GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #942: OH FUCK

Oh fuck. Things aren't looking great right now. I'm going to bed. Here's to hoping tomorrow morning has better news for the United States.

SOMETHING TO CONSIDER by John Bruni NOW AVAILABLE!

 

Check it out here!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #941: THE DUKE OF MAMMON

 

Tomorrow is Weasel Stomping Day, so this is my last chance to shit-talk Donald Trump as a presidential candidate, at least until he returns in four years to make our lives a living hell again. If you are still somehow on the fence about this guy, it is my intention tonight to try to get you to vote for someone else. Anyone else. Is Ross Perot running again? Vote for him.*

Back when I was in college JFK, Jr., created a magazine called George, named after the first president of our nation (as opposed to the King we fought a revolution against?). His intention was to explore where politics and pop culture meet. It was an interesting idea at the time, so I subscribed. It turned out to be a very uninteresting magazine, though, so I let the subscription lapse after a year. I think it would have been a lot more interesting today, in a world where politics and pop culture are inextricably linked to one another.

As you may know I've been cleaning out my house since my grandma's death, expecting to be kicked out at any moment by the bank who now owns it. So I've been exploring a lot, and I found my old issues of George. (Not, sadly, the one the MAGA douchebags point to as evidence that JFK, Jr., was supposed to come back and be Trump's running mate. I think that one, worth thousands (as opposed to this one, worth hundreds), was a couple of months before my subscription started.) One of them stood out from the rest of them: the issue pictured above.

(Please note, in the bottom left-hand corner, these words: THE TRUMPSTER. I'm pretty sure it was the editor who came up with that idiotic nonsense. If you're too young, there was an inexplicable time in our history when adding -ster to anything was cool. It was not actually cool. It was incredibly stupid at the time, so I'm going to take to calling him the Trumpster until he dies.)

As we were living under the threat of another Trumpster Administration at the time (and still are, at least until tomorrow) I thought it would be an important article to read. It was most illuminating. I'm not going to say much myself in this, just some commentary here and there. These are pictures I took of the article at various times. There's also a bonus section at the bottom for the unfortunately named "First Babes."

Let's start off with why I've called this column such:

This portrait of the Trumpster hangs in Mar-a-Lago, a chintzy Florida property he bought up way-back-when and covered with the cheap gilt shit he puts on everything. He bragged about putting a million down to buy it, but we know what his brags are really about. If you don't, you will shortly. But just for a second, let's pretend that the Trumpster (which nearly rhymes with "Dumpster," by the way, very apropos considering his recent jaunt in a garbage truck) was a normal person. Like a dude who lived down the street from you. Could you imagine going into such a neighbor's house and being confronted with this gaudy painting of himself? Could you take him seriously? I certainly couldn't. But the Trumpster was Not Serious when all this started. More on that in a moment.

This article was published in 2000, back when he was running for president the second time. I don't have much info about that first time (you'll see that little bit of info in a moment), but this time a reporter was smart enough to ask him why he was running.

The Trumpster, not being all that bright, told him the truth. (Or, as Gore Vidal would say, he "gave away the game.")

Wait, he was running for president as a PROMOTIONAL TOOL?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! So then . . . what about that first time he ran?

OK, let's stop for a moment. He ran for president the first time to bring visibility to his book? HE RAN FOR PRESIDENT AS A BOOK PROMOTION?!?!?!?!?! That son of a--wait a minute. That sounds kind of familiar. OK, yeah, I ran for president as a book promotion once. I, uh, don't have a lot of shade to throw on that one, I guess.

The first argument against this is, the Trumpster already has a lot of money. Why would he need to get more? Boy, do I have news for you about our corporate overlords! But here's a few thoughts on the Trumpster's personal worth as "presidential material":

That's not bad. Not bad at all. That's definitely worth telling a few lies over.

The Trumpster ran again between then and 2016, much with the same result: bowing out of the race with the ability to rent condos worth millions instead of hundreds of thousands. But 2016 changed everything. Do you remember how he conducted himself back then? There was no way that dude was serious. Even in 2000 everyone knew he was not a serious contender.

What went wrong in 2016? To ensure that he was not going to get elected, he said just about anything and everything he could imagine that would turn people off. My theory is, he didn't count on how many pieces of shit we have in this country who want a racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic (except Russia and Germany (specifically Nazi Germany)) garbage man as their Commander-in-Chief. He was not pleased when he won the White House. Perhaps these passages from George are the explanation as to why. And if you doubt his rage upon becoming the most powerful man in the world, here are a couple of quotes. The first is from author Mary Jordan, Melania Trumpster's biographer.

