Great and unmatched wisdom?

[Friar Tuck confronts the Bishop, who is hastily gathering up gold coins]

Friar Tuck: So, you sold your soul to Satan, your Grace? You accused innocent men of witchcraft and let them die!

Bishop of Hereford: Brother Friar, you would not strike a fellow man of the cloth?

Friar Tuck: No, no I wouldn't. In fact, I'll help you pack for your journey. [he swiftly loads the Bishop down with several heavy sacks] You're going to need lots of gold to help you on your way-you're a very rich man, eh? This too, and that! [Tuck holds up one final bag] Here's thirty pieces of silver to pay the Devil...ON YOUR WAY TO HELL! [Tuck shoves the Bishop to his death out a window]

~From Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

I think, as several people have put it, we've reached the Fuhrer-bunker stage of the Trump Presidency.

I'm not sure what the actual cause of this apparent mental breakdown is, but I imagine we'll all know soon enough. I suspect it has something to do with the impeachment inquiry, and likely Trump knows or suspects that such has uncovered information not yet available to the public. Just a guess.

But one of the effects of this shit, is that we're withdrawing from some territory or shifting the lines in such a way as to leave our Kurdish allies exposed to attack by the Turks, who have already stated their intention to attack.

Listen up, yo. If I were any of America's allies I would not count on shit until we get this orange traitor out of office. It really is that simple, he neither knows nor understands things like why it's good to have allies in the world. To him, the Kurds are basically just another contractor whose bill he chose not to pay...even though they basically did an amazing amount of the hard work of fighting Daesh for absolutely dirt cheap as far as proxy armies go. Wait a minute, where have I heard this song and dance before? Afghanistan, you say? Mujahideen, you say? We're making our own enemies in real time, by abandoning our allies yet again. It's like Republicans haven't learned shit from all the times they've pulled this bullshit and it's blown up in our faces before.

Fuck these motherfuckers. Great and unmatched wisdom, my ass. Every time I think this ungodly goat-rope of an administration can't go any lower or screw up any worse, they manage.

I was taught you don't abandon your brothers, that you do your duty, complete the mission, get the job done and then dead or alive we all go home together.

For fuck's sake, we as a nation still send people to comb through jungles and rice paddies to find the remains of the missing from the Vietnam war. But we're all too willing to abandon the living.

And why?

This fucking orange galoot has access to the greatest, most well-funded and supported intelligence network in the history of the world and where does he get his information? Fox News.

This makes absolutely no sense to me. Granted, I get a lot of my information from news feeds and certain people on social media, but I deliberately make a point of following both conservative and liberal sources *For* my data, as a means of making sure I'm getting the whole picture. Granted, nearly all of the conservatives that I follow are anti-Trump, but some of them have not always been so, Tea Party Joe Walsh for example.

Yes, sometimes you have to follow the assholes, just to make sure you have an understanding of what the other side is thinking. Granted, I don't have to follow very many of them. I don't follow Trump, but I don't have to, he gets ReTweeted by enough people that I follow, generally with commentary by them, that I don't miss much.

And what's worse is, aside from a small core of Trump True-Believers, Fox News seems to be slowly turning anti-Trump. I rather suspect this is only because Trump's stupidity is starting to cost rich people money.

So what's next? Breitbart? One America News Now? Some as-yet unknown conspiracy theorist?

It's only getting worse, and remember the President's official seal of approval seems to dictate where a certain subset of American "Conservatives" get their news in the first place.

Although, such has not always been the case, speaking of weirdo extremists that used to be their news people. When you've lost Pat Robertson...to the point where he says Trump will lose the "Mandate of Heaven" if we withdraw troops from northern Syria...well shit, I don't even know what to say to that.

Except that I'm confused, are we all Chinese now? I ask this because that is a concept out of Chinese traditional religion that has not one damn thing to do with Christianity.

No, not even the whacked-out Prosperity Gospel Pentecostal kind.

The term "Mandate of Heaven" has to do with Emperors, not Presidents.

But that's the problem, isn't it?

As I have said many times, we have a hell of a lot of Americans that simply don't even understand the basic history or purpose of the United States of America...just like they don't understand the Bible or a lot of the other stuff they claim to believe in, not even one little bit. I'm serious.

All too many Americans, in their great and unmatched wisdom, decided a long time ago that if they don't know anything, they can believe whatever they want.

And we're all going to pay the cost of allowing that to happen.

The walls are closing in on Trump. He knows Congress already has something, he knows public opinion of him is sinking like a stone and he probably doesn't actually have enough dedicated followers to pull off breaking off a piece for himself...though I'm sure they'll try anyway. He's screwed, on some level I think he knows it. This kind of mess is just him lashing out.

And there will be more.

And it will get worse.

Because we, as a people, have spent a long time coddling or enabling cranks, freaks, mentally ill idiots, outright frauds and raging morons. That's why. Because capitalism, mostly.

The snipped quote was part of a long, rambling E-mail sent to me by a former partner, who I've now actually blocked. Her entire basic premise basically boiled down to the idea that God was going to give her literal truck-loads of money because something something End Times Gazpacho.

And she said it as if that was the entire purpose of God, as if the money itself somehow equals Salvation.

I spent much of my life as a Christian. And that, right there, is literally one of the most anti-Christian messages I have ever heard in my life.

Mind you, this was from somebody who claims they didn't vote for Trump. (Actually, that's probably true. She doesn't usually vote and she seems to take pride in that, for whatever reason.)

Now, I want you to imagine what the people who did vote for Trump, who do support this crap, are saying when they think no one is watching. It's not hard to imagine that a lot of these fools support Trump because he thinks he'll hurt the people they don't like, or make them rich, or some such selfish motivations.

Trump is not the cause of our current national dysfunction, merely an effect, a symptom of it. The entire problem is itself a symptom of a deeper problem rooted in evil ideologies like base selfishness, misogyny and racism (see also the attempts to sexualize Greta Thunberg) false Gospels like Calvinism and the Prosperity Gospel, fear and hatred of change, and a general spiritual confusion that seems to believe that thinking "good" thoughts leads to the outcomes that one wants.

And until we, in our great and unmatched wisdom, step up and deal with these national mental problems that we have and make sure people have the intelligence to deal with them...this mess is going to continue, Trump or no Trump.

And the people who come after him will be much worse.

If we don't all make a stand now we're all going to pay the price later. So get after it.