Posted on by Joe Murrey

The Illusion of Strategy

The misguided notion that Donald Trump is a masterful negotiator and businessman stems from his own self-promotional book, “The Art of the Deal,” which was actually ghostwritten by journalist Tony Schwartz. Mr.Schwartz spent 18 months embedded with Donald Trump in order to write the book, which would go on to create a powerful, albeit entirely fictional, myth around Trump’s business acumen. In writing his book, the ghostwriter took a man who was naturally aggressive, easily bored and hyper-reactive, and packaged those traits as an inspirational example for mass-marketing. Schwartz applies the vocabulary of a structured, strategic business approach to what was essentially impulsive, erratic, and slightly nutty behavior. Mr. Schwartz has since spoken extensively about the writing process — his account strongly supports the idea that Trump’s unpredictability in business negotiations is the result of a short attention span and extreme self-absorption, rather than calculated genius. Continue reading →

Posted on by Joe Murrey

 

We’ve been fighting World War III for decades …you just didn’t know it

Historians often take fifty years or so after a major event such as the fall of a civilization or beginning of a world war to pinpoint the exact moment that precipitated the landmark event, e.g., it took until the end of World War II for historians to isolate an obscure assassination in Serbia as the event that touched off World War I. Twenty-five years from now, historians will probably single out the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014 as the root cause event igniting World War III. Personally, I would make that date much earlier.

I am convinced that we Americans are already in the middle of a fight for our very survival: What historians in the future may well call “World War III,” assuming it engulfs Europe and spreads into the Indo-Pacific, as I suspect it will. Why do I believe this?    Continue reading →

Posted on by Joe Murrey

 

Trump: Another Red Scare

No, I’m not talking about Trump’s lame rants about the Democrats being communists, which is understandable in Trump’s case because his mentor, disbarred mob attorney Roy Cohn, later worked for similarly disgraced Senator Joe McCarthy as a communist witch-hunter; rather, I’m talking about Trump’s corrosive interference in the upcoming FIFA World Cup match

between the United Snakes and Belgium. In the United State’s last game, a high-scoring US team player, Folarin Balogun, was issued a “Red Card” suspension for a deliberate foul, a violation that implies extremely unsportsmanlike conduct. For non-soccer fans, a Red Card violation comes with a one year suspension from the sport. Not surprisingly, Mr. Trump’s supernatural ability to immediately sense bad behavior anywhere in the world triggered his knee-jerk impulse to reward said behavior: He immediately picked up a phone to call one of the few men on the planet as corrupt as himself, FIFA president Gianni Infantino.

    Continue reading →

Posted on by Joe Murrey

 

Celebrating the 250th? Not so fast there, pilgrim!

Does our current authoritarian plutocracy really qualify as the democratic republic our founders envisioned? Is an alien lizard in a skin suit a reasonable substitute for a George Washington?

When a cabal of billionaire Bond villains co-opted all three branches of our government and bent them to their will, destroyed our institutions, and are now attempting to force their proprietary technologies on society to control us, should we really be celebrating our “achievement” …or hastily packing a “go” bag? The America most people will be celebrating this Fourth of July isn’t the same country as it was on the last Fourth of July, before the coup.

It was a slow-moving coup …until it wasn’t. Is it already over? We don’t know yet: Do you honestly believe we will have a free and fair election at the midterms? If you believe that one, then celebrate away, pal. The rest of us should think about getting the ball over the goal line before throwing the high-fives.

 

Posted on by Joe Murrey

 

Good and Evil

My feelings on religion and cosmology are admittedly a little different: I don’t believe in the Big Bang, gods, or subscribe to any religion, so you may think it odd that I write about “Good and Evil” outside any religious context. Frankly, I am not even sure “Good” actually exists; however, I am certain that “Evil” does.

Admittedly, evil requires a subjective, secondhand opinion in order to exist because it isn’t an independent force, spirit, or devil; rather, it lives in a gnawing, infinite vacuum within certain of our fellow men: Men with no inner light, imagination, or decency. Men with an inner void.

One striking example of this comes from an email in the Epstein Files, an email in which Jeffrey Epstein remarks to his brother that Donald Trump has absolutely no morals, no shame, and no scruples whatsoever. He receives an LOL reply from his brother that Trump “doesn’t have so much as a single solitary cell of decency in him.” But why does it seem the number of such men on the world stage is increasing?

That’s like asking why are there so many mass shootings. Who knows? Maybe it’s the pressure of overpopulation in a world of decreasing, mis-allocated resources. Maybe it’s plastic in the environment, endocrine disruptors in the water supply, or the millions of industrial chemicals in the environment. The number of parents brainwashing their children to believe in a religion based on a blind faith that their god is real can’t help. Maybe “All of the Above” is the right answer.