Hating On Michelle

THE MORE I THINK about the idiots who spew the racist garbage that Michelle Obama is a man, the more i want to embark on a four state shooting spree. What do they mean, anyway? That she's a transgender woman? If so, she's still a woman, if only through surgical procedures. The first time I heard this racist garbage was in an online discussion group with some of my high school classmates. that was when Obama was president, and the right wingers were all mad about it. I left the group. I recently reconnected with a friend I hadn't seen in twenty years. Surprisingly, she gave me the same garbage. I may wait another twenty years or more before I contact her again, assuming we're both still alive, to give her time to abandon her hateful racist nonsense. I won't hold my breath. What makes this all the more incredible is that the hatemongers who spout this trash invariably swear up and down that not only are they not racists, but that they have nothing personally against the former first lady. These denials are lies, of course. In fact these hateful people do not really believe that Michelle Obama is a man, a former, or anything of the kind, nor do they care; they simply want a vehicle for expressing their hatred of the Obamas, and to justify it, without owning up to either their hatred for their racism, which they carefully conceal to preserve their reputation among their fellow haters and to preserve their sense of self esteem and moral superiority. These people are crazy, their mental processes clouded by hatred and poor judgment. When I became aware that this transgender Michelle meme was widespread among the religious right, I was initially shocked, but probably shouldn't have been at all surprised. Trump and the religious right have, over the past several years, shown a remarkable capacity to lie and to hate, often combining the two. the religious right loves conspiracy theories, hatred, and lies, and through practice is quite well versed in the nefarious employment of each. I've tried to explain that when a man transitions into a woman,she is still a woman, that only Michelle Obama can decide her gender, and not the rest of us, that had she undergone sexual reassignment surgery she would never have able to hide or deny it, and that were she a transgender woman it would have long been obvious to many people, especially to those with whom she grew p and have known her her entire life, and she could only have confirmed it, openly. As you might expect, it didn't do any good. Its, meaning reason, never does any good among the religious right wing hate mongers.

Lives, Mattering

BLACK LIVES MATTER. Blue lives matter. All lives matter. Hell, Virus lives matter.We all make a difference, whether momentous or minor, right? Of the above, the exception which proves the rule is black lives. Historically, currently, not all lives, including blue lives and white lives, have been kidnapped, enslaved, beaten, starved, reviled, excluded, and systematically oppressed and discriminated against, en mass, except black lives, by the millions.We are quick to comfort ourselves by reminding ourselves, we privileged white lives, that the vast majority of America's police officers are people of courage, integrity, decency, and morality, not racist. No one argues this point, except the racist part. Nobody actually knows what percentage of America's police officers harbors racist attitudes. Surveys reveal nothing. nowadays, nobody is a racist, nor admits to being one. the number could be as high as one hundred percent. Throughout American society, the number could be equally high. In a very real sense, we are all racists, to some degree. We are willing to ascribe all police brutality, all murders of black men, to "a few bad apples". Are we equally wiling to acknowledge that the violence and looting associated with protests against systemic racism are the product of a few bad apples, and not the anarchical mob rampages of hordes of people of color? The little two bit carnival barking con man punk currently serving as president has incited more hatred and violence among his reprobate followers than all the mobs which ever rampaged through all the streets of all the cities which ever existed. His life matters too; much too much. As an afterthought,, we might wish to bear in mind that all this death, disease, economic collapse and racial unrest are taking place while Donald Trump is president, not some far left radical socialist anarchist Democrat.

Being Among Greatness

WHEN I WAS FIFTEEN, in 1970, my father, who tried his best to expose me to a wide range of cultural and artistic experiences, took me to a major university campus to hear Muhammed Ali speak. ali had been stripped of his heavyweight boxing title in 1967, for refusing to be drafted into the army for service in Viet Nam. Cassius Clay grew in in Louisville, was treated like a second class citizen, not allowed to eat in white restaurant, not allowed to drink from white only water fountains nor to use white only restrooms - the while black discrimination  scenario we all know so well, and then was expected to serve his country by fighting in Viet Nam. Hell no! I was proud of him then, and I'm proud of him now. The basketball arena was filled to capacity; must have been nine thousand people there, including about five African-Americans, the total black student enrollment in this segregated southern college campus, where every fraternity flew a confederate flag. Ali picked the handful of black students out of the crowd - they stood out, and he could easily see them from the podium - and spoke directly to them. you shouldn't be going to school here, he said. You should be going to an all black university, like Grambling, or something. Most of the crowd murmured and hissed in response, but nothing too blatant; Ali was, after all, an invited speaker, and he was surrounded by a number of well built, well dressed African-american bodyguards. At universities, even those in the segregationist south, controversial topics tend not to be avoided, but addressed directly. He explained why he refused to fight in Viet Nam, his upbringing, and why he felt that America had let him down his entire life, so it was time for him to let America down, and the crowd listened, quietly, unable to escape his reasoning. (Ali appealed his draft evasion conviction all the way to the Supreme Court, and won his case there, and was reinstated in boxing, and won his title back.) He said that he received much support from fans in the form of letters, from both black and white people, all encouraging him to keep doing the right thing, to resist racism and resist being forced to fight a war he knew was immoral. He said that should he be convicted and sent to prison, he would do his time, without resistance, knowing in his heart he was in the right, serving his God. Ali made money speaking at universities all across american during his three year suspension from boxing, always with the same militant message. The crowds always listened, unable to avoid his truth. On one campus, he was surrounded by a conservative fraternity, which challenged him by asking why he refused to serve his country. He responded that he aint got nuthin' against nobody in Viet Nam. if he was gonna fight anybody, I want to fight you! He was big and impressive, and looked dashing in his three piece suit, and no frat boy dared take him up on his offer.To this day nobody ever has.

Listening To Rush, Briefly

I HAD THE SAME SORT OF EXPERIENCE WITH Rush Limbaugh that I did with Donald Trump. Call it a brief romance. When Trump declared in the summer of 2015, I got on board. new blood, shake up the establishment. I got off at the first stop, two weeks in, after I had heard Trump call Senator Ted Cruz "lyin Ted" about fifty times. I detest Ted Cruz, but between him and Trump, Cruz is not the liar. Yes, I was a Trump supporter for two weird weeks. In the very early nineties i started hearing about the radio guy with the funny name, making all the fuss, and I tuned in. I actually listened, off and on, for several years, increasingly finding it difficult to believe my ears. I actually kept listening to Limbaugh after i learned to despise him; that may be part of the trick to his success; people who despise him often tune in, or, maybe its just me. Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment. I find it fascinating to hear somebody like Limbaugh or Trump tell so many lies, make so many hateful, egregious comments, so calmly, with such self assuredness. As of now, I haven't listened to Rush for years, and, much to my good fortune, he won't be talking to anyone much longer. he's had his chance. Rarely has anyone in human history made so many horrible comments. "If the left ever senses and smells that there's no consent in part of the equation, then here come the rape police." Really, Rush? "The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. they should get a liquor store and practice robberies." Or how about: "Feminism was established so that unattractive broads could have easy access to the mainstream" Ponder that, ladies. Plus: "If any race of people should not have guilt about slavery, its caucasians." Makes you wonder precisely what race Limbaugh feels, if any, should have guilt about slavery. or maybe he believes that slavery is a guilt free institution. These quotes are but the tip of the iceberg. One could google  incredible, ridiculous Rush Limbaugh quotes, and probably come up with a diamond mine full of pernicious nuggets. And, of course, the same is true of Trump, and has been for decades. Donald Trump has been spewing and doing vicious vile garbage for decades, and has only increased his output during his corrupt presidency. but his cult member supporters, much to their shame and guilt, refuse to see it all. The same is true of Rush Limbaugh. My contempt for people who listen lovingly to rush Limbaugh is no less than for people who still support Donald Trump, after all he has done and said. These people are simply of low moral character. When Limbaugh's illness finally consumes him it will be appropriate to either celebrate or ignore his passing, rather than mourn it.

Walking Through Racism

ON AUGUST 4, which, if memory serves, is the date on which Lincoln issued one of his several emancipation proclamations, a group of civil rights marches left Kenosha, Wisconsin, and walked seven hundred miles to Washington D.c., arriving on august 28, the fifty seventh anniversary of MLK's famous speech. Along the way, the large group, walking dozens of miles per day, was spat at,yelled at, and pelted with obscenities, cans, bottles, garbage, and food by caucasians who probably claim to be non racists,, and that All Lives Matter. Police cruised the highways just ahead of them, temporarily shutting down service stations and convenience stores, preventing the marchers from refueling and restocking. The harassment twas incessant, brutal, and lily white. It was more remindful of august, 1963, than what one might expect in august 2020. It raises the question: how much progress towards racial equality have we really made in modern America? meanwhile, at the Republican National convention, Nikki Haley, who isn't a racist and believes that all lives matter, made it perfectly clear that the Untied States of America is not a racist country. President trump made it crystal clear that the Black Lives Matter movement is a bunch of troublemakers, making trouble about nothing, made up of people who probably have never heard of George Floyd. At least now we can imagine how the USA might look had Strom Thurmond or George Wallace become president, and had the civil right movement never taken place. Then again, maybe the civil rights movement never has really happened.

