American Conservatives, Acting Crazy, Again

HUMOROUSLY AND INCREDIBLY, someone, some delusional conservative nut case, described the investigation into whether the Russians helped Trump win the election with the knowledge and cooperation of Trump's campaign as a "witch hunt". Yeah, right. The question is: how many millions of American far right wingers would say the same thing? The FBI and at least one congressional committee from each congressional legislative body is conducting a full scale investigation into this, including Democrats and Republicans both, and its a witch hunt? Like, I am soooo totally sure. Trump regularly kisses Putin's ass, has money invested in Russia, with the possibility of more to come, it is universally known that the Russians interfere with elections all over the world, we know that in fact there was and still is extensive contact between Trump's people and high up Russians in their intelligence community, and its a witch hunt? Too funny. When Trump is finally revealed as a Russian operative and is convicted of treason, impeached, removed, and imprisoned, count on America's conservative mob to keep right on claiming that a witch hunt, spearheaded by Hillary Clinton, Barrack Obama, the Democratic Party, the mainstream American media, and maybe an extraterrestrial or two conspired to bring down the president by fabricating the entire episode. Bear in mind, please, that the people making this insane witch hunt claim are the self same vicious lunatics who have in fact carried on a witch hunt against Hillary Clinton for the past twenty five years, without so much as a trace of a parking ticket to show for it. So, they're the experts on witch hunts, these crazy conservatives. The frightening thing is that as many as tens of millions of Americans fall into this crazy conservative category, people living right in your own neighborhood. Otherwise, the whole right wing thing would be harmless and humorous, were it not so large and in such deadly earnest. Better change the locks on your doors and windows.

Assessing the President's Mental Health

DONALD TRUMP is unqualified to be president, or much of anything else, by virtue of mental illness, according to John Gartner, who has a PhD in psychology and has created an online petition for the purpose of getting people, mainly other psychologists who agree, to get on board with an attempt to expedite Trump's removal. So far, between forty and fifty thousand have signed on, many but not all of them members of the psychology profession. Psychologists, unlike psychiatrists, are not medical professionals, but merely people who have taken a whole lotta college classes in an attempt to understand human behavior and explain it to the rest of us. Good luck with that, right? The allegation is that Trump is afflicted with two serious mental disorders: malignant narcissism, and anti-social personality disorder. Gartner supports his allegation by pointing to the number of women who have accused trump of sexual molestation, which, according to Gartner, in and of itself constitutes anti-social behavior, since sexual molestation is by definition not an acceptable form of social interaction. The malignant narcissism might be a bit more obvious - orange hair, and all that. Narcissus, we might recall, was an ancient Greek mythological character who looked at his own image in a placid lake, fell in love with it, and was unable to break the trance. There he remains to this day, immersed within, poor fellow. Trump may not be quite that bad, but even his most ardent admirers must admit that he does seem a bit more than merely a bit full of himself. He does have a tendency to dominate every relationship in which he participates, and creates a steady supply of acrimonious interactions with victims. That well documented characteristic might tend more towards the anti-social side than the narcissistic, but, either way, it alarming, no matter who displays it, but particularly the president of the United States, along with his finger on the atom bomb. Trump is certainly not be the first American president to suffer mental illness. Lincoln famously was bi-polar, which he called "melancholia", even as he hid his whittling knife from himself, Kennedy was on anxiety medication, and lord only knows what all else. Nixon curled himself into a fetal position a time or two, and lied like a dog, and Lyndon Johnson pulled the sheet over his head in bed, and complained about "not feeling right." Well, really, who among us is entirely without physical or mental infirmity? Just the same, you wish our chief executive would at the very least quit telling whoppers; if one didn't know better, one might think that the term "pathological liar" belongs on the list.

