Trump, Limping to the Finish Line

IT APPEARS LIKELY that Trump will strike Iran again soon. It almost seems as if he is going to use an occasional missile attack on Iran to demonstrate his power,his macho determiation to back up his threats,or, whatever. He doesn't rally have to declare war on Iran, and launch an all out, devastating attack reducing the country to rubble, and probably arousing the anger of the world, thereby making things much more complicated for him and for the United States He has the option that he has evidently already chosen; that of hitting a specific target, or launching a missile or bomb and then claiming to have hit the intended military target, no matter what it actually hits. The Epstein files not only do not seem to be going away, it looks as of now as though the Democrats are going to milk them for all they're worth. At least, if they're smart they will. And indeed, in this dy and age, if the current president of the United States previously engaged in sexual misconduct of a shockingly criminal nature, no matter how long ago, it must be revealed to us, the people. Kennedy's was not. Nor was that of all the other presidents, most of whom, it seems likely, engaged in sexual misconduct of one sort or another. Its hard to imagine George Washington committing adultery, although in oint of fact he may well have and if so, was not fundamentally different from most other menofwealth and pwer at the time, or any time. It may be that Trump is the worst offender of all forty seven POTUSes. Kennedy, LBJ, and several others were no slouches, so to speak, in their womanizing. Power, fame, and wealth, are the three qualities in men to whom most women seem attracted,as well as your every day physical attraction. No matter how shocking and sordid whatever revelations about Trump eventually are,the best guess is that his fulct followers will ontinue their persistant behavior of minimizing, ignoring, or distorting the facts pertianing to their icon's behavior, find ways of downplaying or justifying it, and continue as cult members.Sixty percent of the American people now oppose Trump, and they not only oppose him, they despise him. Trump is one of those love 'em or hate 'em people; sixty percent of us despise him with a passionate, burning hatred. I for one had never truly been aware of my capacity for hatred, until Trump. Evidently this is a feature of my being which I had preferred to ignore, but no longer can. As has always been the case with me, I reserve my greatest disgust andcontempt not for Trump, but for his followers, all seventy five million of them, or however many there still are in his apparently shrinking support base. Two potential assassins nearly killed Trump. Arguably, it is a miracle he is still alive. His religious supporters can argue wwith confidence that only God's direct intervention, which got him elected in the first place under unlikely circumstances, have kept him alive to this point. You beign to wonder how low his approval rating can sink, or how it could possible change direction and begin to increase. Invariably, when a president loses the appproval and support of we the people, he never getsit back. The election this November seems destined to either dramatically reduce Trump's support in Congress, or to elect a majority congress of Trump opponents. He'll end his term, in the best case scenario, limping along with only fractional support, accomplishing nothing, and, at long last, doing no harm, for probably the first time in his miserable existence.

Trump, Praising Trump, We, Watching

NO MATTER WHO the president is, whether a reprobate or person of moral nd intellectual substance, it is arguabl important to keep track of what he or she does in general, and to listen to the "State of the Union" speeh in particular. Last night I couldn't do it. Couldn't pull the trigger and take the plunge. My personal revulsion is simply too great. I have long since decided that anything it says, no matter what, is worthless if for no other reason than it said it. And, considering ow Trump has acted and what he has said over the past severel decades, this approach is not at all unreasonable. Without Enduring too much Don, which is to say, more than about five minutes per month, my task is to find out what the so called "president" is doing. There's no alternative. Anybody choosing to ignore Trump, anybody refusing to speak his name, view his image or likeness on television or anyehrer else, is quite factually, inserting head in sand ostrich style, pretending, living in a fantasy land. A certain amount of that is understandable, beyond a certain point, it become harmful to the self and to society, as disonesty always is. But I simply cat abide the cretin, so I resorted to letting the media fill me in after the fact. I suspected the Pedophile - in - Chief to blahter endlessly about his alleged "accomplishments" during the first year of his second term, during every moment of his life, and that, evidently, is essentially what he did. He promoted and bragged about his recent past as president, and proclaimed the state of the nation to be excellent, because and only because of his leadership. In all fairness, this is essentially what all president seem to be, as their time in office drags on, seemingly endlessly. If Trump were challenging an incumbant president under these exact circumstances, he would of course declare the nation to be failing, and declare that it has nearly been destroyed, and that only he, if elected, could repair it. He never deviates from the fascist Hitlerian script, in which his leadership is vitally necessary to not only the survival of the United States, but to the prosperity of it, and to the health and stability of the entire planet, wildlife included. I can only assume that his cult bas, the poorly educated thirty eight percent, lapped it all up like puppies sucking down warm milk. At this point the Trump cult appears indestructable, just as a certain percentage of Germans remained loyal to Hitler to the end, and beyond. The amer this duck becomes, ove rthe next three years, the more dangerou, the more desperately he will try to find ways of remaining in power indefinitaley, for life. The godo news is tha he is nearly eighty, and although nobody, probably including his doctors and himself, knows exactly how good his health is, there are signs that it is not altogether good. Still, we msut do more than fret, spew anger, and pray for his death. I unabashadly want Trumpt to die, the sooner the better, and I feel not a shred fo guilt. He's lived long enough, and done enuugh, to mcuh, harm to others, including the wntire country. The Election lie and insurrection merited, and still merits, indictment, trial, conviction, and execution of this traitor president. Treason pure and simple. There will never come a time when it is acceptable to stop talking about this amazingly vile crime. Trump can and will keep glorifying himself, like a HItler, from now on out. Our responsibility as good Americans is to refuse to accept and to actively oppose the MAGA fascist movement, to destroy it by voting it out of existence, and to get rid of Trump, legally, and as soon as possible.

Making Trump Harmless

I WON'T BE WATCHING the state of the union speech tonight. I am convinced that it will consist primarly and nearly exclusive of propaganda,a long list lf alleged achievements by Trump, a self aggrandizing litany of outright lies. With everybody free to fashion hiso or her own reality and live in it, Trumpers will find a way to find the ranting gibberish inspiring and beautful, profound and true, and the rest of us, America's politically and emotionally sane, will be astonished, outraged, and disgusted with the brazeness and sheer number of lies and wil, unsubstantiated claims of fact. One wouldn't be the least bit surprised to hear the good news that wereeas the war in Europe rages on, the number of casualites has been significantly reduced on both sides - because of Presdent Trump's direct intervention, or whatever. Horse manure of that nature is what we're going to hear. Everybody has a presence in real space and time, most of us have one online. Trumpers love his simplistic English and juvenile reasoning capabilities, for it matches their own. I still haven't started saying what I want to say to Trump supporters generally, what I fully intend to start staying That you, my fellow citizen, are in my opinion doing preciesly the appropriate thing is supporting Trump, because mentally, intellecaully, and morally, you remind me of Trump,and in fact you and he are, in terms of personality characteristcs, nearly identical. Especialy intellectually, in terms of educational and intellectual level. And if some sensitive and perceptive Trumper, a rare breed, happens, like a blind squirrel finding an acorn, happens to dimly preceive that this remark is not only not a complement but indeed is intended to be an insult, cleverly, deceitfully couched like a compliment and is angered by it, that's their problem. If you tell somebody that they remind you of their hero, or favorite politician, shey should feel complimented, shouldn't they?I fully intend to make this point with increasingly frequency over the next three years, and see what happens. "You should support Trump, because not only do you support his policies, but you are nearly identical to him, morally and intellectually". I thought you would and should be flatterd by that, and if you're not, why not?" I intend to find out what I come up with if I tpe in "stupid remarks made by Trump". There must be a sit where all fo the "George Washington capruring airports" type of stuff is stored, and there is a lot of it. Rather than sweepit under a rug, or allowed to lie dormant and ignored in the corner, it should be dusted off, all of it, including the breatest hits, and paraded around. Why? Because Trump's windmill cancer kind of remarks are many, there is an impressive collection of them needing to be preserved for posterior, and becaue they are not flukes, not isolated instances of gagffes. They are mainstreamn, normal, typical Trump, astonishingly. Trump's verbal inanities are no less consistant and persistant those those of Yogi and Caesy Stengal, but far less charming, far less endearing, funny, but in a twisted, unhealthy rather than a charming, funny way. I will, anfer the fact, find out essentially what Trump said. Of course its important. Even a mad tyrant merits attention, arguably, more than anyone. Trum must be vigorously opposed, not ignored. Those who support him are dwindling in number, and keep doins so. The sooner the better, the more lame duck he becomes. Trying to replace him before the elctions is a hopeless pipe dream, not necessarily desirable. At ths point, reducing Trump to harmless irrrelevance is the best we can hope for.

Trump, Going Rogue, Hanging On

THE SUPREME COURT made the obvious ruling, the only ruling which would have made sense. Only Congress has the power, according to the constitution, to make tariff policy. The president does not. And its as simple as that. No matter how heavily the Republicans pack SCOTUS with sycophantic far right wing Trump supporters, even an extremist, skewed right wing court has the good sense to abide by the constitution. They could put nine John Birchers or nine Anthony Scalia's on the court, and some of the decisions, like this one, would still come out the same. And of course Trump, with typical very young childish mentality and emotional immaturity, lashed out at the high court, dirtying up the situation with his usual vitriolic spew. The constitution is so clear that tariff policy, like interstate commerce, is strictly under the control of Congress, that, as usual, there shouldn't even be any discussion of it. It should be, and is, a slam dunk, as they say. Trump trying to usurp the power of Congress and gather unto himself powers of government which properly, clearly belong in the hands of others, has been a Trump pattern of behavior from the very beginning, from the very first day of his administration, when, as you might recall, he began the day by issuing an illegal executive order changing the constiturion, rescinding birthright citizenship, which was instituted by constitutional amendment in 1866. Arbitrarily, unilateraly making laws out of whole cloth, declaring emergenies for no reason other than to grab power illegally, ignoring any laws which threaten to impede implementation of his agenda; all these behaviors are straight out of the fascist handbook, purely the stuff of Hitler and all authoritarian tyrants. As always, the even greater tragedy is that the majority Republican Congress,as is nearly always the case, seems poised to step aside and allow Trump to behave like and become a petty tyrannical dictator, to rule by decree, with their tacit approval. But surely there is a limit to this. Trump's approval rating nationally has suck to a new low, below sixty percent, and if current trends continue, he will soon be attempting to govern in his autocratic way with only a small minority of support from the American people. Congressional resistance and opposition to Der Fuhrer is growing, even among Republicans. Either Trump was purposely testing the waters, seeking the extent of his potential power, or he and his legal advisors harbor seriously distorted notions of what, precisely, the limits of presidential power really are. Probably a litle bit of both. Despite their tendency to rubber stamp all of Trump's misguided agenda, they, the Republicans, have shown a willingness, when forced into it, to distance themselves from Trump's more irrational actions, to draw the line before Trump gets totally out of hand. The Epstein files process is going to be played out. The public wants the entire sordid affair to be fully, publicly revealed. Besides making grand pronouncements about alien beings and attacking Iran, Trump, we must rest assured, has a whole host of actions at the ready for the only purpose of preserving and protecting his power. But he cannot make the Epstein files vanish. Its too late for that. The less puopular he becomes, the stronger his oposition at home and overseas, the more desperate he will become, and the more willing to take extreme, irrational action. He will not go down without his flaming martyrdom, and when he does, he will try to take as many of us as he can with him, including the entire country.

