Land of the Pee (Tape), and the home of the depraved

Just a sample of the sad scene we faced at the Trump rally in Tampa. I’m very worried that the hostility whipped up by Trump and some in conservative media will result in somebody getting hurt. We should not treat our fellow Americans this way. The press is not the enemy. pic.twitter.com/IhSRw5Ui3R

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) August 1, 2018

I fear war is coming to America.

But you want to know what's even worse than that? That I think civil war no longer is the worst possible thing that could befall this benighted land.

The triumph of this is the worst possible thing that could happen to the United States of America. I call it "White Trash Fascism." And Donald Trump is its prophet.

Because that's exactly what it is, and no further explication is necessary. None. Not a goddamn bit.

3 Chords & the Truth: Musical truth

Like any product of the 1960s and '70s, I admit my fondness for the Top-40 radio of that now long-ago era. Whenever I hear a recording of that, from then, something comes over me.

Nostalgia, wistfulness, longing . . . whatever you want to call it. It's like an emotional wave crashing upon the graying sands of a middle-aged shore.

But Top-40 by definition is musical popularity, which is something quite different from musical truth. There can be truth in there somewhere . . . but my musical truth and yours isn't subject to the Billboard charts or a survey of local retailers.

Musical truth comes from the soul -- from what speaks to you and moves you, deeply and immediately. That is what 3 Chords & the Truth  is all about.

FOR ME, that's what this week's show is about, what last week's show was about and what every episode of the Big Show will be about. It's kind of like walking a tightrope without a safety net. You know the songs you play, and how you string them together, speaks to you. But will it speak to anyone else?

Good question, no pat answer.

It's an art, not a science. Science has its purpose, but this isn't one of them. Every week, I'm hoping for the best and fearing the deafening silence of the worst.

And I'm hoping for that kernel of musical truth for me and for you.

That's all anyone can do when it comes to the God's honest musical truth.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there.  Aloha.

Rep. Adolf Gump

I can't be sure, but a fat legislative Bubba from Georgia throwing it in reverse with his britches around his feet and trying to use his ass as a battering ram while screaming "AMERICA! AMERICA!" could be one of the signs and wonders Jesus told us would herald the Apocalypse.

It's in the Bible. Somewhere in the back.

THIS HERE? Also from Georgia. This fool is running for governor.

Oh . . . we sooooo doomed.

3 Chords & the Truth: Color your world

This is the episode of 3 Chords & the Truth where we look at the whole flippin' world of radio, both on the Internets and online, and tell it to just hold our damn beer.

Because we're gonna show our true colors on the Big Show. All of 'em. Many of them in the same set of music.

This is not something you would hear on your local commercial radio station. This is something you'd hear on vanishingly few non-commercial radio stations.

This is something you hear all the time on 3 Chords & the Truth.

That's about all I have to say . . . HEY! I TOLD YOU TO HOLD MY DAMNED BEER, NOT SPILL IT!!!

Y'all, I gotta go. I have to fetch what's left of my beer. You can't trust most of the radio world to do anything.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Plunging into the ruined, moldy heart of a metaphor

Vintage FCC 'history card' for WJAR radio

Last month, an urban explorer trekked into the wilds of East Providence, R.I., in search of adventure and long-abandoned places.

Wielding nothing but a video camera and a respirator, "RnK All Day" brought his YouTube viewers along as he pored through the ruins of radio stations WHJJ, WHJY (94 HJY) and WSNE that once broadcast from the crumbling building at 115 Eastern Ave. He got more than he bargained for -- as did we.

What the intrepid archaeologist of urban abandonment found was a moldering, unsealed time capsule of mid-market AM and FM radio, circa 2002. It almost seemed as if, going on a couple of decades ago, the DJ on 94 HJY was playing Lenny Kravitz's latest CD while the talk guy on WHJJ argued with a caller about George W. Bush . . . and then the apocalypse.

The lights blinked. The phone went dead. A blinding flash. Someone spied a mushroom cloud in the distance.

