THE ART OF WAR

The ancient military tactician Sun Tsu said in his Art of War: "When you are strong, appear weak; weak, appear strong." We have been laughing at the Trump administration, and they sprung a second Supreme Court nomination on us. No one in the leakiest of White Houses leaked a word about their campaign to install another extreme-right justice. Let's face it - net neutrality gone, world alliances shifted, two major propaganda arms installed - we've been outplayed, my friends. This is not Saturday Night Live - let's not underestimate our opponent.

THE CULT OF TRUMP

The attachment of Trump supporters to a venal, self-serving, obnoxious man is not unprecedented. Trump supporters display the same psychodynamics as the cult followers of Jim Jones or David Koresh. They systematically reject any information that conflicts with their delusion of a powerful father figure who loves and protects them, even at the expense of their health and welfare. These people will support Trump even if, as he has said, he shoots someone in broad daylight, or even shoots them.

TEXT OF "I BLAME LOUISE HAY FOR TRUMP"

Larissa Shmailo

I am listening to Abraham Hicks, whom the well-loved New Age maven Louise Hay, may the Universe rest her soul, calls “one of the best teachers on the planet.” Abraham is an “ascended” energy being channeled by a woman called Esther. She is touring the country, orating in impassioned spurts marked by anaphora. Tonight, Abraham is advising her enthusiastic audience that they must seek their bliss. She tells them to find a personal frequency, assuring her listeners that everything they could ever want is being stored up for them in their very own “vortex.” All they need to do is think positive thoughts.

So what’s new? A medium is promising people that she can make them rich and happy. Hasn’t this always attracted the needy and the greedy and the seedy? Why is this different? Because uncritical positive thinking has led us to Donald Trump.
Positive thinking has traditionally been reactionary. Go back, for example, to the 17th century to the first new age thinker, Gottfried Wilhem Leibniz (1646 – 1716), philosopher, polymath, and an inventor of calculus. Leibniz believed that God was good, and therefore, all was for the best in the world. Voltaire parodied this philosophy in Candide, or Optimism; Dr. Pangloss, Candide’s tutor and the Leibniz figure in the book, intones “All is for the best in this best of possible worlds” as he, Candide, and Candide’s love, Cunégonde, undergo war, earthquake, pillage, and cannibalism. For the victims, the Leibniz school recommends prayer.

Voltaire

Hay also believed that all is well and perfect in the world, or would be if our thoughts were sufficiently positive; even earthquakes and bad government, says Hay, are caused by faulty thinking. Affirm Donald Trump is loving and honorable and he will be, since thoughts create reality. To that end, both Abraham and Hay urge their followers not to watch the news so as to remain in positivity. Seekers must also not involve themselves overmuch in the problems of others; this, according to the Ayn Randian Abraham, causes you to leave the “high flying disc.” Followers must seek to inspire rather than lend a hand.
At a time of extreme income inequality, class struggle is discouraged by the New Age. Hay suggested that the ambitious let the enormous yachts and other conspicuous consumption of the wealthy give them pleasure. The idea is that if you don’t admire the rich, you might not become one of them. And followers should not look at statistics about poverty: There is plenty for all of us, every prosperity talk insists, and all economies are personal. Collective bargaining, even standing up for abused co-workers, is a no-no.
No one who has sat by an ocean at twilight, breathing its air and listening to the gulls cry as they fly by, can doubt the perfection and majesty of the world. And positive thinking, faith in oneself, and a belief that life is good are healthy outlooks. However, constant meditation on unreal thoughts, saying bad is good, fat is thin, poor is rich, is Orwellian doublethink, doublespeak. And it has prepared us the climate of lies we live in today.
Affirmations are absolute, employing words like all, always, everything, only (“Everything I need is coming to me easily and effortlessly; all my desires are met before I even ask; only good comes to me now”). The gradations of experience, its nuances and subtleties are lost, like rare species of Amazon frog in a pink bulldozer of unreality. And positive thoughts alone are dangerous: Negative feelings, verboten in the New Age sphere, have survival value; anger, which Hay and the 12 Step programs would banish altogether, lets people know when their boundaries have been crossed, when they must stand up for themselves, and most importantly, that they are worth defending.
Thinking in absolutes, affirming what is, isn’t, not defending your point of view (Deepak Chopra advises this), idolizing the rich, staying positive no matter what, and never getting angry is a formula for a mystified and de-hormonized generation, it might be said, a Trump generation. Such people will never be empowered to “create their reality,” as the gurus suggest, especially if that requires conflict, struggle, or effort. It is also painful that people with inadequate medical care are urged to rely on affirmations in times of serious illness, even told their thoughts have caused their sickness.
I think a red light flashed the first time I heard Hay affirm that it was good to take a five-minute break from work every two hours. I grew up in a union household and, as I recall, it was 15 minutes every two hours, not five. No matter—if your work situation is poor, it is because of your thoughts, so get cheerful.
At the end of Candide, Voltaire has his character say, “Il faut cultiver notre jardin”—“We must cultivate our garden.” We are responsible for creating our reality, but not in the atomizing, anti-worker manner Hay and Abraham suggest. And nowadays, negative emotions are highly appropriate. Because if you are not pissed off nowadays, I’m not sure I want to know you.

