Cowardly Liars, Quietening

 MONDAY MAY 3RD MARKS the six month anniversary of the election of Joe Biden, or put conservatively and insanely, after the fashion of Trump and his flock, the six month anniversary of the theft of the election by, or on behalf of Biden, whichever, however, and by whom remaining  unclear, which they will doubtless forever will. Said supposed and hypothetical election theft would have been the largest scale larceny in human history, and would have required for its successful completion the conspiratorial cooperation if thousands of coconspirators at a minimum, and for all of whom to have kept the conspiracy secret for six months and counting, a feat surpassing the most ambitious estimates of human nature. Donald Trump's stolen election lie thus becomes simultaneously the craziest, and most nefarious prevarication ever uttered by any American president (and that says something) or any American. Its enthusiastic, unqualified embrace by tens of millions of previously presumed reasonably sane and intelligent citizens becomes both the most disappointing and dangerously traitorous falsehood ever embraced and oft repeated by the largest group of  disappointingly immoral Americans, ever. The proper way to lose an election is to congratulate the winner, not to fabricate false accusations of fraud. Most children are raised to understand that basic moral value. The proper way to contest election results is to show clear evidence of election fraud before said contesting. Common sense tells us that. Common sense, and a sense of honesty and decency. Trump and his shockingly immoral seventy million member  movement did neither, revealing their complete lack of moral character and fundamental decency. That a high percentage of the Trump supporters who fabricated the false election fraud claims self identify as conservative Christians clearly exposes the fundamentally deep immorality of the conservative Christian community. It is noteworthy that the more time which passes since  Biden's election, the less noise and verbal garbage Trump and his seventy million member mob are spewing,  the quieter they are becoming. Why? Because they never really believed their own lies? Because there is nothing more they can do? Actually, if they truly believed their nonsense, they would have spent the last six months conducting massive MAGA rallies, and demonstrations and protests in every city in America, making the Black Lives Matter movement look by comparison as if black lives matter only somewhat. Fully aware that they are nothing but bad sport liars and traitors, Trump's millions member mob was quite content, by direct participation or by proxy, to ransack the nation's Capitol building in a single desperate, disgusting act of violent insurrection, to kill five people, and then go home quietly and try to hide from the consequences of their treason, having already had the confidence, arrogance, and stupidity to incriminate themselves by proudly posting pictures of themselves on social media, proving their, guilt, idiocy, and cowardice.

Ridin' With Biden

 PRESIDENT BIDEN, the first intelligent person to serve as president of the United States since Barack Hussein Obama, in his first speech to congress, laid out vigorous effective prescription for America's ascent to economic and social health. This automatically means, of course, that it will be strenuously opposed by the fascist (Trump) Republican party and the benighted American conservative community. Biden's idea is to invest in and develop a partnership between government and the lowest level of the socio-economic pyramid, to rebuild the nation from the ground up, which is the only way to build or rebuild anything, using demand side economics. The Repugnantans, by contrast, remain mired in their travesty, the outdated and long discredited top down trickle down Reaganonomic monstrosity; tax cuts for the ultra wealthy, followed by waiting, hoping, and praying for increased productivity in the absence of increased demand. Ronald Wilson Reagan, R.I.P., is long dead, much like the economics of unfettered capitalism and prayer. Senator Tim Scott, the G.O.P.'s token trophy African-American, responded with a fantastic notion that "America is not a racist country", borrowed from some arcane utopian right wing fantasy of reality denial, the one which denies climate change, among among other realities,  a collective delusion brought to us by the same people who insist  that Donald Trump is a  man of fine Christian character sent by The Lord to save white America from racist guilt, and who was reelected by a landslide. The alternative far right universe. While it is true that both major political parties have long since sold out to the corporate billionaire class, which now owns them, between the two, the Democrats are lightyears and decades ahead of the Republican-plutocrats in terms of actually serving the American people. Only the nations' six hundred and fifty seven or so billionaires benefit by supporting conservative economic policies. The tragedy is that most blue collar American males are too politically and economically illiterate to understand that Donald Trump's right wig "populism", like trickle down Reaganomics, is a fraudulent sham, a cover story, a distraction for sucking wealth upward, from worker, to corporate owner, further enriching the already rich. The real cultural was in America is oligarchy versus democracy,  not liberal versus conservative nor Republican versus Democrat, although the latter two  certainly qualify is real wars.  The solution is legislative and regulatory revolution, the sort Biden seems to be initiating. It just happens that progressive Democrats are the prime force for the need fundamental change, and the conservative Republicans are the prime defenders of the oligarchical status quo.

A Flickering of Evangelical Hope

 ALL IS NOT LOST regarding the morality, or lack thereof, of the American evangelical Christian community, despite its blatantly immoral support of Donald Trump, among other concerns. Most, but not all. Several years ago the president of the Christian Coalition urged its members to make environmental protection a prime factor in voting choices. That's a start. Better than denying that the environment needs human protection. Several dozen evangelical leaders signed a statement challenging the Bush administration to do something about global warming, a vast improvement to leaving it up to the lord. This is refreshing, considering that many conservative evangelicals devote unproductive energy to bashing gays, lesbians, and transgenders, supporting tax cuts for the wealthy, and give their endorsement to Donald Trump, while repeating his lie that the election was stolen from him. Perhaps evangelicals are at long last beginning to dimly perceive that most folks are far more preoccupied with how to pay the water bill and how to obtain medical attention for their sick children to how to convert gays to heterosexuality or whether Democrats go to hell. Anyone who calls herself "pro life" should bear in mind that life is possible only on a habitable planet with a heathy ecosystem in a society in which more than  a few people have enough cash to pay for basic living expenses. There is not a single word in the Bible about abortion. The vast right wing conspiracy to deprive women of control of their own reproduction is not scripturally based, contrary to the false claims of conservative Christianity. Of more immediate moral concern are the issues of wealth and poverty, and anyone who opposes the redistribution of wealth have not embraced the teachings of Jesus, who was a hard core socialistic money sharing advocate. (go they way, sell whatsoever thou hast, give unto the poor).  he said not a word about the personal accumulation of wealth through hard work, investment, or any other way. Not much of a capitalist, Jesus. Though the Bible is full of homophobia, it contains nary a word about gay marriage. Those opposed to it are on their own. It has plenty to say about the bizarre, bloody ritual slaughter of animals to appease the lord, and clearly endorses slavery, but is silent on abortion and gay marriage. We are left to our own devices. Poverty and economic justice are mentioned more than three thousand times in the Bible, each time against the former and in favor of the latter. Left wing evangelist (yes, though rare, they exist) Jim Wallis, who like some twentieth century Thomas Jefferson, who himself cut up a Bible for the purpose of separating the wisdom from the nonsense, each of which he found in abundance, cut out every reference to economic injustice, and what he had left over resembled a pile of confetti. Economic injustice is defined biblically as allowing the impoverished to remain so. You'll recall Jesus's estimate of the chances of a rich man entering into heaven. Imagine what HE would think of Donald J. Trump, and those who support him. Evangelical Christians are potentially good people who become evil monsters only when they embrace modern American political and economic conservatism, ideologies directly opposing the teachings of Jesus, who most certainly did not advocate a free market sink or swim winner take all capitalistic dog fight. Politically, economically conservative Christianity make a mockery of the teachings of Jesus, and, by extension, God.

Assaulting Sanity

 TEH REPUBLICAN LEGISLATIVE ASSAULT on sanity seems ceaseless. The most recent attacks started with Donald Trump's insanely dishonest claim that the election was stolen, and the even more insane agreement he received from tens of millions of self deluded supporters. Fortunately, saner heads prevailed, in courtrooms across the country, and in the offices of election commissioners. Not content to leave well enough alone, in states controlled by republican legislatures a flurry of laws were brought up for consideration intended to reduce the number of people who vote, efforts thinly, falsely disguised as intended to reduce voter fraud, which does not actually exist. The considerable national backlash against this, evidenced by corporate boycotts of Georgia, ma have the effect of slowing this insane movement down. Undeterred, the Republican right now turns its malign attentions towards America's transgender community, determined to marginalize more the already marginalized. The piece de resistance? Now several state legislatures are proposing bills which would make it extremely difficult for protest movements like the "Black Lives Matter" movement last summer to stage protests in pubic, by redefining disorderly conduct as essentially which blocks traffic or  causes an inconvenience to non protestors, such as, being there. Making it more difficult to vote by imposing more obstacles to voting will inevitably have the effect of reducing the number of voters, and this, as is well known, is the only chance the Republican party with its regressive, unpopular policies, will have to win future elections. the attacks on transgender people is nothing other than a religious impulse; strict conformity to traditional Christian morality being the objective. Most public protests over the decades and centuries are carried out by progressives; people insisting on changing systems of injustice. Right wing republicans tend to deny the very existence of systemic racism, notwithstanding its obvious existence, and they resent minorities posing a threat to their white patriarchy by demanding equal rights. Worth mentioning is all the furor about limiting the right to assemble and protest is that doing so is unconstitutional, an infringement on basic American rights, of assembly and speech. Also worth mentioning is that among the speeches given in state legislatures complaining about the rioting and looting which occurred at less than five percent of Black  Lives Matter protest last summer, not a single Republican legislator mentioned the insurrection on January 6th at the Capitol, the one in which President Donald Trump tried to reverse the election and overthrow the government, and killed five people. Evidently that one doesn't count as "disorderly".

