Selling Guns

FOUR YEARS AGO, when after thirty five years of teaching high school, college, and a few other students at various levels of attainment, I realized that enough truly is enough, and that I was more than ready for a permanent break for spending time in small rooms filled with sixteen to twenty two years olds, ready to spend a little time at my local senior center. The senior gig worked out well. I began by volunteering in the all important kitchen, then impressing so many muckity mucks with my work ethic and assiduous devotion to dish washing that they began paying me, a little. I have mixes emotions about the pay part; there is a certain freedom from authority and responsibility that comes with volunteer work. I even managed to strike a reasonable accommodation with the right wing evangelicals, the organization's dominant demographic, which I had never thought possible. Energetic, unsuited for leisurely retirement, i began to consider yet another career: that of senior citizen care giver. That would complete the circle, from one end of the age spectrum to the other. As the months went by, and I remained stuck and ensconced in the kitchen, generally enjoying it, members of the center inevitably began moving into assisted living facilities. It occurred to me that since I am in my early sixties, the youngest member, that if I remained long enough, It would to come to pass that all my friends would move on and die, a whole new generation of seniors of seniors would arrive to take their place, and I, poor I, would have to endure all the emotions inherent in that natural but difficult process. Increasingly, I found myself visiting dear friends in nursing homes, and having ambivalent feelings about it. Nursing homes are a racket. the care given is reasonably good nowadays, after decades of settled lawsuits surrounding the business, but profit margins are up, demand is greater than supply, and as is well known, the expense is prohibitive. My best friends, a couple in their early nineties, had to split up, he going to one home, she to another, he was too healthy to live in hers, she, too frail, according to standards established by the facilities themselves, to live in his. so, they use the phone, being unfamiliar with computers, and he commutes across town for visits. Together their hotel bill comes in at about fifteen grand per month. they have money and insurance, but still. To me this situation seems deplorable and tragic; they seem to be dealing with it rather well, except for her daily expressed desire to "just go back home and forget about it". Again, the assisted living facility industry for senior citizens is a racket, something must be done, and we the American people simple must start taking better care of each other. but, I digress. Now that I have had a good dose of senior health care, I am yet again considering one final career before I fade away (I'll be damned if I move into one of those impersonal warehouses); sales. The world's second oldest and highest paid profession, with the potential for setting my own schedule, and meeting people of all ages, including perhaps some attractive ones of the opposite sex too young for me. I don't need the money as much as I need to stimulation of meeting a challenge. The question is: selling what? I agree with the meme that if you're good you can sell anything, and that you don't sell the product, you sell yourself, so, the product is incidental. suffice to say that it should be something popular, in high demand, amenable to the market. Software, insurance, and tupperware bore me. Then came the "eureka' moment: Handguns! What more popular, sexy, or in demand item could one possibly insert into a hungry populace? Everybody needs one, so they say, and what with the mass murder business booming, when has self defense been in greater demand? Personally, I favor .22, 9mm, and .38 caliber semi-automatics, even though I don't like guns and believe strongly in gun control. Door to door, phone, internet, bring it. The only unresolved involve for whom to work, how and where to score the inventory, and a few legal technicalities. Plus, presumably one would be operating among the conservative Christian community, which is where the money is! Then too, this particular arena of sales might even serve to stimulate the senior center caregiving industry, which for me can always be a fall back option.

Making Miracles, the Teen Aged Way

THERE IS A REPORT that in Ethiopia, three hundred and fifty million trees were planted in one day, setting a world record. Simultaneously, it was announced that a teenager has invented a method for removing micro plastics from water. Whether these two reports are true is immaterial. What matters are two things. One, that humanity needs to plant, and is perfectly capable of planting billions of trees, perhaps trillions, in a very short period of time, and that humanity is perfectly capable of removing the ambient and over abundant plastic pollution from the Earth's air, water, and soil, and indeed from all of our human bodies. These are two key components in our fight to save our environment, and ourselves. It is estimated that at the dawn of human neolithic existence, some several thousand years ago, there were approximately seven trillion trees on Earth, and that now, due exclusively to human activity, the spread of habitat designed for human living alone, there are now roughly half that number on the planet, or about three point five trillion. These numbers were arrived at through high resolution satellite photography, and extrapolations of the likely number of trees thousands of years ago, based on reversing the impact of human encroachment and estimating the probable number of trees on land which has over the millennia been cleared by people. Scientists say that if we could get a trillion saplings into the ground within the near future, we could make significant progress in substantially reversing climate change. It would not eliminate or reverse global warming, but would be a great start, since one trillion growing tress would sequester billions of tons of atmospheric carbon, of the nearly one trillion tons now floating in the air, due to human industrial activity. I'm living proof of this. Exactly fourteen years ago I bought a half acre of land, and built a new house on it. On my lot there were no trees, and nothing but crabgrass and rocks. I nearly gave up as hopeless the idea of ever landscaping my virgin yard, so barren it was. Instead, I planed twenty five trees, all saplings less than six feet tall. Now, fourteen years later, my yard is a beautiful shady oasis of tree lined bucolicity (I like to invent words, so shoot me) with towering majestic hardwood deciduous forty foot beauties all around, greatly reducing my air conditioning bill. Each fall I have an abundance of fallen leaves. I don't care. I just let them blow into my neighbor's yards. If I can do it, we all can do it. With regard to plastic pollution, we are by now all too well aware of this horrible problem, with billions of tons of plastic floating in the oceans, littered all across the fruited plain, and micro plastic gathering together in the sexy bodies of each and every one of us. No matter who you are, you have micro plastic embedded in your body, ubiquitously, due to, you guessed it, our all too human industrial and consumer lifestyle. To confirm all this, consult a scientist, your local high school biology teacher, or any intelligent teenager. But despair not. Even now, "we" are beginning to clean up the world's oceans, partly by using a rather bizarre but crudely efficient gizmo invented by, you guessed it, a Dutch teenager. It appears we oldsters must swallow our pride and permit today's teenagers to save ourselves from ourselves. But so be it. After all, they will have to either live with the mess we made, or clean it up. We the senior generation sure as hell aint gonna do it, that much is obvious. The good news is, it can and perhaps will be done, by today's teenagers.

Creating An Imaginary God, Evangelically

DEMOCRATS have created an imaginary God, recently asserted some sanctimonious spewer of ministerial mythology. It was either Franklin Graham or Jerry Falwell Jr., the usual suspects, who are interchangeable. They should both know about imaginary Gods; they create and market an imaginary deity every moment of every day, straight from the most important work of fiction in western lit, the Bible itself. Further, they profit greatly from their imaginative endeavor, dissembling and distorting the message of a purveyor of humility and voluntary poverty whose ministry forms the central theme of the revised covenant. You might think that anyone adequately audacious to label anyone else's perceived God "imaginary" would have some rudimentary concept of nature, and of the sublime, infinitely superior force unarguably responsible for its existence. It is, however, quite evident that neither of the two hustlers of their personal version of the supreme force has anything resembling an actual awareness and veneration of nature. Their religiosity is rigid, perverse dogma, contained in the pages of an ancient collection of manuscripts, written by people ignorant of the subtle workings of the universe, immersed instead in primitive barbarity and cruelty. In American culture, so joined at the hip are extreme political conservatism and extreme Christian dogma that anyone remotely seen as socialist is seen as erecting an alter to a dangerous God who demands that wealth be distributed among the poor rather than hoarded among the wealthy, and that human equality be absolute, universally distributed, rather than the exclusive domain of white male heterosexual believers of the absolute infallibility of Biblical barbarity. The God of Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell Jr., and the conservative evangelical Republican Trump supporting community demands human and animal blood sacrifices, consigns to eternal damnation in hell anyone who refuses to accept salvation through torture, and venerates folks like Moses and Paul, the former of whom leads his chosen people in bloody wars of conquest, the latter of whom mercilessly persecutes those of other faiths. The Graham-Falwell-evangelical-Trump God puts to death gay people, children who curse their parents, and anyone who dares to do a lick of work on the sabbath. Meanwhile the God of the Democratic party lobbies and legislates for paid overtime, gay rights, greater economic equality, religious and cultural diversity and tolerance, and all manner of non scriptural revisionism, including popular sovereignty. The right wing christian righteous harbor the delusion that the United States was founded on "Christian " ideals, and must return to them, post haste, or face wrathful judgment. That the truth is quite the opposite is our good fortune. The christian faith is not a democracy, but a harsh dictatorship, and in America, dissent may get you slandered by the righteous right, but there is nothing in the constitution about hell, or for that matter, any God of any sort, who is not mentioned. When asked why not, one of America's more enlightened if flippant founders is said to have said: "we forgot". We are even more fortunate for two things: that the United States is much less governed by the Falwellian God than the Democratic party version, and that the founders had the good sense and basic human decency to make it that way. At the end of the day, as we like to say, all Gods are imaginary, our personal ones, and those long established in human culture. Whatever, however created the universe, what Einstein called "the infinitely superior spirit", is still,and likely always will be, completely behind our feeble powers of comprehension. As Goethe said: "when I realized that everyone invents his own religion, I decided to invent mine."

