Sunday, November 20, 2016

Sunday Morning Comin' Down


In Bridge on the River Kwai, Colonel Saito never understood Colonel Nicholson...
You are defeated, but you have no shame.
You are stubborn,  but have no pride.
You endure, but you have no courage.
...but Nicholson understood Saito perfectly.

Saito was a not-very-bright middle-manager -- a Reince Preibus -- whose only tools are the blunt instruments of the inept martinet.  And that would have been sufficient if all he had to do was keep a bunch of prisoners locked up and in line, but was also charged by his superiors with completing critical infrastructure project which neither he nor the men under his command were competent to perform.

Saito can threaten and torture all he likes...
Saito [speaking of the Geneva Convention]:  You speak to me of code?  What code?  The coward's code!  What do you know of the soldier's code, of Bushido?  Nothing!  You are unworthy of command!
...but since he refuses to abide by the rule of the civilized world...

...he absolves those who are civilized of any obligation to respect his authority:
Nicholson:  Since you refuse to abide by the laws of the civilized world...we must consider ourselves absolved from our duty to obey you.
And we on the Left understand Trump and the Right just as perfectly.

Trump was elected by millions of profoundly ignorant people and bigoted people based on dozens of wild promises that he cannot possibly fulfill.  This fulfillment problem is compounded by a factor of 1000 by the fact that, even if he were serious about keeping his word, Donald Trump knows fuck all about anything and the unhinged contempt for government at the core of the party that elected him renders that party completely incapable of enacting anything except massive tax cuts, the torching of the safety net and witch hunts.

Sooner that you will believe, the actual j-o-b (don't you dare call them "czars") of actually building a fucking wall (and making Mexico pay for it) and turning coal -- fucking coal! -- into a cutting-edge, 21st century growth industry, and slapping 35% tariffs on some cars coming into this country but not other cars coming into this country, and bringing every fucking manufacturing job back to the Land of the Free and a multi-trillion dollar infrastructure project and delivering awesome health care to every American at "a fraction of the cost" (emphasis added) --
“In some areas, they’re paying 60, 70 and 80 percent more than they were paying last year,” [Trump] told rally attendees. “And Hillary Clinton wants to double down and make it more expensive, and it’s not going to work. I called it when it first came out. It’s only getting worse, and not only for you, for the country. Because our country can’t afford it, you can’t afford it. We’re going to have great health care at a fraction of the cost, and you watch. It’ll happen.”
-- and on and on and on.

And just as they were during the Age of Dubya (no, we didn't forget because we never forget) once the wheels come off and burst into flame, the Beltway media will be right there, johnny-on-the-spot to bury it all under a mudslide of outright lies and rampant Both Siderism.

This is to be expected  They are, first and foremost, craven careerists -- Quislings and collaborators and the willing footstools of depraved power.  But this time there will not just be a rag-tag band of dirty hippies desperately trying the crash the gate and glitterbomb the shit out of the Sunday gasbag Cavalcade with math and history and causality.  This time we will be joined by an army of former Obama Administration Rohirrim spoiling for a fight, eager to protect their legacy and no longer constrained the incumbent diplomatic niceties of running the country, and by veterans of the Clinton campaign looking for payback with interest.

All of them tracking every move the Trump Administration makes, flooding the zone every time Trump breaks another promise and tries to lie his way out of it.  Every time they propose a bill that is identical to a bill the Dems proposed but which got shot down because the GOP are seditious bigots, expect to hear about all over social media.

Yeah, it's a hella shitty hand we drew.  Like 2005 all over again, on bad acid.  I know.  I was there with you for that too.

But this time Captain America and his crew will be standing with us -- 


-- documenting the atrocities, keeping score and making sure every detail of the Failed Trump Administration is held up to the light in all its gory technicolor glory.

After that, who knows? But I do know that, in 2006, people eventually got tired of being humiliated defending a gang of looters and incompetents:
Saito:  Do you know what will happen to me if the bridge is not ready in time?
Nicholson:  I haven't the foggiest.                
Saito:  I'll have to kill myself.  What would you do if you are me?
Nicholson:  I suppose if I were you...I'd have to kill myself.  Cheers!
Cheers!

12 comments:

Mike Lumish said...

This picture that you paint, it looks like Humiliations Galore for certain bad actors.

Speaking only for myself, as usual, I pledge to do my part to see that this comes to fruition.

Cirze said...

Cheers!

;[-]

Bazzer said...

I wish your faith in the Democrats were warranted. I just don't see it. Instead I see them normalize Republican administrations. I see them trying to bargain with them. I see them sign on to the worst of their policies. Remember Hillary Clinton signing off on Bush's Iraq War? Sadly, most Democrats are cowards and quislings. Maybe Sanders and Warren will rouse themselves. Robert Reich will continue to preach. Any others?

Mary said...