“The election night win came as a surprise even to Trump, according to many on his campaign, and little preparation had been done for what came next. Trump had even talked about going to one of his golf courses in Scotland immediately after the election so he didn’t have to watch Hillary Clinton bask in her success. One campaign aide recalled that candidate Trump had ‘told the pilot [of his private jet], ‘Fuel up the plane.’ “

Or how about this from author Michael Wolff? ("Their" being the Trumpster campaign.)

Their unexpected adventure would soon be over. Not only would Trump not be president, almost everyone in the campaign agreed, he should probably not be. Conveniently, the former conviction meant nobody had to deal with the latter issue.

As the campaign came to an end, Trump himself was sanguine. His ultimate goal, after all, had never been to win. “I can be the most famous man in the world,” he had told his aide Sam Nunberg at the outset of the race. His longtime friend Roger Ailes, the former head of Fox News, liked to say that if you want a career in television, first run for president. Now Trump, encouraged by Ailes, was floating rumors about a Trump network. It was a great future. He would come out of this campaign, Trump assured Ailes, with a far more powerful brand and untold opportunities.

“This is bigger than I ever dreamed of,” he told Ailes a week before the election. “I don’t think about losing, because it isn’t losing. We’ve totally won.”

That's pretty tasty, but here's the best part of Wolff's assessment:

Shortly after 8 p.m. on Election Night, when the unexpected trend — Trump might actually win — seemed confirmed, Don Jr. told a friend that his father, or DJT, as he calls him, looked as if he had seen a ghost. Melania was in tears — and not of joy.

There was, in the space of little more than an hour, in Steve Bannon’s not unamused observation, a befuddled Trump morphing into a disbelieving Trump and then into a horrified Trump. But still to come was the final transformation: Suddenly, Donald Trump became a man who believed that he deserved to be, and was wholly capable of being, the president of the United States.

Let's pause a minute to contemplate the fact that Don Jr. calls his dad DJT. Seriously. DJT? Your dad? It makes me wonder what Donald called Fred Christ the First. A few funny things occur to me, but in all reality Fred strikes me as the kind of dad who would accept nothing less than "sir" from any of his children.

The whole article is a great read. It's part of Wolff's bigger book on the topic. But tomorrow's Weasel Stomping Day. Treat yourself.

So the Trumpster accidentally became President. I'm pretty sure it was at that point when the privilege we witnessed during Fred C. Trump III's discussion of his uncle manifested. Suddenly the Trumpster was not just the US President; God had meant to put him there. He was now on a mission from God. And that's what all this nonsense he's spewing now in 2024 is about. He recognizes that garbage talk got him into the White House, and now he's hoping it will do the same again.

(It just now occurs to me that I said I wasn't going to say much, that I would only add commentary here and there. Whoops!)

But George isn't done. While the author of the article points out all these insanities in the Trumpster's character, he also makes it clear that he admires said Trumpster for it. It is his opinion that the Trumpster is America. The 2016 election results seem to bear that out.

Lest ye forget, the Trumpster is never as rich as he says he is. Even his 2016 campaign made comments about how cheap he was being with his own money. Why should Americans invest in the Trumpster (who is really America)?

Thankfully I'm not the only one out there telling you how much of a shit person the Trumpster is. Note to self: Find and read The Lost Tycoon.

Because Blogger is being a piece of shit right now and won't let me continue with the next picture without fucking the rest of my formatting, I need to put this line here. Continue please.

How can anyone vote for this dipshit with a straight face? He has flat-out told everyone he's a conman. But the Trumpster has learned Samuel Johnson's lesson well: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." At the end of the day, there is no real justification for voting for this grifter. Are you really that far gone as a human being that you have to vote for a scarecrow stuffed with empty promises?

I'll let the article have the last thought on this. It's not meant to be a condemnation, but it can very well be taken as one.

ADDENDUM:

There's a sidebar to this article that's actually a two page spread called the "First Babes." It's a list of women the Trumpster has been with, along with weirdly distorted pictures of them. I'm not sure what the point of that was. I mean, I can guess. Let's impress everyone with all the hot chicks the Donald has fucked! But if so, why the distorted pictures? What this sidebar does instead, I think, is denigrate those women. Editorial sure didn't give much of a fuck about them beyond objectifying them. Here's a sampling with Melania saved for last.

A noble sentiment, to be sure, but, ah . . . well.

