Equalitizing

EVERY CONSERVATIVE TALKING HEAD in America, by which is meant every conservative, is falling all over itself using damned statistics to prove that African-Americans are treated no differently by the police than any other ethnic or pigmented group. Those same people are quite capable, of course, of using strange stats to demonstrate that racism is nonexistent, but rather is a hoax being perpetrated by liberals or Chinese, your choice. Statistics are the stuff of which miracles are made. There remains only one relevant question. How many times in recent America history, say, since the end of the Civil War, has an unarmed black man been arrested and killed, and how many times a white man? That, as Hamlet said, is the question. All lynchings aside, if a white man were ever strung up by a black mob, or if a if an unarmed white man was ever arrested and suffocated shortly thereafter by a quarter of black cops, it failed to make the news. The impeached president, twice indicted for racist business practices, spent the Obama administration accusing Obama of have come from Kenya, having been born there. He called African nations "shithole" countries, but he reliably, or unreliably asserts that he loves African-Americans, even as they encircle the White House. even as he twitter tweets hatred, the great prevaricator leads us through the current crisis with vicious dogs and looter shooters. To attribute police brutality against African-Americans to the rare "bad apple" cop is comparable to ascribing malaria to an occasional wayward mosquito. The solution is not to give several hours of sensitivity training to all probational cops, but instead to rebuild American culture from the ground, by digging it up by the root, and replacing it with cultural sanity. President Trump, who condemns heh murder of George Floyd, told police officers in NYC a few years ago that they should be rougher on people they arrested. president Trump, who now expresses approval of peaceful protests, not long ago called Colin Kaepernick an "SOB". Racism in American is a core value with a long tradition, and therefore a plank in conservative ideology, in the party platform in a party which foments racism by denying its existence. In the college town where I live a large protest occurred over the George Floyd murder, with several hundred people attending. they were all white. That's a start.

Proving

ABRAHAM, whose love of and loyalty to the lord he thought intact, seemed surprised when the voice of the lord indicated that his faithfulness was in doubt. God himself, or herself, or itself evidently was not quite so sure about the patriarch's fidelity. maybe there was some other, lesser god out there, lurking, luring Abraham off the true path. The quickest solution might have been, would seem to have been, for god almighty to merely take a peek into the heart, mind, and soul of the man, and see for his himself where his true loyalty lay. But, on the other hand, that would have made the story less interesting; where is the drama in mere divine introspection? So god drummed up a test. Obtain your son Isaac, place him on a slab of an alter, and hack him to pieces, as a sacrifice to me, an indicator that you are willing to dispose of your own son as a show of love of me. The rest, as they say, is history. Abraham raised the ax o high, and, about to swing it, was interrupted yet again, by a god whose insecurity was quenched, sans bloodshed. He settled for a sheep in a nearby bush. This behavior, according to one way of looking at it, hardly suits an almighty deity, the creator of the universe, much less an ill mannered, petulant, spoiled third grader. A grade schooler might be expected to treat a tad pole with more respect..flash forward a few decades, and we find the lord, giving the law to his chosen people, with instructions that nobody is allowed to look at it, that it is to be kept in a very ornate box, made t specifications. One might think that the world's most important document would be copied and distributed widely, but not so. Anyone who attempts to look inside the box is in peril. Somebody dies, and immediately fifty thousand and seventy Philistines, all innocent, are destroyed. Welcome to the wild and wacky world of old testament theology, upon which today's evenaglicas base so much of their spiritual and political life. Little wonder that eighty percent of them vote for Trump. he makes about as much sense as the pathological deity they call "God".

Normalcy, Returning

DURING THE EPIDEMIC mass murders, an american staple, vanished, a welcome unintended consequence of social distancing. With more than one thousand people dying daily of Covid 19 Trump flu, the opioid epidemic paled, left in the dust with less than one eighth the daily daily death rate. Also missing of late has been our regular racist arrest regimen, the familiar scenario wherein white cop kills unarmed African-American unarmed man for failure to genuflect. But now it seems we're back in business, calculating the astronomical odds against a white cop kneeling on the neck of a European-American. The civilian population chimed in; it is unseemly for a person to be jogging in the deep south in a neighborhood in which a burglary has recently occurred, while black. At least we can take our minds off the virus for a brief moment, and relish a return to the good old days, when conservatives insisted that racism comes into existence only when liberals mention it. On social media Lebron James posted a picture of the cop kneeling on the neck of the victim, next to a picture of Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the anthem in his football uniform, the pic which incited a cultural war. James typed in the words: "do you understand now"? Permit me to answer that question. Its like Louis Armstrong said about Jazz. If you have to ask what it is, you will never know what it is. No, King James, they do not understand, and they never will. The right wing racist deniers who so sanctimoniously fly their flag in their phony conceit and judge others who dare protest a corrupt culture for its corruption will never understand, if they do not already.

