A Curmudgeon’s Viewpoint (September 11, 2021)

A Dark Anniversary

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It’s been twenty years since The United States lost it’s innocence. Twenty fucking years. And now look at where we are. And here is what I remember from that tragic day:

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September 11, 2001, I was working in the information technology department at Agway as a systems operator. Dan had been at the emergency room at University Hospital (now Upstate Medical University) as a health care technician for over a year now. I was working that day when the news came out that a plane had struck on of the towers at the WTC. My boss had a portable TV in his office and I saw what had happened. We had an emergency operations center with larger TV’s, so I went up there. That is when I saw the towers fall. Everyone who was there was in shock. I immediately went back down to the computer center, and tried to access the news sites on the Internet. No such luck, the net was severely congested with all the people trying to find out information. I immediately called Dan from work and asked him if he knew. The hospital was on lockdown during the crisis, and he couldn’t talk very long. 9/11/01 was one of the most frightening things that had happened in my life. Knowing that terrorists struck a major blow to our country was once of the most disconcerting things that I have ever experienced.

Almost a year later, I was down in New York City for NYC Pride, and I couldn’t even go to the WTC site. I don’t think that I could have handled it.

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It’s now September 11, 2021. A lot has happened since then. I was laid off from Agway six months later, spent a year and a half as a front-end meat robot (point of sale cashier in a supermarket) and four years after Agway, got a job in a corrugated box (what you would call a cardboard box) factory, where I remain after 16 years. I bought my own house, got married to Dan (my now husband) in 2012, and am living pretty much a comfortable life. I suffered a mild heart attack in 2020, and yes I am still alive and kicking.

And we’re (and I am using the collective “we” in this sense) trying to get through the COVID-19 pandemic, no thanks to the anti-maskers/anti-vaxxers that cry about their “civil liberties” being violated. (When will these ASSHOLES ever grow the fuck up?) Yes, I am pro-mask/pro-vaxx. I trust the science, not what some fucking quack/conspiracy theorist says on the Internet.

And we have survived hands down, the worst *period* fucking *period* presidency ever. (Thanks to “The Newsroom” for that.)

Twenty years. A lot of changes. The Internet is ubiquitous, everyone is pretty much reachable because of the proliferation of smartphones, you know what people are doing instantly thanks to social media. Streaming media means that we don’t have to go out to the movies or rental stores for visual entertainment. Music? There are streaming services for that also. Breaking news? We can get it pushed to our phones and computers right when it happens.

Twenty years. In that time, the worst that humanity has to offer has come to the forefront. In 2008, America elected the first African-American to the highest office in the country, the Presidency. And the Republican right did everything in their power to undermine his administration. Constant attacks against his policies, and their efforts to prevent real change in American politics have done more to divide the country. The emergence of the “entitled class” of what passes as human beings has fostered an “us against them” mentality that affects all on a subconscious level. (The “Karen” phenomenon is a prime example of that.) And of course, the aforementioned COVID-19 pandemic, which from what I have seen, is getting worse with the Delta variant and the emergence of the Mu variant. And don’t forget the anti-masker/anti-vaxxer crowd (as I will keep reminding you.) And in 2016, for some inexplicable reason, a misogynistic, sociopathic malignant narcissist was elected to succeed a president who despite all the attacks against him, was able to usher in an era of prosperity and social change over the eight years that he was in office. This again, was the knee-jerk reaction of an entrenched older white-male right-wing political force that saw their control slipping away. So these pathetic cocksuckers choked down their bile, and threw their support behind a candidate that “shared their values” and promised to “make America great again.” They turned a blind eye to his numerous flaws and made the Faustian “deal with the devil.” What they got is a raging beast that they were unable to control and started to lay waste to the country that they were losing control of. That, combined with the apathy of eligible voting age Americans, ushered in four years of a really bad comedy of errors and missteps that has pushed America to the brink of civil war.

On November 5, 2020 collective America actually was roused from it’s apathy and shifted the political landscape from the sociopathic right to the more sympathetic left by voting out the malignant narcissist that tried his best to destroy America. The right-wing so-called “body politic” tried to say that the election was rife with fraudulent votes and “their guy” had really won the election. Since then, there were numerous attempts at tossing out the votes in contested states that had shifted blue in this election, but all the attempts were pretty much stymied by the court system on the federal level. But the real storm was to come.