Does it surprise me that the Trumpster doesn't know anything about Black culture? Do I need to go over how ignorant he is of history again? But as far as Ivana goes, I couldn't check up on her. For obvious reasons. (There seems to be some evidence that Trump can't recognize his wives in pictures. To borrow a joke from Seth Meyers, is it possible that he's not cheating? That he thinks he's just sleeping with his wife when he's not?)

I find this one fairly disturbing, but not for the reasons you think. A lot of people give Melania a pass because of who she's married to. I don't . . . because of who she's married to. I have another picture regarding that, but I want to mention the part about her having broken up with the Trumpster between the interview for the article and the publication of the article. All the same, take a look at that magazine cover from the top again. Notice someone else in that picture? Here's the full image found inside the issue.

Isn't that a little weird? Creepy, even? That Melania had broken up with the Trumpster, and yet here is George still using that image as if to prove, hell yeah, hot chicks dig this guy! If I were Melania, I would have sued the magazine over this. But I don't feel too bad for her. You shouldn't, either. After all, who is she married to right now? Also, she knew exactly what she was getting into:

If you still think voting for this cumstain is going to make America great (again?) or is going to take back America (from whom?), you're out of your mind. As previously discussed in GF, America hasn't been great since 1950. Who didn't have many rights back then? Oh yes. Now it becomes clear. It's not a docile zoo elephant. It's one of Hannibal's war elephants. If you wanted to travel back to that shameful era of American history, why didn't you just build a time machine? It would be a lot easier . . .

*Ross Perot is dead?! Why didn't anyone tell me this?! Anyway, you should still vote for him.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #940: I MEAN, REALLY?!?!?!?!?!

 I still can't wrap my head around it. Orson Welles was offered the role in Caligula? As in, Gore Vidal's Caligula? As in, in all reality, Bob Guccione's Caligula? That guy?

I can't be the only one struggling with this. I know Vidal was surprised. He described himself as "astonished" when he learned this. He rarely uses that word, so I know it made an impression.

All right. Let's go over it again. See if we can grasp this thing.

This guy:

*This* guy:

THIS GUY:

THIS FUCKIN' GUY:

*He* was supposed to play Caligula?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! He was supposed to be this guy:

The guy they went with in the movie? This guy:

See? *That* makes sense. They made the wise choice with Malcolm McDowell. But who on earth thought Orson Welles would be great at, say, fisting a Roman soldier? Could you imagine Welles doing the Little Boots dance? And what would Welles have looked like in those excessive love scenes between Caligula and his sister?

Welles, a puritan apparently, turned it down on moral grounds. That was a good decision. There's no way I would have been able to watch him in this role. I mean, I *could*, but instead of enjoying it as a nearly Shakespearean drama, I'd be guffawing with laughter at the absurdity of it.

Who the fuck thought that was a good idea?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #939: HOW WOULD YOU DO?

 This election is almost over. Thank fuck. Next week Harris will win, and this goddam cycle will be over. We'll have to make our peace with Trump whining about another rigged election for the next four years (unless we luck out and he has a heart attack), but we've dealt with that before. That should be nothing new, and he'll be easy to ignore.

The last couple of GFs were pretty intense, so let's take it down a few notches. Instead, let's find out how you would do running for president. Well, not really. Financial Times came up with an election game that's kind of silly. The rules are stupid, and the game isn't representative of the actual process, so it's not going to answer the question in the title tonight. But if you're bored, why not give it a shot?

Here you go. I scored 162,000-ish out of 191,000-ish. Not great, in other words, even though I won a lot of those battleground states. I'm pretty sure you've got to get a perfect score if you're going to win, but that's not likely.

Good luck. Don't take any guff from the swine.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #938: A LAUNDRY LIST OF LOSERS

 In most countries the best and brightest go into politics. Here in the US they go into business. To quote Gore Vidal, "Why be a senator when you can buy Congress?" No, our politics attract the dumbest and the dullest. Take a look at who gets elected. They're all fuckin' stupid. They're dedicated to agendas for immediate change, but they're not capable of thinking far enough ahead. They don't think of the consequences for their actions. They only care that they did something. Let history figure out if it was good, just so long as they're remembered. But their worst feature is their devotion to traditional family values. (One man, several wives and a bunch of concubines?) They can't adapt to change.

Pop quiz, hotshot. Who was the last *great* president we had?