Trump, UFOs, Epstein, and Us

PRESIDENT TRUMP, with his finger always on the pulse of American mainstream culture, wisely decided to finally put to an end perhaps the most mysterious and intriguing controversy and mystery in modern America: does the American government have evidence or proof that UFOS not only exist, but are actually spaceships bringing intelligent life forms to Earth, visiting, or perhaps paving the way for future conquest and colonization? And wny not? Why not talk UFOs? This seems lke a good move for Trump. After all, who but the most honest, sincere, transparent president would even consider making this profound knowledge known to the American people, instead of only by a select few presidents and military personnel, and maybe Elon Musk? So Trump decided to finally reveal what the government knows, and it turns out, perhaps disappointingly, that there is nothing to see, nothing to show, no aliens nor indications of the existence of any. I don't don't knw for sure what in reality was made public, if anything, how many UFO files were released or will be realeased by the administration. So far, the media seems to be rather quiet and disinterested in it. From the beginning, the overwhelming probability has been that the government has nothing secretly hidden, no bodies, no mangled or intact spacecraft from other planets, no tangible evidence of any kind. The probable reason for this is that there isn't any, that there aren't any alien beings visiting Earth, either observaing it and us from concealment, or living among us, disguised as humans, doing whatever they came here to do, study us, take control of us, exterminate us, whatever. Over the past fifty years, the evolution of the UFO phenomenon has led to a fully developed UFO culture, with a huge capitalistic component and a large and devoted interested public to which to market. If and when you courageously try to tell true believers that, when push comes to shove, at the end of the day, what it comes down to is that there simply isn't even a single scrap of good evidence for the existence of inetellligent life in spaceships in the Earth's atmosphere or anywhere near Earth. And yet, the UFO fad, hobby, industry, craze, or whatever it is, abides, unabated. Of course by now it has long since fallen into the nefarious clutches of the American marketing industry, and Madison Avenue is humming right along, exploiting a new sucker every minute. UFOlogy has become embedded within the far larger alternative cosmic paradigm community, fad,industry, whichever, which includes radio programs heard around the world, big time book publishing, all of it. It may be that Trump, by announcing what he did when he did, misplayed the whole scenario, lost out on a golden opportunity. Maybe. Better, perhaps, to initiate drama in which Trump is being stonewalled by the military or other government organs and agencies, and has to engage in a great struggle against "the deep state" to get permission and gain admission to and get to the bottom of the whole UFO question, confronts and defeats a deeply entreched government secrecy conspiracy - and prevails as Trump the hero in the end, assuring the American people that, indeed, we've nothing to fear, for they do not exist, or if they do, are not here. He could go even farther,and some chosen whistle blower could come forth with stolen government documents, exposing an alien presence and threat which was destroyed by Trump alone, out of the public spotlight, but a titanic struggle nonetheless. And if you don't think that Trump would or will go to such lengths to distract from the Epstein files, think again. After all, he appears to be perfectly willing to get the United States into a war to use as a distraction from the Epstein files..

Applying Tariffs Properly, (Not Trumpically)

THE GOOD NEWS that SCOTUS had rear ended POTUS, had struck down El Trumpo's idiotic, precipitously and capriciously applied, unwisely conceived and implemented tariffs, filled me with great joy, as it must certainly have many others. All tariff policy should be carefully thought out, with constant and copious advice and guidance from experts, implemeted only with the greatest due considertaion, and targeted, very specifically, at specific industries and countries, for very real, expedient purposes, for economically beneficial reasons. They should not be implemented at the delusional whim of a mad petty tyrant throwing darts at a styrofoam target while admiring his orange hairpiece and thumbing through "Playboy". For some idiotic reason, contemporary American conservatism has taken up with the extremist, insane notion that there is no such thing as experts or expertise, that one citizen's answers are as good as any other conservative citizen's. Intellectual populism. Education level means nothing, and in fact only gets in the way of good, clear, conservative thinking by cluttering up the mind with a bunch of pseudo intellectul elitest nonsense. This attitude is a sort of warped, twisted, misguided understanding of what, precisely, "Populism" actually is. Populism, in a nutshell, is nothing other than the sacred principle that everybody has a right to participate in the public, town square conversation, to have and freely share his or her own thoughts, ideas, and imput, and to be listened to respectfully, if nothing else, if not with actual agreement. Populism is democracy from the ground up, not from the top down. We the people, the teeming masses of the land of economic exploitation of everything, are given, by our own insistence, the awesome responsibility of governing ourselves. Populism is no more intended as a declaration that all ideals and beliefs are created equal than deomocracy is meant to imply that all citizens, regardless of personal character or talent, are equally qualified to participate in popular goverment or to assume positions of political leadership. Herr Trump, with the full approval of SCOTUS, Congressional Republicans, and about half of the American people, has packed like sardines the U.S. Supreme Court with three hard right wing extremist conservatives, for the intended purpose of remaking the American legal in the image of far right wing conservative extremist ideologues. A pure neoliberal capitalist economic system, excluding all governent regulation. Christian nationalism. Mass deportations of the working dark colored working class. Unspoken but glaring, obviously implied: an American society which reverts to traditional but currently fading white Christian supremacy. Packing the high (on drugs?) Court, as well as the entire federal jusiciary, with flaming far right ideologues fashioned in the image of Rush Limbaugh's ghost, is a very real conspiracy, (see: Newt Gingrich, David Brock) dating back to the horror, shock, and outrage of Republicans when Obama was elected, an event which precipitated a secret gathering of the political right leadership in 2009. What they came up with was a strategy of fierce, unrelenting aggression. Obams's ascension scared American conservatism straight into the arms of the John Birch society, within whose comforting grasp it yet remains. Maybe sometime soon the Democrats will figure out that Ali beat Foreman not by rope-a-doping the entire fight, but rather, by coming out and fighting just about the time when Foreman, exhausted from his on savage attacks, was beginning to wear down.

