Escaping

HUMAN BEINGS by seem by nature to have a strong aversion to reality. Either that, or modern humans have a particularly strong aversion to it, perhaps because not only is modern reality particularly unpleasant, worthy of avoidance, but our modern means of escape are more powerful and effective than ever. it may be that humans, in there natural, healthy, wholistic, happy habitat, spend much more time appreciating and enshrining reality into their culture than do we modern escape artists. It may well be that the human imagination is unparalleled on Earth for sheer creativity. There are two basic methods of escaping reality. reality may be escaped either by inventing, creative an alternative reality which of really doesn't exist, or deny actual, verifiable reality itself. We humans are quite adept at both methods. consider the great lengths we have all gone to to created, embrace, and participate in alternative, fabricated realities. There have been, throughout history, thousands of different religions in the world, from all over the world, most of which are long extinct. today there are still thousands of them extant, and more are being invented and created all the time. Every last one of these religions, every religion ever to have existed on Earth, past and present, is a perfect example of the process by which people fabricate alternative realities out of thin air, for the purpose of escaping, or rather, dealing with reality. Fabrications, made up stories, are shared, popularized, agreed on, and before you know it, you have rigid, religious dogma, making no sense whatever. All religions are pure fiction, of course. there really is no such deity as Thor, or Zeus, or Yahweh, of Jehovah. Unable to explain the world accurately, with understanding, humans began early in inventing their own versions of how the universe works, giving a lot of credit to super human entities. myths, fables, fictional accounts permeate human culture and history; we love inventing alternative realities. Our powers of denial are no less impressive. Throughout history almost cultures use denial of reality as a means to find emotional comfort. In all our records from ancient Egypt, there is no mention of the Exodus of Moses and the Hebrews. There are several possible reasons for this. One possibility is that the event never actually happened, that it was merely a legend which made its way into the Old Testament. Another possibility is that the Exodus occurred, but was not of sufficient importance to ancient Egyptian historians and commentators to merit mention. Perhaps it involved far fewer people than traditionally believed. At third, and perhaps most likely reason is that the Exodus was such a humiliating and frustrating event for Egypt that it was ordered forgotten. Our modern day denials may kill us. If all the climate change deniers in America don't get on board and start helping save the planet, there may be no planet to save, all too soon. The good people who believe that vaccinations do more harm than good are partly inventing their own reality, and partly denying reality; they are doing both, and in so doing, causing epidemics of long gone diseases to reemerge. Seldom if ever is it healthy or productive to deny reality. Inventing reality, creating fiction, is all well and good, if it is recognized as and confined to the realm of literature, art, and fiction, and not turned into some religion or other, brainwashing millions of hapless people with false versions of reality.

Relapsing

NEVER, IN MY wildest imaginings, did I ever imagine that I would be hearing on the news about a measles outbreak all across the fruited plain of these United States in the year 2019. I would have expected all of that to be a relic of the past, especially since measles was pronounced dead and gone as long ago as the year two thousand. But here it is, again, hundreds of cases reported across half the country. Across America, during the past couple of decades, it has become common for parents to with hold vaccinations from their children, for fear of side effects rumored to be associated with vaccinations, side effects which are purely imaginary. Who knows how many thousands of children will suffer, and how many long vanished diseases will return in the coming months and years, all because of the anti-vaxxer insanity? I vividly recall my horrible bout with chicken pox when I was about three years old, and I have vague recollections of having had the mumps and measles, those infamous childhood diseases with which all baby boomers were afflicted, but which we had hoped to spare our posterity. All that was around 1960 or thereabouts. In the nineteen sixties, we believed that all diseases would be eradicated by or during the twenty first century, just like there would be colonies on the moon and Mars, hunger, poverty, and war would be eliminated, and so forth. In those days, we believed in science, and in our ability to make a better and brighter future. We never even wildly imagined that our grand children would be beset by the same demons which haunted our youth. But here we are, with no lunar or Martian colonies, rampant war and poverty, and diseases which should long ago have been eradicated from human kind returning from the dust bin of history, spreading, threatening to bring renewed plagues and epidemics. And all because of one simple, societal attitude; the widespread rejection of science by people who not only do not understand simple, basic science, but prefer to make no effort to do so, preferring stead to live in their own fantasy worlds where they, in their fear and ignorance, make and live according to whatever reality they conjure at any given moment. In this science fictiony year of the far future, we are confronted with a culture in which millions of people simply chose to reject scientific reality simply because it does not comport with their preferred imaginary world o choice. As many as one third of the American people deny climate change, even though the science proving it is surprisingly simple, and easy to understand. To accept climate change is to acknowledge the need for fundamental change, socially, economically, politically, which is anathema to the conservative mind set. just as many of the devoutly religious reject the fact of evolution because to accept it would question fundamental religious beliefs, so people reject climate change because it interferes with their political agenda. But why do people reject vaccinations? Because a popular attractive articulate sounding entertainer named jenny McCarthy, using bad science, popularized the notion that vaccinations cause horrible side effects, such as autism? Surely not. Widespread rejection of simple science due to unfounded fears, superstitions, or political agendas is something nobody could have predicted for the twenty first century. But it is a mental illness which could very well kill us all, if we do not find a cure for it. The cure, of course, is education.

Contending In Vain

THE SENIOR CENTER MEMBERSHIP is overwhelmingly conservative christian Republican, which might be the main reason I generally don't like them. I do not like conservatives, Republicans, or Christians, generally. Conservative atheists I can handle, and I can handle Christian liberals. But for some reason, in America, political conservatism and devout Christianity seem to go hand in hand, probably because conservatives tend to be people who love tradition much more than change, and the christian faith is very traditional, and very resistant to change. If you are so traditional, rigid, and dogmatic that you believe that God speaks to us in books, that evolution is a lie, and climate change is a hoax, count me out. Give me an intellectual, well educated, left wing socialist progressive atheist or non traditional religious person any day. Such people tend to accept evolution and climate change as fact, and the Bible as fiction. For me, college educated people who know a lot about history, science, and philosophy and art are far more interesting than, say, the less educated conservative religious types. College campuses tend to have a large majority of liberals among the students and faculty; there is an obvious correlation between education and progressive thinking, just as there is a strong correlation between lack of education, conservatism, and extremely religious people. And, for a fact, most of the folks at the senor center who are conservative Trump supporters and devout Christians, which is a large majority of the members, have very little formal education. The obvious, blatant, contradiction between their Christian religiosity and support for Trump only contributes to my contempt for these people, many of whom I like and consider my friends. I avoid political conversations with these people to avoid trouble. They seem to get as easily upset at having their politics challenged as having their religion challenged. I mentioned Trump's nine thousand lies to one couple; they immediately accused Obama of having been a liar. These people simply do not want to deal with it; do not want to deal with their own twisted thinking, confusion, and evil impulses. Jesus and cut throat corporate capitalism become compatible for these conservative fundamental Christians. Former Minnesota Congressperson Barbara Bachman raised more than a few eyebrows recently when she exuberantly proclaimed Trump to be the most Biblical American president in history, or something like that. What did she mean by that? That Trump behaves like an angry Old Testament Jehovah? Or that he exemplifies the purity, virtue, enlightenment, and perfection of Christ? Surely only she knows for sure. Devout Christian Trump supporters are somehow able to compartmentalize Trump and Jesus to a remarkable degree, applying entirely different standards while pretending not to. White conservative Christian Trump supporters are angry, aggressive, and arrogant. They have invented and instilled within themselves the baseless notion that the Christian faith, the white race, and the conservative agenda are being outnumbered and overpowered by left wing liberal socialist atheists, and unwashed immigrants, who are, according to Trump, animals, not human. Their fears may not be entirely baseless after all. Conservative Christians tend to be older. The millennial generation is only half religious, and mostly liberal. The Republican party is loosing membership. But for the moment, if only the truly devout Christians who support Trump would come to their senses, and admit that their support of Trump is wrong, misguided, and un-Christian, we could get rid of Trump sooner, rather than later. That would provide the help we need now. For that to happen, our conservative Christian colleagues are going to have to require their political candidates to behave like Christians, which for the time being seems to be of no concern to them whatsoever.

Pledging and Praying

FOR THE THIRD DAY in a row, we recited the Pledge of Allegiance at the senior center, right before we prayed, after which we ate. We eat at eleven thirty. It used to be eleven, which I might prefer. Never before, either during the almost four years I've been going there, or before that, had the Pledge been incorporated into the routine. I thought that strange. After years of frustration, I finally just pulled the trigger; I stood up, asked everyone else to stand and face the flag in the corner by the piano, and let 'er rip. It seemed to go over well. Then, I went right into the prayer as usual. Technically, its illegal to pray in an organized fashion, at a place which receives federal assistance. But, we do it every day. On the one hand, it seems rather obtrusive, petty, and manipulative to require prayer abstinence as a precondition for receiving the rather paltry amount of support we do from the federal government. On the other hand, the first amendment does seem to require the prohibition of prayer. We take turns praying, just a few of us regular prayer sayers; I am one of them. I love to pray, even though I'm not "religious". My prayers are pure pantheism. Today I slipped and used the word "worship", which I don't like. I much prefer "admire" and "appreciate" than worship. But I always express thanks, and ask for nothing. Everyone seems to like my style, even though I never make mention of Jesus, nor of anything "christian." One need not be Christian to pray, or to believe in God. Doing the pledge just sorta seems natural. A little secular civic celebration to accompany the religiosity. One day I finally decided to just do it, and I just did it. One need not be a Christian conservative to be patriotic. One can be a left wing democratic socialist, and love America, and want to make America great. Personally, I think that by instigating the pledge at my local senior center, I have done more than Trump and all his bizarre followers have done to make America great. It seemed to work out well. The senior center is veritably awash in first amendment issues. The crazy man (every organization or group of people of any sort must have one, correct?) is becoming a problem. He's close to eighty, and despite advanced diabetes resulting in the loss of half a foot he gets around pretty well. He's illiterate, literally, a big mouth from Boston who has found the Lord, has been saved, and is very proud of it. He considers it his purpose in life to make sure everyone else is saved to. When he found out that I am unsaved, or decided that I am not, he told me in no uncertain terms that I am going straight to hell. I should have decked him, but he would have killed me. He knows how to fight, how to hurt people, as if he once did it for a living, which I suspect he did. He's caused so many problems that he has virtually been banned from the senior center, but has stopped by briefly a time or two and started ranting about freedom of speech. That's alarming, because it looks like he truly believes that he has an unalienable right to come to the senior center and rant about Christ and God as much as he wants, and nobody can stop him. He's got a rude awakening in store for himself. The first amendment says that congress can make no law infringing on freedom of speech, but it doesn't say anything about a mothers, fathers, bosses, and senior center directors. The first amendment protects free speech from harm from congress, but not from anybody else. The term "congress" has been extended over the decades and centuries to mean the government in general, but still, only the government, and not parents or bosses or teachers. Most Americans probably think their right of free speech is ubiquitous, and applies everywhere, under all circumstances. Wouldn't that be crazy, ten year old kids waving a copy of the first amendment at their parents? so, we'll see what happens when my man finds out that his preaching has been prohibited at the senior center. Meanwhile, I'll just keep right on with my pantheistic, new age prayer style.

