Liberals, Killing football

AMERICAN FOOTBALL was invented in 1869, as a from of rugby. Princeton and Rutgers played a four to two game, I forget who won, for the championship of New Jersey. Every play from scrimmage was a leather helmet dog pile scrum, and the injuries were rugby style bumps, bruises, chicken scratches, and your occasional chipped tooth and bloody nose. Harmless stuff, by modern standards. Within a few decades things began to get serious. forward passing was legalized. helmets and pads got hard. Football became a collision sport. Considering current circumstances, brain damage, broken bones and such, it might have been best had the game remained a form of rugby, but in America, that simply wasn't good enough, violent enough. There are some today, including coaches, who think it might be a good idea to re-rugify the game even now. Of course, that'll never fly. Not in America. Permanent brain damage is endemic, and has been for a long time. Finally, we are beginning to acknowledge and study it, and it may be that we will take the drastic plunge and begin to do something about it, but don't hold your breath. I'm America, we love our violence. Conservatives in particular are reluctant to affect change, not surprisingly. Political conservatives have the same attitude about head injuries in football that they do about climate change, racism, and other social ills. Let the free market take care of it. Unless they can be persuaded to join the better health in sports crusade, it might not happen. The pattern is clear: first, they deny the problem exists. Then, they obfuscate its causes, and understate it severity. then, when it becomes obvious that there truly is a problem, conservatives, in desperation, blame it on liberals. Liberals, and the mainstream liberal media. Here's how it works from the right wing perspective. A few guys get their bells rung, and don't know what day it is for a day or two. Liberals, who already hate football because its an American mainstay, go ballistic. Ballistic over nothing. Two or three former players commit suicide, and the damned liberal media, stirring up trouble, has the audacity to report on it. When the helicopter soccer moms get wind, all hell breaks loose. Little boys begin behaving like little girls, clinging to mother's skirts. Homosexuality increases. Grandpa, who played at Dartmouth in the late forties, can no longer drool or speak in tongue without drawing a crowd of liberal do goo meddlers. Next thing you know, stadiums are half empty, quarterbacks are wearing pantyhose, and three hundred pound men are spending more time eating quiche and sipping latte in reading rooms than lifting in weight rooms. America is in decline, all because the hysterical left is politically potent but physically and morally weak. Some guy in Gary can't get the big strong good looking ones to even pay attention, and America is never again the same..

Voting With Feet, Reaganomically

RONALD REAGAN, not known for his compassion after he abandoned the New Deal Democratic party, encouraged people to "vote with your feet", by which he meant: if you can't find work in your hometown, move. If the free market injects life into your local economy, fine, if not, the free market has spoken. Vote with your feet. True compassion. For this attitude, which included a generous offer to permit some wealth to trickle down like descending bread crumbs from the extremely wealthy to the extremely poor, a multi billion dollar aircraft carrier was named the "USS Ronald Reagan". A big ship named for a big money man. Big dollars for big power. Now that Puerto Rico needs help in large amounts,, and has for a while, even long before the hurricane, one might imagine the Ronald Reagan ship of state, fully loaded with bottled water, Meals Ready To Eat, blankets, medicine, and helicopters taking a brief hiatus from duty off the coast of North Korea, or Iraq, or Iran, or Venezuela, or wherever, and cruising into the Caribbean voting with its nuclear power, to help the poor. Might. Imagine. No, Gipper, the three point four people of Puerto Rico cannot vote with their feet without getting them, and everything else, quite wet. Since the Republicans haven't tried to repeal Obamacare again today, yet, although its still early, they need something to do to keep them off the streets, out of trouble. To kill time, they might turn to the next item on their you're on your own agenda: reducing taxes on the very wealthy, what they tongue in cheek smirkily smugly call "tax reform". In bygone days, when America was more civilized, the middle class was visible, and prevalent. The wealthy, who back in the day were far less numerous than now, used to show their love of country by actually contributing to it. Then came Reagan, voting with his feet, moving to Washington, and dispensing bread crumbs unto the unwashed masses. the crumbs are still descending. we still stand below, mouths agape, powerless, waiting. The good news is that the good ship Reagan has been sighted "off the coast" of Venezuela, fighting socialism, or at least threatening it. Regrettably, socialism isn't Venezuela's problem. Venezuela's problem is a far too great dependence on the oil exports, and falling oil prices. The Venezuelans can't vote with their feet either. Ronald Reagan has them hemmed in, and has for a very long time.

Losing Too Much

MY FAVORITE COLLEGE FOOTBALL TEAM is experiencing hard times, which means it isn't winning enough games to satisfy its greedy fan base, which means it isn't winning all of them. The millions of avid fans who love the team are in an uproar, demanding that the coach be fired, demanding that the athletic director be fired, demanding that the faculty be fired, and that the entire student body be expelled. Demanding, in a word, improvement. Petitions are circulating. Teeth are gnashing. Local sports talk radio programs are aflame with anger, indignation, vile, and spleen. Meanwhile, the university has raised ticket prices to all time highs, adjusted for inflation, concession stand items are priced as if the supply were on the verge of permanently vanishing, and taking a family of four to a football game can cost upwards of a thousand dollars. Scalping, in the hallowed halls of academia, officially sanctioned. Winning coaches are paid millions of dollars, and star athletes are "loaned" expensive sports cars, bar passes, pretty escorts, cash, and summer jobs which entail no actual responsibility. By doing all this, a university with a successful athletic department can make tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars, and administrators can line their pockets. About a hundred years ago brainy college administrators realized that a financial bonanza was to be had. The college athletic community jumped into bed with the corporate community, and a marriage was made in heaven, unto this very day, stronger than ever. The athletes themselves, meanwhile, get none of the huge pie. They get room, board, and free tuition, plus all the goodies that come under the table, but no legitimate pay. A couple of years ago the Northwestern football organized a labor union, with limited results. There is now the meager beginnings of compensation for athletes. the late great but tainted by scandal football coach Joe Paterno urged that college athletes be paid, and this, in an embryonic form, is starting to happen. within recent memory is the sight of star college athletes strolling from class to class, and seeing their names on the backs of sweat shirts, and seeing nothing but pocket change on their persons. Now that the great basketball scandal is upon us, we as a society might be motivated to step back, take a deep breath, and take stock. is it possible that we the American people place a bit too much importance on winning, and on being entertained? that we spend way too much money for it, and that by so doing, we are the driving force in a vast system of corruption, above board and below the surface? Is it perhaps time to reduce the amount of time we spend in front of our flat screens, and on the telephone ranting our disappointment that we missed that last second field goal, and lost by a point?

Seeing Ourselves On Facebook

SEVENTY PERCENT OF AMERICAN ADULTS have a Facebook page, and over a billion worldwide. One hundred and ten percent of American millennials and teenagers spend at least six hours a day staring lovingly into their smart phone screens, and punching their smart keyboards with both thumbs, while walking, driving, or anything else. The market for social media is robust. A nation of narcissists, we delight in taking pictures of ourselves, our lovely upper middle class homes, our well behaved children, our pets, our vacations. We delight even more in posting these for all the world to see, as if the world gives a rat's ass. I have a Facebook page, only because my girlfriend, a generation younger than I, thought it objectionable not to have one, and probably because she wanted to assure herself that I am keeping track of her pets, children, lovely face, and lovely upper middle class home. I'm not, but I won't tell if you won't. Soon as I figure out how to delete my neglected page, I will, and I'll blame it on the Russians or the mainstream liberal media, to deflect responsibility away from me. My primary objection to Facebook, other than the narcissistic behavior it enables, is that by becoming a member, a member voluntarily, usually unwittingly, turns into a commodity to be marketed to large corporations for purposes of advertising. your pretty house and kids, all the info you post, analyzed, scrutinized, neatly plugged into patterns of consumption to determine the best approaches to separate one from one's money. Now a new and even more serious and nefarious problem is revealed" Facebook, it seems, was a primary vehicle through which Russian intelligence agencies displayed advertising designed to assist in the election of Donald Trump. the Russians wanted Trump elected because they perceived, strangely, that he is a nit wit, easily manipulated. The Russians spent hundreds of thousands of dollars disseminating what used to be called "false advertising", or "bullshit", but is now called "fake news". Fake news all targeted at Hillary Clinton, to show the American Facebook electorate what an evil, law breaking, communist, or whatever, she truly is, in the world of the right wing imagination. The FBI is all over this, and Mr. Zuckerberg confirms it, having previously denied it. Its easy to place ads on Facebook, and easy for Facebook to tacitly allow any kind of ad to appear. You just design the ad, submit it, and in it goes, without much prior examination of it by censors. Ads go where they will have the greatest impact, according to computer programs. Facebook, now under scrutiny by congress, has pledged to upgrade it "vetting" process ("vetting" in another of our current word of the month nominees). Unfortunately, this comes too late to prevent a foreign power from influencing and possibly determining the outcome of an important American election, but, better late than never. Too late for Hillary Clinton, too late for the American people to make an intelligent, well informed choice of leadership. All in all, maybe this is a small price to pay for the privilege of showing billions of people, who really don't give a rat's ass, our pretty new curtains in our pretty house.

