PAYBACK WILL BE A MOFO

I don't want to talk about "fake news".

The reason I refuse to discuss it is because, mainly, no one agrees on what it actually is. The new President seems to think it comes from specific news organizations, while many of his opponents feel that the White House itself is the source of much of it.

I define it as the Saturday Night Live "Weekend Update" segment that Norm MacDonald used to do. Remember how he'd introduce himself and then say "Here's the fake news"?

So, yeah, I'm not gonna talk about it... because Norm hasn't been on SNL in nearly two decades.


*/*


I'm going to do something I have never, ever done before, and probably will never do again: I'm going to defend Trumpp in regards to the press.

I remember a humor magazine in the '90s called Spy. It was based out of New York City and it was pretty funny, sort of a National Lampoon for Generation X. Predating the rise of the Internet, one of Spy's main targets was none other than The Donald. They went after him with such vitriol, and I loved it. Alongside celebrities like Madonna, Courtney Love, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, and the Clintons, Spy roasted Trumpp on a regular basis. For a while, it seemed like they would win the cultural battle being fought in the media.

But they didn't. Spy went under around 1998... and meanwhile, Trumpp is currently the President of the United States.

Of course, Spy was just one of many magazines, newspapers, and periodicals that were taking potshots at Trumpp. So this man has actually taken a lot of shit, for much longer than any sitting modern President, from the Fourth Estate. He has had tabloid press up his ass, as well as "respectable" beacons of journalism like the New York Times... you know, the publication that outed a CIA operative during George W. Nixon's reign?

Now, I don't like the man AT ALL... but if I were him, I'd do the same thing to the press. It wouldn't be ethical, morally right, or even constitutional... but I'd do it. Then I'd have the good grace to step down from my position of authority.

Or maybe I wouldn't step down. To paraphrase the late great Rick James: power is a helluva drug. And for a petty man like Trumpp, payback is a motherfucker.


*/*


Okay, so I'm done defending the man. But I'm not done taking shots at his enemies. At least that's what they call themselves... the White House refers to them as the Opposition Party, and that's actually a compliment. Because when your main plan of action against a man like Trumpp is to invoke Bernie Sanders for the umpteenth time, or your best strategy is to call upon witches and pagans to cast a spell on the President... well, you don't need a blogger of my esteem to tell you how boneheaded that all is. The label of "Opposition Party" is a gift from the White House and the likes of Sean Spicer and Steve Bannon. It legitimizes the people who hate Trumpp's guts. And that's good, but it's also bad... because it means that the GOP is controlling the narrative even for their enemies.

I mean, Steve Bannon says not to underestimate the Left during his CPAC speech. Funny, I've been underestimating them since the end of the primaries, and I wasn't wrong... He also claimed to be a Leninist whose goal is to destroy all existing political structure. When I hear these words, I have to ask: "Is this guy really a Republican?" I expect to hear this from the types of people who call each other 'comrade' and talk shit about capitalism while they work 9-to-5 gigs soliciting money for credit companies. He's talking a meaner game than most Leftists I know. And at the same time, he's building them up better than Bernie Sanders ever has. It's almost as if Bannon is trying to help the Left to gain their footing because otherwise his victory would seem hollow. He's a political Mr. Glass trying to find his Unbreakable counterpoint.

I see no plan going on, other than the kind of pointless sloganeering that made "Feel The Bern" so satisfying to repeat after Bernie had the keys to the $600,000 mansion in his hand. I am almost inclined to agree with all the MAGATS who refer to Trumpp haters as "special snowflakes" and "crybabies"... if it weren't for the fact that they are turning out to be bigger whiners than their political nemeses.

The only political message I see that has any potency coming from the Left these days is the one that can be summed up in three simple words: "But her e-mails..." 

Y'all really should have thought this whole scenario through before you decided that voting for Hillary Clinton would be as evil as voting for the Trumpp/Pence ticket. The ones calling you snowflakes right now would be stewing in an inarticulate rage, rending their clothes and lying prostate in ashes while dressed in sackloth... but NOOOOOOOOOO, you listened to all that fake news about how corrupt Hillary was, and in the end you're actually no different from the idiot who shot up a pizza parlor thinking there was pedophilia going on.

Which leads me to my last major talking point, and that will include some major Trumpp supporter bashing. Consider yourself triggered, MAGATS.


*/*


I don't think the problem these days is fake news. I think the problem these days is reading comprehension.

I think people are too quick to re-post memes and links without bothering to read them first. I myself am guilty of this... which is why I don't link anything on my blogs anymore. Plus I read somewhere that the more links an article has, the less a reader will actually comprehend what has been written.

I think that people (and they tend to be Trumpp supporters) misread and misinterpret a great deal of what they read. They are taking after their leader, who seems to rely on a peripheral understanding of the news when he opens up his big blabberhole and starts ranting in press conferences about Sweden while his advisors mention a massacre at Bowling Green that never happened...

I think people are too quick to listen to their megachurches and their talk radio show hosts and the Alex Jones' of the world to take a few minutes to verify some of the downright stupid echo-chamber statements they make.

I think that anyone who doesn't try to get facts from at least five totally different news sources is doing themselves a disservice by re-posting links to sites whose content might have been completely fabricated by a Macedonian teenager who makes the cash register sound every time an American ad dollar shows up in whatever he's using to store his bitcoins...

Trumpp and his supporters have legitimate beefs against the mainstream press. Whether it's Dan Rather or Brian Williams or Jayson Blair or Judith Miller or Julian Assange or whoever the contemptuous Asshole of the Month (Press Division) happens to be, they have a right to be angry about the seeming bias against them.

But they DON'T have a right to be angry when they get called out on their lying bullshit. They forfeit the self-righteous indignation position when they support a man with no principals, a two-bit con man who would've been run out of any self-respecting nation long ago, but who happened to know how to game the system... and now he's the fucking President of the United States.

Trumpp supporters and MAGATS, you have to go down with the ship when it starts to sink. Right now this administration is barely treading water. I can't call when it's gonna sink, because it may never happen. Trumpp may make it to a second term. He may even get Congress or whomever is responsible for such decisions to somehow get term limits extended and then we'd have him for 12 years! All I know is, when that ship starts to sink, you have to pull out those violins and play that sad song while the rest of get life jackets and grab all the lifeboats to the tune of "I told you so".

And judging from how long Trumpp has avoided his impending karma, payback will be a motherfucker.