Medicaring: Covering the Gap

AT THE STROKE of midnight, as March 31 magically transforms into April 1, my health insurance expires, and, a mere moment later, Medicare kicks in. I will have arrived. Thus is called into question teh very nature of time, which at best can be described as the human mind's way of organizing its perception of the motion of matter into past, present, and future. Conventional wisdom has it that there is no past or future, but only a "great eternal present". The opposite may be true. Where the sea meets the sand on the shore, there is only sea and the shore, nothing in between. It is the present which may be illusory, and the past and future may be all that is real. Time is either a continuous flow, like a river, or an infinite series of incremental moments, like light. But, I digress. Back to Medicare. In theory, the very moment my current health insurance expires, Medicare kicks in.Masterful timing, if I do say so myself. However, a troubling thought, perhaps inconsequential. Perhaps there are indeed gaps in the incremental passage of time, and perhaps my current health insurance expires tonight just as one moment ends, and just before the moment before Medicare kicks in, in that microscopic moment between moments, I suffer a sudden serious illness, a heart attack, or a stroke..but survive. The illness, in theory, will have occurred at the exact moment, or lack of moment, when I was fleetingly uncovered by insurance. Both my former provider, and my new provider, the United States government, will be free of any responsible for what may amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical expenses. never put it past an insurance provider to find an opening by which to escape exposure to liability and responsibility,including the U.S. government, particularly at a time when it is plunging ever deeper into national debt, seeking to preserve the solvency of its constituency.My only hope is that I neither have any sudden, uncovered illness at precisely the wrong time, that i don't have any illness at all, that I have it while covered, which is almost all the time, or that it kills me.

Trumping Around

DR. DONALD j. TRUMP, who always seems to know what's best for the American people and invariably acts in what he considers their best interest, now says that, for the health and safety of the country, we should continue to shelter in place and social distancing through, oh, say, April 30. Not long ago he had indicated that we must all do the opposite, must get up, out, and around, reopen business as usual, and restart the collapsing economy, by Easter. It is always to prevent an idiot from behaving idiotically the second time; the first time serves as a warning. Trump, obviously temperamentally incapable of acknowledging the simple, obvious fact that it is the Covid 19 virus, and not he which will determine our future economic behavior, has complied an impressive resume' of idiocy during his interminable three plus years as president. At first he accused the Democrats of perpetrating a viral hoax, then suggested that nobody need do anything about it, because the problem would simply vanish with the advent of warm weather. Then in apparent racist frustration, he starting calling it "the Chinese virus", until somebody with some sense put a stop to the slander. Then, he had a brilliant idea, suggesting that the best way to stop the newly mutated virus was for everybody to get a flu shot. As the situation became more dire, Trump's insanity grew ever more evident, in accordance with his usual pattern of behavior. Yesterday he accused hospitals of hoarding ventilators, and accused doctors and nurses of hoarding face masks. Incredible, but true. We can apparently expect a black market on essential virus fighting medical equipment to emerge, with hospitals housing the stockpiles, and medical professionals hitting the streets, doing deals.We lay in a stockpile of popcorn and toilet paper, and await further amusement from our chief executive., the one who discovered windmill cancer, and whose historical research revealed that George Washington's army seized control of all airports during the Revolutionary War, and that Italy and the United States have had warm relations since the days when the Caesars ruled Rome. The promising thing is that the Angel Soft company plans to keep the rolls rolling off the assembly line, and to restock the shelves soon, so that we can all, once again, be privy to toilet paper. No shit.

Explaining the Inexplicable

DONALD TRUMP'S entire adult life, and probably his life before adulthood, has been a litany of nefarious behavior, greed, sexual misconduct, shady business dealings, including cheating laborers, the racism housing discrimination rap from the feds in 1974, bankruptcies at tax payer expense; the list is, for the most part well, known. The facts are easily accessible to anyone, and several decent biographies had been published, all documenting these facts.Nobody who knows and likes Trump has ever written a biography of him; it ies simply not possible to write a book about Donald J. Trump which is hagiographic, it is not possible, without grossly distorting the facts, to present Trump's ;like in a positive way, in anything other than what is, accurately, an indictment. his behavior during his presidency, the constant lying, the insults, the chaotic and contradictory policies, most recently exemplified by his inane and senseless comments about the epidemic, are but the latest installment of a continuing narrative. It is far more remarkable, and unbelievable, that Trump was elected in the United States than Hitler's election in Germany, and it is a sad commentary not only on the discernment of a good portion of the American electorate, it speaks poorly about the American state of mind, generally. Hitler's motto was "make Germany great again". the similarities do not end there. An angry, sizable plurality of disenchanted, backward looking voters manages to drum up enough support to elect a demagogue in a divided electorate. In Germany, the right wing was angry, perceiving that the communists, the socialists, and the Jews had allegedly seized too much political power, and Hitler seemed like the perfect leader to turn back the clock to a time when Germany wa for Germans only, a pure Aryan race. In the United States, gay rights had come too far, minorities, like Hispanics were flooding the country, taking jobs, The Black population had gained not only equality, went the right wing myth, but had actually gained a preferred status, and the poor mainstream middle class white America Christian, in the wake of rising secularism and religious tolerance, was destroying white conservative christian heterosexual America. The people who voted for Trump would have voted for Hitler, for the same reasons; resistance to progress and change. But the people who voted for and still support Trump, like those who voted for and still supported Hitler through all his insane behavior, are, though equally guilty,in a sense, the Trump supporters are more culpable. After all, they had the opportunity to study Hitler, and learn the lesson of history.

Remembering

IN THE SPRING of 1918, at Camp Funston, Kansas, several soldiers became ill. As spring progressed, and soldiers all over America moved and deployed during the final year of World War One, they spread the sickness, now recognized as the flu, to military bases all across the United States, and then to Europe, as two million Americans arrived on the continent to join the war. By 1919 nearly seven hundred thousand Americans were dead of the flu, due mainly to a lack of vaccinations in an ear when bacteria and viruses were only beginning to be accepted as reality. Millions of Europeans and anywhere from fifty to on hundred million people died in the great flu epidemic of 1918-1919. The governments of nations involved in the war, including the United States, deliberately withheld information about the pandemic from their civilian populations, wanting them focus on winning the war, undistracted. U.S. president Woodrow Wilson often gave speeches exhorting his people to hold firm and press on to victory, but he never, not once, mentioned the great epidemic which was killing many times more people than the war. The only country which provided its population with information about the virus was non combatant Spain. Thus the pandemic became known as the "Spanish flu", only for this reason. It should have been called the "American flu". The horrible disease kept reinfecting America and Europe in waves, three altogether, as the war sent hundreds of thousands of people back and forth across the Atlantic. By the time the second wave struck in the fall of 1918, people had abandoned social distancing, and had stopped listening to medical experts, whom they believed had failed them. In fact, social distancing during the first wave greatly mitigated the severity of teh epidemic, but nobody believed it. Once the flu finally abate, it was swept under the rug, as if the world wanted to forget all about it. Society, it seemed, much preferred the memory of the glorious victory in the war to the nightmarish memory of the flu. As H.L. Mencken said: people expunge the memories of nightmares, past and present. Otherwise intelligent people, disregarding medical experts. Religious fanatics screaming about God's vengeance upon a sinful culture. Governments, failing to inform and protect their people for political reasons. All hauntingly familiar. As George Santayana said: those who do not remember the lessons of history repeat their mistakes.

Evangelizing the Virus

EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS are people who believe that the virus is God's retribution for homosexuality, environmentalism, liberalism, and the Democratic Party. I intend to never forget any of the conversations I have ever had with any of them, so interesting and memorable they are. so, the lady says to me, something like: are you a christian? I forget what precipitated the query, perhaps nothing. I responded, as I always do, with my favorite quote from Einstein: "my religiosity consists in humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit which reveals itself, in what little we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. I cannot conceive of a personal God who would sit in judgment over creatures of his own creation. morality is of the highest importance, for mankind, but not for God. For me, that says it all, a perfection description of my religious beliefs. As they always do, she looked at me with a bemused, slightly condescending expression, and ignored what I said. then came more questions. Do you believe in God? Yes ma'am, I believe that I just said that, essentially, I did, in the form of an intelligent creator, an infinitely superior spirit of creation. Do you accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior? Well, ma'am, I do not believe there is anything from which I need to be saved. The very fact that I have lived a wonderful and happy life for sixty five years seems to me to prove that I do not. I believe my existence clearly proves that I am, "saved", whatever that term actually means. Then, are you happy? Happiness, at least in my universe, is not the same thing as religion. Happiness is a state of mind, religion is a belief system. One can be happy, or unhappy, by being either religious, or not religious, in my opinion. Her failure to show any sign that she has any idea what I'm talking about indicates to me that she finds my answers entirely inadequate, nonsensical, missing the point. And so it always goes.to me it is amazing the anyone would think that other people couldn't be happy unless their religions was identical to the evangelical. But, that's evangelical thinking. how difficult is it to simply accept that everyone has his or her own beliefs, and that what works for one person, does not work for others? Very difficult, in evangelical thinking. But blaming Covid 19 on gay people, environmentalists, liberals, or anyone else goes quite beyond the bounds of reason. At that point, our evangelical brothers and sisters have departed not only the realm of logic, but of decency as well.

