We must now ask if the President of the United States is a psychopath

August 31, 2017September 1, 2017 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 11 Comments

August 31, 2017

As a criminologist of extreme acts of violence, I spend a lot of my time talking about psychopaths and sociopaths (essentially the same social types with different focuses on causes). I’ve lectured about psychopathic serial killers and sociopathic hate criminals. My 2000 book with Wayne S. Wooden, Teenage Renegades, Suburban Outlaws: From Youth Culture to Delinquency, included a large piece I wrote about the psychopathic tendencies of school shooters. Boys with guns and without impulse control in places like Springfield, Oregon and Littleton, Colorado.

Now it’ time to talk our president and sociopathy. His visit to Texas on Tuesday in which he didn’t visit with a single victim of the devastating bomb blast of Hurricane Harvey raised a giant red flag. (Such visits are a typical response from the consolers in chief). He didn’t even mention them. He did mention the crowd size that came to see Him and how big and expensive His disaster was. “What a turnout!” he said. Nothing for the millions of Americans suffering . To be fair, a day later in Springfield, Missouri, he did read a speech that someone prepared for him, after much hand-wringing over the president’s lack of empathy, mentioning the flood victims. “All America is grieving with you,” he read.

Donald Trump has shown this cold lack of empathy before. Refugees fleeing war in Syria, the children of undocumented immigrants, families that will lose health coverage if Obamacare is repealed, our men and women in the military who are transgender, females he was accused of groping; he could care less about their stories. Women who get cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood? Meh. People who live downstream from deregulated chemical plants? Screw ‘em. DACA kids in college? Criminals.

Lack of empathy doesn’t make you a psychopath. It makes you an asshole. But the lack of empathy is one of the hallmarks of sociopathy. Psychopaths often have an early history with animal cruelty. Most of us see a puppy and think, “How cute! Snuggies!” A psychopath sees the same puppy and wonders what it would look like doused in gasoline. The clinical diagnosis is Antisocial Personality Disorder. The APA estimates that it impacts about 1% of the population (although in prison populations, it can be as high as 23%) and I’m guessing our president is one of them.

The best way to explain sociopathy is with some Freudian imagery. Imagine a cartoon character with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other. The devil is the primitive id that acts on basic impulses and the angel is the social superego that restrains those impulses with society’s rules. That’s why Freud put so much emphasis on potty training. It’s the first real attempt to put the “If it feels good, do it” idea in social check. You can’t poop in your diapers forever. There are rules up in here.

Most of us have a nice balance, and we know when to listen to the angel and when it’s okay to listen to the devil. But psychopaths are dominated by their ids. They say and do whatever they want. They can say something and they say the exact opposite minutes later just because they want to. They can grab women by their genitals just because they think they’re entitled. They can threaten nuclear war just because it’s kinda fun. They never apologize because they never feel guilt. It’s everyone else’s problem. They’re the greatest person in history.

The research on sociopathy is fascinating. Some of it explores the role a dysfunctional cerebral cortex plays in preventing psychopaths from seeing themselves in other’s shoes. Some of the research looks at the role of early childhood trauma, like sexual abuse. Research has demonstrated that the more comfortable a person is, the less empathy they show to others who are less comfortable. We also know that sociopaths tend be both narcissistic and compulsive liars. It’s all about them and what they can get away with. Sound like anybody we know?

Not all sociopaths become serial killers or school shooters. It’s a continuum. Mild sociopathy might be rewarded on Wall Street or in the military, or anywhere where there’s a “take no prisoners” or “show no mercy” value set. Psychopaths are common in the world of hate as it rewards the ethic of cruelty without guilt. If you ever wondered about people who make Hitler their role model, like Trump fan James Fields, who drove his car into a crowd of anti-racist protests in Charlottesville, there’s a good chance they’re a psychopath. These “evil” people tend to show some red flags early in life, including what’s known as the Macdonald Triad. Kids who engage in animal cruelty, fire-starting, and bed-wetting are at a higher risk of later sociopathic behavior. Is Trump’s nanny still alive? I have a few questions.