Explaining To Lori

I MET YOU on a whim, forty years ago, through your brother, my buddy. You were twenty, I, twenty five. you were engaged to be married, and after your marriage, as you and your new husband settled into your new apartment, you began to call me, nearly everyday. Your beauty was irresistible. Nearly every day, the invitation to join you for supper. I wondered why,but it was a gift horse i dared not examine too closely. Your husband and I got along very well, as he sat across the room in front of the television, and you and I sat, thighs pressed against each other's, snuggling on the couch, my arm around your shoulders. It all seemed strange, and heavenly, to me, so I asked no questions. Your frequent racist comments I let pass. I cringed at the United negro College Fund commercials, when the sad young black face would fill the screen, imploring understanding, and your comments would begin, acid rejections, its not worth it to send you to school. You married several times, looking for the stairway to wealth and social status, and, perhaps, to heaven. We went our separate ways. Then came the internet, nearly forty years later, and Facebook, and we met again, you from your mansion in the mountains, I, from my college town modest home, and teaching job. Its so very easy to become friends on Facebook, no commitment nor connection needed; the push of a button will do. we never really talked. I was there to promote my website, and to distribute material urging people to despise Trump as I did; I don't know why you were on Facebook, don't know why you bothered, you seemed interested only in showing the world images of your six car garage, and kitchen fir for a king. I always knew you would want to do that. My anti-Trump posts must have made their way to your timeline, you must have seen them, and they must have angered you. I would figure you for a trump supporter; rich, white, a former racist, who probably renounces racism now, overtly, but clings to it overtly, like Trump supporters so. Yes, I suppose you must be a Trump supporter, and that's why you unfriended me, the very day after I messaged you what a wonderful you had been, forty years before, and you seemed to recoil in fear and shame.As good a way to end our second attempt at friendship as any, I suppose, you, the trump supporter and "former" racist who hates liberals, I, the liberal who hates Trump and former racists.

Living To a Hundred, Like My Mom

TODAY IS MY MOTHER'S one hundredth birthday. Shew died in 2014, at 93, and for awhile I thought she might live to a hundred. Charlie Parker, teh great saxophonist and originator ob bee bop music, was born the day after she, but he died teh year I was born, 1955, at age 34, victim of musician's lifestyle, heroin, and poor health. So, I feel fortunate. Mom never had a dependent day. When she was niiety, and her health began to decline, I suggested taht I sell or rent my house, and move in with her. Her response? "You gotta be kidding me! It took me over twenty years to get rid of you, and I'll be damned if you're coming back. she felt the same way about my sister, who made her the same offer. She loves her kids, she used to say, but she doesn't want to live with them. you gotta respect that.I grew up smothered with love and discipline. She nurtured me too much, and I grew up helpless. As a two year old, there were no "terrible two" for me. No ma'am. In a room full of adults, i sat quietly with my hands folded on my lap, or else. All she had to do was look at me. She loved to ridicule stupid presidential behavior. She would have had a field day, every day, with Trump. when I asked her whether she voted for Roosevelt, she gave me two answers: no, and hell no.I never met anyone who hated racism more than she. she loved Chuck Berry, Willie Mays, and Jackie Robinson. She loved black people and native Americans, and passionately felt that we should hang our heads in shame.She was too light, at a hundred and five pounds, to donate blood, so she hated teh Red Cross her entire life, though she was a career registered nurse.Pearl harbor happened when she was twenty one, and she wanted to enlist in the military, but her boyfriend, my father, and her brother, my uncle, insisted that she not, saying that we needed nurses on the home front to make sure that we kept a country worth fighting for. When my beautiful German Shepherd died. she wept, as did all my friends. I have moved in with her for two months when she was seventy eight, and broke her leg in a tai chi class. My huge dog and I shared her small house with her, while she healed, and when we finally left, she wanted me to leave the dog with her, because she followed her around in her wheelchair, protecting her. I still think she loved Wolfgang as much as she love me. Suddenly, I wish she were still alive. I reckon she still is.

Organizing Beauty

THE ORCHESTRA CONDUCTOR raises the baton, her other hand raised in sync, the magic wand of perfect rhythm, and gently sweeps through a flowing motion, bringing order and perfect beauty to a hundred musicians. The highly organized majestic noise begins...It was not always this way. three hundred years ago the conductor held a seven foot long heaven thick wooden staff, and over sized cane, and kept time by banging it rhythmically on the floor, thumping, thumping. One renowned composer- conductor - composers often conduct their own music in performances, then, and now - banged the huge baton down on his own foot, contracted gangrene, and, in an era of primitive medicine, died. Eventually, frequent foot bruising prompted a new technique, one based on sight, rather than sound. The list of great composers who died much too soon lengthened over the centuries. Mozart, Schubert, Gershwin, Hendrix Many of them died from self inflicted lifestyle choices, many did not. I recall my father expressing outrage that George Gershwin's surgeon had botched his heart operation. In fact, Gershwin died of an inoperable brain tumor. Centuries ago, orchestra members dressed in brightly colored, gaudy uniforms, like modern marching band uniforms, and the audience was not expected to sit placidly on its hands, and applaud at only the proper times, politely. They were a rowdier bunch, eating and drinking during performances, making noise. Every orchestral member had his or her music lighted up with a candle located near the music, in a candle holder. Presumably there was plenty of water nearby... Franz Joseph Hayden got tired of people goings to sleep during his concert, so he inserted a particularly loud brass blast into a quiet string section, waking everybody up. Hayden, like most classical composers, lived from the patronage of a wealthy noblemen, and he and his orchestra performed at court much of the year, and went home for a summer break. One summer the archduke kept them in session long into the hot weather, and they grew tired, ready to go home and be with their families. Hayden wrote his famous "farewell symphony", in which, near the end, one musician at at time stand up, blows out the candle, and walks quietly off stage, carrying his instrument and sheet music. Finally, only a single violin player remains, onstage, and finishes the symphony with a solo. Hayden and Mozart, good friends, went to a coffee house, and listened as the string quartet played one of Hayden's compositions. Nobody recognized them, although they were celebrities, in the days before photography. Hayden, a prankster, summoned the waiter, and complained bitterly about the bad music being played. the server objected, saying that the piece was by the great composer, Franz Joseph Hayden. Hayden still insisted that the music was garbage, Mozart agreed, and the two got up and stormed out of the coffee shop, and doubled over in laughter outside in the street.

Not Being A Racist

MY FORMER FRIEND is not a racist; she mad that perfectly clear. After all, she has black neighbors, and she accepts them, even talks to them. She speaks to black people. she does not "look down" on them. According to her, that proves that she is not a racist. Quite coincidentally, she insists that Michelle Obama is a man, a transgender woman, or maybe a transgender man, she isn't quite sure, but its one or the other. She is equally sure that Barack Obama was born in Africa, because she has done the research, and knows that for a fact. Also, the Black Lives Matter movement is full of anarchists and communists, which are worse she can't decide. She insists that native Americans have been treated far worse than African-Americans whom she calls "niggers". Obviously which group has been treated the worse by European-Americans is subject to debate. Take your pick. In America, there has been enough cruelty to go around. Never mind the fact that thousands of people have known Michelle Obama since childhood, and nobody has ever seen the slightest indication of masculinity in her. don't we all get to choose our own genders, without other people having a say in the matter? Never mind Barack Obama's birth certificate, and the fact that elderly retired nurses in Honolulu can distinctly remember his being born in a hospital there. He was born in Kenya, and that's that. My former friend, a true Trumper, chooses, like all Trumpers, to deny all facts which are inconvenient to their biases. She invents facts, but accuses those with whom she disagrees of doing exactly what she does, of inventing fake news. My former friend is not a racist, and , evidently, neither is anybody else, even those who call blacks 'darkies", and "niggers". Slavery happened a long time ago. Jim crow happened a long time ago. Hell, MLK Day is a national holiday, except in a few places. Its been a long time since he was threatened, ridiculed, harassed, and murdered.Its been a long time since George Floyd had a knee on his neck. My former friend is not a racist, and neither is anybody else, in these United States of Animosity.

Landing In Reaganland

IN 1976, when Ronald Reagan was sixty five and lost the Republican nomination to president Gerald Ford, he was considered washed up in politics, too old. But he began campaigning for 1980 immediately, and the rest is history. By today's standards, he was a young buck. He led the United States into an era of conservative politics, in which it remains mired today. A fascinating description of this comes from Rock Perlstein in his new work "Reaganland: America's Right Turn", the fourth in a series of books by the author discussing the rise of modern American conservatism. Reagan was once a New Deal Democrat. Like a newly converted Christian, his political conversion was complete, and extreme. He was also a notorious womanizer in Hollywood, and, like someone we know well, lied his way to political fortune. When he ran for president and won in 1980, his campaign slogan was "make America great again." he differs from Trump in one important aspect: he favored open borders, and loved immigrants, believing them the backbone of America. Reagan called for open borders in 1979, and during his presidency, granted asylum to millions of illegal Mexicans. He out-debated Jimmy Carter with charm and simplistic catch phrases, even though both Carter's and Reagan's people knew full well that Jimmy Carter was the far more intelligent man, and the far more moral, and far more honest. When carter pointed out that Reagan had been the American  Medical Association's spokesperson opposing Medicare, Reagan denied it, claiming that he simply opposed the way the bill was written, which was a complete fabrication. During the presidential campaign of 1980, Reagan treated the electorate to an endless series of lies, abut Jimmy carter considered it beneath his dignity as a Christian to fact check and challenge Reagan's lies. When Carter finally started calling Reagan out for his dishonestly, teh American public thought Carter had turned mean. Modern conservatism rose when the business community started pumping billions of dollars into political campaigns during the nineteen seventies, a new phenomenon. Also, the evangelical community mobilized, as old segregationists reinvented themselves as anti-feminists and anti gay rights traditionalists. Although Reagan was during his time not much more popular nationally than Trump, he, like Trump, succeeded in the electoral college, and, like Trump, succeeded in exploiting anger at modernity to make American conservative, again.