Doing Business, Diversifying

PABLO ESCOBAR was quite the consummate business person, quite successful. his advantage lay in the power of monopoly, In dealing cocaine, there tends to be little competition at the cartel level. Pablo, like fellow syndicate boss John Gotti, might have been a bit over confident; he strutted around town all dandied up like a true celebrity, which in a sense, he was, seemingly oblivious to his risk. Eventually he suffered the fate of many syndicate bosses; he was rubbed out. His one redeeming quality was that he loved animals. On his lavish and extensive compound, the billionaire kept many exotic species, including a small herd of hippos. Upon his demise they went untended, broke down the gates, and took up a new life in the Colombian jungle, eating grass, defecating in rivers, and breeding. Today there is an estimated eighty to one hundred of the huge animals, roaming freely, unharmed, undeterred. Chalk up another example of an invasive species, taken from Africa and transplanted to South America, disrupting yet again the fragile ecosystem. Or maybe not. Some biologists are taking a new look at this whole issue of invasive species. Invasive species have been relocating, at human hands, as long as there have been humans. Everywhere humans have migrated out of Africa, most of the large animals have become extinct, hunted to extinction by paleolithic human tribes. Plants and animals have been moved around and relocated for millennia, since well before the great invasive species process began with Columbus, wherein thousands of flora and fauna species were traded back and forth between Europe and the Americas. So much so, inf act, that arguably, the process of human beings switching animal and plant around hither and yon can, and is beginning to be viewed as simply another part of natural evolutionary process, people being part of nature, and all. So what if there are potatoes in North America and tobacco in Europe? Thousands upon thousands of times this has recurred, and yet, here we all are. Pablo's hippos, according to some, are doing a great job of replacing large animals which became extinct in Colombia thousands of years ago. When a hippo takes a dump in a river, it enhances fish and plankton alike, becoming part of and contributing to the abundance of life. Just a humans are naturally migratory, and con only with great effort build and stay put in cities, so it may well be that all other forms of Earth life are destined to evolve, change, and change places. We already have enough to worry about; maybe we should stop worrying about where everyone is.

India, Stepping Up, Locking Down

INDIA is on lock down. One point three billion people, confined to quarters. Like china, when the Indian government speaks, it means business. Prime minister Modi, another of these right wing populists remindful of Trump, Putin, Boris Johnson, and Hitler, inexplicably popular, merely snapped his fingers and five million Indian teamsters pulled over and stopped in their tracks, and camped, until further notice. Impressive organization and discipline for such a large, amorphous country, one must say. Like china, the all out discipline strategy seems to be working. As of the first day of spring, only a few hundred people have contracted Covid 19, and fewer than twenty have died. Considering the population density of India, with its many huge teeming cities of millions of people, mostly immersed in poverty and consigned by caste to crowded ghettos, the concern is that the virus, any virus which takes hold in the subcontinent could wreak havoc and render death in cataclysmic proportions. And yet, not so. In fact, never so. Viral and bacterial epidemics rarely plague India in substantial measure, despite the widespread squalid sanitary conditions. A good friend of mine who traveled widely in India once told me that if ever a pandemic were to plague humanity, it would have done so by now, because it would have originated in India, and that since it hasn't, we are probably safe. Shows how much he knew. He had a point, but neglected to mention China, whose public sanitation is far superior to India's. The right wing racists, once again, are out of the woodwork in these United states, but in fact an epidemic can originate anywhere, at any time, even among right wing white Christian Americans.

Defying Common Sense

LIBERTY UNIVERSITY, in defiance of science, common sense, and decency, is open for business. Classes are being held as usual, not online, but in classrooms, the old fashioned contagious way. Face to face, the students within inches of each other. This, presumably, at God;s discretion, as channeled through Jerry Falwell Jr., who, enviably, seems to have a hot line to the almighty. Either God does not understand microbiology,wants the pandemic to worsen, or is suspending certain inconvenient laws of nature for the greater good of the inculcation of the Christian faith. Presumably, the latter. There are no assurances; we are dealing with a biblical deity who once dismissively exterminated fifty thousand and seventy Philistines in retribution for the god given curiosity of a single individual who curiosity compelled to her to disobey the lord's instruction that nobody should gaze into the ark containing the most important, relevant document on Earth; the covenant of the law. Mass genocidal extermination is beyond neither god's powers nor proclivities. Perhaps he wants the virus to succeed. Also, in Falwell Jr., we are dealing with a minister of the faith who tells us that Donald J. Trump is ordained by God to be president of these United States. Since God's president implores us to get the American economy up and running again by Easter, and since no economy can function properly in the midst of an epidemic, Trump, like Junior, is apparently privy to God's apparent suspension of certain laws of science; namely,, viral contagion. We the people who remain sane must hope that either God's protection from Covid 19 is all American, or that someone can talk some sense into Falwell Jr. and Trump, and, with or without God's help, convince them that this pandemic is quite real, that now is not the time to proceed with business as usual, and that the laws of science and nature apply to everyone at all times.

Saving Capitalism, Socialistically

THREE TIMES DURING the month of march the U.S. government has taken action to prop up and perhaps save the American economy, the most recent and notorious example being the two point two trillion dollar bail out of business and workers, even now surging towards your bank account with electronically deposited funds. This, conservative nut cases should be reminded, is socialism, pure and simple, once again riding to the rescue, saving all, rich and small, corporate and poor, as it has so many times before, as it does daily. its enough to awaken the memory of the New Deal,when democratic socialism first manifested in America in a big way, Roosevelting to the rescue in the wake of capitalism's catastrophic collapse. Socialism is defined as government involvement in the economy. In the U.S., government involvement in the economy began in earnest about ninety years ago, and has been increasing ever since. It is now accurate to say that the United States has become, in large measure, a socialist country. When the president signs into law the program by which over two trillion dollars worth of business loans and direct payments to workers is transferred, socialism will have fully ascended, in this, the biggest single act of socialist action in American history. Contrary to conservative orthodoxy, socialism is almost always a good system, and compliments capitalism beautifully, effectively. When conservatives denounce socialism by pointing to brutal Latin American dictatorships, they are talking about a corrupt political system, not an economic system, evidently without realizing it. They invariably fail to mention European, especially Scandinavian countries, and the United States, where democratic socialism combines with capitalism to produce enormous prosperity. The only problem with the current bail out is that it will only work if private enterprise begins functioning again fairly soon. A capitalistic country like the United states cannot function without free enterprise, no matter how much the capitalistic system depends on support from socialism, as it most certainly does in the United States.

Overreacting

MAX BROOKS,the son of legendary maker of hilarious socially relevant movies Mel Brooks, recently appeared in a public service commercial, a hilarious one, in which he and his famed father were on opposite sides of a glass door, and Mel was telling max to hit the road to get the hell away, to not spread the virus. Max immediately complies, fearful of his foreboding potential power to spread a deadly virus unto his own father, and to wipe out a generation of legendary comedian geniuses, including Dick Van Dyke and Carl Reiner. Social distancing, baby. Max Brooks is a popular author. In his novel "World War Z", a synthetic virus is used as a weapon, is highly contagious, and turns people into zombies. Perhaps a metaphor for Trump and his followers. His soon to be released "Devolution" rumor has it, concerns an organized uprising by big foot (Sasquatch) against the human race. Superficially, the odds don't sound good. Fictional subject matter notwithstanding, Brooks lectures at West Point and other places on his area of expertise; disaster preparedness and response. Talking about the Trump administration's response to Corona virus, Brooks asserts that had the response been adequate, rather than chaotic, inconsistent, and clumsy, the entire situation would one day be remembered as the "great virus overreaction of 2020". The epidemic would have been stopped soon after its initial appearance on the west coast. We the people went into hibernation way too late, and universal testing was never implemented. Brooks reminds us that there was a time when all the necessary supplies and equipment to fight an epidemic was stockpiled in what were called "fall out shelters", which, those of a certain age will recall, were once ubiquitous, safety holes beneath the Earth for people to hide in in the event of a Russian nuclear attack. Facemasks, ventilators, rubber gloves, LL Mnnner of medical supplies, once upon a time, were coming out of our ears.But alas, the cold war ended, and the bottom line, the almighty dollar, reigned supreme in freedom's land. If only Coronavirus had staged its invasion in 1965.