So sociopathy can range from a cruel boss who could care less about your sick kid to a serial killer who has sex with the heads he’s chopped off. The scariest part of sociopathy is how little we know about it and, therefore, how to treat it. While I was working on my book on the subject, I read Jonathan Kellerman’s Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children (1994). Kellerman, a psychologist, argues that until a reliable treatment for Antisocial Personality Disorder is found, the best course of action is to lock up psychopaths at the earliest opportunity, even if they are children, to protect society from their impulsive acts of terror.

My PhD is not in psychology, but I’ve been studying sociopaths long enough to know the red flags when I see them. Donald Trump’s trip to Texas, that served as a campaign stop instead of a sincere effort to understand the on-the-ground suffering, is one flag too many. He seemed more concerned with hawking his $40 USA hats than wading in the dirty water with Americans who have lost everything. I don’t know if Donald J. Trump is a psychopath and therefore unqualified to lead this great nation. I just think it’s a vitally important question to ask and answer as soon as possible.

Postscript: There’s a pattern where Trump does or says something stupid (Remember his initial comments about Charlottesville earlier this month?), but then his handlers set him back on script. Trump is going to donate one million dollars OF HIS OWN MONEY to flood relief. But the True Trump always comes back to undercut Teleprompter Trump.

Cozy turns 3 in Fantasyland

August 22, 2017August 22, 2017 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 3 Comments

August 22, 2017

“I like road trips.”

I can’t tell you how happy I was to hear my daughter say those words before our 990 mile drive to Anaheim, California to seek an audience with Minnie Mouse. My fondest memories of my family are all about loading my brother and I into the station wagon and hitting the road, often to Disneyworld in Florida. Later my dad bought a van camper (with a CB radio) and we would head off to visit my cousins in Colorado. Much of my childhood was spent watching America go by a car window, with stops at Howard Johnsons for ice cream. Andrea and I both love to hit the road, so if Cozy didn’t have the wanderlust gene we were screwed.

The baby was turning three and she was very clear about her desire to go to Disneyland and find Mickey, and Minne, and Elsa, and maybe Doc McStuffins. It’s a never ending source of amazement watching her evolve into a fully formed person with her own opinions on everything. She spits out gold like Rumpelstiltskin with a haystack. “I gave a good idea. Why don’t you get me some ice cream and I’ll watch Frozen.” (This routine is worth it as the sugar rush is sure to inspire her death metal version of “Let it Go.”) She’s ready for adventure and whatever surprises the open road brings. As long as I pack her potty that is.

So we hit the road. With a car full of snacks, an iPad loaded with The Secret Life of Pets, and stories of what awaited in Disneyland (“I’m going to see all my friends,” she said.), we took off on our last day of owning a 2-year-old. The first day was a 12-hour ride that took us as far as Stockton, California. The reward for putting up with mom and dad’s music (and Fabcast podcasts) was a giant pancake at IHOP. When we woke up the next morning in our bleach soaked room in the La Quinta Inn, the rising sun was in the right position to blast through the peephole in the door, creating a cool effect on the wall. “It’s a rainbow hole!” she exclaimed. Our girl was three.

We got into LA in time to hit the hot tub in our Hollywood AirBNB and meet some friends for an impromptu birthday party at the Hollywood Hard Rock Cafe. One our friends, former radio maven and current Disney queen Delia Rae Saldivar, brought a giant “3” balloon as a present, and Cozy roamed the Hard Rock with it. There was a cover band playing and Cozy went right to the stage (with her balloon) to watch them set up. I caught myself thinking, “She better be planning her own band and not a life as a groupie.” During a break in their 80s glam metal set, the guitarist took a moment to wish Cozy a happy birthday. “I wish I was three again,” he said. Then he dedicated “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” to my daughter, commenting that the song was about putting sugar on your cereal. Thanks, dude.

