Blindhogtruffle

Heeees baaaack! And the crowd goes mild. But the Hog here turns his hand to the role of theater critic; political theater, that is. With virus mania running amok full throttle, now is the time to consider an elemental question: what the hell is going on?

          In just a few weeks, we have gone from “everything is under control” to “everything is getting better” to “hoax” to a declaration of a state of national emergency by a president who heads a breathtakingly incompetent administration. A president, who, in cahoots with state governments, has shut down, for at least six weeks, large sectors of the economy, which, until recently, had been his “trump” card for reelection. The likely result of this overreaction cannot be overstated. We are headed for what is euphemistically termed an “economic downturn,” more commonly known as either a recession or (Hog forbid) a depression. The dictatorial closing of so many businesses and activities will inevitably result in the ruin many small business owners, along with crushing job loss. (We know, this is uncharacteristically upbeat for ol’ BH).

          Ironically, the economic ripple effect of this shutdown will spread just as exponentially as does a virus. Closed businesses and lost jobs will cause loan defaults, foreclosures, diminished consumer activity, and a general economic contraction. And all in the service of bad political theater. Hog, you say, where’s the evidence for that?

          Before you can find the right answers, you must ask the right question. Up to now, we have not done so. The economic and social shutdown has been based on the (oxymoronic) premise that we must “flatten the curve,” meaning we want to prevent a large and sudden spike in cases that overwhelms our healthcare system. This seems valid; but the real question is: how close to capacity was the healthcare system before this outbreak? This is, after all, cold and flu season, and, as will be seen below, evidence indicates the flu virus may be more deadly than the coronavirus. The answer: a little research reveals that the system was close to capacity before anybody ever heard of this “novel” virus. (The Hog inconveniently points out that every virus began, by definition, as a novel virus).

          Yes, the system touted by Republicans as the best healthcare system in the world was nearing overload as this new crisis began. So the fundamental problem is not that this virus is dangerous (it is), nor that it is so contagious. The real issue is that our healthcare system is inadequate to cope with this new outbreak.

          As for the comparison with the flu virus, the CDC reports that in the current flu season, there have been at least 34 million cases of flu, 350,000 hospitalizations and 20,000 flu deaths in the United States. This, from a disease against which many of us are already vaccinated. By contrast, the worldwide figure of confirmed cases of the new virus is in the neighborhood of 1 million, of which about 200,000 are in the United States (population: about 330,000,000). The U.S. death toll is at about 4,000 as of April 1, 2020, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Influenza, then, is a known, highly contagious dangerous and often lethal virus. The coronavirus is also highly contagious, and very dangerous for certain segments of the population, such as the elderly with pre-existing conditions. However, statistically, we do not have enough of a sample to determine exactly how its mortality figures compare with that of the flu. The data are simply insufficient, and thus, unreliable. Thus, the tremendous reaction to the outbreak is based largely on first, SWAGs (Scientific Wild-Assed Guesses, and secondly, more importantly, on the aforementioned lack of capacity in our healthcare system.

The danger is real, because if you get sick enough to need hospitalization, you may well run into a shortage of providers and beds. It’s probable that the flu is playing a large part in that shortage. But flu runs rampant through the world every year. So it would seem that our healthcare system is designed to cope with the problems of cold and flu season, so long as something new doesn’t come up simultaneously.

And now we get to the political theater. The rabid bipartisan response is designed to distract us from the awkward reality that if our healthcare system is the best in the world, the world is in trouble. The Democrats, under President Obama, embarked on healthcare reform via the Affordable Care Act, but, under pressure from various corners, that quickly became “health insurance reform,” thus guaranteeing that the insurance companies would continue to take their disproportionate share of the pie. It also perpetuated the fee-for-service, profit-based system. Then the Republicans launched a legislative and judicial attack on what they derisively called “Obamacare,” a decade-long effort that did nothing to strengthen the healthcare system, and most probably weakened it considerably.

The panic being spread by politicians, aided and abetted by the media, stems from the fear of their big donors in the health care industry that this will be the episode that finally wakes up America to the fatal flaw in a profit-driven, fee-for-service, insurance-based healthcare system: a profit-based system cannot afford to have much excess capacity sitting idle for long periods of time, in preparation for, say, a pandemic. Maximizing profits motivates the system to ensure that supply and demand are as closely matched as possible. Thus, during cold and flu season, the system approaches capacity, by design. A proper healthcare system would anticipate the need and provide adequate excess capacity. But that would be a healthcare system geared to actual healthcare, rather than profits.

None of this is to denigrate the efforts of the doctors, nurses, volunteers, and others on the front line. They’re doing the best they can, but they’re toiling in a broken system, one devoted to sick care and not health care.

The Hog fervently hopes that when the crisis has subsided, the public remembers that its world was turned upside down, solely because our healthcare system did not have adequate capacity. Perhaps it will come to understand that healthcare is not a commodity like widgets, and that this sort of disaster can be managed, if not averted completely, by a system that allows a generous amount of inefficient but necessary excess capacity. That would be a single payer system, like Medicare for all. (Ironically, we’ve heard how expensive that would be, and how we can’t afford it. Yet, look at how quickly the government came up with $2 trillion). But the public’s memory is short, and the power of the insurance companies, Big Pharma, and the corporate healthcare system, along with that of their minions in government, is great. Hope may spring eternal, but the likelihood is that the system must collapse (and it will) before we get fundamental change. And single payer will come only when the government has to pick up the pieces. In the meantime, enjoy the political theater from the comfort of your own home. The wild swings in policy, the rampant finger-pointing, the bogus statistics, the speculative predictions, the “now it’s open, now it’s closed” announcements, and the general fear mongering. It’s all so…. distracting…  Excuse me, need to bring this to an end; the latest bad news beckons.

