Trump, Going Ever I.D. Lower

SEVERAL TIMES on this website we have announced that Donald Trump has once again gone low, gone lower than ever before, and that surely, surely he could go no lower. Each time, we were wrong. Now it becomes necessary to reconfigure the paradigm, with the possibility emerging that, like a black hole, there is simply no depth to which The Felon cannot and will not descend. In a bipartisan vote, Congress has passed the "Twenty First Century Road to Housing" bill, which would go are, if not quite far enough, to alleviate one of our nation's most presssing and chronic concerns; a shortage of housing, and an acute shortage of affordable housing. Trump, slithering along in themid as usual, refuses to sign into law this urgently needed piece of legislation until Congress passes the so called, misnamed "Save America Act", which would make voting difficult for most, andall but impossible for the poor, by requiring that every voter present not only a single piece of identification, usually a driver's license, but also, a whole host of others, more esoteric documents, such as birth certificates and passports, and "Real ID.s". Knowing full well the most people do not possess these documents, and would have to go to some trouble to obtain them. The obvious object is to make it more difficult to vote in a country in which often far fewer than half of the population, less than half of all eligible votrs, votes. The more difficult it is to vote, the fewer people vote, and a huge perentage of the effectively disenfranchised are the lower middle class and poor. Maybe it shouldn't be this way. Maybe the poor should step right up, overcome all obstacles, bite the proverbial bullet, and cast ballots. But, alas,they for the most part are too busy simply trying to survive by working long hours at exploitation wages to engage in massive amounts of bureaucratic paper work. The mmore diffficult it is to vote, the fewer voters, and the more likely Republicans are to win elections. The more inclusive and expansive the democracy, the more the teeming masses of Madison's "lesser sort" get to the ballot box, the more likely democrats, liberals and democratic socialists are to win elections. Republicans also advocate for fewer voting places, and fewer ballot boxes, for the same reason. This is actually in keeping with our founder's intentions if not ours, who designed not a democracy, but a democratic republic, in which the poor uneducated masses, Madison's "lesser sort" would be represented in noble, enlightened fashion by Madison's "better sort", the wealthy land owning elite,usually (always) men of fair complexion such as himself. We now see how that turned out. So did Madsion, by the way, who regretted our oligarchical constitution within five years of helping write it. His regret was that he had not helped create a democracy, but rather, an oligarchy of the wealthy elite, and it soon became evident to him that the elite had no intention of governing for the poor, as they had promised. Trump and his fellow Republican prevaricators insist that the American electoral system is rife with fraud and abuse, that illegal immigrants with brown skin are streaming across the Rio Grande, infliltrating America's fair cities, stealing elections for Democrats by voting in them, then, perhaps, slinking back across the border to resume their lives of poverty. The possibility of illegally cast votes for Republican candidates somehow gets lost in the shuffle. Trump is perfectly happy and willing to allow America's critical housing shortage to linger and cause more suffering for the sake of an imaginary problem which exists only in the deep dark recesses of his conspicuously tortured, mentally ill "mind". With the current congressional composition, overriding his veto is nearly impossible. What is not impossible is voting Trump and his gang of quasi fascists out of power, come November.

