Moving On From Kavanaugh

MUCH HAS BEEN PUBLISHED on this website and others concerning Brett Kavanaugh, and unless he ends up on the Supreme Court and rewrites the constitution, its time to move on. just a few final thoughts. As we have said, it is not necessary to prove that Kavanaugh sexually molested somebody years ago, nor is it necessary for anyone to prove that she was sexually molested. it is only necessary for his potential employers to determine to decide whether , in light of all available evidence, they should hire him. More than the allegations against him, his response to the allegations disqualify him for employment. he insulted the Senators questioning hime, by asking her whether she had ever become drunk, after she had asked him the same question. Rude, juvenile. he is being interviewed for a job, not she. his insult, his emotional outbursts, reveal a distinctly unfit temperament for rendering impartial justice from the bench. He screamed, red faced, that there is a massive conspiracy against him, involving Democrats, liberals, and greqt amount of money. The problem with this is that there is no evidence to support it. kavanaugh even went so far as to threaten the Democratic Senators with future retalliation. Much of his behavior, under normal circumstances, would have resulted in his being held in contempt of Congress, and removed from the room. Again, a lack of judicial, dispassionate temperament on display. Bear in mind that Neil Gorsuch was confirmed to the high court with only legitimate opposition, and no conspiracies were evident, probably because none existed, and because Gorsuch has never sexually molested anyone. If the Democrats had wanted to strike, they would have struck then, since at the time they had no inkling that they would ever have another opportunity to kill a republican justice nomination. The FBI will complete its work, and we can know for sure whether kavanaigh's accusers have merit. Even if they do, the Senate Republicans will likely accuse the FBI of being controlled by Hillary Clinton. The Senate Republicans have behaved like Donald Trump during this process; Attack and witnesses and opponents, invent conspiracy theories, change the subject. Their behavior is entirely reprehensible. And, unless there is an actual conspiracy on the part of Democrats, for which there is not a shred of evidence, their behavior must be viewed as nothing other than transparent, honest, strong opposition to a nominee who was nominated only because of his conservative political views, which, it seems are all that matters to the conservative community and the Republicans in Congress.Political or judicial ideology, liberal or conservative, is not a qualification for judicial appointment. Political or judicial moderation and open mindedness is. Whether Kavanaugh, or the members of congress who support his nomination, or the members of the general public who support him are the most reprehensible remains to be determined, but that determination will be made, like all others, by history.

Admiring And Envying Michael Moore

FLIM PRODUCER/DIRECTOR MICHAEL MOORE, as he approaches the end of his life, can look back on his fascinating life, with, if nothing else, a sens of amusement, a smile, and the memory of a job well done. Not all of us, unfortunately, can do that. If nothing else, life is a grand adventure, and Moore's recent life has certainly been all of that. He filled a tanker truck with poisonous tap water from the city of Flint, Michigan, and sprayed it on the lawn of the governor's mansion of Michigan. He wrapped hundreds of yards of that iconic yellow crime scene tape around the headquarters of a major American financial services firm, entirely encircling the building. He walked into the headquarters of another major American financial services corporation, carrying handcuffs, asked to speak to the CEO, indicating that his intent was to make a citizen's arrest. Then, to cap it all off, he filmed all of these reckless actions/stunts for inclusion in his recently released documentary movie, Fahrenheit 11/9. What all these actions have in common, other than being totally disruptive, out of the ordinary, possible illegal, audacious, and weird, is that they all were entirely, completely, and irrefutably appropriate. the sort of thing which "someone had to do it." then too, they were all perpetrated by a man keenly aware of the obvious fact that he is living in a culture which in itself is entirely crazy, off its rocker, and utterly, perhaps irrevocably corrupt.Our major american financial services corporations are all criminal enterprises; its that simple. This is easily demonstrated by the mere fact that nearly all of them have been convicted at least once, in in most case more than once, of financial fraud and other crimes by the federal government. these convictions cannot be challenged, because the government's case, in all cases, was lock down solid beyond question. during the past decade, the Bank of america, for instance, has been convicted of financial crime half a dozen times; the most recent penalty was seventeen billion dollars; the feds have become impatient. What Moore did so audaciously, all of us should have joined him in doing, but we can at least say that he did it for us. The movie he got from it, now in major motion theaters everywhere, is a splendid example of his talent for truth telling, in simple, honest, irrefutable terms. Fahrenheit 11/9 is better than Fahrenheit 9/11, better than all his previous work, a truly magnificent achievement. Let's see how conservative defenders of the system try to find fault with it, to prove any errors of fact, as they most assuredly will; they will not succeed.

America Under Trump; Weird and Funny, Turning Its Back On the World

AT THE UNITED NATIONS the president of the United State carefully explained that the United States wants nothing more to do with other nations. No international agreements, no cooperation, no climate change agreements, no nuclear arms limitations agreements, nothing. Nothing, that is, other than a few trade wars here and there. make damned sure you stay out of our business, and we'll stay out of yours. Like hell we'll stay out of your business. Other than a few hundred military bases scattered around the world , and the occasional invasion, give or take a regime change or two carried out by the CIA and American special forces, we're done, we're out, and you're on your own. That might have been the best, and the strangest pledge ever heard by Iran, Iraq, Latin American, and a few dozen other countries. The French president,for one, openly and decisively demonstrated the inanity of unilateralism as opposed to multilateralism. But the American president probably wasn't listening, as is his wont.Were the troops in Afghanistan were taking it all in, with straight faces. Depends on whether the C.O. was on site, eh? What about the sailors in the U.S. carrier fleets groups patrolling the South China Sea, off the coast of North Korea, and the Persian Gulf? Are we still planning to plant military bases in Poland? How's that for respecting the territorial sovereignty of other nations? the Unites States of American shall henceforth impinge upon the sovereignty, territorial or otherwise, of no other nation, and we'll sell you some good wet land in central Florida to boot.that no one at the U.N. laughed out loud is a minor miracle - that came soon thereafter. Next came the funny part, the 2020 election campaign kick off, which Trump actually kicked off the day after inauguration. The current president of the United States, orated the current president of the United States, has accomplished more during his term in office than any other president of the United States...well, almost. Giggles. Then, rollicking, unrestrained laughter. They could hold it in no longer. Trump, always quick on his feet, expressed surprise at the reaction, then thanked the assemble multitudes for laughing with him, not at him. More laughter. they were laughing, Trump wasn't. He would have been truly humorous, had he not been in such deadly earnest, and the world knows it. Trump, the most successful unintended stand up clown comedian ever to occupy teh White House, better than Reagan, better than Lincoln. We want nothing to do with you, but please be informed; our president is a very accomplished man...As an American, I must sty to the world that I am truly sorry about this, as I am confident are millions of my fellow Americans. its embarrassing. never in my wildest nightmarish imaginings did I think it would get this bad, go this low. Our president, my president, is a criminal, a pathological liar, a severely paranoid narcissist, and, the coup de grace, an absolute doofus. this is worse than mucking through Ronald Reagan's dementia-drenched second term. I've heard highly intelligent people say that somehow we'll survive this. I hope they're right, and I wish I could believe it.

Good and Bad Ideas Within The Faith

WITHIN THE CHRISTIAN FAITH is a movement dedicated to the proposition, as Abraham Lincoln might say, that sex without marriage is a bad idea, a proposition most assuredly not embraced by the libidinous Mr. Lincoln himself. That sex outside of marriage is inadvisable is seemingly self evident, as Thomas Jefferson might say, although he too failed to embrace this idea, he, like Mr. Lincoln, having been of the libidinous and promiscuous sort. To go to the trouble to form an organization devoted to an obviously good idea might seem redundant, redundant of common sense, like the SPCA, but, well, no harm, no foul. The sexual purity movement is popular, like all good ideas. Approximately six thousand Mormon women have an organization of their own, so dedicated, and so conceived. Currently the Mormon women's purity organization is encouraging a full investigation of Brett Kavanaugh, and encouraging the four Mormon members of the United States Senate to vote no on his confirmation to the Supreme Court, all of which would certainly to be in keeping with the lady's stated purpose. Since Kavanaugh is now alleged to have shown his genitals at a party in high school, among other violations of common courtesy, his support seems to be waning among..most everyone. If he tried to violently rape a girl, he is both mentally ill and incompetent at wrestling; if he shared his genitals with onlookers he is downright sick in the head. Either way, why chance it? why have on the nation's highest court a person who at any moment might part his black robe and reveal too much? Sometimes, the strange union between the Christian faith and political conservatism causes problems, best described as "internal contradictions". Precisely how, for instance, does a good Christian woman possibly support an American president who has been accused of multiple sex crimes by multiple women, independently of each other? And how can she support the president's nominee to the Supreme Court, himself similarly accused? Only with great difficulty, presumably. or, you simply assume that all alleged violated women are fabricating their misfortunes, for some mysterious reason, money, maybe, or fame. he sort of fame which causes you to be vilified, called a liar and a slut. Some fame. The reverend John Hagy proclaims that Kavanaugh should stand tall, and refuse to surrender to an obvious Democratic party conspiracy against him. The women's complaints he dismisses blithely, conveniently, sanctimoniously. Misogyny fits well into the traditional Christian faith, in which women, according to scripture, are submissive. Trump simplifies: he pays the women to go away, and they go away. he says he's innocent, as all criminals do, because he has paid. For abused women, the abuse cannot be undone, and money trumps justice. For Trump, he retains the love and support of the conservative Christian faithful, all quite convenient. Whatever it takes to reconcile Christ and the conservative republican politicians His flock supports, it shall be done. But at least we have the purity movement within the faith. perhaps a bit of purity particularly politically, is just what the doctor, and the Prince of Peace ordered.

