Pandemic Newsflash: Consumer Confidence Is Our New Leader. Political Spin Has Novel Coronavirus

      [ADOLESCENT WARNING! THIS ARTICLE HAS A TON OF SHIT AND A FUCK OR TWO]

        It has been a while since I've written on politics; a year in reality, however, over two years if you exclude the piece I wrote last May on Pelosi and her reluctance to impeach Donald Trump. Since I've been away, a lot has happened in our world, but really, not a damn thing has happened at all except the 2018 elections and this current pandemic, the matter that brings me back to the arena of political lip flapping.

        I would love to think that something I enjoy researching and engaging in so much is more than just creative political opinionating, yet, I am now well aware of how truly foolish politics can become thanks to the last 3 years of pure foolishness we've been reduced to. Of course, this is not to suggest that politics are not important. This is to insist that the day to day exchange of thoughts and ideas in our current political arena has been proven to be nothing more than the last surviving circus in America with a ton of elephants and donkeys rolling around, doing silly tricks and shitting all over the place in the process. If anyone has watched the manner in which Congress has gone about dealing with what should be the most bipartisan issue in the history of bipartisan issues and can describe their behavior any better than I did in that last sentence, I highly encourage you to do it and share the results with me. I am totally curious on how many creative ways there are to describe a shit show.

        I enjoy Twitter and Facebook (sorry Google) as much as the next person, but my decision to get away from writing full blown articles (that I would want to read) about televised political pooping was not easy, but it was necessary. At some point it became obvious that the media was simply using Trump- and other people's anger towards him- for the sake of clicks and revenue, and there was just no easy way to not be a part of all that except to not be a part of all that, so I took a hiatus and decided to write a book instead.

        Now that we are all locked down in a pseudo-national quarantine, many of us have had the opportunity to reflect on ourselves and our lives, drink a lot, or drink a lot and reflect on ourselves and our lives all at the same time. Drinking and reflecting typically involves a replay of all the regrets, so I would encourage dancing when you drink and not much reflecting on life. Just a suggestion. Nonetheless, if you have embraced the opportunity to get to know the people in your home, including the one you see in the mirror every morning, you might finally be coming into the realization that nobody, and I repeat, nobody can be the blame for your happiness or sadness.  My apologies if I lost you or killed your morning buzz from that comment.

        For those who are still with me, I have to confess that I mostly lived by that mantra before the election of Donald fkn Trump. I include the FKN with no intention of disrespecting the President of the United States of America that I have very little respect for, but to emphasize the depth of the hatred I HAD developed for the guy we call president. I'm using all caps to bring strong attention to the word HAD, because I USED to hate the guy. Now, I just feel terribly sad for him and US.

 
        My deep sadness started over 2 yrs ago, when I no longer had the desire to write another word about this man. At the time, I also started that book project, so my assumption initially was that I could not easily co-mingle my brain when it came to writing. While the book is finally  winding through final edits, I now realize my inability to co-mingle had very little to do with anything other than the state of depression I was in for American politics. In a way, I have gone through the stages of grief over the death of American politics- my deceased mistress- via the election of Donald J. Trump, which essentially acknowledges that I experienced anger, stage two of grief, for way too long towards this man we call president. Most of our denial happened during the campaign, and we can all recall the bargaining we went through of blaming Hillary for being an awful candidate, or blaming non-voters for not voting. We are not over the Russia blame, but that's another topic for another day.
     
        Every divinely authored sermon in life is one you are learning yourself as you are sharing it with others. I used to love sharing the image to the right as a sermon to myself and to encourage other people to take ownership of themselves and dominion over their emotions. In the spirit of a true confession that might help someone else who is struggling with the same issue, I used to hate our fuckin' president and the mere sight of him made me angry. I ran away from talking about him because there wasn't anything new to be said, but mostly, I was mad as hell and couldn't find enough creative ways to say that or anything else.

        Today, I acknowledge that Trump used to own me the way he currently still owns a bunch of you. I am writing again today to purge this issue, to hopefully save some of you from the silent chains you bear, and to take back agency with myself and my native realm of artistic expression- political lip flapping. He who angers you might own you......but he who kills your creative spirit is killing you as well. So, I am back to writing about politics again because a newsworthy matter has arrived. But, mostly I am writing because I must.

