Washing Away Sins, With Bloody Detergent

AFTER OUR WEEKLY GOSPEL SINGING at the senior center, I repaired,as usual, to the fitness center for some moderate exercise. The fitness center consists of three machines, packed tighly together in a small back room, for which I am grateful. I do my heavy workouts at home, where I feel free to sweat. A fellow singer hopped on the stationary bike next to the treadmill on which I was walking, rather than running, which I do at home on my treadmill. We chatted, to pass the time. We agreed that we both love gospel singing. It occured to me that we have decidedly different reasons for our affection, but I didn't say that. We compared our favorite hymns. Mine, as always, is "How Great Thou Art". That, and "Holy Holly", by Neil Diamond, which I mentioned to her. She seemed bemused. I suggested that she give the song a try. Still, the bemusement. My narrow mind detector flashed bright red. I like to be honest with folks, so I offered that I actually prefer singing secular music, mostly rock n roll, some classical, and that I sing gospel only because its the only game in town, and, after all, when in Rome. I told her, in all honesty, that I am not religious. More bemusement, rather than any appreciation for my open mindedness and cooperative community spirit, which would have been more appropriate. Since she didn't ask why, I told her. well, I said, songs which glorify the washing away of blood with the blood of Jesus may be a good metaphor, but for me it evinces a digusting image, which I find barbaric, even nauseating. And, at any rate, the metaphor is innacurate, as innacurate as Shakespeare's taking up arms against a sea of troubles.(Hamlet is better literature than even the Bible, mixed metaphor and all). If you wash a robe in blood, it does not, repeat, does not come clean pure white, but rather, as a rather sickening baby shit pink. Even "Tide" won't wash out all the blood. Try it at home if thou wisheth, though I don't recommend it. The number of hymns in the Christian faith which use this bloody imagery I find shocking, disgusting, and repulsive, and most gospel melodies are to me flat, hollow, and immature to boot. I plain don't like gospel music, any more than I like religion. What I love is the essential message of Jesus, about giving unto the poor, loving everybody, judging not, not casting stones, and so forth. What I don't like about jesus is the fact that he was, overwhelmingly, an apocolyptic preacher, screeching tirelessly and tiresomely that the end is soon to come, that momentous events are just around the corner. Either he didn't know what he was talking about, or was the original conspiracy theorist, or both. We're still waiting. The larger part of his remarks wwere/are of that nature. As Casey Stengal used to say "you could look it up". My primary complaint about Christian theology is that it seems cowardly and irresponsible to me. People who glorify and rejoice that somebody else, a much better person than they, suffered and died for their sins I find abhorrant, and cowardly. Whatever sins I have committed, let me pay for them, not Joshua ben Joseph, my friend and brother. Let him live to be an old man, and let the Lord do with me as he/she pleases. I place my trust in God. At least I'll have self respect, if not eternal salvation in heaven. If I deserve to suffer eternally in tortorous hellish damnation, whih I highly doubt and reject, well then, so be it. If in reality we live in a "Christian" universe with a Christian creator, a notion I find laughably ridiculous, I wish I had never been born. I have no interest in living in the same universe with such a vicious, diabolical, maniacal diety as the biblical, Christian one. AA archibald MacLeish said,adroitly: "If God is God, God is not good. If God is good,God is not God." Thank God for parallel, alternative universes. Like Eintein said "I cannot conceive of a personal God who would sit in judgment over creatures of its own creation. Morality is of the highest importance, for human beings, but not for God". Einstein, a pantheist, is my religious role model. Now, everytime I walk the treadmill next to the lady on the stationary bike, I make pleasant onversation, as always, but for some reason, she doesn't seem to have much to say.

Trump, Failing To Feed the Hungry

MUCH LIKE THE FRENCH, Americans like neither taxes nor government, except of course when it provides services indidpensible to themselves. Americans do not like being regulated. Americans have been propgandized into thinking that the federal government bureaucracy is bloated, and includes millions of useless, needless workers who do nothing but draw a hefty salary, and that they spend wasted time thinking of diabolical, nefarious ways to inflict pain on and control us the American people. That is a misperception. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Every government regulation has a valid purpose. Every government bureaucrat is kept busy, working hard, providing help to the rest of us Americans. The government, like private businesses, only hires people as a last resort, only when absolutely necessary. The number of people working for the government, in the federal bureaucracy, has remained essentially unchanged for the last sixty years, since the nineteen sixties. This, even though the population of the United States nearly doubled during that same timespan. Like Casey Stengal used to say: "you could look it up". Reducing the government work force, for effeciency's sake, is nothing new. Most recently, the Clinton administration eliminated about four hundred and twenty five thousand jobs, but instead of doing it with a chainsaw, chaotically, cruelly, and arbitrarily, it did it over a seven year period, intelligently, legally, with congressional cooperation. This was possible largely due to the advent of computers, which, in every sector of society, tend to reduce the need for human beings as workers. Clinton did it not by turning the job over to a cruel, unelected egomaniacal multibillionaire, but with a competant team of experts. As the years went by, it inexorably became necessary to re-increase the number of workers, as new cabinet level departments were added, and the exigencies of the country required. And yet, this false notion of a bloated, out of touch federal government persists, as do so many false notions promulgated and perpetuated by Trump, MAGA, and conservative Republican America. Now, we are confronted with the dreadful specter of Trump-Musk, trying to decimate the government, illegally. USAID, America's foreign aid agency, is already largely defunct, the victim of Trump's butchery. U.S. foreign aid takes up less than one percent of the federal budget, but it helps poor people in other countries, and does nothing to enrich America's ultra wealthy, and thus is inimical to all things MAGA. Trump-Musk put a block on funding for USAID, a federal judge orderd Don the Con, twice, to unblock it, he refused, and now Trump's extreme Supreme Court once again came to the great reprobate's rescue, yet again, as it has so many times before, and reversed the federal judge. Now, food sits rotting in harbor, and food, medicine, and vaccinations have stopped flowing from the land of opportunity unto the world's poorest, most desperate people. How many lives have already been lost because of this perfidy? How many more will be? Millions? Probably. U.S. foreign aid has always saved millions of lives, but, no more, likley not for a very long time. Noam Chomsky says that he is still looking for a word adequate to describe the evil of people and corporations which knowingly engage in ativities which will destroy organized human civilization, merely for the sake of adding more money to already overstuffed pockets. the word "evil", Chomsky maintains, is insufficient. He still hasn't found one. He probably never will. If he can't, nobody can. Such a word probably does not exist. Now its time to look for a word adequate to deseribe the behavior of a man and a political movement which deliberately sets out to kill millions by withholding food, medicine, and vaccines from dying people merely for the sake of appearing to increase government efficiency. Because, understand this: DOGE has nothing to do with efficiency. It has everything to do with concentrating power in the hands of a vicious tyrant. Likely we will never find the word. But we will keep trying.

