A TRUE American Patriot does not display the following (in alphabetical order)…
- Authoritarian
- Communist
- Confederate
- Fascist
- Nazi
- Political Party (any and all)
- Socialist
- Trump
…symbology. Period. End of discussion.
partisanship
Trump’s “Peter Principle”
As we watch former president Trump being indicted left and right… which radcen has not yet addressed… it seems appropriate to point out a couple random thoughts.
There is a famous theory where people routinely rise to one level above their competence level. They’re a success and rise through the ranks until they eventually reach a level beyond their capabilities and they fail. It is more commonly applied to corporate business, but it can apply anywhere.
Donald Trump is something of an enigma. He has managed to “fail up” his entire life. Everything the man touches dies, yet he continued to rise. Until now.
The office of president will be Trump’s downfall. The office of president is Trump’s “Peter Principle”. He has risen to a level where he is completely out of his league. He knows nothing about the operations and limitations of government power and has been continuing to operate on what has worked in the past with lesser adversaries. He believes he can be “The Man” just like he always has been, and it’s biting him in the butt.
After the 2016 election and his inauguration I made the following prediction…
Donald Trump and his family will come to rue the day he decided to run for president
…and I have repeated it many times since. What he has managed to build up, and not yet squandered, is in jeopardy. Had Mr Trump never run for president he’d be remembered in history as just another random eccentric rich person. Now, Mr Trump has exposed himself as a traitor, liar, cheat, thief, and a… loser. And it’s this last one that probably eats at him the most.
And ya know, I’m not sure he cares what his legacy is. He is so deeply insecure he only cares that people worship him right here right now where he can see it and revel in it. Donald Trump should have just stayed home, and I bet his family wishes he had.
Does the Media Lie?
Q: Does the media lie?
Short Answer: Yes
Slightly Longer Short Answer: Yes, but…
…it’s a matter of degree and/or method. Probably the two most reputable news services closest to being honest and forthright are Associated Press (AP) and Reuters, but even they deserved to be fact-checked on occasion. Yet AP and Reuters are pretty much straight down the middle with little to no bias.
That covers degree of honesty, then we can add in method. Take National Public Radio (NPR), for example. Pretty much everything you hear on NPR will be legitimate truth… but only a portion of the truth. NPR’s lies aren’t outright lies, but are rather lies-of-omission. It’s not what you hear on NPR, it’s what you don’t hear that you should be concerned about. If you’re not well-rounded in your information intake, and NPR is your sole source of information, you will not know some sides of an issue even exist. Hell, you may not know some whole stories or issues exist at all.
The Long Answer: Yes, you bet! Because we have the rest of the bunch, outlets such as Fox News, One America News Network (OANN), and Newsmax, as just a few examples. These people will outright lie to your face. And I mean literally make shit up, or they will have guests who make shit up with the host not challenge them regardless how absurd the guest’s claims are. Take this example about the stories where schools were installing litter boxes in restrooms for wannabe felines…
“Fake news spreads farther and faster than retractions,”
I personally know people who believe this claptrap. THIS is fake news, people, and it should be blindingly obvious it’s fake news on the surface by anyone with a reasonable amount of discernment and intelligence. And spare me the tripe about Fox News being separate from Fox Entertainment (Carlson, Hannity, et al). Fact is they’re not far apart, and the people most seeking bias confirmation lap up everything like this fed to them without stopping to consider how ridiculous it really is, as if it is legitimate news. It’s what they want to hear. It feeds what they want to believe.
Finally: We have this helpful chart… and know there are many more news sources and varying level of honesty, but these are a primary example that showcase the worst of the worst.
The New “Whataboutism”
Today’s conservatives (read: Trump supporters) seem to be trying very hard to make “whataboutism” a legitimate debate tactic. Seems that every time I turn around they’re making specious arguments with no supporting evidence at all, let alone fact. (As God is my witness, I am convinced today’s Republican don’t even know the definition of “evidence”, but I digress.)
Anyway, back in March 2018 I wrote a piece on “whataboutism”. Long story short whataboutism is frowned upon in most debate circles. Ironically enough, Republicans seem to be going out of their way to set it up as legitimate discourse. Their arguments usually go something like this…
“Joe Biden is incoherent.” Obviously a slam directed at his mental capacities and capabilities in handling the job of president. He probably slurred a word, or misspoke, or whatever. And he does have a history of stuttering. But granted, Joe Biden is not as sharp as he once was, and in an ideal world I’d prefer someone sharper in the job now. Joe Biden has indeed lost a step, in the mind.