        I am writing again today because pandemics happen about as often as ill-suited businessmen winning the presidency. While we have found ourselves to be mostly vaccinated against the damages of voting for the wrong person to lead our nation, we have also found out that vaccinations against viruses and bad presidents take a while to be created and only work if you take them.

       The best option that exists to deal with a novel virus is to self distance, mask up or stay home for the biological ones, and educate yourself on the nuances of the other virus any way you can until it is forced to go away via concerned citizens or term limits, whichever comes first. If you hadn't noticed, pandemics are great for film study or research of any kind. This moment film study/research for me came without intention as I was simply enjoying my morning coffee and scrolling through the movie channels to make sure I get maximum value for the premium channel services I am paying for during this pandemic. Because I insist on getting value out of my purchases, I now know why we are all going through this pandemic like a kite without a string.

       "Where's My Roy Cohn" was the documentary I came across and it left me wishing I had researched him back when his name first became mentioned in connection with Trump. I had seen a few pieces about Roger Stone which made me believe I understood a little bit about Trump, but Stone admits in this documentary, Cohn created him too, and you simply can not understand Trump or Stone without knowing Roy Cohn.

        For those who aren't old enough or didn't follow the Roy Cohn story close enough to know much about him, this documentary not only let's you know who he was, it tells you everything you need to know about the current ring leader of our Washington D.C. circus, and why he wants the spotlight kept on him and all of his pronouncements instead of any other animal in the act, including the media.   

        Yes. The media is just another animal stuck in this circus act, because most of the media has no way of knowing how to make it all end, and the rest have no desire to. The media of America is as dirty as Donald says we are even if we have tried our level best to minimize our overt dirtiness with him. Similarly, the Congress of America is as corrupt and guilt worthy as anyone when it comes to how we got into the mess we are in However, no one should read these indictments and consider themselves exempt.

        If you are not a part of the media or Congress, you still consume whatever media they give, giving them very little reason to feed you anything else, and you vote- or don't vote- with partisan predictability allowing for life-long incumbents and giving them no reason to listen to you. The real circus used to exist because it had a crowd that made it exist. In America's political circus, you are now either a performer or you are the constituents of the performance, because, the people who refused to go to the circus because it glorified caged animals played as active a role in making the circus go away as the people who got bored with the show.

        When I took a look in my own mirror over two years ago, I saw a disgruntled media person as well as an angry constituent who kept buying a damn ticket, and I no longer wanted to be either one. I was covering Donald's latest moment of disrespect towards someone new each day as if it deserved to be talked about like news. Mostly, it was and is just shocking and embarrassing. It absolutely is not newsworthy anymore. Pandemics aside, history will give us all plenty of time to be shocked by this MAGA moment in history that we've created or allowed. With all due respect, with everything at stake and no one steering us through this but YOU, it is not time to keep being shocked by another day of the same shit.

       We all know where to go to find his latest tweet if we need a jolt to our senses with a fresh bucket of embarrassment. If that doesn't work, go see the Globetrotters. Unlike the circus, they still have a crowd. Otherwise, nothing has really been newsworthy about this man we are forced to call president for well over two years, and that includes that slow moving, dodge-able bullet called the impeachment trial. By the time Pelosi finally decided she had enough, America was stuck in a "why now" moment of disbelief over her late pull of the trigger. When we all woke up from too many hours of impeachment coverage, we were left feeling as if the thing she finally impeached him for was much less important than the Mueller report, especially considering how Trump openly did towards China the same thing that he was impeached for doing with Ukraine.

        Trump is only right about the slime in Washington D.C. because he rubbed shoulders, donated to to both sides and slid smoothly without detection between the slime for years. In essence, he was and is the slime too, so nobody noticed or cared that he was there. In addition, nobody understands the slime or the slimey better than him, however, he told us that from the very beginning along with a bunch of other things that have many of us shaking our heads as though he wasn't up front about it all. Of course, he straight up lied about the taxes, but you get my point. He is who we thought he was, so the rest is up to YOU. You can remain stuck in denial, anger, depression, or bargaining away the blame on non-voters, but its time for acceptance so we can save our nation.  In the final analysis, if this pandemic and the presidency of Donald J. Trump does not help us to achieve anything personally, then it will not help us achieve anything collectively because all change begins with YOU.

