Trump Will Die and He Will Be Forgotten, Sadly

 I was in Washington, D.C. once in the late 90s, for a medical presentation on a topic that I’ve long forgotten, but I haven’t forgotten visiting several of the Smithsonian Museums, the Washington and Lincoln monuments, and several other incredible memorials to the good and bad moments of this country’s short history.  I have also been to Marble, Colorado several times before and after my Washington visit and I saw where the stone used for many of those sculptures was quarried.  In this depressing and embarrassing moment in the decline of the American empire, I can’t help but believe that, while “this too will pass,” the damage done will last for generations.  In fact, I doubt that the United States will ever again be “great,” united, or even a major world power when Trump has done his damage.  The “sad” part about Trump’s eventual death and the American fascist period’s disappearance from our memories is that forgetting it means it will happen again.  And, probably, it will happen here again.

Just like when Stalin’s statues were torn down in Russia during that pitiful country’s brief moment of marginal sanity, Russians forgot those lessons in less than a generation and are, now, repeating every Stalinist mistake made in Putin’s regime (and creating some really impressively stupid new ones).  Just like that, in a short time the “loved” gullible, uneducated Republican voters will forget how their foolish infatuation with a fake billionaire and a Russian tool caused the end of the American democratic experiment and folded up the nation’s “empire” like a piece of single-ply toilet paper.  That is the only sad part of forgetting about Trump and the Republican/Russian fascist political zeitgeist. 

Other than Chairman Mao Zedong there are no statues proclaiming the brilliance of any of the world’s past fascist, terrorist “leaders” in the world.  The vote is still out on Chairman Mao, since China has staggered into the 21^st Century more capitalist than socialist while remaining centralist and largely a dictatorship.  The rest of the world’s Trump role-models—Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Tiso, Antonescu, Salazar, Stalin and Lenin, Pinochet, Pol Pot, Amin, Hussein, and their historic predecessors Napoleon and that ilk—have all found their rightful disreputable place in history and their statues and portraits and other likenesses have been trashed and hidden from view.  But the followers of tyrants are not good at history and are even worse at observing reality.  It’s hard to imagine what is going on in their tiny minds, but it isn’t hard to see what kind of world they’d like to construct.  Full of fear, hate, ignorance, prejudice, and foolishness, the minions of dictators just keep getting it wrong and learning nothing from the experience. 

At this point, with the Senate and House of Representatives abandoning their Constitutional responsibilities and stuffing their noses as far up Trump’s ass as possible, it isn’t hard to imagine a nightmare abomination like this picture being funded and, even, begun.  Most likely, it would end in the destruction of the entire monument, since no one with talent, taste, or intelligence would be willing to be involved.  Since Native Americans have long disliked the original sculpture, calling it “a giant middle finger to Native Americans,” they wouldn’t object to having the faces “gently” removed from their mountain.  With Trump’s ugly mug plastered up there, too, more than half of the country would be right there with them.  By the time Trump and his Russian handlers have pumped-and-dumped the US stock market until there is nothing left to hype, it’s possible that even Trump’s minions might join them from the unemployment line and homelessness. 

With nothing but a pack of losers, fake news talking heads, mediocre hedge fund mismanagers, and simpering military second-stringers who forgot their oath to the US Constitution so quickly that you’d suspect they weren’t listening when they were sworn in, this latest pack of fascists are unlikely to last long.  They might outlast me, but I’m fortunately-for-me old.  Putting the US back on the pile-on-the-carbon path to accelerating climate change, it’s possible I might last as long as any of you, though. 

 

Red Voters Create Economic Dead Zones

 Several years ago, I read about a collection of mid-sized towns along the Pacific Coast, between Northern California and the Canadian border, that were affordable (under $300k for a decent sized home and lot).  Because I'm always looking for any excuse to move, no matter where I live, I immediately checked them all out.  When we made our last move, I had created a spreadsheet of things that I needed to investigate along with a scorecard for those things. I've added a few things since then, because rural southeastern Minnesota (where we moved) turned out to be quite a bit more redneck than I had anticipated.  In fact, all of rural Minnesota is more backwards and uneducated, right wing, racist, and downright regressive then you might think from an outsider’s perspective of Minnesota; or from just living in the Twin Cities and only visiting the outback areas. 

