Hyperbole

“There is no better place to hide than hyperbole.”

I don’t remember where I saw that written but wrote it down because I love it. How true is that! Exaggerate! Oversell! Just keep talking and you’ll never have to reveal a thing. It’s really the perfect hiding place.

Everything that’s been written about Donald Trump and we really have no idea what he thinks. We know he lies constantly and makes shit up and screams it at his base and they love it and eat it up, but none of them has any idea what Trump actually thinks either. When he talks – or shouts – he hides, he reveals nothing. Can you even imagine a mellow Charlie Rose-type interview with Donald Trump, talking about things, slowly, quietly, focused? Nope. You can’t.

Hair Mask (Hair Shirt?)

Taking a shower tonight I reached into the skyline of shampoo, conditioner and who knows what else is in there and I grabbed one that said, “Hair Mask”. Imagine that. A mask for your hair. We live in a nation where a much too large portion of the population was unwilling to wear a mask over their mouth and nose during an airborne pandemic to protect their friends and family. An airborne pandemic, by the way, that killed more than one million of us. I wonder how they’d feel about a hair mask.

But on the positive side, all the rest of us did! We masked up and for all sorts of reasons. Some people were afraid for themselves, wanting to stay healthy, not wanting to die (go figure), but didn’t we even more often hear people talk about other people, as in, I have to make sure I have a mask and get a test before Saturday when I go visit my grandma? Stuff like that-there. It was a beautiful thing and we can be very proud of the effort we all made. We saved millions of lives by doing the right thing.

A democracy like ours needs its people to pull together occasionally no matter what you believe. We need to make sure that we insert a little responsibility to all those rights we like to talk about. And most of us did. Warms the heart.

Engage and Enrage

It’s the art of politics on the right side of the aisle here in the good old USA. But if you see us as one nation, under God and all of that, shouldn’t y’all be working harder to engage and assuage? Why would anyone want to pit one group of Americans against another? What are they hoping to achieve?

And beyond just politics, we do in general very much like our groups, those with whom we share something important to us, be that an address, a job, a style of dress, a place of worship, a school, a sport, a pop star, a hobby. And we are proud of those groups and so when our group pride is somehow hurt, we rally our group against other groups, ostensibly our enemies, but almost always just a bunch of Americans who ultimately share the same beliefs about life, love, family and friends.

So what do we do? We resort to inflating the importance of small issues, things that might look or sound bad or wrong or weird, but are ultimately no skin off our backs. And we say these things over and over to keep people thinking about them (they say that hearing something 14 times will lead a person to action). It’s called propaganda, and it works.

Anger, distrust, unhappiness, jealousy, and ultimately violence; that is what they’re hoping to achieve. And when you think about it, the more we’re beating up on one another down here in the trenches of life, the rich and powerful stay busy, accumulating more power, and getting richer and richer and richer.

A Little Help?

“When the alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”
Leviticus 19:33-34 and 24:22

Help Wanted

Not sure about you, but everywhere I look I see Help Wanted signs. They are in windows, on restaurant tables, billboards, huge banners draped on buildings, in urban, suburban, exurban and rural areas – everywhere – Help Wanted signs. Some of these are for better paying jobs but most are for line cooks, dishwashers, service industry, construction, fast food, hotel staff and the like. These are jobs traditionally held by new immigrants and people low on the socio-economic ladder. Businesses are desperate for workers at a time when our jobless rate is at an historic low of 3.6%.

In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are currently at least 11.3 million job openings in the United States. The actual number will be higher due to very small businesses that often go uncounted.

“The Horror at the Border”

The reports are true: There was a record number of encounters with migrants at the Southwest border of 1.6 million in 2021, just over 1 million of those involved single adults. About a quarter of those were repeat crossers, so the number of new people trying to get into the U.S. was about 1.2 million. The number of people traveling in families was 451,087, also a record.

Sixty-three percent of these people were from countries other than Mexico, most from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, another record. Some of these were the migrants we read about or saw on television who walked in caravans hundreds and even over a thousand miles to get to our border.

Republicans among us gnash their teeth, wring their hands, and bellow about the catastrophe at our border. It’s good politics as they can dumb it down, blame it on President Biden and do nothing. Of course, the real reasons these folks are coming in such huge numbers is that there are no jobs in their own countries, they are in mortal danger and/or they want their children to have a better life than they had. The very same reasons every American’s family came to our shores.

I’m sure you’ve already done the math, but here we go: Had we welcomed every single one of those one million single adults at the border and got them each one of the 11.3 million jobs, we’d have filled less than 10% and still have 10.3 million job openings, we’d not even notice the number of Help Wanted signs having gone down, and business owners would still be desperate for workers.

I’m not advocating for that, of course, as it’s all much more complicated, but in general, the average American’s idea of immigration and our borders is shockingly skewed. This is mostly due to misinformation and mostly from right wing media and politicians. They understand that instilling fear into voters, in this case, with “illegal immigrants at the borders,” is extremely effective and distracts voters from the actual issues our elected officials should be focused on – the best education, affordable healthcare, climate change and others that truly affect American individuals and families.

Humanity is the Story of Migration

All Americans are from immigrant families. No matter where you are on this planet at some point your family immigrated to where you currently live. They did not spring from the ground like tulips. Life on earth is defined by migration – constant, ever-flowing migration. Keep an open mind, listen to your heart and don’t buy into the fear-mongering. There are often solutions smack dab in the middle of problems.

The people are woke and global, sorry fatheads

Hearing about Vladimir Putin’s attempts to keep his citizens in the dark about what he was planning and now, what he is doing, in Ukraine is laughable. How is it that these angry old guys really think they can keep information away from people in the age of the Internet? Russia is a modern country, their people are logged in and connected to everyone else logged in. Yes, the state media controlled their message and was telling them one thing but just how many modern educated Russians believe their official state television? Probably about as many Americans who watch Fox News and believe that. (Fox has about 1.5 million daily viewers or about .003 percent of the American population.)

Russians get their news from many sources as do educated and curious people all around the world. They get Russian news, BBC, German news, and on and on – the new perspective is global, which many powerful men and women disdain as it sucks life out of the power to which they cling like deer ticks. Unless Putin could somehow corral the entire world of media into playing along with his lies, or build a dome across his 11 time zones, he is absolutely screwed when it comes to controlling what his people see, hear and know. And we see now how badly he has failed. Brave Russians are protesting in the streets, which to us in America might not sound so amazing, but protesting in Russia is not, shall we say, encouraged by the State. Protesters put themselves and their families in real, sometimes mortal danger.

Even North Korea, a veritable desert of outside news, can’t stop it all. Defectors have reported various ways their citizens still find a way to get western information, usually entertainment, into the country. If the Kim’s can’t do it, no one can.

Here in our own nation, fatheads around the country are banning or trying to ban books, like it’s 1952. This is the absolute dumbest (and dumbing) move the said fatheads can attempt. First, tell a young person with even a modicum of smarts and self-respect not to read a book and they will find a way to read the book. Duh. Second, ban them where? Books are everywhere. You could work to ban it in a school but another school with have it, so will the library, and so will, ahem, Amazon. And third, kids have printers. Got it, fatheads? We know that what you’re doing is merely to make others like you happy to further your political careers, but you look so dumb doing it, that it can only backfire. It seems that you also should read those books, and many more, until you get it.

Young people are woke and global (as are many old people). Your attempts to turn back the clock, jam the toothpaste back in the tube, close the barn door after the cows all left reminds me of the old guy on the 70s television show “Soap” who would snap his fingers and think that he’d become invisible when all the people around him just kind of groaned and went on with their business. You’re ridiculous. You have zero respect for the modern world and for the intelligence of young people. They don’t need you telling them what they can and cannot read. They need you to get the hell out of the way so they can build a new world that recognizes reality, not the wishes of a washed up generation who is handing those same young people a planet that we continue to fuck up on a daily basis.

This is not to mention all of the misinformation perpetrated by these same people around COVID. That led to dead Americans and lots of them. For that, if Christianity is correct, you will all land in hell. Sorry. Well, not really.

Saving Face in Ukraine

I think that Biden and his team are smart enough to understand that Vladimir Putin needs a war like he needs a hole in his head. But Putin’s saber rattling works with some of his supporters. So they will, I believe, find a way for Putin to pull back but save face. Putin needs to look tough with his people and we know that. Give him an out. Let this slowly dissolve and the attention span of the modern internet world will quickly forget.

Update February 27, boy howdy was I wrong. I honestly believed he’d never attack and yet he did. Biggest mistake of that man’s life. What a fool.

Eloquence is important

Truth is paramount

Yoho’s got a new hole

Congressman Ted Yoho, “proudly serving Florida,” is obviously one troubled man-child. You’ve probably heard the story that this old fool accosted Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a first-term Democrat from New York, also known as AOC. This young woman is quite brilliant, fiercely dedicated to her constituents, a true believer in justice and fairness, no matter how much you agree or disagree with her opinions. Not sure what Yoho brings to the table, but it appears to be not much of anything good.

Yoho, like a pimply eighth grade bully, came after Ms. Ocasio-Cortez ON THE STEPS OF THE CAPITOL, and among many other things, called her a “fucking bitch.” Think about that. An old guy congressman accosted a fellow congresswoman on the steps of the capitol. If she were my daughter, Mr. Yoho would be in the hospital right now.

However, that is not the case and in fact Ms. Ocasio-Cortez herself performed surgery on Yoho with one of the most well-spoken pleas, not for any additional apologies (Yoho tried that and fell squarely on his fat head with the most pathetic “apology” – or non-apology – ever given), but instead a plea that this sort of behavior needs to stop for ALL WOMEN. It’s an amazing speech and if I were Yoho I’d resign now. These guys are dinosaurs and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and all the young people who are growing up to respect one another are the meteor that will end their time here on earth.

Watch it here:

Yoho’s got a new hole.

The “O” is for Oligarchy

They are the voice of the few, the proud, the billionaires.

The whole thing is fuckin’ brilliant. Rupert Murdoch emigrates to America from Australia, has a look around and realizes that there are a bunch of disaffected people who feel left out, have watched the great jobs they or their parents once had evaporate all around them, who are angry and looking for something to direct that anger, who are what he even refers to as “low information voters,” and who are ripe for the picking, and so Rupert picks away. Murdoch is at one level a genius and another P.T. Barnum.

Murdoch knew these things to be true:

If people want to be angry, it’s very easy to make them angrier.
Angry people are very easy to weaponize.
Enemies are necessary.
If you distract people, you can pick their pockets and those of their children and their children’s children.
Repetition, repetition, repetition is what many people will come to believe, truth or no truth.
Accuse the opposition of what you’re doing. It creates a dissonance that affects both sides. Think: “Fake News”.

Oh, and wrap it in a flag, keep underfunding education, and voila! The Oligarchs get richer and richer at the expense of regular American individuals and families, even those who’ve been weaponized (otherwise regular Americans) in their war against regular Americans. That’s the genius part.

FOX began with that “no bullshit,” “we tell it like it is” attitude right out of the gate. People liked that. And FOX dumbed everything down, simplified, spoke only in terms of black and white, and repeated beliefs, ideas, slogans, taglines, nicknames over and over. And FOX had the incredible audacity to refer to itself as “fair and balanced.” Who knew a mostly biased news source could refer to itself as fair and balanced and people would buy into that? The genius, and the one-born-every-minute guy.

So instead of people watching the news to learn why we have new healthcare programs, how they work, who they help, how they are paid for and all the rest, they watch news that tells them that the new healthcare programs are made up by crazy liberals who are out to hurt them and give them worse care for more money, take away their choices, freedoms, guns, whatever. “Death Panels” was all they had to say, and like a flash of lightening, the viewership all turned and never turned back. Why not? That is so much easier to understand than the intricacies of the Affordable Care Act, and so the “low information voter” keeps it simple and remains low on information, but even better for FOX and the Oligarchs, now has “fake” information to replace it and a bucketload of anger and hate around the issue to hurl at their supposed enemies.

Vladimir Putin’s main aim in his work online here in the U.S. is to drive wedges between Americans, to create more anger, strife and misunderstanding, because a divided country is a weak country, and Russia wants nothing more than a weak America.

At FOX, everyone (other than themselves and their viewers) is the enemy – liberals, immigrants, black people, Chinese people, the media, scientists, teachers, George Soros, Hillary Clinton, queers, kneeling football players, gun law advocates and on and on. This keeps the FOX news watchers back on their heels. There is always another outrage to get pissed off about – an outrage that strikes to their very livelihood. These people are trying to take this away from you! FOX knows well enough to frame everything as an us versus them issue. People love having enemies.

Who’s the enemy du jour? Think of the recent Chloroquine issue as it relates to COVID 19. FOX talks about this as if liberals and scientists want to keep it from FOX News viewers, whereas the real people who don’t want everyone taking this are, yes, scientists (they understand the dangers – this thing has not been tested) and the people who actually do need the drug for other reasons. They don’t need a run on a drug they truly depend on by a bunch of people fooled by FOX.

