MORE TRUMP STUFF

Here's a couple of recent positions coming out of the Trump administration:

They want to send the question of the treatment of transgender folk back to the states.

The problem with this is that a lot of states have legislatures packed with conservative Bible thumpers who know the only proper way to deal with one of those sexual abominations is to crush its head flat in a hydraulic press.

Them good-ol'-boys are acting according to God's Law, and they feel especially good about taking this stand. They can't be wrong.

(No human can be wrong—it's our birthright.)

It used to be that only at the state level could you get a majority of ultra-conservative dingbats elected to office, that a raving lunatic couldn't be elected president.

Then Trump proved he could pound the ground hard enough to bring sufficient worms to the surface to get himself anointed by the American people.

(Plus, all those guys and gals hated Hillary, starting with the fact she was a woman.)

Moving the transgender stuff to the states is just a legal way for Trump to avoid his campaign promises to the LBGTQ community. Turns out his avowed protection was just smoke and mirrors. Sure, he might claim he feels the same as always, that he's sorry the matter is now out of his hands—and always will be.

I don't think he's going to get a lot of flak from his supporters over this position. Those guys are mainly states' rights folk anyway—except when it comes to protecting their right to stockpile assault weapons.

The states are now free to dictate who uses what bathroom.

So we may get this: Some big strapping man will be required (if he was born female) to enter the ladies room. The chicks in there will scream, cops will be called, and the guy will be hauled out into the alley and beaten to death.

Just as God wishes.

Similarly, transgender women born male will have to use the men's room, where they can be raped to death by self-righteous men overtaken by the spirit of the Lord.

It's a win-win, for the Bible smackers, folks fortified with the Truth.

On another issue, Donald Trump wants to beef up the country's nuclear arsenal. He says as long as nukes exist, we ought to make it clear to everyone that our pile is bigger than anybody's.

I don't think he knows how these things work.

Let's say you've got some transgender dude laid out beneath an industrial press. According to Trump, it's not enough to have hundred-ton capacity to crush this monster's head. He wants to have a million-ton press.

Yet, either device will suffice. Perfectly.

It's simply not important to have the most nukes—once you have enough to get the job done.

True, nuclear "parity" is based on perception. Everybody has to know you have enough nukes. And everybody has to believe you'll use them if you have to.

We used to have a "no first strike" policy. That meant we would only use nukes to avenge our soon to be dead population. Send your missiles in our direction, expect American missiles to rain down on you shortly.

An unacceptable number of missiles.

The idea was this: If the other side believed our resolve, they wouldn't take a shot at us in the first place. It would be suicide.

It's called MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction. And it's worked, so far. Like the conclusion reached by the movie WarGames: The only way to win a nuclear war is not to fight one.

Well, that was then. Who knows what our policy is now.

But since it's all about perception, why don't we just lie and say we built a crap-load of new missiles? Trump's already got folks worried he might start slinging nukes around, just to get some value out of them.

And even if our enemies saw through the lie, those with any sense would know the numbers we actually have are perfectly capable of getting the job done.

Even a handful of nukes goes a long way.

We can only hope our nuclear-tipped enemies can stay cool, and not rise to take the poisoned bait. Even if the US is going to have more missiles in the future, that doesn't mean our adversaries are running out of time to act.

BUCKET OF BLOOD

In a previous installment I proposed solving the problem of human violence by the elimination of the humans. It's a perfect solution, really: No more predators, no more victims.

It also puts to an end all those little insults and injuries you get from rubbing up against those happy monsters, the human beings.

Remember, if for some unfathomable reason you want your life to suck, you can't count on disease, deformity, the vagaries of weather or the violent movement of tectonic plates. You have to get yourself a human being. Those guys are the only creatures on this planet trained and certified to make life miserable.

And largely, the origin of this God-given ability to destroy lives is the human brain's inability to distinguish between what it knows and what it only thinks it knows.

This is, in a nutshell, what's wrong with us.

Human beings simply know stuff. All kinds of stuff, both trivial and profound. The fact is, we're so good at knowing things we feel confident to branch out and take a crack at knowing the unknowable.

I'm kidding, of course.

Humans are too messed to up realize there is such a category of knowledge as the unknowable. We just swim out there into the ether and know that stuff.

Perfectly natural.

But here's the thing. The unknowable comes with a price. Or, more specifically, it comes with a shiny new bucket. A bucket you have to fill up with blood.

Hey, don't go all queasy on me. It doesn't have to be your blood. The bucket is perfectly happy to accept a load of somebody else's blood. But kill or be killed, when you set out to know the unknowable the price is always blood.

And the nastiest, most blood-thirsty chunk of unknowable knowledge is the concept of God. Knowing God is going cost you. Or cost somebody.