        I am proud that I stared into the mirror over two years ago, saw a guy who was angry over a silly white man with an orange tan, and said enough already. Two years later, I am actually over the sadness and fully within acceptance, but Facebook doesn't really give you a wide range of options to click when responding to posts or comments in regards to Trump, so 😢 wins every time for me still.

        Now that I stand here healed and on the other side of my pain, I am also proud to say that I have gone through the stages of grief over the death of American politics too, and it has helped me immensely as we all sit back and watch the kind of disarray in D.C. that we've never seen at historically bipartisan moments when the world desperately needs leaders to lead.

        Take it or leave it. Congress is broken and Donald is all we have, which means we don't have much. After watching the Roy Cohn documentary, I now understand how we got him (and Ronald Reagan too btw😳....yes, watch it) and who he is better than I ever did before. At the risk of a spoiler for those of you who haven't seen it, it will explain why Trump pretends everything is a positive no matter how bad it looks. This is what Trump learned from Cohn as the number one lesson. This is what he does no matter the moment before him. This is what has worked for him immeasurably prior to a pandemic, and this is exactly what is going to kill him figuratively, along with countless Americans literally, because a virus with no vaccine and this level of contagiousness will become the kind of bad news that even Roy Cohn could not spin before it is all over.

        It all ready is, and you can't simply tell people who are afraid of a virus that is killing thousands, 'you are doing a good job' when you are not. The job will be good when WE the People are willing to go places again. PERIOD!! What our president is doing right now will not bring confidence to anyone, which means he is functionally useless, which means YOU are the only hope WE have left.

Watch any 4 television commercials in a row like I did, and
see if you notice any trends or similarities in the theme? If
you can't already tell, YOU are the only hope for this economy. 

     
        Scared people need honesty over bluster. Scared people realize viruses don't know your political affiliation so they want truth in times of fear and not Roy Cohn derived political spin. To watch Donald do his thing before I knew about Roy Cohn was infuriating and terribly confusing before I grew to accept it for what it is. To watch him now that I know what he is doing and why he keeps doing it despite watching it not work day after day is enlightening to the point of almost refreshing in a way. What this pandemic and that documentary has shown me is that, Donald can't lead any other way, and he might not be interested in learning after all of these years of using the media to simply spin the narrative, just like Roy taught him.

        In a way, this pandemic has proven to everyone still evaluating what we currently have in a president versus what we are being offered by way of Joe Biden, that Donald only knows spin....and golf. He might know real estate, but he has failed a lot in that arena and we have yet to see those taxes to determine if he's particularly good at real estate, so the jury is still out on the topic.

       Through his two hour daily televised circus events, Trump reveals his style of leadership for all to clearly see. In a moment when the playbook has already been written for him, in simple words with large text, Trump is floundering and can't seem to read this Dr. Seuss book or listen to Dr. Fauci's advice.  Recent polls suggest only 35% of Americans are still listening to him for guidance through this pandemic. While some of you might be focusing on the number I just shared and evaluating who in the hell that 35% could be, I am focusing on the fact that someone decided we needed a poll asking who are you listening to right now. As I publish this piece, I am two days removed from my 51st birthday, and I am hard pressed to recall when such a question has ever been asked. Ever!!

        If you watch Governor Cuomo (NY) each day, you quickly realize this should be so easy to do, yet, all Trump can do is the same thing he has done from day one. In this crazy circus of elephants and donkeys, the ring leader turns just so happens to be a one-trick pony.

        For every other situation prior to this pandemic, his song and dance has been enough to at least satisfy his base and satiate Mitch McConnel and Republicans from the urge to preserve the now mythical co-equal balance of power that WE were falsely made to believe would protect us from tyranny back in grade school.

             Most importantly, WE. Me. You. US, now know that WE are the straw that stirs the drink. Without us, all the ingredients could be available, but the sugar will settle to the bottom and the drink will taste so awful that it doesn't matter what price you put on it, WE won't buy it. The signs were always there if you listen a lot of news. Whenever they talk about the economy- under Obama or Donald- they define the strength of it as being one thing and one thing only. CONSUMER CONFIDENCE! If WE can't trust what you are selling us, WE surely won't trust dying over what you are selling us, will WE? I love the taste of well made Kool-Aid just like the next person, but not enough to die for it, especially when I can just make that shit at home.