Then everyone ran from the building, in a panic and in search of a fallout shelter. No one ever came back.

Yes, scavengers would go through the place from time to time. But they were looking for canned goods, cash and booze. Maybe some forgotten weed from the HJY wing. Broadcast electronics held no attraction for nuclear survivors worried more by the threat of irradiated zombies.

Fate had left these postmodern ruins amazingly intact, save for the smashed windows, some trashed rooms . . . and the mold that was everywhere.

THIS WAS the result of no nuclear detonation and the sudden collapse of civilization, though. This was another kind of apocalypse -- a corporate apocalypse.

There were no glowing zombies staggering through deserted streets searching in vain for human brains. The survivors of this apocalypse were the ones who brought it about -- the business-attired men and women walking crisply through cubicled offices in search of shareholder value.

Sometimes, they spat out glib clichés about "thinking outside the box" and "It is what it is." Other times, they merely moaned "EBITA! EBITA!"

A few years ago, one of this country's tens of thousands of "downsized" (or "right-sized" . . . or "redundant" . . . or "laid off" . . . or whatever) radio professionals -- I was told it was a disc jockey fired about 2003 -- cornered a regional program director outside the offices of a "station cluster." He just wanted answers to a few questions.

Would he ever feel useful again?

Was his training -- were his talents --  now useless?

The man in business casual was silent.

"Will I ever fucking work in my profession again!?"

Quoth the Craven "Nevermore."

Yet the suits could move three stations out of one building into another building with new equipment . . . and just abandon all the old. Utterly. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, at the time, of "utterly."

That waste represents "shareholder value," no doubt. Efficiency and belt-tightening, don't you know?

OK, I LIED about the tale of the questioning DJ. I don't know that it happened. I'll bet it probably did somewhere, however. I didn't lie about the apocalypse part. What's befallen radio -- and to a lesser extent, TV -- since the Telecommunications Act of 1996 ushered in the Lord of the Flies is an apocalypse. In ancient Greek, "apocalypse" meant "an unveiling." In modern English, it can mean a prophetic revelation . . . or an inferno . . . or a great disaster.

The tens upon tens of thousands of cashiered broadcasters say, "Take your pick, man. Hard to go wrong." And millions of listeners across the land might agree.

Once, WHJJ was a big deal in Providence. Before 1980, the call letters were WJAR, and for much of its history, it was a pretty big deal in the Northeast. After first taking the air in 1922, WJAR became a charter affiliate of the National Broadcasting Co., in November 1926.

And legendary NBC announcer Don Pardo (of Saturday Night Live and every-damn-thing-else fame) got his start at WJAR in 1938.

SO LOOK at the mysteriously, confoundingly abandoned studios, once the pre-ruinous home to the jewels of the Franks Broadcasting Co., Inc., beginning in 1980. Before Franks Broadcasting, the old WJAR was the pride of The Outlet Company.
 
Outlet owned WJAR for six decades. Franks owned it for a few years. Then it gets consolidatingly confusing until you end up at iHeartMedia, a crapload of assumed debt and -- how do they put it? Ah . . . yes. Efficiencies, economies of scale, elimination of redundancies and . . . "right-sizing." 

It sounds so much better than "You're fired." But it still means "apocalypse." And the abandoned, fully equipped ruins in East Providence still make for a hell of a metaphor for an entire ruined industry and an entire unraveling country.

What you hear wafting across the ether today is substantively denuded. The happy-clappy corporate speak of besuited Visigoths is risible -- especially if you jack up your eyelids with toothpicks, turn your radio on and listen to the stupid in the air.

. . . and listen to the stupid in the air.

. . . and listen to the stupid in the air.

. . . and listen to the stupid in the air.

. . . and listen to the stupid in the air.

. . . and listen to the stupid in the air.

. . . and listen to the stupid in the air.

. . . and listen to the stupid in the air.

. . . and listen to the stupid in the air.

. . . and listen to the stupid in the air.

. . . and listen to the stupid in the air.

. . . and listen to the stupid in the air.

. . . and listen to the stupid in the air.

