Dug In Like A Tick

I hate to remind you all - I know we spend a lot of time not thinking about it - but Donald Trump is the president of the United States.

We couldn't believe it when it happened, we are still in a position of disbelief each day, and when it comes down to it, I think we'll write off these past four years as some kind of mass hallucination. Maybe.

I'm not going to dig into his policies. I don't feel the need to. You know where I stand on the topic, as a human being with a degree of empathy.

However - it seems that the populace have become aware of this man's con artistry and general awfulness. He is polling terribly. Almost every poll for the entire US has him behind Joe Biden - who, lets be clear, I am not super stoked about getting the job either, but if we're picking an STI, I'll take the one that itches the least.

I am aware that the popular vote isn't what actually decides the US electoral process, which is its own problem. Which just adds an air of uncertainty to the whole thing, that accompanies another level of uncertainty - mass vote manipulation. A large swathe of US citizens, by various means, having the ability to vote taken away from them. The attempted dissolution of the postal vote / US Postal Service, the mass incarcerations and criminal charges following protests, the closing of polling stations in areas that classically don't vote a certain way.

Can all of that overcome the damage Trump has done to himself?

And if it doesn't - and if he loses - if the electoral colleges do what they didn't do four years ago...

...what happens then?

Well, he's implied - indirectly, in a kind of Schrodinger's Idea kind of fashion - that he might not accept the result. For a variety of reasons.

I say Schrodinger's Idea because - well, you've all known someone like this. Someone that will float something that most people around them won't gel with, without seeming to be very invested in the notion. Just a joke, they'll say. Just trolling. Just being funny. Just to see who bites, and who doesn't - to see how much resistance there is. It's a classic abuser technique, as it happens.

This happens a lot in politics. An idea will be "leaked" and the backlash measured. This happens because the idea is potentially socially costly to the people fronting it up, often because the idea will (if executed) be harmful or detrimental to a significant swathe of society as a whole. It's a case of trying to see if they can make it fly, if they can convince the populace of the merits of the notion (real or imaginary) rather than have them focus on the flaws.

Look at Brexit; the idea was floated as a "Just A Thought" concept back in 2013, when David Cameron started making noises about renegotiating our EU membership. He wasn't idly speculating in the pub with his mates, he was seeing what we said and did about it. There wasn't an immediate uproar against it, and the anti-EU sentiment had been stoked gently and quietly for decades, so that's as much license as he and his needed.

So what happens if Donnie goes through with it? What happens if he barricades himself in the Oval Office and plugs his fingers in his ears?

Fact is, we aren't sure.

If the army, or the national guard, or the secret service, or even the FBI or CIA, have protocols for this kind of thing - they haven't been made public. I would like to believe that they DO have a protocol for this kind of thing. As anathemaic as it might seem for the democratically elected head of state to refuse to leave when the state elects someone else, coups are a semi-regular occurrence worldwide, so it can't be that alien a concept. Especially given that the CIA funds so many of them.

What really matters, though, is what the rest of the executive decides to do.

There's a lot of people in the White House that are only there because they're friends with this dude. There's a lot of folks that have benefited hugely from his being in power, because you can get away with absolutely egregious shit when the entire population is standing in slack-jawed horror at the last thing the president himself has done. I daresay that they would support his barricading, and would try and stir up their base to action - which means boogaloos and proud boys all over the place, and probably a bunch of Klan as well.

Everyone else, though? Senate, Congress? It might benefit them to just... pass on executive power to the person that won the election. Like, it doesn't matter that Donnie is in the White House right now, he's not the one in charge. He's not the President any more. He's just a guy in a room, surrounded by useless sycophants.

Technically speaking, the US military wouldn't have to obey his orders any more; and given how he has treated them at various turns, I don't think that there is a significant ground swell of Trumpism amongst the upper echelons of the Pentagon. So I would predict that the army would go along with the status quo, and refuse to assist the former President - though I doubt they would do anything direct to try and remove him. How bad would that look? US army invading their own White House?

If removal happens, I think it would be the secret service that would be the ones to do it. They are beholden to the office, not the man; and all of a sudden there is an intruder in the White House, which is a big deal. He needs to be removed without delay.

