Watching Birds

OCCASIONALLY the question arises where does one get ideas for one page essays. The answer, of course, is anywhere and everywhere. Over the past five years my greatest inspiration, sad to say, has been Donald Trump. But a little bit of Donald Trump goes a long way, and I confess to have written and published far too many essays on that unsavory topic.  A healthier sources are interviews on National Public Radio. Several ornithologists discussing the beauty of bird watching proved irresistible. They made it sound so wonderful, the lower heart rate, the lower blood pressure, the quiet surroundings, with only bird song to heed. There is an amazing number of bird species, and an amazing number of them which enter into and pass through the average American back yard. I was inspired to think that at one time or another, if only for a fleeting moment, every person on 'earth is a bird watcher, if only of pigeons alighting on skyscrapers in Manhattan. Nearly twenty years ago I moved to a tiny town, bought a hunk of land, and put up a house, on a vacant lot with nothing growing. I littered the ground with seedlings; now I live inside a ring of trees forty feet tall, a veritable forest within a suburban bedroom community. I have a pair of binoculars. Why then, am I not a bird watcher? The answer came instantly: I am a bird watcher, but have never realized it!  I've always had trouble looking through binoculars and seeing a single image, so I do it with my naked eye. My yard is the momentary stopping point of innumerable species. I should be writing them down. I "rescue" stray cats, and have half a dozen living in my garage. it is of paramount importance that I feed them well enough that they show nothing other than a passing, hard wired interest in stalking birds, and never follow through. On a handful of occasions one of my cats has indeed killed a bird; my heart sinks, I feel guilty. the fault is mine, not the cat's. My favorite bard watching story is this: between the ages of thirty and sixty I was a long distance runner hobbyist. I have now retired from the sport. For thirty years my running friends and i sought out scenic, pastoral places in which to run, and in my area, there are many many. Several times it happened. We'd be running pleasantly along a secluded wooded trial, and would come upon a distinguished looking gentleman with binoculars, looking up into trees; an ornithologist. He would be distracted by us, and would glance at us, and just look at us. We were always careful not to speak to him, and to stride and glide as quietly and quickly as possible past and away from him. Long after we had mercifully left him alone I remained filled to overflowing with guilt;  horrible, permeating guilt. never before or since have I felt as guilty to just be somewhere. No matter how many times I reminded myself that I had no intention of doing anything wrong, that had I known he was out and about and watching  would have run somewhere elsewhere - no amount of reason could save me from my guilt, and it still can't. At least now I've sort of made it up to him by finally refraining from encroaching on his sacred ornithological domain. And though he'll never know it, in his honor, as I continue to age and my eyesight dims, I will walk back into the house, grab the binoculars, and at least pretend to be doing what he did.

Giving Thanks to the Dead

 ON THIS SPECIAL  HOLIDAY we honor the fallen heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom, for whatever passes for freedom, for whatever we think freedom is. Freedom, said Goethe, is nothing other than the opportunity to do what is reasonable under all circumstances.Since obviously there is in life often no real opportunity to do anything reasonable, freedom is tenuous and sporadic, sometimes with us, sometimes not. Another way of looking at it is that no matter what circumstances confront us, there is always the opportunity to do something which seems reasonable, and thus, we are always free. Yet another option is that nobody really knows what freedom is, free will maybe be nothing but an illusion, and therefor what we fight and die for is nothing other than a concept we hold dearly, a concept we cannot define. Freedom in the end, is a state of mind. Immanuel Kant said that he was in awe of two things: the starry skies above him and the moral law within him. On Memorial Day, what amazes me, what I am in awe of , in a mostly negative sort of way, is humanity's seemingly infinite capacity to inflict suffering upon itself with perpetual organized violence, and our creative capacity to reconcile our violent behavior, to honor and justify it,  within the framework of whatever the organization, the country considers to be its best interests. Our own national violence is always justified; that of other foreign nations is usually not. Only if they fought as our allies, as if our enemies did not have a point of view. Thus we slaughter each other, then we bury the dead, then we honor the dead with holidays. An equal and opposite holiday decrying the insanity of war would be appropriate. Peace day, maybe. Or better yet: "War Renunciation Day".  On that special holiday we would all acknowledge our collective sin of of our inability to resolve our disagreements in a civilized manner. Einstein sat behind his desk, clad in his usual grey sweatshirt with attached ink pen, looked somberly up and into the camera in that famous photograph, and responded to the question: "As long as there are people, there will be war". he was probably right. he usually was, even though he mad the horrible mistake of endorsing a crazy scheme of deliberately injecting excess carbon into the atmosphere to warm the atmosphere and increase agricultural yield in a starving post World War Two world. Hey. we all make mistakes. but let's not make the mistake of commemorating wartime sacrifice without adding a touch of war renunciation. We may not eliminate war, ever, but by god we can at least try. On this special holiday may we honor our fallen heroes and resolve to somehow find a way to stop making needlessly dead heroes. We need a new system. Under the present one, the people to whom we give our deepest thanks are unable to appreciate them.

Waiting Out the Elephant

 I WILL STIPULATE that if, heaven forbid, I were a Republican, or heaven forbidder, a staunch supporter of Donald Trump,I would be strongly inclined to sweep the January 6th insurrection under the proverbial rug like a dead housefly kicked quickly under the nearest couch just before answering the door bell. That's what empahy's all about. And thus it is with the true Republicans and true red Trumpers. With regard to the discernment of Republicans, a quick note: fully one quarter of them believe, or claim to believe, which is the same thing, that the United States government is controlled by a hidden cabal of pedophiles. ore than half of them believe that the Capitol insurrection was a good idea, and that Trump got more votes than Biden. Discernment, we see, has limits, and is not currently in style among conservatives. Yet, there is  hope. Sunlight filters through small cracks. The hundreds of ongoing criminal prosecutions resulting from January 6th will ultimately cumulatively combine to constitute a de facto thorough investigation, the jigsaw pieces will be assembled, the puzzle completed, and truth will win out in the end. And enough of it could transpire soon enough to seriously dampen Republican congressional capture plans for 2022. Another auspicious aspect of the sordid mess is that no actual "investigation" is at all necessary. We already know what happened. Here's what happened" we the American people idiotically elected a person mentally and morally unfit to be president as president, a complete reprobate who refused to accept his failure to be reelected, falsely repeatedly claimed that the election had been stolen from him, and incited an angry mob to riot, to "go to the Capitol and fight". Enough said. Case closed. It all happened on national television, live. Many of the sycophantic criminals have been rounded up and indicted, while the supreme inciter, the criminal at the top of the criminal organization, lurks, the proverbial big white elephant in the middle of the room in plain sight, unseen. we can keep the faith that the truth will win out.Eventually someone notices the elephant and has the courage to say so, the blind old squirrel finds the acorn, and, at the end of a long and arduous witch hunt, there is , after all, a witch.