Replacing McCain

A STAUNCH DEMOCRAT and Obama supporter, I nearly voted for John McCain in 2008. He is a great American hero, although He himself probably would not acknowledge as much. Most heroes don't. Despite the fact that Donald Trump asserts that McCain is not a hero because he was shot down and captured, which, in Trump's addled mind disqualifies one from hero status, John McCain is a heroic man. He is also a blue print of what a politician should be. McCain Feingold, McCain Kennedy, are only two of the many examples of the type of legislative leadership we so desperately need now: honorable bipartisan leadership. Time and again, Senator McCain has reached across the isle, reached out to his political opponents on matters of policy, offering compromise, seeking and obtaining reconciliation. Now, in the final few months of his life, he is treating us to one final magnanimous display of nobility, one last fine shining example of his noble character. He is urging his fellow republicans to put aside their hatred of Obama and all things liberal, and to work in a bipartisan manner to achieve, at long last, a health care insurance system beneficial to all Americans. Whether this entails repairing Obamacare, or whatever else it might entail does not matter to John McCain; he wants what's best for the beloved country he has served so well and so long. He wants to Senate to simply return to its normal, traditional way of operating, of crafting and passing legislation for the good of all, "normal order" he calls it, because he is sick and tired of the divisive rancor which plagues, and has so long plagued, our country and our government. This means open, transparent committee meetings, with expert testimony to give good advice to Senate members of both major political parties. Expert testimony, intelligent analysis, and respect for the stated wishes of the American people, like good guaranteed health care for all, arrived at through civil discussion and negotiation. When small groups of elite politicians from the majority party lock themselves behind closed doors and designing legislation in secret, without any input from the minority party, and bring it to the floor of the Senate as a fait accompli, the democratic process is not only subverted, it is destroyed. That is what John McCain stands for; integrity. And as he looks back on his long life of service to America, he can do what few of us can; he can reflect that, after all is said and done, he has done his very best, honestly, for his country. And when the sad day comes, as it soon will, that John McCain leaves us, who among us will replace him?

Surviving In The Financial Services Madhouse

WHEN I RETIRED, dependent on savings and social security, I decided to refinance my house, to reduce my monthly payment. My mortgage lender seemed receptive to the idea, knowing that, in the long run, doing so would profit the corporation. Thus began the paperwork, and the odyssey. Fax us this. email us that. Please hurry. My, oh my, did they ever seem to be in a hurry for me to complete my end of the bargain. they wanted to know about my current income, but never even broached the topic of my savings, which happens to be sufficient to support my mortgage and living expenses. I informed them that although social security retirement benefits are at present my only income, I have decided to return to work; I decided I am too young and energetic to retire completely. They were preparing to offer me an interest rate considerably better that the usurious one I have been burdened with since 2005, and the monthly payments would be considerably less than before, perfect to suit my current circumstances, and even better once I return to work. The fly in the buttermilk is that they do not like the rather modest amount of my social security checks. So, bottom line is, they are perfectly willing to allow me to carry on with higher monthly house payment, and reluctant, or unwilling to write a new contract reducing my payment, thereby providing greater insurance that they will be made. To me, it makes no sense. Like the proverbial bank, which will lend money if and only if you can prove that you really don't need a loan. I am years ahead on my mortgage. Each month, for years, I have paid extra on my principle, and at one point I remember throwing in an extra ten thousand dollar payment on the principle. Having explained to the company that my current income is somewhat reduced, it would seem logical to assume that they would be quite happy to rewrite the mortgage, and to extend my contract from the fifteen years, roughly, I have left on it, to a full thirty. How can that not make sense? The trick is to try a different company, somebody honorable, like the Bank of America, which has so far this year avoided and federal convictions on fraud charges, a new record for B o A integrity. My current mortgage lender, Mr. Cooper, formerly Nationstar, does not operate sensibly enough to suit me. Is it even remotely possible that a financial services provide in America, any financial services provider, treats clients fairly, with integrity, with sanity, without being convicted and spending time in jail/ But, wait. corporate executives never spend time in jail, unless they happen to be Bernie Madoff, which, it might be argued, they all happen to be.

Going Home

EVERY YEAR, in the brutally inhospitable desert separating Mexico from the United States, approximately four hundred human bodies are found by good Samaritans and border patrol police. They are in various stages of decomposition, depending upon what killed them,, how long ago they died, and whether the vultures and coyotes have had time to pick their bones clean. Many of them are children, some, infants. usually they die of thirst, exhaustion, sun stroke, or diarrhea. All along the border there are sporadic fences, intended to force desperate impoverished people so far out into the desert that they can hardly hope to survive their attempt to find opportunity and escape poverty, violence, drug cartels. The great wall of Trump has not yet been built, and probably never will be. The Mexican government lacks the funds and the willingness to pay for it, and the American people lack the political will and requisite insanity to undertake it. Besides, the fence that is already there is quite sufficient for the purpose, particularly since the flow of illegal immigrants has virtually stopped. And what, after all, would a massive wall, thick and towering, achieve? Would the bodies begin to pile up on the Mexican side? Would the underground tunnels be dug ever deeper? In 1846 President Polk fabricated a war with Mexico as a pretext for the theft, in 1848, of half of Mexico. Many Mexicans today refer to this land, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, as "the occupied territories", appropriately. That many of Mexico's most desperate refugee have poured into their former territory is, in a sense, ironically appropriate. To build a multi billion dollar wall to glorify trump and American arrogance and greed would serve no purpose, since the immigrants have long since arrived, and are even now contributing their cheap labor and tax dollars to an American economy which desperately needs them. Since 2007 more people have crossed the border back into Mexico than have entered the United States, having been deported, or having given up their dreams of success in the United States and returned home. Ask the experts, unless you happen to be an expert, like most Americans seem to be these days. Then, you already know this. In the United States of Arrogance, experts are never hard to find.

Protesting, Quietly

DONALD TRUMP made it quite clear: the owners of NFL teams should fir or suspend all players who kneel instead of stand during the national anthem. Considering what a horrible melody the Star spangled Banner is, the mere act of singing it, or listening to it being sung can become difficult in any position, standing, kneeling, sitting, or lying down, which might be the best option, to ward of nausea. We should be grateful that the more musically inclined don't bend over and become ill, of lean back and fall asleep. The lyrics are great. the tune comes from an eighteenth century English pub drinking song, and is best sung while drunk. Increasing numbers of NFL players are kneeling, including some white ones, in support of their black brothers in shoulder pads. If Trump gets his twittering wish, there wouldn't be enough players on the field to scrimmage, let alone to fill out rosters. Trump, as he usually does, like his right wing acolytes, entirely misses the point. The purpose of protesting, anything, is to attract attention, to gain publicity for whatever cause is being advocated, which in this case is, of course, racial equality. For this purpose, it would hardly do to kneel before a Taylor Swift tune, Miley Cyrus, maybe. Can we soon expect the white boys to boycott their beloved football teams? Stay tuned. the protestors aren't going away, not as long as they garner the attention of the leader of the previously enslaved world, and his backward looking minions. Martin Luther King did not lead his freedom marchers down back alleys and side streets. They walked right down main street, dodging German Shepherds, fir hoses, and hateful honkie hordes, disrupting traffic. King and his followers were labeled "trouble makers" by about ninety nine percent of white America. They evinced the same sort of cracker jack comments as our contemporary kneeling gridiron gladiators. how dare these trouble makers be so ungrateful to their American hosts for the twin blessings of Christian doctrine, which condones slavery, biblically, and for the opportunity to live apart from the mainstream, in segregated poverty, free from the greater burdens of white supremacy, free to donate their labor to the greater society surrounding them. If, after all these blessings, they still must, for some inexplicable reason, protest, they could at least be good enough to it quietly, unobtrusively, in the privacy of their own closets and black only bathrooms.

Fearing the Wrong Things: Living, And Dying, In Our Culture Of Fear

THE OCCUPATIONAL, SAFETY, and health Administration (OSHA) calculates that approximately fifty eight thousand Americans die every year in work related accidents. Roughly one hundred thousand die annually due to medical malpractice, and sixty five thousand are killed each year by air pollution. About forty thousand dies each year because they lack health insurance, and their illnesses and diseases, left untreated, take their ultimate toll. Also, about forty thousand people are killed in the U.S. in auto accidents, and about a million, or more, are killed worldwide, including a quarter of a million in China alone. Every day, between two hundred and two hundred and fifty Americans die in the U.S. from infections contracted in hospitals.Far more Americans are killed by mainstream medicine than by illicit street drugs. Yet, you never hear about any of this. Instead, you hear about street crime,,, which is actually at its lowest level in decades, you hear a great deal about something called "radical Islamic terrorism",, which is so rarer as to be virtually nonexistent. that is aside from the fact that people who commit acts of terror are not Islamic, nor any other religion, any more than members of the KKK who murder African-Americas are "Christian", though they believe themselves to be of the faith. Not only is American culture a culture of fear, it is a culture of irrational fears; we are, quite simply, afraid of the wrong things. this is because an act of terrorism draws far greater attention, and is far more 'newsworthy", than people slipping and falling in bathtubs and dying from head injuries, another form of death far more prevalent than terrorism. terrorism and violent crime are far more marketable In our attention seeking media than bacteria, or air pollution. As the saying goes: :if it bleeds, it leads". When children are shot and killed at school, which happens about forty five times a year in the United states, everyone turns on the news or social media, and watches the gruesome tragedy, over...and over. But, in truth, far more people slip and fall on uneven sidewalks or in bathtubs than are shot and killed while attending school. We don not, according to tangible, verifiable statistical reality, need a war on terrorism, a was on violent crime, nor do we need to surround our schools with barbed wire and install alarm systems in every classroom. we do need to take better care to keep our hospitals bacteria free, we need to pollute the air less, and we need to install safer bathtubs, because more children drown in bath tubs each year, far more children, than are shot in schools. But if we did all those things, where would we get our fill of sensational headlines?

