The Farce of July

Hello! Welcome back to my blog, my three loyal subjects! I’ve been gone for some time working on my first novel in an attempt to distract myself for the daily nonsense that is the world. Distraction is hard to come by in this day and age given the degree of insanity popping out of anyone’s mouth day in and day out, least of all from the guy who allegedly won the last U.S. presidential election. Since this will be President Trump’s first Fourth of July as the U.S. President, we can all be sure to be hearing the phrase ‘MAGA’ for the next week. And, we’re going to hear it from people taking no part in making that actually happen. That brings me to recap a ‘funny if it weren’t true’ article about Trump supporters I recently read, “If you still support this guy, I know 7 things about you instantly.” I’ll briefly recap the article with my own thoughts and add a few numbers of my own. If you’re interested, you can find the original article here.

If you still support Trump as U.S. President, here are 7 (or more) things I know about you instantly:

One – You like to be ruled, not governed. Absolutely true. You don’t even need a study to understand that some groups of people, say, Evangelical Christians, love to be told what’s good for them as long as you invoke God, the king above kings, while doing it. Being ruled requires no thinking and, well, you see what I’m getting at. If not, that proves my point.

Two – You have no class. Also true, at least for the average middle-to-lower class U.S. citizen. In classifying a reporter who criticizes him as having been ‘bleeding from the face’ thanks to bad plastic surgery, Trump surely scores points with people who think it’s okay to refer to your own daughter as a nice piece of ass (shocker). They also think Trump’s low-brow tweets are ‘fighting back’ against a media that routinely thumps him while forgetting he actually won the presidential election and is well protected by the Secret Service.

Three – You are not someone I would trust to do business with. No doubt! While the article groans about shady business practices and tax evasion, I wouldn’t do business with anyone so adverse to regulations. Sure, businesses and industries can be over-regulated, but no regulation? That means you’re up to no good.

Four – You are racist or a racist enabler. Not always true but true often enough. White people, men in particular, voted for The Don. Overwhelmingly. I mean, when the KKK endorses a candidate, well, they don’t endorse just any ol’ person! I’m pretty sure Trump is racist himself – I could be wrong – though he does hire just enough black people to make us question his racism just a tiny bit.

Five – You have issues with women. Obviously. Three wives, affairs, certain ‘comments’ I won’t reiterate, the Megyn Kelly debacle. Surely this often stems from evangelicalism which hates that women are even allowed to leave the house with shoes on. Of course, some women voted for Trump, so what’s their deal? See One; sometimes thinking for yourself is just too…too…difficult.

Six – You aren’t quite as Christian as you claim to be. Please refer to my previous blog “You are Not a Christian.” Or if you’re in a hurry, think about Jesus being alive today and following last year’s presidential election. Can you imagine Jesus saying, “Oh, yeah, I’m voting for this guy!” I’m sure Jesus wouldn’t be happy with voting for Hillary either, but if forced to choose, I think he’d go with the lesser of two evils. Or be crucified instead. Heck, I considered it.

Seven – You are anti-constitution. Yes. The Emolument Clause means nothing to you – which is why you’re okay with the Muslim travel ban that doesn’t include countries that actually attacked the U.S., like, um, Saudi Arabia where Trump does some business. You also don’t care about the separation of church and state (for obvious reasons) and free speech (to spare your guy any criticism, which is funny because Obama).

Those are the original article’s point’s which I think left a few things out…

Eight – You hate science. Of course you hate science; you’re religious! Despite the fact that your life is incredibly cushy and convenient thanks to science, you are thankless to a fault. That’s all because you don’t want anyone questioning your religious beliefs. You think everyone else should question their religious beliefs because you – uneducated white guy who counts on Fox News for real news – you’ve got it figured out. That’s likely.

Nine – You want Trump to install a theocracy. You whine like holy hell about Sharia law because a Christian theocracy would be SO much better, said no evidence ever.

Ten – You’re oblivious to the obvious. White Americans are FAR more dangerous and likely to shoot and kill you than an illegal alien terrorist. By like, A LOT. You’re also more likely to be shot by a toddler who got their hands on a gun than a terrorist. But, you do nothing to curb these incidents because…you like guns. No reason to have them, you just like guns.

Nine – You cant spel. Trump supporters are notoriously horrible with the English language they so desperately demand everyone else speak. If you’re a Trump supporter, it’s highly unlikely you’ve noticed this blog’s numerous spelling or grammar typos. Want MAGA? Try spelling it out with no mistakes.

Ten – You’re a snowflake. Surely the average Trump voter has already called me a ‘libtard’ or some other innovative metaphor by this point in my spiel even though I’m a registered independent. Another point proven. 