Getting Petty, Trump Style

MORE THAN one hundred thousand Americans have already died, and the experts are saying that another seventy five thousand could follow in this first wave, and that in the inevitable second wave this fall the death total could go even higher, much higher. No longer calling Covid 19 a hoax, ingesting copious quantities of bleach and hydorxychloroquine, president Trump's current concern has turned to the republican national convention, forthcoming in Charlotte, in August. He insists that if the G.O.P. is not allowed to pack every seat in the arena, to fill every nook, cranny, and alcove with right wing meat on account of social distancing protocols, the deal's off. The convention will be moved to a city which cares a bit less about public health, and a bit more about convention revenue. A nice, conservative city, perhaps, where masks are not worn, and men are men. Social distancing, common sense, public health, masks, and prima dona politics to anoint a tyrant simply do not, it would seem, mix. How dare the professional medical community expect expect a large room full of Trump supporters to wear protective masks, and to space a few empty seats in between delegates, when the overweening purpose is to show the world the majestic glory of the president who discovered that windmills cause cancer, and that drinking bleach prevents the flu. Can anyone imagine even for a moment the spectacle of president Trump, expressing concern that a full convention hall in august might be a danger to public health, might contribute to the spread of Covid 19, and that therefore it is of the utmost importance to practice social distancing during the G.O.P. fest, and that it might even be expedient, and compassionate, to cancel the real tiem event, in favor of an online virtual gathering such as Joe Biden suggested for the Democrats? NO, no one can. Not when you consider that president Trump makes fun of people for wearing protective face masks during an epidemic in which disease is spread through the respiratory system, from one person to another. One wonders how petty and vicious one's head of state can become.

Responding

IN SOME COUNTRIES, the virus hit hard. In others, the epidemic was much less severe, seemingly more easily controlled. Among the countries in which the virus hit hard were the United States, Russia, Brazil, and Great Britain. Among those where Covid19 was more gentle were Germany and South Korea, among others. There are commonalities. All four of the large countries hardest hit have right wing, populist governments, governments which at first treated the epidemic dismissively, and were late in responding to it, in terms of medical necessities. The countries in which the outbreak was contained early started dealing with it early, took it seriously from the start, and, unlike the less successful countries, did not have any big national debate on whether the virus was serious, and whether there should be an economic shut down. When the dust has settled, and the analysis begins in earnest, it will be noted that the United States had the worst case of the virus in the entire world. It wasn't even close, and the statistics, which never lie, bear that out. More than twenty five percent of the infected people and more than twenty five percent of the deaths cause by Covid 19 were in the United States. More than one hundred thousand people dead soars above any other country; the next closest is Brazil, with slightly fewer than twenty five thousand deaths Future historians, near future historians, will be asking why, and they will construct a timeline of events, which after all is all that history really is; or, as a famous historian once said, "one damned thing after another". It will be noted that the Trump administration at first called the pandemic a "hoax", and then suggested that it was merely another form of the flu, and then suggested that it could be cured by ingesting disinfectant. The nonsensical comments never stopped. Just as there will soon come a time when the Trump administration is recognized as the most inept, most corrupt in American history, the response by the administration will be seen as having been disastrous, having cost tens of thousands of American lives. These are facts, and no amount of sycophantic future Trump supporter's lies and deceit can conceal it.

Reforming

IF YOU ARE a Republican, a supporter of Donald Trump, and if you completely embrace the conservative political, social, and economic agenda, as well as the message of Jesus Christ, you must, for the sake of your integrity, inner harmony, and perhaps eternal soul choose one or the other, Jesus, or the G.O.P. To be a member of the Republican party, to support Donald Trump, and to claim to follow the message of Jesus is so contradictory as to be utterly insupportable. Particularly people who choose right wing extremism, with its racist, homophobic philosophy, tend for some reason to often be the most devoutly, outwardly religious, the staunchest Christians, while in fact their religiosity has little or nothing to do with Jesus, or his message. Like everyone else in America I have spent my life surrounded by and inundated with Christian religion, and have paid a lot of attention to the four gospels, and Jesus, and his message, what he said, the words in red. Jesus, in terms of redistribution of wealth, was simply hard core. Get it done, he said, whatever means possible. Render unto Caesar, give unto the poor. his entire message makes it celar that he does not think highly of collecting personal wealth. Nor does it seem that Jesus would tell gay people that they are sick, or sinners. he would unconditionally love them, one would think, without reservation or moral judgment. It is indisputable that teh message of jesus is to love, share, and to avoid hatred, cruelty, and greed. The current Republican party is devoted to pure capitalism, while the Democratic party favors of mix of capitalism, regulated by good legislation, combined with socialism, and a certain degree of redistribution of wealth, for the sake of economic stability and aggregate demand. The left wing, socialistic, tax and spend, tax the wealthy and give to the poor agenda of the Democratic party which right wing conservative evangelicals hate so much is, ironically, much more in keeping with the message of Jesus that the conservative Republican agenda. Perhaps some day they will realize it.

Vaccinating

THE GREAT RACE for the vaccine has heated up,and may be over before we know it. The excitement intensified when the Moderna company passed its first test, and Pfizer hastened to do two test rounds at the same time. Meanwhile, president Trump jumped into the fray, with a government vaccine project. Why not? as of now it appears that the winning motive may indeed be greed, capitalism, the profit motive. The firs Covid 19 vaccine would be a huge victory for corporate America, one of which it would doubtless seek to take full advantage.But what about vaccine projects and programs around the world, of which there are evidently many? Who will claim credit for having the first vaccine, and who will get the credit> Pfizer is even now preparing, in terms of infrastructure and physical plant, to manufacture and market two hundred million copies of the vaccine, whatever it may turn out to entail. All this they intend to implement before the end of the year. Perhaps enough vaccinations could be manufactured by enough different companies to vaccinate every person on the planet by the end of this year, or early next year. To do this at reasonable expense, for reasonable profit would be a noble goal. Whether the virus is defeated and the economy recovered by election day will likely have a great impact on whether Trump is reelected. One can only hope for the best. The best case scenario is that the virus will be soon extinguished, with a vaccine appropriately distributed and administered to everybody. Then, of course, a rapid and vigorous economic recovery would be nice, no matter who the president is. We must hope for economic prosperity, and work to achieve it. The best outcome would be that the American people awaken, and realized that the Trump administration handled the virus horribly, incompetently, and that if it had been urging people to social distance instead of calling the virus a "hoax" at the time Trump called it that, then over fifty thousand fewer would have died by now in the epidemic. Feel free to argue with the researchers at Columbia. The performance of the Trump administration before, and during the epidemic has been deplorable, no matter how rapidly the virus expires and no matter how rapidly the economy recovers, and because of that, and so many other reason, Trump must be voted out.