Onen i-Estel Edain, ú-chebin estel anim (I gave Hope to the Dúnedain, I have kept no hope for myself.) I wish I could believe that the Democrats will take up the challenge. Your vision encourages me, but if past performance predicts future behavior, we may have to wait a while before the push-back begins.

Unknown said...

We don't seen the illuminati to wreck planet earth - the illiterati will do just as well

Tanbark said...

Test...

trgahan said...

It is time to end this "Democrats aren't strong/liberal/etc. enough" excuse. Warren and Sanders exist as elected officials because their own seats are in very a-typical sections of America. Neither could hold an elected seat in a battle ground state.

The 2016 election is a prime example of why we have the Democratic Party that we have. Clinton got to feel what hundreds, if not thousands, of State and Federal Democratic candidates in the last 30 years have felt when the support that all the metrics claimed was there didn't materialize. That all the hours on the phone, door to door, and talking with community groups developing policy didn't yield shit against a screaming, no-nothing with pockets stuffed with dark money and being carried up be the media.

Please stop pretending this problem needs fixed by THOSE Democrats, the ones way over there who aren't pure enough. We abdicated our states houses decades ago. We cut and ran in 2010 and 2014. Strategists were already predicting we were going to do run away again in 2018 if Clinton had won. Are we going to make that prediction wrong? or are we going to let Republicans have MORE?

Tanbark said...

8-plus years ago, I joyfully watched Barak Obama accept the democratic nomination for president.
I told a friend watching with me:

"After 8 years of George Bush's savage idiocy, we just dodged a lethal bullet. Hillary clinton is the only democrat who could return the White House to the republicans in this election. ALL of the republicans and a shitload of independents would get out of their death beds and crawl to the polls on bleeding stumps to vote against her."

I think the same was true of this election. The goopers nominated the most repulsive, unqualified, candidate ever to run for president, and the democrats nominated a candidate who couldn't beat him.

Maybe she's come a pilgrim's progress from all of she and Bill's 2007 dog-whistle racism (remember:
"Hard working white people won't vote for Barak Obama."?) and from what one commentator---I think it was Keith Olberman---called "an invitation to a kill.", when Hillary, facing the numerical impossibility of Obama's having the nomination in hand, said, in so many words…

Gosharootie; I can't get out now. Look what happened to Robert Kennedy.

It was the end of "savvy Hillary", for me.

but I doubt that about the progress.

The bitter, false-as-false-teeth (to steal Norman Mailer's indictment of Nixon's "smile"…) irony of Donald Trump criticizing her for supporting the war in Iraq (until she saw it killing her chance for the nomination…) when he, too, supported it, was lost in all the hateful, lying, gabble that he threw on the wall. Instead, the repubs went after her for the ONE diplomat and the THREE "contractors" who died in the sacking of the U.S. Embassy in Libya. They couldn't drape 4500 dead american troops, and who-knows-how-many-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dead-Iraqis? around her neck; it was, and IS, after all, a republican "operation enduring clusterfuck"…but we mustn't forget that while Hillary was going "aye", there were 21 democratic senators who had the courage and the intelligence to vote against it.
My 2c, you could have put those 21 names in a hat; drawn one out, and appointed them president.

I am nauseated at hearing Trump called a "populist". There was one populist in this election, and it was Bernie Sanders. After Hillary and the DNC, with some help from Donna Brazile (Donna, how could you?) jiggered Sanders out of a fair chance, the table was set for Trump. He feasted on her.

It aint rocket science; "We suck less!" is a really shitty campaign slogan.

Unknown said...

Trump and the Republicans will screw up royally and find a way to blame Obama and Clinton.

Chan Kobun said...

And Bernie is running to capitulate to Drumpf now.

Purity is worth nothing, sweetie.

Green Eagle said...

If a tree falls in the forest, and the mainstream media just ignore it, did it fall at all?

Robt said...

Such a long time coming. The precipice of demise or the 2nd coming of the superior race
and the final solution.

In recent years in meeting people. have had them early in a general conservative (of many matters). Out of nowhere upchuck their Belief and identity as Conservative/ republican. I haven't been able to get a read on, if it is involuntary or voluntary upchucks.
I have had many folks in this situation seem on fire to pronounce their religious beliefs and or affiliations. As if they were on fire and that was the only fire hose available.
Why is it they feel so inclined to identify themselves in such a false pride in political self worth?
Sure I have tried to ask them,
At Christmas, do you not (liberally) five gifts to your children? If a relative borrowed from you without paying you back. Only returns to see you that he can ask to borrow more after squandering the last loan. Most do not enable this debt at their expense.
For many, these can be construed as a liberal act (Christmas gifts) and the limit of helping a another (conservative). How did these normal human behaviors become so extremely divisively political?
If your child does something bad, some sort of admonishment is in order? If it does good it is praised? Does it divide here?