Will this national ordeal we are going through be over when the Fat Man swings?

Moonbeam · Friday at 3:18 PM

Imagine a world without Trump if you can! Is he under your bead, in your closet, outside your door. For most of us right now Trump exists only in our heads and will he not remain there if the Dumpster takes his last dive tonight? Will we not fear his sycophants and followers via imagination even though none are anywhere. isn't a sunny day the same as it was a thousand years ago and a thousand years from now, the same warmth on some lovely child's skin.

Is not fear of the future the result of fear in the past, the fear of repeated pain? But there isn't one iota of the past you can change. Are we not like moths circling a flame? Are we not victims of a vicarious dream that mimics our ancient misery with ersatz misery today as if today's misery solved would heal what happened in the past? That can't cannot happen. Only the memories relived of what did happen can open to door to realization that we were conditioned by lies that at root we were worthless as human beings. Real knowledge of what really happened can heal and knowing that is were the problem lies closes the door on useless worry about the present. Only you can prevent Trump wild fires from sweeping through your piece of mind.

Good luck.

Edited to clean up a mess

Sonikku · Friday at 4:24 PM

No way. If Trump hadn't won in 2016 then history would have taken a very different path. But that wasn't just a one off fever dream. A majority of the American people voted for more and now give the GoP a pass for anything they do even if they're being hurt by them. At this point he's packed the courts with so many ultra partisan judges with lifetime appointments, most of them very young that will be with us for a couple generations. His actions are the reason Trump vs US is now the law of the land and while no Dems would abuse such a thing, any Republican absolutely would.

The right wing propaganda machine has gained great steam not only in Fox News and later OAN and Newsmax, but even social media and big name influencers are towing the crackpot conspiracy theories. He successfully leveraged much of the fallout from the failed policies his party created against his opponents and any successor is sure to lean into the same. Any Republican that would have put the constitution first has been wiped out by now for not being suitably sycophantic to Trump. Put simply, the apparatus he's built isn't going anywhere and Vance, Mike Johnson or any other Republican still in office at this point would now emulate themselves after him and his tactics and would co-opt the coalition he has built.

hal2kilo · Friday at 4:29 PM

Moonbeam said:
Imagine a world without Trump if you can! Is he under your bead, in your closet, outside your door. For most of us right now Trump exists only in our heads and will he not remain there if the Dumpster takes his last dive tonight? Will we not fear his sycophants and followers via imagination even though none are anywhere. isn't a sunny day the same as it was a thousand years ago and a thousand years from now, the same warmth on some lovely child's skin.

Is not fear of the future the result of fear in the past, the fear of repeated pain? But there isn't one iota of the past you can change. Are we not like moths circling a flame? Are we not victims of a vicarious dream that mimics our ancient misery with ersatz misery today as if today's misery solved would heal what happened in the past? That can't cannot happen. Only the memories relived of what did happen can open to door to realization that we were conditioned by lies that at root we were worthless as human beings. Real knowledge of what really happened can heal and knowing that is were the problem lies closes the door on useless worry about the present. Only you can prevent Trump wild fires from sweeping through your piece of mind.

Good luck.

Edited to clean up a mess

Swinging his golf clubs on the course, or swinging from a rope?

eelw · Friday at 4:30 PM

Sure others will attempt to abuse the power but I doubt any other will get the same sycophantic following. The leopard face eating will tear them apart. The only hope is the citizens smarten up and give Dems supermajorities to clean up this mess

Moonbeam · Friday at 6:13 PM

hal2kilo said:
Swinging his golf clubs on the course, or swinging from a rope?

A swing has follow through. A rope has an end. Rope it is.

Sonikku said:
No way. If Trump hadn't won in 2016 then history would have taken a very different path. But that wasn't just a one off fever dream. A majority of the American people voted for more and now give the GoP a pass for anything they do even if they're being hurt by them. At this point he's packed the courts with so many ultra partisan judges with lifetime appointments, most of them very young that will be with us for a couple generations. His actions are the reason Trump vs US is now the law of the land and while no Dems would abuse such a thing, any Republican absolutely would.

