Right Wingers Duped

Right Wingers Duped

- immersed in skewed views and conspiracy theories -

Non-Fiction / Social Commentary

Copyright 2020 by Ken Albertsen

Adventure1 Publications

ISBN 9781879338241

All rights reserved under international and Pan-American Copyright conventions. This e-book is available for the person who purchased it. This e-book should not be copied or re-sold or given away to others. Exception: small portions of this book may be quoted in other venues, if it's in regard to reviews or within a teaching context. If you would like to share this book with others, please arrange for the purchase of additional copies, accordingly. Thank you for respecting the work of this author. Carpenters, lawyers, accountants and chefs get paid for the hours they devote to their professions, ....so too should authors. It is hoped you enjoy this book. Reviews are appreciated, thanks.

Chapters

Duped, As It Applies To Trump Fans

1. Why Write This Missive At This Time?

2. Snowflake or Fake

3. A Big Foot Firmly On Environment's Neck

4. Post

5. Virus

5b. Update

Part II: Duped, As It Applies To Right Wing Christians

6. Tilting at Windmills

7. Buddhism in a Nutshell

8. Who's Dirty?

9. Fine Tooth Comb

10. Science Is Not Subjective

11. Addendum, Spring 2021

Foreword

The following text comprises two parts. The second part focuses on misinterpretations of Christianity's New Testament. The first section is more political, focusing on how right wingers, with Trump at their helm, unwittingly endanger the USA on several levels. Both parts, religious and political, share commonalities. One of those common threads is how they depend on unfettered worship, in each case, of a man. For Christianity, that man is Jesus. Within the US political realm at t he time this is being written, that man is Trump.

If one were to ask respective devotees, they would likely say they don't necessarily worship the man at the helm, but rather they worship the concepts behind the man, ...the ideals the man espouses.

Since this is being written in 2020, and the US national election is on the horizon, it was decided to have the opening segment of this text focus on Trump. Religious commentary comprises the second half.

Part 1: Duped, As It Applies To Trump Fans

1. Why write this missive at this time?

To most Americans, a second tranche of four years of Trump at the helm would be sad for the USA. During his first term, he spent much of his waking hours hearing about (but not really learning) the limits on his stewardship. He trampled on careers of people around him and others. Akin to Sir Edmond Hillory, when asked why he climbed mount Everest and replied, because it's there, ….if Trump were asked why he destroys peoples' careers, he would likely respond, because I can.

Trump gives the finger to the Constitution, laws, the FBI, CIA, Justice Dept., EPA, NPR and nearly every other American institution within and outside the beltway. If Trump gains a second term, it would be worse overall. He would take re-election as a double-whammy mandate to be even more belligerent to nearly everyone in his sphere, while knowing he won't have to answer or appeal to voters ever again. He never had to woo voters until his 70's, and he did a well-enough job of it, in 2016, to gain the Electoral College voters.

Trump didn't win just on his own. He had a lot of help. Like all rich Americans, he leans heavily on loans and grants. That includes hand-outs from rich friends. Without rich friends (and his father, earlier) continually passing money to him, Trump would be no richer than a green grocer in a small town. Once Trump got in the power seat in DC, he quickly adopted illegal ways to garner more money. The Founding Fathers (FF) had articulated provisions in the Constitution precluding elected officials from reaping wealth by way of their offices. However, the FF's didn't make such requirements as restrictive for the US president. The FF figured the president would be at least somewhat proper about self-enriching himself using the levers of his haughty position. Unfortunately, the FF didn't even dream of their country being led, one day, by an unabashedly greedy man like Donald Trump. A man who would gladly trample on decency.

The US in particular is suffering chasms, not unlike the lead-up to the Revolutionary war (which the British call 'The War of Secession') and the sad bloody conflicts of the US's Civil War (a war embodying scant civility). Granted, both those schisms involved bloodshed on epic scales, so how do the social rifts of the early 21st century compare, in that sense? Though abject conflict has not yet broken out (unless one counts the Charlottesville murder or violence at Trump rallies or Feds gassing protesters in Portland), the possibility of mass violence is real.