Finding theAanti Christ

I KNOW A PERSON who believes that Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, is the anti-Christ. Whether she actually believes that, or merely wants to, is not for certain, but she says she does. This is independent of the fact that there is no evidence for the existence of an "anti-Christ", nor, for that matter, a Christ (messiah) . At least, no evidence that exists outside the human imagination. This Kushner anti-Christer was until quite recently an avid Trump supporter, then flew the coop. Then she awakened, which in itself raises questions of motive. Why would anyone who approved fo Trump for the first three years of his administration change at this late date, rather then before he was elected, like I did? how long does it take to see through this immoral, dishonest, criminal president? Well, whatever. congratulations on her for awakening, no matter what the reason or how belated. But Jared Kushner, the anti-Christ? I don't like him any more than I like his father-in-law. Kushner seems to be something of a spoiled rich kid, a dandy, a brat, and perhaps a criminal. But he also seems to be a regular human being, and likely a decent person, deserving credit for his financial ambition and business acumen. He inherited a fortune and grew it into a super fortune. In America, that is the sort of behavior we tend to admire. But people are people, and when we dislike someone, anyone, for whatever subjective reason, we tend to look for ways to justify our dislike. Often our reasons become ridiclulous, a stretch. We'd be better off to accept the fact that we need no reasons for our likes and dislikes, we can merely accept them as they are. It is not wrong to despise a despicable person. But that's a far cry from arbitrarily convincing ourselves that the object of our hatred is the "anti-Christ", or that anyone is.

Hoaxing, Like A FOX

IF YOU'VE EVER  watched FOX news television, and you're perceptive, you've noticed that the network, contrary to its claim of being "fair and balanced" is instead unfair, unbalanced, and conservative. another characteristic of FOX news is sex. Many of the most powerful people with FOX, such as Roger Ailes and bill O'Reilly,were exposed as sexual predators and forced to leave and to pay handsomely, financially. They had many targets upon which to pray, right on screen. There appears a steady parade of leggy, buxom, angel faced blondes beauties reading the news, tightly and scantily attired. Conservative sexuality for sale, with many interested buyers. FOX, like white conservative evangelical America, went all in on Trump, and decided to stay, until hell freezes over or the lord returneth. CNN contributor and researcher of FOX Brian Stelter interviewed hundreds of present and former FOX employees for his fascinating book "Hoax: Donald Trump, FOX News, ans the Dangerous Distortion of Truth.".Past and present employees are well aware, and said so, that the network is a right wing propaganda machine, and that the terms "hoax" and 'fake news", which it so often uses to describe other media outlets, apply uniquely to FOX itself. Trump and the network have a symbiotic relationship. Sean Hannity is Trump's most trusted adviser, confidant, and policy formulator. A news anchorman and talk show host, running the government. The disinformation distributed by FOX and Trump, the dangerous distortion of truth, lapped up and digested by millions of conservative evangelical capitalistic Christians, constitutes, according to the author, a serious threat to democracy by creating a seriously misled America,,but only when FOX's foxy indoctrinated folks are in power, as they are now.

Moving Location and Truth

THE REPUBLICANS planned to hold their Trump coronation in Charlotte, then moved it to Jacksonville, then back to Charlotte, like any travelling minstrel show. Finally acquiescing to reality, they decided not to will the arena, and to occasionally wear masks and wash hands. Unable to generate a party platform which makes any sense, they settled for the one they used in 2016; one set of lies and false promises is about as good as any other, they reckon. Trump is running as if it were four years ago, and his one hour speech was appropriate for a man lost in a time warp. Most of it was devoted to denigrating the post office, and warning that dire consequences would result if millions of Americans vote by mail, as he does. The great prevaricator is laying the groundwork for a contested outcome and another coup de tete, perhaps with Russian assistance, in the event that Joe Biden is elected. That's exactly the sort of inspiring speech the American people need to hear from an incumbent president accepting his nomination to run for another term; a thirty minute diatribe against the postal system. The other Republican speakers are busy filling their poorly educated party members with the usual lies about socialism, who practices it, what it is, and whether it works. Just as they magically transform themselves into Christians, they magically transform politically moderate Joe Biden into a radical left wing socialist, ready to sign the country over to Castro and Mao. The usual nonsensical garbage; Biden will turn the country into a socialist state, with complete government control over the economy, it will be a disaster, blah blah blather. Socialism never works anywhere, the biggest lie of all. They always leave out teh part where the United States is a socialist country, and long has been, what with social security, medicare, medicare, public roads and highways, public schools, and the list continues, longer than you might think. Publicly owned, not for profit socialism, not privately owned, for profit capitalism, as in business enterprise.The conservative capitalistic Republicans always leave out the part about Europe, and especially Scandinavia, being highly socialized, even more so than the USA, and quite wealthy and successful to boot. the most important part they leave out is about how the American economy under Trump has collapsed with the weight of the uncontrolled virus; they actually have the audacity, hilariously, to about what they call a 'strong economy". thirty million million people out of work, living on socialistic government welfare and socialistic unemployment benefits, a healthy economy inherited from Obama ruined by a president who refuses to take a catastrophic epidemic seriously. These lying morons move the truth more rapidly than they move the site of their prevarication festival, the Republican national convention.

Hatemongering

NOWADAYS, nobody openly admits to being a racist. Even the racists, who were once proud of their attitude, deny it. Of course, it could be argued that anyone who arbitrarily categorizes people by skin color, rather  then seeing skin pigmentation as a continuum, is a racist, whether or not she values different races differently. Donald Trump's words and actions throughout his divisive presidency clearly reveal him to be a racist as do the testimonials of many who know him well, despite his denials and the denials of his supporters. In her new book "Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda" journalist and author Jean Guerrero succinctly describes how Stephen Miller, perhaps Trump's favorite adviser, who himself is a lifelong racist and white supremacist and nationalist, worked his way up through the Trump administration via his mentor Steve Bannon, to become the chief architect of Trump's anti immigrant white populist policies. Millions have seen Miller on television, although he tends to lay relatively low, and is not often in the spotlight, and many have noted his youth. he grew up in southern California in the nineteen nineties, amid a culture virulently opposed to immigration across the southern border, and he absorbed and embrace ambient anti-Latino attitudes. White America is under attack by dark skinned people. the white race is in jeopardy of being eliminated, overrun by brown people. Good American values  are those of the white majority, and must be preserved. This brand of racism is well known. Miller was not the actual originator of the policy of separating illegal immigration children from their parents and locking them in cages and deporting parents without their children, an ICE agent was, but Miller quickly embraced the idea, and  Trump was easily brought on board. When a federal judge halted the cruel practice, both Miller and Trump were livid, claiming that Americans would die as a result of the court ruling. They both wanted to resume the policy, and still do. The racism of the Trump movement is a tragedy to which the Black Lives Movement is to some degree a direct response. As the historiography of the Trump era begins to be written, this terrible aspect of Trump, his associates, and his supporters will be brought to light, as it is already being done by primary source people and documents, from people who know the president well. There will be more to come, much more, of the history writing, and it is to be hoped, not the Trump administration.

Vaccinating

THERE ARE at least one hundred and sixty five vaccines being prepared against covid 19. Thirty two of them are already in human trials, and several have reached the final stages of teh trials, nearly ready for production, distribution, and utilization. Inevitably there will be a vaccine, maybe many different ones, unless greedy corporate capitalism reduces the number to one. If ever an economic problem called for cooperative solutions, this is it. Then comes the problem of inoculating seven and a half billion people, and in what order. Historically the world's wealthiest countries have hoarded limited medical supplies, and left the table scraps to the developing nations. That method, if employed this time, might cause more problems than it solves. climate change and poverty are already creating millions of desperate refugees from impoverished countries. An uncontrolled pandemic, unmitigated by any massive vaccination program, would exacerbate the chaos. Everyone agrees that front line health care workers should be first in line. Then who? Those withunderlyiing health concerns, the elderly, and the young, one might think. It is well documented and well known that in the United States ethnic minorities, especially African-Americans and Latinos, are disproportionately afflicted. Should there be an affirmative action vaccination program? For certain, politicala, more than socio-economic or demographic considerations will determine the answers to these complicated questions. But it is almost equally certain thay when all is said and done, the most accurate way to explain who got vaccinated where and when will be, as always, to follow the money.

Hating On women, The Right Wing Way

IT IS ALWAYS THE WOMEN against whom the right wing, particularly the religious right, launches the scornful slings and arrows of pseudo righteous wrath. It happened with Hillary Clinton, it happened with Nancy Pelosi, with Michelle Obama, and now, of latest vintage, its happening against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Kamala Harris. Often, indeed usually, the vile bile has something to do with sex and personal appearance, unsurprisingly. Hillary Clinton simply wasn't good looking enough. And how dare her act like an obedient, loyal little wifie by standing by her man in the face of his serial infidelities?! had she left him, the complaint would have been abandonment of marriage vows. AOC and Kamala Harris appear to be too attractive for their own own; accusations of sexual misconduct are always reserved for attractive women who become a bit too successful and strong minded in this right wing man's world. And that, is a nutshell, is the essence of the problem. We are still living with the old boyz network is these United States of Misogyny. Up rises a woman too high, and down she must be made to descend, lest she become a threat to patriarchal power. Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh are the ringleaders of the anti-feminist gang. recall the key maxim in Limbaugh's litany of fatuous irrevocable rules of life; that the feminist movement was created for the sole purpose of giving unattractive women access to mainstream society. Misogyny personified, embodied by Rush. his latest target is Kamala Harris, whom he accuses of having slept her way to the top, without, as always in Limbaugh's allegations, the slightest shred of evidence. Trump's trope is always the same, his name calling never varies; she's a slut, a pig, a nasty woman, and for forth, endlessly the garbage spews forth from the great prevaricator and gangster in chief. note that none of this causes so much as the raising of an eyebrow from the conservative Christian minions who inhabit the white Christian Republican party. count on the assault on Harris to proceed unabashed, all the way to the White House. Sarah Palin should still be counting her lucky stars that she escaped the slaughter house, and we all know why; she, after all, is a good little right wing Republican.

