Trump Discovers Africa

Hi there! I'm Dave-El and as sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serangeti, this is I'm So Glad My Suffering Amuse You. And today's post has some surprising news!  

Hey, y’all sayin’ that Donald Trump is a racist? Get a load of this: he came out in support of African farmers! That’s right, you hard working brown skinned farmers of Africa, Donald Trump’s got your back! And everyone wants say he’s a racist and a---

Hold on. I’m being handed a bulletin.

OK. I need to make a bit of a correction. Yes, the farmers ARE in Africa. But they are WHITE. 

All right. Let’s regroup. Take a deep breath and let’s get to the bottom of this.

So what fresh hell is this? 

Well, as is most things involving Trump, it starts with Twitter.

What caused this to pop into Li'l Donnie's tiny, tiny brain?

Please note the @s for Tucker Carlson and Fox News. 

It seems that Tucker Carlson was doing a story spotlighting  land reform proposals by South Africa’s parliament aimed at accelerating black ownership which apparently is leading to a white genocide by the country’s black majority. 

Yes, it's Fox "News" and Tucker Carlson so of course there are some holes in the plot. 

To address that, let’s start with some history.

During the 19th century, white colonists known as Afrikaners dominated South Africa’s black majority through terror and violence.




In the second half of the 20th, white people dominated South Africa’s black majority through a formal system of legal discrimination known as apartheid.

And also through terror and violence.

Under apartheid, black South Africans were barred from owning virtually all of their country’s agricultural land. 

Apartheid was bad!  (BOO!) 

But then apartheid ended! (YAY!)

But by the time South Africa became a democracy in 1994, whites accounting for 10% of the population owned 90% of the land.

OK, how does that get fixed? Well, not easily. As of today, whites accounting for 8% of the population own 73% of the land.





A law was passed in2016 empowering South Africa’s government to force white land owners to forfeit their real estate — in exchange for market-price compensation. 

Which presents some problems.

YES.....

There is a moral imperative to-

I WAS SAYING....

There is a moral imperative to right the wrongs of nearly two centuries of oppression.

BUT....

There are legal and economic considerations in a policy that allows a government to just step in and take land from somebody who owns it, even if the person is a white guy whose great-great-great-great-great grandfather came to this country, saw some land and figured, “Hey, no one important is using this. I’ll take it! We’ll put up a gazebo over there, plant some rose bushes over here and can somebody remove these irritating Negroes? Thank you. Wait! Bring a couple of them back. We need someone to plant the rose bushes."

Meanwhile, there are a lot of black South Africans who are thinking this shit is taking too long and looking to the far-left, Economic Freedom Fighters party whose strategy is “Fuck market-price compensation! Let’s just TAKE the damn land! And tear up some goddamn rose bushes too!” 

As you might imagine, white supremacists are eating this shit up. Oh no! White people facing oppression! And genocide!  

South Africa is triple X race porn for white supremacists in Europe and the United States.  It’s a white population genuinely vulnerable to discrimination by a government dominated by nonwhites with a lot of pissed off black people ready to take the land of white families.  

And those families are being (dramatic pause) MURDERED!!!

Time now for: LAW & ORDER: SOUTH AFRICA!   

Let’s be honest: South Africa has a lot of violent crime. 

Maybe not on par with Chicago but it’s a lot, OK?  

People get killed and that’s a tragedy. And as a matter of fact, some of those being killed are in fact white farmers. And it’s not been pretty. Not that murder ever is. But some of these white farmers have been killed very brutally and yes, by dark-skinned assailants. 

With a lot of pissed off black people left to boil under centuries of oppression, that much resentment is going to explode. 

Which is not to excuse murder. Understanding motives is not condoning actions. 

The staff and management of I’m So Glad My Suffering Amuses You condemns murder in all forms. It is the official policy of this blog that murder is bad.  

But a couple of caveats about all the killing in South Africa.

• The number of attacks and murders on South African farms has actually been sharply declining since the turn of this century.
• In the late 1990s, about 150 South African farmers were murdered each year.
• Now, that number is below 50.

OK, maybe still too many farmers being killed but hey, those crazy kids in South Africa are trying to make this work and the numbers are going down. So... progress? 

