Appropriately Supporting Trump

I MAY HAVE MENTIONED this before, and if so, I apologize, with the caveat that it bears repeating. Redundancy at times has its virtues. It is this: that the people who support Trump do so apropriately,that they should support Trump. I have often argued, as have others, that since the Republican party and the conservative movement generally has no shortage of proven, effective politians whose political ideologies are fundamentally in harmony with Trump's political agenda, sans the craziness, hatred,and incohenrence, why don't they change course, and back a candidate without the skeletons in the closet, the baggage, all the nonsensical insanity so evident in Trump's speech, character, and resume? The only and obvious answer is that Trump wins elections, that to give credit where due, that he is a winner, hard a pill though that may be to swallow for Democrats, decent people, and a few recalitrant Republicans like Liz Cheney and her ilk, rare Republicans of principle and high character. Those who support Trump remind me of Trump, I tell them. They never seem flattered to hear this. They know that he is a reprobate and moron, but he is their reprobate and moron. In 1920 H. L. Mencken predicted that under the current American political system the time will inevitably come when we the American people elect someone who in effect is a complete moron to the nation's highest office. Mencken was one hundred years ahead of his time. The time has come, the moron in effect is in office. Its like two of Trump's former professors at the Wharton school of business at the University of Pennsylvania, both of whom are still living and in their mid nineties agreed: that Trump is the dumbest son of a bitch they ever had in class. Often candidates are elected out of anger and desperation. FDR is the prime example.soetimes they are elcted because an entanglement of more than two people running for president makes it unaboidable that the winner of the election will have gotten only a plurality and not a majority of the vote. So it was with Abraham Lincoln, who won in 1860 against not one but three other candidates, representing regional interests. Thomas Jefferson won the eletion of 1899 with a somewhat similar entanglement of presidential candidates. The two party system usually guarantees a clean, straightforward contest between two choices, sans ambiguity. When pro temp third parties emerge, complexities result. I remember the election of 1964, when JBL landslided Barry Goldwater, man to mano, the momentum of the JFK legacy carrying him to victory. The nation wanted a continuation of Kennedy, and Johnson accommodoted by telling Congress "let us continue", and pushing forward the "great society", through Congress and through resistance in the eletorate, probably more effectively, ironically, than Kennedy ever could have. The moment he was murdered kennedy became more beloved than he ever was in life, as is always the case with dead people, and LBJ, whom the Kennedy's despised and called "Old Cornpone"(as if these Boston mackeral snappers had the slightest idea what "cornpone" actually is), astutely took that football and ran with it. Whatever is inside of you must come out, a friend of mine once wisely said, crude metaphor aside. Trump may be seen by history, and can be seen now, as a purgative which isneesssary to the purging of the American body politic. Our anger, frustration,an resentment at our failed systems lay within us, awaiting release. Along comes Trump with a bottle of that horrible tasting green liquid people are forced to drink before having a colonoscopy, we drink the ostensible hemlock, and off we to to our gut purge feeling empty, but somehow, cleansed. Soon enough we are back at the dinner table, filling back up. Let us polish off our bottle of bowel cleanser. Drain the gut, the swamp, the reflecting pool inside ourselves. We'll feel much better tomorrow.

Swimming In Two Pools

I KNEW A LADY on Facebook who had two swimming pools; a large one, and a small one. "I got a great big pool in my back yard. I got another great big pool right beside it": (Randy Newman:"Its Money That Matters"). Each day, she posted a picture of both of them on Facebook, side by side.The picture never changed.The small one, she explained, was actually a jacuzzi, The lady never posted a picture of herself that was less than thirty years old; she had been an attractive young adult, and I estimated her age in real space time to be close to mine, perhaps in her sixties. Nice looking, she was doubtless a nice looking late middle aged woman, a bit too concerned about her aging, distinguished looks. Wisely, she chose not to show her entire house, but just enough of it to convey an impression of fashionable, upper middle class affluence. Affluence signaling, as I saw it, without the inconvenience and risk of alerting thieves in the Tampa, Florida area where she lived and Facebook riff raff of the precise location of what to her was undoubtedly her greatest source of pride, probably courtesy of a husband with a lucrative professional career of some sort. She never mentiond him either, except indirectly, vaguely. Mafia type, maybe... I have a nice house too, but no pool, and I don't take pictures of it, pictures of myself, or pictures of anything else for that matter, for many reasons, for any reason, mainly photographic laziness. For me, a cell phone is a cell phone, not a camera, and I know what I and my material possessions and cats look like, and give not a fig whether anyone else does. It must be frustrating, wanting so badly to show the world your wealth, stymied only by an awareness that showing off comes with the risk of putting your pride and joy in jeopardy of attracting unwanted and perhaps harmful guests. I can remember a time,fifty years ago and more, when people who had money and material wealth were admired for their "success" and presumed social superiority. Admiration turned to resentment as a series of mid to late twentieth century recessions rubbbed millions of wage stagnated lower middle and working class Americans the wrong way.The shrinking middle class bifurcated, upper, and lower. Wages of the middle and working classes for fifty years have not kept pace with prices and corporate profits is a barnyard full of chickens coming home to roost.The expanding wealthy class,the expanding poor class, and our shrinking middle class helps explain our current political polarization. Without an economic center, the political center cannot hold. The free market is not the solution to every economic problem. The free market untainted by government intervention is not the solution to all economic problems, as Adam Smith is allegedy, wrongly, thought to have believed. Actually Smth said that all government action on behalf of the poor is desirable, but that no government action on behalf of the wealthy is. Those who cite Smith's seminal 1776 work "The Wealth of Nations" as the "Bible" of capitalistic economics are not inclined to mention this. In today's America, the middle class continues its fifty year shrink, and both extreme ends so the economic spectrum are expanding, somewhat alarmingly. At some point, to salvage what is left of free market capitalism, this trend will have to abate, and then reverse itself. The more money distributed among the more previously poor, marginal consumers, by whatever means, the more consumers of goods and services there are to produce the more manufactured wealth, by demanding a greater supply of it. Workers are also consumers, and there are more of them than there are wealthy or middle class purchasers of good sand services. One only needs so many television sets, cell phones, cars, and refrigerators. We can either give unto the poor with improved wages, or with governemnt transfer payment subsidies, to make real consumers out of them. Both ways work, work for good wages being the preferable means. It is the base of the economic pyramid that is the largest part, and which supports the entire structure, bottom to top. All that human beings build is built from the ground up, or, as Abraham Lincoln said, labor is prior to capital, and must be given the first consideration. A pyramid shaped society is what we want, with a long, flattened pyramid, where top and bottom are within reach of each other. After all, we all prefer swimming in a pool large enough to be more than a mere jacuzzi.