Rationalizing

MY FRIEND who refuses to wear a mask says that her decision is based on the "fact" that wearing one is harmful to human health. She continued that covering teh mouth and nose forces a person to breathe in one's own carbon monoxide. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, I assumed she meant carbon "dioxide". Meanwhile, back in the real world, the medical profession makes it clear, as we all know, that mask wearing is harmless and crucial to mitigating the viral spread. People who refuse to wear masks almost invariably have rock solid reasons, entirely fabricated. Many of them, although they never studied high school biology, seem to know more than trained medical experts and doctors.Others claim to be defending liberty and opposing government tyranny. some folks use both teh medical and political arguments, just to be sure. Look yourself in the mirror, and repeat after me: i will wear a mask, because I choose to to please other people, not because anybody forces me too, which they cannot. The reprehensible part is the dishonesty. Fabricating phony reasons for behaving irresponsibly is dishonorable. You refuse to wear a mask because its uncomfortable, inconvenient, and your vanity prevents you from hiding your pretty face. Killer carbon dioxide? Government tyranny? Gimme a break. For example, it is far more honorable to say that you don't like Michelle Obama than to accuse her of being  a man. Or that you don't like Barack Obama, rather than accusing him of having been born in Africa. Or to simply say that you don't like bill and Hillary Clinton, rather than accusing them of being pedophiles.Rationalization is the favorite tool of moral cowards, of those who wish to conceal their true motives. If, for instance,you happen to be displease with the National Basketball association, please have the integrity to announce that you do not approve of the Black Lives Matter movement, rather tying to utter some high sounding false blather about disapproving of athletes taking political stands.

Killing the Country Through Incompetence

FOR NEARLY SIX MONTHS the virus has spread out of control in the United States. Long ago the president said that it would vanish with the arrival of warm weather. In late March he advocated returning to normal social and economic activity by Easter. The president encouraged people to consume disinfectants and anti-malarial drugs, many did, with unfortunate consequences. From the beginning the president refused to wear a mask, refused to encouraged social distancing, and treated the epidemic dismissively. He still refuses to take a leadership role in providing and implementing a comprehensive national plan to control and mitigate the epidemic. He downplays the impact of the virus on children, while all across America children sicken and die. it is unreasonable to describe the president's response to the epidemic as anything other than criminal, and the crime is mass murder, genocide, nothing less. This crime is sufficiently serious to warrant the president's indictment, trial, conviction, removal from office, and incarceration. When the leader of a country fails to take the necessary action to prevent the deaths of hundreds of thousands of its citizens, the leader is a criminal, and the crime is mass murder. Equally distressing is that not only President Trump, but the roughly forty percent of the American people who continue to support him deny this stark reality, instead choosing to deceive themselves into believing that the president's behavior during this catastrophic epidemic has been satisfactory. These are teh people who spread disease and death by following the president's example and refusing to wear masks, refusing to take the epidemic seriously gathering together in churches and public places. these are the people who defy common sense and science in service to their twisted political agendas. It all adds up. People who support criminal national leadership behave like criminals.

Building A Useless Wall, Or Not

THE PROBLEM with building an impervious, impregnable,  impermeable wall from sea to shining sea along the entire length of the Rio Grande, as has been pointed out by America's political left and the lessons of history, is that it would not work. That, aside from teh fact that neither we the american people or government has the conviction and political will to undertake such a massive project, as evidenced by the fact that trump insisted, falsely, that the wall would be paid for by Mexico. mexico refused, and that was that. History hath shown, as Jefferson might have said, that walls are ineffective, that they only temporarily impede travel, rather than prevent it. Patton agreed. Fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of man, was his remark. the ancient Romans proved that tenet quite well at Masada. the Maginot Line and teh great wall of China, for instance. The former the Germans merely circumvented, and the latter was effective only because it was monitored and defended twenty four seven by a massive contingent of soldiers atop it,and a communications system.The point is, the great wall of Trump would suffer the same limitations, and would required constant human monitoring and defense to keep out of desperate, hungry refugees seeking survival in the U.S., in the occupied territory which, but for american imperialism and conquest, would have always and would rightfully still belong to Mexico.The desperate, hungry refugees of brown skin so dearly hated by American conservatives and Trump supporters.The point is, why not save the expense of useless wall building and merely use the American army to monitor and defend the border, which is, after all, the actual purpose of armies? To comfort open border liberal types, bear in mind that an army need not necessarily be an aggressive organization, but is quite capable of being a welcoming force, and rendering assistance to anyone who needs it.

Conversing, Ambivalently

THE CONVERSATION with the lady was an incredible delight to me, because she is the love of my life, and most intelligent. but when she stated her opinion that Michelle Obama is a man, and that Barack Obama was indeed born in Africa, the chat took a bit of a downward turn. I consider both of these contentions, made popular by Trump and Obama haters, fatuous, irresponsible, idiotic, and indicative of latent racism, and I told her so. To make such outrageous claims is not attempting to speak truth, but rather, to give insult and express hatred. I told her that since I love her so much, I felt obligated to be honest with her, even when my  honesty does not reveal a positive attitude about her beliefs. I hope and think she agreed. I reminder her that shortly after taking office, Trump meekly acknowledged that Obama was born in Hawaii; she responded that her strong belief had nothing to do with Trump, whom she, like I, despises, but rather, on sound empirical proof, of some sort. Unless I intevene, I sense that her proof, and its sources, she will will eventually share with me. I need to be open minded enough to take a look at it. She's already accused me of being narrow minded. I am, in the sense that I am singularly unwilling to even consider the possibility that Michelle Obama is  a man. if accepting the possibility is requisite for open mindedness, I am indeed not open minded. hy temptation is to ask her if she is willing to even consider the possibility that she is wrong about Michelle's true gender, tow which I believe she will say no, her facts are proof, she is certain. At that point i would be tempted to ask her why she calls me marrow minded, rather than dealing with her own narrow mindedness. you are probably tempted to recommend to me that I drop the matter altogether, that I not mention it ever gain, that I simply accept that she and I disagree about Michelle's sex and Barack's birthplace, and my response is that you are quite correct, that is great advice, and I intend to take it, I promise to take it. Further more, I must remind myself that I do not always have to be "right", that I do not have to "win' every argument", and that is is often best to merely , as we say, "let a sleeping dog lie". Usually, its better to be friends than to be right.

Chipping In For the Wall

CREDIT IS DUE. The people, and there are many, who want to build an impermeable wall along the entire lengthy, circuitous Mexican-American border are deadly seriously devoted to their righteously divisive cause.Like medieval Christians, crusading to capture the holy land,. Problem is, during the entire administration of Donald Trump, the crusader in chief,barely a brick has been laid, barely a dent made in the grand project in the grand scheme of things. The monolithic, unbroken barrier is simply not there. Only patchwork bits and pieces have been installed. And yet, the crusade continues. Down goes yet another close associate of Trump, Steve Bannon, victim of his own greed, and excessive devotion to Trumpistry. The perfect metaphor is that sending money to Steve Bannon and the gentleman with three missing limbs is like the proverbial little old lady on welfare sending her nickels and dimes to the Lamborghini minister to build a highway to heaven. Thousands of wall building Trump supporters, donating their hard earned money to a wall which will never be built, and would be ineffective even if it were, their money going instead to support the lavish lifestyles of Steve Bannon and the gentleman with three missing limbs. As they say, we'll see you in court. Its almost enough to make a person become an open border Democrat.

Q Tipping

IT IS AMAZING what a computer savvy teenager with a lap top in a barricaded bedroom can accomplish socially. Or, a middle aged sociopath living in his parent's basement. Ask president Trump, any of his followers,, or any conspiracy theorist, all of whom are the same people. Five'll get you the the cloistered Q Anon celebrity cult leader is one or the other; the teen, or the sociopath. His, or her millions of sycophant followers don't want to know or care to know their master's true identity; they sense a foreboding fear they might feel when their dreams are dashed to disappointment at the discovery that the almighty Q is not some highly place government official, nor the President himself, as many hope. the teenaged sociopath has conceived and fostered and built a massive network of true believers, a sinister, psychotic network of cult members, folks with too much anger, fear, alienation, and time on their hands. These folks, like the demagogue they adore, are so discontented with plain reality that they succumb to the allure of a fantasy world, in which the dear leader Trump does daily battle against the fictional "deep state", an imaginary consortium of deeply embedded bureaucrats, media moguls, and left wingers whose alleged purpose is the overthrow of Trump, God, and virtue, with a little pedophilic sex trafficking on the side. The members of Q Anon, the number of whom is among the murky mysteries surrounding the shadowy, amorphous group, do not know each other, and probably could not stand the sight of each other if they ever came out of the sequestered cubby holes and saw sunlight. Q Anon is fact is a perfect fit for an age and a culture in which facts have no meaning, and might as well be invented on the fly. According to Q, Hillary Clinton was supposed to be arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned years ago; the failure of that event to transpire cause none of the followers to bat an eyelash; big events are never vanished, they merely are delayed for a bit; the next huge earth shaking fundamental paradigm transformation is always just around the corner. As in the Armageddon valley  the forces of Trump are soon going to vanquish the deep state, progressive movements all, and rid the world of ...pedophilia, among other nasty things. All this before teh next election, if not after.