Selling Our Souls to the Corporate Devil

WHEN YOU JOIN FACEBOOK, you are not their customer. You are their merchandise. They sell your info, info about where you live, where you shop, what you like to do, who you sleep with, all the stuff people so proudly, irrelevantly and stupidly post on the Zuckerburg estate, to all comers, mainly America's giant corporations-elite. In essence, they sell you. Makes you feel wanted, eh? You do not buy Facebook membership; no, you get that free of charge. And why not? When valuable merchandise is willing to walk in off the street, position itself on the top shelf of America's corporate masters, why make it pay for the "privilege" of becoming a salable sheepish corporate commodity? Facebook sells your membership to the highest bidder, and there are many standing inline online, ready to pounce. And pounce they do, scooping you up like the goods you have voluntarily, and unwittingly become. Progressive politicians and citizens, who believe in limiting corporate power and protecting individual sovereignty, want to inject legislation into the mix that would require permission from the consumer before being turned into a commodity. Permission by we the American people to withhold our privates from corporate scrutiny. Who could argue with this approach? Republicans, that's who. These supposed staunch defenders of the populist power of the common man do not want every man to have the power to determine his or her own exploitation-free fate. Because, you see, in the conservative universe of free markets, corporate power, money, and the freedom to make tons of it, corporate power trumps all, amid the supposedly conservative championing of the common man and his liberty to do as he chooses. So, we shall live in an alternative reality Orwellian future in which corporate power rules supreme, but that, by the almighty dollar, government is made just a wee bit smaller. The enemy is not the cosmetic apparatus of government, folks. The enemy is not congress, the judiciary, and the executive. The enemy is the massive corporate oligarchy which rules freedom's land with an iron hand, buying and selling politicians, along with the rest of us, to the highest bidder.

Giving, And Taking Away, Sanctuary

SEVERAL HUNDRED CITIES and several states are unwilling to cooperate with the federal government in rounding up and deporting extra-American-terrestrials. Glory to the bastions of American liberalism, usually big cities, in protecting, or at least restraining from pursuing, America's unwanted invaders. Here comes Trump and his alternative reality gang, threatening to withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities and states. Black mail, pure and simple, since the money came from these places in the first place, and is rightfully theirs. According to sanctuary advocates, the undocumented aliens are generally hard working, engage in crime far less frequently than your everyday native born American, are human, and pay into the social security system without ever getting any return on their contribution. Then too, since the feds let them in in the first place by failing to guard America's border, let the feds show them out. We have better things to do with our local law enforcement resources, such as apprehending your regular garden variety native born American criminal. The Trumped up conservative version of reality is that they are illegal intruders, and must go on that basis alone, are lazy, welfare moochers who soak up social service resources which ought properly to go to America's legitimate native born poor. Besides which, these invaders bring crime, rape, drugs, pillage, and general mayhem and destruction. Its just another one of those liberal conservative thingies of which we have grown so fond. In the real world there are more folks leaving the U.S. and returning to Mexico than entering the U.S. from Mexico, owing to lack of opportunity in the north. This has been the case since about 2007. Ironically, non native Americans in large numbers are fleeing into both Canada and mexico to escape American justice and Donald J. Trump, persecution, and bigotry, all of which are made to order in the U. S. of A. With the continuing concentration of wealth and power into the hands of the elite one hundredth of one percent, look for the exodus from the U.S. to continue, and for our angry and uneasy nation to continue to persecute the unwanted brown people. Eventually, America will have emptied itself out, and the land can return to its pristine state of being, inhabited by less harmful species of animals.

Purchasing Justice, the American Way

SOMEBODY SPENT seven million dollars to keep Obama Supreme Court nominee Justice Garland from getting a fair chance, and somebody, probably the same somebody, has already spent more than ten million trying to promote the Trump nominee Justice Gorsuch to the high court. The question is: who? Charles and David Koch? They're the most likely suspects, but nobody knows. When asked before a congressional committee considering his nomination about this mystery, Mr. Gorsuch clearly indicated that he had no idea, and said, rather flippantly, that you'd have to ask whoever donated the money who donated the money. The curious member of congress replied that he himself hadn't the faintest idea whom to ask, but thanks anyway for the heads up. And there the matter stands, or, in judicial parlance, sits. We have arrived at such a corrupt state of affairs in the United States of Advertising that whereas we know that nominations to the United States supreme court are bought and paid for, we know not by whom. Billionaires bribe members of congress with campaign contributions, and bribe we the American people with lavish and extensive ad campaigns, and both of the above respond like Pavlovian lap dogs, right on cue, doing the bidding of our nation's wealthiest and elitest. That's the way it works, with all dark money. Can we be far from a time when political offices and judicial appointments are auctioned off on satellite TV, with anyone who is anyone texting bids to the corporate media, which adds them up, and announces the winner, while the president smugly sits in his New York tower or Florida estate, and tweets his approbation or condemnation, whichever happens to come to mind? You're fired!