Meanwhile, murder rates in white rural areas remain far lower than those in predominantly black townships which really messes up that whole “white genocide” narrative.

But facts hardly get in the way of white supremacists with a story to sell.

And facts hardly get in the way of this guy.

Now this is where Donald Trump comes in, sitting alone in the Lincoln bedroom with his cheeseburgers watching Fox News and there's Tucker Carlson with his white genocide in South Africa story which gets Li'l Donnie's attention for 5 minutes.  

There is NO empirical evidence there is any “large-scale killing” of white farmers in South Africa.  But it's a story white nationalists have been pushing years and Tucker Carlson is more than happy to pass it along to the Racist In Chief.  

NO empirical evidence? Why would Donald Trump worry about having all the facts now?  

A Trump Supporter Confuses David?

I think I’ve made it clear on a frequent basis what the official viewpoint of I’m So Glad My Suffering Amuses You is on the subject of Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is a lying fuck of a fucking moron who doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing. 

Also: the prolific use of the word “fuck” and various derivatives thereof is keeping with the editorial policy of I’m So Glad My Suffering Amuses You on all matters relating to Donald Trump.*

*Fuck

Also I have expressed on several occasions my low assessment of Trump supporters.

I do want to acknowledge, I know how they got to the point where they thought Trump was a good idea. There was this whole swatch of America that felt overlooked and screwed over by a changing world that was leaving them behind and no one in any political party was figuring out how to talk to them. Trump talked to them.

I think if you could couple Trump’s bombast and irreverence with true intelligence and sincere human compassion, that person would be perhaps the most powerful leader of all time.  Sadly Trump’s bombast and irreverence comes with pathetic levels of utter stupidity and a complete lack of empathy for anyone outside his own bulbous head. 

Anyway, to Trump supporters, I do truly understand how you got there.  Nonetheless I still think you were bunch of suckers for buying the shit Trump was selling back in 2016. Bu I do understand how you got there.

What I do NOT understand is why you’re still buying the shit Trump is still pushing.  I man, COME ON! Just LISTEN to the man! Look at what he and his cronies are DOING! He’s helping himself and other rich guys to get richer and he’s doing fuck all for you. This is not opinion. This is not speculation. This is FACT!

So yeah, not a love lost for Trump supporters. 

Which brings us to Paula Duncan. 

Paula Duncan was on the jury for the Paul Manafort trial. 

Paula also says she’s a Trump supporter. 

Paula Duncan dropped some knowledge in an interview that the jury would have convicted Paul Manafort on all 18 criminal charges but for one single hold out.  

Duncan said that 11 members of the jury were in agreement that Manafort was guilty on all 18 felony charges but that they could not get the one holdout to change her mind after nearly four days of deliberations. “We didn’t want it to be hung so we tried for an extended period of time to convince her. But in the end she held out and that’s why we have 10 counts that did not get a verdict.  I thought that the public, America, needed to know how close this was and the evidence was overwhelming.”  

Duncan said  she wanted to believe that Manafort was innocent. She noted that even his critics had described him as a brilliant political consultant and that Trump had trusted him with overseeing his campaign.

“I did not want Paul Manafort to be guilty. But he was and no one is above the law. I think we all went in there like we were supposed to and assumed that Mr Manafort was innocent. We did due diligence, we applied the evidence, our notes, the witnesses and we came out with guilty verdicts on the eight counts.”  

I’ll be honest: I really do not know how to process this. 

Paula Duncan professes to be a Trump supporter. The man she supports as president has spoken derisively about the very process she took part in.

The investigation that uncovered Manafort’s crimes and the evidence of his guilt that Ms. Duncan referred to us “overwhelming”?

Trump has dismissed it as a “witch hunt”. 

The man that Paula Duncan determined to be guilty of the crimes he was accused of committing?

Trump has referred to him as a “good man” and a “brave man”. 

The process of doing due diligence and applying evidence that Paula Duncan applied judiciously  to her duties as a jurist?

The man she supports frequently disregards facts and evidence.

The idea that while she not want Paul Manafort to be guilty, Paula Duncan had to concede he was? 