California Dreamin', Darkness Descending

A MASSIVE HEAT WAVE, outages with absence of air conditioning, perpetual driven driven wild fires, with an added touch, thousands of lightening strikes and a heat driven fir tornado or two, characterize California, or hell, or maybe both. Its happening all over the world, the fires. Australia, Brazil, Asia, and it will keep happening, like the out of control weather, with climate change. Also interesting are the various reactions by the human community to these events, reactions which reveal our state of mind. It all adds up to enough to lure the apocalyptic Christian community out of the wood works, from beneath their rocks, back from mars, and up to the lectern to hold forth passionately.Surely this is the end of days, the opening of the seven or however many seals, four horsemen, six sixty six, you name the magic number, and the rapture, all foretold of course, in the bible .Rapturing was actually invented by William Miller in 1843, but it can be wedged into scripture.The bible code can show you Hitler, the 'World trade Center, both world wars, and probably the nineteen sixty nine Mets, diagonally, in scripture, by using the right symbolic substitute lettering, after exhausting thousands of possibilities, finally getting it right, like the enigma code of the Germans of World War Two.Whatever you're looking for will eventually be found in the bible, irrespective of whether it exists.We are descending into the neo dark ages.The roman empire, classical civilization, rotting from within, supplanted by ignorance, fear, superstition, and cultish religions.The neo Renaissance  commenced in the sixteenth century with Protestantism, nation states, middle class capitalism, and modern science, is waning. The intellectual virus is spreading infection through the internet, destroying learning, science, and reality, like the Christian fertility cult in the second century coursing through the veins of the dying Roman Empire. Welcome to medieval Europe, redux.

Falling Out

OF THE MANY COMPLAINTS I have about Donald Trump,, among the most serious is his removal of the United States from the nuclear arms agreement with Iran, an action which precipitated hostilities. The argument made by Republicans that the agreement guaranteed that Iran would eventually have nuclear weapons is, like many republican arguments, fatuous. Atomic bombs breed bad reasoning, it seems. Or maybe its the other way around. My reasoning concerning Nagasaki and Hiroshima, bad or not, is that dropping atomic bombs on them was a war crime, two war crimes, since, by the summer of forty five the Japanese military was defeated and destroyed, the American bombers were bombing Japanese cities uncontested at will, and the Japanese were sending messages to the Russians inquiring about the possibility of communicating with the United Stats about a possible peace arrangement. A new book entitled "Fallout" by Lesley Blume explores an interesting aspect of the atomic bombings of Japan, the aftermath,and how the American people and the world came to know details about the events because of the determined reporting of john Hersey, one of the most respected war correspondents of the second world war. few people understand the true nature of nuclear bombs at the time; president harry Truman did not, nor did the American people. The idea that radiation would kill people for years after the actual explosion was unknown, and reports that it would were at first considered propaganda by the Japanese, "Tokyo tales". The American occupation forces strictly censored the American news media covering post war japan, and even though American soldiers picked up burnt objects as souvenirs of the bombs, the actual condition of the Japanese people, suffering from radioactive poisoning, were kept quiet. Hersey's book "Hiroshima" awakened the world to the harsh realities of the atomic age. The possibility that Iran might produce an atomic bomb at some future date is not a problem. Its a hypothetical, an abstraction, speculation. The problem is the fact that at least nine other nations already have atomic bombs, some in large quantities, and that most of these nations, like the United States, have a history of belligerent, aggressive foreign policy and behavior, with governments which often exercise poor judgment.Only the United States has used nuclear bombs in war, under questionable circumstances, against an already defeated enemy. Every nuclear arms control expert, every geo-political scholar, every atomic scientist considers it a miracle that the past seventy five years has been free of nuclear war.but even miracles have limits.

Civilizing

ROBERT HEINLEIN said that the quality of a civilization can be measured by te cleanliness of its public restrooms, and by the level of courtesy its citizens extended to strangers. When people give respect and kindness to others who offer nothing in return, civilization thrives, according to the science fiction writer. Courtesy, or the lack of it, reveals much about a person's character, the older generation always accuses the younger generation of having poor manners, all throughout history. What they omit mentioning is that they themselves were once young, and that they failed to acquire good manners as they aged and grew old. Often the old are the most rude. In America, the public restrooms tend to be filthy. I am often tempted to remind people that there are seven and a half billion people on Earth, and that only a feew of them are even aware of your existence, no matter who you are, or even care that you exist if they do know. This happens when someone hears a song in her purse, picks up her smart phone, looks at the number, recognizes it, and nonchalantly replaces the phone in the purse. Whatever the caller had to say can wait until I find it convenient to listen to it, whether or not it is urgent. If teh caller, a friend, had knocked at the door with urgent news, she night instead have locked the door, turned out the lights, and pulled the shades. Smart phones and email invite convenient communication, and arrogant, dismissive rudeness. I recently reconnected with a lady with whom I had been friends forty years ago, before going separate ways, as often happens. It was a happy reunion. While talking, we mentioned a mutual friend that neither of us had spoken to nor heard from in decades. I decided to contact him by email,, and give him the lady's phone number.He got in touch with her, and they too had a happy reunion. For my thoughtfulness and trouble I never received a simple thank you from him, even though he told her how happy he was that I had given him her number. it would have taken him only a moment to shot me an email, saying thanks. The level of civilization in any culture can be measured by how well its citizens treat each other. in America, we need to clean our public restrooms.

Learning Something, From Experience

 I SPENT THIRTY FIVE YEARS teaching then retired. I had perhaps the most convulsed, convoluted teaching career in educational history. I taught, at one time or another, every grade level, college through pre school. At one point I had a job teaching one community college western civilization class at night, a class in which there were seven women, while working at a day care during the day, with a class of seven two and a half year olds. I liked the symmetry. I'm not a big bucket list person, but early on the idea came to me that it would be quite a memory to teach every grade level, and I was able to do this because I never got married nor had children, didn't need much money, was willing to accept nearly any job, and willing to move. My favorite story is when a high school principle called me in to his office, again, and asked why I was telling my classes that Thomas Jefferson was an atheist. I replied: "Why don't you take a wild guess". He didn't like that, and I didn't come back the next year. Actually, Jefferson called himself a "primitive Christian", but did not believe in miracles, such as resurrection, referred to the Christian faith as "our modern superstition", and called the Bible" "a dung heap". He extracted diamonds from it, as he put it, and compiled his own narrative and discussion of the morals of Jesus, commonly called "The Jefferson Bible". But, I digress. I don't know any more than anybody else, but I know something about education and schools, and I know this: there is no way in hell that any school in America should be open for brick and mortar classes this fall, nor should there be anyone playing football. Not in our age of lap top computers, and in a country in which most school districts can afford to provide computers and internet service to all economically disadvantaged students, and in those that cannot, the federal government surely can, especially considering that the recent economic bailouts included twelve hundred dollars for everyone, and billions for corporate welfare for Trump cronies. Look it up. there will be three hundred thousand dead Americans by Christmas, unnecessary deaths, caused by the virus which both the American government and we the American people refused to take sufficiently seriously. We Americans must have or cake, and we must eat it too.

Annother One, Telling The Truth

MILES TAYLOR is the most recent example of many of a formerly high ranking member of the Trump administration who saw a lot, became thoroughly shocked and disgusted with what he saw, left the administration in disgust, and decided to tell the world about what he saw. The list of such examples lengthens, of people who left Trump in disgust, in as it does, the world benefits from the knowledge gained, knowledge of how severely the Trump administration has damaged the United States, and the world. Miles Taylor is going to speak up, and reveal much about Trump, and Trump the punk gangster criminal is going to viciously verbally assault Miles Taylor, a handsome articulate young man who looks nineteen but must be in his thirties. Taylor was among the highest ranking officials in the Department of Homeland Security. He will talk about Trump opposing emergency financial assistance for California to fight wildfires, because California is governed by Democrats, and the state did not vote for him in 2016. he will talk about Trump trying to use teh Dept. of Homeland Security to attack his political enemies, and about the numerous times when Trump instructed many of his staff members to break the law. Miles Taylor is a young man who has a lot to say, and like so many other disgusted former members of the Trump administration, will prove to the American people that by electing Donald Trump the country made a horrible mistake, and that those who still support this criminal president. have exposed themselves as accessories to crime,, and as utterly devoid of morality and decency.

Troublemaking

DESCRIBING SOMEBODY as a "punk", "thug", "gangster", or "troublemaker" can seem petty, angry, unfounded, a result of personal enmity. But the longer Donald Trump remains in office, the more obvious it becomes that these terms are much more than gratuitous  name calling when applied to the president. Cases in  point are too numerous to enumerate here. Two recent examples will suffice. During major party nominating conventions, it is customary, proper, and appropriate for the opposition party to lay low, out of the spotlight, let the other guy have  is day in the sun, and wait for their turn. But during this week's Democratic national convention Donald Trump, ever seeking attention, is visiting Wisconsin, near the Democratic convention headquarters, trying to steal the Dems thunder. Rather than awaiting his moment of glory next week, Trump cannot resist the temptation to stir the pot, to try to distract the nation from the Democrat's big event. That, my fellow Americans, is petty, and nothing but. Still another example  of Trump low lifing is his plot against the postal service. for years the service has had problems with money and efficiency, well documented. And here we are, in the middle of a deadly epidemic, assuming that many people will want to vote by mail. Now, above all, is the time for the president of the U.S. to try to strengthen the postal service with adequate funding, and to reassure the American people that voting by mail is safe, secure, and efficient, all of which is true, verifiably. Instead, the little punk is trying to frighten us into believing that voting by mail will lead to massive corruption and election rigging, even though he votes by mail himself. this is an obvious effort by Trump to cast doubt on the election outcome, since he thinks, as most people do, that he will lose, and he wants to get his excuse ready in advance. Also, of course, he and the republicans want as few people as possible to vote, because if everyone votes, they lose. Essentially, by accusing others of election rigging, and claiming that voting by mail is corrupt, Trump is himself practicing election rigging, or trying to, and trying to win the election by influencing it improperly in advance. This is the sort of thing gangsters and thugs do, they try to rig every situation so as to benefit personally from it. If the president isn't a gangster, a thug, and a punk, his impersonation of such shady characters is most impressive.

