But Jim, he didn't kill anyone to get to the Presidency. Unlike Hillary. Benghazi. I suspect this whole affair of trying to destroy Trump lies with Hillary. My bet is that she gets indicted before it's all said and done.


My fascination is with leftists, communists, and their ilk. Male or female, black or white. They are destroyers of America. They are cockroaches which have been left to breed. We need patriot bug spray.

Forget I spoke. I wish I hadn't.

Huh, I would not have thought that advocating murder of other forum members was allowed by the forum rules. Was I wrong? Mods please advise.

How sweet, Charlie. You obviously know that many of us here are liberals, so it's utterly delightful to know you regard us as cockroaches in need of bug spray. Perhaps you should demand a refund of your charm school tuition?

A list of all peoples once described as cockroaches by their enlightened masters:

Jews
Blacks
Native Americans
Mexicans
Irish
Italians
Catholics
Aboriginals

Carpal tunnel is setting in. Must take typing break....

I have no objection to liberal philosophy, Bob. My objection was clearly stated, rhetorically regarding Leftists and Communists. Everyone knows you can't kill a cockroach.

Your advocacy of murder was certainly clearly stated, yes. Disowning what you so clearly stated, as you are now trying to do, is the retreat of a coward, and disowning it with something as lame as "everyone knows you can't kill a cockroach" is just pathetic.

Silly me, bug spray.

It's an interesting question, though. How would you, personally, kill me, as you would like to do? Would you use bug spray? It would work in a large enough dose, I guess, though it seems an especially sadistic way to go about it.

Maybe you'd use a gun, or a knife? Or a poison that's a bit more... tasteful than DEET? Or maybe you'd just sit back like a coward and hope the police or the army does it for you?

How would you kill me, Charlie?

And me, Charlie. Do you wish me dead?

Oh, Chuckems, you do realize that the largest avowedly socialist organization in the U.S. (the rather mild Democratic Socialists of America) has about 14,000 members, right? No, you clearly have no interest in knowing who contemporary socialists and communists are and what they believe. I am, vaguely curious in what you think actual leftists believe, though. It might be enlightening.

Contemporary?*#!

Charlie, in a long history of idiotic statements, your latest takes the cake. I'd like to be funny about it, but I can't. A minority of Americans elected a dangerous and narcissistic crackpot as President, and good old Charlie is looking for what? Another Congressional investigation of Hillary? What's next? Will you accuse Obama of being born in Kenya?

Actually, Michael, a majority of voters in states won by Trump is what got him elected. Thank God in Heaven for the Founders and the Electoral College. You have no excuse for running a very flawed candidate on the democratic ticket. You only have yourselves to blame. I bet even ol' Quincy would agree with that. "Our" candidate was flawed too, just least flawed than yours. Don't you think it's amazing that in a land of 330 million people we couldn't come up with better candidates? Surely, you must agree with that. Surely. Funny? Yep, ya' gotta' laugh, because ya' can't make this stuff up now, can ya'? Trump made a perfect speech at the joint session of congress. Absolutely perfect. If he follows through on it, he's got me. I have some doubts. Hypocrisy is still thick on this thread after so long.

Charlie, you have aligned yourself with the past. We will miss you and your beautiful poetry. We need to move on.

The benghazi argument is a specious one.

The swamp is Trump.

Perhaps we could stop calling each other cockroaches and dung beetles and such. We're all human beings here. Members of a species that has an ugly history of attempting to dehumanize and exterminate each other.

But we are also members of a species that can, sometimes, learn from the past, and have changes of heart. I'll leave this thread open for now in the hope that that might happen.

Certain violent and contemptuous metaphors are not conducive to changing anyone's heart, though. They also have an unfortunate tendency to be taken literally, and there's been a rash of violence against those labeled The Other in the real world lately. So let's keep the discussion on the merits of various points of view, rather than on the shortcomings of those who don't share our own point of view, please.

I know Julie's last post speaks wisdom, as she usually does. But I really would like Charlie to answer my question, which was pretty straightforward. I'd like to be clear on the point:

Charlie, do you wish me dead because I am a "Leftist?"

