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."

Trump, Impressively Harming

I NEVER, in my wildest imaginings, would have thought that a single human being could ever do as much damage to human civilization in one week as did our new president, Trump. Removing the United States from the Paris climate cagreement and from the WHO (World Health Organization) is sheer insanity, nothing but theatre, intended to make Trump look like a super patriotic "America firster". It will cost the U.S. dearly, in terms of influence on and within the global commmunity, and in terms of priceless, precious research data, the basis of all prosperity. A stunt to show our independence from world opinion, not America first, but, tragically, America alone. The world does not like Trump, except for the felllow tyrants and demagogues, people like Putin. On television Trump looks old, having aged much lately, and yes, he is too old to be president, as Biden was. Trump's offer to ofer to buy out any government worker who is interested in early retirenment is beyond crazy; beyond bizarre, intended only to give Trump a chance to actually replace two million government employees with MAGA cult members, to end the careers of the current competant federal bureaucracy, thus,according to Trump's twisted logic, destroying, once and for all, the "deep state". As always, his cult followers seem to agree with him; conservatives generally embrace the ficticious "deep state", in which millions of Trump-hating liberal democrats plot to destroy the country. Trump and his MAGA cult are seriously mentally ill, delusional, slightly more than forty percent of the American people, delusional conspiracy theorists. The sheer number of such people in America right now is amazing, and alarming, and they elected Trump and the Republicans. They embrace Trump's big election lie, deny climate change, and support the entire twisted "Project 2025" agenda, which they are already forcing on us. Trump is now claiming that the aviation disaster in Washington D.C. was caused by DEI (Diversity Eaualit Inclusion) policies. The government is forced to hire minorities, who are often less qualified, and cause disasters. according to the insane, juvenile reasoning. His executve order eliminating DEI from the federal government he and his MAGA gang insist will end reverse dicsrimination; what it will end is formal efforts to avoid racism in government hiring. Opposition to DEI derives directly from the exact same place in the political spectrum as do racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and such ills, and there is a direct connection between them. They are the people, a large percentage of the general population, who actually believe that the decline in the perentage of "white" people in America is an emergency, as if it truly matter what color the skin of Americans is, as if it matters how many Americans are white rather than black or brown. Anyone who thinks it matters is a racist. Blaming DEI for the air disaster is absolutely, stark, raving, idiotic, and it is typical of Truump; another clear demonstration of why his election was a complete tragedy and disaster for America, a tragedy and disaster which has but barely begun. Trump has already brokent the law by firing solicitors general without givng Congress prior notice, and he has alredy committed crimes as president, in his illegal executive orders. Thus is his inherent criminality once again confirmed. He simply does not care about the law. That we most likely have nearly four more years of idiotic statements, blatant lies, criminal actions, and harmful policies from Trump might be too much to bear, were we not confident of our ability to overcome and reverse it all.

Fading Away

OUR CHURCH MEMBERSHIP is now down to five, I heard the minister say. We seem to have lost a few members recently. One elderly lady, a grand matriarch of the church, moved into assisted living in another state to be near her family, and the old married couple which sat close to me seems to have moved on. And so it goes. The minister, Brother Bruce, suggests convening a congregational meeting to discuss the situation. That seems reasonable. What might be reasonbale might be to combine our congregation with that of another, larger church of the same denomination, and to shut the doors of our church building, tragic though that seems, and tragic though that would be, in many ways. What the five members decide to do with their religious futures is of course up to them. Even though I have been attending this church every Sunday for nearly a year, a am not a member, and I doubt whether I will ever be a member of any church or organzed religion, seeing as how I am not religious. I'm just a chronic visitor to any church I might attend. Churches throughotu the area in which I live, the United States, are losing membership, including in m area, the southern U.S..Europe has become a secular society, and the United States seems destined to do the same, despite the recent upsurge i fundamentalist evangelical religious fervor in America, accompanying the Trump phenonemon. Or minister is a retired attorney and lay minister, near eighty years old, and is under contract to be our minister through april, at which point he might decide it isn't worth it. I will be seventy in April, and am either the youngest or nearly the youngest person who attends the church. I predicted, and still predict, that I will outlive the church. The building is more than a hundred and fifty years old, and is a real classic antique,a worthy tourist attraction of American history. Although it is way out in the countr in a tiny town, the surrounding area in general is growing in population; it would be nice if "we" could lure some new members in, enough to keep it going longer. As of now, that aint hapnin'. By the time I was nine I was pretty sure I would never be religious. Now, I have, I think, a better understanding of why religion exists than I ever did, but no more inclination to become religious. People invent religions all for the same reasons; for comfort and inspiration, and to help them understand the inscrutable universe in which they live in fear. For most of my life I have been predicting that within a few hundred years religion would no longer exist on Earth, and would have by then faded away from lack of interest, as humanity becomes increasingly educated about scientific reality. I still think that's going to happen, is happening now, but I may be wrong. It may be that religions exist as long as people exist. Specific religions, however, all religions, have a life span; tehy are born, they grow, age, grow old, and die, just like people and civilizations. Religions of teh future will doubtless be different from those of the past, jsut as our curent religions are far different than their predecessorss, and indeed different even from their previous selves, as religions evolve over time. I find it warmly ironic that I, towards the end of my life, am actually ivolved in a church, hoping that it stops shrinking and starts thriving, and am trying to make that happen. Life is full of irony, eh?

