How could he know that?

Posted on by Mark Kelley

I recently came across this prediction from H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), journalist, satirist, critic, and Democrat. He wrote the following editorial for The Baltimore Evening Sun on July 26, 1920. Talk about prophesy fulfilled in 2017:

“As a democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and perfectly narcissistic moron.”

Can you believe it? Now that ain’t fake news :–)

Pace.

Don Quixote had more sense than these guys

Posted on by Mark Kelley

(Thought I’d send this one to the local paper before they decide not to accept them anymore. :–)

While researching a book about my mother’s untimely death of cancer, after exposure to nuclear radiation while working for the Manhattan Project in Washington, D.C. during World War II (Rain of Ruin, 2011), I learned a great deal about the horrendous suffering and death caused by America’s early atomic bombs. I was reminded that today’s nuclear weapons—many times more powerful—if let loose, would make the devastation from those first two blasts pale by comparison. Knowing that, and still mourning my mother’s death (essentially at the hands of her own nation), I am outraged to hear North Korea and the United States jousting over political differences with nuclear-tipped lances. Neither nation and neither leader has the right to sacrifice millions of lives so casually. I don’t care if North Korea’s leader was burnishing his image and President Trump was just feeling a little bellicose when they exchanged threats. To my way of thinking, neither has the right to dispose of one human life just to support their ill-considered provocations. We don’t have to wonder what would happen if they made good on those threats; we already know what these terrible weapons can do. My family, and thousands of others whose loved ones were exposed to nuclear radiation during tests to make these awful tools of war battle-ready, and, of course, the victims of the bombs dropped in 1945, have already sacrificed too much. I appeal to the leaders of our nation and all nations to walk away from a nuclear high noon that has the potential to harm millions of innocents the world over. I appeal to world leaders to pursue, through the United Nations, regional political affiliations, hell, Jared Kushner’s secret back-channels if necessary, agreements that would put an end to nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear war forever.

I wouldn’t pitch a pup tent with this guy

Posted on by Mark Kelley

:(Herewith my latest effort to convince the people of Southcentral Pennsylvania to abandon the great orange buffoon.)

Surely Donald Trump’s inappropriate comments to the Boy Scout Jamboree will be the last straw for millions of Americans who, after voting for him, regret his depraved performance as president. Presidents have long encouraged the scouts to become honest, decent young men. Not Mr. Trump. He took the low road, using his time to praise himself and condemn his political opponents while thousands of boys listened. How much of this ugliness must we take from this deranged and decadent man? Isn’t it past time to ask Mr. Trump the question posed to the mad senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, when he attacked yet another innocent victim, “Have you [Mr. Trump] no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

Throughout his adult life, Trump has trampled the principles that define American democracy at its best, values the boys standing before him in West Virginia swore to uphold, things like helpfulness, kindness, bravery, and reverence. Trump has mocked the disabled, insulted veterans, assaulted women, and reportedly once knocked his own college-age son to the ground for wearing the wrong shirt. What should Americans, including the Christians who recently blessed Trump at the White House, say to the Boy Scouts about the vicious ramblings of an immoral, unhinged president? How long will people of goodwill tolerate his narcissistic self-indulgence?

It’s not easy to admit we made a mistake when we committed ourselves to an individual or an ideology that turns out to be devastatingly wrongheaded. Our confession will be accompanied by a lot of cognitive dissonance (psychological discomfort). But, it seems to me, as Mr. Trump’s short-comings and transgressions mount up, the pain he’s inflicting on individuals, the nation, and the world will far exceed the embarrassment we experience by admitting we backed the wrong horse.

He’s crazier than ever…

Posted on by Mark Kelley

So many lies, so many delusions, so much hate, so much ego, so much insanity. And I’m tempted to say the same for those who continue to stand with Donald Trump and his accidental presidency. In the name of all that’s truthful, and honest, and decent, and moral and humane, can’t we find a way to remove this lunatic from office? What lesson do we teach our children when we allow something like this go on? Dump Trump!

Get him out of there!

Posted on by Mark Kelley

[The post below is my latest effort to sway the voters of heavily Republican Lancaster County, PA to corral and perhaps institutionalize the impostor president. Any repetition of argument is intentional. That’s how right wing talk jocks and alt-right propagandists convinced millions of Americans to vote for the Orange Menace. Maybe we can turn it around using the same technique…over, and over, and over, and over…]

To LNP (Lancaster Newspaper):

An op-ed piece in last Sunday’s New York Times convinced me that the author and most Americans are taking unfair and selfish advantage of President Donald Trump. The columnist used Mr. Trump to make himself look clever by arguing that Trump political losses are actually wins, because all he ever wanted was to dominate the headlines, grab audiences, and be the center of attention. Political cartoonists who lampoon Mr. Trump’s foibles and those of us who laugh at them are guilty of exploiting the President’s weaknesses for mere entertainment. And, most insidiously, sycophantic presidential advisers like Stephen Bannon and Stephen Miller are playing to the President’s inordinate need for praise and other mental health issues to advance an agenda that threatens American democracy.

