as if Silverstein had said, “And they made that decision to withdraw the firefighters and we watched the building collapse,” spoken as if there were a causal relationship which could not have existed in such a case.

It takes time to prepare a building for demolition, leaving open the question as to how it might have been done within a single day. But the entire scenario of localized damage utterly destroying such large structures entirely as in the WTC upends all that is known of physics and re-writes the methodology of building demolition. All that careful, advance planning and strategic placement of “well-placed dynamite to knock down a building,” as Dan Rather phrased it on CBS, turns out to be unnecessary, according to the proponents of “the official conspiracy theory of 9/11.” If the sum of the government/ media complex claims were true, all one would have to do is swing a ball of kerosene outfitted with an ignitor switch into some random point on a skyscraper — 78th floor, 93rd floor, it would evidently make no difference — puncture the outer structure, just anywhere, and light a fire. Then, the building would be guaranteed, within an hour, apparently, to suddenly and rapidly disintegrate.

In my mid-forties at the time, I remember being utterly amazed that nearly everyone around me was actually hornswaggled by whatever far-fetched claim the government / media complex stated explained the unnatural “physics” of that day. One day it was “pancaking,” the next, it was “unzipping.” Every day, for me, it was “bull shit.”

For example, something, that struck me within a day or so, a photo was published of the South Tower, second struck, first to fall after 56 minutes, with the upper floors above an estimated 78th floor of strike to the top, up through floor 110, leaning over, falling to one side. What, then, was left to crush the other 77 floors to tangled bits of steel and finely pulverized concrete, its granules measuring about 100 microns — more like talcum powder than steel-reinforced concrete?

The North Tower fell in virtually identical fashion, except for that top portion not breaking off. The rooftop broadcast antenna fell straight downward first, then the rest of the structure began a rapid disintegration. 10.5 seconds later, nothing was left but but billowing, pyroclastic clouds of dust expanding across the cityscape. During the fall, debris was seen ejecting upward from the center and outward. I remember, watching that ugly spectacle on live broadcast, that it reminded me of the sparks flying off a sparkler — so extremely unnatural it begged for explanation. I was suspicious that very day, and I carefully watched the situation evolve for about another five years as earnest citizens investigated and the media tarred any skeptics as mental patients on the loose.

Three of the five “dancing Israelis” appeared on an Israeli talk show in November 2001, On the program, one of them ingenuously declared: “Our purpose was simply to document the event.” They positioned themselves in the right place, at the right time, to videotape themselves celebrating the cataclysms, without knowing in advance the attacks were going to take place? How does that work? Their comments upon their arrest matched those of the talk show, however… their mission was to make the USA feel the terrible sting of massive terrorism.

This all occurred one year to the month after a heavily-Zionist-laden group calling themselves The Project for a New American Century published a “manifesto” called Rebuilding America’s Defenses. These were all hard-right figures politically, many of whom went on to staff the Bush Administration, including key controlling positions within the Pentagon.

There is nigh-infinitely more that’s wrong with the official conspiracy theory propagated by the government/ media complex, but I suspect any reasonable person reading this post gets the point by now.

To anyone reading this, please, please do not let the wrong-headed notion form in your mind that “Jews are evil.” Religion has done immense harm to the human race all around. Fueling bigotry is not my intention. Organized white-collar crime syndicates are international and they involve Christians, Muslims, Americans, Russians, Turks…. the list goes on and on. NO GROUP OF PEOPLE ARE CATEGORICALLY GUILTY — or “innocent.”

It is important to resist the paranoia of bigotry and to simply remember that those among the Neo-Cons who are Jewish, who may lay down the guidance markers, do not comprise the whole body of the “movement” they represent, a movement I consider wholly subversive.
For instance, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was never known to be a Jew, but he faithfully proved to be an extremely willing and valuable ally for the cabal of Straussian Neo-Cons.

Former US House Majority Leader, Republican Tom Delay, was a staunch proponent of a Christian group calling itself “Stand for Israel.” A similar group calling itself “Christians United for Israel” claims over ten million members.

The massive NSA super-surveillance headquarters built in the state of Utah may well have had its site chosen for the dominance of the Mormons in that state. The Mormon Church is an avowedly Zionist organization in nature — until recent times, its web site so stated on page one. So, among its zealous religious members, it would presumably be very easy to recruit many who would also place the interests of Israel above the US, even while employed by the US, while working for Israel’s global ambitions through the sacrificial vehicles of the blood and treasure of Americans.

Most Americans will dismiss such notions simply because the mainstream media calls Israel a US “ally,” and they don’t report on the atrocities that nation perpetrates against Palestinians, Lebanon, and other Arab targets. The American people are trained not to criticize Israel (should they manage to even suss out any real information about its activities), because to do that is “anti-Semitic.”

Most Americans probably do not want to be bigots. Despite what some may say after they read this article, I do not harbor hatred in my heart for people who happen to have been born under Judaism or any other religion. That is an accident of birth. What counts are people’s character determinations made in their individual adult lifetimes. I would not wish to be thought of as “an evil schemer and liar,” for instance, simply because I am, like Dick Cheney, “an old white man.” There the similarities end, and he and I are worlds apart. To be ethical, one must not make assumptions about individuals due to accidents of birth, skin color, religion, what have you. To do so is not the path of righteousness, by any measure.

And by all means, “Jews” are not all “Zionists.” Some have protested Zionism, believing the diaspora, rather than a supremacist nationalism, as embodied by the nation of Israel, founded in deceptions and terrorism perpetrated by Jewish gangsters, and exerted most oppressively by its right-wing Likud Party, is the properly ordained course.

At times, in my lifetime it has, at times, seemed that it is certain Jewish commentators and elected officeholders who alone served as the conscience of the US nation in their writings opposing our own country’s most belligerent and lawless actions.

But it is also a fact that it is Jews who have tended to succeed in the gold and diamond trades, in law, in global high finance, and it is undeniable that Zionist Jews, through AIPAC and their other powerful lobbies, are virtually all-powerful in managing the US governments at the states and Federal levels. They hold the levers of power through granting access to the mother’s milk of politics — money. And this undoubtedly takes the form of granting ever more credit to national governments who spend more than they receive in tax revenues, ever-reduced by tax cuts for the wealthiest persons and business concerns in our society for more than forty years at this point.

All Jews can justly take pride in the successes of their small minority of the world’s people. in earlier centuries, Christian majorities had banned Jews in various societies from engaging in most trades. The Jews strove hard over the centuries to gain prominence via the roads left open to them, and they have succeeded. And some of them, and allied Christians as well, comprise the Neo-Conservative view that we, the people, must be “channeled” to serve as all-conquering, self-sacrificing imperialists — slaves to “noble” lies, per Neoconservative “guru,” Leo Strauss. Some may take satisfaction in getting revenge for those earlier centuries. Most, however, strive mainly to earn a good living and bring up baby, just like most of the rest of us.

The George W. Bush Administration, once inserted into power via some extremely questionable electoral and legal maneuvering in 2000, was the opportunity this cabal of lying warmongers, nominally Jews, Christians, or nihilists, needed to carry out their plans. The firepower they have aimed at the Muslim nations for purposes of imperialist conquest was the fruit of a false flag operation perpetrated twenty-two years ago today.

A Government of Six Marches Forth

March 4, 2024, the day before Super Tuesday and the originally scheduled trial date for Donald Trump over his seven-pronged effort to violate the Vesting Clause of the Constitution and make himself El Presidente for life, was another infamous day today for the United States. The US Supreme Court announced their ruling that the US Constitution, Section 3 of the 14^th Amendment to be precise, has no means of enforcement, other than Congress specifically finding an individual (guess who, in our times) guilty of insurrection.

It says this:

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

Trump’s lawyers tried to argue that the holder of the office of the presidency is not an “officer of the United States,” that only the President’s appointees hold that title. They also, rather absurdly, (but any reed for a drowning insurrectionist), claimed the president never swore an oath to “support” the US Constitution.  The President’s 35-word oath of office, sworn by Trump as by all others, declares, “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

To “preserve, protect, and defend” is not to “support,” see? Entirely different!

To make sure, the justices stripped the states of their electoral power, as the Constitution outlines in Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution, which explains that the States have the primary authority over election administration, the “times, places, and manner of holding elections.” The GOP has used that very clause in recent months to justify the legislatures they control can actually cast the only ballots that matter; the popular vote is not to be honored in a one-party state. (They’re trying this in Arizona right now.)

Nor do “states’ rights” have any place in Supreme Court rulings when it endangers the progress of “Movement Conservatives,” who, thanks to Trump and Mitch McConnell, enjoy a 6-3 supermajority on this Court.

Trump’s appointees, Gorsuch, Kavenough, and Barrett, were lawyers for George W. Bush in the Bush v. Gore lawsuit which ushered in the 21^st Century as a living nightmare, clearing the way inside government’s high command for the “catalyzing and catastrophic” event the neo-cons, under the group name “Project for the New American Century,” had publicly yearned for in their paper published in September, 2000. Rhetorically speaking, “states’ rights” has been an “ironclad principle” claimed by right-wing Federalist Society-trained justices whenever there’s a Federal regulation or citizens’ rights bill they want to strike down. Their true principle is simply the power principle, to be applied as needed for Republicans’ political and financial gains.

And the main point, which justified all the turmoil and treachery in “Coup2K,” was that Justice Sandra Day O’Conner could retire, as she wished, from the bench with a Republican President in place. Some had noticed her cry of dismay, ”Oh no! This is terrible!” at an election-night party when the television announcers projected Albert Gore, jr., as the winner of Florida’s election. When asked about her outburst, she had explained exactly this wish as her response. Those “Movement Conservatives” are such cards!

Today’s justices who most likely share that same self-interested retirement ambition, as pointed out last week in an MSNBC appearance by Eli Mystal of The Nation, are Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Mr. Mystal was calling out these “Republicans in Robes” just after they had announced that, in only another seven weeks, having put it off for twelve already since Special Counsel Jack Smith’s Dec. 11 request to urgently take up the question, that now after a DC Circuit court pronounced “bulletproof” by legal scholars, of Donald J. Trump’s absurd, unprecedented, historically baseless, total, absolute-immunity-for-life as a former president from criminal prosecution. Trump has always sought delay in his trials — because he has no valid legal defenses against the plain and compelling evidence of his many subversive actions — and the Supreme Court granted him five months of delay. In the end, they may pull another precedent-destroying decisions out of their collective ass.

But, it was predictable, really. We saw in the “Dobbs” decision that this court was destination-bound, not -recedent-bound, as they falsely declared in their confirmation hearings; even if they had to base their decision on rulings on decisions from pre-Colonial, 14th-Century witch-hunting judges in England. (I wish I were joking.) The 2000 Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore produced a historically corrupt decision which interrupted a recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court (which was proper according to the Constitution) and usurped the states’ authority as designated in Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution — all so the Republican, George W. Bush, could be declared the winner.