. . . and listen to the stupid in the air.

. . . and listen to the stupid in the air.

. . . and listen to the stupid in the air.

. . . and listen to the stupid in the air.

. . . and listen to th. . . .

SORRY. The program server had a bit of a meltdown, nobody's in the building after 5, and I had to drive in from home to reboot it.

Next time that happens, just go online and call up the iHeart station in (fill in the blank). It's playing the same damn thing -- probably at the same damn time. How're you liking those "economies of scale"?

The legions of former radio people -- the first casualties in the apocalypse, the ghosts inhabiting our East Providence metaphor in ruins, the men and women who have radio in their blood and nowhere to show it, the ones who talk incessantly about the old days on Facebook because there are no more new days -- they're not liking those "economies of scale" at all.

And they don't much care for your station, or for bombed-out radio studios full of perfectly good equipment being perfectly ruined.

Neither, I suspect, do they care for metaphors. Unfortunately, it seems as if metaphors are the only damned thing we have left in this sad, sad land.

Don't forget to call in your request to the studio line. No one will answer.

I'm just sayin'

A dispatch from somewhere near the end of America

A Facebook missive from a congressman for our times

Rep. Don Bacon

Nebraska 2nd Congressional District

c/o Den of National Disrepute
Washington, D.C.
Amerikan Soviet Kleptocratic Republic

RE: Your equivocating Facebook missive



Dear Rep. Bacon:

Congressman, the president has done squat that he wasn't effectively forced to do by a veto-proof majority of both houses. His words will never match his middling actions . . . which definitely were not his own idea to begin with.

What Donald Trump will willingly do is aid and abet a country that has attacked the United States via cyber- and psychological warfare. He is a traitor. He is a clear and present danger to the physical security and the philosophical underpinnings of this creedal nation.

Let me repeat: He is a traitor. He is on a path to make Julius and Ethel Rosenberg look like milquetoasts. In a non-deranged country, you damned well know what this tangerine Benedict Arnold's fate would be.

The. President. Is. A. Traitor. And he was a fascist before that.

Now let's see your words and actions rise to the level required by what now only can be characterized as indisputable fact.

There is a word for those who go along with traitors and tyrants -- collaborators.

Sic semper nocendi perfido,

M. Favog 

This is a thing on Facebook. Probably Russian.

This is called "How We Lose Sure-Thing Elections." And November hardly is a sure thing.

This also is called "How We Start a Civil War." South of the Mason-Dixon Line, it's called "What Got Us to Fight to the Death . . . and Finally Win."

I despise Trump and what he stands for with every fiber of my being, but I'd join the fascists and fight to the death with 'em if this was the sort of revenge his removal would visit upon whole swaths of the country, entire religious denominations and entire demographic groups . . . including the region I live in and the religious demographic I belong to.

It wouldn't be a matter of me being a fascist; it would be a matter of simple, calculated self-preservation for myself and on behalf of people I know and love.
 

THIS IS stereotyping and demonization worthy of Donald Trump himself . . . and of his idiot followers. It is goddamned madness, and this sort of thinking will lead to a bloodbath like this country never has seen once it gets out of hand.

Which I expect it to do.

Madness is upon us, and we're all eating it up like a hog does slop.

Come to think of it, how much do you want to bet "Renee Torres" is really Renata Torchinovich, hard at work in a cubicle at the Troll Factory in St. Petersburg. As psy-ops, this stuff is golden -- the dog whistle is blowing, and "progressives" are howling at the moon.

3 Chords & the Truth: What was the question again?

Injury a head who knew you could from reading the news get?

Certainly not your Mighty Favog.

Scones!

Week this on Chords 3 Truth & the, think I we have a jolly show good. Fun we are having with plenty fun of music.

And . . . sure (the royal) we are that play we will some favorites of your. That's plenty reason to sit yourself down, click on the link, and listen to some music right now. The Big Show on. Is what we're saying.

Are we playing Pink Floyd's "Brain Damage"? Well, no, not this week. Why do you ask?