Turning Up the Pressure On Trump

SOMEWHERE I SAW, or somebody told me, that Trump's approval rating had fallen to twenty seven percent. I hope that's true, but am skeptical. It seems certain thaqt it has indeed declined from its traditional forty two perent or so, which is the number, possibly inflate, that has most often been given during his two disaster fests. Beyond doubt, this is the time to tur opposition to Trump up to a fever pitch, to get over the hump, to hammer teh nails into the coffin of his political career, the MAGA movement, this current strain of fudamentalist evaangelical Christianity married to and making strange bedfellows with far right wing political conservatism.Like Barry Goldwater and Billy Graham both emphatically said, we don't want a strong powerful right wing Republican party married to asssociated with dominated or influenced by evangelical fudamentalist Protestant Christianity. No only do the atheistic far left wing lunatic scum not want this, neither do all good Christian conservative Americans, whether they know it or not, if they are patriotic, truly love their country, and want what's best for America. You sure as hell don't want the Christian religion to formally, legally be made teh official state religion of these United States. Period. Trump's recent, recycled proclaamation of his Christian faith rings more hilariously hypocritical than ever. The thing to do is to mockingly laugh, sneer at, and ridicule it, sarcastically, as viciously as possible, in public, on social media, everywhere. This is precisely what the Prevaricaotor - Chief deserves, and really, needs, other than lifetiem incarceration. What I am telling my fellow anti-Trumpers is that now is the time to swoop in like eagles for the kill and vultures for bone picking, then maggots for final consumation. To merely present such widespread popular, media and political-legislative oppostion to trump, including the Democrats winning the midterms, decisively, is the corrrect formula, just what the doctor ordered for he preservation of democracy in America. It can be surmised that every anti-Trumper, bearing in mind that sixty percent of the American are in that category, not only opposes Trump, but does so vehemently, vociferously, strongly, not merely causually. The anti-Trump movement has a lot of substance and strength, and is formidable, which is the reason why Trump is already resorting to desperate measures, attempting to cling to his shrinking base of support, and indeed, the presidency. With each day it look slike pressure is growing to release the complete Epstein files, fully, compleely, unabridged, unredacted. The ANTIFA movement, which is another name for the anti-Trump movement, is strengthening sufficiently to shut down the Trump agenda, in its entirety. When you consider that the judicial system has essentially already shut it down, our duty is to fully support the judiacary as fundamental to any patriotic American, even as it uses sound legal reasoning to point out the unconstitutionality of all the Trump tyranical insanity by decree that it has alredy relgated to the garbage sack. My ultimate dream, that the Trump administration will become aware of me personally, and will consider me a sufficient threat to its poer and existence that it starts trying to and maybe kills me or tries to discredit me somehow still seems far away, probably unachievable, beyond my grasp, an impossible dream. But, you never know. A journey of a thousand miles, etc. Whatever you're doing to oppose or even get rid of Trump, keep doing it, and do more of it.

Damning With Faint Praise

DONALD TRUMP"S remarks about Jesse Jackson were, unsurprisingly, a perfect example of "damning with faint praise". He knew that for the sake of appearances alone he had to say something, anything free of his usual acidic vitriole and rampant, but subtle implicit racism. He almost made it seem as if the two of them drank beer together,palled around a bit, shared a golf cart.Two peas in a perfecty harmonious pod, Donnie and Jesse. Two galant crusaders for racial and economic justice. A firm, enduring frienship based on mutual respect and admiration."Quite a character. Quite a character, that Jesse. A good guy." Gotta give Trump credit. I was certain that he would remain silent, would have nothing to say. I was wrong. How and why I would expect Trump to remain on the sidelines and out of the spotlight by missing such a golden opportunity to redirct the spotlight towards himself is beyond my comprehension. A momentary lapse of good judegment is my excuse. And, as always, it probably would have been better had he had the good sense to say nothing, but that,of course, is far beyond his capabilities. Donnie always has to weigh in, always has to find a way to make something which has nothing to do with him about, and only about, his glorious, shining, stinking self. Drawing atention to himself at every opportunity is a narcissist's stock in trade, and its what makes Trump Trump. "He shines and stinks like dead mackeral by moonlight", as one founding father said of another, and as I can't seem to stop quoting. The quote is just too good to let lie. But in the midst of his usual self aggrandizement, he found a way to mention Jesse Jackson, and I'll give him that.And he didn't utter a single syllable about shit hole counries in Africa, didn't use the "N" word, at least not unless it was "redacted", as we say these days, edited out. You can never be too sure. In private conservation, Trump never fails to refer to African-Americans as "niggers". That, according to everyone who has ever written a book about him using primary source material. I never in amillion years would have know precisely how close the two menwere, and how much Trumpofa boost Donald gave to Jackson's career. What, the civil rights leader spent a night of two in Trump Tower,and in the Lincoln bedroom, correct? Probably included room service. Trump's obsession with being on the winning team at all costs impels him inmany instances to dwell among his emenies,and to break bread with them. The next step is the announcement of the itinerary for Jackson's funeral,time, place, guest list, and so forth. You can bet your bottom dollar that Donald Trump will be seated in the front row, amidst a sea of black faces the sort of which he has long held in abject contempt, looking all pious, deep in mourning. He's not half bad at feigning emotion, like any good politician. And so I surrrender, with feigned dignity but very real revulsion and disgust, to the inevitable reality that, after all, everything in the currrent incarnation of this parallel political universe is all about and only about Donald J.Trump. Like John Adams said to his wife when Thomas Jefferson stole the election of 1800 and the presidency from her husband "My darling, if he wants it that badly, let him have it." I repeat that story ad nauseum too. i just can't seem to let it go. So let Trump have his moment of vainglorious stolen glory in the sunshine of his own refleced light. We are free to turn away in disgust. Jesse Jackson shall live forever, in our hearts and minds. Trump will sink beneath the cess pool of his own igmoinous, perfidious making, relegated to history's hall of scum and shame. Jesse Jackson will shine on forever as a beacon of social, economic, and racial justice, far from the dark but mercifully short shadow cast by Donald Trump's rotting, stinking dead indecency.

