Religion, Evolving

LAST SUNDAY I attended church at the little Presbyterian church in the woods with a congregation of about ten. Mainly, because I had a ride, a friend, the organist and his wife, willing to come by and pick me up. Avoiding driving is a big factor for me. I would attend the Unitarian church every Sunday if it were less than a mile from my house, rather than twenty. Its not that I have some horible phobia about driving or anything like that, its just that, all things considered, I try to avoid it.I have never,even when I was a teenager, enjoyed driving much, except when I am going somewhere incredible or exciting, which, alas, I rarely seem to be. I have always enjoyed riding around in the country, but not driving. The little Presbyterian church is full of good friends of mine, and the minister, a good friend of mine, preaches a good message, the true Christian message it seems to me, of love, forgiveness, and giving. Besides, since this little rural church has actually existed for more than two hundred years, the church building is a historical landmark, my attending is an important contribution; they need every congregant they can get, for at current trends, they risk becoming extinct. In four more years, in 2028, the church will, assuming it still exists, mark its two hundredth year in continuous operation, and it would be a shame it it failed to survive until then. I keep wondering how much longer th Christian religion, or for that matter any religion, religion in general, can and will continue to exist onplanetEarth as a fundamental component of human culture and civilization. And perhaps the grandest question of all; what aobut intelligent beings on other planets all across the universe? To me, it makes much more sense to assume that they probably exist,than to assume that they do not. Indeed life in the universe may be vanishingly rare, or, it may be common, but we know that it exists, here, if nowhere else. And yes, despite our apparent imminent self destruction as a species, we humans most certainly qualify as "intelligent", even if our level of intelligence is far below that of other species, which one must assume it might well be. Especially now that we know that the univese is filled with trillions of Earth-like planets, it seems more certain than ever that we humans are not only not alone in the universe, but that there are probably many species more intelligent and more advanced culturally than we. Other factors indicate a universe with abundant life; organic chemical compounds we now believe are far less rare, and far more likely to appear often throughout the cosmos. One wonders whether beings on other planets invent religion, as we humans did. In other words, do they formalize and ritualize their response to life, as we do? I tend to believe that over teh next few centuries, assuming humans still exist, that religion will fade away,and ultimately out of existence. Or, if not that,then the ancient religions will either evolve greatly, as they have always done, or die out and be replaced with new forms of religion more reflective of our advancing knowledge of the universe. I almost feel as if I would like to reach into the far human future, learn about our descendants religious beliefs, and perhaps adopt them. Quite likely they will be considerably different from ours today, but still recognizeable. What I like about the Uniterian church is that they seem to accept everybody, no matter what they believe. And since we really are still not sure precisely what to believe, myabe its best that way.

Stopping Trump's War

WITH EACH PASSING DAY, it becomes increasingly evident that this whole business of starting a war with Iran is nothing other than a diversion, albeit a rather impressive one, from the lingering and seemingly here to stay matter of the Epstein files. Will we ever see them? Will they ever be released? And if so, will they be so highly redacted that they have no real value? At this point I, and I am sure many other people, have already decided, long since, to believe the worst about Donald Trump. The reason for this is that by doing so, you are never surprised or disappointed. No matter what you choose to believe about Trump, when the truth is finally revealed, which we must concede it not always is, it almost invariably seems to excede our worst expectations. He really did try to steal the election of 2020 from Biden, America witnessed that horror first hand. The true horror of it, as has been pointed out numerous times, is not so much Trump's false claim of election theft but the fact that almost one half of the American people, knowing full well that Trump's claim of election fraud was a lie, chose to embrace it, to pretend to believe it. This remains perhpas the most glaring example of Trump somehow enabling within his followers their worst potential instincts, the more they accept, embrace, or ignore his lies, the more empowered they feel to tell their own lies, to weave a web of lies into a world view according to which, even at this late date, Donald Trump remains, in their eyes, the only true solution to all of America's problems. The problem with a diversion like a war with Iran is that in order to be effective,it must last long enough to take teh attention of the American people away from the Epstein files for more than a few hours, days, or weeks. From the very moment when Trump started our current war with Iran by bombing it, this war has been very unpopular among the Amerian people, as indicated by all surveys and measurements. The longer Trump keeps it going - and make no mistake, this is Trump's war, all Trump's war, his war of choice, and while nobody else can, and he can bring it to an end when and if he chooses. The best guess is that he'll try to find a way to end it very soon, because it will never become more popular with the American electorate that it is now, and it is extremely unpopular now. Perhaps, as usual, Trump is playing more to his base than to the rest of us, the sixty percent of Americans who despise him. In the early stages, a high percentage of Trump supporters are expressing approval for our new American Iranian war. Unless there is more recent information, at least eleven Americans have already died in Trump's war, MAGA's war. There will, of course, be more. The question is how many more Amerian casualties will there be, and what will be the country's reaction to Trump's war as they begin to mount up, which, it would seem inevitable that they will. The best,smartestthing that Trump could probably do at this point is to make a few more threats, leave the U.S. warhips in the Gulf of Iran for a little while longer,then quietly move them out of harm's way, before they get sunk by cheap drones. Everybody who ever started a war did so firmly believing that the war would be short and victorious, and those predictions are amazingly, consistentlly wrong. Wars always last longer and kill more people than anyone had or could possibly have foreseen. Trump's war is his war of choice, a deliberate diversion from his other crimes. Let's choose to stop it.