Changing Climate Change Stories

THE WESTERN THIRD of the United States was engulfed in a massive heat wave recently, the temperature in Death Valley reached one hundred and thirty degrees, a record unequaled since 1913.Farther east, a massive storm featuring straight line winds exceeding one hundred miles per hour devastated thousands of acres of farmland, destroyed buildings, and killed people. It was called a "rare" event, but may be decreasingly rare henceforth, as added atmospheric carbon traps and absorbs ever increasing amounts of heat, increasing evaporation and atmospheric moisture, energy, and motion. Farther east still, the hurricane season began with more numerous and more severe Atlantic storms, and the U.S. East coast,like the upper midwest, endured massive flooding. Just as scientists have long predicted, climate change is making the weather more extreme, more violent, everywhere. Climate change deniers, largely made up of the same right wing pseudo christian crowd which elected Trump, are on teh defensive. Their traditional refrain that climate change isn't happening has been supplanted by necessity to an acknowledgment that it is indeed changing, but naturally, they say, as it always has changed naturally, and that human activity has nothing to do with it. They can probably cling to that pathetic bromide ever after, but will eventually be forced by circumstances to choose between acceptance of disastrous consequences, or acknowledgment that humanity, even if not the cause, can and must do something about climate change. Would an admission that human action can ameliorate climate change to some degree be tantamount to admitting that homo sapiens can and did contribute to it? Logic says yes, the religious right, being the religious right, will likely say no. Consider the following scenario: through intense pressure applied by progressives, the scientific and corporate communities develop a plan to reverse climate change, and successfully implement it, saving the environment and the human species from extinction. The conservative Christian community chimes in with: we told you so. There was never a problem in the first place. Climate change was a liberal  hoax. At least we could live with that.

Awaiting The Next Protest

THE PROTESTS which erupted all across America's fruited plain after the murder of George Floyd have not ended; it has simply become insufficiently for the corporate media to pay much attention to them. They have become more violent, and more amorphous, as angry, alienated underserved and underemployed people take advantage of the gatherings to enact gratuitous violence, with no specific underlying cause to protest, simply violence for the sake of violence, to release pent up anger, of the sort most of us experience. During the first two weeks of June, I attended seven "Black Lives Matter" demonstrations. My favorite was in a town of about two thousand people, where one fine mild summer day about fifty local high school girls gathered together on main street, adorned with "I Can't Breathe" signs, the works, and really let 'em have it. I was the only male, and the only senior citizen present. Proudly I accepted my role as the "token little old man", bestowed upon me by a pair of fifteen year old cuties. When I mentioned that I could remember MLK marching in the streets surrounded by police dogs and angry cops, could remember white only drinking fountains, could remember the murder of Malcom X, they girls seemed a bit confused at first, because I look young for me age, but, they seemed to understand. We all wore masks. All this, in a tiny town deep in the heart of the confederacy in which odds are, nearly everyone will vote to reelect Donald Trump because, even if he is a bit crude at times, he at least is a defender of the unborn, a conservative, allegedly, a Republican, and unlike most liberal democrats, a Christian, so it is said,  The anti systemic racism protests faded away in our area, and I miss them dearly. whatever to do on a clear, sunny Covid 19 self quarantined day? We radicals must carry one. Somewhere, sometime, there will be other protests, another unjust war, another election of a tyrant, some reprehensible act of American imperialism in some remote country, a regime change for the sake of American corporate profit. We only need wait, patiently. In the United States of Avarice, the next protest is only a heartbeat away.

Voting Progress

ON NOVEMBER 14, 1917, several dozen women were demonstrating near the White House for the right of women to vote, were arrested, thrown into prison, and tortured brutally for two weeks. One of them was stripped naked and forced to stand for hours, her hands tied to a metal bar above her head. A court order set them free, and two months later President Woodrow Wilson announced that he had changed his mind, and supported women's right to vote, and the nineteenth amendment. The incident helped sparked more demonstrations which resulted in passage of the nineteenth amendment soon thereafter. In the United States of Antipathy, people are seldom if ever treated fairly unless and until fair treatment is forced upon them by coercive action, usually taking the form of protracted dampaigns, usually accompanied by repeated acts of violence.The USA is not a country which easily and quickly affords people equal justice under law, freedom, liberty, equality, or any of those virtuous ideals about which we Americans are so fond of bragging. In that important sense, the United States of America is a sham. From time to time, just as Jefferson predicted, the tree of liberty, of fundamental decency and fairness, requires teh nourishment of the blood of citizens and tyrants. Equality, true equality for ethnic minorities, women, homosexuals, and disabled people has been fought for fore centuries, and still has not been fully achieved, although we have come closer to its fruition.The old boys network the white male heterosexual christian patriarchy, like kudzu, diminishes and dies only with great exertion, resistance, and difficulty. The fact that it has defending it the formal structure of the Republican party, and the amorphous ambiance of Christian conservatism impedes and delays ist inevitable demise. conservative America fought tooth and nail to prevent women from voting, using various excuses, such as women are not inherently qualified for political participation, women are inferior, women are superior and ought to be above the fray, and so forth. Conservative America opposed civil rights for African-Americans, equal rights for women, gay rights, and universal social equality through legislation. Over the centuries conservative America has changed somewhat, but only through external compulsion, and not nearly enough, and too little, too late.

Embracing Unreality

I JOINED FACEBOOK primarily for two reasons; to promote this website, and to distribute factual and damaging information about the president. as a retired teacher, I have a lot of Facebook friends, mainly former students who wanted to keep in touch. I tell them all that I aint here to chat, but its good to hear from them. Therefore people send me many many messages, links, forwards, articles, the whole gamut, and I hardly have time to look at any of them, much less all of them. What strikes me is the percentage of them which deal with material utterly unrelated to reality. Also, that the people who send them are seemingly unaware that the material they send has no relationship to reality; they seem to consider what they send to be as valid as anything else in science, current events, or historical scholarship. Topics range from alleged extraterrestrial involvement in human affairs, vast and shady conspiracy theories involving political leaders, and rich and powerful people secretly governing the world, and a favorite nowadays is something called the "Antichrist". The simple fact that there isn't the slightest evidence that any of this exists seems to deter no one, and to actually attract many people. Humanity, in its continuing cultural evolution, will likely eventually abandon these strange concepts of "Christ" and "anti-christ" and good riddance. Deep down most people who swear by the bible probably realize that it was written by people, centuries ago, and is a quaint collection of ancient manuscripts loosely base on oral traditions, and nothing else. It may take more decades and centuries to find life anywhere other than on Earth, and all these crazy conspiracy theories, Q-anon and the rest, are symptoms of societal psychological pathology. But, we love to escape, as any good fiction writer can tell you. If we were willing to confine our serious efforts to reality, reality such as climate change, environmental destruction, mass extinctions of millions of species of plants and animals , the things that are really happening, we would find that we have enough on our plates, as we like to say, enough to keep us productively occupied, without resorting to the garbage we seem so absorbed in. We can only escape for so long, before reality hits us hard. Our ability to comprehend and deal with the real world is greater than we think, and we needn't avoid it so strenuously. We have an impressive accumulation of good literary fiction to keep us occupied. surely we can do without all the messages, links, articles flying all over Facebook, talking about aliens in the banking system and whether Donald Trump and his son in law are the anti-christ. I can assure you that they are.

Getting Smart

THE IVY LEAGUE is where intelligent people go to college, where intelligent lecturers give intelligent lectures, and apparently, where intelligent administrators make intelligent decisions concerning whether to proceed with football and other fall sports in the midst of a deadly epidemic.Ergo, the ivy League was the first major athletic conference to do the intelligent thing and cancel football and all other sports this fall. The Big Ten and PAC Twelve, with only slightly less academic prestige and intelligence, followed suit soon thereafter,  and the only hold out are the Big Ten, the ACC, and the SEC, all of evidently somewhat less intelligence. One might even anticipate an autumn in which all college football all across America's fruited plain in canceled for 2020, except in the Southeastern conference, firmly ensconced in the south and southern culture. The SEC will try to carry on with blocking, tackling, punting common sense, and spreading disease. In the south, college football is a religion. In the south, funerals and weddings are not on the schedule for Saturdays  in the fall. Surely by now, five full months into the great pandemic, it is apparent that Covid 19 is not going away, now or ever, without deliberate, sustained, intelligent human intervention. that is what has been and continues to be lacking in these United States of Avarice, where we refuse to entirely dispense with fun and freedom for even the comparatively short time it would take to whip the bug. It will be a miracle if there are any complete football seasons this fall, high school, college, pro, or pee wee. And, it would be a miracle if there are any more intelligent decisions made about the matter, if high school and college football and especially pro football is put on hold without a thorough attempt to avoid doing so. wonders, it seems, never cease, one way or the other.

Examining Mueller, Closely

JEFFREY TOOBIN'S recent book "True Crimes and Misdemeanors" examines the Muller report, and finds that whereas it is quite accurate in describing president Trump's behavior as unethical and criminal, the report falls short in that it fails to explicitly condemn it, using the now famous phrase ", "we cannot exonerate the president", which bill Barr, Trump, and Trump supporters twisted to mean that Trump had been exonerated. Mueller clearly stated that his job was not to indict or prosecute the president, that would be left up to congress and the courts but he essentially provided a blueprint for doins so, focusing heavily on the numerous instances the president and his legal team committed obstruction of justice. Problem is, the Mueller report was 448 pages long, and hardly anyone bothered to read the whole thing. That gave Attorney General Barr, acting more like Trump's personal attorney than a representative of teh American people, time to publish a four page summary of Mueller's work. and to thus mislead the American people into thinking that Trump had been excused by Mueller, when in fact just the opposite was true, and still is. You are cordially invited to read the actual Mueller report, which is still very much with us, and to decide for yourself. If you do, it will become obvious to you that the president should not only have been impeached for accepting willingly assistance from the Russians in getting elected, he should have been removed from office.the essence of Mueller's findings is this" that Trump was aware of, accepted, welcomed, and did nothing to stop Russian operatives from putting on a campaign of misinformation in an attempt to help Trump gain support against Clinton in 2016. then, he and his team covered up the crime, and obstructed justice numerous time in so doing. We have largely forgotten the Mueller report now, because of an avalanche of presidential misbehavior since; it has gotten lost, literally, in the shuffle of crime, lies, and unethical behavior i which Trump has engaged since. but it should never be forgotten, and, by discerning, honest citizens and historians, won't be.

