Wall Smasher

I'm a wall crasher
A bim bam basher
Empowered by love
From above
To smithereens smasher

So you got a vision
Facilitating derision
To sow division
And build a wall

A wall that divides
To conveniently disguise
A mountain of lies
But it can't hide
The hate inside

So, you put up your walls
We'll knock 'em down
Level with the ground
Make a whole lotta sound

Cause we were once lost
But at a great cost
Now we are found

Yeah, I'm a wall crasher
A bim bam basher
Empowered by love
From above
To smithereens smasher

No, no wall gonna happen here
Won't risk all we hold dear
We weren't meant to live in fear     

You say you got our backs
But day and night
You only incite
As a way to distract
From a sinister attack

Now the Word speaks plain
And warns the vain
Who inflict pain
For their own gain
Invite His disdain

So you build your walls
We'll knock em down
Level with the ground
Make a whole lotta sound

Cause we were once lost
But at a great cost
Now we are found

That's why I'm a wall crasher
A bim bam basher
Empowered by love
From above
To smithereens smasher

And from the rubble
We'll build a bridge
To the poor and troubled
So they can freely live 

Justice for all
Won't thrive behind walls
From which you must know
The further you go
The farther you'll fall       

No, no wall gonna happen here
Won't risk all we hold dear
Yeah "perfect love casts out fear"

So, you put up your walls
We knock 'em down
Level with the ground
Make a whole lotta sound

Cause we were once lost
But at a great cost
Now we are found  

Yeah, I'm a wall crasher
A bim bam basher
Empowered by love
From above
To smithereens smasher  

Your fake urgency
Makes you the emergency
As you plunder and steal
Under the presidential seal

Surely freedom isn't free
But it's the only way to be
Lived or stolen, either way
There's a big price to pay
Soon you shall see

So, you put up your walls
We knock 'em down
Level with the ground
Make a whole lotta sound

Cause we were once lost
But at a great cost
Now we are found

What do you think you're hiding from?
His Kingdom surely will come
His Will will be done

You might destroy

But we will strive
And He will revive
Keep His own alive

So, you put up your walls
We knock 'em down
Level with the ground
Make a whole lotta sound

Cause we were once lost
But at a great cost
Thanks to The Cross
Now we are found

(Poem, lyrics updated as deception builds. Peace.)

A "Good Life"?

Fresh off binge watching Twilight Zone's this past New Year's and now smack in the midst of President Donald Trump's languishing government shutdown, it's struck me anew how we indeed are living in Twilight Zonish times.

The latest Trump-era "Twilight Zone" episode – "The Wall" – doesn't disappoint.

Opening scene: A stone-faced Trump sitting at the desk in the Oval Office amidst his forced government shutdown and just prior to a highly hyped autocratic fearmongering address, impetuously demanding his costly, vague “wall.”

You can almost hear Rod Serling's voice as an epilogue:

"Portrait of a man? Or a monster?
For folks out there who still aren't sure, you'll find out soon enough. And those who've sensed something amiss, something very strange indeed for sometime, it should come as no surprise to learn that you, in fact, have been stuck on an endless loop of purposeful deception.

“It's a state where fear is the weapon of choice. And it's a state that exists only in the darkest, remotest regions of a place we call .. The Twilight Zone."

Cue the Twilight Zone theme music: "Doo, doo doo, doo.. doo, doo, doo, doo.. doo, doo, doo, doo ..."

Of course, the circumstances of each real time Twilight Zone varies, but the starring villain and the sinister plot persist.

Objective: Fear and division.

Endgame: Oppression and control.

Since early 2016, I've likened witnessing Trump's baffling, precipitous venom-spewing ascent in the Republican presidential ranks to living in a "Twilight Zone playing on an endless loop."

It's like we've been stuck in a nightmarish science fiction tale of a parallel universe, where everything we believed or valued has been turned upside down and inside out – threatening our peace, stirring our anger and challenging our faith.