Getting the Message

THE WHITE HOUSE, the most vociferous edifice in the world, wants to have it both ways. On the one hand, the Mueller report, and the investigation which preceded it, is a fraud, a scam, nothing but an attempted coup against Donald Trump and his plan to make America great again. We heard the description incessantly throughout the investigation; witch hunt. On the other hand, the report completely and entirely exonerates the president and his associates of any wrong going, including colluding with Russians to win the presidential election, and obstructing justice in an attempt to prevent the investigation and the consequent report from ever coming to fruition, nor even seeing the light of day. A fraudulent witch hunt which suddenly, amazingly, miraculously acquires sufficient credibility to be credible only when it brings a complete and total exoneration of Trump. The White House, as usual during its unfortunate period of housing the current occupants, is lying through its teeth. The White House, never known for its impeccable adherence to highly rigorous standards of honesty and integrity, has sunk to new lows, has become a pathological liar, from whom the only exact opposite of reality can be expected. The truth, of course, is that the Mueller investigation was from the beginning, and remains to this day, the farthest thing from a witch hunt, or an attempted coup against the Trump administration. The Mueller investigation was initiated according to due process, properly conceived and implemented from the beginning, all above board, all honest, no conspiracies, without the slightest trace of impropriety. Those who accuse the investigation of having been maliciously designed and initiated by Trump's enemies for no other purpose than illegally destroying his presidency are themselves liars, and their charges of nefarious intent entirely bogus, which they themselves well know. Equally importantly, not only does the Mueller report of the investigation's results not only not "exonerate" Trump, it does the exact opposite, it proves beyond a reasonable doubt that not only did Trump and his campaign tacitly collude with Russians to steal the election, but that Trump engages in an extended attempt to obstruct and destroy the investigation. To understand this it is only necessary to read the report, all four hundred and forty eight pages of it. Trump himself, from the beginning, was well aware of the highly organized effort by Russian operatives to influence the outcome of the election in his favor. He knew about it, he accepted it, he welcomed it, and he did nothing to stop it. In other words, Trump, by doing nothing, cooperated with the Russians election tampering project. Simultaneously, he repeatedly denied that there was any such project, even laughed at it, dismissed it out of hand,while constantly trying to do all in his power to prevent the Russian activity from being investigated, by obstructing the investigation, trying to stop it completely. When the president of the united States is aware that a foreign power, an enemy of America, is attacking the country by attacking its political process, and does nothing to prevent it, in fact encourages and welcomes the attack, the president has committed treason, and should be impeached, removed from office, indicted, triad, convicted, and executed. that is how serious treason is as a crime. If Hillary Clinton or Obama were president, and had behaved as Trump behaved, Trump supports would be calling for precisely this course of action. that they are not doing so reveals either that they have not read the Mueller report, yet, and that they believe the white washed White House description of it, or that they are themselves traitorous, treasonous criminals, deserving of only the contempt and scorn of all true American patriots; namely, those who oppose the incredibly corrupt Trump.

Reading For Understanding

YOU ARE, with advice and consent, most cordially invited to read the Mueller report, all 448 pages of it. That failing, you are summarily instructed, to put it pleasantly, to read the Ess Oh Bee. It is of the highest importance that all literate Americans do so, then find someone who can't read, which should be easy, and explain it to him or her. Go thy way among the illiterate, and explain. It is your civic and patriotic duty. It is as important, if not more so, than reciting the "pledge of allegiance" each and every day with a group of Americans, say, before tai chi class. The ordeal is not as great as it might at first seem. The prose is surprisingly accessible, the legalize, perhaps surprisingly, kept to a minimum. I did it by pulling an "all nighter", as we used to say and I think they still say in college, then going to my volunteer gig at the senior center. If I can do it... It is as if Mueller wanted to spare no effort, take no chances, incur no risk that his findings might get lost among a mountain of mumble jumble. Mueller plainly wanted plain folks to read his report, and to understand it. He wanted, and wants, the world to do so. Then, he wants us to draw our own conclusions as to his conclusions, which he with great confidence assumes we cannot mistake. In a nutshell, Robert Mueller proves, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Donald J.Trump is a criminal, who should be incarcerated, or, if not that, removed from the highest office in the land. Mueller's conclusion is perfectly obvious, although he never says so directly, because he lays out, step by step, point by point, in unmistakable, specific detail, the process and facts by which Trump and his presidential campaign coordinated with the Russians to win the election, and then systematically obstructed justice by engaging in a sustained effort to cover the collusion up. Again, just read it, all of it. It is absolutely astonishing. Throughout the entire campaign, Trump knew about, welcomed, and accepted Russian interference in the election on his behalf, and lied about it. He has lied about it ever since. To this day, he lies about it. His attempt to stop Mueller's investigation, to obstruct justice, was extensive, and included issuing orders to his subordinates which were so insanely illegal that his subordinates refused and failed to execute them, knowing full well that had they obeyed, they and their fuhrer would be executed, figuratively, if not literally. Mueller proves, point by factual point, that Trump tacitly colluded with the Russians, obstructed justice, and then Mueller says that the investigation did not establish that Trump colluded with the Russians, and that the investigation did not exonerate Trump from obstruction of justice. Mueller proves the crimes, then passes on indicting and prosecuting. Again, read it for yourself. Mueller knew that there is nothing about indicting a president in the constitution, and that Trump supporters all insist it cannot be done, even though they insisted that it could be done to Clinton and Obama, and that if he indicted Trump, it would end up in the court system for decades. So, he did not indict. He knew that the only remedy was for Congress to impeach Trump, or for the voters to vote him out of office. Mueller thinks Trump should be impeached and removed from office, clearly, and after you read the report, you will agree with him, unless you are a Trump supporter, or a far right conservative extremest fundamentalist evangelical Christian, or both. Most folks, if they are one, they are the other, they are both, and, in essence, crazy. Recent scientific studies indicate that extremely religious and extremely conservative people have brain damage, damage to the frontal cortex which is responsible for open minded, flexible thinking and acquiring new knowledge, but that is beside the point here. The point here is that Robert J. Mueller clearly proves that Donald J. Trump is a criminal, and a traitor, and should and must be removed from office and thrown into the clink, and that little four page summary by Attorney General Barr is a completely misleading pile of bullshit, to use the term Trump used yesterday when he finally realized what is in the Mueller report.

Taking It the Wrong Way

IT WAS IN ONE OF THOSE feel good Facebook posts, a cartoon. A little boy sits sullenly, a ministerial adult asks him what's the matter. "Its good Friday, says the child, but what's good about it? This is the day they hung Jesus on a wooden cross". Adult asks:" Would you think its good if someone else forgave you your sins, and paid for them, instead of you? Would that make you feel good?" The child enthusiastically answers "yes!", and all is well. The child feels good. I commented that it would make me feel irresponsible and cowardly. I never heard back from anybody, so I assume that my remark was either dismissed by the Christian community, some of whom doubtless saw it as some kind of psychotic, demonic drivel, or deemed it unworthy of correction. I feel exactly the same way the child felt, before he was given the usual brainwashing by the well intentioned adult. Exactly what is so good about torturing a beautiful person to death? For all appearances, for all demonstrable causality, it happened for the usual reasons: petty human jealousy, vindictiveness, fear, and viciousness. Only later, much later, did the newly organized religion choose to believe that the crucifixion of Christ has anything to do with atonement for the sins of those who accept him as lord and savior, salvation for the believers. Only later, much later. Nobody who actually knew the man thought of him as anything other than a human being, a very wonderful one. The dogma came later, much later. I refuse to believe that I live in a universe in which every mistake I make, for which I demonstrably pay in this life by experiencing its consequences, must be paid for again. The universe may be uncaring, but it is not vicious and vindictive. The universe is cause, and effect. Any supreme omniscient cosmic creator who would require, let alone permit the slow torturing to death of the most enlightened person who ever lived as payment for my sins, then invite me to accept this diabolical scheme under penalty of eternal damnation and personal suffering, I want no part of, and I refuse to accept as real, as anything other than a twisted product of the darkest corner of the fertile human mind. I am a self proclaimed coward. I often find it amazing the sheer number of things which frighten me and from which I run, cowardly. Chief among them are human beings. I avoid people like the plague. People are vicious, deadly, cruel, and deceptive, as history, and present day reality clearly show. That they invent, spread, and maintain such a wicked, diabolical system of thought and institution, and somehow find a way to think of it not only as good, but as the most wonderful institution on earth, I find astonishing. Throughout history the Christian religion has endorsed and practiced torture and murder of non believers, it has endorsed and defended enslavement of human beings, quite properly, by using the bible, which accepts and condones slavery, it has sanctioned the suppression and virtual enslavement of women, and it has persecuted homosexuals and transgenders, as it does today. And I, more than anybody else, am well aware of my personal shortcomings, my own petty viciousness and fear, my own sins. And, yes, I am a coward. But, for heaven's sake, if someone has to pay for my mistakes, all over again, after I have already paid by experiencing the consequences of my actions, well, then, let it be me. Let me be the one crucified, by this vengeful, petty, cruel, psychotic Old Testament deity, not the beautiful Jesus, who did nothing wrong. To be sure, Jesus said some things which leave me scratching my head, with which I strongly disagree. To me, he Wasn't perfect. Then too, he probably never said that those who curse the father and the mother must be given the death (Mathew 15:4). But he was a far better person than I, and he was murdered by human spite and fear, not for me. I can hear them now, as I always have; I am taking it the wrong way, I do not understand, I do not understand that I have Been offered the greatest of God's gifts, and that the sacrifice Jesus made for me was beautiful. But I know cold blooded murder when I see it, and I don't think it is I who is taking it the wrong way, but rather, a couple billion other very imperfect people.

