I’ll randomly blurt out “fuck you” throughout the day, at nothing in particular.
Like a hiccup, my “fuck yous” arrive without warning.
Most of the time, they happen when I’m alone, but not always, as my wife can attest.
I might be walking from the kitchen to the living room when BAM! – a sharp and sincerely felt “fuck you” burst from my lips.
Sometimes the “fuck yous” happen when driving alone in my car.
These car “fuck yous” aren’t preceded by a driver cutting me off or failing to use a turn signal (e.g., the standard “fuck you” driving scenarios). No, instead, it’s just me driving in peace and quiet when out of nowhere comes a terse and curt “fuck you!”
I’m not afflicted by a sudden onset of Tourette Syndrome, but something’s definitely going on with me. So, I’ve been trying to self-diagnose.
The first step in diagnosing Random Fuck You Syndrome (it’s what I’m calling this) is identifying life changes that might be contributing factors.
Change 1: Being Alone
One thing that’s changed for me is the number of hours I spend alone.
I’ve worked from home for more than 20 years — but recently, working from home has transitioned to working from home alone.
For most of my career, there’s always been another human in the house (for at least part of my workday). But this past year, our younger son moved out, and my wife, who leaves for work at 4:15 in the morning, goes to her mom’s house after work to visit and help with chores.
We have a dog who keeps me company throughout the day, but she’s deaf and, consequently, quiet as a mouse.
So, the number of hours I spend alone during the workday has increased significantly. For long periods, it’s just me, my laptop, the refrigerator’s hum, and my deaf dog snoring.
Being alone is not the sole cause of Randon Fuck You Syndrome, but I think it contributes to it.
Change 2: My TV and Phone
When you work from home alone, your smartphone and television become closer companions to you than they used to be.
I turn my TV on shortly after waking up and listen to the news while going about my morning routine of putting on a pot of coffee, feeding, petting, and talking to my dog (yes, I know she can’t hear me), making the bed, and emptying the dishwasher.
When I’m not absorbing content from work, I’m absorbing it from my smartphone and television. Throughout the day, I’m receiving input constantly – All that input gets stacked in the recesses of my mind, where it sits for hours, without interruption from healthy interactions and conversations with other human beings.
Change 3: Our Turbulent World and the Nature of Content
When the world is a mess, as ours is, having access to information is a double-edged sword. You stay informed, but you worry – a lot.
We have constant access to information about the war in Ukraine, the rise of fascism at home, the climate crisis, inflation, and the looming influence of AI, all contribute to an overwhelming feeling of uncertainty and anxiety.
On top of the pile of the undeniable mess sits a fairly new development (in terms of consequence): the demise of critical thinking and American’s willingness to relinquish their mental and intellectual autonomy to fantastical conspiracy theories and a known crook whose vision for America rests on retribution, revenge, and fascist-ideologies.
I can’t tell you how many interviews I’ve seen recently of Qanon followers who believe JFK is still alive, JFK junior faked his own death, and Donald Trump is a Christ-like figure divinely sent to save America from a cannibalistic cabal of elites.
Donald Trump, (a man credibly charged with stealing top-secret documents, directing a collaborative effort to overturn a free and fair election (and strong-arming state officials to do the same) said, “Don’t believe what you see or hear, believe what I tell you.” And millions of Americans are doing just that.
I stew at the knowledge that these people get a seat at the table and have a say in selecting the next president – that their vote counts the same as the vote from rational individuals who use critical thinking to guide their decisions.
This is a significant change, not just for me (a guy working at home alone), but for our country.
Change 4: Work Burnout
At sixty, what’s required of me at work and where I am philosophically have diverged irreconcilably.
I feel it in my bones and gut every morning I wake up.
There’s a nagging sense of entitlement that at this phase of life, I’ve earned the right to slow down, take my foot off the gas, and smell the roses.
I romanticize about a job that doesn’t follow me home every night. A job that ends when the day ends and doesn’t occupy my mind ceaselessly.