After three and a half years of blatant, grating demagoguery, featuring Trump's smug Reality TV mug invading our living rooms in nightly newscasts, is it any wonder we've digressed into a tribal nation with hate crimes spiking?

Yes, it's been that long since the alarmist presidential candidate, in June of 2015, ominously entered the presidential race by describing Mexicans immigrants as rapists and calling for a southern border wall that Mexico would pay for.

"Mark my words," pledged Trump. So much for that.

Trump's latest attempt at feigned sincerity on Saturday -- proposing to reopen the government by dangling temporary DACA protections before Democrats, while still insisting on his $5 billion for a wall, only deepens the surreal feel of the times.

"As American citizens, we are bound together in love, loyalty, friendship and affection," said Trump. "We must look out for each other, care for each other, and always act in the best interests of our nation – and all citizens living here today."

Sounds good. But coming from a President who has done nothing but deride and divide, Trump's platitudes rang clangingly hollow.

If the President truly has seen the light in the wake of his temper tantrum shutdown, he'd open the government without using 800,000 unpaid federal workers and their families as bargaining chips.

Many actual Twilight Zones seem to prophetically forebode of Trump – such as "He's Alive," "Monsters on Maple Street," "Eye of The Beholder," and "The Howling Man.”

But, there's one particular Twilight Zone – 1961's “It's a Good Life" – that stands out as prescient above all the rest.

In "It’s a Good Life," the tyrannical parallels are clear and chilling, particularly now amidst the President's distracting impetuous government shutdown that has sent millions of lives into limbo and risks the nation's security.

The setting for "It's a Good Life" is an isolated, rural village in Peaksville, Ohio, where a small community of mankind's last survivors live in constant fear.

The central character is a six-year-old brat kid named Anthony – a monster with supernatural powers to physically deform or disappear any living creature.

Anthony impulsively hates anyone who doesn't worship him, demanding deference to his every twisted whim.

Anyone complaining about anything, even the weather, or thinking negatively about Anthony is subject to the boy's angry, wide-eyed look and risks the monster child's wrath.

Non-conformists are turned into something hideous like a Jack-in-the-box before they are ultimately banished to “the cornfield” – a place of punishment from which they don't return.

So, the surrounding adults, mostly family, walk on eggshells around the boy, speaking flattering niceties, telling him how "good" he is and that his every evil act is "good."

"You're a bad man," declares an angry Anthony, pointing his finger at a drunken man named Dan, who disobeyed the boy by singing and challenging his authority. "You're a very bad man!"

Suddenly, Dan is turned into a Jack-in-the-box. After the father urges Anthony to spare the adults such a grotesque sight, the oddity fades and disappears, presumably to the cornfield.

"That's real good what you done to Dan," the father immediately appeases the sinister little tyrant. "Real good.”

Goosebumps yet?

If the menacing kid in "It's a Good Life" is the President, then the syphocant adults, smiles plastered on their faces, are Trump's enabling congressional Republican loyalists and supplicant cabinet.

Most of us have cringed at the creepy White House propaganda footage of Trump's cabinet members offering vain, ego-stroking, compliments to the dictator-like President – in effect endorsing the child-like commander's every misstep as "good."

Mystifyingly and disturbingly, Trump has his fellow Republican abettors tightly wrapped around his little finger, while our democratic values and sense of decency is degraded daily – and sent to the cornfield.

During his two years on the job, Trump has banished scores of administrative officials, some 50, who were fired or resigned, amidst ever simmering White House tensions.

While Trump's enabling Republicans ludicrously accuse Democrats of opposing border security and fear monger lies about the border as the main contributor to our opiod crisis, Trump has sent millions of American lives into disarray with the longest running government shutdown in history, 33 days and counting.

The fallout piles up daily, risking national security, weakening the justice system and undermining scores of programs for the victimized, hungry and addicted.

While short-staffed services for recovering opiod addicts and food stamp recipients are severally threatened, the FBI warns of multiple law enforcement breakdowns. The grand jury for Special Council Robert Mueller's Trump-Russia investigation faces delays.