Rewriting History

NEARLY EVERYONE, at one point or another, mysteriously transforms into an expert historian. The most common venues for this seem to be at family dinners, group gatherings, or bars and grills during converstaions in which the subject turns to politics. Political disagreements tend to be the root cause of these miraculous transformations, in which people with less than ideal high school educations spontaneously possess the historical knowledge of Ivy League faculty members. We all tend to be interested in history, but mostly only to prove a point, to feed the ego by winning a heated political argument. And so be it. History breeds cliches, which, like most cliches, contain more than a modicum of truth. History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. Patterns in human behavior emerge. People and nations who do not learn the lessons and mistakes of history are doomed, or at least inclined, to make the same mistakes which have been made repeatedly before, such as building walls to keep people out (walls don't work unless manned. Why, then, build a wall at all?), or starting wars without proper preparation and motive. History is a powerful and potentially dangerous tool. George Orwell said that whoever imposes his or her version of history upon large numbers of people or nations has the chance to gain power and keep it, and to thus greatly control the historical events of the future. This is why history must be researched, written, and taught in a highly professional, critical manner, and an agreed upon body of facts established, to ensure that malevolent interests don't gain access to and control of the discipline and abuse it for their own malign inerests. Tragically, alarmingly, disastrously, that is precisly what is occuring in American society now. History is being abused. We the people are being subjected to a toxic brew of false history, for nefarious purposes. The ancient Egyptians erased from the records any events unacceptable to pharoah. The communists in Russia and the NAZIs in Germany concocted and promulgated entirely false accounts of their own country's past, versions of history which glorified the fatherland, and made it seem as if their respective political movements possessed the only solutions to their nation's current problems. Now, here we are, in our beloved America, doing likewise. At least, about forty two percent of us are. Trump leads the charge in historical misinformation, and his MAGA minions are right behind him,following suit. Its more blatant than ever, for Trump history does not bother to reach far back in time as many false narratives do, but rather, tends to confine itself to the recent past. The obvious problem for the purveyors of these false narratives is that it makes an easier job of countering and correcting the lies - if only people are willing to accept the truth. And now for some facts. Ukraine did not start the current war in Ukraine. Russia did. Trump did not win the presidential election of 2020. Biden did. The insurrection of January 6, 2021 was soley the responsibility of Donald Trump, with the direct assistance of thosuands of his followers, and the indirect assistance of millions more. It was not a hoax perpetrated by some fictional "deep state", nor the result of a nefarious liberal plot. Trumpism gives us the most glaring examples of historical lies, but a fundamental truth must be recognized. It is this; Public school American history textbooks tend to be written not from an objective, honest point of view, but from a desire and intent of making the United States and its hsitoryseem more noble and positive than it actually is. In truth, American history is not pretty. In fact, it is quite ugly. Traditionally, however, we as a culture have tended to be unable to accept this reality, unable to teach the truth to our children. Public schools have traditionally tends to promote patriotism more than honest, accurate American history. This is called "hagiography". Some more facts: The United States was founded upon violence, genocide, slavery, and greed, not Christian values. Every square inch of the country was stolen from previous civilizations. There are, of course, many more examples. The fact that this dubious approach has been challenged and changed to a large extent in recent years is an encouraging sign, but also a primary source of the widespread disatisfaction of public education among conservatives, who generally, to fuel and validate their hyper patriotism, prefer hagiogrphy to historical reality. Goethe said that "patriotism corrupts history". Indeed it does. Whatever price in pride we pay for accepting the truth, in historical studies or anywhere else, is surely far less than that which we pay for embracing falsehood, historical or otherise.