Conforming To Fashion

DAVY CROCKETT, who preferred being called "David", said: "Fashion is a thing I care mighty little about, unless it happens to run just exactly according to my own notion". In fact, this is the first line in the preface of his autobiography, a best seller since 1835. Amen to that. We should all be so independent of popular approval. David, however, was something of a hypocrite. He wore a coonskin cap to please others, to uphold his popular image. I'm the same way, generally oblivious to fashion trends, but a bit of a hypocrite, like my hero Davy. Sensing the fashionable fad of self quarantining, sheltering in place, and social distancing, I'm all in. Its easy for me, because it runs exactly according to my own notion. I could do this the rest of my life, hand at home with the cats, read, write, watch spring spring, and do little else. No offense to humanity, but I prefer my folks at a bit of a distance. A loner culture by nature, we Americans tend to be like that; free spirits, doing our own thing. Most of my friends, most of th people I know or have ever talked to, describe themselves as loners, mavericks, apart from the herd. Now is the perfect chance for us all to prove it. This corona virus thing is like a dystopian poorly written science fiction novel, in real time. Safely, comfortably ensconced, I can no longer bear to watch people suffering on television, or read about them suffering in books. I see enough of that, I sense it, all around me, on this very real new world. Anxiety, ambient, and that is quite enough. "misery too has its virtues", said Goethe. "I have learned much in ill health that I never would have learned when well"..And, "one does not always lose when one has to do without". somehow, you sense that we are all about to find out.G

The Rich, Getting Richer

THE RESEARCH has been completed, the verdict is in. The big republican-Trump tax cut of 2017 for the corporate wealthy benefited, predictably, only the corporate wealthy. The money saved by big business by reducing its tax rate from 36% to 21% was used by corporate executives to purchase their own stock, and to pay big bonuses to corporate executives. This assessment is neither a Democratic Party, liberal media, nor Chinese hoax. It is documented, confirmed fact, according to the corporations themselves. Once again, supply side, trickle down Reaganomics has failed ninety nine percent of the people, as it does every time. The money saved by corporations in reduced taxes would, said the Republicans and trump, allow companies to invest more in worker's salaries, product manufacture, and upgrades in machinery and equipment. Everyone would benefit, everyone would prosper. Left out of the equation was an explanation of exactly where the new demand for the new products would come from; not from the workers, their salaries did not increase. The only chance for trickle down economics to work is for money to trickle down to the workers. It isn't happening now, it never has. not when the money goes to stock buy backs and executive bonuses. Since the nineteen seventies worker's wages, it is well known, have been stagnant. Federal minimum wage is roughly have what it should be. Progress in raising the minimum wage has been made only at the state and local level. Our corporate masters, who own the cosmetic government in Washington D.C., care nothing about anyone other than their wealthy elite benefactors. Their errand boys are teh Republican Party, and our traitorous, criminal president. They legislate corporate socialism, government support for the corporate elite, and throw crumbs to everyone else. As our economic system collapses and crashes at teh mercy of a microscopic organism, they prepare to give hundreds of millions of dollars to the wealthiest corporate masters, just as they did in 2007-2008, just as they doubtless will again, just as they always do. And we, their pawns, sit idly by, and reelect them, because we are too ignorant to know better than to accept their hollow promises and lies. We deserve what we get. We deserve nothing better.

Praying

THE PENTECOSTAL COMMUNITY is most likely praying for an end to Covid-19, and the reelection of Donald Trump, or for the viral extermination of humanity, with the exception of the saved, themselves, who will be raptured into heaven. One can only guess. Either way, these devout fundamentalist Christians are traitors and cowards. Traitors, for supporting a traitorous, criminal, sexual predator president, rather than resisting him and holding him accountable. Cowards, for begging for help from a mythological being rather than joining the rest of us in fighting their own battles for survival in a natural world which does not always assist in our survival. How very arrogant, for anyone to pray to a deity to solve their problems, by assuming that we tiny creatures could ever influence the supreme creator of the universe. The infinitely superior spirit which created all existence gave humanity the tools with which to survive; as Goethe said: God gave us the acorns, but he will not crack them for us. Modern humanity is the beneficiary of thousands of years of intellectual struggle and seeking to gain knowledge and understanding, which enables us to give ourselves a wonderful life, assuming we have the intelligence to take advantage of what our ancestors and our science has bestowed upon us. We have the means with which to help ourselves. Anyone primitive enough intellectually to believe that the various maladies which afflict life on Earth are some sort of retribution from an angry, unappeased anthropomorphic deity is dismissing the benefits of knowledge to which anyone in our modern world can easily access. The primitive forms of religion which still lie like a shadow upon human culture should by now have been replaced by more advanced forms of philosophy; a simply reverence for nature, for the universe, and the inscrutable intelligence which designed it would be sufficient. We need not concern ourselves with barbaric notions about divine retribution or damnation, or salvation or any such nonsense. We need only use our God given intelligence to amend our behavior, to use the tools at our disposal to solve our problems, and to create for ourselves and our descendants the kind of world worth living in, and giving thanks for. As Goethe said: we ought to pray for two things; a pure hearts and great thoughts.

Burning Out, But Keeping Hope Alive

CONTAGION SPREADS MULTIPLICATIVELY, two becomes four, then eight, sixteen, thirty two, sixty four, and soon the numbers become hugs. Finally, everyone is either fully recovered or dead, the fire is exhausted, the wildfire burned out, like the bubonic plague of the fourteenth and seventeenth centurie. That's why social distancing works; it breaks the chains of contagion. The Americans are more like the Italians than the chinese: unaccustomed and adverse to self imposed discipline, much more so to discipline imposed externally. The Chinese broke the chain, the italians did not. Indeed, there are advantages to living in an authoritarian country. Republicans, conservative by nature, embrace tradition and fear change. Predictably, they downplay the severity of the virus. Democrats, liberal and progressive, react to the existing world with anger, and seek change. They much more readily accept the reality of an epidemic which forces fundamental personal and societal change. Republicans, generally, being bound to tradition, resist accepting the reality and severity of threats like Covid 19 and climate change, because to acknowledge them requires the need to acknowledge the need for fundamental societal change, economically, politically. Democrats,always eager for tangible reasons to justify their anger with existing institutions and traditions, readily, even eagerly accept the threat of impending doom. How can we possibly ever see the world other than through our own eyes? I, and I suspect the rest of the world, am holding up surprisingly well in the absence of entertainment, especially sports. Being without march madness seems no worse than as if I were simply too busy to pay much attention to it. Now, we can all forever believe that our favorite college basketball team would have won it all. And who needs spring training? I have convinced myself that some fine day the first pitch eill be pitched, the season will finally begin, and my beloved Yankees will win the World Series, even if it takes them until Christmas to do it, and even if the Astros try to steal their signals.

Playing By the Rules

SELF QUARANTINED, SHELTERED IN PLACE, social distancing doing all the right things, the hand washing, snug as a bug, that's me. In other words, life as usual, no changes. My normal, everyday, distanced from humanity, lovely life, my cats and me, undisturbed. Looking out at the rest of the world, and hearing nothing about anything but the virus, it seems like some poorly written science fiction novel. like the Andromeda Strain on steroids, in real time, real world. The response from the Trump administration, belated, non serious, at first calling the whole thing a hoax, deplorable, everyone but Trump supporters agree. The Chinese are up and running again, with declining numbers, while in the United States our numbers continue to climb, with a shortage of equipment, discipline, and planning. It has been pointed out that we want to be careful about how willing we are to crash our economy to save a few million lives; a disastrous economic situation produces poverty, starvation, sickness, stress, suicide, which could undo billions, not millions. The American worship of personal freedom begins to sow its vulnerable side. I'll be damned if I will cut back on my personal life merely because some new flu bug is making a few people ill. I have the right to go out on the town! An authoritarian government, with the power to order a billion and a half people into their houses, and to expect complete compliance, has it advantages, it turns out. No new cases in the Chinese city where it all began, while in the United States, it may be that we've only just begun. So, we are finally getting the message, sequestered with our flat screens and small screens; those households which are reduced to merely books, especially good books, and to their own thoughts, have no chance of survival. So we wash our hands, avoid our friends, do all the right things. But at some point, we must start talking about something other than this damned virus. At some point, we must have the courage to resume our regular lives, to go out and about, virus, or no virus. Otherwise, we will not have enough of a life, we will not have enough of an economy, to stay hidden in our houses for the sake of preservation. We are beginning to do all the right things to protect ourselves, finally, after much resistance and denial, inspired by the president who claimed at first that the whole thing is a hoax. It is definitely not a hoax, because it is more potent than the normal flu, and we have as yet no treatment nor vaccine against it. all this we will have, the sooner the better. But not only must we keep our hopes and our faith alive, we must keep ourselves alive, intellectually, spiritually, as well as physically. And for this, we must ultimately be willing to go out again into the world, and to live our lives fully, joyfully.

