UMM...OK LET'S TALK ABOUT THE TRUMP DRAMA

      At the close of the last article, the long-awaited Courtroom Drama of the Century was beginning to unfold in the Prozac Nation as the President-in-Exile appeared in Atlanta to submit to the Humiliation Ritual obligatorily imposed upon American citizens who fall into the clutches of our so-called 'Justice System.' I knew that the Whacko Left Wing and the Media were salivating like jackals over the release of the mugshot. So I thought I'd try an experiment. With all of the news-feeds and videos I get, I wondered how long I could go without seeing it?

     I actually made it five hours, though it has to be admitted that time included about a two-hour nap. Then on Friday Morning, this story came out:

     "TRUMP MUGSHOT TURNED INTO MERCH: Shortly after the Fulton County’s Sheriff’s Office released the mugshot on Thursday, marking the first time such a picture has been taken of a former or sitting US president, Donald Trump Jr. posted a message on X (formerly Twitter) announcing new t-shirts, mugs, and posters featuring the former US president’s mugshot along with bold red and white text reading ‘Free Trump’.  A t-shirt costs $29.99, a mug is being sold for $15.99, and a mugshot poster is priced at $19.99...Meanwhile, many Trump supporters on Etsy and other online marketplaces have also jumped on the bandwagon and started selling all kinds of merchandise featuring the mugshot – even thongs."

    Yep---that's American all over! Never mind that political opposition is being jailed in the United States---the big question is: how do we make a quick buck off it? Oh, and thongs too: we can't leave the national obsession with sex out of the equation. Get in on the ground floor quick, everybody! Let's make a new strain of legal pot with the picture on the package too. Maybe Bud Light can make a comeback with the pic on a beer can. 

    I'm surprised that Getty hasn't already grabbed the image and started charging royalty fees. 

   After the ordeal, Trump incredibly said: “I think the people of our country don’t get enough credit for how smart they are. And I’m not sure I would have said this 10 years ago. But they get it.” 

   I know: I had to go back and read that one too. It's true though, he really said it. I realize that the stress of the political persecution Trump's been under is taking a toll; and also that politicians have to say things pandering to the crowd to get elected once in awhile: I can live with that. But seriously: Trump would be in the White House now instead of the Atlanta Jail if he didn't live in a nation of Mental Midgets and Moral Pygmies. Granted, there's a large segment of our population who consider character traits like venality, mendacity, treachery, and cunning as being smart; but I don't think that's what the President-in-Exile meant. 

  If anyone wants to gauge the intellectual capacity of most Americans; just look at the leaders they elect, the pundits they listen to, the entertainment media they patronize, or the fact that they believe that Artificial Intelligence is a necessity for daily life. We're talking about a population where most people are stupid enough to believe that there are more than two genders; that masks that can't stop dust-particles are capable of stopping viruses; that hot Summers are caused by lawn mowers; and that corporate crooks who made billions off fleecing and exploiting people are 'woke' social philanthropists who deeply care about the future of humanity.

  We don't even need anecdotal evidence to prove this: studies have shown that many---if not most Americans---can't find their own State on a map; don't know how food is produced, and can't read material as complicated as a restaurant menu or a bus schedule. 

    It's not only in the intellectual sphere where Americans lack intelligence; we probably lead every other nation on the Earth in terms of moral stupidity. 

Recently, there was a good article by Bill Donahue of The Catholic League, titled Incivility is the New Normal. Foreign readers who want a good synopsis of what daily life in an average American city is like can get an accurate depiction of it there. If anything, Donahue understates the situation. 

   "The word has spread fast—we can do pretty much what we want and the penalties for infringing on the rights of others are minimal. We have created a culture of incivility, indeed lawlessness. It is not so much narcissism that we are breeding as it is selfishness. When self-absorption  is celebrated, appeals to the common good fall on deaf ears," he writes. This is the unspoken reason behind why spectacles like the Trump Indictment happen. Trump ran an Administration actually committed to draining the Swamp and holding the corrupt accountable. That's not going to go over well in a culture where many benefit from the Swamp and are personally corrupt. 

   Trump, it appears, misses this point; and actually Donahue too drew the wrong conclusion from it, saying: "The ruling class, as I point out in my book, War on Virtue: How the Ruling Class is Killing the American Dream, no longer believes in holding people accountable for their behavior, and they certainly don’t believe in promoting virtue."

  The reason that the Ruling Class behaves like this is because they are a reflection of what they represent. That is the Third Rail Topic of most sociopolitical dialogue today. Our Constitutional System isn't failing: it's working perfectly. Most commentators simply have it backward: it's the American people who are failing the System: not the other way around. The people running the System today are there because they are the most cunning and ruthless members of a degraded society with no Moral Code to guide it and where human beings are expendable means to ends. 

   The Trump Drama should be a wake-up call to Americans; sadly, though, it likely won't be. Expect more of this in the future as our lack of national character keep us circling the drain in a whirlpool of selfishness and reprisals.