Attracting Attention, Part II

 I RESERVE my greatest appreciation for everyone who reads these essays, and especially for my fellow senior citizens around the world, and in the United States. We are approaching the end of a long and  grand adventure, in parallel, if not together. To the American conservative community especially I am greatly indebted, for giving me support from an unexpected source, for helping make this website a success, sustaining me, making me feel important and productive. The remaining enduring mystery is why so many conservatives go to the trouble of purposely seeking out this website and to read it. Its contents invariably angers, indeed enrages conservatives to the point of irrational responses, with an undercurrent of violence. So, why do they bother? Their expressions of anger are irrational, purely emotional, lacking any substance. Do they simply enjoy the feeling of being self righteously outraged? Do they seek some special status in claiming, falsely, victimization? With more than one hundred million websites on the world wide web, nothing is easier than ignoring one among more than one hundred million. Simply refrain from typing in the site's title or URL, and you have successfully avoided material which to you is toxic. Obviously, many conservatives regard the contents of this essay website worthy of their scrutiny. But, why? Maybe they realize that the messages presented hear contain truth, but cannot bring themselves to admit it, because to do so would force them to amend their prejudices. People tend to despise challenges to their false beliefs, even as they perceive the truth in the challenges. Its almost as if they are seeking a confrontation, something to confront. Some have suggested that this website is a vehicle for its author to hide and throw bombs from behind, lacking the courage for direct confrontation. Like most other accusations from the right wing, this is laughable, ludicrous. I avoid conflict by giving people a chance to ignore what I say, rather than getting in people's faces, faces behind which lurk minds of questionable intelligence. When confronted, conservatives invariably lose their temper, become irrational, and abandon reason, to the extent that they ever had any. So why bother? The distinguishing feature of conservatives outraged by  material here is that they never, ever address the substance of it, they never respond with facts. Always, just the insults and accusations. People like that are unworthy of, incapable of intelligent debate. For facts, they would have to rely on fabrications and lies. So, why bother?

Religion Run Amok: Escaping the Children of God

 ONLY THE MOST spectacularly, violently destructive religious cults become famous, of the innumerable which inseminate, and then usually only when promiscuous sex and pedophilia are involved, or some flaming mass suicidal end, as is often the case. Jim Jones and David Koresh are among the first to come to mind, good Christians both, with respective harems of teenaged girls to prove it. The pattern is familiar. Smart charismatic pathologically narcissistic young man feels undervalued by mainstream society, commences quest for cult followers, moving around  the country recruiting through preaching loudly, emotionally sensational doctrines loosely based on Christian dogma, promising an extravagant  reward, perhaps in some future incarnation for those who join, doom for those who do not. those who do tend to be excessively insecure, lost, seeking...something. The usual targets are young women. They become bait for men. Lauren Hough was born into one such cult which flourished, like so many others, in the nineteen seventies and eighties. Its leader, a charismatic young man named Berg, preached to her hippie parents, who joined. They left, as many do, when she was a teenager. Her collection of essays about her experiences is entitled "Leaving Isn't the Hardest Part", which traces her involvement with "The children of God", which later called itself "the family of God", and then, just "The Family". Terri Gross interviewed miss Hough on her National Public radio program "Fresh Air". The cult had all the insane trimmings, liturgically. God lives on the moon, on which is also heaven, in the form of a pyramid. Lauren's suspicious arose when her budding math skills told her that this particular heaven would fill up and overflow. The Children of God embraced the usual lunatic Christian based dogma, the brainwashing, mind control in the name of serving Jesus, and the sexual exploitation, the great leader, in robes and sandals, knows all, and controlled all, except his personal sexual appetites. The cult of God deteriorated into a sex, as religious cults often do, not surprising, considering that the Christian religion itself began  to grow to monstrous proportions, lasing long enough to rewrite their own history to appear to serve the will of God, rather than base human desire. It is a wonder anyone ever survives this insanity, but surprisingly many do, and live to tell about their descent, through exploited vulnerability, into psychological, sociological hell. Those fortunate enough to escape understand that they were the tragic victims of ruthless exploitation of their personal vulnerability. All religions begin as upstart reviled cults populated by social outcasts. A tiny fraction of them, due to a complex perfect storm of societal and historical circumstance, endure long enough and become large enough to wreak their various unique forms of havoc upon the larger world. If for no other reason, we ought to consider ourselves fortunate that no more do than do, and that the vast majority of them, mercifully for all concerned, ignominiously die.

Attracting Attention

 I AM, or so I hope, a modest, humble person. Self confidence and humility are a healthy mix, I believe. In that spirit, I present my little essays for the world to peruse or ignore, as each individual prefers. Either way, in the end, I am content. My conversations I prefer in person, rather than on a computer. Most of the time, when I try to so engage one of my fellow Americans, the fellow America seems distracted, uninterested in what I have to say, as if they can't wait for me to stop talking about my views on issues of public concern such as climate change and poverty, so they can get right to the important matter of talking about themselves. They can barely wait for me to complete my current sentence, so they can talk over me, interrupt, or talk around me, and change the subject. We Americans, truth be told, are a self absorbed lot who can not resist the temptation to prattle on about ourselves. However, neither Americans nor people around the world completely ignore my little essays. They attract a certain, limited amount of attention. Even more amazingly, American conservatives do not always ignore them, and you would expect ignorance from them. Indeed, not only do our right wing brethren and sistern take sneak peaks at my little essays, they actually respond to them, if only behind my back. Locally, regionally, nationally, the howling wolves of the far right can be heard, crying out their injured discontent. It seems that many conservatives prefer, rather than to simply ignore my little essays, to read them and then express great discomfort and feigned outrage. From all across the fruited plain, from Bangor to Butte and all points in between, in the land of supposed free speech, the howling hordes are heard, often doing more than disapproving, often trying to find ways to attack and silence their tormentor. All it takes is a few inconvenient facts for the outrage to erupt. Facts like; one half of all Republicans have no intention of getting vaccinated, and this is a sad commentary on Republicans. Most conservatives pretend that climate change does not exist, which proves that most conservatives are delusional. Most conservatives still believe that Trump's assault on the American government at the U.S. Capitol building January 6th was a good idea, which proves that most conservatives are traitors. It is almost as if American conservatives are allergic to facts, and experience pain at their mere mention. It is both flattering and amusing. Flattering to not be ignored by normally ignorant people, amusing that the willfully ignorant would take such umbrage to an attempt to dispel their ignorance, and to replace ignorance with facts. One might hope that even conservatives would appreciate education rather than reject it, but one's hopes would be sadly dashed.

Dueling Religions

 ISLAM CND CHRISTIANITY, the two dominant religions on Earth, enjoy a combined following of nearly four billion souls. Of the two, Christianity has the slightly larger following, but with the next generation Islam will almost certainly surpass its rival, since Islam is growing and Christianity is not. In Europe and North America the Christian faith is actually declining in numbers as secularization accompanies modernization, and the non religious millennial generation comes of age. They share in common many fundamental characteristics, including the ultimate source of their origins. Many of the same fundamental tenets are enshrined within the scriptural dogma of both; these two Abrahamic traditions are far more similar then different. This makes what is doubtless their most dramatic, tragic, and destructive common characteristic all the more senseless and inexplicable; their mutual and extreme historical antipathy for each other, historical and contemporary. They more appropriately should consider each other as separate denominations of the same religion. In the Islamic scripture, Jesus is mentioned twenty seven times, each time as a great prophet. That alone should be sufficient to endear Islam to Christians. And yet, from the moment of Islam's genesis in the seventh century, the Christian world has responded to the younger faith with violent opposition, as a usurping upstart of which to be jealous and for which to have nothing but utter contempt. Thus confronted, Islam, which like Christianity embraces the dubious doctrine that all faiths but its own are heretical and false, was forced, in a sense, to respond in kind, to defend itself from Christian aggression. Their mutual enmity has never waned, and flourishes in the supposedly more civilized twenty first century. That neither perceives the reality that each is nothing other than one of many vastly imperfect systems of embracing creation's creator in a world in which thousands of such religions flourish is the greatest testament to the primitive barbarity of both. The mostly overlooked reality that no religion on Earth of the thousands extent offers in its dogma anything remotely resembling a reasonably accurate explanation for the existence of and description of nature by twenty first century standards, and indeed by seventeenth century standards, should be sufficient reason to discard them all, and to simply accept modern science as our best vehicle, though yet imperfect, for an elucidation and the admiration of the universe and its mysterious, unknown creator. If not, the senseless, vicious, never ending internecine violence assuredly is.