Obamacare, Hanging Around

EVERYONE KNEW that it would be difficult to repeal and replace Obamacare. After seven years of existence, its deeply entrenched, and it insures over twenty million people who would otherwise lack coverage. Besides, after seven years of wailing and gnashing, not only do the republicans not have a clear cut replacement other than tweaking what's already there, they can't seem to agree with what, precisely, to replace it. The hard core conservatives want to make the Affordable Care Act vanish entirely, and go back to an every man for himself approach, not surprisingly. Hence, disunity reigns within the Grand Old Party. Into the fray stalks Trump, petulantly proclaiming that unless the House passes a repeal and replace post haste, he's done dealing with it. And why not? He has an entire empire to manage, his own, and ours. Plus, Der Trumpster was once, long ago, a single payer advocate. Damned socialist. You just have this nagging feeling that if Big O had named it "Reagancare", there would be no problem, and all would be blissful. To conservatives, whatever has anything anything to do with Obama is poison because it has something to do with Obama. Obama doesn't help his own cause by having been born in Kenya, or maybe Mars, and having bugged Trump tower. Thus remains Obamacare, a fly in the conservative buttermilk, a gum on shoe sole which will....not....go away...

Seeking Judicial wisdom, From Any Viewpoint

THERE IS NO PROVISION in the U.S. constitution which requires a Supreme Court justice to be a conservative. Yet, from what you hear in the media and among our political leaders, you might be forgiven for mistakenly believing that there is. The best kept secret among conservatives is that no particular personal political ideology is a criteria for ascension to the nation's highest court. We should, and we were intended to, appoint people with intelligence, integrity, and a history of impartial, well reasoned, renderings from the bench, not conservatives or liberals. As to what the founders "intended" or "meant" by their words, we can never know for sure, because we cannot read minds. We can only guess, based upon available documents. We know that the second amendment was meant, for instance, to apply to eighteenth century muzzle loading muskets, not automatic nor semi automatic high powered rifles. So then, why do the conservative "originalists" insist that it applies to AR 15s and AK47s? The esteemed document also designates African-Americans as three fifths of a human being for purposes of congressional apportionment, and upholds slavery. So much for conservative originalism; let's stop worrying about what dead people thought, or might have wanted us to think, and get down to the business of using the constitution as it was intended; as a living, breathing document which must, by definition, be interpreted, as all words on paper must be. Our original intent republicans need never have illegally prevented justice Garland from being considered for the high court; he would have done a good job, although as a political moderate. Justice Gorsuch, a right wing conservative in his daily life, needn't be feared or reviled by liberals. When push comes to shove, he will render justice, impartially, equally, under law, the way it was intended, even when his decisions appear to be liberal in nature. Sometimes good jurisprudence seems liberal, sometimes it seems conservative. What matters is that it always seems fair, and wise.

Denying

SOUTH CAROLINA needs to spend billions of dollars to rebuild its entire crumbling infrastructure, mainly roads, bridges, and sewer systems, right fast like, or they aren't going to even have an infrastructure worth rebuilding. If they had been maintaining it all along, year after year, decade after decade, maintaining a continuous program of spend and repair as you go, as needed, they wouldn't be in this fix now. Instead, they have done absolutely nothing for decades, including neither raising the gasoline tax, nor paving roads. The cost will now be about ten times greater than it would have cumulatively been had they done it the right way, constantly and steadily. Its as if the entire state has been in a state of denial, both the politicians, the media, and the general public. The masses, all wearing blinders. Pretend there's not a problem, and there isn't one. That seems to be the emerging American way; or maybe its already emerged, long since, a cultural tendency to deny and self deceive, and procrastinate the solving of problems. There is a man who has written a book, telling about and strongly defending and even advocating his decision years ago to deal with his Parkinson's disease by pretending that it is not real. Strict denial. He is a very thoughtful and intelligent man, and points out that in our culture we are strongly inclined to view every problem, indeed, every circumstance, as a fight, a competition, me against whatever, and to think of it and respond to it in confrontational terms. All well and good, maybe, to a point. Learning to accept reality is also considered a core American value. Accept it, and fight it, all at the same time. Ongoing denial, on the other hand, allows for the elimination of both; elimination of the death struggle, and elimination of the pain of acceptance of reality. Sounds pretty questionable, but, hey, as we speak, dude's still alive, and able to do a fascinating interview on radio, after eight years of Parkinson's, so maybe he's got something after all. Crumbling national infrastructure? National debt at bankruptcy levels? Onrushing climate change and impending global disaster? As they say in Brooklyn: Fuggettaboutit!