Timing the Epoch

 OPENING ONE'S MAILBOX can be a grand adventure. Recently mine contained a newspaper, uninvited, but offered  presumably as an enticement. On standard newsprint, its name was "The Epoch Times". its mission statement was "truth and tradition". When the two conflict, I wondered, which prevails, truth, or tradition? People do not confine their embrace of tradition to only those which are true, you see. The publication said it had existed for twenty years, and that it presented a centrist point of view politically. I immediately begged to differ; to me the rag seemed downright far right. Another of its stated missions was to fight an alleged communist encroachment into the United States. That was news to me; I had not been aware that communism was infiltrating America, other than perhaps in a few coffee shops in places like Berkeley and Cambridge. The Epoch times assured me that the commie threat is omnipresent, without specifying exactly where, by whom, or in what form. Perhaps the presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders, or the Democratic party generally. An article titled "The Big Green Lie' further assured me that the enemy is not the false science of climate change, but rather, the socialism impulse behind it. The supposed "best science" of climate change is only alleged; when someone points out the gaping holes in it, the person is automatically labeled a climate change "denier", and that's that. how horrid. Tens of thousands of scientists, decade after decade, all over the world, motivated by nothing more than a desire to restructure the world's economic and political systems to socialism, statism, to control the people and banish capitalism's freedom. There are many factors influencing the world's climate other than carbon injected into the atmosphere by human industrial activity, and, the Epoch Times assumes, seemingly, that the world's scientists are unaware of that fact, and haven't taken it into account. All the climate scientists of the world, unaware that there are many factors contributing to the climate. They are grossly under educated, evidently. Thus, there is no need to concern ourselves with climate change, global warming is a mere theory, brought to us by fanciful scientists whose real agenda is socialism. we must turn our attention to the real enemy, socialism or communism, your choice. Its coming, from somewhere. to find out more, subscribe to "The Epoch Times'

Accomodating

 THE WIFE AND HUSBAND, both in their nineties and both dear friends of mine, live in separate assisted living facilities, across town from each other. He is too healthy to live in her place, she is insufficiently healthy to live in his. Bureaucratic compassion. If I time it right, I can visit with both of them together by showing up when they are visiting each other. She has early stage Alzheimer's , but does, in my opinion, rather well with it. Conversation is no problem, as long as you are willing to listen to the same comments more than once. She often mentions that she forgets things; I always respond by saying that I do too, and that I think most people do. She seems to think that someday she and her husband will go home, will return to their house. I show support for the idea, then mention that her current living arrangement seems very pleasant to me, and that I would be happy living in a room like hers, which I think I would. I missed seeing them both for over a year, during the pandemic, when nobody was allowed to visit assisted living facilities. Finally, when we all had our vaccinations, I could return. It was good to see them after fourteen months; they hadn't changed. They are blessed to have three loving children and a bevy of grand and great grand children; even the ones who live far away come to visit them fairly often. On my most recent visit, their son, himself recently retired, was there as well. A well organized, disciplined military type, he spent much of the time sorting through and rearranging her possessions, which, I got the impression, she has a tendency to misplace and lose track of. For tomorrow's visit to the dentist, he made sure that he took charge of the crown; keeping it in his pocket to make sure it gets back to the dentist. I talked to the old couple in close quarters while the son puttered around her room, and suddenly I noticed that he had taped a hand printed sign to her chest of drawers, which said: PLEASE DO NOT SAVE PACKETS OF SALT, SUGAR, PEPPER, PLASTIC SILVERWARE OR STYROFOAM CUPS FOR US. WE DO NOT WANT THEM OR NEED THEM. YOUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN. Of course I instantly knew what was gong on. many is the time I had left her room after a nice visit, loaded down with packets of salt and pepper and jelly, and a few forks and spoons to boot. The family's plan, presumably, was to fight her encroaching Alzheimer's tooth and nail, by forcing her to remain in the world of coherent thought. They required her, at doctor's advice, to keep a daily diary, and to write down the name of everyone who visited her. Fair enough. But what, I thought, and think, about her feelings? for all they or anybody knows collecting salt and pepper and sugar packets from her dinner table and giving them out to friends and family means the world to her, is her primary source of joy, is the one thing she looks forward to, her one and only opportunity to still be of use and service to others, to remain valuable and relevant by bestowing small gifts upon those she loves. Tough call, I guess. This is a family which has been together for decades, and quite likely they all know they all love each other, and can speak, even at this late stage, frankly, and practically. But one thing I know for sure; the next time I visit her, if I am the only visitor, and no member of her family is there, and she hands me a bundle of tiny packages, I'm going to accept them with enthusiasm, and on my way out the door, smile, sincerely, gratefully.

Writing Future History

 THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION, the entirety of which was arguably a crises and a disaster, certainly concluded in crisis and disaster, the final two weeks from January 6 to January 20. The lame duck president, hiding from the world after failing to execute his Capitol coup, knowing that negative consequences lurked in his future, his supporters meanwhile spinning ever more elaborate entangled cobwebs of anger, denial, and self deceit. History will kindly view Joe Biden as having stopped the bleeding. Although Trump supporters, currently still in their denial stage, often are heard to declare that Donald Trump will eventually be regarded as among America's greatest presidents, more likely he will soon and forever after be considered the worst. the constant barrage of lies from the Trump white House and the two impeachments won't help. The next half century is going to be, among other things, a desperate, frantic attempt by humanity to do something to mitigate climate change, which, if left unmitigated, will eventually prevent human civilization from continuing. Even now, this urgent necessity is becoming quite clear. I won't live long enough to ever know if the effort succeeds; few currently alive will; we can only send our best thoughts, hopes, and prayers forward in time to bless our descendants in their noble effort to undo the damage we did. But as the effort becomes ever more desperate, it will become increasingly apparent to future historians the harm climate change deniers in the United States were in the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries, in slowing the response of the world's most economically powerful nation. History will not treat them kindly, nor should it. American history textbooks generally don't devote much attention to presidential honesty, to articulating which presidents were honest, and which were not. Its a murky area, largely opinion, a potential intellectual historical quagmire the sort of which writers usually wisely steer clear. However, it is easier now with modern media technology than ever before for the masses to pay close attention to nearly everything a president says and does.Every day during the Trump administration president Trump's every word and deed was available for scrutiny by the American public, served  up on a flat screen big screen high definition silver platter.Every one of the more than thirty thousand presidential lies over a four year period, all the vicious slander and hate speech, all confirmed, all documented for history. After four years of this on a daily basis, why anyone of decent moral character would vote to reelect such a person is known only to those who so voted, assuming they know themselves.

Moving the Parties Apart

 THROUGHOUT my voting career I have generally held the belief that most of the time there isn't a dimes'w worth of difference between America's two major political parties, and that therefore the country needs at least one more major party, and maybe several, or many. For example, every advanced industrial country in the world except the United States has a labor party, a party devoted exclusively to the interests of the working class. although the Democratic party does not always legislate for the poor, since it, like the Republican party, is essentially owned and controlled by wealthy, corporate interests, in recent years has shown a somewhat increased willingness to do so. If this trend continues,  there might come a time in our nation's history when a labor party per se is less than a dire necessity. As for now, we need a labor party, badly. For the working class, the Democratic party is the best bet, and has been since FDR. Strangely, much of the working class fails to understand that. if you happen to be an hourly wage earner, you might want to ask yourself the following questions: which party wants the minimum wage raised?  If government intervention in the economy, why has free market capitalism failed to deliver prosperity to the working class, as promised?   Why has the federal minimum wage remained  unchanged for twelve years? Its not because of the Democrats. Which of the two major parties is the more sympathetic to worker's rights and working conditions, and which is more supportive of labor unions and the labor movement? Not the Republicans, obviously. Often in American history there have been times during which the two parties are virtual mirror images of each other. And even today they are both nourished by the same forces, both basically owned and controlled by wealthy corporate interests. But lately the two have diverged, considerably. The Republicans have move steadily to the right since Reagan, and even now there are signs of a resurgent progressive left wing, especially among post millennials. Also,the Trump movement has helped drive the parties apart. Count me in on whichever political party wants to fight climate change the most vigorously, wants to legislate for the poor and redistribute America's wealth, and most of all, make science and reason supreme, and religion and superstition less relevant.

