About 90% of action movies are stories about one guy overcoming The Powers That Be. Sometimes it’s a rich asshole his gangster employees, sometimes it’s a corporation doing everything from selling contaminated food or medicine to peddling weapons to terrorists or other gangsters, sometimes it’s even just gangsters with power and money. It’s always the same kind of people, though: the people the American public just put into the highest offices in the nation.
When I’ve watched those movies, I have always wondered who is rooting for the bad guys? Somebody has to be, right? The bad guys always have numbers on their side; both in the movies and in real life. The army and the cops are almost always working for the Boss; or are the Boss themselves. Along with the people who are supposed to be the wall between evil and chaos,, it’s usually true that the majority of people are well-intentioned, good-hearted, but cowardly. But when 60,637,350 Americans voted for Trump (vs. 61,422,098 for Clinton as of November 15, 2016) it's hard to prop up the illusion that the average citizen is just a timid good guy. I can’t help you with that delusion at all, in fact.
So, who did those 60,637,350 supporters of the bad guys put in power?
- Reince Priebus as White House Chief of Staff
- Steve Bannon (Breitbart News) Senior Counselor to the President
and these were the leading actors for the rest of Trump's collection of super villains:
- Secretary of State: TBD [Newt Gingrich, Bob Corker, John Bolton]
- Treasury Secretary: TBD [Steven Mnuchin, Jamie Dimon]
- Attorney General: TBD [Rudy Giuliani, Pam Bondi, Chris Christie]
- Defense Secretary: TBD [Kelly Ayotte, Jeff Sessions, Michael Flynn]
- Health and Human Services Secretary: TBD [Ben Carson, Rick Scott]
- Interior Secretary: TBD [Lucas Oil, Sarah Palin, Robert Grady, Jan Brewer]
- Agriculture Secretary: TBD [Sid Miller, Sam Brownback, Dave Heineman]
- Labor Secretary: TBD [Victoria Lipnic]
- Commerce Secretary: TBD [Wilbur Ross, Chris Christie, Dan DiMicco]
- Education Secretary: TBD [Ben Carson, William Evers]
- Energy Secretary: TBD [Harold Hamm, Robert Grady]
- Homeland Security Secretary: TBD [David Clarke, Michael McCaul]
- Veterans Affairs Secretary: TBD [Jeff Miller]
- Environmental Protection Agency Administrator: TBD [Myron Ebell, Jeffrey Holmstead, Joe Aiello]
It’s hard to imagine a nastier looking bunch of rich, corrupt bad guys than this list. We’ve been here before. Nixon’s gang was no better or worse than Trump’s collection of deplorables. Reagan’s gangsters were so corrupt that a bunch of them (138) went to jail. If you are an X-gen youngster, you might imagine that Bush 43 was a disaster of a president and . . . you wouldn’t be wrong. In terms of bankrupting the nation, G.W. was record-setting. He was the kind of doubling-down on borrowing to go to war. But most Republicans are big talkers when it comes to the evils of the national debt and big spenders when it comes to handing taxpayer money over to the military-industrial gangsters.
Trump’s love for the oil companies ought to scare the shit out of anyone who believes we have some obligation to leave resources for future generations. Those oil pipelines that were “stopped” during the Obama administration will be making a big, uninterruped, unregulated comeback.
Nobody with adult reading skills should be surprised who Trump is taking with him to Washington. Trump, himself, is the poster child for the classic evil rich guy who is even more evil behind closed doors than he is in public. About 60,637,350 Americans voted for exactly the guy that you’d hope most people would hope gets killed at the end of the movie. 60,637,350 Americans voted for the people who brought us corporate personhood, Citizens United and worse, and the massive spread between the haves and have-nots. Think about that. When you look at your neighbor, your local store owner, your local politicians, and your friends and when you realize there is a 50% chance that they’d be cheering for the bad guy in the next Batman movie, you can’t help but think about how low humanity has sunk in this country.
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