Heavens no, Simon, elections are what's killing Leftists in America these days, again, metaphorically speaking. Not so much on the West coast or the Northeast bastions of such as yourself, but nearly everyplace else. Conservatism is the deet for extremist Statists. The battle for the soul of America has been rejoined at last. You don't like the taste of it. I understand. But the majority of America wishes to remain free without the boot of Statists on our necks. I don't want my grandchildren to be taught by Leftist ideologues. Neither do I want them to be taught by extreme theists. Let conservative and liberal thought be taught equally and fairly. It hasn't been for many years now. A conservative turn to our past ideals is not a bad thing. I don't know if Trump is the guy to get us there. I have my doubts. I'm willing to give him a chance or two though. I don't understand why you guys hate him so much. I see it on TV and in the papers. It is total hate for the guy. I wonder about your ideology.

Not hate, Charlie. No hate for Trump from me. Just disgust.

He is so far from representing a return to our "past ideals" that it is a real shock to me that someone such as yourself, with all your intelligence, thinks he is, or even might be. How much do you need to see before making up your mind?

Consider this: he's damaging the conservative cause you care so much about. Time to tell him. Loud and clear. He won't listen to us. He needs to hear it from you. Do something, if only for your own peace of mind.

The simple truth, Jim, is that Charlie doesn't have even a rudimentary grasp of any of the political categories or ideas that he mouths off about. He throws out words like leftist, Statist, and communist like a parrot talking about crackers. He is fully indoctrinated and a complete waste of time to speak with. No one that can put up the last few posts he has can still be taken seriously as a thinker, even with the most generous allowances on that account imaginable. There has to be some common agreement about basic logic, historical accuracy, and coherent terms to have a discussion like this. I don't agree with conservative thinkers on most issues. But I recognize in some of them open minds capable of learning and teaching, and most importantly self criticism and a concern for the truth that isn't akin to chest thumping for their team. That is not this. This is Polly-want-a-Cracker speak, doing the wave, painted red, with its shirt off, and going home thinking it just did up some philosophy.

Well put, Andrew. But a bit too kind, if you ask me, since he has called many of us cockroaches that need to be exterminated. Were this not a moderated board wherein I fear that reacting to such vile and filthy hate-speech would paradoxically earn me a reprimand, I would have many colorful suggestions about precisely where he could insert precisely what, along with friendly suggestions regarding precisely what meal he should partake of before perishing.

Russian Dolls by Brian Bilston

Attachment 1001

The simple truth, Jim, is that Andrew is correct. I don't have a rudimentary grasp of any of the political categories that Andrew espouses. He throws out words like racist, misogynist, low brow, Cracker and others because he is completely indoctrinated and a complete waste of time to speak with because he won't hear of it. He has put up post after post droning on the same things now for a couple of years. He says, disingenuously, that he doesn't agree with conservative thinkers on most issues but by his own words in this thread and others, doesn't agree with any conservative thought because he is close-minded to any idea that conservatism is liberating and that liberalism, Statism, Communism, Socialism, Fascism and the other collective ideologies are failures when they are forced upon the free populace, either by regulation or by gunpoint. There, of course, is a long history of those failures and the millions of bodies in mass graves are just a footnote to him and others who believe those isms. He and others glibly gloss over these facts as they keep espousing the same antithetical ideologies time after time after time. There is no learning or teaching them because they are incorrigible. Still, they chest thump and pontificate for their team, such as it is, (or was). They follow their pseudo-heroes into the same dark depths marching along like lemmings to their pied pipers without ever knowing or caring that they are walking off the cliff blissfully ignorant of their own destruction, fully clothed in self-righteousness. It is the only righteousness they can stomach or muster. Philosophy? I think not. I don't wish to grasp that kind of destruction, millstones around their necks as they drown in the darkened depths of the lost. Nope, I think not.


SO far, getting back to the Trump Watch part of this thread, Trump has been impressive in the things that he has done. It's true that a slight/close minority voted for him. But 240 million Americans don't agree with the democrat party, neither did that many vote for Clinton. Every vote counts and I can see why you would include children in your numbers. But it just ain't so. We remain a divided country. Been that way for a long time.

Bob, it is the ideology you embrace that I wish to see eradicated. I am for freedom of thought. But if your thought attempts to put me on my knees or results in chains on my wrists and feet, then I will fight for my freedom. I hope I never have to. We have checks and balances in place to cool Trumps heels. Let those levers work, and quit hating on Trump. We would have had much worse with the Clintons. Be thankful.

