Topics: Civics, Existentialism, Politics
"Lot of shoes to drop from this centipede." - Senator John McCain (R-Arizona), Politico
We have to consider what used to be the unthinkable. Slowly, as each shoe drops we get closer to the end of living with the openly treasonous "uncle in the attic": a narcissistic, emotionally immature and challenged man whose idea of paradise on earth would be a hellscape for everyone else, at least saner citizenry.
The Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 American suspense thriller film about the Cold War and sleeper agents. It was directed and produced by John Frankenheimer. The screenplay was written by George Axelrod, and was based on the 1959 Richard Condon novel The Manchurian Candidate. The film's leading actors are Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and Janet Leigh, with Angela Lansbury, Henry Silva, and James Gregory among the performers cast in the supporting roles.
The plot centers on the Korean War veteran Raymond Shaw, the progeny of a prominent political family. Shaw was a prisoner of war during the conflict in Korea and while being held was brainwashed by his captors. After his discharge back into civilian life, he becomes an unwitting assassin involved in an international communist conspiracy. Officials from China and the Soviet Union employ Shaw as a sleeper agent in an attempt to subvert and take over the United States government. Wikipedia 1962 film page
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Major Bennett Marco, Sergeant Raymond Shaw, and the rest of their infantry platoon are captured during the Korean War in 1952. They are taken to Manchuria, and brainwashed into believing Shaw saved their lives in combat – for which Shaw is subsequently awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Years after the war, Marco, now back in the United States working as an intelligence officer, begins suffering a recurring nightmare in which Shaw murders two of his comrades from their platoon, all while observed by Chinese and Soviet intelligence officials. When Marco learns that another soldier from the platoon has been suffering the same nightmare, he sets out to solve the mystery.
It is revealed that the Communists have been using Shaw as a sleeper agent who, activated by a posthypnotic trigger, immediately forgets the assignments he carries out and therefore can never betray himself either purposely or inadvertently. In Shaw's case the suggestion that he play solitaire is the trigger. Seeing the "Queen of Diamonds" playing card transforms him into an assassin who will kill anyone at whom he is directed. Shaw’s KGB handler is his domineering mother, Eleanor. Married to McCarthy-esque Senator Johnny Iselin, Eleanor has convinced the Communist powers to help her install her husband as president and allow them to control the American government through him.
By observing Shaw, Marco discovers the trigger shortly before the national convention of Iselin's political party. He uses the Queen of Diamonds card to draw out Eleanor's plan: after she obtains the vice presidential nomination for Iselin, Shaw is to shoot the presidential candidate so that Iselin can succeed him. Blaming the killing on the Communists will enable Iselin to assume dictatorial powers. Marco reprograms Shaw, although it is unclear until the final pages whether this is successful. At the convention, Shaw instead shoots and kills his mother and Senator Iselin. Marco is the first person to reach Shaw's sniper nest, getting there just before Shaw turns the gun on himself. Wikipedia novel page
There is nothing salacious that can embarrass this orange Satan. The visual everyone has of his tweeting at hours septuagenarians are relieving themselves via bowel movements doesn't stop him. The serial lies do not bother him. His cult following would still be with him if he shot someone on 5th Avenue in NYC. This is where we are. No, his biggest fear is the prospect he could be bankrupted AT WILL by Vladimir Putin and Russian oligarchs/Mafioso according to his namesake son.
The Derangement Syndrome is a plagiarism without credit of the previous one for the first and only African American president in the history of this racist republic. The Derangement Syndrome is attacking the allies we've been with since the end of the second world war and the beginning of the Cold War with Putin's nation. The Derangement Syndrome is disagreeing with the intelligence assessment of your own agencies, and agreeing with the Judo master that would knife you as soon as involuntary blinking. The Derangement Syndrome is owned by a president* that tweets the path to our adversaries coming to the seat of our power...to gloat? To inspect his new property? His Director of National Intelligence learned as we did with Andrea Mitchell. A meeting with a dictator post the assault on British soil with chemical weapons. A meeting with a dictator that ordered the attack on our electoral process that was with him 2 and 1/2 hours with only an interpreter; not a stenographer that could give us a readout of what was said; what was agreed on. A meeting with a dictator that pointedly proposed the ambassador originating the Magnitsky Act be sent to Moscow for interrogation, an interrogation he would likely not survive. There is still an insistence in this country on voter ID, which is laser-focused in North Carolina and elsewhere to diminish the votes of people of color, but beyond going to paper ballets does NOTHING about dark money from offshore accounts nor hacking of our electoral and civil commons infrastructure: aviation, power, sewer, water; food.
We cannot call ourselves a sovereign nation under these conditions.
We - along with our Putin Pinocchio puppet - are sitting duck marionettes.
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