Nailing America The Lonely

FRENCH HISTORIAN Alexis De Tocqueville visited the United States in 1830, then wrote about his experiences in his famous book "Democracy In America" .He observed that American society is highly individualistic. "I see innumerable multitudes of men, alike and equal, constantly circling around in pursuit of the petty and banal pleasures with which they glut their souls. Each of them withdrawn into himself is almost unaware of the fate of the rest. Mankind, for him, consists in his children and his personal friends. As for the rest of his fellow citizens, they are near enough, but he does not notice them. he touches them, but feels nothing. He exists in and for himself, and though he may still have a family, one can at least say that he has not got a fatherland." De Tocqueville was correct in 1830, and he is right on the mark today. It almost seems as if he visited the United States last week, and is still touring the country. The Frenchman's only sin was his disapproval of Congressman Davy Crockett. he was horrified that Crockett had been elected to congress, thought him a barbarian, and marveled that a far superior man of education and culture lost to the backwoodsman. Had Alexis spent a little more time with the lovable pioneer, his opinion would doubtless have improved. But, all told, he hit the proverbial nail on the head. The United States of Alone. We Americans are trained from birth to be on our own. A more modern comprehensive analysis of this phenomenon is Robert Putnam's seminal work "Bowling Alone", in which the Harvard sociologist describes the recent decline in all aspects of participation, from Parent Teacher organizations, to youth baseball - in all facts of community life in America, participation has markedly declined. We prefer to be alone with our electronic gadgets, where we are in total control, and risk nothing, except eye strain and carpel tunnel. We are looking at something, for something, usually ourselves, but definitely not each other. we take pretty pictures of our pretty selves and our pretty houses, post information about our dogs, cats, and vacations, and show them for all the world to behold - as if anyone out there really cares - while maintaining our physical isolation. We send text messages upstairs, and receive replies in broken, truncated barely decipherable "English". heaven forbid that we should converse face to face. We withdraw into ourselves, unaware of the fate of anyone else, as the French historian cogently noted two hundred years ago. It appears that little has changed over the past two centuries, except our technological means of insulating ourselves against one another. Up go the privacy fences, and the tinted windows, so that as we drive down our lonely highways, nobody can see who we are, of whether we are there. We are not there. We are texting some stranger on Facebook who we deceive ourselves into believing is a friend. Actually, our Facebook friends are merely names on a list, names of people we do not know, and never will, at least not until we decide, in lonely desperation, to come out bravely from behind our brown wooden fences, and show ourselves to others, without our cell phones pointed out ourselves, showing off our vanity to people we will never meet, know, nor care about.

Trump Voters, Ignoring Decency

WHEN DONALD TRUMP announced his candidacy, I supported him. New blood. A fresh approach. But my support was short lived. By the fiftieth time he called Ted Cruz "lying Ted", I was done. When Trump won the election, I reminded myself to congratulate him. When he was inaugurated, I told myself to give him a chance. I did my best, but it wasn't good enough. Its one thing to give someone a chance, and quite another to vote for someone one month after learning, from the candidate's own words, that he is a sexual predator, and proud of it. Under these circumstances, anyone who voted for Donald Trump is either morally deficient, or lacking in judgment. The Access Hollywood video was released on October 7, a full month before the election. more than enough time to weigh one's options, and find another candidate to support. The argument that voting for Trump was the only way to keep Hillary Clinton from being elected is a hollow excuse, a lame justification for a clear lapse in judgment and morality. The policies of an elected political leader can be opposed, especially in America. Had Hillary Clinton been elected, her millions of opponents would have had ample opportunity to expose and oppose her failed policies and leadership, and to replace them. That is the nature of the American political system. To knowingly elect a self proclaimed sexual predator, proud of his crimes against women, in indefensible. Hypocritically and falsely, Trump's angry mob of amoral supporters chanted "lock her up" about a person whose legal record remains free of blemishes, despite a quarter century smear campaign waged against her, backed by right wing billionaires, perpetrated by people with no integrity, whose fabrications have long since been exposed as lies. Those who voted for Trump wanted to incarcerate the wrong person, and the moral integrity of those who attack her remains incarcerated to this day, securely locked up and forgotten behind unfettered political ambition, untampered by even the slightest trace of moral foundation.

Praying

IF THERE IS ANY BENEFIT TO PRAYING, it is emotional, the psychological fruit of self expression, of experiencing the sublime, of getting it off your chest, as it were. The notion that an anthropomorphic deity somewhere beyond the sky listens and responds is dubious at best, defies basic common sense. And yet, I love to pray, alone, or aloud in a group. Unlike most religious people, I don't need to delude myself that an omnipotent being hears and welcomes attempts to influence his or her behavior. I never make requests when I pray; if I'm wrong, and god is a discreet entity, asking for favors to me seems presumptuous and pretentious. God can decide my fate and the fate of the universe without any supplication from me, and I must trust that he or she will. It is quite enough for me to give thanks, and I, like most of us, have a great deal for which to be thankful. At our local senior center I am often called upon to render the daily prayer before lunch; I seem to have a certain flair for it, and the folks seems to like my style, for which I am grateful. I inject a lot of passion into my prayers, all of it sincere. I keep it short, but, I hope, rife with grateful intent. The other seniors probably assume when they hear me that I, like they, am a devout Christian,, which is far from the truth. The truth is that my religious role models are Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein,, whom most people probably don't associate with religion. Jefferson was a deist, a popular form of religiosity in eighteenth century Europe and America, who sometimes described himself as a "primitive Christian", by which he meant that he admired Jesus, and his teachings, but eschewed the miraculous. Jefferson was a man of science, an empiricist. He said: "I am a sect unto myself, as far as I know." Einstein's religiosity consisted in what he called "humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit" which he intuited from his 'weak and transitory understanding comprehension" of nature, as he put it. When I pray, I never make any references to being 'saved", or to the blood of Christ. To me, such notions seems primitive and barbaric. Saved from what? from a set of circumstances ordained by the infinite power and infinite choices of the God who created everything? No, the Judeo Christian God is not my God. To me, the biblical God is a psychopathic, sadistic serial killer and mass murderer. That became apparent to me from reading the Bible. I pray to the infinitely superior spirit which manifests in nature, does not judge creatures of its own creation, nor condemns any of them to an eternity of torment, and for which human morality is irrelevant. An infinitely superior spirt far beyond my comprehension, but not my love and admiration. An infinitely superior spirit which created cosmic and planetary conditions conducive to my potential for a fulfilling life, if I choose to live it fully. Whatever other people think I am praying to is quite beyond my ability to control, and definitely not my concern.

Inventing Racism

RACISM WAS INVENTED BY CHRISTIANS, in particular, white Christians. This cannot be denied, no matter how hard our contemporary Christian votaries might wish to deny it. Racism and religious bigotry are the twin pillars of modern hatred. And today, it is perpetuated largely by Christians. I have never met a non christian who is a racist. Racism is a rather modern invention, a fact which probably surprises amateur historians, the sort who, without ever having studied history, suddenly become quite knowledgeable when a discussion about some current issue turns argumentative. The sort who are likely to assume that racism is as old as the human species, an inherent if unfortunate human proclivity. Racism is an invention of the seventeenth century. Soon after Martin Luther started the protestant reformation in 1517, the revolt spread rapidly throughout northern Europe, and the Catholic church responded to the immolation of the Roman church by launching the Catholic counter reformation, intended to fight the protestant exodus. The fight was on. The seventeenth century was a protracted religious war which raged all across Europe, and religion and national cultural differences were the source of European fighting, not skin color. A war ravaged Europe turned outward, towards other continents, in pursuit of wealth and empire. Columbus and the earliest conquerors enjoyed sufficient success depriving natives of the western hemisphere of their gold and silver, and enslaving them, to inspire gold, silver, and slave seeking excursions all over the world. The settlement at Jamestown was a purely commercial venture, intended to similarly separate the natives from their wealth, and to turn them into slaves. The northern natives were not easily subdued. Unlike the more passive natives of the south, North Americans were impossible to turn into slaves, so, the Europeans turned to Africa for slave capture. The Jamestown pioneers were starving, because they were more interested in digging for gold than farming and fishing, and in 1619 they purchased the first slaves, and a long tradition in American history was born. Racism was nothing other than a justification for treating people like cattle; not only were the primitive natives not Christian, but their skin color was so glaringly different from Europeans that racism, like religion, became a convenient justification for enslaving them. White supremacist organizations like the KKK are but a continuation of a long tradition among white Christians.

Trumping Facts With Fantasy

IN FRONT OF GOD, country, and world, Donald Trump invited Russian hackers to break into Hillary Clinton's email account. A group of Russians, connected to their government, met with Trump's son, who tried, unsuccessfully, to hide the meeting from god, country, and the world. The FBI determined, after an investigation, that Russian operatives tried to influence the election outcome in Trump's favor. During the campaign, hundreds of thousands of dollars of pro Trump advertising appeared on Facebook, paid for by, yes, Russians. Other than that, there is not the slightest evidence that that Donald Trump conspired with a foreign power to help his election campaign. Just in case, several investigations into the matter are ongoing. Stay tuned. For Trump supporters, these investigations are nothing but witch hunts, orchestrated by the left wing media, liberals, democrats, or...somebody. I have a friend whose entire life, as far as I can tell, is devoted to the paranormal, or "alternative cosmic paradigms". Included are the usual; UFOs, disembodied entities, and such. In his universe, innumerable extraterrestrial entities live among us, injecting themselves in every aspect of human civilization, involving themselves in conspiracies, secretly running the world. Never mind the problem of a hollow earth and gravity; they're down there too, thriving. Elite people are conspiring with aliens, for insidious reasons. for my friend, the less likely that something exists, the more likely he is to believe in it. The more likely, the less he accepts it. Any verifiable fact he seems to reject, as being too mundane, boring, or...something. he has rejected reality, and retreated into fantasy. Not surprisingly, he voted for trump. for me, that was the last straw. People who dwell in fantasy find common cause. Trump, draining the swamp, and refilling it in his image. he will keep hordes of murdering marauding Muslims and Mexicans out of the country. In Trump's twisted, unreal world, voter fraud is rampant, all in Hillary's favor. The election was rigged, in her favor. When he boasted about his ability to molest women without consequence, it became "locker room talk", irrelevant to those who support him. Trump supporters and friends of the paranormal world have in common an angry, arrogant disdain for reality, preferring instead to dwell in their imaginary world where every Muslim is a terrorist and every news event the product of some conspiracy. If and when the Mexicana and extraterrestrials go home, the purveyors of fiction will replace with a new set of alternative facts.

