Motley Kamuka

Here's the dynamic. Trump does outrageous stuff. Left leaning people amplify the horror that he is, but he's still in front of you, saturating you, overwhelming America. Just one example. He still owes Albuqueue $200K ( source ). The far right enjoys his antics. Moderate conservatives are not as offended by him, but they are offended some by him. Conservatives are OK with distracting the left with culture wars, some. Only Liz Cheney and Romney feel it's gone too far, those are the only two prominent right wing politicians who have denounced Trump. Others have denounced him, but they're not really prominent, and it's arguable that Cheney, who lost her seat, and Romney are prominent. Most right wing politicians lick Trump's butt, and that's another source of angst for the left, they don't understand who people can pretend to be so blind. He's constantly in everyone's face and not everyone enjoys it. I want to ignore him, and then I see something th...

 

It's been 85 years since Nazis packed Madison Square Garden ( source ), in the last public event where it was acceptable to have such views in public.  73 million Americans voted for Trump in the last election, knowing what they know about him three and a half years ago. I have a strong will to live, and when I first heard about the death instinct, I thought it was a bit weird, but as I get older, I see it more and more in the body politic, and in myself. With this governor who killed a dog because it just wasn't working out as a hunting dog ( source ). Some people are in love with the Sophie's Choices in life, where you get to kill something in a "hard decision." It's like Ivanka making his son conquer his fears by going out on his tricycle in the rain during a hurricane. They're afraid that charishing being afraid will become a way of being. I couldn't get through George Will's articulation of his conservative instinct because it absolutely can...

Capitalism has won big in America, even though everyone owns the roads, sidewalks and parks, and in some sense there's also communism in America. America is a blend of capitalism and communism.  One area where capitalism has won over the people is insurance, and lack of a national insurance. Insurance companies bilk Americans out of health and money. Another area is gun manufacturers. The gun lobby helps murder with propaganda and lobbying. There are actually a righteous set of people who believe it's worth 70 dead children every year for the right to own guns. That price is not too high. The educational system is a mess because of disruptions.  Trump is supposed to be responsible for 40% of the Covid deaths by his inaction and callousness.  The political system is corrupted by money. I was taught in high school that expecting more from government is a self fulfilling prophecy, places that expect good government, have better government. Expecting graft and corruption is a...

That is the question. NY Times op ed piece suggested that ignoring all the shenanigans actually promotes acceptance, ignoring. I'm done with Trump, DeSantis, Ramaswamy, Cruz, MTG, Bobo, Gertz, Santos and Christofascist Mike Johnson. These people are beneath America. It's crazy when a Cheney, Chisty and Romney are the sane ones. They're worse than carnival barkers. Dante has the deepest level of hell for them. The strategy is to overwhelm the parent with bad behavior so some slips through. Never mind it's being in the child position as a leader. The body rots from the top, we need a better system for finding politicians besides who is the most grandiose and venial. The far right wing Christofascist are trying to sneak in behind the grifter wingbats. It's a void, and that's where revolutions come. Not amplifying their grifts does make space for some of it to sneak by. But I don't have time to be the policeman of America, it's a crowd sourcing job. It's...

74 million Americans voted for Donald Trump. There's so disaffected that the fuck you to America by such a horrible human being, and even more so a horrible president, has ushered in an age of assholism, where the assholes feel free to roam free.  As horrible quote after horrible action pile up, the campaign strategy of Biden is to just play footage of Trump saying horrible things. The people who wish to say fuck you to America will like that, and hopefully enough of a slim majority will say no to that. Their contempt is blind and unfocused, but exists. The quirks of American politics give Trump a chance, and it's possible Trump could be president from jail if he's elected. The fuck you people of America would think that was funny. Biden is old, but Trump is only 4 years younger, and seems in worse health. He's mixing things up a lot in his speechs, people are noticing, and not hiding his wannabe fascism. Biden was born 11/20/42, and Trump was born 6/14/46. That's l...

New York Post consistently irks me with their headlines. Great sports page. But their fight against progressives is designed to whip up their base. Rarely do I read the irking article.  For instance they caught deBlasio kissing a woman  (gasp!) and timed how long it went on. Kind of creepy. More than creepy, it's harassment. Get a life. Videos of Biden almost tripping, just a little slip. Yea, you're really the 4th estate with that one. When James Carville is quoted in the New York Post, you know he's said something stupid. Carville is essentially doing right wing talking points. I guess he's still married to that right wing hack. Maybe he said all that so he could take his shots at the Republican party. Was he just saying those things so he could say things to the right base? And then the Post carries it. I guess it's one way to get messages across. What is his message? I couldn't find one. I would argue pulling the party left is what the primaries is all abou...