Creating Perfection

THE STANDARD VERSION, the version with which we historically brainwash our children, is that America's founders, the people who designed the United States government and constitutional system, were men of unrivaled genius, of extraordinary capabilities who gave the world an intellectual achievement unequaled in human history, a document so perfect, so flawless, that it must and shall be enshrined down through the ages, like holy scripture. Why not? When we flatter our founders, we flatter our country, and we flatter ourselves. This, of course, is complete nonsense. The framers were indeed educated, intelligent people, but so were many others, including women, who did not participate. Abigail Adams and Martha Jefferson were the intellectual equal of any man who ratified the constitution. The framers were flawed. Among them were many petty rivalries. Jefferson and Hamilton hated each other. Jefferson was popular, Hamilton was not. John Adams was unpopular, so abrasive was he. If Washington liked anyone, he never showed it; hr refused to touch another human being, including, rumor had it, his wife.The Vice President Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel, then dined at the White House one week later with President Jefferson illustrates how deep the pettiness and animosities ran. As one said of another: "He is a man of extraordinary capabilities, but utterly corrupt; he shines and stinks like dead mackeral by moonlight". Hamilton, with a wife and seven kids, was a notorious womanizer. She lived decades after he died, and constantly reminded others that she could not wait to rejoin him. Jefferson, we recall, had his enslave girlfriend, whom he owned, by whom he had six children, whose descendants are among us today. The constitution they produced was so imperfect most of its authors, mainly Madison, thought it would never survive its authors. With five years after its installation, Madison believed it should be scrapped, and replaced with a better one. The constitution is, rather than a perfectly crafted document, a hodge podge of contradictory schemes and ideas, pieced together amidst much acrimony, and many compromises, mainly for the purpose of appeasing the southern slave holding states, which would never have joined the union had slaves been given the right to vote, or if they, on the other hand, had been ignored as human beings, treated as property. The compromise? Slaves counted as three fifths of human beings for the purpose of congressional apportionment, and as property in terms of civil rights and voting; human for purposes of population count, property for all other purposes, were slaves. Everyone realized what hypocritical nonsense this was; many framers from non slave states wondered whether they could include their horses for purposes of representation in Congress, and as mere property otherwise. Merely reading the constitution reveals its quirky inadequacies, and merely reading accurate history tells us about the serious flaws of the folks who created our American republic. No matter, their imperfections were no greater or less than our own.

Price Gouging: Hoarding Toilet Paper

SELF QUARANTINED, sheltered in place, too wet to play out, to dry to stay in, with little else to do, I betook myself to fanciful speculation. Namely, to ascertaining teh reason why people are hoarding toilet paper. Any ubiquitous catastrophic circumstance of sufficient severity to severely limit the long term future availability of basic consumer necessities would, one might think, doom civilization itself, and perhaps human existence. If we are destined to return to the stone age, why hoard toilet paper, when, ultimately, a return to more primitive sanitary sanitary measures will be required? My plan, should I ever run out, is to "shit and shower". Hoarding, which in its extreme form we regard as a mental illness, can be regarded as a normal human response to perceived scarcity. According to classic economic theory, free market capitalism functions effieiency, producing prosperity for all, when, and only when, people generally behave rationally, i their own self interests. Human behavior is seldom entirely rational; hoarding, in a stable economy, less so. Widespread commodity hoarding leads naturally extreme price inflation, price gouging, in accordance with the law of supply and demand. price gouging can be seen as a rational response to opportunity, since capitalism is nothing other than the exploitation of opportunity and resources for maximum personal profit. Free market capitalism never functions efficiently naturally without government intervention, because because people never behave entirely rationally, harmful practices such as hoarding, price gouging, monopoly formation, and exploitation of human labor can never be eliminated or even ameliorated without government intervention, regulation. Do not fault hoarders, exploiters, price gougers, monopolists, for their behavior, which, though undesirable, are usually perfectly rational responses to existing economic circumstances. Fault faulty economic theory, which argues that in theory a free market can exist, that individual or societal behavior can in theory be rational, must be for capitalism to work, and that they ever are rational. Classic free market theory holds that government actin to regulate the economy is undesirable, when in fact it is urgently necessary. I myself do not behave rationally, but at least I do not hoard toilet paper. Still, the question of precisely why anyone does is still kicking my butt, which, so far, is still clean.

Hating and Hoaxing America, the Donald Trump Way

THE SCOWLING MAN, fading, feeble eyes ablaze with hatred beneath the MAGA cap, refuses to stand for the pledge of allegiance because the pledge leader is a progressive democratic socialist, unashamed of it. The pledge leader, a Bernie Sanders supporter, wears a "Make America Greta Again" cap, which the MAGA man doubtless does not understand, but would be even more filled with hatred if he did. The hateful man is, of course, a Trump supporter. Hilariously, he believes that Donald J. Trump upholds the constitution better than any president in American history, and that Abraham Lincoln was the worst American president ever. The true American patriot is the progressive fan of the great Greta Thunberg, the most intelligent seventeen year old in history, hero of humanity, trying to save the human species from itself, from extinction. The scowling man is, like Donald Trump and all Donald Trump supporters, a liar, a coward, and a traitor, an enemy of the United States. Trump and his ill informed gang-like supporters have repeatedly demonstrated their penchant for dishonesty by accusing their opponents, who tell the truth, of perpetrating hoaxes. Trumpers fabricate ludicrously false accusations as a means of disguising and distracting from their own criminality and misbehavior. Obviously, they are only fooling themselves. Climate change, the Mueller report on Russian election interference, Trump's traitorous blackmailing of an American ally which resulted in his impeachment and should have resulted in his removal from office, the Corona virus, these are all hoaxes, according to the prevaricator Trump, and most of his supporters agree with him. Republicans are still largely unconcerned about the pandemic; it tends to interfere with their unbridled pursuit of personal wealth. The only true hoax, of course, is the Trump presidency itself, accomplished only with foreign assistance, and therefore illegitimate. The worse the pandemic becomes, Trump and his right wing idiot sycophants will begin blaming immigrants, Democrats, the media, all teh usual suspects. The man in the MAGA hat refusing to stand for the pledge of allegiance only because it is being recited by a liberal is a sad, sick joke, a stain on his country, like Donald Trump, like everyone who voted for Donald Trump, and, most especially, like everyone who continues to support this criminal, deplorable excuse of a human being and president.

Social Distancing

IN ITALY, THE DISTANCE is one meter, about a yard and four inches. In the United States, the required human separation is six feet, no less. This is appropriate, because the Italians are a far more friendly, far more touchy feely bunch than we anal retentive Americans, of mostly Anglo-Germanic stock.Whatever the case, humanity, all over the world, is being admonished to stay away from each other, to avoid strangers, and to keep human contact within the immediate gene pool. This will be much easier for some than for others. It is a time to celebrate the introvert, and to eschew the value of human closeness? Who needs genuine human closeness anyway? Who needs an affectionate hug or a friendly handshake? This is the onset of the era of the introvert, the dawning of a cold hearted age in which we are forced by nature to disavow true human closeness, of the sort which builds civilizations and sustains them.I for one am not unhappy about it, this new, isolated arrangement. Like I tell people, I love people, but only from a distance; the closer the contact, the more deeply inbred the contempt of familiarity.Actually, I often tell myself and others that I plain don't like people, that I much prefer dogs and cats and any other species to my own, but only when I am in a bad mood, on the depressive end of the bipolar spectrum. Without everyone else, I would be meaningless, worthless, unable to do anything, nonexistent, and I know this intimately. But in fact i do keep my distance, and I prefer knowing a great many people as mere acquaintances to knowing a few of them as close friends. One must have some of both, in fact.So, all over the world, various personality types are coping with, responding to the circumstances so cruelly forced upon us by our natural master, and each deals with it as best one can. Its a matter of survival. I am quite content, as always, to stay home with my cats, and hope for the best. I trust everyone else will do likewise. I will be happy, as I always have been, in my protected cocoon of a life. But I know this; this is a good time be be an introvert, and an ever better time to be a loner. The hordes and crowds will return soon enough, when we have survived nature's onslaught, and we will once again be free, to love or hate each other, close up, as we choose.

Scrambling To Save the Economy

THE FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD, seven strong, which, contrary to the wild imaginings of conspiracy theorists is owned and controlled by neither extraterrestrials nor a secret consortium of multi-trillionaire Europeans cloistered deep in the Swiss Alps, reduced the prime interest rate Sunday night, just in time for the market to continue its collapse Monday morning, undeterred by the life support. The prime rate was lowered to near zero to nearer zero, oxygen for a collapsing corporate capitalistic system. It will do no good. The cat, so to speak, is out of the bag. Interest rates have been historically low for over a decade, since the great recession. since the great recession of 2007-08, the economy has been on life support; since which time all illusions of a sound and prosperity economy have been a myth. Trump's tariff war against China and America's European allies caused a disruption in the supply lines; his refusal to take the pandemic seriously before it was far too little too late is the dagger, imprisoning Americans in their homes, driving down demand, hence spending, forcing the economy into bankruptcy. Trump's senseless trade war weakened both the American and the global economy; the virus is mopping up, finishing the job. When every American household has a year's supply of toilet paper and bottled water, the jig, as they way, will be up. Standard wisdom is that "its the economy, stupid", that the presidency is won or lost based on the vicissitudes of our eternally volatile economic system, the so called "business cycle". Accordingly, one would assume that Trump is in trouble; for entertainment now we can all sit back, break out the popcorn, and watch while Trump and his message spinning machine blame anything that moves, except himself. The usual suspects are, in no particular order, the liberal media, the Democratic party, the Chinese, and immigrants. Donald Trump took credit for Obama's good economy, to the extent that it has ever been "good"; let him take the blame for its current and future collapse. Politics isn't fair, never has been. At any given point in time, he U.s. economy is described as either "good" or "bad", based upon a few indicators, mainly the direction of the stock market. Unemployment figures are sometimes mentioned, less frequently discussed are factors such as household income of the working class,inflation level, purchasing power, and so forth. In truth there has never been a single discernible american economy; but rather two economies, that of the wealthy, and that of the poor. To the extent that the wealthy have always been wealthy, and the poor have always been poor, the economy has always been, and is always, including at present, both good, and bad. since the concentration of wealth in America is at its greatest level since the gilded age of the eighteen nineties and the roaring twenties, when it was notoriously good and bad, and since the poor, now as then, greatly outnumber the rich, it can be safely said that the American economy is currently about as bad as it have ever been, and has been this way since the late seventies, having been relatively good, with comparative economy equality and prosperity for all segments of society, between the end of World War Two and 1980. both the gilded age and the roaring twenties came to an abrupt end with severe depression. As they say, here we go again.

