Memorial Day reflections: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you

 

     Another old fart's Substack howler flew itself into my Yahoo inbox yesterday and set me to howling, too.

My Two Senses

“D-DAY 2024” 

Some thoughts on how we got here and why we can’t make it go away

OL’ FLAWRIDUH CRACKER

MAY 24, 2024

The Apprentice, and massive Fascist propaganda over a 40 year period generated millions of aggrieved Americans.

© MojoMan 2024

The turn to the far right for Republicans has it’s roots in an amalgam of Rich White Men who embrace Fascist ideologies, from race supremacy, antiSemitism to an obsessive fear of Communism stealing their ill-gotten rents. The road to Trump goes back to the Goldwater race for the White House. The Young Republicans and the JBS, backed by Corporatist Republican elites formed what amounted to a dopplegänger of the Communist Cadres they so feared.

This John Bircher Society ideology clearly inspired the 1964 article “The Paranoid Style in American Politics.” by Richard Hofstadter, that was and is still considered a seminal work that tracked the conspiratorial roots that would lead to the JBS. Later Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas” tried to relate how being aggrieved, and as Hofstadter put it, feelings of being dispossessed fueled resentment that took us into the Reagan/Nixon/Bush fiascos. Having been largely rejected as wingnut fascist ideology the Fascist loving billionaires put on a little lipstick and pretended to reflect mainstream thinking.

Now (talking about paranoia) I’m actually beginning to believe that microplastics in the diet of Far Right Republicans, whether put there by intent or as a bi-product of redneck lifestyle, is a likely major contributor to the cancerous mental malignancy reflected in todays Neo-Fascist ideology.

Along the same lines I have become a fanboy of Dr. Bandi X. Lee, and her recent work on “mass psychosis” Dr. Lee was academically cancelled from her professorship at Yale (thanks largely to the efforts of Allen Dershowitz) because she dared to correlate the clear symptoms of Trump’s “malignant narcissism” in explaining his bizarre behavior. This effort centers (and again I agree with her) on a lock and key paradigm of Trump to his base about that cements this “mass psychosis”. He seeks their constant adoration and they seek his ability to enact their insane dreams of revenge and overwhelming dictatorial rule.

Here we are confronted with essentially a religious cult, fueled by 40 years of paranoia, aggrievement and a complete embrace of Fascism/Christo-Fascism.

Is there a way outta here?

At some point I actually had genuine hope of finding the proverbial key to unlock the mind of these delusional masses, but today it appears that  the Fascist  Republican mindset is beyond any form of cognitive repair.

It is mirrored in science to cases if brain damage of the frontal pre-cortex suffered by veterans who have suffered TBI from being too close to blasts. Study has validated that there is a propensity to embrace deeply rightwing religous and political views.

Think about it. 50 years of constant Fascist propaganda packaged as “patriotism”, true Christianity, and White Identity. Do we really think there is a chance in Hell of helping these deluded masses to see how downright evil their thinking is in the next six months? 

Eighty percent of registered Republicans are prepared to go all the way with Trump and that means to avenge and destroy millions of decent Americans in his demigod name.

In closing I’d like to share that I just finished watching “The Manchurian Candidate” beautifully restored to hi-def black and White. Could it be that Ivanka (an FSB spy under direction of Putin) is Trump’s handler? I know, I’m again sounding a bit paranoid, but given our current threat to Democracy in Trump I’d like to consider it facing reality.

Sloan Bashinsky

A friend of mine once said, “Just because you're paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.”

“Deer Ed”, in honor of the key deer that inhabited Big Pine Key, operated the very popular “Coconut Telegraph” public forum at bigpinekey.com. The forum catered to “Kudos & Whiners”. 

Deer Ed built my websites, goodmorningkeywest.com and goodmorningfloridakeys.com, which were read all over the Florida Keys.

Deer Ed designed a campaign website for a woman friend of mine, who decided to run for sheriff in the Florida Keys.

One page of my friend’s campaign website described the sheriff department harassing her sons, whom the sheriff department contended were criminals, and she contended otherwise. She had some pretty good conventional ammunition, and she had something else. 

