October 23, 2018: Glass Onion, There is No Truth, Greed Runs Riot

“I told you about strawberry fields

you know the place where nothing is real”

                                              ---The Beatles “Glass Onion”

The carnival barker has drawn us into the house of mirrors, that place where nothing is real; or, as Disgustus' confidant Rudy Giuliani has told the nation, there is no truth.

Disgustus has further moved to isolate this country from the rest of the world, announcing this week that he is unilaterally withdrawing from an arms agreement reached between Reagan and Gorbachev thirty years ago. Citing Russian “cheating”, Disgustus announced that we are withdrawing from the pact that had eliminated the development and deployment of short and medium range missiles in Europe, which had given the continent some greater measure of security since it sits geographically on the doorstep of one of the great nuclear powers. Here we have yet another pillar kicked from beneath the structure of international security leaving Europe, and the world, to question the reliability of the United States.

It is strange that we have heretofore heard nothing about any alleged Russian violations, even leading up to this radical departure from U.S. Foreign policy. In any case the action plays directly into the hands of the Kremlin, serving Putin's strategy of dividing, destabilizing and weakening the western alliance.

The action is sure to kick-start a new arms race, not to mention a looming new cold war, only this time with China as a third-party in the mix, making geopolitical calculation all the more complicated and capricious.

Disgustus has now led us out of the Paris Climate Agreement, the Iran Nuclear Agreement, the Transpacific Partnership Agreement, and now a nuclear missile agreement. He has started a trade war with our allies and threatened to pull out of the World Trade Organization. He has cut funding to international agencies and the United Nations and announced to the world that no accord supersedes a frighteningly narrow national self interest. Our Caesar cannot build; he can only destroy. Disgustus is all about vandalizing.

In an interview earlier this week Vladimir Putin, while praising tRUMP, observed that the United States has lost its preeminent position in the world; a development welcomed by the Russian leader. Saying that he couldn't understand why the critics of Disgustus complain that he doesn't listen to anyone, the Russian assured his audience that when he speaks, our Caesar is all ears.

Every poll taken in the last two years reflects a steep decline in how the rest of the world views this nation. America is no longer seen as aspirational; but rather as transactional and, far too often, confrontational. The tRUMPists betray their disbelief in America as exceptional, opting instead for a Machiavellian “America First” mentality, wherein we are just another snake in the snake-pit.

This loss of prestige in the world is not without cost. It has strained our relations with our allies. It has weakened international institutions. It has rendered nearly worthless any agreements entered into by this country as we declare ourselves no longer bound by them.

“I told you 'bout the fool on the hill

I tell you, man, he's living there still”

Nowhere is this more serious than our husbandry of mother Earth. As the United States, in deep denial, further withdraws into self-imposed isolation, mother nature—the last revolutionary—is organizing her armies. This year saw record forest fires in the Western United States and in the rain forests of the Northwest and Canada's British Columbia. The hurricane season recorded the greatest number of severe storms in the Eastern Pacific on record. Glaciers and the polar ice caps continue to melt. The great Barrier Reef is dead, as is the Black Sea, most of the Baltic, and much of the Mediterranean. And in the ocean off the California coast the purple urchin is devouring Northern California's kelp forests, destroying yet another ecosystem. (1)

But in Donald tRUMP's America there is no room for truth, and certainly not “inconvenient truth”. We live in a post-informational society, where up is down, in is out, black is white, and where one is liberated and free to oppose anyone or anything that questions your right to whatever is in your narrow, short-term, personal interest. A nation that now embraces coal and asbestos. A place where greed runs riot.

It is idiocy by original definition (2). It is the death knell of the Republic.

“fixing a hole in the ocean

trying to make a dove-tail joint
looking through a glass onion”.

“An' Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison.

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1. Pierre-Louis, Kendra. “A Purple Pest Is Chewing Up Ocean Forests” The New York Times. Tuesday, October 23, 2018: Page A1 & A12.
2. See previous post: December 2, 2014: Generation of Swine, The Idiot, Bad Citizenship