Fighting A Fight That Should Already Be Won

TUBERCULOSIS IS AN ANCIENT DISEASE which has killed millions of human beings over thousands of years. It has never relented. It kills millions more today, more than automobile accidents, more than AIDS, more than war. This, despite that a cure for TB was discovered during the nineteen forties, is highly effective, and is widely available today, as it has been for decades. There is a plan, sponsored by the U.N., to inoculate forty million people and to eradicate ninety percent of reported cases, ninety percent of the plague, by the year 2030. Whether protecting forty million people, even forty million annually, can achieve this end remains untested, unproven, and therefor unknown. The problem is the usual one: pervasive poverty. In nearly every country in the world, even wealthy developed countries like the United States, there exists a a largely ignored and quite large impoverished underclass, and it is within this demographic that tuberculosis strikes and spreads, ravaging the population quietly, without much media attention. The wealthy elite and middle classes are well protected, and rarely does the disease strike among the propertied. Only in highly socialized countries such as those of northern Europe where universal health insurance is standard is TB basically unknown. To eliminate poverty would be tantamount to eliminating tuberculosis, and there is no other solution; as long as billions of the planet's population remains desperately poor, human species will be ravaged by disease, as well as hunger, violence, and refugee crises. it is indeed truly amazing the number of the world's problems which could be remedied by simply eliminating poverty from the planet. And much has already been done. Over the past generation, for instance, the global poverty rate has declined from roughly forty percent to a relatively low ten percent, as hybrid grain varieties adn generally improved agriculture methods and distribution systems are showing signs of effectiveness. China, for instance, has essentially lifted all of its people out of poverty, and has created a thriving middle class, and the accompanying billionaire class, in less than a generation, astonishingly. the only discernible price has been massive infusions of carbon into the Earth's atmosphere, resulting in rapidly accelerating global warming, which, obviously, is too great a price to pay. The trick is to eliminate poverty not only by increasing the world's aggregate wealth, but to redistribute what we already have, because we have enough, enough food, enough money, enough everything. The problem is extreme concentration of wealth, world wide. Greater economic equality, less extreme concentrations of wealth, and no poverty seem rather small prices to pay for a safer, healthier, more peaceful planet. what remains is to convince our global leaders, the wealthy, of this obvious fact.

Playing Games with Justice

YOU MIGHT RECALL, you should recall that when Barack Obama had one year remaining in his second term, he nominated a political moderate, and a highly qualified magistrate with a strong history of rendering equal justice under law, to the Supreme Court to replace the recently deceased Antonin Scalia. Justice Garland should have confirmed immediately, no doubt. Instead, the Republican Senate majority refused to even consider the nomination, ostensibly because Obama had but a year remaining in office, and the American people deserved the opportunity to choose their new justice by choosing their next president, in actuality because they gambled that the next president would be a republican, and would appoint a right wing justice to match their right wing agenda/. pure perfidy, and a refusal to perform their constitutional responsibility to advise and consent. regrettably, neither the Democrats, Obama, nor we the American people raised sufficient stink about the nefarious behavior to reverse it. The gambit worked. right winger Neil Gorsuch took the seat intended for Merrick Garland, and the right wing was happy, happy apparently with their illegal behavior. During Gorsuch's nomination process, nary a single woman came forth to accuse him of improper conduct, most likely because he has never engaged in any. Strange, how good behavior results in a lack of criminal accusations against you. it seems unlikely the the Democrats, the media, or anybody else is fabricating the accusations against Brett Kavanaugh being registered by professor Ford; women are extremely reluctant to make such accusations when they are true, its nearly impossible to get them to do so when they are fabricated for political or judicial purposes, contrary to conspiracy theorists. the burden of proof is on Kavanaugh and those who intend to vote for his confirmation that he is not a sexual predator. This is not a court of law, it is a judicial confirmation process. Clarence Thomas should not have been placed on the high courts twenty six years ago, and Kavanaugh should be denied now. Neil Gorsuch proves that is is easy to find people for the court who are not sexual predators, have never been accused of it, have never done it. If Kavanaugh is in fact rejected, which according to the basic laws of morality and judicial process he should be, how long will it take for Trump to send up another nominee? What about letting we the American people choose the next Supreme Court member, by waiting until after the midterm elections, and until after the new Congress is installed in January. Letting the American people choose their Supreme Court justices is, after all, of supreme importance to Republicans and their conservative constituents. If they do not stop kavanaugh, and wait for the next Congress to replace him, the conservative community and their elected representatives will have proven two things; that they are highly immoral, and place political ideology over high standards of jurisprudence, and that they are hypocrites, lacking any vestige of decency or integrity.

Taming, Sissifying The Game

OVERWHELMINGLY, American football fans disapprove of the new rules which the National Football League has instigated in an attempt to mitigate violence and reduce injuries to players, injuries which all too often result in lifelong disabilities for former players, physical and mental. The question is, why? why do so many American football fans object so strenuously, as indeed they do, to the sensible attempt to make the game safer? All over the media, televisions, radio, print, former players a journalists denounce the safer football trend as the ruination of the sport. Easy for them to say; they no no longer play, have already made their money, and the very fact that they can ax so negatively so articulately clearly indicates that they themselves escaped the torment of lifelong football inflicted disability. They played in an era when players didn't weight three hundred pounds with the ability to jump from a standing position to the top of a three foot table, and the ability to sprint a forty in four seven. sports radio talk shows are inundated with callers who belittle the placing of skirts on quarterbacks, the new rules which make blocking and tackling too high and too low illegal, forcing players into the middle, even as the number of injuries to quarterbacks continues to increase. Across freedom's land the outcry against violence reduction is nothing less than the ruination of a previously perfect blood sport, broken bones, concussions, dementia and all. American sports culture is in panic mode, fearing the loss of its beloved vicarious violence. Most outspoken are those who have never played the game, never suffered severe injury in the gladiatorial arena. doomsday scenarios proliferate, the parking empty out, keys to the stadii thrown into the dustbin of history. The end of football as we know is the destruction of a pillar of American culture, the one on which is found the inscription: 'we kill". the disaster is the fault of a gang of screeching, bleeding heart liberals, the usual suspects, mothers up in arms clutching their little boys to their heaving bosoms. "Make football violent again!" rads the T shirt of a Minnesota vikings lineman. How cute. How Trumpian. Why are we so stricken with despair at the thought of mildly ameliorating one of the many sources of our vicarious violence. Are we really so addicted to the sight of blood and guts? it would seem that we are.

Taming the Termagants

IS THERE SOMETHING ABOUT BEING OLD and infirm that makes people,mean, rude, inconsiderate, irascible, angry? There must be. How could there not be? I have noticed that my former high school friends, the ones who have been mad at me for several years, share two things in common; they voted for Trump, and they all have serious health issues. i voted for Hillary, having supported Bernie, and I am fit well, and happy, knowing that the Trump voters will see their day of reckoning, soon. Research, however, indicates that as people age, they become "nicer". It makes sense. All of the teenage social angst is long gone, and the arrogance of early, successful honeymoon marriage, the world is my oyster adulthood has mellowed into a calm acceptance of one's limitations and unimportance. A poet friend of mine once said something to the effect that if I happened to feel depression or anxiety, remember my unimportance. Oh, how true. Whatever I do, I ought not make too much of it, because nobody else cares, and in a hundred years, nobody will know the difference. At my local small southern town senior center, which tells you a lot, I stand daily at the window dispensing lunch trays and styrofoam cups of mile, rapidly, smilingly. The line is long, and the elderly are famished, impatient, with low blood sugar, even among the diabetics. Many are cheerfully eager, and a few even say "thank you" when they pick up their blue tray replete with nourishing, delicious fare. Most of them, however, don't. Among those who don't express any appreciation for a well prepared free meal are the fab four, as I call them; two termagants, and two crusty old geezers all of whom have despised me from the moment I walked into the place, wearing my rolling Stones T shirt and New York Yankee necklace, all those three years ago. Maybe it was my Hillary Clinton campaign button. Maybe the "stand up for science" bumper sticker. maybe it became known that I am not only a democrat, but also a liberal, a socialist, and a person who has no religions, due to a dislike for religion in general. I have grown tired of walking around the room serving them coffee, smiling, addressing them as "ma'am" and "sir", trying to win them over. I'm done with it. if I can tolerate their fundamentalist Christian lunacy, and their right wing evil, surely they can tolerate what they mistakenly perceive as my misguidedness. I have even begun saying "thank you" for them, when I hand them their lunches. That shames a few of them, for a day or two, into actually feigning courtesy, but within a day or two, they are back to normal, curmudgeonly. now that I have my "Unfit to serve: Impeach Trump" bumper sticker proudly if riskily displayed, our cold war till probably turn into all out shooting war, since I must them them to staunchly defend their fellow republican and Christian Donald J. Trump. I'll keep wondering what it is about Trump which so attracts them, reminds them of Jesus, and causes them to welcome him into their Christian fellowship; is it the billion of dollars, the slanderous hateful vicious comments, the women, or the lies?

Giving Trump A Chance

ON INAUGURATION DAY, I very strongly reminded myself of the moral necessity of giving everyone, including the new president, a fair chance. That's just basic decency. This, although I had long since come to despise Donald Trump, after spending the first two weeks after his campaign began supporting him. I have rolled my eyes at Trump fpr forty years, at the glitz and glamour, at the front page scandal sheet affairs and marriages, at his obvious craving for the attention of the limelight, and his obvious obsession with making great amounts of money not be sustained hard work, but by investing huge amounts of money on high risk, high return, highly frivolous financial ventures, such as casinos. At first Trump seemed like a fresh breath of political air, a true swamp drainer, someone to step in and reform Washington. Then, he began calling folks names. The one that got me was "lying Ted". No Ted Cruz is not the liar, between the two of them, it aint Ted Cruz. Inauguration day was another fresh start, and his inaugurations speech, all fifteen minutes of it, was simplistic, and hackneyed, with all the for now on its going to be America first B.S.,but I liked the brevity. Then came the nightmare of his actual administration and his word and deeds. The racism was oozing from every pore, although he and his supporters evidently are genuine in their inability to see it; conservatives are prone to such blindness. The constant barrage of slander against the FBI and other intelligence agencies merely because they happen to have the good sense to investigate him, the constant barrage against the media because of their committing the sin of telling the truth; the ban on Muslims, ridiculous then and now, as if a religion with nearly two billion members is the equivalent of terrorism; it would be as if the KKK were indicative of the Christian faith, which, as we well know, it is not. The list of impeachable offenses against Trump, which here have barely begun to be enumerated, is enormous, and it a great tragedy that he remains in office. he may not for long. At some point, Mueller will wrap it p, and, considering how long he's been at it, he obviously has something worth investigating and reporting. For a detailed, convincing explanation of the conflict of interest problem, read what Richard Painter, the world's leading authority on the mater and chief ethics adviser to President Bush, has to say. then too, there is trump's unwillingness to fight climate change, which according to the Dept. of Defense is the nation's greatest threat. One should give everybody a chance, to a point.