Ten months later, the United States got the booby prize for that one. The 9/11 attacks occurred after President Bush immediately ordered the FBI not to investigate the Saudis, and Administration officials studiously avoided listening to warnings about the attack being imminent. But the attacks presented many “opportunities” which some in the Administration were soon publicly salivating over. And the attacks conveniently delivered precisely what many “Neo-Cons,” who had gained important positions within the Administration, particularly in the Pentagon, in their collective identity as “The Project for a New American Century” had pined for precisely a year prior — a “catastrophic and catalyzing event” which would unite the easily-misled, bewildered herd known as “Americans” behind grandiose new war plans and a domestic mass surveillance society.

But the corporate media informed us that only “nuts” saw any of this as more than wild coincidence. A commission followed a foreordained narrative laid out by an Administration insider, and a Commerce Dept. branch conducted a pseudo-scientific,1000-page study the public assumed was authoritative when it was really a fraud. A case never really opened was sealed shut.

This, and the subsequent, government-encouraged corporate censorship across social media platforms to try to stuff the Truth Movement genie back into the bottle, probably drove some people nuts enough to make them resort to supporting Donald Trump for president. Some of those cultists are simply blind fools, but I suspect some of them are just desperate enough to try to overthrow the current power Establishment because they understand that it is thoroughly corrupt. So they turn to Republicans hoping to cure… what Republicans had the largest hand in causing. Yep, that’s rational…

For those young enough to consider this pivotal election of Y2K ancient history, though these events are still shaping our times, a recap: The Governor, Jeb Bush, was the Republican nominee’s brother. The Secretary of State, Kathryn Harris, was his state campaign chair. Prior to the election, they had covertly undertaken, with the aid of a data firm known as Choicepoint, the disenfranchisement of something like 95,000 likely Democratic voters prior to the election. G.W.’s declared “victory” hinged on 537 votes by the Harris count.

An attempted recount in Dade County was disrupted by a terroristic importation of GOP Congressional aides, flown to Florida, I presume, on the taxpayers’ dime, to impersonate outraged Florida voters, to scream and yell and pound on windows and walls. The GOP’s cadre of Cuban exiles stood by, ready for intimidation, themselves embittered as a community toward Democrats ever since, in 1962, President John F. Kennedy refused to permit himself to be railroaded by CIA and Joint Chiefs warmongers surprising him at the last minute into ordering military air support for their forebears landing in Cuba to try to wrest control of the island back from Fidel Castro. (Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, TX, the home state of his Vice-President, in a well-researched and widely-recognized inside job on November 22, 1963. I was in the second grade at that time, and I remember first-hand the seemingly-universal mourning of a shocked nation.)

The decision in Bush v. Gore was not only non-appealable, it was actually “non-justiciable.” Most of us, though lacking that term in our vocabulary, understood it was unfair and not actual law which decided the case. (The unsigned decision stated that it applied “only to the present circumstance;” that’s not law. It was something else the “conservative” justices rhetorically reviled, “judicial activism.”) The statewide recount the Supreme Court interrupted could have been completed within one more day, had they not reached down and interrupted. This action was in defiance of the US Constitution, Article I, Section 4.

“Bush v. Gore created a damning bill of particulars against the five justices, one amply justifying a forceful Congressional response. Specifically, Justices Kennedy, O’Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas:

1) seized federal jurisdiction where the power to resolve the issues in the case was committed to the state of Florida and Congress, ignoring highly relevant precedents dictating that the dispute be prudentially classed as a non-justiciable political question;

2) abandoned their long-espoused allegiance to principles of federalism in overturning the decision of the Florida Supreme Court, and, having done so,

3) prevented the correction of repairable, alleged defects in Florida’s vote counting procedures by misrepresenting the Florida Legislature’s intent as to whether recounts in presidential election contest actions must be concluded by December 12, 2000; as Florida Supreme Court justice Leander Shaw later pointed out, there was no such legislative intent expressed in Florida’s statutes or ever mentioned in the majority opinions of the Florida Supreme Court.

In other words, for partisan political reasons this “Gang of Five” wanted Bush to win and made sure he did. Period.

Over 600 of the nation’s law professors likewise affirmed in a statement published in major newspapers in January [2001] that the Bush v. Gore case simply did not present the Supreme Court with a judicial question for resolution at all—it presented a classic non-justiciable political question.”

Bush v. Gore: A Resolution of Censure (censurethefive.org)

By stopping it so they could “deliberate,” then declaring time was up after they themselves caused the deadline they set not to be met, the majority Government of Five on the earlier iteration of the Republican-dominated “Extreme Court” cast the only five votes that really counted, and inducted our nation into a living nightmare we know as “the 21^st Century.”

So I’m taking a few minutes now to review a small but significant fraction of the more recent hypocrisies which have brought the nation to this lowly moment.

In deciding to open the floodgates to holding office open to insurrectionists, today’s Supreme Court took shelter behind Section Five of the 14^th Amendment: “The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”

So they stripped the states, including the three (Colorado, Maine, and Illinois), who dared honor the Constitution by holding that Trump, as an in-fact insurrectionist, seen by all plain as day on Jan. 6, 2021, must be removed from the ballot, of their electoral power and perceived duty to honor the US Constitution. Of course, they took this action to protect Trump, if not to protect themselves from Trump’s cadre of terroristic worshippers; of course, with several of them, it might have been both factors at play.

They also evaded having to decree Trump as the obvious insurrectionist he has been since January 6, 2021, when he sicced a mob of said worshippers he had summoned on the Congress in order to halt the count of official Electoral College ballots in progress. (That factor, marketed to Trump’s Chumps as “Stop the Steal!” indubitably stamps the event as an insurrection.)

His call to the mob to “show strength” and fight like hell,” along with Rudy Guiliani’s call for “trial by combat,” was triggered when Vice President Mike Pence refused to accept Trump’s un-certified slates of fake electors Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson tried to slip him. Thus, did Trump announce to the mob by way of a Tweet, Mike Pence “did not have the courage to do what must be done” (violate his oath, as Trump was more than willing to do). Pence has just urged “good Republicans” not to vote for Trump. Previously, more than thirty former Trump officials and advisors have spoken out against his leadership and character, voicing their concerns that he is unfit for the office. Well, “duhhhh.” But none of it means anything to his millions of cultists, however many of them have still not opened their eyes.

It was a day of disappointment for Iowa Senator Charles Grassley, too, just because Pence showed up that day; the coup plotters thought they had talked Pence out of showing up altogether for that day, and Grassley had anticipated filling in for Pence.  It’s a good thing for Pence that the little hairs on the back of his neck  had the good sense to stand on end and discourage him from entering a car with Secret Service agents who offered him a ride in the midst of the sacking of the Capitol.  He had somehow come to understand he had to do his duty to the Constitution, be there, and not get “disappeared” for the sake of Grassley and Trump’s sense of Fascistic self-aggrandizement.

When it was finally known, after hours of violent assault and incursion into the Capitol, that the Vice President and members of Congress had evaded lynching, Trump finally “tweeted” for the mob to go home, adding that he loved them for being his mindless mob. Today, with 1,300 or so of them convicted and imprisoned for their activities that day, he calls them “hostages” and promises to free them once he gets his clutches on presidential power again.

Thus ended his seventh and final attempt to change the outcome of the 2020 election. His final gambit in pursuit of violating the “Vesting Clause” of the US Constitution which limits a president to serving four years, and another four years if re-elected — which Trump, now proven beyond any reasonable doubt, was not. Prior to that, he and his henchcreatures had set up a scheme to send Fake Electors slates from swing states on uncertified papers to Congress. Grassley would have been glad to recognize them, but Pence didn’t. He tried to use a henchman in the Justice Department to invalidate the elections under the pretense that massive fraud perpetrated by Democrats had occurred. He made a call to the Georgia Secretary of State, asking him to “find” 11,780 votes (1 more than he needed to win). He tried to get Pence to cheat for him and accept the fake electors. He tried to use a flunky at the Dept. of Justice to suspend the results and “investigate,” the result being, Donald always wins! He tried to get the military to seize voting machines (they wouldn’t). He ran a poll worker harassment campaign. He sent agents to polling places to try to tamper with the data showing the election results. Then he sicced a million and a half or so witless wonders on the Capitol to battle past police and attempt to hunt down and kill Democrats. (Congress managed to evacuate to safety.) Finally, he tried something legal, court challenges to the results. Texas tried to invalidate others states’ results. Not even the Supreme Court would honor that outrageous ploy. The lawyers he used failed to present evidence in 62 court cases in multiple jurisdictions, so they were thrown out. Two of his attorneys ended up indicted for crimes, four others were convicted after confessing, seven others were subpoenaed, and seven others resigned.

But whenit comes to the Supreme Court, I, and many others, could tell by the tenor and substance of the questions the justices, Republican and Democratic appointees alike, put forth when the hearing on the case of Anderson v. Trump took place, that the Court was, once again, going to nullify the Constitution to help a Republican presidential candidate. The suit was not brought by crazed Democrats, either. Republicans and independents who don’t want the country to fall prey to an outright tyranny were the plaintiffs.

But, there’s no dodging that specter just because of the US Constitution. The Court has a 6-3 right-wing majority now. They only needed a one-“justice” majority to evade Constitutional procedure, unscathed, in the case of Bush v. Gore, the lawsuit they used to  hand the US presidency to George W. Bush, until Trump one of the most unfit candidates in history to claim the prize. Trump, himself, is utterly unqualified, and always was.  But, still not legally so, despite being and insurrection leader. Despite the 14^th Amendment, Section 3. Despite his violation of the vesting clause in Article I.

Trump never did a day of public service in any form, in his life. He never held office or even worked in an election in any capacity himself. He came into office such an ignorant human being that he had to ask why we don’t detonate nuclear bombs in the eyes of hurricanes, and he was unabashed in pronouncing Covid sufferers could cure themselves by drinking … bleach. It got a little better, oddly enough, when he advanced to prescribing the horse medication, Ivermectin. As for his policies, one of the most consequential departures from longstanding norms were his tariffs, the effects of which were analyzed by the William & Mary Law school and can be downloaded here.  (Spoiler: They hurt America.)

From the abstract for that study:

“Although President Trump has persistently claimed that China is paying billions of dollars in tariffs imposed on Chinese imports to the United States, empirical evidence indicates that U.S. consumers are bearing the cost of the tariffs: $51 billion in increased prices and a net loss of $7.2 billion to the U.S. economy. The unilateral power-based approach to trade used by the Trump Administration has also resulted in unexpected economic and political costs in key Midwestern states that helped propel Trump to the U.S. presidency in 2016. These costs have led to reverses for the Trump Administration in the mid-term elections of 2018 and could ensue in further electoral losses….

… This study indicates that a power-based approach can be used most effectively against countries that lack either the economic power or the political will to engage the United States in a prolonged trade standoff. While most nations appear to fall into one or both of these categories, China is not one of them. China has the economic power to fight a trade war, and China believes it must stand up to the United States. When used against China, the power-based approach carries greater risks because its economic and political effects are difficult to predict and because this approach is inherently more uncertain than the cooperative approach of the World Trade Organization that the United States has rejected. Using a power-based approach against China could backfire because China has the economic power and political will to endure a prolonged battle and play a dangerous game of mutual pain and destruction with the United States.”