Remaining Calm

SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM, an apparent proponent of personal political expediency, once upon a time proclaimed that Donald Trump is a "race baiting bigot", or something to that effect. That was way back in the day, 2016 to be approximate, when Graham himself harbored notions of seeking and securing the Rethuglican nomination to run for president. Now, of course, he's onboard the great reprobate train, even as Trump repeatedly proves the truth of his earlier, astute assessment. Much is determined when one abides assiduously by bellwethers. Lack of core value integrity notwithstanding, Graham, like the proverbial squirrel seeking acorns, occasionally hits the mark, when the mark is bigger than the side of a barn. In reference to Social Security, among other pension programs, he recently asserted: "we are making promises we cannot keep". That, I thought, should be transparently obvious to all. The fund is predicted to expire for lack of funds..when.. twenty thirty one? The death date keeps inching closer, owing to both updated estimates of its inevitable expiration date, and the inevitable passage of time, like two freight trains, speeding in opposite directions on a single track. All I typed in was something like: "That's a damned shame", or maybe "the old blind squirrel found an acorn", I don't remember which. Seemingly meaninglessly innocuous, whatever. Up from the bowels of the Earth emerged the righteously indignant. In all capital letters, to boot, a sure sign of righteously indignant outrage. Only, it was the same old, tired, disappointing saw. SOCIAL SECURITY IS NOT AN ENTITLEMENT!!! ( I forget the precise number of exclamation points. I am confident it was more than one, no fewer than three). WE PAID INTO THAT PROGRAM!!! (again, at least one, no less than three). The rest of the message becomes cloudy through redundancy, but went something like; THAT MONEY IS OURS, WE EARNED IT, WE DESERVE IT, AND WE INTEND TO GET IT!!!! WHAT, EXACTLY, IS YOUR POINT??? (three question marks, I clearly remember). And then, mercifully: "YOUR TURN". Those two words, and the absence of any excessive punctuation behind them, encouraged me. The message might have even been more intelligent than that, might have even included a fact or two which hasn't already been stated a trillion times, but..well...it just doesn't matter. I began my reply by saying "No need to argue among friends..lol..calm down. The point is, that when an investment fund, any investment fund, goes bankrupt, loses solvency, and is unable to meet its promises, its obligations, all the sanctimonious truth telling in the world about who paid what to whom, and who owes what to whom, and what is right and wrong, makes, at the end of the day (I don't think I actually used that horrible cliche, at least I hope not) matter not. When money is gone, its gone, and all the truth telling in the world will not recover it". I could have said more, about the futility of hysterical righteous indignation in the face of financial reality, but didn't. Looming Social Security insolvency, like all other problems created by human folly, including climate change, economic collapse, and the designated hitter, is amenable to simple solutions, readily available. But no matter how many words we type in all caps, no matter how many exclamation points and question marks we spew across our computer screens, no matter how hysterical we become, no matter how vehemently and vociferously and doggedly we argue amongst ourselves, those simple, easily accessible solutions remain, unemployed, gathering dust on the top shelf, until we the problem makers calm down, stop screaming at each other, and put them to work. And we can do it with smiles on our faces, in all lower case letters, with nary a punctuation mark in sight.

Purchasing Our Destruction

A FEW SCIENTISTS became aware of the potential for climate change precipitated by human industrial activity nearly two hundred ago, merely by watching black smoke being belched into the skies over European cities by coal burning. They knew that the smoke contained carbon, and that carbon absorbs and retains heat more readily than nitrogen and oxygen. They understood basic chemistry. In the nineteen forties Albert Einstein thought that deliberately adding CO2 to the air, warming the planet a bit, increasing agricultural production, and feeding the masses of starving people around the word in the aftermath of World War Two was a capital idea. Sometimes, even Einstein was wrong. There was a consensus among scientists by the nineteen seventies that climate change was real, notwithstanding an occasional article in an occasional magazine proclaiming the advent of a new ice age. Conservative often cite such rogue writing as proof positive that scientists have no idea what they are talking about, and that the debate over climate change is ongoing, vigorous and unresolved as ever. All this, of course, is nonsense. I first became of climate change in the nineteen eighties, when it was usually called "global warming", which it still often is, because that's what it is. Global warming is what is taking place in the Earth's atmosphere as the average global temperatures rise month after month, year after year. Climate change is the result of this warming. As incredibly stupid as it is at his late date to deny the reality of climate change, as stupid as it is to deny evolution by natural selection or the relationship between steroids and home runs, millions of people, mostly American conservatives, for a very real, if not good reason. People deny evolution and climate change for the same reason, because they are the same people: a refusal to allow facts and science to improve their primitive but deeply held and emotionally comforting religious and political beliefs. when new information impinges upon our most cherished values, we reject the information, and cling tenaciously to our outdated beliefs. Such is human nature. I have long believed this to be the only reason for denial of science, denial of reality. But it turns out there is more to it than that: money, the usual suspect. Climate change denial is a one billion dollar industry in the United States. To a certain extent, rejection of basic science is bought and paid for. The phenomenon, as one would suspects, takes place entirely within the conservative community. The money is filtered through several dozen prominent conservative "think" tanks, and is dispersed to people who are paid to spread propaganda, through books, website, and television programming, All this funding comes from the usual suspects, conservative billionaires and corporations aligned with or directly involved in the fossil fuel industry. Shoe me a scientist who denies climate change and who spew out an abundance of pseudo science to prove this false narrative, and I'll show you a paid corporate puppet, or a religious fanatic propagandist with extreme right wing political opinions trying to persuade the congregation that Christ is coming soon, the end is near, and that your contribution to the cause is not only crucial, but tax deductible. Climate change denying shepherds of mega church flocks tend, not coincidentally, to skirt about on private jets, and to drive two hundred thousand dollar Lamborghinis. that, of course, is their concern. the rest of us, those among us sufficiently sane and educated to accept reality, are concerned with the survival of future generations of plants and animals, and we tend to experience considerably disquiet when we reflect that our futures, and the future of life on Earth,might rest uneasily in the hands of pernicious people whose excessive addiction to personal wealth inspires them to pay large sums in an attempt to purchase and ensure our destruction.

Trump, Spewing Hatred, As Usual

LET'S SEE NOW....what was it this time.....oh yes...something to the effect: "the city of Baltimore, and Elija Cummings' congressional district is infested by rats and rodents (as if rats weren't rodents), it is a filthy shit hole, and no decent human being would want to live there. If Cummings were a decent person, he would spend more time in his home district, cleaning up the filth, instead of having the extreme temerity to dare criticize me, the great Donald Trump, or to imply that I, the great one, am anything less than perfection personified..."..Those were not Trump's exact twitter tweet words, but that is indeed the essence of it, the latest in a lengthening serious of vicious, slanderous, dishonest insults emanating from the great reprobate, our justifiably maligned president. Like all cowardly bullies, and all Trump supporters, Trump does his best slandering from a distance. This, of course, is nothing new. Racism is what drives Trump, and has been his driving force his entire life. From the backseat of his limousines, Trump has for decades engaged in two of his favorite pursuits, molesting women, or spewing racism and hatred. The sexual molestations we know about because he bragged about being a sexual predator, in the now famous Access Hollywood recording, which was released one month before his election, and yet did nothing to deter his supporters from voting for him, but actually seems to have encouraged their support, revealing not only their complete moral bankruptcy, but their cowardice. In essence, if you voted for Trump, you made a grave mistake, and exposed your moral weakness. If you continue to support him now, you are indisputably of low moral character, a reprobate. The racism we know about because dozens of people who have known Trump for decades assure us that Trump's racism is no illusion, nor a recent development; Donald J. Trump is a hard core, lifelong bigot. Twice in the nineteen seventies he and his father, another reprobate, were busted by the feds for housing discrimination against, you guessed it, African-Americans. The Trumps took a plea deal, and did not contest the allegations. You'll recall that during the entire Obama presidency, Trump and other racists tried to persuade us that Obama had been born in Kenya, even when his Hawaiian birth was verified by witnesses and a valid birth certificate. Later, trump quietly admitted the truth. Then came his presidency, the "shit hole country" comment, and all the rest. The list is long, too long to deny. And yet, his supporters, millions of them, deny that he is a racist, using the usual lame arguments, which they get away with because racists today, out of fear and shame, tend to couch their racism in indirect language which can be ascribed to other motives. That Shit holes countries are shit hole countries has nothing to do with skin color, such lame, deceitful arguments go. Not all Trump supporters and Republicans and conservatives are racists, but all racists are conservative Republican Trump supporters. You won't find a single liberal among them. For two weeks after Trump declared his candidacy I supported him. Then, I figured it out. I am ashamed to admit that I was a Trump supporter for two weeks. I am ashamed that many of my friends, now former friends, still support Trump. And above all, I am deeply ashamed that anybody in America supports him, I am deeply ashamed of my country for electing him and for still giving him any support at all, and I am embarrassed to know that around the world, Trump is the object of contempt and ridicule, and that, worst of all, he has relegated our beloved country to the same status.

Turning Serious

IT BEGAN INNOCUOUSLY ENOUGH, as conversations at the senior center usually do. I was at my usual station, washing dishes, as I do daily in my capacity as a retired teacher volunteer. I do a little cooking too; I fry catfish, tater tots, and chicken tenders to die for. I often sing softly, sometimes not so softly to myself as I work, enjoying my service to the elderly after giving thirty five years of it to the young. The weekly gospel sing had just concluded, and I, in the spirit, was crooning "I'll Fly Away", one of my favorites, but crooning perhaps a bit too loudly. I have been told so often that I have a good singing voice that I believe it, having been told by people who should and do know. My musical vanity has grown so great that I confess; I love to sing for other people, love to be heard, love the predictable compliments. So, it happened, yet again. A lady heard my booming voice over the dishwasher, approached me, and through the window, said: "you really have a great voice. You should sing in the gospel group". Flattered, but unflinching, I replied: "When they're singing I'm supposed to be working. At least, that's what I'm here for." At that point, I should have quit talking, but didn't. Besides, i said, I really don't like gospel music, except for a few tunes. Its too sycophantic for me, too worshipful, adoring, idolizing. I'm not at all religious, but the God I believe in does not require or even notice when people praise him. I prefer to admire God's work, but not to worship God. Like I said, I should have quit talking after mentioning my busy schedule working in the kitchen. I don't think she knew what the word "sycophantic" means, but she understood the rest, and, as we like to say, it was on. She seemed, as they all do, utterly shocked that she was talking to a non Christian. She told me that her husband had once been a non believer, but had converted, accepted Christ, and that doing so had completely changed his life. I smiled, approvingly. She inquired as to whether she and I might get together and talk sometime. I stopped smiling. I told her that if we did that, she would probably try to change my religious beliefs, I would probably respond by trying to change hers, or by explaining why I didn't share them, and that the exchange might lead to verbal conflict. She asked me whether I was happy, not believing in God, and all. I replied that I am indeed happy, joyously so, and always have been, save for a few bumps in the road, despite my non christian religiosity. She seeme utterly perplexed. Calmly as I could, I reminded her that I in fact do believe in God, just not her God, not the Christian God, not the Biblical God. I believe, I went on, in the same God as Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein. I think I even threw at her the terms "pantheist" and "deist". I'm pretty sure that she didn't know those terms either, had no idea what I was talking doubt, but that it wasn't christian, and therefore pagan, heathen, bad. Sensing her despair, I hinted that I really ought to get back to my dish washing, and she relented, unhappy. It could have been much worse. I could have expressed anger at her for daring to question my religiosity, daring to be presumptuous and arrogant enough to think that not only did my beliefs need improving, but that she could improve them. I could have said that I am as intelligent and well educated as she, that most non Christians are, and that people who think it their sacred duty to influence the religious views of others are insufferably arrogant, and insulting. But I've learned not to do that. She, on the other hand, could have condemned me to eternal damnation in hell, but maybe, just maybe, she has learned something too. If nothing else, she has learned that if she wants to get a great deal on a free lunch at the senior center, she is much better off getting it on a clean plate.

