It's A Lie, But You Know What He Meant

So the old Shrub mouthpiece, Ari Fleischer, was on the news today.   Someone imagined he might have something relevant or insightful to add to the discussion.

That person should be hunted down and beaten immediately.

But the ‘host’ of the newscast asked some questions.  How are we who value words to take the obviously false things Trump said during the campaign?  One of the issues mentioned was when tRump said he saw thousands of people – Muslims, I presume – dancing on top of buildings in Jersey after the towers came down.  Ari agreed that this was probably false, but that people – the press included – knew the underlying message that tRump was transmitting.  That the actual words may have been inaccurate – some would call it a lie - but the message was still valid.

What.  The.  Actual.  Fuck. 

There either were or were not thousands of Muslims dancing on rooftops in Jersey, happy that the US had been brought to its knees.  Since absolutely no one else can corroborate this xenophobic fantasy, I’m going to go with my gut here and gently drop the bullshit flag.  See how it flutters?

But listen, okay, maybe we adults can figure out this crap in context.  Somewhere on earth, certain Muslims were happy about what happened on 9-11.   A tiny number.  Probably hiding out in caves in Afghanistan, dancing around a fire and waving their Kalashnikovs and planning to bugger a little boy after the others go to their own caves to bugger their own 12 year old boys.  Evay-body PAR-TAY.   But the business about the rooftop cavorting as the towers fell?  No, that was a lie.  So many of the words spouted by the Orange Overlord were lies.  Big ones.  Whoppers.  But we were supposed to parse the words and divine the meaning of statements like, “If Hillary Clinton is elected, it will be the end of our country” or “Barack Obama is the most ignorant president in history.”   Personally, I don’t see a lot of wiggle room there.  I think I know what he meant.  Because he said what he meant.

You know who hears the words and believes them, though?   Little kids.  Little kids believe the words we say.   We’re adults and we’re supposed to tell them all the right things, to answer their questions as best we can.   They have almost no filters.  Tell them there’s a fat man in a red suit who travels all over the world on a fucking sleigh pulled by reindeer, guess what?  They believe it.  They don’t parse all the myths about Santa or Jesus or the goddamned Tooth Fairy.  They believe the words that we tell them.  Parents or not, I bet most of us think first when a kid asks us a question because we instinctively know, I guess, that they’re looking to us for guidance. 

An adult who wishes to become president should know better than to lie.  And definitely know better than to lie with an agenda in mind, an agenda that includes personal gain.  Kids believe us.  We run the world.  We can do shit they can’t, like drive and buy airline tickets online.  We run for president and make big decisions about how we deal with other countries.  They expect and they deserve the truth, as nearly as we understand it.

A third grader woke up yesterday and asked who had won the election.  Her parents told her the truth – Donald Trump won.   She considered this for a while and then asked, “Will Sayed be at school today or did he already have to leave?”   Sayed is one of her classmates.  All over the United States, and even in my own little cushy neighbourhood, kids have internalized the message from Donald Trump.  Mexicans are rapists and murderers.  Muslim people are terrorists.  Round those motherfuckers up and send them back to – where?  Most of them were born here, of course, and are as American as you or me.  As American as Timmy and Lassie.   I bet many of them can whistle the Andy Griffith theme.  Americans.

 I assured my own children that Trump was not going to win.  How could America elect such an ass?  It hardly seemed possible just a few days ago.  Any ideas about how smart I am should die here.  My six year old – he was five when the campaigns began – told me without any prompting at all that we should not vote for Trump.  I asked him why not.  He said, “He’s mean.  He calls people LOSERS.”   This is just about as honest as it gets, isn’t it?  Don’t elect people who are name-callers.  Anyway, last week, they held a mock election in his first grade class, and he was mortified that one – only one – of his classmates preferred Trump.  “I guess”, he said, “he just wants to burn the world down.”  You might think he picked this up from me, but you’d be wrong.  He came to his own conclusions.  My teenager, well, that’s another story because he wants to talk about it, and I give him what I think.  So let’s not count him.