When I look at my workstation, I stress out about the amount of work I have to complete – work that no longer interests me – and the mental energy required to barely push through it.
That agitates the shit out of me.
So, these four changes – an increase in the amount of time being alone, unfettered access to information, the shit-state of our world and America’s growing population of unthinking Trump supporters, and job burnout – are contributing factors to the “Fuck Yous!” building inside my head and Random Fuck You Syndrome (RFYS).
At this phase of life, I have both no fucks to give, yet I’m full of “fuck yous” – it’s a strange dichotomy.
As I see it, the cure is retirement (a year or two off) and voting the current Trump culture into oblivion.
After that, I’ll regain control of my “fuck yous.” Until then, Random Fuck Yous will reign.
What happens to the partnership between the Evangelical Church and the Republican party when compassionate conservatism gets replaced with MAGA mania?
How do Evangelical ministers square the teachings of Christ with their MAGA-infected flock?
What happens when ultra-MAGA Evangelicals sit fidgety in church pews and listen to sermons contradictory to the messages spewed by their political Messiah on the campaign trail?
It won’t be long before we see a sectarian split within the Evangelical church and radical versions of Evangelicalism start popping up across the country, like crack houses in the 80s.
These radical Evangelical churches will teach a MAGA-tinged Christianity, where Christ, a muscular blue-eyed-blond-messiah, wields his razor-edged cross to slice and dice woke liberals, immigrants, homosexuals, and atheists, to reestablish truth, order, and the American way.
Break-away Evangelical churches are how MAGA survives and (thrives). These churches will become radicalization factories in America like Wahhabi mosques in Saudi Arabia.
MAGA politicians are no different than any other. They understand religion is a tool for controlling and mobilizing masses – Churches plant seeds dipped in fear and bigotry to grow compliant human saplings so that future outcomes that align with religious ideology can take hold in society.
“The meek shall inherit the earth” will be replaced by a mite-is-right mentality—where the rationalization and justification of cruelty to achieve a particular end is the norm.
The transformation of the Evangelical church will correlate and coincide with criminal charges against former president Trump and his impending legal jeopardy.
Let’s keep our eyes peeled for an upstart-fire-brand Evangelical minister looking to make a name for himself by taking advantage of political chaos.
Donald Trump will be the new radical Evangelical church’s prophet of revenge and retribution.
I hope none of this comes to fruition, but I would not be surprised if it did.
Business Conduct Guidelines (BCGs) are the principles and standards businesses expect from their workers.
Many companies send their BCGs annually to employees through training materials and reference documents. The employees complete the training, read the documents, and give their signature indicating compliance.
If an employee violates their company’s BCGs, the employer can terminate them.
Violating the guidelines can also lead to criminal or civil prosecution.
Like the private sector, the United States government has BCGs, which Donald Trump did not adhere to.
When the Government discovered the former President had taken hundreds of their classified documents, they repeatedly asked (with deference) for him to return them.
Today, there’d be no story, drama, or headlines if Trump had done the right thing and returned the documents that were not “declassified,” were not “Presidential records,” and which DID NOT BELONG TO HIM.
But, of course, Donald Trump didn’t do the right thing. Instead, he lied, deflected, and obstructed his way to a 37-count indictment.
If you or I purposely violated our employer’s Business Conduct Guidelines by stealing proprietary or classified information and then lied about it, we’d be in a heap of legal jeopardy – and rightfully so.
Concerning his conduct in general, former President Trump has a long record of dubious businesses and business deals, for which he’s paid millions of dollars in legal settlements. Not to mention his abhorrent personal behavior.
And yet, this crooked, twice-impeached, ethically vacuous man is the leading presidential candidate for the Republican party.
Intelligent and decent-minded people not tainted by political partisanship/tribalism are appalled at the mere thought of Trump once again sitting at the helm of American democracy.