Leaving, And Returning: A Personal Saga

IN 1989, I turned thirty four, and having lost three teaching jobs in three years because f my apparent inability to keep my fat trap shut when administrators did made decisions which to me seemed idiotic, decided to head west, young man, and try something new, start over. A friend and I loaded up his pick up truck with with our meager belongings and his huskie-Shepherd mix, a bong, and a coffee can full of high grade marijuana< had ninety dollars in my pocket, amazingly unprepared. I recall celebrating our early morning departure from western Arkansas by taking a swig of bong water, which revolted my buddy, and perhaps caused him to call into question my suitability for the adventure. Our ultimate destination was Aspen, where we planned to find a place to live, set up shop, get jobs, and live large. We wer in no hurry, and took a month to get there, camping out along the way in western Texas and new mexico. Our early may departure guaranteed us good camping weather. In New Mexico, we hunted rattle snakes. Actually, he did. my job was to carry the gasoline can. I kept asking myself: why? I aspen, we found a trailer in an old KOA campground, and immediately got jobs, which in Aspen in the late eighties was no trick. You could work at Mickey Dees for eight an hour, an enormous wage in those days. I worked at a Day Care center, the first man to have ever done so in Aspen, and I got a gig teaching western civ at Colorado Mountain college, to Real Estate wives. I lost the job at the day care because to many parents were nervous about my gender; not the only time I have face discrimination of one type or another. The barren Rockies around Aspen eventually had me longing for the cool, green, rolling Ozarks, and after a year I was pulled back home. i only went skiing once, never made it above the bunny slope, because I played a mean game of tennis, and joined a millionaires tennis club, poverty stricken though i was. I fit in well there, due to my intellectual and education, and high level tennis game, if not my personal wealth. It seemed fair to me. My fondest memory is of being behind the register at the only grocery store in town, "The Grocery", lat at night, when in walks Goldie Hahn. I giggled like a kid. she busted me, asked if anything was the matter. Busted, I opted for the truth, and told her hwo wonderful I thought she was. Honest to God, she told me i was cute. that mad my year in Aspen worthwhile.

High Teching

THE FIRST TIME I dropped my cell phone in my coffee, I didn't know whether to shit, or go blind, as the saying goes. The lady at the dealership assured me that, yes, people bring in soaked phones all the time, they bring in more soaked cell phones before nine in the morning than I'm gonna see all day, they bring 'em in by the boatload. that comforted me; I had imagined myself the only high tech user on the planet dumb enough to drop one in one's coffee, let alone one's toilet. I finally decided to give up cell phones altogether about the time smart phones came out, I believe in 2007. I had dropped, lost, or drowned too many of the little buggers, and not being much of a phone person anyway, it simply wasn't, and still isn't worth it to maintain portability and pocket side internet service. Nothing against texting, you understand, it just aint me, so to speak. Cell phones, like ballet and sushi, are wonderful, but not my cup of tea. Six weeks ago I amazed myself by purchasing my first flat screen TV. I waited a month, got it out of the box, then put it right back in, which I took to be a definite indication of lack of interest. I haven't owned a TV in tens years, and haven't watched much, except a little new and sports, since the early seventies, when Gunsmoke went off the air. but now I'm going to jump in, full bore. I;m more of radio guy, NPR, but with one hundred and forty channels for thirty a month, and many of them sports, westerns, movies, and news, I figure I can't go wrong. Home internet service is the way to go, especially when one writes and publishes essays on one's own website, one grows tired of driving all over town, looking for free WiFi. And so I tell myself: Television is good. Smart phones are good. its all good. Machines are neutral, its just a matter of how we use our machines. Which is fine, as long as I don't get hooked on Facebook, Twitter, Gunsmoke, or, heaven forbid, reality TV.

Holding High Schoolers Accountable

I WAS A POPULAR KID in high school, way back in the day, as we all like say say these days, partly because I was intelligent and a good student, whch back in teh day counted for something, partly because I had come out of my shell, and had a warm, friendly personality, and partly because I was a class clown, always trying to be funny. haven't change much; we don't, after they age of five, so they say.This was in the early seventies. I can easily remember my classmates, some of whom I occasionally communicate with, many of whom I see at reunions. I can easily imagine what would have happened to me had I ever done anythign remotely similar to what Brett Kavanaugh is accused of having done. never much of a joiner, I was a peripheral member of three distinct cliques: teh cool jocks, the pure party boys, beer, no drugs, and the artsy intellectuals, with whom i felt the most empathy. I attended many smallish, wild Kavanaugh-esque parties, mostly in wheels, in cars packed to the gills with kids. Only the cool jocks dated much. Most of us just hung out and partied in our respective groups, in activities which often included both genders. mostly it was fun, and harmless. It was dangerous, but we didn't know it, and we didn't care. In those days, many teens could be sardined into the back seats of the then large cars, as could at least one case of ill gotten beer. All my friends shared in common this; had pulled a stunt like his honor is "alleged" to have, I would have been killed, or severely ass kicked - by my best friends. They would have found out about it, and they would very definitely held me accountable. At my very average American high school nobody tolerated abuse of girls, so nobody did it. In general, that is the case everywhere, then and now. Actual rape, on a percentage basis, is still quite rare in America, even though the criminals get the attention, which they should. In the mainstream right wing media, they typically say he didn't do it, or it can't be proven, which is irrelevant, but that if he did, it was a youthful indiscretion, a rite of passage, and not indicative of Kavanaugh's true character, which is absolute bullshit. hardly anyone, if anyone, who is nominated for the Supreme Court is ever accused of anyone of attempted rape; it may have never happened before. The very fact of being accused is of the greatest concern, and grounds for rejecting the nominee. The current circling of conservative wagons is beyond appalling. Protecting their kind, like they protect Trump the often accused sexual offender, one might expect America's right wing to next begin quoting scripture, something about a woman's obligation to be submissive to men.

Confusing Court Rooms With Advise and Consent

THE TACTIC being used by the right wing, which desperately wants a conservative justice on the Supreme Court rather than a moderate one who would render justice without regard to personal political ideology, is that Brett Kavanaugh is innocent of any sexual misconduct while in high school over thirty years ago, because in the American system of jurisprudence we are all guaranteed the presumption of innocence, and the judge has not been proven guilty, and, well, after all, the alleged incident happened over thirty years ago, and is therefore irrelevant, and should be relegated to the category of "youthful indiscretion". Both these arguments are absolutely spurious, and are indications of how far below the level of any reasonable standard of moral turpitude America's conservative community has fallen. Kavanaugh is not being tried in a court of law. He is being scrutinized for suitability for membership on the nation's highest court. Therefore the idea of presumption of innocence does not apply. What apples is the principle that the entirely of a person's life is relevant material in carrying out the constitutionally mandated process of advise and consent, because what we do at any stage of our lives is revelatory of character. We would most certainly not want a person to be on the Supreme Court who has a history of mental illness, or a felony conviction, no matter how long ago the conviction was registered. Hardly anyone, on a percentage basis, is ever accused of attempting to rape a woman, either immediately after the alleged attempt, or years after. Well over ninety nine percent of the nation's high school students, well over ninety nine percent of the nation's men are never accused of sexual misconduct, notwithstanding the fact that those who are receive a disproportionate amount of attention, appropriately so, and notwithstanding the fact that a rather high percentage of men engage in some form of sexual misconduct at some point in their lives, even if such misconduct consists only of minor infractions, such as looking up a woman's skirt, window peeping, kiss staling, and so forth. Anyone who have ever been accused of any sort of sexual misconduct is probably guilty of it, notwithstanding any rules of evidence, because the very act of making such an accusation is so traumatic to any woman that it is a demonstrated fact that only very rarely do woman fabricate such allegations for any reason, financial, or otherwise. Only a small percentage of women one forth wit accusations against men, even a high percentage of them are indeed mistreated, usually by husbands. Most misdeeds against women are never reported for various reasons, usually having to do with a preference to move on and let the past vanish, or a sense of humiliation and a fear of personal scrutiny, or publicity. whenever a spurious accusation is levied, it is serious business, and almost certainly has a basis in fact. The mere fact that the professor who is making accusations against judge Kavanaugh provably underwent therapy years ago , confined the event to her husband years ago, and was indeed in the location at the time she claims the incident to have occurred years ago, and has absolutely nothing to gain by coming forth now, other than death threats and misery, all combines to create an extreme probability that her accusation is true. this, not with standing the attempt by America's conservative to use irrelevant arguments to discredit the highly credible woman. But what else might we expect form the right wing, other than a consistent corruption, and the defense of corruption for political gain?

