Notes From Dystopia: Oct. 1, Cognitive Impairment, Angry Child Syndrome, and America's Bubble-Floating Into the Future

This week in Dystopia, I'll start with a piece from Philly.com staff columnist Will Bunch, entitled "Trump's Puerto Rico potshots make his racism morally impossible to ignore".

It's no Secret that the Trump Administration's response to the humanitarian disaster in Puerto Rico has exemplified his (lack of) character. Without a shadow of a doubt, the Commander-in-Chief of the Greatest Nation on Earth is, in fact, experiencing and showing chronic symptoms of Angry Child Syndrome.

After politicizing the disaster in the U.S. territory, while lambasting the Mayor of San Juan, Bunch came to these conclusions regarding the daily actions of our Daily Horrors -- here in America:

"So when San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz appeared on cable TV news — the only reality that matters in Trump World — after wading through sewage-laden floodwaters with her bullhorn looking for survivors, and stated what has become painfully obvious in recent days, that the federal response has been both inadequate and poorly managed and that more help was needed to 'save us from dying,' the president’s response — condescending, bitter, narcissistic, and larded with racism — managed to be both outrageous and tragically inevitable.

[...]

"Trump’s words have massive consequences, and this goes well beyond Puerto Rico. It’s not surprising that — weeks after the president told an audience of cheering cops 'don’t be too nice' with criminal suspects — the police ran wild in St. Louis. Or that voters in Alabama riled by this poisonous political climate — in which the commander-in-chief couldn’t find it in his heart to condemn neo-Nazis in Charlottesville — went beyond Trump’s pick to nominate a Senate candidate in Roy Moore who is even more extreme, who openly discriminates against Muslims, the LGBTQ community, and others. The man behind the desk in the Oval Office has opened a Pandora’s box of hate."

Indeed. Should it be any surprise, however, that a country with a one-party state should be in the hands of racist, out-of-touch billionaire? When, after all, it's the tiny group of ruling elites who really control America.

Take, for instance, a piece from the Sept. 25 issue of "The New Yorker", called "Still Here; Hillary Clinton looks back in anger."

In the piece, Clinton is interviewed from the perspective of the Victim. Forget the policies that allowed the Republican Party to utterly dismantle itself with a transmogrification of rhetoric between immutable candidates all slobbering for Victory -- the vitriol, according to Clinton, came from the "deplorable" aspects of American Society. Never mind that plenty of people who voted for Trump in the Election of 2016 were Barack Obama voters, just four years prior.

"'I've thought a lot about this,' Clinton told me. 'And for whatever combination of reasons -- some I think I understand, and others I don't -- I am viewed as a threat to powerful forces on both the right and the left. I am still one of the favorite subjects for Fox TV. With the return of [Steve] Bannon to Breitbart, we'll see him utilizing that publication. It's because I do speak out, and I do stand up. Sometimes, you know, what I say is not fully appreciated for years, to be honest. At least, it seems to me that way. But I'm going to continue to speak out. And on the left -- there is a real manipulation of the left. In addition to those who are calling me names, we know that Russia has really targeted, through their trolls and bots, a lot of accounts -- a lot of Twitter accounts, Facebook accounts, of people on the left -- feeding them a steady diet of nonsense.'"

It never occurs, of course, to the only person in the history of the world who's lost to Donald Trump in a presidential election that the nonsense could be coming from Her.

Alas, it's difficult to fight Angry Child Syndrome with Cognitive Impairment.

"As earnestly as she has worked on behalf of women, the disadvantaged, and many other constituencies, Clinton does not, for many people, radiate a sense of empathy. A resident of a bubble of power since her days in the Arkansas governor’s mansion, she makes it hard even for many supporters to imagine that her feet ever touch the ground. In 'What Happened,' she describes how, when considering whether to run again in 2016, she had to consider all her negatives—'Clinton fatigue,' the dynastic question, her age, the accumulated distrust between her and the press—and then says that she completed the deliberative process by going to stay with Oscar and Annette de la Renta at Casa de Campo, their retreat in the Dominican Republic. 'We swam, we ate good food, and thought about the future. By the time we got back, I was ready to run.' This is perhaps not a universally relatable anecdote. Nor did she see much wrong with giving twenty-odd million dollars’ worth of speeches, including to Goldman Sachs and other financial institutions, conceding only that it was, in hindsight, bad 'optics.' ('I didn’t think many Americans would believe that I’d sell a lifetime of principle and advocacy for any price,' she writes. 'That’s on me.')

The Queen of the Democratic Party didn't Believe. She didn't believe in Americans, to be sure.

"Such ingrained habits of media antagonism proved to be another factor that allowed Trump, the biggest liar in the history of Presidential politics, to be seen by tens of millions of people as a figure of rude authenticity, their champion. In Clinton’s view, she could never win with people who had been trained to regard her as a high-minded phony. Her wariness and evasions drained their sympathy; her strained attempts to win people back too often fell flat. Why couldn’t she be admired for her intelligence, her competence, her experience?

[...]

"She acknowledges that her caution had sometimes made her seem guarded (and 'prompted the question, ‘What is she hiding?’ '), but she notes that many men in politics, though far less scrutinized, aren’t asked to 'open up, reveal themselves, prove that they’re real.'"

Does she not know that she lost to somebody who said he 'Grabs by the Pussy'? Because the rest of America does.

