Pride, Going Before

IT IS REASONABLE, if not urgently necessary, to inquire why the United States is the world's epicenter for Covid 19, with at least one third of the world's illnesses and at least one third of the world's death's from the virus. The one certainty, the one indisputable fact is that the reason has to do with the behavior of the American people and the American government, rather than any circumstance or force beyond american control. I've never traveled outside the United States. my knowledge of foreign cultures comes from television, history and sociology books, and perhaps most importantly from people who have come here from other countries and blessed my life with their friendship, and information about their country's culture. It has always impressed me how nice, friendly, and intelligent foreigners are, especially people from oriental countries. And when I compare the personalities of visitors with those of teh many Americans I know, one fact stands out; people from foreign countries tend, almost invariably, to be humble compared to Americans, who by comparison seem arrogant.Almost every time I don't like one of my fellow Americans, my complaint is that the person is unfriendly, arrogant, or both. this seems to be my standard complaint. It has been said that we only see those qualities in others which we possess ourselves; maybe I am the unfriendly arrogant one. I can only hope not. my theory is that the reason why the United States is the viral epicenter of the world is that we the American people are victims of our own arrogance. We simply have too much pride and arrogance to submit ourselves to the necessary behavior to defeat a virus. we'll be damned if we'll give up our o=social lives just because some damned expert says its the right thing to do. It is a demonstrable fact that Americans have done rather well at social distancing and self quarantining; but not nearly as well as places like India and china. In India, with its more than a billion people, the virus has killed only about three thousand people, and has made only about thirty thousand people sick. Thirty thousands Americans are getting sick - every day. In China, similar numbers. Huge population, low rates of sickness and death. The Indian and Chinese peoples, notoriously humble, complying to the letter with social distancing demands and self quarantining, and getting the fruits of there good behavior. We Americans just cannot stand to cooperate and to take orders.The results are obvious. Vice President Pence visits the Mayo clinic, and in a room full of masked medical professionals, is bald faced, maskless. Amid the national uproar he defends his masklessness, rather than simply admitting his error, and promising to correct his mistake, which would have been so easy, so obvious, and so gracious. pride goeth before a fall.

Being Drafted

ASIDE FROM MY complete lack of interest i football in April, and the apparent fact that my Chicago Bears are never allowed to draft anybody, the NFL draft strikes me as a most peculiar institution, although the reason for its existence is obvious; competitive balance, equality, a good product on the field.Most peculiar of all is that in teh land of free enterprise and freedom, adults can only gain employment in professional football by being selected by their employer, with no opportunity to determine their employer, no opportunity to even apply for employment in more than one place, unless the opportunity arises by being dismissed by the team which selects them. If you're a professional quality football player, leaving college, and you passionately want to play for, say, the packers, and you are drafted by the Bears, you're feces out of luck, so to speak, you're going to be a Bear, not a packer, and what you want matters not. This seems somehow strangely un-american, inimical to our sacred value of individual freedom and opportunity, it seems downright socialistic, even though its a good system with good reasoning behind it, and it works well. One alternative might be to permit all players, any player to be drafted by more than one team, by a certain limited number of teams, to give him some choice in the matter, and to install a system whereby all players submit a list of the teams for which they would be willing to play, for which they would like to play. This would give the young, powerless, but adult citizen football player at least some measure of individual freedom and power to influence and control his own fate. Presumably, such options have been discussed, and presumably, they have been dismissed. However, in an ear in which we are on the verge of paying college football players, thus freeing them from their traditional status as chattel property, well, anything is possible.

Believing, Whatever

THERE ARE billions of religions, thousands of organized religions, and hundreds of varieties of the christian religion. None of them are true. Or maybe one of them is, or maybe all of them. If the Methodists are correct in their description of the universe, the Baptists are not. Evolution, it has been asserted by many ministers, is so unlikely as to be impossible. the chances of amino acids combining to form protein molecules are less than the number "one" divided by the number of atoms in the universe, which is somewhere between ten to the seventy eighth and ten to the eighty second. This reasoning seems impressive; the universe cannot exist by chance. This argument fails to mention that the universe seems highly unlikely whether it happened by random chance, or by some anthropomorphic deity ordering it into existence, then making humans out of wet dirt. Whether the univerrse and Darwinian evolution have a one in two, a one in twenty, or a one in twenty trillion chance of happening, of being true it is most unlikely,but given an infinity of space and time, given an infinity of opportunity, both will eventually exist, as they have and do. The salient number is the numerator, the number "one". the number twenty trillion is meaningless. Given infinite and infinite opportunity, the monkey will eventually write hamlet, and the universe and evolution will eventually exist, as they do, as do we, merely by chance. There is, after all, overwhelming proof for both, all around us. So when your minister, with supreme confidence, starts spouting numbers which seem to indicate that the chances of atoms combining by random chance into complex proteins and into even more complex life forms, and then claiming that these enormous odds against such an event proof that it cannot be so, that the universe and evolution simply cannot be the result of random events, he is in reality proving exactly the opposite; that in fact these very existence of any odds at all, enormous or otherwise, proves that the not only the universe, but evolution within it evolution of life, of us, is absolutely inevitable. Christian science proves that evolution is real, is true, is happening, just as much as does science, and it doesn't even intend to do so.

Surviving, Arriving

WHEN I was in my twenties, a dear friend, a lady who would now be 112, told me that one's health in later life depends much upon how well one treat's one's body when young.I arrive at my 65th birthday glad that I have exercised my entire life, grateful to still be exercising, hopeful of continuing to do so for a while longer. In the nineteen sixties I predicted that by now I would have the choice of living on Mars, the moon, beneath the ocean, or in Earth orbit, that disease, hunger, and war would be eliminated - i was a most optimistic little kid, a fan of optimistic, utopian science fiction. On a Bonanza rerun a lady tells Little Joe that her filed hand has been injured. He asks her whether the injury is serious. She replies that its a pulled muscle, but that the man is sixty four, and at sixty four, well, everything is serious. Boy, howdy. I thought my left arm, the victim of over exercise, would have been healed a week ago. i haven't ridden my beloved stationary bicycle in two weeks, at least not the upper body arm attachment part. I never imagined i would celebrate my sixty fifth birthday in the midst of a deadly viral pandemic. Only the good science fiction scenarios die young. I hope to live long enough to get a reliable idea of whether humanity survives climate change, though I doubt I will; it promises to be a struggle lasting at least another fifty years. I had hoped to witness the first human contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life. I must evidently console myself that we have discovered thousands of planets orbiting other starts, and that that in and of itself is cause for optimism. I think most people of my generation would agree that it has been a long strange trip indeed, or perhaps a rapidly passing trip filled with grand adventures. As Bertolt Brecht wrote: 'In the earthquakes to come it is to be hoped i shan't allow bitterness to quench my cigar's glow". And I don't think i shall. We baby boomers are an interesting lot, with a mixed bag of accomplishments and failures, but, overall, we have had much for which to be thankful.