Assessing Presidents, Disagreeably

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN, eminent American historian,has a new book "Leadership In Turbulent Times" in which she draws parallels between presidents Lincoln, Roosevelt, Roosevelt, and Johnson (Lyndon). They all had remarkable political careers prior to their ascension to the presidency, the author points out, and they were all aware of their own personal limitations to the point of being humble, she further asserts. This observation raises some serious questions, and calls into questions Goodwin's character assessment capabilities. it might not have occurred to her that these are apt descriptions of us all, to a point; as we all make our way through the seemingly endless sequence of bargains, agreements, compromises and various other transactions which inevitably comprise life, do we not in our own small ways enjoy remarkable political" careers, in a sense, however insignificant to historians and history? And do we not all at some point and to whatever extent become aware of our own limitations, usually forcibly, by being confronted with their consequences? Also, it might be argued that all forty five American president have held the office during "turbulent times", since no other type has ever been know to exist in the nation's turbulent history. Maybe these four presidents are her favorites; she's dealt with them all before in other books. Kearns Goodwin has forgotten more history than I have ever learned. However, my reflexive reaction is that these supremely confident men were not only entirely unaware of their own personal limitations as men and leaders, but to whatever extent they did, ignored them, and indeed had in common a hugely exaggerated notion of his own capabilities and capacity for achievement. They fact that they all sought the presidency in the first place, each form their own very unlikely lots in life, is an indication of this. Lincoln, from his socially humble, uncredentialed, frontier origins, TR from his blue blooded, pampered, protected perch, FDR from his wheelchair, and LBJ, from his dusty Texas impoverished and relatively uneducated background. None of them as young men could have been expected to make it to the top. Lincoln must have known that his very election would trigger a civil war and probably end the United States forever, yet, he persisted, not the behavior of a man of self aware limitations. During the war he locked anyone who even resembled a southern sympathizer, violating basic American law, again, not the sort of behavior one might expect from a humble man, but rather, from a tyrant. he had the audacity to walk through the streets of burning Richmond before the war was over. Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed the American century, brazenly sailed the U.S. fleet uninvited into foreign ports as a show of force, took a hatchet to big business, and once, while delivering a speech, took a bullet..and finished his speech, before allowing himself to be given medical attention. That sounds little like a limited man. Franklin Roosevelt became displeased withe the supreme Court, and tried to increase its membership from nine to fifteen. He dragged the United States kicking and screaming into World War Two, and redesigned the American economy with a flurry of new Deal legislation, with Social Security as the centerpiece, much of which is with us today. Lyndon John forced through congress socialized health care and civil rights, bullying his political enemies into submission without mercy. He took security briefings in bed, swam nude in the White House pool with anyone who cared to join him, and once told Jaclyn Kennedy that he wished he were her children's "daddy". it is difficult to discern any shred of humility or limitations among these men.It may be that an historian who has forgotten more history than I have ever learned has forgotten a bit too much.

Rendering Justice To the Justice Renderers

THERE ARE SEVEN MEMBERS of the Arkansas Supreme Court, and six of them are in hot water, or in the vernacular of a largely agrarian poultry producing region, "deep do do". The judicial jumble stems from the strong opposition of a county circuit judge to the death penalty, and his vehemence in expressing it. So vehement has his opposition to capital punishment been that the Supreme Court began considering removing him from all case in which the death penalty is an option.At that point the judge sealed his own fate, signed his own judicial death warrant, so to speak. He participated in an anti-death penalty demonstration in front of the governor's mansion where, surrounded by vociferously chanting, sign bearing demonstrators, he lay himself down on a gurney, became motionless, and emulated a corps. Whether he inadvertently dozed had not been officially ascertained at press time; presumably not, considering the clamorous cacophony of outcries ambient. Perhaps feeling a bit pushed to the brink, up struck the high court, formally removing the prostrate magistrate from all cases in which death was even remotely a remedy. In stepped the state's judicial ethics commission, formally notifying six of the seven high court members that this action constituted a violation of state judicial ethics and procedure, because they had failed to give the besieged judge sufficient opportunity to present a defense in his own defense, thus putting the six on alert for possible future sanctions against them. these could involve as little as formal wrist slapping, or as much as bench removal. the seventh high court justice was presumably spared this ignominy, which includes the requisite front page picture and implications of scandal, because of his having refrained from participating in the vendetta against the county judge's moral stance from the beginning. Said restraint turned out to be fortunate, because he may yet become the only citizen actively serving on the highest court in the state.

Turning Against Trump

ON INAUGURATION DAY, which you may remember as the day the United States handed over the leadership of its federal government to the forces of depravity, I strongly reminded myself of the need to give the new president a fair chance. That, after all, is the American way, win or lose, fair and square,shake hands, move on, work together. I reminded myself that although Donald Trump for the past forty years, to the best of my knowledge, has been involved in nothing other than sensational, shallow, superficial scandal and big time high rolling National Enquirer dealing making and publicity seeking, maybe, just maybe, he would emerge as a truly great, or if not great then passable president, he being an outsider, and all that. i had in fact begun as a Trump supporter, but that lasted only two into his presidential campaign; after hearing him call Ted Cruz "lying Ted' fifty or sixty times, I had had enough. More than enough. More than enough of his vicious slandering behavior. Especially evil was Trump's debauched comparison of his own wife's physical appearance with that of Mrs Cruz, the incident in which Senator Cruz made his "not too many things get me really mad, but you attack my family, it'll do it every time' speech. I despise Ted Cruz, but that does not alter the fact that he is a good Christian man, and that he should have been the Republican's choice to run for president, because, after release of the infamous Access Hollywood recording, the Republicans should have refused to support Trump, but, in truly cowardly form, they demurred. But I gave Trump a chance, and that did not, admittedly, last long. his immolation of the Environmental Protection Agecny got the ball rolling. the department of Defense lists man made climate change as the greatest threat to national security, and Trump is doing everything in his power to ignore the problem, and in fact to exacerbate it. That unto itself is reason enough for impeachment and removal; failure to defend the country against its greatest threat. The pathological lies, the vicious attacks against his critics, and massive conflicts of interest, the various forms of corruption, among which may be treasonous collusion with a foreign powr to get elected; t all adds up to more than enough. In response, a national organization has emerged: "Need To Impeach", consisting of five point six million Americans. Log onto www.needtoimpeach.com

Women's Get Togethers, Metastasizing

DEEP DOWN IN THE HEART OF TEXAS, in 1977, a big shindig called the National Women's Conference occurred, then, according to at least one modern modern American cultural historian, metastasized into a far greater phenomenon. Specifically, it morphed into our currently and for the foreseeable future severely polarized "divided we fall" culture, us versus them, left versus right, liberal versus conservative, all of it, the great Americas mess, which, if nothing else, gives us all something about which to argue contentiously. This NWC was righteously ordained by the right reverend James Deal Carter, better known at the rather bland ineffectual thirty ninth president of these here United States.its stated purpose was to chisel into stone a platform, agenda, and strategy for total and complete female equality among all genders and this it did right well. Congress actually subsidized it, which seems incredible by today's standards, and it had bipartisan, bipolar support, which seems even more remarkable in today's ho hum feminist environment, which wasn't so ho hum back in the flaming sixties and seventies, when the U.S.A. nearly, but not quite passed an equal right amendment to its constitutional amendments. The NWC spurred congressional action, on equal pay, and such. This got the right wing all in a tizzy, somewhat surprisingly, since therefore conservatives babes been known to congregate, organize, and activate. The sanctity of the bedroom and the kitchen had been quite enough, under the protective wings of their masculine breadwinners and masters. Never underestimate the power of a little progressive reform,from the "femminazis" as Rush Limbaugh idiotically puts it. to inspire reactionary outbursts within the kingdom of conservatism. So, in a nutshell, the two women's group went to war, the split tails having spread far apart, and the right elected Reagan, and the rest, as the cliche minded say, is history. The new approach here is that the fair sex has more influence culturally, politically, historically, than they are generally give credit for, but after all, that's what the women's progressive equality rights movement is all about.

Sizing Up the Real Problem; The Republicans

THE DAILY KOS is a left wing online publication to which I subscribe, but rarely read. The headlines are enough for me to get the point. An interesting one caught my attention. "Is the country really divided, or is it the republicans versus everyone else"? I probably should have read the actual article, but the headline in itself was revealing. So, without knowing what the article said, I gave the matter some thought. Form the beginning Donald Trump, who lost the presidential election by three million votes, has had an approval rating never any better than the high thirties to low forties, and is at about thirty five percent now, its lowest yet. Some honeymoon. The TEA party, the very epicenter of the modern right wing agenda, emerged in 2010 and peaked soon thereafter. We no longer hear much if anything from it, s it was never anything more than a minority faction within a minority party. The Republican party itself has become nothing other than the conservative Christian white party. For proof of this, notice the make up of the congregation at the next national party convention. Lilly white, little or no color. its focus is far too narrow to attract a diversified membership; Americans seem to realize that there is a realistic limit to tax cutting for the wealthy. Over the past generation church membership has declined from eighty five to seventy one percent; the chief source of new republicans is drying up. One half of the millennials self identify as 'non religious", which bodes not well for the future of the faith. As for the issues, survey after survey reveal that a solid majority of Americans favor the progressive point of view, and lean, if only moderately, to the left. America by a small but consistent margin is pro choice, if unfavorably inclined towards the choice to abort. One can be both pro choice and pro life, quite obviously. roe v. Wade shall remain the law of the land, or we the people shall protest much and secret slaughter many unborn. America favors socialism by a wide margin, including public school, public fire and police departments, and entitlement programs, but only so long as they are aren't described with the poisonous word "socialism". To prove this, as around; how many people want to keep social security, medicare, medicaid, and even Obamacare? A vast majority is how many. Most Americana accept the reality of man made climate change and God made evolution, and want church and state kept apart by James Madison's "impenetrable wall". Moderate, independent American in particular lean more left than right, the secular moderate left is far more popular than the extreme religious right. In a rapidly secularizing, scientific world, the religious right is ever more out of touch with the mainstream. One can hope that it will keep moving in that direction; we'll find out, soon enough.