Speaking Trumpese

DONALD TRUMP was explicit, to the degree that he ever can be.No bones about it. He is the greatest current president in American history. This, objectively, is beyond dispute. Unmentioned is that he is also the worst current president in American history, and perhaps most fortunate of all, the only current president in American history. That's just the way he talks. When George H.W. Bush proudly proclaimed the United States of America the greatest nation in the entire country, we scratched our heads, read between the lines, consulted our dictionairies of modern American Bushisms, and finally, perhaps somewhat miraculously, got his point.That's what we are forced into doing with our modern Republican presidents. The eloquence of the self educated Abraham Lincoln is a relic of bygone days. People in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had good penmanship, they spelled correctly, andwhen they wrote and spoke, they made some semblance of good sense.That's what happens when paper is dearly expensive,andinorderto put pen to paper it isnecessary to dip pen in ink,over and over again.You make the msot of what you have. We seem to have reached the point, in all our affluent surplus, where we can afford to make the least. Donald Trump would be eligible for membership in the Yogi Berra association of butchered verbal expression, were it not for the fact that Yogi was a genuinely good guy, irresistably loveable,and of the highest moral quality, the precise opposite of the reprobate who dares think of himself, laughably, as a great leader.When you repeat Yogi-isms, you smile with love and admiration. When you look to Bush - either one will do - you roll your eyes, and wonder why and what if. When you think about Ronald Reagan, another master at the art of English language butchery, you cntempate his mental decline in his second term, much like that of Joe Biden during his first. But there is something far more sinister and lesss endaring about the way Trump's makes a mockery of coherent self expression. It aint over till its over, it gets late early at Yankee Stadium. Nobody ever eats at that restaurant because its always crowded. These are the stuff of beloved,lengendary linguistic abusers. Both Bushes had their sometimes charming style of spoken idiocy. Trump's word salads are of a different order and magnitude altogether. For one thing, they seem to go on endlessly, like a minor league outfielder kicking the ball all over the left center field gap while runners circle the bases in droves. They go on, and on, extended beyond mere phrases, sentences, or paragraphs. Like a fumble that nobody seems to want to recover, or a loose basketball rolling in slow motion, going out of bounds while ten tall people scramble and dive like gophers into holes, canceling each other out in abject futility. Trump does more than merely innocently, humorously torching good grammer and usage. He garbles volumes. You can, and it has been done,put a Bush quote of the day on a tear off calander, and help people to a mmorning giggle over coffee and donuts. With Trump the temptations tends more toward a head shake and sigh of resignation.True, his gaffs are humorous. All the basics are there. But when you sort out the substance,what there is of it, from the flotsam and jetsome, you go away feeling hollow, somehow cheated. We sole conolation is remindful of what my sister says about her cooking: "It aint good,but there's a lot of it". And, one might assume, a lot more to come.