Fighting Vicious Fiction

 AMERICA'S CONSERVATIVE COMMUNITY, the republicans, the evangelical Christian Trumpers, are all now beginning , incredibly enough, foster the fiction that the violent attack and ransacking of the Capitol January 6 wsa actually a regular, normal tour group, out sight seeing. That, rather than the violent Trump insurrectionist mob we know to be the truth. Of course, thsi should hardly be surprising, considering these are the same people who swear that the election was stolen from Trump. They dwell in fantasy land, big time. The good citizens who elected Joe Biden must remain united to defeat and destroy the Trump movement's propaganda machine, obviously. It isn't going gently into that goodnight. The Trump movement, like similar movements before, strikingly like the Hitler movement, is a shimmering mirage, a virtual cascade of lies and fabricated narratives ; in order to embrace Trump, one must embrace massive falsehood. This is what make the Trump movement so dangerous, such a dire threat to social stability; once any movement is freed from constraint to verified reality and truth any fabrication is possible, even likely, with potentially disastrous consequences. The proof of this is obvious, and quite recent, in fact, present. We have just recently witnessed at least seventy million Americans enthusiastically accept and embrace an outrageous lie by a notoriously dishonest demagogue, Evidently, most indeed nearly all of the original believers still believe, remarkably. They've had plenty of time to calm down and come to their senses, but have chosen not to.No trace of election fraud has been found for the 2020 election, and there has time to find it. non ever will be, because it does not exist. An interestingly sociological question is: how much longer will the election fraud sycophants cling to their delusion? The rest of their lives? When the last one dies, in, say, another sixty or seventy years, will there be a small memorial service? Ti think, because of a single lie oft repeated by a single demagogue leader, and repeated by millions of followers, much turmoil has done much damage to already damaged civil discourse in America, clearly demonstrating what catastrophic consequences of horrible political leadership and followship are possible. The deranged Trumpers must not be allowed to impose their twisted reality on future historical writing, and they wont' be. The election of 2020 was not stolen, and the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021 was not merely an ordinary tour group out sight seeing.

Forgetting the Unforgettable

 THE CONGRESSIONAL REPUBLICAN CLOWN SH OW continues, better than ever. The Repubs are ready, willing, and able to investigate both the black Lives Matter movement and the January 6 Capitol insurrection, but entirely unwilling and unable to investigate the insurrection alone. To investigate the insurrection and only the insurrection would make the Republicans look very very bad, whereas throwing in BLM would distract somewhat from the insurrection, focus attention on left wing protesting and violence. Congressional republicans leaders McConnell and McCarthy, politicizing the vital issue of American national security. How petty, unpatriotic, and self serving. Actually, we are fortunate because thorough investigations into both have already for the most part been completed. It turns out that the Black Lives Matter protests of last summer were triggered by the murder on camera of George Floyd, and were underpinned by four hundred years of slavery and racism in America. Any questions? The insurrection was the inevitable result of president Trump's refusal to accept his defeat in the election, his lie that the election was stolen from him, the tragic fact that tens of millions of people embraced the big lie, and many of them became violent. Trump and the Republicans would much prefer that the country just go ahead and forget about the insurrection, but the country isn't going to do that.  Most congressional Republicans supported Trump pall along, and still do.  Most of them thought the insurrection on January 6 was a good idea, and still believe that. A congressional investigation of the events leading up to the insurrection will inevitably make conservatism in general and the Republican party and the Trump movement in particular in  look very bad. Trump is of course acting like this is all a conspiracy against him, and requiring all his followers to opposes the investigation. He told a violent mob to try to overthrow the government, and they did. The Republicans are confronted with the difficult situation of being largely loyal to an ex president who seems likely to encounter criminal charges and legal difficulties. They will have to decide whether its better to stick with Trump, or to move on without him. Either way, there will be much opposition within the party. The most frightening aspect of all this is that everyone who accepted Trump's big lie was partially responsible for the Capitol insurrection January 6, and, everyone who embraced the lie knew and knows it is a lie. Everyone who ransacked the Capitol considered themselves  heriocally patriotic,  working for Trump, eighty million voters, truth, justice, and the American way. All based on a lie, all of it. Presumably, everything the FBIU knows about the insurrection will be turned over to Congress, and to the Attorney General. It will be noteworthy that all of them did it for Trump, following his orders. The Republicans, many of whom believe the insurrection was justified, do not believe that investigating it is. That's a very interesting reflection upon their character and their current entrapped situation.

Preparing For the Worst

 IT SHOULD NOT HAVE surprised me to learn that nothing in the law prohibits a convicted felon from being elected president of the United States, nor from serving, and yet, for some reason, it did surprise me.  Maybe I'm a bit too idealistic. Why shouldn't criminals be allowed to participate in politics? Most Americans have committed at least one crime, and politics is in itself a field which seems to create a fairly substantial number of criminals. Thus even if Donald Trump, indeed especially if Donald trump is convicted of multiple felonies between now and 20024, say financial fraud, incitement to insurrection, among many other possibilities, he might well run for and be elected president in twenty twenty four. Whether someone in prison can serve as president remains unanswered. Americans love audacious criminals.   If Trump starts carrying a bible and a gun everywhere, goes on television, points his gun straight at the camera and tells left wing radicals to all leave the country, he'll get elected.  If he shoots someone dead on Manhattan's fifth Avenue, he'll win big.  Meanwhile, many republicans want to be president, and think they can be.  Very good. the trick is to keep trump out, and to run a reasonable, sane republican against Biden, or whomever.  Say bush, Kasich, or Cheney, any of whom I could perhaps support.  trump can only destroy the Republican party, because the Trump movement has become too insanely batshit crazy, based on lies and fantasy,  and conspiracy theories, with far too many crazy conspiracy theory folks and new age alternative cosmic paradigm freaks buying into the politically and economically and socially corrupt Trump agenda.   In the United states we simply allow a crazy situation to endure in which a tiny fraction of the population has a huge percentage of the wealth and power.  We must change this.  Wealth and power are becoming more and more concentrated, and in the direction we are headed, and have been headed for decades, all too soon a single person will have all the wealth and power.  When we reach that point, by then it will be too late to do anything about it.

Lighting the Fuse, Part Three

OVER FOUR HUNDRED PEOPLE have been arrested and charged with crimes allegedly committed during the infamous insurrection January 6.  All of them, without exception, are 't'rump supporters who thought they were following the orders of their great leader, Trump. The insurrection was essentially a Trump campaign rally gone crazy out of control. A campaign rally two months after the election.The responsible party was obviously and uniquely Donald Trump who, if justice exists, will face federal criminal charges. Congress will almost certainly come to that conclusion, and will so notify the Attorney General, who will then take the appropriate action. That Trump incited the insurrection is indisputable. there was and is no "deep state" conspiracy to get Trump, to wrongly blame Trump for the Capitol insurrection and loss of life. There are simply the facts, which have all been on national television ad nauseum and will be preserved forever, presumably. Trump's big lie about the election being stolen was the beginning of all this horrible nonsense,  the lie he continues to repeat every day. Amazingly, Trump's election lie and the insurrection do not appear to have dampened Trump's popularity, but rather, to have increased it. This says a great deal about the basic character of the entire Trump movement, and of its members. The big election lie and its acceptance by tens of millions of people has already done great damage to the nation, the insurrection was the ultimate result. The entire Trump movement has become a cobweb of crazy lies, about the election, about the insurrection, (no, Rep. Jordan, it was not just another tour of the Capitol) about conspiracies against Trump, about the very nature of reality. Sanity, decency, and reason require that all the lies surrounding Trump be revealed and accepted as lies, and that his followers rejoin reality. Sanity, decency, and reason impels us to ask whether the evangelical Christian supporters of Trump truly expect to be rewarded for their support of Trump with heavenly salvation, or whether another alternative might seem more likely. Within the Trump movement is a healthy dose of evangelical Christianity, Trump's base. How on Earth anyone can self describe as a follower of both Jesus and Trump is as challenging a question as future historians will contend with.