Living Or Dying

MAN, SAID ARISTOTLE, is a social animal. Each year, in the United States, forty five thousand people commit suicide, and nearly one million do so world wide. this is roughly equal to the number of people who die in auto accidents each year. The numbers are increasing in America, in all age groups. Future research may find that social distancing exacerbated the under reported suicide problem by contributing to its underlying cause; loneliness. The accompanying enormous increase in domestic violence both in America and worldwide is beginning to attract attention; every day hundreds of women are murdered in their own homes, often in the sight of their children, who are thereby forever scarred, psychologically. Perhaps the term should be "physical distancing'; social media provides a feeble substitute for connections, if nothing else. In the best of times, we have trouble getting along, In the worst, we become vicious, murderous. With the world growing weary of precaution, the virus is threatening to launch a second attack in China, and other places. The Americans are becoming so angry and frustrated that they are beginning to prefer risking another viral outbreak to home confinement. What would have happened had the world taken no steps to thwart the epidemic, if the United States had started baseballs season? By now millions might have died, as millions have done from the flu.If we choose to let the virus come again, we may lose millions yet. Yesterday I took a walk around a beautiful lake, and looked from a cliff down upon the beautiful water. there sat a fisherman, and i just stood and watched him, not wanting to bother him. He greeted me, and we both agreed it was a beautiful day. When I got back to my car a young man asked me whether I would give him a jump; his battery was dead. it made me feel good to do this simple act of kindness. I felt, for a few minutes, a sense of connection.

Trump, Being Trump

OF ALL THE INSANE, INANE REMARKS ever uttered by the prevaricator in chief, and there have been thousands, the latest one, the one about eating disinfectants to cure the Covid 19 virus, may be the most idiotic and the most potentially damaging yet. The nightmarish image of millions of disinfected Trump supporters making america great again in intensive care units, while alluringly humorous, would in fact be a further burden on an already much over burdened hospital, medical health, and medical insurance system. The questions, like a neglected white elephant in a crowded room, remains: why does trump incessantly say stupid things, and why do his supporters seem to not care? The ancient observation: "against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain' seems to apply. Conservative capitalistic Christians, the "Jesus, guns, and Money" crowd as gore Vidal termed it, in order to avoid perceived threats to its values, is willing to deny the reality of evolution and climate change, willing to turn a blind eye to Trump's spectacularly sinful, criminal, treasonous words and deeds, willing to pretend that the United states was founded upon "Christian" values, was intended by its founders to be a Christian country, and tp deny that socialism exists or works in America, when clearly it does both. This requires considerable self deception, and Christian conservatives, though well suited by nature to this seemingly impossible level of self deceit, accomplish it impressively. It may be that we never fully understand why the evangelical com,unity so strongly supports a president who lies constantly, is an acknowledged sexual predator, and whose personal conduct has always represented the exact opposite of supposedly "Christian" values. We can, however, console ourselves with teh comforting fact that at least as of now America's hospitals and mortuaries do not appear to be filling up with folks clutching Bibles, handguns, and wearing MAGA caps, victims of self inflicted Lysol poisoning or windmill cancer.

Trump, Declining

MODERN MEDICINE extends life, and mitigates illness. Ironically, the extension and preservation of lief, by allowing us to live, gives us more opportunity to be ill, and forces us to endure it. Goethe feared, in the eighteenth century, that the sweeping growth of machinery, as he put it, would turn us all into each other's nursemaids, and so, in a sense, it has. Our social stigmas motivate us to ignore and to drastically under report mental illness compared to physical illness. Nobody enjoys perfect health, physical or mental. At one time or another, we all suffer from each. It may be that physical health is best defined as "feeling good", and that mental health is best defined as "being happy". Depression, anger, frustration, and anxiety are perfectly normal human responses to external stimuli, unless they last long, and endure. Likewise high blood pressure and headaches. Everyone tells lies. It is the number of lies, their context, and their source which determine psychological pathology. When the number of lies exceeds fifteen thousands over a mere three year period, when all the lies are so blatant, so obvious, spoken without the slightest hesitation or remorse or embarrassment, in front of millions of people, by the president of the United States, arguably, mental illness is present in the president. When the president of the United States says that windmills cause cancer, that George Washington's army captured airports, that Italian-American friendship goes back to ancient Roman times, and that people might be cured of the Covid 19 virus by ingesting ultraviolet light and Lysol, the presence of mental illness within the president seems evident. It is little wonder that the mental health profession has overwhelmingly determined that Donald Trump is indeed mental ill, suffering from malignant narcissism, delusions, paranoia, among other forms of mental pathology. The president later tried to cover himself by claiming that he was only joking, just to get a reaction from the media. Actually, he was dead serious, and talking to the medical experts. His condition, whatever it is precisely, is obviously getting worse. What is much more alarming is that not only do his followers either fail to see this or pretend not to see it; they seem themselves to be suffering from some form of mental illness themselves, some combination of unresolved anger, among many other illnesses, including mass delusion.