Making MAGA Men Mediocre

WHEN the ancient uneducated idiot called me an "educated idiot", he seemed to consider himself quite clever, intending his unintended compliment to be an insult. I laughed at the tired, hackneyed oxymoron from the MAGA mind of a moron. Did he think he invented the expression? Everyone who wears a MAGA baseball cap seems to consider itself a very stable genius, after the fashion of Trump, a moron, and they seem unaware that the term "very stable genius" is in itself something of an oxymoron. Stability tends to characterize mental mediocrity; genius, by its nature, is considerably more enlightened, energetic, at times volatile. Go ask Vincent Van Gogh. The minds which lie dormant beneath MAGA are consistently mundane, mediocre Make America great again? This creativity-free cliche belies an unawareness of America's existing greatness, and a lack of patriotism.A MAGA man's ideal of social protest is to refuse to stand when a progressive leads the recitation of the pledge of allegiance; again, a lack of patriotism. Demonstrating the idiocy of Trump supporters, many of whom are evangelical Christians, is too easy to be challenging. A high percentage f them do not believe in climate change or evolution, both of which are basic, long established science, and jaw dropingly obvious, and ambient. Instead, they believe in fantasy, in a cosmic creation by a petulant, sadistic, always angry and jealous anthropomorphic deity, whose imminent return they eagerly anticipate and await. Any day now he shall come swooping down from the sky in a fiery chariot, wielding a sword, angry as always. since he'l be travelling in a conveyance of ancient, primitive technology, the Lord had better go slow. To deny basic science in a world in which it surrounds us, as do Trump and many of h is supporters, is idiotic, and beyond. The idiocy extends to economics and politics. The United states is completely inundated with socialism, without which the country could not exist. Social Security, farm crop price supports, federal subsidies for various industries streets, highways pubic schools, are but a few of thousands of examples. And yet from the uninformed right wing we hear the tired refrain: "socialism has never worked anywhere its been tried." Right wing Trumpers are either ignorant, dishonest or, most likely, both. Six in ten evangelical Christians say that Donald Trump is a Christian, despite the president's lack of church attendance demonstrated unfamiliarity with the Bible, constant prevarication, and persistent lifelong pattern of abusing women and engaging in criminal behavior. Nearly seven in ten conservative Christians sty that Trump is basically honest, and amazingly, they say it with a straight face. This should not be surprising considering that the same people believe that God created the human species out of wet dirt in less than one day, that Donald Trump was elevated to the presidency by Jesus Christ rather than Russian operatives, and that on the day of the Lord's imminent return, it is they who shall be "raptured" into heaven as they say in their sex driven imagery, while the rest of us "unsaved" will be left behind on earth to clean up their mess.

Hoaxing

LEST WE FORGET, at the beginning of America's participation in the virus crisis, when the first few infected folks had been noticed on these shores, president Trump announced that the whole thing was a "Democratic hoax". Whether he meant by this that there existed no virus, or that the DMC was exaggerating the severity of it for political gain is unknown; Donald Jr. did, however, accuse Democrats of hoping that the virus kills millions of people, Trump supporters in particular. As they say; you can't make this stuff up. Now, of course, the president, having regained by external coercion some semblance of sanity, is proudly proclaiming his leadership in the eventual vanquishing of the tiny organism. He is even considering being tested for it himself, having been repeatedly exposed to infected people, but not, he insists, for that reason. For what reason is unknown; perhaps as a further demonstration of his personal virility and immunity? He continues to shake hands, but refuses to touch his face, and, as an afterthought, declared a national emergency, albeit one couched in his usual barrage of misinformation. Trump is familiar with hoaxes. You'll recall that he officially announced climate change to be first a Chinese, then a liberal hoax, and the same of Russian interference in the election of 2016, and the ongoing Russian interference in American politics generally. Robert Mueller proved and clearly spelled out the facts concerning the highly organized Russian political intrusion, which Putin and his Trump loving gang accomplished by spreading fake news on social media, and science has long since clearly demonstrated the reality of climate change, which we can all now see, especially during the summer month of October and the summer month of March. The rule of thumb is that whenever the president declares something to be a hoax, its existence is indisputably real, and the president's declaration is in and of itself: a hoax. To paraphrase a quote; the fool would be humorous were he not in such deadly earnest. The pattern is that the more real an emergency situation is, the more proof there is of its reality, the more likely Trump is to proclaim it a hoax. Trump's entire life has been something of a hoax; a litany of shady financial deals, reneged promises, failures to pay, failures to file accurate information with appropriate regulatory bodies, failures to operates solvent business enterprises, and much more. His election to the presidency, accomplished with foreign assistance, is the greatest hoax of all. Oh, if only that which Trump calls hoaxes really were hoaxes. But the coronal viral hoaxing does not end with Trump. Enter the paranormal crowd, and the unethical free enterprisers, with their magical cures for any and all viruses and assorted maladies, which usually contain the requisite dose of something called colloidal silver, sea weed, and some snake oil just to be sure. Not coincidentally, the hoaxing free enterprising crowd and the paranormal conspiracy theory crowd tend, overwhelmingly, to be Trump supporters. Why not? One good hoax deserves another, and, as they say, birds of a feather. Being reasonably intelligent, I fully understand the severity of the situation, and the need to take drastic action against it. But at this point I am willing to die, and willing to let the human species become extinct, at the "hands" of a virus. But I am not willing to endure another moment of media discussion about the looming disaster. I learned to wash my hands when I was quite young. Would that the sensationalists, the advice givers, and the hoaxers only fulfill Donald Junior's projection on the Democrats; that the Trumpers and fake capitalists and paranormal conspiracy theory loonies might all fly away, and find some final version of peace, with or without sanity, elsewhere.

Dropping the Ball, and the Virus

ACCORDING TO THE HARVARD school of public health, and to anyone who's been paying attention, the response to the virus by the Trump administration has been catastrophically, chaotically inadequate. Not enough people are involved in leadership; the president is exercising his usual penchant for under staffing a project, believing himself capable of personally handling any and all situations, as witnessed by the fact that many cabinet level departments, notably the department of state, are seriously understaffed. Assigning the vice president to head the response was a mistake; only the president has sufficient recognition, a sufficient platform, his bully pulpit, to be the spearhead of a circumstance of this magnitude. Then too, the president's message that "relax, when the weather warms up, the threat will "go away", hardly inspires confidence, particularly considering that this is the exact opposite of what the medical profession is telling us. Despite the widespread belief among Trump and his supporters to the contrary, the president is far from being an expert on everything, or, for that matter, anything. Canceling all public activities, from concerts to baseball and basketball games to church socials, schools, and bingo afternoons is all well and good, but far too late; according to pandemic experts, taking this action now is tantamount to locking the house after the criminal has already entered; it should have been done long ago, weeks ago, when the virus first made its appearance and began to spread in China. The problem was obviously destined to come to America, and all other destinations, because of the global nature of economics and travel.There is in the United States a tragic shortage of medical testing kits, hospital space, and general preparation, and a shortage of doctors whose specialty is fighting epidemics; the level of preparedness and response in the United States has been rated the worst in the world, by not only the Harvard school of public health, but by public health experts across the country and around the world. There are certain advantages to living in a country with an authoritarian government and highly centralized system of government. There are disadvantages to living in a country with a great deal of personal freedom, a multi layered governmental system balanced between local, state, and national governments, and a culture in which everyone is free to think and act as he or she pleases, and everyone is an expert on everything, with more knowledge about medicine than the so called experts. China has all the advantages, the Untied States none. As a result, the virus is already on the decline in China, and in the United States, clearly, the worst is yet to come.