Lighting the Fuse, Part Two

 BIDEN'S TAKING the country in the right direction, at long last, by basically "Detrumping" i t, being the "anti-Trump". Exactly what the good doctor ordered. But Biden, much like Clinton and Obama, is nonetheless another corporate puppet, a faithful servant of the ultra wealthy who knows exactly where is bread is buttered.Which is too bad, because of all the guys have a sincere progressive reformist spirit, but are constrained economic reality. They are all bought and paid for by our corporate masters, as Gore Vidal called the elite oligarchy. But rather than thinking in terms of progressive versus conservative, Democrat versus Republican, it might be best to think in terms of country versus wealthy elite corporate ruling oligarchy. In other words, the ninety nine point nine nine percent versus the one one hundredth of one percent, the billionaires club. The numbers are staggering, whichever numbers you choose to us; the concentration of wealth and power in America is totally undemocratic,, and, as Justice Brandeis famously said, you can have one or the other, but you cannot have both concentration of wealth and power and a democracy. The reason why the elite few have s much wealth and political power is that they have cleverly arranged the system to suit this arrangement, to benefit themselves, with the passive acquiescence and compliance of a large majority of the working poor people, who remains politically inert, by choice. If the Americans poor working class were sufficiently motivated, it could take over the country, and rearrange the power and economic structure to suit poor working people. But instead, they buy into the conservative free market clap trap. To be a good American one should demand raising income taxes on the wealthy corporations, instituting a wealth tax, raising minimum wage, and eliminate all private spending on political campaigns and replace it with publicly financed campaigns for national offices. Strong environmental regulation and regulation of the financial industry is essential, as well as using anti-trust law to break up the monopolies which exist in every area of the American economy. let's replace corporate oligarchy with competitive capitalism. An excellent new book by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich "The System" is a must read for any American wanting to understand the scope of our corrupt political and economic system, in which big money rules all. He details the problems associated with hugely concentrated wealth, unlimited corporate power, and the destruction of American democracy, and what can, should, and must be done about it. We can't afford to wait much longer, and, like journalist Chris hedges points out in his seminal book "The Wages of Rebellion" the conditions necessary for a fundamental revolution of American institutions are here.

Lighting the Fuse

 A MASSIVE CRIME WAVE currently grips the United States, consisting of hate crimes, cyber computer crimes, and mass murders. Is a huge crime wave a precursor to a revolution? Revolutions generally occur when the overall situation in a country becomes so desperate that revolution is the only alternative. More than one astute analyst has suggested that the United States may currently steadily approaching that point.Symptoms include: widespread social upheaval, violence, economic collapse, major portions of the population alienated and disengaged from society in general. In America, we seem to have a lot of all of that, and then some, right about now.  Finally an alienated angry portion of the electorate elects a mouthy demagogue, who proclaims the media the "enemy of the people". the demagogue attacks society's most trusted institutions, and the people lose trust in them. The demagogue is supported by the wealthy elite, as well as by the military, the police, and the religious establishment. Against all this, popular resentment gradually but steadily grows as an increasingly concentrated wealthy class drives tens of millions of people into poverty. By rejecting Trump, the United States took a big and welcome step back from the abyss. But unfortunately, Trump isn't done, and neither are his angry, irrational supporters. Any future American revolutions should be progressive in nature, not regressively authoritarian. Under Trump, the rich got richer, climate climate was ignored and denied, America first became America alone, civilized diplomacy with other countries came to a standstill, an a pandemic raged out of control. We must never return to that horrible state of affairs. It isn't only Trump which must be stopped. it is the crazy conservative agenda which ignores climate change and cuts taxes for the wealthy. Definitely not what we need. The far right is trying to impose an agenda on America that America truly does not want, but has yet to rise up and stop. We need national legislation overturning voter suppression, and making voting easier, not hard, all over these great United States. We simply cannot afford to keep the status quo, economically, politically, or socially. Too many people are systemically excluded; the systms must be fundamentally reformed, overhauled, replaced, whatever works. What we have now does not work. WE must expand democracy, get as many people as possible to vote, and to vote for the best interests of the people, not the corporate elite, voting to fight and reverse climate change, tax teh wealthy corporations, and raise wages for the workers.   In essence, make middle class America great, again.

Falling Prey

 I CONFESS that my senior year in high school I supported and helped the reelection of Richard Nixon. Well, we all make mistakes. Hell, I was seventeen. What I liked about Nixon's first term was  his diplomacy with China, environmental protection legislation, and Apollo Eleven. Then Watergate came along, and mad a born again Democrat out of me. Looking back, Nixon doesn't even seem so bad. It is virtually impossible today to imagine a Republican president signing the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Environmental Protection Agency into law, much less get along with China. Just stop and think about the current Republican party, still under the control of Donald Trump, but struggling with it. All members must fully embrace Trump's big lie, or be outcast. All seventy millions Republican Trump supporters are still, in essence, required to embrace Trump's huge lie as their own. This is cult mind control at its worst, impacting the future of America. Just for the record, everyone in the country knows full well that Biden beat Trump, fair and square. But the cult followers must embrace the lie as long as their leader does, which seemingly will be until the end of time. This in itself is both alarming and dangerous. What on Earth will they do next? Both before and after they voted her out of office Liz Cheney reiterated that she wants to remain a Republican, and to help the party get back on Trump, some sane and reasonable track, post Trump. She seems to understand that a political party with seventy million delusional members will not work. House Leader Kevin McCarthy insisted that nobody still believes that the election was stolen, that the entire controversy must relegated  to the remote, unlitigatible past. Trump himself, however, doesn't seem to agree. More than ever, in his twisted mind, the election was stolen. Trump was impeached twice, both for good reason. His entire presidency was massively corrupt. History will bear that out soon enough, but for the time being it will be necessary to be certain that the American people do not lose sight of Trump's corruption, because it matters. When a nation is fortunate to rid itself of a lunatic and potential authoritarian demagogue leader, it must be equally carefully to never reinstate the lunatic and the lunacy. Sooner or later, we must all accept the realities of climate change, racism, economic failure,  chronic violence and disease, acknowledge our human inadequacies in allowing these disasters to manifest and endure, and take corrective action, cooperatively. It isn't too late, but soon may be, and it just wasn't going to happen under Trump.