Trump hurt America because he was stupid and his fragile ego dictates to him that to compensate, he has to “out-brilliant” everyone else around. This urgent insecurity which eats at Trump that it was reported, once in 2021, on a European conference trip, some remark about “absolute zero” prompted him to exclaim he was capable of a physical impossibility: that he could make it colder than absolute zero. (Absolute zero is actually theoretical, there’s no practical way to reach a state in which all the energy has been absorbed from an object. Absolute zero is the scientifically-estimated point in the cold temperature scale that all molecular vibratory action ceases. It remains matter, but in a totally non-existent state of flux, unlike normal matter.) It is defined precisely as: “Absolute zero is the lowest possible temperature in the universe, equivalent to 0 Kelvin or approximately -459.67 degrees Fahrenheit (or -273.15 degrees Celsius). At this temperature, atoms would stop moving, and nothing can be colder than absolute zero on the Kelvin scale.”

Ask his cultists, though: Various former members of the Trump Administration who have pronounced the former president to be unfit to serve, after witnessing his performance up-close and personal,are all sinister agents of the Deep State, you see, as their words to that effect surely prove. (At least, they prove it to his witless followers, who cannot perceive the blazingly obvious facts that Trump is a 100% egomaniac whose every calculation takes account only of how he can personally benefit from exploiting others).

Foreign powers understand Trump quite well, though. Flatter him, and bribe him, and he will do anything for you. His driver, Brian Butler, has just now come forward with the statement that he heard Trump and a high-dollar Mar-A-Lago guest discussing US and Russian submarine details on a ride to Trump’s plane, ferrying a cargo of boxes like the ones containing secret documents he stashed in Mar-A-Lago and played keep-away with the National Archives with for eight months. The rich guys got on the plane and the boxes were then loaded on the plane, bound for Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey golf club property. It is unknown whether the FBI ever retrieved or examined these documents. It is reported that he left the White House with the classified information dossier on the Russian collusion which helped him win office via the archaic Electoral College, the dossier known as “Crossfire Hurricane,” has never been found.

But today, despite widespread condemnation among even Republicans immediately after his failed insurrection threatened the lives of the Congress, Trump totally controls the House of Representatives, which the American people made the mistake of granting a very thin majority of Republicans in the 2022 election. Their favorite activity is to French-kiss his puckered anus. They’ve demonstrated they’ll do anything for him!  In the past few days, via his daughter in law, he took complete control over the Republican National Committee. Is there any doubt he’ll use it as his personal piggy-bank? The new bosses kicked out 60 people or so, the ones who knew how to operate it for its prior purposes, electing Republicans nationwide. Trump is now expected to be the Be-All and End-All of the RNC’s resources (especially the “End-All,” I would guess).

True patriots, (not the Trump cosplayers),  need to keep up the good work at the polls, and expand it as massively as we can. So far, we’ve done pretty well. Republicans lost ground in 2018, 2020, and, except for gaining a much smaller majority in the House than they anticipated based on history, in 2022. Oppressive MAGA nutjob candidates were defeated in most elections, and voters in seven “red” states managed to regain, by ballot, abortion rights they had lost under GOP rule after the Supreme Court’s “Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization” ruling. The GOP is working to stop such ballot measures from ever happening again, working to make their own legislatures the only real voters in elections, and they are working on schemes to outlaw consensual sex between adults, to impose a national ban on abortion, and to end access to all abortifacient drugs, and even to all contraceptives. I wish I were kidding. They have this hang-up about sex, you see. Make war, not love.

We had better turn out loud and proud to help the Republican Party complete the suicide course it has embarked upon since 2016, that of becoming enslaved to one maniac named Donald J Trump. And we must figure out how to counter the oppressive “Government of Six” whose statement on the 14^th Amendment case said they wanted to spare us all the disorder of states ordering insurrectionist Trump off the ballot just because of the Constitution, silly dears.

This is the court which does not want us to experience “chaos” because some states kick the plainly self-disqualified DJT off the ballot. Trump clearly deserves, in the eyes of those great Balkanizers of the USA, the Federalist Society Justices, another chance to overthrow the government for his own benefit. All the Supreme Court wants the rest of us poor dears to have to experience are frequent automatic weapons fire (including bump-stockers) at random moments in public places, and our women being, fickle chance willing, doomed to die so that their fetuses may be born, suffer briefly, then die themselves.

Their campaign to make us suffer even more is under way. The right to vote; the right to life if you’re not one of “them,”  “standing their ground,” as they say, so they can shoot you dead on a whim if you come too close; the right to buy a condom, or birth control pills, (or have recreational sex, let’s just cut to the chase here), and much more are at risk, or on the whim of a malignant narcissist who may just decide, once in office again, he wants to be today’s version of the Emperor Caligula.

The Supreme Court can do much to help the Movement. It’s a fact, for instance, that we do not have the right to travel spelled out in the Constitution. Applying the “strict constructionist’s logic” they use when they desire to undo some legal right liberals wrought for us since FDR’s election, should the leader of the Government Overthrow Party decide on a whim that no one other than himself has the right to go anywhere, they could literally declare travel itself illegal at any time.  (I can only hope, but by their behavior so far, cannot be sure that’s a ridiculous proposition.)

Want to roll the dice and see how really, really extremely oppressive these arbitrary, meddling, power-obsessed people may decide to be?  Then, don’t bother to verify whether or not your state government has had you stricken from the voter rolls, and don’t vote this November.

If you already understand what’s afoot here, help us swamp these vicious bastards at the ballot box, and make them sorry they crawled out of their hell-spawned pit of evil to plague us in the first place.

Backward, March!

In the news of just the past 48 hours, democracy’s domestic enemies in the US, who should now be known as the Government Overthrow Party, made news in more than a half-dozen respects.

Arizona Republicans Seek to Guarantee Trump 2024 Win with New Resolution

They’re angling for Election Day, in-person voting only (knowing most of the commoners will have to be at work), with ID required, and the legislature empowered to appoint electors for Republican candidates at will, no matter the results of the popular vote. Nice, eh? All-American! Rah! Rah!

The popular vote in seven states’ ballot initiatives now have voted to regain abortion rights lost when states afflicted with “Red” legislatures rashly leapt to outlaw abortions immediately after the Extreme Court killed Roe Vs. Wade and overturned a half-century of precedent in 2022 (based on the writings of literally witch-burning judges in England several centuries past).

Texas developments have made crystal clear that abortion really is health care in a significant percentage of cases, but the GOP is openly pro-rapist and pro-death for women who are unfortunate enough to have pregnancy complications. No wonder so many Americans thought this day would never come. They naively trusted these twisted bastards enough so that they elected them; they never thought they would effectively ensure the deaths of Americans who just wanted to live their lives and produce families.

Vigilant guardian GOP’eers are now “triggered” to curtail this disease known as democracy in other states, before it can impair their ability to cause more death and despair.

In South Dakota, they’re trying to raise the bar so their citizens won’t be able to do what Ohioans did and write abortion rights into the state constitution. In that state, the “right” are bemoaning the “extreme” language of the proposed ballot initiative. (If anyone should recognize “extreme,” I guess they’re the most qualified). They’re waging a campaign to persuade anyone they can that the ballot initiative is “fraudulent” and pushing a bill “permitting” anyone gullible enough to be persuaded, from among the more than 50,000 petitioners so far (35,000 were  required to place the initiative on the ballot), to withdraw their signatures.

My guess, based on crooked, vote-disenfranchising GOP precedent, is that a goodly number of signatures will disappear without the signers even knowing about it until it’s too late.

Republicans vote to make it harder to amend Missouri Constitution

Missouri state senators outnumber Democrats 22-9, and the twenty-two have voted to raise the bar above the majority-vote standard which has been the law so far.

The same story mentions that Mississippi’s House voted in January to prohibit its citizens from placing an abortion rights initiative on the ballot. That’s lettin’ voters know their place, by jingo!

In related reproductive oppression, one state’s Republican ideologues have actually decided to interfere in couples’ most intimate family decisions in a way that looks intent on — lowering the birth rate?! Well, I guess while we’re running wild with rash and harmful legal decisions, why not take advantage of the opportunity? I guess it’s probably “mandated” by their “beliefs.”

Alabama’s Supreme Court has proclaimed that frozen embryonic tissues used in in vitro fertilizations are already “children.” (Adopt a zygote today?) Medical providers in the state and those patients signed up for the procedure in hopes of becoming parents are now in a state of paralytic dread, due to the atrocities of pointless oppression Republicans have already demonstrated themselves capable of in states like Ohio and Texas.

Georgia Republicans seek to stop automatic voter registration in state

Georgia’s “motor voter” registration stands under threat… the GOP in that state is pushing to place an “opt in” to voter registration when they receive or renew a driver’s license. They are assuming people won’t catch on and may not even notice what I’m assuming will be a tiny box next to some fine print on a tedious form. With the GOP, it’s always about how many people they can strip of the right to vote, one way or another.

Georgia Republicans seek to stop automatic voter registration in state (msn.com)

In news that’s not much older, disenfranchising Republicans in Virginia and Tennessee have, between them, reduced likely Democratic turnout by, perhaps, as much as a million voters this fall, in just these two states.

In Virginia, Governor Glen Youngkin ended the policy used by three of his predecessors to restore voting rights to convicts who had served their time. They have to beg the governor to restore their full citizenship.

It also so happens that recently, election officials in Virginia were caught having removed about 3,500 voters from the roles for no valid reason. Ooops, got caught in that one! Okay, the rest succeeded in flying under the radar? Dismayed Democrats trying to vote may find out as much, come election day.

Tennessee recently adopted much the same system regarding former convicts; these disenfranchised have to convince either a judge or the Governor to restore their full citizenship rights. This new law strips the votes from an estimate 471,000 citizens, all by itself, in a state of about seven million total population.

These GOP’eers believe they are blocking the votes of “likely Democrats,” so, for their horde of confused and illiterate followers who behave according to the Gospel truth that “Republicans are good, Democrats are evil,” it has to be a good thing for Murika.

Section 1 of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution states:

“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

I guess being incarcerated doesn’t count as a “condition of servitude?” What if the prisoner held one of those jobs prisoners are often hired to do to pay for his soap and mashed potatoes, like taking calls to make reservations? (“And your credit card number, please?…”) That’s servitude.  So is being forced to work on a chain gang.

Of course, in Florida, the light of the nation under DeSantis, some voters have been arrested, quite starkly, for the crime of “voting while black.” Gotta enforce “election ‘integrity’,” see? And, as we all know, intimidation works!

These are, of course, the people who scream that Donald Trump’s re-election to the presidency in 2020 was “stolen” from him. I doubt many people remember that Roger Stone and Donald Trump were ready to accuse the Republican Party itself of stealing the nomination from him in 2016… which they didn’t do, any more than Democrats stole the presidency from him in 2020, (while leaving all the Republican candidates on the same ballot alone; they don’t dispute their own wins on those same ballots, of course).

cropped-actionlytics-blog-header-im1.jpg

Then, there are the other “power” plays…

In Texas, GOP’eers clamoring for secession from the Union are reportedly in a rage over a bill from Democrats aimed at joining the state’s power grid to the larger network of power grids the rest of the lower 48 states are connected into. As many as slightly more than 700 Texans are estimated to have died as a result of the private, Texas-exclusive grid’s failure in winter of 2021; slightly more than two hundred are said to have frozen to death.

