In 1997, there was a wonderful neo-noir crime drama called LA Confidential. It tells the story of three cops in the early 50s. Colin McCormick and Padraig Cotter set the stage well in their piece on ScreenRant.com, “Directed by the late Curtis Hanson, L.A. Confidential is an adaptation of James Ellroy’s novel of the same name following three separate detectives in 1950s Los Angeles who operate in very different ways. There is the Hollywood player detective Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), brutal and violent detective Bud White (Russell Crowe), and straight-laced and ambitious detective Ed Exley (Guy Pearce). It is through Exley that the Rollo Tomassi twist comes into play.
While it is initially a seemingly inconsequential story that highlights part of Exley’s backstory, the Rollo Tomassi twist is an example of the brilliant writing on display in the classic noir movie. As the three detectives find themselves all circling the same case and diving deeper into a dangerous conspiracy, it is the Rollo Tomassi story that comes back to reveal a big secret at the center of it all and sets up the climax.”
This twist has always stuck with me. I won’t ruin the movie for you except to tell you what Ed Exley says about Rollo Tomassi toward the climactic scene, “You’re the guy who gets away with it.” His meaning was that some crime of past or present the person that gets away with the crime was Rollo Tomassi. In the beginning Exley refers to Tomassi as the imaginary name that he gave to the person that killed his father, a detective. It was the reason he became a cop was to avenge his father by making sure that no one got away with it.
I have been unsure of what exactly is going on in this country as we have been trying to connect the dots for the last two weeks. We have George Soros and Elon Musk and Donald Trump all seemingly in bed together. We have watched in 2022 as a recession was not called a recession. Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth was called a recession, but because there wasn’t a labor problem the definition changed. The NBER gets to call recessions. Oh kay! Says who? They call most of them after they are over. We have watched as our country came to the edge of nuclear war and not 1 in 100 people even noticed. We have watched as government statistics get revised down for over a year and no one even bats an eye. We have watched Donald Trump become a Republican, Elon Musk become a Republican, who is next Hillary Clinton?
Donald Trump interfered with the peaceful transition of power from one party to another and yet came back to win another presidential election because Americans are too busy shopping online, watching TikTok, or betting on a ball game to even notice. Trump understands that bad publicity is still good publicity. Be an ass, and that is better than not being remembered, grab some lady by the kitty kat and that isn’t a deal breaker just a sign that the other party is trying to take you down, do you want proof that shameful is successful in America today? Try this, Trump told John McCain a Vietnam war POW that he was a war hero because he got captured and Trump liked people who didn’t get captured. Trump’s ratings increased. Of course, Trump received 5 deferments as the silver spoon son of a rich daddy and never saw a minute of combat in Vietnam. But he did tell Howard Stern this in 1997, as told in an op-ed by Lincoln Anthony Blades “As a draft dodger, Trump never knew the horrors of war, but in 1997, he laughed when telling radio host Howard Stern that avoiding sexually transmitted diseases was like his “personal Vietnam.” “It is a dangerous world out there. It’s scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam era,” Trump said to Stern, discussing his sex life. “I feel like a great and very brave soldier… He is certainly not the first American leader to receive draft deferments. Former vice president Joe Biden received five student deferments, former VP Dick Cheney received five deferments, and former president Bill Clinton received deferments and even penned a letter to an ROTC officer thanking him for “saving me from the draft.”