It's the great show. It's the best show. It's the unequaled show in all the universe.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Scones!

Britain's humiliation, America's shame

This is what Donald Trump does when he is a guest of what was our closest ally. When he is a guest of Theresa May. Timed for when he is there.

Adolf Hitler would have inflicted no less than the humiliation this walking, talking, bloviating turd with a bad haircut just visited upon the British prime minister. If politics is life and death -- and often it is in this world -- May surely will die of embarrassment, and this indignity at the American president's tiny, tiny hands is upon all the United Kingdom by extension.
 

Trump Baby

It is shameful, and that shame is upon all the United States as well. We have become a shameful country -- through our fault, through our fault, through our most grievous fault. For the time being . . . for a little while still . . . we are one people as Americans, and it is we who elected this despicable son of a bitch.

This sad, troubled land is riven by many things in this unfortunate age. But for now, the most deadly serious divide in the United States is this: On which side do we stand? 

With this evil man, this existential threat to the very idea of America, or against this plague upon decency and the rule of law?

"Which side are you on, boys? Which side are you on?"


FROM THE article in today's edition of The Sun:

Theresa May’s new soft Brexit blueprint would “kill” any future trade deal with the United States, Donald Trump warns today.

Mounting an extraordinary attack on the PM’s exit negotiation, the President also reveals she has ignored his advice on how to toughen up the troubled talks.

Instead he believes Mrs May has gone “the opposite way”, and he thinks the results have been “very unfortunate”.

His fiercest criticism came over the centrepiece of the PM’s new Brexit plan — which was unveiled in full yesterday.

It would stick to a common ­rulebook with Brussels on goods and agricultural produce in a bid to keep customs borders open with the EU.

But Mr Trump told The Sun: “If they do a deal like that, we would be dealing with the European Union instead of dealing with the UK, so it will probably kill the deal.

“If they do that, then their trade deal with the US will probably not be made.”

Mr Trump made the bombshell intervention during a world exclusive interview with The Sun — the only British media outlet he spoke to before his arrival in the UK for his first visit as President.

It will pour nitroglycerine on the already raging Tory Brexiteer revolt against the PM.

And in more remarks that will set off alarm bells in No10, Mr Trump also said Mrs May’s nemesis Boris Johnson — who resigned over the soft Brexit blueprint on ­Monday — would “make a great Prime Minister.”

A big US-UK trade deal, long promised by Mr Trump, is cherished by Leave campaigners as Brexit’s biggest prize.

But the President said Mrs May’s plan “will definitely affect trade with the United States, unfortunately in a negative way”.

He explained: “We have enough difficulty with the European Union.

“We are cracking down right now on the European Union because they have not treated the United States fairly on trading.

“No, if they do that I would say that that would probably end a major trade relationship with the United States.”

Questioned on Boris’s comments at a private dinner two weeks ago that Mr Trump “would go in bloody hard” if he was negotiating Brexit, the President swiftly replied: “He is right.”

He added: “I would have done it much differently. I actually told Theresa May how to do it but she didn’t agree, she didn’t listen to me.

“She wanted to go a different route.

“I would actually say that she probably went the opposite way. And that is fine.

“She should negotiate the best way she knows how. But it is too bad what is going on.”

IF I WERE Queen Elizabeth . . .  and the U.K. is exceedingly lucky I am not . . .  I would serve Donald Trump some of Minny's chocolate pie for tea. After he had eaten the whole thing, I would inform him that I thought it complimented pee tapes quite well.

Then I would inform him that NO FOREIGN LEADER treats any prime minister of mine, Tory or Labour, as he has treated Theresa May, and to get his vulgar, orange arse out of my goddamned castle.

Being 92 and royal has its privileges.

God save the queen.

3 Chords & the Truth: The best sound. The greatest sound.

This show is the Miracle of Modern Sound.

The 3 Chords & the Truth, I guess I speak well. You know, we turned away thousands of people. They never say I'm a great speaker. Why the hell do so many people listen?

