squidbag

Syria, Blowback & Orange Moron

Our Resident Chump is profoundly stupid. I say this not to insult him, but simply to point out simple facts. Our government is being run by a child, and not even a very smart or precocious one; we have traded purple for orange and elected Veruca Salt. As much as I hate the President - and I do, going back to the 1980s - I hate even more what he represents in terms of my fellow citizens, this blind and ridiculous anti-intellectual bullying turn for the worse, the need to wade into the shit and live there, and the continuous participation in our own distractions as we needle and dissect the reactions of a chimp wearing a rug. (Yes, I made 600 things with his quotes in them; what of it?) Mostly, the things he does are designed to get our attention, to pull focus. When they're designed. Sometimes, though, sometimes they're just reactions, like reflexive moves on his part that maybe he doesn't even realize he's done until he's already done them. The thought is the action.

Case in point: Syria. You could make the argument that we've not had really strong foreign policy now from the executive branch since the end of the Cold War, but we've all had long enough to familiarize ourselves with blowback that I thought we all understood it. It's now clear to me that this is not the case. Please go away and read Chalmers Johnson's excellent book, Blowback, and then come back and finish reading this.

I know, right?

So, we're going to get involved in Syria, begin by proffering non-military aid, then get involved militarily against the Syrian government, then kill a bunch of citizens in "surgical strikes" (just what we do) and then, after ramping up our on the ground efforts and seemingly formulating a military plan for going forward and perhaps providing a little bit of a bulwark against the Turks, completely bail out while government forces still hold most of the country and while humanitarian crises are ongoing. And why?Because "We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency." Oh, well, that's all right, then. But wait, Orange Moron, didn't you also just get caught bitching and complaining about European countries decrying our pullout and say that it's their turn to fight ISIS? I thought they were defeated? Maybe they're just Trumpfeated, where you lie about beating someone. Much more expedient than actually beating them. (For the sake of the Resident, "expedient" means "quicker." Okay, "faster." ) Also, didn't we, like a week ago, say that this was a terrible idea, this pullout? And that it would lead to the "slaughter" of many of our allies? I mean, granted, we drone bomb civilians, but doing the numbers, that might be better than a "slaughter." Does anyone remember 1980s Afghanistan, where we trained guys, got their hopes up and then left, and it took them half a generation to raze the World Trade Center to the ground? You know, on 7-11? The Resident knows where he was on 7-11, I can tell you that much. More than anything, I think it's good that we're pulling 2000+ soldiers out of a land in crisis, but leaving more than 5000 at our border with Mexico. That seems important, especially in this time after midterms when the Caravan has ceased to exist and Sessions' prohibitions being contested and so on.

Or we're wagging the fucking dog again. The government shutdown, the new developments in the various investigations and every goddamn rat that bails from this dysfunctional ship of fools, we need to be looking the other way, and a nice fat foreign policy fuckup'll do it every time.

Trumper Villains

So, starting in 2017, I made a bunch of these. I calls them Trumper Villains.

For reasons what I should think would be obvious to people possessed of the standard five and change senses, the idea struck me (and not just me, let's be honest - other folk did variations on this, too, including one fellow who stuck entirely to the Red Skull) to put the words of Resident Chump in the mouths of comic book supervillains, who are, honestly, his inspirations and spirit animals.

I did like, 600+ of these. This one works particularly well, a little known novelty villain known as The Wall, of course, talking about the wall, of course. Perhaps not all of these are as spot on as is this one, but I did dig deep, using Tangerine Scream's tweets, books, quotes from media and his bleak-ass history, such as it is. It's appalling, and I hoped that putting his words into the mouths of super villains would not only give me a creative outlet that I enjoyed (which worked) but also throw his mouthiness into sharp relief, further highlighting the absurdity of thing he said (this worked less well). I underestimated the times in which we were living, and there was just too much bullshit being thrown about and I didn't have a big enough fan. Eventually, my efforts petered out, much like hope and optimism in this country before the giant MAGA Steamroller of Hateful Bile and Ignorance.

But I did this 600+ times first. On the left (if you're on a computer, I don't know how this will work for phones and tablets) there's a photo album down there with the same name as this entry. Go check it out and laugh or cry six hundred or so times in a row. Become exhausted and bemusedly sad. This is being an American now.