Serving Society, For Profit

 J.P. MORGAN CHASE is the largest financial services firm in the world, a monstrous corporate behemoth made of many mergers, which moves trillions of dollars all over the world on a daily basis. Its CEO, Jaimie Dimon, is a dude about my age with whom I an confident I could sit down, have a cold beer and a hot pizza, and a friendly, interesting conversation. I'll buy. Dimon, a good lifelong Democrat, likes to contrast his allegedly humble origins to the millions of dollars handed to Donald Trump by his father. In fact Dimon, like Trump, benefited from the hard work and accumulated family wealth of his immigrant grandfather, and his ambitious business savvy father. The best predictor of financial success in America is not education or hard work, but the amount of wealth one's family has as one is growing up. Politically and economically, Dimon talks a good liberal line. he almost sounds like a born again Bernie sanders, almost, but not quite.J.P. Morgan chase funds educational, job training, and affordable housing projects for the disadvantaged. It has a program of low interest lending to small businesses, and invests in economically depressed areas of inner cities. All good, as far as it goes.  It does not, however, go very fare, not in comparison with the actual national need for such programs. These projects are, however, good public relations and advertising of the virtues of corporate America. In recent times Fortune Five Hundred corporations and their CEOs have paid a lot of lip services to something called "corporate social responsibility". "Corporate social responsibility has become a popular meme wonderful sounding three words which connote the virtues of corporate capitalism and supposed benefits of the existing economic system for everyone and all. Nearly agrees that for large businesses to have a sense of responsibility to serve their communities and society at large is a wonderful concept. but what exactly does it mean, in real terms? Does it mean anything more than relatively small investments in the community ? what about living wages for all workers, environmental health, and a fair and reasonable distribution of wealth throughout society? These things it does not seem to mean.Despite all the hype about corporate social responsibility, millions of working Americans remain in poverty, millions lack health insurance, and corporate profits soar like never before even as their employees struggle to make ends meet.Society, corporate America, and the global corporate oligarchy will not be repaired - and all are seriously broken - without undergoing fundamental structural transformation. Repeating" high sounding phrases like "corporate social responsibility" is an ingenious way of distracting attention from the reality that a tiny fraction of the world's population has almost all the world's wealth and political aw well as economic power. In the modern world monetary wealth is teh same thing as political power.The corporate leaders can give teh image of a new breed of leadership wanting to give the world a new and kinder gentler form of corporate capitalism, while maintaining the status quo of wealth for the few, poverty for the many.

Policing A Nation of Criminals

THE REASON I truly believe that the the officer shot the gentleman mistakenly, "accidentally", assuming  that the service revolver in her hand was a taser, is that I have on at least one occasion pointed a cell pone at a television flat screen, pushed a button, and wondered why nothing happened. I suspect nobody is immune to moments of complete thoughtlessness, what we call "brain dead". this one happened at a particularly bad time; most of them seem to. Goethe said: "since everyone has erred, since even the greatest among us have made mistakes, we have no basis upon which to regard our own mistakes as inexcusable". He also said: "Only by errors which really irk us do we advance". That's probably why I tried to change channels with a cell phone more than once, absent mindedly. My silly brain dead thoughtless mistake didn't irk me. I was too busy laughing. The lady who tragically shot the young gentleman instead of tasering him has doubtless already learned from her horrible mistake, and advanced. May she forever advance, and share her new wisdom. the police need a more effective weapon, something less lethal than a revolver, but more disabling than a taser, something like a stun gun "phaser"from the old Star Trek series. And maybe police need less power. an officer in Washington D.C. demonstrated this by inviting journalists to ride with him as he drove his beat. his purpose was to demonstrate everyday policing power. As the officer drove around the city, he pointed to pedestrians and to cars in motion. he explained to his passengers that he could, if he chose, approach and detain every pedestrian and every motorist each on a specific, legal pretext. Every drive, he went on, commits several moving violations every time he or she gets behind the wheel. Amazingly, almost the same is true of pedestrians; from jaywalkers to gum droppers to juice spitters. So awash is our criminal law cod with technicalities, so pervasive are the powers of the police, that in America, everyone is vulnerable and exposed to police power, all the time. Not only are all motorists guilty of multi vehicular infractions, every adult citizen in the United states has almost certainly committed multiple felonies, research has shown. We are, alas, a nation of criminals, with a broken policing and criminal justice syste,. a system which has resulted in the highest incarceration rate in the world, many being incarcerated for crimes which should arguable not be crimes. Our culture is chaotic, ans w lack even the most basic idea on how to monitor and reasonably control our destructive behavior. when the republics was founded, there were a few million Americans, three federal crimes (treason, counter fitting, piracy) and no police. The situation is somewhat different today.

Vaccinating, Liberally

 WHETHER TO VACCINATE, like the decisions whether to mask up and social distance, surveys indicate, is largely determined by ideology and political party affiliation. This should not seem surprising. What isn't so determined these days? Conservative Republicans, by and large, are the refuseniks. Liberals, generally, comply with public health mandates. Forty percent of registered republican men have stated their intention to not get vaccinated against Covid 19. And so forth, across the board. Reasons give include the usual right wing tripe: defense of liberty and personal freedom against government mandates and tyranny, personal responsibility, that sort of tripe, with a healthy does of insane garbage thrown in having to do with "safely concerns"; vaccines cause autism, Bill Gates is implanting microchips in every dose to turn people into government controlled zombies. But now, to the point: To those self righteously indignant feigning outrage at the lack of bashfulness on this website in bashing conservatives, get a load of this: There are innumerable contexts in which contemporary american conservatism, and by extension its adherents, is idiotic and evil. the list is long, sufficiently long to fill the known universe with microchips, all microchips fully loaded with info bytes. But there is no single word which conveys evil sufficiently to describe the evil of people, liberal, moderate, or conservative, who on account of some false arrogant psychological need to express resentment of "government control" deliberately contribute, by their personal choices and  behavior, to the needless spread of an epidemic which has already killed nearly six hundred thousand Americans, and still is not finished killing. social distancing, mask wearing, and vaccinating, government or no government,  are all fundamental vital common sense measures during a deadly epidemic. To refuse to do these things is traitorous to one's country and fellow citizens. This is not a matter of personal liberty, but rather, social responsibility. the fact that refusing to comply is overwhelming a behavior within the conservative community is damning. Does the government, local, state, or federal, have the power to implement emergency measure in a time of national crisis? Hell yes. Should it? Damned straight it should, libertarian conservatism be damned. Are anti-government anti-vaccination people who object to this idiotic, traitorous, and in most cases conservative? Indisputably. The anti-government freedom fighting right winger doubtless considers himself virtuous, as does the fundamentalist Christian who refuses vaccination on the false and specious absurd reasoning that vaccines are manufactured with human embryos, which they are not. None of these people are virtuous, despite their illusions to the contrary. They are, in fact, quite the opposite.

Welcoming the Stranger, the Conservative Christian Way

THIS WEBSITE enjoys a worldwide following, especially in Russia and Italy, for some reason. I had assumed that our readers in the United States included only secular progressives. Oh, contrary! Now newly aware that our readership includes a surprisingly substantial conservative demographic, we resolve to temper our bemused amazement with a renewed determination to address issues which concern American conservatism with enhanced vigor and rigor. We begin with the charged topic of illegal immigration, the general tendency of which is that, the more strident the conservative Christian in professing conservative Christianity, the more zealously the professor loathes, condemns, despises, and advocates for the summary rejection of undocumented immigrants, especially those of color, and the  more staunchly aforementioned conservative Christian defends said loathing with false facts and for contrived and dishonest reasons and piously patriotic justifications. Welcome the stranger, indeed. several years ago the late Rush Limbaugh suggested that all undocumented immigrants, as unwelcomed strangers, be required to pay a fine of five thousand dollars before being provided a green card and a pathway to citizenship. American conservative Christiandom, known for its devotion to El Rushbo, seemingly willing to welcome the stranger only pecuniarily dearly, feel all over itself  in enraptured approval. In reality, an apparently foreign concept to the conservative community of Christ, the only way to fairly balance the monetary balance sheet with immigrants would be to pay each of them a healthy bonus when they break and enter into America. Undocumented immigrants are indeed guilty of an international version of breaking and entering, which is always a prelude to some form of behavior. Anyone who breaks and enters into my house, cleans the carpet, washes dishes, does laundry, feeds the cats, and leaves a sack of gold coins on my night stand before quietly leaving the premises and locking the door on the way out, I welcome. Rob me blind and mug me, you're done. What exactly do immigrants do after they enter the United States? That, to quote Hamlet, is the question. Do they cut in line and hog all the best tables at five star restaurants and exclusive country club memberships? Hardly. Actually, they mow lawns, clean offices, hammer nails, pick fruit, change diapers, pack meat , pluck poultry, and serve cheeseburgers. What they do with considerably less frequency than, say, conservative Christians, is rape, murder, and burglarize. this, according to extensive criminal court records. This is an inconvenient fact for the anti-immigrant conservative crowd. All immigrant labor is vital to, underpaid by, and exploited by America's wealthy classes. Undocumented immigrants annually pay an estimated seven billion more dollars into social security than they take out of it, and one point five billion more into Medicare then they use in Medicare services. Taxes paid by illegal immigrants far exceed the value of the public services used by them, according to the national Academy of sciences. Who, then are the true "illegals"? The Mexican lawn mowers, or the multi millionaire McMansion residents who stiff them out of their hard earned pay, knowing that the workers have no legal recourse, a tried and true Trump tactic? Exhaustive research, study after study shows that, on balance, illegal immigrants do not ow the united States money for coming here, the United States owes them money, a lot of money still unpaid, for being here.