Killing For Profit, the American Way

SINCE THE DEATH of the original World Trade Center, the United States has spent approximately six trillion dollars on wars of foreign aggression, and has killed approximately five hundred thousand people waging them, including several thousand of its own people. The stated aim was the usual tripe about defense of liberty and spread of democracy and freedom, the actual motive was the usual; the plundering of foreign resources, in this instance oil, for the enrichment of American corporations and their billionaire owners. These numbers are from the United States government, in particular, the Department of Defense. Although they may not be entirely accurate, they are accurate enough, close enough to be shocking. Even more amazing is that very few Americans seem to know or care, most Americans being utterly absorbed in the details of their own daily lives, or immersed in the various forms of escape entertainment deliberately designed by our corporate masters for the expressed purpose of distracting us from the harsh realities of our nation's foreign and domestic policies. Among these policies are the theft and exploitation of foreign resources, especially mineral resources, and the use of America's mighty military power to accomplish this end. Domestically, the corporate agenda is predicated upon the subjection and exploitation of ninety nine percent of the population for the profit and benefit of the one percent, and the maintenance of a political system perfectly suited to achieve and perpetuate this end. The fact that every successful politician in America is a millionaire, the fact that political offices are all purchased by corporate money and the office holders are entirely beholden to their purchasers is integral to understanding American social reality. For detailed explanations of all this, simply read books by Noam Chomsky, or listen to his lectures on the internet. His most recent book, "Who Rules the World?", is among his best. Of all American intellectuals who study the American social system, Chomsky is by far the mot insightful. The mineral resources of the middle east and other regions of the world, including Latin America, are sufficient to motivate American corporate power to control them. Thus, the Monroe Doctrine of 1824, and the late nineteenth early twentieth century European and American conquest and domination of Africa, Asia, and the middle east. In America's public school system students are indoctrinated with flattering and utterly false accounts of American history and current reality, and any teacher who enters a classroom in the United States to tell the truth about American society, history, and objectives will soon be looking for work. We are spoon fed garbage about freedom, opportunity, and American greatness, even as our corporate rulers send military forces to such disparate places as Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Central America for no other purpose than to plunder foreign lands, dominate and control their governments, enforce obedience to American corporate power, and reap profits from foreign slave labor and stolen assets. In America, poor white and black men are ushered into the armed forces, and used as fodder for the enhancement of billionaire's wealth. Black men are herded into ghettos, or rounded up and sent to prison by a racist criminal justice system. The word "democracy" is a laughable lie we use to disguise our vicious plutocracy as something worth preserving. America's founders, over two hundred years ago, fully intended to install a system of governance by the elite few, but even they would be shocked at the extent to which the American people have been turned into virtual slave laborers, devoid of any power or influence on the system. Thomas Jefferson suggested that only a violent revolution every twenty years would give the people any hope of having any real participation in their own governance. We are long overdo.

Getting Wealthy

BERNIE SANDERS, it turns out, is a wealthy man. We had long known this, or suspected it; his tax returns, the last ten years of which he released, confirm it. Bernie Sanders, multi millionaire, a member of the one percent. And so, with a simple act of transparency, Senator Sanders, a democratic socialist who wants to be president, lays himself open to criticisms of being a hypocrite. The far tight is going to have a field day, and the fun has but barely begun. The capitalist who seeks personal wealth, while urging others to live in a socialist economy. Do as I say, not as I do. The possibilities are unlimited, and Sanders is going to have to deal with them all, from within his political party and from without. For me, this is all too familiar. Twenty five years ago, as a host of a Public Access television talk show, I advocated that society transform itself from an individual automotive to a mass transit culture, as a means of saving the planet. This was when climate change was still called global warming, and hardly anyone had heard about it. In those days, the early nineties, even I wasn't ranting about climate change, like I do now. Predictably, the phone started ringing on our call in talk show, and folks started asking me how I got to the studio. I had, I confessed, driven my pick up truck, with my German Shepherd in the bed. Instantly, I was vilified as a hypocrite. I, the mass transit man, driving a personal vehicle. My response was the same then as it is now, the same as Bernie Sander's should be now: I immediately accepted the description "hypocrite", I owned up to hypocrisy as one of my many personal character flaws, then asked: "Which is the more important topic of discussion; how to achieve a sustainable system of energy, transportation, and economy, or my being a hypocrite?" Just recently a man came and repaired my furnace, charged me over three hundred dollars for a good job, then got into an argument with me about climate change. He seemed to think that climate change is all a liberal hoax, a hoax intended to reduce everyone else to poverty while liberals live high on the hog. He pointed out that I live in a nice house, and drive a nice car, as if there is somehow something relevant about this. Should we be talking about how to make a better, healthier life for all of us, including our descendants, or about my personal character flaws? The answer, I should think, is obvious. I have long since become accustomed to being labeled a "hypocrite" by conservatives who seem to think that they have scored a knock out accomplishment by exposing my hypocrisy. So accustomed to it, that I immediately surrender, and sometimes I even begin listing my other flaws. I am a procrastinator, I drink coffee, I eat fast food, and I lust after women. Shame on me. Contrary to popular belief, socialists do not think there is anything wrong with making money. Among the many popular misconceptions about socialism is that it seeks to make everyone poor. Not at all. What socialism does say is that the more money you make, the more money you should pay in taxes, what is called "progressive taxation". Socialists believe in a large public, government run economic sector, with the tax code as a tool for creating greater economic equality by taking from the wealthy, and redistributing among the poor, and among the workers, who, in socialist systems, should be well paid. If Bernie Sanders is smart, he'll point all of this out, and he will show, using his tax returns, that he has paid what the law requires. Then, he'll take it one step further, that under his proposed tax system, he, Bernie Sanders, a self described socialist, would be, and will be paying a considerable amount ore in taxes, because he is wealthy, and can afford to do so, and should do so, for the benefit of society. When I am elected president, you can hear him now, in his Brooklyn accent, not only will I be paying much higher income and wealth taxes, so will all the other millionaires and billionaires in America. Famed capitalists Warren Buffett and Bill Gates and bill Clinton have said exactly the same thing; that the current system, which favors the wealthy, does not require them to pay enough taxes, but that it would, if they had their way. Bernie Sanders suggested that anyone wanting to become wealthy should write a best selling book. If he's smart, he will stop smarting off, and he will label himself a hypocrite, then get back on topic, the only topic that matters, the topic of everyone, the topic of society. So why not elect Bernie Sanders to the presidency, just to find out if he really is a hypocrite? After all, whether he is or isn't seems to be a pressing concern.

Demons, Haunting Us

FAITH HEALERS never perform miracles of faith in hospitals. Or, if they do, they don't do it often, never on camera, never in well publicized well documented conditions, and only under highly secretive, controlled arrangements. Hospitals house sincerely sick people, people who perhaps might not have sufficient faith to motivate god to heal them. I have not been a hospital patient since December, 1964, when I was nine and a half, etherized on a table as the poem goes, and had my tonsils out. In the intervening fifty five years, I've visited hospitals only on specific visitation missions of mercy. I recall my friend being beaten up by a bouncer, driving him to the hospital, and going to the nurse's desk to say howdy to my head nurse mom at three A.M. She was surprised, but glad to see me, whole. When my mom was fallen on by another lady in a tai chi class and went in for a broken leg, I drove halfway across the country and surprised her. Heavily sedated, she was again glad to see me. When my girlfriend was in, I strolled across the hall to the newborn babe room, stood and adored the twenty five tiny pink and blue tykes, when a young lady in a bathrobe walked up. I picked one out, pointed to it, and mentioned that I thought it was the cutest of the lot. The lady started beaming, and told me that I was pointing at hers. Maybe I should have been a faith healer or psychic. If I'm ever in a ditch, I hope she drives by, with her forty years old child. I've had fun in hospitals, but never saw a faith healer roaming the halls, looking to help. Shouldn't they be? We further notice that self proclaimed psychics never seem to win lotteries, nor make it big, Buffett style, in the stock market. And yet, they charge all kinds of prices for their future reading. We live in, as Carl Sagan said, a demon haunted world. His book by that title is a good argument why science works, and nothing else does. Among the demons are superstition, fear, and faith. Credulity and gullibility are others. Taking the time to elicit truth from what little we, with our weak and transitory understanding, as Einstein described it, can comprehend of reality, requires hard, rigorous, painstaking effort, a lot of time and frustration. As Goethe said: "God gave us the acorns, but he will not crack them for us." Thus left to our own devices, we are inclined to take the easy way out. Faith replaces reason and empiricism, and crazy religions (all religions are crazy) spring up all over the world, become popular, and take control of culture. Faith comes more easily and quickly than the assiduous, arduous attention to detail required to glean truth from the world. God tells us everything we need to know in a book. Why not? We arrive at the twenty first century, faith and reason still battling it out, in a war that should have resulted in a unanimous decision for reason long ago, but still hasn't. Faith, superstition, and nonsense are too alluring to let go, like intoxicants. Of course we can use our minds to heal our bodies. Of course the universe was created, if for no other reason than that it exists. But why not actually find out how, rather than inventing how? If only we could be content to live in ignorance a little longer, while we keep digging through haystacks for needles. But we are too arrogant, too impatient, and we must invent an anthropomorphic deity in the sky, who writes the book of truth, and, according to that book, peaks through pin prick holes, which we call "stars" in the dome to look at us. We feel the need for a savior, so we turn someone into one. We don't know one millionth of one percent of anything, Einstein said. Einstein also said "My religiosity consists in humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit which reveals itself in what little we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. I cannot conceive of a personal god who would sit in judgment over creatures of his own creation. Morality is of the highest importance, for mankind, but not for god." Einstein, you see, was willing to admit his ignorance, willing to do the heavy lifting, and willing to linger in ignorance until he actually found out what is going on here, which really, like the rest of us, he never did. But at least he didn't run to faith, invent a world which comforted him out of thin air, and believe whatever he wanted to believe, because its easier that way.