Additionally, the workforce at the Food and Administration, charged with overseeing our food quality, has been cut dramatically and the national Coast Guard is expected to defend our coastlines without pay. And unpaid federal airport workers call out sick, resulting in sluggish lines.

Republican leaders Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy consistently seem inexplicably, but demonstrably afraid of Trump, tiptoeing around the President, fearful of angering their leader the way the adults in "It's a Good Life" sickeningly appeased the monster kid.

So, the President even threatens to declare a national emergency, diverting disaster relief funds from California's wildfires devastation, and Texas and Puerto Rico's Hurricane recoveries so he can build a wall.

Meanwhile, the President's arguably criminal forced shutdown was absolutely avoidable. While the country suffers, the shutdown accomplishes many goals for President.

It conveniently distracts from and may very well impact Mueller's probe into Trump-Russia malfeasance. And the longer the shutdown lingers, the more it threatens to destabilize many aspects of our Republic, opening the door to some type of autocratic power play.

The same day of Trump's first oval office address insisting on a wall, news broke of his former campaign manager Paul Manafort's sharing U.S. polling data with a Russian intelligence operative.

But the story got buried by Network news' questionable decision to air Trump's brief, alarmist incitement, ludicrously accusing Democrats of opposing border security.

As news continues to break of the President's deceptive, arguably criminal behavior -- like his consifiscating stenographer notes from his private meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin -- the president appears untouchable.

Meanwhile, the Twilight Zone theme music periodically persists in the background: "Doo, doo, doo, doo.. doo, doo, doo, doo.. doo, doo, doo, doo.."

For a couple days there, even major news outlets got sidetracked by the grand illusionist President's Burger King stunt, ordering hundreds of hamburgers to serve the national champion Clemson Tigers at the White House, stirring speculation about who really paid for them.

Who really cares?

Meanwhile, hundreds of mental health professionals have been warning us about the dangers of Trump's sociopathic, narcissistic behavior. A documentary "Unfit" about the President is in production.

In Conservatives' conflicted view, can Trump do anything to merit his ouster from office?

What will it take for Republicans to snap out if it and see the path toward destruction Trump is heading down?

When will McConnell do his duty, listen to the overwhelming cry of the American people evidenced in the polls, and allow a vote to open the government?

Much hinges on Mueller's Russia investigation and House Democrats' probes into the President's myriad misdealings from Russia collusion to emmoulments violations. But now, Mueller's grand jury may be hampered by the shutdown.

Ultimately, it's up to the American people to stay sharp and keep demanding answers from their representatives, Republicans and Democrats. To be complacent is to be complicit.

Art in the form of fiction is capable of illuminating and speaking truth louder than typical conventional foreboding analysis and criticisms.

Rod Serling's "It's a Good Life" does just that. Serling's imaginative, thrilling Twilight Zones -- packed with social commentary and moral messaging -- fittingly were ahead of their time.

They were meant for this time. This space.

If gone untethered, how long before this President, facing multiple indictments, angrily lashes out -- and banishes us all to the cornfield?

(Cue the theme music.)

Which Side is Trump On?

(Below: My opinion from nearly two years ago, February 22, 2017, published in the Cape May County Herald. The President's suspect Russia ties have been clear for years.)

Which side is President Donald Trump on?

That's the singular, simple, burning question we fellow Americans should be concerned with.

America's or Russia's?

That's it.

You can forget about Trump mouthpiece Kellyanne Conway's insipid plug of Ivanka's fashion line, or Trump's delusional talk about inaugural crowd sizes, or his absolutely baseless claim of illegal aliens voting in the last presidential election, or his comments with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Feb. 15 about whether a two-state, or one-state solution with Palestinians was best.

It was like he was deciding whether to get mustard or ketchup on his hamburger. "I could live with either one," said Trump.

Be careful of scrutinizing any one of our president's endless list of blatant lies he has regurgitated during his tyrannical, turbulent first month in the White House.

You can forget all that cooked up garbage - which in many respects is actually designed to distract from the one monumental question that we all should be asking.