Economizing

EACH YEAR enough food is produced on this planet to feed the entire world, every human. Yet, the number of hungry and starving people is outrageous, and includes twenty percent of America's children, who suffer from food insecurity. Nobody on Earth should suffer starvation, hunger, let alone food insecurity. The problem, obviously, is organization, distribution, cooperation, the lack thereof. In teh United States we throw away nearly half our food, even with millions of Americans unable to provide enough food for their families regularly. In economics, this is known as "inneficiency". We must reinvnt our systems of organization, economically and politically, for greater efficiency. The mere fact that less than one percent of the world's population owns and controls more than a quarter of the world's wealth is worth reinventing the system for greater Americans have been strongly encouraged to believe that redistributing the national wealth from the wealthy to the poor is an evil idea which can only result in disaster.efficiency. Progressive wealth and income taxes, plus taxing gains made through investments would help considerably. The horrible inefficiencies of the global and American economy have been starkly exposed just lately, with American farmers and food companies being forced to destroy their product because either they cannot get it to market, while millions of Americans suffer food shortages and insecurities, and spend hours waiting in miles long lines in their cars for a box of food. The horrible management of the virus crises in the United States hurt further. The president is no ingesting daily a chemical. Hydroxychloroquine, which has unknown side effects on the user, and has not been shown to do anything to help prevent, treat, or cure, Covid 19. A vaccine seems imminent, thanks partly to the good old capitalistic American spirit; let us hope that the miracle drug will be manufactured, and distributed sensibly, and reasonably, with reasonable compensation for all who deserve it.

Wearing Masks, Fashionably

YOU WONDER whether the wearing of a mask might insinuate itself into American fad and fashion, whether it night eventuate, soon, that wearing a mask in public becomes stylish, acceptable, preferable, rather like should pads for women were, oh, say, twenty five or thirty years ago. Imagine that, a mask wearing fad sweeping America, like the color "black" did in the nineteen nineties, for instance. Prepared psychologically and emotional as I am for a return to normalcy, whatever that might be, I am not quite sure that I am ready to appear in public bare faced, having been bemasked in public all these weeks. I'm likely to test the waters by slipping into the senior center thought the back door, mask on, and set up my laptop at a table in the corner, and sorta encourage people, by my body language, to stay six feet away at the least. I would even prefer that at the beginning of the reopening that all members sit at different tables; one person per table, in a room with at least twenty tables. Perhaps as the election draws near, Trump supporters will defiantly appear in public without masks, as a show of confidence and strength, a show of belief that teh virus is thoroughly whipped. The progressives, on the other hand, might establish a social protocol of always wearing a mask in public, as a show of respect for science and common sense. Mask wearing, or the lack of it, might become the easy way to tell the two sides apart, as our one day election day war approaches.

Stealing, Sharing

IT HAS BECOME quite fashionable in America in recent years to complain about and express anger at China's allegedly stealing American technology and research secrets, and art, and lord knows what else. China steadfastly denies all wrong doing, of course, but the evidence is convincing. has the United States, or anyone in these United States ever considered the possibility that the Chinese will inevitably possess whatever they want badly enough to possess, and that it therefore might be feasible for the U.S. to design a means, a system, to distribute its intellectual property fairly and equitable among nations? The system would doubtless include both giving and selling, and in some sensible format. Precisely how long do people, especially Americans, actually believe they can hang onto to and retain control of intellectual property, such as information, designs, or works of art, without the rest of the world sharing it and benefiting from it? The problem with constantly accusing China of stealing, no matter how well founded such accusations are, is that it makes it easier to accuse China of deliberately using the Covid virus as a weapon, of deliberately designing it in their laboratories, and releasing it into the United States. That notion, of course, is pure rubbish, having been discredited by scientists based on the structure of the virus. Sometimes it seems as if the United Stats would rather complainng about intellectual property theft than actually do something about it.

Agreeing With Trump

I WHOLEHEARTEDLY APPROVE of president Trump's crash program to discover, invent, manufacture, and distribute a Covid 19 vaccine by the end of the year. I assume that he and all of his associates are fully aware that in this critical endeavor, n o stone be left unturned. A massive global project can emerge out of Trump's initiative, but only if the Trump administration is both willing to accept all help from everywhere, and willing to share information with everyone. Places like Harvard, M.I.T., and Oxford are busily working on their own vaccines, and shared information among all concerned parties, for the sake of the entire human species, is strongly recommended. Trump's project could utilize the military, corporate, and foreign sources to put together a massive endeavor which, with the full support of the entire world, give us the vaccine we so desperately need. It is vitally important not to automatically criticize someone, and to give credit for positive action. now would be a good time for the left, the people who want to remove Trump, to acknowledge that he may be doing something very good. Obviously, we'll have to keep an eye on it, and hope that it doesn't lead to war with china, nor anybody else. With Trump, you never know. But let's not start having a bunch of squabble,s fights, wars, and conspiracy theories about research and information related to a Covid 10 vaccine. Let's simply share , and share alike, all relevant material, within America, and internationally.