–Larissa Shmailo

Skin in the Game

As a person with a mental illness, I have skin in the game of the Trump resistance. Nazis (now, sweethearts, is there really any lingering doubt that Trump is a Nazi?) routinely gassed mentally ill and other disabled people. As eugenicists and ableists, fascists exterminate you if you can't be used for free or cheap labor. Remember that loud dog whistle to the base, Trump's gleefully mocking the New York Times reporter with ankylosing spondylitis, and see Jeff Session's recent attack on regulations protecting disabled people. Not to mention the wholesale Republican war on Medicaid and Obamacare. They will be coming after the Americans with Disabilities Act next, and I intend to fight them every step of the way.

Trump Is Winning and We Are Wimps

Trump is winning and we are wimps. He owns the Internet now, will control 72 percent of television now that DOJ has approved Sinclair's acquisition of Tribune (not counting FOX), owns the courts, has taught local police to be brutal, has listed Black Lives Matter and other black organizations as terrorist groups, has successfully incited Nazis, KKK, and other gun-toters to violence, and has triumphantly dominated the Republican Party. And like any good fascist, he has cemented his relationship with business with his tax bill. He's right - he and his generals really have done more than any other dictators in one year. We have been outmaneuvered, and better wake up to that fact going forward.

FASCISM 101

FASCISM 101
1. Establish charismatic leader.
2. Acclimate populace to propaganda and lies.
3. Undermine democratic institutions.
4. Attack opposition, especially media, intellectuals, minority groups.
5. Start hauling away #4 to concentration camps.
6. Leave behind a cult-like nation of troglodytes to inform on one another.
7.Go down in history as an abomination and an object lesson that some may learn from, hopefully.

This Is Different

The lip service to democratic values is gone, the judiciary is a tool of the executive, the media as watchdog is vastly undermined, propaganda is rife (Sinclair with the merger will reach 72 percent of TV households), the government is a white supremacist one, fascist governments are our models, right wing evangelicals are successfully taking evolution out of our schools and now, with the tax bill, can wage political campaigns without losing nonprofit status, climatology and other sciences are under attack, so much more. This is not business as usual; this is fascism and we have to fight with all our might now, literally all our might all the time, or else.

Elephants, Sexual Predation, The Mob

Donald Trump, Jr. killed a rare bull elephant just to cut off its tail and hold it in his filthy, guilty hands. Trump senior is a sexual predator and a white supremacist. Ivanka exploits slave labor and fronts for the crime-filled dirty money of Trump Panama. And they are all guilty of treason. What a disgusting mob the Trumps are!