Biden? The jury's out still, but I'm doubtful. Trump? Don't make me laugh. Obama? He was mediocre and business as usual. Bush II? He was a nightmare. Clinton? He's a horrible person, but he was a good president. Not great, though. Bush I? He was the embodiment of a facepalm. Reagan? He was an actively shitty president who sold us out to our corporate overlords, but because he knew how to deliver a line (when will Hollywood stay out of politics?), so no one noticed. Because of him we have the current housing crisis, which is actually a *money* crisis, but . . . not now. Focus.

Carter? He was ineffectual. Ford? He was ho-hum. Nixon? He was a great *politician* but a godawful president. LBJ? He endorsed the American Nightmare(TM). JFK? He could have been our worst president. He wanted to escalate in Vietnam, not deescalate as most think. A lot of people would put him at #1 with a bullet. Him or Lincoln. Instead JFK was pretty but useless. Ike? He was more motivated to golf than to govern. Truman? He fucked us so royally that it took us 40 years to unfuck it, and we technically didn't do it on our own. Special thanks to the Soviet Union for being polite enough to economically collapse, thus letting us win the Cold War.

FDR? Yes. Now we're talking. He was the last great president. He gave us the American Empire even if his successors squandered it for literally nothing. RIP America's Greatness (1945-1950). He was such a great president that he essentially became our dictator. Not our first. That would be Lincoln. (A story for another day!)

Despite this laundry list of losers, we somehow think our presidents know best, that if they weren't smart they wouldn't be in charge. Given 45's excessive stupidity, this is a disturbing thing. Because Trump is worse than ignorant. He is *willfully* ignorant. He's the opposite of Tyrion Lannister: he does not drink and he does not know things.

We all know the quote about those who don't remember history and what they're condemned to do, but what if you *never* knew history, so it's impossible to remember it?

Remember when he said that the Founding Fathers won the Revolution by seizing the airports? That wasn't an isolated incident. The reason he was impeached the first time was because he sought Ukraine's help in finding dirt on Joe Biden's son in exchange for military aid. Col. Alexander Vindman was present for that conversation, and it was he who reported his concerns to the NSC, hence us knowing about it. He told us about a few things that Trump didn't understand about history. Apparently Trump didn't know about WWII:

Retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and Trump impeachment witness Alexander Vindman mocked the former president on Thursday for what he saw as the Republican’s limited historical knowledge, after Trump seemed to describe just learning about WWII history during a recent campaign stop.

Here's a few other things he has trouble with. He just learned Lincoln was a Republican. He thought Canada burned the White House down and even asked Justin Trudeau about it. And, well, here's a good quote from, of all things, Business Insider:

Merkel explained to Trump at the G20 summit that she participated in antinuclear protests in East Germany in the 1980s and that her colleagues in West Germany opposed stationing US missiles in Europe, the book says. The German leader "patiently and even humorously laid out all of this and how the risk of a US-Soviet nuclear war had been the all-encompassing topic of her youth," Hill writes.

Trump's conversation with Merkel "was the first time" he had "ever listened to the Europeans' perspective on the 1980s and heard why US-Russian arms-control negotiations were important to them as well," the book adds. "It was clear that none of this had ever occurred to him before," it says.

But what I truly like is this quote from John Kelly:

"He leaned over to me and whispered, 'The problem is the president doesn't know any of this,'" Kelly said, according to Hill's book. "He doesn't know any history at all, even some of the basics on the US."

I understand that I'm an oddball. I am not a historian, but whereas most of my fellow Americans have an aversion to the topic, I'm drawn to it. We must not have a president ignorant of history. We had Trump for four years, and we lucked out. He didn't fuck anything up beyond repair. But if he gets his second term, all bets are off. What's he going to do, run for reelection? If he "won" three times, why not go for FDR's record of 4? Or perhaps he can beat it with 5? Could he resist such temptation?

I know this seems petty compared to the other awful shit he's done, but history is more important than most realize. It tells us how we got into this mess, which is helpful when trying to find a way *out* of this mess.

A US president *needs* to know history. Don't put this clown back in the Oval Office.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #937: THE FUCKERY OF RELIGION IN POLITICS

 

I was born in 1978, and Ronald Reagan was the first US president I was aware of. I didn't get interested in politics until Dukakis got his ass kicked by Bush I (shouldn't have gotten into that tank, buddy) in 1988. Gramps was particularly hurt by that one. He really wanted to see a Greek in the Oval Office. His anguish over that election started me down this path.