But the point remains:  kids want the truth even more than we adults do, and I don’t know about you, but I value it pretty highly.  For the last eight years, my kids have figured Obama to be a pretty decent man, and I trusted him enough to let my children listen to him if they wanted to.  I’m pretty sure I won’t let them listen to tRump unless it is to remind them that some adults will lie through their teeth.  So it goes.

The Peaceful Transfer of Power - or why I will not use the term "president" for tRump

I talk a lot about how the peaceful transfer of power every four to eight years makes me all woozy and happy and shit.  And I mean it.  Even when it was a president I didn’t particularly care for, I would remind the complainers that the US is unique in our ability to just hand over the keys to the White House.  “Here you go, buddy.  Good luck.” From a global standpoint, this doesn’t happen often enough. Other countries are justifiably jealous of our process.  Hooray for us!

When I mentioned that bit about presidents I didn’t particularly care for, I was of course mostly thinking about George W Bush, who was kind of a doofus.  I’d already lived in Texas with him as governor.  He was definitely a doofus governor, but his duties weren’t particularly taxing.  I don’t think he was that serious about it.  He went for hours-long runs every day, I guess in an effort to get healthy after all those years of drinking and cocaine and so on.  I think he rediscovered Jesus, too.  Now plenty of folks along the streets of Austin look a lot like Jesus, but good for Shrub, I say.  In my military years, I was considered an expert at getting doofus senior people the fuck out of the way in order for real work to be accomplished, especially during deployments.  “Sir, you need to get out of here and go do some Officer Shit.  We’re busy as fuck and I’ll tell you later how good we made you look.”   The smart ones would go do Officer Shit, and I usually did make them look smarter.

Anyway, yeah, a few presidents along the way I did not care for.  Shrub was one, but I also worked under Reagan and Bush the Elder.  I even voted for them.   This turned out to be a mistake.  Not the only mistake I ever made - but big ones, to be sure.   But with Bush I and II and Reagan, I knew they were not Evil Incarnate or anything like that.  We’ve also had candidates like McCain, whose brain power has diminished over time, but he was once a guy I kind of liked and respected.  If not for the Palin running mate, I would not have been frightened in any way to have McCain as President.  Mitt Romney was about the same. He, like McCain, was not ‘my’ candidate, but I didn’t find either of them particularly evil.  We just disagreed on some issues.  Maybe even most issues.

And I remember telling my wife and others, in 2012, that we might actually not re-elect Obama.  The pendulum tends to swing back and forth and that’s not even a particularly bad thing.  The ship tends to right itself.   We lived through Shrub and I found it ridiculous that some thought he was going to destroy America.  Others said the same thing about Obama – he was destroying America!   No one, no one man, I would say, could do that.  System of checks and balances and all that.

This time, though, it’s different.  Not that I won’t still be awestruck with the peaceful transfer of power – I will.  But I hereby swear that I will never use the term “president” before the last name of “Trump”.  Nope.  Not gonna happen.  He spent the last year and a half telling us and showing us exactly what he was, and I believe him.   Maybe you’re okay with mocking the disabled.  Or grabbing women by the pussy.  Threatening to imprison your political opponents.  Banishing entire religions from coming here (I think religious freedom had something to do with our history, but maybe I’m just being all romantic and shit).  Killing the families of suspected terrorists.  Torturing prisoners of war.  All the things he said along the way – maybe you’re okay with those things.  I’m not.  I am ashamed and angry that we – well, some 18% of us, anyway – elected this fool.  

And after 8 years of hearing the white racists mumble, “He ain’t MY president” when Obama’s main crime was being President While Black, do NOT fucking even TRY to tell me that tRump is ‘my’ president and I need to get behind him.   Nope, don’t run that up my flagpole because I ain’t saluting.

As I said earlier today to a good friend of mine, “He showed us who he was, and then we showed him who WE were.”  Yes, America, I am ashamed of us.  I fear we will all regret this soon enough, but I regret it right the fuck NOW.