Trump is notorious for not backing down from a position, regardless of  any facts to the contrary of that position. 

Paula Duncan’s view that no one is above the law?

Trump has pardoned several people who were charged, tried, convicted and sentenced within the due process of the justice system.

Paula Duncan’s view that she thought that the public needed to know what really happened?

The man she supports is constantly at odds with those whose job is to inform the public, questioning their ethics and deriding them as the enemy of the people.

So Paula Duncan sounds like an intelligent, thoughtful individual who took her duty as a citizen and a jurist seriously. I highly commend this person.

Paula Duncan is a supporter of Donald Trump? I have no idea what to do with that. 

I’m going to go over there and lie down awhile. The rest of you just talk among yourselves.

And remember to be good to one another.  

The Man With All the Right Answers

A lot of effort goes into trying to make sense of how Donald Trump’s brain works. Most analysis to his way of thinking is geared towards his ego. His need to be the center of attention, the object of adoration.

He sees himself as the man with all the right answers and if those answers come from his sizeable gut instead of his diminutive brain, who cares? Why bother learning stuff when its just as easy to make shit up. And in Trump World, shit he makes up as the weight of factual evidence. If Trump sees himself as always having the right answers, then whatever he says must be by default always true. 

Except this cannot be attributed to just ego. There’s a lot of people who have a very strong and powerful view of their self worth.

You can’t put yourself out there to host a TV show or star in a movie without some sense of “Hey, there are people who want to see ME! There are people who want hear what I say!” 

You can’t seek the be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company without thinking, “The best person to run this billion dollar enterprise is ME!”

You can’t run for public office, like say President of the United States without thinking, “You know who has two thumbs and is the most qualified to lead the most powerful country on Earth? This guy!” 

Barack Obama had ego. Mitt Romney had ego. So did Hillary Clinton, George W Bush, John McCain, John Kerry.

Having an ego is not inherently a bad thing. Ego is the strength of confidence that separates leaders from followers. But for most people with some degree of ego, there is something to back it up.  Your TV show has the highest ratings! You have Oscars on your bookshelf! You have a degree from a prestigious university on your wall! Your book is on the bestseller list!

But Trump is ego unchecked. Trump is “great” because he thinks he’s great. Yes, he’s had some accomplishments but usually attained with the considerable assistance of others.  Trump wouldn’t have a rep as a real estate mogul without Roy Cohn as his fixer. Trump the TV star would not have existed without Mark Burnet. But Trump in Trump World sees only himself. He counts only his wins. Any failures can be attributed to the faults of others. Trump has always spun his own narrative as a powerhouse and a player. His skill was getting other people to believe that narrative. 

Trump is ego unchecked by facts or evidence or accountability. He says something and he expects it to be so. Like a child playing a make believe game in a world his own design. Except he has deluded himself to think the rest of us live there too.

I think the key to Trump’s thinking is summed up in three words in the previous sentence: “Like a child”.  

Let’s consider Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the United States’ election process. Apparently Mueller wants to have a chat with Trump about this. There have been concerns expressed by Trump and his minions about Mueller setting a perjury trap.  Here is how Trump see this: 

“So if I say something, and he [Comey] says something, and it’s my word against his, and he’s best friends with Mueller, so Mueller might say, ‘Well, I believe Comey,’ and even if I’m telling the truth, that makes me a liar. That’s no good.” 

What is the foundation of Trump’s distrust of Mueller? Trump thinks Mueller will accept Comey’s word over Trump’s because Mueller and Comey are besties and Trump will get zapped with a perjury charge based on that.  

It’s been suggested by many helpful people on Twitter that Trump can avoid a “perjury trap” with a simple two word plan: Don’t lie. 

Except lying is 2^nd nature to Donald Trump even if he is too deluded to see it himself. He sees himself as the man with all the right answers. And any answer he gives must be right. But if Mueller believes his best pal Comey, the problem  can be attributed to the faults of others. It can’t possibly be that Trump’s right answers are not “right”.  