Living In A Plastic World

THE WORLD IS AWASH in...plastic. that wonderful creation of twentieth century chemistry, that magical substance, made up of long strands of carbon atoms, so flexible, so versatile, with so very man uses and applications, is having the unintended consequence of turning the entire world, the ocean's, the soil, our food, our water, and our bodies, into repositories of plastic, none of which are places where we intended to put it. plastic, as we all know, is not biodegradable, and thus does not mix well with land fills or compost heaps. It simply sits where it is discarded, occupying space, forever, either we recycle plastic, use all commodities of plastic manufacture until hell freezes over without ever throwing them away, or we recycle them. It turns out that the United States recycles only about twelve percent of all discarded plastic materials, and the rest is thrown into waste heaps, and ignored, only to stay there, while we add more and more to our landfills and waste heaps. the rest of the world does little better; only in Europe is there a serious attempt to limit the plastic pollution of our environment. In every major city in the world, and in most towns of all sizes, the plastic content of the community water supply can be measured in terms of its plastic content. the plastic is there, always, measurable. a sample of sea water taken from any salty body of water anywhere in the world shows the same things. Its in all our food, and it dwells in our bodies, all of our human bodies, all over the planet, in measurable w=quantities. Such is the ubiquitous extent to which we in our modern world have used, and misused plastic. Its too late to do anything about it; to do wo would be to pass every person, place, and thing through some sort of plastic removing filter, and no such device has yet been invented. Our days of non plastic purity are behind us. Even if we were to eliminate the manufacture, sale, and use of plastic immediately, the world's current supply would linger for thousands of years. It is irrevocably embedded in us, and our culture, like carbon in the atmosphere. And if that isn't frightening enough, random samples of breast milk taken and analyzed from human females reveals traces of jet fuel. Not only are we what we eat, it would seem, we are what we make.

Displaying The Sacred Symbol

IN THE PUBLIC LIBRARY in the town where I live sits a miniature replica of an ancient instrument of torture and death. A ten inch tall wooden cross. adorned with a crown of thorns, reposes on a wooden pedestal between too smaller, similar crosses. Front and center for the torturing to death of the main criminal, with his own, larger cross. How appropriate. The ancient romans nailed thousands of prisoners of war to full sized versions, and positioned them along the main highway leading into Rome, as a display of imperial power, brutality, and as a warning to all: dare not defy Roman power. Jesus was crucified because Roman power prevailed in far flung places. His fellow Jews would have stoned Jesus to death. This replica in our library was fashioned by a local artisan-entrepreneur, who sells each one for, if memory serves, about forty dollars a cross. Slightly larger, better adorned ones cast a bit more. Cash on the barrel. No credit. Exploitation of torture and death for personal financial gain. How Christian. In a daring act of defiance, a new sacrificial cult made this tool of torture a sacred symbol, and it grew into a religion predicated on torture, death, and resurrection. The grotesque result of justice denied. To display a religious symbol in a publicly owned building is probably illegal,, but secular legalities are but minor matters to the devout. the devout have a higher calling than mere civic responsibility. If another member of the public library ownership were to place a statue of the Buddha or a Wiccan symbol next to the cross, she would likely be challenged by the devout library Director. Who dares challenge the Christian monopoly? Any non Christian symbols would be accepted only grudgingly, under threat of legal action. The Christian religion and its votaries has have murdered millions of people in the name of the Prince of Peace, and is not yet finished. Aside from the crusades and the Inquisition, the seventeenth century was a perpetual war of blood letting between the protestants and the Catholics. During the twentieth century over one hundred million people were killed in wars, and a preponderance of both the killers and their victims were Christians from Christian nations. Thus, in a grotesque sort of way, it is entirely appropriate that our local library proudly displays a symbol that is both an instrument of torture and death and sacred religious symbol. It is equally fitting that the world's bloodiest religion retains an instrument of vicious brutality as its sacred symbol, remindful of a brutal and unjust murder committed long ago. Or maybe our local library might, with equal pride, display a hangman's noose, a guillotine, or perhaps even a blood soaked dagger, lodged deeply into the rib cage of a virtuous and innocent man of peace.

Evangelizing Racism

IIN HIS SEMINAL STUDY "The Myth Of Equality", published this year, Ken Wytsma cites the finding of a Christian research group which reached the following conclusion: "More than any other segment of the population, white evangelical Christians demonstrate a blindness to the struggles of African-Americans", and concludes: "this is a dangerous reality for the modern church". Wytsma, a cleric who attended a conservative seminary, reached the same conclusion in his personal life. he further asserts that the evangelical community tends to view racism as being a thing of the past, a problem which will be remedied only when the rest of society becomes more involved in it, or as a problem that is stirred up by trouble making left wing political agendas, which themselves must be resolutely opposed. According to Wytsma, we all love justice, in theory, racial and otherwise, as long as it imposes no cost to us personally, such as challenging or compromising our personal prejudices. The author tackles the problem of semantics, noting that the term "white supremacy" in enjoying a born again popularity, a term often used by black activists, and usually avoided by the white community. Racism, he point out, is among America's founding values, the first slaves having been brought to Virginia only twelve years after the founding of Jamestown. Racism is not only implicit in our modern day judicial and economic system, but also in our immigration laws, which, for the most part, have favored Europeans from predominantly white countries, and have tended to exclude people from countries with darker skinned populations. Today's controversy concerning Mexican immigration is but a continuation of a long standing American tradition of racial segregation and exclusion. He makes the salient but overlooked fact that there is no genetic, biological, scientific basis for dividing the world's people's into "races" by skin pigmentation. skin color, like height, weight, and depth of a body of water, is a continuum; one merely chooses to draw the lines of separation where it is mot convenient for the person drawing the lines. Races, in fact, do not exist in any real sense, but are mere categories, artificially contrived for the sake of categorical simplicity. At what point, as one descends beneath the ocean surface, do we begin to call the water "deep"? Whenever we choose. The world is a far more complex system that our minds prefer to contend with, so, we simplify by categorizing arbitrarily. Wytsma offers the surprising assertion that racism, rather than being an ancient fact of human history or an inherent aspect of human behavior, perception, and culture, is in fact a rather recent creation, and emerged only when advances in transportation exposed far flung cultures to each other. And, since it is a recent invention, racism is therefore neither inevitable nor unavoidable, but merely a construct of our modern, divided world. That means that there is hope for a future unfettered by bigotry, but only if we allow ourselves to accept the reality of the imaginary nature of race, and the possibility of a future world less encumbered by needless and harmful divisions.

Embracing Your Local Library, and Its Culture

IN THE SMALL AMERICN down in the deep south town where I for some reason live (cheaper to build a house) theres sits a brand new high school and a brand new library, much to the credit of the town. within the library are only a few thousand books, which matters not, for there are computers, which matters. The librarians are, for the most part, portly middle aged women, as our modern American librarians tend to be. In my entire life, much of which has been spent in research libraries struggling to finally complete a doctorate, I have rarely if ever seen a male librarian? Reverse gender discrimination, possibly? Every profession seems to attract its own personality type. policepersons tend, for the most part, to be the strong silent type. Teachers wax pedantic, and seem fond of correcting people. Librarians, as a while, I have found to be priggish, prudish, prim, proper, and tight assed. Walk into a library wearing baggy saggy shorts, and a ball cap turned around like a catcher's, and you're likely to receive a baleful, disdainful gaze from a lady attired in Hillary Clinton pants suit, and eye glasses pointed on each side, with perhaps chains attached. When they say, "may I help you", the message they often seem to be conveying is: "although" I disapprove of your attire, your mannerisms, and your failure to conform to my priggish notions of how a person should present himself, I shall attempt to be rid of you poste haste". Permit me to declare that the ladies in "my" small town library fill the bill, to the letter. The Director, who seems to have forgotten that I am her boss, is built like a fullback, and requires a wide berth. Her daughter, nepotistically part of the crew, is prim, proper, sanctimonious, and always ready to rebuff with a disapproving glance. In their defense, there are librarians in Harvard's esteemed research libraries who are cast in the same mold, and at the Library of Congress, and, well, in every small town in these United States of Antipathy. Never let it be said that the U.S. lacks cultural conformity. I would bet my kingdom that ninety five percent of all American librarians are devout, sanctimonious, Christians, looking down their noses at the slightest trace of social non conformity, through glasses with big, black frames.

Socialsim, by any Other Name, by Bernie Sanders

BERNIE SANDERS, who but for the lack of a few million votes would now be president, would likely have made a far better president than the current one, the one who uses alternative facts as if facts were commodities purchased at amazon dot com, and refundable. he never does anything stupid, unlike the present president. From a right wing point of view, everything he does is stupid, which means that nothing he does is, since all right wing notions of wisdom and stupidity are, shall we say, alternate. Sanders has introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate to expand Medicare to include everybody in the country, thus creating a single payer, totally socialized health insurance system, like those in the wealthier more civilized countries of Europe. Last time he tried that, in 2013, he had no support, even among democrats. This time, sixteen democrats are on board, plus a strong plurality if not majority of we the American people. That matters not; the republican much prefer profit seeking health insurance, and what the American people prefer matters no more now than it ever has, which is never. The tired rap against Sander's plan is that it would cost too much, as if there exists anything on esrth which does not cost too much As if three quarters of a trillion dollars military budget supporting eight hundred far flung American military bases were not too expensive. It might be worth considering that if indeed the sky feel, hell froze over, congress adopted single payer health care and Trump learned how to write just in time to sign it, Medicaid and Obamacare would both be redundant, and their current combined expense would prove to have been more costly than the Sanders system. But, alsh, we must not have socialism, because we would be unable to call it anything other than socialism. or maybe we could invent another term: police, and fire protection are not called socialism, although they are, nary a road nor bridge is called a socialistic, although every last one of them is, the trick being, that whenever a socialistically funded, owned, and operated public good or service works well, and is socialistic, it simply is not called "socialistic', because to do so would be to recognize that social works,, and, far be it for us living her in the great American fun house to ever accept the dirty dark little secret; socialism works, like a charm. Psst: social security is socialism, but never say that to a church going right wing profit seeker. When a right wing Christian American goes to church, and mentions socialism, he or she is summarily excommunicated, socialism is not acceptable, even though America runs o it, could not exist without it, and must, therefore, think of something, anything, else to call it.