Trump, Making Deals, Ending Wars

DONALD TRUMP made it, as Richard Nixon used to say, "perfectly clear", during the presidential campaign. He could, if elected, and maybe even if not elected, end the war in Europe in a single day, by making a deal. As someone pointed out to me, he didn't actually say that he "would", but that he "could". Thers is a difference. My thought was, heaven forbid that somebody could end a war, but would choose not to. Quite a price in human lives for passing up a chance to end a war. Making a deal. Trump, the art of the artist of the deal, the ultimate transactional master, the self proclaimed stable genius, fixing the world, or able to if he so chooses and has time, through wheeling and dealing. Buy a golf course, sell a slum rental property. Buy a country, end a war. Its that easy, we are told. Now, there's been a change in plans. The new timeline given by the great deal maker extends to several weeks, not days or hours. It looks like the war is on track to be ended, by Trump, in "several weeks". Don't be surprised that when the fourth anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine rolls around next February twenty fourth, 2026, the time table has been extended to several months. And then, eventually, by several years, or even decades. Donald Trump promises that the war in Europe will end in several centuries, if not sooner....The proverbial "fly in the ointment" is, as always, the contents of the deal. The devil, as always, is in the details. The Trump administration is now telling us that it would be "unrealistic" to expect any peace agreement to include a Russian withdrawal from the twenty percent of Ukraine, and slowly growing, it currently occupies. That, of course, would make ending the war considerably easier for dealer Trump or...anyone. Ending the war with the status quo intact would have the further (dis)advantage of essentially rewarding Putin's Russia for its wanton aggression. During this second Trump administration, United States foreign policy is predicated on an "alternative reality", to borrow a phase from Trump's former spokesperson, that being that, in the world according to Trump, Ukraine, not Russia, is responsible for starting the war. This is the equivalent of blaming Poland or France for igniting World War Two, but it perfectly suits Trump's admiration and affinity for Vladimir Putin and all things authoritarian, and his unflagging penchant for rewriting hisotry, twisting the present as well as the past into fantastical alternative realities. The real reality is that, under Trump, the United States has, like Italy in World War Two, switched sides mid war. Its hard to remember the United States of America ever doing that before, unless you include its abandonment of the British Empire in 1776 as side switching. More than one hundred billion dollars spent on Ukrainian defense, and we end up, for all intents and purposes, on the side of Putin. Freedom's land, having its Benedict Arnold moment. Serving this alternative reality, Ukrainian president Zelenskyy now becomes, in the great Trump fun house, an unelected dictator. Why not? He was of course elected by a huge majority, but, one thing we know about Trump is that in Trump-land elections are vague, shadowy tenuous things the results of which can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Perception become reality. It now seems that their very exstence can be whitewashed from the history books. We probably won't see American boots on the ground fighting alongside Russian forces pushing ever further into Ukraine from the east, but, as we say, never say never. We now want to be repaid for our prior assistance to Ukraine in precious metals and minerals, a modern version of "Lend-Lease". Eventually, Russia can be expected to be handed a bill for American services rendered. The United Nations overwhelmingly voted to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the third anniversary of Putin's initial attack. The United States, freedom's land, joined North Korea, Iran, and China in voting against the proclamation. Our beloved America, joining itself at the hip with the world's most oppressive, authoritarian regimes as the former land of liberty enters its very own authoritarian era, courtesy Donald J. Trump and MAGA America. Conservative America wholly approves. Doesn't that make you proud to be an American?

Stomping Off With Satchmo

WHEN I WAS A KID my dad gave me a trumpet for Christmas, and told me to do whatever I wanted with it. Play it, put it in the closet, my choice. I chose the former, and athough I took lessons and played in the band throughout school, I never became very good at it. No regrets, good experiences. It just turned out that I prefer listening to music to trying to create it. Quite naturally I developed into a fan of certain famous trumpet players. My favorites were Al Hirt and Louis Armstrong. I still love them both. Maybe I was expressing some deeply embedded New Orleans vibe, previously unknown to me. There was something special about Louis. His race, his smile, and his gravelly singing voice appealed to me, notwithstanding the fact that to this day I consider Louis Armstrong and Bob Dylan to be the worst singers in popular American cultural history. Go figure; they are probably still laughing all the way to the proverbial bank, in their respective realms of reality. Armstrong biographer Ricky Ricardi has written three books about Armstrong, including one about his early life and career, titled "Stomp Off, Let's Go", after a song title. (Its prounced either "Lewis" or "Looie", your choice. He usually used the former, but not always. Fans go both ways. The latter is the way the French say it.) He claimed he was born in 1900; records "seem" to indicate that he was born a year later, on July 4th, according to Ricardi. The third ward in the "big easy" was so violent that it was known as "the battlefield". From the small flat he shared with his mother and sister, the child Armstrong heard gun fights and screams of agony deily. Ricardi says it is a miracle he survived childhood when many other black kids didn't, as if a cornet playing guardian angel hovered over him. Louis maintained throughout his life that he didn't know whether his mother and sister were prostitutes; he knew. He tried pimping, but his lady shot him in the shoulder, and he showed off the scar the rest of his life. He spent a year and a half in a juvenile detention center for no particular reason other than to keep him off the streets, which, strangely, arguably, might have been the best thing that ever happened to him. There, he got stability, three squares a day, discipline, and an opportunity to develop a variety of skills, including music, which he chose to exploit on the cornet. He always thought of himself as a singer first and foremost, and according to Ricardi would have had a career as a vocalist had he never picked up the ax. Yes, his distinctive voice turned out to be a benefit. By the time he was nineteen he may hae been the best trumpet/cornet player in the world. He wanted to sing and play both, but since he didn't play guiter, had to alternate. Problem was, nobody had ever done that before. It was one, or the other. He wouldn't be disuaded, and his voice to horn back to voice style made him famous, and, eventually, helped earn him the title as the inventor of jazz, of modern American music. His unique status as America's first pop music superstar gave him a unique opportunity to speak out against segregation, and he received much criticism for failing to do so with suffient vigor. However, he spoke out. He accused President Eisenhower of having "no guts' for his failure to publicly endorse the civil rights movement, and he generally refused to perform in front of segregated audiences. Better than nothing. After all, President Eisenhower was in a much better position to assist in rights rights than a poor black trumpet player and black pimp from New Orleans. There was more than enough blame to go around. No American presidnet until Kennedy addressed the issue forcefully, and Kennedy, only late in his presidency. His jazz ensembles, the "Hot Five" and the "Hot Seven", were releasing recordings by 1925, which can still be heard today, with rewarding clarity. You simply have to hear them, especially his first big hit "The Heebie Jeebies", in which Louis begins with an earbending thirteen second solo intro, then sings his heart out, up tempo, joyfully. During the 2020 pandemic, there was on an online Louis Armstrong Heebie Jeebie challenge, and musicians all over the world tried to knock out the famous, hopelessly complicated cornet riff. If anybody succeeded, nobody ever knew. "Cornet Chop Suey" came soon thereafter. Louis got the nickname "satchmo", short for "satchel mouth" because he once briefly stored coins in his mouth for momentary safekeeping. While recording "Heebie Jeebie", the story goes, he dropped the sheet lmusic, and couldn't remember the lyrics, so, in desperation, resorted to singing in half words and nonsense syllables. Thus was invented "scat singing", which in 1926 was spelled "skat". This account has been confirmed. (scat, for "shit", perhaps?). I developed a fairly passable impersonation of his singing voice, which I still, from sheer love and admiration, occasionaly show off today, at the risk of a sore throat. I remember seeing him perform on the "Ed Sullivan Show", and I recall once when he took questions from the live studio audience, to everyone's delight. "Hello Dolly", and "What A wonderful World", both big hits late in his life, were not among my favorites. He died when I was sixteen, in 1971, but not really.

Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing

OF ALL THE HUMAN personality characteristics in our vast portfolios, none do I find as odious as sheer pettiness. Anger, resentment, holding grudges rank highly among them, but for basic contemptuousness, small minded, avoidable vindictiveness, to my thinking, has no equal. Just the other day a good friend of mine was mentioning a mutual acquaintance of whom neither of us is especially fond. My friend mentioned that the annoying man has an annoying penchant for calling my friend "bud". "I'm not your bud", my friend said he responded. He calls me "bud" too,I said, and it annoys me too, but I just let it go, I told my friend, because I have far lerger fish to fry, far greater concerns. My friend,by his silence, seemed to agree, if only tacitly. Let's not be petty ourselves, even when it seems merited, even when others do, if we an avoid it. And, we can, always. Of all the execrable behaviors of Donald Trump, and there are many, as we all know, it is his patent pettiness which I find most revolting, even more so than his pathological lying or incessant slandering and insulting of people wholly undeserving of such verbal garbage. So the Associated Press decided to call it the "Gulf od Mexico", and to leave it at that. And, at a press conference, an AP reporter used precisely that term. Down came the edict from his malignant majesty on high: henceforth no members of the Associated Press shall be given admittance to press conferences of any other media event centered around the prevaricating president. And it only gets worse. Donald Trump is a weak, insecure little personna whose personality portfolio never fully developed beyond a childish childhood level. What he lacks in intellect he over compensates for by his bluster, his incessant urge to dominate every conversation and situation, his vitriolic speech. Sounding like another presidential emotional cripple, Richard Nixon, Trump recently exclaimed: "He who saves his country cannot break the law". He can, of course, but cannot, according to the Supreme Court, be prosecuted for doing so. Saves his country? Is what precise way does Trump the Deluded really think he is saving the country,, or has alreday saved it? Saved it from what, decency and integrity? Trump's egregious, reprehensible words and deeds go well beyond mere pettiness. They enter the realm of the absurd and diabolical, well beyond merely the Gulf of America. Wosrt of all perhpas was his pardoning of violent insurrectionist criminals, the pardon given only because their violence suited Trump's personal, traitorous purposes. With the stroke of a pen, his sycophanticic gangster criminals go free, to do harm elsewhere on behalf of their mafia-style don. Trump's attacks on the media, all petty, do not end with the AP. He has threatened to pull the broadcast license of CBS, presumably for having the etemerity to disagree with him, and to explain precisely why. He wants to sue "Sixty Minutes", or has perhaps already filed suit against the iconic television program, for that very reason. Expose and delineate Trump's perfidy, he breaks your kneecaps. National Public Radio has been threateed with similar extinction, and is fortunate that less then one percent of its funding comes from the government. Trump's handing over the economy to billionaire oligarchs like Elon Musk is well documented, and his petty apointees are all in agreement that Trump's Attorney General, a MAGA mainstay, absolutely must use the "law" to go after not only duly authorized invistigators of Trump's criminality, but also, his critics. Critize Der Fuhrer, down you go. The infamous Sedition Act of 1798 reincarnated. Fortunately, this has not yet been codified by Congress, and thus, so far, means nothing. But stay tuned, as we say, lest we would be reduced to awaiting another Thomas Jefferson to void it. Oh, how I wish that Trump's goons would come after me. The upshot is that no decent citizen should even consider supporting Trump, and, in fact, no decent citizen does.