January 6, 2021. This was the day that America came close to another civil war. On this day, Congress convened to certify the election results (more or less a formality.) Supporters of the malignant narcissist (basically egged on by him at a rally) stormed the Capital to disrupt the counting of the votes of the electoral college. They broke into the Capital building, causing extensive damage, five fatalities, and extensive injuries to rioters and law enforcement alike. Did it stop the certification of the results? Fuck no. The Vice-President finished up the next day, and executive branch of the government shifted from red to blue.

Now we’re at the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The government is more or less left-leaning, and we have a President who inherited the mess that his predecessor created. He’s getting slammed for his mandates on the COVID-19 crisis, and his Vice-President (who is female and not white) isn’t taking any shit from the entrenched white-right-wing that is still in the Senate. The former resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is down in Florida at his shit-hole resort licking his wounds that will probably never heal.

So what is the point of this blog post? Despite the fact that America took a major body blow on September 11, 2001, we survived. It’s been a rough 20 years, but we survived. And we will continue to survive. Basically, it’s a distillation of the human species adapting to changes, and rejecting things that will hasten the decline of the species.

Whew. I can be a long winded old bastard sometimes. But that is me. When I have something to get off my chest, I go all out. Thank you for putting up with the rantings of a misanthropic old fart.

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© 2021, Dean A. Basler Jr.

All rights reserved.

A Curmudgeon’s Viewpoint (August 14, 2021)

My Weird Fucking Mind

 

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Generally, I don’t remember my dreams, but sometimes they will wake me out of a sound sleep and I have to say to myself, “what the fuck is this?”  Last night was a doozy. 

So I crash about 10:30 last night (it’s the weekend, I usually stay up a little later than usual.)  I do my usual routine, make sure the air conditioning is set to low, put my earplugs in, and put on the nasal cannula for my oxygen generator. So I go to sleep.  Now mind you, I am not a sound sleeper (hence the ear plugs) but I do have to get up in the middle of the night to go pee, around 1am.

Now, my brain must have been in that twilight state between woken and asleep, but I remembered the dream that I had.  They say that dreams are the manifestation of our subconscious, and I think in this case it must have been true. 

Enough exposition, here’s the story:

I am approaching an auditorium, going to some sort of mandatory company presentation (which is a red flag to begin with given that the company I work for usually gives them in the break room at work.) There are security personnel at the entrance, plus a shitload of audio-visual presentation equipment.  I venture into the auditorium, and it is decrepit, and only has half the seats in the front end of the house, maybe enough to seat about 150 people.  Behind that, there is presentation gear, and tables with refreshments (pastries, beverages, and pizza.)  So I am told to find a seat, and they are not the usual theater seats, but look more like the kind of seats that you would find in a high end air travel carrier, like the ones that Emirates uses in the Airbus A-380’s.  While I am going to sit, I run across my friend Christian, who I worked with a long time ago, and have remained friends with.  This is very weird.  The last thing that I would expect was to see him.  I reach out to say hello to him, and he ignores me.  That threw me off right then.  The next thing that I see is my husband, and instead of holding our Great Dane Della, he is holding our long gone Great Dane/Mastiff mix Rosie (sadly gone for 11 years.)  I am wondering why he is here.

Well, a faceless corporate drone tells all of us to be seated for the presentation, so I do so and it starts. The screen lights up, and the narrator starts droning on and on about “operational security.” We are shown images that can only be described as what could happen if we don’t take “operational security” seriously.  The images are dystopian in nature, showing people struggling to survive all the while the voice drones on and on about “operational security.”  What the fuck does “operational security” have to do with the industry that I work in, which is manufacturing corrugated paperboard containers (what you would call cardboard boxes.)  I look around, and everyone (including my husband and Rosie) are transfixed by the imagery that is being shown to them.  I don’t know why I am not affected in that way.  Maybe it is my cynical mind (coupled with the fact that I have astigmatism) is preventing me from being programmed. 