The right wing propaganda machine has gained great steam not only in Fox News and later OAN and Newsmax, but even social media and big name influencers are towing the crackpot conspiracy theories. He successfully leveraged much of the fallout from the failed policies his party created against his opponents and any successor is sure to lean into the same. Any Republican that would have put the constitution first has been wiped out by now for not being suitably sycophantic to Trump. Put simply, the apparatus he's built isn't going anywhere and Vance, Mike Johnson or any other Republican still in office at this point would now emulate themselves after him and his tactics and would co-opt the coalition he has built.

Was your life being threatened directly as you wrote that or were you thinking of the dangers to human welfare Trump is creating. I bet the latter, so as I said your concerns are produced by thought, how you imagine how things could go even more south than they already have. Your comment is based on predictions predicated on the past imagined rationally into the future, not on actual immediate threat. You have allowed Trump to control your mind as it were. The nut housewife full of people driven over the edge by that kind of fear.

A person is walking to their car near me and I heard a plane fly by and an engine stare. A cool breeze blows into the window of my car tutching my skin pleasurably. I don’t see Trump in the white clouds that float by. Between jets descending to land at the airport, things are quiet.

gothuevos · Friday at 6:42 PM

Moonbeam · Friday at 6:51 PM

gothuevos said:
No.

A case study posts

HomerJS · Friday at 6:54 PM

eelw said:
Sure others will attempt to abuse the power but I doubt any other will get the same sycophantic following. The leopard face eating will tear them apart. The only hope is the citizens smarten up and give Dems supermajorities to clean up this mess

Even if they did as long as we have Fox News etc they will continue to pound in people it’s all the Democrats fault and stupid people will forget Trump caused it all. If in 2026 Dems got supermajorities complaints would start within months because taxes would have to be raised to fix this mess. If Dems are smart massive tax hikes on everyone making over 400K. A new bracket lets say 45%. Also make it illegal to pay salaries in stock over 25% of total compensation so cap gains can’t be used to totally avoid taxes.

Also raise the SS cap to take its insolvency off the table

[DHT]Osiris · Friday at 7:03 PM

The wave of anti-intellectualism will fade when the children of anti-intellectuals realize how goddamned stupid their parents were. Don't expect this to be over soon.

Jaskalas · Friday at 7:20 PM

eelw said:
Sure others will attempt to abuse the power but I doubt any other will get the same sycophantic following. The leopard face eating will tear them apart. The only hope is the citizens smarten up and give Dems supermajorities to clean up this mess

Rome did not return to a Republic after Ceaser. Quiet the opposite actually. That it had fallen to imperial rule was codified by Octavian.
You speak of supermajories as if the US still has a Congress. In name only.
The seat of the President is now an Emperor, and this power will be needed to defeat MAGA.

Moonbeam · Friday at 7:52 PM

HomerJS said:
Even if they did as long as we have Fox News etc they will continue to pound in people it’s all the Democrats fault and stupid people will forget Trump caused it all. If in 2026 Dems got supermajorities complaints would start within months because taxes would have to be raised to fix this mess. If Dems are smart massive tax hikes on everyone making over 400K. A new bracket lets say 45%. Also make it illegal to pay salaries in stock over 25% of total compensation so cap gains can’t be used to totally avoid taxes.

Also raise the SS cap to take its insolvency off the table

Where does this concern that Fox News is destroying people's capacity to reason? Isn't that a conclusion that has happened in your head. Hasn't Fox News troubled your mind because it gets into people's heads. Can you see it also got into yours. You worry about it influencing people as it influences you. Fox News feeds on imaginary fears. Only you can have a say in what you wish to imagine or not imagine.

Jaskalas said:
Rome did not return to a Republic after Ceaser. Quiet the opposite actually. That it had fallen to imperial rule was codified by Octavian.
You speak of supermajories as if the US still has a Congress. In name only.
The seat of the President is now an Emperor, and this power will be needed to defeat MAGA.

Sound like you are feeling defeated. Perhaps all that happened was your imagination about what is winning and what is not are the products of concepts that have no reality other than that you cede.