        In the name of home-made kool-aid, I'm back into this arena of political lip flapping because my brain is no longer co-mingled, and there is finally something worth flapping about, which is this current conversation over CONSUMER CONFIDENCE; aka., YOU and me. I started my mirror moments over two years ago, so I am fully into this process of self realization we are all enduring during the era of Trump in general and the pandemic specifically.  At the risk of over inflating my own value, it seems clear to me that me, and people like me, will determine when it's time to get Taco Bell back to normal business levels, not elected officials. If you fools who aren't taking this seriously could save the economy by yourselves, the current businesses that are still open would not be down 40% in sales, but they are, and, even with a return to everything open, everybody won't be outside buying Taco Bell until everyone can be made to feel safe while doing it.

            I ask you, random consumer reading this post? Are you rushing back to any place that is crowded and has a potential health risk just because its one of the places who has an owner deciding to open so you can regain your sense of normalcy, or are you willing to let the other people buy shoes at an understaffed Ross until you feel confident that it is safe?

        Don't answer that. You don't need to. Without question, only consumer confidence will work to save our economy. Period. There is a window for business owners with limited liquidity to ride the storm to save themselves by offering stock options instead of money, so they can retain staff with the promise of future wealth sharing, but that is also much too close to Socialism and much to close to right to ever happen. Because fighting to become the powerful makes some people afraid to share what they've gained, many powerful people will practically risk and lose everything they have rather than willingly let go of their power. Donald J. Trump is exhibit A for this dynamic as he holds on to his powerful way of manipulating the world at the risk of losing the presidency and millions of lives during his watch.

        If circumstances play out as they are currently headed, we will get to witness a mass realignment of power- be that actually or just conceptually- as WE all are forced to fully reckon with the reality that capitalism is controlled by the consumer and no one else. In other words, how often you stare yourself in the mirror each morning and the message you deliver to the person standing there will determine the future of your individual financial situation, which will determine the future of our nation. In other words, this post and our future is all about YOU.

    In the face of a pandemic, getting to know yourself is kinda' not optional unless you intend to drink yourself broke to avoid all of that. For those of us embracing our mirrors and saving our money, it is clear. WE the People are the only hope for our personal survival and for the survival of our nation, and the rest of the world is anxiously waiting to see what we'll do next. Not just about opening our country, but whether or not we will return to who WE used to be for ourselves and the world at large. 

It's Only A Crisis Because Pelosi Is Afraid To Impeach

     Donald J. Trump, America's current President, wants to be impeached just as Nancy Pelosi says, and he will stone-wall his way into making it happen if he must. Pelosi wants to win even if it means not doing her job, as if Trump will impeach himself for her. 

     So the war is underway. Impeach him and run the risk of helping him get re-elected, or try to beat him at the ballot box while fighting back the morality cops, like Elizabeth Warren, who see this as a clear matter of integrity.

     
 I agree with Warren and I believe Pelosi and the Democrats are joining Republicans in a really dangerous game of wanting to win the politics of the day so badly, they are running from the spirit of justice in a nation much too passionate about honoring that spirit.

     Wantonness is not a great emotion to plan around, but it is the driving force for everything Democrats talk about these days. They want Trump gone so badly, but they are afraid to listen to the Mueller report and just "Do Their Jobs" because of the potential political backlash.

     Instead of simply reading the report- which, I am starting to question if many in Congress have- Democrats want to chase down Bob Mueller and former White House attorney, Don McGhan, who might be forced to testify, but will never be able to say anything that isn't already contained in the report. No matter how much Democrats want their way on this, they will look silly having McGhan turn to pages in the report to read it out loud on television for them. In essence, they want Mueller and McGhan  and Trump to do their jobs for them.

     In fact, Pelosi said as much when she recently resorted to stuttering her way into a weird explanation of Trump trying to "self impeach", a term nobody in the world understands but Pelosi. Even her attempts to clarify herself only amounted to saying that "Trump is building the case for his own impeachment".

     Translation: Pelosi wants Trump to do her job within Congress of whipping up support for impeachment by convincing individuals who are too lazy to do their jobs, to do their jobs and finally read the report. Pelosi herself is more willing to claim that we are in the midst of a Constitutional crisis rather than do her job and accept the answer the Constitution has given for this crisis moment.