Trump, Using War As Cover

IF IT ISN'T ALREADY, it certainly should be painfully obvious that this entire thing with Iran, and lord only knows how much farther Trump and we Americans will go on pulverizing that poor hapless country, is nothing other than a distraction from the Epstein files, which allegedly arrived in Congress just a few days ago, and are available to all members. And, at least for the time being, the ploy seems to be working. But, as they say, you can run but you cannot hide. How long, after all, can this war possibly last? If it lasts longer than a few news cycles, we the people are likely to become extremely tired of it, and heavily opposed to it, as American casualties start coming in. In terms of keeping the Epstein files under cover and unavailable to the American public, the Republican party seems to be fully conspiring with Trump, if informally, to obstruct justice. The Trump administration is on a roll, in terms of naked aggression, having already attacked several countries, Venezuela and Iran among them, and one starts to wonder how much farther it will go, how much and many military hostilities Trump will unleash around the world as he struggles to upstage and obscure the Epstein files. Rumors have it that the actual files contain a good deal of highly incriminating material pertaining to Trump, damaging testimony and photographic involving underage girls and Trump's alleged sexual misconduct towards them. Trump haters are calling the president a "pedophile", which, at least technically, appears to be a false, incorrect, acccusation. The actual definition of a pedophile is a person who experiences sexual attraction to pre pubescent children. Whispers and indications hint at the possibility that Trump's behavior, arranged and enabled by Mr. Epstein, might very well extend to outrageously heinous depravity involving children. Evidently the Trump political machine has gone to and continues to go to incredible lengths to keep all the salacious, condemning actions of Trump concealed from public view, forever. And yet, it might not be enough. It might be inevitable that,even though we may never know the true depths of Trump's depravity,and probably wouldn't want to, that we will, over the next few weeks, learn enough to strongly reinforce our most unflattering appraisals of our president's moral character. Trump opponents already assume the worst about him, and since the sixty percent of America which opposes Trump tends to oppsoe him to the point of loathing and hatred, it seems almost imposssible for his opponents to need or find yet more reasons for their abject and utter contempt for what they often call "the orange menace". A noted professor of modern European history once asked the question whether love or hate has been the more powerful force in the world throughout history. He didn't hesitate to answer his own question by saying that hatred appears to indeed be the more influential force in ancient, modern, and current history. Just as humanity appears for the moment to be losing its struggle to stop destroying and start nurturing the natural environment, so too we are evidently choosing war over peace, at least for the time being, in our eternal moral struggle against violence and war. And yet, history indicates that with each passing century, our species becomes, when measured scientifically, more peaceful, and less violent. That's hard to believe, but well supported by facts. It makes us realize how far we have had to come to get where to where we are and closer to where we want to be, but also, how terribly far we still have to go.