Exposing Liberal Lies

CONSERVATIVES, WITHOUT RESERVATION highlight liberal lies, of which it seems the most egregious is that the atmosphere is absorbing and retaining excess heat, which is trapped by excess carbon, billions of tons of it, injected into the air by human industry, that this excess heat causes permanent warming of the atmosphere, and that as a result, global warming and climate change are even now ongoing. How dare the left wing even so much as suggest that it is urgently necessary to make fundamental changes to the economic system. Change, to conservatives, is anathema. All that matters is tradition, since there is nothing wrong with the way the world works now, except for the very existence of change mongering liberalism. The fact that climate change is nothing but a liberal hoax is clearly demonstrated, say the conservatives, by the fact that liberals have deviously substituted the term "climate change" for "global warming", and the term "carbon" for carbon dioxide. Any climate change is natural, say the traditionalists, because the Earth's climate has been changing, on its own, for billions of years, proving that human activity cannot possibly be involved. Another reprehensible liberal lie is that there is great economic inequality in America, and that this is not a good thing, and that action should be taken to correct it. Obviously, an economy functions best when left entirely alone, free of government intervention, which, ironically, is a philosophy called "neo-liberalism" everywhere except the United States. Only government intervention in the economy damages it. But the liberal nonsense doesn't stop there. Liberals, who now call themselves "progressives" in order to conceal their true, state-ist agenda, have the audacity to suggest that minimum wage be raised, that doing so will create an entirely new class of spenders and consumers, and that the resulting increase in spending, in demand for goods and services will stimulate the economy, thus inspiring the producers to produce more, requiring them to hire more people, increasing the number of jobs and employed people. Damned liberals. Everyone knows, or thinks she knows, that raising wages can only destroy jobs, because employers can then afford fewer employees, because even when wages are raised for millions of low wage people, they will never spend their money, since they have decided to save every dime they earn, evidently. Liberal lies must always be exposed.

Waging wars, Awaiting Repairs, and Saving Money For the Wealthy

NEXT ON THE AGENDA is tax reform and the repair of the nation's infrastructure. By tax reform, it is meant by Trump and the conservative community tax relief for the very wealthy, by which they claim the producers will be able to keep more of their own money, and thereby produce more goods and services. What they omit is that production is unnecessary without sufficient demand for the goods and services produced to facilitate their consumption. Demand precedes supply. Without a sufficiently large consumer base with sufficient purchasing power to buy products on the free market, production becomes over production, which is what happened leading up to the great depression of 1929. The foxes are in charge of the hen house. The billionaires make the rules by which we the teeming masses struggle to stay afloat financially, while the corporations enjoy unprecedented profits, the workers sink ever deeper into debt, and the billionaires become trillionaires. Accumulated personal debt in the United States is now thirteen trillion dollars, most of it obligated by the middle and working classes, and the share of the national wealth owned by the top one percent has surpassed twenty five percent of the nation's wealth. Who will buy the products produced by the corporations if the middle and bottom of the economic pyramid continue sinking ever deeper into debt? Can the wealthy be expected to purchase all of the unsold televisions, washer dryers, and cars? Keep looking for a tax cut for the wealthy; it will soon be easy to see. A one trillion dollar payment to repair the infrastructure will barely begin to cover the cost of repairing the nation's highways, bridges, electrical grid, and sewer systems. And yet, we haven't even gotten an infrastructure out of congressional committee, and when we do, it will contain far less than a trillion dollars. The wars of aggression in the middle east that the Unites Stats has waged for the past quarter century have already cost three trillion dollars, with no end in view. Had it not been for these endless wars, the infrastructure could already have been fully funded, and tax relief could have been provided for those who really need it, the low wage workers, who, even if they already pay little or no taxes, are still unable to thrive economically. The endless wars go on, the infrastructure remains in ruin, and the wealthy await their tax cut.

Kicking The Kids Out

OBAMA'S DEFERRED ACTION ON CHILDHOOD ARRIVALS (DACA) was possibly his way of atoning, in his mind, for the fact that he ordered the deportation of two and a half million illegal residents. Or perhaps it was his way of atoning for the fact that he ordered drones to attack targets in Pakistan which killed hundreds of innocent people, thereby making himself a war criminal. Or, maybe Obama believed that id a child was brought illegally into the United States without having anything to say about it, that child should not be kicked out of the country now that she has completed high school, received a scholarship to Harvard, and is currently working towards an advanced degree in medical science. Trump, quite predictably, rescinded the executive order, only to inform congress that he will kindly give them six months during which to arrive at a permanent solution. Whatever Obama did, Trump, by his very nature, must undo. Who knows, maybe Trump was born in Kenya, and is not qualified to be president. He sent out his A. G. Jeff Sessions, who told us that because of Obama's actions, tens of thousands of unaccompanied children had headed north to the American border. This is a lie; the mass migration began long before DACA. Sessions, content to press on in fantasy, further informed us that because of DACA, there has been a soaring crime rate among illegal residents. Another lie; the actual crime rate among illegal participants in American society is actually far lower than among those of us with proper papers. Anything to reduce the number of people who are potential democrats. There isn't a shred of evidence to indicate that illegal aliens take jobs away from American citizens. there is, however, considerable evidence showing that they are productive in expanding the American economy, that they pay into the social Security system without taking anything out of it, and that they work hard, and give American businesses the opportunity to sell more products to more people. Kicking them out shrinks the economy. But who cares about all that? Donald J. Trump, with his morass of conflicts of business interests, profiting personally in his businesses from the presidency, is ever the stickler for the law.

Losing Squirrel, For The Time Being

SHE WAS CUTE, as all cats are, friendly, with a beautiful silvery coat. She came to my yard looking underweight, a seeming stray. I couldn't put up with that, so I began to feed her, and she kept coming back. She rarely ate much. I named her 'Sylvia", and adopted her. Then suddenly I found out that she belonged to my neighbor, and her name was "Squirrel". My neighbor and I compared notes, and he told me that she wasn't eating for him either. She kept lingering in my yard, the only problem being that my own cat, Cassandra, was freaked out by her presence, and began to spend an alarming amount of time away from home. Cassandra was playing the part of the jealous female, unwilling to put up with competition for affection. So, I was forced to start encouraging Squirrel to stay out of my yard. This she was reluctant to do. She kept getting worse, losing weight, and my neighbor took her to the vet. She was diagnosed with feline leukemia. My neighbor had originally vaccinated her against rabies and distemper, but not leukemia. The vet put her on an emergency diet of ultra care food, but it didn't help, and she died. She nearly died in my arms, as I tried, unsuccessfully, to stop weeping. She seemed to want to be left alone. My neighbor came over, and said three beautiful things to her. "You have been so good for me", he said. Then he said "I will see you again". And then, finally, "I love you". At this point the tears began to flow, As she lay dying, we decided it might be best to let her lie quietly and alone, as she seemed to prefer. She lay beneath my car all night, and in the middle of the night, it rained. As I lay in bed I prayed that the lord would take her before the cold rain made her uncomfortable, and I believe that is what happened. I will always remember Squirrel girl, and I will always remember the beautiful words spoken to her as she left her life behind. I think I know more than ever why people feel the need to believe in a benevolent God. how else can we suffer the "slings and arrows" of this life of suffering? Although I have no idea what sort of first cause set the universe in motion, I choose to believe that the force is anthropomorphic, as most people do, despite the complete lack of any evidence to that effect. We resist the truth, Goethe said, only because we fear that we might perish if we accepted it. I choose to believe that when I die I will be reunited with every dog and cat I have ever loved, and that Squirrel girl and my dear neighbor and will dwell eternally in the embrace of a loving God.

Losing Our Helium

THE BAD NESW IS, the Earth is losing its supply of helium, which is already in short supply. The good news is, it might not mater much, and we can probably get by without it. Still, you hate to see an entire chemical element vanish from the Earth. After all, there are only ninety How are we supposed to blow up balloons, and make our voices sound like Donald Duck? helium is the second most abundant element in the universe, comprising about twenty five percent of the matter in the cosmos. it forms in the interior of stars, like all the other elements, as hydrogen fuses into helium, then into heavier elements, as the process of nuclear fusion fills the void with electromagnetic energy, coming at us in both wave and particle form. Here on earth, the gravity simply isn't sufficient to hold down helium, since it does not bond with any other element, and always remains, in its normally gaseous state, lighter than air, lighter than gravity. were it not for its capacity to bond with oxygen, we'd out of luck with hydrogen too, but, since it does, not to worry. Helium has been seeping into space for billions of years, much like the entire atmosphere of Mars, once significant, did long ago. We still have some left, but we'd better hurry if we wish to preserve any for future generation. It is estimated than within a few million years, our helium supply will have gone away entirely, and we'll be bond dry. Helium is used primarily for science and industry; but for the purposes of our daily lives, we'll never know the difference, at least, that is, until your child wants to have a birthday party, with balloons, and all the trimmings.