Well, to the delight of a few, the dismay of others, and the utter indifference of most, the Hog is back, forced by circumstance to take up the cudgel in one hoof, whilst dipping the other all the way up to the ham into a typically uncontroversial subject: religion. Specifically, the saga of the Catholic Church’s attempt to grapple with the seemingly never-ending scandal surrounding the serial and widespread child abuse perpetrated, covered up, and sometimes even encouraged by the church’s minions and overseers. Yes, encouraged, exemplified by the priests who marked vulnerable children as likely targets for other abusers.

You may ask (if you’ve read this far), what is there to be said about this sordid subject that hasn’t already been written, said, blogged, reported, and otherwise opined? Unfortunately, much. For there is a 900-pound gorilla, no, a 9000-pound elephant, no, a 200-ton balaenoptera musculus (blue whale, unfortunately beached for the sake of this metaphor) in the room. In all the blather about who is responsible, there is one group never mentioned. The priests, who perpetrated? No. The non-abusing priests and nuns, who knew but remained silent? No. The bishops and archbishops, who covered up, and who facilitated by transferring known abusers to unsuspecting parishes, where they could prey again on the innocent? No. The cardinals and the popes (former priests, monsignors, bishops, and/or archbishops all) who presided over this undeniably criminal activity? No. All these are known parts of the problem. However, one group so far has been left out of the discussion, and until it is included and its responsibility dealt with, all the weeping and gnashing of teeth will be merely so much noise.

Who are these people? To answer that question, the Hog poses another: who is primarily responsible for protecting children? Not the church, that much we know. The schools, the police, friends, Romans, and countrymen, anyone else acting in loco parentis? Of course not. The responsibility for keeping children safe falls on…the parents. (The Hog recognizes he is venturing into territory bound to make him at least as popular as the proverbial plague of locusts. However, as the philosopher Clichéus says, it is what it is, and since no one else seems willing to go there, we must blunder on.) Yes, the parents. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to groom a child for abuse where the parent or parents are paying strict attention. And part of the process involves grooming the parents. Things don’t get to where the folks will let little Snavely go on an unsupervised overnight with the parish priest, without a trusting relationship between the parents and the padre. And how does such a relationship arise?

Have no doubt these abusers are clever, and know how to ingratiate themselves with the families. Too, they are also very skilled at spotting vulnerable children and yes, parents. They can be very patient, gradually grooming the family for the right time to take advantage of misplaced trust. They can create situations in which the parents would believe the priest over the child. There are the aforementioned transfers of abusers into unsuspecting parishes. And from a legal standpoint, the church certainly depended on the cooperation of good Catholic police, judges, and politicians, many of whom would readily give credence to the clergy. But…

Speaking of belief, there is another factor. Unquestioning belief. The very basis of the church is a willingness to believe without question in God. And in the fiction that the church is God’s representative on earth. Having inculcated parents in this belief, it has been relatively easy for the church to persuade the parents of abused children to believe the church instead of their kids. Or, at the very least, to remain silent, believing that the church will “look into it,” and that remaining silent “for the good of the church” is the right thing to do. Given the sheer numbers of clergy and children involved, is unimaginable that at least a good number of these children did not tell their parents, only to be silenced in the face of credulity in the church. Many more doubtless remained quiet, sensing that the devout parents would credit the collar over their children. And good old Catholic shame surely played a part.

Predators seeking vulnerable children would avoid close families whose members talk with and love each other, which don’t keep secrets, and whose parents exercise proper protective supervision. No, the abusers look elsewhere for their victims.

The church’s corruption of these families is part and parcel of the evil it has perpetrated. This is painful to say. But those parents who believed the church over their children, who stayed quiet “for the good of the church,” who failed to pay attention while they and their children were being groomed, or who otherwise failed to protect their children, must acknowledge and be held accountable for the role they have played in this tragic situation. Yes, to a certain extent the parents were also victims. But that does not excuse the fact that they are primarily responsible for protecting their children.

Needless to say, the church is even more reluctant to deal with the parents’ responsibility than it is to acknowledge its own. For the adults, not the children, contribute the money that is the church’s lifeblood. Without their financial contributions, no more vast real estate holdings, or priceless art collections. No more gold chalices, or silk vestments. Lose the parents, and you lose not only the children, but the money.

Another aspect of this mess is the question of legal responsibility on the part of those involved. It appears the church’s efforts to hide behind statutes of limitations are crumbling. Since the law also places primary responsibility for the children’s welfare and safety on the parents, confronting them with the legal issues raised by the scandal would be a nightmare for all involved.

Yet it must be done. Until and unless all the secrets are laid bare, the evil will continue. It may be a low blow to use the words of Jesus against the church that claims to be his, but the truth must out, to fulfill the biblical homily: “ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Apropos of truth (or lack thereof), Richard Nixon famously said on the Watergate tapes that it’s not the crime that gets you, it’s the cover-up. Here, it’s both, but as long as the cover-up continues at any level no one need take the church’s mea culpas seriously. Just like Nixon, the longer the church hierarchy continues to insist it did not know, the deeper the hole it digs for itself. And that defense will not work for the parents either; they had responsibility, and many if not most, blinded by belief, flunked it.