Becoming Educated

I CAN THINK of two formally well educated people who support Trump, and there must be many more, somewhere. One has a masters degree in geology, the other, in creative writing, from Columbia. This initself does not disparove the well worn thesis that Trump suooprters are poorly educared, indeed most of them are, studies reveal. It merely proves that there are exceptions to generalities, exceptions which prove the rule. All across America's fruited plain,on the campuses of major universities, even occasionally in libraries,Trump supporters abound, young Republicans clubs flourish, but like Trump supporters generally, are vastly outnumbered by America's morally decent sane. One of my Trump supporter former friends told me that he knows damned good and well that climate change is a hoax, because he is a geologist. Credentials count. The other Trumper friend, who is not a scientist, assures me that climate change is caused by fluctuations in the sun's output, that the Earth is holow, and that it harbors intelligent life in its interior.No input from the actual solar scientist community was sought.Why bother with expertise, when truth can be so easily be gleaned from locals with advanced degrees,in whatever? My two friends are clearly engaged in a war on expertise, science, and common sense. Gravity, it seems derives not from mass, but from empty space beneath a planetary surface. The climate change denier does not explain how you can add a trillion tons of carbon dioxide to the Earth's atmosphere without it absorbing any extra solar radiation heat. The proponent of solar fluctuations has not yet articulated precisely how the alleged solar fluctuation phenomenon has excaped, somehow, the attention of the world's solar astronomers and scientists generally. They probably don't think they should have to. How, for example, can we account for the Earth's gravitational attraction, sans the necessary mass? Ask a Trump supporter engaged in magical pseudo science. If he could do it he'd do it bending over backwards,twisting and turning like a fourth grader during an excruciating math exam. Carl Sagan pointed out in one of his books,"The Dragons of Eden", that there is no shrotage of intelligence, but that there is a shortage of basic science education in American life. Such shortages, however, have never been known to impede the human imagination, the human ego, or the flow of hot carbon dioxide from the oral orifices of the overly exuberant inadequately educated. But if only the well educated spoke, and if the poorly educated failed to express their nonsensical opinions and beliefs, how would we measure and know who needs to learn what, and from whom? An American political leader, a Republican Senator from the great state of Oklahoma, recently warned us that wind is a finite resource, and that wind turbines are using it up at an alarming rate. As we like to say, you can't make this stuff up. When we the halfway decently educated finish splitting our ribs, rolling our eyes, and venting our expressions of disgust,it is our mandate to make a game plan for how to address this. Those who are the problem are not going to solve the problem. Head Start, charter schools, more money for public schools and teacher pay, better teacher training, adult education, free college, are all good ideas. Perhaps less texting, pronography, and endless avalanches of selfies would assist. Escape entertainment is always an easy target of choice. The object of education is to inspire in us all a love of learning based upon a fascination with the world. Let us teach our children, allow our children to nurture their innate curiosity, and stop stifling it through rote, cookie cutter, punitive forced fact mind stuffing. People have the inherent right to use their talents however they find most rewarding. We exist to fulfill our own dreams and aspirations, not to jump through hoops held firmly in place by petty pedantic pedagogues.

Trump, Having It All

WE NOW KNOW, because the true representative of Christ on Earth, (Trump, not the Pope) told us, that Donald J.Trump, aka Joshua ben Joseph, has perfect morals. Like, totally terrific. He told us so just yesterday. Coupled with his assertion that he is the most intelligent person who ever lived, and we have the world's greatest genius and moral entity, if not narcissist, all rolled into one big rotund mound of adipose. Not since Leonardo Da Vinci has such a magnificant talent graced the face of the Earth. Look for the great one to complete the cirlce of attained wisdom by becoming a Bodi satva without even bothering to look for it by roaming far and wide with disciples in tow, or to wait for it while sitting beneath a bodi tree, like Gautama Siddhartha. Although his majestic lordship has not made any proclamations concerning his world class athletic or musical ability, just wait, you can see it coming. Trump could sit down at a Steinway and play Mozart without missing a note or beat. He would doutbless contend well from the pitching mound against, or strike out Susuki Ichiro, looking, probably by throwing a screw ball. Move over Babe Ruth, move over Vladimir Horowitz, take a hike Einstein. Genius, athleticism, and morality, we learn, concentrate themselves in mounds of fat, perhaps for purposes of nourishment. You might think that genius and righteousness would prefer to insinuate themselves into at least a minimal amount of muscle tissue and grey matter encased in a cranium, but that turns out to not be the case with the world's most nearly perfect human. Trump has already been a successful television star. He has not yet discovered, or exploited, his greatest talent of all, although he has unwittingly implemented it to a degree. It is comedy. He could easily do stand up, and instantly join the ranks of Johnny Carson, Mel Brooks, Jay Lenno, Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball, Benny, Burns - His monologue would be drier than the driest martini, and he wouldn't even know he was joking, that indeed, he is the joke. At length you begin to wonder about Donald Trump's upbringing. Richie Rich, bow tie and knee britches, smugly sneering out the tinted limo window at all the other,less privileged, less talented kids on the way to the most exclusive private school on snob hill. Never mind his poor grades, third from the bottom at Wharton. He didn't want to show up the other students. Exactly how in hell or psychosis anybody can possibly turn out to be such a thorough mess is a subject that can and probably does fill psychology and psychiatry texts. We know that he was rasied by and doting mother and a cold, distant father, always a lethal combination. Was it simultaneously too much and too little love? When Trump slunk into office agaisnt the wiches of a clear majority of voters, books started rolling off the press about him, as authors by the drove began taking advantage of best seller opportunities, and whipped out Trump monographs by the bushel. Somewhat curious in my extreme post election depression, seeking understanding to assuage grief, I read probably fifteen or twenty of them before I noticed myself sliding into a sort of catatonic, neurotic state. Patterns emerged. Most evident was that nobody who wrote about Trump liked him. No hagiography emerged from the collective opus. Laura Trump, a psychologist with a doctorate, reaffirms all of our worst fears and assumptions about her uncle; that he is a deeply troubled mental health patient, for whom extensive psychotherapy would be prescribed, but probably insufficient. For some of our worst cases there is no recourse except institutional care, mind altering medication, sedation, and a room full of toys with which the inmates are free to play, just as much as they want.

