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“Goodbye and thanks for all the fish.”

That quote, in case you’re not familiar with it, comes from Douglas Adams’ seminal Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It was attributed to the dolphins as they were teleporting themselves off the Earth in advance of the Vogon’s demolition armada and seems especially fitting considering today’s tweet from the Unstable Orange Shitgibbon:

Never in my life have I been so gripped with fear for the future as I am now—and not just for me and my loved ones, but for this entire fucking planet. While I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, I was born only a couple years before it happened so I have no conscious memory of the events, but in the years that followed I did grow up learning the laughable Duck-and-Cover routine and living under the specter of Russian nukes raining down from the skies at any moment.

It wasn’t until the fall of the Berlin wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union that I—and no doubt the rest of humanity—was able to breathe a collective sigh of relief. The Cold War was over and a general understanding grew that because of mutually assured destruction, nuclear weapons would never be used in another war.

But then, sometime over the last twenty or so years, humanity started going collectively batshit insane and now, thanks to the cheeto-faced fuckmuppet and the powder keg that all of civilization seems to have become over the last several years, that’s no longer a given. As I half-jokingly said during the primaries, “If Trump is elected and has the nuclear launch codes, all it’s going to take is one foreign leader to diss him on Twitter and it’s GAME OVER.”

It’s no longer a joke.

Never mind the loss of civil liberties and societal progress we’ve made over the past 50 years that a Trump “presidency” brings to this country. I’m starting to worry about the annihilation of all life on earth because that unqualified, mangled apricot hellbeast with a hair-trigger temper has the intellect, emotional maturity and self-restraint of a toddler. I mean he is still whining about not winning the popular vote! I have never seen a more sore group of winners than that fucktrumpet and his vulgar, ignorant minions in my entire life.

I only pray that when the bombs start falling, I—and my loved ones—are at or near ground zero. I want it to be over in a flash; to be incinerated before the pain signals even reach my brain. The alternative—to die a slow, painful death over the days or weeks that follow is something I don’t even want to contemplate. And the absolute last thing I want to do is to “survive” a nuclear war and witness the downfall of civilization.

I’m seriously starting to wonder if this is the reason the Universe is not teeming with interplanetary explorers knocking at our door. Perhaps 99.99999% of all sentient life that arises in this universe cyclically destroys itself each and every time it’s on the verge of becoming a spacefaring species and there are only a handful that survive their perpetual childhood and mature, wandering the blackness of space encountering nothing but the burnt-out cinders of millions of civilizations that weren’t as lucky as they.

Alternately, perhaps it will take a near-civilization-ending event to force humanity to finally grow up, put aside our infantile beliefs in invisible sky fairies and finally come to realize we’re all in this together and no one’s going to save us but ourselves. As Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones,” and it seems more true now than ever.

Looking to the Star Trek universe, it must be remembered that their society arose only from the ashes of a nuclear war—although to be honest I doubt humanity will recover as quickly as it did in the Trek timeline unless the next war is a very limited one—something I find extremely unlikely in today’s climate of supercharged hate and intolerance.

The sense of dread so many of us are feeling is not hyperbole. It’s not sour grapes because our guy girl lost. Hell, I’ve been voting all my adult life and there have been only a handful of elections when the candidate I voted for actually won. I’ve had to suffer through bad president after bad president—Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, Bush II—doing what they could do to fight progress and set the clock back to some mythic “Ozzie and Harriet” time in America that never even existed. But Trump’s treasonous ascendancy to the presidency and the fact that he is now surrounding himself with people who are without exception the absolute antithesis of the posts they are filling is NOT business as usual. This is not normal! It is not just a case of “good presidents come and go.” For the first time in our history, we are about to have someone at the helm of this country who has the capability of causing an extinction level planetary event and no one seems to care or understand except a few of us acting as modern day Cassandras screaming into the darkness. Unless his own party—or the opposition finally grows a spine—and stands up, says No Donnie, you can’t nuke [insert country of your choice]! and takes away his goddamned Twitter, I’m not holding out hope the United States will not be recognizable—much less have another presidential election when he can be removed from office—in four years.