At Least Trying

 WHAT LIZ CHENEY  is trying to do is not "relitigating the past" as Kevin McCarthy lies, but rather, she is trying to accomplish something far more immediate, urgent, and necessary.She is trying to verbally slap some sense into seventy million misguided people, trying to force them to abandon their hypnotic fantasy about the election and Trump, and return to reality. A seemingly impossible task, it must be very frustrating for her. I should know, for for six agonizing months I have been similarly engaged, though doubtless with much less hope of succeeding. I realize now that they deluded themselves, and they'll have to undo their own delusions. If I could help, I would. Liz Cheney is a Don Quixote Sisyphus sort of figure gallantly or perhaps foolishly pursuing the impossible. It takes far far longer to mentally heal seventy million deluded people, than it does to vaccinate them, a difficult enough task unto itself. Who knows where all this will lead. Trump could run again in 2024, win, and be proclaimed president for life by order of Christ.With enough crazy people, anything's possible. Under a newly reelected, reinvigorated reinvented save by the grace of God and Almighty Jesus Christ Donald Trump, the term "president" might gradually fade away, and "The Throne of Christ, America" might become hereditary, with Ivanka, Jared, Eric, Barron, and Don Jr. sharing the prize.  If this seems at all nightmarish, contact your local Democratic party. In the progressive community, there are two schools of thought regarding Liz Cheney. that she is a hero, and that she is not. She is not, of course; she  is basically a person who is trying to do the right thing, against great odds.  Amazingly, she is one of only ab elite few republicans willing to do that. In that context, anybody who does the right thing seems, by comparison, a hero.

Devolving Towards Fascism

 U.S. HOUSE Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy , a possible reincarnation of the infamous Senator Joe McCarthy, is leading the Republican gangster style attack against Liz Cheney. He "suggested" that she be voted out of her leadership position in the Congress, and she promptly was, for committing the heinous crime of "relitigating the past". In other words, for reassessing, rethinking, renewing the study of...the past. In essence, to excommunicate he Republican party for being interested in history, recent history, involving the United States, and its political leadership. One must never, ever do that, evidently. How dare she, accusing the king of con, Don the con Trump, or prevaricating. Der Leader can do no wrong. As if Trump would ever lie more than twenty five times daily while president, for a total of more than thirty thousand while in office for four years, for the entire four year term. The Republican party, evidently unwittingly, is steadily transforming itself into a fascist party, with the great leader unassailable, demanding complete and absolute loyalty. Before our very eyes, dispensing severe punishment for nonconformity, for free thinking and free speech, for failing to follow the great leader sufficiently subserviently. First, they vote her out of her leadership position in congress, then they find a pro Trump candidate to run against her in the 2022 primary, and its all over. The Trump faithful will do the rest. Such is the punishment for disobeying Trump, the great American Hitler wannabe. Cancel culture at its finest, right wing Christian conservative Trump style. This is beyond mere "cancel culture".  This is fascist authoritarian leadership and followership, its victims mindlessly willing and eager enablers. Enough good Americans did enough in 2020, thank the dear lord, to get rid of Trump, and his gangstah followers, sorta.  But they're still out there, lurking.....they're all around us....We the sane American people must unite to prevent the Republican proto-fascists from taking control of congress in 2022, and from reelecting Trump in 2014. If these crazy people ever come to power again, they're likely to overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminate all government regulation of corporate crony capitalism, lower taxes even more on the wealthy, pass laws making the United States officially a "Christian nation", eliminate the EPA and all environmental regulation, and innumerable other insane acts harmful to America. WE can stop it, and we must, now.

Canceling, Like A True Republican

WHOMEVER INVENTED the term "cancel culture" deserves credit.  It seems to be conservatives who use the term, in a negative, insulting, pejorative manner, something evil that liberals do, for which they should be severely punished. Thus they hate both liberals and what they perceive as liberal cancel culture, canceling badly behaving conservatives. For example, Major League Baseball, Delta Airlines, and Coca Cola, all boycotting Georgia for voter suppression. Long live liberal activism emanating from corporate America!  that kind of cancel culture conservatives don't like, preferring voter suppression. But of course conservatives have a cancel culture of their own, a false, vicious, typically insane as only conservatives are insane. Amazingly, incredibly, out of all the people in the United States,  with millions and millions of American Trump Republicans, there is only one honest Republican, and that honest one is being destroyed because of her honesty. how wildly, insanely, hilariously G.O.P. What a position for an entire political party, huge and long established to be in, every single one of its members a liar, except Liz Chaney  who is being systematically outcast and destroyed by the party. Anyone with a functioning brain, and that includes a majority of people, who paid attention to president Donald Trump knows he is a pathological liar, and that he just made up the big lie about the election, like he does all his other tens of thousands of lies. Pretty pathetic, really. Nearly half the country trapped in an outrageous lie it must believe to be a member of the Trump cult, which now includes the Republican party. Only Liz Cheney has the guts to tell the truth, and for that, she is being destroyed by the Trump cult. The Trump cult and its mass delusion lie is perhaps the greatest single instance of mass delusion in American history, and that's goin' some...its too late to do anything about it.  The mass delusion is too deeply embedded in the cult.  Extensive group psychotherapy will not help. They will be claiming that the election was stolen from Trump the rest of their lives. Soon, Republicans will start running for president. There are many who want to, many of them quite attractive from a Republican point of view. One of them will replace Trump. the damage done to the American people and democracy by Trump and his cult may be irreparable. Its remindful of the Hitler cult movement. If we're lucky, we'll survive it.

Redefining Radical

 WHEN I TURNED SIXTY I decided to retire and go back to school, for free at my age. I enrolled in two journalism courses which didn't go well. One was frankly a bit too easy and the other was taught by an old professor who preferred talking about his personal achievements rather than the course material. Between him and Hillary Clinton, by the summer of 2015 one of them had visited one hundred and eleven countries, and the other one hundred and twelve, I  forget which. To him it really mattered. But really, who cares? Being in the same room with two hundred eighteen year olds was freaky enough, freakier because had laptops except me. One day I approached the old professor while wearing my favorite "rolling Stones" T shirt, which I think he didn't like and probably thought immature for a person my age, and asked him whether he knew anything about journalist Chris Hedges. He did, he said, but he didn't sound like he liked Christ,  damning him whit faint praise, describing him as "different". Different indeed, if "different" means super intelligent, well educated, and brutally honest. Chris Hedges I describe as "great". If nearly everything you say is radical and true, you aren't so much radical, as honest. If by chance you are not familiar with Chris hedges, and are not yet fully convinced that we urgently need in the United States a full fledged revolution to overthrow the existing power structure and replace it with actual democracy, if you read Hedges, you will be. Maybe his best book is "Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt."  Everyone should at least know a few basic facts about America, and be horrified by them. First, a tiny fraction of the American people, less than one hundredth of one percent , own and control most of the nations' wealth. The numbers are really staggering, like, forty percent of the wealth in the hands of one percent of the population. Even worse, the world's eight richest people are wealthier than the bottom fifty percent of the world's population, nearly four billion people. Wealth and power in American are synonymous. Corporate capitalism and democracy do not mix, its that simple. With a few big corporations with billionaire owners owning most of the wealth and having nearly all the political power, like we have in America, is not democracy, its plutocratic oligarchy. What we need in America is fundamental, revolutionary structure change, but most people don't realize it, having been brainwashed by their corporate masters to embrace the corporate status quo. Anyone of modest or average means who actually believes that he or she has the same amount of political power as a billionaire is stark raving crazy, or, an idiot, or simply uninformed and uneducated. I  do not object to people having more money than I do, but I object strenuously to their having more political power than I because of their money, and everyone who really believes in democracy should feel the same way. Maybe some fine day enough of us will understand the situation, and get mad enough about it to actually do something about it.