Of Jobs, Trump, and Existing

JUST AS THE BIBLE is the most important book in the world, the most important and influential book ever widely circulated, Donald J.Trump, whether we like it or not, is either the most important person in the world, because of his power and influence, or he's in the top two or three. I'm an Aaron Judge fan, and I like the Pope, but neither of them, despite Judges's RBI total and status as the Yankee's "Captain" and best hitter in baseball in the tradition of Lou Gehrig and Thurman Munson, rise to the level of the Commander-in-Chief of the world's most powerful nation and military, commanding thirty to fourty thousand nuclear warheads. Or have we discarded some of them through treaty obligations? Suffice to say, a bunch of bombs.I'd sooner have Thurman Munson, even though he is deceased, or certainly the Pope, in charge of all the bombs. Trump might make a good bat boy for the Yankees, if he could shed a few pounds and stay awake long enough to follow the game, and know when to run out on the field and pick up the bat after every Yankee at bat. Not all of us are in the jobs for which we are best suited. I taught in the public schools for years, beacuse it was easier, far easier to get a job there than sending out two hundred ignored applications to colleges and universities. Trump was a horrible businessman, and is a dangerous, inept, corrupt hack politician, but he was a helluve television star. His show "The Apprentice" was so hot that it propelled him to the American presidency. There are many books which I prefer to the Bible, many polticians, all politicians, whom I prefer to Trump. It is worth remembering that heads of state have emerged from even stranger places than billionaire business status and impromptu television celebrity stardom. Abraham lincoln was a railsplitter, which kept him lean and in good shape. U.S. Grant tried anything and everything in private free enterprise before finding his true self in the military. His resume' reads like that of a drifter, and he probably couldn't get a job today. He couldn't pass the drug test, for alcohol, not that there are any. But by God, U,.S Grant was a winner, an implacable force in battle. So what if he was drunk all the time? Whatever he is drinking, Lincoln said, give a bottle of it to every officer in blue uniform. After graduate school, when I discovered that neither columbia nor the University of Mmissouri would have anything to do with me, I decided to swallow my pride, and teach in the public schhools, if they would have me. They would have me, but only as a substitute, until I proved myself. I spent years proving myself in a very high quality public school system in a college town where teaching jobs were in great demand but short supply. I languished as a fill in for so long that I started enjoying it. Shitty pay, but it was fun, since kids love subs, and subbing has the benefit of choice. When the call comes, you can either take it or leave it. You choose your days off. So, who's to say who the most important person in the world really is, or the most influential? Trump's professors at the Wharton School of econoomics, two of whom are still iving, swear that he was the dumbest son of a bitch they ever had in class. Their words, not mine. Grant made do, and got by. The Bible still sells in a world where books generally are neither sold nor read. And, giving credit where due, Trump, no more likely to succeed than Grant or the patchwork endlessly rewritten Christian Bible, managed to make it work, against all odds. In this universe,nothing is likely, including existence itself,and everything is a fluke. The good news is that the old cliche is true; anybody can become anything, even, sometimes, what they want to be.

