Let’s see how a spoof news guy stacks up against our supposed intelligentsia. Over the last couple of decades, I’ve spouted from my blog and my bar stool how: we only have one problem in this country. The rest is implied as, under republican leadership, we can’t even identify the key issues of our time, let alone solve them. I started following politics closely post 9/11 and in the days and weeks after that horrific day my own nationalism and fear of terrorism was quickly replaced by concerns regarding our response to these events and the emergence of this enemy within. Enemy is a strong word, but if the jackboot fits… The case that Iraq = 9/11 was weak, and the fact it worked so well is a testament to our collective gullibility. The implications are profound as any nuisance can be elevated to a threat and then eliminated by the greatest military the world has ever known. So my first decade of blogging can be summarized as GOP, please reform, but the second shifted to GOP, please disband. Even though my statements and posts may have seemed hyperbolic fifteen plus years ago, I think they’ve been validated (which means I can keep blogging for another two hours before I have to move my car).
For a recap, an impeached president recently assassinated someone without notifying congress, except via twitter, and threatened to bomb a country’s cultural centers, and then proceeded to lie about the rationale for the mob hit. Make no mistake, folks, this is the house that Cheney built, and it’s the promised land I’ve been ranting on about, aka a great time for The Discord’s decade in review.
My Main Prediction (somewhere around 2005): There will be a collapse at the end of Dubya and, if we survive this, the next republican administration will end us.
*The earliest graph I found …uh, I still want to kill my friend Dave for, here.
I always concerned the next Dem would have a hard time stabilizing us, in fact, I wasn’t sure it would be possible. I also knew the next R president would pick up where Bush left off—which, if you recall, was on a cliff.
Polarization Nation Watch (2006): This is going to get worse before it’s irreparable.
A key theme is how I noticed the vanishing US moderates and the growing polarization that I believed would eventually mark the death of meaningful discourse:
“You can’t ignore that lines are being drawn, in some cases battle lines. Folks are becoming more entrenched and polarized than ever. Even your run-of-the-mill moderates understand that if we hand the keys to Rush Limbaugh or to Michael Moore we are simply going to crash this car called America into different trees.”
Fast forward a dozen years, and I would tweak that to:
“Mr. Moore, please go easy on the clutch.”
A quick history on how we became so polarized:
The three biggest factors are the media, self-gerrymandering as we move to like-minded communities, and what I like to call the growing disparity of grey matter. Somewhere over the last twenty years we completely lost it. While many point to the speakership of Newt Gingrich as the advent of these dueling realities we now reside, others like Drutman over at The Atlantic points to hyper-partisanship taking hold during the 2010 midterms. Regardless, the fomentation of an alternate political reality has been in the works for a long long time. Dellek at the Washington Post is more in line with my view as he places this truthular deterioration at over half a century of republican lies. He also, like yours truly, warns of putting all the rotten eggs into the Trumpian swamp basket, or: “Trump, then, isn’t what caused these conspiracy theories. He’s what happens when nobody stands in their way.”
The right sees it differently, of course, as they harken back to the days of Walter Cronkite when news anchors simply relayed the day’s events, free of any hint of an informed opinion. They claim progressive tendencies began slipping into the mix and fought back through the creation of Fox News, which essentially became a safe space for the uneducated to rail against any and all meaning and progress. A parallel movement was occurring on radio as the Sinclair group, who have a stranglehold on AM radio since the George W. Bush administration. On the web front, I’ve noted how Matt Drudge over at the Drudge Report recently started linking to more anti-Trump articles. As a result his traffic dropped 28% over the last four months. It will be interesting to see what passes muster with the deplorables moving forward, well, backwards. Breitbart XL? For this bubble to hold they will need to kick this shit into Space-Balls-level-plaid, aka Big Lies Matter. About 16 years ago I started calling this creeping crapola: “the story within the story of our time” and they are even less insightful and the depths they will sink still seem limitless. Personally I have become a little more liberal every time I hear a republican politician speak. They should really stop doing that.
The Election of Donald J. Trump (2016): This is going to get worse before it’s irreparable, revisited.