Humbling Ourselves

A TINY, MICROSCOPIC ORGANISM, not even alive, is bringing the mighty American economy to its knees, bringing humanity to its knees, humbling us. Nature inevitably finds ways to remind us to be humble, respectful of its omniscience. We are a small species of animal life so arrogant with our meager powers of comprehension that we choose to believe that we look like God,so we invent a God who looks like us. We wantonly exploit and destroy our natural environment to satisfy our greed and vanity, we build huge monuments to ourselves, and nature takes note,brings us to our knees. There should be seven trillion trees on this planet. There used to be. Now there are half that, and dwindling, and unless we hastily replace at least one trillion of them, we may or may not live to regret it. Soon there will be more tons of plastic in the ocean than fish. At the current rate of human population growth, in a few hundred years, the universe will be filled to capacity with human flesh. Population growth compounds exponentially, the resources necessary to sustain the growth can increase only arithmetically, as Thomas Malthus taught us two hundred years ago. So far, through modern agricultural techniques, we have kept pace, but barely, by the skin of our teeth, and we will soon begin to loose ground. The amount of human made material wealth in the world has increased by ten fold since 1960. We all want to get rich, to live in big, beautiful houses with manicured, barren, green, high maintenance lawns, we want to fill our pretty houses with pretty things, sacraments of pride, greed and vanity, only because we want to show our wealth to others, mistaking it for success. We do not increase everyone's standard of living reasonably, we do not lift people out of poverty. Instead we increase it madly, insanely, exorbitantly, for the privileged few, at the expense of the many, and of teh natural environment. john Maynard Keynes, arguably the greatest economist of the twentieth century, simply asked: "How much is enough?" By thsi he meant, at what point does the gospel of wealth, the gospel of free market growth finally produce enough material wealth to satisfy our gluttony? He never provided a definite answer, nor received one, but the question remains, because he, and all other economists, realize that there must come a time when we have enough. Free market capitalism depends upon growth, growth in population and in material production, for its survival. it cannot survival forever, nor for that matter, much longer. Traditionally, economic models have been depicted in linear form; the line moving from left to right on the graph, with the expectation of its moving up. Kate Raworth, an oxford economist and something of a renegade, in a seminal new book "Donut Economics", argues that the traditional linear paradigm ignores the realities of economic inseparability from social circumstances, and environmental factors. A more accurate depiction, she asserts, is the shape of a donut, in which, whenever individual needs are in balance with societal and environmental needs, the economy stays between the two concentric circles, and neither descends into the hole, nor travels outside the two rings. this model is gaining increasing attention as the unsustainability of all current economic systems becomes glaringly obvious. the sooner we all take heed, the better our chances of long term economic, and natural survival.

Choosing Wrongly

WHEN THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN began, the Republican party had sixteen qualified, interesting candidates of all shapes and sizes, and one criminal, who also doubled as a self proclaimed sexual predator, pathological prevaricator, and all around smear merchant; the inimitable Donald J. Trump. Much to the discredit of the G.O.P. and the United States, it was Trump who prevailed, with demonstrably tragic consequences. There were far better choices available. John Kasich and Jeb Bush come to mind. Any choice alternative to Trump would have been preferable, as principled conservatives understand. Aside from all the lies, insults, presidential crime and bad policy we the American people have endured since 1/20/17, consider the following: In the midst of our global and national panic concerning a new and heretofore unstoppable (by any known treatment) highly contagious virus, President Trump assures us that he and his administration are doing everything possible to fight the impending epidemic, that all is well, that the situation is well under control, and that he is leading heroic action to avert disaster. Meanwhile, he blames Democrats for spreading another "hoax", and his son accuses the president's opponents of hoping that the virus kills millions, to nefariously increase the chances of Trump loosing his reelection bid. But not to worry; the president assures us that he hasn't touched his orange hued face in months. He might wish to reconsider that plan. However, the Trump campaign rallies, a weird fixture of this administration since inauguration day, in which the president remains in constant reelection campaign mode, will go on. Hordes of angry, hateful, screeching MAGA folk will regularly gather together, hold hands, blow noses, and breathe toxic fumes into each other's faces, even as nearly all other events involving the assembly of large crowds are postponed, often as great economic distress to working people. With regard to missed paychecks, the president's solution is to cut taxes. On precisely whom, he has not said. Rumor is that the cut will be on payroll taxes, a temporary expedient. Those'll go right back up in our post viral world, you can bank on it. No mention of reinstating the taxes Trump and his corporate republican colleagues eliminated on the corporate wealthy and redistributing unto the paycheck free working poor, or, heaven forbid, no mention of raising the federal minimum wage from its ludicrously paltry seven twenty five an hour to something reasonable, say fifteen per. Heaven forbid that actual meaningful action should be taken to permanently economically uplift the working virus plagued poor; after all, such meaningful action might burden the very wealthy, by increasing their labor costs, and reduce their take home pay by a few thousand per hour.

Advocating

ON MARCH 8, 1956, my paternal grandfather died. I don't remember him, having been only ten months old at his passing. I have always known that I missed a great deal, because from all accounts, he was a kind, gracious gentleman who constantly expressed sincere concern for the welfare of others, even to the point of offering to readjust the thermostat in his home for the comfort of visitors. Would you like something to eat? To drink? Please, take your coat off and relax, that sort of thing. ironically, he, like his son my father, was a tort lawyer, endlessly haggling in court over whether this insurance company or that was liable for damages. Not much fun. I am told he held me in his loving arms, and that's enough for me, because its all I have. Sixty four years later March 8 took on a significance of s different sort; International Women's Day, when the female gender, all across America's fruited plain and around the world, got up and out of the kitchen, out into the streets, and paraded, their message being: we demand the opportunity to develop our full potential as human beings, we are tired of being confined to gender base roles, we want, in short, equality, of the comprehensive, unqualified kind. Well, they have a point. They've have the same point for decades, centuries. From the eighteen forties on, women marched into the streets of America and Europe, suffragettes, demanding the basic right to vote. It took a long time to get there, in 1920, on the day of my mother's birth. In Europe and America women have had advantages that Asian and African women have not; so go cultural differences. History is uneven. I never knew my grandfather, but I knew my grandmother well. She lived until I was a teenager. She was a stern, severe, domineering, haughty woman, deeply devoted to her Southern Baptist faith, deeply scornful of anyone who was not. In my grandparent's household, it was my grandfather who needed liberating. He never achieved it, and, his relatively death, at age sixty eight, my father, who detested his mother, attributed to her incessant, harridan haranguing. Abraham suffered a similar fate. he married a woman party for her social statue and money, then spent the rest of his life trapped in a dominated state called "committed marriage". It is not always the woman who needs liberating, but usually, it is, and across the world, women, over the decades and centuries, have come to fully realize it. now, they are finally starting to really do something about it, and the world will be better off, at long last, with all that human potential finally liberated, free to express itself and to produce, at long last.

Divesting Harvard

HARVARD UNIVERSITY is the second oldest (Wm. & Mary) institution of higher learning in the United States, and the wealthiest in the world. Its incorporated endowment of nearly forty billion dollars is among the oldest incorporated entities in the western hemisphere. The people who manage Harvard's money, which comes largely from wealthy alumni, are somewhat hidden figures; their names are not prominently displayed in any published lists. They tend to have one thing in common; connections to large corporate interests, and close ties to the fossil fuel industry. This might partially explain Harvard's close ties to the fossil fuel industry, aside from the fact that investing heavily in the oil and gas industry has been and remains a very lucrative way to the top of the financial pyramid. At the top of whatever it chooses to participate in is where Harvard wishes to be, and almost always is. nowadays, however, Harvard scientists, and just about every other intelligent being on the planet, is are acutely aware of the dire threat of climate change looming over its ivory towers, and, well, the obvious connection between fossil fuels, those who invest in it, and the contradiction between institutions whose stated purpose is to make the world a better, more intelligent places place while simultaneously investing in activities which have the exact opposite effect is becoming, and long has been, glaringly obvious. there is a growing movement, on campus and off, to change that, to force the venerable university to divest itself of carbon based economy, and to reinvest in sustainable resources. the problem is, this would cost money, take a rather long period of time, and costing money is not the favorite past time of the millionaires who run Harvard's finances. After all, as its Board of directors points out, so noble is Harvard's mission, so generous it is in awarding full scholarships to those academically qualified but impoverished scholars in need, that any and all means to enhance Harvard's wealth is more than justified. doing damage to the planet, for whatever reason, is not justified, say the fossil fuel resistors. Harvard previously divested itself of any and all things associated with apartheid, and with Iran, say they. Walking around the campus of Harvard is a history lesson, a litany of America's finest, from teh dorm rooms of John Adams to John F. Kennedy, a monument to the people who truly made a difference. People at Harvard, student and faculty, know how to protest. A few years ago, when the University refused to give is custodial staff a pay raise, law school students staged as sit, in, brought in alumni Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, got the media cameras rolling, and, nest thing you knew, the janitorial staff was flush. So, odds are that over the next few ears the Crimson will indeed rid itself of its carbon based portfolio, and try something more morally redeeming. Options are many.