Friendship Trumping Politics

WE MIGHT ALL be able to agree on this; that friendship is more important than politics. Or maybe the most ardent political animals would disagree, poor tragic souls, addicted to political conflict and adrenaline. We have more friends in high school than at any other time in our lives. Hallways teeming with empathetic teenagers, cloistered together in a petri dish in which connections flourish like bacteria on rotting meat..After high school, we scatter like disturbed minnows. College,the military, work, marriage and kids. We cherish of options and opportunties, and exploit them. We make friends as we age, but we lose others, with most of us moving from place to place,job to job, in a semmi-nomadic society. The average American, according to Robert Putnm in his seminal monograph "Bowling Alone", has one good friend. That's a statistical average; many people have many friends, some, perhaps most Americans have a small inner circle of buds, sisses, and bro's, many people have none. You hear them talking about in on Facebook, and who would lie on Facebook? Then too, we change friends as our personalities subtly change. Americans are not knwon to be tolerant of those who are unlike themselves. All these assertions,or course, are generalities. I once read that no matter you are located on land, you are within ten feet of a rat. Just as I was starting to frreak out and run to the hardware store to stock up on rat traps,(I have never even seen a rat trap, they must be huge), a friend of mine quietened me be assuring me that this, too, was undoubtedly a statistical average. I have noticed that many of us in freedom's land are mch closer to our friends than to our siblings. We all know how that goes. We grow up in the same house with other kids competing for the attention of the parents,the dynamics depending on the number of kids, their age differences, genders, traditional two parent family,single mom,single dad. and on and on. Since grandparesnt and grand children tend to form especially tight bonds,being seperated by a generation, one might speculate than people who were raised by their grand parents have a special treat,inundation of love, scarcity of strict discipline. Whatever the the price and benefits of that may be,they manifest later, and forever. I was an am the second oldest of two children, with a sister nearly three years older than I. We were raised by a single mom. Father was nearby, in the same twon,and was very close to both of us. I have no complaints. When my sister and I were pre teens, we played together happily, although she dominated and bullied me generally. An aunt warned her that I would soon outgrow her, and exact revenge. I outgrew her, but never exacted the revenge I more than deserved. We were estranged through our teen years. Three grades apart, in the same high school building. Yikes. I couldn't wait for her to get out of the house, which she did at twenty two, by joining the military and getting married after graduating from college while living at home. Hell, I lived at home with mom until I was twenty seven,because we got along,it didn't hurt mom to have a "man" around the house, and I had nothing to do except to work on a masters degree, and then a doctorate. What it all comes down to, maybe, is, "whatever works". We humans adjust well,if reluctantly,to change. We thrive in diverse environments. We have no choice, because change is nature. Now, old, I am among the fortunate few in poessession of a sister I adore and get along great with, and a few good friends. To hell with politics. I vote, and that's enough.

Protesting, Redux, MAGA, Dying

ON SEPTEMBER 11,2011, the OCCUPY WALL STREET protests were held in New York City, way downtown, in Battery Park, and elsewhere.If memory serves, there were smaller versions of the protest movement all across America's fruited plain,in communities large and small. Sometimes, with advancing age, you get your protest movements confused and mixed up. I was too young, in my early teens, to do the Viet Nam War, aka "police action" protest thing, although I wanted to, and would have, had my parents let me out of the house for anything other than school, neighborhood pick up baseball, golf, (I was a fair bogey golfer), and frequent visits to the local public library. The purpose of the protest was to express opposition to corporate greed and domination of the American economy, the grotesque economic inequality which has always and contiues to characterize and plague the United States of Avarice, and whatever else we could think of that came to mind. Thus my disappointment at being sidelined under age restrictions for the anti Viet Nam war movement was finally quenched, somewhat. I like to remind people what a precocious little anti-establishmentarian I was (and remain to this day), that I was entirely against the Viet Nam war as a grade schooler, but was afraid to come out of he closet on this issue, what with my parents being so patriotic and conservative and all. Mom and dad were raised Republican, and remwined mired in this evil disease, as far as I know, until their respective dying days. Dad never wavered. Mom moved a bit leftward, maybe, when she indicated that she actually liked Obama. However,she thought he was arrogant. So did a good friend of mine,a fellow left wing "radical" democratic socialist and erstwhile Obama supporter. Evidently my love and admiration for Barrack Hussein Obama (BHO) blinded me to his arrogance, and still does. Like Goethe said "He loves not who does not see the deficiencies of the beloved as virtues". Now, in the glimmeringg, gloaming twilight of my existential existence on this here plane of perceived reality, divine providence or sheer blind ass luck have presented me with the golden opportunity of one last huzzah harrah. The "No Kings" anti-Trump anti fascist (ABTIFA) protest movement-rally is coming soon to a location near you and everyone else, having been there before. Last time out, it was a glowing success in the lower midwestern college town of about a hundred thousand residents where I taught and near which I still live in dignified, (usually), professorial retirement. Most likely it will be once again. The estimated turnout nation wide,if memory serves, was about eight million patriots. We anti-Trumpers would doubtless consider the imminent version a glowing success if those numbers were repeated,a smashing success if they were exceeded. With each passing day oppposition to The Felon (Trump) broadens, widens,and deepens, like the reflecting pool's publicity, as former but now disenchanted MAHAts lose patience, as they pay more at the pump, and watch their paychecks and spending power shrink to the size of Trump's hands. As the Felon's support sags to its current paltry thirty six percent, fallling like a parachutist with lead in his boots,the MAGA movement commences to sun set, with little sound and fury. Conservatives are quietly slithering away, rehearsing the speeches they will recite to their grand childern, about how they never liked the son of a bitch in the first place.

