Trumpian Venn diagram: life imitates dystopian art. By Hal M. Brown

I found the Venn diagram below in a Facebook post. Then I made a version with a DonkeyHotey caricature of Trump in the middle. I was planning to end the blog without making my own version but changed my mind and made one which you can see below.

Click above to enlarge.

I don't know who made the original with the names of movies and books. Some company made it into a sticker:

It has been republished in a number of places:

I wasn't familiar with Brazil. It is a 1985 dystopian science-fiction black comedy film directed by Terry Gilliam, focusing on a bureaucrat named Sam Lowry who dreams of escaping his oppressive reality. The film is known for its satirical take on bureaucracy and surveillance, drawing comparisons to George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four."

I'd heard of Gattaca but never saw it. It's a dystopian film set in a future society where people are genetically selected and then discriminated against based on their DNA.

Most people are familiar with the other flms and books shown.

You can use your imagination and judgment to add your segments. 

I had Tucker Carlson (who is said to be influencing Trump's choices). Some say Donald Trump Jr. exerts substantial influence over his father so I used him. 

Previous list of  all blogs here.

Primary Hal Brown's Blog website is halbrown.org (if you are reading this anywhere else any additions or corrections will be at this address)

Anti-Trumpers made a big mistake calling Trump just a convicted felon. By Hal M. Brown

Consider how public perception might have been changed if all the articles and signs saying "Donald Trump becomes the first convicted felon to be elected president" instead said "Donald Trump becomes the first convicted rapist or sexual abuser felon to be elected president" or billboards were put up like my version of the one below:

The E. Jean Carroll trial is again in the news, today with many articles like this in HuffPost with the link on top of their main page:

Here's another article, with a video, about it:

'What is going on!' MSNBC host stunned by new Trump legal settlement

The upside I see is the timing of the ABC action. It brings this into the news again, especially at a time when Trump is pushing his nomination of Pete Hegseth, who  someone accused of sexual assault, to be Secretary of Defense. The country needs to be reminded of Trump's sexual assault history and how he has treated women as unwilling objects for his sexual gratification. 

While I think ABC took the chicken shit route and should have stuck with the law suit this isn't the point I want to make today. Everyone who followed the E. Jean Carroll trial knew it was technically about defamation. However, it was really about Trunp sexually assaulting Carroll. There was debate mired down in legalise about whether what Trump did was technically a rape or a sexual assault.  How one decides to define rape may depend on whether one is looking at a lawbook or a dictionary. Here's a dictionary definition:

Cick above to enlarge

Note the seocnd part of number two above: The crime of using force or threat of force to compel a person to submit to some other sexual penetration (my emphasis).

This is from Wikipedia's entry for E. Jean Caroll v. Donald J. Trump.

Carroll's accusation of rape was in a different category from claims of any other women. Regarding this accusation of rape, the judge gave to the jury "the narrow, technical meaning of that term" under New York law as it existed at that time, which defined rape as forcible penetration with the penis, as Carroll had specifically alleged. The jury rejected her rape claim, but found Trump liable for a lesser degree of sexual abuse than rape. In July 2023, Judge Kaplan said that the jury had found that Trump had raped Carroll according to the common definition of the word which did not require the alleged penile penetration. In August 2023, Kaplan dismissed a countersuit and wrote that Carroll's accusation of "rape" is "substantially true".

Wiki, ever up to date, includes the following:

In December 2024, Trump settled a defamation case with ABC News after anchor George Stephanopoulos falsely stated that Trump was found liable of rape in the case. ABC News agreed to pay Trump $15 million for his presidential library and $1 million for his legal fees, as well as issue a public apology.^[17][18]

I think that a large part of Trump's rage and drive for revenge is rooted in this case and his having to sit through day after day in court. This may have been the first time in his adult life that Trump was forced to be somewhere he didn't want to be day after day, and worse than this, somewhere he was being charged with a crime. This is a side aspect of what I want to say here. 

While the trial was all about what Trump did to E. Jean Carroll anti-Trumpers kept calling Trump a convicted felon which left out the salient fact that it was sexual abuse that led to the case being brought in the first place. His supporters turned his conviction to their advantage making him into a hero with his mugshot a badge of defiant honor, and other in-your-face depictions showing how little his cult cared about his convictions.

Trump friendly media, like the Murdoch New York Post, also had their own slant on the conviction.

