Conventional Wisdom – Snidely “Donald J.” Whiplash Hates America

“Heroes and villains

Just see what you’ve done.”

Both the Republican and the Democratic Conventions are now in our rear view mirrors, and the contrast could not have possibly been more distinct.  The DNC was a celebration of America. The RNC was its wake.

Compare the conventions, and it’s as if we witnessed electoral events of two completely contradictory countries with very little, if any, similarities – two opposing realities, two perceptions of politics, of good and evil, of values, of life and living. The GOP of 2016 has much more in common with the Confederate States of America, than it does the republic envisioned and designed by our founders; with a leader owing more to Jefferson Davis than Thomas Jefferson.

Trump Presidential role model, Jefferson Davis

The Democrats hosted a proud, patriotic, flag-waving, optimistic proclamation of the greatness of our country, our people and our ideals, with an exciting vision of a positive and diversified population unified in its love of liberty, equality, freedom and country. The Republicans presented an Aryan hate rally, denigrating our great nation, belittling its people and painting a hopeless, bleak portrait of the world and our place in it – all led by a weak, thin-skinned, vengeful, uninformed, hate-filed, bigoted, authoritarian madman and wannabe totalitarian strongman, proffering himself as the sole solution to the many fictional dilemmas of a non-existent dystopian society. Trump shared his singular view of America, that being, if you’re non-white, non-Christian, non-native born, you are the cause of all of Mother Earth’s problems and you are not, and will never be, a “true American.”

Meet Don J. Trump. His Boy Eric. Daughter Ivanka. Melania his wife.

Here’s a unique interpretation of this Fuhrer of Fifth Avenue - many generations of Saturday Morning cartoon viewing Americans are familiar with a classic, animated evil-doer by the name of Snidely Whiplash; may I suggest the unlikely scenario that the Donald is the flesh and blood, living embodiment of this cell-drawn demon, albeit, one who’s actuality accedes greater peril, with far worse intent; while still being one-dimensionally cartoonish and sincerely simpleminded, with a focus solely on inflicting severe damage on others, all in the cause of self-aggrandizement, self-promotion and self-gain.

Yes, Trump is the fiendish, mustache-twirling, dastardly devil who, upon having his loathsome lustful advances spurned, lashes the young, lovely damsel in distress to the train tracks. He’s the heartless landlord who gleefully evicts the poor widowed senior from her home for a single late rent payment. He’s the cruel, orphanage director who feeds his minor charges nothing but cold, lumpy gruel 3 times a day.  And I wonder, why do Republicans not grasp this obvious and odious disposition? Is my worldview too sadly dominated by repeated childhood viewings of the Little Rascals and Dudley Do-Right?

Or perhaps, just perhaps, the Trumpeters do sense this deeply embedded background and foundation of pure, vile evil in their candidate, and rather than reject it, choose to embrace it, and so share equal responsibility in the end of days that a Trump Presidency portents and promises.

I'm afraid that the millions of us trying so desperately hard to fight against Trump’s ascendance to power are actually helping him instead. The sorrowful truth is that all of the things that reasonable people find so repulsive in him - his misogyny, racism, ignorance, narcissism, lack of any knowledge about our country, our history or our government, his dozens of extramarital affairs, his sexual assaults, his non-stop onslaught of lies, his draft dodging, his disparagement of veterans, POW's and the disabled, his pure hatred for those not Caucasian, his text book sociopathic traits, are the very things his supporters worship about him. They love to assert that he speaks for them, so, the more we point out what an inhumane, worthless parasite he is, the more we may actually be helping his malicious cause.

Republicans believe that everyone in the world is out to get us and so we better get them first. We (real, thoughtful, genuine, flesh and blood humans, that is) believe that the best is possible only when we are united and come together in cooperation and harmony toward a common goal.

By the final, fetid, fascistic words of Trump's oration of hate, fear and division, one felt covered in a foul filth that a million showers could never expunge; yet, thankfully, the optimism, the American spirit and the truths spoken by the participants at the DNC thoroughly cleansed us, as only love, tolerance, unity and acceptance can.

The GOP makes heroes out of villains and villains out of victims.

“Stand or fall I know there
Shall be peace in the valley
And it's all an affair
Of my life with the heroes and villains.”

Any comments, questions, criticisms, candid confessions, cash contributions?  Contact me at butchersaprons@mail.com.