Reading

FORTY YEARS AGO a well intentioned friend of mine dug deep into his affluent pockets and rented a vacant building in the college town district for the then exorbitant sum of five hundred dollar a month. It was an old funky edifice in an appropriately funky, quirky college town party district. His intention was to establish a reading room within a local and national culture in which most Americans already had a place to read, and in which the average American reads one book or fewer after graduating high school. He outfited the old building with used furniture and book cases, filled them with books, and brought in as many interesting books and magazines as he could obtain, place them invitingly on tables next to comfortable chairs. He anticipated that some people would bring in their own reading mateiral,and perhaps, upon completing it, donate it to the cause...Only, nobody, other than an occasional straggler or two, bothered to showed up. No customers for the free service, perhaps not surprisingly. Local intellectuals and students, it began to appear, were already well provided with reading material and places to read, textbooks in libraries and private homes, He named his baby "Citizens and Philosophers", did no advertising, erected no signs to capture attention. My friend, it soon seemed, lacked not only business acuman, but possessed of surfeit of wishful thinking, if not presumption. Cutting his losses, He closed up shop, if memory serves, after two months. A mutual friend, a Republican capitalistic type, laughed at him, at how he could possibly even think about opening a business without intending to make a profit from it. At the time my idealistic pseudo entrepenuer friend said that he got the reading room's name from a quote: "The failure of our educational system is the failure to make of us citizens and philosophers." I thought that the quote was beautiful, but never managed to find attribution for it. Even today, Even the great God of Google doesn't seem to know. Maybe nobody said it. Maybe my friend was as imaginative in his literary attributions or lack thereof as he seems to have been in his business universe. It may be true, and doubtless is, that we could do better in instilling civic virtues. Todays' public school curriculum has tended in recent years more toward pragmatic electronic device training, and business training, and less towards the humanities and science. High school students are still probably playing "Solitaire" on their laptops and I phones in class. Or most likely they have moved on to Snap chat and Facebook, and who knows what else. We use our electronic devices to make imaginary connections and friendships in cyber space, as we used to call it, while our connections to other non bot entities in real blood and bone space time dwindle into faceless anonymity. We send text messages to people who are in the same house we are. We are all aware of this, and whereas some people consider it a problem, most people don't seem to concern themselves with it, or even care, a little. I'm an old man who, ike much of the American population, prefers the company of dogs and cats to people. The real consequences of our current socioogical dysfunction will be felt long after I am dead. The average American has one good friend, and the average American is lucky to have that many friends at the end of his or her life. We could use a few Citizens and Philosophers reading rooms all across America's fruited plain. But probably not before we start reading again, and not before we start talking to each other again, instead of to our machines.

Bequeathing

ELON MUSK, it is extrapolated, will have become the world's first trillionaire by the end of this working day. Rumor has it that he plans to celebrate by putting his dirty, work stained overalls in his washing machine, or taking them to a laundromat, leaving them in the dryer for one of his people to tend to, and repairing to a local pub to stand a few select friends to a round of stout. They're all wealthy, quite. The ultra wealthy tend not to hang out with the unwashed masses,the "hoi polloi". I once mentioned to my father that poor people seem to be more generous than wealthy people, that statistics indicate this, and he agreed "How do you think they got wealthy", he asked, rhetorically. Never lose a friend over a ten dollar bill, he told me. I'm not aware of any charitable foundations underwritten by Musk or for that matter his friend Trump, Surely such things exist. At some point in the eighteen eighties J.D. Rockefeller beame the world's first billionaire. During that time his personal income, from Standard Oil, was estimated to be around one million dollars a day. He was somewhat more generous, and funded education, just as Andrew Carnegie paid for libraries. So did Cornelius Vanderbilt and Leland Stanford, whose eponymous universities bear witness to their philanthropic proclivities. In our present day,, philanthropically, Bill Gates ranks among the best, he having already given away almst all of his formerly vast fortune to various worthy causes. Warren Buffett, who insists tha the has neither the desire nor the intention to establish a legacy in his own name, will bequeath a paltry million dollars or so, maybe less, to each of his children, and donate the rest to charity. Gates and Buffett have teamed up for this purpos, forming the "Bill and Melinda Gates Foudation." My older sister, who has no human children, loves cats and though not especially wealthy is wealthier than I, upper middle class, says that sh eplans to leave her money to the Cornell University School of vetrinary medicine, where ground breaking research is being done, probalby in honor of her beloved bygone pets. (I might suggest another arrangement, but why bother? My house is paid for, I also have no children, I have food on the table, and my cats eat better than I. Sis says that she would love to enjoy the standard of iving of my cats. I decide some years ago to tak eout o reverse mortgage on my house, so I don't have to keep paying the mortgage and can still keep the title in my name. A friend pointed out that this is a complete ripoff. I beg to differ. It would be, if I had children. A recent study revealed that we baby boomers prefer spending our money now, on travel, frivolity, and what not, rather than leaving it to our children. The Gen Exxers, millennials, or whatever generation the scions of baby boomers are, will, it seems, have to get by largely on their own. Wealth and inheritance taxes, so despised by all Americans with any money to speak of, are not currently on the table, but will probably get there within the fairly near future. Goethe said that "We are indeed immortal, made so by the effects of our actions". The atoms which comprise our bodies and brains once circulated through the bloodstream of Julius Caesar. We have existed, in various forms, repeaedly to the point of infinity. Our only true inheritance, ourselves, was forged in the fiery furnaces of dying stars billions of years ago. We, as Carl Sagan said, are star stuff. We have lived as long as the universe has lived, and will die only when the cosmos dies. But it too, we now believe, will be reincarnated, God, for whatever reason, made it hard if not impossible to get rid of anything and everything, including us.