And if he does go down this route, and if he does refuse to leave, I guarantee you there will be no dignified end-of-movie resolution to the affair. Just another long, sad, dejected walk out to the car - potentially in cuffs.

...honestly gives me warm fuzzies just thinking about it.

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Don't Do What Donny Don't Does

Anybody remember this bit from the Simpsons?

The cartoon show has often been held up as predicting the future. Lots of shit has happened in the Simpsons which has then happened in real life, but then, when a show runs for 620 episodes in a singular setting, it's going to hit some beats somewhere. Throw enough pebbles, you'll hit the window.

Some examples - to save you sitting through a bullshit Buzzfeed article - include when Roy Horn (of Siegfried and Roy) was mauled by his own tiger, the NSA was caught spying on everybody, when voting machines went (TOTALLY ACCIDENTALLY) wrong, when FIFA was corrupt (yeah as if we couldn't see that coming without Matt Groening), and when ebola broke out.

This scene, however - this scene (aside from providing the best way to say "Down I Go" I have ever heard) seems to predict the future in a big way.

If there has ever been a President that has existed solely to tell future Presidents what not to do - if there are any - it's been Donny.

Donny Don't just has no idea. Just...no idea. It's actually somewhat comedic as to how incompetent he really is, and I am embarrassed that at one point I was convinced that he was just playing dumb in order to lull people into a false sense of security. He's dumb as a post. The job - the job of being President of the United States - is a difficult one, and I wouldn't want to put myself in that position. Even somewhat take-it-easy Presidents come away with grey hairs. So why would this man, who persistently failed in the business arena in ways that seem basic to you and I, actually have the skills to be President?

There's such a thing as the Dunning-Kruger effect, which states that at the bottom end of the ability spectrum, there's a lack of awareness and cognition which would allow the individual to realise that they kind of suck. Now I'm trying to contain my cynical misomania at this point, wherein I'd break out Carlin lines about thinking about how smart the average person is, but - Dunning-Kruger is real. I bet that anyone who reads this can think of at least one, and probably more, people they have encountered who were...to be blunt... just too dumb to realise they were dumb.

Donny Don't is doing everything that a President shouldn't, and he's not really clued-up enough on the job to know that he shouldn't.

Examples? Do I need to give any, really? Well, okay, how about -

• Being a white supremacist.
• Playing golf, all the time.
• Inciting war with whoever looks at him funny.
• Doing shady deals with Russia.
• Pulling out of UNESCO because Israel or something.
• Being a speaker at an anti-LGBTA seminar.
• Pulling out of the Paris agreement because who knows.
• Describing everything he dislikes as being false.
• Leaping onto Twitter whenever upset or offended, which is often.
• Having zero respect for the position he occupies and the country he serves.

The worst thing about all of this?

He can get away with it.

There is no recall election for the President - that has to wait until an actual election year, and I suppose that is for the purposes of the country not immediately trying to unseat the head of state the moment he says or does any one unpopular thing. Hell, I guess if there had been the ability to recall, Barack Obama would have faced one recall election a week from - I'm going to be honest - racists and right-wingers.

There being no recall, however, relies on most people who take the role of President being halfway competent. It's a polite assumption that whoever wins the election will at least be partially versed in statehood, that they won't immediately start insulting other nations, that they will show a measure of decorum.

I am about to do something that you will not often see or hear me do, so take note of the time and date.

George W. Bush showed decorum as part of his position. There were moments wherein that decorum went away ("Now Watch This Drive"), but for the most part, the man was lampooned as being clueless, not brazenly rude. The man understood that sometimes, you sit down, you shut up, and you listen. The man didn't lash out every time people talked out against him - and fucking A did we speak out against him. He was the President. He was above getting into mud-wrestling matches over what was perceived as a personal insult. Even Dubya was above having bitch-fits on Twitter because he had seen something that didn't sit right with him.

(In fairness, Twitter wasn't that big when Bush became President - but hey.)

Should George W. Bush have been impeached for his part in the Iraq and Afghan wars? I'm leaning toward yes. Should the public, had they had enough of him, been able to recall him as President? I'm leaning toward yes - but you'd have to set the bar for that pretty high. His approval ratings were fairly low when he left office.