Mocking and Bashing

 SIX YEARS AGO I suggested that we recite the pledge of allegiance every day at the senior center before lunch, right after we pray. It seemed appropriate to me, patriotic. My suggestion was turned down, flat.I waited a couple of years, and brought up the same suggestion for the new director. More open minded and patriotic, she said: "Fine. You lead the pledge and the prayer every day" I agreed, and I started leading the group pledge and prayer every day just before lunch. Fortunately for the senor center, somebody, I, was patriotic enough to initiate the pledge of allegiance. Nobody else was, among the conservatives. I only did the praying myself when nobody else volunteered. I improvised my own prayers, expressing my true feelings about giving thanks to God, and I received compliments for them. I considered a great honor to express my love of God and country with others, leading them. Two directors later I was notified that I was being relieved of my duties. The reason given is that some of the seniors felt uncomfortable with me leading the pledge and prayer because I "bash" conservatives on this website, and I "mock" God"..Poor sensitive little wall snowflakes. How horrible , their discomfort. As if only conservatives are patriotic, fit to lead the pledge. I'm sure none of them ever has anything unpleasant to say about liberalism.. It looked more like hatred than discomfort. Permit me to say that anyone, anywhere, anytime, who accuses me of "mocking God" is a liar,  and owes me an apology, but probably lacks the decency, integrity, and the courage to offer one. I believe in god, I love god, and i admire God, actually. I do not worship; I consider worship an extreme stat of mind, comparable to being madly in love or violently angry, irrational, a form of mental illness. and even if I were an atheist, what of it? religious belief and virtue are not the same thing. to be an atheist is perfectly acceptable in a nation of religious freedom and tolerance. I, however, believe in God. I have never in my life mocked God, nor would I ever, and I deeply resent any suggestion that I "mock" God. My religiosity, to quote Einstein, consists in humble admiration for the infinitely superior spirit which reveals itself in nature. Our conservative christian friends might benefit by being respectfully reminded that their faith has a monopoly on neither the concept of God, nor the believe therein. Concerning my alleged bashing of conservatives, I plead guilty, proudly so. To have been bestowed with the tile "conservative basher" is among the great honors of my life, and I pledge to live up to it. I bash conservatives for supporting Donald Trump,  for supporting him even after he incited an insurrection and attempted to violently overthrow the government, which I consider traitorous. I bash conservatives who refuse to accept the results of a fair and free election, thus undermining our democracy. The proper way to respond to an election is to congratulate the winner in this case Joe Biden. I bash conservatives who refuse to accept the reality of human made climate change, even though the Department of Defense identifies it as Americas greatest national security threat. To pretend that a grave threat to our country does not exist I consider treasonous. More than eighty percent of the evangelical christian community still supports Trump, and claims that the election was stolen from him; to me they are traitors, like Trump. When anyone, including Christians, contends that people of all other religions, and there are thousands or religions in the world, are following a false god and religion, and are doomed to damnation because of it, I believe that is is they who are mocking god, not I. All religions are attempts to seek God, and are true, for their believers. Those who complained about my leading the pledge are petty, and they should feel uncomfortable with their own pettiness, not with my valid objections to conservatism and to people of faith who are intolerant of the beliefs of others. The probably do. I am the patriotic one, and the one who loves God, and I am not the one  who mocks God. Despite their pettiness, I still love these people, and I assume they love me, assuming, of course, that they have read and understand the message of Jesus, and live by it, just like I do.

China Rising, America Declining

 CHINA, which was once the world's most powerful and wealthiest nation, is poised to become so again, despite the best efforts of the United States, which is in decline. Much has been made of late concerning China's intentions regarding both Taiwan and Hong Kong. The intentions are simple, and obvious; to control both of them, and to exploit their resources for inclusion in the greater Chinese economy as part of China's project to become the world's biggest economy and strongest military power. Both entities have historically been part of china, controlled by the central Chinese government. When Great Britain formally ceded independence to Hong Kong to Chinese suzerainty, it did so with a Chinese pledge that the end of Hong Kong's one hundred year inclusion in the British Empire would mean that Hong Kong would be integrated into Chinese control, but, economically and politically, would be a separate system, two systems within one country. That promise was from the beginning obviously hollow and pseudo, and any astute observer knew it. No power on earth will prevent China's eventual complete control and domination of Hong Kong and Taiwan. Even stranger than  this state of affairs is the history of western imperialism which precipitated it. In 1900 the western powers, including the United States and several European countries, essentially invaded china, carved out by mutual agreement spheres of influence in the "Open Door" system, and proceeded to engage in economic intercourse with China which exploited Chinese resources and impoverished many Chinese. For decades prior to this aggressive arrangement the British had used China as a dumping ground for opium grown in Britain's crown jewel subjugated colony, India. The British stifled India's previously strong industrial economy, fearing its competition, extracted resources from India by force, and made considerable profit by pushing opium in China, turning tens of thousands of Chinese into opium addicts, dependent upon their British suppliers. Queen Victoria has been correctly called the biggest drug dealer in human history. The long brutal history of western exploitation of China ended only with the communist revolution and takeover of 1949. Freed from western oppression, the Chinese are now rising, the United States and Europe powerless to prevent it. In this context constant complaints by the United States about human rights violations in china ring hollow, not only on account of America's history of mistreatment of china and Chinese, but also by virtue of its own poor record in this regard. China no longer has to beg its western exploiters for air, no longer has to whimper 'I can't breathe", but can with some credibility remind the Untied states that breathing is too often made difficult in the supposed self proclaimed land of the free.

Learning, Rather Than Repeating

 APPROXIMATELY EIGHT HUNDRED still alleged but soon to become convicted criminals attacked, invaded, and ransacked the U.S. Capitol bldg. on January 6th, and just over four hundred of them have been criminally charged. So far, so good, but in a more perfect world every last one of them would be rounded up, charged, tried, convicted, and incarcerated, at length. In an entirely perfect world Donald Trump would be summarily executed after being processed through the legal system, duly. So would everyone still claiming that the election was stolen from Trump, or at least deprived of citizenship and voting privileges. well meaning people of the anti-Trump variety now seem intent on wiping the insurrection, and Trump and his big lie about the stolen election form memory, and "moving on", since, after all, Trump is gone, ostensibly, and the nation has been saved from this unprecedented attack on democracy. The danger and inadvisability of this are two fold. First, Trump isn't gone. his behavior lately strongly indicates he plans to remain involved in politics, likely as a candidate for president in 2024. Contrary to widespread belief, no matter how many felony convictions a criminal accumulates, they do not disqualify the criminal from being president of the United States. By 2024 Trump is likely to be a convicted felon, appeals pending. that will not stop him. Nothing will, except the voters. Secondly, Lord Acton was quite correct; failure to learn the lessons of history requires their being learned anew, later. Normally it is considered inappropriate, even rude to repeat one's self, an insult to the comprehension capabilities of the listener. We Americans are an impatient lot, and poor listeners, always wanting to move on to something new, not always intent on learning. But some messages and lessons are so profoundly true and important, so central to who we are as moral beings, that they bear repeating, as often as necessary, to embed them indelibly into the consciousness. Attend this if you will: Donald Trump is a pathological lair and a traitor, especially after the election, and everyone who still supports him, especially after January the sixth is no better. They are traitors to the democratic electoral system, thus to democracy itself, which is the foundation of American civic life. This is no exaggeration, and cannot be overstated, nor stated too often. The election of 2020, and the traitorous response to it by the losing candidate and his supporters, constitutes the single greatest mass betrayal of the United States by Americans since the aftermath of the election of Abraham Lincoln and its disastrous consequences. There is no other way to describe it, and nobody should ever describe it differently.

Reopening

 THE SENIOR CENTER reopened, thirteen months after it closed. I took my sixty six year old body over, and was the first person to reenter, after hand sanitizing and face masking. Gradually the old regulars trickled in, and the eighty five year olds looked no different than they looked at eighty four, among the few blessings of advanced age. After six years at the center, the conservative evangelicals and I finally learned how to like each other, though it took time. I still follow the instructions my sixth grade teacher gave us; I never talk politics and religion with strangers. Still, people have a way of finding out where you stand, and my non religious left wing orientation appeals to only a handful of folks in my small southern town, and those handful are automatically my friends. I finally decided that I contribute to the center, culturally, intellectually. I have a litmus test for intelligence and sanity. If you deny climate change, if you believe that racism no longer is a problem in America, if you think you can identify an Islamic person merely by looking at him or her, which some at my senior center do, I consider you intellectually unfit for intelligent conversation. If you're a Trump supporter, especially after the insurrection, you're out. I'll have nothing to do with you. there are many of those at the center, poor fools. I find it shocking that a reasonably intelligent person can spend an entire lifetime as a supposed Christian and support Trump. But, alas, millions do. This business about God making use of less than perfect people I consider a cop out, fraudulent reasoning. God did not elect Trump. With regard to forgiving people their sins, fine, forgive Trump, but for heaven's sake, do not elect him president. Worst of all, if you claim that the election was stolen from Trump, as I'm sure many of my fellow senior centerers do, I consider you a traitor, to democracy. so, yes, I have ideological issues with the folks at the senior center, and I'm willing to confront them on any of them. But I never broach any of it.Who bother? Why should I? My side won the election, and I did my talking at the ballot box. Let the  losers talk. I'm getting to the point, six months after the election, at which anytime I hear some disgruntled Trump supporter mention the stolen election, I want to say: "I suggest you spend the rest of you life complaining about the stolen election, and wait to find out how much good it does you. With regard to Muslims and "non believers" going to hell, I am tempted to say, "I'll see you there". I'm a believer - a believer in what I believe, not what you believe. The worst are the people - mos  of the people at the center who believe that only Christians go to heaven, and all others go to hell. These folks think themselves virtuous, and I truly believe they have no idea how evil their hell fire condemnations are. But, they never will, and I am not the one to teach them any better.  For the time being we'll get along by talking about sports, and maybe, just maybe, I'll see them later. Basically, they're good folks.