Which side is he on?

And you, me, we the people, need to insist that Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, expediently investigate Trump's Russia ties now.

The writing has been on the wall in glaring, dark letters for months since we started learning about Russia's meddling in the elections and Trump's odd defense of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump's relationship with Russia goes back decades.

We know of Trump's desire to build a Trump Tower in Moscow in the 1990's. We know of his son, Don Jr.'s repeated trips to Moscow.

"We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia," said the younger Trump in a 2008 real estate conference speech in Moscow. He told investors that the Trump Organization had trademarked the Donald Trump name in Russia and had big plans to build in Moscow.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg.

How can Trump claim to be a champion of American Democracy, while repeatedly, bizarrely, inexplicably, exhaustively, unrepentantly and exuberantly defending Putin at every turn?

How can Trump consistently, unapologetically stand up for the murderous Russian oligarch at the slightest hint of criticism, in the same way he impulsively attacks anyone who remotely challenges his own twisted, hateful, divisive policy tweets.

Indeed, what incriminating evidence might Putin have on Trump?

General Michael Flynn's resignation as National Security Advisor recently, makes all the more urgent an investigation of Trump.

Flynn apparently lied to Vice President Mike Pence about discussing sanctions with a Russian ambassador prior to Trump's presidency.

But who put Flynn up to discussing those Russian sanctions?

The plot thickens. Flynn's ouster should ultimately be the ticket to Trump's own. But that's only if we get some answers.

Beginning of The End of Trump?

Tonight is a pivotal night.

Either the blatantly demagogic President scores another huge victory in the name of authoritarian oppression and control -- or he falls flat on his face.

Much appears to hang in the balance with Donald Trump's 9 p.m. national primetime pitch to fear monger for a wall we don't need and would be so costly in myriad ways.

Network news' decision to invite this desperate President, facing indictment on a multitude of misdeeds and demonstrable crimes, into our living rooms, granting this distracting sheer political ploy such high profile attention, is disconcerting on many levels.

The move automatically lends a sense of legitimacy to an illegitimate President's illusion of grandeur and risks abetting the demise of our democracy.

Now, so much hinges on the professionalism of the Fourth Estate, broadcast and print.

With the President threatening to declare a national emergency unless he gets his destructive wall, tonight is a chance for the broadcast industry, in particular, to redeem itself after, wittingly or not, feeding and promoting the Reality TV disaster that now occupies the Oval Office. 

The facts are clear. The lies too.

According to the federal government's Department of Customs and Border Protection, a total of six migrants (non-U.S. residents) on a terrorist watch list were stopped at the Mexican border in 2018 -- not some 4,000 possible terrorists as claimed by the Trump administration.

In the meantime, during this Trump-forced government shutdown hundreds of thousands of government workers and contractors have gone without work for more than two weeks.

All legitimate print and broadcast media must exhaustively scrutinize every Trump utterance, dissect every single Trump claim, weed out the abundant lies, eviscerating the narcissist con man's claims.

Much also depends on a thoughtful, but forceful Democratic response plainly stating the facts.

And of course, much depends on a sober-minded American public seeing through the President's facade and recognizing the unstable destructive force that he represents.

To even hint in the slightest degree that Trump carries an iota of credibility at this precipice in our country, after all we know about the President's shady past and present, perhaps most disturbingly his multi-tiered Russian business connections, is to live in fantasy.

Trump has been building his wall, that runs right through the heart of the country, long enough. 
So, enough of this garbage entertainment TV already.

Tonight needs to be the beginning of the end of Trump.

It's time all of America, Trump's loyalist Republican enablers and rabid rally-goers included, realize that America's most dangerous terrorist is hiding in plain site -- inside the White House.

(Kevin McKinney is a freelance writer and former daily newspaper journalist living at the Jersey Shore. His opinions have appeared in McClatchy newspapers, The Hill and CounterPunch. Follow on Twitter @WriteFight99)

Mississippi Memories

In Gulfport, Mississippi, 1998, you could depend on the gracious hospitality from whites and blacks alike, a haircut for just $3 -- and perodic proof of an uncanny racism.