"Elsewhere in the book, she writes, 'As the campaign went on, polls showed that a significant number of Americans questioned my authenticity and trustworthiness. A lot of people said they just didn’t like me. I write that matter-of-factly, but believe me, it’s devastating. Some of this is a direct result of my actions: I’ve made mistakes, been defensive about them, stubbornly resisted apologizing. But so have most men in politics. (In fact, one of them just became President with a strategy of ‘never apologize when you’re wrong, just attack harder.’)

[...]

"...Clinton climbed in the back seat of her car, the Secret Service all around, and headed back to her white house in the woods. "

This is what the one-party state in America gives us. Angry Child Syndrome v. Cognitive Impairment.

THE BUBBLE

A country that's $20 trillion in debt. Quadruple that, for unfunded liabilities. And take away all the protections the Founding Fathers had built into the Constitution regarding a potential demagogue gaining the reigns of the White House.

Everything, now, oozes with corruption. The roaches are out, looking for food and water. While the Trump Administration goes on to loot the U.S. Treasury and the American people, reflections abound in the populace. For when they need the protection of their Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness the most, it's nowhere to be found at all.

A piece from Jacobin, named "Wealth Inequality Is Higher Than Ever".

"First, here is how wealth is distributed overall. What this says is that the bottom 10 percent owns -0.5 percent of the wealth (they are net debtors), the next 10 percent owns 0 percent of the wealth, and so on until you get to the tenth decile, which says the top 10 percent owns 77.1 percent of the wealth.

[...]

"In 1989, the top 1 percent in each group owned around 28 to 29 percent of that group’s wealth. By 2016, the white 1 percent owned 36.5 percent of white wealth; the black 1 percent owned 40.5 percent of black wealth; and the Latino 1 percent owned 44.7 percent of Latino wealth.

"Overall, the new data presents a bleak reality. Wealth inequality is higher than ever. The overwhelming majority of Americans still have less wealth now than they did one decade ago. The wealth of each racial group is overwhelmingly monopolized by a small elite class. And black and Latino families especially remain trapped in a wealth underclass from which there is no obvious escape."

What does Trump intend to do with this problem? He's going to make it worse, of course. Just as his predecessors have done in the past, whereas a transfer of wealth is made by the upper-echelons of power to their greedy companions on Wall Street, those who've most certainly never done an honest day's worth of work in their lives.

That's the System. Of Violence. Corruption. Greed. Avarice. Hubris. Racism. Intolerance.

Led and ruled by Angry Children and the Cognitively-Impaired.

From Vanity Fair:

"When Gary Cohn first joined the Trump administration, giving up his job as the second-most-powerful person at Goldman Sachs to do so, he easily ranked as the president’s favorite adviser not named Ivanka Trump. In Cohn, Trump saw a Wall Street elite who wouldn’t have given him the time of day just months prior. 'Trump loves having Goldman guys around,' ... 'The bank wouldn’t touch Trump, and now they’re working for him,' ... Cohn had 'walk-in privileges' and was actually allowed to interrupt inane ramblings that other aides were forced to endure in order to offer his take on a situation. Trump was said to love that Cohn was a 'guy’s guy,' and the fact that he had the experience of running an organization that employed thousands of people; plus, he had a 'self-assured confidence' that put him at the top of Trump’s list of trusted associates, presumably well above his own male progeny. So enamored was Trump with Cohn that for a while, it looked as though the ex-Goldman No. 2, who is not an academic or an economist, and whose own friends say they can’t see him reading policy papers, was going to be named chairman of the Federal Reserve when Janet Yellen’s term expired in February. Many on Wall Street presumed that Cohn that [sic] thrown aside his dignity, career, and good name for the chance to grab at the brass ring.

"Unfortunately, as we now know, that’s wildly unlikely to happen, following Cohn’s fatal mistake of daring to tell the Financial Times that the administration needed to do a better job handling the vitriolic rhetoric of hate groups like white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the K.K.K., in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville. And now, the president seems to be going out of his way to rub Cohn’s face in it..."

We know, now, as Concerned Americans, that there's no place in Trump's Administration for people with Ethics, Morals, and Integrity.

And why shouldn't we expect anything less? It's easier to blame someone else than it is to admit to the real problem.

"By now you’ve heard that the tax plan unveiled by the Big Six is essentially designed to improve the lives of millionaires and billionaires, do little for low-income families, and potentially raise taxes on the middle class. But exactly how much does the real-estate developer turned president stand to benefit? The New York Times crunched the numbers and it’s in the ballpark of tens of millions of dollars a year, or more self-tanner and 24-karat toilets than Trump would know what to do with. And that’s not including the billion-plus dollars the Trump kids could save once 'Daddy' kicks the bucket. Here’s how it all breaks down, based on Trump’s 2005 federal tax return (his most recent public return) and Bloomberg’s estimate of his net worth ($2.86 billion)..."

The difference between Trump and Hillary is that there is no difference. And that's the truth.

We live in a political system that leaves out the voices of millions of people. For a profit.

That's how demagogues in power prosper. In a world of willful ignorance.

America's true colors are finally showing.

As billions of dollars go shooting out of Uncle Sam's asshole each month, to arm, fund, and train over seventy percent of the world's dictatorships, millions of people will continue to support well-dressed, over-educated criminals and their looting of America's future.

Until they wake up to it.