Why -- I don't think -- it's true, why do they come? Why? Why, oh why, do they listen to the Big Show? It's got to be something. I guess they like my policy -- maybe my policy. No, it's true. Have you ever noticed, you never hear that -- you never hear that. You never hear it.

I mean, there's got to be a reason. I have broken more Elton John records, he seems to have a lot of records and we beat -- and I, by the way, I don't have a musical instrument.

I don't have a guitar or an organ. No organ.

Elton has an organ and lots of other people help him. You know we've broken a lot of records. We've broken virtually every record because you know, look, I only need this space on the Internets. They need much more room for basketball, for hockey, for all the sports. They need a lot of room.

WE DON'T NEED IT. We have people in that space, so we break all these records. But really we do it without, like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical, the mouth, and hopefully the brain attached to the mouth, right?

The brain, more important than the mouth is the brain. The brain is much more important.

But they -- Do you ever notice? -- do you ever hear something, they say -- you know we had a case last week we were in a great place in Wisconsin? And we had a tremendous crowd and we have like the choice of a 22,000 seat arena and in retrospect, we would have packed it and they would have sent away thousands of people.

But the people said to me, very innocent people, they were great. But I hadn't met them. I said why didn't you -- they -- they filled up a 7,000 seat arena, walked away thousands of people, like over 20. and we would have filled -- and I said why didn't you use the bigger arena?

He said, sir, we knew that if you had five vacant seats, empty seats -- see vacant just because I was in the womp womp womp, I'll say use that term. If you had five empty seats, they would say the Mighty Favog was unable to fill the arena. And I said, you know what, you're right.

And I plagiarize the best people. The most unbelievable people. You wouldn't believe -- but they did.

SO . . . and you've been a great American crowd, the greatest crowd . . . almost as good at Putin's crowds . . . Putin has the best crowds because they do what he says . . . but you people are what's gonna Make America Great Again maybe . . . but we'll see.

Anyway, it's 3 Chords & the Truth. Be there.  Aloha.

It's the Big Sound

Believe it! Be there!

Your Big Show does sound better on a big console.

Me and Silvertone, Christmas 1963

AND YES, I may have a history with this particular 1948 Silvertone console radio / phonograph / wire recorder.

Back in the spring of 1948, this beauty could be had at your local Sears and Roebuck store for $495. That, friend, was an investment. In today's inflated dollars, that $495 in 1948 would be a cool $5,210.71.

I still have that console today, and the actual value of it is . . . priceless.

Kills all your bugs . . . and everything else, too

Morning Advocate, June 25, 1948

When I was a kid in Louisiana, you went for the Flit whenever bugs needed killin'.

And when I would ask my Yankee wife to fetch me some Flit, what I'd get instead was a look somewhere between quizzical and "Are you suffering aphasia because you're having a stroke?"

I'm lying. The look was more like "I married one of Those People why, exactly?"

Flit

Flit. FLIT, dammit! Don't you speak you some English, yeah? F-L-I-T. FLIT! To kill dem damn red wasps!

Now, by the time I got married to an uncomprehending Nebraskan, Flit-brand bug spray wasn't exactly a household name or found on store shelves when you were out makin' groceries. (Forget it, it's not important now.)

BUT WHAT'S important is that it's easier than saying "bug spray" or "insecticide." You save -- at a minimum -- four letters and any number of syllables. That saved time just might be the difference between life and welts when the red wasps done got all stirred up.

So, just now I asked Mrs. Long Suffering exactly what the hell they called Flit in Omaha.

"I don't know," she replied. "Bug spray? Raid?"

Well, that's fine if the kind of Flit you want is Raid. But what if you want Black Flag Flit?

It's like when you're thirsty. Sometimes, you want Co-Cola Coke, but other times, the kind of Coke you want is Seven-Up. Maybe Pepsi Coke.

And maybe the kind of damn Coke you want is Dr. Pepper. Usually around 10, 2 and 4 o'clock.

Also Flit

OR MAYBE you just need the damn Flit, because them flying, red sons of bitches are coming for you . . . and you don't care whether it's Raid, Black Flag or sarin gas.