Disneyland, the birthplace of princesses, is such a strange place. I was last there, at the original park, in 1969, when I was five. It really hasn’t changed much. But I certainly have. Part of the experience was like being five all over again. (The Peter Pan ride is exactly the same as I remember it.) But now I see it through a much different lens. Do all these people dressed in cartoon costumes get a decent wage with health benefits? Where were those Mickey Mouse ears made and by whom? Child labor? What’s it like to be 62 and work in an amusement park? Does the It’s a Small World ride promote a colonialist view of the world? We were floating through the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, past the “wench auction,” and one of the guys behind us said, “We’ll take two and take them home,” to another guy. Their wives sat next to them. We took a picture of Cozy beaming in front of the statue of Walt Disney and posted it on Facebook. One friend posted, “Famed anti-Semite Walt Disney” and another commented, “Tear down that statue!” You can’t win.

But I wasn’t there for me or my political agenda. In 1989, I smuggled a quart of oil into the Disney Epcot Center in Orlando and dumped it into the fountain in front of Exxon’s Universe of Energy ride to protest their “propaganda” after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. So I was good. This was about Cozy. Although, I’ll admit, after a stroll through Fantasyland and the faces of kids from across the world, I was closer to five in my head than fifty. And even by the parking deck, Cozy was shining with excitement. We parked in Mickey, 5-G. “There’s Mickey!!”

What is this wonder? All things are new and magic is real. Her face was and endless expression of joy at every corner. This radiance. It’s intoxicating. And now she has the language skills to convey it. “I want to ride the tea cups and get dizzy!” We made our way to Mickey’s Toontown in search of her favorite mouse. The lines were pleasantly short so when she saw Minnie’s house, she knew we were close to pot of gold at the end of this thousand mile-long rainbow. When she finally entered Minnie’s living room and saw her in 3-D (instead of just on Mickey’s Road Racers), she about burst, immediately hugging the giant mouse like they were life-long friends. When we told “Minnie” that it was Cozy’s birthday, she got a big hug and kiss and Cozy was just pure bliss. There was even a birthday cake in Minnie’s oven that was surely for Cozy.

Mickey’s house was right next door (begging the question about Mickey being a backdoor mouse). He was also quite wonderful to Cozy, who, after two-living legends embracing her, was ready to explode. All the nooks and crannies of the Magic Kingdom provided moments of happiness for her, especially the Enchanted Tiki Room. The day ended with the Main Street Electrical Parade. I saw the first parade at Disneyworld in 1972 and this was the parade’s final weekend. It hadn’t changed a lick. Same 70’s Moog soundtrack, Pete’s Dragon, and (my lost love – long story) Alice in Wonderland on a giant mushroom. Cozy’s face was aglow and when it was over, she cried. “All my friends are gone!” We’ll come back Cozy. I promise.

The following day, after some podcasting and lunch with a friend who animates at Dreamworks, we hit the road north, trying to beat the eclipse back to Portland. Cozy would wake up from naps, singing the Tiki Room song and saying, “I want to go back and see my friends!” The happiest place on earth.

Now we are home with our three-year-old who has lots to say about the world, but it’s a world where there is still magic and wonder. There are flying elephants and Cheshire Cats and submarines that will take you “down, down, down” to see Nemo. While she was too starstruck to talk to Moana, she hugged Pluto like he was her favorite pet And of course it’s a world where she is good friends with Minnie Mouse. I hope this world lasts for a while.

August 22, 2016: I found a 2-year-old!

August 17, 2015: ¡Cozy turns uno! Happy first birthday to our daughter!

Note: A sincere thanks to the Saldivars, Chases, and Sullivans for helping to make Cozy’s birthday so wonderful. We’re lucky to have such good friends.

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Charlottesville: America’s fork in the road

August 16, 2017November 29, 2017 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 9 Comments

August 15, 2017

Chaos theorists talk about bifurcation points in our human history when everything changes. The invention of agriculture around 9,500 BCE that allowed nomadic people to (literally) put down roots and build civilizations. The invention of the wheel around 3,200 B.C.E. that allowed us to travel and trade with other civilizations. The invention of the modern computer around 1950 C.E. that allowed us to process masses of information in a non-linear way.