Spoiling the System

ON THE SURFACE, they're harmless, ostensibly, superficially innocuous. Many have warm, fuzzy mundane southern names and nicknames like "Big(oted)" Bobby, "Sad(istic) Harold, funny sounding, redneck names. But as they grow and multiply in numbers, they fester and coalesce, and eventually become poisonously contagious. Only when they become sufficiently numerous and politically active to affect public policy do they become truly dangerous. Beneath their MAGA caps and spread piously across their tobacco stained overalls they were their fundamentalist Christian faith and ultra conservative street cred as if it the two go together, as if they were a badge of honor, rather than of shame. For the sake of identification and clarity, let us henceforth refer to them as Lowlife conservative number one (LLC1), and Lowlife conservative number two (LLC2), a pair of purely hypothetical but indicative American right wing pious punks. LLC1 is a less devout octogenarian, and confides that in his younger years he had his way with women, consent or no consent, much like president Trump, with whose behavior he sees nothing wrong. The old relic is an equal opportunity hater: what's wrong with calling niggers niggers and queers queers? LLC1 hates Lincoln and Roosevelt: the former freed the darkies, and the latter was a damned socialist. Who needs social security? Make america great again, just as it was, sometime, somehow, in some remote, imaginary past, when men were men, not queers, and everyone was on his own, with women quietly seen in the background. LLC1 is the fervently religious one, also in his eighties, eagerly awaiting the return of the lord, or his guaranteed ascent into heaven, whichever make believe event comes first. He hates people who are not saved, and he hates Democrats, all of whom, he piously proclaims, go straight to hell. Low life conservative Christians are the backbone of Trump support. they, like their cult leader, are pure poison, a disease which has infected American culture and politics. Again, the people presented here are purely hypothetical, but they exist, by the tens of millions. To use the term "nigger" is one thing; to defend its use, and to see nothing wrong in using it, is quite another. And instead of of consigning all members of a political party to hell, in the guise of religious piety, why not proclaim the beauty of all people, politically and otherwise, and leave hell to the dustbin of corrupt, primitive, misguided religiosity? We really do not want to return to some by gone far gone idyllic epic which existed, but not at all like we prefer to remember it. Political correctness has cleared the smoke out of our smoke filled rooms; we who grew up in the nineteen sixties grew up breathing our parents smoke; they hadn't the slightest concern for its effects on their, or our health. When we baby boomers were kids, gays and blacks were in hiding, or confined to their side of the street. make America great again? A White patriarchal Christian culture with the sex and booze behind the curtain? No thanks. Hell no thanks.

Worshiping Religious Power

WHITE SUPREMACY arrived in North America in 1607, religious supremacy arrived thirteen years later, in 1620, in Massachusetts, when the "saints", freshly disembarked from the Mayflower, imposed their stridently religious will upon their shipmates, the "strangers", and, eventually, upon New England. By the late eighteenth century the secular scientific enlightenment had grown sufficiently ambient to oppose religious dogma with science and the ideals of secular representative government, and credit belongs to America's founders for having the insight to establish a secular government, and a constitutional barrier between church and state. Religion was to be neither encouraged nor prohibited, forbidden as a qualification for citizenship, with guaranteed freedom from religion. These ideals were largely respected throughout the nineteenth and well into the twentieth centuries; even the most ardent Christian proselytizers acceding to the separation, claiming no political jurisdiction. That changed with the ascension to the presidency first of Jimmy Carter, a devout Southern Baptist, and Ronald Reagan, a reformed liberal Democrat whose belatedly acquired fundamentalist faith was accompanied by a new notion among the evangelical Christian community; that the time had come for the Christian faith in America to assert itself by insinuating itself directly into politics. A newly published monograph by Katherine Stewart: "The Power Worshipers: The Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism" is a lucidly researched and written account of how Roe vs. Wade inspired the Christian right to organize for the purpose of seizing control of the american political system, and imposing Christian values upon society, legislatively, or, if necessary, undemocratically. What began as and called itself a social movement to oppose abortion rights and same sex marriage morphed by degrees into a vast, highly organized political movement, and gained control of the Republican party. It was facilitated through a large network of think tanks, pastoral organizations, a Christian conservative media complex, and huge infusions of money from ultra conservative ultra wealthy individuals. The greatest threat it presents is to American democracy and secular government, as it seeks to impose its will upon all traditional institutions, particularly the public education system, the political system, and its favorite target, the judicial and legal system. It bases it attack on these fundamental American values upon the false notion that there exists a "war against Christianity" in America, and the fiction that the country was founded upon Christian values. The evangelical right wing movement is antithetical to science, to democracy, and to freedom of thought. It bears mentioning that if the country had been founded upon christian values, it would be a dictatorship; the Christian religion is certainly not democratic. This alarming goal of turning the United states into a theocracy has not yet abated, and, even more alarmingly, has perhaps not even reached its zenith. The movement is world wide, existing throughout Europe, Russia, and India. If modern secular democracy is to survive, this movement must be taken seriously, addressed, and defeated. Otherwise, civilization is as risk of returning to a very dark age.

Owning, Using, and Abusing the System

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS are created for the purpose of preserving civilization, and facilitating international economic, political, and social intercourse, in a world divided into nearly two hundred nation states with divergent interests and goals. Among the most important are the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, all of which were established amid the chaos and devastation following World War Two.The U.N., of course, handles the geo-political side of things. It is dominated by the Security council, made up of the victors in World War Two, still the most powerful and wealthiest countries on the planet. The IMF and World Bank are designed to stabilize the global economy, and to provided assistance to developing countries. The most noteworthy thing about all three is that they are all headquartered in the United States, which would have it no other way. The U.N. has its iconic building on Manhattan's east side; the other two sit on "K" street in Washington D.C., gleaming edifices, a tribute to American power, wealth, and supremacy. The International Criminal court (ICC) is the most recent addition to international civility, having been founded in 2002. It is the direct descendant of the NAZI war crimes trial at Nuremberg following WWII, in a world much in need of an institution to cope with the fact that the second world war did not put an end to war crimes. Much to its credit, the ICC is located in Europe, not on Pennsylvania Avenue or in Trump Tower. Whereas membership in the U.N., World Bank, and IMF is nearly universal, the ICC has a membership of fewer than 150 countries, with most of the others on the sidelines as signatories, but not participants. What all four of these venerable institutions have in common is that the United States never fails to use them to its own advantage, but generally refuses to abide by their decisions when those decisions do not advantage American interests, meaning American corporate imperialistic goals. The pattern is persistent and irrefutable, the examples too many to enumerate here, but easily researchable. The current example involves the ICC, which recently announced its intention to investigate events in Afghanistan, a country in which the number of investigatable events is limitless. The ICC deals only with war crimes committed by individuals, not nations. The United States, the most prolific war crime committing country in history, wouldn't have it any other way, even though it isn't a member. Individual war crimes can be any of the usual: murder, genocide, aggression, and more. The U.S. is indeed fortunate that the ICC did not exist during the Viet Nam War: Lt. Kali comes to mind, among many other examples. In Afghanistan and Iraq, American forces participated in many regrettable activities; stripping Iraqi soldiers naked and staking them on top of each other, urinating on them and photographing them comes to mind. The Trump administration, with Sec. of State Pompeo leading the charge, insists that it will have nothing to do with the investigation of the Afghani war, claiming the the whole affair is politically motivated, a hoax, to use the all too familiar Trumpian terminology, a scam intended only to gain retribution and revenge. Sound familiar? The claim is nonsense, of course. The United States, as always, wants its own brand of pro-American justice, refusing to cooperate with the international community in obtaining impartial justice. All criminals claim innocence. Rarely if ever does the American government admit fault or blame, and certainly not in the era of Trump, when the king can do no wrong. The ICC will nonetheless do its work, and, whether the United States accepts or condemns its findings depends, as always, upon one and only one factor: whether those findings reflect favorably upon the world's most powerful empire.

Electing Bernie

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM has it that Bernie Sanders is unelectable. Too far too the left. That socialist thing. Super Tuesday seems to have confirmed that. His base is the millennials, more than half of whom believe that socialism isn't such a bad thing after all. On super Tuesday, they seem to have stayed home, as young folks are inclined to do on election day. This, notwithstanding the fact that Bernie has already gotten millions of votes, from Democrats, running against Democrats. One is motivated to wonder whether he might receive enough support to unseat the incumbent reprobate in chief. To so do, he would have to convince the general electorate of the following: that although he is a self proclaimed "socialist", he is a democratic socialist, of the variety found in those wealthy Scandinavian countries, and throughout Europe, not the kind they have in dictatorial places like Cuba, China, and the like. Furthermore, so is everybody else in these United States; democratic socialists. Problem is, those who attack and express terror at the word "socialism" do no understand what socialism is. socialism is, of course, when goods or e=services such as Social Security, Medicare, highways, streets, and schools are provided by the government, at tax payer expense, rather than by private enterprise for profit. hence, all Americans are, at least i part, socialists. Bernie Sanders needs to make that point, pronto. Renowned scholar Noam Chomsky says that Sanders is more of an FDR new Deal liberal than a socialist. Roosevelt, however, was himself a socialist, only he had the political savvy not to say so. socialism has deep roots in America, stemming from the horrible working conditions in America's first factories, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1920 socialist Eugene V. Debs received a million votes for president, even though he was in jail at the time, for union organizing. In 1932, the year in which Roosevelt sent Herbert hoover packing due to Hoover's refusal to take government action to alleviate the great depression, convinced that the free market would solve everything, socialist and communist candidates received over one million votes. But that was then, this is now. Since he Reagan revolution, American conservatism has reared its ugly head and mover far, far to the right. For proof, consult the Republican party platform from 1956, the Eisenhower era. It sounds like Bernie sanders. Support for Labor, minimum wage, women, minorities, all that. Although we are now firmly ensconced in the dark ages, there remains hope for Bernie Sanders. He has more company than most folks seem to think, and, more is on the way.