Enhancing the Plague, Evangelically

 ALTHOUGH THERE ARE are an estimated forty one million evangelical Christians in America, it often seems like the actual number is in the billions. Predictably, a high percentage of them, maybe half, indicate that they no intention of getting vaccinated. Radio talk shows are being devoted to asking why, but they needn't be. the reason is simple; evangelicals believe that whether there is a pandemic, and whether somebody gets Covid 19 is determined entirely by God, and vaccines are needless and irrelevant. somehow, you have to respect that, whether you agree with it. Perhaps they have not heard the old joke about a man sitting on his rooftop waiting to be rescued from a flood, and declining offers from passing boats, telling them that he is waiting for God to save him, confident that HE will. The pattern is clear and well documented. the people who are refusing vaccination are the same people who refuse to wear masks, and who vehemently protest the closing of the economy and stay at home orders; right wingers,, notably Republicans, Trump supporters, and yes, evangelical Christians, all of whom tend to be the same people. The same people who have driven the domestic epidemic all along, who are disproportionately responsible for the nearly six hundred thousands dead by Covid Americans, the same people who elected Trump in the first place, and supported his policy of ignoring the epidemic from the beginning, thus precipitating it and causing its disastrous spread. The pandemic,  the American version thereof, is directly traceable to Trump and his supporters, and this is fact,not partisan slander.  Liberals tend to believe in science. the farther to the right one is, the less the tendency to accept modern science, the greater the tendency to replace it with religious superstition. The category can be generally described a "conservative Christian republican Trump supporters." perhaps you recall Trump's prescription of hydroxychloroquine, Lysol and bleach, ingested liberally, as the cure all for Covid. Perhaps you recall Trump proclaiming that the plague would be behind us by Easter, of 2020. Then too was the prevaricating president's famous proclamation that the virus would be on its way out with the advent of warm weather, in 2020. The fact that all along millions of right wing evangelical Trump supporters bought these crazy lies, hook,line and sinker, and probably still do is hardly surprising;  they believed, and still do, every single one of Trump's approximately thirty thousand lies as president, because, after all, he was God's president.

Uprising For Justice

 MY INTEREST in politics and elections started early, in 1964, when  Goldwater ran against LBJ. I was nine. JFK's assassination got me interested, for all the wrong reasons. I love elections, and I love voting. I inherited this from my attorney father, who said he loved voting so much he was willing to vote on anything. I agree. that's why I find Donald Trump's big lie so repugnant, and its embrace by tens of millions of Americans even more so. every political scientist will tell you that a democracy exists only with  free and fair elections, and that the only thing making them fair and free is a willing of the public to maintain faith in their fairness and freedom,  unless confronted with extraordinary, compelling evidence that they are not. No such evidence has even been presented nor exists that last November's election was anything other than honest, and that comes from the FBI from every state election board, and from very city, town, and precinct in America, where tens of thousands of Republican poll workers found nothing wrong. Pretty convincing, wouldn't you say? Their dishonest discredited clamor dying down for want of veracity, trump supporter and the Republican party are now resorting to voter suppression, disguised as fraud prevention. More treachery, more dishonesty. Only Georgia has passed such heinous legislation so far, but many other right states are on their way, and what may save us is that much of America, and in particular corporate America, which is more important, is rising up in justifiably righteous indignation. A Yale professor organized a zoom conference call which included a who's who among the powerful corporate elite. Travel, transportation, retail, industry; you name it, corporate America is on board with resisting voter constriction by making it harder to vote, the calculation evidently being that most Americans prefer expansive rather than restrictive voting. Its no secret that new restrictive voter laws, requiring voters to jump through more hoops to cast a ballot, will decrease minority turnout, not white conservative Republican turnout. Whether or not this should be the case, whether or not everybody should be equally able to navigate obstacles to voting is not the issue, the issue is the reality that voter suppression suppresses Democrats far more than Republicans. With Georgia beginning to suffer the economic sting of corporate boycotting, you can bet your bottom dollar that the rest of the states will think twice, at least. before following suit.

Preparing For the Worst

 DONALD TRUMP hosted a group of  Republican politicians and donors at Mara Lago last weekend, which tells us that he isn't done, or doesn't think he is, by a long shot. He still controls the fascist party, despite substantial opposition from within it from powerful politicians, who see him leading it to ultimate destruction. The great reprobate spent the entire weekend lambasting his enemies; Republicans! Amazing that an "unsavvy" politicians could remain popular in a party he seems intent on dividing. This reminds you of his first two weeks as a candidate in 2015, when he called Ted Cruz a liar more than fifty times. That was enough to turn me off. If that's how he treats his fellow Republicans, how would he treat the rest of us? Well, we found out.. The populist is popular, remains popular among the minion masses. The country is filled with tens of millions of little tin soldier fascist followers, Trump lovin' intellectually inferior folk, moral reprobates, traitors to America all. May they all rot or burn in hell, your choice .Everyone else, America's moral sane, must conspire, openly, to defeat the fascist MAGA mob. Remember, Hitler failed to take over Germany illegally in 1920, but succeeded thirteen years later, electorally. The situation hasn't really changed. America is now, like Germany was in the nineteen twenties, full of xenophobic ultra right wing angry, violent thugs. As always, the real problem isn't Hitler or Trump, both of whom were and are blow hard pathological liars.  Trump is a punk, a thug, a garden variety criminal, and ha proven it his entire life, before and all during his presidency. But he's a charismatic leader, and the problem, as always, is the multi million mass of morons which continues to support him, even after he was defeated by a landslide for reelection, refused to accept his defeat and refused to leave office peacefully, and organized and incited a violent mob to attempt to overthrow the United States government. Trump's post election behavior proves that he is a fascist, and teh continued support of his criminal traitorous base after January 6 clearly demonstrates that so are those who support him. Tens of millions of white Christian American blindly devoted to a fascist dictator wannabe, all because of their intense xenophobic racist hatred of Mexicans and Muslims. Anyone who has spent more than a few minutes in America watching the great American freak show fun house in action begins to realize that in America practically anything can and will happen. Hence the oft repeated phrase: "only in America". It is therefore not at all beyond the realm of possibility that Donald Trump will be elected president in 2024.  Remember Grover Cleveland. And bear in mind that contrary to what many believe, a convicted felon as Donald Trump may become before 2024, is not ineligible to run for and become president White conservative Christian America will continue its war on America, with voter suppression attempts and attacks against minorities, and will strive to keep Donald Trump politically powerful and relevant. The MAGA mob monster still lives, and must, like a dragon, be slain.

Waiting For Justice

THE FACEBOOK POST, in big bold letters, said: "He gave the order on January 6. Why has nothing been done"? What the post meant was obvious, a question many are asking. The person who posted it is on my "friends" list, ans usually chimes in with offbeat comical posts, so I knew she meant business. Good for her. Good citizenship. I have been wondering the same thing myself. My first thought is that its still too soon. Several civil suits have been filed against Trump,w ho is now out of office and thus fully exposed to litigation, at least one police officer who was injured in the insurrection has filed one, and presumably there are many many more to follow. Six people lost their lives on January 6, and they all have families.But what about the big one, the criminal indictment lovers of justice anticipate and expect will eventually be handed down by the Department of Justice? Biden so far seems to be making good on his promise to let the Attorney General work independently, as he is supposed to and Merrick Garland is known for his fair and equal approach to justice, and he can't be much of a Donald Trump fan. But the wheels of justice turn slowly, as well they should. slowly, and dispassionately. Garland hasn't had time to fully consider his options, so busy has he been settling in to his new prodigious tasks. And, he hasn't time to conduct and complete a thorough investigation of the events surrounding the insurrection at the nation's Capitol building on January 6, 2021. We can most likely safely assume that before the end of this calendar year, much more will be publicly known ab ut the proceedings involving Donald J. Trump. And there will be many proceedings. Trump is already involved in thousands of law suits, of various kinds, enough to overflow a docket the size of his his toupee, with more on the way, having to do with his assorted criminal activities, alleged, while in office. My personal opinion is that Trump should be charged with treason, insurrection,convicted, and placed in front of a firing squad. That is neither an unreasoble nor a purely partisan attitude. When the president of the United States refuses to accept defeat in a reelection, refuses to acknowledge any intent to peacefully leave office, then summons a violent mob and orders them to "go to the capitol and fight like hell", and they do exactly that, and very nearly overthrow the government by attacking and killing member of congress and the vice president, you have grounds for legal action. We'll wait and see, as Trump would say.