Unwelcoming

FOR A NATION OF IMMIGRANTS, the United States is notoriously, demonstrably immigrant unfriendly, just as, for a nation of cultural, racial, and ethnic, and religious diversity, the United States, the american people, are and have always been antagonistic to such diversity. The xenophobic attitude of Donald Trump, his followers, and conservatives generally, while alarming, is quite typical of American historical tendencies. never underestimate the European-American capacity for hypocrisy. African immigration was once so strongly desired that it was coerced. Their services no longer required, no longer allowed, they were promptly discarded; even slave owner Thomas Jefferson wanted to send them back, to Africa's land of liberty, "Liberia". In the 1790s, an epidemic of yellow fever was blamed on German immigrants, when the king of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin, so seriously despised the Deutsch that some of them started calling themselves "Pennsylvania Dutch", instead of "Pennsylvania Deutsch". In the late eighteen forties, when desperate began arriving in Boston fleeing the great Irish potato famine of 1845, they were immediately blamed for subsequent outbreaks of cholera, for which they of course had no more responsibility than anyone else. In America, it has traditionally paid to be white, Anglo Saxon, Protestant. In the eighteen sixties thousands of Chinese workers were brought to the west to work in the mines and on the railroads, but they became too numerous, and public opinion, never favorable towards them, turned against them vehemently. The Chinese exclusion Act 0f 1882 finally halted Chinese immigration, and was supposed to be temporary. it lasted sixty one years. In the nineteen thirties and again in the nineteen fifties millions of Mexicans, many of whom were legal citizens, were kicked out of the country, scapegoats for economic stagnation, for allegedly stealing American jobs. Those are the twin excuses for kicking people out and stopping immigration; they allegedly steal jobs and bring disease.Today we have turned our attentions back to the Chinese, the progenitors of the virus. All across freedom's fruited plain, hate crimes against people who even remotely look oriental are proliferating; to have almond eyes puts one at great risk. As consolation, for the time being, middle easterners and Muslims are off the hook, no longer the American scapegoat of the month. Now trump has stopped immigration altogher, supposedly temporarily; because immigrants steal American jobs and bring disease. Its anyone's guess who will be our next victim to suffer the wrath of white christian conservative america. One thing we can depend on: it will be somebody.

Peddling Poison

UNSURPRISINGLY, the white supremacist extremist movement, firmly ensconced within the conservative Christian Trump base, is taking advantage of the epidemic to peddle poison, creepy crawler style. The main M.O. is to blame the pandemic on the Chinese, or any convenient, hated minority, any of which will do, which is a common strategy throughout the political right. Using the internet, using the usual redneck reprobate terminology, niggers, queers, ragheads terminology well known, to denigrate and arouse higher levels of hatred. They exploit tie great ongoing left right divide in American society, by fomenting anger which they hope will result in social conflict, chaos, destruction, and the rebirth of an all white christian American state. The white Christian party, also known as the Republican party, is their most reliable vehicle. The thinly disguised, loose coalition of Christian nationalism, the Trump movement, and the conservative media, featuring FOX news, foments violence by egging on the relatively small protests against quarantining virus control occurring in many cities, especially state capitol cities. These protests are highly organized and planned, but try to convey the impression of being spontaneous, representing the will of the people, in a tactic widely known as "Astroturfing", to distinguish it from its intended purpose of appearing to be grass roots. They are mostly MAGA-nauts who protest mandatory home confinement and loss of income, which are being required by governments only for the sake of survival - the virus must be brought under control before society can return to normal, scientists point out - by standing close together, often not wearing masks, and screeching the usual platitudes and rhetoric about freedom and liberty, and badly needing haircuts. FOX news, like Trump, is egging them on, it being a violation of law for the president to do so, encouraging insurrection against legal governments. But, among the capitalistic right, money Trumps public health. And for the white Christian supremacy movement, racism, xenophobia, and hatred trump all.

Republicans, Socializing

CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICANS, champions of trickle down, laizzez faire, neo-liberal economics, have, pandemically speaking, discovered the value of big government, aka "socialism".They must be spinning in their graves, and they aint even dead yet, at least, not physically. When big business needs help, everybody needs help. You can't even give away a barrel of oil these days, and we shall soon expect to be paid for filling our gas tanks.Tens of millions of Americans are the recipients of government handouts. Businesses of all shapes and sizes are being bailed out. Not since the great depression has socialism reared its magnanimous head so convincingly.The great recession of 2007 doesn't count; that was socialism only for the wealthy, only the big Wall Street banks were saved by the haunting specter of socialism. And yet, you'll not hear any right winger in freedom's land call all this what it is: socialism. They just can't bring themselves to that admission. Economics is a system by which goods and services are produced and distributed to members of a society. Done privately, for profit, its capitalism. done publicly, through government, its socialism. Clearly, the current mass spending, providing income to the economically damaged, citizens and businesses, is pure socialism. Either conservatives don't understand that, like they don't understand climate change, or they prefer not pretend that they do not, as they pretend that climate change is some sort of hoax. hence, they pretend that there is no socialism in America, when in fact you cannot swing a dead cat without encountering it. Without socialism, capitalism simply cannot exist. The folks at my local senior center, like so many other conservative and thus economically challenged Americans, have been brainwashed by the corporate media into believing that "socialism" is a deadly virus, a tin horn dictatorship, something dreadful which must never be allowed to infect freedom's land. The United States of America, where senior centers are publicly owned, non profit, non capitalistic, socialized...and the seniors gladly accept their non capitalistic social security checks even while they rail against those left leaning semi- commie socialistic democrats.

Shirking

BY MID FEBRUARY it was evident that the Covid 19 virus not only could but would come to the United States. Instead of setting in motion a system for producing and distributing hundreds of millions of testing kits,, which could have prevented the necessity of shutting down the country and ruining the economy, President Trump first called the epidemic a hoax, then suggested that everyone get a flu shot. He didn't begin to take the disaster seriously until mid March, for which he is morally and criminally culpable. On April 20 Facebook joined the fight against the virus. In what way remained unclear, presumably to share information, of which the venerable gossip mongering corporation has a greater abundance than any organized entity on the planet, save the United States government. Why the delay? The government, aka the Trump administration, late to the table, with over forty thousand preventable deaths on its hands, and rising. Every day one hundred and fifty thousand Americans are being tested for the virus, by now everyone in the country should have long since been tested, at least once, the sick healed, and the economy should be operating smoothly, as usual, without collapse or interruption. Trump promised 27 million test kits by March 31; by April 20 only four million Americans had been tested. Each day the president stands in front of the nation, brags about his fake achievements, and spews vicious insults at everyone who disagrees with him and tells the truth. He refuses to accept the facts from experts until he is either ridiculed into doing so or forced into it by made being made aware of the obvious. By criminal negligence and failed leadership,the president failed to prevent tens fo thousands of deaths, needless deaths, and yet, the morally bankrupt reprobates who support this gangster president resolutely serve as his criminal accessories. Laughably, they think of themselves, for the most part, as followers of Jesus Christ.