If Comey said one thing and Trump says another, I don’t think Robert Mueller would hand down a perjury charge simply because he believes one person and not the other. To think that might be an outcome is childish thinking, detached from the real world.  I think Mueller would need a more solid evidentiary basis for taking such action. Evidence like Trump’s own words and actions would be a start. 

Trump may have the child like conviction that  his is the man with all the right answers. And that may be true in his world.

But not in the real world.  

Some Thoughts About The Last Sharknado

I mentioned in Monday’s post that I watched The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time.  To be honest, I have not watched all of the previous 5 installments in the series. I’ve seen bits and pieces of each of the previous movies. I wasn’t too worried that I might miss some nuances of the plot. 

It’s a tornado. With sharks in it. 

Gotcha! 

But man, The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time was a balls to the wall, crazy as fuck mess that I enjoyed way more than an otherwise intelligent humanoid life form should.  

“So you turned a sharknado into a time machine.” Ian Ziering deserves an Emmy for saying that line with a straight face.  

Dinosaurs vs. sharks? Suck it, Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War and Incredibles II. Did you have dinosaurs vs. sharks? No, you didn’t! You lose!

Sharks attacking Camelot? With frickin’ Neil deGrasse Tyson as frickin’ Merlin? Hey, Chris Chibnall, does the new season of Doctor Who have frickin’ Neil deGrasse Tyson as frickin’ Merlin fighting off sharks attacking Camelot? No?? Then Mr. Chibnall, you are way behind! 

“The British are throwing flying sharks at us?!” Hey, Doris Kearns Goodwin, you’re an expert in American history? Did you know about the British throwing flying sharks at the American revolutionary army? Did you know that Benjamin Franklin punched a flying shark? No? Well I must say, Ms. Doris Kearns Goodwin, I scoff at your alleged expertise in American history!  SCOFF, I say!  

Speaking of the sequence set in the American Revolution, major props to whoever cast Darrell Hammond doing his Bill Clinton impression as George Washington. That was so cool!

There is so much going on in this movie. If a joke falls flat, another one will be along in about 5 seconds. Hell, if nothing else, just watching the very dodgy CGI is worth a few giggles.

There’s a sequence near the end that takes place in the middle of a sharknado where the weird magic guy from Big Trouble In Little China shows up for some reason. It’s that kind of movie. It’s an “everything but the kitchen sink” approach. Oh wait! There’s a kitchen sink!

Yes, this movie is stupid but damn if it wasn’t the best time I've had watching TV in a long time. The sheer absurdity of every action, every line of dialogue just jumped wholeheartedly into the absolute insanity of the entire premise.

Yes, this movie is just plain stupid. Sometimes in life, I need something this stupid to make me laugh.  

A Dark Day For Trump?

How do you know it’s dark when your eyes are closed?  

 

I saw this headline on NBC News website Wednesday: 

 

A Dark Day For Trump. The Darkest Day For The Presidency Since Watergate.

 

Yeah but does Donald Trump know that?

 

Tuesday, Li’l Donnie was in West Virginia for one of his rallies to make him feel better. Here are some of the things that were on his (for lack of a better word) mind. 

 

“It was just announced by ESPN that rather than defending our anthem, our beautiful anthem, and defending our flag, they decided they just won’t broadcast.”

 

Our anthem and our flags are symbols for a country that’s all about freedom. ESPN wants the freedom to not have to deal with this shit.

 

“How many Chevrolets are there in the middle of Berlin? Not too many. Maybe one? In Beijing, a Chevrolet Camaro costs $119,000!” 

 

“My mom made the greatest turkey you ever had.”

 

Well, she certainly gave birth to the biggest one I’ve ever seen. 

 

Trump talked about his Supreme Court pick, Brett Kavanaugh: “Central casting! How do you vote against him?”

 

The criteria for being a Supreme Court nominee per Trump: look like you’re a judge. Or to put it another way: white middle aged male.

 

A Dark Day For Trump?

 

Do they know that in West Virginia?  

 

When asked about Paul Manafort’s conviction and Michael Cohen’s pleading guilty, here is what rally attendee Rick Hunt had to say about that.

 

“All I know is everybody makes mistakes. But if they try to take Trump out of office, there’s going to be a revolt.”