Acting Without Reason

THE EXPRESSION, if I'm not mistaken (I'm not), is "arbitrary and capricious". The two words are always paired in tandem, like "clear and present", "black and blue", or "love and marriage", "constitutional crisis". Or, as Festus Haggen eloquently put it: "like ugly on ape" (apes tend to be better looking than most humans, depending on one's point of view.). "Arbitrary" means without rreason, and "capricious" means intending harm, if only overtly. What could be more arbitrary than renaming the Gulf of Mexico "The Gulf of America?" Renaming Greenland "Redwhiteandblueland", maybe, or renaming the Mississippi River the "Missamerica River", perhaps. On the capricious side, for the president of the United States to take over personal control of the Kennedy Center only in order to insure that no artistic productions run counter to the wishes and whimsical values of the chief executive comes to mind, values which include a hatred of the term and concept of wakefulness, awareness, aka "woke". God forbid that we the American people be entertained with any stage production which acknowledges the reality of lingering systemic racism in these United States of Apartheid. Simply don't talk about it, and it either vanishes, or never existed. Only by mentioning racism does racism spring, like lilacs breeding out of the dead ground, as T.S. Eliot might have put it, into existence, for all to see, ignore, or deny. Henceforth nobody will appear in drag at the Kennedy Center, and nothing will be said or heard about gay or transgender people. Behold the newly reformatted schedule of events, in which only artists whose current gender matches that on their birth certificates are allowed to strut and fret on stage. It is not beyond the realm of possibility in the world according to Trump that eventually only lilly white Christian nationalists are deemed suitable for public consumption. Can there by any doubt that the "Kenned Center" will sooner rather than later by renamed "The Trump Center"? Speaking of Christian nationalism, Trump recently issued an executive order establishing something called the "Office of Faith", or something like that. Accordingly, he appointed a widely seen fire and brimstone lady from Florida, a well known televangelist with her own mega church, to the position of chief of religion, religion of the conservative Christian kind, the kind in which the gospel according to Jesus Christ is twisted like a badly made pretzel into an endorsement of far right American politics. No other religions allowed, of course. Contrary to what John Adams said and the constitution still says, it seems that the U.S. is indeed more a Christian than Islamic nation. Unbridled capitalism becomes sacred, gay and transgnder people become a scourge, that sort of thing. This, notwithstanding the admonitions of the actual Christ to render uto Caesar, and to give unto the poor, and to welcome the stranger, even without work requirements or visas. (At least the nation's prevaricator-in-chief spared us Joel Osteen.) More,many more than one legal scholar has clearly indicated that not only are nearly all of Trump's edicts blatantly unconstitutional, but that ther are, by definition....arbitrary and capricious. And yes, there is indeed a federal law prohibiting any law enacted from being without reason and being with the intent of malice. All twelve of our federal circuit court magistrates seem to agree; Trump is way out of constitutional line. Asssuming that the appellate courts assume likewise, we are left to await the renderings of SCOTUS, which, being packed like sardines with Trump loving MAGA injustices, can be expected to do most anything, including upholding the Trump agenda of unreason. Like somebody said on the "Colbert" show the ohter night, "buckle up". The great American fun house will only become more quixotic as Trump, with the full support of his lurking mob, in and out of Congress, leads us on an even more convoluted journey into the arbitrary and capricious. Our best consolation might be that we will once again be allowed, perhaps forced, to use plastic straws. After all, what's a little oceanic garbage and a few whates and dophins choking to death among friends of the far, capricious right wing?

Ghostwriting

I HAVE READ NO FEWER than twenty books about Donald Trump, all written by his family members, close associates, well respected journalists, and historians whose area of emphasis is modern American culture. While offering the differing perspectives one expects from divergent writers, they all correlate well, both in biographical facts and conclusions. I began doing this reading after recovering from shock and despair at his ascension to the presidency in 2017. I needed to be informed and forewarned. My favorites are the two by Bob Woodward, of Watergate fame: "The Trump tapes", and "Fear: Donald Trump In the White House". The former consists of transcripts of the twenty interviews Woodward conducted with Trump, and the latter is an incisive examination of interactions between Trump and his staff members during Trump's first administration. During the first administration alone, at least forty five hundred books on Trump were published. Trump has been famous for nearly fifty years, and the books began to appear long before he became president. When he became a television star, the output proliferated. Only a handful of American presidnets have been written about more often. Those include Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt. Since there is an emerging consensus among professional academicians and historians that Donald Trump already is and likely shall forever remain the agreed upon worst president in American history, it seems probable that many more volulmes will be in agreement in his post presidency, and that the biographical output will continue well into the late twenty first century and beyond, as historical perspective is gained from a chronological distance. Every future writer on Trump will offer a fresh, if somewhat familiar perspective, as is common in this field. Such is the nature of all historical writing, especially biograpy. Future works are not likely to be any kinder to Trump than our early attempts; we tend by nature to be less generous towards historical figures who start their careers in print in infamy. The effects of damage done by nefarious leaders and their cohorts become ever more apparent in the sharp relief offered by decades and centuries of their impact and examination. Trump himself has produced books about himself, about twenty, all ghost written. Not only is Trump not a writer; he is not a reader either. One of his ghost writers, who spent a year and a half collaborating with Trump on "The Art of the Deal", which was published in 1987, remarked that in all the time he spent in both Trump's home and office, he never saw a single book. For some of Trump's books the ghost writer is given full credit on the book cover, on other's the ghostwriter is merely mentioned as having given some assistance, and still others make no mention at all of anyone other than Trump himself. Anyone who has ever listened to Donald Trump speak can readily discern that he is not capable of writing a book on an intelligent, adult level. The problem associated with books allegedly written by Trump is verifying their accuracy, as many of his ghostwriters have indicated. Often they are unable to either confirm or repudiate facts about himself supplied by Trump; they become lost in a morass of vague assertions, grandiose bragging, and incoherent intertwined timelines. Many of Trump's background biographers have mentioned that when ghostwriting a book for Trump, whey were discouraged from attempting to confirm alleged facts, and were simply not allowed to put in print any point of dispute with them. And, needless tosay, book authored by Trump are hagiographic; those written about him by others are uniformaly in agreement about basic facts and about the fact that Trump is a man of questionable moral character. Limited though my personal reading and research has been,and even though I pay close attention to Trump and have for a long time, for me there has emerged a common,irrrefutable theme; I have yet to discern a single redeeming personal quality or personality trait in the man. It seems unlikely that I ever will.