My main prediction: if we elected President Ass-clown Hitler we would face two out of three of the following:
A constitutional crisis, an unnecessary war, and an economic collapse.
And, if we elect Trump to a second term, we would have the whole shit-show hatrick.
Here’s an article back when Trump was elected: “You cannot command an economy and the world’s largest military from a place of delusion—well, you can, but results may vary.”
Here’s the big three:
A. The Next Unnecessary Trump Skirmish (NUTS): This is a combo of my 2008 prediction of a re-escalation with Iran during the subsequent republican administration. Any R administration would blow up the Iran Deal and then blow other shit up. It’s what they do; it’s all they do. Iran was the most logical choice for an illogical war. Fun Fact: our so-called ‘adults in the room’ are actually children, but sadly not physically small enough to stuff down a laundry chute.
Here’s the three simple steps:
Step 1: Blow up the Iran Deal
Step 2: Make a mistake amidst the resulting increased tension (See: Iranian General death).
Step 3: Reince. Priebus. Repeat.
I kept this in my predictions despite Trump’s insistence that wars are dumb for three main reasons:
- There would be hawkish forces within the party that would drive Trump toward war. Bolton and Pompeo come to mind.
- As a narcissist who only operates for personal gain, a ‘wag the dog’ scenario was always a real possibility. [Changing a turd mid-flush joke plunged by the editor.]
- Pulling out of the Iran deal alone would likely put as back on a course toward war.
Here’s a pre-election Zano quote:
“Trump would also stop the Iran deal on day one. Republicans would choose to let them move toward a bomb, which, in a few years, would force another escalation/conflict/occupation. It’s moronic.”
Which brings us to today’s headline a few years later: Iran abandons 2015 nuclear deal after Soleimani’s killing. Hey everyone, it looks lie two wrongs do make a right …wing.
B. The Impending Economic Collapse:
My analogy for the typical R Administration’s economic gravitas, or lack thereof, is simple: just envision those pallets of money Dubya lowered into Baghdad during Operation Enduring Daddy Issues, you know, the loot that immediately disappeared. Highway robbery is legalized and weaponized under republicans. Regs are cut and then corporations run amok. Oh, and the theory of a corporate conscience is a myth, the latest here, yet these ridiculous themes permeate Republicana even as our ecosystems implode. The saddest part of this segment is how the average republican thinks they’re getting a cut of the bounty.
Hint of the Day: They.Are.Not
It’s all just another illusion from the wasteland.
“The Republicans have spent the past 30 years creating deficits and the Democrats have spent the past 30 years closing them.”
—Joe Klein 2011, I guess since this quote is over 10 years old we can say 40 years.
The next economic collapse may wait until Trump’s second term, aka the final insult.
C. The Constitutional Crisis:
This one is already in the history books, and has been since team Trump was still hanging the drapes. Some don’t believe we’ve hit the level of a constitutional crisis, but in their defense pot is legal in a number of states now. I feel this constitutional crisis will crest should Trump lose the next election. Will the president even accept the results, especially if facing charges? There’s a good chance he won’t step down and the country will be torn apart. So do the right thing, America, vote Trump! I also predicted how Trump enablers would eventually be brought to justice, Zano 2008, while NY Magazine is just getting around to this conclusion today. I also called out David Corn over at Mother Jones for posting a very similar article to mine six months later, but he still refuses to Instasnap me.
The New Republic’s Ganesh Sitaraman is the winner of the best Revisionist History article. This guy blames the great recession on neoliberalism, both forever wars, then pins the growing disparity on smart people as well. This is an amazing piece, even by the coherentless nonsense of the typical republican.
As per Politico, I steered clear of each of their top ten worst predictions of 2019, but without further adieu: the medal round for this decade (keep in mind, these are just the ones I found while playing around with this piece):
Bronze:
“Make no mistake, what Trump will do to our economy, our reputation and our republic will be irreparable.”