The truth shall make you free, but not without great cost. The tab has been building for a long time. The church’s and the parents’ treatment of the children leaves a lot of chickens to come home to roost.

“Addiction is a pathological relationship to any mood altering substance, experience, relationship or thing that has life damaging consequences.” – John Bradshaw

The latest in a seemingly interminable string of school shootings has stirred a noisier than usual debate over what to do, what to do… We are disturbed that our national daydream of indifference is regularly interrupted by the inconvenient news that, once again, a murderer with a gun has slaughtered children. What to do, what to do?

The palliative narratives generally take two tacks. The first is gun control: longer waiting periods, regulate or eliminate “assault rifles,” raise the legal age, ban handguns, etc. The second is mental health: more money for treatment, diagnosis, and earlier identification so that we can keep weapons out of the hands of the mentally ill. The irony (no, the age of irony hasn’t even started yet) is that both sides are right, and both sides are wrong.

Let’s start with the obvious: in a country of 350 million people, over 300 million guns. This last could be a Larry-the-Cable-Guy statistic; however, empirical observation confirms that we are awash in a sea of firearms. It would be irrational to assume that there is no connection between our world leadership in school shootings and our world leadership in per capita gun ownership. Or, as Eddie Izzard says:

They say that “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Well, I think the gun helps. If you just stood there and yelled BANG, I don’t think you’d kill too many people.”

As for mental health, it is equally apparent that many, if not most of the perpetrators (euphemistically called “gunmen”) are suffering from varying degrees of mental illness. Hard to know when the murderer dies in the act. Still, we have examples such as the Colorado Planned Parenthood shooter, who now resides in the state mental hospital, having been found incompetent to stand trial.

So, what is it, too many guns or too many mentally ill men? Again, both and neither.

Okay, BH, you say, enough doubletalk, what does all this mean? It means that the proliferation of guns and the issue of mental health intersect in one place: addiction. Addiction is the single most powerful force driving American behavior today. A bold statement, you say, prove it.

All right, let’s start with America’s addiction to violence. It has been said that baseball as we were, football is who we have become. Tens of millions of us spend days and evenings watching our modern day gladiators beat each other to a pulp. For our entertainment. And, if somehow the games, lovely diversions like Ultimate Fighting, and endless replays don’t sate our bloodlust, there is always the war. Which war? Pick one. For now we can choose amongst Afghanistan, Iraq, and seemingly just about any place in Africa. (Niger? Really? How the hell did that happen? Guess we took our eyes off the real ball while watching football.). We are the most warlike society in recorded history (and probably unrecorded too). But we are still not satisfied: our PGP (pussy-grabbing president) now rattles the saber across the Pacific. We just gotta make war, for the economy, to be sure, but also for the entertainment value. And speaking of entertainment…

Television, movies, video games, all are saturated with repetitive, realistic, gratuitous violence. In first-person shooter games, for example, the more you kill, the higher you score.

So, using war as an example, it’s a heavy-duty mood-altering experience. Our politicians use it to control us with fear. BTW, they are not immune to the addictions of war. We whip ourselves up into patriotic frenzies over the war(s). We fall over ourselves fawning over our military, which we then proceed to misuse and overuse in service of our declining empire. We watch in fascination (from a distance, of course) as our billion-dollar weapons inflict terrible destruction on military and civilian targets alike. We are enthralled, terrified, entertained, horrified, saddened, and elated, sometimes all at the same time. Gets to be hard to tell what a normal mood is.

This constant warfare certainly does have life-damaging consequences, not only for its direct participants, but for us as a society. The toll, in human suffering, never mind treasure, is staggering. Never fear, though, one night a year we’ll get together and sing about peace on earth. Then we can go back to watching the war while flooding the world with weapons, and using those left over from the sales to make our own wars.

So we are addicted to violence, not just the solo school shooters amongst us, but all of us, as a society, and a culture. We are sick. Addicted. And not just to violence.

We are addicted to religion, which Bradshaw describes as the most pernicious addiction: “The feeling of righteousness is the core mood alteration among religious addicts.” He should know, as a former Jesuit. Life damaging? How many wars have been fought over the issue of whose god is the true one? How many arguments, how much anger, frustration, grief and general mischief has religious strife caused?

We are also addicted to entertainment in all forms. We value our professional sports more than our educational system. As a result, we pay professional athletes and movie stars many millions of dollars; our teachers, well, a little less. It would appear that we also secure our professional sports venues better than our schools. When was the last time you heard of anyone shooting up the Super Bowl?

And our addiction to entertainment has ruined our politics, not that it had far to go. We now demand only that political debates be entertaining, and care more for their mood-altering effect than about the fact that our system of self-government is broken.

Food addiction? Not much analysis needed here. Food porn ads featuring gigantic portions are followed by Jenny Craig commercials. It is widely recognized that there are all sorts of disorders around eating, and mood-altering with food leads to obesity, anorexia, bulimia, diabetes, and all sorts of other problems.

What else ya got? Sex, drugs, (rock ‘n’ roll?), work, cell phones, other electronic devices, the list goes on forever. We are a society of addicts. And we are addicted to our guns.

Our addiction is based on fear, which is in itself a mood-altering experience. Even emotions themselves can be addictive. Ironic, isn’t it? Fear is not necessarily life-damaging, as it is often necessary to spur us into protective activity. It becomes life-damaging, however, and thus addictive, when we fall victim, for example, to the constant fearmongering of both the government and the media. Groundless fear becomes a substitute for genuine emotional experience. Gotta buy more guns to protect me from the gov’t, intruders, immigrants, any bogeyman will do. Be afraid, very afraid.