She became so concerned that sheriff deputies would find one of her sons and do him harm, that she sent him to work one day with his father, who operated a tree trimming company. Trimming a tree that day, their son touched a high power electric line and was electrocuted. His body was taken to the hospital on Stock Island, where the sheriff department and jail were, the island just above Key West. While she sat with her son’s body, grieving, the sheriff detective, who had pursued her son, came into the hospital room and made her leave so he could fingerprint her dead son’s hands and continue prosecuting him.

The Coconut Telegraph and my blogs heralded her campaign website coming online. The morning her campaign website went active,  bigpinekey.com was destroyed by hackers. Deer Ed was freaked out, because he had installed every kind of protection known at that time to protect his website.

 

The page on my friend’s campaign website, which contained the worst dirt on the sheriff department, was destroyed.

Deer Ed repaired his website and reported there what had happened, and the context. Some readers accused Deer Ed and my friend of being paranoid. Dear Ed responded with, “Just because you're paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.”

Deer Ed was a recluse, and he was reluctant to take my suggestion to get the FBI involved, but he finally asked them to investigate. He told me that the FBI finally told him that his site had been hacked, but whoever did it was really good and covered their tracks really well.

 

I ran ten times for public office in the Florida Keys: 6 times for mayor of Key West, 3 times for county commission, 1 time for school board. I got my belly full trying to change the minds of people on the left and on the right, whose heads seemed to terminally live where the sun never shined. Quite a few of them were regular readers of and contributors to the Coconut Telegraph. A lot of them were conservative Christians.

When Donald Trump entered the 2016 presidential race, I watched him adroitly pluck every last string in redneck Christian America. He plucked them like they were little red violins that had longed all their lives to be plucked. 

What bugged me most was the people who ought to know better, who were not little red violins, voted for Trump in 2016. I was just as bugged by the Democrats running Hillary Clinton against Trump. That’s when it saw just how truly fucked up America was. 

I had no clue how much more fucked up America would become. 

Putting In God We Trust on its money and One Nation, Under God in the Pledge of Allegiance, and claiming America was founded on Christian principles didn’t make it so.

When I was writing the goodmorning blogs, which eventually went to Internet heaven, I heard about a black comedian in Texas, who said something like, “Attending church has as much chance of making you a Christian as sitting in your automobile in your garage has of making you an automobile.”

There was a regular contributor to Kudos and Whiners, went by the handle “From The Right”, or “FTR”. I met him after he asked Deer Ed to see if I would have dinner with him and his wife and Deer Ed. FTR seemed nice enough. His wife seemed nice enough. FTR was well versed in all things conservative. It was his religion. He was articulate.

After he outed himself at Kudos and Whiners, FTR posted on his Facebook that, as devoted as he was to the Republican way, he would. not vote for Donald Trump if he gained the Republican nomination. I wondered if FTR would hold true to that. 

By then, I was publishing at my mew blog, afoolsworkneverends.blogspot.com, that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton should be locked up in adjoing cells.

After Trump won the Republican nomination, FTR announced on his Facebook that he would vote for Trump. That led so some interesting back and forth, and to FTR loosing his cool and tearing into me and displaying what I had figured was there all along.

Back when I was writing frequently at Kudos & Whiners, I developed a posse of Sloan haters, who took lots of pot shots at me from behind their fake names, which Deer Ed allowed them to have. I offered to meet them anywhere they chose, they could bring anyone they liked, and any weapons they liked, and I would bring me and the angels that never left me alone, and we could get to know each other. There were no takers. 

 

I think voting for Trump has as much chance of making God like you as waving a Confederate or Nazi flag has of making God like you. Alas, I don’t think voting for Joe Biden will get you any kudos from God, either. 

Old farts like you and me ain’t able to do the roughhouse things we once did, but we have l-o-n-g memories, and we know how to type, and we don’t like sitting at home playing TV bingo, and we still have some functioning brain cells, and we use them, and we shoot off our mouths, and it don’t change nothing, but at least we tried, and at least we are not going out brainwashed by cult leaders and stupidity, ignorance and gullibility.

Ol’ Flawriduh Cracker

I remain deeply, deeply distressed on this Memorial Day that the ultimate sacrifice and suffering of so many Americans that was about preserving our Democracy within a freely elected government acting in the spirit of E Pluribus Unum, is falling to a Fascist, Grifter Authoritarian hellscape. 

Sloan Bashinsky

That falling deeply distresses me, too, but I do think America’s wars during my lifetime were noble, given what America did to help those wars get started. 

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com