My thoughts, while walking off long Covid and listening to podcasts...a blog designed and meant to be freely associating, on the run, and not perfectly edited:
This podcast, or Rachel... and I am very serious, need to win some awards for the Ultra podcast.
Rachel details in the episode the explosion of the Hercules gun powder plant who supplied in the US military back in the 40s. And how months before that, a citizen had put together an agent cell to infiltrate American fascists and Nazis planning to overthrow the government. Who then notified Congress about it. Who turned it over to the FBI. But the government did not follow through with due diligence. This is another fascinating episode in this tale of how Donald Trump was not the first fascist to try to take over America, just the first president. And how the FBI dropped the ball back in the 1940s and with the Jan. 6th, 2021 insurrection
Next podcast I listened to is, John Heilemann‘s "Hell and Highwater" podcast part 2 finishing up with Maggie Haberman. Something people need to think about in voting for Trump ever again as president...if he were to get elected again, what makes anyone think he would leave office at the end of the second term? When he’s not allowed a third? And how would that stop him from trying? It wouldn't. That's the point.
Third podcast is Political Gabfest, Bonus Edition, Michigan and Arizona Midterms
Weather today is overcast, the air quality is good in the 40s for AQI. First day I’ve been able to go for a walkabout in a while. Air quality doesn’t seem to be affecting my heart or blood pressure, yet. Today there was a change in airflow coming off the ocean in the west, pushing the smoke east. It’s a little moist today. But nice overall.
My Instagram post for the day.
The thing about MAGA, other than being ridiculous and easily debunked if you really wanted to do that… is that it’s not about intellectual level or critical thinking to sink into it. I mean, it is as far as vetting information. But it’s really about holes in one's mental concepts and paradigm of reality. In one’s desires, politically speaking Also religiously speaking. Do note that many atheists have a very religious structural orientation to reality, because so many were raised as theists and grew into being atheist. It’s not about how smart or educated you are, it’s about those blindspots in the hierarchy of one's thinking. If you push certain buttons in the mind, as Trump did and is doing, as MAGA and QAnon types are doing, it lights up certain pleasure zones in the brain. And when we lighten up those pleasure zones, we become kind of stupid. Which explains adultery, libertine orientations, and various disabilities like pedophilia and even, serial killers.
America’s wannabe fascist leader in the 1940s said Hitler had the brown shirts, Mussolini had the black shirts, so why can’t I have the silver shirts? And so he started that organization of silver shirts. Much like silverfish insects who are disgusting to all who fully examine them running about their bare feet, at the most vulnerable of times.
About all this...I keep saying to read Timothy Snyder’s book “On Tyranny”, for how tyranny, through Fascism, comes to power as we're seeing in America now, and as we’ve seen before. And yet, for some reason none of us learn about this in our history classes. We're going to need to change that. Or all this will happen again, and again. Until this country crashes. This is our second time. That we know of so far.
This thing about the American Nazi "silver shirts" is interesting. In 1978 when I lived in Spokane, Washington, I was in the Air Force at Fairchild Air Force Base. 15 miles outside of Spokane. I met a guy that seemed nice, at the gym, who with his wife took my wife and I across the border to the hills of Idaho, where we met his friends. At "The Church of Our American Christian Heritage". Who basically look like the Silver Shirts. It was a day that scared the hell out of my wife and I. Little old ladies in a fascist church spewing the most vile anti-somatic and anti-non-white and minority bullshit. I listened in their church with a sermon from their national leader up from Georgia that day, who didn’t know there were newbies in the crowd. I wasn’t really buying what he was saying anyway, until he started talking about his visit to Vancouver BC, in Canada. A city I love, dearly. Both Victoria on Vancouver Island and Vancouver on the mainland, north of Seattle. He started talking about what a vile cesspool Vancouver is because basically, it’s just such an international city. Which is part of what makes it so cool. I had to cool my rising blood pressure and anger has he vociferously, furiously denigrated one of the most beloved cities in my life.
The story Rachel is telling in this episode of her Ultra podcast, is essentially what is a small group, compared to the population of America, who were trained well enough to make specific attacks on our infrastructure, to truly damage America. Reminds me of a "60 Minutes" piece ("How safe is America's Electric Grid?") they did not long ago. Someone in, I think Southern California, who took pot shots at a power station in the middle of nowhere. That seemed to experts as obviously a practice run targeting Americas infrastructure where a bullet could do massive damage to a region of the power grid. While it would be perhaps too expensive to secure all those locations with proper armed guards and dogs etc. They can be outfitted with enough electronic surveillance equipment to be remotely monitored if anyone coming up was acting suspiciously. We should have a rapid response team who can go check it out before damage is done. Are we doing that good enough? Probably not. Again we’ve been forewarned and did little or nothing. Examples? The Hercules gun powder plant in the 1940s mentioned in the "Ultra" podcast. Or, 9/11 in the 2000s. January 6 insurrection in 2021. We need to wake up! And as painful as it as it is for America, we need to begin to be proactive. Even though toxic conservatism professes otherwise in that it’s progressiveness which is socialism, or communism, or even Satan. Pretty childish really. It’s ridiculous if that is what stops us from acting protectively and we get hit with yet another actual and real fascist attack... ever again.