It's hard to relate how bigotry on the Mississippi Gulf Coast was any different from racial indifference you might experience in say, Philadelphia or New York City.

But during my two and half years living on the coast, covering a burgeoning casino industry for the local daily newspaper, driving a cab and fronting the Rockin' Daddy Blues Band, I experienced that unmistakable undercurrent of engrained bigotry.

Listening to the supremisct rhetoric from Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Mississippi) who rallied in Biloxi/Gulfport Monday for today's Mississippi Senate runoff with Democratic challenger Mike Espy, reminded me of such things.

As an east coast white, yankee boy
lover and player of the blues, I was pretty much naive about the south's present day racial tensions. Hadn't the Civil Rights Act of 1964 gone a long way towards repairing the divide? 

My first night at the newspaper in Biloxi, making calls to find a place to stay, my future landlady asked me over the phone, point blank: "You're not black are you?"

I remember being taken aback. Up north they wouldn't put it so bluntly, and yet so smoothly.

For some folks, definitely a minority, it's like distrust, maybe hate, for the African American race is encoded into their DNA.

On the psuedo-melting pot of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, these bigotries didn't seem as manifest as in the heart of the "deep south," but at times they felt as present as any southern charm.

Cold indifference could seep to the surface of conversations and flow from the mouths of the bigoted as if they were casually asking you to pass the butter at dinner.

I was the only white boy in the blues band. 

On my band's first road trip gig north up Highway 49 to a backwoods joint just off the highway, in between Gulfport and Jackson, the scars of Mississippi's oppressive past and lingering present were evident on Guitar Bo's face.

Guitar Bo, a black man and Mississippi native in his early 60's, was an exceptionally versatile guitar player and genuine good soul. And he was intimately acquainted with the Magnolia state's hateful prejudices.

Bo, surveying the woods-enclosed shack of a bar as we arrived, stopped me outside the bar entrance.

"Now Kevin, you best make sure it's okay for all of us to order drinks from the bar," said Bo.

"What do you mean?" I asked baffled.

"Well, you don't know how some folks still think about black folks in parts of Mississippi," said Bo, his normally light-hearted demeanor, gravely serious.

I told him not to worry and after I ordered a pitcher of beer at the bar, awkwardly ensured there wouldn't be a problem with black band members ordering from the bar.

There were no issues. The owners were gracious. But the visceral concern that Guitar Bo had about open racism, and this, just prior to the turn of the new century, has stayed with me.

I couldn't fathom an east coast establishment on the cusp of the millennium, outright refusing to serve a person due to his or her skin color.

Another time, on a crowded night outside Grand Casino in Biloxi, three older white men agreed to share the cab I was driving with a younger black man.

On the way to the next casino, we all talked, mostly about sports. They were smiling and laughing.

But, after I dropped the black man off first, one of the white guys said concerned: "That boy wouldn't have been speaking so freely 10 years ago, I'll tell you that." 

Huh?

The guy was miffed just by the fact that the black man felt comfortable in my cab speaking freely in the company of white folks?

And I'll never forget how casually the older white-haired, balding barber dropped the n-word as he snipped away at my hair; it just oozed out the way you'd say: "It's a lovely day." 

The barber was ranckled over how somebody on the beach, probaly a kid, threw a seashell at a seagull and killed it. Referring to a story in the newspaper, he made it sound like a mob of blacks ganged up on the poor bird.

I thought of the irony and said little.

It wasn't until later, I realized Mississippi was 130 years behind most states in ratifying the 13th Amendment, and the Emancipation Proclamation Act, outlawing slavery.

Mississippi ratified the amendment in 1995, just a year prior to my arrival on the Coast. But even then, due to some unexplained oversight, the state never officially notified the U.S. Archivist.

It wasn't until Feb. 7, 2013, that Mississippi officially ratified the 13th Amendment, according published reports.

In retrospect, through my brief and amittedly mild encounters with racism in Mississippi, it's easy to imagine the machinations behind such delays.