Inciting Rebellion, for the Money

THE EMERGING SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS is that not only have three quarters of a million Americans contracted Covid 19, but that very likely tens of millions have, without symptoms or diagnosis. Thus spake a conservative small business owner: "Then why in the hell don't we just open up the whole country, since so many people have already had it, and get back to normal, to business as usual, what harm could it do"? To which, albeit in vain, I responded: "Because there are tens of millions of Americans who have not yet had the disease, and to reopen the country would doubtless greatly increase the number of people exposed, and would doubtless greatly increase the number of dead people, compared to what the numbers will be if we simply continue our social distancing, self quarantining, business destructive ways a while longer" Its easy to understand the anger and frustration of someone who has spent decades building a small business from scratch, only to see it crumble into bankruptcy in a few short, disastrous weeks. But saving lives is more important than saving businesses, which can always be rebuilt. All across America's fruited plain people are starting to become angry and frustrated at the economic disaster, self inflicted, and the protests are multiplying. Invariably the protesters are conservative, pro business, Republican Trump supporter types. in Michigan, Virginia, Texas, and other states, the protests are proliferating as MAGA folk chant clever slogans about tyranny, liberty, their rights, and needing haircuts. they have a point, of course, as all protesters do. Enter, as always, President Trump, with his usual attention getting behavior, wanting, as usual, to play the hero. "Liberate", he tweets, taking the side of the protesters against the side of health and science. The president, encouraging citizens to rise up against their own state governments, duly empowered governments, in open rebellion. it has been pointed out by at least one legal scholar that the president is thus engaging in treasonous insurrection, open rebellion against government, state, and indeed federal government, because his own administration issued teh guidelines which strongly encouraged Americans to shelter in place for the foreseeable future. Add this to the list which includes conspiring with a foreign power to steal an election, and blackmailing a foreign country to obtain damaging information on a political opponent. The president should by now have been impeached at least three times, maybe more, and removed from office just once.

Social Distancing As Normalcy

I MISS the packed, roaring stadiums, the dull drone of a baseball crowd, as I suspect I may soon miss the thunderous explosions of football. A retired walks into a crowded airport and boards a crowded jet liner. They land at another crowded airport, check in at a crowded hotel,, have lunch in a crowded restaurant. The bus is full as they head to the port, which is crowded with people boarding a crowded cruise ship. The ports of call are all crowded, as are the tour buses, mostly with elderly retirees. Will this scenario ever happen again, or will we forever hunker down in our houses, dashing to the grocery store once a week, wearing face masks? A bit more microbiological research will tell us the genetic sequencing of the protein part of the virus which infects the cell, and we will know how to trigger the human immune response. Beyond that there is no magic medicine, no chemical to attack and destroy every copy of every virus. There is only the minor matter of microscopically motivating myself,ourselves. lacking that I am resigned to living out my life in the isolation of social distancing. I have found it to be a lifestyle with which I am completely compatible,lacking only a few roaring stadiums and booming concert halls. I find it to be a lifestyle I have practiced since early childhood, when I preferred to be alone in diapers, with my toys, and no one else around. Crowded classrooms hindered my love of learning, for which I compensated on my own, in my books, in solitary confinement. I don't go to restaurants merely to eat or watch games. In large measure I go to watch teh crowds, to glance furtively at the folks between bites and pitches, wo wonder about their lives, and what might have happened had I met them in other circumstances. I stay by myself, decade after decade, in social isolation, but paying close attention, like some alien from another world.

Right Wing Extremism, Going Around, Coming Around

THOSE OF A CERTAIN AGE will recall that the very moment bill Clinton took office in 1993, white Christian conservative males, mostly between teh ages of infancy and senility, grown men, began wearing military camo fatigues, bearing automatic and semi-automatic rifles and assorted handguns, began packing bibles and crosses and MREs into backpacks, and gathering together in wilderness areas, and playing army, or whatever it was, under the name "the militia movement". Most of them eventually had their fun, got bored, went back intotown and got real jobs, and grew up somewhat. clinton left office, amid a dung heap of right wing hatred. The religious right quietened down a mite during George bush the second's grammatically incoherent two terms, then came obama, and back out of hibernation came the camo boys, this time wearing white, like brides, sheets and hoods, like hoods. The rebirth of true all American white supremacy, a resurgence of the KKK. Right on time, never a dull moment with the "Jesus,Guns and Money" crowd, teh capitalistic corporate socialist hating christian caucasian elite, as we affectionately call them. They would have made Obama's life a living hell, with their racist nonsense, disguised as conservatism, had he paid any attention to it, but gracefully he ignored it, Obama, always the gentleman, in stark contrast to our current president, who never heard an insult he didn't want to multiply and double down on. By the time Trump took office the hate mongering fanatical right wing was in full bloom, for finally they had their man, a man who has devoted his life to greed, shady dealings, and racist, misogynist vendettas. Trump is the soul mate of the christian right, a community fully capable of ignoring any egregious sin if the sinner implements the right kind of agenda; pro white, anti gay, anti minority; the conservative christian agenda, thinly disguised as patriotism and virtue, is well known. Our only comfort is that as the white demographic declines as a percentage of the American population, and the baby boomers are replaced by the millennials, the extreme right wing christian community fades into non existence, mercifully.