For me the religious right has always been running the Republican party. It's hard for me to imagine otherwise. As it turns out Barry Goldwater was right. The Christians* took over the Republican party during Reagan's administration, and they've royally fucked conservatives since. All the same, it's crazy that this happened not just in living memory but MY living memory. These horny-for-the-apocalypse nutbags are, as Goldwater suggested, impossible to deal with. "It's my way or the highway" is their way of life. Even worse, most of our laws are "sin laws," ie. these things are illegal because they're sins.

But we've had those laws for a while, which suggests that Christianity had a much heavier hand in law making than one would think, but now they have the Republican party in their mitts, so clearing those laws off the books, as I wish to do, would be impossible. Not "near" impossible. IMPOSSIBLE.

I'm an atheist. Sin does not apply to me. However, if I wanted to suck a dude's dick, that would be illegal in 18 states. Granted, there's a 2003 Supreme Court ruling negating those laws, so I probably wouldn't do serious prison time for sucking cock, but it's times like these that I think about the recent Roe v Wade decision. How easy would it be for them today to throw these sin crimes back to the states? I would do time for SINNING. That may be cause for celebration across the country, but I personally find that unthinkable.

The best argument for kicking the religious right out of the Republican party (as they are not willing to compromise, they don't belong there) is the separation of church and state. If you're wondering where that's canonized for the American people (well, oligarchs, but that's a story for another day), it's in the First Amendment. It says that Congress can't establish an official religion in the US. The direct quote comes from Thomas Jefferson:

"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."

But the religious right will insist that the Founding Fathers were Christians, therefore the United States is a Christian country. A lot of the Fathers were, indeed, Christian, but not all of them. Aaron Burr, for example, was a self-avowed atheist. (Burr is a Father, whether you like it or not. Plus he did us the great service of killing Hamilton.) Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were mostly reticent on the subject, but there are a few clues. Jefferson claimed to be a Deist, but that doesn't mean he was a Christian. He rejected their beliefs, favoring reason instead of revelation. Franklin claimed also to be a Deist, valuing morals over doctrine. Regardless, those Fathers who were Christians thought the separation of church and state was necessary. That's a huge thing. If they could control themselves, why can't their modern day counterparts?

Look at who the Republicans hate the most. (Setting aside the words "Democrat" and "liberal"  and other party identifiers for the moment.) These fuckers are looking at the LGBTQ+ community as the worst offenders in the land. Man having sex with man? Man changing sex to woman? Man having sex with any gender and not just his own or the "opposite"? None of these things must come to pass, as far as the religious right is concerned, but let's also throw in anyone who isn't white, too. God help them if they're not US citizens.

I get the Ham thing leading to slavery, hence America's built in racism, but I can't think of a commandment for the life of me requiring the faithful to be US citizens. I can't even find a reference to the United States in the Mediocre Book. How many people today believe that Jesus was a US citizen? And a Republican to boot! A *white* Republican! The only kind God approves of.

Reagan was an evangelical, meaning he believed in all that Judgment Day nonsense. He had a vested interest in forcing Armageddon's hand. There is some evidence showing that he would totally be cool with fast tracking the End Times, and he could have easily done this. He didn't, for some reason. Maybe self control got the better of him? But do we really want someone who looks forward to the apocalypse to have the nuclear codes? Especially now that we're on the brink of World War III?

The religious right has been rabid about defending their own freedoms while doing their level best to deny the freedoms of others. Isn't there a commandment telling them to love their neighbors? They don't think that "neighbors" only means people living next to them, do they? Or are they mixing up the definitions of love and hate?

Perhaps they should read their own Bible. This passage from I John might help:

"If anyone says, 'I love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar, for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen." I John 4:20

But more importantly it's impossible to maintain the millennia-long existence of those rules, hence our need to not have them on our books. Here's James SA Corey on the nature of tradition. From Mercy of the Gods:

"Preservation is irrational because it glorifies what cannot be. The universe is in constant change from the smallest measures to the greatest. To cling to one state of being over any others is foolish and futile and doomed."

Gore Vidal says that America was great for precisely five years. They're probably not the five you're thinking of. (Stay tuned tomorrow night for more on that!) But tradition can only be maintained by keeping oneself stupid. That's a strange attitude to have. Pretty good for authority figures, though. Stupid people are easy to govern.

Is that what Trump really means by "Make America Great Again"?

*DISCLAIMER: I don't have a problem with Christians or any religion. People have the right to worship as they see fit. Whatever brings you peace in this fucked up world of fuck. My problem begins when someone uses their religion as a weapon against others. Those are the people I'm talking about in this GF. It's a good thing I don't like to suck dick, because . . . well, just keep reading. It'll make sense shortly.