what would Jesus do?

Comrades,

What would Jesus do?

Why of course he'd gas a bunch of dudes standing around holding placards, light 'em up with exploding chalk pellets and spray 'em with rubber bullets to clear a path for the Secret Service - who by this stage are freaking right out of their minds big time running around like chooks with heads cut off screaming "what the fuck does the Mad Muthafukka think he's doing now?" - so the Trumpotus can go steal a copy of the Holy Book and wave it around for the camera's in front of the 'Church of The Presidents', which has all the stained glass windows boarded up. The Donald then throws himself upon the mercy of The Lord, repenting his multitude of evil sins, so he can be graciously granted the ever-lasting eternal life of a martyr. Never mind the horror, what a fantastic, magnificent, hugely awesome photo op! A photo op like you've never seen before! In history. A God Fearing Commander-of-Nothing proudly on display, lined up with his Cronies-in-Chief, is just what the world needs now. Hooly Dooly! What crazy bat-shit is this? Having now, after three and a half years as Leader of the Free World, finally and beyond reasonable doubt reached The Mad Emperor stage, what next? Dropping the Big One? The nuclear solution?

At the risk of being labelled a pretentious up-himself know-all, when I came out of the hospital I had a prescient book waiting for me to read that I'd ordered in on the basis of trying to get some historical handle on the "interesting times" in which we live - and this before the plague and pestilence settled on the globe and the USA fractured down centuries old fault lines to find itself a once powerful nation now 'very weak' and spiralling in an out-of-control free fall to 'third world' status.

The hefty tome in question? Mark Kurlansky, 1968 - The Year That Rocked the World, (Random House, New York, 2005), 437pp.

Sure as hell some wild, weird and crazy shit went down that year - the Tet Offensive (25 thousand American casualties), the Prague Spring ends in a Soviet invasion, New York explodes in race riots in May and there's Bloody Monday in Paris, student protest movement in Poland brutally crushed, Martin Luther King Jnr takes a bullet, Bobby Kennedy gets shot up ans shot out of the US Election campaign, Chicago riots savagely repressed, Black Panthers at the Mexico City Olympics, Nixon wins the White House etc etc etc. And we think the current political difficulties are unprecedented? Think again. History repeats. Even at the tender age of 12, I remember '68 well, and it turned me into a committed Trot age 13-15. As everyone knows, I am now a nice well-mannered reformed Pinko watching the globe spinning on it's way to mayhem and catastrophe, while waiting for the New Great Depression to show up, which it surely will when we arrive at "the cliff" in September. What joy awaits. My current read? Studs Terkel, Hard Times - An Oral History of the Great Depression, (The New Press, New York, 2005 - 1st published 1970), 462 pp.

You'd have to fear for the Miracle of Democracy in the current climate. Despots the world over are using the plague as a pretence to crack down hard on dissent - just take a look at Honkers, Brazil and other joints folks have hardly ever heard of...it's a global phenomenon. Traditional election campaigning in the US has been killed stone dead by the plague, and in any case Democrats traditionally do poorly at the polls after race riots. Republicans are much better voters anyway; they turn out in droves at the ballot box, while the Dems for some reason always have trouble turning out the vote - never mind rampant voter suppression, disenfranchisement and outrageous wholesale gerrymandering against them. None of that really matters in the denouement. If the Presidential election result is close - and it will be - in favour of Uncle Joe, there is no way DJ Trump! will just graciously concede defeat. Why would he, when his entire agenda fully revolves around a single issue - his own self promotion and agrrandisment? Losing to him is worse than death, much worse. The Donald will claim voter fraud, vote rigging, ballot stuffing, he'll say millions of illegal immigrants somehow voted, dead people voted, federal felons and innocent black people voted, aliens in flying saucers were involved in making great bundles of ballot papers disappear and the illegal mail-in conspiracy was especially designed to engineer his fraudulent defeat. The Trumpotus will simply refuse to accept the result, stay put in the White House, shut down Congress with the stroke of a pen, and get the Supreme Court to confirm him as the Tyrant-in-Chief. We aint seen nothing yet. That'll be no ordinary Constitutional Crisis, its the template for Civil War Mk II, right there. Mr Ping of China and Vlad The Impaler of the Kremlin are having a quiet chuckle, knowing they need do nothing other than just watch the show, while quietly working out who gets the spoils of the New Word Order. So, the Donald worries the Commies might win? Well, sorry to tell you, son, but they already have.