Jesse Jackson, Making Me Better

I SAW JESSE JACKSON speak on a college campus in 1991, where I was teaching. My girlfriend and I attended together, and, I confess, I was much more excited about my date than about Jesse Jackson. Go figure, as we say. In an arena seating about nine thousand people, there were probably half that many people in attendance, and my date and I were among the very few "white" people there, sprinkled throughout the sea of black faces. I recall being a bit nervous, hoping we would be accepted, not regarded as posers, wearing some feigned, prominently displayed racial equality on our sleeves for appearances only. In retrospect, I needn't have worried. I must assume that when Jackson appeared on campuses up north, the crackers came out in much greater numbers. But in the deep south, whitie boy stayed home, probably sulking. Only the radical liberals dared venture forth to listen to an uppity N word griping about some imaginary racial inequality. My mother, who was born in 1920, was raised around racists, and hated racism passionately. She had more influence over me than my overtly racist father, thank heaven, who was brilliant, but should have known better, and knew better. When Jesse walked through the door and into the basketball arena, he was flanked by no fewer than a dozen very large, young, athletic looking African-American men, all wearing suits and ties. Jesse wasn't going to take any chances, play any games, or cater to anyone's misplaced sensitivities. He meant business, which was immediately evident. The most handsome group of men I had or still have ever seen, except perhaps when Elvis Presley or Neil Diamond appeared on stage alone. Jackson lost no time getting to the point. The theme of his speech was, and its title should have been and maybe was "they work every day." By this time the reverend had long since abandoned his attacks on racism only, and had expanded his repertoire to the working class, all pigmentations included. He had come to realize that the root problem is more comprehensive than mere racism, that it exrended to the entire working class, the exploited, largely forgotten part of the American people who do the actual work. Paraphrased, he said: "Tonight, when we finish here, we will all go back to our comfortable homes, our comfortable, well paying jobs, and we will carry on with our comfortable, privileged lives". He well good and well that he was speaking about a class of Americans to which a select, chosen few people of color had been admitted, by reason of some talent, some ability to entertain, or by sheer chance of birth or marriage. He knew his audience, the sons and daughters of the upper midddle class of white privilege. The well educated class. Nobdoy there was dressed in the clothing of the working class. No thread bare coveralls, no brown uniforms. "That's when they, the workers, will take our place here in this arena, which will need a good cleaning. And they will clean up our mess, and noody will know or care about what they did. We won't even bother to imagine what this beautiful building would look like, what it would become, without their deovted, crucial assistance. They alone make our presence here possible." He said more than this, but he needn't have. He had made his point, and we, the privileged few, got the point. We left the arena that night changed,somehow. I for one have never been the same. That was the end of my date. My date and I had done enough, heard enough.. I grew that night, in ways that even the reverend Jackson would never fully know or understand. I became a better person because of what he said to me, what he did for me. As Goethe said; "Confronted with great merit, the only resistance is love". The night I listened to Jesse jackson, I became a better person, and for that, I shall always be grateful.

Doing Something

"FASHION IS A THING I CARE mighty little about, except when it happens to run just exactly according to my own notion, and I was mighty nigh sending out my book without any preface at all, until a notion struck me, that perhaps it was necessary to explain a litle why and wherefore I had written it. Most of authors seek fame, but I seek for justice."... When writer's block, which is a very real affliction, afflicts one, one recourse is to quote the first sentence in the autobiography of David Crockett, American hero. The historian who wrote the introduction to this quaint classic American treasure pointed out that heroes are made, they are not born. Quite correct. At the Unitarian church I attend, the pre service disussion group, which always chooses something interesting to discuss, centered around "heroes"; what one is, what characterizes one, etc. When the topic turned to female heroes, I nominated Abagail Adams, a personal hero of mine, who among other acts of heroism wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson after he in effect stole the presidency from her husband, in which she said: "I still love you, but once upon a time I respected you."...You go, girl. I left the discussion exhilarated, proud of myself for having, for the fist time, contributed something. I try to write and publish at least one page of nonfiction prose on this website daily. Sometimes I fail. When that happens I feel useless, idiotically guilty (guilt, I believe, like jealousy, is bullshit). I write and publish an essay, (a good essay I hope) nearly every day for more than fourteen years,six thousand essays, I miss one day in a blue moon, and I feel guilty?! As we say: "gimme a break!"...Forgiving one's self can be the most difficult and is the most important form of forgiving of all. So stop with the emotioal garbage nonsense, I exhort myself. There comse a time when you simply have to get your ass up off the couch, and go get some exercise. Just do it, as Nike tells us. Blame nobody, expect nothing, do something. Get up, get out, get better. Goethe, my main man as anybody who knows me knows, said: "There is no better way to blunt a resolution than to keep talking about it." Thus this essay becomes an exercise in stream of consciousness, guilt free. The page is filling up with words, and I am, I was the one who put them there. Well, and then, so be it. If nothing else,I will have done something, will have broken the chains of my self inflicted paralysis of mind and soul, and can at least say: "I did something, I produced something" In my favorite televsion ad, Michael Jordan is walking sullenly into the locker room, all black leather, carrying a gym bag. He is talking to himself. He says: "During my lifetime I have lost three hundred basketball games. I have missed more than nine thousand shots. Seventy five times my teammates have relied on me to make the game winning shot, and twenty five times I missed the shot. During my lifetime, I have failed, over, and over, and over again. And that is why I succeed....And so this page is filling up with words. Only a few minutes ago I thought I had "writer's block",and indeed I did, but only because I thought I did. I have no idea whether these words will benefit anyone, other thanas a sort of mental laxative for myself. I'm gald I contributed something, however meager, to the discussion group at church. And I am gladder that I wrote this essay, inadequate though it likely is. Verbal garbage though it may be, a lost game, a missed shot, I took the shot, and can do nothing more than that.

