Make Government Spending Larger Again!

"The U.S. Congress voted early on Friday to approve a $1.3-trillion government funding bill with large increases in military and non-defense spending, sending it to President Donald Trump, who was expected to sign it into law." (source)

The Real Reason for Trump's Wall

Trump is considering what kind of expensive wall to build (paid for by America, not Mexico). Meanwhile, drug runners have perfected mile-long tunnel construction with vented sections in remote areas of the desert along the border. And ladders are always going to be cheaper and taller than walls.

There is nothing in Trump's proposal that will address the real issue of drug abuse that he pretends to care about.

But this isn't about stopping drugs or even preventing people from using them (many of the most addictive and lethal drugs are manufactured by highly profitable pharmaceutical companies in the USA). This is about constructing a physical safety blanket for older white Americans suffering from anxiety about a changing country, placating their innermost views on brown-skinned immigrants, and masked with a thin pretext of political calculus.

Bots for Trump

Today on Facebook, Donald J. Trump proclaimed his innocence after his own party concluded there's no evidence of collusion between his 2016 campaign and the Russian government. Right.

I stated that considerable evidence already exists that Trump has more than a decade of unethical and ongoing connections with the Russian government including money laundering, as well as communication between at least 73 associates of his 2016 campaign and Russian sources.

Within 5 minutes, someone replied to my comment with "Please show proof sir." Which I did. But who was it that wrote that? Someone named Chloe Harrison. Who is Chloe Harrison?

"Chloe Harrison" is a fake profile created 18 hours ago using two studio-style model photos of a young woman claiming to have lived in Houston and studied at Texas Tech University and University of Houston. There is no profile information or links, nor any profile activity prior to 18 hours ago. I have flagged this as a fake profile and anticipate it will soon be deleted (I've reported dozens of fake profiles that are no longer online).

So here's another point: the fact that when I write a comment critical of Donald Trump and the first response is a fake profile defending him... should tell you everything you need to know about how pervasive and ongoing the hijacking of social media by bots and foreign agents to disrupt and agitate American political discourse has become.

Dylann Roof and the Death Sentence

Buried beneath all the other breathless headlines, I just now read that "Dylann Roof has been sentenced to death for the June 2015 Charleston church slayings."

Stories like this actually remind me why I oppose capital punishment.

Roof was clearly lost and fell into all the wrong influences as an impressionable, isolated person. He deserves life imprisonment without parole to reflect on his choices and the opportunity to reconcile with his own moral failures.

Unfortunately, the government-sanctioned execution of Roof will stoke the flames of martyrdom in future angry young men just like him.  In their racist ideology, it will only validate their persecution complex.  Notoriety in death is often the outcome that rampage shooters desire.  In our pursuit of justice, we should not be so unwitting as to play into white power delusions about their imagined persecution.

By sentencing Dylann Roof to death, the US government will affirm that our response to killing people is... killing people. We should not want for further blood on our hands after the tragic shooting in Charleston. This is not what those slain church-goers who follow Christ would want nor what we as a society should accept as our moral standard.