     Because of the Providential perfection of our amendable Constitution, you can never have a Constitutional crisis until you run into a problem that the Constitution has no answer for. The problem right now is that the politics are historically horrible on impeachment, which has nothing to do with a crisis at all. This is about Pelosi wanting to have her cake and eat it too. But, everyone wants to have and eat their cake right now, and it's not a good look for any of them.

     Progressive Democrats say they want a woman to be the next President of the United States, but can't find one the masses seem willing to support yet. In addition to their Medicare-for-all plans, these progressives really want America to finally get serious about climate change vis a vis their Green New Deal, which is currently just a cool name and not quite a deal or a plan yet.

     Many of the new progressives in the party came to Washington D.C. on a commitment to impeach this President, but they have been quieted by Pelosi even though the Mueller report gives them more ammunition to impeach than they had when they arrived.

     Republicans have their own wants, but they are limited because they got that tax cut that turned out to be 4-5% bigger than anyone ever wanted or asked for. As it stands, way too many Republicans simply want Democrats to move on from Mueller's findings and turn a blind eye to the outlined obstructions and impeachment instructions messaged in the report. If you read between the lines on Pelosi's "self impeachment" comment, she seems willing to comply.

     Unfortunately for the GOP, moving on from Mueller means moving on to a huge spending bill that Trump negotiated directly with Chuck and Nancy (Schumer and Pelosi) realizing Congress is hardly the right place to make agreements anymore. This odd trio have agreed to a $2 trillion infrastructure plan that will probably get jammed by the politics of deficits, special interest add-ons, or a combination of both

     But I am mostly upset with Pelosi who is convinced the impeachment process will "die at the Senate's edge" and has fended her party away from the process, even though she seems more and more willing to discuss the option herself after the controversial AG Barr Senate testimony recently.  If Democrat voters start to feel this President deserves more than he is getting, they will stop pressuring this President and start pressuring his enablers instead- Democrats included.

     Pelosi is correct in her view on the dead end road impeachment faces in the Senate, but she is dead wrong in her overall analysis of the benefit to detriment because justice can never be about politics. Whether every Senator in America chooses to align themselves on the right side of history or not doesn't diminish the importance of making them have to. 

     In fact, this is not the time to run from the process and suggest the ideal of a Constitutional crisis. This is the time to use the process and make every person in Congress have to place their marker in the history books for our grandchildren to study. This is a time to shame those who haven't read the report, and this is also the time to better explain what the word impeachment means.....because, in the minds of many, the word means removal, and Americans don't like removing people WE voted for unless we have no other choice. The first Democrat to own the process of explaining impeachment to US all will help drive the process to its proper conclusion, and they might even win the White House for their efforts.

     An impeachment is a trial.  Period. It is a fact finding process intended to investigate cabinet officials who could be immune to such an inquiry if not for impeachment. Anyone geeky enough to be reading this already understood that. Many Americans do not. The only crisis currently is that Congress is at a stand still in getting documents from the White House for every current congressional investigation, including Russian election interference, and Congress can't begin their duty of oversight without compliance from the Trump administration.

     Insert AG Barr, who runs the Justice Department and is the key lineman blocking out front for all of Trump's obstruction efforts. Ultimately, someone in the Department of Justice will have to decide to indict their boss if Democrats attempt to hold Barr in contempt for not testifying before the House as requested recently. Lying to Senators about the letter he had received from Mueller is also perjury, which is an impeachable offense. As with Nixon, obstruction of a congressional investigation is also an impeachment worthy offense. 

     At the very least, Trump and his administration have promised to obstruct and are presently living up to the promise. The reasons to shut up and do something about this administration are recent, ongoing, and exist outside of the Mueller report, a report which also begs for something to be done.

     Impeachments alone have never resulted in the removal of a President because they were not necessarily intended for that. Before the Senate ever gets a chance to vote to remove a President via impeachment, a majority vote has to happen in the House first. The Founding Fathers intentionally designed an impeachment to be just as difficult as it should be. 

     Despite popular perception, the politics of impeachment are much more damaging to the party of the President, but that is beside the point. The impeachment process is the point and it is a provision designed for scenarios that demand it. It is part of the oath of the office that Congress promises to fulfill when the President and his cabinet fails to fulfill their own oaths.  History has painted impeachments as toxic, but politics themselves are naturally toxic and occasionally corrupt. By reinforcing the toxicity of an impeachment, Pelosi and Democrats are blaming the remedy.

