Trump and “The Best Phrase in All of American History”

Posted on June 22nd, 2018 by Adam-Troy Castro

Holding yet another rally for himself two years into his Presidency, Trump just mused that “Make America Great Again” is probably the best phrase in all of American history.

So fuck you, my own nomination, the glorious sentence that begins, “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Fuck you, “Four score and seven years ago,” and all that followed.

Fuck you (especially), “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

Fuck you, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Fuck you, “We do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard.”

Fuck you, “I have a dream.”

Fuck you, Twain. Fuck you, Steinbeck. Fuck you, Hemingway. Fuck you every glorious phrase put together by any person of influence, for 242 years.

His inane, Nazi-derived rhetoric beats all of them, he wants us to know.

Tags: Assholes, Donald Trump, Politics, Race | Category Politics

Trump Thinks He Can Operate Without Q Branch

Posted on June 19th, 2018 by Adam-Troy Castro

Donald Trump’s call for a “Space Force” as fourth branch of the military is a distraction. That is all it is, a bit of handwaving to seize your attention from the criminality taking place elsewhere. To discuss it at all is to fall for the trick.

And yet, and yet, I will, long enough to note the following. It will seem like digression but I will drag it back to relevancy by the end.

I have always treasured the three minutes of every mainline James Bond movie (except for LIVE AND LET DIE and CASINO ROYALE, and that should show you what a goddamned nerd I am), that feature his interactions with the weapons master known as Q. (Or his successor, R.)

Q, classically played by Desmond Llewelyn, who doesn’t appear to have ever been young, was this persnickety guy who spent his life working on gadgets, like fountain pens that fired acid, Astin-Martins with bulletproof shields, and, oh, I don’t know, socks that if snuck into some malefactor’s drawer would electrocute him if he tried to wear them. Q was great. Q was goddamned serious about his job, and though he only rarely took any further part in the action, he was honestly irritated by 007, who took every visit as an excuse to needle him.

Those scenes were often an exercise in showing us gadgets too silly for even the current silly adventure, like the coil of levitating rope designed to blow up and kill the fakir climbing it, and about all you can say of that is, well, I suppose the need for that device must have come up at least once.

I always resented James Bond, a little bit, for not giving the guy his due. I mean, sometimes the ribbing did cross the line into abuse, and it always struck me that this fellow was also giving his all for Queen and Country, producing this nonsense that helped James Bond stay alive while defeating various super-villains. Would it have killed James Bond to just tell the guy, “You know what? Those garotte cuff-links you provided me with last time really did come in handy. At the very least I owe you a nice bottle of sherry?”

And this brings us back to space force.

Donald Trump has proposed a space force because it sounds cool. He has proposed a space force even though our actual space program is moribund and even though he has nothing but contempt for science or indeed for knowledge of any kind. He wants the dashing stuff, the uniformed stuff, the zip around in outer space stuff, but he doesn’t actually want to fund the technology that would make it possible.

He wants Captain Kirk but has no place for Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, let alone Science Officer Mr. Spock. Never mind that Kirk would be dead without those two luminaries, and a crew of highly trained professionals providing the knowledge that makes Kirk’s derring-do possible.

He wants James Bond but he doesn’t want Q.

But you can’t have James Bond without Q. James Bond without Q is a frat boy dead in the first reel.

And James Bond might not always show that, but he sure as hell knows it.

Alas, Trump is not of the same level of intelligence.

Tags: Assholes, Casino Royale, James Bond, Live and Let Die, Politics, Republicans, Sneaky Metaphors | Category Movies, Sneaky Metaphors

Like No Business I Know

Posted on June 18th, 2018 by Adam-Troy Castro

According to Ann Coulter, the crying, traumatized children in these internment camps are actors.

This would normally be my place to provide you with a nice paragraph of eloquent invective about the woman I’ve considered a loathsome monster for years now.

However, none of that will provide much in the way of enlightenment about anything except the state of my capacity for stringing together eloquent expressions of disgust.

What I will do instead is examine the premise.

Let us imagine a little brown boy, or girl, with an interest in acting. Let us imagine that this child really hopes to get cast in a Spielberg movie someday. Let us imagine instead that Central American Variety puts out a casting call for lots and lots of children, the more photogenic and heart-rending the better, to play a long-term role which will consist of staying in character while sitting around on concrete floors behind chain-link fencing, and doing nothing. Let us further imagine that the bigger things this performance can lead to are limited to further indefinite periods existing in tents, with no amenities, at the height of desert heat.

We are expected to believe that in a world where the Harry Potter kids needed to be coached and trained and directed to get to the point where they were professional enough to not move their lips in silent rehearsal of the lines they were being fed cues for, or look directly at the camera while speaking, THESE little brown children sleeping on concrete will see the visitors who have had to fight for days to see them are secretly thinking, “This is my big moment! I have to find my center! I have to sell the premise that I’m traumatized and heartbroken and don’t know what’s going to happen to me!”

That they’re studying the Method, finding their centers, doing vocal exercises, practicing, and later critiquing one another, all to give the most persuasive performances as children living through a nightmare, staying in character twenty-four hours a day, as prisoners. Down to the tiniest babies!

And in her fantasy, when one of them thinks of complaining about the working conditions, when one of them says, you know what, my agent never said anything about this, they are not treated as prisoners; in fact, the talented show-runners working with them will inevitably say what you or I would say, “Well, are you saying you don’t want the job anymore?”, when that happens?

No doubt they all say, “What? And quit show business?”

Tags: Ann Coulter, Assholes, Race, Republicans | Category Commentary, Humor, Politics