A JuicyLesson from the mind of 🇨🇦 Jerry 🇨🇦. (12-19-2021)
So it’s been more than a year since the November 2020 presidential election in the United States and almost one year since the riot/attempted insurrection at the American capitol on January 6th, 2021.
And where has the United States gone in the almost complete year since the latter event which saw Trumpists storm the Capitol, vandalizing a “symbol of American democracy” including smearing human feces on stuff as well as threatening lawmakers both orally and In writing? Five people died during that event, including a civilian, shot while she was trying to climb through a broken window into a chamber in which some Senators and Congresspeople were hiding out, in obvious fear for theIr lives, as the mob called for the hanging of Vice-President Mike Pence. Regardless of his protestations to the contrary, the then moron-in-chief, the United States Commander-In-Chief couldn’t tell whether Pence was safe at that time or not. Yet, he didn’t speak to his lap dog loyal vice-president until three days after the riot. Just goes to show how self-centred Trump is; he couldn’t have cared less about Pence or anyone else for that matter except perhaps for Ivanka and Melania. All he is cognizant of is how all goings on affect him and how he thinks he is being perceived by those he feels, for one reason or another, he needs to impress.
After having finished all of the following books on Trump himself and about some of his cohorts, hangers-on and other selected misfits …
This listing is in no particular order.
1. Karl, Jonathan, Betrayal. The final act of the Trump show;
2. Leonnig, Carol, and Rucker, Philip, I Alone Can Fix It. Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year;
3. Dean, John W., and Altemeyer, Baob, Authoritarian Nightmare. Trump and his Followers;
4. Fox, Emily Jane, Born Trump. Inside America’s First Family;
5. Toobin, Jeffrey, True Crimes and Misdemeanors. The Investigation of Donald Trump;
6. Woodward, Bob, and Costa, Robert, Peril;
7. Blue, Wendell, Only I Can Fix It;
8. Bender, Michael C., “Frankly We Did Win This Election”;
9. Wolff, Michael, Lanslide. The Final Days of the Trump Presidency;
10. Res Barbara A., Tower of Lies. What My 18 Years of Working With Donald Trump Reveals About Him;
I1. O’Brien, Timothy, L., Trump Nation. The Art of Being the Donald;
12. Wolff, Michael, Siege. Trump Under Fire;
13. Wolff, Fire and7 Fury. Inside the Trump White House;
14. Woodward, Rage;
15. Cohen, Michael, Disloyal. The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump;
16. Trump, Mary L. Trump, PhD., Too Much and Never Enough. How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man;
17. Karl, Jonathan, Front Row at the Trump Show;
18. Pfeiffer, Dan, Un-Trumping America;
19. Karl, Betrayal. The Final Act of the Trump Show;
20. Jordan, Mary, The Art of Her Deal. The Untold Story of Melania Trump;
21. Trump, Mary L. PhD, The Reckoning. Our Nation’s Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal;
22. Wilson, Rick, Everything Trump Touches Dies. A good Republican Strategist Gets Real About the Worst President Ever;
23. Ward, Vicky, Kushner Inc. Greed, Ambition, Corruption;
24.Winston Wolkoff, Stephanie, Melania and Me. The Rise and Fall of my Friendship with The First Lady;
25. Rucker, Philip, and Leonnig, Carol, A Very Stable Genius. Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America;
26. Woodward, Fear. Trump in the White House;
27. Pfeiffer, Dan, Yes We (Still) Can. Politics in the Age of Obama, Twitter, and Trump;
28. Pfeiffer, Un-Trumping America. A Plan to make America a Democracy Again;
29. Markay, Lachlan, and Suebsaeng, Sinking in the Swamp. How Trump’s Minions and Misfits Poisoned Washington;
30. Tur, Katy, Unbelievable. My Front Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History;
31. Green Joshua, Devil’s Bargain. Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising
32. D’Antonio, Michael, and Eisner, Peter, The Shadow President. The Truth about Mike Pence;
33. **Black, Conrad, Donald J. Trump. A President Like No Other;
34. Reilly, Rick, Commander in Cheat. How Golf Explains Trump;
35. Sims, Cliff, Team of Vipers. My 500 Extraordinary Days in the Trump White House;
36. Comey, James, A Higher Loyalty. Truth Lies and Leadership.
** Black, a convicted felon, wrote this rather positive book about Trump, in order to get Trump to pardon him; and what do you know, it worked.
… let me just say that I have virtually no recollection of what each of these books had to offer, but I did gain much general knowledge from the surprising (to me) number of tomes that I have consumed over the last five years or so. In a nutshell, I could find no redeeming qualities in either of Trump’s personae – public or private – not one fucking characteristic demonstrating anything resembling kindness, generosity, empathy, honesty, benevolence, compassion, loyalty or even just simple blind faith; coupled with this, Trump is undoubtedly one of the most unintelligent beings I have come across in my over sixty years of sentient life.