My point isn’t that Trump needs to serve in the military to be president or anyone else does either. My point is that Trump is serving up entertainment. He is good copy. People talk about him all the time. He gets mentions, I am mentioning him now and I recognize what he is doing. Popular is winning. Popular isn’t beneficial, that’s my point. Trump is like social media. It is just silly and shouldn’t really be taken seriously. You want to be outraged go on line. Go yell at someone in person and you might end up getting your ass kicked. That’s what Elon almost ended up receiving from Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook. Those jiu jitsu guys like Mark would have Doughy Elon stretched out and he would be flopping around like a carp. Musk backed out of that more successfully than he did his Twitter purchase. Elon just spent $275 million dollars on Trump and he has made well over $100 billion in stock appreciation in 3 weeks since. Trump is Rollo Tomassi. Elon is Rollo Tomassi. Hillary Clinton is Rollo Tomassi. What? You don’t like grouping those three together? You forget Hillary was a cattle futures trader in the 1970s and had a 99% success rate and she got away with it. She left soldiers to rot in Benghazi, and she got away with it. Her husband had more frequent flier miles on Epstein’s Lolita Express than anyone other than maybe Bill Gates and she and he and he got away with it. They are Rollo Tomassi.
I could go on and on about Clinton lying under oath, Monica Lewinsky lying under him, Ted Kennedy and the Chappaquiddick, Enron, the bankers that gave themselves bonuses after the US taxpayer had to bail them out, and let’s not forget that we have still not gotten the Epstein list. If the rich people want to be rich and immoral that is their prerogative. What chaps my ass is that they are destroying our great republic right in front of our faces and that only chaps my ass. What really pisses on my parade is that no one seems to notice or care.
The ancient Romans needed circuses and gladiators to distract their citizens while they lived lives of luxury at the expense and demise of the nation. Americans have way more options: celebrity wealth obsessions, celebrity dating obsessions, wokeism, fantasy sports, Sportscenter, and my favorite, youth sports. History will not remember kindly that Americans lost their republic because they couldn’t be bothered to notice that their nation bestowed unto them by great men and the bloodshed of patriots was stolen under their nose because Karen’s kid had a 7-year-old soccer game and going to the game was more important than reading a newspaper. These are games and Rome burns. It used to take lions and tigers and bears Oh My! That and humans dying in a Colosseum. Today it takes an ice bath challenge and a dance video. We even suck at distraction. What would happen if something truly drastic did happen? A war that hit us here at home, a nuclear strike, a great depression? What would Americans feel about these leaders that they have passively followed because they have kept them entertained. What would Americans do? Probably just like their content, follow for more updates, and continue down their miserable path into irrelevance. Hopefully all the soccer kids get participation trophies, that’s what is important.
I always say follow the money and I see our money has been dropping in value since 1971 and we went off the gold standard. Hell, it has even been longer than that. FDR took us off the gold standard in ‘33. Don’t think I forgot about that or my favorite method of relating to the Great Depression, shoes. There is a famous picture of 4 poor kids sitting in the dirt, all barefoot during the Depression. Now we buy hundreds or thousands dollar shoes with printed money. It is a great way to remember how cheap money has gotten. $1 in 1971 would be worth $7.79 cents today. Our current debt to GDP is as high as it was after World War II when we defeated the whole world into submission.
Today we just got done battling Covid by closing non-essential small businesses but keeping open essential large businesses and sending those small businesses into submission. Trump and Biden have spent more IOU money than damn near all the other presidents combined $16T to $20T. That printed debt goes out into the world and American military makes sure the world uses it, and will brow beat them until they do or hang them like we did Sadaam Hussein when he tried to not use our worthless paper. Now Bit coiners think that America will just let them create an out from using the worthless paper and America will go down without a fight? How charmingly naïve! That a forementioned debt is $36 trillion and growing and it takes a kid blowing the brains out of a Health Care CEO to get Americans to have a nuanced conversation about an important topic for 5 minutes. Those 5 minutes are almost over by the way. The healthcare industry has been taking money from customers and enriching themselves for decades. A young man dealing with chronic pain had to show them they were touchable. They thought they were Rollo Tomassi. America thinks they are Rollo Tomassi. They were wrong. Learn your history, everyone is touchable.
Sincerely Yours,
C Thomas Printer
Also born on this date… German car designer, Ferdinand Porsche
Thank you for listening today and you can find all of our articles and more on our website cthomasprinter.com.