You can either die for God or kill for God. Sometimes you even have a choice. But whatever the transaction, there's going to be blood.

Case in point, the Branch Davidians. Those giddy folk at Mount Carmel knew with certainty the only way they were going to get home to God was to burn up in that compound—man, woman, and child.

So they ended the siege with the FBI by pouring Coleman camp fuel everywhere and lighting it off.

Devious anti-government documentarians scrutinized video of federal tanks ranging about the compound, tearing holes in the walls, until they noticed a moment when a piece of foil-backed insulation got hung up on the body of a tank. It looked, in still frame, something like a flame.

The anti-government documentaries displayed that video, stopping the tape at the appropriate moment, and convinced a lot of folks the FBI had set the fires at the compound with flame throwers.

Letting the tape run another half second or so would have shown the piece of shiny insulation falling to the ground, so they made sure not to do that.

One fellow was sufficiently outraged by this editing trick to blow up the federal building in Oklahoma City.

See? Blood, followed by more blood.

And all for nothing, as far as anyone actually knows.

Eliminating the humans absolutely safeguards you from this threat. But such a slaughter is, let's face it, a logistical nightmare. Is there any way around it that has a chance of solving this deadly problem?

Maybe, but I find it almost as difficult—and a lot less straightforward. You'd have to remove the idea of God from the list of so-called Human Knowledge.

Not that easy, boys and girls. It's been said there's a God-shaped hole in the human psyche.

The concept of God goes back more than a hundred thousand years, back when guys worshipped stones and tree and suchlike. Folks couldn't figure out how the universe worked, so they made stuff up.

At first they just wanted a dangerous world to stop hurting them. Later, they realized it would be nice if they could get a little help with the daily hunt. After all, guys needed to feed their families.

You need to bless and hold sacred the animal that falls into the snare or forfeits its life at the tip of a stone arrow.

Folks found it necessary to personify the universe. They needed to figure out what that guy wanted, so they could make the appropriate sacrifice.

Embedded in a swirl of largely random events, acts designed to appease the numinous often seem to work. Unfortunately, this only encourages folks to dive deeper into the rabbit hole of institutionalized nonsense.

And at the bottom of that hole is a shiny new bucket.

Hard to resist that damned bucket. Probably would be easier to just kill everybody.

But as a stop-gap, it might be possible to fight fire with fire, to invent a God that can't be weaponized—a divine creature who has no interest whatsoever in the doings of living people, a God who refuses to intervene in human affairs for any reason.

This entity won't help you beat somebody in battle, or figure out a way to obliterate a rival country with plagues or rains of celestial fire. He also won't send you out to settle a score with a knife or a gun or a bomb, so you can let your membership in the NRA lapse. You won't need it to do God's work. He has no work, not on this planet, anyway.

The guy's only concerned with the afterlife, and nothing you do here has any effect on that. (Maybe.)

(By the way, I say "guy" for convenience—and out of tradition; gods tend to be father figures.)

Let's say this: You can't worship him or try to coerce anybody else to worship him. He hates that stuff, and just might use it against you in the afterlife.

But he is a God, okay? So you have to respect that. Also, he hates the idea of anybody worshipping any other God, so you need to leave all that crap behind.

(You might say I'm simply making this stuff up, that I'm inventing a God for my own purposes, without direct revelation from the known source of all Gods. Don't worry, I'm getting this God from the same place folks go to get every other God—the human butt. The only difference, I'm not a lunatic besotted by my own creation.)

So, what do you think? Could you learn to live with the Holy God of Non-interference? There's no payoff, not here on Earth, anyway. But there's also no bucket to fill with blood. Which is the point of the exercise. Wanna be a member?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

Like I said, easier to just kill everybody.

DEAR PRESIDENT TRUMP

Here's what you should do about your seven-nation travel ban. Nothing. Nothing at all.

Sure, you could fix the green card thing, and modify it for current residents out of the country on vacation or whatever, but you'll probably never get a real Muslim ban through the courts—and if it's not a Muslim ban, it can't possibly do what you say it's supposed to do: keep us safe from radical Islamic terrorists.

So just let the travel ban go, let it die out. It was always only supposed to be temporary, right?

Concentrate on setting up your extreme vetting, whatever that might look like. Seriously, how long could it take? (You've been talking about it for many months; don't tell me you wasted all that time.) Ramp up the vetting right away and tweak the details in the weeks and months to come.

Worried about the delay? Don't be. Obama-vetting has been in place for a long time. Lots of bad guys have had their chance to get into the country. You'll just have to deal with them in another way.

As for the vetting itself, you probably aren't going to get away with waterboarding anybody (as some idiot recently proposed), so forget about that.