Attacking America, From the Right, Part II

IN AMERICA TODAY, there is a vicious assault on core American values and culture by the infamous nefarious conservative Christian community, specifically, the cult of Trump, which ironically, perversely fancies itself the defender, not the destroyer of traditional American cultural values. the defender of traditional American values. Trump, with his big election lie, and his followers, by their uncritical acceptance of the lies, are motivated by the same anger which elected Trump, and refuses to accept the reality of his defeat and rejection by America's true moral majority, the secular middle and left. The various areas on which the assault is underway include; voter rights, gay and transgender rights, racism and police reform, economic regulation, gun control, freedom of speech and assembly, among others. The assault is broad based, state and local, well funded and organized, must be completely dismantled and defeated, and will be, simply because it isn't what the majority of Americans want. It is in fact the dying gasp of a dying political movement and political party. IN a nutshell, literally, the Mara Lago loonies want to make it harder rather than easier to vote, they want to essentially outlaw protests against systemic racism, they want to eliminate religious diversity and make the Christian religion government sanctioned official, as well as severely limit gay and transgender rights, to deregulate unfettered capitalism, to militarize the police, scale back gun control, and to well arm white Christian America. One nation, made great again, under Trump. American society is steadily, inexorably advancing towards greater cultural, ethnic, and religious diversity, and white Christian America is shrinking, numerically, and as a percentage of total population. This is simply an irrefutable fact. Within a few years, white Christian America will be but one of many pluralistic minorities, comprising less than fifty percent of total population. And that is precisely the problem, the cause of all the conservative anger, discontent, craziness, and Trump. The white Christian white has decided that there is a "war against Christianity" being prosecuted by murky forces of conspiracy, maybe involving the mainstream media, liberals, and Democrats, the usual suspects. That, plus a slow motion genocidal war against white America, brought about by unrestricted immigration, and the usual suspects. The likely far future, or maybe not so far,  in which a minority of dark and light skinned people are immersed within a moderately skin toned majority  humanity, with billions of individual systems of religious belief drowning out mass organized dogmatic religions, must seem to the Christian white right, utterly repugnant, unthinkable. Such are the sorrows of being among the last of a dying breed.

Attacking America From the Right

 AMAZINGLY, SEVENTY PERCENT of republicans still believe, or claim to believe, that the election was stolen from Trump, a remarkable feat of mass delusion. Now they are trying to take over the country, remake it in their evil, twisted image, and, to boot, bring back Trump to rule once again. Needless to say, we the American sane must somehow prevent that nightmarish scenario from coming to fruition. The problem, predictably, is in conservative red states currently governed by Republican legislatures. An ongoing right wing rampage is flooding state legislatures with harmful, insane legislative proposals, some of which are becoming law. Ultimately, all of it will be challenged and overturned in the federal court system God bless the federal court system. Specifically, laws targeting transgenders, laws making it much more difficult to vote, and laws mandating self aggrandizing but false history education will be discarded by American society, the American people, as well as the courts, as unconstitutional. Also, the spate of laws being passed in many states making it harder if not altogether impossible to have an abortion will be thrown out by the Supreme Court, which will uphold Roe versus Wade, despite the number of conservatives on the high court. As long as there is an "America", Americans will from time to time see fit to stage protests in the streets for just causes, despite the attempt by  red states to make protesting essentially illegal. Limiting freedom of assembly and speech in public places is a violation of the first amendment, as the court will someday rule. This entire right wing frontal assault on America values will fail, just as the entire Trump movement will fail, despite the apparent interest among the right wing to run Trump for president again in 2024.Donald Trump has much, much farther to fall from grace, much of it involving pending federal criminal indictments against him, and the possibility of his being convicted of various felonies. Trump has basically become the cult leader of a violent, unreasoning cult of true believers who delude themselves about his  about his, and about their own, unbalanced mental state. In 2024, other Republican candidates for president, many of them attractive to conservatives, will finally bring Trump down politically. The Republican party has gotten to the desperate point in which the third leading Republican member of the U.S. House of representatives is telling the truth about Trump and his lies, and getting drummed out of the party for it. The Republican party cannot long endure like this.

Medicating National Amnesia

 THE UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA is as determined as any country in human history to fabricate a falsw history of itself, and spoon feed it to its unsuspecting children. Phony fabricated history, written by patriotic people to make their country look better than it is, is called "hagiography", rather than "history". American society has displayed a high level of self deception from its very beginning. At Jamestown, for instance, the settlers knew full well that they were looking for slaves, gold, and silver, not religious freedom or to spread Christian civilization unto all the world, replacing savagery with goodness. American hagiography has largely served its main purpose, to reconcile the savagery and violence inherent with the creation and development of the United States with Christian values or at least decent, civilized values. It hasn't always been easy. Yet, to an amazing extent, American society has been successful brainwashing away its collective guilt, and replacing it with arrogance, and proud delusion. Thus we celebrated the courageous explorer and seeker of knowledge, Columbus, the spread of superior civilization by intrepid pioneers, the civilizing of native American savages and African savages. The glorious white European Christians, our heroes.Brave pilgrims and pioneers fighting the forces of darkness on behalf of religious freedom, the work ethnic, Christ, and the American way. America, the land of freedom and liberty. Finally, beginning tentatively in the seventies, a few brave intrepid liberals started trying to inject a modicum of truth into american history.The attempt was accepted, respected, and understood by enough educated people to become fairly widespread, which inevitably aroused the wrath of conservative, Christian, patriotic American hagiographs, who prefer pleasant fiction to harsh fact. Now, this bizarre incarnation of American 'conservatism" called "the Trump movement" is striving to eliminate honest history and to bring back hagiography into American classrooms. American historians must once again make American history good, noble, and glorious, or else. Make America Great Again, by lying about it. we must stop teaching children that slavery and racism were and are very bad things that white Christian people did to black people, and we must now adopt a more 'balanced" approach,  dispersing and making blame disappear. State legislatures in red states are close to legislating all history out of the history textbooks which make the Untied States look less than glorious. Our conservative colleagues feel a bit too "uncomfortable". American history teachers have always been subjected to punishment for telling the truth, about the "founding fathers" for instance, most of whom were distinctly non christian in their personal religious beliefs. They were "deists", which is closer to atheism than traditional Christianity. We seem destined to returning to the old hagiography in which the Civil War was fought for state's rights, rather than over slavery. Happy days are here again!

Remembering Brother Harold

 BROTHER HAROLD, my beloved friend, died nearly two weeks ago, on my sixty sixth birthday, which warmed me a bit. He was ninety eight. Several years ago when I retired and started going to the senior center  brother Harold was the first friend I made. He was the one person who greeted me the most warmly, unconditionally and showed an interest in me. A retired Baptist minister, he led the prayer before lunch every day. We became good friends, fast. One day I boldly asked him whether I could lead the prayer for one day, and he told me to ask the Director. I asked the director, and she told me to ask him. I know when I licked. He moved into an assisted living facility about four years ago, and enjoyed life there, and even had a girlfriend. During the spring of 2016 we developed a routine in which I would go to his house every Sunday night with a frozen pizza, and we would cook the pizza and watch a national Geographic series about the great religious traditions of the world. Every episode was excellent, and highlighted the cultural and artistic richness of several of the great religious traditions of the world. The pizza usually was ready to pull out of the oven and eat during the show, and when we had finished eating it, brother Harold was free to remove his dentures and set them on his lap, which he unabashedly did.During his long career he had pastored several different churches and congregations, and I once  asked what it was like to attend a church service conducted by his replacement. He simply said that when he left- he left. Its easy to understand why: How weird would it be to resign from a church, only to return the next Sunday ans listen to your replacement, leading your congregation?  It might be hard not to become negative and critical of the new minister. Brother Harold was open minded, intelligent, intellectual, always wanting to learn more. He loved science and truth, which I still believe he valued more than religious dogma. He seemed secure enough in his religious faith, and well enough educated, that he had no need to reject scientific realities to satisfy any emotional need for fake cognitive consistency. Not your typical hard shell southern Baptist. Enlightened souls see no conflict between science and religion. As they learn science, they adjust their faith accordingly. He grew up up north, of dutch ancestry, and liked to quip 'If you aint Dutch, you aint much!" I knew this day would come, and I will greatly  miss Brother Harold, as long as I live. But maybe I haven't really lost him. maybe I'll see him again, in a better place. We talked a lot about such fundamental questions, and were both open to - anything, as long as it is the truth.