Reading

MY FOURTH GRADE TEACHER, in 1964, assigned us a reading list. We were allowed to select our own books, within reason, and we were not always required to submit boook reports. But we were asked to write down the title and author of every book we read,in a loose leaf notebaook, and to submit it to the instructor near the end of the school year for the teacher's approval. She announced her intention to award a blue ribbon, or gold star, or some such, to whoever had read the most books. We were warned not to fabricate titles, or to make false claims of titles consumed. Doing so would forever stain our consciouses, she explained. I was never tempted to cheat; I loved to read. People willing to cheat don't enjoy reading enough, or they enjoy winning too much. I won going away. If memory serves, I was awarded both the star and the ribbon, on stage, at an assembly, parents in attendance. My mother and father were beaming. The students closest behind me were clustered closely together, as if competing hard for second place. I learned to enjoy tho documentation habit, and never stopped. Now my loose leaf notebook, the earliest pages beginning to turn yellow, still sits on my desk, the list of titles and authors still growing, growing both in number and intellectual level, but starting to level off, as limits are reached, both in published books of interest to me, and in my academic level. I read ponderously slowly, partly by choice, but my retention rate seems good, and, when pressed by circumstances, I can speed read, somewhat. Everything I read in graduate school is included in my list, almost exclusively European history titles. I have omitted my doctoral dissertation; after all it was written by the reader, and to include it seems...unfair. I enjoyed reading in graduate school less than at any other time in my life. Books read under coercive infllueces from professors were less enjoyable to me, if only because of the coercive influence. I grandfathered in what I could remember from first grade on; Dick, Jane, and Sally matter. The list, I think, is about evenly divided between fiction and non fiction. Most of the fiction is science fiction, most of the non fiction is history and science. There are more than seven thousand titles on my list. I sometimes think that reading is what I did instead of getting married and having a family. No, I have no regrets. Reading is fundamental, as the old TV ad used to tell us. I must confess that my pace has slowed somewhat as the books have become more challenging and computer screens have taken time away from my book reading. Maybe I'll hit ten thousand before I'm done. My point is the we live in a country which seems to have abandoned reading, to the extent that it ever fully embraced it. Our founders were a bookish bunch; from there, its been downhill. Blame television, computers, and cell phones, but not our public education system. Teaching classes in diversity, equality, and inclusion does not prevent anyone from reading. Some years ago it was calculated that your average American read about one book per year. Today it is somewhat less than that. About half the population never reads a book beyond high school, and approximately twenty five percent of the American people are functionally illiterate. The average American reads at about a sixth grade level. Previously, it was on an eigth grade level. We are regressing, it seems. And yet, in the university town where I live the public library is usually packed. But how many of them are actually borrrowing books and reading, and how many merely browsing, killing time? Reading enhances one's health, we know, both mentally and physically, both provoking thought and lowering blood pressure. On the down side, it turns folks into couch potatoes, if allowed to. The solution is to read while standing, or, failing that, to take frequent breaks for standing, walking,and leg stretching. Another solution to literary muscular atrophy is to risk mental atrophy by limiting or eliminating reading altogether. Reading has limited value. Anybody expecting God to speak to us in books and stories is either deluded or disappointed, for, as Goethe said, books, at best, are designed only to give names to our mistakes.

Trump, Ordering Illegality, Speaking Inanely

DONALD TRUMP'S HONEYMOON with the far right extremist MAGA movement may endure forever, but with the saner segment of American society, never existed. It lacks passion. It also lacks legality. Legal scholars are in nearly unamimous agreement that almost all of his executive orders are illegal, and the American Bar Association issued a statement making that clear. The prevaricating president seems intent to govern by decree, notwithstanding his cult-like hold on a Congress comprised of a slim but solid majority of sycophantic adoring MAGA puppets, who seem fearful of any retribution from their king for any sign of disloyalty on their part. Like the lap dogs that they are, the very thought of the master withholding approbation is...unthinkable. Might we expect the convicted felon to soon issue an executive order to remove two million people from Gaza, relocate them to Jordan and Egypt, and then to begin the process of clearing the rubble from Gaza, and rebuild it in the image of Trump Tower? The only fly in the ointment, other than the suggested project's lunacy and illegality, is that it is estimated that it will take twenty one years to clear away all the rubble left from Israel's recent excessive campaign of destruction. Trump might have to wait until he is nearly one hundred years old before he can ride down a golden escalator on the shore of the Mediterranean. "The Apprentice", a movie starring Sebastian Stan, begins by detailing Trump's attempt, as a twenty seven year old stripling seeking to assert his own financial power while still beholdn to his father, insisting that the mayor of New York give property tax breaks for the project. The mayor refuses, and the fledgling real estate developer threatens retribution in the form of lawsauits. Roy Cohn is in the room. Never admit mistakes, always be on the offensive, repeat large lies early and often. Trump learned much from Cohn, and has never changed. Now, the chief executive usurper says he'll have to "take a look" at the federal judges, many of them appointed by himself in his first administration, who had the audacity to put a temporary hold on his illegal executive orders, pending further litigation. The problem, a matter of mere inconvenience for Trump, is that when Congress passes legislation establishing a government agency, only Congress has the power to dismantle it. According to the American Bar Association, Trump, with his ominous hints of defiance of judicial authority, has already created a constitutionl crises. Can there by any doubt that he'll create more? Our consolation is the entertainment value that the renewed clown show has resumed, with a flurry of inane remarks and outright lies. After imposing a tariff on imported aluminun and steel, Trump assured us that the tariff applies to all countries, but does not apply to the United States. In other words, all alumimum and steel manufactured in the United States and "imported" into the United States shall not be subjected to tariffs. We breathe a collective sigh of relief. We're back to where we started, with George Washington capturing airports and windmills causing cancer. We further learn that lap dog in chief, Elon Musk, has already slashed billions of dollars in useless government expenditures from the federal budget, without providing specifics. There are no specifics. Every propsed, executively ordered budget cut harms many, and help nobody. Always willing to defer justice, Trump seems to be banking on a stacked, sycophantic Supreme Court to evntually uphold his power to usurp Congressional authority, and the current Congress seems quite willing to acquiesce to authoritarian tyranny. Ultimately, as legal scholars are telling us, our only recourse will be, as it has always been, citizen oversight, at the ballot box.