Charlie, you refreshingly admit your self-evident total ignorance, then go on to pontificate again about what you admit you don't know and don't understand. In doing so, you sound like a... well, less than persuasive and less than clever [on reflection and in response to advice, I redact a naughty word and an unflattering epithet...]. I'm sort of hoping the simile there saves me from being ad hominem. If not, apologies--but I'm still a little stung by your wishing for my extermination up-thread before your unpersuasive disavowal of same.

It's the same here, Charlie, and, I gather, in Australia, the left in command of the levers of power. My children were indoctrinated with lefty ideas. I must just hope my grandchildren won't be. Though I'm not holding my breath. But in the USA and over here we, the people, can say, 'You lost. Get over it.@ But they won't and they can't.

I gather Tony Blair wants to work for Trump. Well, how about that. There's a man who follows the money though, God knows, he's got plenty. That you sell your soul doesn't mean you can't sell it again... and again...

For me one of the saddest things about the current administration is its attitude toward environmental and wildlife protection. What did the rusty patch bumble bee or the sage grouse or the polar bear ever do to deserve extinction caused by selfish human beings? As a friend once said about not killing the bugs in his garden: “They’re nicer than people.”

Pretty hard to argue with that these days.

Is care for the world a "leftist" stance, Charlie and John? Or could it be that left or right has nothing to do with it, but rather it's a matter of ethics and compassion?

I'm always suspicious of somebody who talks about ethics, Andrew. They usually want to pick my pocket.

Here's my pocket, Andrew. Help yourself, friend.

You are close there Charlie. Your post is almost thought-like. Its hard to be sure though. So much of it was lifted. Like trying to nail down the use of sign language in other primate species. I think what gives away the final divide though is again the use of terms and concepts that are so hopelessly misapplied that the reader looses hope that there is a mind behind the gestures that is actually translatable into anything coherent.

Anarchism, even lose and unfaithful as mine, is not easily related to Bolshevism, Stalin, or the fascism words you through up onto the wall where the adults can see them. Those millions of bodies your appropriating, many of them were anarchists and true leftists of various commitments. It is tiring that you are so intellectually lazy that you never take the time to even form a basic grasp of anything you ever talk about, even the bits you post about your own theologies are school boy pantomimes of the voices you ape, usually unsuccessfully. I guess it is consistent with your poetics, so that kind of cool.

We are animals in a biosphere, related and dependent on the swirl of species around us. Any body who thinks they are conservative as they hail a party that is actively holding the door open for the total destruction of the wilderness for the sake of a handful of Once-ler parasites is an idiot.

Every one of the ideas in this debate wants to conserve some things, liberate others. So those words have become almost meaningless. Human techniques have created State-sized problems and your party is only interested in eliminating the areas of the State actively (if ineptly) engaged in trying to solve those problems.The parts of the State that continue to make these enormous holes in the fabric of life, those parts your party (and the mainstream Democratic party) well...those parts are served like Gods.

And now we pause for a message from our sponsors:

https://youtu.be/2RkjdYNvbVI

Anarchism, anarchy, anarchists, however loosely defined as you would like it, Andrew, preceded all of the major tyrannies I admit to knowing nothing about. The kind of anarchy you may or may not be associated or affiliated with does have some semblance of structure or some defined order or hierarchy at the top and soldiers (loosely defined). So, it is not truly anarchy for anarchy's sake. Someone makes the cute masks/balaclavas, someone buys and pays for the paint for the silly A moniker, someone tells other someones where to meet and cause trouble. You know, the general way Brown Shirts and Leninists used to do it. It's why lots of Leftists embrace Mao's communism instead of Stalin's communism. Mao is much more palatable than Lenin's version as appropriated by Stalin. China was still pretty primitive when Mao took over in 1949. A certain amount of anarchy took place before he succeeded, and then "your kind" was put in the same camps along with the other academics who ushered Mao in. Imagine the betrayal those folks felt.

"Contemporary" Communism and Socialism, whatever the hell that means, is as it has always been, an means to an end, which is State control and ownership of business and its people. Contemporary Communism classifies the people into castes. Lower class, middle class, upper middle class, and so on. It dehumanizes individuals (workers) for the collective good. It has been largely successful since the anti-Macarthyites, the true communists with their cocktail parties and gauche movie stars endeared themselves to an compliant political elite to entrench themselves into the system like parasites. (Apologies to parasites.) Anarchists are nowadays pretty much laughed at, much like we laugh at the remnants of the KKK, whose power is now only a joke at keggers in the backwoods. No one likes being laughed at, so once in a while, one of those "kind" does something really stupid and awful. Your position is untenable. Pretense is an awful thing to carry around on your shoulders. The thing that makes America resistant to the isms is its love for individualism in the face of "groupthink". Why would we willingly give up that which makes us unique among the entire world. We wouldn't. I don't.