The carnage in Charlottesville, Virginia feels like a bifurcation point. If not for the world, then for America. Are we going to descend into a fascist state or are we going to wrestle the reins of our democracy away from torch-carrying “proud boys” and their enabler-in-chief?

When I began my research on white supremacist extremists thirty years-ago, they were purely a fringe phenomenon. There has been some serious actors, like The Order, that funneled millions of dollars from violent heists to folks like David Duke and the Aryan Nations, in hopes of funding a race war. My guys were mostly 17-year-old knuckle-heads who were angry that their parents had been laid off from the local textile mill and the only source of an explanation was the White Aryan Resistance. For years, my work was focused the alienated few who took their righteous anger in the wrong direction. It was always fascinating and good fodder for cable crime programs but never seemed to have much value in the analysis of mainstream culture (as much as I tried to link the two worlds). Nazis were an anachronism. A comic footnote in our progressive history.

That’s until Donald Trump decided he wanted to be president.

The images of Charlottesville, with hordes of white men carrying torches, chanting, “You will not replace us! Jews will not replace us!” was shocking enough. That they were defending a statue of the traitor Robert E. Lee was beside the point. But then we saw the video of one of those neo-nazis, James Fields Jr., driving his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of counter-protestors, killing Heather Heyer, 32, and seriously injuring many others. Even though this was a tactic utilized by ISIS around the globe, President Trump refused to call it an act of terrorism. In fact he refused to call it much of anything, bemoaning that there was violence on “many sides.” Two days later he retweeted a post asking why the media had covered this but not the “9 deaths” in Chicago that weekend. Because, you know, black people.

Unravelling the Alt-Right knot

Those on the racist right get fairly regular public make-overs. In the late 1980s, Louisiana Grand Dragon David Duke took off his Klan robe and put on a Brooks Brothers suit (and got a nose job) and ran for president of the United States (as a Republican). He didn’t win, but he did get elected to the Louisiana state legislature for a term. White supremacists have become white separatists and then white nationalists. It’s all the same racist ideology. I was doing live commentary for local news station during a large alt-right rally on August 6. One of the attendees said he was a “western supremacist.”

My first thought was, “Well, west coast is the best coast. So am I!” But then I realized he meant western civilization supremacist. He was a white supremacist.

There’s a lot of people who are attracted to the alt-right message who are not white supremacists. Local alt-right organizer Joey Gibson is not even white. He just loves Donald Trump. A lot. He seemed to be caught off-guard by all the Nazis that kept showing up at his “free speech” rallies and is now fashioning himself as a “moderate Libertarian.” But the Nazis still show up whenever he holds a rally. They want to complain about immigrants, Muslims, Black Lives Matter, and feminists and anything else that bugs white men that day.

For the last ten years the alt-right has been primarily an internet phenomenon. Those who felt the most conservative Republican was not conservative enough. They found a safe space on the web, including on Breitbart, 4Chan, Reddit, and the DailyStormer.com. They’ve been able to find a place to talk about the “liberal (Jewish) media,” how much they hate the women on The View, the threat of “Sharia Law,” and Trump’s favorite drumbeat, that President Obama was a Muslim, not born in America. Going to a Klan rally has its risks, but sitting in front of your laptop, kvetching about Beyoncé all day is easy peasy. (You know she hates white people, right?)

The campaign of Donald Trump, with all its white supremacist dog whistles, brought these trolls out into the sunlight. Now they’re in the streets ready to preserve the macho tradition of the white men who “built this nation” by beating up a few “communists.” (Last season, they were all “anarchists.”) They’ll go to liberal bastions, Berkeley, California or Portland, Oregon, or the University of Virginia because they know they’ll generate a strong response. And if some anti-fascist kid punches one of them in the face, they can further their wimpy cause that white men are the “victims” of the multi-cultural shift in America. Boo hoo, poor oppressed white men.