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Quote Of The Day

Once again, life imitates art…

Humans fancy that there’s something special about the way we perceive the world, and yet we live in loops, as tight and as closed as the Hosts do, seldom questioning our choices; content, and waiting to be told what to do next.” ~ Doctor Robert Ford, Westworld

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The Four Stages of Trump Grief

From Robert Reich:

As the era of Trump approaches, some of you are succumbing to the follow four syndromes:

1. Normalizer Syndrome. You want to believe Trump will be just another president – more conservative and pompous than most, but one who will make rational decisions once in office.

You are under a grave delusion. Trump has a serious personality disorder and will pose a clear and present danger to America and the world.

2. Outrage Numbness Syndrome. You are no longer outraged by what Trump says or what he does – his incessant lies, his cabinet picks, his bullying, his hatefulness  – because you’ve gone numb. You can’t conceive that someone like this is becoming President of the United States, so you’ve shut down emotionally. Maybe you’ve even stopped reading the news.

You need to get back in touch with your emotions and reengage with what’s happening.  

3. Cynical Syndrome. You’ve become so cynical about the whole system – the Democrats who gave up on the working class and thereby opened the way for Trump, the Republicans who suppressed votes around the country, the media that gave Trump all the free time he wanted, the establishment that rigged the system – that you say the hell with it. Let Trump do his worst. How much worse can it get?

You need to wake up. It can get a lot worse.

4. Helpless Syndrome. You aren’t in denial. You know that nothing about this is normal; you haven’t become numb or stopped reading the news; you haven’t succumbed to cynicism. You desperately want to do something to prevent what’s about to occur.

But you don’t know what to do. You feel utterly powerless and immobilized.

Millions of others feel equally powerless. But taking action – demonstrating, resisting, objecting, demanding, speaking truth, joining with others, making a ruckus, and never ceasing to fight Trump’s pending tyranny – will empower you. And with that power you will not only to minimize the damage that is about to occur, but also get this nation and the world back on the course it must be on.

If you find yourself falling into one or more of these syndromes, that’s understandable. Normalizing, numbing, becoming cynical, and feeling powerless are natural human responses to the gross absurdity and genuine peril posed by Trump.

But I urge you to pull yourself out. We need you in the peaceful resistance army, starting January 20.

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“It’s Like A Good Fuck.”

When we first met Maeve at the beginning of the season, at first I thought she was one of the guests. I mean, who wouldn’t want to run a brothel—if only for a few days?

But she turned out to be one of the Hosts, and much more than any one had ever expected. She’s now my favorite character and the one I most look forward to seeing chew up the scenery.

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Wha-Wha-What?

Anyone besides me find it a bit—odd—that there are two women sharing this bed? In 1959?!?

Built-in “vibro-massager”? “Stay up all night pushing buttons?”

As George Takei would say, “Oh myyyyyyy!”

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This Horrible Belief About the Election and What to Do With It

From RudePundit:

If a Republican were president right now and an incoming Democrat had won in an election where there was even a whiff of Russian interference, the nation would be shut down right now. Lawyers would be filing every lawsuit imaginable in every court everywhere. Marches would be ready to blockade the path of the electors from even getting to their meeting place. Impeachment documents would have been drawn up and, if they were in the minority in Congress, Republicans would be nonstop shaming Democrats, asking if they’re loyal to the United States or Russia, until they agreed not to certify the election. It would be a 50-alarm fire and no one would be able to stop the momentum until the president-elect agreed to postpone inauguration until either a definite determination was made about the Russian influence or until a new election could be held. And that’s what they’d do if the Democratic president-elect was an entirely competent, qualified person. If it was an egomaniacal hedonist who craps all over the traditions and decorum of the government? We’d be at Def-Con Monica.