Charlie's most recent post, like the thread as a whole, reminds me why it's not a good idea to wrestle with a pig: you can't win; you get covered in filth; and only the pig is having any fun.

[Charlie, I'm not calling you a pig--although your extreme abuse of the apostrophe merits some kind of counter-attack and although you have called me and my "ilk"(love that word!) roaches in need of extermination. Just making an analogy...]

I'll try not to succumb to the temptation of pig-wrestling again, but I do hope (and here I'm addressing my aforementioned ilk) that folks will continue to use this thread to document the doings of the Trump administration. I find it useful, even if there's a lot of static...

That's funny, Simon. I was wrong to say you can't kill a cockroach. They can be stepped on and they make this wonderful crunching sound as you're doing it. I'm sure you've done it too. As for pig wrestling, you can win, you just have to be persistent. I'm a farm boy. It's true. I truly do have apostrohphitus and commaitis. I am challenged that way.

Trump did a most wonderful thing with his new Sec. of the Interior. He undid the acrimonious law detrimental to sportsmen and hunters. He opened up federal land to us. Good move. There'll be lots more places to hike and climb and ski and bird watch and the like. I love it.

What if the ethical considerations extend to the well-being of your descendants, John? Is that worth making sacrifices for and adjusting to environmental warnings? For instance, Polluted environments kill 1.7 million children a year. That includes your own, or their kids. Think about it. (And while you're at it, spot me a Fiver; somebody's gotta pay the Piper).

Thanks, Ann. I just lightened John of his wallet, now that he has opened his heart for the benefit of his loin-fruit. :D

Consequently, Andrew F. what are the ethical considerations of over a million abortions a year in America alone with regard to our descendants? Is that too, worth making those sacrifices for and adjusting to environmental warnings? Are you saying that genocide is justifiable for our own well-being? Overpopulation being what it is... Yep, somebody's gotta pay the Piper. Of course, that is if one believes the unborn is actually a human being. Additionally, what to do with all that medical waste? Burn it, bury it in a pit, make paté. Certainly an environmental issue, don't you think. I hope Trump dumps Planned Parenthood. Imagine when they get in line for unemployment. What skills do you have, sir? Well, I...

That may very well be, Charlie. I wasn't arguing about the abortion issue. I do believe in choice but I can understand the other side as well. It's certainly a complicated and deeply human question, I wouldn't deny that.

But to go off the issue at hand--the ethics of environmental protection--is a prevarication. You didn't address the problem of what to do about the environmental crisis, but went off into the abortion question. I wasn't talking about the latter. I raised the environmental issue because, as I mentioned, it's an aspect of the Trump administration that bothers me a lot, and because it's a concern for all living beings, not only liberals.

This latter point is ironically a reason for hope, since at least when we are all sick or dying from the environmental catastrophes that are surely coming or already here, we or our descendants will be able to agree on something: that it sucks to be sick and dying from a situation we could have prevented.

That's the point, Andrew. There is no environmental crisis. It is a canard. The canard is the crisis.

Perhaps this thread could pose one new question.
In the light of 'Charlie's' latest post - is 'Charlie' real? You know, like that little safety valve where one has to prove one is "not a robot".
How would he do, for example, when asked to click on all the melting glaciers, or tsunamis, or images of industrial smog?

If 'Charlie' is real and so deeply motivated by whatever it is that he thinks/feels he is motivated by - perhaps 'he' could pass the "not a robot" test by penning some poetry that displays his political/social beliefs.
If a poem within this thread is against the rules - though they seem pretty flagrantly in abeyance throughout this thread - perhaps 'Charlie' could start a new Metrical - or non-metrical (I'm not prejudiced) - thread which could illuminate the Muse of Trumpery. This is a poetry website after all. It was Cecil Day Lewis who asked it first - so 'Where Is Our Trump Poet'?

Cinderella's Coach, Pandora's Box. Pennsylvania Review.