The Big Lie propagated by Trump and his craven cronies – Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Green, Louis Gomert, and Lauren Boebert among the more vociferous of that lot – has been adopted as “truth” by over sixty percent of Congressional Republicans. That’s correct – more than 3/5 of the GOP Senators and Representatives in the American Legislative branch believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and therefore, that Democrat Joe Biden is not the legitimate president of the United States. Actually, I don’t actually know what the aforementioned Congresspeople really believe regarding the election nor am I cognizant of what the about seventy percent of American Republican adoptees of the Big Lie really and truly believe, but suffice to say all these people, Republican legislators and otherwise, do not hesitate to support the Big Lie in public. The furthest some of these Republican Congresspeople will go when pressed to admit, during interviews, that Biden won the election fair and square, is their answer that “Joe Biden is the president of the United States” or words to that effect. What is believed by these idiots is in fact irrelevant; it’s what these and others of their ilk put out for public consumption that is cause for concern in terms, at least, of the divisive nature and effects created by these semi-humans on the American people (and among others, allow me to add).
So almost a year following the inauguration of Biden as president, this Big Lie lives on, started by Trump, who continues to push it at every opportunity whether it be on his tour with a disgraced Bill O’Riley or as he pontificates, just about every night, in front of his guests at Mara-logo, and this crowd of Trump sycophants reacts to his bullshit with a standing ovation amidst applause and loud shouts of approval and/or encouragement. It’s an undisputed fact that Trump himself started the Big Lie in the first place and it is he, himself, who continues to propagate this falsehood at every opportunity. He is a complete narcissist and, as such, probably can’t admit to himself that he lost the election and lost it to Biden, whom, during the campaign, he described as the worst presidential candidate in American history.
This continued propagation of the Lie does no one except Trump, potentially, any good; as a matter of fact it serves to rent even further the fabric underlying American culture and society as well as unleashing, in a way, the racist and white supremacist elements in said society; this in turn has created the preconditions for the violence, rioting, looting, destruction, and death, all evident south of the border. Not to say that these negative elements did not exist pre-Trump, but it is undeniable that his presidency gave free rein for fringe groups espousing racist agendas to come to the fore and become, almost, part of the mainstream. Since a problem cannot be solved unless it is admitted to exist in the first place, maybe it will prove to be a good thing that Trump was elected so that people become more conscious of the fact that these features actually exist to a greater extent than one originally, possibly, would have thought, and that they are indeed very dangerous and distressing components of American life.
It is true that Biden is a boring president compared to Trump but isn’t that what you were calling for during the latter’s presidency? Wasn’t it a desire to avoid the shit show which was the Trump administration which, more than anything else, contributed to Biden’s victory in 2020? Personally, if I was an American, I would have voted for Bernie Sanders, even if it required a write-in ballot which it did, in fact, as the Democrats rose up, excepting the progressives, to defat Sanders and establish Biden as the party’s presidential nominee.
And what of Joe Manchin, the Democrat who almost single-handedly has so far prevented the passage of the Biden Build Back Better Act. Manchin, who lives in a houseboat christened “Almost Heaven”, refuses to support this piece of legislation which would help a significant segment of the American population as well as allocating funds and taking other measures to fight very real climate change.
Why? It’s because Manchin, one of the two Senators from West Virginia, receives hundreds of millions of dollars from the Koch brothers in addition to other energy giants as well as holding stock in oil and gasoline corporations in the United States. Even with this clear conflict of interest evident in Manchin’s wheelings and dealings, I believe that Manchin could successfully seek re-election if a federal vote were to be held sometime in the very near future, although his popularity among West Virginians, one of the poorest groups of people in the whole country and for whom Build Back Better would be a gift, seems to be slipping just a bit. Get Manchin on board, somehow, or at least take some action to censure his behaviour. Would it not be an excellent idea for it to be made illegal for the peoples’ elected representatives to hold any stock portfolios? I realize that they are supposed to put their holdings in a blind trust right now, but that’s a complete joke.
So with the continuation of Big Lie, the declining popularity of both Biden and Kamala Harris, climate events unlike anything seen anywhere before, the killing of young blacks by police and other white supremacists as well as reactions to these murders from both the left and the right, it’s apparent that the United States is not headed in a healthy and positive direction at present. What could compound this hardship, all that would be needed would be for Trump or one of his cronies to be elected to the presidency in 2024, coupled with the Republicans gaining control of both the House and the Senate in 2022 and maintaining this dominance in 2024. Perish the thought. Please.
Peace out, friends.