Relapsing

ABC NEWS said it perfectly: "Here we go again". Trump's gang is starting the same old B.S. all over again, this time about Kamala Harris. It seems that because both her parents were immigrants, that she may  not have been born properly, and may therefore not be an American citizen, and may be ineligible to be vice president. This, of course, is complete nonsense. Harris was born in 1964, in Oakland, verified. Do we now anticipate that Trump and his gangster associates and supporters will exhume the "birther" conspiracy attack, in to which they subjected Barack Obam throughout his presidency? Get ready. four years, maybe eight, maybe twelve long years of hearing the same old crap from the same old crappy reprobates. You might not recall, but soon after taking office, Trump meekly,. quietly admitted that Obama had in fact been born in Hawaii, and that he, Trump, had known it all along. No apologies, no nothing, just a quiet, quick acknowledgement of reality. Maybe the Harris thing will die out soon, maybe not. Amazing, how irreparably devious, nefarious, and stupid Trump and his extreme right wing extremely piously religious his supporters are. They seem to have never learned. All of this would be nothing but laughable nonsense, if the fools, to paraphrase H.L. Mencken, were not in such deadly earnest. Donald Trump entered politics by spewing his hateful, racist nonsensical lie about Barack Obama and is now rehashing the same tied idiocy against Harris. its all obviously racially based, if indirectly so, and what makes it tragic, especially tragic, is that it starts with Trump, but reaches far beyond him, far beyond his inner circle of sycophants, and extends deep into America's politically conservative evangelical christian demographic. The very same people who most piously embrace "family values", once again, as usual, spew racial hatred in lies oft repeated. But, as we say, its par for the course. The bright side is that this stale tactic has long since run out of steam, and, like the political aspirations of those who promulgate it, is likely to go nowhere.

Heartbreaking

AH, FONDLY i remember March, 1973, when senioritis began to kick in, and simultaneously i couldn't wait for my senior year to end and to graduate from high school, and i dreaded the thought, knowing that it would be final, the end of a vital part of my life, gone forever, friends I would never see again. Everyone's been through it, except of course for the drop out G.E.D. crowd. And so it came to pass; the summer of seventy three, the Watergate hearings, and then college, and so on, my high school friends growing more distant with the years and decades, but still important; I have been to every high school reunion, and will probably attend number fifty, three years hence, lord willing, and the creek don't rise. Oh heavens I feel sorry for the class of twenty twenty, their senior year truncated by teh virus, just as the bittersweet feelings of senioritis were kicking in. they'll never know the pleasurable pain of those final few weeks and days, those drunken last few nights with friends soon to be parted forever.. prom, graduation night, the whole shootin' match. In every grade level there are unique situations which make for unique lifetme memories, and so many of those will be shattered or twisted beyond recognition. it must be weird to be a student right now, and i feel sorry for them all. But we must persevere. We must make more sacrifices, not fewer. At my age, every football seasonlost is one I will never get back. For college and high school football players, families, and fans, every cancelled game and season is lost forever. Again, to be a high school or college senior, and missing that last precious football season forever, must be heartbreaking. But we must do it. We must make more sacrifices, not fewer. Our unwilllingness to make personal sacrifices is at the root of our problem; with sufficient sacrifice months ago, we would not now be in this dreadful situation, with the virus more out of control every day; we've no one to blame but ourselves. We must take heart by remembering that all generations of Americans have had to make sacrifices, that all great people everywhere have done it, and that when we make necessary sacrifices in the present for a better future, the price we pay pays off. As Goethe said: "One does not always lose when one must do without". What he meant, of course, is what we all know; that when we do without now for something worth waiting for, the wait is always rewarded in the end. Just think' that next football season is really going to be a good one.

Exposing Crime

A NEW EXPOSITORY GENRE  has emerged; that of former Republican insiders abandoning the party under Trump, and writing tell all books explaining why. Examples are David Brock and Stuart Stevens. (see previous article). These, combined with the revelatory works by people such as Mary Trump, John Bolton, and others, combine to make for a substantial and reliable anti-Trump body of primary source material. They all share similarities and common themes. Donald Trump is wholly unfit to serve as president because of his personal character and temperament, ks a person of low morality, wholly has committed multiple crimes before and since his election, and should be removed from office as soon as possible. He was elected by the electoral college with a minority of American votes by an angry right wing white conservative evangelical Christian constituency, people who fear that traditional American values are being undermined by societal acceptance of homosexuals, transgenders, non christian, minorities, and immigrants. They want to establish a theocratic America, in which the Christian religion is official, and progressive values are eliminated. To achieve this, Trump's supporters were willing to abandon traditional conservative and Republican values such as fiscal restraint and family values, and to elect a person they saw as strong, a person whose strength is conspicuously based on low moral character, a bullying personality, and a tendency to seek revenge on all opponents, a true demagogue. They simply ignore Trump's obvious traitorous criminality because, well, he is pro life, supposedly, and he is not a liberal. The conservative evangelical community has also abandoned all Christian values in supporting Trump, while piously pretending not to. What is it about Donald Trump that is imitative of Jesus Christ? The women, the sexual predatory history? the greed and constant striving for personal wealth? the pathological dishonesty? the vicious insults and bullying towards those who disagree with him? Their pathetic excuse is that, biblically is is not necessary to be a Christian to fight for the Christian faith, that God often appoints unlikely champions for his purposes. This pathetic justification for supporting an criminal and an traitor is no more sensible that the rest of their twisted, diabolical thought and behavior. Not only has Trump exposed his own criminality and traitorous character, so have the Republican party, the conservative community, and the conservative evangelical Christian base which reveals its hypocrisy and fundamental evil on a daily basis, and which will never fully recover any semblance of decency or credibility.

Coming To One's Senses

SOMETIMES people lose their senses, sometimes they come to their senses. among the losers are late life Christian converts, who are always the most fanatical. Radio talk show host Chris Plante was once a progressive, lost his mind, and now rants on the right wing airwaves. David Brock was once in charge of the vast right wind conspiracy, his job being to find or fabricate damaging information about the Clintons. After researching them he came to admire them, and finally converted to a Clinton progressive. his book "Blinded By teh Right" tells his story of conversion to the light and renunciation of the dark side. Stuart Stevens was a long time political operative an campaign strategist, who ran the successful election campaigns of man prominent Republicans. then, along came Trump, and Stevens, like all decent conservatives, jumped ship, became an avid anti-Trump activist, and is even now working with the "Lincoln Project", a group of well funded Republican defectors helping got Joe Biden elected. His new book "It Was All A Lie" discusses his thoughts concerning why the Republican party decided to give its support to an obviously unfit man like Donald Trump, and become the party of Trump. He points out that in order to achieve this, it was necessary for the party to abandon all of its traditional core principles and values, such as fiscal restraint, balanced budgets, family values, and individual integrity and virtue. Stevens calls the G.O.P. a party of cowards, afraid to stand up to a leader they well know is not fit for office, corrupt, a pathological liar. He further asserts that many if not most republicans know full well that Trump is unqualified, and has made a mockery out of the presidency in his disastrous term in the White House. And yet, they remain passive, and silent. The G.O.P. has become the white christian party, the "Christian" part referring to formal religious affiliation, not actually following the message of Jesus.the party lacks any semblance of ethnic or ideological diversity. More than half of the people in American under the age of fifteen are non white; this does not bode wall for the Republican future, which after its second defeat by Obama pledged to become more culturally diverse, but still hasn't. Stevens predicts that over the next few years the Republican party will dwindle into insignificance. sometimes, for the better of society, such predictions come true.

Going Nowhere

GOETHE SAID that when one travels abroad, one learns to appreciate what one has at home. everyone has experienced this. Life becomes hum drum, boring. Get up, go to work, come home, go to bed. Get up, go to work....finally, that long awaited two week vacation rolls around, we pack up the car, and head out to Yellowstone or somewhere for that beautiful but all too brief respite from reality. It runs out that we are exhausted by the time when we get home, and need a vacation to rest up from the vacation. The respite was fun, the trip a success, but when we pull into our old familiar driveway and park, we are first relieved that the house is still standing, and that the pictures of Yellowstone we posted on Facebook didn't result in our possessions being sold on Ebay, and we are super happy to be back on home soil. Everyone has experienced this; glad to get away, glad to get home, and even glad to be back in school or at work. As Goethe said, habit is our only comfort; we dislike doing without those unpleasant things to which we have become accustomed. Psychologists call it "the hedonic treadmill" from the word "hedonism". We build a new house, get a new car, or win the lottery, and the first day we are thrilled, filled with joy. the second day, not quite so much. within weeks or months we have settled down, and even a million dollar home or bank account becomes ho hum, familiar, and we realize; we still have the same back back, the same boring marriage, job, and the same neurotic hang ups in our heads. Only the window dressing, only the packaging has change. the solution is simple, if we utilize it. Learn to appreciate the simple things, learn to appreciate our modest lifestyle, seek no frills, keep up our steady, boring routine and know that we are producing, contributing, and, most of all...throw in a little variety. A two day vacation every few weeks will do just fine. A new friend, a new hobby, something always entering our lives to renew us,and to remind us that the treadmill, the old daily grind, isn't half as bad as we sometimes thin, that in fact our daily  lives our full of adventure and new experiences, within the framework of our old familiar homestead. And, above all; use your disposable income to invest in experiences, not material things with which we will become bored in short order. Great memories are, ultimately, all that we have left.