Adding Truth To Faith

BART EHRMAN Had a born again experience when he was sixteen, and decided to pursue a career in the ministry. He graduated from the esteemed Moody Theological Institute, then went on to earn a doctorate in Div9nity from Princeton. You couldn't ask for a better education in the Christian faith, perfect for several careers, including academic and ministerial. At Princeton, the Bible, the Christian faith, and the history of the church are studied critically, scientifically, objectively, historically, rather from a purely devotional viewpoint. So much so tat along the way, more than a few theological students lose their faith, when factual documented history reveals the religion to have emerged in circumstances that appear entirely human and political, not divine. This happened to Ehrman. He became an agnostic with a superb education in Christianity. he says it wasn't the historical knowledge which changed him; it was the problem of seeking to reconcile a benevolent god with immense human suffering. He weathered the thousands of factual errors and internal contradiction found in the Bible, but not the concept of an all omnipotent deity who allows great suffering. Today he is the dean of the North Carolina University school of Divinity at Chapel Hill. he has written many best selling, controversial books about religious history. They are best sellers because they are fascinating, well written, well written, and, to those of faith, shocking. "Jesus Interrupted" is perhaps the best. it details the factual problems in the bible, just as they do in the Princeton curriculum. At least half of all documents which shed light on church history have been discovered within the past one hundred years; modern scholars have an abundance of evidence with which to work. We would be blessed if the New Testament had been written by Jesus himself, but, alas, history is not that kind, and Jesus was almost certainly illiterate, as were all of his disciples. Instead, the bible was written and rewritten, altered and edited by thousands of people over a period of hundreds of years. Nobody knows who wrote the gospels, and nobody ever will. We do know that whoever their authors were, they lived in large cities, spoke and read ancient Greek fluently, and did their work from secondary, tertiary, or even fourth hand sources. Ehrman is careful to point out that knowing the truth about the origins of the Christian religion need not destroy anyone's faith, but that if we do not approach it from on objective point of view, we are at risk of falling victim to a morass of misconceptions. Ehrman is only controversial precisely because his scholarship is predicated on critical analysis, not blind faith. For that reason, one might hope that his brand of scholarship gains a permanent foothold upon the academic community, as well as the rest of us.

God, And Human Suffering

IF GOD HAD ANYTHING TO DO with the writing of the Christian Bible, he engaged in an extreme form of micro management. He caused hundreds of versions of the life of Jesus, each considerably different from the others, to be written, rewritten, edited, and exposed to forgery, over a period of several decades. He caused thousands of clerics to travel far, at specific times and places, and to put thousands of words on hundreds of documents. He entered the mind of the Roman emperor Constantine, converted him, and placed within Constantine's mind the idea of unifying the church around agreed upon, voted upon dogmatic principles in a small town in what is now Turkey, in the year 325 A.D. In that year, in Nicea, the clerics gathered, argued, debated, and voted on which gospels to leave in, and which to leave out. Presumably God desired that his Word be brought into the world by committee, and that His Word be rewritten scores of times, translated repeatedly, often improperly, and sent out into the world in many different editions and versions. Does it follow that God micro manages the world at all times and places, did he do so only on the occasion of the assembling of the Bible, or does he just sort of come an go at his leisure? Either God causes human suffering, does not cause it but chooses to allow it, or cannot prevent it. If The supreme deity micro manages the world continuously, he has a lot of explaining to do. Namely, the horrible state of human affairs, throughout history, and in the present day. The eternal and never answered question of god and human suffering has confounded everyone since the advent of religion. In the Old testament thousands of animals are sacrificed to an apparently meat eating God, in an attempt to appease him. Is does not seem to work. A poet once said: If God is good, God is not God. If God is God, god is not good. The problem of reconciling extensive human suffering with a benevolent God has existed since humans invented religion. It has never been done. Millions of Christian, nonetheless, think they have done it, at least to their own satisfaction. They introduce free will. free will only means that God chooses to allow human suffering. They introduce the devil. The devil means that God either chooses to allow the devil to have power, or cannot prevent it from happening. the answer is perhaps that human understanding of God is misguided, inadequate. Einstein that "morality is of the highest importance, for mankind, but not for God". Maybe Einstein was right; he usually was.

Trying to Talk to South Korea

THE UNITED STATES does not currently have an ambassador to South Korea, and hasn't since Trump took office.The hallways at the ponderous State Department Bldg in D.C. are eerily empty and quiet. Nobody works there. this, during the eight months of the Trump presidency, what seems like eight millennia. Trump's budget cuts for the State Department are considerable. "Restructuring", which means downsizing in personnel and importance, is underway.Like KMart and Sears, state Department employees are being mustered out and not replaced as diplomacy dies, receding into the President's twitter account. When has the United States ever needed communication with South Korea more than now? When has a fully staffed foreign policy team been more urgently needed than now, in the era of fighting terrorism, economic uncertainty, and climate change? Indeed, the more weather related disaster humanity confronts, the more effective our lines of international communication must be, to ensure a coordinated assault upon our own foolishness. the Paris climate and carbon agreement is a perfect example of the need for cooperation, a shining example of what humans, working together on a worldwide basis, can achieve. So of course Trump removes the United States from the agreement. One may assume that if and when our president gets around to dignifying south Korea, one of our closest allies, with a former ambassador, the person will doubtless be someone who knows noghing about South Korea, and has no interest in learning, if current trends continue. Any nominations? if not, let it be noted that the best man for the job is Dennis Rodman. he gets along well with North Korea, which would seem at first glance, to be a positive feature. it probably means he will never even be considered.

Rightfully Roaming

I LIVE IN A LOWER middle class-working class 'hood in a town of two thousand souls in the former confederacy. My house is two blocks from a two lane state highway which meanders across the state, and through "my" town. I walk the three blocks to the senior for lunch each week day. Permit me to brag about the fact that whenever a car approaches a bit too rapidly. I can jog across the highway, particularly when hungry; essentially, always. I shorten the trip a bit by cutting across my neighbor's yard on the way; a concession to laziness, not age. During the twelve yearfs I have lived here, my neighbor's house has housed four different neighbors, all families, all of whom stayed on a couple of years. each time someone new moves in, I knock on their door, introduce myself, explaining that I am doing so primarily to prove to myself that I can, at times, behave like a proper gentleman. it always works out. the first thing I do is to ask permission to cut across their yard on my way to the senior center. I emphasize "senior center" because not only is it the truy, I hope to gain permission to trespass by playing on their sympathies, hoping they will accommodate an old man. It invariably seems to work. Admittedly, if and when a stranger walks across my yard, which is seldom, I feel a bit annoyed, as if my personal property rights have been violated. this, obviously, makes me a bit of a hypocrite; I won't tell if you won't. All this brings to mind just how proprietary we Americas are, myself included. What's mine is mine, and nobody else's. We Americans not only don't like anyone touching our possessions; we don't even want anyone else to look at them. we are a nation of privacy fences, secluded behind our brown wooden boxes, we are willing to prevent ourselves from seeing outside our box, in order that on one might see in. Is there something a bit, shall we say, "sick" about this? I heard a man on the radio talk about his walk from the Canadian border all the way to the Mexican border, a walk which took several months an covered hundreds of miles. He related how he encounterd all kinds of weather, all kinds of terrain, and that throughout his entire walk, hew was trespassing. On several occasions he found himself in themiddle of a cow pasture, threading his way between cows and around cow deposits. One on occasion, he said, a herd became annoyed, and about fifteen of the animals started jogging towards him. he found the barbed wire fence, quickly, and crawled under it, wondering what would have happened. In many countries, among them Scotland, Sweden, and Norway, there is what is called "the right to roam". this means that anyone waling or bicycling across those countries, beautiful that they are, are not in violation of the law, are by law not trespassing. With all the room we have in the U.S., and as harmless as most trespassing is, we might want to consider something similar. Anyone who doesn't like it is free to build a privacy fence, which, come to think of, probably ought to be illegal.

Giving Peace A Chance

MY UNCLE BOB, who is 93 years old and so vigorous he retired last year and regrets it, and after whom I am named, gave me some cogent advice about this website. Rock on, Uncle Bob. He suggested that I turn it into an instrument of healing, of national reconciliation. He also said that by so doing I might be able to score some serious jack (money). He thinks it would be a valuable service, that reconciliation is a virtue with a virtually untapped american market, and he's thinking about doing it himself. I told him I liked the idea, although I'm not so sure about the money. I also reminded him that the word "reconciler" is part of this website's title, so, should probably be part of its purpose. So here goes: excessive patriotism is a mental disease which badly influences human behavior and, as Goethe artfully put it, "corrupts history". Calm, quiet love of one's country will do quite nicely. So let's not unite America around Trump, or anybody else, uber patriotically, as in NAZI Germany. Let's unite it step by step, unhisterically, with baby steps. Let's stop the social media civil war, or, if nothing else, slow it down a tad. If we must argue, let us at least be brave enough to do so face to face, out in the streets. I never met a protest march I didn't like, including the Klan. Long live the exercise of free speech by the far right. Let the fools expose themselves, that we might truly know them. Le's shine the light on us all. If you happen to think that liberals are idiots, encourage them to speak. They'll show you who they are. I don't expect my uncle Bob to start a new reconciliation website; he's more the face to face ministerial alliance type. But his online reconciliation project is still a great idea, if only somebody will give it a try.