Trump Is A Fucking Idiot

My cousin Bart, who is otherwise a wonderful guy to have as a cousin, is apparently going to vote for tRump. I’m going to be like Mythological Jesus here and ask that he be forgiven, for he knows not what he does, but I have to – maybe for the last time – explain some real shit here. Donald Trump is the least qualified and most reckless, dangerous candidate of all time. You hear me? There’s never been a worse choice for president. Ever. Millard Fillmore finally rests in peace. James Garfield and William Henry Harrison and even Andrew Johnson may also, in death, finally be sighing with relief.

Among the many reasons tRump is a giant goddamned tool: he knows shinola about foreign relations, seeing nearly every effort at common defense as transactional in nature. This may be for one of two reasons. First, he’s a businessman and his god is money. Second, he’s a fucking idiot. We don’t offer protection and the use of our military to other countries because we’re simply the nicest guys ever; there is always a benefit to the United States. Always. And the benefits must outweigh the risks. This explains why we’re in NATO, why we have military installations in Japan and Germany, and why we don’t ask those countries/organizations to pay us what we’re worth. tRump sees this as financial in nature. He’s wrong. Also, and I think I mentioned this before, he’s a fucking idiot.

He is also the most self-absorbed, thin-skinned pussboy we’ve ever seen on the national stage. Every slight, real or imagined, results in a late-night Twitter storm, often boiled down to “No, I’m not – YOU are.” This is acceptable for 12 year old girls and/or 18 year old boys, but in no way can be considered adult behaviour. He likes to talk about what a tough guy he truly is, but was all butthurt when Meghan Kelly asked him a hard question and thinks Saturday Night Live should be pulled from the air because they made fun of him. Can you imagine him, really, in tough talks with Netanyahu or, god forbid, Putin? “He’s looking at me! Make him stop looking at me!” So not only is he a fucking idiot, which I mentioned earlier, but he’s also a big, fat crybaby pussy.

There is a familiar pattern now. It is this: each and every day, tRump says or does something that is simply unfathomable. His supporters don’t seem to give a flying fuck what it is, and he’s testing them in interesting ways. Remember, he actually jump-started his “political career” by promoting the lunatic theory that Barack Obama was not born in America. And if you believed that deranged shit for even one second, get off my Facebook page and get back to your White Supremacist buddies. (Seriously. Go. Now.) This week, it’s his obvious penchant for sexually predatory behaviour. His surrogates are required to assume pretzel shapes in their attempts to explain away what he said with his own fellatio-shaped mouth. I can only hope the pay is outstanding. Perhaps down the road they can purchase new self-esteem. Perhaps not. But that’s okay; tRump has a total disregard for history, often denying what he said maybe five minutes before. He’s a fucking idiot and he thinks you must be, too.

He’s a businessman! He knows the bottom line! I hear this constantly. Folks, he’s a parasite. As Matt Yglesias writes: “Across these ventures, Trump has mastered essentially a single skill — structuring deals to be financially beneficial to him personally regardless of whether the underlying business is successful. Rather than creating wealth for his business partners, Trump took advantage of investors who believed in him in order to benefit himself personally — just as he did years later with students at Trump University.”

Possibly the worst thing he’s done is help foster the belief, now that he’s losing, that the entire system is rigged against him. Question: if the system is rigged for him to lose, how the fuck did he defeat so many other candidates in the Republican primary? It’s nonsensical. But worse, he’s convinced his trailer park followers that the elections are broken. Stand by, true patriots. There’s going to be violence when he loses. For the longest time, we – the people with functioning brain stems – considered him a joke, but now he’s doing real damage to the country without ever being in any elected office. To call him ‘dangerous’ is like suggesting the surface of the sun is ‘toasty’. It’s true, but somehow doesn’t convey the magnitude of the situation.