Bradshaw identifies toxic shame as the basis of addiction. His book, Healing the Shame that Binds You, explains in more detail. He points out that addiction is rooted in denial: that there is no other disease where the worse it gets, the more the patient denies it. He also posits that it is rare for an addict to have only one addiction.

Does any of this sound familiar? If not, perhaps denial is not just a river… At any rate, addiction is, according to Bradshaw’s broad definition, unquestionably a mental health problem.

“Paranoia strikes deep in the heartland…”—Paul Simon

So we, the addicts, #1 in school shootings, weapons suppliers to the world, and serial warmongers, continue to buy and sell millions of guns, and countless tons of ammunition, all the while indulging our other addictions, especially those to violence and entertainment. And here is where the gun-control and mental health people have got it wrong: it’s not the guns, and it’s not the mental health of the shooters. It’s the “addiction society,” its lust for weapons, violence, entertainment, sex, drugs, and acquisition getting worse and worse while it wallows in denial.

This is precisely why it is so difficult to address the problem of school shootings. The greater the grip of our addictions, the greater the denial. It may be comfortable to believe that the only mental health problem is that which afflicts the murderers, or that all we need do is control the guns. But it is a comfort born of denial of the greater problem. We must all look inward to find the root cause: addiction. So far, a sufficient introspection eludes us.

Shame. Shame on the House. Shame on the Senate. Shame on the President. But most of all, shame on all of us.

Shame, because we sit by while the Washington swamp prepares to enact tax reform legislation, otherwise known as The Lawyers and Accountants Relief Act of 2017. It purports to cut taxes and simplify the tax code, but do not doubt it will contain all sorts of hidden goodies for corporate and wealthy special interests. We are told the ‘gators are working hard to keep the cost from adding more than $1.5 trillion (over 10 years) to the national debt. And that the cuts will pay for themselves.

First, no one in or out of Washington can predict next week with any assurance, much less the next 10 years. And $1.5 trillion is an unimaginable sum for most of us. Plus these projections surely omit small numbers such as the added billions in interest. So the figure itself is a chimera worthy of Larry the Cable Guy (42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot). Shame on us for buying into these fictions.

But most of all, shame on us for allowing tax cuts to be paid for with borrowed money, knowing the debt will fall on our children, and on theirs. To all the parents who have mouthed platitudes about wanting their children’s lives to be better than their own: don’t forget to thank your children as you pocket this political payoff disguised as a tax cut. Perhaps a bit of your good fortune could “trickle down” to them, along with some sound parental advice about living thriftily, and saving and investing for the future.

Better yet, perhaps there is no need to thank them. With luck, they’ll follow our example, and kick an even larger “can” down to their children and grandchildren. And our shame will become theirs. A legacy to do any parent proud.

Shame.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” – Joseph Goebbels

It’s late at night, and the Hog’s head and heart are hurting. We have elected a president who cannot find it within himself to unequivocally denounce Nazis. Who will not condemn the Ku Klux Klan. At whose alt-right hand sitteth the neo-fascist flamer Bannon. A president who rose to prominence as the birther-in-chief. Who fawns over authoritarian figures like Putin, Duterte, and Erdogan while castigating democratic leaders of our NATO allies. Who encouraged thugs at his rallies to wreak physical violence on protesters, even offering to pay their legal fees. Who casually threatens nuclear war to gratify his own ego. Who lies at every opportunity (see, e.g., birther-in-chief). And who, even in the wake of Ferguson and other similar episodes, actively and explicitly encouraged police brutality.

This is a natural consequence of society prioritizing bread and circuses. The old entertainment saying goes, “call me whatever you want, but spell my name right.” The current occupant (no need to mention him by name), who is nothing more or less than a reality TV personality, lives by the ethic that the only bad publicity is no publicity. Hence, there seems to be no limit to what he will say or do to keep his name in the public eye. Even when he pokes a short finger directly into that eye, America apparently cannot get enough of him. His name and image dominate the media he claims to despise. The President of the United States will actively denounce journalists and the media, but not the Klan. Not the Nazis. We are far, far, far down the rabbit hole now.

Just how far, you ask? “There are two sides to every story,” says the president. Right. The side of the Nazis and the Klan, and the other side. The side of Auschwitz and lynchings, and the other. The side of Birkenau and white-hooded terrorism, and the other. The side of Hitler, Goebbels, and the “grand wizards,” and the other. The side of the gas chambers and the cross burnings, and the other. The side of the big lie, and the other side.

Unfortunately, millions upon millions of the witnesses to one “side of the story” were murdered by such as the brown shirts and the white sheets. But their testimony to the bankruptcy of the ideas pushed by the Nazis and the Klan is writ large, in blood and tears.

One must ask what goes through the hearts and minds of the occupant’s Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his converted Jewish daughter, Ivanka, when the president spews his poisonous “two sides” billingsgate. The Jews are and have historically consistently been targets of white supremacists. What can these folks think when armed Nazis and Klansman parade through the streets shouting racist and anti-Semitic slogans, and proudly waving the swastika, while the current occupant blathers about “two sides to every story?” What can black citizens think when they see the same people arm-in-arm, ranting about taking their country back, and waving the stars and bars, while the president sides with the racists? And what are we all to think when our titular leader, afraid of offending his base, refuses to call out these ancient and ugly evils?