Getting The Info Out -Somehow

THE INFORMATION IS RIGHT THERE, in plain sight, in black and white, for anybody to see. The problem is, its spelled out in words and sentences on the pages of not only a hardbound book, but a forbiddingly long one, four hundred and forty eight pages of rather smallish type, which makes it even worse, even more imposing. Arguably, it is the most important book published in the United States in many years, perhaps ever, most important because of its shockingly scandalous, non fiction contents. More important to the health and future welfare of the U.S., perhaps, than even the icon of all books, widely considered to be the most important and influential tome of all time, the Bible itself. There is one big difference; the Mueller report was written by a single person, with technical assistance from others, not by several dozen largely unknown authors, and, of course, the Mueller report is fact, not fiction and mythology. And still, hardly anyone in America has read the Mueller report. Estimates range from less than one tenth of one hundredth of one percent to one tenth of one percent of the American people having read it in its entirety, in a nation in which the average American reads not a single book upon completion of high school. Although there are readers among us, they are scattered widely; we are a culture of visual and audio, disinclined to do the grindingly hard work of making our way through lengthy books. Just as many people swear by the divine origins and absolute sacred truth of the Bible who have never actually read the nearly one million word collection of manuscripts, so many people, mostly Trump supporters, dismiss the Mueller report out of hand, without having taken the time to open its covers. We Americans seem to find it much easier to evaluate the quality and importance of books which we have not bothered to read. Just as thousands of scholars have over the centuries carefully analyzed and reanalyzed every letter of the Bible in every language in which it was written and has ever been published, so future scholars may with equally assiduous detail treat the Mueller report, so important is its contents. Mueller tells, in perfect verified detail, the shocking story of how the United States of America was invaded, conquered, and thoroughly manipulated by a foreign power, obviously an enemy, not a friend. It tells the true story of how, while this was happening, the person who would become president and his associates were perfectly well aware that this was happening, accepted it, welcomed it, and did nothing to stop it. The reason? The foreign power was invading and manipulating the American people on their political behalf, on behalf of the man who became president partly because of the invasion. Most shocking is that Donald Trump clearly and overtly attempted to obstruct the investigation which resulted in the Mueller report. Under our very noses, in front of our very eyes, our nation was invaded, manipulated, and our president chosen for us by a foreign enemy power, with the assistance of the president of the United States. Shocking. And most shocking of all; we the American people don't want to know about it, don't care to know about it, and many if not most of us refuse to believe it, perhaps because it seems so hard to believe, even though its plainly spelled out and proven, right in front of our eyes, between the covers of a book too long to open and read.

Senselessly Arguing the Obvious

FLORIDA has had one hundred nineteen hurricanes since 1850, goes the drone, and the last one was caused by climate change. Those familiar with the climate change debate, which should no longer be a debate, the question having been settled decades ago, have heard tired, lame, idiotic arguments like this. On the superficial surface, to the unthinking, they seem to make sense, although they make none. The common thread of these fatuous contentions is that nature is so all powerful, and humankind, with all its technology and landscaping capabilities, is so very puny and insignificant, that the very notion of human activity changing the climate, even slightly, is sheer nonsense. Again, the argument has a certain appeal, especially to those who embrace religion, and view nature as the work of an omnipotent God, infinitely more powerful than the creatures of his own creation. They claim that those who think otherwise are arrogant. The arrogance actually resides within the climate change denial community; the arrogance of refusing to accept common, simple, long established science. It would be as if opponents of nuclear weaponry refused to believe in nuclear physics, or as if adherents to the Christian Bible refused to accept the reality of human evolution by natural selection, which, of course they do in frustratingly large numbers. No single hurricane is caused by climate change alone. The natural world is far more complex than such simplistic assertions would have us believe. More likely, all 119 Florida hurricanes since 1850 were slightly and over the years increasingly modified, magnified by climate change. People have been pumping carbon into the atmosphere for several hundred years, trapping heat, warming the planet. That is simple, factual, easy to observe and understand, and undeniable. Two jars of air samples, one containing abundantly more carbon than the other; the one with all the carbon will always have a higher temperature; it traps more heat than oxygen and nitrogen alone. The Earth, for millions of years, has undergone innumerable changes, geologically, and climatically, without the slightest contribution from human industry, thus proving no modern human complicity, goes the specious argument. As if the fact of our recent arrival on the planet prohibits our having any impact on it. Stand in a forest. On this land forests, oceans, molten lakes, deserts, grassy prairies, all have come and gone, many times over, over millions of years of naturally changing land forms. And yet, while standing in the forest, you, the puny recent arrival, particularly during a dry August, need only strike a match, and you, a puny person, can destroy thousands of acres of woodland. You and your match stick aren't so puny after all. Against the infinite backdrop of the universe, and even of the natural processes at work on Earth, humans may indeed be insignificant, and may not be here much longer, not having been here long. And yet, somehow, we manage to turn rivers into lakes, deserts into forests, and mountains into hollowed out pits. Our ability to inject billions of tons of carbon into the air, over decades and centuries, and our ability to leave the carbon alone, and to allow it to simply sit there and absorb the heat of sunlight, naturally, warming the atmosphere, is really not so extraordinary and unbelievable after all.

Skirting The Law, Abandoning Morality

TO REITERATE: The Mueller report conclusively, irrefutably proves that during the presidential campaign Trump and his campaign staff were fully aware of the systematic Russian interference on their behalf, accepted it, welcomed it, and did nothing to stop it, such as reporting it to the FBI. Verified meetings, documents, and sworn testimony concerning communication between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives cannot be denied. That constitutes tacit, passive collusion, even if there was no covert, contractual conspiracy. Technically, it may not be collusion, but the distinction is paper thin, too close for comfort, so close that for all intents and purposes there was a conspiracy between Trump and the Russians. If a person embezzles money from a company, and launders it by placing it in your bank account temporarily, the fact that you knew about it and did nothing to prevent it makes you an accessory to the crime. for Trump to deny his wrongdoing is predictable, understandable. All criminals claim innocence. for his supporters to accept and support his laughably false claim is utterly reprehensible, and reveals the total moral bankruptcy of everyone, yes, everyone who voted for, and still support this criminal president. That Trump obstructed systematically and repeatedly attempted to obstruct justice by sabotaging the Mueller investigation is even more apparent, even more proven beyond a doubt. the only reason why he failed in his many attempts is that his subordinates refused to carry out his orders, recognizing Trump's various schemes a criminal, and as they often said, crazy. Assuming that the president eludes impeachment and removal, which appears increasingly probable, there is little doubt that Trump will be indicted and prosecuted for a wide ranging litany of crimes upon the completion of his term as president. Sadly, his supporters will almost certainly continue their disgusting insistence that all charges of wrongdoing against their leader are nothing but conspiratorial fabrications by his enemies in the media, and within the progressive political community. Sixty one million people voted for Trump, and, surveys indicate that, for the most part, they still support him, many if not most of them more strongly than ever. this is a tragic indictment of the American people, or at least the conservative portion of the electorate. The American conservative christian evangelical community, Trump's staunchest support base, has been fully exposed for the intellectually and morally bereft community that it is. Studies repeatedly indicate that politically progressive people tend to be more intelligent than conservatives. We now know that progressives are also more morally, as well as politically correct. Conservatives tend to ridicule people who expect high standards of respect and courtesy - political correctness. They now ridicule people with sufficiently high moral standards to condemn Trump's consistently vile, vicious, criminal behavior. those who continue to support rather than condemn and abandon Donald Trump are no better than he, and deserve the same fat as he. In all likelihood, they will eventually experience the consequences of their horribly immoral behavior, just at those who have the intellectual and ethical integrity to oppose the depravity of Trump and his supporters will, at length, receive their just rewards; the removal of the Trump political movement from all positions of power and influence in American society.