If you come across some guys who look like they need waterboarding, simply deny their visas. Put 'em on the Guys Who Need Waterboarding List and forget about it.

As for bad hombres without visas slipping across the border with Mexico, not much you can do about that. Remember, it's going to take years and years to build that Wall—assuming you ever get funding through Congress, which—let's face it—is not a lead-pipe cinch.

And even if a Wall could be built, keep in mind this country is cursed with extravagantly long coastlines. Not to mention a border with Canada that's pretty much too cold to guard in the winter. Nobody wants to pull duty at Frostbite Falls in January.

You'll have to rely on the FBI to sniff out terror plots coming at us from within. And you'll need a good relationship with the native Muslim community.

(How's that going, so far?)

And if bad dudes are headed to this country just because you're the president, you might consider resigning for the good of the country.

It's called an Attractive Nuisance.

Realistically, though, you're probably not in much personal danger, at least not from Islamic terrorists.

But you might want to keep an eye on all those violent a-holes you fired up during your campaign. Piss those guys off, you might need to install another machine-gun nest in your hair.

TRUMP'S OUTRAGE

Donald Trump excoriates by Twitter the judges who have delayed his famous non-Muslim ban Muslim ban, asking the musical question: How can they put this country in peril?

Trump's like the character that occasionally pops up on Family Guy, calling folks "phonies" because they managed to trick him into believing something the rest of us don't.

(I know, it's a reference someone will have to explain to him—in the unlikely event he ever sees this post.)

Trump similarly rages against so-called "fake news" in a manner that suggests he was not himself a major source of the stuff during the campaign. To some extent, it must be argued, fake news from the Internet got the man elected.

He appears to be unaware of this.

Trump still claims his ban is not a Muslim ban. His logic, as usual, is faulty. If the country is really in peril from the temporary ban of his Muslim ban, it can only be because Muslims are allowed to enter.

The whole point is to prevent attacks in the US performed by radical Islamic terrorists, right? Those people are by definition Muslim.

So it has to be a Muslim ban.

But look, it's only a temporary deal, okay? In place just until "extreme vetting" can be arranged.

Which is to say, "Trump vetting."

Trump vetting differs from Obama vetting in this crucial way: Trump vetting keeps us safe and Obama vetting doesn't.

According to Trump, Obama vetting pretty much let anybody into the country who might have developed a yen to come.

All that is over.

Trump says he needs six months to distill his brand of extreme vetting. That's nonsense. All he needs to do is add waterboarding to the process.

You know he wants to.

The good news, he can also use waterboarding to retro-vet the Muslims already in the country (including those born here), to see if the Muslim ban on immigrants has in any way shaken their love for this nation.

Without waterboarding, how can you be sure you've reached the end of the vetting. Extreme means extreme, right?

On the other hand, torture tends to get folks to say whatever it is you want them to say. You get a certain result, but the real outcome might be the opposite.

"Yes (sputter, sputter) I will never harm a hair (sputter) on America's lovely head (sputter, vomit)."

Is what they'll say.

But deep down they may harbor some resentment, maybe start to hatch plans against us—because of the vetting.

It's like testing old-fashioned flashbulbs. Sure, they work. You've proved it definitively. But now they never will again.

(Get somebody to explain flashbulbs to you.)

It's an epistemological dilemma. You know what you know, but how can you be sure what you know is true?

(If you're human, you can be pretty sure what you know is not true—but there's no way for you to figure that out.)

The only way you can be absolutely safe from radical Islamic terrorists is to kill all the Muslims in the world.

You can't just kill all the radical Islamists without running the risk of radicalizing others. It's an endless process.

(Actually, it ends with the end of all Muslims.)

But killing all Muslims is not practical.

And it may be unfair.

So let's go with this: The only fair and thorough method of making us safe—making all of us safe—is eliminate the humans.

They're the ones behind all the threats in the world.

(Not counting disease and really bad weather, which are generally pretty random.)

Sure, humans have their reasons, but that's just another way of saying they're ridiculously dangerous. All their reasons are crap.

So there you go: Kill the humans, save the world.

It just might work...

TRUMP'S SLEEPLESS NIGHTS

English dictionaries have to be among the largest in the world. Not only does English possess a record number of words, but so many of our common words have multiple meanings.

And we still get things wrong in normal parlance.

Aside from the controversy concerning whether the free end of the toilet paper should hang out over the front of the roll or over the back along the wall, the subject that often occupied the letter writers to advice columnists is the annoying fact that some people express a lack of interest by saying, "I couldn't care less," while others deliver the same message by saying, "I could care less."

Despite the fact it literally means the opposite.

If you ask someone a naive question you might get the reply, "You don't wanna know."