I usually refrain from making political posts on LinkedIn. But I’m at a point where I have zero fucks to give, so I’ll speak my mind regarding America and American values (regardless of the venue), especially when both are in jeopardy of being trampled. Additionally, I firmly believe a second Trump Presidency will damage the collective psyche of Americans, especially those who genuinely care about conduct, ethics, and integrity.
Our political parties, institutions, and businesses live in the same ecosystem. The rot from today’s GOP will seep into other areas society unless we stop it at the ballot box.
The ballot box is America’s last line of defense against political grift, intolerance, and authoritarianism.
With that said, here we go . . .
After the 2020 election and the events of January 6th, most Americans just wanted to put our abusive relationship with Trump in the rearview and return to normalcy.
Unfortunately, Trump lingers like a fart in a closet.
After 8 years of Trump polluting our politics with dishonesty and unethical behavior, we continue to wallow in a palpable and inescapable MAGA malaise – because Trump is all around, all the time. He’s on the news, in the newspapers, on social media.
Most Americans are exhausted (not to mention ashamed and embarrassed) by it.
When hard-working Americans pull their noses away from the grindstone and look up to see the former highest official in the land lying and disregarding the rule of law, with an entire political party backing that behavior, and an onslaught of propaganda aimed at deconstructing our democratic institutions, they begin to question the stability of the country in which they live and work.
And quite honestly, I think that’s the intent of the Trump-led GOP. To weaken Americans’ confidence in democratic institutions and systems so they can dismantle and replace them with authoritarian-based systems.
Generally speaking, Americans refrain from discussing politics at work (historically we know nothing good comes from it).
We willingly accept our political differences because we know (or at least we thought we knew) that values like honesty and integrity transcend politics — that if a President was demonstrably dishonest and unethical, we’d put aside politics and condemn him uniformly.
Unfortunately, we’ve discovered over the last 8 years that the reverse is true: politics transcends values. As former President Trump once said, he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any of his supporters.
The assault on truth and our democracy did not end when Trump-inspired rioters left the capital late in the afternoon on January 6th.
The assault is ongoing.
Today’s perpetrators are not violent insurrectionists beating police officers with American flags but elected officials with a blind and cult-like allegiance to a corrupt demagogue. The assault and threat are equally dangerous, if not more, as it has the illusion of legitimacy.
A few months ago, Republicans voted unanimously to censure a member of the opposition party for his role in the impeachment trial of former President Trump. Republicans have floated a proposition to “expunge” the impeachments of President Trump, who knowingly tried to extort the leader of a foreign country and overturn a free and fair election.
The GOP has crossed the Rubicon by embracing Trump and Trumpism – dragging millions of brainwashed Americans with them.
American corporations who spoke out against the events of January 6th and pulled support from candidates who knowingly lied about that day need to tap back into the sense of urgency and condemn what is happening currently with the Republican party. So, when former President Trump gets on his social media platform and spouts lie after lie about the 2020 election, companies need to explicitly and publicly denounce him and any member of Congress who regurgitates the lies.
Silence provides a safe space for unethical conduct to grow and spread.
The corporations we work for can help Make Americans Proud Again by speaking out against dishonest and unethical behavior and the assault on truth from Trump and Trump sycophants in the GOP. Otherwise, confidence in American institutions will wane, cynicism will take root, and morale will drop – and that’s bad for business.
But Donald Trump is a creeping fracture on the hip of America’s democracy.
Biden is a danger to himself.
Trump is a danger to the republic and the freedom for which it stands.
Do I think Joe Biden is too old for the presidency? Yes, I do. But that problem will eventually take care of itself, as it does for all of us.
We must stop thinking about 2024 as a contest between two men, one who has clearly lost a step, the other hell-bent on lying his way back to the presidency.
The 2024 election is not about Biden or Trump; it’s about good versus bad ideas.
It’s about whether we move the country forward or backward. It’s about whether we expand rights or restrict them. It’s about whether we try to bridge our gaps and differences or widen them. In 2024, either we embrace and promote the ideas of western Democracy, or we don’t.