As I told Bart his morning, if we were to learn that Hillary Clinton had assassinated JFK, broken up the Beatles, and was solely responsible for the Black Death, she’s still a better choice for President. Because he’s 100% unqualified. So make up your own disasters for which Hillary Clinton is responsible. The Titanic, both World Wars, Nickelback, the Hindenburg, Hurricane Katrina, the post-Aikman Dallas Cowboys, pick one or pick a handful, it turns out the same. tRump is the least qualified and most dangerous candidate in the history of the fucking UNIVERSE, and nothing you think Clinton has done will make him more qualified. He is a political cockroach and should be dealt with accordingly.

Here endeth the rant. All praise the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Why I'm With Her

Early Voting/Gag Reflex

The Ghost of Benghazi Past

Benghazi should be over by now but it isn’t.  I see that a lot of people are still angry even if they don’t understand it very well – or at all.  I probably won’t convince any of those with Clinton Derangement Syndrome; they’re going to hate her no matter what, truth be damned, and I can’t get involved with that lunacy.  But if you still have questions or just don’t understand it at all, maybe, just maybe, I can at least tell you what I think.   I wasn’t there, of course, and am not privy to many of the sordid details, but I did do a few years in and out of embassies and over four years in one particular embassy.  I worked closely with the regional security office, whose members provide security in various ways, but their prime directive is to protect the ambassador.  I also organized and participated in a number of security details, tasked with protecting visiting dignitaries – admirals, Secretary of the Navy, USMC Commandant, and other (supposedly) important people.   I have a pretty decent understanding of how that shit works.

I tried as best I could to not say what I really thought during the first few days after the event because I didn’t want to be accused of blaming the victim.  Chris Stevens was, by all accounts, a good man, a good diplomat, committed to the bettering of Libya – and of course, he was considered a friend by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  They were colleagues.  From what I’ve read and heard about Stevens, I would have liked him and agreed with many of his views on politics.  But his presence on that September day in Benghazi was the problem.  I’m not going to say “Blame Stevens!” but I will say that it was his responsibility.  He made bad decisions. 

There is a difference, of course, between ‘guilt’ and ‘responsibility’.   When I was in the military, I had X number of people working for me.  If one of them drank too much, got in a car, maybe got a DUI or, god forbid, killed an innocent person on the road, I would be called in to the commanding officer’s office and grilled.  Because I was responsible for my people.  But I would not be judged guilty of the DUI or any other crime committed by this person; I would not be facing punishment.  That would be wholly and entirely on the person who made the bad decisions.  So let’s clear this question up.  Hillary Clinton, being the Secretary of State at the time, was responsible for ALL actions taken by her ambassadors all over the globe.  But she wasn’t guilty of anything.  She didn’t order Stevens and crew to Benghazi on 11 September.  She didn’t put those fighters/terrorists in the street to attack our people.   Hillary Clinton, as she said in her appearance before Congressional committee, was responsible.  But she wasn’t guilty of anything at all.  If you want to assign guilt, then you can go one of two ways.  First, blame the fighters who perpetrated the attack.  This is the most sensible thing, after all.  Isn’t it?  Or if you want to go further, blame Chris Stevens for making the obviously fatal decision to be in an unsecure zone on a significant date. 

I’m not big on tossing it all on Stevens, but according to my experience, here’s how it works.  The ambassador is the senior representative of the US government in his assigned country.   He is the Big Cheese.  He has a country team to advise him on certain interests – political, economic, drugs if those are an issue there, military concerns, and so forth, but he makes the decisions.  This also includes where he will go on any given day.  The Regional Security Officer will talk to the ambassador about any security concerns.  He and his team may even advise the ambassador to not go, but that’s it – they advise him.  If he decides to saddle up anyway, their job is then to go with him and protect him as best they can, and believe me, they do that very, very efficiently.   Having worked with quite a few of these regional security guys, I’d guess (just a guess) that they advised Stevens to NOT go anywhere on 11 September.  Stay home, sir, the embassy has hardened defences, let’s picnic in Benghazi later this month.  Words to that effect.  No one in government service would miss the significance of the date.