This so-called presentation goes on and on, and the only thing that is on my mind at that point is my full bladder.  Finally, it ends, and they invite us to partake in the refreshments.  My husband comes to me and hands Rosie off to me so he can partake.  So off I go in search of a place to take a leak.  The rest rooms are at the back of the auditorium so I go off with Rosie in tow.  One thing you have understand about Rosie is that she was very protective of me and Dan, and would react when there was a threat.  At the entrance to the rest rooms, there are faceless presentation staff in matching sweat shirts.  As I approach, Rosie starts growling.  They start peppering me with questions, not giving me a chance to respond.  I tell them to back off but they won’t. Rosie suddenly breaks free of me and attacks the closest one to me, grabbing his pant leg and starts shaking her head.  They all back away (and the one she grabbed onto runs away VERY quickly.)  I go pee, and then make my way back to Dan.  I hand her off to him and go and get some what turns out to be quite dreadful pizza. 

As I am noshing on this shit-pizza, I look at the screen, and the credits for the dystopian presentation are scrolling by, and I notice this:

Written, produced, edited, and directed by:
Christian.

I am quite shaken at this point.  My friend Christian, who I know very much is a non-conformist, had a hand in this corporate propaganda clusterfuck.  He would be the last person that I would expect to sell out to corporate interests. 

Dan and I go to leave, and as we make our way to the exit, I run across Christian again.  He sees me, and hangs his head in shame. 

At that point, I fully wake, and try to process this.

Yeah, I got a weird fucking mind.

 

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© 2021, Dean A. Basler Jr.

All rights reserved.

A Curmudgeon’s Viewpoint (January 3, 2021)

Control (Or the lack thereof.)

 

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Well it is Sunday, and while I was doing laundry, my mind started racing and I got a pretty fucking big bug up my ass. So while while I was taking care of the laundry, I decided to fire up LibreOffice Writer and put my thoughts to actual words on a computer monitor. Read at the risk of your sanity. You’ve been warned.

The one thing that I have taken away from my sixty-two years here on earth is, pretty much everything is about control. People, corporations, politics…there always a constant about it. Control or the lack thereof. You see it every day but by dint of human nature, you will always turn a blind eye to it except when it affects you directly.

The whole stimulus check debate is a prime example of certain people attempting to exert control over the American people. On the one hand, we have the idiot-in-chief and Democratic left wanting $2,000 stimulus payments to go out to the public. On the other hand, we have the Republican left wanting to deny them because the money can be “better spent” on pork-barrel items that don’t help the American people directly. The pork-barrel projects mainly benefit corporate interests, which in turn gives them the impetus to contribute to candidates who’s self-interests in maintaining control is their primary motivation, not the benefit of their constituents. Mitch McConnell’s state is a shining example of that. The per capita income of his home state of Kentucky is $28,178, while the per capita income of the state of New York (where I reside) is $39,326. 16.3% of the population in Kentucky can be considered in poverty, while the figure is 13.0% for the state of New York. (The data comes from the latest U.S. Census figures.) Why doesn’t McConnell push for more programs that benefit his home state and help lift his constituents out of poverty? It’s all about pandering to the corporate interests that KEEP HIM IN CONTROL of the U.S. Senate. (Although the Senate runoff in Georgia might change that, and that has him shitting his pants. The other thing that bothers me is WHY THE FUCK was he reelected? The best I can figure is, the conservative right or what passes for it now, knew exactly which buttons to push with the populace, which is overwhelmingly evangelical Christian and has a bit of the “Old South” racism still.)