It is human nature to want to believe that the source of our troubles lies somewhere other than within ourselves. The greater our troubles, the greater the urge to find a scapegoat. Unfortunately, too often the truth hits much closer to home. In the words of Pogo, “we have met the enemy and he is us.” According to some obscure Bard: ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” But none of us wants to think he is his own worst enemy, and many yield to the temptation to place wholesale blame on those of a different race or creed. That is much easier than accepting responsibility.

This tendency is not limited to white supremacists. Those of us who stand on the sidelines, pontificating about how this is not our America, and about how this does not represent us, fail to recognize that there is a dark side to everyone, and each of us must make a choice between the dark and the light. Between the Nazis and the other. Between the Klan and the other. Between murder and the other. Between terror and the other. Between antisemitism and racism, and the other. And that choice requires that we shine a light first on the darkness in ourselves, however uncomfortable that process might be. Then we will understand how evil is enabled by the inaction of good people.

As Shakti Gawain said:

Evil is like a shadow – it has no real substance of its own; it is simply a
lack of light. You cannot cause a shadow to disappear by trying to fight
it, stamp on it, by railing against it, or any other form of emotional or
physical resistance. In order to cause a shadow to disappear, you must
shine light on it.

Standing on the sidelines is a choice of sorts, but ultimately it operates in favor of darkness. From Edmund Burke:

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Which will we choose: the darkness or the light? There is no third option. It would be a bad mistake to believe that the shadow that darkened Nazi Germany could not fall over this country (or others). When the president embraces darkness (ironically in the form of white supremacy), as long as only his name is spelled right, then it is the obligation of each of us, and all of us together, to shine the brightest light we can on him and his ilk, while we still can.

Now it is not good for the Christian’s health to hustle the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: “A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.

—R. Kipling, The Naulahka

“Here we go, again…”

–R. Charles

Once upon a time, there was a president of the United States, home of all that is good and true. But in spite of presiding over all that goodness and truthiness, the leader was troubled: his approval ratings were circling the drain. And so he began to regale his subjects with details of an evil dictator in the Middle East, who had used chemical weapons on his own people. He began to beat the drums of war, proclaiming the dictator must be dethroned. His minions began to strum the strings of fear with details of frightful weapons until the people cried (almost) as one, “this will not stand!” And so began the war in Iraq.

Had you there for a moment, didn’t we? Well, as the Hog would have thought we could have told you, ol’ Rud got it right about hustling the East. However, he had nothing on Brother Ray. The son of a Drumpf in the White House, obviously counting on the non-existent memory of the American people, is following the time-honored stratagem of creating a foreign diversion to distract us from his domestic troubles. Only thing is, who’da thunk it would have happened less than three months in? Truth to tell, not even this swinish sultan of cynicism.

It was probably inevitable. Let’s see, so far, Flynn resigns, his putative successor declines, Sessions recuses, Nunes recuses, Bannon is “banished” from the NSC, health insurance bill fails, Mexican wall looks more like a pipe dream, investigators are closing in on Russian connections…what’s a president to do? Nothing a few (well, okay, 59) cruise missiles lobbed into that Eden we call Syria can’t take care of. The hounds are at the door, so let’s stir up a hornets’ nest. Talk about your brilliant foreign-policy ideas.

But guess it wasn’t enough to commit an act of war against the Middle Eastern country. UN envoy Nikki Haley declared the US is prepared to do even more. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, signaling a flip-flop from Trump’s previous declarations that the US would not be pulled into the Syrian civil war, now says there is “no room for [Syrian President Bashar Assad] to govern the Syrian people.” And Recep Erdogan, the president of Turkey, and another dictator with significant domestic trouble, expressed the hope that Trump would take military action.

Ah, but you say, what about Assad’s gas attack on the helpless civilians? We must start with the immutable principle that nothing this administration says is to be believed. Nothing. For example, we are told the gas contained sarin, a powerful neurotoxin. The source of this information? Um, well, it’s Turkey. Whose president has sort of an ax to grind. The Hog’s sources tell him that if indeed sarin was used, it would be extremely hazardous for the first responders to be handling bodies, survivors, and even their clothing with bare hands. But just the mention of sarin conjures up images of, oh, WMDs!! To hell with the truth, man, there is a dictator to be dealt with! And then there’s Assad…

Scott Adams, who writes the Dilbert comic strip, points out how convenient it is for the administration that Assad seemingly chose this moment to commit suicide by Trump. But you gotta hand it to DT, who is a master of misdirection. Something else happened yesterday that was headline-worthy, but was relegated to the back pages by the missile attack. Devin Nunes, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and lead attack dog for the White House, recused himself from the Russia investigation. The “investigator” became the investigated for, get this, illegal disclosures of classified information. (“House Intelligence Committee:” there’s Hog’s oxymoron of the day). We may not have hit the mother lode of irony yet, but we’re surely getting close. Trump and his fellow travelers hounded Hilary Clinton about her casual handling of classified information. Turns out that’s only a problem when the other fellow (or woman) did it.

But the beating drums of war overshadowed the Nunes news. Newnes nus? Whatever. Coinkydink? You decide. At any rate, the Hog bets nothing as rash as a missile attack would have happened were Steve Bannon still in charge of the NSC. Ahem.

