273) Criminals gonna criminal: So why do we keep giving them power over us?

Trigger Warning — domestic assault, death threats, rape, child sexual abuse, etc….

“You need a fucking bat in the side of the head.”

“You’re gonna answer one day, boy, you’re gonna answer.”

“I’ll put you in a fucking rose garden, you cunt! You understand that? Because I’m capable of it. You understand that?”

This is the man who beat up his girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, punching her in the face and breaking her teeth. And then going to get his gun while she fled the house.  All while she was holding their baby in her arms.

This is the same man who was disgraced multiple times over three decades, for multiple drinking and driving episodes, for racist statements, for accusations of homophobia, for threats to burn down his girlfriend’s house while she was inside it, and for anti-Jewish statements to a police officer while being pulled over for, again, drunk driving.

This is the same man who is friends with Donald Trump. Indeed, Trump named him as one of his “Special Ambassadors to Hollywood” and believes he, and a couple other old, white men who played “tough guys” in movies, are going to revitalize Hollywood.

This is the same man to whom Donald Trump just gave back the ability to own a gun. Cuz domestic assaulters who break their girlfriend’s teeth and threaten to kill them, with a decades-long history of alcohol abuse and racist statements, should DEFINITELY own guns. Right?

* * * * *

While apparently “fighting anti-Semitism”, “drug trafficking” and “the crime wave caused by illegal aliens”, Donald Trump sure does like criminals, and people who beat up and abuse women.  He’s gotten the Tate brothers back to the USA from Romania, despite their charges for sexual assault, trafficking, confinement, etc. 

He’s gotten lots of convicted criminals out of jail, including MANY of his former collaborators who were arrested and convicted the first time around. Then there’s the “J6ers”, Trump’s treasonous, police assaulting mob, who Trump pardoned, several of these upstanding citizens had criminal convictions or pending charges for lots of crimes, including rape, sexual abuse of a minor, domestic violence, manslaughter, production of child sexual abuse material and drug trafficking. But I’m sure they were “good people” right? Just like the Trump claimed about the fascists who marched with their tiki torches in Charlottetown…. Just the kind we want back on the streets after they violently assaulted police officers and tried to overthrow the government.

Trump himself is no stranger to charges of abusing women. For one, he ADMITTED PROUDLY to entering Miss Teen USA dressing rooms, while the teenage contestants were undressing, famously telling them all simply not to worry that he was standing there while they were naked, because he had “seen it all before”. Besides, as Trump claimed, because he was rich, people let him do anything he wanted, including grabbing women by the pussy.

Along with his more than two dozen sexual assault allegations, and rape conviction (technically, “indictment” as it was in civil court), Trump is also on at least two of the “flight logs” of Jeffrey Epstein, his former close friend for many years. (No wonder they don’t fully release the Epstein files.  AND NO WONDER Trump supporters spent so much time accusing the Democrats under Hilary Clinton of running pedophile rings.)

Heck, Trump’s former “spiritual advisor”, Robert Morris, a now-disgraced megachurch pastor and staunch Republican, is facing a prison sentence of up to 100 years, for being a pedophile.

But instead of any of this mattering, Trump makes up bullshit stories, like Haitian immigrants are “eating the cats”, and blames law-abiding immigrants for a non-existent crime wave. Under his orders, innocent people with no criminal records get deported to a foreign mega-jail known for its horrible abuse of inmates, and his ICE agents are now kidnapping innocent students off the street in broad daylight.

And now, he’s given Mel Gibson back his gun rights.

The one person, Elizabeth Oyer, a former pardon attorney for the US Department of Justice, who refused to bow to the demand to give Mel Gibson back his gun rights? Well, of course, she was abruptly fired and replaced with someone who would do Trump’s bidding.

And now Mel Gibson hangs out in public with Kash Patel, the QAnon cultist who is Director of the FBI.

* * * * *

As a society, we really need to talk about the safeguards around who is eligible to be elected to lead a country. And not just talk. We need to PASS LAWS that prevent criminals from gaining power over democratic governments. Cuz we sure as hell are seeing how THAT turns out.

It seems self-evident that a convicted felon, not to mention rapist, someone who steals from their own children’s cancer charity, etc.etc.*10000, should never be allowed to lead a country.

It seems self-evident that political leaders should not be able to simply override criminal convictions just cuz they want to, ESPECIALLY for people convicted for crimes that involve the leader themselves, such as a ton of Trump’s accomplices and former “colleagues” who should have gone to jail, but most simply received “Presidential pardons”. Because it’s not a crime if you commit crimes for a powerful enough man, it would seem.

This is so absurdly obvious we shouldn’t even have to talk about it. This shit should NEVER happen. And yet, the current state of democracy, in America at least, allows these things to happen. Being a criminal is no big deal at all, no matter what the crimes, from raping people to committing treason for god’s sake, as long as you have friends in the right places. Like the White House.

In Canada, things are not quite as crazy. Nevertheless, we are allowing a man who refuses to undergo security clearance by intelligence services, to run for leader of the country. Despite the fact that there are KNOWN security threats in his own political party (which he can’t be told about…), AND there is evidence his own leadership campaign was influenced by foreign entities (which he can’t be told about…). But “nothing to see here”; let’s let him lead the country!

And if he doesn’t know anything about security threats, then what? They just cease to exist? This is so mind-bogglingly idiotic, Canadians can’t even laugh at Americans anymore for electing a felon; we are sabotaging our own democracy, and from this “glass house” we should definitely not throw stones.

We, the public, “The People”, are letting these things happen.  And the consequences are utterly predictable. 

Each one of us, individually, has a brain, and can reason. But collectively, in these cases at least, we have been completely fucking stupid.

We need to change this.  Fast.  Before someone else has their teeth broken by a man who gets a slap on the wrist and then goes on to make more movies, or gets raped by a so-called “powerful” man who faces no real consequences for ruining their lives, or gets deported under false pretences and ends up in a foreign country’s torture-jail.

We need to stop the criminals and those hiding their activities, from gaining power before even more elections are tampered with by foreign powers, and before more rampant corruption siphons TRILLIONS of dollars from the working class and poor, and gives it to billionaires.

This is not complicated.  But we are utterly, 100% failing at making things right.

And why? Seriously, why are we so incapable of standing up to a buffoon-business failure-rapist-serial liar like Trump? Why are we so incapable of telling a lifelong politician who has never had any other career but pretends to be a working-class hero by doing photo-ops where he wears a hard hat, that he’s ineligible unless he gets SECURITY CLEARANCE? Why does obvious, in-your-face insider trading happen, and everyone knows it, transferring $304 BILLION to billionaires in a single day, and they just get away with it?

To me, this is the same question, ultimately, as why, in our own families, we let abusive assholes continue to play a role in the family, rather than standing up to them and collectively saying “NO. Get help, or fuck off”?

These are questions literally every person in our society needs to ask themselves. And then…start standing up, saying no, and refusing to allow people who don’t deserve it, to have power over us.