Living In Our Own Realities

GORE VIDAL USED TO refer to The United States as "the fun house". By that he presumably meant that nothing is as it seems, that reality, in America, is obscured by fantasy, and that the fantasy comes to us from above, from our corporate masters, with their billions of dollars spend on advertising and propaganda. They tell us that the economy improves when taxes are cut on the wealthy, and that raising wages for workers damages the economy, that doing so kills jobs, and other garbage, much of which we in the United States of Amnesia (another Gore Vidal moniker) soak up thoughtlessly; the mythology, the lies, the fantasy, we embrace it sheepishly, without a whimper of protest or question, because we want to, and we have the right to. How can our wealthy corporate leaders possibly be wrong? A new book by Kurt Anderson, "Fantasy Land: How America Went Haywire", picks up on the same theme, and provides a comprehensive analysis of the American love of the unreal, which he proves is deeply rooted in our history, from the pilgrims onward to Barnum and Bailey and our huge free market entertainment industry, which specializes in fantasy. Welcome to the United States of advertising. A sizable percentage of the American people believe in speaking in tongues, and in the rapture, but do not believe in climate change. Since it isn't in the Bible, and since its implications are ominous for capitalism, why believe in it? We are all free to choose our own reality, to have our own facts. Its an inherent right to believe that we know more than the experts. We Americans have become tired of experts. After all, they tell us so many things we would rather not hear. Twenty five percent of we the American people believe that vaccinations cause autism, although there is no evidence that they do, and the medical and scientific professions tell us, without equivocation, that they do not. We were told that vaccines are harmful by an attractive movie star, and, for us, that was good enough. To hell with what the scientists and doctors say. Conspiracy theories are an American specialty. Large swaths of the population believe that bottled water is fundamentally more pure than tap water, although any lab analysis shows that there really is not much to be gained by paying big prices for store bought water. Nine eleven was an inside job, maybe the work of some dark and obscure part of the U.S. government. UFOs, plots to kill Kennedy, the list of secret pseudo knowledge is endless. No matter how much evidence, or lack of evidence accrues, our fantasies linger. We are not an evidence based society. We are a culture which celebrates the right of every citizen to think and believe whatever one chooses, and we tend to believe that all beliefs are created equal, which they most assuredly are not. In America, we believe whatever we choose, notwithstanding proof to the contrary. Its the penalty we pay for being a nation of dreamers, who, as Goethe said about all humans: "resist the truth only because we fear we might perish if we accepted it."

Paying For Harvey, and Now, Introducing Irma

HURRICANE HARVEY was one more on a long list of recent weather events which would seem to strongly suggest that climate change is a reality. With all due respect to Rush Limbaugh and the millions of American conservative Republicans who believe, or say they believe, that global warming is a liberal hoax, extreme weather events are becoming much more common, and we are assured by the scientific community that this trend is only going to get worse. Sea level rise is beginning to flood the East Coast of the U.S., while islands are beginning to sink below the water in the Pacific. Hurricane Harvey did at least one hundred and eighty billion dollars worth of damage, And yet, President Trump is only now planning to introduce an eight billion dollar relief bill to help hurricane Harvey victims. The governor of Texas, a right winger who normally hates using the federal government to help anybody, calls Trump's meager proposal a "down payment". Uh huh. We'll see. By now it should be obvious to everyone that in the very near future, the United States, and everyone else, is going to have to start spending huge amounts of money replacing the stuff that climate change destroys. Trillions of dollars worth. We won't be able to afford to worry about public or private contributions; we will need both, in vast quantities. Since about half the world's wealth goes to military spending each year, the may be a future for the militaries of the world in hurricane clean up Five'll get you ten that Trump's eight billion dollar hurricane assistance bill will get stalled in congress, endlessly debated, with pork being attached to it, until, at long last, a compromise is reached, and a bill is signed. Meanwhile, Trump has drastically cut the budget for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) at the exact time that FEMA is most needed, and will be needed increasingly more in the near future. For don't look now, but there's another hurricane in the Atlantic, a huge one, bigger than Harvey, headed straight for Florida. NO matter where it hits, its going to do billions of dollars of damage. Who's going to pay for it? We'd better decide right now; its already a category five, and it could be another Katrina, Andrew, Sandy, or Harvey. If this one isn't the next one will be, and the next one, and the next one after that.

Celebrating, and fighting For Workers

ACCORDING TO THE THEORY BEHIND CAPITALISM, as long as everybody behaves in a rational, reasonable manner, economically, in his or her own best interests, capitalism works. And that right there, dear reader, is the problem with capitalism. When is the last time you saw anybody acting rationally lately? All kidding aside, people demonstrably do not always act in their own best interests; they drink like sailors, and spend money on booze and other crazy, irrational pursuits. Most people squander a good part of their personal wealth. Adam Smith, the godfather of modern capitalism, understood that. That's why he was careful to point out that the government exists, should exist, for the primary reason of protecting the average citizen, the worker. Any government action on behalf of the poor is beneficial, said Smith, and any government action on behalf of the wealthy businesses is undesirable. Smith wrote "The Wealth of Nations" in 1776 mainly to protest against European governments assisting the big corporations (mercantilism) and aiding them in exploiting the working poor. In perfect, theoretical, government-less, free market capitalism, the workers get paid exactly what they produce, with profit for the owner. but perfect markets do not exist, can never exist. There are too many unintended factors that get in the way. In reality, all throughout the history of capitalism since 1750 or so, the workers have been, in general severely exploited. A quick history of the labor movements in Europe and the United States plainly show a constant struggle of the working class against extreme exploitation by the wealthy owner class. Even a cursory glance at contemporary America reveals this. The current federal minimum wage of seven twenty five clearly reveals the persistence of worker exploitation. On this labor Day it is appropriate to remember that the majority of working people have never been treated fairly, and history has been a long, slow, painful fight on the part of working people to achieve basic fair treatment. Let us together celebrate the dignity and nobility of labor. Workers of the world unite; celebrate your own worth, and work together to make it even greater.

Christians, Joining the Appropriate Party

THE SHIT HIT THE FAN at the senior center when I got word that Big Harold had proclaimed the necessity of voting for Donald Trump to be a true Christian, and I responded by writing that in the event this actually happened, which I suspected it did, then Big Harold should spend more time walking, exercising, less the mixing politics and religion. Nobody at the senior reads this website unless it published an article about a senior center. Then, all hell breaks out, which is exactly the intention of most websites - to get attention. Who says what is less important than what is said and repeated, than what is done. Whether Jesus of Nazareth is the actual speaker of everything attributed to him in the New Testament is far less important then reading his alleged statements and benefitting from them. Not all beliefs and statements are created equal - we must use our intelligence to assess their applicability, their beneficial efficacy. We live in an age in which crazy ideas and beliefs are given free reign, owing to the internet, and a growing belief in free expression and tolerance. Equating Donald Trump with Jesus Christ is among the craziest I have ever hears, and will oppose it in one way or another. Responding to it by suggesting that someone get more exercise, it would seem, is a far kinder, gentler manner of opposing it than many others one could think of. The entire phenomenon of extremely conservative extremely devout Christianity in America seems crazy, frankly, no matter how widespread it becomes. What on earth did Jesus have to do with accumulating personal wealth and carrying guns? And if you think it all doesn't matter anyway because soon the rapture will occur, the end of times, and you along with a few other select elect will be raptured in heaven, you might want to think again, and ask yourself whether you might not be just a wee bit crazy. If the democrats are smart, they will try to convince America's devout Christians that they really and truly do not belong in the Republican party, with the gun packing, fortune seeking free market capitalists. rather, thy should hang with the crowd which encourages rendering unto Caesar, giving unto the poor, with no matter shoes money, and sharing. if anyone was ever hard core about redistributing the wealth, it was Jesus Christ. You simply cannot deny this. The home of the true Christian, Big Harold, is the Socialist-Pacifist party, and since we don't have one, the democrats, the Bernie Sanders wing, will have to do.

Calling A Spade A spade

WHY IS IT THAT seemingly the same people who insist that we use the term "radical Islamic terrorism", refuse to not only not use the term "radical Christian terrorism", they refuse to admit that it even exists, or ever has. The crusades were centuries ago, and therefore irrelevant. The fact that there is indeed a type of terrorism perpetuated by extremely devout Muslims, when these terrorists commit mass murder of any other terroristic act, the Islamic community, overwhelmingly, banishes themm from the faith, and does not want the faith to be named as part of the terrorism. And really, its as simple as that. The term "radical ISLAMIC TERRORISM", which American conservatives must be used, offends ninety nine point nine percent of the Islamic community, and thus, smart American liberals do not use it. What the KKK has done, does, and stands for is nothing other than radical Christian terrorism", OK? Like it or not, Klan members are among the most devout Christians. The fact is, the Christian faith, just like the Islamic faith, has been and still is full of terrorists, hate mongers, whatever you want to call them. And yet, they tend to be but a small minority, with a large megaphone. One could argue against the desirability of organized religion based on that fact. Devout Christian mainstream American conservatives shudder at the very thought of "Christian terrorism", and particularly "conservative Christian terrorism", but here it is, out in the open in our society, being treated as the invisible white elephant in the room by those whose views are fundamentally similar. Its amazing how many different ways Jesus and the bible can be interpreted. There is no other possible conclusion than that slavery is condoned in the Christian bible. This is why books are designed only to give names to our mistakes, at the very best, like Goethe said, and why if God chose to reveal HIS truth in a book, he couldn't've picked a worse, or stupider, of doing it.