That's presumptuous, right? They asked, didn't they? Obviously they do want to know.

But here the more accurate response is, "If I answered your question, you'd wish I hadn't."

When word came the North Koreans were preparing to test an intercontinental ballistic missile, of the sort that could reach the western half of the US, Donald Trump tweeted: "IT WON'T HAPPEN."

This flat statement is bound to keep the North Koreans up at night.

What is the man saying? Is he assuring the American public the reports of a possible test are false, that no such test will be made?

Or is he claiming the coming launch will be prevented. If so, does that mean Seal Team Six is already on the ground in North Korea?

Or more troubling, is Trump saying the intruder will be shot down by our ballistic missile defenses? Followed by a full retaliatory barrage of incoming nukes?

(On the wall inside one of our ICBM sites is a sign that reads: GUARANTEED DELIVERY WORLDWIDE IN THIRTY MINUTES OR LESS—OR YOUR NEXT ONE IS FREE. That's a joke, of course. They're all free.)

Or maybe Trump is just kidding, and the words have no actual consequence. The problem with that, I don't think the North Koreans are much into jokes.

Remember this? One time President Reagan was messing around on a microphone and announced the Soviet Union had just been outlawed by congress, and missiles were on the way. The USSR went on high alert, just to be safe.  Mistakes could have been made. Very bad mistakes.

(Recall the movie The Bedford Incident. A US destroyer is shadowing a Soviet sub. The captain remarks, "If he fires one, we'll fire one." A nervous fire control officer overhears and takes it for an order. "Fire one, aye, sir!" he says, and sets loose a nuclear-tripped missile. The sub also gets one off before it's destroyed. Quid pro quo.)

At some point the North Koreans have to consider the possibility that Trump is just waving around his magnificent penis. Spraying testosterone about in a ritual display of toughness.

If so, than nothing need be done about those words, except utter the appropriate diplomatic response: "Blow me!"

We can only hope the North Koreans are that sophisticated, because as far as we know Trump's words did, in fact, mean nothing at all.

(To folks concerned about his tough talk, Trump has some advice: "Don't worry about it.")

What are the chances our new Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, will privately assure the people of the world they need pay no attention to anything Trump says?

Problem is, if he tried that with the North Koreans, they might take it the wrong way, and go on even higher alert.

As we toss and turn throughout our own sleepless nights, we might take comfort from the political reality in North Korea. They know they can't win a nuclear war with the US, so they're not likely to start one.

But the leadership relies on the imminent threat of an attack by the US to keep power over the people. It's a delicate balance. They need to poke us, but not so hard we get fully aroused.

The real question we have to sweat out: How much gentle poking will Trump put up with? And what will he do when his wiener gets good and angry? The man has a temper. And it's not exactly clear if he can take a joke.

PROMISES, PROMISES

Ah, yes: The Muslim ban that is not at all a Muslim ban.

Listen, it can't be a Muslim ban because that would be bad, somehow. It would give folks a hook for protest, like seeing some five-year old kid detained in an airport for hours.

Lucky for Trump, stuff like that won't be happening anymore. Not because he stepped in and put a stop to it, but because from now on that kid will be kicked out of the airport in his own home town.

But what about those seven countries named on the travel ban? It's not as if anybody from one of those countries came to America and did anything to hurt us.

Look, I get it. The Trump administration wants to get ahead of the game of terror. Too bad we can't learn from the past, and maybe ban folks from a country that did send bad "dudes" to kill us.

Saudi Arabia, for instance, on 9/11.

It's like the horse got out, and Trump is going around closing the doors on other people's barns.

As for the Muslims, it's going to be pretty hard to thwart "radical Islamic terrorism" (those magic words) without interfering with a Muslim or two.

Specifically. It's right in the name.

In the meantime, there are still Muslims established in the country. Is it time for Trump to start rounding them up? Time for mass deportation?

Not that such a move could possibly do the job all by itself. Recall that the guy who killed folks in that Orlando nightclub was born in this country.

So now it becomes a purely religious purge: Ban Islam from America, because of what might happen.

But what could happen? American Muslims are perfectly happy in this country, right? And they would never go on the Internet and see what ISIS could make of this horribly misnamed Muslim ban. No way that evil propaganda could inspire anybody to do anything bad, right?

But even if something bad did happen, how many homegrown acts of terror would it take before Trump could acknowledge he'd made a mistake banning those special travelers?

Remember, the man has little use for criticism. He's human, after all, and humans know what they know and they can't be wrong (as far as they know).

Besides, Trump is simply fulfilling campaign promises. He said he would impose a Muslim ban and he's done it. Check that one off the list.

He made a bargain with the American voter, and he's not prepared to declare bankruptcy on this deal—at least not this early in the game.