Hiding From The Truth

OVER THE PAST FEW DAYS, there has been much talk in the media, or at least more talk in the media than one might expect, about the suddenly famous Tulsa race riot of 1921, as it has traditionally been called. For some reason, maybe because we are now approaching the one hundredth anniversary of this nightmarish disaster, it is coming to light. Only now we are starting to call it the Tulsa "massacre" of 1921, because the term "massacre" is considerably more accurate. since it involved large numbers of African-Americans, the term "race riot" was simply too convenient to pass up. The details of the event are now fairly well known to many but not most Americans; anyone not familiar with the event is strongly encouraged, indeed ordered to finish reading this essay, then immediately do the necessary reading to become educated. source material is easy to find; google and Wikipedia will suffice. The two most striking facts are that it all began with an ostensibly extremely minor event, so minor that something like it must surely have happened every day in every city in America, throughout history, and to this day. The event concerned a misunderstanding between two teenagers, one black, one white, a misunderstanding which triggered a virtual, if not an actual war. Almost remindful of how a stalled car triggered World War One, which is also worth reading about. the other outstanding feature is the degree to which the vent was almost instantly denied by Tulsa, and by American society in general, as if it didn't happen, or as if it was so horrible, so ridiculous, that the city and the nation preferred to pretend it didn't happen. For nearly one hundred years textbooks on American history have omitted mention of it, just as surely as they have omitted mention of Thomas Jefferson's hatred of the Christian religion, and of his sexual liaison with a fifteen year old girl who was his slave. But that's what history books, cities, people, and nations do; they behave like ostrich's with heads in sand, by going into denial at the approach of truth too terrible to accept. As Goethe said: "We resist the truth only because we fear we might perish if we accepted it". WE have done this throughout history. There has never been found, among ancient Egyptian writing,s any mention of Moses, the Exodus, and plagues of locusts. Maybe the whole Mosaic Exodus never happened; or maybe the ancient Egyptians preferred to pretend it didn't. After World War Two, the horrible nightmare of Hitler and the holocaust was pretty much swept under the rug, as it were, by Germany. All NAZI symbols were banned, and German children were given but the barest outlines of the war, with the murder of six million Jews brushes aside. only in recent decades have they come out from beneath the rubble, as it were. Russians are particularly adept at erasing history. "De-Stalinization" of the nineteen fifties, when the Russians decided to forget about Uncle Joe and his millions man purges, is but one of many examples of a country which, admittedly, has much history worthy of forgetting. One hesitates to even mention, to this very day, a certain terrible Tsar who released pigeons from the tops of the tower, but only after having broken their wings. These are but a few examples of humanity's capacity to forget the too horrible to remember. we all know from personal experience, or are told, that as we as individuals age we tend to filter out our unpleasant memories, or to paint over them with improved, happier versions. We do it individually, and collectively, for the sake of our sheer sanity. it is the duty of good psychologists and historians to fill in our blanks with truth, as a way of healing by remembering. So, maybe that's what we are now doing with the Tulsa massacre of its black community back in 1921, finally, after a hundred years, coming to terms with it, healing. In the spirit of times, it may take a good one thousand years for us to be ready to remember just who was president of the United States in the year 2019, or whenever.

Witnessing

MY FATHER, an attorney, and my mother, a nurse, mercifully withheld religious instruction, and shielded me from any evangelical tendencies of my devout votary grandmothers. Thus I became aware of the term "witness" in context with secular jurisprudence long before I was ever aware that it also embodies any religious meaning. I lost my Christian witness virginity much later, in my late teens, on a tennis court, playing doubles with a fellow pantheist against a team of true believers. We won, naturally. At the end of days and tennis matches, I maintain that enlightened spirituality trumps rigid, barbaric dogma. My Christian tennis buddies fully intended to be, and in my opinion genuinely were, good Christian witnesses, insofar as I understood the concept. I vaguely recall something in the Bible about witnessing for the lord, and vaguely wondering why the architect and builder of the universe would need witnesses, per se. The lord's works are ubiquitously on display. The sun rises and sets with sublimely designed reliability. Are we not all aware of, witnesses to the work of the creator, regardless of our particular religious beliefs or lack thereof? One of my tennis playing witness friends was at the time, the mid nineteen seventies, greatly excited about his forthcoming trip to Texas, to participate in an archeological dig with a group of like minded diggers whose purpose was to unearth proof that the world is a mere six thousand years old, rather than the widely scientifically accepted four point five billion. If they succeeded, they either chose not to share their success, or the news media and the Christian community conspired to conceal it, neither possibility of which seems likely. My other tennis playing witness to Jehovah, Yahweh, Elohim, God, or whomever, was fixing at the time to visit the still extant Soviet Union with a group of devotees for the stated purpose of smuggling a horde of Bibles into the godless, evil empire, for illicit distribution among the unsaved Russian proletariat. I expressed my concern that my friend and his comrades might not return safely from Russia with love; quite predictably, my fear fell flat. Fortunately for them and soviet-American relations, they made it back, having flouted Russian law, Biblical admonitions to always obey local secular law and authorities, the travelers admonition "do as the Romans do", and common, simple, sane sense. A witness, it turns out, is a person through whose words and actions the Christian faith is typified and exemplified, for the purpose of serving God, serving as an example unto all the world, or both. Even if it means flagrantly abusing one's status as a visitor in a foreign land, or pursuing the seemingly hopeless task of disproving, by digging up ancient artifacts and dinosaur bones, solid, simple, well established science. My entire life Christians have been trying to turn me into a Christian, but I cannot recall a single instance in which I have tried to convert anyone, Christina or otherwise,, to my beliefs. Why? My assumption has always been, and remains, that all people of all faiths are as intelligent as I, and better qualified than I to determine their own religious beliefs. It just seems so obvious. My tennis player Christian friends were once admonished at church that they really shouldn't be fellowshiping with non believers, on a tennis court, or anywhere else. Their response to their sanctimonious colleagues, they told me, was that it is sick people who require a doctor, and it is the unsaved who require the company of Christian witnesses. They evinced not the slightest comprehension that this explanation was a great insult to me. I refrained from telling them; good friends, Christian or otherwise, are hard to find, and, besides, good tennis players are even harder to find.

Getting Lucky

WE HAVE ALL, at one time or another, been the beneficiaries of blessings. Only the most unfortunate among us fail to so benefit, or, having benefited, fail to fully appreciate the blessing. I betook myself to a drive into a country, to a local lake, early on a summer morning to beat the heat, where there are good running trails. The run was delightful, as runs invariably are when run among beautiful scenery of the natural kind. I climbed back into my car, euphoric with runner's high, and headed back to town. As i was tooling down the two lane blacktop going thirty in a fifty to enjoy the scenery, suddenly a small beaver dashed across the highway, right in front of me, and although I didn't have to stop or slow to avoid the precious creature, I die, reflexively. He, she, scampered quickly across the road and into the woods. I smiled. I couldn't recall ever having seen a beaver before, except on television. Within about three minutes a small flock, herd, or school of deer crossed in front of me, again without forcing me to slow down or stop. The group included at least six members, and i made out at leas one doe, a buck I think, and two or three youngins, fawns, or yearlings, or children. I beamed. A bit further along on the four mile country road from my house to the lake, out from the bushes come a family of ducks, a large one followed by three adorable small ones. this time i had to stop suddenly in order to not only not disturb their passage, but to avoid hitting them, which i successfully did. by this time, however,a care had caught up with me, and, in typical American automotive fashion, was following much too close for comfort. Admittedly, that's what happens when you're doing thirty in a fifty, but, I suspect that had I been doing fifty, or fifty five, the same fate would have assailed me, her in the United States of Autosanelessamerica. The driver was man, ostensibly of the red nick MAGA sort, for he, bedecked in one of those nauseating red MAGA caps, being forced to suddenly cease and desist his forward progress due to my do good liberal urge to save the lives of ducks, appeared to be most vexed. He waxed a mite wrathy, as Davy Crockett might have, and often said. His facial expression was death, personified, perhaps exacerbated by the "Impeach Trump" bumper sticker now scarcely three from his hood. I prayed I would neither get shot, nor mugged. If he could have, he would have. But I, ever the assuaging placatin' peacemaker, smiled in my rear view mirror and held my hands out, palms up, in the universal 'what the hell could I do"? sign. Un-mellowed, he rolled his MAGA eyes, sped around me, and on down the road, just missing the last of the chicks. now it was my turn to be bad. suddenly much angered, I honked my horn, and flew the bird, nice and high. His brake lights briefly flashed, and I thought, once again, that I might be toast. But, much to my relief, he thought better of it, and continued on his miserable way, mercifully, for me and american wildlife, out of sight. I had memorized his license plate number. I phone the local police, and told them my tale of woe. I hope they arrest, indict, try, and convict him of gross stupidity, and "lock him up!", as I chanted a few times before arriving at the house. The rest of the was home was uneventful, other than the box turtle I saw halfway across the road near town. Hell yes I pulled over and moved the little doll off road in the direction he was going, willing to incur the wrath of every last hate mongering chanting Trumper in these United States. None of them showed up this time, much to their good fortune.

Changing Country, Changing Color

AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN LADY from Brooklyn grew up in the projects, the tough way. She used her ambition and intelligence to improve her circumstances, gaining admission to an elite university and pursuing a career in corporate management with her law degree. her first visit to Paris was in 1975 while i college, and she returned twenty years later to to live permanently, working as a representative of an American company. She's been living there since,and has no intention of returning to the United States. She likes the way she's treated by the French. Back in Brooklyn, she grew up tough, acted tough, and surrounded by tough, became tough. She and her homie gangstah bitches ruled the fair sex side of the 'hood. They never had to wait in line for anything. The white babes backed off, every time. Every African-American knows what honkies deny in America: in America, white folks are afraid of black folks. Lingering vestige of hundreds years of ill treatment have inculcated within the white world a knowledge of the anger engendered within and ingrained throughout black America. We feel their pain, and their anger, and are afraid of possible repercussions, which we have so often seen and felt. It is the price we in America pay daily for being the most racist nation nation in human history. In France, she says she tried the same bullying tactics which worked so well in America, but instead of being met with capitulation, the French well dressed French babes in high heals were having none of that shit. She was promptly backed off, and told exactly where the end of the line was. white France earned her respect, and got it. She likes it better that way, likes respecting rather than shunning her peers of a different race. its refreshing not to be treated simultaneously as an outcast and an object of fear and loathing. The French respect cultured, educated people, regardless of skin color. Beginning in the nineteen twenties jazz age, artistic African-Americans have expatriated themselves to France in droves. Am american brain drain. The French love jazz, American music and art in general, and welcome the influx. richard Wright, author of "Black Boy" and the 1940 classic "native Son", about life in the Chicago ghetto, said that while living in the United States he felt as he were carrying a corpse on his back, no matter where he went. In France, the corpse was gone. No, France is not some color blind multi-cultural mecca of color blind virtue and tolerance. they have their own version of far right wing populist nationalist anti-immigrant activism, their own version of the Trump movement. Bu its only fifteen percent or so. In France, to be an immigrant is not to automatically be relegated to second class status. The french are indeed cultural elitist, culturally demanding. But if you bring intelligence and education into their country, you earn their respect, you have a chance. It is common among many American conservatives to assert that "we don't want America to be more like Europe than it already is". As is often the case, they are dead wrong.