Outsourcing the Pawn People

SUSPENDED BETWEEN THE INSANE AND THE SURREAL, we now go about the tedious task of attempting to discern, regarding president Trump, the usual. How serious is he? What, precisely, motivates him? Where on earth did he ever get such an ostensibly wacky idea? Actually, this business of sending all refugees and illegal immigrants, if there is a difference, to various and sundry sanctuary cities has a certain merit, and the leadership in these many American cities are openly embracing the idea, which is quite likely not at all what the president anticipated. Big cities tend, as a rule, to welcome people and population growth, and good labor is hard to find, even at today's still low but rapidly increasing wages. Sanctuary cities always had motives other than mere altruism. They need workers and bigger tax bases. When the idea first hit the street, a few days ago, having been under consideration off and on for several months, nobody was happy. The left saw it as a get even tactic intended to make their altruistic approach to needy immigrants look bad, to expose it as a sham by overwhelming them with numbers and logistical problems; conservatives are shell shocked at the prospect of their leader in immigrant hatred actually capitulating, and letting these people into the country, instead of building a will to keep them out. What happened to the wall, and to the law? Now the White House, an ever loquacious edifice, is claiming the the plan was intended all along as an "olive branch" as they put it, to Democrats, the intention being to put the incoming folks precisely where the progressive end of the spectrum has wanted them all along; in American cities which claim to welcome them. A clever ploy, but transparently faux. Bear in mind that Trump and his right wing ilk regard all refugees as criminals and sub human animals; he said so just the other day, and he certainly does no think he is doing anyone a favor. What the president expected was mass capitulation; a nation wide progressive throwing in the towel and offer of surrender; sanctuary cities, teeming with liberals and millions of unwashed, suddenly on board with the great wall of Trump and exclusion immigration policy. Trump, like most small mined folk, assumes that everyone thinks like he does; that all refugees are scum. Is the plan to simply hand a bus ticket to everyone standing in line, and with the luck of the draw determine who goes to what city? This ignores the fact that these desperate people, though desperate, are not stupid; they can envision the concept of the future, they already know where they want to go once in the United States. As soon as they arrive in the city chosen for them, they are most likely to begin making plans and efforts to get to the city or town of their choice, where friends and family and future await them. A scramble saga, in two parts. The other elephant in the room is this: if the United States really wants to discourage people from seeking to enter, you can think of better ways to do it than by offering a free pass to a life in the big city to anyone who simply shows up at the border. Has the president bothered to think of that? All the legal, logistical, and economic concerns are an entirely different matter, but very important ones. When Trump announced his little scheme, he made the mistake of revealing his honest attitude about it; there was spite, petty vindictiveness, and anger in his words. "They say they want these people, so we'll give them as many people as they want, and see how they like it". That sort of thing. What the Democrats should do is call Trump's sinister bluff and embrace Trump's madness, because, in a way, its not a bad idea from the point of view of the open borders crowd. But it is a horrible idea from the viewpoint of the Trump base, which elected Trump on the basis of xenophobic immigrant hatred. What Trump should do, for his own political sake, is get on his stupid smart phone, and tweet "April Fools!"

Hating

I HAD HOPED I had had a bad dream. And perhaps, in a sense, I had. Is it Hinduism or Buddhism in which life is the dream of the great dreamer? Both? The president of the United States, at the border, calling immigrants "animals". Saying that they are not human. Parr for the course, of course, and yet, not acceptable. The nation rose up in anger, and removed him from office.. End of story. I wish. In the bad dream, the nation either ignored it, or agreed with it, much as another nation once passively ignored or agreed with another right wing populist demagogue with well prepared hair when he asserted that Jews are animals. And technically, they were both correct. Immigrants and Jews are animals, because all humans beings are, primates, more specifically, descended not from monkeys but descended along with monkeys from a common ancestor which no longer exists. Problem is, The orange haired primate intended nothing technical with his identification, and everything demeaning, insulting, dehumanizing. The orange haired orangutan is frighteningly remindful of the Charlie Chaplin look alike petty dictator who took uppers in the morning and downers in the evening, and hatred with passion. Intent is everything, wanted to make his nation 'great again", and strongly attracted teh hateful, the bigoted, and the angry white male. its the thought that counts. america, the land of thoughts and prayers. perhaps if our prayers were less intended for our own benefit we would stop seeing ourselves as so very superior, and others as animals. Upon examining the many forms of home sapiens sapiens categorical hatred against various categories of homo sapiens sapiens, the examiner constructs, by sheer necessity, a rather impressively long list. Gay folks in recent years have enjoyed a rapid rise from the ranks of the widely despised to now near normal humanhood, a combination of their being widely dispersed throughout demography, every family has one, to a well organized, inexorable pressure propaganda campaign. When I was a child it was illegal to be gay, and the worse insult one heterosexual child could hurl at another was "queer", and "queerbait". Even being attractive to gay people was a great sin, to be avoided at the cost or ridicule and ostracization. My, haven't we made progress? If you do the math, you discover that almost no matter who you are, you either still are, or have lately been, the object of hatred and discrimination. If you just add up all the women, the African-Americans, the Hispanics, the homosexuals, the transgenders, the native Americans, the Irish, the oriental, the Catholic, the non religious, the very young and the very old, the mentally disabled, the physically disabled, the poor, all at one time or another and in one way or another an "out group", what you have left is heterosexual middle class Christian white men between the ages of eighteen and sixty five, of sound mind and body. In other words, humans are by nature elitists and conformists. Anyone not a member of the five percent, or one percent is second or third class. It is observable that the lion's share of violence and terrorism in America is currently being perpetrated by the "in group", the only unhated group in America, the young white, angry, bigoted, petty tyrant adoring male. The poor little darlings feel unloved, as if hordes of the lesser sorts of animals are ganging up on them, demanding not equality but complete control, threatening their social superiority. They and their fuhrer will not be replaced by Jews, Muslims, women, African-Americans, gay folks, or any by God else. They and their fuhrer, wearing their cute make America great again blood red ball caps, will so do by restoring hegemony to its rightful owners, the youngish white middle aged heterosexual male animal, atop the animal kingdom, as always.

Progressing

NOTWITHSTANDING AN INCESSANT and vociferous conservative clamor espousing traditional American values such as racism, patriarchy, social Darwinism, social hierarchy, and cultural conformity, including conformity of religious and sexual orientation, among others, the United States is basically a progressive country. Surveys, which utilize scientific, statistical methods which are verifiably accurate, clearly reveals this. Despite all efforts to establish and maintain a white Anglo Saxon protestant (WASP) uniform culture, it has never happened, and now never will. The very existence of a native civilization predating the imposition of our European one made it impossible from the beginning. Importing slaves and their culture further damaged any hope of a ubiquitous Anglo-Christian American nation. Then too, a nation built by immigrants has never been able to stop immigration, though it has used extreme measures, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1872 and the immigration law of 1924, without success. Not everything in the pot melts. And that which does irreversibly transforms American culture. American music is black. American cuisine is Mexican, Italian, and Chinese. Anybody who is a senior citizen today can remember an America entirely different from the current one, and the evolution has been progressive, not conservative. No matter how tenaciously we the American people cling to racial segregation, racial barriers, against great resistance, continue to erode. that's progress, albeit slow. The Christian religion has never been able to conquer American culture, and sweep all others out of the country, and in the past twenty years the percentage of Americans who identify as "Christian" has dropped from eighty five to just over seventy percent. The millennial generation is only half Christian. The future is religious diversity, which will enforce by numerical fact the putative American value of religious tolerance. And now, for some specific issues. A majority of American, if only a slim one, is pro choice. Most people who are pro choice oppose abortion, but support a woman's freedom of reproductive choice. A huge majority of Americans want to increase taxes on the wealthy, and install a much more progressive taxation system. All social spending, including all forms of welfare and transfer payments, are popular. And why not? Most Americans are either poor, or lower middle class. We the American people want to redistribute wealth from wealthy to poor through government action, despite claims to the contrary. Among poor people, redistribution of wealth is always popular, as it is in theory, but not practice among Christians. Despite the current administration's policy of mocking and ignoring climate change, and the fact that as many as eighty five percent of republicans deny its reality, an overwhelming percentage of the population accepts the reality of climate change, and the vital necessity of enacting policies which mitigate it. Inevitably, future American leaders will enact such policies, and if they are successful in their efforts, those who currently deny their necessity will fall silent, or claim to have supported them all along. Progressivism creeps, incrementally. Yesterday's proud racists are today's ashamed, closet racists. Gay and transgender people, despite a strenuous ongoing conservative campaign to exclude them from social equality, are and will attain it. The numbers are on their side, as are the demographics of the incoming and outgoing generation of leaders and activists. yesterday's liberalism is today's conservatism. History, with sidetracks, moves from fight to left, as the forces of progress overwhelm that of entrenched tradition. In a world of global interconnectedness, teh viral nationalism which has in recent years swept across Europe and the America's is bound to fade from history, as future generations see themselves more as citizens of an global, interconnected culture. A small percentage of the world's population still possesses a disproportionate share of the world's wealth and power, an anachronistic, inefficient arrangement, and this too is destined to be relegated to history's trash heap; the world's poor are increasingly able to organize worldwide movements for progress. Conservatism is tradition, progressivism is change. America and the world are rapidly changing, ever more so, much to our good fortune.