Jaskalas · Saturday at 12:41 AM

Moonbeam said:
Sound like you are feeling defeated. Perhaps all that happened was your imagination about what is winning and what is not are the products of concepts that have no reality other than that you cede.

And in what ways are you going to pretend Trump is still a Constitutionally bound President, beholden to two other EQUAL branches of government?

Do you think he feels that way?
Do you think the Speaker of the House feels that way?
SCOTUS?

Your options seem rather limited for a rebuttal given their actions. SCOTUS placed POTUS above the law. Congress cedes the law to POTUS, lets him wave a hand for the single greatest tax hike in American history. Surrendering their roles. Yet you would pretend they exist in anything more than name only. Funny, that.

An executive beholden to no one is an Emperor. Call it what it is.

HomerJS · Saturday at 1:04 AM

Moonbeam said:
Where does this concern that Fox News is destroying people's capacity to reason? Isn't that a conclusion that has happened in your head. Hasn't Fox News troubled your mind because it gets into people's heads. Can you see it also got into yours. You worry about it influencing people as it influences you. Fox News feeds on imaginary fears. Only you can have a say in what you wish to imagine or not imagine.

Sound like you are feeling defeated. Perhaps all that happened was your imagination about what is winning and what is not are the products of concepts that have no reality other than that you cede.

Where does it come from? Have you paid attention to their M.O.? Have you paid attention to the gaslighting?

Answer this using your knowledge of history and intelligence. Could Nixon have survived if he had the Fox News machine in 1974?

Moonbeam · Saturday at 1:27 AM

Jaskalas said:
And in what ways are you going to pretend Trump is still a Constitutionally bound President, beholden to two other EQUAL branches of government?

Do you think he feels that way?

Do you think the Speaker of the House feels that way?

SCOTUS?

Your options seem rather limited for a rebuttal given their actions. SCOTUS placed POTUS above the law. Congress cedes the law to POTUS, lets him wave a hand for the single greatest tax hike in American history. Surrendering their roles. Yet you would pretend they exist in anything more than name only. Funny, that.

An executive beholden to no one is an Emperor. Call it what it is.

As I said, what I am saying is heard not from a state of unity but from one of duality. You name things, emperor, and experience the naming via a memory of bad experiences, memory, and are a prisoner to that addiction. You live in thought which is time and fear, unaware there is a timeless awakening into the now.

I have no problem with what you see, I am not arguing against it. I am saying that your need to see as you do is creates what you see. That need isn’t real. It is created by duality.

Moonbeam · Saturday at 1:42 AM

HomerJS said:
Where does it come from? Have you paid attention to their M.O.? Have you paid attention to the gaslighting?

Answer this using your knowledge of history and intelligence. Could Nixon have survived if he had the Fox News machine in 1974?

Do children pay attention to such things when it’s time to play? Except as you be like a child you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Have you paid attention to the wisdom of the ages? Love is being, thought is fear. Where is one alive, in the now or in the past or the future. Once there was a way back home. It didn’t go anywhere. We just hide from it out of fear. We live in tanks because we have known war and you want me to pay attention to that on a lovely spring day. I want out of my tank and to go play. The clock is ticking.

cytg111 · Saturday at 4:02 AM

I sort of hope it continues long enough to build up enough momentum to incur real change, enough to get enough progressives into power to kick over scotus overturn citizen united kick Fox to the curb etc... give rise to singlepayer, all that stuff.
I think its evident that the Americans wants change to the point where the center is straight up poison. On the other hand Biden adm did a lot but that shit never reaches the audience cause of Fox and like. Well. Conservative Billionaires.

Abwx · Saturday at 5:35 AM

[DHT]Osiris said:
The wave of anti-intellectualism will fade when the children of anti-intellectuals realize how goddamned stupid their parents were. Don't expect this to be over soon.

The problem is that everyone is dumber than what we were precovid and no one realise it.

A medical study proved that the ones who were very lightly impacted as to be asymptomatic still endured a neurons losses ranging within 0.2 to 2% of the brain total mass, so the result is that our reactions to stimulises are less logical and more emotional, that is, cortex activity declined and we rely more on the reptilian part of our brain.

