STARS, STRIPES AND BULLSHIT – Reclaiming Our Country’s Venerated Symbols

Fascist governments are about control, often brutal control. But one of their slightly subtler grabs is always that of their country’s venerated symbols. 

The wannabe dictator of the United States of America, Donald Trump, wasted no time in checking this theft off of his to-screw list.

BLEEDING COLORS
Our flag, the good ol’ Stars and Stripes, was already well on its way into the grubby hands of the folks on whose grievances Trump rode to the presidency. Think the Boogaloo Bois, the Christian Nationalist Crusade or just good ol’ Billy Bob freelancin’ in his flag-bedecked, gun-racked pickup. 

IMAGE: Eric Gay / AP

Everyone with a beef—or who feared others might steal their beef—wanted us all to think their hissy-fit “patriotism” was somehow sanctioned by their flag-waving.

Trump, their self-declared gift from God, has done nothing but solidify that hold on the flag. The image of Old Glory waving, alongside the Confederate flag, as a battle standard of the January 6 Insurrection will sicken truly patriotic Americans for generations.

IMAGE: Brent Stirton / Getty Images

        The draft-dodger president thinks he can suddenly grow 
        a pair by slapping his name all over U.S. military assets.

ROAR AND PEACE
Speaking of battle, this draft-dodger president thinks he can suddenly grow a pair by slapping his name all over U.S. military assets, many of them having long evincing our nation’s proud military supremacy.

In one of the most absurd ironies of Trump’s absurd reign, at the same time he’s been obsessed with begging, borrowing or stealing the Nobel Peace Prize, he’s also hijacked the Department of Defense and renamed it his very own “Department of War.” And now he's branded a whole class of U.S. Navy battleships as—you guessed it—the Trump Class.

HOLY CRAP
Then there’s the Bible—a book somewhere between ten and twenty percent of Americans truly abide by—and which holds no special place in our church/state-separated Democracy. Yet most of Trump’s MAGA base claim it as their license to hate. 

Trump has them believing he lives and breathes the Bible, that somewhere in those pages he’s actually discovered a mandate for his egomania, cruelty and rage. This even as he refuses to put his hand on the volume in his last inauguration; even as he hawks his own Trump-branded version of the Good Book at 60 bucks a pop.

PHOTO: Patrick Semansky / AP

             The Oval Office now sports an aesthetic better suited 
             to the tastes of the Real Housewives of Las Vegas.

A ROCOCO HELLSCAPE
Next, it was the White House—the People’s House—which this egomaniac has deemed less than representative of his grandeur. So he’s demolished the venerable East Wing to make room for his ghastly 90,000-square-foot, $400,000,000-plus ballroom, an eyesore that will dwarf what remains of the White House.

PHOTO: POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Trump has turned the Oval Office, long the epitome of elegance, exuding quiet confidence to visiting heads 
of state from every corner of the world, into a space better suited to the tastes of the Real Housewives of Las Vegas. As if afraid of blank wall space—or, God forbid, paintings of America’s true greats—Trump has slapped on gaudy gold flourishes some describe as “polyurethane onlays you could buy online” and a "gilded Rococo hellscape.”

And the Kenne…oops, did I almost mention that loser, John F. Kennedy?…Trump Center for the Performing Arts. He’s installed himself as board chair and foisted 
a multi-million-dollar re-make to his own insipid specs. It’s such a monumental affront to cultured Americans that the only acts likely to stoop that low will be Lee Greenwood and Kid Rock.

       We’re not just fighting against something; we’re fighting 
       for a vision of our country’s Post-Trump Renaissance.

A LUMINOUS VISION
As we witness the Trump shit show unraveling—and there are encouraging signs it’s happening—we must not let up on our defiance of this charlatan and his outlaw regime. Let’s be disciplined. Watch our language. Reject Dear Leader’s desperate distractions from his crimes—especially those whose exposure he fears most. Among them the ones laid bare in the unredacted Epstein files. 

We aim for nothing less than a blue tsunami come the midterm elections in November. 

As we work to turn the tide, we must also keep in mind that we’re not just fighting against something; we’re fighting for a vision of our country’s Post-Trump Renaissance. The return of decency, kindness, intelligence, honor, respect for truth, courageous leadership…and a renewed quest not for fools-gold illusions of greatness, but the true, gold-standard greatness that has defined the United States of America since our singular experiment in Democracy began 250 years ago.  