Trump fans own many more guns per person than Trump opponents. Trump fans are also quick to anger and eager to use their cherished guns - for any causes they deem justified. It's not a secret that, in the US, more than a few Trump fans with guns are 'waiting for the nod' from Trump, in order to activate - to go out and shoot people. Sorry if that sounds alarmist, but just a cursory cruising of right wing online blogs will back that assertion.

When mentioning the Founding Fathers, there's the red-flag issue of 'right to bear arms.' That provision was written at a time when rifling had not yet been invented. State-of-the-art firearms at that time were single shot, smooth-bore guns. The writers/signers of that provisions did not even dream about automatic weapons or bullets which could shatter upon impact, thereby blasting a person's head to smithereens with just one shot. Plus, the contentious paragraph was written at a time when there were no substantial 'standing militias' within the colonies, and British red-coats were the greatest threat. Most colonial men, at that time, were small-scale farmers. Most had a smooth-bore, single shot musket somewhere on the farm, used for shooting game for food, or for protection. If one or more states within the colonies were threatened, it behooved the residents to raise militias as soon as possible. Hence the term 'Minutemen.' In the Second Amendment paragraph, it refers to 'a well-regulated militia.' Are biker gangs or mafia hitmen, or city sidewalk heroin dealers, or overweight rednecks ensconced in travel trailers, 'well-regulated militia'? Doubtful.

The Second Amendment didn't even try to address automatic or semi-automatic weapons, nor were its writers thinking about ignorant rage-filled rednecks, when they wrote that oft-referenced paragraph. Those entities didn't exist in the late 18th century.

Since it was written, there have been a million stories of Americans using guns mischievously. Here's just one. It's a true story. I knew the murderer, and had helped him build a shed. He lived in a rural area. His hippie neighbor, 150 yards away, had an annoying habit of pooping on his compost pile. The redneck didn't like it, so one morning he took his combat rifle and shot the pooper dead. I jest not. I could recount hundreds of similar true stories - where rednecks maim or kill people (sometimes their own family members) because anger and gun ownership make a bad mix - ....and rednecks are easily offended, and quick to anger and eager to mete out retribution.

I am not against gun ownership per se. Swiss men, for example, have guns in their homes, but therein lies the difference. Swiss people and Scandinavians and Canadians and New Zealanders (among other nationalities) are generally more cool headed than the average American gun-owner. Perhaps there are psychological reasons, such as the western shoot 'em up tradition (often seen in movies / TV / video games, etc) which so influence Americans to become trigger-happy.

Not only movies about westerns, but many other genres show good guys shooting bad guys dead, in droves. That includes movies about the mob, war movies, horror, and even science fiction. If you're in the movie-making business, and you want to get a lot of butts in paid seats, you're smart to be involved with a movie that has lots of bullets flying. People love to watch the good guys plastering the bad guys. From the time of the first b&w silent movies, the good guys nearly always connect with each bullet they shoot, while the bad guys nearly always miss. It affects the movie-goers' psyche, particularly children and the child-minded - and one result is the skyrocketing death rates in the US - caused by people shooting guns.

Gun huggers are human and therefore able to twist words around to please themselves and their agenda. Christian preachers do similar, but we'll delve deeper into religious issues in the second section of this tome. Yet, gun lovers have a religious-like dedication to their guns and the related justifications they wave around. To give an idea how easy it is to twist written words around, let's take a look at the children's song: 'Row Row Row Your Boat.' When an innocent child hears the song, she hears it describe rowing a lovely little boat gently down a stream, and surmising that life is but a dream - a sweet dream, one assumes. An adult who, for example, wants to espouse the merits of mainlining heroin, could readily describe that song as 'rowing' a hypodermic needle gently down a stream (bloodstream), and so on. Interpretations of vague things written long ago can be as varied as the human mind cares to make them. It applies to the Second Amendment as much as to the Bible.