If you don’t listen to Rachel Maddow's "Ultra" podcast, if you don’t listen to podcasts, you really should listen to Season 1 Episode 3 that came out today (Mondays) about the American fascist Nazi attempt to overthrow the government in the 1940s and how the government stumbled so that it took a citizen to build an undercover cell to get the info. Eventually forewarning Congress in a public hearing, telling them there was going to be a massive explosion at the Hercules gunpowder plant, which serviced a lot, including America’s military. And yet, nine months later, it happened just as he said it would. Sounds familiar. We were also warned about the Jan. 6th insurrection. And yet, things were not set up to protect us, but rather hindrances were put in place to allow it to happen. History, repeating itself, or just rhyming?
I don’t believe in theology, I don’t buy into the metaphysical, like demons and evil and such. I do however love it in storytelling, has I grew up Catholic. And I’ve certainly written about it in my fiction. My most extreme example being my last book Anthology of Evil II Part II The Unwritten, where I literally describe Hell as it interacts with two other real universes. Still, if anyone were to be evil, it would be Donald Trump. Why? Because he has spawned ignorance and abuse, misinformation, and has supported and been supported by, our worst actors on the planet. Including Putin. And now his interplay with Herschel Walker, who he fully supports because he wants somebody that’s stupid to follow the Trump paradigm and succeed. Someone to just do what he's told by the Republlcian Party. He’s trying to bring about that movie… and you know which movie ("Idiocracy"). A film story we're headed further and further into, day by day, election by election.
Apparently in Maggie Haberman‘s book, she details how Trump, in the 1990s, told his biracial girlfriend she got her brains from her dad's side of the family, who is a white guy. What a nice racist boyfriend, right? Said she had brains.
Trump has been the most powerful force in the Republican Party and America's lower intestines. He’s moved on up past the bigger intestine, now. He’s in the stomach, approaching the esophagus, and pretty soon all that dripping shit that’s been coming out of some (too many) Republican mouths, will soon become a fire hose, should he ever get reelected.
China committed a kind of genocide in Tibet through Chinese Settler colonialism, overpopulating another country with the children of the invading Chinese. With many bullshit disingenuous arguments as to why they were (rationalizing) doing “good“ there. We’re seeing the same thing with Republicans now here, only in a political sense. While they fine tune an ancient racist Jewish conspiracy, where they’re over populating lower official government positions with MAGA nut cases, so that eventually they’ll take over. If we don’t do something about it.
It is definitely a problem in binary thinking in being full theist or atheist. Being agnostic can also has it’s dangerous. I would call it "bilious logic" or "encapsulated cloud logic" or "fuzzy logic". Not to be confused with actual fuzzy logic. Which is actually something. [fuzzy logic: Fuzzy logic is an approach to variable processing that allows for multiple possible truth values to be processed through the same variable.] There are some topics/subjects where, if you don’t take a hardline stance against it, you’re asking to slide into a binary understanding, eventually in the opposite direction than had initially been intended. It can evolve into an "infection". We're seeing that in its toxicity today. It’s overcome our conservatism and republicanism as it evolved into things like the "Tea Party", and MAGA, and Trumpism. It’s self-destructive but begins by fueling itself through the destruction of others, until the pleasure received from being inhumane takes root, and it's too late to see it's gotten out of control.
Especially in politics, if concern of something should evolve into fears of other things. Unless there’s actually something there to fear. So often, not. As well when we do fear something real, we need to be sure we’re not simply concerned about some thing else, as that can evolve into a fear that evokes binary fight or flight. And yes I know there’s also, freezing, with fight or flight. Don’t be a rabbit just run or freeze up, or flight. Fighting for what we should believe in and not just what we do believe in. [Fight, flight or freeze are the three most basic stress responses. They reflect how your body will react to danger. Fawn is the fourth stress response that was identified later.] Fawn by the way, is what we se from those close to someone like Donald Trump. Or Vladimir Putin.
I should add a side note in my long Covid book on my personal history about the OSI and the Berlin incident with the KGB in 1977. Something like, "Here’s a story you’ll never hear anywhere else." And true enough. I already did a FOIA request For my medical records and my mental health records which they didn’t send. But I should do one about me and the OSI see what it shows. It's sometimes surprising what those show, and what they don't.
Regarding new political candidate Kari Lake who for decades Phoenix trusted as a news anchor. That’s fine. She walked away from a media career, giving her some weight, because MAGA types don’t trust media. Unless it says what they like to hear, obviously. Like Fox News, etc. Problem there is, they trust the wrong media when they do. But look, don’t trust either her politics or her ambition. Because she’s bought into the Trump Disinformation loop paradigm that's destroying this country. Literally do not trust those supposed "leaders". Remember as always, if you do want or like to trust them? Trust but verify. The thing is, if you verify these people they fail verification all the time. Still, if you’re MAGA, they won’t fail it. Because of whatever rationalization is being put into play so one can believe that due diligence was accomplished. The only due diligence they’re doing however, is of an allowance to continue to believe the disinformation.
Somewhere above I referred to “this information”. But we have to understand that’s a bigger subject and it seems the current MAGA political disinformation campaign that's been going on now for years, is more than just a piece of information. It’s efforts, dynamics and processes that they're putting into play and that have been put into place to support all that. The big lie is just one more of all that. We really need to pay attention. And act, and act accordingly.
Cheers!
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