     A concerted push for a better understanding of the process would offer better clarity to the word itself and to the necessity for invoking it when the Constitution demands. The Democrats anxiously screaming for impeachment need to acknowledge the confusion about the process and clarify it enough to tilt public perception and force Pelosi's hand. 

     The reason impeachments have never removed a President is because our hope-filled dream of Democracy in this fractured Republic typically intervenes. In reality, the standard for removal has always been higher than"... high crimes and misdemeanors", even while the standard for impeachment is not. Until Nancy Pelosi gets that and gets the courage to do what is right and not what is politically expedient, she is failing her country, her party and herself.

     I hate to beat a dead horse, but this horse deserves a beating. Pelosi asking for hearings with Mueller is the equivalent of asking him to slap her and the rest of the Democrats over the head with the obvious before they do what the report begs of them. All of this because everyone in D.C. wants a political victory even if America loses along the way.

     Until political wantonness changes, beating Trump at the ballot box is the only trick the Democrat pony can pull off, and Joe Biden is the best option to do it. Yet, beating Trump in 2020 is what Nancy needs. It has nothing to do with integrity, justice or addressing the reason Trump won in the first place. Trump happened for a reason and his approval ratings have never been low enough for me to think that mysterious reason has changed.

     Yeah, Russia is the easy answer, however, I tend to believe that Russia tipped a scale that was waiting to fall over from eight years of the racial uneasiness from a black president that millions refused to call their own. Now, we have millions on the other end of the political spectrum unwilling to do the same with Trump although the underlying issues from both sides are bigger than either men.

   It might be time for each of US to take ownership of our own part of this problem. We all want the America WE dream of but can't see how we become our own worst enemies screaming to the winds for the America we want instead of pursuing a nation that fulfills the wants of many, Trumpians included. The Trumpian army isn't confused about what's wrong even if they have a fully distorted view of who to blame or how to fix it. 

     Because the "Lord Is My Shepherd" I loathe the word want and wantonness, and I run from the use of the word as often as I can. It is a selfish emotion.  It defies my spiritual upbringing and denotes a desperation that defies the constant provisions of God. It screams desperation, yet, some needs are desperate, and I too want this rightfully elected dude gone just as passionately as the rest of you.

     What I don't want is to use want as a strategy to get him out. I don't want an elected president to lose his job without the full benefit of a due process too politically risky to touch. I would like for Trump to get everything he deserves, even if the process results in a real exoneration and not a fake news variety.

     What I also don't want, is for Democrats to pursue a political gain and
short circuit the process and the pursuit of democracy intended by the Founding Fathers who created the impeachment to properly adjudicate the misdeeds of a President gone array. If the misdeeds are unfounded, only the process can fully investigate and set the record straight, either way.

     No matter how Trump fights it, history will be forced to sniff out the truth. No matter how Pelosi fights it, the impeachment process was meant to deal with certain presidential matters and everyone in Congress currently playing politics instead of doing their job to clarify the historical record will be held accountable by history as well.

     No, this isn't a Constitutional crisis because there is an answer for this moment and it lives in the Constitution. One day in the future, Republicans and Democrats will regret not reading the report soon enough, and they'll regret trying to take this moment to use it as an opportunity for their own political gain.  Every American who lets them get away with it will feel the same regret.

What Exactly Is A President For If Not Reassurance?

First it was just one old guy recalling his boxing days, Now 

he's actually the president with an influence on steroids. As he

calls for civility, will he change his stump speech attacks?

A time consuming writing project forced me away from my typical opining on current events, which has worked out fine because my Super Bowl 50 champion Broncos suck almost as much as our president, and there are only so many ways you can ridicule John Elway or Donald Trump before YOU start to look like the idiot and not them.

My two Trump loving followers who read that previous paragraph are thinking to themselves, Trump doesn't suck, CNN sucks. Even they, however, are smart enough to keep those words inside at a time like this. Our president is not. He is too small a man to simply call the targets of terror and offer his words of sympathy.

As it stands, Trump has postponed his own verbal attacks on CNN and the rest, but he smiled and listened to the ritual chant- "CNN Sucks"- of his campaign crowd,  just one day after FBI agents arrested the pipe bomb terrorist who targeted CNN and others declared enemies by Trump himself.