Stealing

THERE IS SHOCK, fear, and righteous outrage in certain sectors of American society, corporate, government, public, private, over the Chinese allegedly trying to steal American research into a vaccine for Covid 19. This negative response is indicative of the American capitalistic system, with its proprietary priorities. In America, corporate and government power are effectively the same thing, so the FBI's warning that the Chinese may be pilfering research material reflects corporate and government concerns both. Since Covid 19 is a definite threat to everyone, every person and country, it could be effectively argued that all research into vaccines should be shared, cooperative, and that profit seeking capitalistic motives should be put aside, at least this once. Today president Trump actually made reference for the need for international cooperation in the search for vaccines, treatments, and cures, and this is most auspicious, and out of character for the capitalist president. As a sixty five year old, I really don't care where the vaccine comes from, or who profits from it. Preferably a system could be designed in which everybody benefits from the vaccine, and nobody becomes fabulously wealthy because of it, but the people or corporations responsible for its development are rewarded reasonably. If the notion of international cooperation sounds un-American, that's because it is. The United States is a highly proprietary culture, which places personal profits above the public welfare. Perhaps an agreement could be arranged in which all nations agree to share all research with the entire world, to produce a massive organized global effort.

Talking

BEAVER CLEAVER got up a sandlot football team, and Wally, being Wally, offered to help coach it, promising to keep Eddie under control. They devised and practiced a secret play, about which Beaver blabbingly told a girl, who promptly told the other team, with disastrous consequences. Ward came to the rescue, as always, with a good teaching moment: "son, don't ever tell anybody anything, don't ever say anything to anybody, that you don't want to be repeated." Never has better advice been given to anyone, ever. Whatever you say to anyone, always assume that the person to whom you spoke will share the info with somebody else. If you don't want it repeated, don't say it. often people have gotten upset with me for repeating something they said to me. I am always willing to explain to anybody that whenever anybody says anything to me, the person has given me information, which now belongs to me, and I am therefore free to use it in any way I please, to do with it as I choose. You are of course free to ask me to keep a secret, but if you do, I'm likely to ask you why i should keep a secret, since you obviously can't. Sometimes I tell people things that I hope the other person will not tell anyone else. But if they do, I am always willing to take the consequences, and deal with them, without blaming the person who shared the information they got from me.Often, when I tell somebody something I would rather not be repeated. it isn't, and I am glad. It almost seems that in many cases there is an unspoken agreement not to repeat information. Whenever it happens that something we say is repeated, we should be angry at ourselves, not at the person we gave the information to. We are the ones who could not keep a secret. A little more accountability, sadly lacking in American culture, would be a vast societal improvement.

Looking and Playing the Part

RIGHT WING publicity hound show horses, pulpit and political, like to look sharp, hair spruced and coiffed. It all started with Reagan,, like all else about the modern right wing. The acting president with the nice thick pompadour hair. now is the time of Trump and folks like Rand Paul. Trump, for whom orange is the new black, and paul, sporting a perm and a beard, to go with the chic name. Clothes make the man. Fancy hair spawns brazen behavior. Trump's is well documented. Rand Paul, disconcerted with the political ramifications of a stalled economy, saw fit to remonstrate that Dr. Fauci is not the know all be all end all of viral economics. The good doctor, typically classy amid a morass of morons, replied calmly that he never intended nor proclaimed himself to be anything but a serious, discerning scientist with an opinion based on science. Had he chosen to be more forthright or trumpically tactless, he might mentioned that neither is the Senator an expert on viruses or economics, that he had carried teh infection around for days unconcerned with spreading it to others, and that he therefor was living in something of a glass house. Once again, as usual, America's conservative rejects expertise, tries to demonize the real experts, and replace their knowledge and wisdom with their own, inexplicably. The trump administration, and teh conservative community in general, the people who support Trump, have a troubling tendency to reject established, mainstream science, like climate change and the need for continued social distancing, in favor of their own agendas, which never fail to include a desire for great economic prosperity at any cost.

Testing

DROM THE WHITE HOUSE hung a gaudy, gauche, arrogant banner, reading: "the world's leader in testing". A lie, of course. When the world's wealthiest country with a population of over three hundred and thirty five million people has tested fewer than ten million of its citizens by the middle of may, bragging is hardly appropriate. But leave it to the Trump white House to do the bragging anyway, under false pretenses, always bragging, always touting accomplishments which never happened, always seeking the spotlight, the glory, the hero worship. Every American should have been tested for Covid 19 by now, long since. The test kits obviously exists, the methods works, because it is being used in the White House, for the important people, daily. The kits exist is grossly insufficient numbers, to test all the rest of us, the little people, who, according to the spokesperson for Trump, it would be silly to even try to test for deadly viral infection. Determination, leadership, leadership, and organization could have, should have accomplished the massive task, should have been instigated by early February. Testing, and contact tracing, and the virus could have been halted in its tracks, merely by quarantining those who needed quarantining, and letting the rest of us continue to work. We need never have all been sheltered in our homes, hiding from a virus which could have been effectively dealt with with a sustained, concerted project uniting the government and the free market business sector, and, of course, the military. There was never any need to devastate the economy with a massive shut down, nor to sacrifice thousands of lives. Suppose each test costs one hundred dollars. That means one billion tests would have cost one hundred billion dollars, a lot of money to be sure, but only a fraction of the money spent, sent out to every American American, trillions of dollars of lifeline which was required only because of inadequate testing and record keeping of social contacts. Between now and the election the Trump campaign will ceaselessly brag about its about its leadership in fighting the virus, but it will all be a huge lie, with e over a hundred thousand dead Americans and a wrecked economy to prove it.