De Santi's culture wars ape government overreach in an attempt to avoid real interventions against gun violence, and health care with distracting nonsense that is crafted to mobilize his base. "I don't like government," as they drive on roads created by the government, get trash hauled away by the government, deposit their social security checks in the FDIC protected bank accounts. "I don't like government" as they meddle with Disney, tell teachers what they can teach. Luckily Ohio didn't fall for Ohio's nonsense attempt to try and block democracy. ( twitter )  I'm going to deadname X because while it's wrong to deadname for individuals, and it's wrong for Elon Musk to do it against his own child, I think it is deserved for a corporation that has basically wrecked the best method for following soccer news, and spreading information. That is why he's wrecking it and opened it up to far right wingnuts. He's suing a watch group t...

Being stuck upside down in a roller coaster is perhaps the image of our times ( source ). The cynical take over of the Supreme Court, through graft, corruption and cheating rolls back the liberal progress.  Political discourse is dead, Republicans don't want to debate, they want to grasp the rings of power and do the unpopular things, they know better. "The conservative cultural movement is based on lies, misinformation, and fantasies. That’s what makes these people so odious when they crawl out from under their rocks and present themselves in the public square: They make stuff up and then demand that their delusions be given pride of place in our objective reality. (There simply is no woke, trans, race-critical monster hiding under their beds who comes out at night and jabs their children with a vaccine that makes them gay." ( Source ) Culture wars are a distraction. I think Trump was fine with misspelling Covfefe. Every time a liberal person tweets the latest outrage of...

If certain people on the right are so afraid of replacement, doesn't that kind of speak to how it sucks to be a minority and maybe we should agree to have basic rights to exist in America? How about whatever happens happens, and you treat everyone well. Driving away non-whites seems to be a bad strategy. I know in this day and age everyone feels empowered to speak their truth, but it's also OK to be critical and dismiss certain opinions as incoherent and nation crumbling. Conservatives are confusing the culture war, a tactic of conservatives, with the conservative instinct and values, which is to not feel that government is the solution to problems. I can't help but try and translate conservativism to something reasonable, because I'm not hearing it articulated well. The right has become a spin producing with reality absent, or passing the hypocrisy test, so with my superior ability for empathy (sarcasm), I'm going to articulate some reasonableness.  Part of it can ...

The threat to wreck the economy and the blame game is tedious, probably won’t happen but if it did it would really turn up the heat on an already hot campaign. Biden is too old, he can't unite the ununitable. Trump will be in jail because he can’t stop implicating himself. DeSantis is full out fascist. America will never accept what he’s doing to Florida. Utter insanity. I’m predicting the 4th ranked person after them wins. Not Pence, anything but that fake pius Pence. Not Haley, that fake man.  Ramaswamy  is good, anyone who writes a senior thesis on the ethical questions raised by creating human-animal chimeras has my vote. Actually I'd hate him too.  I don't care if Marianne Williamson  can't win, she's looking pretty good for 70 years old. A socialist Jewish woman has my vote. In the primary anyway. Anyone who sings Gershwin standards in a nightclub has my vote. No democrats are challenging Biden, so there is no 4th candidate. This year, like every year, you vot...

When I was growing up the Republicans were shady, but they seemed to have some integrity. Nixon, Reagan, Bushs.  Trump proved that people with a conservative orientation in their psychology and personality don't actually care about ethics, and the country over their ideology and culture war crap. Party over country. They align with Russia sometimes. The NY Post hates an autocratic young female actress, but not for a leader of the country. So they don't like misbehavior, they just don't like it when it goes against their prejudices.  Woke turns out to be a one size fit all space to put your shameful ideas: racism, fascism, sexism, selfishness. Woke is the forces that fight injustice, destroying the planet, thinking about others. The people I actually like who vote republican aren't racist, sexist, undemocratic, but they feel the right to vote against others and their future. Selfish. Maybe humans are psychologically selfish, and the factors that make them less selfish a...

Politics is disappointing. I feel like certain stories are meant get up the ire of one or the other's side. I find George Santos an offense. The more information I get about him, the more upset I am that he exists in the Congress. I don't want to pay attention or fully understand shady act that he's documented doing. I just want him one. It's disgusting that he isn't gone.  I read the conservative side of Reddit too, and they're upset about the communications director getting snookered at times, about how they know Trump had 3 balloons fly across America during his presidency. She can't really say things, and it's a difficult job, not sure why she's not sputtering more. I don't experience that as a win for Conservatives, and that their ire should be up, but they believe the 3 balloon story is false, and she's bumbling on the falseness of it. I don't know maybe it was a wrong fact check, who could even know it's hard to know who to tru...