And who could blame them, really? If Democratic elected officials truly believe that Russia hacked the Republican and Democratic National Committees’ email servers in an effort to push the needle even slightly towards Donald Trump, then that’s exactly how they should be acting.

In a twist right out of Shakespeare, President Obama’s fatal flaw is the very thing that launched him into the presidency in the first place: his belief in the basic decency of people. It has failed him time and again, yet so often when dealing with his political opposition, he has treated them with respect and dignity that they did not deserve and that they refused him. It failed him when he tried to get Mitch McConnell to release a joint statement on the hack before the election. McConnell said he wouldn’t do it and, if the Democrats did, he would just call it political games and discredit it. So, being decent, Obama backed down. Everyone in that situation should be ashamed.

Now, in the last weekend before the Electoral College votes on Monday, in the last month before Donald Trump takes over and attempts to completely destroy his legacy, it is time for President Obama to at long last forgo his instinct to trust that right will somehow always win and to actually reach out to bend the arc of history towards progress. In simpler terms, he needs to fuck some shit up.

This is where we are right now: Obama has such confidence that Russia did hack the servers that he is promising that the United States will retaliate. Now, yes, real evidence needs to be presented to the nation (which will automatically be dismissed as false in many quarters, notably the ones that inform Trump’s opinions). But, at this point, I’m gonna trust Obama over Russia or the guy who told an audience in Chicago a blatant lie last night: that the murder rate is “the largest it’s been in 45 years.”

In the course of two tweets, Trump pretended no one had ever talked about the hacking until now and then admitted that people had talked about the hacking before the election. It’s no wonder that White House Spokesman Josh Earnest could directly say, “Mr. Trump obviously knew that Russia was engaged in malicious cyber activity that was helping him and hurting Secretary Clinton’s campaign.”

As Trump continues to deny and deflect on Russia’s involvement, it would be good to remember the rule that whatever Trump says about others generally applies to himself. During the election, for instance, Trump kept insisting that Hillary Clinton’s email server something or other “disqualified” her from even running for president. The truth is that Trump’s financial entanglements that will likely put him in violation of the Constitution from the moment he’s sworn in actually should have disqualified him from running. And he knew that (and, as many others have said, I’m still not convinced that this election is not a publicity stunt that got out of hand).

So we have to consider both Trump’s just weird refusal to take the intelligence agencies he’s going to need at their word on Russia and that, in the latter part of the election cycle, he claimed that the whole thing was “rigged” against him. Again, it’s just a damned odd thing to say. What we originally thought was simply a shot across the bow of the legitimacy of a Clinton victory is seeming more and more like a deflection from the election actually being, if not rigged, then manipulated. Ultimately, if there was coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia, then do we call that “treason”? And if we do, then we have to follow through with all that that requires.

At the very least, President Obama should ask that Congress delay the Electoral College vote until, as Trump might say, we can figure out what the hell is going on. Barring that, he should ask Congress to delay the January 6 count of electoral votes. Barring that, Democrats should file objections to the vote that will force Congress to have to go on record in support of Trump.

And rank and file Democrats better be calling their members of Congress and the White House to voice their concern. And they better be ready to take to the streets to shut this down before the Trump cancer metastasizes so that its diseased tendrils grow deep into the American body. Act like our goddamned lives depend on it. Obama should be leading the charge on this, asking all concerned Americans to get involved. Just don’t expect decency from a good many of them.

Barring all of that and Trump becoming president (as is most likely), well, then we need a new plan. And I’ve got an idea or two.

One last thing for President Obama: Fire the fuck out of James Comey. Shit, arrest that motherfucker.

And yet none of this will happen. Based on past experience I know I can call my representatives until I’m hoarse and email them until my fingers bleed, and it will make absolutely no difference whatsoever.

I often wondered how the people of Germany could let Hitler rise to power.

Now I know.

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