MAGA, Covering For Trump

WE STILL DON'T KNOW, evidently, whether the infamous "Epstein Files" are ever going to be released, in full, unredacted to the public, and if they are, precisely what they contain. My impression is that some of them have indeed been relesedto Congress,adn that various congresssional committees, controled by Republicans, are in the process of deciding precisely what to do next. They know full well,these Republicans, that whatever the Epstein files contain that is harmful to Trump is also armful to them, for they know the wages of hopping aboard the Donald Trump political bandwagon. One thing for certain; with each passing day more people know more about what's in the infamous files. If Trump's name is in them, or was in them, by now it has been scrubbed out, along with other probable redactions. Meticulous research ad investigation can probaly reveal what precisely has been redacted,and whatever it is, it should be madepublic. No matter how fervantly and frequently we all scream and preach the virtues of transperancy, which is a perfectly approprate and improtatnt thing to do, concealment and deceit remain deeply embedded within American political culture, here in the great American fun house, where everything is distorted for profit and expediency,and nothing is what it seems. What has already been revealed is that Trump's association with Mr.Epstein was extensive, and it revolved around Epstein, with his enormous wealth, giving ennormously wealthy people, mainly men, access to his inner sanctum o sex ad exploitation of young attractive women. Whereas Trump is the perfect example of the corruptive power of political power, both Trump and Epstein are poster boys for the corruption made possible by vast personal wealth, with little or no social accountability. Trump and Epstein have never, in their personal lives, been up to any good, and this relationship between the two men, in which Epstein cultivated favor from Trump because of Trump's wealth and influence by offering Trump something he obviously wants badly, sexual contact with very young girls. And, the hard truth is that humans in general want sexual contact with young members of,in most but not all cases, the opposite sex. If nothing further happens regarding the Epstein files beyond this point, which is exactly what Republicans are hoping for,for good reason, the whole issuemight indeed fade away by election day, but, on the other hand, it might not. Trump, his inner circle,and the entire MAGA movement is going to have to come to terms with this inconveniently lingering issue in one way or another,and it appears that to merely urge the public to fuggettagouttit amidst a swirling whirlwind of exiting and schocking events on the world stage may not be adequate to the task, no matter how hard MAGA tries to make it so. The Democrats, and we the American people, are perfectly capable of walking and chewing gum simultaneously. Whether, and the extent to which, their president was involved in an illicit sex trafficking operation,in which young girls were made available to old wealthy men for sexual exploitation by luring them to Epstein's notorious island with promises of lucrative, glamorous modeling careers, is of the greatest importance to the American people, and they, we, deserve to know. MAGA has for years been complicit in a criminal conspiracy to conceal Trump's extensive criminal behavior, and there is no better time than now to fully expose it.

Rooting For the Future

YEARS AGO I recall the shocking item in the news that traces of jet fuel had been found in a lactating mother's breat milk, a sample of said milk having been submitted for chemical analysis for research purposes. I further reall that nobody seemed to be able to explain why jet fuel in particular, since teh woman lived nowhere near an airport, had been nowhere near jets or jet fuel to the best of here recollection. I found that particular new item quite disturbing. Not juste yesterdy, I and probably millions of other people saw a new item on one of the major television news networks that race of complex industrial chemicals, including heavy metal rear earth samples. have been detected in some grapefruit. This is even more alarming in that it raises the question: where else might such heavy duty industrial chemicals be found? The answers, which seems to be emerging, is, more alarmingly still; essentially everywhere, it seems. If my memory serves correctly, reserach scientists were even increasingly amazed and shocked at how widespread radioactive atoms have proven to be in our environment, including, most alarming of all, within and throughout our bodies, including our bloodstreams. The true story of people poisoned by radioactivity associated within the invention, development,and testing of the atom bomb in New Mexico in 1944 is no less frightening. Essentially, anyone who wea anywhere near the test sites when the bomb was tested was poisoned by radiatio from the blast, heavy metals piercing human bodies, and remaining lodged within them, for life. The United States government has handed out, after decades of litigation, millions of dollars in compensatory damages, and has gone to great lengths to downplay and cover up as much as possible the entire bizarre, terrifying episode. The first people who witnessed the first atom bomb tesing - and the United States tested dozens of nuclear bombs in the years after World War Two - were unavoidably bombarded with near lethal doses of nuclear radiation, inadequately shielded from it. I have a smart phone, which I probably use much less often than your average smart phone user. I never text anybody, don't take pictures, and don't make a lot of phone calls. And yet, I have one, and sometimes, when I hold it up to my left ear, I wonder precisely what effect if any the electromagnetic radiation going into and coming out of the phone is having on me, physiologically. Tha invisible radiation, going in one side of my head,and coming out the other. Are we really sure we know what we need to know about the impact of this on people? These super heavy "forever chemicals" are,evidently, everywhere. We have spewed all throughout the Earth's environment, including inside our own bodies, a large quantity of poisonous materials. There are no "bad" chemicals. there are only chemicals which are in the wrong place, if that's any comfort. For me personally, it isn't much comfort. Neither does it comfort me knowing that at my advanced age, I won't be alive long enough, no matter what, to actually experience personallly the worst impacts of our current and past bad stewardship of the environment. The best I can hope for is to approach death with whatever degree of solace I can derive by knowing that there are people alive now who are indeed seeking and working on solutions to our current environmental crisis. During my entire lifetime the Earth's ecosystem hung in the balance, as humans tried but failed to keep themselves from harming it. I seem destined to die without knowing the final outcome of man vs. nature, but rooting hard for my descendants to be smarter than we were.