Surviving A Deflating Trump

FIRST, Trump said that the current inflation is a very, very good thing, like, totally terrific. After all, everything is more valuable than it used to be, and how can that not be a good thing? We can all get rich, quick. To his intellectual rescue came some underpaid caregiver, who gently but surely informed the addlepated president that inflation is actually not a very good thing, not at all, and in fact is, like, bad, specially for poor and middle class people, because that means that prices for consumer goods is going up, and that therefore everybody, including the poor,is paying more for everything. Into the fray and to the rescue self inserts Mary Trump, the president's niece, with a doctorate in abnormal psychology, who knows her uncle well, all too well, probably better than she might like to. She confirms our worst suspicions, that of her uncle's narcissistic personality disorder,among his many other mental health maladies. From what she knows, he's been this way his entire life, but with advancing age, left untreated, its getting worse, much worse. Help is available; psychotherapy, oral medication, perhaps a frontal lobotomy or two. A sick person, however, must want and seek help before others can step in, and they must be ready, able, and willing to help themselves. Donald Trump's recent allegation that he is a genius clearly indicates mental illness, the diagnoses being delusions of grandeur, criminal insanity, rampant narcissism, you name it, take your pick. Aside from the fact that true geniuses rarely if ever call themselves "geniuses", Trump, as is evident to everyone even remotely discerning, is clearly not one. Arguably, the word "genius" is meaningless. Compared to slugs and rocks, we are all brilliant. As Goethe said: "When one respects nothing, it is no trick to be brilliant." A couple of times a year Trump's personal physician dutifully pronounces the presidential sex addict and offfender fit as a fiddle, physically, for a man his age. (It might damage the good doctor professionally to do otherwise.). American presidents, like cats, almost always conceal their weaknesses and illnesses. Most people never even knew that FDR was confined to a wheelchair. He was shown on video "walking", bouncing along with a security man on either side, propping him up. Woodrow Wilson lay in bed for two years after having a debiitating stroke. His wife carried on as a behind the scenes first de facto woman president, smooth as silk. Had Lincoln not been shot, he would likely have been dead soon anyway, long before he was due to leave office, his body ravaged by a strange growth related disease. Eisenhower had heart attacks only a few folks knew about. JFK, of course, who really was a near genius, was afflicted by Addison's disease, another weird and rare ailment. We the people really have no need to know the details of Trump's various physical disfunctions. His mental and emotional disabiities are proudly on display, front and center. The problem with Trump, which is everybody's problem, is that not only is he getting noticeably worse, he also has a while longer to be president, and that, in the event of his inability to continue to "serve", his constitutionally mandated replacement is utterly, entirely, unacceptably intolerable. But somehow the ancient Romans survived Nero. Great Britain survived King George III. The Russians made it trhough Ivan the Terrible, even while the troubled tsar clipped the wings of pigeons and tossed them off of the tops of tall buildings. My prescient sister tried to comfort me by assuring me that this too shall pass, that America will survive Trump. I agree, but the question I was and still am afraid to ask is: "In what condition?"

Trump, Disrupting (Finding A True Home)

IN 1969 TEXAS played Arkansas in a December football game in what was then termed "the game of the century". Since then, there have been several such game of the century college football games. More will come.Entering this final week of the season the teams were both undefeated, and were ranked number one and two in the nation. The entier nation watched on televiion. Texas scored a late touchdown and won the game, 15-14. As an avd fourteen year old Arkansas fan I was seriously depressed, aside from the fact that I didn't get to watch the game because at the time I was marching down Main Street in a small town playing my trumpet with my high school band in a Christmas parade, a place where I didn't want to be. At the last moment president Richard M. Nixon decided that he wanted to attend the game in person. The college twon of Fayetteville, Arkansas lacked an airport large enoough to accommodate Air Force One, so Nixon landed iin Little rock and flew in to Fayeteville on a helicopter which landed next to the football stadium, inconveniently for the University, conveniently for Nixon, who cared not a whit about inconveniencing other people. I was excited nonetheless, and all and all I thought the situation was pretty cool, my Razorbacks hitting the big time. I resented missing the game, that is, until I found out the final score. Turns out teh band and parade spared me an even more broken heart, but at the time, I didn't see it that way. My father,a graduate fo he Arkansas law school and avid Razorback fan, didn't think Nixon's behavior was so damned cool. he was angry that Nixon,without prior preparation, had used his power and prestige to not only disrupt local air traffic, ground traffic, the local police and stadiumsecurity, but worst of all, had forced several dozen regular fans out of their usual fifty yard line seats and up into the closely packed quarters of the press box, where thay had to stand behind members of the media, packed together. History never repeats itsef, but it rhymes. Flash forward to 2026. Without adequate planning, into Madison Square Garden strolls Trump like a troll, who just had to watch the Knicks-Spurs game in person. People in position of power, inconveniently ruining the plans for the common people, the little people, the millionaires who should have been there. In a nation wher "all men are created equal", let the big boys stand in line to buy a ticket, like everyone else. I'm pretty sure that my father is turning over in his cremains. He initially attended the University of Missouri law school, but hated it and flunkded out,spending more of his time writing songs and playing keyboard in a college jazz band than hitting the law books. But he transferred to the U.of A. law school, and there he found his true home. He remained closely tied to the school his entire life, and gave money and donated a valuable law library to it. When he died in 1986, I knew what I had to do. I scattered his ashes all over the front lawn of the University of Arkansa law school, where he said he spent the best days of his life. I plead no contest to improperly disposing of ashes, human remains, from an urn. I hope the statute of limitations has run out on that crime. I did my doctoral work at Arkansas, partly because Columbia and Missouri University turned down my application, partly because I inherited my father's love of Arkansas and our beloved Razorbacks. I spent my entire career teaching at Arkansas. Many of us spend a lifetime searching for our true homes, and, if we are fortunate, lord willing and the creek don't rise, we find it, even if it takes a lifetime. Things worked out well for me. People like Trump and Nixon, tragically, deservedly, never seem to find a true home, anywhere.

