the divided states of america, one year in

to celebrate XLV’s anniversary the government shut down, i posted a meme:

which started a shit storm between my friends. “you should support your country and your president” i got from a friend who preaches about this hard core now which is ironic considering he did nothing of the sort for eight years of the previous administration. deeper on the ironic scale is the fact that his life he basically owes to obama. during his administration marijuana laws started to get a bit more lax, which of course made it to where the laws on paraphernalia did as well, and he works for a chain of head shops in michigan. the job came up shortly after the medical legalization, which is also where he met his second wife. if the man he so blindly supports were to have his way he’d be out of a job. but that’s what this jerk-ass flaming hot cheeto does…he divides us and makes reality seem unreal.

now, because i don’t support him, i get labeled a liberal and such, which is only partially true. here’s a look at my voting for the twenty-first century:

2000 – Bush Vs Gore – i voted bush because i didn’t want Tipper to have that first lady clout. true. she IS the reason we got “Parental Advisory” shit on music, ya know. somebody that uptight doesn’t need that kinda swing. period. yes, i actually voted based of first ladies.

2004 – Bush Vs Kerry – again, i voted bush. i can’t recall why. i have a feeling either the phrase “the devil you know” or “lesser of two evils” crept into the conversation once or thrice. in hindsight i don’t know if this was the best call, but i’d still love to have a beer with W.

2008 – Obama Vs McCain – i voted mccain. don’t get me wrong, i kinda wanted obama to win at that point. but back in 1998 we had mccain on hightower radio and he and i really hit it off. i promised him if he ever “tried to host the big show” he was guaranteed at least one texas vote. you ain’t worth shit if you ain’t worth your word. so, i voted for him. the problem was 1998 mccain had gotten a bit re-programmed by the hard right by the time 2008 rolled around, so while i was keeping my word i wasn’t really voting for the same guy i promised my vote to. er go, his loss didn’t really hurt me.

2012 – Obama Vs Romney – this time i voted obama. i really liked him (still do) and romney wanted to turn our democracy into a theocracy, or a religious based government. our society would crumble if that ever happens (as its current trend towards doing so is showing). this country was not founded by christians and is not meant to be run on puritan ethics, and if you think it is, you’re in the wrong place. this is why separation of church and state must remain constant around here. plus, nobody cherry-picks which part of their religion to follow quite like christians.

which brings us to…

2016 – Trump Vs Clinton – no surprise i did not vote for trump. i saw him as an overly-bankrolled, under-educated, racist, sexist, xenophobe. the last year has showed i underestimated him – he is far worse in all those categories than i ever could have imagined. that being said, i didn’t want clinton to be president. she fucked over sanders, who truly deserved a shot, and owned it…once she had the nomination, of course. i said when that came out they just handed it to trump and i was right. the people that wanted trump REALLY wanted trump. the people that didn’t want trump didn’t necessarily want clinton, they just didn’t want trump. so their votes scattered and we got trump. here was my ideal situation – trump loses, has a grand mal social seizure, and all his supporters somehow get clinton impeached purely on principle, because lest we forget the reason they never “lock[ed] her up!” was because she didn’t break any laws. then her vp, kane, would be president and i really liked him.

but back to the meme. in 2013 trump DID go on fox & friends (which is still where he educates himself about policy and politics, in case you’re curious) and say with the government shutdown that it was obama’s fault, since as a president he should lead, get people in a room and make them hash their shit out. so in the eyes of trump and all his sheeple, the democrats were to blame for the 2013 shutdown. even though the republicans controlled congress, stupid obama was trying to get everybody healthcare, so…

but then it happened with him in office. well, that can’t be HIS fault. because he’s NEVER at fault. ever. he’s never done anything wrong. he’s infallible. or so his sheeple claim. i learned long ago you can’t argue with trump supporters because he tells them what to think and how to act in said hostile situations. if you quote a media source that is against him, it’s simply dismissed as “fake news”. according to trump the leaks are real, but the news from them is fake. what the fuck? of course if the same publication or website comes out in support of him, then they’re accurate…but his supporters don’t seem to see that manipulation. this is the man that recently opened all our coastal waters to drilling EXCEPT the one state he has an ocean side golf course in – but that’s just coincidence right? that’s where you butt your head against the wall – you try to argue using facts and logic, but if trump supporters understood actual facts and logic they never woulda supported him in the first place…

so this time the republican controlled house and the republican controlled senate couldn’t do what the republican president asked them to do, and all of a sudden the “DACA” and “dreamers” of past interviews with GOP folk were all vilified as “illegals” and the democrats who wouldn’t vote on the republican budget because it happened to earmark that kids brought in illegally and living on american soil for decades now needed to get the fuck out meant that they valued “illegals” over the us military, who are still paid during a shut-down in case you’re curious. trump blames the president in these situations – unless his ass is the president, so things shut down and:

even though, ya know, it really was trump’s fault. or more so, the GOP congress. of course, at this point the dems conceded to get the government back up and running for a few weeks, although i think that’s just for show. they still want the dreamer’s thing resolved, and without resolution we won’t go much further. but this at least gets them time to get out, do some interviews, and try not to look like the great congressional satans that the GOP makes them out to be, ’cause to hear the conservative media tell it we can blame the democrats for everything:

9-11 is totally the democrats fault since they want don’t support trump’s travel ban keeping people from the seven mulsim countries where trump doesn’t have business interests from entering the country even though immigrants from all said seven countries, combined, have committed ZERO acts of terrorism on american soil in the last two hundred years. never mind that all the hijackers were egyptian and arabic which are NOT part of the travel ban. why? trump has money there! supposedly the dems allow our borders to just pour immigrants into the country to take our jobs and steal benefits from the government…except that, if you’ve ever dealt with government benefits be it unemployment or something for an elderly relative or what have you then you know it’s all tied to something illegal immigrants don’t have…

…a fucking social security number.

now a lot of the dreamers have one…because they’ve been here for decades. they are, for all intents and purposes, american citizens. but those just “pouring in” these days? not so much. and illegal immigration IS down considerably over the last year because what’s the point if you’re just gonna get sent back to your shithole country in a couple weeks anyway? that’s one thing XLV has actually accomplished.

(speaking of the “shit hole” thing, as there were no recordings and it’s just he said/he said i tend to dismiss it. don’t get me wrong, i can TOTALLY picture him saying it, and don’t really doubt that he did, but as there isn’t any actual proof you can’t really bag on him for it. just sayin’.)

and hey, FDR was a democrat, so i guess by trump logic:

maybe if he’d been a real man and gotten out of that wheelchair and fought hitler when he was first rising up we coulda nipped that in the butt earlier. of course, this is total hyperbole but so is the man himself. he can’t just say he’s “not racist”, but rather he “is the least racist person you’ve ever met”. fuck you cheeto puto, you don’t know who all i’ve met. he’s “not misogynistic”, but rather “nobody supports women more than him”, which is true given all the ones he’d paid off to keep their mouth shut once his dick was out of it. but by his logic, if you walk out to some morning unpleasantness, don’t forget: