Non-fiction-- it's my first. Based on blogpost from the election year, Dropping Truth Bombs details my evolution from die-hard Berner to kinda-sorta agreeing with Trump on a small handful of issues.
There's oodles of footnotes, by the way.
Here's the introduction:
Odds are you haven’t heard of me. That’s fine. I write stuff, mostly naughty fiction. I research things, mostly random. I cuss. A lot. According to some study-1 (probably run by people who cuss like salty fucking sailors on shore leave) people who utilize curse words more often are more trustworthy. I’m not saying you gotta believe me (research to come to your own conclusions can be a beautiful thing, I promise) but you know, science says I’m an alright person. I used to do super-cheap political commentary YouTube videos, but that’s another story altogether since they started censoring certain topics and my channel throttled. Evidently, I’m fairly decent at rocking the figurative boat.
This book due in part to something my father said to me shortly after the election. He commented that I was fairly conservative, and that blew my mind, as I consider myself liberal with a penchant for ethics and keeping with the spirit of the law— especially for those in positions of power. Since the election, I’ve come to the determination that I’m more liberal than most and that those who identify with Democrats are mostly Republican-lite. I’m for single payer health care for US Citizens and getting rid of health insurance (or “How much are you willing to pay to stay alive?”) and feel that the choice to abort is between a woman and her doctor (and hopefully impute from the would-be father) and that state parks should be unsullied, not just for recreational purposes, but because trees make oxygen and people need that particular element to survive. Also needed to survive is a livable wage, which encourages those wage-earners to spend, thus helping local economy. That’s important to me because when I was a kid, my hometown had a movie theater. Now it doesn’t. Without societal-accepted diversions, people get bored, and bored people can get destructive. I was a volunteer on the forums belonging to the outfit behind NBC’s “To Catch a Predator” well before they were on television, and I participated in the now-defunct Human Shield program. Trust me, this information will be relevant later. Suffice to say, I’m for improving the lives of future generations. It’s important to me. Not in a lip-service way; I want my children’s children to live in a better world than what we currently have. As the current custodians of this planet, it’s our duty, I feel, to not fuck shit up even more, because humanity has done a lot, like locusts. We can only strip the planet so bare before its lifesystems collapse, and us with it.
I’m the child of the lower-middle class. My mother worked for the federal government since before she graduated high school, up until the day she retired. My father worked on a ranch, and later, a fertilizer company, until he unwillingly retired due to the long-lasting effects due to trauma sustained in an auto accident. One of my two brothers had a congenital heart problem, and it was a good thing my mom had insurance through her employment because as it, we scraped by. I’m not particularly religious; I don’t consider myself Christian, although I attended church as a kid and have read the Bible (I prefer an Ancient Greek to English translation). More of a Jesuist (as in, one who follows the teachings of Christ and not the words of others) with a healthy respect in an anthropological sense of the myriad of religions that dot this blue marble floating in space. I feel people believe things mostly due to where and when they grew up, and none is more valid than the other, since they all are facets of human spirituality: a means of feeling connected to this world. We are but tiny grains of sand on a cosmic beach, in the greater picture.
On that note, I want to be the grain of sand that finds itself inside a cosmic oyster and becomes a pearl. This book, which started as a collection of blog posts, is that oyster, as it details my journey from being a die-hard Bernie Sanders fan to actually agreeing with Trump on a few topics.
It’s a weird fucking journey, man.I married into a wealthy family; my ex-husband’s grandparents owned a house on an island (albeit, in the Sacramento River; not so glamorous as a tropical locale), lots of expensive toys, and some Bay Area real estate. Dan had been a longshoreman in San Francisco, and retired with a six-figure pension. His wife, Terri, owned her own catering business. Her first husband was a Sicilian mobster from Chicago. Her second husband, a cop. Dan was her third trip to the marriage altar, and Dan had a mistress. Coming from a blue collar upbringing into such an environment… it was enlightening, to say the least. I sat and listened, mostly, because beyond basic emotions like love and anger, I had a hard time relating to them and their particular brand of mores. My ex was raised by his grandparents, since both of Terri’s daughters were wild childs of the 70’s. Teresa, the eldest, had chemical dependency issues and ended up cut in half and disposed of in the San Francisco Bay. Toni, my ex-husband’s mother, had been imprisoned in Mexico for smuggling “parrots” (so his grandparents told my ex. Turns out it was weed.) and met another imprisoned American. They fell in love and spawned. When Reagan did the prisoner exchange in the early 80’s, Toni returned to the US, pregnant with my ex. Her lover, Max, by the way, had been arrested and sentenced for the murder of his step-father for raping his sister. After prison, he was a courier for the mob outfit that ran the Mustang Ranch in the early ‘80s. He died in a car accident when my ex was four years old, and they didn’t have a whole lot of contact prior to his accident.
Every word with the exception of names in that paragraph up there is one hundred percent true. I didn’t know most of it when I got married to Merin-2. There’s a whole other level of fucked-perspective when one is immersed in such a collective of personalities. It taught me a lot about what drives people.
That’s relevant.Motivations are everything in this world. This is important. What motivates a politician to run for office? Is it the thought of improving a community, or becoming someone famous and living a lifestyle everyday Americans could never conceive? As they say, actions speak louder than words. This too, is important, because it’s the deeds of these politicians which have given us a Trump presidency. Think of it: a man with no political background, not even on a local level, becoming a head of state.
It’s said that the average lifespan of a country is two hundred fifty years and America is already two hundred forty-one. Even if Trump serves a single term, that leaves five years before America joins the ranks of other failed super powers like ancient Rome, Byzantium, Spain, Italy and England. All those countries, at one time or another, were torn apart by the oligarchies imploding and goading The People.
I can admit it, I was never particularly political before 2015. Before that, I recall being excited to be alive in a time when we finally got a black president! He was the Wayne Brady of the political world.
Whoo hoo, what a fucking mistake that was. Don’t get me wrong, Obama could speak eloquently and presented himself well, but when one can make the claim that they dropped the equivalent of one bomb every twenty minutes for eight fucking years, they are no means a “great” president-3. They are a warmonger, and without just provocation, a tyrant. His Nobel Peace Prize is a bandage for something requiring a tourniquet. I can’t wear a liberal flag and consider myself a proper treehugger without registering my dismay that the “liberal left” under the DNC idolizes a fucking warmongering two-faced mistake of a President— not that Clinton or Romney would have been any better. It saddens me greatly that the “hope” I had was a pipe dream under Obama and resulted in mass murder across the world.
So when Bernie ran, I was stoked. Here was a candidate that didn’t believe in taking special interest money, didn’t want war, someone who wanted every American to have health care and not be stuck wondering what bill won’t get paid that month because gas for the car, rent, food, and/or meds are requirements to survive and are expensive. I’m a single mom with a special needs kiddo. I’ve a friend back east who had been in two car accidents within six months and it triggered a series of auto-immune issues which resulted in chemotherapy and a medication that cost ten thousand dollars PER DOSE. Her insurance didn’t cover it all, not by a long shot. My dad got a broken neck in a car accident when I was in high school. He’s alive and in constant pain from the spinal damage.
I get it. Healthcare is the determining factor in how well a country treats its people, in my opinion. A country in which people have to crowd-fund necessary medical procedures isn’t a country that values it’s people, in my opinion. It’s okay to disagree— you come from a different background than me. I respect that. I simply hate watching people I care about suffer horrific anxiety when they get their hospital or specialist bill. It becomes a dance of sacrifice to bargain with a faceless entity about how much their life is worth. It’s fucking sad. The level of worry one experiences when it comes to paying for medical stuff shouldn’t be how America determines it’s social strata. But it is. And it boils down to those without as being not as worthy to live, as compared to those with. And I’m not okay with that dichotomy.
That is one of the main reasons I rallied to Sanders as opposed to Clinton. Sure, once upon a time she was for single payer. But then she started taking money from lobbyists, and well, she’s not for single payer anymore, is she?
So, when it came to the 2016 election, I got excited. And when I get excited, I research. Within these pages, you’ll read what I discovered and see how I changed my tune and whole perspective when it comes to politics. In fact, it changed my life.
See, I didn’t believe in “rabbitholes” and “red pills” but when Wikileaks did the Podesta Email Leaks, it literally shifted my view of how the American Government operated. Grew up patriotic; many members of my family served in the armed forces, some dying during wartime. As I mentioned, my mother worked for the Feds, and I volunteered in her office for a few years, in Human Resources. Things like FOIA have meaning to me. Things like new hire paperwork— they serve a purpose. And what does it say about an entity that has a party sign what one would hope was legally binding documents in the presence of FBI agents— only to ignore blatant violations of well-known politicians while arresting sailors taking selfies in subs?
I started exploring rabbitholes and finding past news articles to bolster the claims made. Books were read. Research documented. And I shared it online with my blog and YouTube channel-4. After a video I was editing had been tampered whiled I edited it, I thought I was imagining things. Imagine my shock when reading the Wikileaks about the CIA’s hacker toys -5 that I found out that my desktop computer could be remotely hacked and files manipulated. A lot of distrust built up regarding the shenanigans and blatant manipulation utilized by unscrupulous arms of the government. It’s sad but true, and it’s taken a long while for me to wrap my mind around it.
I’m telling you right now, I’m a bit of a ranty asshole on occasion. It’s okay to not agree, as having multiple perspectives makes for a healthy society. That said, here are my rants, in chronological order, edited (do memes belong in a book?) and sifted through, peppered with footnotes. You will notice an evolution in how I perceive things; this is due largely by what was revealed in the Podesta leaks. You may also notice the length between posting dates; those gaps were covered by the videos I was making. You’ll notice I’m not a fan of Clinton or Trump in the least. If it ruffles your feathers to hear an unpopular opinion, save your dime and don’t buy this. You will not like what you hear, I don’t do echo chambers. You want my opinion? Consider yourself warned.
That said, there are a few things I’m on board with regarding Trump. Such as his executive order regarding transnational corporations and human trafficking. His whole stance, actually, regarding his current views of human trafficking are a huge fucking bonus. I mean, do you find it odd that Hillary Clinton’s opposition research against Marco Rubio’s stance regarding human trafficking (he was against it) was a negative? Who in their right mind is pro-human trafficking? The Podesta Leaks seem to insinuate that being against human trafficking is bad. What the fuck, Clinton supporters? How is that okay? Especially when touting feminism and equality? Or do those concepts only apply to white America and fuck the rest of the world? Because that’s how it comes off, y’all. Think I’m bullshitting you? I’m not.-6
I used to be a liberal who thought she knew better than most, especially conservatives. I was wrong. We’re all fleas on the dog called America, and that’s a fact. Took a lot of reading and thinking to get to this point, and there’s no telling where it’ll end. I just hope America survives and becomes reinvigorated with beneficial change, because doing anything less is unacceptable.
FOOTNOTES
1- Here’s an article about said study.
2- I am chalking that marriage up to being young and stupid. It did serve as a lesson well heeded when vetting others, however.
3- I mean, unless you are really into warfare and turning civilians into dead folk. It cannot be denied for any reason— and that includes societal enabling by turning a blind eye.
4- After a particular video detailing the rape allegations made in 1995 against Hillary Clinton by one Cathy O’Brien, I got a lot of hits from the DC area on a single day, on my author blog, to a specific blog post detailing a medically necessary abortion. Why that post? Don’t know, beyond maybe psychological profiling. On my twitter, I was approached by a guy who questioned why I supported neither Trump or Clinton, and then accused me of using cointelpro, which I had to look up. It means Counter Intelligence Program.
More rabbitholes I traveled, the weirder things got. As I edited a video detailing sex abuse of children by military personnel, the sound was cut out— and not by me. The file was intact when I first loaded it into the editing program, and the edited part dealt specifically with a case in the San Francisco area. The Wikipedia page I cited was removed, and the only trace one can find of it is in conspiracy blogs and old newspaper archieves.
Finally, in July 2016, one rabbithole resulted in me being stalked for two days. I announced on Twitter to those who may be watching, that I was dropping the subject, which I have no doubt is a crucial piece of the puzzle I was exploring.
5- Here’s a sampling of what the CIA can do to American citizens with unpopular opinions.
https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/
6- Here’s some links for starters.
Check attachments for the report on Rubio: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/21534
https://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/rubio-human-trafficking-diplomats/2013/05/17/id/505071/
https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=4ABEBDA1-585C-44A8-B194-C1C76074284B