Space Dreaming

I WAS BORN at a good time to dream about space flight. When I was six, Alan Shepherd ventured into space. Fascinated, I asked my mother what he had said about it, what it was like to be in space. She told me that Mr. Shepherd was reporting that it was very dark up there. John Glenn excited me by educating me to the fact that it was possible to orbit the Earth in an hour and a half, and to do so multiple times - he did it three times - without being killed. Then, I started reading a series of children's books called "Mike Mars", about a kid named Michael Albert Robert Sampson who in one book taught me how to make a rocket out of an empty pop bottle, some baking soda, and I forget what else. Put it on roller wheels, and it would propel horizontally along the sidewalk. I never actually performed the experiment, but I dreamed about it. Mike's great dream, like mine, was to walk on Mars. Each Mercury and Gemini mission was obviously getting us closer to going to the moon. On July 20, 1969, I, a fourteen year old between eighth and ninth grade, watched Armstrong walk on the moon with my mother and sister and billions of other people, on our boxy black and white, with Cronkite. That was the summer, the summer of sixty nine, when I had my first "real" telescope, a two point four inch refractor, and twice during that summer, on July 9 and again on August 9, I spent the night at a friend's house, and we observed the heavens all night. He was going into his senior year, and had a three inch telescope, appropriately larger than mine. We called that summer "the glorious summer", not because of baseball or golf, which I did curing the day, but because of those wonderful hot nights beneath the stars, insects humming, with our telescopes, watching and dreaming. That was also the summer I saw on the big screen what is still my favorite movie of all time: "2001:A Space Odyssey". I remember my joy that I actually understood the movie, and my pride at trying to explain it, perhaps unsuccessfully, to my mom and sis. Obviously it was a bit too ambitious in predicting humankind's future in space: maybe about a hundred years too ambitious. But, as they say; its the thought that counts. Unfortunately my astronomy friend died young, but I like to think his spirit is up there, among the stars. With each return to the moon, my interest was a bit diminished; by 1972, the last time humans walked on the moon, I was heading into my senior high school year, and had other matters, the usual ones, on my mind. At first I was quite interested in the space shuttle and Skylab, but soon lost interest. It was as if we were rehearsing for nothing. In 1969, I thought that by the year 2020 I would be going back and forth between the moon, Mars, and Earth as a passenger. I fancied moon and Mars bases, and expeditions beyond the solar system. So naturally, i become disappointed, like, I suspect, many people of my generation. All of the great science fiction writers I loved as a kid, especially Asimov, Clarke, and Silverberg, piqued my fascination with the human future in space. The Viet Nam war, and other wars, diverted funds, and after Apollo Eleven, it seems that we the people simply lost our focus, that we never had a concrete plan for continuing outward. We now know that the incredible expense and technical difficulties are far more daunting than we at first believed. Yet, there is hope. There is renewed interest in space exploration, travel, and colonization, and various projects; the Hubble telescope, the Mars rovers, deep space probes heading out beyond the solar system, have all greatly increased our knowledge of the universe, and re-inspired us to exploration. I still believe that humanity will do everything I wanted so badly for us to do fifty years ago, but, alas, it will all be done much later than I would have thought or hoped. I'll be long dead when we the human species take to the off Earth universe in earnest, but I comfort myself that maybe, just maybe, when it all happens, I will have joined my telescoping buddy as a spirit in the sky, looking down on it all, and smiling contentedly.

Criticizing It, Yet Loving It, and Staying

ITS BEEN MORE THAN FIFTY YEARS since the catchy little phrase "America: Love It Or Leave It" hit the streets, in connection with the Viet Nam war, as the hawks and doves battled it out in the great and ubiquitous arena of public opinion. The dirty little secret is that the dis United States is always divided, by one thing or another, to one degree or another, at many times far more so than even now, difficult that this may seem to believe. The civil war comes to mind. Back then I was a tried and true patriotic little brainwashed pro establishment teenager on the "Love It" end of the spectrum, though rapidly and inexorably evolving out of it. I always felt some vague sense of disquiet about the "Love It or Leave It" dichotomy, as if there were something contrived, some false equivalency about it. By the time I had reached my twenties, my radicalism had emerged full blown, and I knew the reason behind my disquiet. Once again I am confronted with this false choice, fifty years removed from the turbulent sixties, as a psychotic draft dodging president claims he would have enjoyed serving in Viet Nam, and resurrects the old cliche. My response, in the early seventies, and now, is this: How do you know I don't love it?...(Because you criticize it incessantly, all the time, you constantly point out negative things about it).....But that does not mean that I don't love it. It means I care enough about it to be honest about its shortcomings, and to seek ways of addressing them, and improving the country I care so much about.... And this is where I stand. At the senior center we recite the pledge of allegiance every day before we pray before we eat lunch. The pledge was my idea, and I lead it, every day. A lady said "I bet you really hate Colin Kaepernick". I said, "No, I love him. I personally would not kneel during the anthem, but I do not expect anyone to behave in accordance with my values, but instead, in accordance with their own." Then she started this is the greatest country on Earth crap, proud to be an American, Love it or leave it, and all that. My rejoinder was that I think it is a bad idea to be proud of anything, country, flag, personal accomplishments..anything. I prefer to be grateful and happy and pleased to be lucky enough to live in America, but not proud. Pride, all pride, is a form of arrogance, one of seven deadly sins. And to boast that ours is the greatest country in the world is nothing but sheer arrogance, and incapable of being proven. Greatest militarily? Culturally? In what way? Greatest in preserving peace? Definitely not. Other than grotesque economic inequality, child hunger, and a few other problems, American arrogance is among my greatest pet peeves. I tried to convince her that Kaepernick has the right and the moral authority to protest. She claimed that his upbringing had been privileged. Maybe so. She said he himself had said so. I asked her whether Cassius Clay, barred from white only drinking fountains, had any reason to be proud to be an American. She allowed as that he hadn't. Well, if he hadn't, how many others hadn't, and don't? Maybe Kaepernick was protesting not on behalf of himself, but on behalf of others, like Muhammad Ali. Of course, I had her, even though she didn't seem to know it, and probably wouldn't admit it even if she did.

Being Racist

WE ARE ALL RACISTS. Rather, most of us are. A "racist" is a person who accepts the concept of races as inherent to human beings, as real, a person who believes that the human species, or human "race", is naturally and really divided into discrete, identifiable, recognizable sub groups based on skin color, independent of whether we accept the divisions. Someone, anyone who understands that different races only exist because people choose to apply the concept to our species, and that the concept is a mere mental contrivance with no tangible manifestation independent of our imagination, is definitely not a racist. Race is a convenient device for purposes of classification and simplification, a device to help us simplify a world of infinite complexity and variety. Since our culture has accepted race as real, rather than purely conceptual, which it is, everyone is a racist in America, the most racist society in history. No matter your opinion of one race or another, if you believe in different races, you do so only because you choose to, not because they are real. If you compare the color of your skin to that of every other person in the world, you will never find a perfect match. In the real world, we all have different skin colors. Often, in fact usually, the difference is slight, barely noticeable. Obviously, if we didn't believe in races at all, we wouldn't form opinions concerning their relative merit. My skin color is different now than three months ago. My suntan has changed my race. Line up everyone in the world, according to height. Everyone is one millionth of an inch taller or shorter than the next person. At what point do we divide the tall people from the short people? When we choose to. Tall and short, like white and black, are choices, opinions, not facts. Once we choose to accept race as real, we invent racism, by forming opinions, making racism real. People who do not know history but think they do believe that racism has existed as long as people have. They are quite mistaken. Before the middle of the fifteenth century, there is not a single reference to racism in the entire body of human literature. That's because racism did not exist, until it was invented as a way to justify the enslavement of Africans. Racism first appears in a biography of the Portuguese explorer, Prince Henry the Navigator, in the fifteen forties. In the ancient and pre-modern world, us versus them was predicated on geography, language, religion, national identity. Our ancestors invented racism, and we modern people have long since decided the invention we inherited is evil, and universally we condemn it. We are quite correct in doing this. We cling to our imaginary concept of race, but condemn anyone who believes one race is superior to another. We are right to condemn Donald Trump for being a racist, for he is very obviously a racist. The fact that people who support Trump accept the false notion of the existence of different faces, but claim that he is not a racist, and that they are not racists, is nothing other than one of innumerable examples of human self deception, and human folly. We simply choose not to notice how widespread the human folly of racism is; it includes nearly all of us. In many ways, we do not really know much about ourselves. It is indeed quite possible to be a racist, and unaware of it. Recently former KKK leader David Duke stated that he and Donald Trump share the same message. One thing for certain; a confirmed, unapologetic racist recognizes a fellow racist when he sees one, even one who either is not aware of his own racism, or chooses to try to hide and deny it. Racism exists because we pretend that races exist, racism exists because of an abstraction, a concept. Concepts whose only existence are in the human mind often powerfully influence our minds. When others identify racists as racists, racists often respond by calling the person who identified the racist a racist, a clever attempt at "turning the tables". Therefore, when a president of the United States tells darkly pigmented people to leave the county, the best response might be, rather than accusing the president of being a racist, to accuse him of being hateful, for that is inarguably true.

