Time to Strap on Your Bullshit Detector
Do it now or the next four years are going to hurt much more than they have to...
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I spent a good part of my late teens and early twenties in coffee houses. This was way before Starbucks escaped Seattle and partially iced, double mocha, triple shot, par-boiled, faux-pork-infused, vegan frapicanitos with maple syrup and a cilantro infusion became the norm. Though I was a serious caffeine addict, what attracted me to coffee houses was the people, a mix of bohemians, reprobates, and lurkers, characters all. Also, the vibe, which was reflected in the design and decoration of each establishment, more funky, timeworn, and individually unique than corporate cookie-cutter.
The first coffee house I haunted was Eye Dream, a supposed ice cream (gelato) shop on 20th off L in Midtown Sacramento. The building is no longer there, having been torn down for a parking lot. What was there was a squat box with not much interior space, a stricture that forced people to hang out in front of the shop and in the alley which ran along it’s north side. Eye Dream was one of three coffee houses where artists, poets, musicians, punks, and queers hung out – the other two were Weatherstone, which was down the street and much more rustic than it is now, and one between Broadway and X Street, whose name I forget. Of the three, Eye Dream was the hippest and wildest.
Because of the lack of seating, Eye Dream was a stand and scheme joint, a place you spent less than an hour at before moving on to an apartment, bar, gallery, or show to fuck, drink, create, do drugs, cause trouble, bullshit, or just hang out. It was my first taste of an underground America that was not punk, but it was not my second home.
A few months after I moved Midtown, Java City opened its first shop at 18th and Capitol, a small space devoted to roasting, with a few tables and chairs on the sidewalk, tables and chairs quickly claimed by bohemians, reprobates, and lurkers, and the riff-raff who frequented Eye Dream, which was now no longer. A block away from my first apartment, it became my living room.
The tables hosted hours-long bullshit sessions, fueled by 75 cent cups of coffee with unlimited refills, something we all took advantage of until management realized that we were drinking dry their profits. Naturally, I was as attracted to the bullshit, or rather bullshitting, me having a love of debate and a gift of gab. Despite being wired for that scene, I was an unknown among the bohemians and reprobates so I had to lurk at a “minor” table until I proved myself able to keep up with the older heads, something that happened pretty quick.
It was at the “big table” where I really learned how to argue, how to present ideas and back them up. It’s where I learned to troll and lay waste to trolls. It is also where I learned where substance and bullshit met and where they departed. And because this was when irony was a slight flavoring and not the mass market cliché that it is today, what was substance and what was bullshit was pretty easy to suss out, that is, unless you were so full of bullshit that you were so far up your own ass that you couldn’t smell shit.
Those full of bullshit – mostly guys over 30 – never escaped the orbit of the big table and for one good reason: Their bullshitting could not survive our sparring. The satellite tables were reserved for the bullshitters and were much safer, and sometimes more entertaining, than the main stage. Occasionally, I’d sit at a satellite to listen to what was being said, often UFO talk, deep conspiracy theorizing, unworkable plans to save the world, grandiose creative projects that never got started, but most off all lots and lots and lots of words.
At the big table people talked, but they also listened. There’d be times when half the table was reading something, while the other half talked amongst themselves about daily life. As long as you proved that you could hang with the “big dogs,” no one faulted you for being quiet. And when people did mix it up, whatever bullshit was spoke was cut with a lot of insight and back-up. Words alone did not help you.
The dynamic at the satellite tables was similar but not the same. While the satellites welcomed both the boisterous and the bashful, no one had to prove that they could contribute to take a chair. That also went with opening your mouth. Thus, instead of a table full of potential debaters who actually read real books, the satellites tended to be peopled with one or two pontificators and a handful of audience. There was also more noise at the satellite tables, that noise being nonstop bullshitting.
It was at a Java City satellite table that I first met Donald Trump. Not Thee Donald Trump, not the political Donald Trump or the “deal-making” Donald Trump. But the Donald Trump of endless bullshit, the Donald Trump who, when given a stage, cannot shut up, the Donald Trump that feels compelled to empty his head of all the air within. It was at the satellite tables where I learned the limit of being titillated by outrage and amused by empty words. It was when I started to get seriously annoyed with blowhards who are too lazy to back their “stable genius” with facts and idiots who did “their own research.” It was when I realized that the Donald Trumps of the World are a waste of fucking time.
“Our” Donald Trump, the next President of the United States, is a satellite table bullshitter, a man so tickled by his voice that he will talk and talk and talk, saying absolutely everything that flashed in his dull little mind, everything that amounts to a whole lotta nothin’. This week he talked about making Canada the 51st state and refused to rule out US invasions of Greenland and Panama. He said that he would rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, an “idea” as absurd as Freedom Fries. He said a lot of stuff that he will not, cannot, and won’t be allowed to do. He spoke a lot of empty words. He spoke bullshit.