Lost in all the patriotic blather is the fact that this direct attack on Syria fundamentally changes the conflict from a proxy war between the US and Russia to a more direct conflict involving America. We already have hundreds of boots on the ground (as “advisors”) in Syria. Sound familiar? Can you say Vietnam? There are doubtless more than a few Russian boots tramping around too. Both of us are staging air strikes (which, by the way, probably kill more civilians every day than died in the gas incident). And both are heavily invested in supporting various factions in a war that has already lasted six years.

Mr. America First has taken less than three months to lead us to the brink of another Middle Eastern war. And we are now indisputably closer to armed conflict with Russia, which might have a few nukes lying around. Worst of all, this adventurism takes place at a time when North Korea, a nuclear power with its own domestic problems (including an unhinged authoritarian leader, where have we seen this before) is rattling the nuclear saber across the Pacific. In response, the newly Bannon-less NSC has presented Trump with options that include putting American nukes in South Korea, or killing North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un! I guess once you get into dictator-killing mode, you might as well go whole hog, so to speak.

And over in Moscow, there is another dictator waiting, one who in his own right has slaughtered and murdered quite a few. Let’s get busy, America! The authoritarian regimes are out there proliferating while we are obsessing over Kardashian mammaries! Where are our priorities?

We can be sure that neither the Israelis nor the Japanese are sleeping any easier over these developments. Nor should we be. Edging ever closer to that mother lode, Trump proclaimed that the missile assault was part of an effort “to end the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria.” Ah, yes, let’s have another war to end all wars. Or as the Army major said in 1968, “it became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” Maybe that’s going to be the strategy in Syria.

Worth remembering in this pea soup fog of lies and distortion is that all it took to trigger World War I was the assassination of a single Austrian Archduke by a nationalist from Serbia, part of the Balkans, another garden spot. What do we think might happen as a result of, say, a nuclear exchange between North and South Korea? Here’s a hint: Einstein said something like this: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

Why, oh why are we mucking about in these godforsaken places? The Hog refers the gentle reader back to a previous blog, in which it was suggested that contrary to the presidential protestations, there is a problem “down there.” And we don’t mean Australia. Both Trump and Pooty show serious signs of insecurity about their respective equipment, and probably with good reason: even with tweezers and a microscope, you’d be lucky to come up with one good johnson between them (although, based on Trump’s loving pro-Putin pronouncements, that’s likely where you’d find it: between them). The Russian dictator (hear that Don? Dictator!) is constantly running around half-naked, doing manly things. And Trump wears his garish red tie a foot too long, stylishly keeping his suit jacket open to display this bright crimson phallic symbol draped down to his crotch.

George Carlin said it: “To me, war is nothing but a whole lot of prick-waving…War is just a lot of men standing around in a field waving their pricks at one another…It’s called dick fear.” Unfortunately for us, our crotch-grabbing president seems to have embraced “the bigger dick foreign policy theory,” and there are plenty of other dangerous men out there who seem more than willing to join the contest to see who is, er, has the bigger dick. And, as with all such contests, we know who’s going to get screwed.

“Do as I say, not as I do.” – The Hypocrite’s Motto

The lethal mixture of snake oil, sheep dip, and just plain horsesh*t emanating from the nation’s capital brings to mind Frank Zappa’s rap about the boob tube (“the tool of the Government”):

“I make you think I’m delicious with the stuff that I say,
I’m the best you can get, have you guessed me yet?
I’m the slime oozin’ out from your TV set.”

The alleged debate over health insurance would be enough to send the Hog into high dudgeon (again), were it not for his veterinarian’s advice that a constant state of agitation makes for a very tough ham. Drumpf forbid.

These Washington phonies argue about how to prevent the government from providing their constituents with health care, while they live like royalty, enjoying all sorts of government perks, including solid gold health care, heavily subsidized by the taxpayers, with the rest paid for by their lavish government salaries. (For some details, see: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43194.pdf). Members of Congress are entitled to care at local military facilities, and have access to the (taxpayer-funded) Office of the Attending Physician. And although their subsidized (at 72%) coverage is a part of the Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, if the ACA is repealed, members can return to subsidized coverage under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, or FEHBP. Millions of their constituents will have no such fallback plan. The irony threatens to raise the dudgeon alert level once again. A safety net for the oligarchs; a gill net for the hoi polloi.

And let’s not even get started about the Drumpfinator, with his own personal physician in a White House office.

So here’s a simple solution: if they repeal the ACA, Congress, the Senate, and the President Trump (that last phrase still reeks of unreality) all get the same options we have, with no government subsidy. Or, we get exactly the same options they have. (An in-pen vet: that has a nice ring to it). There, we’ve solved that problem. Except that we haven’t. The King and his courtiers would have none of it. We must do as they say, and not as they do.

One way or the other, we are going to wind up with single-payer health care. This will not be as big of a change as you might think if you listen to the gasbags in DC. Between Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE, medical benefits for government workers at all levels, and that part of Social Security used to cover what Medicare doesn’t, the government already pays for the lion’s share of all health care. The best estimate is approximately 2/3. And since the hog pollog pay for the government, and their own health care, and the unpaid bills of the uninsured: well, we’ve got single payer, and it’s us. But in between, we’ve got the insurance companies, feeding off of fee-for-service. All with different plans, coverages, costs, co-pays, deductibles, addresses, protocols and rules and regulations. It’s a perfect recipe for chaos, which is by design, as it maximizes profit (often at the expense of care) by hiding it in each little corner of the byzantine dance that is health care today.

By contrast, the program that works most efficiently, and best, is Medicare, with roughly 3% administrative cost. You doubt it? Ask anyone who has recently changed to Medicare from their private health plan which they prefer.