Trumpism – the metastasizing malignancy of malevolence and malfeasance has taken root in the Republican party. Trumpism is less of a political platform and more of a manifesto of intolerance, anger, fear-baiting, and grievance. And that’s today’s GOP.
To move the country forward and to trigger a “re-set” for the Republican party, we need to bury it under an avalanche of votes that screams DEMOCRACY MATTERS!
Today, banning books, demonizing “the other,” promoting one religion over others, and protecting unfettered access to weapons, even in the face of mass shooting after mass shootings, are Republican ideals, but they’re not American ideals.
While Republicans bitch and moan about pronouns, wokeness, and drag show readings, broken parents relive the scene of janitors mopping up the blood of their children from the hallways and classrooms in schools.
Most Americans are tired of nonsense in the face of real-life challenges and hardship.
The 2024 election, more than any other past election, is about ideas. Foundational ideas. The ideas upon which America will stand or crumble.
‘Let he who tied the bell on the tiger take it off’
So said China’s President Xi Jinping, alluding to who is responsible for reigning in Vladimir Putin from his vicious and unlawful military assault on Ukraine.
So, who tied the bell on the Russian Tiger?
I would suggest:
The first bell was tied on the Tiger when Trump sought Russia’s cooperation in a US election.
The next bell on the tiger was Trump’s un-ending praise of Putin and other autocrats.
More bells were attached with 4 years of Trump trashing NATO alliances.
And then there was that big bell when Trump sided with Putin over US intelligence agencies, for everyone to see, in Helsinki.
Another bell on the Tiger was the Trump administration turning its back on the Kurds and letting Russia have its way in Syria.
So, President Xi is correct; America did indeed put the bell on the Tiger. A fuck-load of bells. Christ, with so many bells, we could name that Tiger Jingles.
Biden is dealing with a Russian Tiger, belled by 4 years of praise and appeasement from a thug-loving autocratic-wanna-be President who hated our NATO allies.
And now Putin, the belled Russian Tiger, is terrorizing Ukraine, murdering innocent men, women, and children.
I have my own proverb:
The belled tiger is less restrained and more dangerous after 4-years of an orange bull in Western Democracy’s China Closet.
Like a bull in a China Closet, former President Trump obliterated the norms of liberal western democracy in favor of autocratic principals, opening the door to a terroristic Tiger.
On daddy’s dime, he ran business after business into the ground.
He shorted his contractors, defrauded and extorted his way to the top of the New York real estate market.
He cheated on his taxes almost as much as he cheated on his wives.
He sexually assaulted women and bragged about it.
He publicly mocked a handicapped reporter.
When a woman reporter held his feet to the fire with tough questions, he insinuated that her tough questions were related to her menstrual cycle.
He endlessly equated a women’s worth with her appearance.
He sexualized his own daughter publicly.
He denied housing to people based solely on the color of their skin.
He used a charity as a front for illegal activities and was forced to shut it down.
He created a fake university to take money from suckers, truckers, and dumb motherfuckers all across America.
He pandered to Americans’ fears, employing a nationalistic propaganda campaign emblematic of the Nazis in Pre-World War II Europe. And as a result of that campaign, he ascended to the highest office in the land.
And for four years, we bore witness to a fundamental truth; like sewage in a leeching field, a man’s lack of character seeps into every decision he makes.
At the pinnacle of power and public service, instead of leading and uniting a nation, Trump put all his energy into pitting Americans against one another. He understood that a divided America was his best and only chance at hanging on to power.
As president, he promoted and pushed tax policies that helped the rich and powerful.
He implemented a punitive immigration policy that separated children from parents and caged them, all while using nationalistic propaganda and xenophobic tropes to justify his cruelty.
He tried to shake down a foreign leader by holding-up military funding for dirt on his political opponent.
He minimized the danger of the COVID-19 pandemic and pushed false cures and the notion that COVID-19 would not last, despite knowing his words were lies.
He cheered the efforts of nationalist militias to overthrow state governments.
He regularly praised and flirted with authoritarians while simultaneously trashing alliances.