Current South Carolina GOP presidential primary contender, Nikki Haley, by the way, claims the states have the right to secede from the Union if they want to. Her state, of course, ignited the Civil War when it did that very thing. Let’s do it again? Puh-leeze!! The rest of us are trying to have a civilization here, Republicans. Get used to it!

Meanwhile, the entire Government Overthrow Party is in thrall to one master, a grifter named Donald Trump.

They couldn’t deny it now if they wanted to. Having insisted for years that the influx of immigrants at the border constitutes an emergency that is “poisoning our blood,” and so on, government officials in the Senate and the Biden Administration worked out a deal that gives Republicans 95% of the conditions the party has insisted on for about a decade, and granted the Democrats about 5% of what they wanted. The deal included money to beef up border enforcement, to continue to foster Israel’s genocide of Palestinians (of course, I mean, “fighting terrorists,” O Lord, how captive our nation is to foreign interest$), and enable Ukraine to resist the Russian invasion, a war which they are now losing due to having depleted their stocks of ammo.

Speaker “MAGA” Mike Johnson had previously declared any Ukraine package had to include the border. When he got that legislation from the House, he pronounced it “dead on arrival” and refused a vote.

On the occasion of receiving a bill negotiated with Democrats by Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, until “MAGA” one of the most right-wing Senators imaginable, Speaker Johnson declared the House “won’t be rushed” into aiding Ukraine, and dismissed the House for a two-week vacation. Russia then finished capturing a major city in Ukraine and hoisted the Russian flag.

Why? Because, for his own gain, which is the only thing that matters to him, ever, no matter what, Donald Trump wants his benefactor, Russian despot Vladimir Putin, to win the war with Ukraine. (Putin doesn’t want a NATO state with missiles pointed at Moscow on his doorstep any more than US leaders would want Russian missile silo construction in Mexico.)

Trump also wants the border issue “sky” to continue to “fall” all this year so he can campaign on blaming the President for allowing the situation to remain critical. GOP Senators are very upset by his paralyzing, apparent commands. But that’s their problem.

So, in the spirit of continuing political theater, after blocking all action on the border, the House GOP’eers voted, by one vote on the second try, to impeach Cabinet Secretary Mayorkis for not doing enough about the border crisis. They have no valid legal basis for impeachment, which would require high crimes to have been committed. (Law? Constitution? Bah! As another great leader from their ranks, former President George W. Bush, once reportedly yelled at staffers, “Who cares about the Constitution? It’s just a god-damn piece of paper!”)

They really think Americans are total, clueless idiots. Well, no wonder; enough of us were witless enough to get these hypocritical, self-serving, gutless bastards elected to high office.

Besides, anything not flattering to Trump or to the Government Overthrow Party is “fake news,” as automatically decided by “faith-based” (wishful-thinking) millions of US citizens who have opted to cease the exhausting efforts required to engage in current events with a rational mind.

Those matching this description will keep rooting for the likes of Senator Charles Grassley, (who stood ready to act in place of the dispirited, and nearly “disappeared,” Vice President Pence and accept illegal slates of fake Electors on January 6, 2021), and Representatives James Comer and “Gym” Jordan to find some real reason to impeach President Biden, at least once, as Trump commands in his effort to drag the whole system down to his level, and that of his avid, addle-pated “believers.” It won’t matter to them that they’re only serving as tools to a foreign dictator, or that the “proof” that the President committed impeachable offenses were in reality mere allegations submitted to the FBI in an unverified report. It’s easier to just hate, as instructed, and sling mud based on the words of elected, grandstanding cowards and liars.

The Supreme Commander, allied with what is now said to be 90 hard-right, “non-profit” orgs, is readying his strike force against normal, modern Americans as we speak. They openly plan to change the nature of the US government. The plan is to make America “great” again for the “boss” class, just like it was a hundred years ago. Segregation and workers under the thumb of business owners forever, and no partial survival aids like Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid for those who did their best all their adult lives.  Back in the good old days, workers were people who really knew from their wretched and brief lives the meaning of the term, “wage slaves.”

Here’s your chance, if you belong to the right country club or religious sect, you can go ahead and jump into the line so as to receive your bully license.  The government will no longer be the “enemy,” it will be your friend again! Just yours, and your select in-group’s! Not those inferior “others.” And no one disloyal to the glorious cause of oppression will make it out alive. Come, worship “the Orange Jesus!”

The “Extreme Court” Republicans have engineered into having a supermajority of “Movement” “Conservatives” refuses to weigh in on Trump’s ridiculous claims of total, permanent presidential immunity from any kind of prosecution until Trump exhausts his options in the Federal district courts. So, with his appointee, Judge Aileen Cannon already a proven ally, he’s “district shopping” for immunity. His lawyers have filed ten pre-trial motions challenging every aspect of the government’s case against Trump.

There’s one motion in this mass they have thrown against the wall which I agree with, in principle. Presidents have been lawless in one or more ways during the 21^st Century, and have not been indicted for acts which violated the law or the Constitution. I’ve often said to myself over these past several years, it’s no wonder Trump thought he could get away with absolutely anything as President.

George W. Bush and his gang should never have gained the White House, and they didn’t, according to a majority of the people’s votes, even in Florida and Ohio (2000 and 2004, respectively). These were truly rigged elections, but, like the good citizens they generally strive to be, Democrats accepted that temporarily, a gang of white-collar criminals who, with their connections, could have anyone killed at will and seemed likely to, was destined to run the country, better luck next time, and we suffered the ghouls, if not gladly, to run their gamut of war crimes and defrauding America. (I’m not even including their apparent complicity in making sure the 9/11/01 terror attacks succeeded.)

Next up, Democrat Obama, the greatest political orator of my entire adulthood, continued as a captive of the kinds of Neo-Cons who had held forth the “unitary executive” anti-democratic load of garbage during the previous Administration. As such, he turned his back on his own campaign pledges to protect whistleblowers, pursuing even more draconian measures against them than even the “Putsch-Chicanery” White House had done (though, unlike them, he never “outed” any CIA agents, ending a successful anti-WMD operation and doubtless causing the murders of dozens of operatives in the process). But his mouthpieces did pretend that targets for murder by drone (begun under G. W. Bush) who were US citizens received “due process” despite having no day in court to face accusers, etc.  Comedian Stephen Colbert, seriously offended by this betrayal of American principle, lampooned the administration’s claims by saying, “’Due process’ means ‘there’s just a process that you do.’”

But now, and I say in part, because Democrats, tired of being pummelled by the Culture Wars bullshit by which the Republican Party assembled a mob of mindless fanatical followers since the Reagan years, decided to join in “counter-kulturkampf” with “political correctness” rub-your-nose-in-your-own-shit tactics, the far right is furiously activated and ready to actually end the United States of America. No doubt they’ll stick with the name, but the substance, such as it was, will be obliterated. They, fanatics and puppeteers alike, have wanted to get rid of inconveniences such as the separation of church and state, separations of governmental powers, and elections of representatives by popular vote for decades, and simply carry on a cruel and arbitrary, stark reign of master/servant relations all this time.

Aggravated by the counter-culture-wars measures they have encountered, they are making ready their blitzkrieg for this fall. The American people are unprepared for what we face, as far as I can tell.

It’s a national-existential menace which, if successful, is going to have even many Republicans weeping, wailing, and gnashing their teeth if the hard “right” succeeds.

For weeks, as I’ve found the time, I’ve been delving into the websites of the many allies determined to straighten us all out, the architects of this dysfunctional government and signatories to the worshipful cult of the “right” wing. I’ll be sharing notes I’ve made in the process, in coming entries.

Get Used to It: The Government Nine (or Maybe Six)

I want to start with the story of the Right’s next big call to arms, which has been vociferously acted upon from the 1970s until today — the “starve the ‘Beast’ strategy to end the powers of the Federal Government that can do anything but boost their bottom lines, at any expense to the public. What is the public but a flock to be fleeced, any way? they must wonder.

The story of the modern Republican Party is the story of the “Right’s” assault on a century of progress in making the US government work for the people, instead of simply for the rich and influential, as it always had previously. Making America “great again” actually means returning it to the days, just over a century ago, when life in these-here United States was so hard for the common people that the average life expectancy was 43 years of age. Widespread disease, exhaustion, and poverty made it so. This was the normal, everyday way of things a century ago.

And it appears we have a Supreme Court who is going to be willing to return us to the days before vaccines, and maybe, oh joy, restore the grand old tradition of real “witch trials.”

Such a system has a lot to offer, provided one already possesses all the advantages of wealth and political influence. Beggars can’t be choosers, after all. So … let’s have more beggars! Say the right-wingers of US politics. And we can have more than 60-million — and elderly ones, to boot — more beggars if we just get rid of Social Security!

It’s not only millions of the elderly the US “right” would not mind seeing frozen to sidewalks, either.

I was alerted last night to a challenge being brought by Elon Musk to the very Constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Long ago, the Republicans declared they would end all the programs of FDR’s New Deal. After a little more than a half-century of positioning their agents, all the while chipping, chipping away, they are out of patience, ready for their “eagle” to swoop down, clutch all aspects of executive government that has any regulatory capabilities as assigned by Congress, and drop them into the sea —, or, perhaps, to launch them into outer space.

This particular conflict, just one aspect of a surging right-wing crusade against all business regulatory power, arose when eight of nine fired SpaceX employees brought suit, accusing Musk of unlawfully firing employees who penned an open letter critical of his chairmanship. This letter, circulated in June 2022, raised several workplace concerns and called on executives to condemn Musk’s public behavior on Twitter (now-known as “X”) and hold everyone accountable for unacceptable conduct, including allegations of sexual harassment against Musk. The employees assert Musk’s actions were a frequent source of distraction and embarrassment for the company, particularly when making light of sexual harassment allegations,

As a result, nine employees were fired for their involvement. Eight of them recently filed a complaint with a Los Angeles-based regional director for the US National Labor Relations Board. The complaint also accuses SpaceX of interrogating other workers about the letter, which announced that employees were terminated for their participation, and even invited employees to quit if they disagreed with Musk’s behavior. Some employees were allegedly shown screenshots of communications related to the letter, creating an impression that their protected concerted activities were under surveillance.

So billionaire Musk has filed sued against the NLRB in federal court, claiming that it is “unconstitutionally structured,” and its action against the company is “unlawful”. SpaceX attorneys argue that the employees’ letter caused “significant distraction” across the organization, leading to the firings based on “violations of company policies.”

Musk has has faced similar issues before. He reportedly moved Tesla from California to Texas because the government hassled him over labor complaints. A federal jury once awarded nearly $3.2 million in damages to a Black former worker at a Tesla factory in Fremont, California, which has been a locus for racial discrimination allegations. Worker Owen Diaz alleged he was subjected to racial epithets and other abuses during his tenure at Tesla, which ended in 2016.

California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a lawsuit alleging that Black workers at Tesla’s Fremont factory experienced “rampant racism” and that the company had left the behavior “unchecked for years.” The workers reported they were subjected to racist slurs and caricature drawings, and that they were assigned the most physically demanding tasks.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filed a federal lawsuit against Tesla, alleging that since at least May 29, 2015, Tesla has violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by subjecting Black employees at the company’s California, manufacturing facilities to racial abuse, stereotyping, and hostility, including racial slurs.