Evolving

TRAGICALLY, the covid 19 virus adversely affects animals other than human, for example, in zoos, which, being temporarily closed to people, leaves our precious genetic cousins alone. Their funding source gone, they still must be fed and cared for. We'll find a way. We deprive them of their normal life by placing them in confinement, but, in captivity, we improve on it in certain ways, one of which is by eliminating dangers of the wilderness, like people moving into cities and forsaking their normal lives in roving bands of hunter gatherers. Now, we make do in houses and cities, in front of flat screens. Most amazing is the number of people who have made faces fact to face with chimps and monkeys and gorillas as zoos, without learning anything about them, without even thinking about why it is so alluring to make the faces at each other. The most obvious lesson is that we humans are primates, just like the others, closely related, looking so much alike that the connection is obvious. Equally obvious is that we all got to this point by a long, extended, intricate, sophisticated process, a process which is ongoing, rather than as the result of a sky God scooping up mud and fashioning first a man, then a woman out of the man's mud made rib. Now is as good a time as any for our evangelical Christian conservative republican primate cousins to abandon their varieties of fantasy, to which they heretofore tenaciously cling, varieties of foolishness, including denial of evolution and climate change, and to join modern civilized home sapiens in the twenty first century of scientific reality.They have the potential. They already accept microbiology, the reality of viral infection, and no longer ascribe disease to evil spirits. Many of them admit that humans have walked on the moon, that the Earth is round, and that nuclear physics and other modern sciences actually exists. Their next giant leap forward will come when they stop supporting president Trump, and thus relinquish real evil, and begin to vote for some civilized, decent human being to be president, rather than a barbarian, a known traitor, liar, and criminal. They have the potential to become intelligent, educated, informed people.

Advertising

PRESIDENT TRUMP already has an impressive television advertising campaign. Its a pack of lies, naturally, but impressive, slick. The ad says, in a bold admission, that the president" isn't always polite". That's the understatement of the millennia. Its like saying that the KKK isn't always culturally diverse, or that an NFL linebacker isn't always gentle with someone in his arms. Slick. Very slick. the ad turns a pathological, serial prevaricator who incessantly maliciously attacks everyone who dares disagree with him into a person who "isn't always polite". The ad goes on to tout Trump's leadership during the pandemic. Quickly reviewing the facts, the ad fails to mention that the president at first called the pandemic a "hoax", then suggested that it would simply go away with warm weather, then advised everyone to merely get a flu shot. Although Trump was told in late January that the virus had come to America and that it was going to become serious, he didn't begin to take it seriously until mid march. The piece de resistance was his famous suggesting that by swallowing disinfectants like Lysol and bleach people could rid themselves of the virus. This prompted an outbreak of needless self poisonings among the uninformed Trump crowd, and a host of denials from chemical companies. One third of all the infected and Covid 19 dead people on the planet are American. Why? A lack of an adequate response, obviously. The American people have simply not been willing to make the necessary sacrifices, and there has bee no leadership, only a chaotic, haphazard, contradictory series on nonsensical comments and actions from the white House, which are now being recast, through revisionist history, into a successful plan by the president and his administration. And now, it is the conservative community which is hollering that the country must restart its economy, the conservative community protesting social distancing in the streets, and the conservative community in conservative states prematurely lifting restrictions necessary to get the virus under control. Trump and his supporters, once again, doing harm to the country. The Democrats need only state the facts concerning Trump's performance and his behavior throughout his entire time in office to sufficiently inform the American people to motivate to vote the traitorous criminal out of office. But firs,t Trump's propaganda machine must be exposed for what it is: an elaborate propaganda machine trying to seduce a sleepy electorate with the same nonesense it it has been issuing for three years.

Contradicting

I RECKON I'm a mite wrathy, but I'll stand up to my rack, fodder or no fodder, may the devil take the hindmost, as Davy Crockett would say. My position, my complaint is this. The conservative movement, the evangelical Christian community, the Republican party have all revealed themselves not only to be morally bankrupt, but worse. By their continued support of president Trump, who is demonstrably a liar, a criminal, and a traitor, they have revealed themselves to be no better than he. Accessories to crime, liars, traitors all, they have made themselves, by supporting a lying, treasonous, criminal, traitorous president, they are accessories to all these, by being enablers. The Christians are the worst of the lot. A devout christian socialist is fine by me.. Likewise a libertarian free market atheist. Best of all is teh socialist atheist, unencumbered by religious pretensions. But the most reprehensible, execrable creature in God's green universe is the Christian conservative, more particularly the fundamentalist evangelical Christian conservative Republican who supports Trump. The United States and the world would be far better off without them. If only some method could be devised to eradicate them. Reason and intelligence should be the means, should be able to persuade any sane, intelligent person to renounce this horrible ideology, but, alas, intelligence and reason are absent among these people, and they are impervious to its influence. The conservative republican agenda is the exact opposite of the message of jesus christ, as even a cursory examination reveals. They ignore render unto Caesar and give unto the poor in favor of work to obtain personal wealth and let the poor fend for themselves. Jesus, in terms of redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor, was hard core. he made no mistake about it, left no room for misinterpretation. Conservatism and religion both embrace tradition, which resists change.Traditions like racism, exploitation of labor, poverty of the working class, hatred of gay people and minorities, are all traditions which receive respect. The people who most zealously advocate for economic freedom to become wealthy or poor, or to gather together in segregated communities and groups,also most zealously embrace a dictatorial religion which condemns social freedoms of sex, marriage, and many forms of cultural diversity. Political conservatism may be compatible with Biblical Christianity, but not with the essential teachings and message of jesus, who was a progressive.