The Banality of Evil

One meaning of the phrase, "the banality of evil," coined by Hannah Arendt reporting for the New Yorker on Adolf Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem for war crimes, is that the evil do not always give the appearance of monsters. Arendt saw no satanic genius in Eichmann, just an ordinary man, perhaps even a clown. And now we see our clownish, banal, very ordinary president and his banal, ordinary cabinet and banal, ordinary Republican henchmen rapidly erode our freedoms and democracy. Time to fight vigorously now, as Trump et.al. most heinous actions are normalized for a very ordinary and banal third of the electorate.

Honey Badger Don't Care

This vid is a favorite among the Alt Right. The tough, crazy, unstoppable animal totem, the honey badger, "doesn't care," "doesn't give a shit." These are the values of the alt right, not to care, to be tough, never to be sensitive or kind, values embodied by Donald Trump.
Breitbart declared "The Age of the Honey Badger Has Dawned" shortly after Trump's election; all concerned are working hard to make it a reality, and promise never to quit. I also promise not to quit until this nation expresses caring and kindness in all its affairs. But the Alt Right has to go back to the badger hole it came from.

Honey Badger Don't Care

There is no such thing as nonviolent Nazis

Or Klan. 
They want to kill you. If you are disabled, mentally ill, black, brown, Muslim, feminist, Jewish, LGBT, or leftist, they want you dead or enslaved. Don't be confused about that. And their affiliates want the same. They are much more extreme than you can imagine. I spend time on their websites for a book I am writing, and almost pass out from the murderous rage of these monsters. Almost. 
They are lifting weights, stockpiling arms, get ready as we speak. The president of the United States loves them. Do not think Trump will not use them for violent ends.
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Fear of the Humanities (from the HOWL Collective blog)

FEAR OF THE HUMANITIES, from the HOWL (Humanities Opposition World League) Collective

by

Larissa Shmailo

This November, Americans experienced an unnatural transition from a democracy to a country led by a fascist president. Swastikas, church burnings, hate writings on walls marked with “Trump,” are sanctioned by our new president-elect; indeed, the alt-right (a sanitized term for white supremacists) is lodged next to the Oval Office. We are ripe to be pussy grabbed, placed in conversion therapy, registered, and deported. Oh, and torture is in. (If you do not know anything about fascism, don’t worry: you are about to learn.)

So, many of us in the humanities, artists, poets, writers, historians, social scientists, scholars, linguists, critics, journalists, oppose this. I know: even now, Steve Bannon is slugging down an extra shot to stop his trembling, and is telling Trump, “Mr. President, we’ve got a problem.”

Artists!!! Scholars!!! Sociologists!!! Be afraid, Donald Trump, be very afraid!

Well, yes, actually, he has cause to be. Fascists are afraid of vibrant, truth-telling humanities, which is why they arrest their makers so often. One of Trump’s earliest encounters with defiance was from the cast of Hamilton, who used their stage to confront our homophobic VP-elect. Apologize, the Donster demanded. No, the cast answered. There was more here than a distraction from Trump’s business conflicts of interest (which are actually bribery, explicitly cited in the Constitution as impeachable). 

The president-elect wanted the cast of Hamilton to obey, and the arts and humanities rarely do.

What do we in the humanities do that threatens demagogues, authoritarians, Hitler-wannabes? (“I alone can fix it” was a direct quote from Fuhrer by the Donald.) We record, parody, inspire, inform, debate, debunk, analyze, summarize, translate, abstract, respond, journal, categorize, report, opine, educate, satirize, uplift, mobilize, underscore, energize, review. We bring forth new ideas and data, show people how, when, and where to resist, and keep up the spirits of people oppressed by their selfish and erratic leaders.  

And we continue to do so in the face of the angry tweets and the red face of the Orangeman. And we are legion. So indeed, it is rational, to paraphrase National Security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn, to be afraid of the humanities and their practitioners. So, yes, Trumpetters, do be afraid. Very afraid.