 

“Everybody makes mistakes”? Well, that’s a very understanding and forgiving perspective, Rick, and…

 

Wait! Trump mentioned Hillary Clinton.

And the crowd responds: 

 

“Lock her up!” 

“Lock her up!” 

“Lock her up!” 

 

Yeah, Rick.  Everybody makes mistakes. 

  

A Dark Day For Trump?

 

Well, by all accounts, it should’ve been. Here’s everything that went down in one day. 

 

Michael Cohen

Trump’s former fixer and personal lawyer pleads guilty to felony crimes that included illegally paying women hush money to help Donald Trump win the presidency in 2016. Most important, he said he did so at Trump's direction.

 

Cohen’s attorney Larry Davis had this to say:  “What he knows that he witnessed will be of interest to the special counsel. He will tell the truth to everybody who asks him about Donald Trump.”

 

Don’t toy with us like that, Larry. Stormy Daniel’s attorney has been stringing us along for too long now. Don’t go breaking our hearts, Larry. I don't think I can stand the pain. 

 

Michael Cohen is not alone on the Trump Chumps Parade of Felonies:    

 

Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn

Trump’s deputy campaign manager Rick Gates

Trump’s campaign adviser George Papadopoulos  

 

Paul Manafort

Trump’s onetime campaign chairman is convicted on eight counts of bank and tax fraud. 

 

Paul was up on 18 charges but the jury deadlocked on 10 of them. That ratio of 8 out of 18 is being played up on Fox News and various right wing outlets as a point of weakness in Robert Mueller’s efforts. 

 

The thing is a hung jury is not an acquittal no more than it is a conviction. If 11 out of 12 jurors were convinced of Manafort’s guilt or innocence on any given charge and juror #12 can’t get on board with that, VOILA: hung jury!

 

Trump did go on Twitter to speak his praises of Manafort as a brave man for facing up to a jury trial as opposed to Cohen who took the coward’s way out by copping a plea and making a deal. 

 

And let’s not forget this “brave man” was convicted on 8 counts of defrauding people, banks and the government. 

 

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.

An early endorser of Trump for president, Hunter was indicted on federal charges that he violated campaign finance law. Just a couple of weeks ago, Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., another Trump political ally, was indicted on charges related to insider trading a week or so ago.

 

A Dark Day For Trump?

 

It should’ve been. Three people in one day, advisors, helpers, allies to Donald Trump, all caught  breaking the law, joining a long list of names of others caught in the crosshairs of the law. 

 

But in Trump’s world, no, not really. 

 

It’s hard to know the day is dark when you don’t open your eyes to see. 

Where My Head Is At

Hi there!

 

The last few posts to I’m So Glad My Suffering Amuses You have been rather spare as far as text is concerned.

 

A few reasons for that:

 

1. Work

My job involves a great deal sitting at a computer writing and editing. Coming home to sit at a computer to write and edit anything, even for my own personal use or enjoyment, is not something I’m always prepared to do. Lately, I have a number of projects that are jockeying to be #1 on my to-do list at the same time so that’s been a thing impacting blog stuff.

 

1. Politics

Quite frankly, I am really tired of talking about politics. I have posted a lot of political stuff because it is an extremely disturbing time in my lifetime and I feel compelled to document how I feel about that.  The thing is the sheer volume of things said and done by Donald Trump and his complicit cronies that are stupid, heartless, illegal, unethical and more is just so damn overwhelming to keep track of.  I know it’s important to not give up and give in to despair.  That is exactly what Donald Trump and his complicit cronies are counting on. But damn, it is so hard. 

 

1. Mental health

To be blunt, I’ve not been in a good place mentally. I have ongoing issues with depression and anxiety.  Anyone who deals with depression and anxiety or knows someone who does, it’s not always an even continuum. Even with drugs and therapy, there are good days and bad days. It seems there have been more bad days lately. Maybe I can chalk some of that up to more pressure at work and the current political environment that quite frankly depresses the hell out of me.  Regardless of cause, my mental state is not in the best place. I’m working on that.

 

Anyway, that’s where my head’s at. 

 

Thanks for reading and remember to be good to one another

Does Your Business Plan Involve Nudity?