What the FOX viewer is expected to think is that, for some unfathomably vile reason, liberals and scientists want people to die unnecessarily – those people being the FOX viewers who want the Chloroquine. Liberals want to keep it from them so they die.

If this wasn’t something that happens on FOX every day, it would cause real outrage. Imagine, in a more rational world, one group of people in a nation (with a giant media corporation behind them) claiming another group would rather they die than allow them access to a drug that would save their lives, with fake and stupidly wrong information as proof. We would all be calling for, and receiving, a huge apology from the network. Editors would be fired.

Yeah, not here in the 21^st Century with FOX News. They made that shit up, and they know it doesn’t matter if they did.

FOX is powerful stuff. Their viewers are in deep with their emotions; they are angry, appalled and righteous because FOX tells them over and over that they are right. That righteous anger is a huge buzz. The brain goes nuts, fight or flight is on high alert, the sense of entitlement ramps up and a good zinger against any of the many enemies releases a flood of serotonin that makes the FOX viewer feel even more righteous and satisfied and downright stoned. And so they come back for more and more and more. Like my twelfth trip to the liquor cabinet back in the day.

This is what toying with people’s emotions really means, plain manipulation. FOX tells the viewers what to think, but more importantly, they tell them what to feel.

I don’t have any answers. My discussions with FOX News watchers quickly devolve into FOX talking points, ergo, often bald-faced lies. When I point that out and show them absolute proof that they are wrong, they devolve further to: “Fake News,” “I don’t believe it,” “That’s not what I heard,” etc. Faced with being actually factually wrong, they punch their heads into the ground and basically just yell, “La La La La La!”

The left has some of this also with MSNBC, but if this is an arms race, MSNBC is firing a BB gun at FOX’s aircraft carrier.

There was a Simpson’s episode years back in which for some reason the televisions stopped working in the town and so there’s a scene where all the pale and weakly kids come out on their front stoops, shielding their eyes and are looking around as if they just landed on a different planet. Of course, they are soon having a blast together out in the street.

This could happen here if FOX news would just be kind enough to go off the air for a couple of weeks. Probably not. The Australians need to keep sucking money out of the United States and the FOX viewers, as does the Republican Party (who I’ve not mentioned so much but is the true beneficiary of FOX News) and also the Oligarchs (a lot of overlap there).

I’ve argued that the Australian multi-billionaire and owner of FOX News, Rupert Murdoch, is the most powerful man in American politics and I honestly still believe that is true. What FOX News has done through misinformation, manipulation, repetition, fake news, fake patriotism and all the rest has been a thousand times more detrimental to this Democracy than anything little Vladimir Putin can do from over there.

But they use the same game plan and want the same outcomes so does it really even matter? The billionaires, the oligarchs, the powerful republicans will ultimately make a shitload of money off the coronavirus and move more of the nation’s wealth to the very few.

More for them. Less for you. Think outside the FOX.

US_Wealth_Inequality_-_v2

CBO Chart, U.S. Holdings of Family Wealth 1989 to 2013. The top 10% of families held 76% of the wealth in 2013, while the bottom 50% of families held 1%. Inequality worsened from 1989 to 2013. Fox News started in 1996 and while we can’t claim a straight causation, the incredible redistribution of America’s wealth from the rest of us to the top 10% grows right along with FOX News viewership.

The Dubstep Show

Okay, so the dubstep show. That was trippy. And I wasn’t even tripping. I had no idea that happened. Picture these young folk with an array of colorful, brightly lit baubles and bangles, hula hoops and hats, glowballs and whatnot, much of which they swung around in slow sometimes erratic orbits in an otherwise mostly dark room.

They wore big furry bear hats, and sometimes that was about it. They wore footy pajamas with hoods. They even wore beaded masks. I’m not sure what that was all about but it was rather disconcerting mostly because it must be complicated to breathe, let alone drink. And they had gloves with lighted fingertips that they wiggled around in front of other dubsteppers faces like some crazed magician.

The deejays pounded out music with their fists in the air. I couldn’t tell exactly what else they were doing up there. A lot of dancing and then stopping to work on something on a table in front of them. But the music pounded the people and the people jumped up and down ecstatically. The ones toward the back, the really trippy ones, mostly just spun around in circles – often well-lit as well.

But it was cool! Kind of Build-A-Bear meets Cabaret Voltaire cool, but cool like that! I wanna go again – and be almost the oldest guy there. There was an elderly gentleman in a straw hat with a handful of glow stick bracelets on each wrist. He rocked back and forth in the middle of the crowd. I was proud.