Voting For Trump, and Getting What You Voted For: Coming Home to roost

AT THE SENIOR CENTER, in my small southern U.S. town, only I voted for Hillary. Several of the others did not vote, the rest voted for the Donald. I know this because they told me. Good, conservative Christian types, alt right, resisting rendering unto Caesar or giving unto the poor. Now, President Trump has released his budget, which is public knowledge. In it he drastically cuts federal funding for meals on wheels, and for assistance to low income seniors, including housing and utility assistance. But, at least we will have a bright shiny new wall, somewhere or other, and the complete defeat of some myth called "radical Islamic terrorism" (terrorists are inherently not Islamic nor any other religion. They are in fact banished from their prior faith by the ninety nine point nine percent of the Islamic faithful, as are KKK members by true Christians.) Hillary, we can assume, would either have increased funding for seniors, or left it alone. Best guess is that she would have done the reverse of Trump: she would have increased spending for social programs, and would have left the already bloated military budget alone, giving instructions to make do with a mere six hundred billion or so a year. We do not know what Hillary would have done about the wall. Best guess is that she would have rolled her eyes at the very idea, laughed out loud in her shrill raucous way, and gone about her business, since she actually has a brain, and since, since 2008 more Mexicans have left this country and returned to Mexico than have entered this country from Mexico. For verification of this little known and oft ignored factoid, log onto the sociology department at Princeton University, and read the words of the world's leading authority on human migration, a certain Professor Mathews. Even the republicans don't like Trump's budget. Not enough tax breaks for the extremely wealthy, among other concerns.

Losing Stuff

THE OTHER DAY I walked over to the senior center, a book and notebook in hand, just in case (just in case nobody there had any entertaining conversation to offer me). Read the paper, drink coffee, run on the treadmill, and chat with the other elderly. You come to feel comfortable at a senior center, rather like you do in kindergarten. I ran, chatted, didn't need my books, left, walked home, and realized that I had left my books back at the center. Short term memory begins to vanish at the age of twenty five, which for me was thirty six years ago. I walked back to the center, trying to decide whether to be angry with myself, or to choose a victim at random. They (the books) were gone. Haven't been seen since. Probably some eighty five year old thought they were the Bible, and couldn't resist. I wish I wouldn't do things like that, but I have my entire life. But so, apparently, has everyone else. The average human being, particularly the average American, by the time he or she reaches sixty, has misplaced, incredibly, an average of two hundred thousand personal possessions. A thirty billion dollar a year industry could be had finding lost items, if only somebody could find them. This is not a matter of senility, so it seems, but rather, a mere matter of too many things, too little time, and too many distractions. Suddenly< I don't feel so bad. I just wish I hadn't lost such a good book> I was only halfway through it, and the killer had not yet been caught...Postscript: This story has a happy ending. Turns out I left the books in the back room, where I had set them down on a table, for just a moment, while stocking canned goods in the pantry. The table then became covered with other books and papers, and, well....this means that I have only one hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine personal possessions to find. PPS: It is said that the difference between absent mindedness and dementia is that an absent minded person forgets where the car keys are, and a person with dementia finds the keys, but forgets their purpose.