Consider what would have happened if the anti-Trumpers as well as the objective press publishing articles, about the conviction and those making billboards and signs never used the word felon without prefacing it with at the least the words "sexual abuse" and preferably the single word "rapist." 

If there was true justice Trump would have been tried and convicted for rape in a criminal trial rather than in a defamation civil trial related to a rape allegation. If this happened the headlines would have been very different and Trump could have gone to prison. If convicted of Forcible Touching, ie.  one who forcibly touches the sexual or other intimate parts of another person for the purpose of degrading or abusing such person, or for the purpose of gratifying the actor’s sexual desire, He could have been senetenced to a year in jail:

Forcible Touching, Penal Law Section 130.52, is a class A misdemeanor punishable by up to 1 year in jail. However, the opportunities for a plea agreement are more limited than in most misdemeanor cases. The District Attorney may not offer a non-criminal plea, even for a first offender. And, if some form of conditional discharge is offered, it will typically depend on completion of a mandated treatment program or sessions with a private therapist.

Trump can factually be called a person who was found liable for sexual abuse and what was really the far less egregious crime of defamation by a jury of his peers.

I am just one small voice trying remind people of this. Hopefully the media addressing the $15 million ABC settlement will remind more people about this.

In 2016 people elected a man who uttered a few words which were recorded and replayed hundreds of time and which if said by any other candidate would have lost him the election. Voters just didn't care enough.

He hasn't changed. He is proving this by the choices has made for people to serve in his administration. He is turning it onto a phallocentric manosphere ruled by the ultimate mad megalomaniac manly monarch.

Read related blog: For some MAGA manly men, Hegseth's sexual assault and drinking charges are badges of honor worthy of a medal.

and this blog: 

If only the entire country could divorce itself from a toxically masculine regime.

If only the entire country could divorce itself from a toxically masculine regime

Previous list of  all blogs here.

Primary Hal Brown's Blog website is halbrown.org (if you are reading this anywhere else any additions or corrections will be at this address)

Apple CEO's visit to Mar-a-Lago caused my iPhone to throw up on my Mac laptop, by Hal M/ Brown

This was the the top HuffPost story this morning.

It prompted me to spend some time using AI to create an illustration of Cook bending at the knees before King Trump. AI created a king and I added Trump's rather large head. Oddly, the gods of AI made the man on his knees resemble Tim Cook so I left this alone.

On the left is the original AI image:

This is what I posted on BlueSky:

I was hoping to upgrade my iPhone and Mac laptops in a year or so to the newest Apple devices. Now I am rethinking this. If another company becomes the BlueSky of tech I may buy those products. 

I can see a company which makes cell phones and laptops, probably a much smaller company than Apple, promoting themselves as a company not beholden to the autocratic leader of the United States. 

Click to enlarge

Some day in the not too distant future we may look back at these people the way the industrialists who collaborated with the Nazi's are viewed today. Consider the following sample of articles about this:

In the Room Where German Tycoons Agreed to Fund Hitler’s Rise To Power

Hitler's millionaire backers: how Germany's elite facilitated the rise of the Nazis

How Big Business Bailed Out the Nazis

A tragic tale of what can go wrong when profits are entangled with politics.

Secret Meeting of 20 February 1933 from Wikipedia

Addendum:

In case you missed it: Trump Taps Anti-Trans Lawyer Harmeet Dhillon to Lead DOJ Civil Rights Post

If you aren't familiar with BlueSky, here's an article from Z NET: 

7 things to know about Bluesky before you join - and why you should

Yesterday I wrote a science fiction fantasy about the drones really being an advance force from an alien civilization preparing humans for an intervention which would reset our world and set it back on a course of peaceful coexistence between neighbors and countries. Today there are reports of more sightings and there has been no explanation as to what they are. Could it be that after decades of sci-fi writers speculating about what form an alien invasion would take it is finally happening? Read the blog here:

Previous list of  all blogs here.

Primary Hal Brown's Blog website is halbrown.org (if you are reading this anywhere else any additions or corrections will be at this address)

The delightful distraction of the dastardly drones, by Hal M. Brown

 

Constructed by the autocratic Galactic Empire, the Death Star was capable of obliterating entire planets. It served to enforce the Empire's reign of terror. It was protected by twin ion fighters (below) which the heros of the Star Wars stories had to battle in their Jedi Starfighters in space dog fights.