Trump, Solving Problems

WITH EVIDENT PRIDE AND JOY, President Trump announced that with the rising stock market the 401Ks of American military personnel were appreciating quite well. This, despite the inconvenient fact that the American military does not offer 401Ks to service members. Oops. Faux pas. Not to worry. There is nothing at all unusual about this. Our president is an old pro at this game,in which he says something idiotic, then either denies having said it, or claims that somebody else did. The self absorbed addlepated chief executive routinely fabricates a seperate, alternative reality, for whatever demented reason, usually one in which he escapes laughable ignominy only to emerge as the heroic protagonist, in his own mind if nowhere else. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that he sincerely if mistakenly believes that he authored, sponsored, and skillfully maneuvered through Congress and signed into law a provision extending 401K benefits to all members of the military. Or that he knows he did no such thing, but likes to think he did, or prefers to pretend that he did. Sort of like one of his election fantasy things with which we are all so painfully familiar. Its anyone's guess, as always. Whatever the sordid case may be, five'll get you ten that his cult followers, no less delusional than he, duly impressed by his "achievement", imaginary or not, will tout it as undeniable proof that the Donald deserves a third term, all constitutional considerations aside, the founding document be damned. He may or may not be seriously mentally ill, but you can bet your bottom dollar that He is utterly corrupt, capable of anything, as is well known. He shines and stinks like dead mackerel by moonlight, as one founding father said of another. Our luminous president's precarious perspicacity is demonstrably not limited to merely imaginary pension programs. His expertise, we now learn, extends to geology. This reminds me of a friend of mine, who has a degree in marketing, who swore that cliamte change is a hoax, and said that he knows this becasue he is a geologist. I still haven't made that connection.I hope and assume I never shall. But, I digress...You'll recall Mr. Trump's optimistically assesing rising sea levels as nature's way of providing new opportunities for developing ocean front property. (as always, you can't make this stuff up). He now proposes that what with hundreds of active volcanoes distributed all over God's green Earth, it would be expedient to dump tons of cement straight down into their hollow cones, filling them with hardening concrete, plugging them up,thereby trapping all future lava while the molten mess has a chance to cool down, and reconsider doing damage to people and property. Don the Con's impressive resume' of problem solving includes his forthcoming cure for windmill cancer, Covid 19 treatments and cures which include drinking bleach and using ultraviolent radiation in a suppository,and his greatest prescription of all; simply letting the virus spread without medical resistance, culling the weak from the stong while the flu like symptoms run their course. If only all this were no more than a dystopian science fiction novel, and perhaps it should be, but it isn't. Bear in mind that we have nearly three more years of solutions by Trump. Einstein allegedly said that there are two things that are infinite, human stupidity and the universe, but that he wasn't sure about the universe. We know for certain that Friedrich Schiller said that against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. True enough, and our silver lining is that this reality takes the heat off of us for our pathetic inability to do a damned thing about it ourselves.

Denying Science, At Great Peril

IN HIS SEMINAL book "The Demon Haunted World", published just before his death in 1995, the late Carl Sagan provides a compelling examination of the modern preoccupation with pseudo science. In our increasingly well educated era, a not insignificant segment of the population,is apparently unable or unwilling to understand and come to terms with the revealed, verified realities of the world and the universe. Sagan points out that there is no shortage of intelligence among the masses. There is, however, a shortage of scientifically well educated students. In this regard our education system has failed us. We have turned out more than a mere few generations of poorly educated citizens. When a charismatic leader openly proclaims his love of the poorly educated, sycophantic cult like followers eagerly assemble at his throne of willful, lazy ignorance, their choice to eschew education in favor of cheap entertainment fully reinforced and vindicated. Maybe science classes, particularly chemistry and physices, should be required courses, not elective. Maybe pseudo science is perceived, albeit incorrecly, as being more fun, more exciting. It is of course neither, but it is simplistic, easy to comprehend and digest, and embrace. The poorly educated, who have become a celebrated demographic in the United States of Avoicance, take the lazy way, the easy way out. Its cool to be dumb. Simply spout a few conspiracy theories laced with pseudo science and you have the making of a best seller or rapt audience on the A.M radio stations which market, under the cover of night, this garbage like they market far right wing dispensers of hatred and lies by day. The money hungry media, which relies on the steady income of abloated,over priced advertising industry, happily spoon feeds a credulous, gullible public the precise intellectual opiate it so desperately craves: pseudo science fiction and fantasy, attractively packaged and presented as credible information. Certainly it is far easier and more immediately emotionally fulfilling to immerse a lay mind in the salve of escape entertainment rather than slogging our way through the hours of lectures, textbooks, and examinations necesary to put one's self on a firm footing with the ostensibly enormously complex universe as it really is. Imagine the shattering experience of conversing, or trying to have an intelligent conversation with a climate change denier, as he moves the downward facing open palm of his hand in an undulating roller coaster motion in front of your face, signifying that climate change is cyclical, and that the cycles recycle according to their own natural causes, without any human intervention or influence. The message is tragically clear,the product of an opaque mentality. Imagination him telling you, with a condescending smirk, in all seriuosness, without a trace of doubt, that teh Earth'sclimate is alwasy changeing, and has always changed, and alwasys will, regardless of human activity. One trillion tons of carbon, injected into the atmosphere by humans, thus becomes irrelevant, even imaginary, or worse, a hoax, a conspiracy among the world's radical liberals, a pretext to take control of government,destroy all economic freedom, and to sustain the enormous corporate profits generated by the fossil fuel industry. Ironically, it is the conservative capitalists, not the socialistic tree hugging liberals who seek to sustain forever their sacred corporate money making machine. No, the Earth is not so huge, and we humans are not so weak and small as to make any impact by us on the world's ecosystem impossible. we burn down huge forests, turn rivers into lakes, and our cities can be seen from outer space. There shall remain of our cities but the wind that blew through them. Astray within their hollow cement shells,our descendants will marvel at the stupidity of their ancestors, for truly, against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.