A Grudging Acceptance – Trump Channels Goebbels

“Great Trump Speech, America First… couldn't have said it better!” – David Duke, former KKK Grand Wizard

“… laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is; I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.”- Donald Trump, White America’s current Grand Wizard

“I've heard this sort of speech a lot in the last 15 years and trust me, it doesn't sound any better in Russian.” – Gary Kasparov, Russian Chess Grandmaster and Political Activist

Fascism comes to America in Chinese polyester and piss-poor hair plugs.

“America’s long national nightmare” has begun. The Republican National Convention has concluded, and we patriotic Americans suffered through a sad and shocking spectacle of Aryan power and desires, delivered from and to an overwrought, angry assemblage of enraged, screaming, alabaster-hued, pasty, monochromatic faces, unlike anything witnessed since the years of the Nuremberg Rallies. The GOP (aka KKK) formally nominated our first openly bigoted and openly totalitarian presidential candidate, and he regaled in the unbridled adoration and unquestioning devotion of his obedient sheep. 

Trump’s acceptance speech was full of the kind of perverse and perilous prevarication expected by someone who kept copies of Adolph Hitler’s speeches in his nightstand (should you doubt the veracity of this blog - http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trumps-ex-wife-once-said-he-kept-a-book-of-hitlers-speeches-by-his-bed-2015-8) and was full of hatred, racism, division, lies, anti-Americanism, xenophobia, authoritarianism, and more than anything else, irredeemable and acute self-worship.

 

“I Am Your Voice… I Alone Can Fix it.” – Donald Trump, Lord and Savior

This historic oration (historic, of course, as in terms of events like the Ice Age and the asteroid that slew the dinosaurs, not historic as in the American Revolution or the first moon walk) was a dangerous and offensive exercise in narcissistic deception and fabrication, firmly built on a foundation of proven and time-tested, wrathful Fascist rhetoric.

Trump pushed all the traditional Fascist buttons and articulated (if one can “articulate” purely monosyllabically) its ignorant and igneous ideology – the militarism, the fear-mongering, the provocation of unfounded fury, the dystopian doom and gloom, the demonization of the other -  foreigners, immigrants, Muslims, non-whites, non-Christians - the intense isolationism, the extreme nationalism and the artificial appeal to the everyday working man, those whom Trump and his monyed compadres regularly bilk to build their fortunes.

He vociferously, vituperously and vengefully presented a series of flagrantly false facts and figures, painting a grey, grim and gruesome portrait of a completely non-existent America, overrun with “others” of darker skin-tones, divergent faiths and destructively disloyal allegiances, who are raping, pillaging and murdering their way through Mayberrys and Pleasantvilles from the mountains to the prairies, to the oceans white with foam and plastic six-pack rings, infiltrating and annihilating our culture, forcing onto us their deviant views and values and, of most importance, pilfering all of our best jobs.

As is the conventional Fascist custom, Trump maliciously and mercilessly scapegoated those who, in reality, have the least among us, and placed blame squarely on their overburdened and stooped shoulders for any trials and tribulations "real" Americans may currently be enduring. And in response to all these harrowing and frequently fictional woes of the white privileged, he proffered not a plan, not a position, not a platform, but a person – a single dictatorial figure to whom we must surrender our will and blindly place our unwavering trust – heil Trump! “I alone can fix it.”

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” - Joseph Goebbels, Third Reich, Minister of Propaganda

“And here, at our convention, there will be no lies. We will honor the American people with the truth, and nothing else.” – Chancellor Trump

"Fact-checking Trumps's garbage truck of lies: His speech... riddled with fiction and conspiracies." - Salon

Sadly, and inexplicably, tens of millions of our fellow Americans march willingly, and even gleefully, to Donald Trump’s totalitarian drum beat.  We’ve heard this song before.

“Oh Fatherland, Fatherland,

Show us the sign

Your children have waited to see

The morning will come

When the world is mine

Tomorrow belongs

Tomorrow belongs

Tomorrow belongs

To me!” – Fred Ebb

Any comments, questions, criticisms, candid confessions, cash contributions?  Contact me at butchersaprons@mail.com.