Now we have these drone sightings in New Jersey making the news. Marjorie Taylor Greene is speculating that they are coming from an Iranian mother ship. 

We are hearing that they may be remotely operated drones or, like the Empire fighters, that they could be manned.

Now America is on the brink of becoming something like the autocratic Galactic Empire with its own version of Darth Vader leading it. 

I find making up a science fiction alternative story can be a delightful distraction to thinking about the horror show about to come. 

I've put together this tall tale about these to spin a science fiction scenario.

Maybe at long last aliens, not the ones Trump wants to deport, but the ones from a galaxy far, far, away, have gotten fed up with the United States and other autocracies and decided to intervene once again. 

Once again, you might ask. 

The first time could have been when they seeded Earth and planted the ocean with the DNA that led to the first life forms coming out of the primal ooze. 

The second would be when, as depicted at the beginning of 2001, they gave primates human intelligence. 

The third could have been when they sent several shape shifters (Jesus, the great philosophers and religious leaders, and perhaps Einstein) to try to make a difference. 

It is possible that the current plethora of drones over New Jersey (shown below) are being controlled by Bruce Springsteen, the alien primary shape shifter on Earth today and soon to be emissary from his home in Northern New Jersey.

Now perhaps they are trying again to prepare for an outright invasion, or better call it an intervention, by preparing earthlings to accept that they must change their ways or else... which brings us to the Death Star. 

What if these so-called drones are the advance scouts for numerous mother ships all with planet destroying capabilities. 

I don't think these aliens want to cause human suffering or annihilate us, but since they've been studying earthlings since the dawn of mankind they know how set in our beliefs we are. 

They know about every human atrocity.

I think they are aware that a demonstration would be necessary to convince skeptical humans, so the next step would be having these drones demonstrate alien capabilities proving them to be extraterrestrial. This hasn't happened yet. This is phase one. 

Phase two should be occurring soon. They may have a drone hover a few feet above the podium during Trump's inauguration while the Secret Service tries to shoot it down in a fusillade of bullets to no avail. Then it would take off straight up with blinding speed. It would be an image seen around the world. I'd like to see Trump raising his fist defiantly after this.

The aliens would then take over all media and in all languages lay out their demands for reform. The demands would sound very much like the "love thy neighbor" and "do unto others as you would have them do to you" messages of Christianity and all the world's great religions.

If this didn't lead to an end to cruel inhumane autocratic regimes the next phase would be to have the actual motherships appear over all major cities like in the TV Series V.

The aliens would give humans one final chance to peacefully coexist with each other. They might have to demonstrate that they aren't kidding around. Vaporizing the Moon into dust as dramatic as this would be might do it but there would be major consequences (read article) such the disruption of the tides which would cause loss of human and aquatic life.

Better they announce they will vaporize Mars giving time to the media to assure they have powerful telescopes televising the event.

Yesterday:

Recent blogs: A decidely unempathic fantasy about what I wish for Trump voters, addressing Hegseth and his toxic masculinity, another about Trump and MAGA toxic masculinity, and a sign Trump may have dementia.

Previous list of  all blogs here.

Primary Hal Brown's Blog website is halbrown.org (if you are reading this anywhere else any additions or corrections will be at this address)

Maybe writers should dispense with words and just use emojis to express opinions, By Hal M. Brown

 

In today's blog I take a break from pure poltics and write about about linguistics, language, words, and writing.

There was an article about Kari Lake being selected to lead the Voice of America which was shown on the top of the page in HuffPost (above with arrow). It didn't offer any opinion. All it said was the following:

The president-elect named Kari Lake, the failed Arizona Senate and gubernatorial candidate, to be the next director of Voice of America. The media network is funded by the U.S. government and is meant to be an unbiased source of news for people around the planet.

VOA provides news in nearly 50 languages and reaches a weekly audience of more than 350 million people, according to its website.

Lake, Trump said, will “ensure that the American values of Freedom and Liberty are broadcast around the World FAIRLY and ACCURATELY, unlike the lies spread by the Fake News Media.”

Lake is a fierce denier of the 2020 presidential election results and refused to concede her race for Arizona governor in 2022.

The title was preceded by the thinking face emoji. This is the "yellow face with furrowed eyebrows looking upwards with thumb and index finger resting on its chin. It is intended to show a person pondering or deep in thought. Often used to question or scorn something or someone, as if saying Hmm, I don't know about that. Tone varies, including earnest, playful, puzzled, skeptical, and mocking." Reference.