Lacking Compassion, Trumper Style

SHE IS A YOUNG ATTRACTIVE NURSE, and she knows what the emergency rooma and the ICU unit are like, on a good day, when they are not easy. Now, she know what they are like on a bad day, on one bad day after another, when they are overloaded, overcrowded, and a normal working staff is a pitifully short staff. In the age of Covid 19, every day is a nightmare for the nursing profession, everywhere you go. Finally, she got a little impatient watching the protesters in her town, day after day, armed with their MAGA caps, their automatic assault rifles, but unadorned by any protective face masks. She got tired of their unrelenting, screaming anger, even though she understood their frustration, their anxiety at having less than enough money, of missing paychecks, of being without work. Because oen thing she knows above all else: it is far too early to let our guard down, far too early to open up the economy, to return to public life in crowded cities, too close together to stop the spread of terrible death and pain. Sure, we all want the virus to go away, we all want the economy and our lives to resume some semblance of normalcy, but for these Trump people, the economy trumps all else, and the virus is merely a nuisance to be endured, no matter how many elderly people die. The compassionate nurse respects the protesters, and understands their point of view, even though they mocked her and taunted her when she tried to talk to them. But they do not understand her point of view, nor do they know intimately, as she does, how horrible the epidemic is. They endure late bill payments and joblessness and unemployment checks, she endures and sees much worse. Nor do they understand at the White House, where everyone was being tested once a week, but now is being tested daily, even as the hot blonde spokes-babe for Trump declares in his name that the very thought of testing every American is "silly". Nobody at the White House wears a mask, nor worries about six feet of distance. Why should they? they get tested, daily. Any female who gets within six miles of the president, let alone six feet, does so at her own risk. I had my first, and I hope only Covid 19 dream last night. I was some sort of health care provider, and was at a banquet in our honor, buffet style, dressed up, sitting at round tables. At the buffet line, I was unable to put food on my plate. It kept sliding off, and no matter what the food was, it didn't look good to me, or there wasn't enough of it, and I couldn't decide which side of the plate to put it on, so I overturned a plate full of food, and spilled it all over the lady in line behind me. My plate was a gooey mess. I knew she was angry, and i was embarrassed, so I explained to her that my sister has the virus, and I am frantic with worry, and not thinking. She forgave me, and told me that I must clam down and stay strong, that I have people to help. I was relieved when I awakened, felt fortunate that it was only a dream, but I felt a little stronger, a little more able to face the world, and, a little for gratful to the heroes who really do endure the unendurable in the service to others.

Judging, Harshly

HE IS A REAL TOUGH GUY, or seems to think he is, despite his advanced age and seeming inability to stand for long periods of time or walk across the street. Each day when I enter my senior center, he glares at me relentlessly, with obvious contempt, hostility, hatred, and aggressive attitude. This happens daily, despite the fact that I have spent the last four years volunteering in the kitchen, cooking his lunch, washing his dishes, serving his lunch, daily. Never a smile, never a kind word, never a simple thank you. Only the glare and the hateful frown, always, every day. Some gratitude. I assume this is because he is a right wing extremist, a Trump supporter, and an evangelical, fundamentalist Christian, waiting very patiently for his lord to descend from the sky, usher him into heaven, and send everyone who disagrees with his religion or politics to hell. It is observable that right wing extremist Trump supporting evangelical Christians tend to behave like gangsters, holding rallies at which they listen to their thuggish leader, Mr. MAGA, berating good people, accusing the media of fake news when it is merely telling the truth about current events, and railing against people who seek to assist the poor of fight climate change. There is something about being extremely religious and extremely conservative which brings out the punkish, thuggish, gangster in one. As if they alone possess truth, and all others must accept it, or be damned. The man glaring at me at the senior center is one of them, and so very typical of the rest of them; a rel intimidator. Trump, who has rarely attended church, proclaims himself a "good Christian", and that is good enough for America's conservative Christian community, whose real agenda is exclusion of minorities, particularly gays, Muslims, and Mexicans, from mainstream society, and the imposition of a Christian theocracy, coupled with a purely capitalistic, competitive economic system, devoid of all social programs which might assist the vulnerable and the poor. Render unto Caesar and give unto the poor are statements made by Jesus which these right wing Trumpers conveniently ignore, because their true agenda has nothing to do with the message of Jesus, but much more to do with harsh, social Darwinistic survival of the wealthy. The gentleman might as well keep glaring at me, for being a non religious Democrat. He may not end up being the one who goes to heaven, and his beloved candidate, the gangster president he so loves to emulate, might not be the survival in the forthcoming general election, considering the state of economy, which, after all, Trump must be given credit for, since he took credit for Obama's healthy economy. it comforts me to know that I needn't worry about going to hell; by the time I die, it will be filled to capacity with right wing Christian Trump supporters, standing much less than six feet apart.

Protesting

DURING THE VIET NAM WAR, which lasted throughout most of my childhood, I rooted for the protesters I saw on the news on television, being too young to join them. I rooted for their success and their survival, which could not be taken for granted, either one. In college I studied history, and became a history professor. I found an affinity for the American, French, and Russian revolutionaries in history books, as well as for the African-Americans, women, and gays in real time, on television. I realized that I never met a revolutionary movement that i didn't like, and have spent my adult life with that point of view. All protest is good protest, to me. Regretful at having missed out on the Viet Nam protests, i finally got my chance in early 1990, when I joined several hundred other protesters in a protest march against the war against Saddam Hussein, who had invaded Kuwait because the United States had deceived him into believing that he had U.S. approval. I felt, and still feel, that this was was as unjust and immoral as the Viet Nam War, and I remain proud to have participated in the nationwide protest against it. Now, the virus is changing the world, and with it, me. i finally met a protest I do not like, nor of which I approve. And, I can honestly say that my opposition to thie opposition has nothing, or little to do with my inherent antipathy to conservative causes. I shudder in horror to think of the death toll without social distancing, without quarantining. The covid 19 epidemic would have been far worse than the 1918 flu pandemic without all the measure taken in America, and around the world. To shut down the economy was absolutely necessary. Even now, as the United States begins to resume normal economic activity, the pandemic hangs like a dark cloud over the country; the virus shows little sing of relenting, making the restart of teh economy a h highly dubious proposition. The people protesting the extended shut down were and are dead wrong. There can be no normal economy without getting control of this virus. It may eventuate that opening the economy back up so soon will be a dreadful mistake. we can only hope not.