Living In Cyberspace

TRUE STORY: college football player decides he's lonely, goes online, gets involved in a video game called "Warlock", or some such. He likes it. It creates a sense of community, which, for some reason, he doesn't have on the football team or in his classes, people with similar passions. Then too, there's the adrenalin, the drama, and the seductive world of fantasy, so much more appealing than mundane reality. The hours turn into days, and forty five days later our man is still online, fighting for or against warlocks, or whatever. He survives on an hour of sleep per night, and pizza delivered via text message ordering. Whether he wears diapers is unknown. Don't ask. Fortunately, the pizza is not delivered by drone; he is forced to actually speak to a real, living, breathing high schoolish pizza delivery human at least once a day, if only fleetingly, as he hands over his debit card and as the pizza boxes and pounds pile up. Pizza is easy to order, easy to receive, and easy to eat without paying attention. Incidentally, the coursework and football career go out with the trash, which never goes out of his dorm room. Not enough time for such trivialities, in his endlessly exciting cyber world. His mother tries to reach him, as do others, to no avail. Finally, she gets through, and the story has a happy ending, as he is dragged into rehab, rehabbed, and ends up thriving, though probably on a different football team and life path. This is not an isolated incident. It is a mainstream American narrative, played out every day all across the fruited plain, as millennials by the million stride across college campuses, staring at their upraised palms, oblivious, but somehow, for the most part, surviving. Millennials, unlike baby boomers or even Gen X folk, are uniquely suited evolutionarily to surviving on the streets as android zombies. On a major college campus with twenty seven thousand students I never saw anyone walking across campus without being in smart phone zombie-land, and, miraculously, I never saw anyone walk into a car, a telephone pole, a water fountain, or another zombie. But it happens. Too often. People who stand at the edge of a cliff in their I phone world stop dead on the street, and look down, jolted alert by the real time sidewalk at their feet. People wandering through the streets looking for the treasure to which they are being guided through clues forget that they are actually on the streets, the real streets, and walk into walls, forgetting that the wall is real, not digital. Electronic entertainment devices, like crystal meth, are highly addictive. We know this after watching people becoming addicted since the introduction of the smart phone in 2007. Cocaine works on the body and mind, E gadgets work on the mind, which works on the body. Same result, alternative route. The attention span of the average American has now plummeted from a hefty twelve seconds to a more meager eight, one less than the nine second capability of a goldfish. This has been tested and proven. Gold fish can focus for longer than can we. Are we now satisfied that we now know why face to face conversation is no longer possible? Its because it no longer happens. If I talk face to face to another American for more than a minute, I've noticed, about anything other than the other American, I get that same old glassy eyed look. The person is gone, bored stiff. Whenever, in the course of what now passes for a conversation, I happen to be talking, and the other guy's phone rings, he always looks at it, decides that this is a call which absolutely must be taken now, mumbles an apology, and is gone. If the other person is talking, and I listening, and her phone jingles a cute tune, the call or text is ignored, or dismissed as postponable after a perfunctory glance. Maybe that's a good thing; people still like to talk, even if they hate to listen, which most Americans do. And its only going to get worse, you've doubtless gleaned, as the world of temporal reality descends ever further into climatic and socio-economic chaos, and technology inexorably advances towards temple chip implant heaven. Looking forward to seeing either you, or your holographic image on a screen near you, God speed, and, by all means, text me.

Christians, Supporting Their Role Model

JUST OVER SEVENTY PERCENT of the American people self identify as Christian, down from about eighty five percent a decade ago. America, like Europe, is fast becoming a secular society, as the human race casts off the darkness and superstition of organized religion, and accepts empirical science as the way to derive truth. The Bible condones slavery, rape, murder, and a whole lotta other bad stuff, such as putting disobedient children to death. Its easily the most violent and profane book ever written. (see Thomas Paine, "The Age of Reason"). Therefore it is hardly surprising that political support for Donald Trump, profanest of the profane, is heavily concentrated in the evangelical christian community.Two peas in a pod, as they say, a president whose self proclaimed history of sexual predation and harassment not only failed to be a deal breaker within the American Christian community, but seems to have ignited its support. It takes a misogynist to know a misogynist, and the most anti-woman text ever written was, yes, the oly writ. For Mr. Trump, three divorces, three trophy wives, a history of infidelity, of cheating low wage workers, hiding assets from the IRS, and all other manner of corruption blends in well, apparently, with modern Christian morality. Render unto Caesar, and, by all means, conceal tax documents from all public scrutiny. You never know; the President's tax returns might reveal tax deducted tithing, which would appeal to evangelicals, but not to people of real character and discernment.

Trump Being Trump

PRESIDENT TRUMP'S first big presidential speech didn't include any attacks on anyone, so I'm told, no name calling, no amazingly blatant lies, except maybe for the one about ninety four million Americas being "out of work" - in other words, the president's speech was entirely out of character, which was absolutely necessary, and it proved that Trump can indeed do a passable impersonation of an intelligent, sane, moral gentleman. At least, for on hour or so. Now, presumably, we can look forward to getting back to business as usual, with the grammatically butchered, truncated Trump tweets, the name calling, the war with the media and anyone else who disagrees with him or tells the truth about him, in essence, we can now look forward to the same old, temperamentally unqualified for his job Donald Trump. It would be nice if the president could make some fundamental changes to his character, but, at his age, people don't usually do that. The best we might hope for is that his handlers can convince him to be as much out of character, as much of the time, as he can possibly manage.