Gold, Lasting

 T.S. ELIOT called April "the cruelest month" because it forces nature to awaken to the harsh reality of the world, after winter's long peaceful slumber. Robert Frost took another approach. Focusing on the transience of the first bloom of spring, the budding of tree leaves, he noted how rapidly the golden hue of a forest exploded into verdant leafy green. Nothing gold can last. Spring and fall are everyone's favorite seasons, maybe because we are consumed with birth and death, and their seemingly endless cycle, reminding us of our ultimate immortality. The spring of 2021 is unfolding more naturally slowly than any other in my sixty six years, fitting, as we struggle slowly to re emerge form our year long pandemic hibernation. I remember past springs which seemed to last a single day, a day of perfect weather lodged between cold winter and hot summer. With accelerating climate change, spring begins ever earlier, and recent spring seem to linger gladly longer, a gradual steady emergence from early March through April and into late May, when the heat arrives. Mid April and the redbuds in my yard and everywhere else have remained purple pink red for weeks. They needn't  hurry into green for me, nor, I suspect for anyone else. I love them just as they are. The maples are keeping their helicopter seeds as if reluctant to part with them, the tiny leaves reluctant to finally abandon early childhood and grow up. the tall purple which normally spring forth from the soil suddenly in early March are usually gone by April, replaced by dandelions. This year, the purple is still here in mid April, and the dandelions, unwilling to wait longer, have joined them. By now only the hardest of the hard core deniers still refuse to accept to obvious reality of climate change, and we know that future seasons will be far different from those present, for we already see them changing, hotter summers, milder winters, violent weather. We are beginning our efforts to reverse climate change to late to stop it. whether humanity ever deals effectively with climate change my generation will not live long enough to know. I am content, and must be content, to have lived long enough to dwell joyously in this perfect spring in the autumn of my life.

Going Out of Style and Fading Away

 THE WHITE CHRISTIAN CONSERVATIVE party, usually called the "Republican" party, is overwhelming all of the above, any even the most cursory glance at one of their gatherings reveals. Black and brown people and non Christians are absent, as are, one suspects, gays and transgender people. Minorities are rare in the Republican party. Republicans tend to be Christian, capitalistic, heterosexual.But why? Their agenda, their politics, perhaps? Why would black or brown folks be attracted to a political party which denies or downplays racism, seems to believe that racism only exists when liberals invent it by mentioning it, and that only hard work matters, for anyone and everyone? The modern Republican  Attrition by lack of interest.cultural, ethnic, religious diversity inclusion, and acceptance. That is why white Christian conservatives have been for a long time angry, and behaving as if their panties are all bunched up, and sitting on a corncob. That is why they claim that there is some sort of "war" against Christianity and conservatism, because they are going out of style, as a smaller portion of the population embraces them. Attrition by lack of interest. Behold the angry, screeching MAGA rallies, where the grimacing audience eagerly watched trump attacking everybody and everything.Voter suppression. Attacks on gays and transgenders from the pulpit and elsewhere, including Republican majority state legislatures.Tradition and conformity are the twin pillars of conservatism everywhere. In America, that means social and economic Darwinism, a ceaseless, unrelenting competition for wealth, power, prestige.Cooperation and communal planning ar enemies, as are reform and forward progress. The actual American economy is mixed, with strong elements of socialism. Its racial, ethnic, and religious diversity is growing greater,and will continue to do so, contrary to conservative desires.People and groups of people threatened with extinction, such as white supremacist conservatives, resort to violence, and we see that happening now on the far religious right. The violence will get worse before it finally burns itself out, and we are left with its smoldering remains as a reminder of its evil, of its former domination of American society, and as a reminder that it must never be allowed to renew its awful strength and harm us again.

Dreaming, Part Two

 I HAVE A DREAM. Or rather, I had one, a good one, before awakening as usual to harsh reality. In my beautiful dream, a typical American conservative Republican Trump supporter was speaking, perhaps to me, or to a crowd, or to a priest in a confessional, perhaps under the influence of sodium pentathal. He or she - I can't remember which, and it doesn't matter - was addressing climate change. "Obviously climate change is happening, the science is clear. Most of my conservative colleagues and I have long denied it because accepting it would mean that our capitalistic corporate industrial economy must be fundamentally transformed, which means government involvement,  and which means fast change, and that the liberals were right all along - it means many things abhorrent and unacceptable to conservatives. Many of my long held cherished conservative notions are of course false, such as America being a "Christian" country rather than a country of religious freedom, diversity, and tolerance, and about free market capitalism being the only economic system which works well. We like to say that socialism has never worked anywhere in the world, and that we must keep socialism out of America, when in fact socialism works quite well in Europe, Democratic socialism of the sort they have in Denmark, and when in fact government regulation of capitalism,laws such an bankruptcy, patents, and incorporation, all mandated by government intervention in the free market, are necessary to keep the free market economy functioning. When science tells us that homosexuality is cause by a genetic predisposition and that it occurs throughout nature, we tend to ignore this reality because it offends us, and our traditional morality, according to which gay people are sinners by being gay.  We might be better off to just honestly assert that we do not like homosexuality because we are not homosexual, but that if we were, our moral objections to it would disappear, rapidly. We conservatives might do better to simply state our opinions and preferences without trying to use facts or logic to defend and sustain them. We like capitalism because we prefer having the opportunity to become wealthy, and we do not like socialism because socialism forces us to share our wealth with others, and because it limits how much wealth we can personally accumulate. We condemn homosexuality because we are heterosexual.And yes,deep down we want a traditional,it christian America, a patriarchy without other religions in sight, because they make us realize that our religion might not be the only one which has merit." Don't hold your breath waiting for them to say these things.

Dreaming

 I  HAVE A DREAM. Actually, I have many, every night, all weird, ever since I quit smoking pot. In one of the weirdest but most pleasant dreams, a fundamentalist evangelical Christian is talking, maybe to me, maybe to an audience. "I love my christian faith. My relationship with Christ gives me comfort and inspiration. It sustains me through all life's difficulties. I am saved! And I know that billions of other people, people who embrace many different religions, feel the same way. Muslims, Jews, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, all part of the great human family whose members all approach the Almighty, the divine, the inscrutable in their own separate ways, everyone receiving comfort and inspiration from his or her own special truth, special relationship with the universe. That goes for everybody, for all our gay, lesbian, and transgender brothers and sisters, all beloved in the eyes of God, just as they are, all perfect and beautiful in the eyes of God, or nature, however you choose to express it.We fundamentalist evangelical Christians love everybody and judge no one, regardless of religious beliefs or sexual orientation, and wish to change no one. All religious faiths are of equal, infinite value. We look forward to spending an eternity in heaven with our maker and with all people of all faiths and beliefs." The problem with this dream is that, like all good dreams, not only must one awaken from it, it is destined to never come true. We tragically live in a corrupt and vile world in which the exact opposite is true, in which our evangelical Christian "friends" say and belief approximately the exact opposite of my beautiful dream. They say ad believe horrible things about Muslims, Hindus, gays, transgenders, and even liberal Democrats and pro choice politicians such as;"they are unsaved, and they are destined for an eternity of suffering in the flaming pits of hell, because they have not been cleanses of sine by being bathed in the holy blood of the lamb, our Lord Jesus Christ". The evangelicals are never shy about making it all sound very, very dramatic, and gruesome and bloody, and they make references to "the blood of the lamb", and grizzly metaphors which server to reveal the barbarity of their primitive barbaric religion, as well as their intolerance of all religions other than their own. In the real world, these people think and speak more like gangsters and fascists than enlightened children of God, any god. they are clever about the way they express their hateful viciousness. "All we can do is to pray and try our best to help save these lost souls, and to bring them to Christ. We must pray they they abandon their cults and their sodomy and begin living clean lives devoted to the true God and Christ, and abandon their filthy debauchery and stop following Satan" so smug, so condescending, so certain of their twisted, judgmental selves. They, not the atheists and gay folks, are the real problem, the real threat to civilization.