 From that lesson I added two high-pointer qualities to my next prospective new location: #1, there needs to be a Unitarian Universalist Fellowship somewhere very nearby (within 10 miles) and #2, I don't ever want to move to a place where the majority of voters voted for Donald Trump.  I don’t even want to live somewhere where nearly 50% voted for a rapist/felon/Russian asset.  You probably wouldn't be surprised to know that all of those affordable places in California, Oregon and Washington were heavily slanted towards Donald Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024.  Likewise, you might not be surprised to know that all of those small towns are economic dead zones, with high crime rates, lots of meth and Fentanyl arrests and overdose deaths, and most of those affordable houses, and neighborhoods, look like they were lived in by someone who died from a meth or fentanyl overdose.

 After reading a recent article that described the possibility that the Vermont legislature might actually start outlawing loud exhausts and applying appropriate fines for violators[1], I started looking at Vermont real estate.  In particular, I was interested in real estate along the Canadian border.  My first surprise was that area is incredibly affordable and most of the urban parts (A misnomer in a state where a 45,000 population “city” is the largest in the state.) of Vermont are way out of my price range. (For example, 900 square feet and 2 bedrooms in Burlington is nearly $400k.)  That made me suspicious. So, I did my presidential election results search and discovered (you guessed it) most of the northern border of Vermont is filled with unemployed, drug addicted, illiterate, racist Trump voters. 

 The question is, are all of the negatives in the area what created the Trump voters or are the kinds of people who are inclined to be Trump voters also inclined to trash an area? Personally, I'm inclined towards the second.  Either, or both, could be true, though.

 Another example, Crescent City, CA, is a town almost right on the California-Oregon border and only 80 miles north of an absolutely spectacular small, very liberal, and totally unaffordable city (Arcata, CA).  Crescent City is an example of one of those affordable garbage dumps. Crescent City currently has a selection of houses available for sale between $90,000 and $260,000. None of them are particularly amazing, but several are definitely livable. Arcata, on the other hand, will cost you anything from $180,000, for a lot to build on, to a bit short of a million dollars for a very similar collection of well-maintained, very livable houses.  The difference is one city is filled with loser Trump voters and the other is largely intelligent human beings. 

 As anyone who has paid the slightest attention to US states’ economic situations knows, red states don’t foot their own bills.  Blue state taxpayers not only pay their own way but they also carry the deadbeat red states.  The same is true for rural areas . . . everywhere.  All of that would be dramatically less irritating if there were some level of gratitude from red and rural dependents, but, like typical teenagers, rural Americans imagine they have done something to deserve their “allowance.”  It’s certainly not based on the “food” they grow, since corn and soybeans accounted for 87% of total U.S. grain and oilseed production and most of that is either converted to energy-inefficient ethanol, health-destroying corn syrup, or exported, with heavy state and federal subsidies, to other countries.  Even substantial percentages of the meat products American farmers grow is exported, again with federal supports, because farmers produce too much of what Americans don’t want to eat and the various chemical contaminants make those products undesirable to non-US consumers. 

 All that means that regressive Republican towns and cities are filled with a majority of non-productive, mostly-white, uneducated, entitled residents who don’t take good care of their property or communities.  It’s hard to spot those things from outside, especially from hundreds or thousands of miles away, so the best tool I’ve found for making those kinds of judgements is stereotyping; as politically-incorrect as that may be.  There might be some responsible, decent, intelligent, creative, democratic-minded (small “d”) communities, somewhere in this country, but the odds are staggeringly against that and, if they exist, they are the “exception that proves the rule.” 

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[1] As far as I’m concerned, shooting the drivers of illegal vehicles is “appropriate.”