And when the American people finally said enough is enough, he used lies and misinformation about a stolen election to whip his supporters into a frenzy. Then, he gathered his supporters in Washington for the express purpose of subverting American Democracy, urging them to storm the capital to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election.
Blood was spilled, people died, but Democracy prevailed.
Since then, members of his administration have said that Trump was, and is, unfit to lead. Yet members of the Republican party serving in congress refuse to refute the fat orange brute.
A few weeks ago, Russia invaded the free and sovereign nation of Ukraine and Trump refused to refute the brute who initiated the attack. In fact, he praised Putin’s tactics as “Genius” and “Savvy.”
When asked by a reporter, “what message would you like to give Vladimir Putin today?” Trump did not denounce Putin’s aggression. Instead, the former leader of the free world said, “I have no message.”
And yet Trump – this menace to American Democracy and democracies around the world – this selfish, shallow, vile human being devoid of character and morality is still the most powerful man in the Republican party.
Republicans in congress grub for his support., similar to the scared immigrant families of generations ago who cowered to the local mafia thug strutting in their streets.
Unfortunately for America, Trump is that Mafia thug. Instead of threatening physical violence, he threatens the congressional community to withhold his support. And to the dismay of many, Republican congressmen bend a knee and kiss the ring of this despicable human being.
The lack of courage in the face of Trump’s moral and ethical turpitude stunned and deflated Americans and weakened our standing around the globe. Our allies wondered aloud if America could still be trusted. How can we expect America to stand up for Democracy when their own president does not?
Trump spent four years weakening alliances with western democracies across Europe. He joyfully cozied up to authoritarian leaders and countries around the globe. He softened the ground for autocratic regimes in their march against western democratic ideals, which lead inevitably to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Like Trump, Putin is a bully and a thug.
Like Trump, Putin understands Democracy is the iron in the blood of free men and women.
And when Democracy takes hold in a country previously constricted by authoritarianism, it unlocks the desire for freedom that exists naturally in all human beings. Our natural human desire for freedom is contagious and spreads quickly, especially in countries where freedom has been denied.
Freedom, and the courage to fight for it, is the kryptonite of autocrats, dictators, and bullies.
Freedom was flourishing in Ukraine. And though Ukraine was no threat militarily to Russia, the freedom of its people was a threat to Putin himself.
What happens if Russians get infected with freedom? How long would Putin last?
And so, we have bombs raining down on cities across Ukraine. We have a free and sovereign nation under attack by a menacing bully.
Like Putin, Trump understood that his rule was also threatened by freedom.
The freedom for people to march in protest.
The freedom of the press to report truthfully.
The freedom of citizens to question and challenge authority.
All of these freedoms ended Trump’s presidency and saved (for now anyway) our Democracy.
We must do all that we can to help Ukraine fight for freedom. As free people, it’s our responsibility to help Ukrainians in their fight to remain free. They’re standing up to the bully, putting their lives on the line to remain a sovereign nation of free people. If they lose their fight, it’s a victory for the enemies of freedom everywhere. A victory for Putin opens the door to further aggression and the spread of autocracy’s dark shadow around the globe.
In a recent interview, a reporter asked Ukraine President Zelenskyy if he understood America’s view that imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine would worsen the situation. Worsen it for who? was his reply.
By refusing to close the sky over Ukraine, we’re permitting the slaughter of Ukrainians.
When you’re an ocean away from bombs raining down from the skies, you can afford to be pragmatic; when bombs are raining down on you, pragmatism goes out the window.
Ukrainians don’t have the luxury of being pragmatic or assessing their situation from a geopolitical perspective. Instead, they’re asking America and the world to give them a chance at survival. Refusing to close the sky over Ukraine diminishes their chances significantly.
Either we stand up to the bully and close the skies and risk escalating the war to other countries, or we permit the slaughter of innocent civilians.
Put more simply, either we do what is right or what is safe. We stand up to the menacing bully with all of our strength and courage, or we do not.
bendingtheneedle 