At the most recent count I could find there are 1874 emojis in 10 categories and 100 subcategories. While some are objects, activites, and symbols many convey a range of emotions (see here).  You can find all of the emojis here.

I can see a time when some writers who are tired of putting together words decide simply to report what Trump and his allies are doing and the consequences for the country without offering an opinion. There are enough emojis to do this.

Here's one example:

Meaning of 😤 Face With Steam From Nose Emoji 

The 😤 Face With Steam From Nose emoji is often depicted as a frowning face with closed 👀 Eyesand steam coming out of its 👃 Nose, which typically represents extreme anger (similar to mad bulls in cartoons). This is why its most common meaning is related to 💢 Anger, aggression, and frustration. It is often used to symbolize someone struggling to manage their intense negative emotions.

As anyone who has used them knowsm combining emojis can elaborate on a reaction or what they want to express. For example, follow the steaming nose emoji with this one:

Meaning of 🤯 Exploding Head Emoji 

The 🤯 Exploding Head emoji is a face with the head removed to reveal a 🍄 Mushroom ☁️ Cloud. It's commonly used to express the feeling of being mind-blown after learning or discovering something new. It's okay to have those moments of confusion because it's always 😄 Fun to learn something new. 

If you want to show your confusion towards your new discovery, you can send this emoji along with a ❓ Question Mark emoji. But for a little fun, you can use the 🧠 Brain emoji and the 💣 Bomb emoji instead to show that your latest realization blows your mind. 

It's basically used to show that you don't understand something because someone said too many things.

Many of the articles warning about what Trump plans to do to the country and the world go on and on and on. Word and after word after word, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph. I don't know how many people actually read every word in an article. For that matter I don't know how many people read every word of my blogs and I usually intersperse text with illustrations.

How many people who need to be enlightened about Trump actually read books like these six from 2020 (reviewed here)?

Maybe Kash Patel had a good idea reducing his nasty ideas to three books for children. He may grasp that everything has to be dumbed down to reach the people who need to be reached in Trumpworld.

I expect that lovers of language lament the prospect of the literary landscape being overrun with emjois replacing words and phrases expressing nuanced and complex ideas and emotions previously expressed with, well, you remember them, words.

I haven't succumbed to the temptation to use emojis, but in the blogs and substacks I read I haven't found any that use illustrations the way I do.

I am seeing more artwork, some created by AI, used as primary illustrations. In fact, back to Kash Patel's book, the illustration in Alexandra Petri's column (here, subscription) was animated.

This Washington Post column is also animated:

My point is that in order to get some people to pay attention and keep to them engaged you have to use various tricks. The so-called "gray lady" New York Times didn't even use color photographs until 1997.

Before that a typical front page looked like this:

Occassionally they would include illustrations:

Here's today's front page.

This is The New York Times. How many Trump voters even read The New York Times? If they read any print newspaper at all if they are New Yorkers they probably read Rupert Murdoch's New York Post.

Trump got away with convincing people that speaking gibberish was something he called the weave and that it was brilliant. Trump dumbed everything down and managed to convince people he was someone he clearly wasn't. One Trump voter told The New York Times he thought Trump was compassionate and a believer in Christ. I wrote about this yesterday.

According to this article you can use emojis on Truth Social but I don't know if Trump has ever used them or, for that matter, if he even knows how to use them. I looked at about 20 of his Truth Social posts and didn't see any emojis. Along with images and GIFs they are very easy to use on X and BlueSky.

It is no surprise that the role of emojis and how they effect language is the subject of learned discussion. For example in "Emoticons and symbols aren’t ruining language – they’re revolutionizing it" from The Conversation back in 2015.

I am one of many who have said that the Democrats are lousy at reaching low information and uncritical voters. I'm not really saying we should replace words with emojis but we damn well better learn how to get our message across to people who may be amenable to hearing our side of the story.

Recent blogs: A decidely unempathic fantasy about what I wish for Trump voters, addressing Hegseth and his toxic masculinity, another about Trump and MAGA toxic masculinity, and a sign Trump may have dementia.

Previous list of  all blogs here.

Primary Hal Brown's Blog website is halbrown.org (if you are reading this anywhere else any additions or corrections will be at this address)