Revealing

 TERRI GROSS, on her excellent NPR interview program "Fresh Air" was interviewing a lady whose knowledge of Donald Trump is quite up close and personal. Terri, the best in her business, was listening in stunned silence along with her several millions of listeners as the lady, paraphrased, said: "I'm an old crow (crone?) now, seventy five years old. butt forty five years ago I was quite a looker, tall, slender, curvy, with a pretty face, and let me tell you, I dressed to kill. Mini skirts, tight low cut tops, sleeves dresses, heels, you name it, the whole nine yards. I had the attention of men, and I loved it. It helped my career in advertising. I flew a lot. One day I got on the plane and headed for the back, as usual,  regular folks section. We called them "stewardesses" back then, and one of them came up to me, and said that a gentleman sitting in first class front row was inviting me to join him, that he had an extra seat. How could I reject that offer? I walked up front and sat down to, it turned out, a thirty year old Donald Trump, in suit and tie. He introduced introduced himself, we began chatting, he turned on the charm, and soon he got showed me a picture of his mansion, his yacht, and his private jet. Then he showed me his erection, the real deal, not a picture. Next thin I knew, he had his tongue in my mouth and his hands up my skirt, heading for my privates. I struggled free, got up, and went back to my original seat."......Terri asked question, including the obvious one. No, she said, i didn't say anything about it, to anyone. I didn't file a complaint with the airline or the police.  just told a few of my friends. This was the nineteen seventies,and things were different back then. Back then woman did not generally report mashers and sexual predators, unless they got raped, and even then, not necessarily. It was understood that that was just the way things were, that that's just the way some men were, and it part of life, part of what you had to deal with if you were a woman, like getting less pay and obeying your husband. If you spoke up you were risking not being believed, or retaliation, or public shame and ridicule. So she kept quiet, lived her life, pursued her career, and only when Trump became president and the others started coming forward did she decide to join them in revealing the true Trump to the world, so disgusted was she with the thought of a sexual predator in the white House. and of course, she is not along. She is among at least two dozen women with similar tales to tell,; there is no conspiracy to defame Trump, all the accounts have an eerily similar narrative, they all corroborate.  And still, Trump is a free man, for the time being. And once again, as with so many other aspects of Trump's behavior, you just have to shake your head and wonder at the thinking and the morality of people who still support him, even after all these years and all the garbage he brings to the table. Worst of all, he isn't done yet.

Checking Up On the Reprobates

 HAS ANYBODY heard anything more lately about the stolen election of 2020? I anybody still talking about it? Hello? No? I didn't think so.how can anybody talk about it anymore? what is there left to say? Certainly nothing new or different, just the same ole whiny crap from the same old Trump loving idiots.By now teh vast abundant avalanche of incriminating evidence they promised us so long ago should be at least beginning to trickle in, but, nary a nugget. Nothing, not a single shred. This, of course was predictable from the start.Loud mouthed bullies are invariably liars, who cannot back up what they rant.There was never any stolen election, no evidence for it,  and no matter how long we keep waiting, there never will be, All good American citizens knew that, as did all Trump supporters, bad citizens.so teh big uproar from the roughly seventy million big mouthed conspiracy theorists has died down to a whisper and a whimper,as was inevitable.There is nothing left but lingering amazement and disbelief that so many Americans previously assumed to be intelligent and moral could ever have been so corrupt and dishonest.I have believed from the beginning of Trump's candidacy that he and his supporters are both intellectually and morally inferior, and this proves it, as it has been proven time and time again. The loud mouthed big talking Trump supporters have gone silent, their lies exposed, their integrity and honor and credibility in tatters. They will fade into history as yet another American joke in teh land of hype and illusion, a twisted tragic comedy and joke they tried to play on the country, but only played on themselves.Its ironic to consider that all they had to do was what decent people do after a tennis match, a football game, or an election; shake hands, congratulate the winner, promise to keep in touch, and move on together into a productive future. They lacked the decency for that, of course. But it makes sense that people who would support and elect a criminal reprobate to the presidency would be no better than he, and would sink to such depths morally. I have former friends who still support Trump even after the insurrection of January 6, people who by their behavior shocked and disappointed me, people I am ashamed to have ever called a "friend".As the years pass I will wonder whether any of them redeemed himself or herself by admitting the truth, coming clean, and regaining decency and honor. On the other hand, maybe it doesn't really matter.

Lovin' On the Corporate Oligarchy

 MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL, Coca Cola, and Delta Airlines are indisputably, corporate juggernauts, all three, of the all American kind. They also have in common that they are not bastions of left wing radical activism, sponsors of Antifa, controlled by the Democratic Party, antithetical to capitalism, Christianity, nor conservatism, nor part of some deep state conspiracy working in concert with the mainstream liberal media to destroy traditional American values and replace the American democratic electoral system with godless, atheistic, totalitarian communism. That, please take on faith, if nothing else.They are all three, in short, about as American as America can get.Currently they also have in common that they are speaking out vociferously and vehemently in strong opposition against the great state of Georgia's new and insidious election laws, laws insidiously presented and disguised as being intended to eliminate voter fraud, which does not exist, and to expand voter rights, which the new laws do not, instead being nefarious, furtively intended to do the exact opposite. the new laws are nefariously, furtively intended to make it more difficult to vote, and to thus reduce the number of people from poor and minority communities who vote. everyone, including the people who promulgated the nefarious laws, knows this. All three above mentioned corporate heavyweights are either headquartered in Georgia or vary active business-wise in the state,  and so what they say and do matters, both to themselves and to the economy and people of Georgia.Their political position in this matter is purely public relations oriented, because, being PR savvy and sensitive, these corporations are well aware that a large majority of Georgians and Americans are progressive,  pro-voter, and against these new voter suppression measures. Most Americans are indeed opposed to the ongoing Republican coup taking place all across freedom's land according to which the grand ole white Christian conservative party is attempting to  secular diverse democracy with white Christian conservative governance. In other words, to "make America great again", great white, Christian, conservative, and Trumpist. Trump and the G.O.P. lost Georgia, or these new laws would never have been enacted. Trump and the two Republican Senators lost, and Georgia Republicans lost their minds and their morality, such as they ever had them. PR savvy corporate America rose up in protest, if only for the purpose of public relations and profit, and is doing the right thing, for once. This is a one time only offer, but God bless the American corporate oligarchy!

Going Down Into the Sea, to Save It

 HENRI LeMer grew up on the north shore of the Mediterranean, watching Jaques Cousteau documentaries and staring out at the blue infinity in wonder. He learned to scuba dive at eighteen, and pursued a career in academia, studying and teaching oceanography. he discovered firsthand that the Mediterranean he so loved was barren beneath the waves, bereft of all life in large sections of . he had learned from Cousteau that this ought not to be, and wouldn't be were it not for human profligacy. Increasingly alarmed over the years, he at last realized that he was spending his time teaching the obituary of the world's oceans, and resolved to start doing something  instead of just talking about it. He resigned the academy, joined National Geographic, and began work on the Pristine Ocean Project. That's when his education, both learning and teaching, really began. the pristine ocean project, he found out, is the greatest thing since the slicing of bread. It persuaded the Mexican government, for example, to turn a large of ocean off its coast into a wildlife sanctuary, free from all human interaction. The region, long over fished and devoid of life, a wasteland,  suddenly left alone, rebounded and became flourishing area of abundant life within an amazingly short time, which shocked and amazed scientists. This game plan, because of its immense success, is rapidly gaining popularity as many nations are doing similar projects, but the projects are gaining momentum too slowly; as of now only about seven percent of the ocean area of the world is similarly protected wilderness. We need much more than that. Henri LeMer is happier now that he is helping to save the planet rather than talking about is destruction, and the rest of us would be too, he assures us. I still feel a sense of accomplishment at having planted twenty saplings when i bought a vacant lot and built a small house on i sixteen years ago.t. they are now huge forty foot trees. I feel I've made a small but meaningful contribution. Maybe it would have been better to have planted even more trees and omitted the house, but, better than nothing. In each of us in an Henri LeMer ,a good person dedicates to saving the oceans, the land, and ourselves. If we can do it in the oceans, we can do it on land, because the land has shown us that it can and will heal equally fast, if only we allow it.

Enhancing Fertility, Religiously

 HUNTING EASTER EGGS,which has recently been outlawed in republican states as a form of gambling and cruelty to the unborn, was among my favorite recreations until, oh, third grade. The activity was provided for me as fun by by mother, and inseminated into the early Christian church because the egg embodies and symbolizes fertility, and the Christian religion is a fertility cult on steroids. In ancient times, when newly neolithic humanity became dependent on agriculture and animal husbandry, fertility cults emerged around the world, independently. Offer a blood sacrifice, human or animal, to the hungry gods, who control everything, and they, appreciatively, grow better crops. Among the wonders of the early twenty first century is that such primitive religions, invented millennia ago and embracing fantastically false realities,  continue to flourish amid the rising tide of science. That they do so is a testament to humankind's inherent conservative nature. A brown wooden cross with a brown crown of thorns served as a backdrop prop for an Easter service I saw. Nothing abnormal or special about this. Crosses on display everywhere, including necklaces and lapel pins. The fact that I seem to be the only living person appalled, disgusted, and  horrified by an instrument of torture and death employed as a sacred religious symbol dampens not my revulsion. No, I'm not "missing the point". Neither are the cross worshipers. we merely have different points of view. I have always, since early childhood, found the image of the cross, with or without the bloody Jesus in agony  nailed to it repulsive, horrifying, despite the fact that i am supposed to see it as a symbol of beautiful sacrifice, resurrection,atonement, salvation, and love. Call me crazy. I call the others crazy. For me the perfect symbol of the resurrection of  Christ is not the instrument with which he was tortured to death, but rather, the manner in which he was born again. Let the symbol of the Christian faith be the mouth of a cave, with a huge Boulder only partially blocking it Picture a golden rod, in the shape of a horseshoe, upside down, for good luck.. Next to it stands a solid circular golden coin shape, the boulder. the edge of the boulder intersects the horseshoe edge, and just barely passes through it. Now hang it up in church, on steeples, on lapel pins, a symbol not of tortorous death, but of the actual circumstances of the resurrection of Christ. Crazy? No, just unfamiliar. You the cross wearer are the crazy one, no disrespect intended. I am willing to apologize for having unorthodox views on religion, if that's what it takes to bring peace. but I shouldn't have to. My views should be respected. I am unwilling to change them, other than from within, with God's assistance and guidance. My religiosity consists of humble admiration, not worship, of the infinitely superior spirit which reveals itself, in what we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality, to quote Einstein. the best I can do is to let the christian cross inspire me to hope and belief that humanity is on the verge of outgrowing primitive, barbaric religions, and replacing them with sublime comprehension of the wonder of existence.