One vital aspect of that renewal must be to reclaim our once-revered national symbols from their debasement at the hands of this vulgar reality star. It will take at least a generation and billions of dollars—money that could have been invested in better lives for all Americans, not corporations and the filthy rich—to strip those icons’ of their spray-paint veneers and "Trump" epithets, and restore them to their accustomed roles representing both America’s celebrated history and our glorious, big-hearted, evolving future.

Let us all vow to nurture and to share that luminous vision.

PHOTO: Nigel Francis 

HISSY FIT – How the Trump Chumps Got Their Way While Losing It

Since a crass, bigoted reality-TV star somehow, incredibly, broke and entered the pantheon of the U.S. Presidency, I’ve not hesitated to speak up about my disappointment, my apprehension and my deep embarrassment for our country.

Usually, I get ample proof from my friends and followers that I’m preaching’ to the choir. But lately I’ve also received a few of precisely the kind of responses I might have expected from some of Trump’s supporters. Comments like “You lost; get over it!,” “I’m sick and tired of all you cry-babies bitching and moaning!,” and “It’s your turn to be a loser, college boy; why don’t you just man-up?” And those are the polite ones.

Really! We’re the cry-babies?

AN INVISIBLE HOLE
So…a big chunk (not a majority, mind you) of the American electorate apparently has perceived themselves as oppressed, muzzled, getting short-changed in their share of the American Dream. This despite ample proof that, overall, the quality of life in this country has never, ever, been better.

After the Obama administration’s helped dig us out of the deep hole dug during the “Dubya” years, we now enjoy the best job growth in 18 yrs.; strongest dollar in three decades; gas a bit over $2 per gallon; unemployment cut in half; the annual Bush deficit cut by two-thirds; recovered housing market; growing exports; Dow Jones average tripled and surging once again…

What am I missing?

        What they'd really lost...was their ability to control.

They say they’d lost their voice, their power. And even some more charitable liberals than I believe them. But I’m going to call them on it. What they’d really lost during those eight hard-fought years of progressives’ gains was not the American dream. It was their ability to control.

And it was not simply control over themselves and their own fortunes they so lusted for. It was authority—control over land, people not like them, other countries, ideas they see as threatening to their rather narrow quasi-religious ideology. That’s what this election was really about.

LILY-WHITE CLONES
For the last eight years, while we progressives have been thinking positively, constructively, of ways to make the world a better place—connecting people; creating opportunity; trying, against the best-funded, most powerful lobbying efforts in history, to preserve a natural environment we’re proud to pass on to our kids and grandkids—conservative ideologues have put all their eggs into one big basket of NO!

          He held out a few cheap promises like a candy bar 
          to a health nut's child. 

By their own admission, their one and only goal during the eight-year administration of one of the most intelligent, visionary, positive-minded, decent presidents in history has been to derail absolutely anything he’s proposed. Not exert their own version of leadership, not offer constructive alternatives, not paint a picture of a better America; no, just stifle every glimmer of hope for a kinder, gentler nation.

What is it you want, folks? Federal hands off of public lands so you can gouge out more mineral wealth on the cheap, wallow in more ATV mud holes and build more rifle ranges? A sub-prime mortgage on the environment we leave our grandchildren in return for a few jobs in unsustainable industries? Your own little nation of God-fearin,’ lily-white clones?

THE PRICE OF A CANDY BAR
Well, looks like your political temper tantrum has, against all odds, gotten you the attention you so craved. And now the rest of us must live, for at least the next four years, with the consequences: a president who—at precisely the moment in history when we most need a leader with a constructive vision—has already proven himself an utterly ill-prepared, emotionally unstable, uncurious, vulgar, pompous, self-serving narcissist.

And none of this charlatan’s destruction should come as any surprise to those who ganged up—apparently with a little help from one of our nation’s arch enemies—to push him into office. He held out a few cheap promises like a candy bar to a health nut’s child. And you totally reached out and grabbed it.

Congratulations, you poor, self-styled victims, your little hissy fit worked big-time. You little brats set the house afire over a fucking Milky Way.

“We the people chose a man who has shredded our values, our morals, our compassion, our tolerance, our decency, our sense of common purpose, our very identity — all the things that, however tenuously, made a nation out of a country.”  ~ NEAL GABLER