Knowing Me, Knowing You

IT IS REALLY IMPORTANT for me to avoid conversations with evangelical Christian political conservatives, other than about the weather, football, or baseball, none of which they often seem to know much about. I sense they assume, a priori, that I, and everyone else, share their beliefs. Why not let them linger in delusion? They don't need to know me. People resist the truth only because they fear they might perish if they accepted it. (Goethe). And really, I have heard that humans are too puny to change the climate, that the Lord is on his way back so it doesn't matter anyway, that socialism has never worked anywhere and never will, and we certainly don't want it to come here, that Obama is a Muslim...quite often enough. When one of these geniuses, as if reading from a cue card, reminds me that I live in a nice house, and drive a nice car, so why am I trying to tell everyone else to give away their money and live in log cabins to save the planet, I bow up, and comfort myself that my blood pressure medication is at home, ready. OK, I drive a car. I inherited it from my mother, God rest her soul. My house is fifteen hundred square feet, cute only because its new. I had it built on what was formerly the parking lot of a natural gas dealership. I smile when I imagine the confusion on their faces were I to mention that the Christian religion began as a political uprising which failed, and turned moral and spiritual. Or that cults of human sacrifice and fertility flourished across the near east during the century before a compelling rabbi attracted a larger than normal following. That the chosen people may have invented monotheism, or they may have borrowed it from earlier folks in Persia, but letting the blood of valuable livestock and virgins is clearly a precursor to political crucifixion, which was a Roman method, borrowed from the Carthaginians, who were colonists from Phoenicia. I would invite Christian fundamentalists to read Bart Ehrman (Jesus Interrupted), or to listen to anyone in the Harvard school of divinity. Certainly, don't take my word for it. Socialism, it turns out, was invented by paleolithic people, before animal husbandry and land owning replaced communal living. It came to these disunited states early, and has lingered, if inconveniently. Try finding an evangelical politically conservative christian who favors free market, privately owned, profit seeking highways, bridges, police departments, and senior centers, or suggest that his house of worship be sold to the highest bidder. When it comes to redistribution of wealth, Jesus was downright hard core. He meant business, his business being voluntary poverty. His message was never ending voluntary sharing, utopian socialism. Perhaps in the evangelical conservative capitalist Bible, revised edition, Jesus admonishes all to accumulate personal wealth. The reference to the Christian conservative community as "geniuses" was not merely gratuitous and condescending. To simultaneously embrace American corporate capitalism and the message of Joshua ben Joseph requires a special kind of insight. One definition of a saint is a person who can simultaneously embrace two seemingly contradictory concepts. Free market, neo-liberal capitalism, and sell whatsoever thou hast and give unto the poor. That sort of thing. Render unto Caesar, and the TEA party. Folks like me, (progressive humanists) must be content to live in a world in which socialism, which is sharing required by government, and Jesus, who seems to have encouraged sharing, are compatible, and are good things. For someone to simultaneously embrace competitive, profit seeking capitalism and give unto the poor render unto Caesar Jesus seems to folks like me nothing short of miraculous. That the conservative evangelical Christian community elected Donald J. Trump is an even greater miracle. Wasn't it Jerry Falwell Junior who said that it is not necessary for the president of the United states to be a good person? Really? I didn't know that either. I always believed it was essential that the president be a good, honest person. Donald J. Trump is very popular at Liberty University. These politically conservative evangelical Christians are truly amazing, ostensible saints and geniuses, able to find compatibility in concepts which are apparently contradictory. Maybe the reason I avoid conversations with them has nothing to do with their lack of interest in or knowledge of baseball. Maybe, just maybe, I am just downright jealous.

Going Crazy, Being Crazy, Criminally

NOAM CHOMSKY became a professor of linguistics and philosophy at M.I.T. in 1955, the year I was born, and he's still there. He has done for the science of linguistics, the study of human language, what Einstein did for physics; rewritten its rules in theory and practice, revolutionized it. Chomsky is regarded as the leading intellectual in the United States everywhere in the world, except in the United States, where his radical political ideology and activism renders him somewhat of a mainstream outcast, and keeps him out of the mainstream conservative media. (yes, America's mainstream media is conservative, not liberal, as it is corporate owned, and speaks for corporate interests.) Chomsky is somewhat of a cult figure within the progressive and far left communities, so, he gets plenty of attention. he considers himself a "socialist anarchist". No, those two words, which imply big government and not government, are not contradictory, nor mutually exclusive. In face a large body of literature is devoted to this economic political concept, in which all government resides in the hands of local democratically operated committees, and economic equality is mandated. Much of Chomsky's writing, many of his books, explain America's role in the world, and the fact that the United States, ever since it acquired world hegemony after World War Two, has essentially ruled the world and insists on absolute obedience to its wishes, under penalty of military conquest. Among his latest book is, aptly title "Who Rules the World"? Noam Chomsky says that the Republican party is the most dangerous organization in world history, probably because of its ability to control the behavior of the most powerful nation in history, and its tendency to control the U.S. in a manner antithetical to not only the rest of the world, but to almost all of its own citizens. He goes further. he refers to the G.O.P. as the most deadly terrorists organization in the world. Foreign wars of aggression, justified by fake claims of defending freedom and democracy but really in pursuit of foreign resources, mainly oil, instigated by deceit and immoral diplomacy, contribute to this assessment. For decades he has pointed out that the desperate poverty with which much of Latin America is afflicted derives directly from deliberate American foreign policy, based on the false assumption that America knows best, and that making the world safe for American corporate exploitation and economic domination serves not only America's interests, but everyone else's as well. American foreign policy architects, and American corporate policy makers of course know full well that only the wealthy owners of American corporations benefit, or are intended to benefit from U.S. foreign policy. The reality is one thing, the propaganda is another. Every country from which the massive flow if immigrants is currently coming to the southern border has been made poor by American corporate exploitation. The usual scenario is that a small Central American country duly elects a socialist president, who pledges to redistribute land and wealth equally among the poor, the United States objects, then overthrows the socialist government and replaces it with a dictator who favors corporate capitalism and enriches himself by turning over land and other resources to American corporations for their profit, at the expense of the newly impoverished masses, who then head north. Every claim made by Chomsky he footnotes, give full attribution, backs up with facts. Anyone wishing to do so can research what he says, and confirm it. Chomsky currently claims that Donald Trump and his devout followers are criminally insane. he cites the constant, blatant lying, and its acceptance by those who support him. he goes into greater detail about Trump and his supporters, sticking with his charge of criminal insanity and supporting it with facts. it is easy to use the internet to listen to Chomsky's lectures, to read what he writes, and to research the factual basis for his statements. Just as everyone is to some degree physically ill, with small physical ailments of one kind or another almost constantly. In essence, we are all a bit crazy. Its reflected in and manifested by our thoughts and actions. Fifteen percent of the Republican party denies the reality of human made climate change. That's a good start. Anyone who believes that he or she knows more about the earth's atmospheric conditions than people who spend their lives and accumulate advanced degrees studying such matters, and believes that the fact that the hundreds of thousands of such people, trained professional scientists, who all tell us the same thing, are wrong, are, arguably, a tad shy of a full deck, if not criminally insane. Bear in mind that for twenty years the U.S. Department of Defense has warned us that human made climate change is the greatest threat to American national security, based on simple science and by simply looking around at the climate. What, other than a criminally insane traitor to the United States is a person, who denies reality for the mere sake of self esteem and defense of personal political ideology? That seems to be the point Chomsky is making. But again, anyone can see for himself, or herself.

