Notes from Dystopia: Constipated Congress Controlled By Crypto-Fascists, Corollary to Cholera Conscripted By Cash

Picture taken from Sparrowmedia.net -- "Narco-a-Lago: Donald Trump Made Millions from Panama Development Used to Launder Drug Money"

Writing about politics can be tiresome. And I am tired. Rather it feels good to be indifferent to the clicking sound of the thermostat hovering at a comfortable temperature and listening to a Spanish concerto, drinking beer. Reading books, smoking cigarettes, thinking about the blank canvas. I should be writing poems, I should be working on the novel. I should be editing the next manuscript.

Instead, I've chosen to write about bankrupt criminals, in a bankrupt nation.

To nobody at all. Okay.

Earlier this week, I was reading my daily copy of The Wall Street Journal, and I couldn't help from looking something up, in response to an article about a recent passage of an NDAA spending bill in the U.S. House. The bill called for $700 billion in military appropriations. It struck me because I remembered reading about a U.S. deficit that hovered around that amount. What gives? I thought these were our brightest and best, the richest country on earth. The most intelligent human beings that ever held dominion over the planet. Etc., etc.

The story, after the fact -- I'd looked up the vote on the passage of the NDAA spending bill in the House, 70 voted No, while 356 voted Yes -- made me wonder about just where the hell we're all headed. "Flood-Insurance Revamp Advances".

"The House voted largely along party lines to revamp the federal flood-insurance program, which expires in December and has struggled in recent years to keep pace with record disaster payments..."

"House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas), the measure's primary author, agreed to ease aspects of its provisions in a move aimed at securing support from coastal lawmakers who had balked at what they viewed as unduly onerous restrictions.

"'It is a bankrupt program that is being funded, regrettably, by a bankrupt nation,' Mr. Hensarling said."

Pause for effect.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that the government waits until the last minute to pay for the shit they really need. I'm sure you have some people in your life who do the same thing. I mean, who wants to pay bills? And for flood insurance? Shit.

Moving right along...

I'm behind on my New Yorker subscription. (Not the payments. I've got 12 issues for $12. What I mean is that I'm behind on reading these suckers. It's an interesting experiment to study the death of everything all at once. It's even more interesting to feel like you could go a week or two without reading the New Yorker and feel like everything in-between its covers is nearly out-of-date and useless. I'm almost starting to feel like these two publications would better serve my living arrangement if I melted them down to ash every night in some kind of fire, or maybe I'm just being unreasonable.)

The first story in the outdated version of the New Yorker I decided to sketch little lines around was a story about Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. I'd been meaning to read the piece because she's a war veteran, she's been to Iraq and Kuwait, and I think she's one of the most viable candidates for the 2020 Election. But what the hell do I know? I'm just an anarchist asshole who drinks too much beer and doesn't (want to) pay his bills.

The piece is entitled "Against The Tide, What's behind Tulsi Gabbards's unconventional politics?"

It has a different title on the internet. The first half, I found to be enlightening. She's one of the few people in Congress who is anti-war. She's also been to Syria, to meet with their dictator. Okay. They all do this shit. By "they", I mean the politicians. Trump just went rollicking along the Asian continent meeting with dictators, ruffians, the riffraff of our society, playing at being For the People, By the People. Etc. Etc. Power and money-hungry grubbers feeding on their respective troughs. Respect? Pfui. 

Tulsi is the first Hindu in our Congress, to be elected, that is. She'd served as a vice-chair of the DNC, and stepped down when she felt pressured to support Hillary Clinton. Because why should she have her own opinions in a democracy? She is a Bernie Sanders supporter, and she doesn't alienate the right. I'm for anyone that knows how to bring people together, especially in this fucked up world. Okay.

The next piece: "Letter From Syria, Dark Victory, Kurdish revolutionaries helped the U.S. expel ISIS from Raqqa. Will we soon abandon them?"

The answer is, resoundingly, yes.

But strangely enough, it was interesting to read two consecutive pieces in the New Yorker about funding terrorism or participating in it or accidentally so, legislation called the Stop Funding Terrorists Act, and the support for a "semi-autonomous" group via medical supplies and weapons and training, a group that Turkey, a NATO ally, calls a "terrorist state," and so one country's terrorist group is another country's rebel uprising, when, really, they belong to nobody, only to themselves, their people, their own neighborhoods...

Billions spent on that war, only a drop in the bucket of the deficit...

If America floods, you're SOL.

And I guess it all leads to the propaganda, lies, cover-ups, smearing, scapegoating of our current political climate. One that is diseased, cancerous, broken. The beer bottle, the beer bottle. I am so very loyal to thee.

I guess I'll get to the cholera of Yemeni people who are blockaded by U.S. sanctions to prevent, what exactly. Wouldn't want the poorest country on earth to ... get ... food ... and ... medicine. Instead, it's sent to where our geopolitical goals are necessary for, what exactly?

Try following the news for a week straight. See if you can come up with any kind of sane political sense of what the "brightest and the best" can conjure up. Most Americans are terrorized by the plausibility of a dead elephant's tusk being made to be transported back to hell, the states, the glory of the golden epicenter, yes. Try talking about endless bombing, forever wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc. Etc. Who really knows what the fuck anything means anymore?

I was going to write about this report I dug up in the last day or so. I'd been sharpening my pitchfork and, clumsily, I stumbled upon it. A 28-page report from an investigative organization called Global Witness. It came via the website The Sparrow Project. I stole their picture: Trump's silhouette on a bag of cocaine.

I'll have to read the report, yes. I'll print it out in a public place. And then I'll give it directly to the first cop I see on the streets.

The report explains Trump's SHADY BUSINESS DEALINGS, CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? He licensed his name, his brand, out to a development project in Panama, that was invigorated with capital from money launderers for drug cartels. So while the "Justice League" flutters and farts unremittingly at the box office, here in America, actual justice stews and boils like a horny toad. What will come of these revelations?

"We had nothing to do with that building. We didn't own it. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. You hear me? Talk to my lawyers. We just lent out our name. And looked the other way..."

I once worked for a Beatles impersonation band, who licensed out their name. This is how America works. Only if you want to make a killing, you'll license out to a body/organization that takes in COLD, HARD CASH from drug cartels. They need somewhere to stash their ... how should it be phrased ... ill-begotten gains ... their loot ... their ... their ... aw, shit ... where's Ludicrous when you need him?

WHAT YOU GOT IN THAT DEVELOPMENT PROJECT ON THE BEACH IN PANAMA, YO?

They stashed money in a building project like a terrorist group, like human traffickers, like war-torn criminals with political connections, enough power to light the skies of the Panama Canal with greenbacks burning throughout their own coke-laced chimneys. Do they have chimneys in Panama?

I guess it stays pretty warm down there. I guess we have a Commander-in-Chief who plays by his own rules. I guess I'm just making up these words to fill up some empty space. The poets were right. Or at least one, in particular. His book, a translated work, sits next to my beer.

"Everything we are taught is false!" he'd once claimed, exclaimed, chimed.

These corollaries to cholera.

How deep do they go?

And, do we really need the money and financing of crooks, criminals, cronies, to help resuscitate our capitalist society? A rotting corpse, stinking in the wind.

Down in the southern states, they're just starting to fight against the next inheritors of the earth.

"Mutant Giant Rats That Thrive Off Climate Change Are About to Take Over the World".

That's from the Daily Beast.

I guess to rant anymore feels unnecessary. You'll just have to make your light somewhere else.