Musk is now out to end this kind of hassle for employers in the USA, once and for all time.

As Republicans have told the rest of us many times, “get used to it.” They’re about to make sure workers have no avenues for government to enforce any rights on their behalf. They’ll say “get used to it” again, as usual. If you don’t want to get used to it, know that you can contribute to a fund designed to make both SpaceX and Trader Joe’s pay for tolerating (really, the word should probably be, “fostering”) bullying in the workplace. http://tinyurl.com/bdxkzbxn

Can Musk get away with his plans? After all, he’s only one citizen. What will it mean for the country if everyone who has to work for a wage has no means of enforcing any rights for themselves during their 2/3 of their waking hours for life they will have to spend in a workplace (or die trying).

Sure, he can, and he probably will! The majority on the Supreme Court we have today are minions of billionaires who shower them with “hospitalities” the Justices neglect to record on their annual statements. They have demonstrated how far they will go to enact Republican politics into the fabric of the law of the land, while saying with a straight face that they leave politics out of their decision-making process.

They, the “strict textualists” and “originalists” who claim they interpret only the letter of the law as it was intended when it was written, they who claim they want to avoid political questions and oppose “judicial activism,” they who have told us these things for better than four decades are poised to see to it that the disqualification clause of the supreme law of the land does not apply to Donald Trump despite his a blatantly-attempted insurrection (to derail a Constitutionally-mandated Electoral Count process in Congress) for baldly-stated purposes of violating the Vesting Clause of the Constitution, Suddenly, the rights of states, given power over conducting elections by the Constitution itself, shouldn’t have ballot qualification powers. They always have been charged with those decisions before, but they cannot be now.

Then, there’s the matter that Movement Conservatism, from which sprang the Federalist Society, the “fountainhead” of hypocritical right-wing justices, doesn’t want the polluting of air and water to be deterred by the Federal government, either.

While visiting the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1970, I rode a trolley to the summit of Lookout Mountain. The view I had hoped to see was not there. What I could see was like a rainbow of smog. There were bands of red, organge, yellow, green, blue, and black-colored gases which lay atop one another. I could make out a structure or two through mist at the base of the mountain, but all the rest of the view of the city was lost.

How did things get that bad?

There was no Environmental Protection Agency to prevent it.

Cleveland, Ohio’s Cuyahoga River actually caught fire six times, it was so polluted before the EPA came into existence.

Richard Nixon signed the legislation necessary to create the EPA. A president then long-regarded as an arch-conservative since his Commie-hunting 1940’s days in the US House was far more liberal than the most liberal Republican that will be left in the US Congress after 2024.Kin this way, at least. He touted the “Silent Majority,” and sent George H. W. Bush as an envoy to China to open up a way for Reagan to send Americans’ manufacturing jobs overseas, so there was that “Movement Conservative” side to him, still.

This Court can refuse to hear any issue. But the justices have gone to extraordinary lengths to pick up cases important to “movement conservatism,” restore rights to discriminate (you only have to claim a customer in some way lives contrary to your own cherished, “dearly-held religious beliefs.”

In the 2018 Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission case, the Supreme Court sided 7-2 with a baker who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple on those grounds.

However, unlike the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, Coloradan Lorie Smith brought a lawsuit based on a hypothetical scenario. Normal procedure in such an instance would be to deny standing, since no one had been injured. However, “normal” is not a word one should apply to this court. Even earlier generations of activist right-wing justices would have been appalled in this radical instance.

Smith, an aspiring —not even practicing, her sole web work sample having already been removed  from the internet — website designer who owned “303 Creative” wanted to challenge a Colorado law prohibiting businesses from discriminating against LGBTQ+ customers. So, despite not even having any customers who were gay, despite not yet having any customers at all, she got the court to rule in her favor. This is as clear an instance of the Court “reaching down” — both ethically as well as within the hierarchy of the court system — as one could imagine.

Coming up this term is a lawsuit called “CFPB vs. CFSA“,  intended to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created by Congress to help the people avoid being scammed out of their money (thus thwarting Republican constituencies set up to do just that).

Quoting from the link: “The CFSA is challenging a CFPB rule that prohibits the predatory practice whereby payday lenders make multiple attempts to withdraw loan repayments directly from consumers’ bank accounts—a practice that can result in significant overdraft fees being applied against those consumers.”

Ask any Republican, and they’ll confirm, the best time to kick a man is when he’s down. Harder for him to fight back that way, see. And if God had loved him, he would have made him rich.

But, depending on the majority ruling of the court, when it comes down, the coming “Extreme Court” ruling could even also destroy Social Security, Medicare, the USDA, FDA, and the EPA.

And on this, unlike their line of questioning on the “Trump-is-disqualified-from-the-presidency-because-he’s-plainly-an-insurrectionist” case, and unlike their 2022 overturning of a half-century Roe vs. Wade precedent, the court would not hesitate to settle a theory they have, themselves, invented, called “Major Questions Doctrine.”

The very-potential consequences if they go the route I’m predicting:

After all their benefactors in the shadows are whispering in their ear, “We must have ‘freedom’ from all this costly security for the public!” If God had loved all those poor people, He would have just made them rich!

· Sixty-five million Americans lose the retirement benefit they paid for with their taxes through a half-century of working.

· Agriculture returns to being a free-for-all instead of an organized system assuring healthy crops and enough food to maintain the population.

· Food and drug safety will be a matter of “faith,” not scientific testing and an approval process.

· Our air and water can, once again, O glorious day, be poisoned at the convenience of industrial tycoons seeking only to maximize profits, “general welfare” be damned.

The very Libertarian rationale for all this Republican legal putsch is that agencies that do not operate on “specific annual appropriations from Congress” are un-Constitutional. Social Security was ruled Constitutional twice immediately after being inaugurated in 1935, but this Supreme Court has already demonstrated utter disregard for legal precedent more than once. This one carefully-selected lawsuit can deliver almost the entire wish list to the American Oligarchs whose billions fund the political cancer known as “the Right.”

Another, brought by another small Right-wing clique before the court, who choose which cases they will hear and which ones they won’t, will also affect the lives of millions. As you may have heard, this Court may outlaw the “morning after” abortifiacient known as Mifesprestone, temporarily made completely illegal by one religious fanatic judge in Texas who had publicly itched to ban abortion previously. Judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk had to pretend the drug had not been safety-tested enough in order to make his ruling. This same judge, the shopped judge du jour for right-wingers, is domiciled in Armadillo, Texas, so that’s where Republicans bring cases to be guaranteed a win. The Federal Fifth Circuit is stacked so as to generally uphold any whacky ruling made here. Judge Kacsmaryk ruled that both the initial approval of the pills in 2000, as well as more recent FDA decisions allowing them to be prescribed via telemedicine, sent by mail, and dispensed at retail pharmacies, are unlawful. Currently, as I write this, his ruling is still under a stay until our US “Extreme” Court weighs in.

As things stand, here’s a recap of that case:

· On April 7, 2023, a Texas judge, taking the side of “The Alliance Defending Freedom,” suspended the approval of the medication abortion pill Mifepristone.

· The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists called this ruling a “grievous legal overstep” and “inflammatory”1.

· The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) appealed this decision and stands by its approval of Mifepristone1.

· Democratic President Joe Biden promised that his administration will fight this ruling.

Then came a slanted judicial compromise order, of sorts, from a far-right dominated court. On April 13, 2023, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Mifepristone will remain approved, but under more intense restrictions, while a legal challenge proceeds.

The court reinstated the previous regulations up to a point, meaning Mifepristone will remain on the market, but it’s now approved only for use only up to seven weeks of pregnancy, (versus the former 10 weeks), as the “right” hopes to catch more women pregnant and make sure they have no recourse, even if the woman is bearing one of the 65,000 reported rape-induced pregnancies (rape has always been underreported) since the overturning of Roe Vs. Wade.

Finally, Mifepristone can’t be prescribed via telehealth or mailed any more, either.

The Department of Justice said it will seek emergency relief at the U.S. Supreme Court to get the entire original order stayed.

Condoms and prophylactic foam products may be next. Right wing religious fanatics want all prophylaxis banned. They believe very firmly in only two genders: “males,” and “brood mares for the state.” (I’m amazed beyond words at the existence of right-wing women.) The national supply of infants must be assured! We will need more poor people to feed the war machine, or we may never rule the Earth!

On the matter of abortion, whose absolute bans Trump has (correctly) boasted he was able to do with his three Supreme Court appointees, on Day 1 of his next presidency, the day he says is the only day he’ll want to be a dictator, here, from a discussion on MSNBC this weekend, are the things Trump could do with executive control over the regulatory authorities:

· End telemedicine for abotion pills permanently.

· Penalize and prosecute virtual clinics that prescribe abortion pills to patients in states that have a ban.

· Ban health clinics from referring people for aobrtion if they receive Federal Family Planning funding.

· Classify ingredients in abortion pills as “forvever chemicals,” even requiring referring physicians to collect and dispose of the aborted fetus.

All this is necessary, lest people who are the wrong color, or the wrong religion, will become the population majority! (It’s true, the demographics seem to indicate Caucasians will eventually become a US minority. It’s also true that enough devoutly religious people in a nation will alter its culture. If Americans continue to be free to define their own (sub)culture(s) by their own choices, rather than having one monolithic culture Federally imposed by a narrow-focused right-wing national conformity inquisition, it appears they will continue to drift away from having That Old Time Religion quite so prominent in determining the course of their lives.

The only trouble is, the right-wingers who claim to be Christians, though they aren’t too big on the teachings of Jesus, but are devout fans of the murderous God of the Old Testament, want to get everyone not just like themselves firmly under their thumb — and right now, lest they lose primacy.) Get used to it!

The lesson to be learned here is that we need to get rid of that-there gol-danged “democracy” crap. It ain’t in the Bible anyway, so it can’t be right.

Slavery can be, though. It is in The Bible.

And, we can expect to hear pretty much constantly from the far-right as they continue to succeed in pursuing their one, true principle — the power principle — “get used to it.”

“Ketchup”

Apparently, music composer Frank Wilhoit is a man who’d like to cut through all the bullshit, as he baldly stated the simple truth of the matter:

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

There must be in-groups whom the law protects, but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds, but does not protect.

(This quote is usually misattributed to the American political scientist and author, Francis Wilhoit, a logical assumption which turns out to be a fallacy.)

We have been seeing the facts illustrate the truth of this very pithy quotation for quite some time. The truism is that the Republican Party wishes to crush the much-denigrated American working people under the bootheel of an exalted “economic royal” class. This is as true now as when Vice-President Henry Wallace spelled it out in the 1940s. If you agree with this goal, vote Republican.

To quote from the link:
“Reagan was the smiling face and good-cheer voice of an ideology that seemed to erupt with dumbfounding suddenness to mock the narratives of Hofstadter consensus and Schlesinger vital centrism. After years of false starts around the conservative publications the National Review and The American Spectator, after years spent brooding in a handful of conservative, second-tier think tanks and foundations and the moneyed purlieus of Orange County, after devising an emotive political language (coded for race and gender) aimed at working-class whites and their struggling suburban cousins, the new neo-conservatism, or Radical Right, emerged as a powerful, vote-getting synthesis of antitheses and a major shift in the American narrative: populism bonded to plutocracy. Yet it seamlessly wove together two long threads of that narrative in order to swear by a Jeffersonian wariness of government and a Jacksonian resentment of old money and elite culture.