I wonder at the current polarity in politics. It's not about government overreach, more or less, like when I was growing up. Reagan was an elderly man who saw the government explode. He thought maybe it was too much, not like when he was growing up. Smaller or bigger. The culture wars were not as pronounced, though I guess they were beginning in the rhetoric.  Now DeSantis is trying to be a thought police in colleges, schools and libraries, but to his mind he's just trying to be free of the liberal ideology. The culture war has advanced past the smaller or larger government to how and what the government does.  Both sides seem like flaming hypocrites to the other side. Conservatives think they're ridding the government of a anti-semite, when what they're doing is enforcing their politics. Progressive Jewish people don't feel protected from anti-semitism. But Ilhan Omar is pro-Palestine, and like so much in politics either you're a hawk or a panda. Either you hat...

Admittedly the choice between corrupt democrats and corrupt republicans isn't the political choice I want. I'd rather vote my way towards fairness, elimination of poverty, anti-trust laws that fight the consolidation of corporations (you read about grocery stores lately?), education, infrastructure. What you do get is a vote for democrats that vote to end rail strikes ( source ) because they can't carve out of the profits a sick leave, versus reality denying, Russian bought, obstructionists who might lower taxes, and want smaller government. The Ron Swanson's of the world who hate government and work in government. I've been running into people who believe the corrupt choices aren't worth even making. Reasons not to pay attention.I've thought that a few times in my life, but I don't think that now.  There are real choices about health care for women, and even just an attitude towards democracy. It's hard to fight past the rhetoric, and understand eve...

It's such a relief when the opposing party can call out their own assholes, it kind of lends a air of objectivity to a fairly subjective process. Liz Cheney's politics are rancid from my perspective, but she's potentially carving out a presidential run, after being voted out of office for breaking ranks and getting ahead of the curve. Oh and holding Trump accountable for his criminal behaviors. No small thing. Just like I can say Biden is doing amazing for American standards and criticize him for not doing more from a progressive viewpoint. Politics is about having ideas about how things should be, and then kludging something anyway. I can hate Cheney's voting record but also applaud her American decency.  (Did you read about the Florida candidate who got his twitter account suspended for saying he will make a law that it's okay to shoot FBI, IRS or other government officials? ( source )) I've always thought the first female president would come from the right. ...

"Rising autocrats have declared democracy obsolete. They argue that popular government is too slow to respond to the rapid pace of the modern world, or that liberal democracy’s focus on individual rights undermines the traditional values that hold societies together, values like religion and ethnic or racial similarities. Hungarian president Viktor Orbán, whom the radical right supports so enthusiastically that he is speaking on August 4 in Texas at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), has called for replacing liberal democracy with “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy,” which will explicitly not treat everyone equally and will rest power in a single political party." ( HCR ) There was a woman from Ivory Coast in my neighborhood (black), who married a Hungarian man (white). We got along well until we started talking politics. She said January 6th was a protest, not an insurrection, and I told her I couldn't talk to someone whom I didn't share ...

I posted about how NYC isn't going to allow unvaccinated home players to play in Major League Baseball, the Mets and the Yankees, as per the regulation on whatever that you have to get vaccinated if you work. The pandemic seems to be waning and everyone focuses on the fact that fans and away players don't have to be vaccinated. My point is that if you think it's a good step, then maybe more should do it but that others don't do it doesn't mean we need to get rid of it. People have different priorities and different political views, but I found the discussion vastly stimulating. I dislike the idea of virtue signaling, because you're calling someone a fake and it would be better to just say why you think they're a fake instead. Various moves were made. They thought it was off topic to discuss virtue. The opposite of no-virtue signaling wasn't a thing and complained about my exploring the topic they brought up, they just imagined a takedown, not a discussio...

I come across a lot of Republican memes, that irk me. I'm against guns. I don't want 35 children to die every year because of our infatuation with loose gun laws. I have never made this argument. I see the police as welfare queens who come to crime scenes after a crime and fill out forms and take statistics. OK, I'm exaggerating, I once called the cops when I saw a man hassling a woman and they showed up in 10 minutes, but the guy had gone. So maybe their presence helps keep order, but the couple went away and probably continued to enact their abusive dynamics. My point is that when there's an active shooter in a school, the police aren't there fast enough. The guy usually blows his head off in the end anyway. But sometimes they are brave, and clean up messes. Mostly in NYC they respond to a call about a crazy person who needs to be hospitalized. Or fills out a car accident form so you can take it to your insurance company. They do a lot of things, and I'm n...