I think we all need to stop and consider the best course of action in relating to Mr. Trump. Johns Hopkins Medical School psychotherapist John Gartner believes the President is afflicted with malignant narcissism, an incurable condition that, according to Gartner, means Mr. Trump is dangerously mentally ill and temperamentally incapable of being president. Reports from the White House and Tweets from Mr. Trump in recent weeks suggest that he is delusional, detached from reality, obsessed with the need for adulation, and given to fits of uncontrollable rage. Mr. Trump grew so angry with aides Reince Priebus and Stephen Bannon recently that he banished them from Air Force One, not adult behavior.

Mr. Trump’s condition is not new, he no doubt indulged in fits of rage, along with the bouts of sexual assault he has admitted to, while running his family’s business. Such behavior then may have wrecked some real estate deals, such behavior now could wreck our nation and the world. For his sake and ours, Donald Trump should be removed from office.

Stick that on the back of your car!

Posted on by Mark Kelley

It occurred to me the other day that I haven’t provided any inspiring Bumper Stickers for a while. As it turned out, I found myself reading an article by Henry Giroux (a professor in the English and Cultural Studies Department at McMaster University in Canada) with a slew of thoughts that begged for reduction to bumper sticker length. The title, “Donald Trump and the Plague of Atomization in a Neoliberal Age,” gives a pretty good sense of what he’s on about. I had been doing some reading about “atomization” and its connection to human rights, and Giroux’s piece was tremendously helpful. He does a great job of  explaining how we as a people have been “atomized”–separated from each other by a growing individualism that encourages us to focus on ourselves and seriously threatens our ability to empathize with each other. He includes some thoughts on how media and entertainment (the whole fascinating, mesmerizing digital world, actually) have provided the “bread and circuses” of our time, distracting us from the destructive acts of those who seek to control our political systems and threaten to replace our democracy with an authoritarian regime that substitutes cold hearted, laissez-faire, self-interested capitalism for the empathy and  “reciprocal altruism” (as Richard Leakey called it) many of us have long believed in. (You can find the whole article here: http://billmoyers.com/story/donald-trump-plague-atomization-neoliberal-age/)

Okay, on to the Bumper Stickers:

B.S. #18: ATOMIZATION = EPIDEMIC LONELINESS 

B.S. #19: POLITICS HAS TAKEN AN EXIT FROM ETHICS 

B.S. #20: NEOLIBERALISM CAUSES IMMORAL POLITICAL ZOMBIES

B.S. #21: ATOMIZATION IS THE SCOURGE OF DEMOCRACY

B.S. #22: EMBRACE EMPATHY

B.S. #23: FIGHT FOR THE SOUL OF DEMOCRACY

B.S. #24: WAKE UP AND WORK TOGETHER

But Giroux doesn’t just depress us and depart. He offers words of encouragement (in his scholarly way):–):

“…any viable notion of collective resistance must take matters of consciousness, identity, desire and persuasion seriously, so as to speak to the underlying conditions of atomization that depoliticize and paralyze people within orbits of self-interest, greed, resentment, misdirected anger and spiraling violence.”

Here’s some inspiration from The Youngbloods in “Let’s Get Together”:

C’mon people now,
Smile on your brother
Ev’rybody get together
Try and love one another right now
Pace.

Don’t put Donald Trump on the list

Posted on by Mark Kelley

Columnist Gail Collins needn’t have bothered herself (Lancaster News Paper-LNP, 2/21/17) wondering if Donald Trump will do such a terrible job as president that historians will place him at the very bottom of the presidential rankings, thus moving Lancaster  PA’s favorite son, James Buchanan, out of the basement he’s occupied for so long. Throughout his election campaign and now in his first few days in office, Trump’s immoral, illegal, unconstitutional, and increasingly irrational behavior has disqualified him from even holding the office. He certainly doesn’t deserve to be on the list of legitimate presidents. The only reason he’s still in the White House is because those who have the authority and the responsibility to remove him have not, for whatever selfish reasons, done so. So, no worries, Ms. Collins, no need to inconvenience President Buchanan by forcing him to move upstairs and make room for a basement-dwelling, degenerate real estate salesman.