Helping

THE STORY WENT "VIRAL", as it should have. During a world class soccer game, played before a crowd of one hundred thousand,a kitten staggered onto the field, panting with extreme thirst. A world class soccer player, and world class person, stopped the game, and gave the tiny creature water. The kitten seemed to regain strength immediately, and the player left the field and presented it to a stadium employee, with the admonition "please find it a good home. The employee is reported to have replied: "You already have". Indeed he alredy had. The star athlete named the kitten "Goal" and soon welcomed it into his home, permanently. The crowd, increasingly aware of what was happening, reacted with a roaring standing ovation. Maybe Goethe was correct when he said: "Noble be man, compassionate, and good." And also: "If thine own value thou would relish, the world with worth thou must embellish." The nobility and compassionate part is arguable, because it often seems that human behavior is motivated more by hatred than love, contempt, rather than compassion. But inarguable is that we human beings are capabple of transcending our least desirable traits, and reaching a higher level of awareness and action. Jesus, like many others, sets an example proving this and inspriing more of it. When William the Conquerer set foot and planted his flag on English soil, he declared, somewhat prematurely, that henceforth anyone who sets foot in "his" kingdom" would be a free person. Slavery, common among the Anglo-Saxons whom William II conquered, would be no more. He backed up what he said. After the American Civil War, it was written into the constitution that anyone born on American soil is automatically an American citizen. Noble be man, compassionate, and good. Any stray cat which enters my yard will be fed, and, cat willing, will be given a home, mine. I believe that in the past twelve years I have spent about fifty thousand dollars on stray cats. I "built" my house twenty years ago, and it took about eight years for stray cats to start appearing. I don't know what took them so long. They came, and keep coming, to the right place, as if word got out. The first one, whom I named "Mandi" after my favorite bar tender, is now more than twelve years old, and spends much of her time in my lap, as my legs cramp and my bladder fills. Others have come and gone, for various reasons. There was a male who left home probably becaue he preferred to find a new home to spending his days with a group of spayed females. One of my females left home probably because her spayng was an ordeal for her, she blamed it on me, and for several years after it happened she was fearful of me, even though she lived with me. I am certain that they found good homes, because they were both extremely cute, and, as we humans know all too well; cuteness counts. Several have been struck and killed by inattentive or malicious motorists. My solace is that I haven't moved, both of those who left home voluntarily knew where to go if they needed a good meal. The female returned once, the male never did. I wish them well. More recently one of my neighbors brought home two cute black females from the animal shelter, and one of them, a precious little angel with a chronic respiratory condition, expressed her preference to live with me. Whenever I put her outside for some fresh air and exercise, she returns to the front door within mere minutes. If I don't open the door sufficiently soon, she goes to my bedroom window, climbs the window screen, and hangs there, seemingly for as long as it takes. I cannot refuse her, have no intention to, and cannot imagine anyone else feeling any different. Proper medical care for her will soon add to my expenses. My hopes and plans to travel to Europe in retirement are on hold, and are probably vanishing with each bag of specially formulated high nutrition cat food. All virtue signaling aside, I will be content to visit Europe vicariously. My precious babies come first.

Helping, Or Not, In Trump's America

INDISPUTABLY, there is a great deal of wasteful spending within the federal budget. One might recall the five hundred dollar toilet seats which reared their ugly heads during, if memory serves, the Reagan administration. The Department of Defense leads the charge of recklessly throwing money around, at problems, as well as billionaires. We now turn our attention to "USAID", a primary agency through which economic assistance is channeled from the United States to the more poor world. We know that foreign aid constitutes less than one percent of the federal budget, and that it amounts to billions of dollars per year. And now we know that our prevaricating president has unilaterally ended USAID, just like that, by decree, without proper authority, with the evident support of congressional Republicans, but not Democrats. Trump's hot blonde spokesperson is a vast upgrade from Sarah Sanders, sight for sore eyes wise, and, arguably, no less capable of echoing Trump's lies with an impressively straight, unblemished face. She mentioned ceramics classes in Africa, funds for Irish folk dancing, and services for transgender folks. What she doesn't mention, what Trump doesn't mention, is the millions of lives which have already been saved by the vaccination and nutrition programs administerd by the agency. Also unmentioned is the reality that because of the demise of these programs, it is estimated that as many as eight million people will starve to death in the war torn, impoverished Sudan. Millions will die in other places as well, of disease and famine. Trump and the Republicans emphisize the wasteful spending, but not the starvation nor the epidemics prevented by American foreign aid. Elon Musk, who knows a thing or two about criminal organizations, if only by serving in the Trump administration, calls USAID "a criminal organization". Again, he's the expert. Takes one to know one, and so forth. The only thing "criminal" about American foreign aid are the people who are ending it. Is the United States a "Christian country" or not? It most certainly is not, neither by heritage nor behavior. It never has been. Ironically, the same people who insist that it is, namely, conservatives, cherry pick the wasteful spending as evidence that the baby should be thrown out with the bath water. They dug deep enough to find a few examples of unnecessary forms of assistance, and declare that the very idea of giving help to people in need is an entirely corrupt undertaking, which must be abolished. Gore Vidal, whose grandfather was the first United States Senator from the newly established state of Oklahoma in the early twentieth century, said of Senator Gore, who was a Republican: "He didn't believe in giving anything to anybody, ever". The late Senator's ideological descendants are now fully dislayed, as our modern Republicans find one excuse after another to stop helping...anybody. We have entered the era of conservative Republican governance. Like an increasingly popular T shirt proclaims: "We are being governed by morons". If not morons, pseudo Christians, Christians in name only. Render unto Caesar. Give unto the poor. Welcome the stranger. These fundamental precepts of the Christian faith will never be uttered nr enacted by our right wing extremist gangster leaders, who much prefer the harsh simplistic Ten Commandments to the Sermon On the Mount or the Beatitudes. If you pay close close attention, you will notice that Trump, his, his personal cult, and the Republican party will never ever be caught, dead or alive...helping anybody.