Becoming Tired

I AM BECOMING Tired of it all; the bitterness, the hatred, the ceaseless acrimony. I refer to the current state of American politics. I for one am willing to set aside my long standing hatred of Trump, and to take a new look,even though there is most certainly a vanishingly small chance that I will find anything new and different, different than the usual pathetic, hateful,snarling liar in chief. I do not expect this new approach to be popular among my fellow anti-Trumpers. Somehow, I'll survive. A good place to start is with the policies of the Trump administration, both foreign and domestic. C Van Woodward, a preeminent historian of the American south (I forget whether the old south or the new, post Civil War south), who began one of his monographs with the sentence "five times during the American experience the celebrated art of compromise has held the union together", paraphrased. When I was in graduate school at a major university, in the doctoral program, eminent historian C. Van Woodward was invited and accepted the invitation to be the guest speaker at te annual end of the year history-fest, or whatever they called it. One of the professors had a big pot luck party in his home, and I recall one of my fellow grad students, going a bit overboard, going from pot to pot,heaping an amount of food on a plate that no three hundred pound athlete nor anyone else could possibly comsume, and handing it to the esteemed scholar.The food eas excellent, and although I had already stuffed myself full of it, I was envious, and would gladly have acepted and devoured the entire plateful. I was not only a lowly graduate student teaching basic freshman history courses to earn my stipend as a doctoral student, I was also an ardent tennis player and exercise enthusiast, in my late twenties, still in possession of a metabolism and appetite worthy of a high school or college athlete... C.Van Woodward was unequal to the task. Although a large man of ample girth who was obviously no stranger to a large plate of food, he seemed overwhelmed, and barely took a bite... Five times...the celebrated art of compromise... His reference was to compromises made at the constitutional convention of 1787, the compromise of 1877 by which the federal occupation of the defeated south was lifted, the Missouri compromise, and so forth. The word "compromise" is apparently lacking not only from our modern political vocabulary and discourse, but also from the American political process itself, at a fundamental level. We now live in an allor nothing world and political climate, or so it seems to this humble observer of contemporary American politics. While all this was happening Ronald Reagan was president of the United States, and then as now, the nation was divided, between Reaganites and his opponents, among whom I numbered. Arguably the United States has always been a divided nation, in one way or another; whether or not to separate from Great Britain, whether to join the union or the confederacy, whether to legislate probition, whether to repeal it. The list is long. My strongest memory of a divided nation was the Viet Nam war, when I was a child. When I was twelve years old, in 1967, I had doubts about it, about whether it would ever end, whether the United States could possibly extract from it anything resembling "victory". In January, 1968, when the massive Tet offensive failed miserably and the American military slaughtered the attacking North Vietnamese army and the Viet Cong, although I had not yet turned thirteen, I saw, or thought I saw, the "handwriting on the wall". The failure of the Tet offensive seemd to deter the North not one iota. The Viet Nam war, essentially dating back to the French acquisition of it, who had colonized the Asian country in 1862, and were trying to keep their hard won "possession" trying to keep the colony for which it had sacrificed much to aquire and retain. World War Two spelled the end of the French owned Viet Nam, and of most of their overseas colonial empire. Overseas empires of major western powers are in decline. National self determination is the trend. And so powerful nations, their international influence waning, are forced to look inward, upon themselves. So it is with the American empire, forced to once again look inward at itself, despite its apparent reluctance to do so. Nietsche said it best: "If thou gaze long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into thee." Maybe a bit of fatigue would benefit us all.