If news is nothing more than what WE find interest in, these recent acts of terror and violence are mostly news worthy out of decency for the victims not because they are unique, irregular or terribly interesting. I've forced myself to opinionate on this "way too regular" fringe violence crap because I find myself- once again- a normal, Regular American longing and waiting for my president to comfort me into rationalizing away America's violent nature, like presidents usually do. 

I'm still waiting.

If the president of our country were simply capable of saying the right thing at the right time, WE could all feign sadness and quickly return to whatever television show we binge watch over the weekends so we can mentally recharge for our understaffed, underpaid work weeks.

Despite the 11 people murdered at a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh, following 5-days of pipe bomb terror all over America, President Trump continues to do and say everything except the reassuring words regular Americans need right now.

In reality, there will always be extremists behaving extremely. Regular Americans understand this even as WE wait the 2 hours of post-tragedy grief that is customary before we argue over gun rights, the NRA or just return to our television binging for mental health escape.

WE, the regular People of America, don't blame George W. Bush for wars or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan even if we believe Saudi Arabia deserved the brunt of our anger, and maybe still does. Some of US might blame Bush, but the lion-share of America understands the industry of war, the necessity of war and the hair-triggers that cause violence of all kinds.

WE also understand that, sometimes, we war with ourselves whenever weapons of war become tools of terror in our streets, because Regular Americans understand the parable about living by the sword and recognize the inevitability of all this. When things grow beyond our ability to explain, Regular Americans know enough to follow the trail of money to clarify confusion. War an violence bring tons of money even as they bankrupt those who overuse them.

When it comes to war of any sort, presidents are often nothing more than the guys who listen to the advice of the generals and sign or decline their documents to proceed- especially now that Congress has abdicated that role among a few others. A president can choose to fight another day or in another way, but the industry and the machinery chugs along with our without their 4-8 years of consent. Violence in our streets is a byproduct of war in our world. It is a sad reflection of our inner-most nature to confront difficult challenges with rage.

Russian president, Vladimir Putin, predicted

 the end of American greatness. Is he right?

And if so, what will be our demise?

As it relates to violence in general, WE, the People, are a peculiar lot. We continue to market our land with milk and honey even though guns like the AR-15 have long since become the item most reflective of modern America and its nightmarish Dream.

The eerie connection between the Dream of America, our gun lust and that caravan from Latin America is a lengthy conversation all by itself.
(The Latin American gun leak. -- LA Times. Jan. 6th 2015)



Any notion that people willing to walk over 2,000 miles for a dream could be lazy is even more silly than the idea that ISIS would fly to the Guatemala just to join their death defying journey. The Trump administrations attempt to stoke fear of migrants by claiming Middle Easterner infiltration of the caravan. Making descendants from the Middle East analogous to terrorists is possibly more shameful than his refusal to be a president for Real Americans when Real Americans need it.

In some ways, WE are a land of type-A personalities who breed, attract and inspire those same personalities from near and far to come, live in our land and argue alongside US about what it means to be American, or how America can ignore the dangers of our violent compulsions, yet, still remain the best country in the world and not just a nation conforming to one man's distorted view of greatness.


WE will never lose our partisan divide even if the lines get blurred by another flawed, reactive socialized program or two that Regular Americans discover they need too much to let go of, flawed or not. Regular Americans want our degrading social programs to be replaced with sensible, dignified hand up legislation because Regular Americans realize that the sacrifices of the American Dream are also the exact formula for achieving it. Regular Americans still believe in the dream and see their dreams as clearly as they see the obstacles because regular Americans understand what it takes to keep ALL of our dreams alive.

On the fringes of American society, we will always have pessimists who think all this a nightmare. Because fear and misery demand company, those on the fringes have no choice but to bring the rest of US into their nightmares just to legitimize their own miserable fear induced realities. The reasons for those on the fringe are numerous and real, but no more real than the fact that the extreme fringes are not the majority. The majority of US love this land for what it is and can be, and are enjoying our chase of the dream the best WE can.

WE the People, know quite clearly what happens if we remain silent when they come for the Jews, so we depend on the civility of our president whenever those on the fringes terrorize our neighbors until we no longer understand how to feel about our country, or ourselves. 

While Democrats focus on the rhetoric of the pipe bomb terrorist, 

Republicans deflect by pointing to his Native American race.