Inventing Religion

 THERE ARE MORE than thirteen hundred and fifty religious sects in the United States. slightly more than half are various Christian denominations, and the rest are mostly outposts of major religions which are more prominent in other parts of thee world, such as Islam and Hinduism. Many are made in America one hit wonders, cute little cults consisting of a few dozen or so members, doing their own thing. World wide, there are thousands of religions, some highly organized, some not so much, many confined to a single locality far from the beaten trail and madding crowd. From all this we learn two things. Religious diversity is alive and well in America, as it has always been intended to be, and the Christian faith is fragmented into fractions of its former self, as it was never intended to be, but became, early and often. We also learn that religion is a highly individual affair, or as Goethe put it best, as Goethe always seems to put things best: "When I realized that everyone invents his own religion, I decided to invent mine". Tragically, much harm has been and continues to be done to the world by the failure of billions to understand this. People, the more devoted they become to their religion of choice, get the crazy idea that there is only one true religion, which just happens to be theirs, rather than billions. Those who get this crazy idea are, invariably the one obsessed with religion, of whom their are countless millions. There are reasons for this, most prominently the human mind, its nature, its inability or refusal to see beyond the end of its own nose. There are also societal benefits to religious tunnel vision.  The main benefits of a single, absolutely completely inarguable true religion for all of society in which everyone belongs is a passive, controllable populace amenable to authoritarian rule, which is the most efficient form, in which everybody, from a religious standpoint, is always right, all the time. Organizational efficiency. Conflict with other systems of thought, religious and otherwise, persecution of non conformers, and cultural stagnation and its resulting harm in retarding cultural evolution far outweigh any and all benefits of absolute uniform religious conformity. Every human has his or her own religion. the sooner we all accept that, the better. Merely interviewing people concerning their religious beliefs clearly confirms this. We are intelligent, creative imaginative, creative beings, not dumb animals requiring the close supervision of uniform authoritarian cultural conformity. Since all religions are invented by people, let all people invent their own religions. After all, one is about as good as another.

Following Instructions

THE FACEBOOK cartoon featured a picture of a square flat pizza box, the sort we all know and love when it arrives at our front door just before a hungry kickoff. On its flap was stenciled: "Remove pizza from box before eating." Below the cartoon someone had typed in; "We're not gonna make it as a species, are we"? Indeed it was enough to make you wonder, and it made me think, trying to decide whether I should laugh, cry, or both. the governor of Florida spoke today, and said: "This climate change stuff has been 'politicized'. I just want to do what's bets for Floridians." Florida is already and will in the future experience the worst consequences of human made climate change: sever droughts, severe heat, coastal regions submerged beneath ever rising water, killer hurricanes of increasing frequency. Precisely whom does the Republican governor think has "politicized" climate change if not folks like him, Republicans who deny its existence rather than acknowledge it and help fight it?  And what does it matter if idiots 'politicize" climate change as long as everyone accepts its reality and helps mitigate it? since solutions to climate involve public policy, well, of course it is "politicized, because it is a public, political concern. Remove the pizza, governor. First, we need to get everyone vaccinated. All of us. If everyo I had in my hand a very large circular sandwich of some sort, a gyrne in the U.S. A. gets vaccinated, the Covid 19 epidemic ends. If everyone in the world gets vaccinated, the pandemic ends, just like polio and small pox, chicken pox, and shingles. Our anti-vaxxing friends might do well to notice that more than one hundred and fifty million Americans have been vaccinated, and that they are all doing just fine. They have removed the pizza from the box before eating it. That tells us something, correct? If only half the country vaccinates, the pandemic will go on about its business, killing hundreds of thousands more people, in half the country. About forty years ago I was hanging out on the south end of Battery Park, gazing relaxedly out at the water and Lady  Liberty. I had in my hands a very large circular sandwich of some sort, one of those new York gyros, on a thin circular paper plated exactly the same shape and size as the sandwich. Absent mindedly, contentedly I munched. Suddenly I realized that I was eating the plate along with the sandwich.both were half gone. i was shocked and horrified. My sister couldn't stop laughing. So maybe I do need to read the instructions on the pizza box. The paper neither made me sick, nor even upset my stomach. Maybe we have a chance after all. Then again, maybe we don't.

Getting Hot

THE AVERAGE TEMPERATURE in the United States has increased by one full degree Fahrenheit, from fifty two point three to fifty three point three over the past twenty years. One full degree hotter, just since the beginning of the millennium. Does this mean that by the beginning of the twenty second century the average temperature will have warmed by four degrees more, if not more?  The rate at which climate change is accelerating, which used to be called "global warming", but was changed to more accurately describe the actual effects of the process, is increasingly alarming to scientists, as it should be to everyone. "Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest" is a glorious new book by Suzanne Simard, which describes in detail the intimate manner in which every tree in every forest is directly related to every other tree, sharing resources such as water and mineral nutrients, sharing shade and sunlight, sharing information. Mother trees actually pay special attention to the well being of their seedling children, making sure they have the necessary resources to survive and thrive. Trees live for decades, and take decades t o die, letting go of life with deliberate dignity,  and as they slowly fade away they release as least forty percent of their considerable carbon content for use by their neighbors. Trees are social "beings", and love to grow in groups. "Primitive" societies have always tended to regard nature as a single, living organism, and trees as living beings; we should consider doing likewise. At the dawn of neolithic human civilization it is estimated that about seven trillion trees were alive on Earth; that number has been cut in half to our current three point five trillion. It has been widely suggested that a massive global tree planting project could restore the natural abundance of trees and help reverse climate change by removing excess carbon from the atmosphere. It turns out that there is enough land on the planet on which to plant enough trees to make enough of a difference, so far has global warming advanced while humanity failed to take action. But planting trillions of trees would still help, in concert with all the other measures we are hearing and talking increasingly about, measures such as setting aside half the world's land for wilderness habitat protection, limiting human population, converting to an all green fossil fuel free economy, removing carbon from the atmosphere by using technologies now in development, and so forth. Nature, as the billboard said in the nineteen sixties, symbiotic. The name of the earth is "Gaia"