The Radical Right made it possible for the employees of industries that were being merged, downsized, or outsourced, or had completely disappeared, to vote for politicians beholden to the very people who were forcing these employees to work for lower wages and fewer benefits, and increasingly not to be able to work at all. [I lived through this era as a young adult, which is why I have emphasized certain text. These were the developments I witnessed first-hand which persuaded me never to vote for Republicans. I realize that younger people will have never known an America which was better than the one we now have. They need to know a better American society once existed, and is still possible, but first, we must prevail politically, very decisively, over the Economic Royalists, now embedded within the misleading masses of “QAnon,” “MAGA,” and “Trumpism,” with bribing “fountainheads” of billionaires funding these Pied-Piper-ish movements.] What’s the Matter with Kansas? , indeed, asked journalist Thomas Frank of people ready to vote against their own self-interests. … The Radical Right tapped into those ancient underground veins of American nativism, fundamentalism, and anti-intellectualism, into paranoia, violence, and gender consternation, to produce an alloy combining, as seldom before, the politics of resentment with that of economic royalism. This squaring of political and cultural circles amounted to an epic achievement that was meant to spell the death of government in the life of the market, the end of the regulated market economy and of the social services dependent on tax revenues derived from it. The rightward shift in market deregulation, the financialization of the economy, and debt-financed consumption continued under the Democratic version of Reagan, William Jefferson Clinton.”

For that third point, I would agree but I usually refer to the third stool leg of the “Reagan Revolution” as being “privatization.” In practice, deregulation meant well-placed predators could plunder, because what were crimes in the regulatory world would be free space for crooked actors henceforth. The financialization of the economic was the result of the crass assumption that the economy could depend only on debt and elastic currency, rather than the value of manufactured goods being produced and sold, as had been the case. The Republican-controlled government used our tax dollars against Americans, they literally paid company controllers and owners to take our jobs overseas. This broke the unions, the main pillar of support for the Democratic Party, turning them into “me-too Republicans” in all but name for two generations. Only longtime Senator and current President Joe Biden, quite surprisingly, in his advanced old age, is trying to break that mold, at long last. But the government has been heavily “privatized,” as well. For an example of what this means, consider the private prison system which has grown like a cancer; states have been known to literally guarantee the owners a certain quota of prisoners to fill these places, as if they knew in advance how many criminal convictions they were going to complete per year. Once locked in, the quota-provided prisoners are provided jobs such as call-center work at low wages to work off the fees for things like soap and towels provided by the company. It really helps supply a certain quota of prisoners when good education and good-paying jobs are more scarce, not when they’re more abundant. Another example of what this means comes through consideration of whistleblower and exile from the US, Edward Snowden; was the information he provided on how we’re all under constant surveillance all the time national security secrets. or are they the proprietary intellectual property of his employer sub-contracted to the NSA, Booz Allen Hamilton? Is there any difference, any more?

If you want equality under the law to be our aim as a society, and if you want the powerful in our society to be answerable for their actions which can be expected to work to the detriment of millions of others, then vote for the Democrats. (Or run for office as one. In too many precincts in this country, Republicans run unopposed for elected offices.) As the party’s leading lights often state on MSNBC as guest commenters, Democrats aren’t perfect. They’re just trying to serve in the interests of the general welfare, which includes our having a survivable world. Republicans are out to convince you government is the enemy — by oppressing you with their control of government on the one hand — and, on the other, by providing their much-touted “freedom” (to be an ignorant bully or to bilk the taxpayers at will, depending on one’s ambitions) to society’s predators who are in on the joke.

We face this stark and clear choice, never more so than now. In my life, the better part of 70 years at this point, never as much as now.

For this column, I will provide a few links which I think may help the relatively uninformed catch up, so as to be better aware of just where we are in the USA and the world at this perilous political moment. Democracy is at stake. If you think things can’t get any worse than they are, you’re mistaken. Let’s not let a group who would render this land looking and behaving like the Land of Mordor have their way, even though they follow the golden rule, namely, “He who has the gold, makes the rules.”

If you’re wondering what, in the current mess, is really going on, read these articles.

Paul Buchheit’s editorial on “the Right Wing,” here, for one:

The wise and historically knowledgeable Thom Hartmann has written brilliantly about some of the little-known histories of the political “Right’s” attempts to regain total power over the USA, after losing some ground to the people’s interests after the Great Depression. This one is the story of 1933’s attempted “Businessmen’s Coup.”

As the USA entered its most prosperous era of growth and modernization after the Second World War, with the rise of a middle class, alarms rang out from Fascist-loving corners in the 1950s that the right to vote must be curbed, lest mere, non-wealthy commoners in the US begin to dictate the nation’s political objectives. But the whole of the right was not galvanized yet. Christian lobbyists pressured representatives and Senators relentlessly, as did paranoid anti-Communist groups like the John Birch Society. But the American center held, for a time. For a time, Americans prospered and progressed.

It was not until the 1970s, and a repetition of those warnings from Lewis Powell, a judge Richard Nixon would then soon appoint to the Supreme Court, that the contorted political world of the USA today would begin to take form, with the formation of a parallel Counter-Establishment based in the more rural South and West, rather than the traditional US power Establishment which had formed in the older, more populous Northeastern states. The Counter Establishment’s goal is to ensure that “Divided, We the People Fall” prey to the rule of their whims and business purposes, losing all say in choosing our own way of life. It’s not only abortion they intend to abolish our right to choose, although their success so far in that regard has been heinous in its results. Pursue simple-minded policies, reap social disasters; or, put another way, play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

I don’t know how many Americans realize the mistake they made in the Fall of 2022. True, the projected “Red Wave” in Congress did not materialize. But, the Republicans did get a slight majority in the House of Representatives, with enduring chaos, and the stymying of President Biden’s positive agenda, as the result.

This is what leading Republicans want.

Since FDR, their radical factions have been out to take total and permanent control of the government. For the decades of ascendant middle class prosperity, the public and even the Republican Party didn’t want to allow that, knowing it was the road to disaster. However, the Nixon Administration steered the nation toward a new era, and, starting with Reagan, the GOP (which now baldly stands, to judge by their actions, for “Government Overthrow Party”) stomped the gas pedal to the floor. The aim: to establish a one-party, totalitarian capitalist society. They started acting as if the only legitimate choice in the two-party system was to vote Republican. Anything else was tantamount to treason. All the attacks on norms which followed have been shocking, jaw-dropping in their daring and disgusting in their reduction of political discourse and thought in the United States to “a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Don’t fall for it.

Next post, I’ll write about some of the “right’s” current efforts to hurt the commoners and elevate the economic royalists of our time.

“Ketchup.”

The Brand is in the Brain

On this blog space, I previously reviewed two books on psychology for screenwriters, (“Roles and Traits to Wrinkle Your Characters”) to which I now link for anyone reading this article who missed out.  What I’m writing about today concerns the same factor in writing fiction pieces for the screen which led me to purchase those two excellent books in the first place. But, today, I’m writing about another approach to developing character which I’m thinking may be useful before consulting the pages of those books.

I went “hermetic” many months ago in seeking effective ways to help guide screenwriters in making their decisions on critical aspects such as concept, character, and all that flows from these twin pillars of storytelling. I found I wanted to search outside the many publications on screenwriting, per se, with which I was already acquainted.  I felt there were certain basic, ingrained motive forces in the human character which might serve as a guide to setting up compelling conflicts which, if properly identified, might help even thoughtful novices to quickly write much more professionally, if they were utilized in molding characters, than some of the broader suggestions I have encountered in my vast readings.

An example of what I wanted to avoid would be a typical form I’ve seen elsewhere, for the writer to fill out and plug in blanks having to do with a character’s Sex life; Ethics & values; Drive & Ambition; Frustrations & Disappointments; Temperament; Family Life; IQ; Attitude toward Life, etc., etc.  Although, as a writer, it’s good to know as much about your characters as possible, I find myself looking at forms like this and growing impatient with myself, while drawing mostly blanks.  I skip them and feel kind of guilty or inadequate for not “doing that work”… so, I wondered if there might not be a better approach.

Responding to this problem, I felt it would be useful to start with essential human drives and pick out some really elemental qualities that are universal to the human being — which is what the writer needs to tap, anyway, in order to reach a broad audience— and begin fleshing out the more circumstantial aspects of a character’s life once I knew the character’s “beating heart” or essential drive. Besides being useful in developing a rounded character, I also sensed that identifying some core element and working out from there would be enormously helpful in defining the story world’s arena of conflict, thereby helping me hone in on the theme of the story.  To have powerful characters clashing in a well-defined world over a powerful theme gets the writer a long way down Quality Road on the way to the land of Story Development!

So, I thought about the question, “What must we have, as human beings, for life?”  I was already aware of  psychologist Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, so I felt that revisiting that paradigm would be a great place to start defining my system.

From low to high in the pyramidal ranking, the pyramid defines human motives as involving the following:

SURVIVAL – the prowess to gather the means to eat, rest safely, and escape predators

SAFETY AND SECURITY – the ability to protect that which enables us to survive

LOVE AND BELONGING – a connection to a group, such as a family or a community

ESTEEM AND SELF-RESPECT – the need to be recognized for one’s efforts and achievements

A NEED TO KNOW AND UNDERSTAND – curiosity, scholarship, soul-searching

AESTHETIC YEARNING – creativity and artistry

One glance at the pyramid, from the broader lower end of physiological essentials to the rarefied top end of self-actualization (with physical security, social life, and personal ego as the intermediate layers between those two), reveals all the priorities we human beings strive to attain, each narrowing slice on the pyramid ascending on the broader base of the prior layer of needs, each “higher rank” leading away from the primitive and the common to the more rarefied and individualized  It’s useful to bear in mind, too, that as soon as we have the needs of one level satisfactorily addressed, we begin to yearn for something “sitting on the next shelf up” in the hierarchy of needs.  .  These ranks handily define human struggle!  A repressor strives to create unawareness for that reason; after all, better not to let yearnings for too fine a life disturb the work schedule of the servants. “Keep ‘em in their place!” Liberator characters will encourage that yearning to bring about new, and hopefully finer manifestations in the possibilities of life. “Break your chains and become free!” But any one of the layers contains, by itself, the kernel of a complete story. These needs are a great starting point for any type of story because they define the arenas of conflict we, as human beings, are constantly engaged in.

Somehow, continuing research led me discover what I felt was a great corollary to Maslow’s pyramid.  I learned that market researchers Kim Cramer and Alexander Koene of Positioneringsgroep, The Netherlands, polled more than 8,000 Dutch respondents to profile more than 195 brands in 23 product categories, producing a study called “23+1.”  The aim of their study was to ascertain the answer to the question, “Why do some brands simply feel better than others?”  Based on their findings, they defined twenty-four motive drives in people which are useful for marketers to define their brands so as to appeal to the primal urges, and seven broader “types” of people who will respond to similar stimuli. Twenty-three of these drive types might be called “proactive” or “positive,” with the “+1” or twenty-fourth type being a form of psychological retreat, the “Escapist.”  The following are the Types according to “23+1,” along with their corresponding motive arenas within the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs.