The issue is that impeachment doesn't seem to happen when the person sat in the chair shouldn't be in the chair. It's a long and rather complicated process, that needs to hit several legal milestones, and can be upset if some of the people involved would rather see their pick still in situ - even if they did the thing they are accused of doing.

So Donny Don't is here now, and he's here doing things, and we can't get rid of him, and he's busy throwing shit on the walls and breaking flower pots and shouting obscenities at the grandparents. The damage he is doing, he is doing forever. He is burning diplomatic bridges that will take years if not decades to repair.

He isn't even smart enough to know that he shouldn't be doing it, or that it is wrong. He's got shit all over his hands, and he's smiling, because this is just lovely.

The only positive thing we can take from his Presidency is that there will be a living, breathing example of what happens when you elect someone into power who you wouldn't trust with an electric toothbrush.

If we aren't annihilated by nuclear fire before he is voted out, that is.

I'm Tired, Boss

This time last year, I wouldn't have believed anyone if they had explained in reasonable terms what the social and political landscape of now would look like.

Our government on the run, radio silence as they continue to push through harmful legislation, picking apart the NHS before something happens to end their mandate - a rebellion, another election, a referendum on leaving the EU.

The calls for a second referendum are loud, too. I agree with them. There's a lot of facts in the open, now. A lot of the lies have been kicked into the long grass where they belong, leaving only the economic certainties that are already coming true.

You know what I wouldn't have predicted happening?

The Nazi march in Charlottesville.

I'm not so naive as to assume there aren't neonazis in the United States, or here, or in most countries. There's a lot of racism drifting about, often kicked up as a way to consolidate or fabricate political support. As a general populace becomes less bigoted and less prone to hatred, there will always be the echelons of that society that kick back and hate more.

Back in August 2016 though - I didn't think the orange wonder would win the presidentail election, and usher in his little cadre of white supremacists and general scumbags. Nor did I think that he'd appeal in such a base way to violence against those who oppose him, or this whole Alt Right thing, which as best I can tell is the "moderate Right" telling the world: yeah, we may be ultracapitalists who hate women having rights, but at least we're not antisemites and racists.

And I didn't think I would see a bunch of people claiming against all evidence that they are the superior gene pool, marching through a town, holding tiki torches and loudly proclaiming that Jews wouldn't replace them.

Even just...paying attention to the whole thing...watching how people treat each other, and how those who stand up against the Nazis get painted with a very ugly brush...

It's enough to exhaust you.

I know that is a big reason why some people just avoid politics and social issues altogether. I also know that's a privilege. I can't pretend that the current economic or political situation won't affect my life, and almost always in negative ways. I don't earn enough money to just wave off news that workers rights are being tested or that the economy is slowing down at record rates. Likewise my friends and loved ones who are any kind of minority - how can any of my people of colour ignore the fact that Herr Drumpf only gave vague lip service to opposing these Nazi assholes? Or ignore that our own government is still okay with this Nazi sympathiser coming to visit sometime in the near future?

Nonetheless. Paying attention, seeing the ugliness that human beings are capable of enacting on each other - it is draining, and I won't deny it.

On Friday I felt a deep and keen sympathy with this tear-jerking scene from The Green Mile.

Because it would be so easy...so easy for these things to not happen. Surely, it takes more effort to be an evil fuck than it does to just not. When you get home from work at the end of the day, from giving up your daylight hours to have enough paper just to make it to tomorrow with shelter and food - do you have the time or the energy to actively try and make the lives of innocent people worse?

Wouldn't it just be so much less hard, so much less taxing, to just...not?

Maybe it's just the chronic health conditions I carry around with me that makes me feel that fatigue. Maybe most people get home at the end of the day and they DO have that energy. Maybe it's just the mindset I lack - I don't feel terribly accomplished or refreshed when I get myself furious at poor people or sick people or old people or disabled people or people of colour or LGBTQA folx.

Maybe it's because the hate I have in me - and I do have hate in my heart, I'm no sinless wonder-child - is reserved for specific individuals. Bastards. Racists. Sexists. Bigots. Too busy hating on people for something they actively do, to hate people for something they are.