Overall we may have witnessed some kind of regression in the human s intelligence
evolution, that may be a bold analysis but i dont think (!) that said brain mass loss can
be of negligible consequences.

[DHT]Osiris · Saturday at 8:09 AM

Abwx said:
The problem is that everyone is dumber than what we were precovid and no one realise it.

A medical study proved that the ones who were very lightly impacted as to be asymptomatic still endured a neurons losses ranging within 0.2 to 2% of the brain total mass, so the result is that our reactions to stimulises are less logical and more emotional, that is, cortex activity declined and we rely more on the reptilian part of our brain.

Overall we may have witnessed some kind of regression in the human s intelligence
evolution, that may be a bold analysis but i dont think (!) that said brain mass loss can
be of negligible consequences.

You can be 'stupid' and still not be anti intellectual. I accept that there's plenty of people that know more than me about all sorts of shit that I have absolutely no knowledge of, that I'm 'dumb' about.

Pontius Dilate · Saturday at 10:03 AM

Moonbeam said:
Do children pay attention to such things when it’s time to play? Except as you be like a child you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Have you paid attention to the wisdom of the ages? Love is being, thought is fear. Where is one alive, in the now or in the past or the future. Once there was a way back home. It didn’t go anywhere. We just hide from it out of fear. We live in tanks because we have known war and you want me to pay attention to that on a lovely spring day. I want out of my tank and to go play. The clock is ticking.

Let’s say @HomerJS stops paying attention to Fox News and the people who get their information from Fox. Stops giving thought to Trump and the other reprobate Republicans making up illegal laws. Let’s say he pays attention to the wisdom of the ages and re-acquires his child-like sense of wonder, love and being in the now.

Six months from now, having lived a life of bliss, he encounters an ICE gang on an immigrant sweep. They see his non-white skin and one of them is convinced they heard him speaking in a foreign accent. He is arrested, whereupon they find he has no ID, but he does have a Chelsea Football Club tattoo. When he wakes up in El Salvador, do you suppose he will feel blissful about having ignored the people who created the environment where this was possible, while they were doing it?

hal2kilo · Saturday at 12:28 PM

HomerJS said:
Where does it come from? Have you paid attention to their M.O.? Have you paid attention to the gaslighting?

Answer this using your knowledge of history and intelligence. Could Nixon have survived if he had the Fox News machine in 1974?

Why don't people understand that this all makes sense if you admit Trump and MAGA are a cult.

Moonbeam · Saturday at 12:54 PM

hal2kilo said:
Why don't people understand that this all makes sense if you admit Trump and MAGA are a cult.

To me a cult is a collection of people who were made to feel worthless as children, and thus who capitulated to the notion they are disgusting and the way they cope with the misery living in that delusion, actually feeling that it is real, is by projecting all those notions of disgust onto other people so they can feel justified in using them as punching bags to let out all the rage they accumulated but had to suppress and deny to survive that torture as children.

If you allow them to make you miserable, their real and often conscious intention, you yourself will start looking around for someone to dump on too.

I think any real self understanding is going to involve the pain of realization that the evil we hate out there we learned via being accused of those sins.

Moonbeam · Saturday at 1:04 PM

Pontius Dilate said:
Let’s say @HomerJS stops paying attention to Fox News and the people who get their information from Fox. Stops giving thought to Trump and the other reprobate Republicans making up illegal laws. Let’s say he pays attention to the wisdom of the ages and re-acquires his child-like sense of wonder, love and being in the now.

Six months from now, having lived a life of bliss, he encounters an ICE gang on an immigrant sweep. They see his non-white skin and one of them is convinced they heard him speaking in a foreign accent. He is arrested, whereupon they find he has no ID, but he does have a Chelsea Football Club tattoo. When he wakes up in El Salvador, do you suppose he will feel blissful about having ignored the people who created the environment where this was possible, while they were doing it?

This is what thought and imagination does. This reminds me to the man who was so self tortured by all the scenarios of possible future misery he bricked himself up in a cave and dies of suffocation.