Coping, Somehow, With Hating Trump

FACEBOOK, for all its shortcomings and pitfalls, is blessed to host a large number of groups opposed to all things Trump, one of which, perhaps a bit hyperbolically, is named "Trump Will Be the Death of Our Country". Hyperbolic or not,I join them all. My sister astutely remarked, during the prevaricator-in-chief's first term, that the nation will survive Trump. True that. Indeed it did, and will yet again, but I responded, not witout some measure of merit, with a question: "Yes, it will, but in what condition?" It struck me, and still strikes me, that survival means individual as well as national survival, and I posted on the "Trump will be the death of our coutry" page, a partially rhetorical comment, which,roughly paraphrasing myself, went someting like: "I am looking for ways to deal in a healthy manner with my intense hatred of Trump." I typed it in large letters, which only added to the attention it received, which, in any event, would have been considerable. The responses and suggestions came pouring in, and I appreciate all of them, with sincere thanks. Someone, actually several someones, evidently ignoring my stipulation "healthy" suggested drugs and alcohol. Been there, done that. To quote Keith Richards: "I never got a flash from no cocktail"."Gummies", presumably of the marijuana laced kind, were a popular option. Well, maybe, but ingesting pot orally doesn't seem to do much for me, high wise. I'm a bong guy, as are, it seems, many of of fellow "Trump Will Be the Death of Our Country" countrymen. On the healthy side, one lady said that she exercies a lot, and meditates. Well, again, thanks to everyone for chipping in. Fact is, I have already tried every suggestion thus made long before thay were made, and still, no dice. My conclusion is that the only truly healthy way to deal with my hatred of Trump is...to simply feel it. Let it happen. Don't deny it. As we say, "let it out". As one of my friends adroitly said; "whatever is inside you must come out". I assume he was referring to emotional responses,rather than internal organs, which should never come out, or fecal matter, which must, at the risk of intestinal blockage. But the point is well taken; pent up emotions can lead to stress and anxiety, which in turn can lead to various mental and physical illnesses,ranging from schizophrenia to cardiovascular problems. At the end of the day, as we like to say, there is no solution to the bad health impact asociated with barboring hatred other than the most obvious, which of course is refraining from harboring it. As the Dhammapada says: "He beat me, he abused me, he defeated me, he robbed me. The hatred of those who harbor such thoughts is never appeased, but the hatred of those who do not harbor such thoughts is always appeased. And this is a law eternal." well, true enough. Nothing could be more obvious, nor wiser. I know full well that my mental and physical health will never be fully restored, nor the harmful effects assocated with negative emotions assauged, by using drugs, exercising, meditating, or anyt other prescription. There is only one way to stop harming one's self with hatred; stop the hatred. Never in my entire life did I ever have the faintest idea that I would ever come to hate anyone as much as I hate Donald Trump. I fantasize about his demise. I have loathed him for decades, ever since he started posing for front page pictures on the "National Enquirer" back in the day. My hatred of him grows by the day, and there seems to be no relenting of it. Perhaps there comes a time when the cancer has spread so widely that the metastasis is beyond control, and one can only acccept and somehow endure it. Such is my unrelenting hatred of Donald Trump. We change what we can, and endure what we must. Meanwhile, I am comdemned by my inherent nature to go right on hating Donald Trump. But it sure feels better to talk about it, even if nobody listens.

Still Going To Church

WE HAD TWELVE PEOPLE in the buiding Sunday, which for us was a good turn out. This includes the minister, the organist, the collection plate passer,and the "liturgist", a good friend of mine who sits near the minister and assists in the service, mainly by introducing the minister. The actual congregants usually number about five or six. The church has five formal members. I am not among them. Everybody counts. When we reach double digits, which we do not always, we're good to go. Liberal though I am, I, like people generally, am drawn to tradition, and I want our little congregation (Presbyterian) to continue to exist for another four years, so that, in 2028, we can celebrate two hundred years of continuous occupancy. The quaint brick church building was built in 1890. Before then, services were held in another building which no longer exists. But what counts for me is the continuous congregation for one hundred and ninety six years, and counting. I am bound, by my love of tradition, and determined to help usher in the third century of this historic entity. I have said before, and I still believe, that I will outlive this church, whose congregation has been steadily shrinking, like many congregations, for decades, and I am nearly seventy. I'd like to get hold of a list of all the ministers who have ever ministered there, if one exists. Our current minister is a "lay" minister", a retired attorney who gives a passably good sermon, altough he arguably spends a bit too much time and energy talking about himself in his sermons. (Imagine, an American, talking about himself). His remarks, however, are always appropriate. This past Sunday he talked about Jesus being a prophet elsewhere, but not in his home town, and saying so. Our minister was similarly, so he said, under appreciated in his smmall Iowa home town, so, he left, like Jesus. Altogether, I'm glad he did... All this, and I don't even like religion. It took a perfect storm to get me to attend church. First, the invitation, as a visitor. (Although I have been attending for nearly a year, I am not a member, and will never be, of any church. I would consider it inappropriate, and hypocritical, considering my general contempt for organized religion). I accepted the invitation, and decided to accept the offer of a free ride each Sunday morning. The donuts at the social gathering prior to the service, coffee and fellowship at nine A.M.,sealed the deal. I'm easy, it seems. The nine thirty worship service works well too; it lasts until ten fifteen, and we've just enough time for another donut and coffee fellowship in the lounge area before the lunch buffets begin at eleven. Perfect timing. Each Sunday after church I ride with the organist and his wife to a local restaurant for Sunady out-to-lunch. I by design never know in advance where we are going to eat. They do the driving, and no matter where we end up, its a pleasant surprise for me. I need to avoid lunch buffets, like most folks do, but easily cave to suggestions. Sometimes I end up taking most of my lunch home in a "doggie bag"; donuts before lunch can spoil one's appetite. Back home after being dropped off, I reflect on the pleasantness of the half day. I spend only a moment recalling Goethe's quote: "When I realized that everyone invents his own religion, I decided to invent mine."