Because here's the thing: you can choose to not be a Nazi. You might have a deep and abiding resentment inside of you, but you're the one that chooses to walk out to a march, to buy a tiki torch and a red MAGA baseball cap and stupid cream chino pants, to chant the same things as the other Nazi scumbags. The people you loudly and angrily hate can't stop being what they are. YOU can. You're the one putting in the effort.

And then being really surprised when you get fired, or lose social privileges, which is weird. I mean, you'd expect some flashback from being a Nazi, right? Even peaceful unarmed protesters get the shit beat out of them by riot cops, and all you got was escorted around by the boys in blue. Surely your workplace suddenly remembering that they shouldn't employ members of hate groups is a thing you expected?

After all, you took the effort to not go to your little private social event. You took the effort to stand around a statue, wearing clothes imported from other countries, holding a torch made popular by an entirely different culture, and loudly brag about your supremacy, with the symbols of more than one failed government.

When I take the time to call out bullshit, I expect people to remember that and treat me as such.

Even if it would be easier if I didn't.

So yes, I am tired. I am tired of these twerps thinking it's unfair that they suffer repercussions for being racist shitlords. I am tired of people who act against these scumbags being called out and torn down because activism makes people uncomfortable.

But they aren't going to stop.

So we can't either.

Fuck 'em.

Saturday Morning Villainry

If you were born when I was born, and watched as many cartoons as I did, then you are probably well acquainted with villainry of a specific sort.

Cast your eyes over this little bevvy of bastards (original artwork here: http://batkong40.deviantart.com/art/80-s-Animated-Villians-557990209 )

We all know who THESE folks are, surely.

The maniacal Megatron, leader of the Decepticons. Mumm-Ra the Ever Living, sworn enemy of the Thundercats. Skeletor, perpetual thorn in Eternia's side. Cobra Commander, GI Joe's constant nemesis. Shredder, leader of the Foot Clan, whom the Turtles battle at every turn.

All indisputable bad guys of the most epic quality. All, as Don John from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing would put it, "Plain Dealing Villains". You know what they are about the moment you clap eyes on them.

They were so ridiculous, weren't they?

I mean as we all grow up and become adults we know that no villain looks like this. Nobody deliberately bedecks themselves with the trappings of mwahaha evil and does what these people do. I mean some of their truly most incredible plans include erecting a pyramid of blackness around the earth to block out the sun, unleashing a mostly uncontrollable iron titan to raze Eternia to the ground, and Megatron's biggest and weirdest plans are just erratic in the extreme. Hypnotising twenty-somethings in nightclubs for unknown reasons, convincing the world that the Autobots are evil by very dubious means (THIS ACTUALLY WORKED), and drilling to the core of the planet are all means by which the gladiator from Kaon thought he could secure victory.

They aren't the only crooks, obviously. I mean just name a cartoon. Captain Planet fought a whole host of bad guys who randomly polluted things as if that would benefit them in any way. I mean some of them weren't even making any money. They were just deliberately fucking up the rainforest for no apparent reason. Doc Terror and Hacker from Centurions were similar - they just acted douchey as if that would get them more likes on Instagram.

But then we all grew up. We started looking for nuanced antagonists. Sometimes, we found them. If we look at Alien we find a dual antagonist - the instinct-driven inhuman xenomorph, incapable of good or bad, simply doing that which it does, and the faceless corporation so determined to exploit aforementioned xenomorph that it is willing to give up the lives of its employees to secure the dangerous creature for profitable ends.

We started seeing bad guys in the regular world, with motives that were understandable that we could almost sympathise with (and in a few places, actually could sympathise with totally). We found Roy Batty and his quest for more life; we found the competing forces of nature and industry; we found antagonists of every stripe, some more like us than we liked, some more like those four-colour bad guys that we had grown up with. A whole spectrum of supervillains.

We start seeing them in real life, too. We see the faces of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Ed Gein, Charles Manson. We realise that evil still lives, still exists in the world beyond the cartoons that we watched with our cereal on a Saturday morning. We realise that the antics of Megatron - a huge, mighty, despicable tyrant - are still more bearable and tolerable than those of, say, Luis Garavito. (If you don't know who he is - look him up - his nickname is La Bestia.)