Militarizing Religion

THE PENTAGON, I am informed, maintains a list of organized religions which it recognizes as organized religions, an impressive achievement for a five sided edifice. But, I digress. It, the Pentagon, the human beings within the building, most likely a select few people of high military rank, has determined that no fewer than one hundred and eighty of them will be removed from the list. The criteria by which those cast off will be eliminated was not immediately announced; it may be that when a recognized religion dwindles in numbers of votaries below a certain point, it is booted off the list. A military machine, maintaininng a list of religions, and classifying them according to its recognition and approval. Somehow, there is something ironic in that. Ironic, in that, as far as I know, every religion on Earth not only condemns human violence generally and individually, but also, of the organized sort engaged in by military establishments. Might one assume,that according to Christian theology, in order for mankind to live in accordance with the teachings of Christ, that all military institutions, including armies and navies, should not and would not exist if all nations and their citizens fully embraced the teachings of Christ? Arguably, yes. By what reasoning does any military organization involve itself in any religion at all, or acknowledge any? Well, the reasoning is that when most people enter into military service, they bring with thm their religiosity, and do not, and cannot "check it" at the door. But perhaps it would be better if they did or were required to. One possibility would be to establish as official military doctrine that the military is a secular institution, with no formal acknowledgment of any particular religion, or religion in general, but that all military personnel are free to practice their respective religions, off base, and out of uniform? The answer, it would see, is that religiosity is very real, inherent in the human heart, mind, and soul, whether or not one serves in the military, and, again, that nobody suddenly ceases to ambrace or practice one's religion by merely checking it at the door upon entering into military service. Requiring such personal denial of religious faith would further run the risk of demoralizing, in more ways than one, mmilitary service members. In our modern times many people, usually well educated intellectuals, disparage all religion, tending to consider it anachronistic. I am among them. But those of us who share this attitude would do well to remind ourselves that religiosity is a phennomenon fundamental to the human mind, but that it also serves as a solid, firm pillar upon which we support and nurture one of our most fundamental inclinations; to regard ourselves, our lives, and our creator with wonder, reverence, and awe. There may indeed come a time when not only is there no religion in any military institution, and there are no religions, and no military institutions, including huge, well organized militaries, land, sea, and space, permanently in place, ever prepared to engage in organized violence, for reasons which are always justified by those who choose to make war. We appear to be far from perpared to take this culturally evolutionary step foreard. And since we humans remain addicted to our petty, barbaric violence in highly organized form, perhaps we soften the situation a bit by embuing it with the highest form of spiritual nobility at our disposal, our philosophies and our religions.

Civilizing, Slowly

ROBERT HEINLEIN intimated that the degree to which a culture, a society, a civilization is civilized is indicated by the level of cleanliness in its public restrooms. According to that standard, America is in deep doo doo, so to speak. One might suggest other standards of measurement. One possibility is to measure the treatment of the infirm, the poor, tne very young, and the very old. Precisely how do we treat the vulnerable, the least among us? How do we treat animals, including those that we raise in factory farms and slaughter wholesale for our own consumption? Many things can be measured in many different ways. In Islamic countries, cats are considered sacred animals. The prophet Muhammed was in danger of being bitten by a deadly poisonous snake. A cat killed the snake, but not before being bitten itself. The cat died, but not before the prophet stroked its back gently, after which all cats were destined to be beautiful for all time. Henceforth all cats would have a special, priveleged place in Islamic society, to this day. Islamic cities, like all big cities, are filled with stray cats, due to human irresponsibility, and human compassion. But in Musli cities they are not ignored and regarded as nuisances, they are cherished and respected, regarded amost as special heavenly angels. They are cared for by the public in general. Anyone who brings harm to a cat on an Islamic street is in serious trouble. In the USA we don't do quite as well, but are evidently doing a bit bettter. There is a growing movement in America to stop murdering cats systematically because nobody wants to care for them. Why not let the live, free and loose on our streets, having been spayed neutered, and vaccinated? If nothing else, give them a chance to live. Let American culture emulate the nobility of Islamic cat life. At my local senior center I pointed all this out, and for my trouble some self righteous Christian nitwit left on my desk a couple of brochures and pamphlets lecturing me on the unique truth of the Christian faith. Wow. Talk about missing the point. I was talking about culture and cats, not religion, for heaven's sake. We in the United States have a long ways to go, but we can get there. We can become more compassionate towards the vulnerable. We should, arguably, begin to build a better society, one in which stray dogs and cats do not have to get their meals from dumpsters. A society in which all citizens feel not only obligated, but eager to render whatever assistance they can to those in need, including animals. We here in proud, arrogant, individualistic America should, it can be argued, not only do a better job of taking care of each other, but a better job of respecting cats, dogs, and all animals. Anyone who thinks that this is an advocacy for a vegetarian lifestyle is quite correct. Hypocriically, when I dine at the senior center, I eat meat, because meat is served. When in Rome. At home, where I make out the menu, I go vegetarian. Today's meat substitutes are of excellent quality. Albert Einstein was asked to make a contribution to a time capsule, to be opened in one hundred years. His contribution was a message to future generations. Paraphrased, it said: "If you people of my future have not become kinder, more compassionate and tolerant than we were, may the devil take you". Seventy years after Einstein's death, we still have a ways to go. Our progress towards becoming civilized has been, and remains, slow and tortured. But we are trying. Humanity is less violent now than it ever has been in history, hard as that seems to believe. We are evolving upward from savagery, lurching towards civilization. The Ohio Supreme Court recently ruled that stray dogs and cats have the same legal protections as pets. California has passed a law prohibiting the barbaric and cruel practice of declawing of cats. Maybe there will come a day when all animals receive proper, compassionate treatment, and American public restrooms are all spiffy clean. But for now, they, like all of us, like our culture and society, could still stand a bit of sprucing up.