America, Expanding

"I TREMBLE FOR MY COUNTRY when I reflect that God is just, and that his justice cannot sleep forever" Thomas Jefferson supposedly said. Actually, unlike some famous quotes falsely attributed to people like Jefferson and Mark Twain. Jefferson does seem to have actually said this, in reference to the insittution of slavery, in whcih Jefferson freely engaged, but had serious misgivings about. But, like so many gerat and famous quotes from great and famous people, this one has meaning on a seemingly unlimited number of levels, is applicable to a wide ranging number of situations. Jeffrson was literally born and raised into a culture of slavery. He said that his first memory was of being carried as an infant in the arms a slave woman, and on his death bed he allegedly remarked that his fianl moments seemed destined to place his care in the hands of another slave woman. With regard to the hundreds of slaves Jefferson inherited from his father, he had a tiger by the tail, in that, he was thereby trapped himself within this "peculiar" economic institution which so clearly, then and now, defies and defiles fundamental concept of human decency and dignity. Jefferson's attitude towrds the intitution of slavery seemed to be that it would eventually have to be phased out of American life. Presumably, by implication, he meant that the institution of slavery, hundreds of years old in the United States and deeply embedded into the culture and economy, could not simply be ripped out by the roots and burned in a pile of rubbish, but rather, would have to be gradually eased out of existence to make the transition as painless as possible for the entrenched, monied interests who profited from it and who had no real desire or intentions of ending it. George Washington and some other slave owning founders freed their slaves, Jefferson, who kept talking about it, never did, other than his slave girlfriend Sally Hemmings and some of her family members. People, especially religious people, like to talk about receiving the just rewards in heaven or hell for our lives we chhose to live on Earth. It may be that, more often than not, whatever we deserve, we get sooner that than, right here on Earth, in the present life. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner, in his famous "Turner Thesis" explained American history as a process of expansion. Westwerd expansion across the continent, and expanion into overseas markets. It is an historic fact that when the United States finally reached the west coast in the late 19th century, it didn't stop there, but continued to probe and expand, out into and across the Pacific Ocean, and southward, extending its influence into our current global empire. Within more than eight hundred military bases on foreign soil, indeed, the term "global empire" applies to the United States, and has for a long time. The United States has craved ownership of Cuba from the beginning. The Spanish empire was willing to sell Florida to the United States, but not Cuba. Perhaps history would have been kinder to the island in American hands, but, as they say, we'll never know. A quick glance at a map makes it tempting to believe that the large array of islands in the Caribbean is naturally, by virtue of geography, destined to come under American control. The only "fly in the ointment" so to speak, is that the idea fo becoming part of these United States is evidently no more appealing generally to our southern neighbors than it is to our neighbors to the north. Go figure.