Another example is Donald Trump (otherwise known as the idiot-in-chief.) He’s always defined his life as being in control. From his real estate holdings, his “brand,” all the way to his rise to one of the most powerful positions in the world, it’s always about him “being in control.” Psychiatrists all over have pretty much diagnosed him (despite the presence of Section 7 in the American Psychiatric Association’s Principles of Medical Ethics, otherwise known as the “Goldwater Rule”, which says that it is unethical for them to diagnose and give an opinion of public figures who they haven’t examined) as a sociopath and has malignant narcissism. This is a dangerous combination for someone in control of the United States. You could see his “control” over the past 40 years in the public eye, from all the high stakes business deals that he bulldozed through, his hosting of a “reality” program (The Apprentice,) the 2016 presidential debate, where he stood behind Hillary Clinton’s lectern in an attempt to intimidate her, and up to the present day, where he used intimidation tactics to ram through legislation that is counter to the interests of the American people in general. His constant use of Twitter is another example of him trying to assert control of the narrative. Every time that something goes against his “alleged” Adderall-addled viewpoint, he goes on Twitter and starts whining about various conspiracies that stand in the way of his “control.” Things such as “The Deep State.” “Fake News.” “Rigged Election.” It’s all a grand conspiracy to bring him down and strip him of his “wealth” (which is pretty much a delusion rattling around in his head, supposedly.) His constant denigration of anyone or anything that goes against him is another attempt to exert control over the narrative and keep the bullshit alive to distract the populace from the fact that he is NOT IN CONTROL! The revolving door of people in and out of his employ over the past four years is an indication of someone who is a “bad boss.” People can only stand so much bullshit before they throw up their hands and say “fuck it, I am outta here.” Oh, but everything is fine and dandy because the president “is in control.” (I almost spit up my coffee when I wrote that.)

Now, with Trump throwing his support behind $2,000 stimulus payments to the American people, and his trumpeting that he pushed the COVID-19 vaccine through (which is bullshit because the first one that was approved, the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine was developed without government funding,) he again is trying to control the narrative. He wants people to think that he has their best interests at heart, but in reality what he is trying to do is polish the turd that his tenure as president has become. But I see it for what it is, the last desperate gasp of a drowning man. The truth of the matter is, he has never been in control. His insistence of everything being “my way or the highway” has turned most of the American populace and all the movers and shakers inside the Beltway against him, and he can’t fucking stand it. The next seventeen days (as of this writing) are going to be on everyone’s mind because we are going to keep asking ourselves “what the fuck is Trump going to do next?”

Whatever it is, it’s just gonna be another fuckin’ dumpster fire that Biden is going to have to put out.

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© 2021, Dean A. Basler Jr.

All rights reserved.

A Curmudgeon’s Viewpoint (October 2, 2020)

There is NO SANCTUARY!

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Well, with the news that Cheetolini (and his wife with the resting bitch face) have tested positive for COVID-19, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was true. Given his propensity for not wearing a mask, his attendance at large rallies, the death of Herman Cain, people on his staff testing positive for the coronavirus, and his overwhelming need to be surrounded by people who stroke his ego and not wear any masks, I would say that the odds finally caught up with him. Having it happen almost a month before the election, that does raise red flags.

1: The first debate.  Trump looked and sounded like the total ass that he is.  Biden kept his cool for the most part, but when Biden mentioned his son Beau (who served in the military in Iraq, and then died from brain cancer) Trump immediately went on the attack and started to ramble on and on about his son Hunter. Joe pretty much kept his cool during that personal attack. Trump then interrupted him while Joe was talking about ending the filibuster, and Joe said “Will you shut up man, this is so unpresidential.” Trump getting COVID-19 pretty much put the kibosh on future debates. 

2: The revelation by the New York Times that Trump only paid $750 in taxes for the years 2016, and 2017. Prior to that, it was was reported that he paid no taxes from 2000 to 2015, plus he took deductions on things that would be considered personal expenses such as aircraft, personal residences, $70,000 for hairstyling (when he was hosting “The Apprentice,) and most of all, “consulting fees” to his daughter Ivanka. 

3: His debt load.  Also from the New York Times, it is reported that he is personally responsible for 421 MILLION DOLLARS in loans, and they are coming due within 4 years.  Hell, I still owe about 40 thousand on my mortgage, and I don’t have anxiety over it, but Trump has a major Sword of Damocles hanging over his head.  He thinks that his lenders will be unwilling to foreclose on a sitting president. That is enough to scare the shit out of anyone.

4: His “Brand.”  Most of the income he does have comes from the licensing of his name to various ventures around the world.  If (more like when) he loses, his “brand” is going to suffer a major hit in terms of viability.  For someone with malignant narcissism (which Trump has in spades) this would be totally unthinkable.