Having Good character, Or Lacking It

NUMEROUS WOMEN have accused President Trump of various forms of sexual misconduct, including groping, forcibly kissing, rape, all the usual forms. These women often come forth and then lapse into silence, presumably paid off. Numerous close associates of the President have been indicted and convicted of serious crimes, with more seemingly on the way. Now Trump's Supreme Court nominee stands accused of attempted rape. Not only trump's core constituency, not only the Republican party, but the christian conservative community as a whole seems to be totally unconcerned with all this, indeed dismissive of it all. their responses amount to lame justifications, descent into bizarre alternative conspiratorial explanations, and generally attempts to justify the unjustifiable, all of which reveal moral bankruptcy, and a total lack of personal integrity and good character on their part. Republicans in the Senate are trying , with apparent desperation, to hasten Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the high court, before the full impact and importance of his alleged sexual misconduct can by fully examined and assessed by the proper authorities. Their attempt to blame Democrats for failing to bring forth relevant information concerning Kavanaugh's alleged misbehavior sooner in the proceedings demonstrate a contemptible disregard for the well being of the alleged victim, a woman who has spent most of her adult life traumatized by a brutal physical attack, and quite understandably reluctant and conflicted about coming forth at all. Quite understandably, but apparently quite beyond capacity of republicans to understand. Imagine for a moment that a Democrat president and democratic Senate and democrat electorate were in the same situation as the Republicans now are. A demonstrably Democrat president, surrounded by convicted criminals, and a democratic Senate and voter base ignoring, denying, and even defending corruption and credible accusations of corruption. The conservative Christian Republican community would be p in arms, pitching a proverbial fit, as well they should be doing now, if only they had the integrity to do so.

Selfishly Solving Problems

ANAND GIRIDHARADAS, whose very name is sufficient to inspire confusion and interest, has published a new monograph of immediate and pertinent interest: "Winners Take All; the elite Charade of Changing the World". The title itself portends a fascinating analysis of an ambient topic, but one largely ignored. A summary of the book goes something like this: everybody in the world who has not been living on Mars is aware that there is an enormous amount of work needing to be done to make this a more perfect world, or at least a reasonable facsimile of a civilized, sustainable, habitable one. The pervasive problems are self evident; global poverty on a massive scale, accompanied by hunger, despite the abundance of food and material wealth in the aggregate. A shortage of clean drinking water. The persistence of regional wars which always threaten to explode into world war. Rampant disease, much of which is curable but uncured because of socioeconomic and political factors, and many more. We are also aware that for every widespread human ailment, there are many highly organized enterprises ostensibly dedicated to their alleviation. Many of these organizations are put into motion from the top down; they are brought into being by the trust funds and donations of the very wealthy, the philanthropic donor class. This elite class of the extremely wealthy comprises a tiny percent of the world's population, and the needy comprise a huge part of humanity. The great amount that needs to be done is partly undertaken by national governments, but a large part of it by people like Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and others, who lend their names more than their personal wealth to the great cause of uplifting humanity. These private entities inevitably espouse the virtue of solving problems by using market forces, by using capitalism, and not with socialism. That these well funded private foundations seem to make more money than they distribute, and seem to do more for the reputations and legacies of their chief benefactors than for the folks intended to receive the help, is the theme of "Winner Take All". Over and over we hear the message that big problems are best solved by market principles, not government intervention, which, so the logic goes, only limits freedom and stifles innovation, somehow. The innovations it stifles turns out to be the business success of the charitable wealthy. even while giving, even while engaged in philanthropic problem solving, the rich get richer, and the poor never escape poverty, or get the clean air, food , water, and absence of war and disease so highly touted by the givers.

Shaking Hands, Coming Clean On Taxes

WHEN I SHOOK HANDS with the governor, I told him that I might consider becoming a Republican. Seeing through my little charade, he said: "under what conditions"? "More money for our senior center" I replied. He smiled, and nothing else. A few minutes later, while speaking to us all,he said:"to all you seniors, let me say, I hear you loud and clear". So I like to think I had an impact, even though my offer to switch parties was, as we say these days, a "hoax", and he knew it. I wasn't dressed properly either. Gray sweats and a pink T shirt don't cut it when meeting the gov, but hell, he wasn't even wearing a necktie, so I called it a draw. Nor was I the only hoaxer in the room. During his remarks, the governor started in on the old tax cutting routine, just like a conservative should, i suppose. I rolled my eyes, then, and now. Bottom line, we simply can;t keep cutting taxes, nor even begin to cut taxes, nor keep promising hollowly to do so, for anybody, rich and poor alike. Them days is over. The much celebrated (in conservative circles) fourteen percent tax break for the wealthy corporations enacted several months ago, included a much less celebrated much more subtle tax increase for the middle class and everyone else, to pay for the largesse for the rich. We, the teeming, passive masses screwed, once again, due to being underrepresented by the billionaires in congress and lobbying firms. No, in the future, near and far, taxes will not be cut, they will be raised, through sheer necessity. last I heard, we have no plans to stop driving our expensive cars on expensive roads and highways,n o plans to immolate the military, nor to stop exploring and militarizing outer space. To pay for the required infrastructure, salaries, and equipment, all expensive publicly funded = socialistic enterprises - taxes. then too there are those annoying poor people, and programs like social security, medicare, and medicaid, which we all say we love but would prefer not to pay for. In the future, our socialistic projects will be big, vital, and expensive, even more so than now, and that's goin' some. We will all help pay for them. Taxed enough already? (TEA party) hardly. We have barely begun to tax ourselves to death, and speaking of death, each and every day in these United States another ten thousand Americans reach the golden age of sixty five, and for the most part they want to retire, live a long time in retirement, and live reasonably largely. The world is aging. True, we might have to start working longer, but there comes a time for each of us when we simply can no longer work, physically, mentally, or both, and yet...we linger. who's going to pay for that? We are, that's who. I'm still glad I shook the governors hand, even though he sold us a bill of goods. Maybe if I had just been a little bit better dressed...

Turing, Suffering and Dying In Uncivil Society

ALAN TURING COMMITTED SUICIDE in 1954, two years after being castrated by the unenlightened British government, having been convicted of homosexuality, which in those days was illegal throughout Europe and North America. Now that we have established that Europe and North America were uncivilized in the nineteen fifties, we turn to the question: are they civilized today? Turing's suicide cannot be indisputably attributed to his having had his nuts forcibly removed by toxic chemicals; it may be that he would have done the tragic deed anyway; after all, he was a genius, and as they say about geniuses, they are often emotionally unstable. Yet when we consider how unlikely it is that a person can be castrated without experiencing a tremendous amount of psychological torment of various sorts, we are tempted to arrive at the conclusion that the great computer scientist suffered in agony for a couple of years, then ended it. Turing was not famous at the time of his death; he avoided publicity, but Einstein, who was still alive when Turing died, although perhaps unaware of all the circumstances associated with Turing, was absolutely aware of the fact that he lived in an uncivilized western civilization, having fled NAZI Germany to the wild wild west of Princeton. Alan Turing single handedly deciphered the supposedly indecipherable enigma code, which the Germans were using to hide their wartime communications from the Allies. He thus either castrated two years off World War Two, or, he won it outright for the allies, depending upon the historian consulted. Churchill called Turing the greatest war hero nobody knew about. After the war, Turing invented computers, by developing the system of using a programming code, based upon ones and zeros, off and on switches, to issue instructions to the machines. He also predicted, in a famous essay, that computers would become artificially intelligent by the end of the twentieth century, and would have their way with humanity. In this, hew was only slightly too ambitious in his time line. All this pales in comparison to the fact that he made love to other men, and was caught, prosecuted, and murdered. That's how we, the uncivilized, tend to treat great people, from Jesus on throughout history. Welcome to the jungle. Is western civilization still uncivilized? You had better bet your bottom dollar that it indeed is.

Elucidating The Facts About Mr. Kavanaugh

BRETT KAVANAUGH quite predictably denies it all, as such men always do, and in his denial is it implicit that a very successful woman with a career as a college professor and an evidently fulfilling family life would somehow be motivated to fabricate a wild tale about his having made a very impressive, concerted effort to rape a young woman in high school, which was long ago in some ways, not so long ago in other ways. her version adds p, in time, place, and various corroborations. She underwent years of therapy, and talked about it with her husband years ago, which eliminates the eleventh hour hit job theory on a Supreme Court nominee by vengeful liberal Democrats and new media conspiratorial types. Sorry, Alex Jones. Too bad, Mr. President. No conspiracy tweets this time please, they would fall too flat. The lady would have kept publicly quite about it for years for all the usual reasons: shame, fear of retaliation and humiliation, the anxiety of standing in the spotlight. The"Me Too" movement, and Kavanaugh's sudden rise to impending national influence motivated her, quite naturally. The victim's behavior since the alleged incident and recently tends to strongly confirm her story, and at least a few members of the Senate Judiciary committee will doubtless agree, and they will slow down the process. Everything we do as humans is characteristic of who we are. Everything we do matters, no matter who long ago we did it; that's why high school matters long after we leave it, and the reunions continue. There is no statute of limitations on the moral implications of our behavior. Maybe it is characteristic of Brett Kavanaugh to commit attempted rape one time while drunk in high school, and to never do so again. Perhaps not. perhaps like so many powerful high status men in America, Brett kavanaugh is a serial sexual predator, like the person who nominated him. Judge Kavanaugh has pursued, and continue to pursue a career in which transparency, the exposure of facts, and the pursuit of equal justice under law are paramount. Now is the time to dig deeper into Mr. Kavanaugh's past, factually, and his character. due deliberation by the United States Senate is mandated. No more rushing his nomination through in haste, no more refusal to submit all facts and documents to thorough scrutiny. presumably even his supporter will accept this simple truth.