With Mississippi finally officially on the books supporting the 13th Amendment, what better time for the state with the largest population of blacks than any in the country, to finally get a true representative?

If I could, I'd be voting today for Democratic challenger Espy for the Mississippi Senate.

With a demagogue President, inciting and dividing daily, this Mississippi senate race holds implications not just for the state, but for our nation.

The Pigs

As appears in Counter Punch
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/23/trump-and-his-loyalists-are-animal-farms-pigs

NOVEMBER 23, 2018

Trump and His Loyalists are “Animal Farm’s” Pigs

by KEVIN MCKINNEY

They are the Pigs in Animal Farm, preaching righteousness, peddling preposterousness and hoarding all the “milk and apples” for themselves.

If the demogagic President Donald Trump and his greedy loyalist Republican abettors had their way, the American citizenry would be consigned to a life of Farm-like drudgery.

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others” becomes the leader pigs’ contorted “Commandment” to the rest of the farm animals by the end of Animal Farm.

As Trump, in a grand Christmas tree ceremony outside the White House yesterday, bestowed more reverence to a harvested tree than he has recently to our fallen war heroes, American lives lost in California’s wildfires or our democratic rule of law, it’s more evident than ever that Trump and his loyalist enablers consider themselves “more equal” than the rest of us.

No brazen lie is too ludicrous. No insensitive criticism is too ugly. No bigoted, alarmist incite is too inflammatory. No obstructive meddling with our justice system is out of bounds.

In the face of Trump’s grotesque persistent disregard for truth, justice and human decency, Republican head hogs led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan offer nary a snort nor a squeal of objection.

But, our Conservative leaders’ hero masks are slipping – and their snouts are starting to show.

George Orwell’s 1945 Animal Farm primarily was a dystopian fable on early 20th Century Soviet Communism’s bloody ruthlessness, but Orwell himself, indicated that his simplistic foreboding fairtale held “a wider application” about “power-hungry people.”

“I meant the moral to be that revolutions only effect a radical improvement when the masses are alert..” Orwell writes Politics magazine founder Dwight Macdonald in a 1946 letter.

“What I was trying to say was,” Orwell continues, “‘You can’t have a revolution unless you make it for yourself; there is no such thing as a benevolent dictatorship.’”

Disillusioned Americans, who weren’t so much “alert” as they were desperate, clearly were swindled by Trump’s disingenous populous revolution of sorts.

Now, in the flotsam wake of the midterm election’s Democratic blue wave — demonstrating a new found citizen alertness that will flood the House in January — the mistake of ever allowing a Trump Presidency, is coming into sharp, unsettling focus.

Oppression is oppression. Greed and abuse of power produce essentially the same result whatever the misanthropic ideology – Communism or Fascism or some other hybrid demagogic “ism” to which Trump and his loyalists aspire.

If Washington D.C’s plutocratic pigs had their druthers, Americans would be so dumbed down by the con-in-chief’s exhaustive lies and grating vitriol, endorsed by congressional majority party Republicans, that we would have about as much say in our Republic’s affairs as Animal Farm‘s befuddled barnyard animals had on the farm under the pigs.

“Napoleon is Always Right"

Trump is akin to Farm’s ruthless ruling pig, Napoleon, a Berkshire boar who, Orwell writes, has a knack for “getting his own way.”

Napoleon counted on his propagandist pig, Squealer, who “could turn black into white” to brainwash the farm animals with lies about their tyrannical leader’s supposed benevolence.

Even Clover the mare, who notices the changes the pigs sneakily make to Animalism’s Commandments, eventually is lulled into a sense of complacency, convincing herself that she must have “remembered it wrong.”

As the Farm animals work harder for less, the beloved, but dim-witted carthorse Boxer declares, “I will work harder” and routinely motivates himself by extolling the pigs’ most controlling lie of all: “Napoleon is always right.”