Being Right

HE IS EXTREMELY RELIGIOUS, convinced that he has been saved, and that because he has, everyone else should be, but hasn't been. his religion is the only true religion, the one true religion, for everyone, no questions. He supports President Trump, wholeheartedly, because Trump is the presidential representative of Christ, having been appointed by God, by god. In his mind the republican party embodies Christian values with its extreme right wing agenda which includes hatred of illegal, hungry dark skinned immigrants, hatred of homosexuals, Muslims, and liberals, He firmly believes that he is destined for heaven, and that all Democrats and all non Christians are destined for hell. Amid his self flattering piety, purity, superiority, and virtue he is in fact quite mentally ill, and irredeemably evil even during his rare moments of lucidity. his entire belief system, his politics and his religiosity, is a sham, a fraud, concealing the latent personality of a gangster, of a thug. his poisonous hatred of most of the world's population, of the unsaved, the progressive political people, the gays, and others give him the sham self esteem from a false sense of superiority and moral perfection. Tragically, his twisted, sick ideology is typical, typical of the extreme right wing evangelical Trump supporting community, a gang of thugs who continue to support the most criminal president in American history by ignoring his criminality and pretending that he is a good person, when in fact his is nothing but a gangster criminal. Donald Trump is the exact opposite of the teachings of Jesus, as are his followers, who more resemble the vicious, diabolical Biblical God of the Old Testament than the prince of peace. jesus would never lock hungry children in cages, even if their parents had entered the country illegally. Jesus would never condone the hoarding of personal wealth by calling it something grandiose, like "free enterprise". Jesus would never accept a society in which a few people had nearly all the wealth, while tens of millions of others go hungry, or can barely afford the basic necessities of life. But these malignant conservative evangelical Trump supports have no problem supporting a reprobate president, because he, of all politicians, most closely resembles themselves.

Getting Impatient

IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA, folks are becoming antsy. Tired of being told what to do, bored to be at home with nothing to entertain them except five hundred television channels on a high def big screen and the internet on every room, tired of having only a smart phone and several radios available, they simply cannot stand it any longer, and are beginning to defy reality, government restrictions, and common sense in their apparent urge to spread the epidemic far and wide while having a little fun at the beach in so doing. During the 1918 American flu pandemic, people got tired of staying at home, and since everyone seemed to be getting the flu no matter what, folks said to heck with it, got back out on the town, and the second and third waves hit, killing millions more people, all because of a lack of patience and respect for the health and well being of others. A lack of understanding of the microbiological world doubtless also contributed to the reckless behavior. History never, ever repeats itself, but it rhymes so closely as to seem eerily familiar. We the American people are simply too spoiled by our material wealth, and too arrogant by virtue of living in the land of exceptionalism, to obey any directive from any source which inconveniences us of impedes upon our ability to gain instant gratification. The mobs of protesters, who are really far fewer in number than their conservative media sponsors would have us believe, are so confident of their ability to resist infection by a ubiquitous virus that they for the most part don't even bother to wear masks, which they perhaps perceive will limit their ability to accurately aim their automatic rifles at people who disagree with their twisted thinking. They are the right wing loonies, wanting to get the economy going full bore by ignoring reality, and pretending that a second wave of viral infections is impossible, maybe because of their devotion to their Christian faith, which shields them from all harm. If America's conservative evangelical community is sufficiently insane to elect Donald Trump and to insist that he is a man of virtue and a great president three years later - and it is - it is sufficiently insane to believe that now is the time to stop fearing an epidemic, an epidemic that is taking a trifling seventeen hundred lives every day in the United States. The greatest threat to human civilization is neither climate change nor Covid 19, although both are deadly threats, but rather modern American evangelical conservatism.

Melting

GREENLAND AND ANTARCTICA, both of which should be named "Iceland", are huge land masses naturally covered with huge amounts of ice. or should be.problem, all the ice is melting, and it shouldn't be. During the past decade, enough ice has melted and flowed into the ocean to fill Lake Michigan. Climate change in motion, rising sea levels, hastening the eventual inundation of the world's coastal cities and human populations. Half of humanity levels close to an ocean. The situation with regard to climate change is dire, and can only become worse, due in large part to the failure of the United States to exercise leadership and take the necessary drastic action. In the Trump era, the United States is America first, america alone, America the land of corporate capitalism, wedded to fossil fuels, unwilling to make much needed changes to its economic and energy systems. The U.S. is failing to lead the world in a meaningful cooperative program to reverse climate change not because of progressivism, but because of the deeply entrenched conservative community, much of which denies the existence of global warming altogether, despite the existence of irrefutable proof. The conservative community elected a president who denies climate change, and whose policies only increase the rate at which it is occurring. in order to deny global warming, it is necessary to pretend that automobiles do not spew billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, or that there are nearly a billion cars on the planet. To deny climate change it is necessary to deny that there are nearly one billion tons of carbon in the atmosphere, put there by human industrial activity, or that carbon, a chemical element, absorbs far more heat from sunlight than do the other atmospheric components, nitrogen and oxygen. Essentially, to deny global warming, the cause of climate change, it is necessary to pretend that the laws of nature have suddenly been nullified by some mysterious force, perhaps the Christian God. When you consider that a large part of America's conservative community is made up of evangelical christians who are waiting for the return of a God whose existence has never been shown to be anything other than imaginary, it is little wonder that right wing America is advocating a course of action which will lead directly to teh destruction of all life on earth.