5: The criminal tax probe by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office.  Cyrus Vance Jr. said that they are investigating The Trump Organization for potential bank and insurance fraud relating to properties in Manhattan, not to mention the alleged payoffs to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, who claim to have had affairs with Trump before he became president.  As long as Trump is president, he can stymie the investigations to his advantage.

 

So basically, one month before the general election, Trump is getting shithammered on multiple fronts.  Is he looking for an escape?  Is he finally losing whatever shred of sanity he has left?  Who knows.  All I know is that it is gonna get very fucking strange in the next 31 days, and all of us better buckle in and brace ourselves for for a very rough fucking ride.

 

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© 2020 Dean A. Basler Jr.

All rights reserved.

A Curmudgeon’s Viewpoint (July 27, 2020)

Show me the fuckin’ proof

 

pragmatism

 

Now, I wrote this back in February of 2013:

“I am a pragmatist. I do not speculate, I do not use blind faith to make choices. I need facts to make decisions. I don’t believe in something until I have proof that I should believe in it. I am an advertiser’s worst nightmare. I don’t buy a product because someone says it will make my life better. I have to believe that it will have some benefit to me.”

Now, people that I have thought of as rational people are getting their knickers in a bind because of vaccines again. Yes, they are fast tracking a vaccine for the coronavirus. And I hope that they can find an effective one. I for one, do believe in the value of vaccines. I DO NOT believe that they are the cause of autism. I DO NOT believe that Bill Gates is trying to usher in a “New World Order” by getting everyone vaccinated and have a microchip implanted so we can be tracked by RFID. The autism-vaccine link? It’s been debunked time and time again. I get the flu vaccine every year and guess what? I DON’T HAVE AUTISM! AND I DON’T GET THE FLU! Do a little fuckin’ research and grow a fuckin’ brain, people. Like I did:

Snopes: Study Alleging a Connection Between Vaccines and Autism ‘Unpublished’ By Journal

Mayo Clinic: Autism-vaccine link debunked

Centers for Disease Control: Vaccines Do Not Cause Autism

PublicHealth.org: Vaccine Myths Debunked

BBC News: Coronavirus: Bill Gates ‘microchip’ conspiracy theory and other vaccine claims fact-checked

USA Today: Fact check: Bill Gates is not planning to microchip the world through a COVID-19 vaccine

Snopes: Are Bill Gates and the ID2020 Coalition Using COVID-19 To Build Global Surveillance State?

Reuters: False claim: Bill Gates planning to use microchip implants to fight coronavirus

 

tinfoilhat

 

What it boils down to is, if they come out with a  tested, proven, and safe vaccine for the coronavirus, I’ll get it.

Excuse the fuck outta me if my pragmatism gets in the way of you denying me the right to make my choice whether to take a vaccine or not.

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© 2020 Dean A. Basler Jr.

All rights reserved.

A Curmudgeon’s Viewpoint (July 10, 2020)

Tin-foil Hats, Anyone?

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Are people losing their collective fucking minds? Wayfair involved in human trafficking? All based on something someone posted on Reddit? Where is the fucking evidence? Ever since the whole Jeffery Epstein debacle and the arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell, everyone is looking for a boogeyman. You gotta remember, this originated on the r/conspiracy subreddit, which ISN’T a reliable source. It’s pretty much tin-foil hat land there. It’s bad enough that the destruction of America is happening right before our eyes, and bullshit like this makes us lose focus. Snopes has already debunked this, and if people would DO A FUCKING SIMPLE GOOGLE SEARCH, they would see that it’s bullshit! Fer chrissakes people, GROW A FUCKING BRAIN!

 

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© 2020 Dean A. Basler Jr.

All rights reserved.

A Curmudgeon’s Viewpoint (July 5, 2020)

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The Kanye Problem.

Really? Even after having a mild heart attack  (it happened on July 1st, and I am fine,) I thought 2020 couldn’t get any fucking worse, but Kanye West announced that he is running for President FOUR FUCKING MONTHS before the election, and he has the support from Elon Musk? Even after the show that he made of kissing Trump’s ass all this time? Is he fucking high? No one takes him seriously. Fer chrissakes, he and Kim “Big Ass” Kardashian named their kid “North.”