Purchasing Political Power, At A Price

IT IS WIDELY KNOWN that the United States of America is a nation governed by the wealthy, for the wealthy, exactly as the founders intended. James Madison divided society into two classes, the "better sort", and the "lesser sort", and made it perfectly clear, in his writings, letters, and in his constitution, our constitution, exactly who the better sort were; men such as himself.By the "lesser sort", he meant the other ninety nine percent. After the Civil War, corporations took over from the wealthy land owners, and rule to this day. The facts are well known. Corporate money purchases political power, by purchasing politicians. Nobody does it better nowadays than Charles and David Koch. David died not long ago, Charles trudges on, undeterred, spreading his money among extreme right wing interests and politicians. The best monograph about the Koch industry dynasty is "Dark Money", by Jane Mayer. The book describes the criminality of Koch Industries, including the cancer epidemic among trailer park residents living near Koch refineries, which dump toxic waste into the environment, and only stop when stopped by government regulation and litigation. Poor people are easy to purchase, cheaper than politicians. Koch industries has contributed enough money to far right politicians to ensure Republican control of the Senate, for the time being. A new book, "Kochland" by Christopher Leonard, takes a more personal look at the brothers, and fins them personable, welcoming, charming. Leonard is impressed by the way in which the empire was built, one brick at a time, since the nineteen sixties, from a collection of small enterprises into a vast conglomerate. Equally impressive is then fact that the Kochs have resisted public ownership, thus turning down hundreds of million in immediate investor generated profit. Whether or not they intend to be, the Koch brothers, (R.I.P. David), are malignant to the American economic and political system, notwithstanding job creation. The damage done to the environment, the destruction of people's live, through the manufacture of fuel and plastics, and by their steadfast refusal to seek alternatives, is incalculable. They are libertarian, hateful towards any and all government oversight, not because they think it serves humanity, but because it serves their own interests; the acquisition of personal wealth. For people to acquire massive personal wealth is one matter. For people to use such wealth by purchasing political power, thus gaining and maintaining a disproportionate share of influence in a supposedly democratic system in which everyone has one vote, is quite another. As former Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis and others have pointed out, you can have great economic inequality or democratic citizen political equality, but you cannot simultaneously have both. Thus, our current oligarchy, our current plutocracy. The Koch brothers are quick to point out that they are merely succeeding, the American way, and using their wealth to influence politics, as anyone has the right to do. This is quite correct, and James Madison would doubtless approve. Or maybe not;within five years after Madison's constitution went into effect, he realized that it was a mistake, that the better sort had no interest in representing the interests of the lesser sort. Maybe he would be horrified at our present political and economic circumstances after all, as the rest of us should be.

Hating, As Usual

THE OLD REPROBATE is at it again, which, really, should surprise no one. Only progressive eighty six year old people, of whom there are far too few, especially hateful one are capable of learning and improving themselves. Conservatives, by nature, are wed to tradition, especially hateful ones, both personally and societally, and prefer the status quo to change and progress. It seems like only yesterday that the hateful old curmudgeon used the "N" word at the senior center, and, when confronted by the director, said he saw nothing wrong with it, and, hell, he even named his cat "Nigger". You feel sorry for the cat, and, strangely, for the human garbage. Everyone in the United States knows by now, has long known, that the "N" word is unacceptable. That's been known for decades, if not centuries. The fact that African-American men, when gathered together in insular groups, sometimes refer to each other in that manner does not justify right wing idiots from so doing. For one thing, bad behavior is not justified by merely pointing to someone else's bad behavior, and for another, groups of blacks use the term jokingly, and they understand each other. The word of the day is "queer", as in, "That queer dropped out of the Democratic primaries". It brought back memories. I remember fifty years ago, when the terms 'queer" and "fag' were used in a hateful, derogatory manner, among adults and children alike. It was as bad an insult as one could sling. In those days, it was actually illegal to be homosexual; gay folks ran the risk of being locked up, hence, all the more reason to remain "in the closet". Times changed, as times always do, with staunch right wing resistance, protests proliferated, people demanded equality and respect, and now, at long last, gay people can walk the streets in relative safety, and even marry, without constant fear of violence or incarceration. Conservative people were not responsible for the change and progress. They never are; hence, the term "conservative', as in, hang on to tradition at all costs, even hateful traditions. As Goethe said: "The world advances only because of those who oppose it". Only progressives, who used to be known as "liberals" until the far right, the same folks who gave us "nigger", "queer", "fag", and all words hateful, and the refusal to accept progress because it came to be called "political correctness", which to them is a bad thing, got hold of the word "liberal" and demonized it; only progressives stand between the right wing and their insistence upon perpetuating hatred as one of their cherished, traditional, core values. The silver lining is that slowly, inexorably, American society and culture, with staunch conservative resistance, is progressing, and that people such as the eighty six year old reprobate will, much to the improvement of society, not be with us forever.

Preparing For the Worst

IN THE EARLY NINETEEN SIXTIES, when I was in grade school, my classmates and I were regularly instructed to crouch beneath our wooden desks, simulating a seemingly lame response to a nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. the possibility seemed very real, what with Nikita Khrushchev installing nuclear armed missiles in Cuba, banging his shoe on his wooden desk at the united nations, and the U.S. corporate government constantly telling us how perfectly evil Russian communism was. I clearly recall taking advantage of the opportunity beneath my desk to inspect underworld bubble gum, smile at nearby girls, and compare homework results. The largely symbolic exercise might have protected us from plaster and light fixtures falling from the ceiling dry wall, but not from any initial nuclear explosion nor consequent radiation fall out. I didn't really think it would ever happen, but took no chances. Sixty years later, we Americans are far more frightened of each other than we ever were of the old Soviet Union. Atomic bomb drills have become passe'; active shooter drills are all the rage. During the Cold War, the American economy was at its best, the only time it ever has been, and a man could make a minimum wage living to support a family of four point three. america was one big happy middle class, with fewer rich, and fewer poor. Enter Reaganomics, and trickle down poverty, and we live in an angry , alienated, polarized society, in which the Russians have receded into relative harmlessness, and the angry right wing gun owners have hit the street. Below desks won't do. Now our children are trained to lock class room doors, hide in coat closets, play dead, or summon help from the cell phone. We are more afraid of each other than we ever were of the Russians, and we should be, and it shows. After all, we are much closer to each other than to Russia. In most cases, we are better armed, often with Russian assault rifles. We are angrier, more alienated from the mainstream class warfare that is modern America, and far more deadly, less fearful of retaliation. Those among us with the urgent necessity to kill as prolifically as possible fear no consequences, because they themselves often want to die, often at their own hands. Altogether, I'd rather be cowering beneath a wooden desk, awaiting aircraft overhead, than being stripped searched, I.D.'ed before gaining entrance to a public building surrounded by barbed wire, security entrances, and security guards. I never thought I would miss Russian nukes, but, I do.

Forgetting History, Repeating Mistakes

BY THE TIME I entered high school, having long since deduced that the Viet Nam war was an unwinnable, useless display of American imperialism, I decided that I would register for the draft, use my draft card as I.D. to buy beer, and, if necessary, flee to Canada. I got lucky, got a high number, and in January, 1973, the peace treaty was signed. I turned 18 in April, got my draft card, graduated in May, and spent the summer, playing tennis, preparing for college, watching the Watergate hearings, regretting my senior year support of Nixon, becoming a Democrat, and drinking beer with my classmates. Five years later, feeling safe from liquor stores and draft boards, I burned my draft card, just so I could say I did it. Viet Nam was a civil, in which the United States and everybody else should not have been involved. The United States lost the war. Everyone agrees on that now; on the hippies and war protesters did at the time, those long haired traitors, as they were known. Treaty in hand, the U.S. withdrew its military forces from Viet Nam. North Viet Nam waited a couple of years, then invaded and conquered the south, winning the war, merely by breaking the treaty. There was little resistance. Gerald Ford went to congress, seeking permission to reenter the war, but, no dice, it was too late, the American people were sick of was, had turned against it. Whatever lesson the U.S may have learned from this disaster, it soon forgot. The next American quagmire was Iraq and Afghanistan, two more mistakes. Now we seem to have a peace treaty with the Taliban. Problem is, the government of Afghanistan is not part of it, and has no intention of participating in a prisoner exchange, of releasing thousands of Talibani prisoners who would simply return to their homes and rejoin their militarized compatriots. The Taliban must be anticipating the removal of American troops with glee, much as the North Vietnamese did two generations ago. Now, all they have to do is wait a couple of years at most, then retake Afghanistan, and rule it under strict Islamic law, as they did before the U.s. invaded eighteen years ago. We Americans will have slouched out of the country, defeated, impoverished, wondering where we went wrong, and why we didn't learn our lesson, yet again.