Type: CONSERVATOR

1. Ensuring bare existence – air, water, shelter, care for the body, prevention of disease.
2. Safety & Security – Haven, risk reduction, stress reduction, stable, safe surroundings.
3. Physiological well-being – Physical power and stamina, health, strength, vitality, performance.
4. Order & Structure – Familiarity, order, organization, rules, cleanliness, certainty.

Hierarchy of Needs arenas for Conservator characters: Physiological; Safety; Love & Belonging.

Type: PIONEER

5. Curiosity – Adventure of discover, learning, developing insights, seeking answers.
6. Competence – Mastering skills, abilities, crafts, proficiency.
7. Performance – Gain via effort, achievement, accomplishment, ambition.
8. Competitiveness – Aggression, finding superiority, fighting, vengeance, combat.

Hierarchy of Needs arenas for Pioneer characters:  Safety; Esteem; Self-Actualization.

Type:  SPIRITED

9. Individuality – Being different from others, distinct, self-expressive.
10. Independence – Self-control, autonomy, freedom, responsibility to self.
11. Self-esteem – Self-acceptance, confidence, pride, optimism in one’s own capabilities.
12. Acknowledgement – Seeking acceptance, appreciation, confirmation, respect, rewards.

Hierarchy of Needs arenas for Spirited characters:  Love & Belonging; Esteem; Self-Actualization.

Type: DRIVEN

13. Status – Striving for power, prestige, and privilege.
14. Possession – Owning objects, materialism, greed, hoarding, keeping in reserve, conserving.
15. Power – Influence over others, command of resources, leadership of other people, dominance.

Hierarchy of Needs arenas for Driven characters:  Safety; Love & Belonging; Esteem

Type: SENSUALIST

16. Sexuality – Urge to physical ecstasy, blissful union, erotic temptation, lust, seductiveness.
17. Aesthetics – Cultivating beauty in appearance, surroundings, expression in arts.
18. Creativity – Composing, designing, imagination put into action, mental freedom.
19. Play – Physical or mental stimulation for pleasure, humor, celebration, sports.

Hierarchy of Needs arenas for Sensualist characters:  Love & Belonging; Esteem; Self-Actualization

Type: NURTURER

20. Care for loved ones – Caring for parents, children, spouses, cuddling, pampering.
21. Intimacy – Familiarity, loyalty, solidarity, confidential communication, sharing.
22. Loyalty – Moral commitment toward family, religion, culture, group, friends.

Hierarchy of Needs arenas for Nurturer characters:  Physiological; Safety; Love & Belonging

Type: EXALTED

23. Idealism – Empathy, compassion, honesty, justice, altruism, social conscience.
24. Escapism – Retreat, diversion, daydreaming, fantasy, withdrawal, escape from responsibility. This is the “23+1” factor, a person who so desires a perfect world of beauty, ease, and tranquility that s/he seeks to escape from the flaws of the real one rather than accept the challenges of dealing with reality.

Hierarchy of Needs arenas for Exalted characters:  Love & Belonging; Esteem; Self-Actualization

I feel this avenue of exploration offers rich possibilities for quickly defining story worlds, character traits, types of conflicts, the stakes, and the theme. We see these types of clashes in movies all the time —a “Pioneer” clashes with a “Nurturer;” a “Conservator” with a “Sensualist,” a “Spirited” with a “Driven,” etc. Two “Nurturers” clash over priorities, two “Drivens” are rivals for the same prize or partners with divergent ideas about what they’re striving for, or two “Exalteds” clash over philosophical approach to life when it comes to aesthetics vs. escapism. Drawing from this well of possibilities, it becomes much easier to imagine details such as a character’s family life, IQ, etc. within the total context of story development.

They Killed My Darlings – Why Filmmakers Make Changes to Your Script

The following is a guest post written by Joey Corpora, a film director with the film-making group, Platypus Underground. Check out their site for some insightful low-budget filmmaking tips, originating in real-life adventures in movie-making. – Ron Brassfield

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I think it goes without saying: filmmaking is a collaborative medium. With so many people involved in the filmmaking process, things are bound to change from the time the rough draft is written to when an audience watches the final print.

What can change, and why?

Maybe the location manager found an awesome deserted beach to shoot at that wasn’t originally in the script, or the director met an outstanding actor who could fit in the movie if the story was tweaked slightly, or maybe the script was too ambitious from the beginning.

The thing is, most of the time when a script is picked up by an independent film company, changes aren’t made because the script is bad.

They’re made because new opportunities came up, or because the budget wasn’t quite big enough to fit in the more extravagant bits written in the script. Independent filmmaking is a very fluid medium. You need a director who is willing to roll with the punches and seize new opportunities as they present themselves. Being flexible allows for change- but it doesn’t mean it’s because your script is bad.

I can give an example.

At Platypus Underground, we write all of our own films, so we are well aware of what we are capable of, and what we can’t reasonably do on a small budget.

However, we are all big dreamers. And, as most writers will tell you, when you are caught up in the moment of writing, you don’t want to censor yourself. As a filmmaker and writer, you begin to think, “I’ll write this scene in anyway, even if it seems like it’d be tough to shoot. We’re a smart and creative bunch. I’m SURE we can find some way to pull this off.”

We write scenes that fit in our story, but once it comes time to actually film, our experience, budget, equipment, or location sometimes just don’t match up with what we’d originally written.

When we shot our kung fu flick, Sins of the Dragon, we’d planned on having parts of the film shot in huts or temples. Those were written in the script, so we needed them in the movie, right?

The problem was we didn’t have access to those things, and though we searched for possible locations up until the day before shooting, it just didn’t work out. We needed to find some alternatives, and the easiest alternative is usually to change the parts of the script that just won’t work.

Some scenes were cut. Some were re-written. And others were left mostly intact, but we decided to film them in a different location.

At other times, you may find that you’ve written something “impossible” to shoot, but you end up finding a way to pull it off anyway.

We are currently working on a short film called Future 1986. It’s an epic sci-fi story, and the opening scene involves a huge battle sequence on a charred alien world.

We’d spent a few weeks planning the scene, recruiting people, gathering costumes, and scouting a great location. We figured it would be a cinch — after all, we’d done battle scenes before. No problem!

At the last minute, almost all of our actors dropped out, leaving us with FOUR people, including our two person camera/sound crew for the day. It snowed the day before shooting, and the temperature had plummeted. The props we thought we had were missing.

Everything was going wrong, but we decided to shoot, anyway, and hoped for the best.

Using some clever split screen effects, fast cutting, a variety of camera angles, a few Hallowe’en masks, and uniform costumes, we were able to double up on roles by obscuring our faces and making it look like we had more actors on screen. By using a split screen technique and dividing the screen into thirds, we were able to turn our four actors into “twelve” actors for any shots where we needed to show larger groups of fighters.

Once the footage was shot, we were able to go into After Effects to manipulate the footage further, adding planes flying in overhead, explosions in the distance, and fires in the trees. It was starting to look like we really did have an army of extras!

We keyed out the drab sky and replaced it with grungy clouds, and with a quick bit of color correction — viola! — We had ourselves an epic sci-fi battle on an alien planet — shot with four guys, some Nerf guns, and a tripod.

The point of all this is: don’t get discouraged if you need to make changes to your script, or if a filmmaker you’re working with makes changes to it. Write the story how you think it should be told, and fight to keep your script as intact as possible.

But don’t be stubborn — if a new opportunity arises, or if something doesn’t work out, you should be open to change. Understand that the changes aren’t necessarily being made because your script is “bad”; more than likely, changes will be made due to circumstances beyond your control. Oftentimes, these changes end up being better than anyone could have planned.

And when things work out like that, then guess what? You still get the credit for those great ideas on screen, because you’re listed in the credits as the writer!

All Together Now

A year ago, while toiling as a temp for a large American manufacturer, I wrote a one-hour television spec pilot, and later, I wrote another one. In the midst, I finished writing a feature for a small Northeastern production outfit, based on a loose concept they had envisioned as their next movie project, which was very well-received. Great, we signed a deal memo and I carried on struggling to make a living, hoping one day our deal would bear fruit for us all.

Around about June, I started to have daydreamy moments in which I’d picture them wanting to produce some scripted television. Guess what?  By late June, they emailed me about exactly that question, asking if I also wrote for television. I sent them my two pilot scripts, and they asked if I would like to write another one for them to pitch to networks this Fall? Of course, I would!

On our ensuing conference call, they referenced a documentary on UFO contactees and abductions, told me they were acquainted with its producer, and wanted to involve him as a consultant, giving him input into the story. They proposed a package deal in which, if the pitch were successful, the four of us would share equally in the proceeds, all credited as “creators” or “co-creators” and with me as the writer, because they believed in my ability, based on my work they had seen.

I was aware, of course, that in practical terms, that meant that the couple who held the production company shingle were to get half the money, should money ultimately flow, and, as the writer, I was tasked to do a large majority of the actual work. That would have been a foolish point to stick on. My objective is to help these people become more successful, and, in so doing, gain influence and prospects as a writer. I already know, with this proposal, what I have gained from the experience so far: champions, people who work in the industry, who stand ready to promote my work as a writer to network executives. As a writer attempting to promote myself, I could easily be seen by these busy people as a self-deluded fool swimming in a swarming pool of pestilent life. With a champion, I conceivably become a writer who might be worth carving out an hour to take a look.

A six-week process ensued. I watched the documentary. I met its producer on a subsequent four-way conference call. On a mistaken assumption, I lost several days analyzing his proposal for a series and submitted a slightly revamped version, with suggestions I believed would increase its chances for achieving a sale. I was corrected; this was not actually under consideration for our project. I developed another series proposal for utilizing a similar set of elements, using a different approach. We were mandated, the documentary producer and I, to discuss developing the series based on that approach, which used a Special Forces type reluctantly forced into becoming a UFO investigator. We held two Skype sessions covering a total of about three hours, before receiving another mandate, a new slant on the subject which I felt meant we had to scrap our work up until then and start the series from a more “workaday world” ground level, what I called “switching from Yang to Yin” with the approach.

I came up with the idea to use an insurance claims adjuster as the lead. He was to lose his job by the end of the pilot, and, as result of his experiences, was to embark on a public career as an occult investigator, in a way that made him an instant charlatan to most, and a hero to a minority out there with some strange stories to tell, seeking only someone to believe them.  I chose this occupation for two main reasons: it was professionally oriented toward inquiry, even investigation, while being “ordinary,” normally a routine job, so it should be somewhat both pertinent to the show’s direction, and also relatable. Secondly, using a routine job for the main character’s occupation meant we could avoid using the usual TV trope characters who investigate, such as cops, detectives, private eyes, or, perhaps the least-overused for main characters, media reporters. I proposed a half-finished plot line in which the main character launched into an investigation of a death by spontaneous combustion, in which he was tasked to invalidate a life insurance policy because it was death by suicide.