Saving Ourselves By Ignoring the Truth

WE RESIST THE TRUTH only because we fear we might perish if we accepted it. That, in so many words, was articulated by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the undisputed prince of European literature. how true it is. If you think otherwise, consider this. Each year thirty five thousand Americans and one million people world wide die in automobile wrecks. To quote Casey Stengal, you could look it up. yet, onward we drive, billions of us, unconcerned. Automotive culture is a life and death lottery. To us, its worth it. Its worth it to lose one million people per year as the price we pay for our cars. Our avoidance of truth consists in the fact that we never admit to that obvious fact. We do not call for an immediate halt to the mass slaughter; we accept it, cooly. Scoff if you wish, or choose not to "look at it that way". It remains true. The truth is, the truth we ignore, is that we the human race is perfectly willing to trade one million innocent dead for the convenience of our cars. To accept that reality would be uncomfortable, so, we "don't look at it that way." Temper your angry disagreement with me; I'm just the messenger boy. We ignore climate change, as a species, except for a lot of hot air, a lot of talk. we really do not care, because it does not impact our daily little lives. The truth is we don't give a damn, and we casually endure our six month summers in Minnesota, ninety degrees in Sweden, daily flooding in Florida, weird weather, because we really don't suffer from it, like our poor descendants will. Let the Marshall islands sink! By the time the planet becomes uninhabitable, we'll all be dead, and Al gore's inconvenient truth will be buried with us. Football season is here in America, and how I, along with millions of other people,love it. So do the players, who are starting to retire earlier to avoid dementia later in life. We resist changing the rules of the game t make it safe, but less violent and exciting. Over half of all former football players suffer from concussion dementia, and the outrage and panic we should be be using to fundamentally change the sport is utterly lacking from our interests. who cares? The truth is easy to ignore. And in America, does nobody really give a tinker's damn about opioid addiction and death, domestic violence, or gun violence, all of which ravages our culture, and bring devastating destruction to millions of lives? Certainly not those among who have not suffered because of it! we are fortunate to have the psychological freedom to ignore the truth when we choose, because Goethe was right; we resist the truth only because we fear we might perish if we accepted it, and we very well might, but, fortunately, we do not have to find out.

Moving From Right To Left

FIFTY YEARS AGO it was illegal to be homosexual in America. it was punishable b incarceration in a single occupancy prison cell. During my childhood, the nineteen sixties, if you really wanted to insult someone, you called him a "queer" or in our neighborhood "queer bait". I swear I had no idea what they were talking about until I was swell into my teens. It was all incomprehensible to me. I knew only that these words meant something that you most definitely did not want to be. Now, not only is homosexuality legal, gays and lesbians are out of the closet and standing at the alter, exchanging wedding vows with the blessing of the state if not the church. Societal attitudes about homosexuality have demonstrably liberalized. When social security was created in 1935, America's conservative community warned of a communist takeover, and accused FDR of taking orders from Moscow. Now, conservative seniors gladly deposit their monthly social security checks, just like the rest of us, and social security has properly been given with practically eliminating poverty among America's elderly. Once upon a time marijuana was associated with "reefer madness", was demonized and criminalized. now its once again legal in most of the country, and since the nineteen sixties generations have grown accustomed to using it, as many as forty million Americans use it regularly, with no proven ill effects, other than fast food weight gain, giggles, and maybe some cloudy memory loss, temporary. societal attitudes about marijuana have liberalized. These few examples are but a few of many which follow the same pattern; movement from conservative to liberal values, from right to left, from traditional to a more progressive culture. Compare women's clothing fashions over the past one hundred years or so. In the nineteen twenties women waded into the swimming pool fully clothed, from shoulders to ankles. The bikinis of the sixties were fr from revealing. now, the ladies show tits and ass cheeks galore, at the public pool, without consequences other than a stare or two here and there. it was in the nineteen twenties that dresses started being made to conform to a woman's curves, rather than baggily showing no contours. Now, the cat is entirely out of the sartorial sack. Skin is in, has been for a long time, and so will remain. there are, of course, conservative reactionary cultural backlashes, but these are inevitably temporary.Culture, and history moves from right to left, from traditional to progressive change in values, as new traditions supplant the old. if you are a traditionalist, you are by definition fighting a losing battle. Its a battle worth losing.

Being Bad Asses, Again

DONALD J. TRUMP wants to be a bad ass at the border, but its too late for that. The proverbial cow is out of the barn, the eleven million and counting are already here, just as its too late to enact strict gun control in a country which over three hundred million firearms are already in private hands. But, I digress. For decades millions of Mexicans have crossed the border, largely with impunity, just as many Americana regularly go back and forth, unhampered, for various nefarious reasons, including running drugs, running guns, fleeing justice, fleeing child support payments, and the like. The Mexicans, many of them claim, and their claim is quite correct, are merely reentering the occupied territories, the land stolen by James K. Polk in 1846-1848, one of america's quaint wars of aggression and acquisition. Every few decades some American president fancying himself a bad ass and strict border enforcement guy, makes a show of driving some illegals back across the Rio. Roosevelt did it in the nineteen thirties, Eisenhower did it in the nineteen fifties, and now, its Trump's turn to look, act, and feel bad. Trump is not a racist, be damned sure of that, because he says he isn't, when he informs us that three thousand Puerto Ricans did not actually die in their devastating hurricane, the number was more like twelve, because that's what they told him when he landed, then quickly took off down there. The three thousand bit is another Democratic party hoax, intended only to make our leader look bad. This incredible chief executive twitter tweet in itself is sufficient to warrant confinement in a mental institution for the president, with extensive therapy and medication. His (Trump's) assertion that the illegal Mexicans are disproportionately criminals and rapists might, to give the president the benefit of the doubt, be neither racist nor psychotic, but it certainly qualifies as identity confusion, in which the president thinks he is talking about Mexican criminals, but in fact is talking about himself. Projection, I believe its called. Zero tolerance no longer involves kidnapping children, so we the American people may breathe a sigh of relief that we are no longer accomplices to a monstrously immoral federal government policy, a policy no less monstrous than Indian removal, slavery, or torture of P.O.W.s.. Zero tolerance now seems to mean something perfunctory, impotent, and purely theatrical; detaining apprehended border crossers for two days, and subjecting them to cue card interrogation and giving them a strict lecture on the impropriety of trespassing. Give America credit, bless its little schizophrenic heart; if it isn't doing something monstrous, it at least is doing something of a meaningless, token nature, and, all things considered, we are much better off as a nation, morally and geopolitically, as well as economically, when we choose to take the tokenism approach.

Serena, Going Off

THE WHOLE WORLD, or the tennis part of it, was watching when Serena Williams, the greatest tennis player in history, melted down emotionally in the worst of all places, the finals of the U.S Open. And the whole world, seemingly,,, had and still ha something to say about it, characteristic of our age of social media. Twitterers will always tweet and retweet. Two camps have emerged, the usual polarization thing, so prevalent in these United States of animosity. There is the pro-Serena anti-establishment camp, and the anti-Serena pro establishment mob, which in this case is in the majority, which is usually the case when anti contends with pro establishment, unless one is talking about populism within the republican, which here we are most certainly not. The, any establishment usually emerges as the prevailing force numerically, if not morally. In this case the establishment appears to have due process and proper jurisprudence on its side, which is certainly not always the case, while the pro Serena anti establishment clique has...raw emotion and righteous indignation. Serena's coach was coaching during the match, a clear violation and tennis nono, and he owned up to it. He said, hell, everyone does it. Great defense, coach. Had Serena simply told him to lay off the coaching, either before or after the umpire did, the entire ugly consequent scene would have been avoided. But, she didn't. She chose instead to take a defensive, righteously outraged approach, lecturing the umpire on her high ethical standards and the umpire's professional responsibilities. (nobody likes to be informed of their own professional responsibilities.) She was duly penalized for arguing too much with a duly empowered authority, which she resented, which resulted in her being further penalized when she threw her racket and calling the ump a "thief". At that point, she and the pro Serena anti-establishment forces took it to a stratospheric level, opening a terrifying can of worms of Pandoran proportions, playing the race and gender card. this would not have happened to a man, and so forth. The world chimed in, and here we are, polarized yet again, over something nonsensical..again. the boorish New York crowd actually booed her sweet twenty year old opponent, to whom Serena has been a life long idol. Way to go, ya schmucks. Social media turned an ugly incident into a feeding frenzy, as usual. Oh, my heavens. If only Princeps, a teenager, had not shot the Arch Duke in 1914. If only Lee Harvey Oswald had missed. If only Bin Laden's boys had been shot down before they got there. And, for the sake of the great sport of tennis and the sacred spirit of good sportsmanship, if only Serena had merely told her coach to knock it off, right off the bat...or, racket...

Exiting The Stage

THE UNITED STATES was destined to be an empire, the continent destined first to be overrun by land hungry Europeans, then to form a European style nation replacing the existing one, and then, to emerge strong, well protected by water and well provided with natural resources, mainly farmable land. having achieve all that, the question is now, and long has been; what to do with it, what to do with this North american based global empire? The American colonials defied their English overlords, and set out across the Appalachians. From that point limitations vanished. The first indication of impending empire was the Monroe doctrine of 1823, which forbade anyone but the U.S. from having anything to do with Latin America. Fat chance. Its bark has always been louder than its bite. Every European nation has, at one time or another, meddled in Latin America, in direct defiance of american bluster; today, its china's turn. There has never been a damned thing we could do about it, then, and now. The Civil War the nation's long term survival in one piece, and ushered in the industrial revolution, necessary for empire formation. the United States now had the resolve and the means to implement its overseas ambitions. James K. Polk had already stolen half of Mexico. Expansion to the pacific presaged overseas conquests. William McKinley got the juggernaut rolling in earnest; provoking a war with declining Spain, and stealing Cuba, and other former Spanish possessions. Teddy Roosevelt reaffirmed our war mongering aggressive tendencies, and the two world wars left the United States the undisputed superpower of the world, with Europe and Russia in ruins, and China yet to emerge. And so here we are, with a decision looming; what, exactly is an empire which for all intents and purposes is bankrupt, to do with itself, in the face of rapidly emerging China, and reemerging Russia? At some point, exactly when is debatable, the U.S. decided it wanted to rule the world. The Teddy Roosevelt administration is a good choice, as is the Truman administration, bent of opposing communism wherever. that's a tall order, and needs imperial backing. Should America try to hold its ground, further expand, or retreat back into a mild mannered republic it was originally intended to be? It is no longer the undisputed most powerful economic nation on earth, and in order to remain so militarily will have to either increase its material production dramatically, or go further into bankrupt debt. There are no easy answers. All empires eventually collapse, mostly from within, which appears to be a very realistic option for the United States.