Flying The Trump Coup

 LIZ CHENEY is a good person and a good American, and therefore, a terrible Republican. Because of the bizarre recent direction of the grand old party, the first two descriptors have become contradictory to the third. The Trump wing of the G.O.P., which constitutes the vast majority of it, wants Cheney to simply go away and shut up, and has told her so many times, in many different ways, in so many words, since last November's election, but she refuses to comply. That she is the third ranking republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives makes her words significant, and thus a considerable thorn in the side of the party of Trump. Cheney, who has not ruled out a run for president, in defiance of conservative orthodoxy, insists that the election was not stolen, that Donald Trump's oft repeated claim that it was was and remains a big lie, that he is unfit to lead the party going forward, and that anyone who persists in insisting that the election was stolen from him is a bad citizen, a liar, harmful to the nation and to the democratic process. Liz Cheney is, in short, a heretic among conservatives and Republicans. So low have Republicans sunk that telling the truth with integrity renders you an outcast within the party. The problem is that she was not satisfied to simply say all this several months ago shortly after the election and to leave well enough along, but that she continues to say it all, over, and over, and over again. The republican party has a big decision to make; whether to embrace or abandon Trump. Current indications are that it will embrace, since an overwhelming majority of members favor sticking with him. He is likely to either run for president again, or to remain a powerful force in politics as de facto party leader. Over the next couple of years Trump is likely to face federal criminal charges and various criminal indictments; most people are surprised to learn that there is no law preventing a convicted felon from being president. The current Republican party is much like a vicious, maddened animal trapped in a corner, confronting an implacable enemy; truth, and a majority of the American people. Covered with shame for having as its leader a disgraced, criminal former president who was voted out of office by a landslide but refused to accept defeat and staged an insurrection to try to overthrow the results of the election, and now promulgating a crazy agenda of voter suppression, anti transgender rights, and an assault on the first amendment rights of assembly and speech, an agenda designed to short up its most extremist base but extremely unpopular with the American people in general. It is time to put the wounded animal out of its misery.

Legislating For...whom?

"IT IS MY FIRM BELIEF that congress ought to at least occasionally legislate for the poor" said Congressman Davy Crockett. According to a thorough study published in 2014 by Princeton professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern professor Benjamin Page, the preferences of the typical American have absolutely no influence at all on legislation passed by congress. Long had we suspected this; they verify it, empirically. Their study is titled "Affluence and Influence". Former labor Secretary Robert Reich, who now teaches and researches in the academic community at U.C. Berkeley, refers to their research in his new monograph "The System: Who rigged It, How We Fix It". Congressional law makers pay no attention to us, the American people. Instead, according to Gilens and page, congress caters caters exclusively to the extremely wealthy and to big business, the corporate elite, the ruling oligarchy, what the late writer and historian Gore Vidal called "our corporate masters". The common denominator is that all these legislative assault on equality, freedom, and democracy are being promulgated under false pretenses, the stated justification a fictitious cover for their actual intent. Their stated intent is usually a version of trickle down economics and government; assist the rich in assisting the poor, the actual intent is the transfer of trillions of dollars of wealth from the poor and middle classes to the governing billionaires. Democratic and Republican politicians are both owned and controlled by big, dark money, but any cursory examination of their respective stated agendas quickly reveals that the Democratic program is much more aligned with tet interests of the poor, working, and middle classes.and the republicans serve the billionaire class, directly, unabashedly. In terms of actual preferences, it turns out that we the american people are actually far more socialistic than the corporate controlled spokespeople and media would have us believe. A substantial majority of the American people want Medicare for all, a green new deal, higher taxes on the wealthy, a wealth tax, a higher minimum wage, well regulated capitalism, and protection of women's reproductive rights. This has long been the case, though never revealed to us.  It is the billionaire class and the corporate oligarchy which wants and gets lower wages for workers, unregulated capitalism, trickle down economics, and the rest of the conservative, pro business agenda.Thus it is the one percent which rules, and the ninety nine percent which accept overlordship, placidly, inertly, like sheep.

Facing Fascism

 SURVEYS CONFIRM that, six months after the election, fully seventy percent of conservatives, republicans, Trump supporters, who are essentially the same people, still insist that the election was stolen. That was not predictable, nor is it especially surprising. The percentage of people who sincerely hold this belief rather than merely espouse it remains uncertain, beyond determination. These facts are sufficient to morally indict those who espouse them as traitors to democracy and thus to the United States, whether sincere or not. There still exists no evidence that the election was stolen, and there never will, because it does not exist. What of the thirty percent who do not agree? Are they outcast from the Trump movement?  The entire Trump movement and presidency remains a huge hoax, the greatest in American history, underpinned by a massive convoluted web of lies and deceit, falsehoods concerning immigrants, medical and economic health, and a whole host of other forms of deception. That the Trump presidency ended amid the most blatant lie ever promoted by an American president and amplified by the greatest number of Americans in history correlates perfectly with the false foundations of entire Trump movement.  The United States of America, in its proclaimed values, is a sham and always has been, and the Trump movement is the latest culmination of delusional, false, misrepresented purposes. Concentrated wealth and power destroys democracy, and leads to authoritarian government blindly supported by an angry electorate, authoritarian populism. Rampant nationalism and xenophobia, and a backward looking ideology to an invented glorified past of supposed national greatness which never existed is the hallmark of fascism, whether under Hitler or Trump. Hitler and Trump are alarmingly comparable, as are their supporters. It would be as if Hitler had been voted out of office in 1937, four years after being elected in 1933. Hitler, to the world's misfortune, succeeded in conveniently circumventing the electoral process, and never had to be accountable to the voters again. Trump tried his best to do the same, but fortunately for the world, failed. We will never know what might have happened had Trump succeeded in refusing to leave office as he threatened, or had he succeeded in overturning the election results, or had his violent insurrection at the Capitol succeeded in overthrowing the government. Fortunately, we will never know.What we do know is that a large majority of his supporters wish he he had succeeded,and angrily regret that he and they failed. These facts alone are more than sufficient to place trump and his supporters in  the same infamous category as Hitler and his, and to despise and loathe them with infinite vigor.

Making The Constitution Unconstitutional

MORE THAN NINETY LAWS in thirty five states are being proposed by Republican controlled legislatures, and the first one has already been signed into law in Florida, essentially making it illegal in the United States to peacefully assembly and peacefully protest on public property, and including harsh penalties for doing so. Any of them which actually become laws will inevitably be challenged in court as violating first amendment protections of assembly and speech, and, at first glance, would seem destined to be eventually ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court. This is the modern face of the Republican party, for which the description "fascist" seems increasingly,  frighteningly fit. Not a single republican legislator in freedom's land has openly acknowledged that all these police state legislative proposals are in any way a response to the Black Lives Matter movement which swept into America's city streets last summer, but that is obviously the case. The right wing is inclined to deny the existence of racism in America, and was quite outspoken inits opposition to last summer's demonstrations, falsely characterizing them as "riots", when in fact looting and violence occurred in less than five percent of BLM protests. These proposls are being misleadingly described as "anti-riot" and "pro law enforcement", measures. Most of them include passages making it illegal to impede pedestrian traffic on sidewalks and to hinder vehicular traffic on public roads while protesting. An overturned garbage can or a discarded protest sign can result in years in prison. Aren't the republicans usually complaining about government over reach, about big government attacks and infringements on constitutional guarantees and civil liberties? Or do they really only mean civil liberties and freedoms whose exercise is generally enjoyed and exercised by conservatives, such as the right to carry concealed and unconcealed weapons in public, the right to refuse to wear a face masks in public when mandated by the government during a pandemic, and the right to gather together packed in like sardines in houses of worship, loudly singing hymns and sharing a deadly virus? It seems that in the right wing mind the constitutional right to peacefully assemble and peacefully speak about racism in America is an exception to constitutional guarantees of liberty. Perhaps only left wing, liberal, progressive liberties are not guaranteed by the constitution. Ransacking the Capitol building in support of Donald Trump is seemingly protected under the first amendment. Conservative assembly and speech must be protected, progressive assembly and speech is a riot. Perhaps the next conservative step is to make church attendance mandatory, gun carrying mandatory, and all references to systemic racism illegal. True defenders of liberty, those republicans. don't look now, but the far right populist mob is coming, coming to get anything even remotely resembling progressive pro activism.