But apparently Stevens decided he was going to Benghazi.  He was a friend of the Libyan people, he felt he had a special bond with them, it would be fine.  My term for this is ‘mission blindness’.  I’m sure other people have other terms, but this is when your dedication to the work at hand blinds you to overt/covert threats to your physical safety.  Being the Head Cheese, everyone else saddled up and saluted crisply and said shit like, “Yes, Mister Ambassador” and off they went.   It’s what we do, or what I used to do when I was a military guy.  We go where we’re told to go and, using whatever tools are at hand, we accomplish the mission without bitching (overtly).   That’s what his team did.   Or tried to do.  But let’s be clear: the only reason Stevens and his team were in Benghazi on the 11^th of September was because Stevens himself wanted to be there.

The genesis of the attack was unclear during the first few days.  Tensions had been high all over the Middle East and there had been unrest in Egypt, Tunisia and other countries.  The streets were full of people who were incensed over the youtube video that they considered blasphemous.  This was very clear.  No one had questions about it.   It was logical – to a point – to think, initially, that the violence in Libya was more of the same.  The people on the ground there had no idea about the motivations behind the attack.  They were too busy trying to stay alive and return fire and all the things one does when shit goes south in a big way.  

The lack of response is often cited as proof that the US government, especially the President and the Secretary of State, somehow and for some reason ‘abandoned’ the crew in Benghazi.  This is crazy talk.  This is not what we do, and it isn’t what they did.  Everyone was working hard to try to figure out how to respond, but the tactical situation was simply out of control.   Think about it this way: you’re assigned to keep peace between two large groups of people who are armed to the teeth.  Let’s say they’re in a gym.  You’re thousands of miles away but you start to get phone calls telling you things have gone bad.  But it’s dark, the lights are out and no one can tell you where the good guys are.  Or where the bad guys are.  But you have to put a team in, don’t you?  SOMETHING MUST BE DONE.   But if your team rushes in to that darkened gym where rounds are flying back and forth and explosions are everywhere and maybe there’s a fire and smoke and no one speaks the same language to boot – what happens to your team?   I can tell you: they are added to the list the dead.  Real-life combat is not like a Rambo movie.  Before you put even more people at risk, you must understand the situation.  You must have a plan.  Sending even more people into the streets of Benghazi would have not guaranteed any success at all, but it would have increased the number of flag-draped coffins coming back to Andrews AFB.   That much was certain.   We could talk about how far away help was (it was far away.  We could talk about how willing certain units were to go in anyway (very willing).  But that last bit just tells you how brave our military SF is.  You cannot simply send them in to die.  In any case, no one issued an order to “stand down”.  That is a fucking fairy tale.  People were doing their best to understand how to respond without getting a lot more Americans killed in the streets.  You’d think we would respect that. 

The other issue with Benghazi is whether or not the Obama team thought it was motivated by the youtube video and was a quickly-mobilized mob or whether it was an orchestrated, planned attack by an organized terror group.  I saw a lot of arguments about this.  It seemed to me that they simply didn’t know at first and believed – logically – it was connected to the violence that had flared up around the Middle East.  It seemed to be that the government was playing it close to the vest until they figured out who was responsible, which is, again, sensible.  The police don’t broadcast who they think may have perpetrated a crime until they have some pretty good ideas – evidence – that tells them who to look for.  Conservatives wanted everyone to believe that Obama and Clinton were being coy in order to keep the attack from negatively influencing the upcoming election.  It was a confusing period, the first few days after the attack, and if you’re inclined to believe such things, nothing I can say will stop you.  But I don’t buy it.  There was too much risk and too little return and Obama is just not that dumb.

Maybe it’s worth mentioning that two of the people who died in Benghazi were former Navy.  I am former (retired) Navy.  Ask anyone who is or was Navy:  we take this seriously.   Those were my shipmates, our comrades, and I would be the first to point fingers at anyone in the government who knowingly contributed to their deaths.  But no one in the government did.  Terrorists and hoodlums and thugs on the streets of Benghazi killed them, and that’s who I blame.   If any of this seems like bullshit to you, that’s fine with me.  I do the best I can to see things clearly.  With Benghazi, you’re on your own now, because I am officially done.