Question about Scariest Stephen King Villain

 There was an open question posted on my Facebook news feed: which Stephen King villain character is deservedly the scariest?  The comments varied, but the one that resonated with me the most was Randall Flagg, the murderous manipulator from his epic The Stand.  Donald Trump, who speaks and acts like he thinks he's the Supreme Dictator and expects his lapdogs to obediently follow suit, to me seems to pattern his entire presence on the King antagonist.  In that novel Flagg takes advantage of a deadly pandemic in order to establish absolute tyranny over a stricken planet.  i wonder just how far he is willing to go as he attacks civil order here, vulnerable internationals, and even entire nations.  "Our" Trump mentioned in passing that Cuba is "next"...I wonder what unprovoked violence he is about to inflict on a place that, in a more peaceful, reasonable world, could have become a very prosperous, attractive tourist destination.  When I was growing up, Fidel Castro and Krushchev were scapegoated for being America's Cold War antagonists.  But now that they're gone, the Playground Bully seeks only to incite passions and fury. When is he going to turn against his own people? He's already been vilifying our erstwhile allies in the last several days.Where are Hegseth, Noem and Bondi going on all this?  It makes me want to switch to all-day, live Major League Baseball.  I recently watched the Dodgers play Arizona, the Yankees play San Fran, Milwaukee play the Chicago White Sox, the Rockies versus the Marlins, the Reds against the Red Sox, and Philadelphia against the Chicago Cubs.  In viewing the MLB Channel, I'm getting to know each team by their players and staff. 

I can't stand our so-called leader going off at the mouth with his brash, offensive remarks and dismissals: he sounds just like the guy on Twilight Zone (Sounds and Silences episode) who wouldn't shut up. Now it's 4:30 AM and time for me to sign off and get our sweet Peewee Daisy all riled up....

Quote of the Week...from Mark Twain

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress, but I repeat myself.

                                                                                  ---Mark Twain

Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) lived from 1835 to 1910, so his above words...whatever year he made them...refer to the state of politics in his own time, well over a century ago.  In a way, they're reassuring, reminding us that regardless of the tomfoolery and deceit that seem to dominate Congressional politics today, this has pretty much always been the case in Washington.  On the other hand, the "idiots" in Congress, both in Twain's day and ours, tend to be reelected over and over again...so what does that make us, the general population that keeps sending them back for term after term?  Personally, I don't believe that those serving in Congress, be they in the Senate or the House of Representatives, are idiots...even the ones who at times make idiotic statements.  But they ARE perverting the intent of our founding fathers when they established this representative republic.  It all comes down to the concept of "primarying" in which a populist...even demagogic...element of a politician's own party boasts of enough fanatical voters to topple them in the next primary if they don't tow the line to their peculiar ideology.  The result is that the more extreme elements of each party tend to either control who gets their nomination, or...much more prevalently...control the behavior of those already in office, who are afraid of getting on their bad side.  Sometime in the future I plan to write an article about the "rabble", that is the masses of people in any society who tend to be more autocratic, hung up on symbols, and less educated in the civics of how our government is supposed to function.  They are easily manipulated, as recently we have seen mass hysteria about the COVID-19 pandemic...particularly in the areas of masks and vaccines, Trump worship, and widespread denial that Biden won the 2020 election fair and square.  For elected politicians to kowtow to the basest of the "base" reveals them not to be idiots, but rather as lacking in personal standards of ethics and integrity.  And I'm not giving the Democrats a free pass, either...too many of  the rank and file seem to be imbued with the notion that mass protest marches are somehow "democracy at work" while regularly skipping election after election in which there's no emotionally-gripping candidate or issue on the ballot...resulting in state legislatures across the country being dominated by Republicans, even in several "blue" states.  And what's happening nowadays with the put-downs of moderate Democrats is completely unacceptable to me...

Quote of the Week...from Groucho Marx

Those are my principles, and if you don't like them...well, I have others.        ---Groucho Marx

Back when Citizen's United was being decided by the conservative wing of the United States Supreme Court more than a decade ago, justices bandied about concepts like "corporations are people" and "spending money is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment".  Yet it seems that whenever conservative politicians...who almost unanimously claim themselves to be highly principled advocates for freedom of businesses to make their own decisions without government interference...including what to do with their own money and how to conduct their affairs...it all goes out the window whenever convenient.  So Major League Baseball decides to move its All-Star Game from Atlanta after Georgia's new voting law was passed, and Senator Ted Cruz urges Congress to pass punitive legislation against them!  So cruise lines operating out of Florida have reasonably decided that crew and passengers need to provide a record of their COVID vaccination...our state's conservative governor has decided to interfere, decreeing that they are banned from doing that!  But Ron DeSantis' "principled when it suits him" mentality goes further: earlier he signed a law making participants in public protest demonstrations and marches potentially liable for the actions of others in those events, a direct violation of the First Amendment if I ever saw one.  And what about all these election laws passed by different "red" state legislatures and governors that give those partisan bodies the right to arbitrarily nullify any election they have a problem with (in other words, when Democrats win) while claiming the laws are necessary in principle to restore public confidence in elections?  Oh yeah, I'm "confident" that if a Republican wins an election in one of those states by 10 votes there's no problem but if a Democrat prevails by 10,000 somebody will dig up a bogus fraud charge, leading eventually to a partisan vote to overturn the results and install the losing Republican candidate...you just know this going to happen.  And what about all this bemoaning of "cancel culture" and criticism of Facebook and Twitter by Republican congressmen when these private companies fact-check their users' posts and remove the more habitual abusers, while overwhelmingly ostracizing one of their own...Liz Cheney...for simply telling the truth about the 2020 election and Trump's culpability in the Capitol riot on January 6th? I think this pronouncing and then shameless shirking of principle isn't just confined to politics, though: it is a sad trait of our universal human nature.  And only a master of cynical comedy like Groucho Marx could have put it so succinctly, as he did in the above quote...