Pontius Dilate · Saturday at 3:32 PM

Moonbeam said:
This is what thought and imagination does. This reminds me to the man who was so self tortured by all the scenarios of possible future misery he bricked himself up in a cave and dies of suffocation.

Poor fellow. Unlike him, many of us are obliged to inhabit the real physical world, a consensus reality world, where people wield real power and make real choices that have real effects on real people. I can’t afford to pretend that a refugee hasn’t been snatched up under false pretenses and flown to a prison in El Salvador from which he cannot return, or a US citizen hasn’t been snatched up and illegally held for hours until they confirmed what they could have confirmed immediately, or a person who was endeavoring to legally travel to the US wasn’t illegally held for two weeks before being deported. These are real people and real events. And actual living beings are gaslighting and propagandizing people en masse on networks with enormous reach to twist them into accepting this evil as not only a fact of life, but a good thing for them. Acknowledging this reality doesn’t diminish me as a person, or make me clinically insane or psychologically damaged, or unable to live a prosperous, productive and joyful life. It just means I see in color rather than black and white.

Moonbeam · Saturday at 3:47 PM

Pontius Dilate said:
Poor fellow. Unlike him, many of us are obliged to inhabit the real physical world, a consensus reality world, where people wield real power and make real choices that have real effects on real people. I can’t afford to pretend that a refugee hasn’t been snatched up under false pretenses and flown to a prison in El Salvador from which he cannot return, or a US citizen hasn’t been snatched up and illegally held for hours until they confirmed what they could have confirmed immediately, or a person who was endeavoring to legally travel to the US wasn’t illegally held for two weeks before being deported. These are real people and real events. And actual living beings are gaslighting and propagandizing people en masse on networks with enormous reach to twist them into accepting this evil as not only a fact of life, but a good thing for them. Acknowledging this reality doesn’t diminish me as a person, or make me clinically insane or psychologically damaged, or unable to live a prosperous, productive and joyful life. It just means I see in color rather than black and white.

All I am saying is that the real world is what it is whether you see it or not and all that you can control is how you react to it. You can either react to it emotionally based on thought and fear, or observe what is without emotional attachment depending on your capacity for that. The former produces programmed reactivity the latter freedom of choice to act. Life has enough suffering already without you creating your own additionally.

Pontius Dilate · Saturday at 6:58 PM

Moonbeam said:
All I am saying is that the real world is what it is whether you see it or not and all that you can control is how you react to it. You can either react to it emotionally based on thought and fear, or observe what is without emotional attachment depending on your capacity for that. The former produces programmed reactivity the latter freedom of choice to act. Life has enough suffering already without you creating your own additionally.

I understand. I agree that perpetual wallowing in emotional misery at the horrors of the world helps no one, least of all one's self. At the same time I don't believe feeling sadness or anger are inherently bad. Knowing that a man who fled his country in fear for his life and sought asylum in the US is now in an El Salvador prison locked up with the very gang members he ran from, only because we have a number of racists and sadists running our government, I cannot help but feel anger and sadness. People who aren't capable of feeling anything about that are broken.

I'm a middle-aged white male with a house and a good job. No one is coming after me. I could easily shut off part of myself, disregard what's happening in this country, tell myself this doesn't affect me and none of this matters, like Greenman does. Sure, I'm going to pay more for everything, but technically I can afford it. Other people are not so lucky, but I'm not them. On our current trajectory, I'm probably not going to retire before I'm much closer to death than I expected to be. But a fuckton of people are going to die a lot sooner than me, a lot younger than me, at a much higher rate than we would have calculated back in October because of what the US government is doing. And I could feel nothing about that.

But I won't. I'll express my anger and sadness, because I'm a human being, not an avatar or a monk. I will endeavor to express my emotions in healthy ways, ways that don't hurt other people. I'll make mistakes. Sometimes I'll encounter people who lie, who are hypocrites, who don't care about the pain other people feel as long as they perceive themselves to be safe. And I'll tell them how I feel about them. I don't need to be at one extreme or the other, those aren't the only choices.

Will this national ordeal we are going through be over when the Fat Man swings?

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