Trump, Running Out the Clock

I WAS SORRY, and remain sorry, to see Kristi Noem go. And, I'll be the first to admit that its for the shallowest of reasons;I think she's hot. I doubt that I'm the only seventy year old man who thinks, nor the ony man generally; there must be at least several hundred thousand of us, if not a few million. There seems little doubt that Trump likes to hire attractive young women for high level government positions, either that, or, by sheer chance the best qualified people to run the American government are hot young women. If so, so be it. Arguably Pam Bondi, despite her vile nature, doesn't hurt ones eyeballs. Much the same can be said for Trump's good looking blonde public relations babe. Just as Trump seems to hire people for all the wrong reasons, so he seems to fire them for equally ludicrous causes, the most common one being a demonstrated ability to tell the truth about the president and to the president, instead of automatically, reflexively zombie-like reciting the company line, including expressions of veneration for the master. Trump loves to fire people, obviously. He loves exercising power ruthlessly and hurting people, evidently. He also probably enjoys hiring people, preferably by putting the through a hellish interview-interrogation process, similar to the process which attracted him so much attention, good ratings, and seeming popular approval on mainstrean American televised garbage. That Trump's springboard to the presidency was a television program which was extremely popular precisely because it was extremely cruel speaks volumes about not only American politics, but, ominously, about American culture and society as a whole. Trump got a lot of support right from the git go largely because he was widely perceived as being a skilled business person. This, largely because of his famous big time business doings, gaudy large scale projects to which Trump went to great lengths to attract media attention. Trump loves nothing more than he loves media attention, and he has for decades been expert in getting it. When he finally,mercifully leaves the presidency,don't expect him to emulate George Bush Sr. or Junior, or Barrack Obama, or Bill Clinton, or Joe Biden, and simply fade away into the background, out of the mainstream daily media limelight. You have to beieve that Trump post presidency will do everything in his power to keep his name and image on the front page. And you start to wonder what that might look like. The big question is; what will be Trump's legal situation after January 20, 2029? You would think that later in the same day that he leaves office, he and his lawyers will bebeseigedby a flurry of court appointments, law suits, legal actions of all kinds, both for and against. When he entered office for his second term, some of the thosuands of lawsuits involving Trump were put on hold, many went away or were dismissed, but some others, including many important ones, were simply continued, indefinitely. Trump will probably finish his term and leave office alive, and, even in a best case scenario for him, will doubtless be confronted with an impressive array of litigation thereafter,probably until the end of his life. Most of the ongoing legal actions agaisnt him, the ones which will resurface when he leaves office, will be postponed and delayed until he dies. The best guess is that justice will never catch up with Trump, and that he will never serve a single day in prison, although, arguably, he should be there now, and forever.

Trump, Getting Desperate

A SOLID MAJORITY of we the American people are opposed to Trump's war against Iran, and, evidently, all of Trump's other wars, including Venezuela. Dropping bombs on fishing boats has never been popular among the American masses. Trump's atack of Iran is obviously intended to do nothing other than to arouse and rally and huge emotional outpouring of patriotic emotional fervor among we the masses, to entice Trump's massive, strong opposition to lose its hatred of Trump amid a rousing continuous chorus of U.S.A!, as American military are sent in to harm's way to defend the land of liberty against the forces of darkness, aka,anything or anybody who dares get in the way of American corporate interests, esp. foreign investment, expansion, economic imperialisn. We anti-Trumpers might either have to combine an anti-war protest movement with an already vigorous anti-fascist anti-I.C.E.movement, the, so called "No Kings" or "ANTIFA" movement, a term which seems to encompass the entire opposition to Trump, MAGA, the G.O.P., and contemporary American conservatism generally. The bigger and more destructive Trump's war on Iran beccomes, the more we anti-Trumpers are going to angrily blame it all on Trump, with good reason. It seems highly unlikely that Trump is going to be able to involve the United States in a big enough or desperate enough war to convert the opposition to and hatred of Trump, which includes at least sixty percent of the population if not more, into rampant, fervant, patriotic war fever. What seems evident is that Trump is keenly and painfully well aware of his continuing loss of support and approval, and, becoming more desperate by the day as the Epstein files seem to be closing in on him, is ready to do whatever it may take, extreme measures, to rally his base if not a majoritiy of Americans behind him. Although Trump's term, to his opponensts, seems to be dragging on endlessly, in fact it won't be long until the midterms almost certainly take a big bit out of Trump's power in Congress. If he finds himself in a situation where nothing that he supports or proposes has a chance of passing both houses, who knows what measure a stymmied, stifled Donald Trump might resort to to maintain or increase his presidential power. Both Trump and the Republicans currently are very inerested in and trying hard to increase the powers of the president, to give Trump a stronger position. It almost seems as if Trump's MAGA base, in their zealous supportof Trump,are ready, and willing to elevate the orange menace to authoritarian power. They might ever try, with Trump's enthusiastic assistance, to elect Trump president for life. Watching Trump and his MAGA mob, year after year on a daily basis, might provide some insights into the sociology and psychology of Adolph Hitler's rise to power, and his use of it. Nobody doubts that Donald Trump would gleefully assume the title of president for life, or "Dear Leader", or king. His pathological narcissism, and other mental illnesses, have been on full display before the entire world long enough, that all sane, reasonable people want him rmoved from power. In this context, the fact that Trump is apparently, for all intents and purposes, seemingly safely entrenched in the presidency for nearly three more, long years, can only evoke thoughts of horror and dismay among those who consider Trump unfit for office by virtue of criminal insanity, intellectual bankruptcy, moral depravity, and evil intent.