Silver:
“Now that Fox and Friends have successfully fomented and fostered a delusional army, I predict this army is about to be unleashed on us.” —Zano 2015
Predicting the coming of a Trump-like character in 2012 is my fav. I diagnosed The GOP with a personality disorder long ago and predicted a president would emerge with a similar psychological profile and yet, still, I crawled out onto one hell of a limb by predicting the next R president would be even dumber than Dubya. This quote occurred when Paul Ryan and his Atlas Buggered shit was really buggering the shit out of me:
Gold:
“At this rate the GOP will never elect some Randian John Galt type; they’re going elect Gordon Gekko’s retarded brother. They protect and back the sociopaths of our society. They’re going to get completely screwed on this deal and, worse yet, so are the rest of us.”
[‘Art of the Deal’ joke removed by the editor due to some temporal inconsistencies.]
The picture obviously appeared in a later article. And an honorable mention to my Brexit guesses, here
Brexit Wounds? Bad Sign For UK’s EU Departure As Merkel Presents May Container Of KY Jelly
And, I just found this one, geesh:
“I am predicting a Sanders or a Clinton would handily win all three presidential debates on substance, but will that actually matter in this post-truth world? Perception is now reality, so a couple of well-timed Rosie O’Donnell jokes and who’s your Donald?”
What’s my worst Current Fear? Well, besides shitting on all things environmental, and not in a good way, I also worry that Russia could slip Tehran a small dirty nuke, who could then hand it to a terrorist group. Second: the dollar will be in jeopardy post the next republican led collapse, especially when you can add the EU to Russia and China’s goal to topple the dollar, here.
As for the democratic hopefuls in 2020, I did pick my best ticket to beat Trump here, which a few days later Politico ran with the same Biden Harris ‘Dream Ticket’. In that same post, I offered my concerns with Biden, which are all sadly coming to fruition.
[My ‘ageism comments age nicely’ joke retired by the editor.]
My assessment of the democratic candidates before these folks took to the debate stage is nearly identical to Andrew Sullivan’s review today. I only watched part of the first debate, because I hate knowing the ending. Overall, I was always extremely concerned about the crop.
My other main premise from the days of yore is how Fox News was starting to have an adversarial relationship with the truth. Here’s a Wired article from two days ago: Fox News Is Now A Threat To National Security. This is old news for the Zano Nation, which makes this next quote from Newsweek even more Knopfleresque:
“National security experts have said President Donald Trump is making military decisions as Commander-in-Chief based on what he sees on Fox News rather than maintaining ‘good order and discipline’ in the country.”
This is not hyperbole. This is really happening. Your president is laughed at when he speaks internationally, and rightly so, and the failures of your last two presidents on the world stage will be huge chapters in the story of our nation’s unraveling.
What did you get wrong, Zano?
I thought my traffic would go up under Trump, ha ha. The Discord is on the rocks, folks, but then again so is our country. Granted, my schitznik needs to get less repetitive and more solution oriented. That’s why I have nominated the Rendezvous’ Gin Lizzy as the drink of the year! Congratulations. Now please let me back in.
Were my blogvesary still chiming in, I think he would say the findings of Robert Mueller marked my worst prediction. I don’t agree, as the day the Mueller report was released I called it: “an unmitigated disaster, regardless of its implications,” and I still think my original predictions of Mueller’s conclusions were spot on:
Russian interference = Yes.
Obstruction of Justice = Yes.
Money laundering, or other white collar crimes = Coming soon.
Collusion = Yes (but full conspiracy, the so-called actual crime = 50/50).
It certainly beats my friend’s predictions, but, then again, my worst day will always beat a republican’s best …well, if history is any judge. And don’t get me started on judges…
What’s going to happen in the senate trial, Zano?
Here’s your only hint.
The pressure will be great, because the evidence is damning, but at the end of the day a crime syndicate has gotta be a crime syndicate. What’s not fair is how you can’t ask any republican politician: “what did they know and when did they know it,” because they truly don’t know anything. And, as it turns out, my old joke “innocent until proven republican,” wasn’t a joke. Who knew?
That Hope Springs Eternal Moment:
Trump just dipped his toe into the wartime president ‘Black Waters’ and instead of a bump in the polls, he got a sit and stay. So even though republican insight remains undetectable at this time, maybe something is happening beyond the range of human senses. Maybe.