...and then we have the current leaders of the United Kingdom and the United States.

Now every time I see the Cheeto holding up a piece of paper, another executive order, another bill, I get nervous. Because the first few made you think - well sure, it can't keep up this pace the entire time he's in power, can it? He can't keep signing these bills, which are clearly pretty shit for most of the population. Like every single thing this guy does seems to be something that Cobra Commander would do if he was in charge. Every single thing.

A selection of those bills that have been signed include trashing the Affordable Care Act (yes, he literally got rid of affordable healthcare, it means what it sounds like), promising to build the big fucking wall that won't stop drugs or people entering the US, making women's lives harder the entire world over, send federal authorities into every city that don't do what he says, fuck with the lives of immigrants from the Middle East (but not those countries he has business or military deals with), and force through pipelines that are mostly (if not universally) considered a bad idea.

Meanwhile, the Wicked Witch of Westminster is engaging in similar shennanigans, promising a trashing of trade deals and making vague threats of engineering better ones (usually with people like the Cheeto), cutting funds to objectively good things (The NHS and renewable energy), promising to spend billions on nuclear weapons that don't work, and indicating a willingness to deploy troops we can't afford to properly equip into countries we won't accept innocent refugees from.

...see, that's not evil like real world evil. That's not subtle. That's not the kind of thing a taut drama is written about, like Frost/Nixon or like the extra-judiciary murders conducted by Mossad in Munich.

This is Saturday Morning Evil.

How do we fight this? We aren't Optimus Prime, we aren't Lion-O or He-Man or G.I. Joe or the Turtles. If we show up and just kick people's asses, we are the ones who go to jail - or worse, get shouted down by well-meaning people on our side (just look at the response to the neo-Nazi chappy getting punched or how people felt about Shia LeBoeuf not turning the other cheek to another alt-right Nazi prick).

It's had to believe that people actually voted for this.

...well most people didn't, it does bear mention. Just less than 20% of the population of the United States voted for the Cheeto. Just over 17% of the population of the UK voted for the Tory party, who then changed out their leader for the Wicked Witch of Westminster without public consultation or similar.

I don't think that one in five counts as a mandate.

So what do we do about it? As Theoden says in The Two Towers: "What can men do against such reckless hate?"

...well I have to be honest, I am not strictly sure. But we have to make sure this shit doesn't happen again. I've often spoken out about resisting these bastards. Now it seems those words have come home to roost. Enough people have started to realise that this right-wing fuck-em-all approach is just going to get innocent people hurt and killed. If they haven't realised this, then they haven't been paying attention.

I've been experiencing fatigue in this department. There is only so often you can preach what you think is common sense, that you can tie the facts together to come up with a course of action or a method of resistance, and have little to show for it. Almost all the people who read my blog either agree with my particular line of thinking or just don't care very much - and I have no idea how to get my ideas TO the people that matter, TO the people who can be convinced by argument. Because I have faith that there are people that vote Tory, there are people that vote Republican, who are at their heart good people that are making a bad choice.

Everyone makes a bad decision, sometimes - none of us can look back at our lives and claim a golden streak - but some of those decisions only result in personal misery. Some of them compound with a great many other bad decisions.

And those decisions sometimes lead to these two cartoon villains being in charge of previously proud nations.

This sounds like a generalisation. It probably comes across as one. I know, love, value and respect people who don't vote like me, and don't think like me. We can still get on if we don't see eye to eye on this topic. And I don't think that everyone that wears a Labour badge is a saint, or that every Democrat is in it to help the world. It just so happens that the current antagonists of this season of Human Life are, well...jesus. They're like poster children for the worst of the worst.

But what can I do?

I can keep talking. I can keep up the facts and the thinking. Because giving up doesn't help anyone. And if there's any one thing that being ill for this long has taught me, it is that victory isn't always something that happens in a single action. Sometimes, victory takes weeks, months and years. Sometimes it isn't about knowing what to do in this moment...Sometimes it is about doing the right thing for as long as it takes, and staying standing until you can't - or until you win.

That's the lesson to take from Saturday morning. The fight always continues, but the good guys can't afford to give up. So they just don't. They fight, until the fight is over.

So let's do that.