To advance his doubtless premeditated assault on truth and civility from the start of 2017, President Trump has employed his own tag team versions of Squealer – in imaginative mouthpieces Kellyanne Conway and Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Sanders, White House press secretary, seems eternally lost in an alternate reality where if President Trump “says it, it must be true” – just as Farm’s animals were programmed to parrot of Napoleon, no matter how absurd the lie.

According to Sanders: Mueller’s Trump-Russia probe is a “hoax,” the President wants to protect pre-existing conditions afterall and, despite her boss’ constant maligning of the media as the “enemy of the people,” Trump actually favors a free press.

And we Americans, like Farm‘s flock of mindless sheep taught by Squealer to obediently bleat “Four legs good, two legs better,” are supposed to believe it all.

In the disturbing aftermath of pipe bombs mailed to Trump’s outspoken opponents and horrific hate-fueled mass shootings last month, we were expected to accept that Trump’s relentless fear-mongering of “the other” has had no destructive effect on the American psyche.

Republicans feign ignorance when it comes to explaining the disturbing spike in United States’ hate crimes that coincides with Trump’s exhaustive, malice-spewing 2016 presidential campaign.

The President’s most loyal sycophants – Senator McConnell, Vice President Mike Pence, Senator Lyndsey Graham and House leader Kevin McCarthy and their like – even stumble out of their way to defend Trump’s unrepentant childish outbursts and destructive autocratic impulses.

In the meantime, Trump bungles, connives and insults his way across the American landscape, leaving a destructive path of Reality TV rubble for us to clean up.

He tries to bury a probe into his criminal malfeasance by inserting an unqualified apologist as U.S. Attorney General, snubs our WWI fallen, strong arms The Press and increasingly blathers banalities.

Obstruction — A Majority Party Privilege?

With the looming threat of special counsel Robert Mueller’s “Trump-Russia” investigation wrapping and a blue wave crashing, President Trump, more and more over the past six weeks, has been lashing out like a cornered wild animal.

In the month leading up to the Nov. 6, 2018 midterms, Toronto Star Reporter Daniel Dale reports, Trump made as many “false claims” — 815 of them in 30 days — as he did in his first 286 days as President.

The day after Americans, in effect, voted (in the midterms) to preserve our democratic freedoms, Trump took the gloves off; he went rogue at a White House press conference, revoked CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s press pass (reinstated by a federal judge Friday) and savaged the U.S. Justice department.

Any last vestiges of his mask, or by way of their largely complicit silence, Republican leaders’ disguises, fell away that day.

As if obstructing justice were just another majority party privilege, Senate leader McConnell refuses to allow a vote on a bi-partisan bill that would protect the integrity of special counsel Mueller’s investigation.

McConnell baselessly insists there’s no need for alarm over Trump’s firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions to replace him with his controversial inside man Matthew Whitaker, a vocal critic of Mueller.

Of course, Trump’s klutzy move to preserve his own hide by snubbing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who has overseen the Mueller probe from the start, smacks of the authoritarianism abuses Orwell called out incessantly in his lifetime and creatively alerts us to with Animal Farm and his later novel, 1984.

Meanwhile, in America, despite the abject swirl of controversy befitting a crime boss encompassing Trump, the autocratic programming advocated daily by Trump apologist “news” outlets like Fox, even at this late date has so many citizens convinced that if Trump “said it, it must be true.”

As the pigs did in Animal Farmand Vladimir Putin does in Russia, Republicans, led by an authoritarian President, are advocating censorship, increased wealth to the powerful and suppression of the people’s democratic rights.

Pigs Hoarded Milk and Apples; Repubs, Tax Cuts For Rich

Just as Farm‘s pigs reason early on that they need all of the farm’s “milk and apples” to lead the rest of the animals, Trump and his complicit Republican chums insisted at the outset that billionaires’ tax breaks are the key to economic revival for all.

Never mind that Reaganomics trickled down – and out, decades ago. Never mind that corporate profits are soaring, while workers’ wages have stagnated.

And that now, in order to pay for corporate big wigs’ tax cuts, Republicans contrive to carve up the people’s Medicare and Medicaid, while sinisterly eyeing social security benefits.