Praising Trump From the Pulpit

CONSERVATIVE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN MINISTERS, some of whom achieve celebrity status by seducing sycophants in large numbers through the seductive power of charismatic personalty, snappy attire, and provocative proclamations, have been especially in evidence since the political advent of Donald Trump, in large part through their near unanimous support of him, but also because of the often extraordinary nature of their explanations for his ascent to the American presidency. It must be said, however, that explanations and proclamations issued from evangelical ministers often contain elements of the extraordinary, nearly always unverified and unverifiable. Carl Sagan said: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Extraordinary evidence is the key component invariably missing from extraordinary and provocative proclamations. Most folks are familiar with the standard issue. The AIDS epidemic is God's wrath being visited upon America for its tolerance of homosexuality. The lord has established the United States as his bastion of the Christian faith on earth. The righteous of this denomination or that denomination, at the end of days, shall be raptured into heaven, leaving everyone else in the dust,, or extreme heat, or worse. The usual bill of fare. These hyperbolic pronouncements have in common that they presume a considerable degree of knowledge of not not God's future behavior, but of the motivations behind it, they clearly delineate an "us against them' paradigm, in which "them"those who adhere to the proclaimer are the in group, the "us", safe ensconced within the fold of righteous, and the predictions inherently evince probably futures of apocalyptic proportions. And of course, they are shouted to all the world in stentorian style, complete with dramatic gesticulations by comparison to which nineteenth century stage actors would seem inert. lately our evangelical screamers have been outdoing even themselves for histrionics, and for the unverifiable extraordinary. The purveyors of percipience form the pulpit have been political in nature since the late nineteen seventies, when the moral majority inserted itself into the political arena, defying the wise admonition of true believer and esteemed academic C. S. Lewis that religion goes astray when it becomes entangled in political affairs. Having cast its lot with the repackaged pro life pro straight sex "good Christian" Donald J. Trump, the conservative evangelical community has no reason to go go half measure. according to Graham Jr., Falwell Jr., or both, Donald Trump has been anointed, by god, by GOD, to be the president of these United States, and is the most christian president in american history, notwithstanding Woodrow Wilson's ministerial bond fides, notwithstanding the tendency of nearly all nineteenth century presidents to begin the day on bent knee. Ever inclusive, conservative evangelical issuers of unprovable profundities include explanations of the motive of members of the Democratic party. why not? Accordingly, the Democrats have invented their own God, goes the gist of the gaslight. In truth, the Democrats have invented much, including social security, medicare, minimum wage and labor laws, and a safety net for the disadvantaged, ostensibly helpful, compassionate things widely considered blasphemous anathema throughout politically conservative evangelicaldom, which prefers a social Darwinistic approach, despite the evil falsehood of exhaustively verified evolutionary science. But no Democrat has ever been confirmed to have invented an imaginary God, but only to have described the christian one in terms more verifiably, scientifically compatible with observed reality. Any tendency towards a more compassionate, more sane deity more in keeping with observable nature quite naturally meets with the dismissive disapproval of the conservative Christian community, which much prefers to stick with the harsh god of the Biblical kind, the one who scares Abraham half to death by ordering him to execute his own son as proof of exclusive fidelity to the divine, and who strikes dead fifty thousand and seventy poor souls in retribution for breaching the privacy of a document in a box. What cannot be denied, and can be verified anecdotally, is that this ruthless, genocidal god of the Bible is far more compatible with the mentality and moral principles of Christian conservatism, and Trump MAGAism, than any watered down, toned down, rational deity ever invented by any damnable Democrat.

Letting The Word "Bullshit" Bear the Burden, but Being Blessed by a Presumptuous Evangelical

FINALLY, ON FACEBOOK, I had a long longed for direct exchange between me, and an evangelist. These are the folks who have aroused my ire by supporting Trump at a rate of eighty percent, despite Trump's demonstrably un-Christian behavior and policies. It began when a post appeared, listing Trump's alleged accomplishments. Among them was his removal of the United States from the Paris climate change agreement, which, I argued, was hardly an accomplishment, being insane by virtue of failing to address climate change. The self described evangelical told me that I need to learn the facts, and that the United States would have been 'screwed' as he indelicately put it, by remaining in the agreement. Instead of explaining that my disagreeing with him was not an indication of my being unaware of the facts, that two people can be aware of the same set of facts and reach different conclusions from them, I used the word "bullshit", and left it at that. Instead of pointing out that the purpose of having the United States in the Paris agreement was not to secure economic advantage for the U.S., or to avoid being "screwed" as he indelicately put it, by being economically disadvantaged, but rather, to begin meaningful worldwide cooperation to fight climate change, and that whatever economic loss accrued to the United sates fighting climate change was of secondary importance, and probably appropriate, since the United States is the leading cause of climate change, I failed to make this point. I failed to point out that if the entire world does not cooperate in fighting climate change, it really won't much matter whether the United States got screwed, or for that matter whether the united States was economically healthy at the precise moment when the world becomes uninhabitable by human beings. Instead, I allowed the word "bullshit" to bear the burden. These days, I have little inclination to say much more to evangelicals other than "bullshit", to put it indelicately, owing to their willful and undoubtedly sincere and well considered support for Donald J. Trump. His response to my indelicate use of the word "bullshit" was "god bless you anyway, you lost soul". I quickly responded: "god bless you too, you sanctimonious, presumptuous soul". He responded with an emoji, one depicting the shedding of a tear. That might be the last communicative exchange between the two of us, an emoji shedding tears. His sanctimony derives, upon further reflection, from his assuming that I am somehow a "lost soul" for using the word "bullshit", for disagreeing with him about the Paris climate change accord, or for whatever reason he assumed, presumptuously, that my soul is "lost'. In all fairness, that aint a whole lotta evidence upon which to assume loss of soul in somebody. God bless me "anyway"? WTF? An evangelical, qualifying a blessing? That's both sanctimonious and presumptuous. As if he can only bestow the lord's blessing upon me with reluctance, as if his so doing is an act of generosity, in spite of my being undeserving of it. Hence, his sanctimony. I hope the tear shedding emoji indicated his regret at being presumptuous and sanctimonious, but I rather doubt it does. Even now, he is probably weeping for my soul, which he sanctimoniously, presumptuously, and mistakenly presumes is lost. I can assure him that is isn't. God knows exactly where it is, even if he doesn't.

Going Ever Lower

DONALD TRUMP is indisputably a criminal, a reprobate, and arguably criminally insane. A cursory examination of his policies and behavior strongly suggests as much; a detailed examination verifies it. The facts are well known, and scarcely bear repeating. Defining a "criminal" as someone who breaks the law, defining a "crime" as both misdemeanors and felonies, Trump's words and actions qualify, clearly. Anyone who either supports this president's policies, fails to condemn his behavior, or both, is either lacking in moral character and decency, or has suspended good judgment and moral character for personal or political expediency. Treason is one of only three crimes mentioned in the constitution. For the president to fail to act or to even acknowledge the reality of the greatest threat to American national security, climate change, is clearly a crime against the United States and humanity. Further examples of his criminal activities are easily available. When Trump exposes his own extreme moral deficiency, he does so so humorously that it makes for good entertainment, which may partly explain why seem to tolerate it. Another partial explanation is that his view coincide with those of a high percentage of the American people, thus revealing their moral deficiency, if not complete moral bankruptcy. It is already being pointed out that the four members of congress singled out for vicious slander by Trump have in common that they are female, are "of color" in the popular parlance, have been highly critical of Trump, and are all citizens of the United States, three of them having been born in the United States. Trump attacked them verbally for being critical of America, and for having immigrant backgrounds. Trump also has an immigrant background, as is well known, although he himself evidently dos not know that it was his grandfather, not his father, whom migrated from Germany, having been kicked out of that country for unethical behavior, which seems to be hereditary. Trump to has been critical of America, the distinction being that his criticism are usually fabrications. He fails to understand that to criticize one's country by using provable fact to indicate areas of potential improvement is the patriotic duty of every good citizen. Throughout his presidency, and since long before hi became president, trump has revealed himself to be a racist, a misogynist, and a pathological liar. To cite these facts is not unfair nor slanderous; they can be proven, easily. Every slanderous remark about minorities and women, every outright lie trump has told, has been irrefutably documented, and is available to anyone to see. The fact that the American people chose a person of such low character as president is shocking. to have voted for Donald Trump may be forgiven as an error in judgment, a understandable human mistake. To support him at this point, or to fail to condemn his behavior and treatment of others is so reprehensible that anyone who does os can only be described a an accomplice to evil, and therefore, deeply immoral.

Passing the Homeless Buck

HALF THE HOMELESS people in California live in Los Angeles, partly because of its warm climate and the fact that the city tolerates them, and even offers some measure of assistance. The number may be more than a quarter million, as many as half a million, or more. More, probably, than in New York City, long known as a homeless hang out. In L.A., the homeless inhabit every neighborhood, sleep on every park bench, and establish tent cities all over the city, in the suburbs and downtown. The quality of the air in the city has improved considerably over the past few decades, while the number of homeless people has skyrocketed. As is always the case in discerning the reasons for a ubiquitous social problem, the reasons are many. There is a sever shortage of affordable housing in California, and nationwide. The average rent in l.A. is around two thousand dollars a month; it is possible for a worker to work full time, or to have several jobs, and yet to be unable to afford to live indoors. Mental illness plays a role> When Ronald Reagan turned tens of thousands of mentally ill people out of asylums in the nineteen eighties, he unleashed a torrent of troubled people onto the streets from which American society has never recovered and to which it has never responded. Reagan's legacy is not one of compassion. The standard American response to homelessness is to ignore it, and to place exclusive blame on the homeless, using the false accusations that they are lazy, irresponsible, and have made poor decisions the result of which is their being without a home. Par of the problem is pervasive poverty south of the Rio Grande. a significant percentage of America's homeless are Hispanic, people who became refugees from violence and poverty in Latin American countries, fled to the United States seeking asylum, or in desperation sneaking into the country, only to be met with the usual pervasive American racism and lack of opportunity. The American have a moral responsibility to help the homeless which we the people are blatantly refusing to act on. The usual means is to deny that any responsibility exist, to blame the homeless for their plight in a society which offers nothing but opportunity, and to excoriate and ridicule those who articulate the problem as liars and troublemakers. In fact, opportunities for people to improve their economic circumstances in the united States fall far short of nearly every European country, and far short of most of the worlds' countries. Despite anecdotal evidence often used as proof to the contrary, the United States is not a society which offers opportunity to the economically disadvantaged. The United States is not a welcoming, inclusive, helpful culture, despite all the anecdotal evidence presented to the contrary, charity in America lags far behind actual need, less fortunate people tend to contribute much more than wealthy Americans, and Americans with means have a tendency, born out by irrefutable statistical facts, to hoard rather than share their wealth. The United States is not the wealthiest nation in the world, despite that fact that many Americans claim that it is. bu tit is certainly wealthy enough to eliminate poverty and homeless within its own borders, merely by giving everyone access to the benefits of both capitalism and socialism. But for this to happen, we Americans must first begin to take the problem seriously, and do more than pay occasional lip service to it.