Choosing Whether To Value, Or Devalue Children

 EVERY CHILD, accompanied or otherwise, who through bad judgment seeks entry, legal or otherwise, into the United States of Animosity, is a precious cargo of infinitely valuable worth, skin color notwithstanding.This assertion is predicated upon the universally accepted eternal verity of the Christian faith, among others, that all human lief is precious and priceless. Accordingly, its inherently infinite value is not diminished by circumstances such as childhood, poverty, or legal status as an immigrant. Therefore, it is arguable that to separate immigrant children from their parents is an act of cruelty, and that any Christian who votes for and supports a national president who institutes this policy is acting contrary to the precepts of the Christian faith, one of which was, according to scripture, spoken by Jesus Christ, when he said "welcome the stranger". He did not qualify which strangers to welcome according to immigrant legal  status or skin color. And yet, it is the evangelical Christian community which most ardently supports Donald Trump, and which is most stridently opposed to the United States of A. receiving and accepting into society illegal immigrants, adult or children. arguably, each child is a future source of great prosperity for the United States, a person who will grow up and earn more than a million dollars over the course of a lifetime, who will produce millions of dollars of prosperity and wealth for society, including him or her self.and will pay  hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes to society. the United States has a low birth rate and an aging population, with a diminishing work force and a growing community of retired and elderly people, people whose welfare, to one extent or another, will be the responsibility and burden of the working community.When Social Security was started in 1935, each retiree was supported by thirty three working tax paying people. Over the decades, the workforce has not maintained the rate of growth as the retired community, and now fewer than three workers supports each retiree. The Social Security trust fund, and many other forms of wealth, public and private, re suffering similar declines as the number of working age people becomes increasingly insufficient to support a growing, population of elderly people who are no longer producing wealth, but instead living off of previously accumulated wealth. In short, what America needs is an infusion of very young people, from any source available, to ensure a future or prosperity production. skin color, ethnicity is less important than future productivity and economic viability. Whatever the skin color and language spoken, whether the future workers are produced domestically or by foreigners does not alter these facts.From the Christian, capitalistic point of view, these thousands of children chowing up at America's southern border are a pearl of great price a priceless gift. the trick now is to convince the native born white skinned conservative evangelical Christians of this rather basic, easy to understand reality, a reality accessible to anyone of reasonable intelligence and moral character,the sort of folks which seem to be in very short supply among the conservative Christian community in these United States of Animosity. 

Denying Reality, Conservatively

 A "REPROBATE STATE" can be defined as any of these united states which is currently governed by ultra conservative republican evangelical Christian Trump supporter types, with the approval of a majority of the electorate. As Davy Crockett would say I "arter" know, I live in one. Here's proof of reprobate statehood: currently under consideration in the state legislature is a bill which would require public school employees, teachers, administrators, custodians, and cafeteria cooks included, to address transgender students by the sex and name listed on his or her birth certificate, rather than by the name and sex by which said transgender student identifies him or her self. For example: a child is born male, named "Butch" , becomes transgender, changes her name to "Sissy", and enrolls in public school. School employees would by law be required to address Sissy as "butch", and as "he", rather then "she", even though Sissy wears a mini skirt, pantyhose, make up, lipstick, Cher hair, and calls herself "Sissy", as do her parents, family, and friends. It may eventuate, if this inane bill becomes law, which it likely will in this reprobate state, that com-compliers will be terminated, of job, liberty, or even life, considering the extremity of the reprobationary tendencies within the state. These moronic monsters mean business. The ostensible purpose is to eliminate transgender people by simply denying their existence, much like right wing reprobates tend to deny the existence of such obvious realities as climate change, science, evolution by natural selection, racism, economic inequality,hereditary homosexuality, change, progress, socialism in America, their own barbaric lunacy, religious mythology, among many other obvious manifestations of reality.Apparently these mentally ill monsters believe that by attempting to enact legislation pertaining to transgender people which denies their existence, they are actually acknowledging their existence.Denial and reinvention of reality is indeed a human proclivity, but we Americans and the subgroup within of conservative Christianity have elevated it to surpassing heights.Many primitive cultures, such as ours, have since prehistoric times, for instance, ritually tortured people ar other animals to death, strangely believing that so doing appeases some powerful god whose control over weather, agricultural production, or human affairs in general can be made more benevolent by so doing, by virtue of feeling honored, with meat eating appetite sated by the attempted bribery. The belief that a certain person of great compassion and wisdom is the sacrifice which, if worshiped, provides eternal salvation of some sort for the worshiper is an extreme form of this barbarity. Why not torture transgender people to death? They don't exist anyway.

Actualizing

 BRITNEY SPEARS says she hasn't watched the popular documentary about her, "Framing Britney", but that from what she has seen of it, it made her cry for two weeks. So she must've caught a fairly good glimpse, or maybe a bad one. Britney, as everyone who reads scandal sheets or watches celebrity television knows,has had it rough. A few too many romantic entanglements of the volatile kind, maybe a few to many mind altering substances, and just maybe a bit too much of the proverbial overbearing parents. The "Free Britney" movement, to liberate her from custodial guardianship, is tinged with a tad of irony. We should all be so fortunate as to be fighting for the freedom to do what we choose with fifty million dollars.Britney may have been a victim of the Judy Garland Michael Jackson malady:too much parental pressure too early in life to work hard and succeed, too much rehearsal time and not enough down time.The rest of the equation is too much fame and fortune at too early an emotional age.Elvis Presley belongs in a different but similar category. He didn't have the parental pressure to succeed in entertainment business and to become famous and wealthy, he was successfully driving a truck as an eighteen year old. It was a job he arguably should have kept. What ruined Elvis was what seemingly ruined the other three, the fame and fortune itself.I had a friend from China who moved to my university town from shanghai, and immediately figured out America. "You Americans are the loneliest people in the world. You care more about your dogs and cats than each other".How true, I thought. Guilty as charged. But we like it that way. In the United States of Alienation we chase fame and money because we cannot imagine that there is anything better available. When a very few of us obtain these commodities, those who have them realize that they are not worth all the trouble and stress it took to get them, and, thinking them liquid, try to exchange them for for love or drugs. That doesn't work either.Genuine relationships with ourselves if no one else, and a connection to the greater community through productive enterprise has always worked, and still does. Britney, it turns out, is a great dancing teacher and much beloved by her students, little girls, while Elvis drove a pretty mean tractor trailer.

Riden' With Biden

 JOE BIDEN has not yet made a mistake, other than perhaps inserting a high strung German shepherd into a millieu of strangers. Otherwise, he's the greatest president, so far, in the history of the United States, the best since the worst, his predecessor. Nor has one single solitary republican congressperson contributed a single iota of productive bipartisanship, especially stimulus wise. We can much much the same, infrastructurally. The Republicans, who suddenly, mysteriously become quite concerned with fiscal responsibility and public (government) debt when the Democrats are in charge, will refuse to increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans . Biden will propose to pay for repairs to the nation's crumbling infrastructure, the Republicans will prefer to bestow the burden upon future generations, as usual. If there are any valid criticisms to be made about the breakdown of the infrastructure bill, it is that only a hundred billion dollars will be allocated to the repair of roads and bridges, while an equal amount will be used to upgrade broadband internet.Arguably, the roads and bridges are a much greater emergency priority. Point out teh obvious that the republicans are beholden to their wealthy campaign contributors, the response will be: so are the Democrats. That may well be. There is, however, a huge difference: Democrats almost uniformly vote for tax increases on the wealthiest Americans, Republicans almost always vote against such tax raises. If both parties are obligated to billionaires and millionaires, the Republicans do a much better job of fulfilling their obligations.Just as every congressional republican voted against the recent stimulus package, so every Republican is likely to vote against the infrastructure bill, a bill which under Trump they failed to even consider their own version of.Both pieces of legislation will probably come to be seen as seminal in bringing the American economy back to prosperity after its disastrous collapse brought about by the pandemic and the Trump administration's failure to take the decisive action needed to control the spread of Covid 19. However, in defense of Trump and the republicans, during the Trump administration they were preoccupied with lowering tax rates for billionaires and gathering together by the thousands at MAGA rallies, for the ostensible purpose of spreading all manner of disease, viral, mental, socio-economic and political.