Lying, On Steroids

DONALD TRUMP'S LIES are going to be far more egregious and blatant then during his first term, amazingly. He has clearly signaled this, by the outlandish nature of his lies duringh is first few days in office. The current whopper of the day is that all fifteen hundred of the people convicted of felonies related to the insurrecion of twenty twenty one are in fact...get this..innocent. Roughly fifteen hundred people, sentenced to prison or other punishments for such crimes as assaulting police officers, repassing, vandalism, caught on camera by more than one hundred million witnesses doing precisel these things.....innocent. Amazing, the rate of unjust convictions...That is the reason the prevaricator in chief now gives for his blanket pardon of violent criminals whose crimes were committed in service to himself. They, the violent criminals of MAGA, are in fact patriotic heroes, who were persecuted by the political system (under Biden) for political purposes, merely because they all chose to tour the Capitol building, en mass, on January 6,2021, the day the electoral college votes were verified. An estimated sixty percent of the American people do not approve of Trump's mass pardons of criminals, whch perhaps indicates that there is still a glimmer of hope for American decency and morality. And, as always, even more reprehensible than Trump for fabricating his criminal lies, are his tens of millions of followeres, for allowing him to do it whithout any repurcussions other than tacit approval. The narrative now among MAGA folk is that the Biden administration "used" the Department of Justice to conduct a campaign to destroy Donald Trump through the legal system, thus "politicizing" the D.of J., and using it for immoral, illegal ends..blah blah... This fatuous argument, of coruse, like nearly all reasoning offered by all Trump supporters on all topics, is complete piffle. Shortly before leaving office President Trump tried to steal his reelection bid, steal the presidency, and overthrow the government,violently, with a premeditated, carefully orchestrated plan by Trump. Under Biden, the Dapertment of Justice investigated the event. That's not politicizing the Justice Department; that's using it appropriately, to fight crime. When he left office, Trup stoel thousads of top secret documents, tried to hide the, denied stealing them, an refused to return them to the government when told to do so. For all this, the Justice Department under Biden investigated him Biden himself had nothing to do with it, the decision was made by Attorney General Graland. The decision was appropriate. A decision to not investigate this would have been a corruption of justice. Everytiem Trump tells an egregious lie, or does eomthing immoral or illegal, which s seemingly every day, a few of his supporters, still possessed of some semblance of decency and morality, express mild disagreement with Trump, faint, mild disagreement. Then, they say nothing further about it, as if by ignroing Trump's criminality it will just go away, as if it never existed. The extent to which Trump followers, tens of millions of them, are seemingly perfectly willing and content to act as accommplices to Trump's criminality, by supporting him, a man who, under any reasonable system of justice, belongs in prison, not in political office, much less the presidency..is astonishing. Astonishing that so many Americans are willing, over a long period of time, to give their full supprot to an obvious criminal simply because his values and beliefs so closely match their own. However, when you take a closer look at what those values are, it starts to make some sense, if not much, in pragmatic if not moral terms.

