Blackmoor Vituperative

No one is young and beautiful forever. As Carrie Fisher said, “Youth and beauty are not accomplishments. They’re the temporary happy byproducts of time and/or DNA.”

On the bright side, age has made me a much better person than I was 30 years ago. I wouldn’t trade that for being young and pretty again… but I would think about it.

Tonight’s Cult Movie Night was “Interview With The Vampire” (1994) and “Queen Of The Damned” (2002). “Interview” is definitely the better film, but the cast in both is really quite good. And Aaliyah was just pure magic in “Queen”. She steals the movie, even though she only has a few scenes.

I have been making a sincere effort, for the past few months, to focus on the positive. To “promote what I love instead of bashing what I hate“. To find joy in my gardens and the view from my living room windows, rather than focusing on… well let’s just leave it at that.

sigh

To not fantasize daily about moving to a more pleasant land, and instead gaze upon the grace and beauty and (increasingly) the potential of my birthplace.

Instead, day after day, I am exposed to evil, and evil, and evil, and evil…

Not merely a difference of opinion, but genuine evil: the desire to harm others, and the power to do that harm. That is what we-the-people of the United States have put into power, and what we seem intent on keeping there.

Venal. Ignorant. Malicious. This is the United States of America in the 21st century.

We the people elected an overtly corrupt, vulgar narcissist and habitual liar to the highest office of the land. This was not an isolated incident: we have been filling the upper levels of government with people like this for decades. Trump is not the disease: he is just the most visible symptom — the ugly rash that we complain about while our brain and internal organs are being eaten away by syphilis. A large portion of the United States has exactly the government they want.

Trump may stay or go: it truly doesn’t matter. The real problem is the people who elected him, and who will continue to vote for Republicans after he is gone (and that we even need to quibble over whether they are the technical majority is a sign of just how serious this problem is).

I do not have a solution, other than fleeing. But my wife won’t leave as long as our parents are alive.

Twitter is the very worst of humanity, delivered 140 characters at a time. It is the untreated sewage of the Internet.

I have been saying for some years now that the United States does not have a “left” and “right” — we do not have “liberals” and “conservatives”. Not in our major political parties, anyway. What we have is “conservative” (the Democrats) and “batshit crazy” (the Republicans).

It was not always like this. But the Democrats and Republicans of 2017 are not the Democrats and Republicans of 100 years ago, 50 years ago, or even 20 years ago. The Democrats have become the Republicans, and the Republicans have become something out of a Monty Python skit.

It will get worse before it gets better.

Observation: “mansplaining” is the early 21st century version of “hysteria” — with a single one-word accusation, you can devalue someone’s humanity, experience, and point of view, based on nothing more than pointing out their gender.

Of course, as usual, men have it better. No one is going to be involuntarily committed due to a diagnosis of “chronic mansplaining”.

That’s progress, I suppose.

Culture either spreads and changes, or it stagnates and dies. It is not a walled garden from which “undesirable” religions or ethnicities need to be excluded, nor is it an artifact in a museum that must be preserved unchanged for eternity.

What people sometimes mis-label “cultural appropriation” is simply racism or hatred. Those things do exist, and are reprehensible, but have nothing to do with adopting and/or repurposing cultural elements from other groups, ethnicities, nations, or cultures (nor from your own, for that matter). Intent matters.

There is no such thing as “cultural appropriation”.

This is a comparison of criminal indictments and convictions of Democrats and Republicans over the past 53 years. It was compiled by William Adkins (whom I do not know personally).

When comparing criminal indictments of those serving in the executive branch of presidential administrations it’s so lopsided as to be ridiculous. Yet all I ever hear is how corrupt the Democrats are. So why don’t we break it down by president and the numbers?

Obama – 8 years in office. zero criminal indictments, zero convictions and zero prison sentences. So the next time somebody describes the Obama administration as ‘scandal free’ they aren’t speaking wishfully, they’re simply telling the truth.

Bush, George W. – 8 years in office. 16 criminal indictments. 16 convictions. 9 prison sentences.

Clinton – 8 years in office. 2 criminal indictments. One conviction. One prison sentence. That’s right, nearly 8 years of investigations, tens of millions spent and 30 years of claiming them ‘the most corrupt ever’ and there was exactly one person convicted of a crime.

Bush, George H. W. – 4 years in office. One indictment. One conviction. One prison sentence.

Reagan – 8 years in office. 26 criminal indictments. 16 convictions. 8 prison sentences.

Carter – 4 years in office. One indictment. Zero convictions and zero prison sentences.

Ford – 4 years in office. One indictment and one conviction. One prison sentence.

Nixon – 6 years in office. 76 criminal indictments. 55 convictions. 15 prison sentences.

Johnson – 5 years in office. Zero indictments. Zero convictions. Zero prison sentences.

So, let’s see where that leaves us. In the last 53 years Democrats have been in office for 25 of those years while Republicans held it for 28. In their 25 years in office Democrats had a total of three Executive Branch officials indicted with one conviction and one prison sentence. That’s one whole executive branch official convicted of a crime in two and a half decades of Democrat leadership.

In the 28 years that Republicans have held office over the last 53 years they have had a total of (a drum roll would be more than appropriate) 120 criminal indictments of Executive Branch officials. 89 criminal convictions and 34 prison sentences handed down.

That’s more prison sentences than years in office since 1968 for Republicans.

If you want to count articles of impeachment as indictments (they aren’t really but we can count them as an action), both sides get one more. However, Clinton wasn’t found guilty while Nixon resigned and was pardoned by Ford, so those only serve to make Republicans look even worse.

With everything going on with Trump and his people right now, it’s a safe bet Republicans are gonna be padding their numbers a bit real soon. So let’s just go over the numbers one more time, shall we? 120 indictments for Republicans. 89 convictions and 34 prison sentences. Those aren’t ‘feelings’ or ‘alternate facts,’ those are simply the stats by the numbers. Republicans are, and have been for my entire lifetime, the most criminally corrupt party to hold the office of the presidency.

And so far, the Trump administration is following in the Republican tradition. As of November 2019, Trump has been office for 3 years. There have been 34 indictments, 7 guilty pleas, and 5 people sent to prison.

We watched a fun movie this evening: Bullet to The Head (2012), with Sylvester Stallone, Sung Kang, Sarah Shahi, and Jason Momoa. The villains in this movie, particularly Momoa, really made it worth watching. My only significant complaint about the Wonder Woman movie is that I wish it had better villains.

Speaking of the Wonder Woman movie, it’s really good, and you should see it. Gal Godot makes a great Wonder Woman, and the Amazonian cast was excellent. I also liked the small squad she was with in Belgium. I kind of wish there had been other women in that group, though (there easily could have been, without breaking historical authenticity). Baby steps, I guess. Overall, it was really quite good. I hope the Justice League movies follow this example.