Fiction is a key point, when discussing people being duped. Everyone is drenched in fiction from the time of exiting the womb. It starts with mommy telling you something which isn't true - usually with an agenda ('stop crying, baby, or the boogie man will get you'). Then on to fairy tales, ....then more elaborate fairy tales, .....then fables in books and movies, ....then religion, .....then romance novels, .....then unfulfilled political promises from politicians, .....on and on.

Look in any popular video selection, or any public library selection, ....how much of the selection is fiction? Between 85 and 100%. If real science and nature shows/books were more sought after, then perhaps the people formulating the selections would stock their shelves accordingly. But the companies/stores which cater to the general public know (or have indications of) what is most popular, so they respond accordingly.

Not only are selections of videos/books fiction, the lion's share fall into the following categories: violence, criminality, horror, metaphysical, fantasy, romance, humor, and science fiction. If the videos/movies are aimed at children, the same parameters apply, except with a few less bombs exploding, bloody bodies, and less sex.

Where are selections of true science videos/movies? The the term 'true science' is used here, to differentiate from 'hocus pocus science' of time travel, unicorns, life-after-death, paranormal, metaphysics, and so on. Granted, people with internet can access some real science videos and books online, but how many do so? A relatively small percentage. It's as though Americans were invited to a buffet with all sorts of food, but only a rare few pick healthy portions to ingest. The majority go straight for the dessert table to fill up with white sugar treats, while turning their noses up at healthy food on offer.

Along with the dearth of true science videos/books, there are very few related to nature. In the old days (6 to 35 years ago), there used to be video stores. Among hundreds of available items, the selections would include a few science or nature titles, at best. More often than not, there would be none at all. That's a reflection of the type of society we've become. We live, or want to live, in a fictionalized world, ...a world where Tom Cruz gets the beautiful slim girl after smashing the evil cartel with a thousand bullets and six perfectly-placed bombs, ......where Rambo takes down an Apache combat aircraft (and the bad guys' entire army and air force) while standing on a sand hill, half naked, alone, and shooting a machine gun with one arm.

A population which feeds their brains with hours of fictionalized pap is going to be confused, at best. For starters, they won't know how things happen in the real world. They won't know much about real science, because they haven't been exposed to it beyond a cursory level. The situation worsens when looked at through the prism of the internet. With the near-instant cavalcade of data available online, right wing Americans devolve to ingesting portions of what suits their subjective leanings. If a right-winger is reading this, that person will compulsively retort with, Well, maybe that's true, but libtards do the same. They only look at fake news like CNN.

Libtards or whatever silly name right wingers want to peg reasonable-thinking people with, take in news and news-like data from various sources. Some of us watch news reports from other countries, ....even in other languages. That's something that right wingers couldn't do, even if they wanted to, because few are fluent in languages other than base English. Their hero, Trump, speaks mostly one-syllable words, repeated ad nauseum, in chopped-up brief discombobulated sentences. It's what's needed to spoon-feed his fan club. If I was a 4th grade teacher and he was in my classroom, I'd probably give him a failing grade and have him do the year over.

Some 'libtards' also peruse Fox 'News' and other right wing media. Why, you may wonder, would liberals want to submit themselves to such discomfort? A major reason: To get an idea of what adversaries are thinking. Trump and his enablers have been making great efforts to divide Americans. The political playing field has devolved to adversaries, and the splits are deepening week by week. Of course, there have been political divisions throughout American history, but the rifts that Trumpists are cleaving are the worse the USA has seen since the Civil War. When one has an adversary, it behooves that person to apprise what the other side is doing and thinking. It's the same in war as it is in a vindictive political arena. Partly for that reason, a portion of liberal-minded Americans keep tabs on what right wingers are saying and doing, and preparing to do.

In the latter half of 2016, who could have predicted the mayhem that would befall the USA in the ensuing years? Psychics and pundits and some others may have offered generalized projections, but similar to no one predicting Princess Diana's violent demise in a Parisian car crash, not one person could have predicted the details of America's downward trends, post-election.