The Pitchforks Are Coming

'THE PITCHFORKS ARE COMING', by Nick Hanaour, is a must read book which I, admittedly have not yet read. I plan to, soon as I can scrape up a copy. Usually, of course, you write a book review after reading the book. Hanaour is in his late fifties, and as he puts it an "eight hundred millionaire." He inherited a good company, and went from there. Now he runs a venture capitalism firm in Seattle. Somewhere along the way Nick did something very few extremely wealthy people do; he became a liberal, or, as we like to say today, a "progressive". I can only think of a handful of others; Bill Gates and Warren Buffet come to mind, along with George Soros, ted turner, and Richard Branson. Hanaour says he is extremely concerned about the gap between the rich and the poor in America, which is the greatest its ever been, and getting larger. Many people, including economists, have been noticing this trend, which has manifested in America since the nineteen eighties. In 1980 the top one percent of America's wealthy took home about eight percent of the total national income. Today, its roughly twenty five percent. Working class and middle class incomes have been stagnant over the same time period. Hanaour warns us that never in history has a constantly increasing concentration of wealth ended in anything other than a war, or a revolution. he believes America is headed in that direction - we already have the wars. We see more and more groups of angry people marching in the streets, more than in decades. The unruly mob, armed with pitchforks, can be seen gathering, growing in numbers and in anger, ready to launch the revolution in the streets that will overthrow the existing order, but not without much violence.

Keeping The Statues, and Adding More

THERE'S NO REASON NOT TO just go ahead and tell the damned truth, even if we don't want to. Eventually it'll come out anyway. Fir instance, let's get this straight: every damned time a group of people gather together to protest the removal of a confederate civil war statue, the statue isn't the real issued. The real issue is racism, white supremacy, or segregation, take your pick. These statue huggers, invariably right wingers, for the most part know nothing about the American or any other civil war, and don't really care about it. Nor do they care about state's rights, and all that bull. Today's statue huggers have the same racist motivation that our ancestors did when they erected them in the first place, back around the turn of the twentieth century, generally. They were erected long after the war was over, by people who didn't fight in the war or know anyone who did. They were erected as a right racist backlash to the reconstruction era, when the Yankee federal government in Washington shoved racial equality down southern throats. A generation after the war, Jim Crow laws proliferated, and a century of segregation and oppression began for the former slaves. No, the European-American "white" portion of the American people should not, by any stretch of the imagination, feel very good about the history of their treatment of blacks in America, then, or now. Its that simple. One African-American lady was heard to mention that no statue of Robert E. Lee could hurt anybody unless it falls on them. True, but maybe not quite the point. Early in the twentieth century, the Klan flourished, and the statues were erected by racists wanting to remind everyone of white superiority. OK then, let's leave the statues up, since it doesn't seem likely that any of them will fall on anyone. but let's put up more. let's put up a big statue of martin Luther King, striding forward, followed by freedom marchers, walking straight towards Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis or even Stonewall Jackson. And maybe a Rosa Parks statue sitting in a seat, smiling, looking at Lee, or Booker T. Washington lecturing a row of confederate soldiers, standing at attention, with the light of new understanding gleaming in their youthful, innocent eyes.

Being Paranoid

I CAN CLEARLY RECALL looking at my dead step grandfather in his casket, when I was six years old. I was scared, but not confused. I understood. But I still don't know why my mother decided to take me to the mortuary. Wasn't I too young for that? I was about to enter first grade; maybe mother dea thought it was time I learn about life. When I was eight, JFK was killed. I remember being surprised that such a thing could happen to someone so important. It gave me nightmares. All through grade school, we crouched regularly beneath our wooden desks, avoiding make believe Russian bombs. I was told that any day now, the bombs could be real, so we must be fully prepared. Even in third grade I could easily see that my wooden desk was not going to protect me from a nuclear bomb, but I didn't dare tell the school; in those days we were all afraid of teachers, administrators, and parents, I thought they might get me in trouble for being a trouble maker. I was treated to my first, but not last mass murder at age eleven, a made for media event in a three TV channel world. I have been aware of radical Islamic terrorism since high school. A group of my friends actually dressed up in turbans one night, in 1972, and drove around town play acting like "Arab terrorists". I kid you not. Radical Islamic terrorism was still a novelty then, with a humorous overtone to it from a smart assed teenager's point of view. Today that 'tude wouldn't fly. I decided to stay home that night, and study. Climate change I first heard about in the nineteen eighties, I"ve heard about it more every year since, and it doesn't seem to be going away. In 2011, I happened to be visiting my home town, and while I was there, it got blown away by a category five tornado, one of the largest ever measured. I was out jogging when it struck, saw folks flying through the air, was lucky to survive, but I was afflicted with a good healthy does of PTSD thereafter. In other words, clouds still frighten me. The point to all this is that it really is no great mystery why I am paranoid. Over the past few years, as I have entered my senior citizenship, I have noticed an increase of paranoia, especially since the tornado. I keep telling myself to "get over it." Its almost as bad as the complete loss of short term memory, but not quite. One thing's for sure, though - if I keep on being paranoid a bit longer, eventually it will be justified by circumstances.

Trump, Thinking Long and Hard - If Possible

NOBODY QUESTIONS AMERICA'S RIGHT, or any other country's right, to monitor and defend her own borders. After all, we live in a world of nation states, governed by certain principles widely accepted, and until we think of something better, we're stuck with it. The question is: to what extreme extent do we monitor and protect borders with friendly nations? Its an important question, with huge impacts on our country. Immigrants from across the Rio Grande tend overwhelmingly, it has been proven, to be hard working, good people, who contribute to America's economy. They do not take other people's jobs. They contribute. Our economy needs them. Yes, we need an organized and well regulated border. There is nothing wrong with the US government keeping a list of citizens and guests. The problem with Sheriff Joe in Arizona is that he was stopping and searching anybody in his jurisdiction who had a sun tan, looking for illegal Hispanic folk. We just can't allow that in this country (USA) because if we did, we would end up with law enforcement agencies, federal, state, and local, coming out of the woodwork, and stopping and frisking anything that moves. It can happen. Some people brag about the effectiveness of the "stop and frisk" program in New York City, some do not. There was very little crime in NAZI Germany, but very little freedom, and very harsh treatment of offenders. That works just fine - until the powerful wealthy elite get victimized, then, its not so fine. Sheriff Joe was so passionate about law enforcement that he had prisoners sleeping in tents, eating bologna sandwiches, for heaven's sake, and he had perfectly innocent people very frightened. Now, that aint America, or shouldn't be. With our friend Mexico this whole wall thing is ludicrous, and detrimental to the cause of domestic tranquility, as articulated in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. Is Trump really going to criminalize eight hundred thousand dreamer kids, and impose harsh penalties against so called Sanctuary cities? Really? He'd better think long and hard about it. He needs to be aware that it is illegal to issue a presidential pardon before sentencing, and it is supposed to follow a five year waiting period. We'll see whether the President gets away with this, as he seems to get away with everything else -so far.

Understanding Trump: Trying To

WHENEVER THE FBI investigates Donald J. Trump, it is by definition a "witch hunt", according to Mr. Trump. When the Bureau declares the Russians guilty of interfering in the American election for the purpose of trying to assist Hillary Clinton getting elected, but says it can't be sure yet whether the Trump campaign conspired with them - its "fake news", according to Donald, or a dark conspiracy between the Democrat party and the left wing media, intended to discredit and destroy the president. And who knows more about diabolical plots and witch hunts than Donald J. Trump? Of course, to be honest, if I had been running against Hillary Clinton, and had spent months trailing her in the polls, I might find it tempting to look for some secret, outside help also.Trump spent several years telling anyone who would listen, including those evil purveyors of fake news, the mainstream American news media, that Barack Obama was not a native born american citizen, and was therefore ineligible to be president. Of course Trump, like everyone else, knew better. If ever there was a witch hunt, this was it, courtesy Donald Trump. Dark, sinister, evil, a deliberate fabrication based on nothing but hatred of Obama and racism. If Obama's father had been an Irish bloke who died young, nobody would have caredabout Obama's place of birth. But a black African father, that's another matter. So narcissistic is Trump that when he accuses others of inventing fake news and spreading lies, he is actually seeing himself, without knowing it. The idea here is not to argue about Russian spies. The idea is to see into Trump's character and personality. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps the FBI and the democrats did indeed invent the whole Russian election interference story, and maybe Obama was actually born in Kenya. But how likely is it? Very, very....un. And if these sorts of sensational and dubious claims, which Trump makes seemingly every day, are merely his fabrications, what on earth does that say about the current leader of the free world?

Losing Our Ability To Communicate

THERE MIGHT BE A VERY good reason to be concerned about the future of face to face, oral-verbal spoken communication in America, and worldwide. Homo Sapiens might well be in danger of losing, by not using, our conversational capabilities. Conversation is an art, an art which at one time flourished all across the fruited plain. Ancient documents and pieces of history memorabilia seem to indicate that primitive Americans actually spoke to each other, intelligently. Particularly on the frontier, there was little else to do, no other way to communicate. So they learned how to do it, and did it the right way, listening to each other, taking turns talking. Now we of the twenty first century be forgetting how to have a conversation by standing, sitting, or reclining within a few feet of each other, and using the spoken word, taking turns speaking without interrupting or talking over each other, all the while continuously practicing the subtle art of deciding when to make eye contact. Are we texting and tweeting our way back towards barbarism? Many studies have been conducted indicating that yes, indeed our communications skills are diminishing, because they are being replaced by Twitter, Facebook, texting, and so forth, all manner of electronic gadgetry. This, as you might suspect, is particularly pronounced among the young, the younger, the less communicative. This is of interest to me because my personal experience tells me the same thing; it is more difficult than ever to have a rewarding, intelligent conversation with another living being. We no longer seem to regard interrupting as rude. Its dog eat dog, with the loudest, fastest voice holding the floor. No matter whom I talking to, if their cell phone rings while I am talking, they must take the call, now. If it rings while he or she is talking, the call can wait. We Americans love to speak, and love listening far less. We talk past each other, through each other, around each other, anything except TO each other. I am as guilty as anyone. We now consider it perfectly acceptable to suddenly change the subject without a moment's notice. That was once considered rude. But maybe conversation is like riding a bicycle; faster methods have been invented, but people still ride bikes. Plus, once you learn how to do it, you never forget how,...maybe.