Who is the real “enemy of the people”?

“The turning-point of the story was supposed to be when the pigs kept the milk and apples for themselves,” Orwell writes in the 1946 letter to Macdonald, published in  George Orwell: A Life In Letters, 2013.

“If the other animals had had the sense to put their foot down then,” Orwell continues, “it would have been all right.”

At the first sign of feebleness, Boxer, the farm’s hardest worker — instrumental in the farm’s success from which the pigs alone capitalized — is hauled off to the slaughterhouse.

Despite the animals’ increasingly desperate circumstances on the farm, Squealer’s barrage of untruths ultimately convince the lowly, overworked animals that “things were getting better.”

Think of Trump’s grandiose claims of new plant openings and soaring jobs numbers. When Fox News’ asked him this past weekend how he would grade his job as President so far, Trump offered, “A plus.”

And look no further than Trump’s scripted, dictator-esque, brainwashing rallies, where gullible Reality TV “fans” pathetically worship a snake oil salesman, cheering on command and smiling idiotic smiles.

Which is Which?

In Farm’s last pages, the pigs have rewritten Animalism’s “Seven Commandments” to suit them, embracing the ways of the animals’ sworn enemy humans.

“Comrade Napoleon” and his fellow privileged porkers have moved into overthrown (Manor Farm) owner Mr. Jones’ farm house, are dressed in his clothes and are walking upright on their two hind legs.

By then, the incoherent sheep under the absolute sway of Napoleon’s propagandist pig Squealer, no longer are sounding off on command: “Four legs good, two legs bad,” but rather, “Four legs good, two legs better.”

Animal Farm leaves us with the animals peering through the farm house dining room window as the pigs inside schmooze and toast mugs of beer with neighboring farmer, Mr. Pilkington and his associates.

The pigs and humans end up squabbling over a card game in which Napoleon and Mr. Pilkington each play an ace of spades.

Who is cheating?

In the novella’s last line, the baffled animals at the window look from face to face, from the humans to the pigs, but: “It was impossible to say which was which.”

Anymore, whether it’s in the company of dictators Trump keeps or among the multi-millionaires and billionaires that our purported Capitol Hill representatives mingle with at home and abroad, it’s becoming increasingly harder to tell “which is which.”

To what degree, weeks from now, the new Democratic House majority protects the Mueller investigation’s imminent findings and gets actionable results, may just hinge on the vigilance of the same Americans who made the midterm blue wave a reality.

There’s no time for typical post-election complacency. The real battle to reclaim our Republic from a manifestly unstable President and his gluttonous cohorts clinging to power, begins now.

And victory is likely to depend not only on our federal courts and newly elected legislators, but on “we the people” sticking to the fight — demanding loud and clear, our fair share of the milk and apples.

Thankful This Thanksgiving

I'm thankful this Thanksgiving. 

I'm thankful to be alive, for this imperfect life that ultimately through its trials and tribulations brings me closer to the knowledge of a creator, The Creator.

I'm thankful for family and friends, for the love for and of my fellow man. (And I think of the souls lost in recent tragedies and pray for their families.)

I'm thankful that Democrats won the House, to give us Americans a shot at reeling in destructive recklessness.

I'm thankful for the work for my hands -- for being able to work along side the Creator's wonderous works -- the ocean, in a seaside village of a town, breathing the seasalt air and listening to the waves crash on the sandy shore.

I'm thankful that God sticks around even when we snub him. He never leaves us, never forsakes us.

Even the darkest days hold a silver lining particularly as we "Trust in him with (our) whole heart." Psalm 3:5

I'm thankful that I know which side I'm on. And I'll always try to stand up for justice as Jesus Christ instructed.

And if I screw up, I'm thankful that His "mercies are new each morning." Psalm 103

And I'm thankful for the hope in knowing that ultimately God is a God of love and justice. And that justice indeed will prevail when it's all said and done.

A thankful heart truly does go a long way. Peace. Happy Thanksgiving.