Breaking Promises

A BIT MORE than one month ago, president Trump declared a national emergency, belatedly, and made many promises, rather impressive promises, after the fashion of a hyper emotional demonstrative fear mongering demagogue. He promised a massive, coordinated effort between the government and the private sector to manufacture and distribute urgently needed medical supplies, including Covid 19 testing on a massive scale, including drive thru one stop testing, as well as an assortment of equipment such as face masks, ventilators, protective gowns, and other necessities. one month later,, all these things are still in short supply, for the most part, nowhere to be found. States, communities, and hospitals are involved in a desperate competition for all of them, driving up prices, slowing down distribution. There are as of now no more than half a dozen drive thru testing sites in the U.s.; Walgreens and CVS have made token efforts, but Target and Wal Mart have not been heard from. Virus testing in America is among the lowest rate in the world, and the United States has by far the most deaths from the pandemic, and the most sicknesses, fully one half of the world's supply of both. Trump promises a new website which would provide an enormous amount of relevant information for the American people to use in determining their personal strategy for dealing with the virus; no such website exists, one month after the promise. Now, the president has announced thaqt the U.S. will stop funding the World Health Organization, at the worst possible time; in the middle of a global medical catastrophe. The WHO was founded after World War Two precisely to deal with situations like the current one; Trump, wanting to deflect attention from his administration's chaotic and ineffective policies in dealing with the pandemic, is trying to put the blame on the WHO. This is possibly Trump's most idiotic, petty, criminal act yet, in a long line of them; to defund the world's leading health organization at precisely the time when it is needed most, simply for his own political again, to avoid responsibility for his disastrous handling of the epidemic, which has cost tens of thousands of America lives, with many more thousands to come. Soon enough, we will look back on the Trump administration's litany of criminal behavior, and this will surely head the list.

Reconciling

IN THE NINETEEN EIGHTIES, those of a certain age will recall, there appeared over Antarctica a hole in the ozone layer, which is a layer in the upper atmosphere of oxygen molecules, unattached to hydrogen or any other element, which blocks harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun, making life on earth possible. The conservative community dismissed this as a liberal hoax, true to form, and indicated its intention of doing nothing about it. Two iconic conservative leaders, however, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, came through. They signed an international agreement outlawing the primary cause of ozone depletion, chloroflourocarbons, and over the years since the Earth, as it tends to do if only given the chance, has gradually repaired itself In 1990 the Starkist company, a subsidiary of the Heinz corporation, announced that it was eliminating the methods of tuna fishing which were harmful to dolphins. since then, dolphins and dolphin lovers have been most grateful. These two instances prove that conservative leaders, corporations, and conservatives in general can in fact rise above their usual behavior, and do the right thing. Liberals are well known for sharply criticizing conservatives and their policies, not without justification. It is therefore incumbent upon progressives to give credit where credit is due. I haven't been a big fan of the republican party nor of conservatism since Watergate. Strident, zealous Christianity has repulsed me since I was a child. Political conservatism wed to evangelical Chrisianity, an american original, I find creepy, despicable. But in the age of the killer Corona virus, we suddenly have a powerful new motive for seeking common ground, a reason for all of us to unite, against a microscopic machine. Bt only if we are willing to try.

Being Warned

TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO the skies over London, England were Chocked black with air pollution from factories. In 1852 thousands of people died during a particularly smog choked few days.A few perceptive scientists took notice, and predicted that if the coal dust continued to belch into the atmosphere, that eventually the earth's atmosphere would absorb more heat, causing global warming. We've, at least a few of us, have known about climate change for a long, long time. Einstein, who died in 1955, believed that we should think about deliberately adding carbon to the atmosphere, to produce climate change, and improve agricultural production in a hungry world full of starvation and famine. Even Einstein had some bad ideas. Fifty years ago, in Congress, Senator Paul Tsongas and Representative Al Gore worked on committees which provided warnings of environmental destruction and of global warming due to atmospheric pollution. In 1988. NASA scientist James Hanson warned Congress, the american people, and the world that global warming had already begun, and that it would get much worse if not stopped. We have had plenty of warnings, plenty of opportunity to start doing something, to solve the problem. right now in Antarctica there is an iceberg the size of Manhattan which is on the verge of slitting off the land mass, dropping into the ocean, melting, and raising the sea level by two feet. Another much larger ice berg the size of Ireland is right behind it; if the first one goes so will the second, and scientists now say that is appears inevitable that they will both melt in the ocean and raise the sea level by eleven more feet, putting all the world's coastal cities under water. within the next few decades this is almost inevitable, the raising of the world's sea level by at least a dozen feet, and flooding along all coastlines. We cannot say that we were never warned.

Giving Good Advice

EASTER SUNDAY, the white House is suggesting that religious services be held in cars on parking lots, at home, online, anywhere but gathered together. Common sense in the time of epidemic, given by a building built by slave labor. This, only weeks after president Trump, showing no semblance of good leadership, ranted that the American economy must be made to get up and run, the nation return to normal- by Easter. Wisdom and common sense, from brick and mortar, from the White House, but not from the incompetent morons within. An honest examination of the time line, of the events, the expert warnings, of whom did what when, of the actions taken and not taken, will clearly reveal, has already clearly revealed, that teh Trump administration has behaved with criminal negligence, in allowing the United States to become the world's most infected country, with the greatest loss of life on the planet. The people who have ignored the epidemic by gathering together, partying, worshiping, defiantly dismissing medical concerns are the Trump supporters, the religious right, the Republicans, not the liberals. On all the conservative right wing radio talk shows, the epidemic has been treated dismissively, and the Trump administration's behavior praised. Behold our conservative pro Covid 19 community, spewing their nonsense about government inflation of the numbers as a pretext to gain more control over the population, to justify big government. Conspiracy theory gangsters, extreme right wing, evangelical, new age alternative paradigm, a motley lot of mentally ill morons, disregarding, as usual, solid, verified science, in favor of their chosen fantasies. may they all be swept by a rising tide of sanity into the trash bin of forgotten history.

Witnessing What?