There are legitimate social issues that people have a right debate: immigration, trade policies, when religious freedoms bump up against existing laws, free speech. On the Glamor Shot surface, that’s all these alt right blokes are doing. It’s just a public conversation. But you barely have to scratch the surface to see what the truth behind this phenomenon is. Drop into AltRight.com’s editor Richard Spencer’s Twitter feed on any random day. Or pretty much every thread on Reddit’s “alternative_right” page or the incredibly sexist “Politically Incorrect” forum on 4Chan. How did these dorks become part of our mainstream political discourse?

Make America White Again

There are two very real threats from the alt right. And I mean very real.

The first has to do with our alt-right president, who rode to power by championing the issues of these quasi-fascists, including bringing some of them into his White House men’s club. (You think Steve Bannon is a right-wing nut-job, spend some time with Sebastian Gorka, Trump’s deputy assistant.)

The rhetoric of the alt-right is that America is being ripped away from white men by all these enemy forces; Muslims, Jews, feminists, homosexuals, liberals, Mexicans, Chinese steel, and Korean smartphones. (It’s so much easier to just say “communists.”) The Charlottesville marchers chanted, “You will not replace us!” After all, it’s good to be the king of the hill.

The problem is, they are sort of right. White males are a shrinking percentage of our nation of immigrants. The U.S. Census Bureau has stated that by the year 2050, the proportion of Americans who are non-white will be be greater than the proportion that is white. If you believe this is a “white man’s country,” there’s reason to panic, because your vision is fading away. While most of us not only accept the demographic shift, we celebrate the added diversity, these guys want to go back in time. Push back against the hordes and make America great again. That’s why they voted for Donald Trump. What looks like an attempt to even the playing field to the rest of us, looks like oppression to them. They needed a “strong leader” who will stop this “political correctness.” Merry Christmas, motherfuckers!

Obviously they are going to lose. They can have all the tikki torch marches they want, but they can’t stop the browning of America. There is not a single family fleeing the violence of El Salvador who is saying, “We can’t go to America. They have racist Twitter trolls!” BUT, with friends in high places, the alt boys can hope Trump and his alt-right handlers can dismantle democracy just enough, and gerrymander a few more swing-state districts, that America starts to look like the country after the Klan helped push through the Immigration Act of 1924. It’s not an impossible vision. Neither is A Handmaid’s Tale.

The McVeigh Threat

The other is what happens when the alt-right coup plan fades. There is a direct parallel with the militia movement of the 1990s. Like the alt right, people (men) were attracted to the militia movement for a number of reasons, including gun rights, land use issues, and a general hatred of paying taxes. A bit further down it became a hatred of the federal government who had control of these issues. The next step on the flow chart was the arrival of the conspiracy theories. Republicans and Democrats and the whole ball of wax were controlled by the Freemasons or Illuminati. (The left tends to go for Reptilian aliens or the Koch Brothers.) A bit further down that conspiracy becomes anti-Semitic. America was controlled by a Zionist occupation government. (ZOG!)

At that bottom of that dark funnel were the revolutionaries who believed a second American Revolution was needed to replenish the nation and rid the country of its Zionist masters. This was Timothy McVeigh’s intention when he bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people, including 19 children in a daycare facility. The alt right has its own McVeighs who believe the exact same thing. Jeremy Christian, the Portland Max train murderer idolized McVeigh as a true hero. At his arraignment, Christian shouted, “You may call it terrorism, I call it patriotism!” Just yesterday, the FBI thwarted a plot by an alt right follower named Jerry Varnell to explode a van in Oklahoma City to jump start McVeigh’s race war.

The more people you bring in at the top of this funnel, the more revolutionaries you end up with at the bottom. The question is, what will be the body count from these McVeighs as they realize that Trump isn’t going to deliver 1924 America to them on a silver platter? Will they force their race war on us? And if so, can I go ahead and enlist with the Black Panthers?