A third scheduled Skype session with the documentary maker followed, in which the usual pattern was followed. Basically, he questioned every choice I made. Our dialogue was not antagonistic in the “contrary” sense, it was a debate aimed at probing and discovering whether there were better choices to be made. I’m not very much used to collaborating, but I was able to effectively support my choice of occupation for the main character, and we agreed on that point without the debate on it going overlong.  However, my plot collaborator did not like the idea of “spontaneous combustion” as an inciting incident. He felt it was too well-known to be a real phenomenon. I was not so sure about that, but asked what he would like to try instead. He proposed involving a grand master of a secret society, having a family member, perhaps a child, being menaced, or already killed.

This point was indicative of the shape of our collaboration. He would generally propose far-out suggestions, I would generally reel him back in. On this one, I really didn’t have to. He realized, himself, that would be too grisly.

I didn’t have an immediate take on the effectiveness of using a grand master, other than it placed us in the way of some “secrets,” but after only a few moments of discussing the exact nature of the threat, inspiration struck and I began to assert that the grand master himself needed to be menaced, and — here was the hook — he marched into the insurance company office in the opening minutes and announced he was going to be murdered and wanted to take steps to insure his life insurance policy would not be voided by counter-claims that he was a suicide, involved in illegalities, or what-have-you. Nice! It brought us a “ticking clock” element, too! This was definitely far better than my first idea, because it gave us someone live, not just a surviving spouse, that sort of thing, to involve our lead with, but someone directly involved in “the mysteries” at which we were aiming our series idea. We held another session and talked about other ideas I’d put forth, and generally supposed a few things about the shape of the second half. But that session was irresolute and vague, not yielding any “gold,” as the previous session had. By this time, we were also down to just over a week before the deadline for digital submission for materials to the pitch session. I needed to get writing, fast!

Suddenly, I had another problem, one which I worried might derail the project now that we were down to the wire. We received another game-changing email from the producers who had packaged our group deal. One of them had decided to be adamantly opposed to the idea that the main character was an insurance claims adjuster. We had a new suggestion to make the profession “more action-oriented, like an EMT.” This seemed, as I inquired into the question, to be due to personal impressions formed during encounters with actual insurance adjusters. They were too damn boring, evidently. I laid out my tactical case for thinking it would work, and why I felt an EMT would not, in a reply email, and my plot collaborator, bless him, weighed in, in favor of using a claims adjuster, as well. However, I was willing to get it hashed out and make such a change, as long as we could do it quickly and logically, coming up with something better than EMT. But, as “investigation” remained essential to the discoveries inherent in the concept, I felt stuck for something better than the usual TV trope character types I mentioned earlier. Fortunately, once again, I was able, in another conference call, to carry the day, conditioned, as one of the pair gently suggested, on making it clear this particular insurance claims adjuster was a “fish out of water” in his everyday milieu. Perfect! I mulled things over and made notes the next day, a Sunday, trying to get my head in order for the task.

I wrote the script from early Monday morning until late Thursday afternoon. At this point, being jobless was a blessing. My old personal best had been nine days to do something comparable, but I did that over two weekends sandwiching a work week in a regular, non-creative job. Still, this was a process of working to a not-fully-developed plan, while making decisions and discoveries in the process. As late as Tuesday evening, having reached the midpoint, I felt hopeless, to the point of despair, that I would ever get the elements we had discussed to mesh properly, to really work.

But, that’s part of the excitement, folks. On day three, I made certain decisions about how I was going to handle the rest, decisions which carried certain risks, but, I decided, were going to bear delicious fruits if I carried through with them. On day four, I wrote on a continuous natural high, which only became stronger as I progressed to the end. One more added scene and three spots of tweaking were all it needed from there, easily done with the three remaining days I had left until deadline.

During my Skype sessions with my co-plotter, I had gathered an impression that his thinking was very “plot” oriented, this happens, then that happens, and something else happens, if only because it might seem “cooler,” I supposed. I have trained myself over the years as a writer to put my head inside the space of each character. As an example, would I, as a stringer reporter, rent a boat to get out to an exclusive enclave and try to gain a spying position for a possible story, being stuck outside the house of my target when I arrived, or would I try to finagle a ride, by hook or crook, with someone I knew had business on the island, and try to ride his coattails right inside the home? We had a few friendly arguments over things like that. Luckily, my explanations of the choices I had made generally carried the point with the producers who had brought us together, as they refereed those disagreements, though I was okay with doing some tweaks to accommodate the points of my other collaborator at times.

The end result was that everyone accepted the script and the couple who packaged the deal expressed what I must call no less than ecstasy with what I had ultimately written. Their reaction to my efforts brought more than relief, to be sure. Though I had believed I had written an outstanding script, it’s not hard for a writer making a huge effort to develop that impression of his own efforts. I have validation through their responses, and in the process, I gained even more determined champions of my work.

They’ll be pitching it and my other two projects, those other spec pilot scripts I gave them, under separate agreements, at the New York Television and Film festival (NYTVF) in October.

 

Dog Paddling… Toward the Zero Point?

Long time, no post. This has been my year of trying to figure out how to earn a living, after 40 years in the workforce, or at least of constantly trying to be, mostly successfully, up to a certain point.

The leaves are turning brown and falling to earth now, as Fall begins. Earlier this year, as those leaves blossomed and established themselves on those trees and Spring established itself, I spent four solid months of long days revamping a website I had originally established to house “webisodes” into a 104-page shopping site. Nearly six months after setting out on that journey, I have not earned one single penny with the results. In retrospect, I feel like such a fool, getting that business license and registering with the state, only to file one “zero-return” after another, month after month.  Yes, I did some social media promotion and online advertising for the site. That helped keep me busy. That’s all that did, except cost me a little money. My only consolation is the truism that you do not know, until you try, if something will work for you.

Sure, I’ve put in applications for jobs. Lots of them. All the while. It’s getting really hard to fill out those forms, over and over and over. In nine months, I had six interviews and no offers. I stopped counting applications after hitting about 150. What’s the point? One of the longest forms of all was for a placement service you might have heard of, and it involved one of those “psychological” profiles I love so well <sarcasm>. This one took the prize for asking, over and over in slightly different wording, such questions as when was the last time I had punched a co-worker, whether I had smoked crack, grass, or PHP this morning before breakfast, and many other similar questions. Evidently, they were looking for a younger, more energetic type to fill their position. The one result that filling out that application evidently produced was lots of phone calls from strange numbers all over the country began to flood in with sales offers. No, I’m really not in the market for anything except food and shelter, and really just trying to remain even in just those markets…

Aat least four of my six interviews have arrived in the following sequence: filling out an online application; receiving a follow-up telephone call and conducting a telephonic pre-interview; then, after receiving an email follow-up with details, performing satisfactorily on a skills assessment test and one of those lovely mind-fuck assessments, which I suppose must be checking one’s capacity for robotic repetition. Then, I would drive, at an appointed time, to conduct a face-to-face interview, or series thereof, with no fewer than three, and up to as many as eight persons. Afterward, the nicer ones sent me an email declining to employ me.  Each time, six to eight hours I could never get back, gone.

A dear cousin of mine I lived with for a period in our childhood grew up to have several children. These included, until this year, a young man reaching his mid-twenties, who still resided with his parents. In the late Spring, they discovered his body, lying on the floor in his basement quarters. Families being far-flung and preoccupied as they are in our culture, I never knew this troubled young man, unfortunately.  I do know this is not a time when I would want to be young. It’s hard enough at my age, more than twice his, facing whatever promise the future seems to hold now. I can only imagine how I would feel if I were his age. My solace is the time in which I was born and grew up in the United States, during its more liberal and most prosperous era in history. It was a real sweet spot, the time of my birth. Detroit, where I was born, was thriving and US withdrawal from the War in Vietnam was proceeding when I reached draft age. After forty years of right-wing domination, Detroit is a ruin and the US is locked in a struggle to conquer the entire world, justifying its actions with lie after lie, regardless of which party produced the person nominally known as the President. The sources on line I tend to trust peg the true unemployment rate in the USA at around 23%, so I know I’m far from alone in living my life of quiet desperation. In polls, Congress is getting the popular approval rating it deserves, I think — about eight percent. But, in my life, in my era, in my youth, there was a chance to enjoy sheer Being, and even a measure of freedom and hope. Surely, that spark is not gone altogether for today’s young, but I believe society’s capacity to permit it has greatly diminished.

What’s interesting about having time off is the way it absorbs all your time. My hobby, for many years, has been writing and recording my own songs. I, honestly, haven’t had time for that, aside from keeping in practice and coming up with a few new progressions.  Words seem to have deserted me, when it comes to song — at least for now.  No words seem strong enough to fit any more.

I picked up a few hundred bucks in the spring, proofreading and editing books. It wasn’t a living, but for one month, I got to preserve my bank balance by that means. The best experience was proofreading a comedic novel by a pair of screenwriters who have worked on Saturday Night Live, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and Boy Meets World, among others. I’d recommend it for light humorous reading, but, as I search the internet for the title, I can’t see that it’s hit the marketplace since then. For freelancing, I’ve been using a site that lets people who want help collect up to five bids. Those who want to provide the services have 24 hours to submit a bid. It’s cutthroat, and, as a service provider, you’re bidding based on sketchy information. After my few initial successes, such as they were, my most common experience was not to be contacted, and the next most common was to have the requests for help cancelled by the requester. P.S. you pay money to buy points to enter those quotes into the competition, and you lose it if they look at your bid and don’t contract with you, or if they cancel their request. Your points are refunded if they allow 48 hours to go by without looking at your bid.

Anyway, that’s why I poured all that energy into establishing business relationships and building a large sales web site.

I’m luckily married, and my virtuous wife, who has a good-paying, if, at times, onerous job (but, I repeat myself?), has been a real source of support for me, in every sense of the word, in all these months whizzing by. My financial role in the marriage is to pay for our health insurance, because that is not a work benefit for her. So, I do have bills every month, that being “the big one.”

We still have our Netflix subscription, for now. Last weekend, we watched Robert Redford’s remarkable movie, All is Lost. The mariner, Redford, in that film, did everything right and lost out every time, pummeled by the random, merciless elements, his desperate flares ignored by whomever might be hidden in the bowels of passing cargo ships bearing freight from China. If you have not seen this film, I recommend it. It kept me in suspense until the very last second. The only thing I’ll add about it is that, at no time did the character practice reality denial as a means of struggling for survival.

The 36 Stratagems

During my researches this week, I happened across a page featuring a Chinese list of “36 Stratagems.” Further research today has found it in some other places, one of which, on TV Tropes, I link to here.  Taken in consideration with the context of my plots and the nature of conflict in my scenes (such as in the “diamond” graphic shown here), I look forward to exploring use of these stratagems in my writing and related work.

I love lists. They are a concise way to quickly reframe your mentality when searching for an approach to writing a scene. One of the things I work on periodically of late, both for the sake of improving my own writing and for an online application I intend to develop, is a compendium of confrontational frames of mind and emotion. These mindsets are, naturally, going to have a powerful influence on the behaviors of characters, and as I develop my list, I am attempting to come up with a set of writer’s prompts to match a character’s mental and emotional state in alignment with a specific set of actions that character might undertake in response.

This set of 36 stratagems should help me enrich that area of my writing and my program tremendously. Have a look and see if they will help yours, too.