Presidential Posturing

IN A PURELY THEATRICAL, gratuitous gesture intended only for media consumption, president Trump offered to provide Covid19 testing for Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi. They both declined, citing the much greater need for testing among those who help heal victims of the virus, and the shortage of testing kits. Trump supporters will doubtless use this occasion to trumpet the president's great wisdom, compassion, nobility, and generosity. Trump is and always have been quite eager to benefit from exposure in the media that he so despises and constantly accuses of being fake. it is fake, but only when he tries to manipulate it. As of now a few more than five million Americans have been tested for Covid 19' According to the Chen school of public health at Harvard, we should by now be testing five million people per day, and by now every American American citizen should have been tested at least once. By February first trump was told that the virus was definitely coming to infect the United States. and he called it a hoax. A comprehensive consortium of pharmaceutical companies, the government, the military, and academia should have been assembled in a Manhattan project style effort to create a massive program of testing, tracing, isolating, and treatment. had this been instigated by the president, the economy need never have been shut down, the epidemic in the United States need never have occurred. Forty two percent of the American people approve of Trump's handling of the crisis, fifty seven percent disapprove. These numbers are of course identical to the president's overall approval rating.The epidemic seems for the moment to be damaging to Trump's prospects of being reelected, because of the epidemic's severity and because of the president's evident lack of effectiveness in controlling it, and lack of effectiveness in keeping the economy running. Despite the president's obvious intent on being hailed as a hero for stopping the virus, and despite his administration's and his supporters' efforts to portray his behavior as heroic, the American people can plainly see the lack of results, and assuming the crisis continues into late summer, the president will have difficulty being reelected. this is perhaps the only consolation we have for this horrible tragedy, but it is one worth savoring.

Crazy Revalating

IN RETROSPECT, it was probably inevitable. Inevitable that in the midst of the greatest pandemic in one hundred years,, the evangelical apocalyptic crowd would begin dusting off their Bibles, turning to the last but not least section, and start equating the Book of revelations with the virus.They would inevitably find the part where it says that in the final days trials and tribulations would beset humankind, and they would decided that the virus qualifies, and that therefore we have at our disposal incontrovertible proof that the good book is the best book, the only book in which God reveals not only his plan and his law but his predictions for the future, and that the end of days is therefore upon us. No matter how vacuous, how ridiculous, it was bound to happen. Thomas Jefferson, who was an atheist but allowed everyone to wallow in the misconception that he was a Christian for the sake of his social advancement and position in society, called the Book of revelation "the rantings of a lunatic." For that matter, he called the Christian faith "our modern superstition", but he did so only in personal letters, which he never intended to be made public, nor dreamed that they someday would. And indeed a close reading of the book quickly reveals exactly how twisted, crazy, hallucinogenic it really is. It is as if its assumed author, John of Patmos, were either on acid, crazy, or the inventor of fantasy and science fiction, pick your genre. And yet, here, well into the twenty first century, millions of the faithful, the gullible, the nob-bibliophile types, right wingers, Trump supporters usually, the deeply devout, actually cling to the nonsensical belief that the bible was written by other than human beings, and that God speaks to us in books and stories, rather than in nature and beauty. Goethe put it better: "It is beyond me how anyone can believe that God speaks to us in books and stories. if our hearts do not tell us what we owe ourselves and others, and if the world does not directly reveal itself to us, then we will most certainly not find it in books, which at best are designed only to give names to our errors." It must be acknowledged, however, that anyone sufficiently ill informed to believe that the Bible, or any other book, contains the ultimate truth, about the present, past, or future, simply cannot understand Jefferson or Goethe.

Exercising Judgment

THE LOCAL SENIOR CENTER plans to reopen May 8, a dubious decision at best, premature, made by an administration with a history of dubious decisions, decisions seemingly more intended to protect the job security of the administrators than to promote the well being of the center. My experience with administrators throughout my professional career has convinced me that self interest underlies most administrator's behavior. They'll have to find someone besides me to lead the pledge and the prayer. Rather than immerse myself in a room full of virus vulnerable elderly, I'll sneak in, bemaksed, grab lunch to go, maybe wave and bump a few elbows, then get out of dodge. The seniors most at risk are those who support the actions of the lunatic president, Donald Trump. Nationwide, trump's approval rating among all demographics has declined, including among seniors, who at the moment would elect BIden. Most Americans would gladly elect any newly mutated organism over Trump. The latest example of presidential lunacy? The president now claims that the virus was deliberately manufactured in a Chinese lab. What a wonderful way to foster international cooperation and to bring comfort to a troubled world. As always, no evidence exists for this idiotic contention. All evidence indicates the exact opposite, that the virus was naturally occurring, from animal to human. Every intelligence gathering agency, every scientist affirms this, a naturally occurring Covid 19. As always, the moronic, narcissistic American president ignores the experts, and replaces their wisdom with his personal brand of idiocy. his supporters, the sycophants who adoringly follow the criminal traitorous leader, remain on board with Trump's criminality and recklessness, to their eternal discredit. The right wing MAGA mob, hateful as always, racist, protesting in the streets without masks or concern for the well being of others, wanting only to enhance their financial fortunes. Either Trump supporters should be quarantined for the safety of the sane until they mercifully expire, or the rest of us should so social distance ourselves from them as to eliminate their influence on society, entirely. The vulnerable elderly are far more at risk from Trump and his gang than from any virus.