A Few Words in Praise of an Unhinged Lunatic

A Few Words in Praise of an Unhinged Lunatic from my Substack page: Blues, Jazz, Politics and Irony at richardcongress@substack.com SUBSCRIBE! It's free. Donald Trump is an authentic nut case; a narcissist, an ignoramus, a racist and who knows what else? BUT, he has done far less damage than those who are counterposed to him as upright, trustworthy statesmen (and women). George W Bush and his puppet master Dick Cheney have the blood of millions of innocent civilians on their hands. The servants of their crazed orgy of killing, Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, et al should all have been jailed for life along with Bush and Cheney. Think about it: Based on a series of completely fraudulent lies each one more ridiculous than the previous: Iraq, a small, poor nation with an economy the size of Kentucky, which couldn’t win a war against Sweden was planning to attack the US and had developed “weapons of mass destruction.” Why? Because Saddam Hussein was…what? Nuts? An agent of…Satan, Iran? An Islamic fundamentalist? Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed in a massive, indiscriminate ground and air assault by U.S. armed forces. Afghanistan, also invaded by the US military suffered a twenty plus year war in which the U.S. abjectly failed to win over the population to its side but managed to kill tens of thousands of people. The whole region was hard hit by the U.S. aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fighting spilled over into Syria and Lebanon. The war caused a wave of refugees to flee westward creating a crisis not just in neighboring countries, but also in European nations. This wave of refugees caused a rightward reaction in many countries and has led to the growth of ultra -right and neo-Nazi groups. The U.S. pro-war hysteria was triggered by the 9/11 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Organized by a coterie of Islamic fundamentalists who were followers of Osama Bin Laden, a Saudi who was based in Afghanistan. The ones who carried out the attack were mainly located in Europe when they planned it out. All of them except one (an Egyptian) were Saudis. This accusation of Iraq’s complicity in the 9/11 attacks was obviously nonsense, but it was propagated by the Bush/Cheney administration and its Republican supporters and echoed by most Democrats, including then Senators Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton…and the press went wild to promote a hysterical war frenzy. Whoever questioned the validity of these claims were slandered as traitors and agents of Saddam Hussein (this means you Andrew Sullivan. He and fellow scumbag Christopher Hitchens…a pseudo progressive turncoat who has since died) went on TV to excoriate critics of Bush’s lying war propaganda. The New York Times featured articles that advanced Bush/Cheney propaganda without ever questioning the logic of the claims. The idea that Iraq, which was governed by a secular regime that was a mortal enemy of Islamic fundamentalists, was involved in helping Bin Laden attack the United States, is and was ridiculous. But counting on the bottomless ignorance of the American people, and the bottomless lusting for war and profits by the military/industrial complex the Bush/Cheney administration was able to get its desired war. If it was necessary to invade some country because of the 9/11 attack, wouldn’t it have been more logical to invade Saudi Arabia? All of the hijackers but one were Saudis. There has since been some evidence that some prominent Saudis had pre-knowledge of Bin Laden’s plans to attack the U.S. Is this valid or had it been investigated? Who knows? The Saudis have too much oil to criticize them anyway. Not only did that Republican administration manage to have its desired war (part of a glorified GWAT: global war on terrorism) but, again with the complicity of the spineless Democratic office holders, manage to inflict damage on basic democratic rights by enacting police state type legislation: The Patriot Act. This inaugurated a new frenzy of Islamaphobic McCarthyism and fueled physical attacks on Muslims and anyone who (to the average American moron) looked like a Muslim…like several unfortunate members of the Sikh religion whose origins are in India and have nothing to do with Islam…but they grow beards and wear turbans…so they have to be goddamn A-rabs! So gun them down in the best American NRA tradition! So due to our great two party (pseudo) democracy the government got more power to abrogate basic democratic rights at will. The legacy of the Bush/Cheney war of choice is that we now have a panoply of anti-democratic rules that can be used to persecute and prosecute anyone who questions whatever displeases the governing administration. CIA guy James Clapper goes on TV and lies through his teeth, claiming that they don’t spy on phone calls between Americans and foreigners. His punishment? Nothing. Ed Snowden tells the truth about U.S. Government spying on the American people’s phone communications—his reward? Prison threats and worse, so he goes into exile. Julian Assange is being crucified for unpardonable truth-telling and having the gall to show video footage of U.S. military helicopter pilots slaughtering of civilian new reporters and laughing about it. This bipartisan assault on democratic rights persists and is now being applied to anyone who criticizes U.S. government policies now about the Ukraine proxy war against Russia. We now have a repeat of the Iraq war frenzy applied now silence criticism of the U.S. proxy war against Russia (Ukraine is just tool of the U.S.). So, now do you think that Donald Trump is just the worst person in the world? He’s a con man and a jerk. He’s a crook. But how many children has he killed?

Taylor Swift: The Bland leading the Bland

this is from my Substack account richardcongress@substack.com Listning to Taylor Swift Mood music for the comatose RICHARD CONGRESS AUG 14, 2023 Listening to Taylor Swift: American Blandstand. A Taylor Swift concert is similar to eating tapioca pudding with whipped cream and vanilla jello. She exhibits a singing range of about 1/8 of an octave and lyrics that would be rejected from a Hallmark greeting card as too bland. What is it with this singer? The only distinguishing characteristic of her performances is a slight country twang to the backup music. Blues, Jazz, Politics and Irony is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribed Maybe she is such a sensational hit because of the anesthetic quality of her music. People don’t want to be worried about anything, given the state of the world and the country. But…then, why gather in huge concert venues and wildly applaud? Why not just relax at home and stream her on Spotify? It looks like getting up and actually going to a Taylor Swift concert requires an investment of physical exertion. It’s like getting physically worked up and then drinking 3 vanilla milkshakes. How about seeing it as a retreat from a disturbing reality of gun violence run amok, deteriorating pseudo-health care, income stagnation (if you are lucky and not seeing decline), constant war, etc? That could be the answer. Perhaps she has been created by the entertainment industry (I won’t say music business) as a purgative to get rid of and bury the effect of female vocalists who had feeling and ideas: Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Billie Holliday, or more contemporary, active performers like Shamka Copeland, Bonnie Raitt, or Lucinda Williams? Taylor Swift could be the designated soundtrack for a coming nuclear war caused by the lunatic neo-cons who populated the war-criminal Bush/Cheney regime and who have now migrated to the Biden camp (Hillary was already a Democrat and a war-lover). And as if it wasn’t bad enough, now the Biden Administration has raised from the dead Regan administration hack Elliot Abrams, the used car salesman of indiscriminate murder of civilians by contra mercenaries in Nicaragua, who also was convicted of lying under oath before a Congressional committee. Maybe Taylor Swift could do joint performances with Elliot Abrams, and Kamala Harris could sing backup.