The Majority, Discarding Trump's Evil

FOR PEOPLE who really despise President Trump, which evidently consists of about sixty percent of the American people, his words and actions are so vile, so reprehensible so often that it becomes tempting to block him out of the mind, to ignore the reprobate. All modern American presidents are fo course in the mainstream news every day, both because they want to be, and because they have no choice but to be, since there is a market for it among the consumers, and the media, like all successful businesses, cater to the often whimsical preferences of we the American people. Follow the money, like we say. In a functioning democracy, above all else, the people must pay attention to their chosen leaders, who want the attntion for the most part, except when committing crimes. Politicians, like actors, learn early and often that they are always onstage, and the best politicians, like J. F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, understand this,and learn how to exploit it. FDR, whose presidency ended at the moment in history when television was just barely beginning to gain widespread use, understands as well as anyody the importance of presenting to the mass media consuming public the image of a healthy, alert, energetic, confident leader. My mother was twelve years old when Roosevelt became president in 1933, and nearly twenty five when he died in office in 1945. For her, she essentially grew und into early adulthood with FDR in office the entire time,and it seemed almost inconceivable to her that anyone else could or would ever be president,that Roosevelt had been and would remain in office forever. She told me that the entire time he waspresident, neither she nor her parents, nor most people evidently, were aware that FDR essentially lived in a wheel chair, and was confined to the chair because of polio. The extent to which he went, with full cooperation from the media, to conceal his disability from the public was remarkable, largely effective, and seems bizarre to us today. Likewise, it seems strange that the mainstream media helped conceal bed behavior of American presidents like Kennedy from the American people, which is nearly impossible now. Nearly, but not quite impossible. My mom was twenty one, newly eligible to vote in 1944, and I remember asking her whether she voted for Roosevelt. She had two answers, she said, "no", and "hell no"...So, alas, I come, it seems, from a long line of Republicans, at least on my mother's side My father's too, actually. As far as I know I am the only Democrat, and certainly the only radical left wing lunatic, in the family, nuclear, or extended, although there seems to be hope for my sister, who, if nothing else, hates Trump. That, as they say, aint a bad start. I made it through eight years of Reagan, and he doesn't seem so bad to me now. Neither, for that matter, does Nixon. Bad, but not that bad. I feel full of energy adn optimism for the next three years, because the anti-Trump movement is a solid majority of the American people,it is not likely to shrink, and support for Trump is not likely to grow. The Trump movement has by now surely begun to reluctantly envision its own seemingly inevitable decline, a decline which seems destined to come to stark fruition after the November elections. We who strongly oppose Trumpism are a large majority, and can stop the MAGAmovement dead in its trackes,and can render the rest of Trump's term impotent, ineffective, uninfluential. We have the peopepower to bring the Trump-Repubican political uprising to a dead stand still, and to cast it into history's dustbin without distinction or fan fare. Blatantly immoral politicians like Trump must in the future be ignored and discarded, not elevated to power and exalted as tyrant dictators by a poorly educated mass of angry, fearful sycophant cult worshippers.