Unfortunately, despite all of us having gone through four years of Trump running his mouth and accomplishing nothing, a lot of people got the jeebies when they heard Trump’s “foreign policy objectives.” They forget the stupid child-fight between Trump and Kim Jong Un, the nonsensical saber-rattling and name-calling which quickly morphed into man-love. They forget about how Mexico never paid for a less-than-half built Wall that doesn’t do anything but rust and fall down. They forget how those he said that he was going to “lock up” never even got a cop-visit. They forget the months of gas-bagging Trump did during the pandemic, never having a useful or truthful thing to say, instead proposing moronic solutions to a pandemic that he often refused to acknowledge, solutions like shining light up our keisters to kill all the germs.
Donald Trump is a fucking idiot who cannot stop talking. He will say whatever is in his mind, especially when there is a microphone in front of him. He is so entranced with his voice and so isolated from reality that there is nothing that pops into his head that he doesn’t think is genius. Because he is filthy rich, he can see his “visions” materialize with little effort and no one telling him “No.” Doesn’t matter if his pet projects fail (and they do, over and over and over), he will get bailed out and move on, spinning his bed-wetting as intentional, never having touched bottom as you or I would if we were as much of a loser as he is. And because he is not you or me, Donald Trump can talk endless shit without having to worry about someone punching him out, something that would surely happen if he was a “normal guy” attacking people like he does in the neighborhood bar.
This is Donald Trump. This has always been Donald Trump.
Digging around the internet, I found an interview gossip columnist Rona Barrett did with Donald Trump in 1980. A read-through is instructional. Here’s Trump on “deal making”:
Well, I always like to say that I think my deals are the most exciting deals. I don’t necessarily want the excitement for myself, and that I’ve always been somewhat guarded about that. I mean I do think we probably have, and I’m not saying, it has been recognized that we are the most exciting real estate transactions in the country at this moment, and I would say that I think they’re very bright themselves. They are very exciting, and that satisfies me. That’s my excitement is it’s really seeing what happens with them.
Trump on the “Iran Hostage Situation”:
Respect can lead to other things. When you get the respect of the other countries, then the other countries tend to do a little bit as you do, and you can create the right attitudes. The Iranian situation is a case in point. That they hold our hostages is just absolutely, and totally ridiculous. That this country sits back and allows a country such as Iran to hold our hostages, to my way of thinking, is a horror, and I don’t think they’d do it with other countries. I honestly don’t think they’d do it with other countries.
Trump on the Iran/Iraq War:
Oh yes, there is a war, and it’s a war where nobody has any tanks, has any guns. It’s a war where everyone is standing around. That would have been the easiest victory we would have ever won, in my opinion…But you’re talking about two non-existent armies. I mean Iran has an army composed of American equipment without parts and without anything else, and Iraq has a very weak army, and they’re just really fighting each other, and it’s almost hand-to-hand combat if you see now.
Trump on the presidency:
There is one man that can turn this country around. I could tell you, I know a number of people that would be excellent presidents. I will not tell you who they are, but I know a number of people that could be excellent presidents of this country. But they are not running for political office. They are not in political office. They are extraordinarily brilliant. They are very, very confident. They are leaders. They have the respect of everybody, and they would be fabulous presidents. But they’re not running for political office, and I think that’s very sad, and I think you said it.
Trump on something:
I guess probably sometime during high school, and during college, and during whatever. I think you probably just start forming -- the brain cells start forming in that direction. But I really don’t know when exactly. I wish I could answer that question a little bit better.
While there’s no talk of anal illumination or renaming vast bodies of water, all the regular Trump bullshit is there: The boasting, the vagueness, the ignorance, the unnamed other, the nonsense, the taking credit where none is due, the false modesty, the sleazy schmoozing, the out-of-touchness, the emptiness, and especially the blah blah blah blah blah. The man speaks words but the words contain nothing. The words contain nothing because the man contains nothing.
No one should be concerned with nothing. No one should be fact checking nonsense or getting outraged over absurdity. No one should be fearful when they hear “Blah blah blah blah blah.” We spent four years overreacting to Trump’s verbal diarrhea, stressed out that the Sky Was Falling whenever he started yapping. His words might have set a tone of cruelty, but other than that they meant nothing, except during the pandemic, when the words were a smokescreen for doing nothing to help people who were suffering and everything to deflect blame from Trump. The inaction – not the bullshit – killed a lot people.
Rather than react to President Stupid’s babbling, we must focus on what we need: Truly affordable housing and food, clean air and water, environmental sanity, reliable and renewable energy, stopping and mitigating violence in our country and others, rebuilding our education system with civics emphasized as vital, and even getting a new crosswalk and stop sign on the dangerous intersection in your neighborhood. These are the things that really matter, not all the hot air leaking from the head of the satellite table, but real things that impact our daily lives. Understand and live this, and the next four years will be much more tolerable and maybe a bit of a success for you and me.