Cleaning Up

THE GANGES RIVER, which arises high in the Himalayas and flows for hundreds of miles along the border separating India and Pakistan, is among the world's largest, longest, and most polluted waterways. Garbage and sewage is cast into the waters upstream, where swimming is possible but inadvisable, partly due to strong, unpredictable currents, deep parts, and whirlpools. As the river makes its way to its ultimate destination it become ever more polluted, as the millions of people crowded into filthy cities lining its shores almost casually toss their waste material into its sacred waters. You could almost walk across it, without a bridge. (Those of a certain age might remember when Lake Eerie caught fire.) China's Yangtze river suffers a similar afflication. It is debatable as to which nation on Earth is most guilty of failing to protect the delicate ecosystem of planet Earth, and which layer of it has been and is being the most abused by humans; Earth, air, or water. Any bet placed on any of the above would beat the odds in Vega. The United States is certainly a front running candidate. As to which of the world's great rivers endures teh msot mistreatment, again, your pick is as good a anyone's, although generally much progress has been made in cleaning up rivers, lakes, and oceans,but not nearly enough. We shouldn't have to be doing the cleaning up. We the people of planet Earth hould have had the common sense to never have defecated where we dine, so to speak. We have plenty of places and opportunities to properly dispose of our wretched refuse on the planet where harm done would either be ameliorated or eliminated altogether, but we have only one planet to pollute. Even nuclear waste can be buried deep beneath the surface of the Earth, where its deadly harm can at least be mitigated or ignored if we prefer. Long before we were fully aware of atmospheric carbon pollution and resulting climate change we were well aware of the, harm being done by plastic grocery sacks, toxic waste dumps, inadequae sweage systems. Amazing, the amount of damage to our planetary nesting place we do by producing more than eight billion of us, with many more to come, and by giving ourselves a blank check to do with our thrown away materials whatever our whimsical nature impels us to do. We have known better all along. Whatever is most convenient. We know that we are threatening to bring about the extinction of the human species, and that we are already causing the extincion of thousands of other species of aninals. We have until recently been relatively unconcered with the mess we have made and continue to make. Our recently enhanced awareness of our own folly is an encouraging sign, a sign of our dawning awareness of the absolute necessity keeping the kitchen and the latrine separated. (Even George Washington had to be taught this.) High schol "ecology clubs" used to pick up garbage in public places on weekends for extra credit. Now, they and the rest of us must do much more. Hysterical warnings about our behavior and the future of the planet are, of course, a dime a dozen, but are worth every penny, and then some. We can never give ourselves sufficient warnings, take too many proactive measures to protect the environment, or write too many books and essays on this subject. Like Issac Asimov and Frederick Pohl warned in their 1991 book "Our Angry Earth", the alarms are sounding, the red warning lights are flashing. And yes, time is running out, and no matter how many times we repeat this redundantly, it becomes more urgently true by the day. All the damage we have done can be undone. High school environmental protection clubs are a good start. The end game will consist of our decision to begin treating the Earth like a home, rather than a waste dump.

Losing our Religion; The Twilight of the Gods

THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, said Goethe, began as an abortive political revolution which turned moral. The uprising was against Roman power and suppression. It failed for the usual reasons; lack of organization, weapons, and suficient political will. All turned out well for the faith, in that it spread around the world and to this day illuminates the lives of more than two billion people. Its actual origins are deeper in history than that, dating back, in fact, to the dawn of history itself. All religions, approximately four thousand of them, have the same genesis; in the human imagination and ability to reimagine an incomprehensible universe in anthrophmorphic, all too human terms, in the image of humanity. God becomes a superhuman entity, and we his chosen children of the light. All religions begin with their votaries calling their invented beliefs "the light", or "the truth". The sun is the center, the focal point of all religion. God has many names. This is illustrated by a science fiction short story by Arther C. Clarke "The Nine Billion Names of God". When the last, final name of the last god is spoken, the universe, satisfied that it now knows itself, willingly, mercifullly dies. There is almost always a "messiah". Our ancient ancestors correctly perceived their own fragility, and the fragile, makeshift nature of human existence. The anthropomorphic deities were nonetheless somewhat emotionally fragile themselves, taking after their inventors, and required their own nourishment of the soul, in the form of human formalized adoration, worship, an exprssion of which isinherit in every ceremony ever held by every society which ever feared and failed to understand the essential harmony of nature, and in most cases harmlessness of thunder and lightening. We invent superior beings and set them atop Mount Olympus where we can relegate them to the status of observers who once upon a time intervened directly and constantly in human affairs, but gradually withdrew from our daily lives as our understanding of them grew and perhaps made them fearful that their fraudulant nature would be exposed, and their power over us, purely psychological, would dissipate and vanish altogether. Religion inspires and comforts people, the only real reasons for its existence. We are now in the twilight of our gods. Having largely outgrown them, we simply do not need them anymore. Though many people still cling to traditional religious beliefs, the sweeping growth of science, with our attendant advance in our knowledge of the universe, is inexorably reducing our pantheon of gods, for they have become relics of a benighted past, and we simply do not need them anymore. We should celebrate and not lament the passing of our ancient omnipotent, omnipresent heavenly benefactors. Thomas Jefferson,two hundred years ago, called relgious belief "our modern superstition". He understood that humanity's capacity to understand the world through our own faculties was freeing us from the need to assuage our fears and ignorance-based beliefs about the world, by replacing them with explanations for phenomena which are coherent, observable, verifiable, and ultimately far more comforting and satisfying than our previous reliance on fabricated narratives. As a species we are growing up, outgrowing our need for the comforting crutches of religious superstition. We are entering the twilight of the gods, and giving birth to a newand better way of understanding our world and ourselves. Childhood's end. We are yet unsure precisely how to adopt to and evolve with our new found freedom from the mental bondage of our inferior prior beliefs. For better or for worse, we will think of something.