Teaching Trouble

YEARS AGO I made the mistake of telling a high school American history class that Thomas Jefferson was an atheist, which he technically was not, but actually was, he having been a "deist", for whom the terms "God", "nature", and "universe" are essentially synonymous. Jefferson, I said, truthfully, believed in science, and considered all religion to be, as he put it "superstition." The good Christian kids got of the bus after school with an attitude, ran home to mommy, and told the unfortunate lady that their weird old improper teacher was an atheist, and was trying to convert the entire class to godlessness, using of all people one of our great founding fathers as a role model, without his (Jefferson's) or the principle's permission. This happened in Arkansas. Yes, the principle called me in, and asked i I had really said all that, and why. I suggested that he take a wild guess, which I sense did not please him. So much for my tenure at that particular high school. I got out of town just in time, just ahead of a white clad righteous mob. Then, there was the time when I was teaching western civ at a junior college, again in Arkansas, and lecturing on European intellectual history, in particular Copernicus and Galileo. I described how they both got in trouble for telling the truth, that the Earth revolves around the sun, not vice versa. Yes, Christ lived on Earth, but, alas that fact does not cause the sun to orbit the Earth. Copernicus was smart enough to withhold publication until his death in 1543, thus escaping the wrath of Rome. Galileo wasn't. He stood ecumenical trial, was convicted of blasphemy, forced to take it all back, and placed under house arrest in Italy, close enough to the Vatican to be closely monitored. He may have even been forced to wear an ankle bracelet; (just kidding). Supposedly, as he left the building after receiving sentence, he muttered something to the effect: "I still know what I saw". For the sake of the sacred spirit of resistance to unreasoning religious tyranny, let's hope he said those exact words, but we'll never know. I once had a tennis buddy, a good friend who liked to go around the country digging for dinosaur bones for the purpose of proving, somehow, that the actual age of the Earth is not four point five billion years, but rather six thousand, four years, three months, two weeks, three days, and a few hours, give or take several several minutes and seconds. The exact details of his methodology eluded me then, as they do now. He still teaches at a bible college, if that tells you anything, which it certainly should. I was able to restrain myself, when this happened forty years ago, from suggesting to him that the very act of looking for dinosaur bones would seem to be an attempt to defeat his own purpose, unless he was hoping that by not finding any his method of calculating the exact age of the earth, presumably by adding up days and events in the Bible, would be vindicated. Its anyone's guess. These days, most Christian conservative republican types consider two alleged, presumed realities to be liberal hoaxes; man made climate change, and evolution by natural selection. So, things really haven't changed that much. Fast forwarding back to the recent past, in my Juco western civ class, I suggested, rather strongly, that the Christian, in particular the Roman Catholic church for centuries stymied the progress of science by refusing to allow science to progress or even engage in any meaningful research, which would seem to be self evident, a fact almost universally accepted in academia, except, I suppose, at Bible colleges. I lectured on this topic emphatically, stalking around the classroom while pounding my right fist repeatedly into my left palm, for emphasis, lamenting the baleful effect of dogma on human progress. The thirty students all had their laptops up and open on their little plastic desks, and were gazing at their screens and furiously hunting and pecking, seemingly oblivious to my behavior, or even to my presence among them. Someone, however, must have been listening, because the next day i got a few too many emails, all stating in no uncertain terms that it should be possible to teach a history class factually accurately and appropriately without showing personal bias against religion, or denigrating that most important pillar of western civilization, which, as you might guess, is the Christian faith. I replied that this is indeed so, but that, well, facts are facts, and its not as if the christian has been a traditional bulwark of uninhibited free inquiry. Nowadays, however, the Roman Catholic church owns and operates several large telescopes all over the world, and does exactly that; does research, perhaps as a way of doing penance for past crimes against the spirit of free inquiry, perhaps as a way of digging up dinosaur bones, figuratively speaking, to prove that modern astronomy is all wrong, a secular hoax, and that the Earth's sky, like the Bible strongly hints, is the full extent of the universe, with the earth being surrounded by a solid dome, through which the light of God shineth through those numerous little holes we like to call "stars". for the sake of truth and knowledge, I'll go with the penance for past crimes against the spirit of intellectual inquiry theory, bu, as they say, who knows? All I know is this; in the future if I ever teach again, I shall strenuously avoid making mention of either Thomas Jefferson's religiosity, Copernicus, Galileo, or even imply that there are any serious flaws with traditional religious beliefs. Whether I like it or not (not), I still live in a nation of bone digging, science bashing Christian conservatives, for whom the universe is quite young, and quite small.

Believing In Something, Strongly

IF YOU BELIEVE IN SOMETHING strongly enough, if your cause is good and true and just, spare no effort fighting for it, never give up, be willing to sacrifice everything. So goes the oft articulated wisdom, wisdom of the ages, century after century, unchanging. So, it must be true. But you get tired of trying, and not failing, but not succeeding. What frustrates me is my seeming inability to successfully complete my own personal crusade, my seeming inability to convince even a single American that whereas the U.S. has been a at war in the middle east for nearly thirty years, continuously, that so being has been a matter of choice, a mere option, a deliberate decision by the U.S., and that the results have been tragic, and that the war was begun by the U.S. deliberately, for nefarious reasons, using a most evil form of deception. The never ending war in Iraq and Afghanistan is neither necessary, nor forced upon America, nor even remotely desirable. it is a complete scam, a mere imperialistic act of aggression, intended, like most American foreign policy, to do nothing other than further enrich the already rich corporate community of these United State of Aggression. Everyone knows about the thirty year war, assuming non residency on Mars. that part is easy of which to convince folks. Unless, of of course, you'r a millennial, and too young to care, or, as mentioned above, residing on Mars. the hard part is getting people to understand the real reasons. Here's what I always do: I tell people to type into google the April Glaspie, then scroll down to where it says "conversation with Saddam", click on it, and read.Its that simple. I never have any trouble getting people to do that, unless they promise to do it later, and later never comes. After doing this, the person inevitably does nothing. nothing other than getting up from the computer, stretching legs, and going on about business, sometimes after saying to me something like"good to see you." What everybody should do, after completing this simple task, is turn red, scream and curse violently, and start tearing up the immediate environment, a good target being the actual computer upon which the material appeared. Oh, I remember a librarian, a middle aged portly woman of mediocre intellect, who did the reading, which doesn't take long, then growled a little bit while walking away. I was proud of her; she's the only person who ever even came close to behaving properly, reacting appropriately. Later, however, she banned me fro her library for talking too much left wing politics and particularly for making many negative comments about the Christian religion in public, so, so much for her. She's one of them. But at least she cared, if only a little bit. She understood. hell, everybody understands. Its that easy. but why nobody seems to throw a tantrum afterwards is utterly, completely beyond me. Even my sister, a retired high ranking pentagon D.O.D. big shot, made nary a sound. Maybe she was trying to cover the backs of her own kind, or something. She damned well understood, alright, but...did nothing. these other people I can't control, and it does not good to other than chastise them behind their ass covered backs. But I confess to be especially disappointed in my sweet sister. She should know better.

Turning The Sahara Green

THE SAHARA DESERT, which comprises the northern half of Africa, is not only huge, its growing. As climate change progresses, the frequency, severity, and length of droughts increase worldwide,e and kill what little vegetation lurks in and on the edges of the largest desert in the world. When the green disappears, the exposed soil beneath dries and bleaches, and its lighter color reflects more light back into the atmosphere, warming the air currents above, desiccating them, resulting in less rainfall for the already parched Sahara. This vicious cycle is expanding the desert with sufficient rapidity that within a century, if not checked, the desertification will encompass most of Africa. For planet earth, for us all, for future generations, this would be disastrous. there is, however, a solution, which is known to at least one scientist, and presumably all of them. It would be desirable to convert much if not most of the Sahara into grassland, forest, and farmland, some of each. The solution is solar energy, vast arrays of solar panels spread out over vast areas to absorb rather than reflect the sunlight, convert it to usable energy, enough, in fact, to power the entire planet and operate enough desalination plants to water the land, and begin the process of growth, renewal, and prosperity, for humankind, and for the rest of the plant and animal kingdom. Furthermore, the Sahara is a windy place, a perfect place to generate wind power. A few wind turbines here and there might even serve to spruce up the barren appearance of the landscape. if future generations of humans and all other species are going to be able to live on a sustainable, harmonious ecosystem, we the current generation must set about the task of terraforming the earth immediately, so that our descendants can complete it and reap the benefits therefrom. No, this planet is not Mars or the moon, but yes, considering the sorry state into which we have allowed the ecosystem to descend, nothing less than a comprehensive terraforming is expedient. May we have the political will to begin the great task ahead.

Getting To Know Judge Parker, and Ourselves

THERE IS MUCH ABOUT HISTORY in general, and the late nineteenth century american western frontier in particular, about which many people, myself included, are misinformed, due to popular culture. The roman empire didn't so much "fall" precipitously, as it slowly declined and evolved into something else, due to shrinking resources and over extension among other factors, into modern Rome, Italy, and Europe. The wild west was not quite as wild as we like to make it out to be, at least in terms of standing, facing, and staring at the enemy prior to a quick draw gun fight. Gunfights in fact were quite rare, and in most western frontier towns guns were forbidden. they had to be turned in at the sheriff's office, or left outside the city limits. And above all, the most popular misconception, that history somehow "repeats itself', though its sounds nice and tidy, is simply not true. No amount of effort can turn Tuesday January second into Monday January first, no matter how similar they seem. I had been given to believe that "hanging judge" Isaac Parker, of frontier fame, who held court in Ft. Smith, Arkansas from 1878 to 1894, was something of a madman, a vindictive, angry lunatic who meted out summary justice and capital punishment at the drop of a hat, the borrowing of a horse. i was dead wrong. It turns out that the hangin' judge was a a compassionate, wise, and highly principled person. although he sentenced over one hundred and sixty people, including four women, to death by hanging, fewer than half of them, including none of the women, met that fate, but were instead resentenced to lesser punishments. The judge himself did not believe in the death penalty, and always reminded condemned criminals: "it is not I who condemns you, it is the law." Parker was also an early and strong advocate for women's suffrage, and believed in improving living conditions for incarcerated criminals, especially those awaiting trial. he believed that it was not the severity of punishment, but the certainty of it, which deterred crime. It turns out that when we more thoroughly scrutinize the lives of people, living and dead, we are often surprised, often pleasantly so, sometimes disappointingly so. often those whom we had held in the highest esteem become more flawed than we want them to be, and the supposed scoundrels turn out to have redeeming qualities after all. It may be that the lesson we should derive from history,and from our own lives, is that no one is worthy of unqualified veneration, and no one is deserving of unrelenting scorn. As with our opinions and emotions, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle.