He thinks that his “base” is going to support him. He’s hoping that he can tune into the collective rage that happened over the death of George Floyd during his arrest. But the thing is, this crossed racial barriers, and a lot of the people that are protesting are pretty much from the liberal left, which already had a few beefs over unchecked police brutality.

The Republican party is pretty much made up of old, southern, conservative, bible-thumping and probably racist white men (who are scared of what Trump can do to them financially in terms of support.) Given their fear of Trump, they will more than likely pull out all the stops to degrade him and get him to give up, even with the support of Musk (who is pretty much shown his colors that he is a lunatic of the first order, despite the fact that he has done great things in transportation such as Tesla, energy storage, and aerospace travel such as SpaceX.)

Kanye should just shut the fuck up, make music, and continue to bury his face in Trump’s ass. He’s a fucking joke when it comes to politics, and it’s just gonna cause more discord in the political process. Not to mention the fact that he missed the deadline for filing as an independent candidate in six states and filing as a candidate in a major party after the states had held their primaries. Most political pundits just see this as a stunt to take votes away from Biden.

Sheesh, 2020 is really gonna end with a fucking big bang at this point. People call me fucking paranoid for stockpiling survival supplies. I guess that the next few months will tell. Buckle up, boys and girls, this ride is gonna get REALLY bumpy.

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© 2020 Dean A. Basler Jr.

All rights reserved.

A Curmudgeon’s Viewpoint (June 12, 2020)

FUCK YOU FELLOW WHITE PEOPLE!

Alright, white guilt becoming the next fucking excuse for white people to excuse their latent fucking racism. You know what? I am fucking disgusted because I am white. You fucking racist losers who say you support “black lives matters” because it is a trending topic on Twitter, but cant’s say a fucking word because an unarmed BLACK paramedic was gunned down in her bed because the police “made an error.”

Fuck you fellow white people, you totally fucking disgust me.

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© 2020 Dean A. Basler Jr.

All rights reserved.

The fear is real. A Curmudgeon’s Viewpoint (June 5, 2020)

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Alright, I had this conversation with a friend on Facebook…I love her.

June 5, 2020 (I edited her full name out.)

Dean: What’s next? Brown shirts and jackboots? Just another fucked up week in Dystopian America.

Linda: I have never been a conspiracy theorist – just too many variables/unknowns and most often junk science to boot (which, given the collective IQ of this country, can be peddled successfully more often than not). But no insignia on uniforms? It is valid to believe that they are not affiliated with any legitimate military or police force. So who are they? Where did they come from? WTF???? I am 68 years old and I have never, despite the vague grumblings and resistance movements of one stripe or another, believed that Nazi Germany could be reprised here. I am watching it happen before my very eyes and I am terrified to the point of abject fear. And I know you are too, Dean.

Dean: You’re goddamn right I am terrified. Since the orange haired idiot was elected, I have been feeling an increased state of paranoia. Too many instances of police brutality coming to the forefront, the disjointed messages coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania, the revolving door of people in the administration, and of course the clusterfuck that the pandemic has brought on. And smack dab in the middle of it, that asshole in the White House thumping his flabby chest saying that he is the greatest because the unemployment rate is going down, and saying that the economy has become better. Terrified? fucking A right I am.

And then like an asshole, I went with a Wikipedia entry.  Sinclair Lewis was fucking right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can%27t_Happen_Here

  • It Can't Happen Here - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org

    It Can’t Happen Here – Wikipedia

    Linda: never read it. He was very insightful.

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    (c) 2020, Dean A. Basler Jr. All rights reserved.

A Curmudgeon’s Viewpoint (May 9, 2020)

Well, it’s the end of the week and I decided to do another rant, just my usual cranky old man ranting.  I actually try to make some valid points towards the end of the video.  (I actually recorded, edited, and posted this on the 8th, which was yesterday.)

 

Agents of Chaos.

Rated TV-MA for language

 

 

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© 2020 Dean A. Basler Jr. All rights reserved.