THEY CALL IT witnessing", which lends credence to it, makes it sound important, respectable, by giving it an air of legitimacy, of legal validity. they would say that they are serving, attesting to, being witnesses to the truth of Christ's gospel, his plan for salvation, the Christian faith, by living according to its principles, thus verifying its eternal verities, and spreading its message to all, among the unsaved. Another way of describing it is that they are witnessing the enhancement of their own self esteem by convincing themselves that of the thousands of religions on earth, of the hundreds of varieties of Christianity, theirs is the true religion, and that they are therefore spiritually superior, and cannot resist demonstrating their moral superiority to others by reminding others of it. Every few months they knock on my door, wanting to improve me, to save me from something, to enhance their sens of superiority and self esteem. My mother, a clever woman, used to tell them that she was Catholic, and would pray for them at mass.I invite them in, offer them refreshments, and proceed to tell them about my religiosity, and to quote Goethe, Einstein, Voltaire, and Jefferson. they want to help me, maybe I should return the favor. Pantheism, baby, Join me? That always seems to confuse them, annoy them, and to ultimately motivate them to write me off as incorrigible, and then to leave, sadly. So zealous are they that they travel not only around their own neighborhoods, but to foreign countries, trying to improve people of different cultural and religious heritages. Invariably, those they try to improve and save are as intelligent, happy, and dedicated to their existing religious beliefs as they are, but, to them, that is of no consequence. The unsaved must be saved by their superior religions. The fact that this is arrogant, insulting, and aggressive, and disrespectful never occurs to the evangelical witness, because, the evangelical witness, attesting to the true religion, the one true religion, is bringing a superior message to the misguided. The witnesses will never understand this, will never respect people whose religiosity differs from their own, for they are incapable of humbling themselves and opening their own minds to this reality. somehow, society survives their onslaught on decency and civilization. Maybe some fine day they will shrink in numbers to nothing, and we will be spared their contempt of us. If one of them tries to tell you that the pandemic is God's wrath for a wicked society which tolerates homosexuality, liberalism, atheism, and other religions, slam the door in their ugly, hateful faces.

Coming Together

RONALD REAGAN, in a rare moment of lucidity, reflected that were the Earth invaded by extraterrestrials, humanity would cease warring among itself, and unite in defense. Given a comparable opportunity, the old ancient acting warmonger declined; he said no when Gorbachev offered to rid the world of nuclear weapons. But Reagan had a point. What humanity needs is a common purpose, a transcendent reason to transcend international borders and conflicts. As a child I thought that space flight would fill the bill. But, alas, we seem to have, at least for several decades, given up on the ideal of exploring space with human beings, and we relegated ourselves to space shuttle redundancy and space probes. Neither has pervasive poverty or disease done the trick. Climate change, for purposes of human unification, still holds promise, but the damned right wing american climate change deniers keep getting in the way. Enter the virus, and for a brief, flickering moment there was a glimmer of hope. Not for the virus, which we'll lick, but for true pan-people cooperative unification. But even as the curve begins to show signs of flattening, even as we can begin to see life beyond Covid 19, life returned to some semblance of normal, we sense that the old animosities, personal, political, international, the old divisiveness which has plagued human kind since homo sapien sapiens evolved on this planet, shall return. We simply cannot seem to get our of our own way. It seems that fundamental human nature is immutable, not prone to mutate and drastically change course like viruses do. maybe, like Einstein and the bible said, as long as there are people, there will be wars. And so it may be that the Gipper, not known for his intellectual stature, had it right after all, that the only possible force great enough to compel humanity into unified behavior is a serious threat from an alien life form from beyond the stars. the fact that such an intelligent species of beings, able to come to Earth and to threaten us, would doubtless easily have the ability to note only defeat us, but to completely exterminate us, in which case, we would be back to exactly where we started from; the beginning.

Infighting

ALL ACROSS AMERICA'S fruited plain, and all around god's green Earth, people are beating up on each other, domestic violence is, as we say, "spiking", by as much as thirty percent. My father, a wise man, always said that a husband should never play meed doubles with his wife. Maybe they shouldn't live with each other either. married couples, even the best of them, seem to be able to stand each other for no more than a few blessed hours per day. It turns out that bowling alleys, poker games, and girls nights out exist for a reason; domestic tranquility. All this hype about sheltering in place with family is much overrated, it seems. Modern marriage is a recent invention. We have grown to expect much too much of our spouses; business partner, best friend, soul mate, mate, all rolled into one. When one domino falls, they all fall. marriage serves a valuable function. It organizes society, protects women and children, and, to a degree, prevents men from behaving like wild animals. marriage is as sacred an institution upon which civilization has ever been built. but it isn't for everybody. Not everyone should get married. In teh United States, about ninety percent of the population gets married. About one half of all married people get divorced. In the U.S., about one half the people are married, one half are not, at any given time. The single life is greatly underrated. We need alternatives. arranged marriages, gay marriages, multiple interlocking marriages, monogamy, polygamy, marriages with a prearranged expiration date, marriage to inanimate objects, interspecies marriages; all should be available as alternatives. Despite religious conservative resistance to progress, social institutions, all of them, evolve, and it is pointless to resist evolution. When chief justice John Roberts cast the deciding vote legalizing gay marriage, conservatives were horrified, predictably, and were left in teh dust, choking on it. People used to ask my mother why her cute, handsome, brilliant, successful con was not married. her answer was always the same: because he's smart.

Leading By idiocy

YOU'LL RECALL that only a couple of weeks ago president Trump, the very stable genius, announced that he wanted the country up and running again by Easter. No more social distancing, quarantining, all that,a roaring return to business as usual in america. Consider also that at least one of trump's former professors in college called Trump the "dumbest sonofabitch i ever had in class". Also bear in mind that the president for weeks has been touting the supposed effectiveness of an unproven, ineffective drug, hydroxychloroquine (sp?) for treatment of Covid 19. Fools who know little often think they know much, as we all know. Dr. Trump. Well, Easter is almost here, the epidemic rages and we all, thankfully, are still wisely social distancing and sheltering in place, at least, those of us with a lick of sense who knows what's good for us. True, the cure can be worse than the illness. but not in this case. Can you imagine the results if all across america churches were full of worshipers on Easter Sunday, and baseball stadiums were full of thousands of fans, and bourbon Street and Broadway were humming and hopping? Te consequences would be disastrous; millions of sick people, hundreds of thousands of dead and dying, a catastrophe. Obviously, shelter in place, shutting down America was the answer, the only answer. Trump was dead serious about Easter. he wa also serious when at the outset he said the whole thing was a big hoax, and everyone need only get a flu shot. Rush Limbaugh and his fans are wondering why we are all required to hunker down - couldn't we just isolate the sick folks, and go about our business as usual? Limbaugh accuses the government of inflating the numbers to gain control over the American public, and suggests that the virus is merely another form of the flu. Idiocy runs deep in conservative America. Despite not wearing a mask, Trump is unlikely to contract the virus. One wonders, however, whether he has already contracted windmill cancer, and whether it might already have spread to his brain.