Legislating Gender Discrimination

WHAT I NEED is a list of Trump's executive orders. That shouldn't be a problem. Did he in fact sign one prohibiting transgender girls from playing girl's sports in all American schools, or public schools? What about transgender boys? Will they be prohibited from playing boy's sports? Does he have the power to do that? Does Congress? Or will it be abjudicated all the way to the Supreme Court, and will SCOTUS rule that its up to the states? Trump evidently signed an order declaring that in these United States, there are officially two genders, male, and female. This is in response to the fact that in recent years, there has been a sharp increase in the number of people who have "come out" and publically declared themselves to be a gender other than male or female. The number of actual non binary genders out there right now is unknown to me, and perhaps to everyone, but, suffice to say, probably considerable. Congress will probably pass legislation of this sort, a male and female only bill; Trump will doubtless sign it. We shall be a nation of male, female, and nothing else. What next? Will heterosexuality be legislated by Congress or decreed by der fuhrer Herr Trump to be the only acceptable sexual orientations in America? Legislating transgenderism out of existence by pretending that it doesn't exist might sound like a simple easy solution on the surface, but only a little cursory thought and analysis is required to see that it is in fact no such thing. Transgender and gay people and non binary people are going to exist, evidently in fairly considerable numbers, whether or not we the American people or mainstream conservative society or conservative Christian America, or whatever, pretends they do not, or tries to legislate them out of existence, and they are going to demand recognition, tolerance, and acceptance. A majority of Americans, despite Trump and Trumpism, believe that they deserve these things, which they considerable fundamental. Why can't MAGA-folk and conservative Christians, which are to a large extent the same people, get this through their indoctrinated little heads? So, here we go again, with more culture wars, wars that the right wing simply cannot, in the long run, win. Gay and transgender and non polar peeple have a large number of social and political allies; the progressive community, basically. Gay, transgender, and non polar people do not choose consciously to be who they are, any more than heterosexual people decide and choose to be heterosexual. They are compleed by their genetic make up to b what they are, just lie the rest of us, just like those of us with black or blonde hair, light or dark skin, just like those of uw who are either tall, short, or something in between. All these laws banning transgender kids from playing sports are nothing but pure discrimination, just a blatant as racist or ethnic or religious dicsrimination, and based on hatred and narrow mindedness, like all discrimination. Racism, gender bias, religious bigotry, and homo and transphobia are all products of traditional, conservative ideals and beliefs, not progressive. Progressive ideals and beliefs are opposed to all discrimination. By electing Trump, the United States has essentiallly written a blank check to the white Christian nationalist supremacist movement, and embraced the hatred it harbors for gay and trans people, as well as non Christian people, non white people, and progressive people opposed to conservatism. The forces of Trump will encounter resistance as powerful as the forces they have assembled to oppress us.

Pardoning Hardoned Criminals

DONALD TRUMP has been the subject of more essays than any livign human being, and that doesn't seem likely to change, especially now. Leave it to Trump to begin his administration with a flourish; he didn't disappoint. Of all the horrible, stupid, cruel, egregious, harmful things he has already done in a remarkably short period of time as president, none is more egregious than issuing pardons to cold blooded killers, murderers, isnurrectionists, cop killers, cop beaters. Evidently, the fact that Trump is himself a convicted criminal enhances his empathy for other convicted criminals. The fact that the recipients of the approximately fifteen hundred pardons committed their crimes in the direct service to Donald Trump was obviously a major factor in their being issued. I am glad that I happened to watch on television as Trump ranted and raved while signing the piece of paper with presumably fifteen hundred names on it of convicts to be released from prison, immediately. He obviously wasn't comfortable, and it was as if if he felt that he had to explain why he was doing this ostensibly horrible thing, even while he was doing it. As always, his reasoning renged from cloudy to the totally inane. They burned down Seattle (in the Black Lives Matter protests), and didn't get punished, prevaricated the president, as if what happened in Seattle several years ago justified in any way what he was doing; namely, excusing violent crime. Word has it it that already the far right wing extremist insurrectionist criminals have been released, and are on their way back to their homes, emboldened, to resume their activities in support of Trump. Groups like the "Proud Boys", newly reformed, reconstitutited, numbers soaring again, as tehy advocate for a pure white, patriarchial, conservative Christian America under Trump, from the America colony Canada, down to the Gulf of America. Of all the crazy, surrealistic things that Trump has said and done in the remarkably short period of time since he became president, none is more pricelsss than this business of the "Gulf of America". Unless I am confused and mistaken, which admittedly happens often, Trump actually signed an executive order changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America". One wonders whether the Mexican government will file a formal lawsuit against Trump and America in the International Court, and win. It cracks me up every time I think about that. All of this other crazy stuff Trump has talked about - the Panama Canal, Greenland, etc. - the thing to remember is that Trump is perfectly serious about all of it, and we are not finished hearing about it. If nothing else, the entertainment value of the second Trump administration is likely to be as great as that of the first, if not greater. Banning DEI from the government is mere theatre, although it may seem like more. It is too late to turn back the clock on diversity, equality, and inclusion as forces in American culture. In the future, any and all government personnel managers, while hiring new workers, are free to and encouraged to take into consideration the desirability of hiring a diverse ethnic, racial, cultural mix, and we throughout society can and will remind ourselves to treat everyone equally, and include everyone. Despite Trump, DEI is here to stay. The United States will also continue cooperating with the rest of the world for world health and for fighting climate change, despite Trump and his misguided MAGA movement which, despite present appearances to the contrary, is doomed to extinction.