Maybe this pipe bomb terrorist is not a Nationalist like our president recently  announced himself to be. And hopefully this Pittsburgh killer doesn't avow himself to Trump either. Regular people don't really care about the political leaning of killers who terrorize US even if our debate over weapons of war makes it look like WE do.

At moments like this, WE need to be reassured that WE are much more similar than different.

According to Trump, some 

of these are fine people.

Trumpians might have found a feeling of reassurance in the words Trump robotically read before he stepped all over them with some weird attack on the media and a few false equivalencies about congressman Steve Scalise, but Regular Americans are still empty.

Whatever Trump called his moment of reassurance only stoked terror and the debate further. With every shallow call from our president for "all sides" to improve, I am hard-pressed to understand what Trump wants to see from the media, or what he intends to change himself? I am beyond baffled as to who will change first when our president hasn't even declared what change should look like...."on all sides".

If there's anything the media should change if they could, what exactly should it be Mr. President? Lead US! Reassure US, if you can.

I will give Trump this concession on behalf of the media. If Congress was at all worthwhile, guns wouldn't be so rampant and presidents wouldn't be allowed or expected to send troops to war because war would only happen as the Constitution prescribes- via congressional order.

If this current Congress was at all fulfilling it's coequal duty, they might consider this president guilty of yelling fire in a theatre from campaign speeches that have stoked his fringes to act against a hit-list of opponents and other undesirables. It is perfectly legitimate to question the impetus of recent radicals. It is unthinkable that any president would call for civility while running so hard away from it at the same time.

Let me say this once more, for effect! The day after catching the pipe bomb terrorist, our current president was not wise or courageous enough to discontinue the "CNN Sucks" rant while campaigning. Is that a high crime or a misdemeanor? Did those two black people at Kroger die from just being black in Trump's America and or did they die from Trump's inability to promote the very civility he calls for? 

Will  there continue to be more unexplained terror stoked and promoted by our Nationalist president until a seemingly clear connection is no longer avoidable? 

If the next pipe bomber goes a step further after a Democrat mid-term takeover of congress, Trump could easily be considered a cause of this and could be impeached from the deadly toxicity of his presidency alone.

In reality, high crimes and misdemeanors can mean whatever Congress wants it to mean when they are convinced that a president is no longer fulfilling the call of the office. And what is more vital to the call of the office than what WE need from a president at moments like these?

Americans don't like the impeachment of a president, so smart Democrats like Nancy Pelosi won't let her party forget that truth. Unless, of course, the next wave of pipe bomb terror comes at her. How Pelosi managed to avoid pipe bomb terror is as mysterious as why none of them exploded.

Trump: "You should have had an armed guard in your 

church....and capital punishment. God bless all."

From military to economic, Trump has waged war with his own advisers and appointees, yet, none of them seem to care or seem compelled to follow his radical lead in areas of such vital significance. Republicans in Congress have tried to cater to his whims, but even they could only pull off a tax cut for themselves and a controversial Supreme Court pick that might work against them come November 6th.

The quandry for the GOP is that they will either l retain their majority and have to explain why they still can't agree on anything useful enough to turn into law, or they will lose their majority and have to fend off the kind of congressional oversight of the president that used to be part of co-equal governance. Anything left to be accomplished in America can not pay for itself, something Republicans promised their tax cut would do.

The bully pulpit of the president has always mattered because it is essentially their only weapon. Presidents function on influence alone, although nothing is more powerful than being able to influence the media cycle and popular opinion. Congress used to be powerful, but those days are a distant memory.

Presidents don't write the bills they eventually sign, and they obviously can't even force their own party to buy a wall they promised Mexico would pay for. Obama used his influence to complete universal healthcare, but he did it using the Republican plan based on pressure from his own party even though he didn't get a single Republican vote for his conciliatory effort.

Unless the president of the U.S. is attempting to comfort US with their yearly State of the Union- or a monthly address from another act of terror- presidents don't really have a whole lot they can do but comfort US when our world appears frenzied.

Until WE all screwed up and allowed Russia to suppress and influence enough voters into our orange accident, WE had always elected a president with the capacity to speak words of reassurance to the bulk of US and not just those fringe folks who terrorize or tacitly approve.

Now WE have a president incapable of rising above tough coverage, Saturday night live spoofs or the  insults about his spray tan to still do the only thing WE need presidents to do.

And it's sad.