Obamacare went off the rails when it became health insurance reform instead of health care reform. There was hope that it was a needed step towards single payer, but then there was Drumpf. More irony; the Repubs who screeched about repealing the ACA never thought they’d actually have to do it, but with the new prez… well, as someone said, nobody knew that health care could be that complicated. Actually, everybody knew it, except the short-fingered orange dust mop currently occupying the Oval Office. (Allegorical reference to previous blog: short fingers, short you-know-what. There’s a problem down there. Still waiting for trou-drop, Big D [or should we say Little D]…).

Most likely, we’ll get to single payer when the whole house of cards comes down in a catastrophic crash, like the financial system in 2008 (only worse). Again, there’ll be nobody to pick up the pieces except the government, and we’ll be coping with the fallout for years, trying to stay healthy whilst picking our way through the wreckage. Again, there’s an easy solution: just don’t get sick for the 10 years or so it takes to figure it out. It’s the American way, everything resulting from a crisis mentality.

Whatever the new legislation turns out to be, it’ll be the product of so much logrolling and smoke-filled-room horse-trading that the result will make sausage look like filet. It will be great, all right; for them, and the rest of us can eat cake. All this talk about food is making the Hog hungry, so back to Zappa:

“You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don’t need you
Don’t go for help . . . no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold

That’s right, folks . . .
Don’t touch that dial”

If Zappa were alive today, he’d be turning over in his grave. Okay, that’s it. The old dudgeon meter is at 11 on a scale of 10. Albeit that they are difficult to wield with cloven hooves, time for the pitchfork and the torch.

And, about touching that dial? A .357 would work nicely. Elvis had the right idea.

“Bewitched, bothered and bewildered am I.”—Lorenz Hart, lyricist.
“I read that a bunch of witches have gotten together to put a curse on Trump, and I think the Christians need to be praying for him to defend him.”—Pat Robertson, televangelist.
“We just can’t go on a witch hunt.” –House Intelligence Chair Devin Nunes, R-Ca.
“It’s a witch hunt.” Roger Stone, Trump confidant (referring to investigation of the Russian connection).

Who knew that Trump’s election would usher in a Wiccan resurgence? Sure, some may have had a premonition, perhaps there were omens, but it fell to cognoscenti of the occult, like Robertson and Stone, to point out the obvious: it’s gotten so you can’t swing a dead black cat by the tail without hitting at least two witches. They are ubiquitous, casting spells here, forming ritual circles there. The Hog has heard that there is a pentagramhouse atop Trump Tower. And even a casual observer would have no trouble believing the Trump administration (an oxymoron if ever there was one; the guy seems not to be able to administer his way out of a paper bag) was operating under the influence of some sort of hex.

Leave it to those godless Russkis to invoke the assistance of Neopaganists. First they put a lying curse on Michael Flynn, and then a similar enchantment on Cracker-General Jeff Sessions. Speaking under oath, our new Attorney General was asked by Sen. Al Franken, “… if there is any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of this campaign, what will you do?” The AG responded, “Senator Franken, I’m not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it.”

Turns out, during the campaign, the Jeffster had two meetings with the same jolly fellow who met with Flynn, Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Oops. Ah well, just a coincidence these guys were meeting with a heavyweight from the same country that was hacking the Democratic opposition. Mere happenstance that they both lied about it until they were busted. Of course, Kislyak is a simple diplomat, unschooled in the ways of cloak and dagger. And the Hog will be judging the Miss America Pageant next year. Wait, no, competing in the pageant. Wait, no, winning it. Might as well dream pig, er, big.

Coincidence-schmoincidence! It was the witches! They put the prevaricatin’ whammy on these two upstanding Trumpistas, befuddling them until, for the first time in the era of Trump, fact became fiction, and fiction fact. (Oops, maybe not the first time. A pox on these enchantresses! They’ve even jinxed the Hog!).

At any rate, now we know the source of the magical thinking that’s led us to this sad pass. So, instead of being bothered and bewildered, the Hog says, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. See you at the séance tonight; I’ll bring the Ouija board.

“Always look on the bright side of life…”– Monty Python, The Life of Brian

And so it begins: the Trump cabinet doesn’t even have all of its shelves, doors, and hardware in place (much less has it been installed) and already the new national security advisor, Michael Flynn, has resigned. Seems our boy was in frequent telephone contact with the Russian ambassador before the great one was sworn in, and then gave “incomplete information” about those calls to the VP, who, ostensibly relying on information from Flynn, then stated (incorrectly, it turns out) that the subject of sanctions had not been discussed. This at a time when the Obama administration was sanctioning Russia for sticking its greasy tongs where they didn’t belong, into our electoral process. Flynn has since acknowledged that the discussions might have included the subject of sanctions. And the Eiffel Tower might be in Paris.

It happens that our intelligence people, much-maligned by the Sage of Trump Tower, were monitoring the calls of foreign officials, just doing their jobs. And lo and behold, what falls into their laps but a security lapse of fairly significant proportions. The fact that Trump had not yet taken the oath of office did not stop him and his little helpers from undermining Obama’s efforts to impose consequences for the Russian meddling. A rookie mistake, you may say. But Flynn is no babe in the woods when it comes to intelligence (of the spying sort, at least). During his military career, he chaired the Military Intelligence Board (MilIntelBo), served as Assistant Director of National Intelligence (AdNit), commanded the Joint Functional Component Command for Intelligence (JoFuncCoCoPuffs), and he was senior intelligence officer for the Joint Special Operations Command (JoSpecOpCo). And up until today, he was our national security advisor. But somehow it never it occurred to him that the FBI or CIA might be bugging the Russian ambassador’s phone. True, they missed the call on Saddam’s WMDs. But this was like fishing barrels out of a chute, or something…

There is a lesson here for all of us: never say anything on the phone you don’t want your government to hear. Even if you’re in the government. Yikes: the government isn’t even safe from itself. But I digress.