Inventing

AMONG THOSE THINGS WHICH ACTUALLY DO NOT EXIST, but are convenient constructs of the human mind, are money, a perfect vacuum, the free market, and race. There are others, too numerous to mention. they all serve essentially the same purpose, to allow the human mind to impose order on a world of infinite complexity, too complex to comprehend with our weak and transient understanding. Our illusions give us comfort, helping us to make sense, however arbitrarily, of a complex world. They serve the further purpose of adding justification to what we fervently wish to believe. The price we pay for our intellectual liberties is, alas, truth. Science has long known that in every square meter of supposedly "empty" space, there adheres at least one subatomic particle, if nothing else. Matter spreads out, puts distance between itself and its cohorts, like to have its own space. Race? Every human being on Earth has a unique skin pigmentation, no matter how closely we think ours resembles somebody else's. The number of skin colors is exactly equal to the number of people on the planet, no more, no less. Place your forearm next to that of anyone else; you'll never have a match. Race is a convenient categorization, made popular only in modern times. With regard to money and the free market, there was a time when money very nearly existed. I once carried folded green paper in my billfold, and a few loose coins in my pocket, but no more. Money was invented as a convenient substitute for hard to carry cattle and grain, and it has value only because we agree that it does, even if its made of gold and silver, metals whose practical value is quite limited. now, money is nothing but a flow of electrons. it doesn't really exist at all, except in our fertile imaginations. The free market is much like our supposed vacuum; a convenient concept. A truly free, unimpeded, undistorted market has never existed, and will never exist, because of what economists call "externalities". Externalities are unpredictable factors which manifest in every capitalist economy and distort the perfect process of supply and demand, however slightly. These factors can be weather, an unexpected flood of refugees unbalancing the labor market, crop failure, monopolies, technical innovations which create monopolies, or a nearly infinite number of other manifestations. They are always with us. Racism, money, and perfect vacuums are also always with us, even though they really don't exist.

Avoiding Dancing

AT THE SENIOR CENTER, an attractive lady asked me to dance. She had a few years on her facially, like we all do, but a hot bod. Ben Franklin's kind of girl; older,, and as he reminds us in his famous essay on the virtues of older women, they age from the top down, and, as the old saying goes, they don't yell, they don't tell, and they're grateful as hell. I was afraid to dance with her. I knew she wouldn't ask me twice. I can't dance, and I don't like the kind of music we have at the center; hillbilly country, fiddle included. So I engaged her in conversation, briefly. She began by mentioning that she had recently taken up dancing, that she found it to be good exercise, and therapeutic to boot. I just had to turn it intellectual. I asked her opinion as to the greatest dancers of all time. I gave her my list. Among the men, I named Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Michael Jackson, and Prince. I offered ginger Rogers, Lisa Minnelli, Judy garland and Shirley MacLaine for the ladies, and left it at that. I would have started to name ballet dancers, but decided they didn't count. The attractive lady looked nonplussed. I waited, for her to speak. When she did, I was disappointed. She said she had never really thought about it much, that she was really more interested in actually dancing than naming dancers, and that, well, she really didn't spend much time studying on it. the truth was obvious; she had never heard of any of these people. and that, in itself, was just about enough to scare me off. My standards are not particularly high, but I have them. A friend once told me that he would never date a woman unless she could name the Vice President of the Untied States, and to me, that seems reasonable, and not not really too much to expect. if you've never heard of Fred Astaire, or Prince, don't bother to ask me to dance. I'm already looking for an excuse not to.

Praising Science and Socialism, Our Twin Saviors

BECAUSE OF SCIENCE, we have airplanes, cars, computers, heart surgery, television, radio, and several million other wonderful life enhancers, far too many to mention. (Technology is applied science, science in action in service to humanity). Some might argue that humans were happier in a prescientific age of primitive, stone age life, like the native Americans; perhaps in some instances this is true, probably not, overall. Science,, upon which our better quality of life is predicated, exists not because of religion, but in spite of it, and would have improved our lives and saved many lives had its progress not been impeded by religious superstition. None of these scientific marvels resulted from religion every benefit ever bestowed by religion could have been provided by other means, using truth rather than fantasy, mythology, and dogma. Science is superior to religion, because it yields far more truth. the spirituality inherent in a scientific understanding of nature is far more spiritually advanced than any put forth by any religion. Because of socialism, we have police protection, fire protection, streets and highways, public schools and universities, social security, and several million other life enhancers, fundamental, absolutely essential government services, too numerous to mention. Socialism is government, which in a liberal democracy is cooperation by popular participation. Consider whether you would prefer your local police department by privately owned, and operated on a for profit basis, with the cost of police protection subject to the fluctuations of the free market. The same hold true of fire protection. What if every street and highway you needed to use were controlled by private, profit seeking interests? Good luck getting there without being ht hard in the pocket book. Capitalism was defined and described bets by Adam Smith in "The Wealth of Nations", the bible of capitalism. it is not widely known that Smith stipulated that properly functioning free market should result in economic equality between workers and owners,a nd that if it didn't, something was awry in the market, and should be corrected by government action to assist the poor, but never the wealthy. Obviously, our modern capitalist system has gone far astray of what Adam Smith intended. religion began as a well intentioned, honest effort among primitive, ignorant people to explain, understand, and gain some measure of control over the frightening world in which they lived. When emotion took over and dogma replaced reason and inquiry, religion went far astray, where it remains today, moored to false beliefs and damaging dogmas. religion has its place as a means to revere the wonders of nature, and capitalism has its place as a means to produce wealth and prosperity, but religion must at some point be directed by science, and capitalism must be heavily regulated by government and socialism, as it already is in every economically successful country in the world. Future human success will depend on reason, not mythology, and cooperation and planning, not blindly functioning free markets.

Putting Out Fires

AROUND 1910 A SERIES OF WILDFIRES raged across the western United States. Panic followed the conflagrations across the previously fruited plain. The federal government responded by pouring water on anything that flickered, and thus began the era of unburned, overgrown underbrush. When fires are quenched before they ever really start to spread, the countryside becomes choked with highly flammable plant life. Now, in the era of climate change and more severe droughts, hotter and longer summers, this policy of fire suppression is coming back to haunt us, after a century of over protecting our forests and grasslands. Shockingly, the world's worst air pollution in 2018 was not in Beijing, China, or Calcutta India, or Mexico city, or Bombay, India. It was in none other than beautiful Seattle, Washington. The wildfires of 2018 have been the most numerous, most severe, and the largest in U.S. history. cities such as Seattle which are largely surrounded by by forests subject historically to fire suppression have been the hardest hit by smoke; no matter which way the wind blows, air pollution is scattered across the city from all directions, a guaranteed blackened skyline. Although people in Seattle have generally not been wearing gas masks this summer, as they often do in places like Beijing, there have been days during which they might have seriously considered doing so. Respiratory illnesses, especially among the very young and the elderly, have skyrocketed in Seattle. The fire season is growing longer, and all across the west now extends nearly the year round. Folks have been encouraged to stay indoors many days this past summer in Seattle, where the summers are not usually hot enough for people to have air conditioning, which filters the air. Denver is more fortunate, since it is not surrounded by deciduous forests, but nonetheless must contend with nearby prairie fires. I recall visiting Yellowstone park in 1988, just one year before one third of it burned in a massive fire, from which it has only recently recovered. Climate change will only get worse. We had better find better ways of dealing with our burning land.

Writing A new Constitution

OF THE MANY PROBLEMS created by our poorly written, outdated constitution, the most blatant and obvious is the vague, ambiguous second amendment. Does it guarantee the right for an individual to own a weapon only when serving in a militia, or the right to own and carry a gun for personal protection? What kind of guns are covered? Muzzle loaders only, as would be the case in a strictly "originalist" interpretation, or machine guns as well? If you think the answers to these basic questions are obvious and need no discussion, reconsider. Neither the United States Supreme Court nor anyone else has ever been able to make a convincing argument in response to any of these reasonable, obvious questions. In fact, for most of American history, the high court has indeed ruled that only when serving in a regulated militia does the document guarantee the right to bear arms. Throughout its history, American society has been engaged in a continuous dispute over exactly what the second amendment means. In 1977, the National rifle Association, which had therefore been primarily concerned with gun safety and hunting regulation, joined the gun fight, when its leadership was taken over by a group of right wing right wingers, in whose hands the organization remains to this day. previously, ironically, the NRA had for the most part been a staunch advocate of strict, or at least reasonable gun control, the thinking being that such regulation would serve ultimately to protect the second amendment rights of responsible gun owning citizens. In the United States, there has always been gun ownership, and there has always been gun control, to one degree or other. Regulations were rather strict in the early republic, far stricter than now. In the supposedly wild west, guns were very strictly regulated, and for the most part were not allowed to be carried in frontier towns. obviously, America needs some final resolution to the second amendment mess, some clearly written set of laws which reflect modern reality. Since forty three states have constitutional provisions allowing for gun ownership, there is no chance that the federal government will come and take away anyone's weapons. there are numerous other examples of the inadequacy of the two hundred and twenty five year old constitution, too many to mention here. prohibition is enacted, then, a few lines further down, repealed. For purpose of congressional representation, a certain class of people, slaves, are counted as three fifths of a human being. No, I'm not making that up. Surely, a more modern, concise term could be found to replace the archaic term "emoluments". Why not specifically enumerate a right to privacy, and define "privacy" in modern terms, instead of arguing about whether one can be found between the lines in our current document? Why not clearly outlaw discrimination base on gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation? We the people need and deserve a new, improved constitution, as Thomas Jefferson said we inevitably would. And,for teh sake of respect for tradition, the current one would be a very good model upon which to base our better version.