We all know the only people saying these things are Trump supporters and they’re inferring Trump was better and more qualified for the job than Biden is. Kind of a pre-emptive whataboutism, if you will. Beat ’em to the punch! If it weren’t so sad and transparently weak it might be mildly humorous.
So for those who are so inclined, what might you “whatabout”? How about this…
Well what I would do, is I would, we would, we have tremendous military capability and what we can do without planes, to be honest with you, without 44-year-old jets, what we can do is enormous, and we should be doing it and we should be helping them to survive and they’re doing an amazing job. (Fox Business TV show, “Varney & Co,” in March 2022)
…or the time he tried to redirect a hurricane with a Sharpie. And we will be polite and not compare Joe’s “handling” of young girls with “grabbing them by the pussy” and walking in on naked teen girls at beauty pageants. It’s almost as if Republicans are BEGGING people to counter with a whataboutism as pretty much everything they can possibly come up with to shame Biden Trump has most assuredly done worse. There is nothing you can ding Biden for where Trump has not himself been more incompetent or sleazy or repugnent or Every. Single. Time.
And really, what about Hillary’s emails?
Do You Like Your Elected Representatives?
It’s a simple question. Do you like your elected representatives? Do you like your Governor, your Senators, your House Representative, your president? (Yes, I said YOUR president.)
I bet you say you don’t. If you are an average person and not a crackpot or a whackjob, I mean. I bet you constantly complain how you distrust government, how they’re all crooks, how we need new leaders and why we need term limits (no, we don’t). Americans are fickle and will turn on a dime when the government sends out stimulus checks, but historically Congressional approval ratings have been dismal, like this recent January when it had tumbled to 18%. Obviously not popular, right? Or, are they?
In the November 2020 elections nationwide… federal, state, and local… 93% of incumbents nationwide won their re-election bids. What the deuce? How can this be? We don’t like our leaders. Well, I have some ideas… and almost nobody ever agrees with me when I tell them this because it challenges them and their convictions directly… and they go something like this…
- Gerrymandering: Essentially where your representatives choose you, based on where you live and who you are likely to vote for. Even people who live in gerrymandered districts disapprove of their representatives, in general. This is the only point in here that is controlled by the government and not the voters… but even then it doesn’t explain how or why local elections follow the same predictable path.
- Ignorance: Increasingly willful ignorance. No one discusses issues anymore, it’s all name calling and yelling. Let’s face it, if you read social media and the conversations taking place, you realize a great many people simply cannot understand the nuances and ramifications of politics. They spout what their emotions tell them and what others they like say.
- Selfishness: They give us what we want. We say we hate spending, but programs and jobs, often government-induced jobs, get votes. Democrats never cared about deficit spending, and even Republicans abandoned fiscal responsibility decades ago because they figured out the voters didn’t care as much about it as they say they do. In other words, they “bring home the bacon”, or they buy us and our votes. We now have so much in a historically opulent lifestyle that we’re afraid of losing it.
- Selfishness, Pt 2: Voting an incumbent out just might require… voting for the other party. gasp!!! (In all seriousness, especially in today’s political environment, this could be tough., regardless which side you’re on.)
- Laziness: Term limits are a very popular idea, but there’s a disconnect here. We want these people out, but we’re not willing to do it ourselves, we want it to be a default so we don’t have to think or be pro-active. This results from ignorance and selfishness above.
- This last point is what people so vehemently disagree with and refuse to admit or consider… for all the bitching and moaning and whining and crying we do about out leaders… we actually approve and get what we want. Yes, I said we like them. Re-read the things I said above… we hate them and see them as greedy (which is true), they don’t really care about us, but they do know that keeping us “fat and happy” keeps them fat and happy, just on a bigger scale. As long as we have our cushy lifestyles and our boats and our vacations we’ll keep voting them in. Don’t want to upset the apple cart.
So what can we do about this? Or, should we do anything about this? I mean, we could just keep going as we are, let the status quo do its thing. That would be the convenient way out. Whining is free. So, if we are truly serious about changing our representation here’s what we have to do…
- D.R.I.P: Don’t Reelect Incumbent Politicians. Any of them. Now, at a 90%+ reelection rate they know they can safely ignore us. But if we could get the reelection rate down to just 50%, let them know their cushy job isn’t guaranteed, they’d sit up and pay attention. They would at least throw us more bones. Since we, and not corporations, are the ones who actually vote the balance of power would shift.
You up for it?