Category: The Trump Years Pt. 2

A Vocabulary of Fascism

Photo Protesting Minister Chadwick

Extremely anti-social views and behavior, coupled with a lack of conscience, are evidence that a person is suffering from sociopathy.  It’s hard to tell if someone actually lacks a conscience, but anti-social behavior is easy to spot.  People who habitually flout the laws and mores of their society, and who are, in fact, against those laws and mores, are behaving anti-socially. This may even be accompanied by misanthropy, which is the hatred of other people.

But just because you hate other people doesn’t mean you can’t love yourself. Narcissism is just that — excessive vanity and admiration of self.  And of course, egotism follows, for surely such a fabulous person as oneself will be completely selfish and self-absorbed. It’s the mindset of the spoiled rich kid — I want it, give it to me now!

Egotism leads to autocracy — the expectation of absolute power over other people, because after all — you’re great!  Not only do you deserve absolute power, you are the best and only person for the job.  And look how the people love you.  It’s proof that you deserve to run the world.

Every now and then, an autocrat emerges who takes it a step further — to the right, that is.  Suddenly, it’s all about the autocrat and his great nation which is his.  Everyone and everything must be put to the service of the great nation and its aims, which are the autocrat’s aims, which are never wrong and always right.

And now you have fascism, a totalitarian, rabidly nationalistic, far right system of government and society run by what we usually refer to as a “fascist dictator.”  Looking back into the not-so-distant past, we see that you don’t even have to be fully sane to do it.

If this is a problem for society, it will be solved. It’s only a matter of time.

 

Photo credit: Vrb7, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Kids Say The Darnedest Things

Ever since Elon Musk started strutting around the White House like a third world dictator, people have been saying President Musk.  This was meant to get under Trump’s skin, but he hardly seemed to notice.  Musk did his standard derisive denial, and we were all supposed to forget about him, except when he calls press conferences in the Oval Office.  It was at just such a press conference, just days ago on the 11th of February, that none other than Musk’s son dropped a bombshell.  The adorable four year old turned to President Trump and said — near as anyone can tell — “You’re not the president — you need to leave.”

This would be Musk’s son “X,” who was named, tediously enough, for his father’s PR service Twitter, which he renamed X for reasons of his own.   The child was also heard to say, again to the President, “Shut your fucking mouth.”  Nice!

See: Did Elon Musk’s Son Say “You’re Not the President”? What He Said

Little X is one of at least 12 publicly acknowledged offspring Musk has brought into the world.  Why so many? No way to know since Musk’s reply seems typically disingenuous (he says he believes ‘intelligent people’ should produce offspring). Assuming none of the children are actual clones a la The Boys From Brazil, these are still seriously engineered children.  You could almost call them GMO kids. 

To begin with, all but the first of Musk’s children were conceived via In Vitro Fertilization.  According to Musk’s biography, Musk believes IVF is a more efficient way of having children because it allows parents to control the process. According to one blog, taking Musk’s bio as its source,  Musk used IVF with his twins by Shivon Zilis to ensure that the children would have his “genetic makeup.⁠1” We are left to ponder what that means.  There is also a tweet making the rounds, purportedly by yet another mother, Ashley St. Clair, which claims Musk used CRISPR and other genetic modification tools to create their 5 month old child, but the veracity of this post is in question.

According to Forbes⁠2, two of his first ten children were born male (an older child now named Vivian changed her sex).  The genders of his most recent offspring have not been revealed.  Who knows why Musk would want so many sons, although given what we know of his personality, it’s easy to guess.  Think of it, 13 little Elons running around, exercising their egos and using their vast fortunes to run the world.

Adding to the weirdness, People magazine told us last year⁠3 that Musk and Grimes (mother of Baby X and two others) were planning to build a compound somewhere on the west coast where Musk could live in peace and harmony with all the mothers and children, presumably while Musk indoctrinates them with his magnificent masculine aura…. Then again, this plan may be off now that Musk is running the world himself.

Ooh la la.  Is Musk building a dynasty?  If so, we could be dealing with “President Musk” for a very long time.

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1 According to a story in How We Became A Family.

2 As reported by Forbes

3 All About Elon Musk’s 13 Children: All About the Tesla CEO’s Sons and Daughters (and the 4 Women He Shares Them With) 

The Perils of Political Ambivalence

Storm at Sea

America reels after Trump’s shocking election. What does it mean and what will the future bring?, people ask.

Half the people say: “It’s the end of the world! This will be Hell on Earth!”

And the other half say: “This is a glorious beginning. Soon we’ll have Heaven on Earth.”

I don’t believe either one. What to do?

Out here in the tiny bark of my ambivalent political opinions, I have been greatly buffeted by the much stronger and more forceful energies of those on either side. I am blasted from the left, frozen from the right, and rejected as wanting by both. Some think the path lies one way, some another; some think there’s no path at all.

First off, this last is false. There is always a path, even if you’ve been busted down to electrons. And since choosing between extremes, right or left, A or B, is impossible (because it leaves the entirety of the other side out), we need another way to choose.

Here’s an idea: imagine the American electorate as a Venn diagram. Now imagine that the best path lies between the extremes of A and B at the point where the two intersect.

In our competitive, winner-take-all society, politics is regarded as a battle, and the goal of government is to “push through” policy changes, regardless of how many or how few people actually want them. But perhaps this isn’t the role of a democratic government after all. For instance, what would happen if instead of enacting policies that half the country despises, we were to legislate only that on which we can agree? Would that be wrong? We’ll likely never know.

Meanwhile, pity the poor non-partisan, for truly they have nowhere to lay their head where it won’t get bashed by one of their politically-aligned fellows!