Why seekers flock to Nazis and Trump

People want to make sense of a confusing, chaotic world. The pace of change is accelerating. The old order is unrecognizable. Transgender bathrooms, bilingual signs at Home Depot, and a new iPhone when you haven’t even gotten the old one yet. It’s dizzying. Some one thinks your racist because you said, “All lives matter,” and you didn’t realize you were supposed to ask when pronouns people prefer. Wasn’t “queer” a bad word? People of color not colored people. I get it. It’s a lot for a privileged person to keep up with.

Both Trump and the Nazis speak to this sense of normlessness, what sociologists call anomie. People need a frame to put all these images in and Trump and the Nazis do it. It’s a simplistic worldview of good versus evil and the only reason it’s confused is because of the fake or Jewish media. But don’t worry, Trump and the Nazis will explain it for you. It’s all a big conspiracy meant to deprive the average white (male) person from his natural position in the status quo. As Trump opined today, what are they going to do next, take down statues of George Washington? He owned slaves! (I’m guessing Trump doesn’t actually that Robert E. Lee was a Confederate general who was defeated by the United States.)

Once you have the analysis provided, the second part of the appeal is the action plan. What are you going to do about it? The white nationalists in Charlottesville clearly stated they wanted to take their country back. From who? Trump says he wants to make America great again. When was that? These are not even thinly veiled calls to return America to the days before civil rights movement upset the straight white male apple cart.

Step one: Provide the analysis. Step two: Provide the action plan. Step three: Unleash the hounds.

Life in Alt Right America

Saturday afternoon I was hosting a hate crime forum in downtown Portland, co-sponsored by the Department of Justice. Peoples’ phones started buzzing and attendees began to ask, “Have you heard what’s happening in Charlottesville?” Afterwards I was whisked off for a CNN interview where I was asked what I would say if I was Trump’s speech writer. Over the next 48 hours I did dozens of interviews about the alt right (including with Turkish TV). There were two things on my mind. Could this please wind down before I take my daughter to Disneyland for her third birthday? And how did this weird little fringe group I started studying thirty years ago become mainstream? (I woke up this morning to MSNBC giving their audience a primer on neo-nazi groups and symbols.)

We are at a crossroads in America. It is obvious that President Trump just does not get it. He does not get the real trauma cause by racism in America. He does not get real threat posed by domestic terrorists, like James Fields, Jr.. And he does not get that people trying to stop fascists are not somehow equally threatening as the fascists themselves. His only response to this horrific trend should be to purge all the alt right bozos from staff. He needs to admit that he made a mistake and that’s he’s instituting a course correction for the country.

But he won’t. He never admits mistakes. That takes an evolved person. He’s the mayor of Simpletown. The alt right loves him and so he loves the alt right (and it’s clear that Trump is afraid of his alt right handlers). They will go on a road of destruction together. The destruction of the core values of this country. The question is – will the rest of us go down it with them?

Note: This isn’t the most cogent piece I’ve written. I tried to zip if off between TV and radio interviews, a Canadian film crew in my house, and Cozy jumping on my back over her excitement about meeting Minnie Mouse this week. Also, the sun is going to disappear. But you get it, I hope.

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Fascists Fall for Trump, their Nazi Dream Date

August 4, 2017October 16, 2017 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 5 Comments

August 4, 2017

The Metroplex was a beautiful abandoned building turned into a thriving punk rock club and the de facto Island of Misfit Toys in the 1980s. I saw shows there by the Dead Kennedys, the Circle Jerks and a million others (including, oddly, Mick Taylor of the Rolling Stones). I did my first interview with a racist skinhead there 31 years ago this summer. There had been a skinhead brawl at the competing 688 Club that had sent the doorman to the hospital. You can hear the skinhead version of events in the Anti-Heroes’ song, “Disco Riot.”

I had first encountered skinheads when I was student in London in 1982. I hopped on a train in Victoria Station to my internship in a clinic out in suburban Thamesmead. There were three skinheads in the car and me. They were drawing swastikas and National Front logos on the wall. One looked at me and then scrawled, “Kill a mod.” I got off at the next stop. By 1986, racist skinheads were popping up all over America, including the Old Glory Skins in Atlanta. I was 22 and this kid, in boots and braces, was probably 18. I wanted to know what was going on.