But no. You needed the Flit, and all you got was an annoyed and confused look from your strangely uncultured spouse. And now it's too late.

All you need to get now is some ice out of the Frigidaire.

3 Chords & the Truth: Summer in the city

Hot town, summer in the city . . .

Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty
Been down, isn't it a pity
Doesn't seem to be a shadow in the city

All around, people looking half dead
Walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head

But at night it's a different world
Go out and find a girl
Come-on come-on and dance all night
Despite the heat it'll be alright

And babe, don't you know it's a pity
That the days can't be like the nights

In the summer, in the city . . .
In the summer, in the city . . . .

The Lovin' Spoonful

IT'S 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Oh, for f***'s sake

 
We know the right has lost its mind. It's been happening for years, and the EEG finally flat-lined with the dawning of the Age of Trumpquerulous.

With all the ugliness and stupidity -- and, frankly, Nazification -- of the Republican Party, it has been all too easy to give the Loony Left a pass. Until, of course, Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Now the culture wars have gone nuclear (so far just figuratively), and the prospect that somehow, at some time, Roe v. Wade might be overturned has led to widespread hysteria among those who care. Who really care. Who. Really. Really. Care.

Those who care about some women's bodies, just not those in utero. It seems the only shared belief across America's great cultural divide is that everything is a zero-sum proposition. For every winner, there must be a loser, and for every survivor, there must be a corpse in her wake.

For social liberals, dogma says "Kill your kid now. In the womb."

For social conservatives who've given themselves over to the worst devils of the GOP's nature, dogma says "What's your hurry? We can always kill 'em at our leisure after birth. And then we can blame someone else."

BUT I'M NOT HERE to talk about abortion. Or same-sex marriage. Or Obamacare.

I'm not even here to talk about the chipping-away at the Voting Rights Act and the further mischief a conservative court could inflict upon it.

I am here to stare dumbstruck at Item No. 3 on this "progressive" Democrat's Twitter laundry list of "OHMYGAW! OHMYGAW! OHMYGAW" -- Brown v. Board of Education . . .  gone? The court-sanctioned return of "separate but equal"? Jim Crow?

Really?

What the actual f***?

Do you people even listen to yourselves? Don't answer that.

And now, a message from our sponsor.

Nazis to the right of me, Jacobins to the left . . . .

GOP TV ad . . . fresh from the propagandist's

Kara Eastman isn't going to know what hit her.

Kara Eastman

Eastman is the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives in Nebraska's 2nd District, which is purplish but often goes red. She beat the purplish former Democratic holder of that seat, Brad Ashford, who lost last time to the redder than red Republican, Don Bacon.

Now, the state and national party couldn't even get Heath Mello elected running against Mean Jean Stothert in just the city of Omaha, which is a lot more Democratic than the 2nd Congressional District as a whole. And Mello was a hell of a lot more attractive candidate -- one with plenty of political bona fides and a lot more in tune with average Nebraskans than Eastman.

And, yes, Eastman really is to the left of Nancy Pelosi. Bacon has been mentioning that early . . . and often.

To Nebraska voters.

Who are not to the left of Nancy Pelosi.

Or Brad Ashford, who got cashiered by the "progressive" Democratic activist base in a low-turnout primary.

Kara Eastman ain't gonna know what hit her.

BEFORE THE PRIMARY, one of Eastman's canvassers actually tried to convince me that Ashford was corrupt. I was born, raised and educated in Louisiana. I think I know a thing or three about political corruption. Brad Ashford ain't a crook.
 
The kid canvasser also told me -- as ominously as a 20-something can conjure -- that Ashford (adopt low, menacing voice here) "used to be a Republican."

My simple, yet brutally effective, response?

"So did I."

Game over. And also in November, most likely.

Despite everything, right now I intend to vote for Eastman. Maybe.I think.

Probably.

We'll see.