Trump, Doing Something Good

DONALD TRUMP did something good today, or maybe last night. I saw it on the news in the early morning, when I had begun but hadn't finished drinking coffee. It has nothing to do with the reflecting pool, amazingly, around which a fence has gone up. Trump finally has his wall, a bit of a downgrade from what he had planned. I'm not one of the many milllions of Americans who hate Trump so passionately that no matter what he does, its bad. I'd rather give the man, or anybody, seven times seventy. The problem is my age related short term mmemory. Short term memory, the experts say, begins to diminish after the age of twenty five. My only recourse is to keep watching the news, which is aired twenty four seven,and repeats itself,like history, seemingly endlessly. Like digging through dirt and searching for diamonds at that diamond mine in Arkansas where anybody can take a shot at sudden wealth by getting their hands dirty, good behavior from Trump, benefiting anybody but himself, is, as they say, a diamond in the rough. By seeing on the news something good that Trump did, and then losing it within the folding folds of my shrinking grey matter, I feel as if I had a fourteen caot gem from the Murphreesboro, Arkansas diamond mine, then had it slip through a hole in the pocket of my blue jeans I tried googing it. Google the all wise reminded me that good presidential behavior is in the eyes of the beholder, like, duh. My frustration is copounded by knowing how terribly hard I try to find good behavior on Trump's part, and how seldom my efforts are rewarded. You hear a funny noise in your car, and it keeps getting worse, louder. You take the car to a mechanic, he takes it for a spin, and, as you might have guessed, the nosie is gone. That actually happend to me, and my mechanic said, no problem, it happens everyday. No problem? Easy for you to say. YOu can fix a car in your sleep. I have to drive mine,noise or no noise. What, then, do I do about he funny nose coming from my car which will reappears the moment I get outside radar range of the auto repair shop? You see and hear with your own faculties that Donald J. Trump, Don the Con, did something good, and just when you decide to write an essay in celebration, the ever reapeating news goes to a new news cycle, and Trump's one act of decency gets lost amid a cascade of new news. I'm beginnig to think that I will have to wait, and catch the next act of decency from the convicted criminal president. But when will tht be? When I'm dead? Hell, I'm seventy one years old. The old blind squirrel occasionally finds an acorn, but not if he starves to death first. I've been waiting for eons for Trump to do something that isn't either crass, stupid, crazy,perfidious,mean, or downright crazy. Now, the acorn may have droppedform the old oak tree, and I,poor I, ever vigilant but not vigilant enough,may have missed my one and only chance to actually witness Donald J.Trump behaving like a respectable human being. The high scool beauty queen walks down the hall, my vocal chords seize up, and there she goes, on down the hall, stopping only to have a word with the next geek, or the football stud. Sometimes, but not often, cheerleaders go out with geeks.I missed my chance. With my luck, Trump will never do anything crazy or stupid again. Life is a trade off. Even more horribly, he will never do or say anything good again. But if that eventuates,it means that Trump will never do anything again, and, well, that has to be a good thing.

Feeling, but Not Being, Guilty

GUILT, my office mate in graduate school once said, is bullshit. This was sometime in the early eighties. It was true then, and its true now. He went west, looking for a teaching career in California, found it, and also found the love of his life, and married her. Before they had a chance to start a family, he was rear ended and killed on the L.A. freeway, among the greatest personal losses of my life. I believe he was thirty seven years old. How much human talent have we lost to premature, needless death? In his honor, I determined to remember and live his admonition concerning guilt, and to a certain extent have succeeded, Despite my tendency to embrace the poisonous emmotion, it, guilt, plagues me the most concerning my beloved cats and dogs. I would wager that in this millions of people empathize. We all love our pets like the children that they essentially are, and no matter how much we do for them, its never enough. When they die, we are consumed with our needless, bullshit guilt. People will try to manipulate the heck out of you by laying a guilt trip on you. To whatever extent we allow ourselves to be affected by this, shame on us. A friend of mine, a cracker with close ties to the black community, told me that what he admired most about the black culture is that brothers don't play head games. If they have a beef, they spit it out, they bring it. "Yo, dude, waddup with this crap you laying on me?" So refreshing, the clearing of the air. So elegant,so intelligent, as T.S. Eliot wrote. To hell with naunce and the subtle, undertoned expection of boot licking apologetic, feigned, falsely perceived offense. Those who accede to attempted emotionanl blackmail are the suckers have chosen to be,and merit nothing more than the heavy guilt trip that they seem to eagerly to accept when the pile of mental manure is proffered them. The people who are the most sensitive to their own emotional needs always seem to be the least sensitive to those of others. Hell, my cat, like all cats, is a shrewd little emotional manipulater, blackmailer. She makes the cutest little plaintive nosises expressing emotional abuse on the planet, in a close emotioanl race to the top with all other felines. She plays me, or tries hard to play me, like a poorly tuned fiddle which she has determend should be upgraded to a Stradivarius. I would tell my therapist, if I had one, that I am immune to such emotional manipulation, but I would be lying, and he or she would know it instantly. Psycological therapy, like ye olde annual primary care physician check up, would do us all a great deal of good, and should perhaps be considered essential, and routine, covered by medical insurance, fat chance of that. A nice relaxing session, on one's back on the proverbial couxh, say, once or twice a year, and our sick society and culture might, if othing else, at least beign the process of the renewal of the mind, th ehealig of the soul, whatever on Earth or in heaven a "soul" is or might be. Stipulated that we have one such, which is a bit of a presumptuous stretch, it, like our minds and our bodies, can be expected to require rejuvination, rewnewal, no less than the other fundamental components of our beings. Throughout human history humans have roamed around paleolithically, looking for food, water, and survival, mired in the fear which aids our survival no less than it does the horses we tamed, partnered with, and exploited. Anyone who has ever look gaxed deeply ino the abyss like eyes of a horse understand one thing; that horses are driven by fear. Anyone who has ever been a human being knows, or at least vaguely senses, that so are we. Fear, with added layers of brain matter as add ons, piled higher and deeper. We advance from savagery by looking up and reaching out to the universe, and even more, by digging deep within ourselves, and somehow, with a supreme act of the will, conquering the fear and revulsion at what we inevitably must find.