The Standard Warning

JOE BIDEN is going out gracefully and graciously. I would be tempted to boycott the inauguration, but, that's me. His remarks and actions are right on the mark, noble and wise, although sometimes I wonder whether it might signal inhetegrity to issue presidential pardons a bit earlier in one's administration. One might also wonder whether President Biden thought he was issuing a novel warning to us, his remark about America being perilously close to slipping out of a democratic republic and into a plutocracy. We are on the verge of being taken over by billionaires, Biden stresed. Did he think that we didn't alreay perceive this, or hadn't been warned before? Jame's Madison's constitution went into effect on September 17, 1787. By 1792, Madison saw, or thought he knew that, it wasn't working out, this resurreced ancient idea of representative republican democracy. Madison's once firmly held belief that the wealthy, the "better sort" could be counted on to govern the nation in the best interests of the masses, the "lesser sort" had been tragically, shockingly incorrrect. They would do no such thing, and never had any intention to. Madison realizzed he migt as well have installed a constitutional monarchy, hopefully a benevolent one. The idea of the United states as a nation governed by the people, of the people, and for the people has always been, and remains, a sham. The constitution was written by and installed by powerful land owning white men who firmly believed that only wealthy, powerful, educated, land owning white men were capable of governing a nation, and that the masses of people in general, the "lesser sort", as Madison called them, were child -like, and needed close guidance and control. It could be argued, and probably is and long will be argued by scholars, historians, and political scientists, that the current political sitution in the United States proves that our founders, who had so little faith in us, were ultimately quite correct. These United States of America have always been a county owned and operated by the wealthy elite few for the wealthy elite few. Trump may be thought of as the culmination of a trend which has been brewing and growing for more than two hundred years, and doing so profoundly and rapidlly since Reagan. The consolidation of wealth and power in t hands of an elite few. The corporate oligarchy. Trump is assembling a government of billionaires, which will within hours begin governing on behalf of and in the best interests of the billionaire class, not the middle class or the working class I want to walk up to some of my friends and ask why anyone would even for a moment think that a billionaire from New YOrk City would have any interest in caring about or helping a dirt farmer in Arkansas, but so far haven't. Why bother? Biden's oligarchial warning reminded me of Eisenhower's military-industrial complex" warning in 1961, as I'm sure it did many people, including Biden. After all, its the same warning. The thing is, the cow is out of the barn, as we used to say. Warning this country about plutocracy at this point is about like warning southern California about wildfires. AS long as the poorest, most powerless Americans by the millions endorse our plutocracy by voting for it and electing it to office and forming a cult centered on a member of it; the plutocracy is here to stay. We the American people will perhaps hear the standard warning against concentrated power and wealth again in the future, by some future demagogue. The question will be whtether our descendants choose to resist it, or embrace it.

Humanity, Committing Suicide

IT CANNOT BE REPEATED often enough that compared to climate change, the United States, and the entire world, do not have any significant issues, including the threat of nuclear war, disease, famine, war, and all the rest. They all pale, compared to climate change caused by global warming caused by human acivity, namely, the burning of fossil fuels. Simply high school chemistry explains it. Those who passed it understand climate change, those who did not take or pass chemistry do not understand climate change, generally. And being human, their lack of understanding often causes them to deny its existence, which is not only a complete travesty, but truly tragic. The reality of climate change, and its disastrous consequencs, is now with us, glaringly. And over tht next few years, its going to get much much worse, fast. With Trump coming to power in three days, the United States is on the verge of greatly increasing its production and consumption of fossil fuels, which already are at an all time high. To save the nation and th eplanet wht we must do is to drasticallly decrease and eliminate our use of fossil fuels, fast. The election of Trump, from this very reasonable point of view, begins to appear like societal suicide. Those of us who took high school chemistry must band together and force Trump and the MAGA-Republican-conservative criminally insane mob to reverse course, to accept the reality of climate change and of our desperate situation, and to work with us to solve the problem. We must convince the religious fanatics that we can't wait around doing nothing and waiting for the lord to return and take care of everything, and we must convince that science deniers that the climate will not someday suddenly, magically, take care of itself, and, as Trump says "change back" to how it was before. By allowing Trump and his forces to take power in the United States we the American people are effectively commiting suicide, and taking the rest of the world with us. Every yer is hotter than the previous year. That is now a fact of life on planet Earth, and it is not going to change. Without some drastic change in our behavior the global temperatures will keep rising until Earth is uninhabitable for humans, and for most other species of life, if not all species. Maybe withan a year or two or three technology will provide a way to remove carbon from the atmosphere in huge quntities. Removing about a trillion tons of carbon from the air we breathe would indeed end human made climate change. The question is whether we can learn how to do that in time, or at all. We certainly cannot afford to assume that we can and will in the near future, any more than we can rely on Jesus or God to come to Erath and save us, or take to heaven the saved while the bulk of humanity remains on Earth to suffer and die in suffocating carbon dioxide and five hundred degree heat while those who are saved rejoice in heaven. Those of us who understand high school chemistry and global warming must make our voices heard, now, thunderously, in unison. We must force the climate deniers in power to abandon their mass insanity - because that's ultimately what climate chagne denial is. Trump and his mob are on the verge of destroying, removing all protections for the environment put in place by Biden and previous governments, and to embark on a project to kill us all with fossil fuels. We must save ourselves, even if it means destroying them.