Disappointing

"WHAT A PIECE OF WORK is man, how noble in reason"..begins a wonderful monologue by Hamlet. For an uplifting experience, read its entirety. It will give your admiration of mankind a boost. Hamlet is also the person who asked himself "to be or not to be?". He at once comprehended the miraculous beauty of life, and yet, seriously considered snuffing out his own. "Noble be man, compassionate, and good", said Goethe, who is widely regarded as surpassing even Shakespeare in literary brilliance. It is comforting to know that the two greatest writers in the English language, arguably, were both capable of harboring a positive attitude towards humanity, although both lived through turbulent times. But, don't we all? At other times, in other books, both writers expressed disenchantment with humanity. For me, the tendency is, the older I get, the more the contempt in which I hold the human species, excepting, of course, myself. I adore myself. When I was twenty, in 1975, I recall telling one of my friends that I liked somebody, and he responded "hell, you like everybody". Back then, in fact, I did. That seems like a long time ago. Then again, it doesn't. Now I tell myself repeatedly that I don't like anybody, that I prefer cats and dogs to humans, and that I have only contempt for humanity. I think I mean all of it. Simultaneously, I feel that I truly appreciate the wondrous beauty of the human species, the pricelessness of people, and the awe inspiring beauty and complexity of all life, and nature. I conclude that I love my fellow humans, but that I love them far more if I keep some distance between them and me. A college student wrote a letter to Einstein, telling the famous scientist that life was a disappointment, and that he often wondered why he even bothered to live. Einstein, a modern American celebrity, hated his celebrity status but answered many of the hundreds of letters he received. He replied to the young man that he personally found his life to be immensely interesting and very much worthwhile, and believed that everyone, with a little introspection, could find value and meaning. The most famous picture of Einstein has him sitting behind a desk in his study, wearing a grey sweat shirt, with a pen clipped onto it, and looking up at the camera with his head angled downward, a somber expression on his aged face. He had just answered an interviewers question by saying that as long as there are people, there will be war. In 1975, a friend told me that within fifty years, only a handful of Beatles songs would be remembered. Time is running out. He was wrong. My prediction was that someday everyone would have a flat screen on every wall in the house, which would serve as a television, a computer, and a picture telephone. I don't recall whether I had my computer spitting out cardboard cards. I night have, I hope not. My prediction of forty four years ago wasn't half bad, excepting that I never imagined portable pocket telephone computers. Neither did anybody else, with the exception of the guy who watched Star Trek, got jealous of Spock to Kirk, and invented the cell phone. I think his name was Smith, and he died a few years ago. Most of my childhood fantasies about the future were extremely optimistic. In the nineteen sixties, and on into the nineteen seventies, I believed that I would live long enough to visit a lunar base, and a Martian base. Now, it seems as if nobody will live to visit either. Back then, we were in love with space travel. I also figured that all of humanity's problems would be solved by science. In 1969, in ninth grade, Paul Ehrlich brought me down a bit with his "The Population Bomb", which, fortunately, didn't come true. He's still on campus at Berkeley, and he's glad about the agricultural revolution which made a liar out of him. The lesson is; human beings are very poor at predicting the future. The United States is the nineteenth happiest country in the world, and slipping. I saw a post thanking Trump for that, but it isn't his fault. Its ours. America is an angry, disappointed culture. The young are disenchanted with the world they are inheriting, old folks like me still want to visit Mars and live in a world devoid of disease, hunger, and especially warfare, as we expected to someday do when we were children. This truth is eternal: the choice is ours as to whether we find life disappointing.

Reading the Bible, Literally

THE NEW COOK at the senior where I volunteer is a pleasant young lady, and I am glad they fired the three truculent employees, and replaced one of them with her. when they replace the other two, I can go home less exhausted. The new lady is thirty six, a millennial, half of whom do not identify with any religion. She does. She didn't show much interest in my background, but for some reason I want people to know that I work in the kitchen because I want to, not because I have to. As retired college instructor, I've made my money. Without conversation a kitchen van become dreary drudgery, so I told her the story about the time I lost my high school teaching job because I told a class that Thomas Jefferson was, in effect, an atheist. I love that story. The principle called me in, asked why i was telling teenagers in a small southern town such a thing, and I invited him to take a wild guess. For Jefferson, as for many men of science, the term "god" is interchangeable with the terms "nature", and hence, from the Biblical Christian perspective, he was an atheist, a non believer. I asked the new help if she was disappointed. I don't recall what she said, but she made one fact perfectly clear: people who do not accept Jesus as their lord and savior in this lifetime, people who do not accept the truth of the Biblical doctrine of god's judgment, when such people die, then, they most certainly will. I remarked off hand that I feel the same way, that I can hardly wait for the time to arrive when everyone accepts my religiosity as universal truth, and drops the primitive religions crap. I mentioned that in 1797 congress passes, unanimously, a law prohibiting the United States from being a "Christian" nation, the law intended to support the first amendment. I mentioned that the Bible says that the world is flat, and she told me I might have to show her that in the good book. I don't think I'll bother. I can read her Isiah twelve all day long, about "the four corners of the earth", and she would point out that the term "flat earth" does not appear. No, it doesn't, but only a flat , non circular surface has "corners", and, if the Bible is the literal word of God, then, corners means corners. The quite devout do not believe in evolution, in they do not believe in God's word as the literal truth when it reveals god to be a liar, or ignorant of planetary geometry and geography. they believe that if humans descended from monkeys, there would be no monkeys on earth now. they think themselves clever for this formulation. I must refrain from telling her that neither Darwin, nor any evolutionary biologist since ever said than humans evolved from monkeys. they said, and still say, that humans and monkeys evolved from a common ancestor, an animal which in fact no longer exists, which, in a limited sort of way, justifies their belief that monkeys do not or should not exist in an evolutionary paradigm. The Christian resisted accepting the sun as the body around which the earth revolves, and now it resists evolution an climate change, just as it has always tried to deny scientific fact. But four corners are four corners, and that can only happen on a flat square four sided surface, which, by the way, according to the bible rests upon four pillars. As for the stars themselves, they are either pin pricks in the dome of heaven through which God takes peaks at us from heaven, or shiny trinkets hanging from the dome which will, when the Lord returns, fall from the sky and smash to pieced upon the ground like glass ornaments, depending on which book, chapter and verse you happen to quote.

Trusting the System

SOMETIMES, DESPITE ALL ODDS, despite all politically motivated attempts to the contrary, the American judicial system actually works, actually works to render equal justice under law. America's politically conservative political community, most notably the elected legislators thereof, has for decades been bound and determined to pack the nation's judicial system with extreme right wing judges, as if doing so has anything to do with dispensing justice, with achieving a truly just system of justice. There has been no such effort from the progressive community, which has demonstrated a willingness and even a preference for appointing politically neutral or moderate magistrates. Why conservatives consider it so important to have a system of justice which reflects politically conservative values rather than one which dispassionately executes its responsibilities with logic, reason, and fairness is debatable; it would seem, in any event, that ideology is more important to conservatives than objectivity. But there seems little reason for concern. When the chips are down, when justice is on the line, often conservative leaning judges disappoint their conservative appointers by handing down decisions contrary to conservative values. Two decisions of the current Supreme Court come to mind. The high court, with conservative justice John Roberts as chief justice, upheld Obamacare, and then, in an even more disappointing decision for social conservatives, legalized gay marriage. In both cases, the court placed constitutional considerations above their personal values. It is highly likely that the conservative judges who voted to legalize gay marriage do not personally approve of it for religious reasons, and yet saw the importance of interpreting the constitution fairly, in a manner which seems consistent with its wording. When Donald Trump issued an executive order restoring off shore drilling, a federal stepped in, and declared his action illegal, despite the wishes of most hard core capitalistic conservatives. Similarly, Trump's prohibition against Muslims entering the country has been severely limited by federal court action. this has not met with the approval of the conservative community, which tends to be suspicious of all Muslims, as possibly harboring terrorists. In Wisconsin, when a Democrat was elected to the governorship, replacing a Republican, the Republican majority state legislature promptly passed laws severely limiting the new governor's authority, in what appeared to be a purely partisan effort to cripple the new governor's powers before he even took office. The federal court system stepped in, and blocked the dubious move. And within the past few days, the ninth circuit federal court, notorious for its liberal minded judges, stopped Trump's plan to keep refugees from crossing into the United states. We must have faith in our judicial system, because we must have faith that our system of laws is adequate to maintain a well ordered, stable society. The more we politicize the judiciary by seeking to place on the bench judges of one political persuasion or another, no matter what the particulars, the more we are disregarding the prime purpose of any system of justice, and poisoning it with political prejudice. Whenever a court noted for its conservative justices make a ruling contrary to ostensible conservativism, or a court known for its progressive minded judges makes a decision contrary to liberal values, it is cause for a renewal of confidence, confidence in our ability as reasoning human beings to rise above our personal prejudices, and to elevate ourselves to the level of true fairness and reason, because, as a wise man once said, law is an ornate platform elevating the human species above the rest of the animal kingdom.

Hiding An Empire; America's Unawareness Of Itself

THE UNITED STATES is neither a democracy, nor a republic, but rather, a plutocratic empire, owned and operated by and for the wealthy corporate elite. Just so you know. It was intended by its founders to be a plutocratic republic, a system in which the people in general were largely excluded from power, and would be governed by their superiors, the wealthy elite. That plan ganged agley as early as 1763, before it was ever implemented, when people like Daniel Boone began defying the Ordinance of 1763 and headed west, beyond the Appalachians and British control. I recall several years ago when the conservative members of an online class of '73 discussion group, in the midst of a discussion on America's role in the modern world, insisted that the United States is not an empire, never has been, nor ever shall be. Lacking the fortitude to engage in an explanation of westward expansion, overseas expansion, Hawaii, Alaska, Samoa, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and any possible argument over whether eight hundred and some odd American military bases scattered all over the world constitutes an "empire", I left the group, and struck out on my own, a sort of online version of Daniel Boone. There are two traditional explanations for America's unplanned but now seemingly inevitable expansion across North America to the pacific, and beyond. The more traditional is Frederick Jackson Turner's "frontier thesis", according to which geographical expansion is inherent in the American opportunistic character. The other, an amended version, holds that westward expansion has been the safety value by which open warfare between America's two classes, the rich, and the poor, has been postponed, to date. The Spanish American War is the accepted date of the commencement of the true U.S. empire, when overseas possessions were stolen after a trumped up war versus Spain. For a few short years maps depicted the United States as the continent from Atlantic to the Pacific, and included little boxes on the lower right hand side of the page, in which were located its newly stolen oversees possessions, including the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and the rest. Then, the maps stopped including the imperial possessions in boxes, and went back to depicting only the mainland, plus Alaska and Hawaii, and have largely remained so, ever since. For a few short years, during the McKinley and Roosevelt administration, Americans were proud to be an empire, and then, the thrill faded, faded into eventual denial. Why? Why did we become ashamed of our empire? Was it the dubious manner in which it was obtained? Partly. Was it the fact that we haven't treated it very well? Consider Puerto Rico, today, in real time. The island was hit by a devastating hurricane, and human infrastructure was mostly wiped off the map. Aid to Puerto Rico has been like pulling teeth; difficult to send, difficult to apply. The president has often talked about the island as if it were not part of the United States, as if he is totally unaware that its people are American citizens, as if they are foreigners. When he visited there several months ago, he stayed for a few minutes, saw very little, and underestimated the death toll by a factor of a few thousand. He, and we have resisted sending the massive assistance required to the extent that Puerto Ricans spent months without electricity and shelter. "How To Hide An empire" by Daniel Immerwahr, is perhaps the best history yet written of the evolution from American republic to American empire, and the curious manner in which the American people celebrated the glory of their newly acquired and declared imperial majesty for a few short years very early in the last century, then basically forgot all about it. Racism plays a part. Most of America's overseas subjects were non white non Christian, and after killing millions of Philippinos trying to force cultural conformity to American values, the islands were set free in 1946. Most Americans do not realize that people in Puerto Rico are in fact citizens of the United States. We are ashamed of our empire, and thus we hide it from ourselves. We do this to the point that if you mention the term "American empire" to a group of conservatives, they are likely to look at you as if you are crazy, when in fact, they are.