Knifing the Cement Pond

TRUMP IS NOW CLAIMING that somebody took a pocket knife, Bowie knife, dinner knife, switchblade, or some other sharp object, and vandalized the national wading pool by gashing a long gash into the concreteon bottom. We know where we got this idea, although we might prefer not to; from deep within his tortured, disabled mind. Here on this website it was suggested that he is off his medication, or that he hasn't been prescribed the proper medication, or any at all. If Prozac isn't used anymore, and i can remember when a prominant psychiatrist asserted that thi mind and behavior altering chemical should be added to community water supplies, then surely there are far more advanced medications available for criminally insane people, which, along with confinement and supervision, would help. Quietly somebody gently pointed out that the entire body of algae filled water is on security camera twenty four seven, and that surveillance "flim footage" shows no such thing. An intriguing if pointless question is whether our delusional chief executive is actually on any medication, which he most certainly is at his advanced age, and precisely what it is. Inquiring minds want to know. We the American people, arguably, have the inalienable right to know, to know the exact stte of their elected leader's health. Full disclosure before purchase, before voting. We should hav nown about Lincoln's impending death by multiple disease, we should have known that Woodrow Wilson was sick in bed for two years while his wife ran the country, and "we" should have knwon that FDR was confined to a wheelchair, but we knew none of it. My parents, both of whom hated the radical socialist Democrat, told me thay had no idea. When I was an undergrad history major, neither American nor European nor Americam,just "history" as a small college, I wrote a paper about the history of fun and games at the White House. With Trump's recent East lawn fun house carnival, a long tradition of wildness on the lawn was extended. The Kennedy's touch football games, which, considering the size of the brother's annd cousins respective families, could go eleven on eleven,with a full roster of of back up, on both sides of the ball. It now seems amazing the JFK had only two children that we know of. Surely there must be more, out there somewhere, breeding and carrying on the Kennedy legacy, only not in name. Many years ago, when I was in my early twenties, I was informed by my father, who probably thought that I was finally old enough and man enought to know, that I have a half brother by a someone other than my mother. At my "tender" age I was shocked and horrifed, but shouldn't have been, as well as I know the proclivities of my philandering father. Like many men of his World War Two generation, my dad thought of women as mere play things, to use at his disposal. He often reminded me that a married woman is legally the chattle property of the man, which indeed was true, legally, until rather recent times, say, the nineteen seventies. Now, we know full well that our president is a philandering con man and a rape "artist", but about half of us don't seem to care, or care, but are suddenly very forgiving of sin, as evangelical Christians, Trump's support base, are supposed to be but known very well to not be in the slightest, that is, unless the sinner is Trump, or some other conservative Republican, rather than, say, Bill Clinton. Everyone, and I mean everyone, lies about sex. I told my dad that I was bedding every woman in town, just to please him, when in fact I, a prude, was not. Trump lies about everything, even when he has no need to, like all habitual liars. Let's keep our eyes glued to that reflecting pool security camera. Unlike the rest of us, it never lies.

