plunder | The Direction of Intention

Cleansed By Gaslight Fire [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab]

Posted on April 12, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

I understand that over in fox-news-land they barely mention the stock-market-free-fall due to the tariffs calculated with kindergarten math. Instead, the are chatting about Kid Rock’s tailor. Important stuff and definitely bolstering their claim to be the champions of truth. In other news, The New York Times managed to bury the Hands Off protests on page 18. Evidently, millions of citizens protesting the intentional collapse of their government by the executive branch is not worthy of front page news. By the way, whatever became of the free press, the fourth pillar of democracy?

Do you recall that one of the methods used to detect if a witch-was-a-witch was to tie the woman (or man) to a large rock and throw them into the river. If they drowned, they were not a witch. If they didn’t drown, they were proven to be a witch, dried off and summarily burned at the stake. Either way, the authorities confiscated the witches’ property. They divided-up the spoils as payment for their time.

This is the same mentality driving the madness of the current administration.* The executive cries that he is the victim of a “Witch Hunt”. He and his party tied our democracy to a rock and chucked it into the river to test whether or not it is a democracy. Lady Liberty survived their January 6th insurrection so is now being tied to the stake. She’s a democracy for sure and must be cleansed by hot gaslight fire.

By the way, whatever became of those pillars of democracy? The Legislative, the Judicial and the Free Press? I suppose they are waiting until the fire burns Lady Liberty to ashes so they, too, might enjoy the confiscation of democracy’s property.

Don’t worry. You’ll never hear the gory details on fox news or, apparently, any other purveyor of polished entertainment once known as the free press. Truth has no meaningful role to play in an authoritarian state.

*This is also the same mentality driving the DOGE: 1) Level the accusation of waste, abuse and fraud. 2) Decimate the agency. 3) When it no longer functions properly or at all, proudly proclaim it wasteful, abusive, and fraudulent. 4) Confiscate the secure data, privatize the agency in order pass the savings and profits onto the billionaire class.

read Kerri’s blog about ASHES

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Second As Farce [David’s blog on saturday morning smack-dab]

Posted on March 1, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

My friend Roger once said that the real problem pathological liars face is that they can never keep track of their lies so they must continually heap lie onto lie onto lie until their narrative is a tumorous absurdity. The same rule applies to the enablers of liars. They, too, must heap justification upon justification until their justifications are preposterous. Ridiculous. Harebrained.

And, so, here we are. Tumorous absurdity propped up by preposterous, ridiculous, harebrained justifications.

With a pathological liar-in-chief and his party of dancing-bear-enablers, the story gets more and more barmy. A rapist leading the charge to eliminate abuse. An oligarch profiting mightily from the government he proclaims to be cleansing of fraud. Republicans, in the name of cutting waste, race to run up the national debt to provide tax cuts for billionaires.

It leaves me wondering how much balderdash a maga-mouth can swallow, how much rubbish a fox-infused brain can justify before it (they) wake up – you know, become “woke” – to the fact that America is not being made great, it’s being plundered. When do the sheep realize that they are being fleeced?

Karl Marx called it: “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce”.

read Kerri’s blogpost about WASTE, ABUSE, FRAUD

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Filed under: smack-dab | Tagged: absurdity, abuse, artistry, david robinson, davidrobinsoncreative.com, enabling, farce, fraud, irony, Karl Marx, Kerri Sherwood, kerri sherwood itunes, kerrianddavid.com, kerrisherwood.com, liar, plunder, story, studio melange, the melange, tragedy, waste | Leave a comment »

No Surprise [David’s blog on KS Friday]

Posted on January 10, 2025 by davidrobinsoncreative

“…the larger story of this moment is the plunder of public land for private gain.” ~ Historian Heather Cox Richardson, Letters From An American, January 7, 2025

When future historians ask the question, “What the heck happened to the United States of America?” they will need only look to Heather Cox Richardson’s encapsulating phrase: the plunder of the public for private gain. Were I one of the future historians I would title my book, The Nation That Ate Itself.

Our Achilles Heel? We worship business above all things so believe everything should run like a business. Government-by-transaction is no way to run a country. The natural conclusion of a nation that confuses public-service with business is the blatant exploitation of its people. It inevitably divides and feeds on itself. I would conclude my imaginary-future-history book with this: “It was inevitable and calculated. Their demise was no surprise”.

We watched the storm roll across the lake. The clouds were ominous and roiling yet the colors were gorgeous. It’s the reason we stopped. The visual collision of beauty and menace. While Kerri snapped photographs I was awash in metaphor (of course). The coming storm.

Our fall is not so different than the fall of Rome. When wealth is consolidated at the tippy-top and controlled by a gluttonous few, a once powerful nation tips over. It’s simple physics. Feasting on the people, the nation rubs its fat belly and decides to protect the privilege of the few over the health of the many. History repeats itself and, as we’ve written of Rome, our demise like theirs, is not and will not be a surprise. Root rot.

Kerri believes that, as people age, they do not change but become more of who they really are. Life boils them down to their essence. The same might be said of our nation. The plunder of the public for private gain is endemic in our system.

There is no mercy in the god of transaction. There is no morality in a worship made hard by the fundamentals of bottom lines. The church of Dog-Eat-Dog has little use for truth.

When asked the question, “Why did so many of the plundered public vote for their own demise?” the future historians will smile and answer simply, “They were manipulated by their social-media-masters into seeing their neighbors as dogs-to-be-eaten.”

Communal root rot. The mighty tree falls. No surprise.