Plumbing The Secrets of Trump's Hugely Complicated Tax Returns

MUCH ADO is once again being made about Donald Trump's tax returns, because it has been a tradition since the nineteen seventies that all presidential candidates release them to the public, and the Democrats, now in control of one half of Congress, are determined to uphold tradition. The tradition began when the full extent of Richard Nixon's white collar treachery was revealed to the public, and ensuing seekers of the Executive Office decided to become a bit more forthcoming, as a precaution against the then gathering public mistrust of politicians and their promises, which remains with us today. Wherever the Republicans hold sway, there is no such interest in transparent tradition. Trump's fellow grand old partiers are evidently quite content to take the president's famously reliable word for it, that there is nothing of interest to be seen in his taxes, that they are currently under audit and therefore unavailable, and that they are so terribly complicated due to his enormous wealth and far flung investments and extensive charitable donations that nobody in the world except himself and a few select windmill cancer research scientists have the necessary intellectual skills to comprehend them, even if they were laid open for scrutiny for all the world. The unwashed masses, it would seem, lack the ability to even remotely comprehend the taxes of Donald Trump. Consider yourself a member of this benighted super majority. Precisely how the president's taxes can at once be so enormously complicated yet hold nothing unusual nor of interest has not been explained. What is certain, however, is that there is nothing about being under audit, in the law or anywhere else, which prevents someone's, anyone's personal taxes from being disclosed to whomever the taxee so designates. In 2014, a similarly taxalogically reticent Trump insisted that in the highly unlikely event that he were ever to run for president, his tax returns would be immediately forthcoming. Then, when he decided to actually make a go of it, he promised that shortly after his election, he would come forth with the concealed document. Then, when he indeed was elected, he postponed the grand disclosure until after the inauguration. Do we detect a pattern here? Well, of course, all the promised disclosure due dates came and went, with no tax returns. now we have arrived where we now stand; the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives is demanding to see the damned thing, and will soon vote to do exactly that, and the president has hired a formidable team of tax attorneys to resist the assault, much like the folks at the Alamo sent out urgent requests for assistance shortly before the Mexican army launched its final assault. The difference is that that tax lawyers willing to take Donald Trump's money are far more available than either willing, ready, and able Alamo defenders, and far more reliable than nineteenth century Mexican military conscripts. In 1924, in the wake of the infamous "Teapot" Dome' scandal, in which members of President Warren G. Harding's cabinet were taking bribes for favors in connection with oil drilling rights out west, Congress passed a law which clearly stipulated than Congress may, at any time, issue a subpoena requiring any American citizen's tax returns to be divulged for Congressional scrutiny. The law includes a provision requiring Congress to have a clear and present and specific reason for the subpoena, which is the part that Trump's lawyers, demonstrably highly competently bull doggish, are going to use in their defense against disclosure. We may never know why this president is so determined that his income tax returns shall never see the light of day, because the litigation over their erstwhile disclosure may continue until not only Trump and the rest of us are long dead, it may continue until all life on Earth is made extinct as a consequence of climate change, the greatest threat to American national security according to the Department of Defense, and which Donald Trump has never even made any false pretensions to fight. Maybe Trump is far less wealthy than he has always bragged about being, or maybe his returns would shed light on a few nefarious financial dealings upon which Trump would much rather shed none. And since Donald Trump never does what he says he is going to do, we can be well assured than when he doesn't even claim that he will do something, like delay the destruction of the environment, it will never, ever get done.

Feeling The Wonders Of God's Word

THE FACEBOOK POST was from a friend of mine and his wife, a high school classmate who became a diabetes doctor. Nice post. It has a depiction of a pair of hands, feminine, holding an opened book, which appears to be a Bible, judging from the tightly organized words into the all familiar small square parcel packages lined neatly up and down the page in two columns. The caption said: "May the wonders of The Word of God fill your heart today". You can see why I assume the depicted book was a Bible. Being an inveterate smart ass and trouble maker of the pseudo intellectual kind, I had to chime in. I commented: The wonders of the one hundred and thirty seventh psalm". And then, a few minutes later, filled with blood lust, I came back for a second strike, much like the Zeros at Pearl harbor. "The wonders of Mathew chapter fifteen verse four" I typed. Yes, I will return yet again to the scene of the crime, like any amateurish common petty criminal, but not to do more harm. God willing, the creek don't rise, and if I can control my evil impulses, I will not strike again. Haven't I already done enough damage to someone else's good intentions? I will return to see how they are cleaning up the mess I made, how they are responding, if at all. They are a lively pair; I can expect retaliation. They are a smart pair of wise and mature well educated people, I might expect to be ignored, which would serve me right. But if they choose to retaliate, and to show anger in so doing, it may start a war, because I actually had, and have, a point to make. For anyone wanting to know what that point is, simply consult the scriptural passages I cited. The Psalm, if memory serves, says something about smashing a baby's brains out against a boulder. The verse in Mathew has Jesus admonishing that whoever curses the father and the mother must be given the death. The Psalm is recited after one of the many destructions and diasporas of God's chosen people, and their lamenting and anger and despair resulting therefrom, and their desire for revenge against the enemy's infants. Righteous retribution against the most innocent. In the Mathew verse, Jesus is merely reiterating what we are told in Leviticus I believe it is; that children must honer and obey their parents, under penalty of death. My point is best made by Mark Twain, the noted author, stand up comic, and atheist, who said: "The Bible contains come noble poetry, clever fables, a great amount of obscenity, and no fewer than one thousand outright lies." Or something like that. A few facts about the Bible. For one, mark Twain was right. So was Thomas Paine, the founding father of America who wrote "Common Sense", which motivated the colonists to start the revolutionary was, and then later wrote "The Age of Reason", a withering attack on the Bible in particular and the Christian religion in general. Paine said that the Bible contains so much obscenity, violence, and obscenity that for him it was much more the word of a demon than of a benevolent deity. Both of Paine's famous pamphlets are must reads for students of history. Paine went from being a hero of American independence to being an outcast whose funeral was attended by no more than six people, owing to his atheism. In America, atheists have historically been treated like outcasts, much like gays, lesbians, transgenders, blacks, and several other non white non male non Christian types we needn't mention here. Another Biblical fact: if God truly intended His Word to be contained in a book, any book, God is an idiot, because there is no worse method known to man and woman. We the children of God do it that way because we don't know any better. God has far better means; just take a look around you, at the universe. The Bible has been translated, edited, plagiarized, added on to, and otherwise altered so many times that it bears little resemblance to its original version, and in fact every century has its own version, ever since its compilation, by people, at the council of Nicea in 325 A.D.. Like Goethe said: "Behold the phenomena, for they are the doctrine". Another Biblical fact; the bible is among the most violent books ever written, and Thomas Paine was right about that. The bible is, and should be treated as nothing other than a valuable compilation of ancient literature and history,the most important book ever written, nothing more, and nothing less. but as for the "Word of God", I'll take a star filled sky, a sunrise, a sunset, a mountain vista, a new born babe, a litter of kittens, electromagnetism, gravity or a million other magnificent manifestations of nature, any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.