Eleven - You don't care if people are unqualified to do important jobs. You figured Obama was a community organizer with little government experience, so why not abandon experience altogether? Why not have a brain surgeon in charge of housing or a science denier who campaigned on fossil fuel industry money in charge of the EPA? Meanwhile, you keep complaining that the barista at Starbucks got your order wrong. Again.

Twelve - You have no sense of history. Make America Great Again? When was it great before? When there was slavery? Before women could vote? Before civil rights? When there was child labor? Before there was an EPA? When we used nuclear weapons on civilians? When we put a man on the moon thanks to a Democratic President? What happened to all that greatness, I wonder. Oh, yea, the internet. Sigh.

The Cult of Banality

Considering the number of things that I find troubling, I really should meditate more…

I saw an entertainment headline a few days ago, something about drugs being found on Justin Bieber’s tour bus in Amsterdam. Okay, great. Who cares? Everyone it seems; the people who aren’t his fans regard this incident as another in a long line of incidents that point towards the young lady’s self-destruction while Bieber’s fans would defend her even if the tween idol chopped up a baby and served it with a glass of wine. And that’s what I find troubling – why are Justin Bieber’s off-stage antics more important than her art?

I remember many years ago when I, as a die-hard Judas Priest fan, learned lead singer Rob Halford was gay. The news did not phase me; I didn’t care because I care more about the man’s art than who he has sex with. Gay or not, Rob Halford can scream like a sonofabitch and that’s a part of what makes him a good music artist. Really, it’s the art that is important. Or maybe that’s a misperception on my part as the art of a musician or actor is now a distant second to what news the artist’s life generates.

Case in point, Taylor Swift: She really has very little musical skill either as a writer or performer, yet she is terribly famous. Why? Mostly because she’s a perfectly pretty lily white girl, so pretty that people apparently have no choice but to root for her as she dates a platoon of men who dump her as soon as they figure out she has no talent. Justin Bieber floats in the same boat, more famous for his homosexual attributes than for his music. Is anyone going to remember any of his songs decades from now? No, but people will remember that he started acting out as soon as his balls started to drop and realized he doesn’t have to date someone equally untalented. Worse, you have celebrities not famous for anything besides being rich and having hired a publicist, e.g. Kim Kardashian, Paris Hilton. Yet the general public snaps up news of these people’s lives. Is it because seeing how the other half lives is inspiring? No.

The reality is perhaps more depressing. My hypothesis is that people who lap up entertainment news have low self-esteem and no desire to be much of anything in life (not that one needs to make something of themselves). I arrived at this conclusion by thinking about what people get out of reading entertainment news, which oddly has very little to do with entertainment itself: A glimpse into a purportedly glamorous life that for the 99% is unattainable. Entertainment news, that is celebrity news, actually reinforces the notion among lower class people that they belong in the lower class. [I use ‘lower class’ here to mean the people who place celebrities in a status above themselves.] While someone may pick up People Magazine and say, “That’s going to be me some day,” the people who actually become celebrities don’t stop to say such things because they are busy becoming celebrities. That said, I have very little respect for anyone who reads celebrity news as it indicates just how little they contribute to the world.

Of course, I’m not saying all celebrities contribute something positive to the world. Many of the afore mentioned celebrities are in the game for celebrity’s sake; it’s better to be on top than on the bottom so I don’t blame anyone for walking down that road. But, in order to make some kind of contribution to the world, a person must begin with some sense of their own value and a person cannot do that if they are consumed by details of the lives of celebrities. Celebrity news is disempowering, not inspiring. It also reinforces one of the worse tendencies of human beings, the desire the see others fail or become miserable.

The people who keep track of celebrity news to satisfy their lust for schadenfreude are no doubt worse than passive purveyors of celebrity news since they take their disdain for their low class status in a direction opposite from where it should go. Instead of ignoring celebrity news to spend their time more wisely or turn their view of the well-to-do into a force of positive change, they wallow in the muck of celebrity divorces and self-abuse as if doing so could possibly make themselves feel better about their meaningless lives. Either way, news about the lives of celebrities is destructive for those who consume it.

To be fair, talking about the well-to-do has been going on for ages, obviously because the lives of celebrities are more interesting than that of the Average Joe. Only, wouldn’t everyone’s life be like the life of any given celebrity given the fame and fortune? Why then do people consider lives of celebrities more interesting? I suppose people who track celebrity news lack imagination. (Ask them what they’d do if they won the lottery if you want to confirm my suspicion.)

I don’t know what we’re supposed to take away from this other than a good many people do not mind their status among the blissfully ignorant. Personally, I find such an attitude repugnant. I find the desire to put details about a celebrity’s life ahead of their art or professional business even more objectionable, for if the lives of celebrities are more important than their professional lives, why not dispense with what they do for a living altogether and go straight to Free Parking? For a nation that likes nothing more than to pretend accomplishments and talent matter, America sure values its Lindsay Lohans.

Art is dead. Long live the “artist.”