Apologizing, and Forgiving Ourselves

I SUFFER from two mental illnesses,my twin towers of disability. Guilt, and paranoia. My office mate in grad school pointed out wisely that both of these are complete bullshit. I agreed then, and I agree now. My sister, who shares and emmpathizes with our shared guilt, suggested that either we were born into a Catholic family without knowing it, or that we both, over the course of our lives, have "evolved" into Catholics, again, without being aware of it. This, aside from the fact that Catholics formalize and ritualize the expunging of guilt has nothing to do with whether they, as human beings, actually experience more of it thn anyone else. I wish I had started, years ago, to keep track of the number of times I have apologized to people. I recall hitting tennis balls with a friend of mine who, although a good athlete, was not a tennis player. I mentioned to him that if he ever decided to actually become a tennis player, working on his game on a daily basis, that he could become quite good at the sport. I was trying to hit the ball down the middle of the court, right to him, setting him up for easy shots. I was so determined to serve tennis balls to him on a silver platter, that I realized this was as effective a method of working on my game as trying to hit the ball to every corner of the court, and that his errant, unpredictable shots were good practice for me as well, making me scramble all over the court chasing down his wild shots. I felt obligated to feed him easy shots, and everytime I failed to do this, I softly said to him from across the court "I'm sorry". I must have apologized to him for hitting too tough a shot...what... a hundred times? Within a half hour of hitting tennis balls I had racked up dozens of "I'm sorries". As an experienced college level player, I felt obligated to feed his tennis balls suitable for beginners. Finally, after enduring several dozen apologies, he had had enough. Would you effing stop apologizing every damned time you make a mistake?! Even he, a tennis beginner, understood that when you play tennis, you make mistakes, no matter who you are. I recall years ago watchig a tennis match on television which involved my favorite player of all time, Bjorn Borg. Borg, of course, is considered by many to be one of the best if not the very best, the "G'O.A.T., as we like to say these days. In the middle of a very important match, (it may have even been Wimbledon), the great Borg swung at a tennis ball, and missed it entirely. No contact, like some rank green beginner. He was slicing his racket strings across the ball at a steep angle, barely grazing the ball, putting hard spin on it, as was his style, and he simply cut one too close. Borg acted as if nothing had happened, no problem, and got right back on his game for the next point, a real pro. I learned a valuable lesson. If he, perhaps the greatest to ever swing a racket, is capable of making such a mistake, (the match was on clay, and the ball took a bad bounce), then why, in the name of Billy Jean King, should I fret and fume over a few bad shots off my racket? One of my best tennis buddies had the same habit,incessantly apologizing for no real reason, and every time we played tennis together, even while we were warming up, the number of needless apologies issued between us must have climbed into the thousands. The answer, as it so often does for me, comes from Goethe, who said: "Since everyone makes mistakes, since even the greatest among us have made mistakes, we have no reason to regard our own errors as inexcusable." I have another friend who says that apologies are bullshit. That I don't agree with. A sincere, appropriate apology is, to my thinking, among the noblest forms of human behavior. Well intentioned people seem to always be their own harshest critics. And although there is much to be admired in this, this determination to ceaselessly seek self improvement, what benefit do we gain by endlessly chastising ourselves, reminding ourselves or our shortcomings, while failing to give ourselves due credit for the nobility of soul we exhibit when we offer, in sincerity, a heartfelt apology? As Goethe said: "Only by errors which really irk us do we advance". We are taught by Jesus to forgive people, without hesitation. Surely we should not hesitate to forgive ourselves.

Time, Running Out

IN THE "That's hard to believe" department, the "where did all the time go?" category, it has now been twenty years since Al Gore's seminal movie "An Inonvenient Truth" was released. Its likely that many people who had been undecided, "on the fence" about this crucial issue, left the theatre convinced that climate change is indeed very real. The more the merrier. You go Al Gore. Who knows? Perhaps someday future historians will write that the late twentieth century American Vice President Al Gore founded the first effective climate movement which, after much struggle and resistance, at long last grew strong enough to tip the balance away from climate denial and towards climate action, and that the resulting pro climate movement succeeded in electing enough political leaders who finally, after years of struggle, convinced corporate leaders and the corporate investment community that there is money to be made by fighting climate change, even more money than can be made by causing it and ignoring it. As climate change becomes worse, and more people are impacted directly by it, the percentage of "believers" increases, and public policy, driven by public opinion, begins to become more sane, more receptive to reality. The Trump administration is pursuing policies intended to essentially subsidize the dying coal industry, incredibly, almost as if having joined a death cult, bent on human extinction. Climate deniers must bend over backwards denying obvious scientific reality, They refuse to accept the simple reality that when you burn coal,coal dust end up suspended in the atmosphere, mainly carbon, which traps more heat in the atmosphere than does the normal nitrogen oxygen air mix. Its strange to think of people rejecting simple scientific reality, because the truth is that the environmental beliefs and policies of progressive political thought are urgently needed now. Meanwhile, good old conservative coal and oil, which are slowly but steadily killing us, both have full conservative unwittingly suicidal support. Thus the Republican party and the American conservative movement underpinning it is a sort of unwitting death cult. But hope remains. Slowly, all too slowly but inexorably, climate denial seems to be waning. Let us so hope and pray. We reject the truth, accurately said Goethe, only because we fear that accepting it will destroy us. Rejecting the truth about global warming and climate change will indeed destroy us, and in fact is already causing human misery and death at an increasingly alarming pace. The situation regarding the slow huan resposne to climate change makes it increasingly urgent and necessary to "rub it in" to all necessary faces, most notably conservative visages in denial. We must accept reality before we can begin in earnest to save ourselves from it. There will soon come a time when no amouont of human assisted healing of the sick and angry planet Earth will restore its fragile paper thin ecosystem to health. Surely we can all see, looking at pictures of blue planet Earth taken from outer space, that the Earth is a tiny speck of miraculous matter in an inconceivably large universe, and, whetehr or not the universe if full of life of barren of it, is suffficiently miraculous to go to any length necessary to save. Even if the universe is full of life, the millions of species on tiny blue Earth are surely unique in all the cosmos, and that if we indeed commit suicide by poisoning the Earth to death, we will have commited the greatest of all possible crimes, by destroying what the universe created, and what it obviously fully intends to exist, perhaps, as Carl Sagan said, as a way of knowing and understanding itself.