Going Around, Coming Around

THE UNITED STATES was from its beginning intent on becoming an empire, and an imperial power. Having defied its British overlords by migrating west of the Appalachian mountains, having evicted the British, the French, and the Spanish from their North American possessions, and having successfully exterminated the native inhabitants of the original thirteen colonies, the united States was full of itself, confident of its divinely ordained future. When Most countries in Latin American revolted and gained independence from Spain in the early eighteen twenties, the United States began to see itself as the new colonial power in North and South America, replacing the Europeans. Almost immediately the U.S. issued the "Monroe Doctrine", instructing all foreign powers, mainly the Europeans, that henceforth only the United states would wield power and influence throughout Latin America. The fact that the Doctrine was unenforceable and has never been enforced die nothing to deter american imperialistic aggression in the region. throughout the late nineteenth century, and all the way up to the present, the United States has been intimately involved in the internal affairs, the political and economic life of nearly every Latin American country, removing and installing governments by force and subversion, according to perceived American needs, managing national economies, reaping the benefits of resourced exploitation. All this has enriched America's corporations and their owners, and has impoverished the nations and people of every country upon which the heavy hand of American imperialism has descended. The United States is a nation, in a very real sense, built upon stolen resources, stolen lives, violence, and conquest. Since before World War Two the birds have been coming home to roost, as it were, as millions of Latino refugees from poverty have ascended northward and descended on the United States, many legally according to American immigration, many not, all seeking nothing but a better life of mere survival. they are, and have always been willing to work for their survival. Detailed research clearly shows that these millions of Latin American immigrants, mainly from mexico, have greatly enriched the United States, by providing labor, creating prosperity, and increasing the consumer and tax base in an expanding but not fully developed capitalistic economy bursting with growth potential , but desperately in need of cheap labor for corporate expansion and profit. Like Trump said, they bring crime and rape, but very little compared to the amount engendered internally by native born citizens of European ancestry. Like people from Africa, people from Latin America have truly not made America more culturally vibrant they have made it more prosperous, and indeed, they have made america possible. Mexican immigrants have filled up what Mexicans call the "occupied territories", a huge swath of land in the Southwest which the United States invaded and conquered under false pretenses and turned into states beginning in the eighteen forties. For a nation in which everyone not of Indian/native american ancestry is the ancestor of an arguably illegal foreign immigrant, for Latin American people to be told that they should not be here, illegally or otherwise makes no more sense than to tell African-Americans that they should "go back to Africa". Recent surveys indicate that only twenty five percent of conservative evangelical Christians believe that Latino immigrants should be offered assistance, while seventy five percent of atheists and people unaffiliated with any religion believe that America should "welcome the stranger". This statistic speaks for itself. It says much about the true nature of the American conservative Christian community, ans who actually follow the teachings of Christ, and who does not. It says much about the ignorance Americans have of their own sordid history, and their arrogance of ignorance. Upon reflection, none of it is at all surprising.

Expanding The Canon With Trump

SHELDON AND MIRIAM ADELSON own casinos, and billions of dollars. Their wealth, like that of Donald J. Trump, greatly exceeds any contributions they might have made to society. Like most wealthy people, they are quite conservative, politically, resistant to social change, quite content to retain the status quo, and quite willing to pay to do so. To this end they contribute lavishly to the campaigns of conservative politicians, including Donald Trump, even more than the Koch brothers, who are similarly inclined to contribute to conservative and libertarian politicians, but not to Donald Trump, whom, at last report, both Koch brothers thoroughly despise. The arrangement is lucrative for both the givers and the takers. Conservatives in Congress pass legislation reducing taxes on the wealthy, and people like the Koch brothers and the Adelsons (sons of Adel?)) help ensure the reelection of such politicians. So grateful is Mrs. Adelson, and so taken with Donald Trump, that she proposes adding to the Bible a "book of Trump". This is not fake news. She really means it. She seems to think that the new book would fit best into the old Testament, somewhere near the book of "Esther". The problem with this, of course, is that it would seemingly require the approval of the Judaic religion, as well as Christianity, whereas including the book of Trump in the New Testament would allow for the dispensing of Jewish approval, and would seemingly require only christian consent, which, considering Trump's popularity among American Christians, might fly in America, if nowhere else. Esther, you might recall, entails yet another of the many stories of ancient Hebrew captivity, this time in the hands of the Persians, in modern day Iran. The evil Persian king is bent on complete destruction of the Jewish people, but Esther, the heroine, comes to their rescue. It may be that Trump is widely seen among his supporters as a savior of Israel, he having moved the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, to the great approval of Israel and the American conservative evangelical Trump support base, and the great consternation of most of the rest of the world. Then too, having torn up a peace treaty with Iran, and having turned a peace with that country into a condition of near war, Trump has pleased Irael and his domestic supporters, by demonstrating his ostensible fearlessness towards, contempt for, and willingness to destroy Israels's prime enemy. So, perhaps somewhere near Esther is where Trump properly belongs. Interestingly, although it is not widely known, as the Old testament proceeds, God, who is mentioned quite often in Genesis, is mentioned less and less as the Hebrew bible proceeds, less often in each book, and by the time we arrive at the book of Esther, quite late in the collection of thirty nine books making up the Hebrew bible, God is not mentioned at all - not once - in the entire book of Esther, which deals exclusively with human activity. This fact has been researched and discussed much in academic circles. There are books dealing with this interesting phenomenon. It might be argued that if indeed there is a place for Donald J.Trump in the Bible, it would be a place from which God is absent, and in the Bible, such places are few and far between.

Seeking Something We Call "Truth"

C.C.LEWIS was a passable science fiction writer until he became a fervent Christian relatively late in life. Then, he changed. His writing became more rigid, stilted, dogmatic, serious. Religions does that to many previously, already perfectly good people. It has often been noted that the people who become most intolerantly zealous are the late bloomers in religious belief. Lewis started writing about his new faith, and spewing dubious, often untenable assertions, again, often the product of rigid, dogmatic thinking. People who claim to know nothing are invariably more interesting than those who know the truth. Among his most memorable assertions is that, taking into consideration the totally of the message of Jesus Christ, that he was either a madman, or he was what he seemingly claimed to be; the only begotten son of the living god, come to earth to offer salvation to anyone who follows him, and accepts him as their lord and savior. That's a bluff many are willing to call; in this world, there are many more mentally ill men than saviors. Lewis conspicuously omits mention of many other possibilities. Among those possibilities is that the Bible is simply wrong about Jesus, and about who he was, what he said, and who he claimed to be. In fact, nowhere in the four gospels does Jesus say that he is God, or any part of God. That interpretation of his statements came about much later, mainly as an extension of the gospel most ardently supportive of the idea of Jesus as lord; the gospel of John. A little poem by Goethe accurately describes the situation: "Pure was Jesus in his passion, in his heart but one God serving. Who of him a God would fashion, from his sacred will is swerving". The four gospels all contradict each other at every turn. Each of the four gives Jesus a different personality. Each of the four describes different events, occurring at different times. This is best explained by the fact that none of the four was written by people who knew Jesus, or each other, and all were written decades after the death of Jesus, by unknown authors, using a disparity of sources now lost to us. Every beautiful teaching of Jesus can be found in earlier writings, by Confucius, or in other religious texts in Buddhism, Taoism, or Hinduism. The message Jesus hammered home most urgently was that the world would soon end, and god would soon come to Earth, in the form of the "son of Man" to bring about an entirely new world order, a world in which all the wickedness of this world would be replaced by God's grace and goodness. Jesus, in brief, was an apocalyptic preacher. Most of us are neither madmen nor divine beings. We are somewhere in the middle, suspended, between the sublime and the sordid. We are, in short, a bit of both. As Wallace Stevens said: "A poetic synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits." C.S. Lewis, like the rest of us, sought truth. And like the rest of us, he never found it outside himself, but had to content himself to embrace only what he could discern from within. We live in a universe of relativity, in which the truth is dependent upon point of view. That may have been the only true message Jesus ever taught, handled and handed down to us so very clumsily by people who failed to fully understand him. The truth that Jesus gave us might well have been that the attainment of truth is only a matter of seeking, and the seeking only occurs within each of our very different selves, in our very different universes.