It was obvious on Monday that the ax was falling when Kellyanne Conway disclosed the kiss of death, the dreaded vote of confidence from DT (just another alternative fact). Of course, mealymouthed minions are now falling all over themselves insisting that neither the Prez nor the VPrez knew anything about anything. The Hog guesses it’s just coincidence that the mutual admiration society of Trumpy and Pooty was blossoming at the same time into a full-blown bromance. Yep, just a rogue general, acting on his own, without any orders from higher-ups. As lieutenant generals are prone to do. No scapegoat here. Mm-hmm.

The irony fairly drips from this situation. (The Hog told you we were just getting started, Age-of-Irony-wise). The Republicans built their entire campaign around allegations that Hillary’s carelessness with her emails might have compromised national security. But here are these yokels, not yet in office, chatting with the Russkis on an obviously unsecured phone about the weather in Minsk, the upcoming Olympics, a little of this and a little of that, and, oh, by the way, how ’bout dem sanctions? What were they were discussing? What the hell were they thinking? A cynic might think they were reassuring the president-elect’s boyfriend not to worry, the incoming administration will take care of those pesky sanctions. Perhaps a quid pro quo, a little payback for Putin’s electoral push? Heaven forfend! That would be so out of character for the Trumperino. It would be unethical, immoral, maybe illegal, possibly even treasonous. Never happen.

And that Flynn was done in on account of lying, in the administration of the Birther-in-Chief, is just too rich.

This is just the first domino to fall. Rumor is that Reince Priebus will be next (watch for that vote of confidence). A buddy of the Trumpster has stated that the new chief of staff is in over his head. Well, at least he’s in good company. Trump’s critics pointed out frequently during the election that he had no experience at governance, something one might need in dealing with the most powerful and complex bureaucracy in history. With historic hubris, he arrived in Washington proclaiming that he would drain the swamp, when in fact he has no clue where the alligators and quicksand are, much less how to tell the difference between them. One of the keys to survival in D.C. is skill in bureaucratic infighting, and the newbie administration is now surrounded by thousands who have mastered that art. They were there before this gang, and they’ll be there after it’s gone. It is likely they will eat Trump alive, swallowing the last bite before he even knows he’s on the menu. Few will mourn. Many, however, will suffer. An inevitable consequence of bad decision-making.

But maybe all this is just an aberration. What’s a national security advisor here, a chief of staff there? A mere bagatelle, the Hog fears, compared to what’s coming.

Are we great again yet?

The world of professional sports is all atwitter with the news that the Super Bowl Champion New England Patriots have instantly and hugely improved their chances for repeating as champions by signing a free agent out of AU (Autodidacts University), Frederick Douglass. Douglass, who first hit the radar when discovered by amateur talent scout and president Don Trump, is expected to make, in Trump’s words, a “big impact.”

Said Coach William T. “Sherman” Belichick, fresh from the win over Atlanta, and burning with pride: “While AU isn’t known for its impact players, DT pointed out that Douglass has done an amazing job. And when we heard that he’s getting recognized more and more, well, we figured we better acquire him. Patriot Nation is proud to welcome a football player who helped make the American nation what it is today. And kudos to our scouting department, this guy is a real live wire!”

Super Bowl MVP Mathew “Uncle Tom” Brady said the signing was yet another feather in Trump’s brain, er, cap. He opined that only a diligent researcher, with a keen grasp of the metrics involved, could have unearthed such a prospect. The QB joked: “Just hope the new guy doesn’t steal my jersey!”

Patriot spokesperson Allie “Facts” Conway noted that the team wasn’t sure yet what position the new acquisition would play. She said the Pats should have no trouble finding a place in the starting lineup for someone who was, in her own words, as “mobile, hostile, and agile” as the new phenom. Stated Conway: “I have only three words of advice for Fred: ‘agitate, agitate, agitate.’”

Coach Harry “The Engineer” Tubman of the Fighting Emancipators was animated over Douglass’s never-say-die enthusiasm: “There were games when we were so far down, I thought we could never climb out of the hole. But Fred put the team on his shoulders, and revived us.” Quipped Conway: “He’s the original Comeback Kid!”

Since AU has not updated its football Nos. since 1895, little is known about Douglass’s stats. However, his articulate halftime speeches, and his oratory in the huddle, are the stuff of school legend. Once, when the ’Pators were locked in a life-or-death battle with the Mahwah State Nonentities, he exhorted his squad: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” The lads struggled, but progressed to victory. And when the team became demoralized under the coaching regime of infamous martinet Jeff. D. “Stonewall” Calhoun, he tweeted: “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” The players rebelled, and Calhoun was soon looking for work.

Although Douglass was unavailable for comment at press time, team Hog is working diligently to dig him up. Meanwhile, Trump was characteristically modest about his role: “Amazing, great, huge stroke of genius for me, and good for the team too.” Ad-libbed Conway, “you can’t keep a good man down.”

The world breathlessly anticipates the next chapter in the saga of the irrepressible, the indestructible, the immortal, Frederick Douglass.