Trump, Keeping Control

YOU CAN watch the news on any given day, and within minutes get some good material to think, talk, or write about. You can turn down the volume, and get your amazement by just reading the headlines. These days, it doesn't take long to become amazed, unless you're one of the lucky ones who has become oblivious to it. "DOJ To Investigate E. Jean Carroll" rolled across the screen and caught my attention this morning. This really shouldn't seem surprising by now, but in a nation with a traditional democracy, its rather hard, as millions have discovered, getting used to having your government taken over by a gang of fascists, through the elecoral process.Many women have accused Trump of raping them, a couple of dozen, if not more. There seems to be a pattern. Most of these alleged victims have been mree inconvneiences rather than problems to Trump ever since, who has apparently spent millions of dollars to pay the ladies off, to keep them quiet, under control. But of course Donald J. Trump has never been one to be content by merely keeping anything or anybody under control. He is much more the dominate and destroy type. So now don the Con, ever ready to exact harsh retirbution for alleged slights, has decided to sic the FBI on the poor hapless lady. She is to be investigated, thoroughly, for nothing and everything in particular; id you dig deep enough, you will either strike pay dirt, or fabricate some. Joseph P. Kennedy allegedly asid about his son Robert F.: "When Bobby hates you, you stay hated." This mafia mentality of revenge and reprisal is at the rotten core of the thoroughly rotten heart and soul of our current chief executive. Trump's had so many people accuse him of doing so many nefarious things, and has accused so many people of nefarious behavior - at one point he was involved in an incredible four thousand law suits, many of them accusing Trump of something, many others in which Trump accuses somebody of something, that one or two lawsuits, more or less, either way, would normally merely blend in with the rest, and og largely unnoticed by the media and general public. Most of them see to linger in abjudication for years, even decades, dragging on. Trump actually seems to be trying to run out the clock on looming potentially unfavorable verdicts. But E. Jean Carroll has been lurking, a thorn in Trump's side for years, the wounded MAGA-Christ, the splinter resistant to extraction. But the don always gets his revenge, and revenge, says an old Spanish proverb, is a dish best served cold. E. Jean Carroll is almost certainly clean, unblemished by personal scandal, with little or no dirt to dig up. Investigations skake up up people's lives, clean or otherwise, by turning the upside down. To be investigated is sometimes the same as being punished, victimized by revenge. Somehow you, and probably she, knew all along that she could not elude the wrath fo the don forever. Her time has come, evidently, to take a hit from the mafia don, the don of dons, as they say. At this point you wouldn't be surprised if she up and vanished altogether, sleeping with the fishes, as they say, with Jimmy Hoffa, at the bottom of Lake Michigan. Trump brings lawsuits for revenge, lawsuits his lawyers know will be thrown out of court by any sane judge. Its comforting to know that E. Jean Carroll is, in our legal system, largely beyond the reach of Trump, or so it seems. If she keeps her mouth sut and quietly goes away, she'll probably be just fine. But if she ever decides to write and publish a book, which is exactly what seems to be happening now, to seek public attention for her history with Trump, don't be surprised if, in the middle of her book tour, she turns up missing, and is never found.

Trump, Taking Advantage

THE EPSTEIN FILES are truly important, to everyone, in that, in theory, they prove that Trump is a criminal and a sexual predator, both of which we already knew, and would have known anyway. What they evidenly clearly demonstrate is that Trump used his wealth, fame, and power to expolit underage girls by exually molesting them when he had the opportunity, of which eh evidently never failed to take advantage. Then too, there is Trump's status as an adjudicated rapist, as established by the federal courts. It is perfectly fair and appropriate for people opposed to Trump politically to point all this out, to force Trump supporters to acknowledge it, and to explain, based on it, their continued support of Trump. Either they pretend its all a hoax, or they ignore it. Both methods are deeply dishonest.It puts them (MAGA) i a potentially uncomfortable position which, one must admit, they generally do an excellent job of avoiding largely by dancing around it. One harkens back to Bill Clinton, and the fact that, like Trump, multiple claims of rape were made against him by multiple women. According to statistics, ninety five percent of the time claims of rape are valid, and that women,relatively rarely fabricate claims of sexual abuse for financial gain or other reasons. Of teh several dozen women who have accused Trump of raping them, all of them seem credible, from people who have given sufficiently consistant and verfiable details to make their versions appear quite genuine, sincere, factual. It is a fact that a very percentage of rape victims never report the crime to law enforcement. Just as many if not most or even all American presidents were guilty of one form of criminal activity or another, wealthy powerful men in general, including those who carefully cultivate a public image of virtue, often succumb to the temptation take advantage of their inherent appeal to women. Wealth, power, an fame are resources, and females are conditioned by nature to seek mates with resources, so called "eligible" men.Men who have wealth, fame, and power, but lack basic decency and morality, are no les harmful to society in general than to the people they exploit.We as a society tend to give power to those who seek it with the highest level of desire. We should probably do the exact opposite. Having enough of a desire to obtain wealth and power by any easn possible or necessary is enough to disquality those from having the power they so deeply desire. Among America's founders it was considerable bad form to openly express a desire for political power, or to go about the business of openly, actively seeking it. This attitude was probably a reaction to the tyranny imposed on early Americans by Great Britain and its king. George Washington accepted a high ranking military command to serve his country, but was extremely reluctant to assume the power of even the new American pesidency, let alone of a king, which many Americans preferred that he become. Arguably, perhaps undeniably, the best, most efficient form of government is a benevolent dictatorship. Problem is, good dictators, willing to serve, are hard to find. It seems that only corrupt people even desire so much personal power. We continue to admire Washington for turning down a chance to be a king. Maybe we would all have been better off if he had accepted the offer, and established a Washington family monarchy. In any event, he ruined any possibility of that, by not having children. We seem to have fallen far. It is almost impossible to even imagine George Washington being involved in anything like our modern scandals. Even if he was, maybe we're better off not knwing about it.