Half a Mike Pence: Legislating Hatred for the Prince of Peace (Redux)

The Case Against Religion: Argument Number 2,987,425

“Indiana wants me,

Lord, I can’t go back there.” – R. Dean Taylor

Hot off the virtual presses, and straight to your favorite blog (well, my favorite blog, anyway) - that tangerine-tanned titan, that Hair Club for Men President (who's also a client), that KKK cover boy, Donald Trump has revealed his selection for Vice Presidential running mate - and the earth yawned. In choosing, about to be defeated, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, the Donald has, once again, demonstrated the kind of dubious discernment that has led to a life littered with thousands of lawsuits, hundreds of poorly-placed hair plugs, dozens of extramarital affairs, four bankruptcies,  three marriages, two rape accusations and, of course, (please say it with me) a partridge in a pear tree.

In reality, what we now have representing the party of Lincoln (not Abe, but the Lincoln Motor Inn on the Jersey side of New York's Lincoln Tunnel, offering hourly rates for over five decades) is a two for the price of one GOP ticket, a single vote buys you two avowed bigots - one practices discrimination as a loathsome hobby, while the other has, oh so unconstitutionally, made it law in his state.

"So, how old are your daughters, again?"

So, while not to conceitedly crow, or too proudly proclaim a predilection toward prescience - concerning Pence, we've been there, done that, and now re-present to you, updated and revised from well over a year ago "Half a Mike Pence:  Legislating Hatred for the Prince of Peace." Enjoy, share, and tell your friends!

The face of a man already in deep regret

Indiana,  home of Forrest Tucker and Leon Ames (I have odd tastes) previously best known for its production of gap-toothed, late-night talk show hosts, its yearly festival of race car crashes and as the largest supplier of Caucasian basketball players to the NCAA, finds itself suddenly thrust into the national political headlines.

For as Conservative Christians continue their crusade to take this country ever backwards in time and tolerance, Indiana Governor Mike Pence made their destructive dreams come true by enacting an unconstitutional law allowing legal bigotry against the LGBT community. Thanks to Mike’s minute and malicious mind, businesses in the Hoosier State can now deny service to gays, lesbians, transgenders and members of the touring company of “Kinky Boots.” He, like so many self-proclaimed but ill-intended Christians, continues to demonstrate his complete lack of knowledge of Jesus’s teachings, philosophy, and charitable and beneficial beliefs. Further, punitive Pence proved he is also painfully deficient in his acquaintance with our country’s history, laws and Constitution.

Clearly missing from Governor Pence’s faulty civics education is this extremely well-known and popular gem from our Constitution - "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Also unknown to this ignorant executive is this greatest hit from the Declaration of Independence – “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

But, as so many on the Right feel the Bible trumps any mere government documents, what of the figure for whom myriad GOP pols claim to speak? What are Jesus's thoughts on the subject? From John 13:34 - “A new commandment I give unto you. That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.”

So, by all obvious and outward appearances, no matter how you approach fairness and equality, be it through the words of our Founding Fathers or the Word of the Biblical Father, Conservatives are wrong, wrong and, for good measure, wrong again.

Numbers Don’t Lie (But Political and Religious Leaders Do)

Not to cause great insult, injury or offense to any sincere believers who may have mistakenly stumbled upon this bit of blasphemy while trolling for a Kirk Cameron direct-to-video release, but to my less than humble, and overly-opinionated sensibilities, all of your creeds are incorrect. There are approximately 4200 religions in the world, worshipping around 2870 deities, each whose followers sincerely know that theirs is the one true faith and the one true god; resulting in distrust, animosity and thousands of years of warfare against those who believe otherwise. But how logical or plausible is it that 4199 religions are fugazis while one is genuine? Maybe, it’s at long last time that someone admits that their faith is flawed; and as charity, and perhaps, truth telling begin at home, allow me the distinct pleasure to begin. 

When I believed in the Judeo-Christian god, and I celebrated Christmas, not as a festival of cheerful ditties, multi-colored strings of lights and entertaining animated television fare, but as the birth of a lord and savior, I did so in accordance with my childhood indoctrination. However, just a few moments of research will reveal that, as Fred Flintstone is to Ralph Kramden, Jeb is to W, and Cheney is to Beelzebub, Jesus seems but imitation of earlier invented gods, primary among them, Egyptian deity Horus. The virgin birth, the three Wise Men, the twelve disciples, the crucifixion and resurrection, all of these biographical details, and more, were a part of the Horus mythology concocted sometime around the 31^st century B.C.

The Big pre-Webber/Rice Savior

Denying others their freedoms and rights is not anyone's freedom of religion, it's simply bigotry and hatred wrapped in phony sanctimony. It's also vile and unconstitutional. Might I suggest that if what anyone derives from a book is to hate and hurt others, whether it's the Bible or a dime novel, one reject that book immediately? Unfortunately, until we reach a more progressive period when humanity supplants divinity and fact supplants faith, classes will always clash and the world will forever war.

