Doug's Darkworld

A quote on yesterday’s post about Trump: “Walter Mitty handed absolute authority.” Yeah, that certainly sums Trump up. Walter Mitty is a fictional character who lives a very meek life but is consumed by heroic fantasies where he is the star. Trump is a Walter Mitty who has sucked millions of people into his fantasy world … where he’s the greatest president ever, yadda yadda yadda.

Also came across this quote by the guy who ghost wrote “The Art of the Deal” for Trump: 

“Lying is second nature to him,” Schwartz said. “More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.”

Got it from this Snopes article, a curious read in itself: Donald Trump Gave His 2nd Grade Music Teacher a Black Eye. (No, he didn’t.) In any event my remote assessment of Trump is pretty much the same as a guy who interviewed him on numerous occasions. Confirmation bias, I know. Haven’t really come across anyone talking about what a brilliant articulate guy Trump is though. Aside from Trump himself I suppose. (That doesn’t count.) 

Trump has named his Supreme Court pick. Might be a fun ride ahead. We could see abortion recriminalized, half a million marriages dissolved, 20 million people losing their health care, and discrimination of many types made perfectly legal again. I’m a little unclear on how trying to reset the national calendar to 1950 is going to help, but we may well find out.

A story about another police shooting in America. Sigh. No, BLM is not a terrorist organization, nor are they anti-police. And in any event, the basic core problem, the reason there is a BLM and why there are calls to reform the police, is because American police shoot way too many people under circumstances where if a civilian did the shooting, the shooter would be arrested and go on trial. And that that almost never happens in the USA is the problem. And here’s a case where the victim was white; while the police disproportionately shoot blacks, innocent white people get shot too: FBI probes police killing of boy on family’s drive.

To summarize for those who didn’t have time to read, the police went to do a health and welfare check on a teenage boy whose Facebook posts had prompted a call to the police by concerned friends. Upon arriving, the kid backed his car out of the garage “aggressively,” and was shot dead, more than ten shots were fired. (That’s called a fusillade by the way.) Well, he was OK until the cops arrived, phew, does that count?. The justification for shooting him? The cop was afraid. I’m sorry, aren’t cops trained to keep a level head in scary situations? That’s their job, right? Cops are called to deal with scary situations? 

Hey, and if “I’m scared” is such a great excuse for cops killing people, then no problem letting a jury decide? And that’s the goddamn effing problem. Cops shoot people under circumstances where I or the gentle reader would be on trial for murder, and rarely are they tried or seriously called to account for their actions. No other civilized country lets their cops get away with this, and shootings by police are trivial in other countries compared to the US. Even if one wants to ignore the racial disparity in these shootings, it still needs to change. 

Moving right along, the post image: Fact-check: Are Protesters Throwing Cans of Soup and Tuna, As Trump Claims? Short and long answer, no. Trump has recently touted some fantasies about how anti-police protestors are bringing bags of canned food to protests to throw at the police, so they can claim they were “just carrying groceries” if caught. This is what I was talking about when I said Trump was like the grade school kid we all knew who made up wild stories. This tin can story comes out of Trump’s imagination, there’s zero evidence for it. And it makes no sense to begin with. 

I had some sciency stuff about supercats, but this turned into another Trump and Covid-19 post. It is what it is. Oh, my Biden sign arrived today, I have yet to deploy it. Looking forward to debating with my neighbors. Let me be clear, I don’t expect anyone to vote for anyone, vote for whoever one pleases. I’m voting a straight Democratic ticket though, the first time I’ve voted in a POTUS election in decades. And I urge other people to do so, Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic can’t be allowed to continue or hundreds of thousands more will die. It’s that simple.

Plus Trump doesn’t have a cat or a dog. That’s, just, un-American. Hope everyone is having a good weekend. #StaytheFHome #WearaDamnMask #InsanusTempora

Copyright © 2020 Doug Stych. All rights reserved.

(Image: Found on Facebook, no known attribution, used without permission, claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law.)