Voting

EVENTUALLY, some fine day, we'll resume hugging, kissing, and shaking hands, but for a time, we'll be paranoid and extremely hygienic. As more corona type viruses infect the future world, the world will, as it has long done with influenza, accept viral pandemics as a way of life, a fact of life, and will develop and encourage vaccinations, and go about our business as usual, as we Americans do with the flu, thirty thousand flu deaths per year be damned. And when we are finished hugging, kissing, and being considerate and kind to each other in celebration of the vanquishing of Covid 19, we will return to our usual, rude, dismissive ways. We will, however, belatedly change the way we vote. We will install a more reasonable, practical system, to mitigate inconvenience and contagion and long lines at the ballot box, but we will do so only over the kicking, screaming, dead bodies of Republicans. We will begin voting by telephone, computer, and snail mail, as we already do to a certain degree. It is the only way to go. It is the future. republicans want fewer people to vote, Democrats want more.Elitism versus egalitarianism. Hamilton versus Jefferson. The fight has already begun, and it will end with an expanded, more inclusive democracy. It will also give greater voice to we the poor people, and might very well, as some republicans have predicted, guarantee that no Republican ever wins a national election again, because, when push come to shove, America is a progressive country, with many more people served by the ideals of Democrats than republicans. Long live the future.

Trump, Stepping Up

AN OLD FRIEND OF MINE, a neighbor kid with whom I played whiffle ball back in the sixties, has a great idea. After decades, we ran into each other on Facebook, and he, like I, sees Donald Trump for the criminal and traitor that he is. The idea? This: President Trump could volunteer to use his various properties, resorts, hotels, what not, as hospitals and recuperation centers for people afflicted with Covid 19! What a wonderful idea, and what a wonderful way for our president to show us the American people just how much he really truly cares for us, as he has ever so sincerely so asserted.Can you imagine that? you can, but only if you have an extremely vivid imagination. Another one of my childhood turned Facebook buddies reminded us that the president is far too busy playing golf at his properties to actually put them to good, magnanimous use. And now, for the bad idea. During times of crisis, we must take the bad with the good, and forge intrepidly forth, in the comfort of our quarantined homes. In such a circumstance, safely sheltered at home, I betook myself to a glance out my living room window,, and there, striding down the quiet street, was a gentleman wearing a face mask. I resisted the temptation to burst upon the scene and tell him that he needn't bother. A cat lay asleep on my lap, and I know well the rules of engagement concerning cat lap napping. In essence, one must not move until one's cat does. Besides, the gentleman was striding along at a very brisk pace, despite the limitations on his air supply. Between him and the closest available human being, me, there must have been an expanse of at least six times sixty feet, well beyond the range of any known viral transmission capability. but, better safe than sorry, as we like to say; he was taking no chances. I can easily imagine that had he been in grade school during the Cuban missile crisis, he would still be crouching beneath his wooden s=desk, in a moldy, abandoned class room, inside a building which is a boarded up, crumbling into a pile of bricks.

Heeding Lord Acton

PEOPLE LOVE A GOOD STORY. Good stories are the foundation of all human culture. People love to embrace them, to make them real, a part of their lives, even to the point of accepting fictitious myths as factual. Sometimes, the opposite is true. sometimes, a factual account seems so unbelievable that it is rejected as fictitious, relegated to the realm of myth. When peace spontaneously broke out in the trenches of World War One, nobody believed that this had actually happened for decades, even though it was confirmed, verified, corroborated, documented by hundreds of documents, mostly personal letters. It all began when a British unit decided to cease firing long enough to enjoy a proper breakfast. Only a few hundred yards away, the Germans decided to do the same. The behavior grew and spread. As Christmas approached, the Germans began placing Christmas tress in front of their trenches, and decorating them, and singing Christmas carols. Soon, thousands of enemy combatants were shaking hands, exchanging gifts, sharing eggnog, and singing Christmas carols together. Safely ensconced behind the lines, the generals on both sides were outraged, at what they considered cowardly, traitorous behavior. They began issuing commands requiring their men to provided tangible proof that teh blood letting had resumed, and the fun was over. This inspiring anecdote lends credence to the popular notion that we the masses are fundamentally peace loving creatures, but placid, passive, willing to easily submit to authority, and easily led astray by ambitious, foolish leaders. Einstein, a pacifist whose views in cold war America often aroused the enmity of right wingers, suggested that if all men in the world of military service age would refuse to participate in military service, war could be ended forever. Lord Acton's famous admonition that power corrupts, and that absolute power corrupts absolutely also seems true. It behooves us the powerless masses to remember our ever present potential for exercising power, regardless of its normally lying dormant.

Making War No More, For Awhile

MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED MILLION people died in combat during the twentieth century, which, ironically, was a far less violent century, according to measurements involving deaths per population, than previous centuries. Statistically, humanity is becoming more peaceful, a fact which defies our perceptions, so violent is our present world. Since recorded history began, there have been only a handful of years during which there was no war anywhere raging. There is an iconic photograph of Albert Einstein, late in his life, sitting at a desk wearing a dark sweat shirt, with an ink pen tucked into it just below his chin, with Einstein, with his halo of unkempt white hair, looking up at the camera, with an expression of great solemnity, but with his head lowered, his eyes exuding sadness. he has just responded to a question: "do you think there will ever be an end to war"? No, said teh father of relativity, as long as there are people, there will be war. we are, nonetheless, currently taking a bit of a time out from our organized violence. all over the world, in hot spots such as Syria, Afghanistan, and across Latin America and Africa, various ongoing wars have settled down into unplanned truces, actual cessations of hostilities, in apparent reaction to the global pandemic. we have, at least for a short time, laid down our arms to care for our sick, dead, and dying. how long this will last is anyone's guess; your best bet is that as soon as the war against the Covid 19 virus starts to become successful, the human against human wars will flare up once again, and normalcy will resume. I grew up with the Viet Nam War in the news every day. the casualty numbers were placed on the black and white grainy television screen like a baseball scoreboard, while Walter Cronkite informed up of teh most recent combat action. The Americans, as I recall, lost about two hundred soldiers a week, the South Vietnamese about a thousand, and the enemy about two thousand. I was seduced into thinking that my side would win, through attrition, until February of 1968, when I finally figured out, with Cronkite's help, that the North Vietnamese would pursue the war no matter what their casualty rate, because they h ad only to wait for the American public to loose patience, and the Americans to go home. Since then, all war has seemed futile to me, as, of course it is. ther are never any winners. As a child, I hoped an e believed that Einstein was wrong. But, alas, he rarely was. Now, I tend to agree with him, that there will always be war. For the moment, however, we have a time out, which, though doubtless short lived, is perhaps the one and only benefit from our global viral nightmare.