Returning to our original theme of intolerance in Indiana, R. Dean Taylor performs his one hit wonder, “Indiana Wants Me.”

Any comments, questions, criticisms, candid confessions, cash contributions?  Contact me at butchersaprons@mail.com.

Somewhere, Under the Sea – Murder at 20,000 Leagues

A beautiful sight to some, a harbinger of death to others

“Happy we’ll be beyond the sea,

And never again, I’ll go sailing.” – Jack Lawrence

My best friend is a woman. I am a man. Should these facts be relevant to the tale about to unfold, I am unsure, but as the flavor of this prose is so frequently flowery and dandified, the experiences and allusions referenced so often asexual, it is possibly a worthwhile clarification.

I love my best friend, as surely as I love chocolate egg creams, the Temptations (original line–up only), my white, shawl-collar dinner jacket, the dear departed Spanky, finest of all felines, being an accepted regular at a welcoming, neighborhood tavern, and a perfectly prepared prime rib. We have each other’s keys, and we all are aware of the seriousness and solemnity of the key exchange ritual. We watch each other’s cats, precious and fragile lives left in the other’s care – sacred bonds of trust.

She’s been as important to my adult existence, maturity and development as anyone who has ever cautiously and carefully, with justified trepidation, pierced the protective plastic armor of my presence. I’m as comfortable with her as I’ve ever been with any animal, vegetable or mineral, and as trusting of her as the little lamb that followed Mary to school one day.

Foreshadowing?

So, after these many eons of familiarity and faithful friendship, why is she trying to kill me? No one could be more aware than she, that I take to water like an anchor takes to water. I take to water like Joe Frazier in “The Superstars” competition took to water (today’s obscure reference). I take to water like the guy from the beginning of “Sunset Boulevard” who, although deceased, somehow still manages to narrate the film, takes to water.  I take to water like a mob stool pigeon, sporting the latest in stylish cement footwear, takes to water. If I have been at all unclear, please allow a little additional elucidation, I take to water like the drowned, dead, bloated, floating corpse, I appear destined to become, takes to water.

nycityman takes a dip in the backyard pool

Once wary toe makes its first move from blistering, beach terra firma, to initial dip into Neptune’s domain, the principle problem reveals itself - by some freak of nature, which I have neither the intellectual capacity, wisdom nor knowledge to explain or comprehend, my body completely lacks buoyancy. Be I alien, artificial intelligence (using the term “intelligence “ with some flagrant looseness), an X-Man-like mutant with the world’s most useless anomaly, or in possession of a physique composed of primarily sand or sponge - unlike Ivory Soap, I’m not 99 and 44/100% pure (and may I say, for that I am grateful) and I don’t float.

nycityman enjoys a day at the beach

One must ponder, then, why is the aforementioned best friend constantly putting me in situations where I’m very likely to succumb to a watery demise – be it a pool deeper than my stubby, old, Italian-American man height, a dolphin cove, offshore on a tiny, little boat that we piloted with no prior boating experience, or on a very large cruise ship afloat in a vast sea with no vision of safe, blessed land ever in sight?

All that was found of nycityman in the dolphin cove

Friends, to the point of all this damp deliberation - should I harbor some suspicion?  Is there foul play afoot? Has a deal been negotiated between beloved bestie and suspicious insurance agent? Will my organs command an abundant bounty on the black market? Will she publish these, now, six years of timely treatises and become the next American Poet Laureate? Should I alert some authority?  A gendarme?  The FBI?  A lifeguard?  The Italian-American Civil Rights League?  David Hasselhoff?  The Coast Guard? The Tea Party?  Sub Mariner? Or, are these aquatic undertakings all, rather, well-meaning, and well-intended attempts to free the self-imposed, land-locked restraints of a far too sheltered and too guarded gentleman, and expand his heretofore limited vistas to what have been new, rewarding, and extremely enjoyable experiences, should I survive them?  

Or, has she understandably had it, and just wants to kill me? Keep a watch on these pages.

nycityman on Celebrity Cruises

And now, Bobby Darin stands on golden sands and watches the ships as they go sailing – enjoy!

Any comments, questions, criticisms, candid confessions, cash contributions?  Contact me at butchersaprons@mail.com.