Dying To Have Fun

MORE THAN a hundred and sixty thousand Americans are dead by the virus, , needlessly. by Christmas, the number will be close to three hundred thousand, needlessly.the United State of america is number in the world, according to most Americans. Number one in covid 19 death and disease, number one, the greatest country on Earth, we like to say, exactly where we want and deserve to be. Two hundred and fifty thousand american gather together at close quarters, without masks, to ride motorcycles together. A sixty three year old woman, a friend of mine, with lupus and diabetes, refuses to wear a mask, damned if the governmentt is going to tell her what to do, and goes flitting off to a casino, to have fun. Fun, after all, trumps public health. Me, having fun, now, and may the devil take the hindmost. In america, we deserve what we get. We deserve a pathological prevaricating gangster president, because we were stupid enough to elect him. We deserve an epidemic, because when it became obvious that an epidemic was imminent, we did little or nothing,our political leaders were inert, and we the american people decided that making the necessary personal sacrifices to stop the spread of disease was just too much to endure, too much an infringement on our freedom and sacred right to have fun, and anyway, nobody is going to tell us what to do, we are so very great. The public schools are open, and already the disease is spreading through them, because we lack the sense and humility to keep our children at home, to learn online. Football practice, without social distancing, is in full swing, tackle football, and the virus is spreading.Voices of sanity are ignored or shouted down as we the American people insist on living our normal, fun filled, self absorbed lives.A seventeen year old student in Georgia, whose school had twelve positive tests in the first week, said she thought most of the kids would be wearing masks and social distancing. She must have forgotten that she lives in the United States of Amnesia, the United States of Arrogance, where we all have our fun, and are number one, in everything that really matters.

Color Blinding

ISABELLE WILKERSON, African-American reporter for the new York Times, had arranged to interview a gentleman for a research project, and she was excited about doing the important interview. She arrived at the restaurant early, sat down, and waited. The gentleman arrived late, but when he did, she introduced herself, and invited him to join her at her table. He said he was there to do an important interview, gave her a weird look, and asked to see some identification, like a Times business card. she responded that she didn't have any on her, but assured him that she was the reporter, because she had shown up at the right time and place. He told her there must be some mistake, and that he didn't have time to stay. he left....African-American agricultural scientist George Washington Carver was working for the state agricultural extension agency. A lady called the agency, and reported that she was having a problem with her peach trees; they were infested with a peculiar kind of ubg, and were looking sick  Carver's supervisor said he would send out a scientist to try to help her. when Carver got to h er house and knocked, dressed in overalls, work clothes, she answered the door and said, "If you're looking for work, the front lawn needs mowing. The lawn mower is in the tool shed." Carver shrugged his shoulders, went to the shed, got out the lawn mower, and cut her grass. Then, he went back and knocked on her door again, When she answered, she handed him a dollar, and he said: "I'm a scientist from the agricultural extension service. Could I perhaps take a look at your peach trees now?" True stories, both. they raise the question, how would the scenarios have been different had Wilkerson and Carver both been European-american, white, rather than African-American, black? We were once told that the solution is to be "color blind". But being blind to anything is nothing other than ignorance, will ignorance, and since people can see each other plainly, color blindness is nothing but a pretense, a form of dishonesty. so now in our modern age of enlightenment, we have abandoned color blindness in favor of...what...black lives matter? The problem here is the cliche "all lives matter". In Africa, and most civilized countries, nobody is black, and nobody is white. People are categorized by a broad range of ethnic traits, such as language, and so forth. the black and white bi polar paradigm is uniquely American. Only in America, as they say. Put your forearm next to that of any other human being, and it becomes obvious; nobody is "black", nobody is "white", and we all have different skin colors, if only slightly. Maybe we Americans are simply too busy being racists to notice.

Contributing

IN EVERY COMMUNITY, members want to seem valuable, to ensure their social status and enhance their survival chances through contributing to the community and gaining the respect of other members. A young attractive woman gives birth, a young healthy man provides labor and builds wealth. leadership and advice giving are left to the elderly. The various professions provide essential services. Others add communal value by providing new knowledge to the community. Entertainers entertain with narratives and stories, shaping cultural heritage. President Trump, says president Trump, has done more for African-Americans than any other president or anyone else in American history, with the possible but highly improbable exception of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, like Trump, was a racist, but, arguably, did a bit more than trump to assist black folk. In our age of alternative realities and conspiracy theories, if our president can invent his, we can invent ours.What better way to achieve self esteem, social status, and influence than to construct, from disparate sources, a comprehensive alternative cosmic paradigm, and to present it to as many willing acolytes as possible, as gospel. Thus one can seek status as the leader of a cult, with or without the cult.The most dangerous cult leader with the largest cult became president of the United States, with his narrative of hatred of immigrants, of the media of all things progressive; a right wing wish list of fabricated enemies of the people. The multi dimensional, extraterrestrial conspiratorial, hollow earth hidden civilization crowd is emboldened by, and embraces Trump,a fellow purveyor of false but alluring narratives and realities. In this ilk, whatever is most obviously real and extant is denied, whatever is pure fantasy is embraced as gospel fact, and the fun house becomes the best of all places to which to escape the world.

Trump, Lowering To Every Occasion

JOE BIDEN is not the most articulate presidential candidate in american history; that distinction belongs to Thomas Jefferson,with John Quincy Adams and Abraham Lincoln placing and showing. Biden's good fortune is that his opponent is teh least articulate ever, even including bushes one and two, a considerable lack of verbal skills. Biden blundered through a comment that whereas there is considerable cultural diversity among Latin-American Americans, there is much less among African-Americans, since Latinos come from all over  Latin America, and African-Americans were almost all born here in the U.S.. Blacks, he said, are far more homogeneous, with some exceptions. an arguable contention, but certainly not overly insulting nor racist.Suddenly Donald Trump, with his extensively documented history of making blatantly racist remarks, becomes highly sensitive and politically correct, and  objects strenuously, or pretends to. Trump, the highly sensitive politically correct defender of politeness and human dignity. The words "hypocrite", "phony", and audacious" do not do justice to Trump.The temerity only intensifies. the Russians, we are again warned, having assisted Trump's election, are at it again, trying to help him get reelected. the Chinese and Iranians are supporting Biden. Trump denies the Russians are doing this, since they have no reason to and every reason not to, since he, Trump, has been tougher and more resistant to Russian bad behavior than any president in American history, Even Kennedy, who stood up to the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis, and Reagan, who helped end the cold war with his stalwart opposition to Soviet schemes and his build up of the american military, pale in comparison to the bold actions of trump in defending America against Russian aggression. Evidently, the obvious fact that Trump has spent his entire presidency licking Putin's boots is but a mere distraction from his lion hearted bravery in dealing decisively and firmly with the Russian bear. Trump's temerity is nearly boundless, nearly as much so as his pathological, delusional dishonesty.

Purchasing Justice

THE WORDS "discrimination, "Segregation:, and "racism' do not adequately describe the ethnic, socio-economic, and racial parameters of american society, according to Isabelle Wilkerson, for mer reporter for the new York times, in her seminal new monograph "Caste". she argues that American society as a whole, and within the African-american community, is structured quite similarly to that in India, the notorious caste system, in which a person's position within society, from birth until death, is predetermined by a rigid traditional set of traditional values, handed down from generation to generation. White anglo-Saxon protestant wealthy aristocrats sit at the top of the social hierarchy, beneath which layers of white America, middle class, working class, and poor, all stand above African-Americans, who remain rigidly ensconced at the bottom, pigment precluding any possibility of rising, regardless of personal achievement or wealth. A black american, whether Lebron James or not, is still black, and of his caste, untouchable. The NBA, seventy five percent of whose players are are multi-millionaire untouchables, is establishing a three hundred million dollar fund to promote racial equality and justice in America, and to end systemic racism. Many of the players are wearing "black lives matte" T shirt in place of their names, and kneeling before the anthem, symbolically. how do they propose to accomplish a fundamental transformation of deeply entrenched american culture with money, by paying for it? By bribing racists to reconsider? Educational initiatives, presumably. Education must begin early and often, because the broader society  has proven most conservative, resistant to change.  Then too, reason tells us the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions of well indoctrinated people, an entire entrenched culture, cannot be bought and paid for.

Learning, The Hard Way

IN CONSERVATIVE STATES, where schools are being forced to open despite better judgment and against the wishes of most teachers by politicians and school administrators whoe either won't, don't, or can't comprehend simple microbiology, classrooms are crowded, hallways are crowded, and some students wear masks, and some do not.America seems to prefer hastening her return to normalcy to taking sufficient precautions to avoid millions more sick and tens of thousands more dead. Every teenager in America has a smart phone, and one community oriented high school student whipped his out in the hallway, took a pic of the crowd jammed together, and shared it on social media. Not a hint of social distancing was to be seen., but only a mass of young life, at risk. the school administrators, preferring secrecy, censorship, and concealment of its corruption to  truth telling, had strictly forbidden this, after the fashion of the Waffen SS or the Catholic clerical hierarchy. the young potential photo journalist was summarily banished from the herd, for daring to tell the truth rather then conceal it. it brought to mind my high school in 1970, when the index of forbidden books included "The Catcher In the Rye", of which every one had a copy of the small red hard cover salacious masterpiece in his or her locker, hidden inside a hollowed out Bible. Positive tests ofr teh coronavirus are already increasing in America's schools, as allegedly virtually immune prove not to be so virtually immune, and virtual immunity, which could be achieved by virtual learning from the sanctity of the home, lurks in the background, a forgotten but reasonable alternative to insanity . these politicians and administrators herding children into hallways with free floating viruses loitering - are they perhaps trump supporters, convinced that a little time, Lysol for lunch, and hydroxychloroquine will bring a hundred and sixty thousand people back to life, and prevent the same amount more from dying before Christmas? If only conservative America would awaken to the reality that the virus is real, and that real virtual immunity will require real virtual learning. bBut don't hold your breath.