“What do you guys really want?” I asked him as we sat on the curb of Marietta Street, the heat too unbearable inside the Metroplex.

“We just want a strong leader who will kick all the fucking mud races out of the county.”

I wonder where that kid is now. I bet he’s happy. He finally got his “strong leader.”

Much has been written (including by me) about how Donald Trump has used white supremacist tactics, dog whistles, and code words to generate support from the extreme right and white supremacist counter-culture. Remember when he pretended not to know who David Duke was? When he was elected, white nationalist, oh, excuse me, “alt-right” leaders like Richard Spencer raced to Washington to exalt “Hail Trump!” with a stiff-armed salute.

His campaign to take America back to 1950 (in an interview with CNN he said that was the “again” in his “Make America Great Again” slogan), has only gained momentum. His fascistic rule by tweet undermines the fabric our democracy, including his recent pronouncement that all transgendered people will be kicked out of the U.S. military. His unquestioning flock believe that accusations of racism are just a liberal (Jewish?) plot, spread by the fake (Jewish?) media.

Certainly the people I have been studying for over thirty years have been watching. I don’t go to Klan rallies anymore or bring beer to skinhead parties to get them to talk, but I still hang out with them in their virtual worlds and eavesdrop on their conversations in neo-Nazi discussion groups and the hang-outs in the darkest corners of the web (i.e., Reddit). And boy howdy, do racists love Trump.

The latests clarion call from their fake blonde führer is his plan to limit legal immigration to English-speaking only applicants. Everyone knows this is not about keeping German-only speaking immigrants out of the country. It’s about brown and black people, especially brown people from Latin America. It’s not even a veiled attempt at racism. It’s clear as a bell, and the radical right (and some of the Trump trolls who post on my Facebook page) are loving it. Just try to keep up with this thread on Stormfront, the leading discussion site for white supremacists: STORMFRONT

Trump’s “merit based” plan (you know, because the people who pick our food have no merit) would only offer visas to immigrants who have high-paying job offers and speak English better than our Drunk Uncle president. It would end the diversity that comes from the visa lottery and that was making America great long before Trump’s made in China MAGA dunce caps sat on the empty noggins of Bocephus and Betty Lou. It would also drastically restrict the number of refugees allowed in the country, because, you know, screw that whole America is a “beacon of freedom” thing. If only we had more Nazi rocket scientists who needed sanctuary. The Statue of Liberty was a French (Jewish?) plot.

These policies are surely the work of right-wing hate groups, like FAIR (the Federation for American Immigration Reform), that have Steve Bannon’s blotchy Caucasian ear and the soul of “more than kinda” racist Stephen Miller. And they are catnip to white supremacists. You thought they went gaga over Trump’s unconstitutional Muslim ban and Attorney General Jeff Sessions praise of the 1924 “Whites Only” immigration act. (That’s the one that caused the 1920s KKK to close up shop because they got what they were marching for.) The Little Hitlers are going ape poo over Trump’s latest plan to make America white again. I know. I lurk in their world of stupidity. And we don’t even have to get into his silencing of the First Lady (First Ladies are to be seen and not heard), or the stomping on transgender rights (“No boot camp for you!”). Fascist forums have threads dedicated to both. The immigration thing alone has them ginned up like frat boys on pledge night.

Yes, America has a president who was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan. But Trump won’t get his final solution. He’s clueless at how America works. The guy can’t even speak in complete sentences or keep his lies straight. The Republican congress has blocked him and the courts have blocked him and the diverse patchwork of the American populace will continue to block him. But there will be casualties along the way as the 2017 alt-right versions of those 1980s skinheads believe they’ve got their strong leader. That’s why Americans cannot be silent or still.

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Watching the Wheels

Feminist Fatherhood

Month: August 2017

We must now ask if the President of the United States is a psychopath

Cozy turns 3 in Fantasyland

Charlottesville: America’s fork in the road

Fascists Fall for Trump, their Nazi Dream Date