Having just read Tom Hine’s latest Tommy Wayne Kramer article, I was happy to also catch my friend Jonathan Middlebrook’s column where he draws a distinction between Mr. Hine and his Archie Bunker-esque creation, Tommy Wayne Kramer, which kind of took the wind out of my sails on the article that I had intended to write despairing of the disappearance of compassion for one’s fellow man and basic human decency to others; I could scarcely believe that TWK was celebrating what he purported to view as a liberation from the irksome burden of DEI and the oppressive specter of ‘wokeness’.
Let’s think about this for a minute; diversity, equity and inclusion. Seriously, is there any civilized person who can make a rational case against any of these three aspirations in dealing with the various organizations of our fellow human beings? I mean, what are the opposite of those three ideals? The opposite of diversity?; basically, I guess, it would mean, in the minds of right wingers of most developed Western nations, a license for straight white males to dominate the social order. Equity?; as I understand the term’s meaning, it refers to paying women, people of color etc. the same as white males for the same work. How does one oppose that? Inclusion?; Is anyone really in favor of kicking disabled people to the curb, to let them beg for their existence, to not avail ourselves of the skills of variously disabled people because it’s too much trouble!?
And as far as the much vilified term ‘woke’, with such cretins as Ron DeSantis proclaiming that, “Florida is where woke comes to die”. Well, what is the opposite of woke? Asleep! I don’t want to sleep through the less attractive realities of our society and how it came to be! I was into my second half-century of life before I ever heard of the Tulsa race riots; a pogrom against what used to be referred to as ‘Black Wall Street’. There in Tulsa, where former black slaves and their descendents prospered in our capitalist economy. I remember reading about this one family of very successful hoteliers who had built a giant brick hotel and held off the murderous white gangs at gunpoint until they were talked down by the police who promised that if they came forward that their hotel would not be destroyed. Of course, the moment they complied their giant successful hotel was completely burned down. Who knows what kind of Marriott, Hilton or other giant hotel chain they might be competing with today had this act of racist terrorism never taken place. The debt that we owe the descendents of such events is incalculable.
Thank God for people like Springsteen and George Clooney, who are bravely putting themselves in danger by speaking out so forcefully against what ‘The Boss’ declared to his British audience was the, “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous” Trump administration! Clooney has made similarly damning appraisals of Trump’s grifter regime. When asked whether he feared reprisals from Trump, whether from one of the many now captive agencies who could ‘trump up’ legal problems for him and his family, or he/them being attacked by one of his fanatical followers, who don’t need to be directly encouraged to commit violence against the Dear Leader’s perceived enemies. Clooney said that he wanted to be able to face his kids years from now and tell them what he did during this time when our government was becoming an oligarchy.
Now that we have crossed the Rubicon in terms of becoming an autocratic dictatorship, refusing to comply with rulings from the Supreme Court as well as blatantly violating the prohibition against presidents enriching themselves with ‘emoluments’, such as the $400 million flying palace from Qatar, which it’s estimated will cost the US taxpayers around $1 billion to retrofit to be used as an Air Force One plane, a renovation which will likely not be complete before the end of Trump’s, hopefully final, term in office, just in time for him to fly off into the sunset, if not some country that does not have an extradition treaty with the US, outahere a few steps ahead of the law.
Pretty funny that his famous bromance with perhaps the second most obnoxious billionaire in the world, Elon Musk, has finally come to the only conceivable end for two malignant narcissists obsessed with their victimhood; a bitter divorce.
I like Musk’s comment about his erstwhile friend’s Big Beautiful Bill; he called it a disgusting abomination, which it certainly is, robbing the least amongst us of vital Medicaid, to the point where it’s estimated that it will result in 50 or so Americans a day dying unnecessarily. This is on top of the already hastily-shoved-through annihilation of USAID. This invaluable global source of relief food for starving populations, abruptly terminated with virtually no oversight, has left warehouses full of relief supplies to rot and left in the lurch thousands of selfless relief workers, stranded, unemployed, all over the world. Apparently Musk and his Doge crew harbored a special enmity for USAID because of its role in helping the poor in South Africa when they finally overthrew the inhuman rule of their white Afrikaner oppressors. It’s estimated that worldwide the collapse of USAID is causing a couple of hundred deaths PER HOUR!
The amount of corruption, naked self-aggrandizement and even a pattern of ‘shaking down’ countries for favors to him and his family in exchange for any kind of help from ‘his’ government, is so great, the daily stream of outrages that pour forth from his mouth and those of the various suck-ups and hatemongers he employs, is such that to trying to write a thousand word article about it is like trying to drink from a blasting fire hose.
Perhaps the most awful thing in the world these days is Israel’s genocidal slaughter (please don’t call it a ‘war’) of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The rest of the world is united; Israel should withdraw from all of its stolen land and live in peace with their Palestinian neighbors in a two state solution. Of course, as has been obvious for many decades now, the Israelis will never voluntarily allow this to happen, and with Uncle Sam’s deep military pockets and the absolute subservience of the US government to the most extreme racist violent Israeli government in history under Netanyahu, there is little hope that Usreal will stop this unbelievably cruel genocide, where recently, after killing and exiling the UN’s experienced Gaza food distribution system, the hundred or so distribution sites became only three under a joint US Israeli supposed-to-be relief agency. After inviting the starving masses to come to these few sites for paltry amounts of food, day after bloody day the Israeli military slaughters hundreds of these poor desperate starving people, many of them children. All with guaranteed US financial, diplomatic and military support.
There’s got to be a particularly hot corner of hell for those directing this genocide and for all the members of Congress who don’t seem to have any problem with it, if that’s what their Dear Leader wants.
For this and other columns, inarationalworld2.blogspot.com/2025/06/twk-djt.html
John Arteaga is a Ukiah resident.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( John’s Corner: TWK )
Also on site :
- ‘90s Country Star, 60, Shows off Slimmed Down Look at Intimate Show: ‘Beautiful'
- Star-Studded Tribute to Brian Wilson With Tom Hanks, Bruce Springsteen, Michael McDonald, Elton John and More Re-Airing on CBS
- Jury begins deliberations in Mike Lindell defamation trial in Denver over election conspiracies