Attending Church, Religiously

WRITING THIS ESSAY will have to serve as a sort of religious service for me this Memorial Day Weekend. I chose not to go to church yesterday. My excuse is that I felt unwell. A flare up of gout which I failed to quench with medication in time. I like going to shucrh, and miss it when I don't go, whether or not I belong there, theoogically. Not only that, but there is more than one single church that I enjoy going to, so, I rotate. I somehow strongly suspect that, it never would nor will it ever really matter to me what if any curch I attend, but I think I know which churh where I truly belong, the Uniterian Universalist (UU) Fellowship. Irmind myself to always keep in mind that there are no bad choices regarding churches, only good ones, excluding the so called Satanic "churches", whatever they are. Hell, I'd be happy to flip a coin, but for the sake of self identification, I call myself a "pantheistic Unitarian" The fact that I miss church when I don't go probably indicates that I should go. I think I would be and wil always be will ready and abel to attend church anywhere, at least once, for the learning experience. To me all churches seem like diferent versions os the same thing, no matter where. And, like everyone else, I pick and choose my religious beliefs, or lack thereof. For instance, I doubt that I would or will ever embrace crucifiction theology, so I choose to essentially ignore it. All of that stuff about Christ dying for my sins is not part of my religiosity. Christ died, it seems to me, because humans are petty, jealous, and fearful. And I accept the reality that the Christian Bible, like the Christian religion, has evolved over the centuries since its inception and inclusion in teh faith,and is still doing so today, like we all are.In a few hundred ore years, the Bible, adn the faith may both be barely recognizable. Supposedly there are several thousand organized religions in the world. Will there be millions more in the future, or only one, or, perhaps, none at all? Maybe future human theology will evolve with human culture into some sort of transcendant, universal religiosity. The one final, ultimate religion. Science seems to be replacing religion, but not without a fight, and maybe, just maybe, religion will never be totally replaced. Even the most enlightened form of religion will likely share with all previous reigons the same fatal flaw; that of having smugly, presumptiously fallen into the trap of declaring itself, in its current form, to be the true and only source of a comprehensive uderstanding and description of the universe. Beware of such claims. No religion on Earth has ever nor will likely ever succeed in doing that. But we humans do have the necessary tools, our collective brains, to understand, if not the entire universe, at least a large enough part of it to justifying our bragging to ourselves that, if nothing else, at least we have made a start on our grand adventure of universal exploration, beginning on a single planet. It will be up to our descandants, and their descandants, to carry on the quest. All we can and must do is bequeath to them as healthy a world and human civilization upon it as possible, and wish them well. This process, and our awarenes of it and participation in it, is worthy of admiration, which is what religion is all about; admiration of the amazing universe in whieh we live, appreciation of the lives we have, and reverence for the the eternal infinitely superior spirit which constructed it all.

Waiting For Maybe A Blue Wave

LESS THAN six months until the election, and most indications remain predicting a blue wave, to one degree or another. Considering the administration and Congress so far, its no wonder why. When you consider that Trump and MAGA are still blaming Biden for everything, and that they are trying to change the subject to a hypothetical arch of triumph near the reflecting pool on the Capitol mall, you realize that Trump and MAGA are doing everything humanly possible to avoid actually discussing Trump, and the performance pf him and his administration.They'll use anythingthat works, whatever it takes. A ball room, an arch, Trump's face added to Mt. Rushmore, anything, whatever works. Whatever succeeds in taking the nation's attention off of the infamous and mysterious Epstein files. "The Epstein files", as they are called, is evidently a massive collection of documented evidence and proof that Donald Trump is indeed a pedophile who acts on his impulses, and is guilty of sexually abusing and raping children. Even if normal, everyday MAGA folk would rather the Epstein file quietly go away, they aren't likely to, at least, not soon. The war against Iran, Turmp's war of choice, is not making anybody, Republicans included, happy, The United States, and we the American people are far from being done with this war of Trump's (our) choice, and we might not be done with it for a lot longer than we now think, as is the case with all wars. It may be that by early November, when election day rolls around, his war against Iran may have become something of an albatross around Trump's fleshy neck. When one further considers how strenuous opposition to Trump has been, remains, and that it seems destined to only increase, and that as of now less than forty percent of the American support either Trump or his various wars of choice,it begins to seem increasingly likely that all this will hurt Republicans and help Democrats in November. But, as always, who knows? Its hard to imagine Trump gaining any new support from here on out. Anybody not on board with him by now most likely never will be. Opposition to Trump, over sixty percent of America, is rock solid, angry, and enthusiastic. So far it shows no sign of being well organized, by anybody, but what relly matters is voter turnout for the midterms. The higher it is, the more it becomes possible for Democrats to take both the House and the Senate, although the Senate will still remain unlikely. There are several ky aspects of this administration, other than the Epstein files and Trump's obvious lifeling immorality and criminality, which engender disapproval from both sides of the isle. Attacking Iran is one of them. All of Trump's nonsense about Canada and Cuba is another. But working against Trump and the Republicans more than anything at the moment is inflation, for which Trump et al will get the blame, as is always the case, depsite their best attempts to deflect it. No president can do much about inflation, which comes in cycles, like most economic phenomena, and must run its course. This is, however, a perfect opportunity for Democrats to pin the blame on Republicans, who, after all, currently have control of all three branches of government, and most state governments. No decent person wants the American people to suffer economically. But if in the coming months they do indeed suffer in the pocketbook, whatever state the economy is in on election day will not be attributed to Democrats, and will be directly attributed to Trump and Republicans.