Dilly Dallying

THE GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA, a Republican, and Donald Trump, allegedly a Republican, took some time away from work to engage in a playful game of viral "hot potato". Making lemonade of lemons, so to speak. The apparent object was to see who would end up with the responsibility of deciding whether to quarantine or to not quarantine the tens of millions of susceptible people who live in the sunshine state. The winner would evidently be determined by which alleged political leader could evade responsibility the longest. Back and forth went the viral potato, until finally, mercifully, the governor made the decision he should have made weeks ago: to order people to stay home other than leaving home for necessary errands. The timing was convenient for tens of thousands of partying spring breakers, whose march madness on the beaches, large crowds clustered closely together frolicking in the sun, went unhindered and unchecked by mere medical concerns. The college students, and whatever viruses they happened to be carrying with them, were thus free to scatter all across the fruited plain, to go back to their respective college campuses, and spread the contagion. This is in stark contrast to China, where it all began, and where it has ended, the epidemic firmly under control. They nipped it in the bud. they built a huge, new, fully equipped hospital in less than two weeks. In the United States, it is difficult to imagine something like this being done in less than two years. One can scarcely imagine any provincial governor in China passing responsibility back and forth with the central government in Beijing, each claiming the other was responsible. Donald trump and governor Desantis, each abrogating responsibility, each passing the buck, the governor waiting for guidance from Washington, Trump insisting that the states should decide, while tens of thousands of people, not taking the situation seriously, congregated at will spreading and sharing their infections. Another one of those priceless "only in America" situations.

Going Out of Style

IT IS WELLKNOWN that white Christian Americans, as a percentage of the general population, are declining in number. Two reasons. Immigration, and encroaching secularism. And, to name a third, white Christian Americans just aren't reproducing like they used to. This fact of white Christian decline explains nearly every aspect of the current virulence of the white conservative evangelical Christian pro Trump movement; the perception that white Christianity is declining, or, as its frightened adherents often put it; that white heterosexual Christianity is under assault of some sort.What's really happening, obviously, is that millions of Latin Americans, immersed in the grinding poverty precipitated largely by decades of exploitative corporate United States foreign policy, and their hope of its alleviation, are desperately seeking asylum in the U.S., and are often being met with the usual racist hatred so prevalent among white Christian conservative America. Then too, Americans in general are losing their religion. Americans who self identify as Christian are at a percentage of sixty five percent, down from eighty five percent a generation ago. One half of millennials have no religious identification. White Christians, essentially, are being outnumbered. They are reacting to this bey becoming panicky, angry, and by electing to office angry gangster demagogues like Donald J. Trump. The phenomenon is similar, sociologically, to the behavior of Germans in the nineteen thirties, reacting to the perceived takeover of German society by Jews, socialists, and communists. Studies indicate that caucasians are less tolerant of minorities, as minorities, including gays, become more prominent in American society.As the Hispanic percentage of the population increases,, a decreasing proportion of the white demographic is willing to think of Hispanic people as being "white". It is as if a privileged club with an elite membership is trying to further contract its exclusive membership, to achieve an ever greater elitism, which is a counter intuitive process. One might expect that, as the white demographic declines in numbers, it might seek adopt a more inclusive definition of"whiteness", to expand its numbers, but, that is not the case. As the inevitable discrediting and collapse of Trumpism and resentment base white supremacy proceeds, it may eventuate that the movement contracts into a hardened core of its former self, like the NAZI movement in the final days of World War Two, defending itself and its values to the bitter end, while history moves on, without it.

Admiring

MY RELIGION, to the extent that I have one, is science. I worship nothing, I admire everything, merely because its exists. It is beyond dispute that science is humankind's best, and perhaps only tool for understanding the world. Applied science, which is science translated into practical applications, called technology, has transformed human life for the better, as attested by modern medicine and machinery, provides more than ample proof of this. It will be science, not religion, which will give us the answer to eradicating the current pandemic, and all future pandemics. Ironically, all major religions are actually contributing to the spread of the current virus, by insisting on gathering their votaries together in large numbers for purposes of prayer, creating results contrary to their actual purpose. The sense of comfort and inspiration derived from religion can be much more tangibly delivered by science, without the senseless and misleading dogma and superstition. At universities like Harvard and Princeton, a sizable number of students who enter doctoral programs in religious studies begin as devout, fundamentalist, evangelical Christians, and graduate as agnostics and atheists. At good universities religion, like everything else, is taught from a factual, critical, scientific, historical perspective, rather than a devotional one. There are no presumptions.all religious doctrine, including the bible, is studied without preconception or bias. Each student is free to decide for herself whether biblical scripture is the word of God, or of many different human authors. Graduates complete their doctorates fully aware of the thousands of contradictions and errors of fact in the scriptures. Religion, for the properly educated, is a purely human affair, replete with human limitations and foibles. And this is how it should be. After all, aren't we all better off using our god given abilities to examine, explore, and explain the world for ourselves, rather than settling for and relying on books and explanations written thousands of years ago by people with less knowledge and means of discovery than we?Science does no harm to religion, other than disproving it. People are always free to believe whatever they wish. Religion, however, has done and continues to do inestimable harm to science and truth, if only by encouraging people to reject it.Graduates from the Harvard and Princetono schools of divinity always have good jobs awaiting them at highly prized pulpits. And anyway, they always expediently preach to their new congregations exactly what their parishioners want to hear, with tongue in cheek, and good job security.