Biden, Backtracking

ALL POLITICIAN, and for that matter all humans, make statements they wish later they had never made. The rule is; think before you speak. Conversely, people seeking and holding elective office often fail to make statements they might rather wish they had made. Joe Biden has had such along career in politics that he has, like his political party, like his country, evolved considerably over the decades. In the nineteen seventies he was opposed to busing during a time when all good liberal democrats were in favor of it, and he worked closely with and compromised with southern conservative democrats when no good northern, eastern, or northeastern liberal democrat deigned to so do. Forty and fifty years ago there were still conservatives in the democratic party, and liberals in the republican party, and it was often difficult to tell the two parties apart, as it had been for much of their existence. Not so anymore, in our era of bipolarized political in which democrats are far to the left, republicans are far to the right, and never the twain shall meet. Now running for president, Biden has some 'splainin' to do. he says that he was always in favor of busing, as a social, educational equalizer, but that he was opposed to it being implemented through the heavy handed of the federal government, preferring a more localized approach. It sounded lame. It sounded remindful of confederate sympathizers and their lame appeals to stats rights. Here's a suggestion for candidate Joe Biden. do not pretend to be enthusiastic about busing, then or now. Say something like: "although I understand that busing is a noble attempt to equalize society, to mitigate the effects of racism, I always considered it, and still consider it, a wholly inadequate means of dealing with a pervasive, deeply rooted american problem, that of racism inequality and prejudice. Busing is a band aid applied to a gaping wound, which will never facilitate real healing. Real healing will occur when the hearts and minds of the American people, as reflected in American social patterns and American institutions, are changed, fundamentally. The answer, of course, is the only answer, the same answer as always, the answer which ultimately solves all problems: education. We must teach ourselves, and our children, and our children's children the sheer stupidity of racism, its history, its scientifically baseless illogic, the shallow, unreasoning impulses behind it, and we must remind ourselves that skin pigmentation is ultimately no more important a factor in human worth than hair color, height, weight, age, or gender." And with regard to his past cooperation with racist, segregationist united Senators within his own party, maybe he should try this: 'I strongly disagreed with them then, just as I strongly disagree with most republicans now, on most issues. That does not, however, mean that I cannot at least try to reach out to them, respect them, and work with them for compromise, in the hope that we as leaders of our nation can produce results through cooperation beneficial to us all and set an example for the american people that merely disagreeing strongly with someone need not prevent nor even impede mutual respect, communication, and the sacred spirit of compromise, which has been a hallmark of American history and progress since our founders molded our nation out of disparate interest, from compromise." It might produce more support for Biden than his chosen tactic of backtracking and showing regret and remorse, the tactic currently in style. then again, maybe not. Americans today seem to prefer a good gut wrenching mea culpa to someone standing behind their actions. Either we shed tears and show remorse, or we dig in and double down. Its a shame. Sometimes its best to merely stand behind what you say and do, without all the drama.

Compromising Our Morals, Ourselves

YOU'LL RECALL, unless you're a Trump supporter and prefer not to, that one month before Trump was elected, he revealed himself to be a serial sexual predator, and proud of it. It suddenly appeared that although Hillary Clinton was only slightly ahead in the polls, that her election was certain. How could Trump possibly win? Millions of Americans would refuse to vote, or switch their vote. In fact the Republican national committee wanted him to withdraw, but he refused. Amazingly, he was elected, largely because of the vicissitudes of the electoral college; Clinton got three million more votes than he. Trump's primary support base consisted, and still consists, of white evangelical Christians, and working class white men with limited educations. These same people would undoubtedly have lambasted a Clinton or an Obama under similar circumstances. A great deal of research has gone into figuring all this out. Angry, alienated people looking for an authority figure, a savior of sorts. The year of the outsider, in which Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump stole the show. America, moving in a progressive direction, with increasing cultural diversity, acceptance of gay and transgender people, and increasingly dissatisfied with corporate economic hegemony and grotesque inequality of wealth and income, spurring conservatives to long for and seek to revive a long gone America with white male patriarchy and Christian dominance. Maybe it all adds up, maybe it all makes sense, and yet, somehow, it doesn't. A man with three divorces, numerous extramarital affairs, and dozens of accusations of sexual misconduct, being elected by the support of the Christian community. It turns out that America's conservative Christian community has more than a selective memory; it has selective morality. Since the late nineteen seventies, when evangelical participation in politics became prominent, the two issues upon which politically active Christians have hung their hats have been abortion, and homosexuality, the twin sins of Christian conservatism. And on those accounts, Trump fills the bill, or at least pays lip service to it. Marital infidelity, divorce, and heterosexual misbehavior have taken a sinful back seat. Our right wing evangelical Christians place great emphasis upon those sins in which they have no personal interest, and show little or no concern for those in which they already have, or might be tempted in the future to indulge in themselves. If only Hillary had been stridently anti-choice. Even that might not have been sufficient to break the magic of Trump. White supremacy has a long history within American conservatism. Racism, after all, is a traditional American value, conservative, not liberal. The Christian American right is strongly pro capitalism; sharing wealth through government action is taboo for those who profess to follow a man who told us to render unto Caesar and give unto the poor. Mega churches and larger than life ministers spewing these values satisfy America's longing for celebrity. Trump, the glitzy celebrity with an angry, reactionary message of a better America lost to progress is the perfect match for religious, money seeking conservatives, what Gore Vidal called the "Jesus, guns, and money" crowd. As the baby boomers age out and the much more progressive millennials take over, this will change, but it hasn't yet, and until it does, we will be stuck with Trump, his followers, and all the unpleasantness inherent therein.

Messing With Iran

THE IRANIANS are deliberately violating the nuclear arms agreement they signed in 2015 with the United States, France, Great Britain, Russia, and China. They are enriching, rendering more potent, radioactive metal, uranium, from its normal five percent, roughly, the process which is necessary to render the metal sufficiently explosive to make weapons out of it. A considerable increase in explosive capacity is necessary, upwards of a ninety percent increase. The Trump administration, which precipitated the problem by removing the U.S. from a perfectly good nuclear arms treaty, and initiating what amounts to economic warfare with Iran, including trade sanctions and embargoes, has already and will doubtless continue to rant, rave, and complain vociferously. Phrases like "playing with fire" are already coming forth from the head of state who was recently confused about the origins of aviation. Most people already know all this. Most people also are aware that building nuclear weapons is a skill any graduate student in physics can explain. All that is necessary is the mechanical and technical infrastructure, which Iran, and many other countries have. What most Americans seem unaware of is the chaotic treatment of Iran by the United States over the past one hundred years. Early in the era of oil the U.S. and Great Britain gained access to Iranian oil fields, then lost access when an election in Iran brought to power a government which nationalized Iran's oil, and left the western powers high and dry. The western powers responded by removing Iran's government, and replacing it with one amenable to western exploitation, a standard mode of operation for the United States. For several decades the United States strongly encouraged Iran to become a nuclear power, welcoming Iranian nuclear physics students to American college campuses. Then, it didn't. When the Iranian revolution of 1979 again brought to power a government resistant to American imperialism, the empire abruptly changed course, and suddenly it became verboten for Persia (Iran) to have nukes. The United States, beginning early in its history, took it upon itself to decide which nations could do what, economically, politically, internationally. It is a heavy burden, that of empire, not without unintended consequences. The United States, in its unquenchable thirst for expanding markets, resources, and wealth, has always messed with other nations. the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which has always been unenforceable and still is, commanded that no nation other than the United States would be allowed to have influence in the affairs of any Latin American country. American foreign policy and practices can change, and always have changed with dizzying speed, depending on world events and the vicissitudes of American corporate demands and desires. When a world power initiates, engages in, and completes a treaty with several other nations, then abruptly abandons the treaty, the world power loses credibility. Under Trump, the United States has turned peace into approaching war, losing its credibility in so doing, and the most tragic aspect of this is that it isn't even the greatest crime so far committed by the Trump administration, and by the United States under it.

Loving the Yankees, For All the Right Reasons

I BECAME A YANKEE (American baseball team) fan, in 1961, when I was six. My parents hated them, my neighbors hated them, it seemed the whole world hated them, so, being the precocious little social protester do gooder that I was already emerging into, I decided "hey, this is my team". I felt sorry for them; the Yankees were obviously the underdog, and were getting no love. By the time I was old enough to learn the truth, it was too late. I've never been ashamed to be a Yankee fan, and in fact have enjoyed the animosity generated by it and by living in the Midwest. Baseball argument are the best. They're harmless, notwithstanding the occasional barroom brawl and gun fight, since everything is settled on the field, in plain sight. I have never been prouder of them than now. Just recently, in concert with the fiftieth anniversary of the famous "Stonewall" incident, in which a gay bar in New York was attacked by police and the publicity resulting therefrom is widely credited with having engendered the gay right movement, the Yankees, at Yankee stadium, with forty five thousand in attendance, honored the LGBTQ community. It was LGBTG night at the big ball park in the Bronx. I do not know the details. I do know that there were people on the filed before the game, standing in a row at home plate, shaking hands and holding commemorative plaques and trophies. All the talk was about the Stonewall event. The crowd seemed generally amenable to it all. New York, like almost all big American cities, is full of liberals, and one can presume that it was largely a liberal gathering at the stadium. Yankee fans, however, abound all across the fruited plain, and it can be surmised that quite a few sixty year old right wing extreme Trump supporter lifelong Yankee fans turned in their membership cards in disgust that night. fine, Screw them. For that matte, screw everyone who hates the Yankees because they have and spend a lot of money on their baseball team; so do all the other teams, just not quite as much. the Yankees are the third most valuable sports franchise on the free market, behind Manchester United soccer, and Dallas Cowboy football. America loves winners, and the word "Yankee' means "American", so, what's not to love? The ownership of the team, the Steinbrenner family, must have thought long and hard about honoring LGBTQ folks, and the fact that they decided to go ahead with it attests to our changing times, to the Yankees ownership brilliance, and to liberal New York. The event might not have flown in Atlanta. Whether our conservative evangelical Christian Trump people like it or not, and they don't, LGBTQ people are going to gain social equality in America, because they and their millions of friends are insisting on it Gay people, transgender people, and all other kinds of unusual people are not sick, they are not sinners, and they are not criminals, though until recently they were so categorized by the American justice system. But,as Thomas Jefferson is reputed to have said, though it does not appear in his writings: "When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty". So, as far as justice is concerned, social justice, you right wing evangelical christian Trumper hypocritical moral and intellectual bankrupt reprobates can kiss some gay ass, and some bi-sexual ass to boot, which they would probably enjoy, and watch the Yankees win, while the ball club, with its forty thousand in house spectators per game paying exorbitant ticket prices laughs all the way to the bank, and to Stonewall and back to the Bronx.