Diagnosing Trump, and Trying To Help

SOCIOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND PSYCHIATRY are all rather new sciences, having been born in modern form only in the nineteenth century, and only now just barely beginning to make some sens of human society and the human mind. we have come far in our understanding, but we have along way to go, and, like Einstein said about the universe: "we don't know one millionth of one percent of anything." Until quite recently it was believed that emotions originated in the heart, and that mental illness was caused by bad morals and demonic possession. now we are taking detailed pictures of the brain, and identifying the function of each part of it. So, we are starting to learn. For obvious reasons, the psychiatric profession, which deals with mental health, has a strict code of conduct for it practitioners; they are treading on unstable ground, even when practicing their craft with extreme caution. with extreme caution. When presidential candidate Barry Goldwater started talking a bit too loosely about the possibility of using atomic weapons against America's enemies in the 1964 presidential campaign, his opponent, Lyndon Johnson, warned the country about Goldwater's gun slinging personality, and the American psychiatric Association issued dire warnings about his personality type and possible mental illness. Aware of potential unintended consequences, such as inadvertently destroying the career of a perfectly healthy, competent person, the psychiatric profession rapidly backtracked, and made it illegal for practicing professional to publicly offer opinions and diagnoses of politicians seeking office. this restriction does not apply to psychology professors and researchers, of whom approximately forty thousand signed a letter shortly after Trump's election warning of his potential mental poor health. now, more than two years into the Trump presidency, the chickens, so to speak, would appear to be coming home to roost. Among mental professionals, there is widespread consensus that the president is not mentally well. This consensus is long standing, but is deepening by the day, as Trump's behavior becomes increasingly erratic and painfully bizarre. Trump has always been paranoid, vengeful against people who fail to do his bidding, dishonest, and narcissistic. When Donald was a young man just starting to branch out on his own in his expansion of his father's real estate empire, Ed Koch, the mayor of new York, commented: "I wouldn't believe a word Donald Trump says if he had his tongue notarized." In the cut throat world do competitive big business, a bit of paranoia, mistrust, and tough minded retaliation can be an advantage; Trump's father, who was born in the Bronx, not Germany,taught this to his ambitious son. Now, however, confronted with the stressful requirements of the presidency, all these neuroses are getting rapidly worse, getting out of control, becoming a toxic, lethal combination of full fledged pathological psychoses. There was a time when Trump's constant lies revealed a pattern. he distorted and destroyed the truth whenever it suited his political agenda. He attacked people who were a very real threat to his personal ambitions. Thus, in his mind, millions of Mexicans were pouring across the border, all intent on rape, pillage, and murder. Hillary Clinton was, in his criminal mind, a criminal, worthy of incarceration. now, there is no rhyme, reason, nor discernible purpose. he seems to actually believe that his father, not his grandfather, was born in Germany. In the past, he claimed to be of Swedish ancestry, to facilitate business transactions with the Jewish community in New York. And then, suddenly, there's the windmill cancer thing. This is the most bizarre manifestation of delusion yet. There was a time when Trump was able to use half way reasonable sounding, if transparent lies to attack sensible, progressive policy proposals. Now, this pathological claim. Everyone is making fun of it, perhaps cruelly. His supporters are, as usual, ignoring it. This brings to mind an even greater threat to American social stability: the bizarre behavior of Trump's millions of supporters, their evident refusal to acknowledge and accept the reality of any of this. Like Trump, they seem intent on stubbornly continuing their refusal to believe in man made climate change, despite the overwhelming proof which basic science has long been providing. Climate change, like Trump's mental illness, is beyond obvious; it is a great white elephant in the room, one of many. Mental health professionals tell us that mental illness can be and often is contagious; it often spreads to and afflicts family members and friends. And that appears to be precisely what it happening among millions of Trump supporters, as they retreat into a state of denial. Renowned scholar and social observer Noam Chomsky calls Trump and his inner circle "criminally insane". Chomsky's flaw is that he fails to tell the entire truth. the entire truth, tragically, is that there are millions of mentally ill Americans, just as there are millions of physically ill Americans. the mentally ill have all congregated conveniently, and made themselves easy to identify; they are the one in the red MAGA caps.

Teachers Teaching People How To Hire People

WHEN I ENTERED THE ROOM in cyberspace, the argument had already started. The retired teacher, a progressive and the wife of one of my high school classmates from 1973, was obviously upset. I read her comment which said: "I don't understand why teachers get to deduct only two hundred and fifty dollars in expenses for school supplies from their income tax each year, while corporate executives get to deduct from their taxes the expense of an entire corporate jet." She was using capital letters, yell typing, a sure sign of anger. Her adversary, another high school classmate of mine, one I never liked, and considered a moron forty six years ago and do to this day, made a smug, dismissive reply: "Businesses hire people. Teachers don't." I just had to jump in. I typed: "Teachers teach people how to hire people." And that was the last of the conversation. Nobody said another word. I never figured out whether my comment was so profound that it rendered all further discussion useless, which I preferred to believe, or whether the other participants suddenly got phone calls, and never came back. In American culture, there is no definitive argument, because there is no one willing to concede an argument, under any circumstances, no matter how strong the evidence presented. We are a nation in which everyone is always correct, and nobody ever stands corrected. I assume that my conservative moronic classmate had no idea what I was talking about, and assumed that I, whom he knows to be a liberal, was insanely ranting liberal lies. Perhaps had I gotten the chance to explain to him that hiring people requires literacy and social skills, both learned in school, and that one can never hope to become a business executive without the direct assistance of teachers, he would have grudgingly understood. More likely, he would have had some inane response, right wing style. Maybe he would have said that without business revenue, public education would be impossible. Hell, who knows? Of course, public education is socialism, and paid for by taxes on capitalistic private property. Was my pro corporate jet classmate trying to say that tax deductions are given for private jets in order to allow businesses to take the money thus saved and invest it in hiring more people? Really? As if that is automatically what they will do with it? How does he know? He doesn't. Similarly, when large corporations get tax reductions, like the big one given to them by Trump and the Republicans last year, supposedly, the reduction from thirty five percent to twenty one percent will enable them to hire more workers. But saving money by paying lower taxes is not why businesses hire more people. The reason why businesses hire more people, the one and only, eternally true reason, is an increase in the amount of business they do, an increase in the demand for the goods or services they provide, necessitating the hiring of more workers to produce and provide said goods or services. That's it. If a business has more customers, the business must of necessity hire more workers to produce what the customers want to buy. Hell, if you own a business, and you save money by suddenly paying lower taxes, you can do whatever you want with the money saved, anything from raising salaries for workers, raising salaries for executives, paying out dividends for shareholders, or reinvesting the money back into the business. Research has been done on this, asking the question; how do business most generally use money saved by tax reductions? The answer, it turns out, is not surprising. Tax savings, overwhelmingly, go towards increased executive salaries and bonuses for the top executives, or go to the major share holders, in the form of dividends. Workers do not get hired, money is not reinvested into the business in the form of equipment purchases, or upgrades to existing systems and buildings, upgrades to physical facilities. And, most unsurprising of all, the money which corporations save from tax reductions almost never goes to increasing worker's salaries, or to charitable donations, animal shelters, anti-poverty programs, or contributions to houses of worship. Whether business hire people has nothing to do with whether they pay for their own corporate jets, and everything to do with demand, supply, and necessity. Maybe my pro private jet friend would have learned that in school, if his teachers had been paid better, or had been able to afford more school supplies.

Ignoring Threats, the MAGA Trump Way

WHEN THE ORIGINAL WORLD TRADE CENTER came a tumblin' down, in what we blithely refer to as "nine eleven", the United States revealed its sudden paranoia by establishing the "Department of Homeland Security", implying that our military was not up to the task. Bin laden and friends were a bit too sneaky for us, and required special bureaucratic attention. Bin Laden had a valid complaint, and we all knew it, but pretended, and still pretend otherwise. When a military superpower sends its military halfway around the world, half a million strong, attacks, invades, conquers, occupies, and destroys an Arab country, more than a few Arabs are going, quite simply, to be angry, just as you or anyone else would be in their place. Condemn Bin Laden's methods, but not his motive. Terrorism, generically, was thus recognized and established as the enemy of America, aside from the fact that much of America's foreign policy can be and often is described in similar terms. It was eventually, with reluctance, conceded that there are more forms of terrorism in heaven and Earth than are dreampt of in our biases, above and beyond the radical Islamic kind. Of particular prominence is the white supremacist sort, invariably waged by devout, right wing fundamentalist Christian extremists. The Oklahoma City Federal Building comes to mind, among many other examples which need no mention here. During the Trump administration, hate crimes in general, and white supremacist terroristic mass murder in particular have proliferated, and, in many if not most cases, the mass murderers have given Donald Trump credit, immediately before acting out, for having inspired them. Unwittingly or otherwise, Donald Trump seems to have become something of a role model and inspiration for those intent on killing as many non white non Christian people as possible, in defense of what the mass murderers, as well as many white conservative Christians, perceive as their religious ethnicity under assault by non Christian people of color. Trump supporters vehemently deny this, not surprisingly. Trump supporters deny much, most of it undeniable. It can be convincingly argued, however, that when a person who is preparing to kill many people cites a particular person as his inspiration for the killings, then proceeds to carry out the killings, that the killer has proven his point, has very convincingly backed up his attribution of inspiration, has proved his credibility, and deserves to be believed. Who are we to doubt that someone who kills twenty to fifty people was inspired by the person he says inspired him? Only Trump himself, the Inspiration-In-Chief, and his supporters. There is more proof. President Donald Trump has officially disbanded, eliminated, the department within the Department of Homeland Security which deals with white supremacist terrorism, almost as if it is unnecessary, almost as if there is no white supremacist terroristic mass murder occurring with alarming frequency. What better way to prove that a government response to white supremacist mass murder is unnecessary, that white supremacist mass killings are not a problem and do not exist, than by eliminating the agency responsible for mounting a government response to resist and eliminate them? With but a single stroke of Trump's pen, white supremacy killers are no longer a problem in America. How convenient for Trump, and his far right white Christian extremist supporters. It is a fact that a very high percentage of all terrorism in the United States over the past few decades has been carried out by white supremacists, and that hardly any terrorism has been carried out by radical Islamic terrorists. To verify this, consult the FBI. They keep close track of such things. Or, for that matter, consult the department of Homeland Security, what's left of it, any division. Climate change does not exist, says Trump, and neither does white supremacist terrorism, notwithstanding the hundreds of dead victims of it scattered across America's homeland, and reaching as far as new Zealand. If you didn't know better, you would almost expect Trump's next move to be the elimination Obamacare, Medicare, and Medicaid by executive order, and his declaring that health problems do not exist, and are nothing but fake news, a left wing conspiracy of the mainstream media, the Democratic party, the deep state, and the Chinese, whose purpose is to destroy the Christian faith, the American way, and to prevent Trump and his MAGA members from making America great, again.