Granted, a few smart people, such as Bill Gates, warned of the importance of being ready in case of a looming pandemic. Some Americans are old enough to remember Nixon's corrupt Attorney General John Mitchell. Mitchell was convicted of crimes perpetrated with Nixon, and served 19 months in prison. That foreshadows Trump and Barr's Constitution trashing relationship. Yet, the tanking economy and high number of unemployed on Trump's watch, coupled with Trump's blatant disdain for most Americans, is shaping up to be worse than even Never-Trumpers could have predicted.

Trump's mishandling of the COVID19 pandemic is epic. Not since Ivan The Terrible burned his home city of Moscow has a world leader been so opposed to the people he purportedly governs. As I write this, US cities are burning. It's not all Trump's fault, but he's effectively pouring gas on fires.

Portland's protests, during the summer of 2020, were winding down. That prompted Trump to tell Barr to send in camouflaged troops with no ID and with unmarked vehicles, to fan the embers of a dying protest movement. The mayor of the city was given scant notice of the invasion. Not surprisingly, she plus all Oregon officials, were against the forced insertion of incognito and armed Federal agents. If the the term 'forced insertion' sounds a bit like rape, that's no coincidence.

Prior to the Feds arriving, Portland protesters were peaceful and civil, other than a few rowdies on the fringes. The right to protest is protected by the US Constitution.

Compare that with events that took place 17 months earlier in Oregon. A small cadre of Federal troops were sent to Oregon. At that time, there was an illegal take-over of Federal property in the state. The occupiers comprised a group of White Supremacists - and they were all armed with loaded military weapons. What did the Federal forces do at that time? They negotiated. Many days were spent discussing options with the occupiers, despite military-grade weapons being pointed.

Rednecks in general and White Supremacists in particular make a lot of noise whenever the topic of Federal troops entering US counties/cities is brought up. They are adamantly against any interference by Fed troops, period. Yet, all those strong convictions seemed to evaporate when armed Fed troops entered Portland, uninvited. What hypocrites! It's as if rednecks took a strong stand against raping of girls. Yet, when they see girls getting raped who aren't a part of their family, they cheer it on.

Another tidbit re; the Black Lives Matter protests, that right wingers don't know or don't want to know about: The first building destroyed in Minnesota, at the start of that protest in May 2020, was firebombed by a self-avowed White Supremacist. He later admitted doing so in order to (literally) stoke the fires and plunge aspects of the protest into mayhem. He succeeded. As of this writing, he has not been apprehended or charged with destroying the car-parts building - despite local police knowing who he is (nickname: Umbrella Man). Trump and Barr probably decided, Well, he's a good ol' gun-wielding White Supremacist, ....so let's leave him alone.

Brains Fed on Fiction and Violence, continued....

I submit that such brains stuffed with such a tirade of violence and other crap, also leads to depression, and here's how: They see the good guy overcoming ridiculous odds and winding up with the beautiful girl and/or a big pot of money and/or the notoriety he craves. It feels good while it's being watched. But what happens in the watchers brain the next day or next week/month? The fiction-watcher realizes he's far below the hero he idolizes. That can be depressing.

An alternate reaction is thinking that challenges/problems can be solved by violence - usually in the form of shooting many bullets at the person/people who are standing in the way. Is it any surprise that mass shootings are common in the US, and Americans lead the world in that regard? Granted, there are other parts of the world which have mass shooting spasms which top US tallies for days at a time, such as Central Africa, Mexico, northern Nigeria, .....so perhaps it's not fair to put the onus on the US (pun intended. Onus = on US).

Yet it's the US which grinds out the majority of violent movies and video games. India possibly puts out a greater number of movies annually, but their topics are mostly Hindu legends, and romance-related song-fests. Fictional, for sure, but not with millions of bullets flying, bombs exploding and bloody body parts strewn around. For that mantle, American film-makers take the cake.

The US-based film industry contributes as much to violence worldwide as salaried ad execs contribute to children ingesting piles of white-sugar products. Think about it. Those fellows get paid millions of dollars/year, each, for all the harm they're causing.

With the election of Trump in 2016, the US ship of state embarked on a stormy voyage into uncharted waters. For decades, Trump called himself a Democrat. He was enamored by