Eschewing A visiting Minister

THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH where I attend as a sporadic but perpetual visiting Uniterian pantheist is having a guest minister today. For that reason, I'll stay home, drink coffee,catch a little boob toob, and accept Father's Day gifts, garden snakes and mice,from my loving kittens. (I call all cats "kittens, affectionately, like retirees calling their middle aged children "kids"). I am told that the guestminister is of the highest quality, and I am sure that he is. I'm guessing that by "high quality" my fellow congregants mean that he is embued with fervant evangelical enthusiasm, preaches an inspiring sermon, and captures his eclesiastical audience, holding them in rapt attention, by reputation and widespread agreement. Of this, I have no doubt. If I were an actual Christian, rather than a Uniterian pantheist agnostic in occasional Presbyterian drag, I'd doubtless be all in. Apparently this man has no permanent pulpit, but serves as a sort of wandering fill in preacher in our local college town of approximately one hundred thousand souls. I don't think Christian votaries adore guest ministers the way school children adore substitute teachers, as if they are plotting and savoring the opportunity to get away with an enhanced amount of sin. I am wondering in general,ifalla crosss America's fruited plain guest minsiters tend to draw more people to church, or fewer. I can see it both ways. Attend church to respect the guest vicar of Christ. Stay away, disappointed that the beloved regular guy won't be leading the flock. To me its six of one half a dozen of the other. With each passing Sunday,my interst in divergent spirituality and religiosity strengthens. On my ecumeical bucket list is an intent to visit an Islamic mosque and Jewish synagogue, both of whch are extant if our thriving college town. college town, moreproperly major university towns, have as as an attraction enormous cultural variety. Our history department faculty has an annual end of the spring semester softball game, professors versus graduate students. Over the years, in my career in both categories, I have played center field and shortstop for both teams I keep thinking about becoming a member an actual member of the Uniterain Church, but would rather self identify as a card carrying pantheist. What the Uniterians have as their primary attraction is their universiality, their embrace of any and all forms of religiosiy, spirituality. They can rightfully claim to cover all bases. I could embark on a long journey to visit a house of worship of all the world's more than four thousad, (or is it eleven thousand) formally organized religions, circle the Earth, and end up right back where I started, on a small roughly round planet, wheeling around the edge of an ordinary galaxy, in what is evidently a nearly infinite number of galaxies in a universe which we now believe to be finite, but unbounded. My usual ride came by to pick me up for church. I told him I hadn't asked for a ride, he told me I had. We refrained from fist fight in in my front yard, a physical altercation I think I would have won. When the time is right, when he's cooled down and gotten his blood pressure under control, perhaps he can accept that I am more than a warm body to be used to occupy a slot in a pew, for appearances. If he gave an actual rat's ass about the salvation of my eternal soul, I might be concered about his distress at my lack of church attendance today. But I am more than a prop to make an mptry pew lok filled up with a warm human body. I am an eternal soul, as he would agree, only, I am one who never falsely claims to have any answers.

Reflecting (Cleaning the Cement Pond)

UPON REFLECTION, if I were, heaven forbid, president, and I wished to distract the public's attention away from a trifling matter such as a proclivity on my part for raping children, I would either start a war with a foreign country of choice while proclaimng myself a champion of American virtues and values, announce that the national cement pond badly needs a good scrubbing which has been delayed far too long, or both. If the rape rap lingered annoyingly long, I might even try to extend my war of distraction well beyond the mere few days needed to bomb the fabricated enemy of convenience into oblivious submission. I might sound the alarm that the black serpentine Viet Nam War Memorial monument has been gathering dust, and needs a good wipe down. The old hidden ball trick. Chat up the baserunner, how's the wife and kids, ask him to step off the base for just a second, (or minute as we like to say), so you can kick the dust off of it, and tag him out. Hope that he doesn't cold cock you on his embarrassed way back to the dugout. All perfectly legal, if a tad less than honorable. There is no crying in baseball... I'm so confused I can't even remember or figure out where we currently stand in the matter of the infamous, notorious Epstein Files. Either Trump is metaphorically trying to lure the hand of justice off first base, or justice is trying to lure Trump's famously small hands off base. Either metaphor suffices nicely. Another "No Kings" national holiday protest celebration is imminent,if memory serves, though I forget the exact date. (I'll find out in time to attend.) In the shower, where I and everyone else sings great, between renditions of "Sweet Caroline" and "Hey Jude" (I love Paul's scat singing), I ponder profoundly which is the better group chant: "Epstein!", "Epstein files!", or "Release 'em NOW!". A friend of mine gave birth, fathered a scion, about thirty five years ago. The kid grew up, made it big. When he reached an age of responsibility, whatever that happens to be in any given fammily unit,'long 'bout fourth grade or so (in my case it happened when I was about twenty five, in graduate school), he was rewarded with a cute puppy for good grades, good conduct, penmanship, keyboard skills, the whole ball of wax. Daddy properly delegated the responsibility for naming the little cutie to his demonstrably highly responsible kid. The kid narrowed down the choices to two: "Spot", and "Black Spot". Decisions, decisions. In the ensuing convoluted much overwrought narrative, the nme which came out of nowhere and made the final cut was "Maya", as in Angilou, or native Guatemalans. From this I learned a valuable lesson; a rose by any name. Whether we the people, wearing our "Morons Are Governing America" bright red ball caps and ANTIFA T shirts, carry homemade neatly printed signs which read "Epstein" or "Epstein Files", or "Release 'em Now!", in the fullness of time, all will come out in the reflecting pool scrub boarded wash. Good citizens are even now dumping metric tons of hydrogen peroxide into the big rectangular cement pood which, if memory serves, is about..what..two feet deep? (I walked around it, long ao.) We, or whomever, might have to dig or swim a bit deeper to finally get to the bottom of Trump's pedophilia, a nose dive into a sordid cess pool of muck and sludge, which no Republican dares do. Somebody, however, always seems to show up to shine a light to scatter the cockroaches. Voltaire was right. "All comes out even when the day is done, and more even still when all the days are done".

