Remembering Mark Lane's, "Rush to Judgement"

Stayed up too late last night, talking on the phone to a friend from Los Angeles who I've known for half a century, drinking so I could talk to him, which told me how far apart we are now, so far apart that I ended hanging up on him, but not before I called him a, "racist."

I'd said that finding the parallels between Obama and Trump might be more useful to the middle class, not the ruling class but the class that's been brought up to believe in the fictional verities of democracy and the free-market economy, than just concentrating on all the problems with Trump. When I said this I knew I was on to something, that there was a little truth in it, the same kind of truth achieved by seeing Obama as a Republican and Trump a Democrat--and by seeing this way I'd leveled the playing field somewhat, in a way that made both Obama and Trump more human so that I could forgive each of them and get on with my own life.

My friend, a man capable of saying the most interesting things about the obvious, started defending Trump by attacking Hillary Clinton. The Clinton's, he said, are corrupt, everybody knows that, The Clinton Foundation has taken millions of dollars from foreign governments...

He'd tipped my tipping point--in the same way a chess opponent will throw you off your game by making a move that makes no sense--but I took another big gulp from my drink and soldiered on.

I don't know what Hillary Clinton has to do with what I said about Obama and Trump, I said, needing to clear up the little mess he'd placed before me. Then I said, I think this country is extremely racist and that the recent Presidential election proved it; that when you really dug into the core mentality of the voting bloc that elected Trump you'd find big globs of fear--fear of the other. And that somehow Trump tapped in to this fear and turned it to his political advantage.

Well, my friend didn't want to hear this. No, No, No, he said. Then he said things he always says--about the nefarious international banking cartel, The evil Federal Reserve Board, the baneful effects of World War I, from which the world's never recovered, orchestrated by Jewish bankers...

It was then I lost it, not so much because what he was saying angered me but because what he was saying I'd heard so many times before. What he said lacked imagination and wit, as do most all conspiracy theories.