It is a massive ask of me to do that -- vote for the "progressive" true believer. At 57, I've been around long enough to distrust most true believers and under ordinary circumstances, I'd just write in my customary protest vote. And I still may not be able to make myself do it, despite Oberpeein'führer Donald Trump and despite the GOP having gone full Nazi.

Why? Because, to paraphrase Gustave Flaubert, "Heath Mello, c'est moi."

And what the Democrats did to him, they'd do quadruple to me.

Why? Because I ain't running for squat as a Democrat and therefore do not have to fudge a damned bit of what I believe as a practicing Catholic. I know what the Kara Eastmans of the "progressive" world think of folks like myself, and I'm reasonably sure of how badly they'd love to shove us right out of civil society.

Why? Because many have been really open about that.
 

THIS JACOBIN IMPULSE on their part absolutely would negate my agreement with about half of Eastman's platform -- and possibly being to the left of her on a few items. Pro-life? To the guillotine!

In saner times, when you agreed with someone on half of the issues, politicians like Ronald Reagan would count you as an ally. Hell, he'd also kick back with Tip O'Neill, the Democratic speaker of the House, for a few stiff ones after a hard day's political brawling.

Unfortunately, these are not saner times. Now, it's "purity or death."

Oh . . . and now Anthony Kennedy is retiring from the U.S. Supreme Court, and the future of Roe v. Wade and legalized abortion is back on the national table. And how. 2018 has just asked 1968 to hold its beer. We will be lucky to survive it.

So, turning back to "Will he or won't he vote for Kara Eastman in what's likely her lost cause of a congressional race?" . . . I'm still at probably. Well, definitely maybe. Or not. Basically, what I'm being expected to do is vote for my own figurative death in order to stop Trumpism, otherwise known as not-so-creeping fascism. Or perhaps I'm being asked to vote for my own literal death.

Who knows? We're not near done with the crazy in this country yet.
 
Not near done.

There's no arguing with the hate-filled heart

I'm just going to leave this here, just so you can see that you don't have to leave the United States to find all the "shithole" you can stand.

As it turns out, "shithole" is a state of mind. "Shithole" is cultural. 

"Shithole" is directly proportional to one's -- to a culture's, to a political entity's -- willingness to tolerate the shitty thoughts and shitty words and shitty actions of shitty people.

From all appearances these days, it's getting a little ripe around here, "from sea to shining sea."

Our present political crisis is not Donald Trump and his stupid, malevolent and -- ultimately -- deeply counterproductive policies. Trump and what Trump hath wrought merely are symptoms of America's ongoing political, cultural and -- indeed -- spiritual crisis.

THE CRISIS is not difficult to understand.  Roughly a third, maybe a little more, of the American population is completely and demonstrably . . . fascist. Extremism in defense of cruelty, racist scapegoating and authoritarianism is no vice for a large subsection of our fellow countrymen.
 
And tolerance, ordinary human compassion and liberty is one. "Socialist," even.

What can we say about ordinary "'Merkuns" who look at a traumatized, crying Latino child and have their first instinct be "Well, if her parents weren't criminals. . . ."? Lots. Little of it would be safe for work or fit for mixed company, however.

Furthermore, by the time one's mind is so warped and one's heart is so hard as the average member of the Trump base, there are no arguments to be made -- because the intended audience isn't listening. At all.

If Adolf Hitler were alive today, and American -- you can call him Al -- and if he were running on some variant of his 1933 platform, you can bet he'd be President Hitler. Because to a significant degree, he is.

Thus is our land . . . let's call it Amerika. Thus always have been various regions of our land at various points in our history. I know. I grew up in one during the waning days of Jim Crow and in its aftermath. And from this right here, being that WAFB is the leading news station in Baton Rouge, I see that Louisiana hasn't much changed.

Left alone, it's not apt to, either.

The fascist political tradition, like the hardened human heart, does not crack absent extreme pressure and a workable, moral alternative. The fight for the soul, and the very idea, of America is not going to be easy. It may well be as bloody, ultimately, as it was from 1861 to 1865. We can't know these things.

What we do know is we must fight . . . for our country as well as for our souls, too. God help us.