Forgiving

MY FLEDGLING CAREER as a Presbyterian church visitor rests on tenuous grounds.This, aside from my lifelong aversion ot the Christian religion, owing to what I perceive to be its irrational, lunatic barbarity. I took a quick peek at the official Presbyterian handbook, or whatever thay call it. The rules of the game, so to speak. Clearly, all church officials, clergy and assistant clergy, are called upon to provide a welcoming environment for all congregants. Warm and affectionate clerical behavior always, as I read it. Accordingly, one of my best friends, in and out of church, is on the clerical staff, with the formal title of "liturgist". Not only do he and I attend the same church, we patronize the same senior center, dining there daily. We have known each other about ten years. He seems to have a man crush on me, respects and admires me, for whatever weird reason, and has often bought lunch for me around town. (I need to return the favor). My complaint about him is that he, as a church leader, isn't provinding a warm and friendly atmosphere, not for me. Rather, he treats me with a certain dismissive coldness. Upon further reflection, I think I may know why, just guessing. I suspect that he wants more from me as a friend, emotionally, than I have ever given him. Ironic, since I am an immensely emotional person, kind, and loving. (so said my mother). Ask my cats. Ask my mother, who art in heaven. Ask anyone who knows me well. "Poor fellow who is all head", said Goethe. Who could disagree? I am called upon from within, impelled by my essential being, by my dead parents and by my upbringing, to take the high road, to turn cheek and proceed to inundate this fellow with love, kindness, and friendship. All too soon, when I lay upon my death bed, I want to examine my life, and to be able to honestly say to myself: "I took the high road". I was noble in spirit, magnanimous and generous in all matters. Writing about your emotional difficulties is a good first step in coming to terms with them. Whoever might read this essay is serving as my therapist, if unwittingly. The teachings of christ, like all true wisdom, are universal. If I don't forgive my alleged trespassers and transgressors seven times seventy times, for starters, I have not succeeded. I must find a way to forgive the juvenile deliquents who broke in to my house the other day. The police and the judicial system can take care of the rest. The person ia am hardest on, the person I find it the most difficult to forgive, as you might have guessed, is myself. (That might sound familiar to most people.) Yes, we of good intentions tend to be hardest on ourselves. My addcition to quoting Goethe is beyond medical help. "Since everyone errs,since even the greatest people among us have made mistakes, we have no grounds upon which to regard our own mistakes as inexcusable". If I didn't know better, I might almost think that even the great wise man Joshua ben Joseph made a mistake or two, and then forgave himself,if only to set an example. I feed stray cats, who come to my house because they lack and need a food source. Soon they start to become cat picky, and I've got skinny stray cats turning down Purina because they want Temptations. Their tastes change daily, they are moving targets. Feline beggers become choosers. You can scarcely imagine how much that pisses the heck me off. OK, fine. I can be just a Pee Oh'd as my little heart desires, but I have better damn well keep trying my best to feed my super particular picky chhoosy beggar stray cats, or, I aint being the best version of me available. Less than my best don't cut it. All I can do is my best, forgive everyone, including myself, for everything, and, for heaven's sake, pay attention in church.

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.