Wishing, Carefully

WHEN PRESIDENT TRUMP ordered the attack of Iran, it was reported on the television news, (I usually watch Scripp's) the first thing I thought was, this is hiswayof trying to deflect attention from the Epstein files. Now, a day or two later, I'm still thinking the same thing,that the attack on Iran, which happened without the provocation from Iran, oher than their evident reluctance to capitulate and accede completely to American demands that the Iranians give up their nuclear bomb and perhaps nuclear power program. is Trump's way of trying to distract the media and we the American people from what is obviously very seriously criminal, sordid, and extensive relationhsip between Trump and the infamous Mr. Epstein. Epstein wanted access to and relationships with wealthy, powerful, famous people, preferably men possessing all three of these ever marketable and valuable assets. Trump, who more than probably any human in history has always to be wealthy, powerful, and famous, perhaps in no particualre order, and Epstein filled the bill. You have to give Trump credit for one thing, if nothing else. His entier life has been a constant pursuit of wealth, fame,and power, and beyond doubt, he has succeeded wildly, perhpas beyond his expectations, in achieving all three of thee magic elixirs of self esteem. And, it goes without saying, people like Epstien and Trump are far from being alone or even uusual in harboring these shallow, selfish, socially worthless commodities.Socially worthwhile, because in what way exactly does extreme wealth, power and fame for an elite few benefit society as a whole, if it does at all? It is utterly amazing the frequency with which people desperately crave fame, obtain it, and then, within a verily short period of time, regret having ever wanted it in the first place. Classic wisdom; be careful what you wish for. The Epstein files will be either talked about widely, or will quietly swept under the carpet not by Trump or his gang or his cult,but by we the American people. And we already know that sweeping it udner the carpet, beneath huge headlines delaring war and whatever other sensational stories the prpaganda teams can generate and disimminate, is exactly what the Trump fascist organization will attempt to do. We the American people keeing talking about the Epstein files as early and often as we choose. There is plenty of room in our huge multifaceted media industry for foreign wars of American aggression, imperialism, expansion, and distraction, and Trump and the Epstien files both. We Americans are talented at multitasking. One evident reality is that the nation of Israel has a termendous amount of indluence within teh American government, regardless of administration. It might be beneficial to all of us if somebody would bother to look into that, objectively, and provide evidence, one way or another, to reassure ourselves that we the American people, and not the holy nation of Israel, is in fact governing the United States. Forcing a brand new powerful Jewish nation state into the middle of the Arab world on land forcibly seized from said world might not have been, in retrospect,the best idea, especially at the late date of 1948, by which time the status quo in Palestine was well estabiished, and, again in retrospect, quite peaceful and harmonious by comparison. British and American imperialisn, gone awry, as always. Israeli aggression and arab Islamic intolerance of Judaism cannot be ignored or accepted. As always, there is plenty of blame to go around.

Thinking Great Thoughts

I ATTEMPTED, but failed, to attend church yesterday. It was a bad day for me mentally. insofar as I can have a bad mental day. I like to think that everyday I have at least one or a few thoughts worthy of thinking. I was unable to comprehend and follow directions given to me by a friend on how to get to the church, which I have been to before, but not for a while. I drove around for a while out in the country, but never got to church. I simply couldn't find it. I started wondering what was wrong with me, mentally. I do indeed seem to have a real disability in terms of following street directions, one which I have long thought I might improve if I made a concerted effert, which, honestly, I never have. Its a mental disabiity I have had all my life, and seems destined to accompany me for the remaining life of the universe, in whatever form. On days when I go to church, which are not frequent,I often never get around to writing and posting an essay for this website, either before or after chucrh. Maybe I'm so focused on getting ready for church, and so focused on winding down the rest of the day after attending, that it pushes writing to the back burner, and off the stove entirely. But I've noticed, most of the time, on churhc days, I never get around to writing and publishing, and I am not happy with that. Obviously it doesn't have to be that way. The only thing that ever truly keeps me from writing and publishing is me, and nothing else, including church. Perhaps, when I get home from church, the spiritual or psychic energy I would have used in writing,typing, and publishing has already been expended. And still yet, I remain a devout pahtheist, no moreinclined to convert to the Christian faith than I ever have been, which, essentially,is never. Like Goethe, who I think wa shimself not a Christian, pointed out, the teaching of Christ are the most sublime, wise,beautiul teachings possible.They have also been taught before,by a surprising number of people, many in ancient times, including, for instance, the Chinese philosopher Confucius. Goethe said: "All the great thoughts have long been thought. What remains for us is to think them anew". This quote troubles me a bit. I like to think that I have original thoughts, original on this planet, and in this universe. This of course goes to the age old question of "free will", which we all seem to think and like to think that we have, but which does not seem to be the case, in terms of what we know about science, reality, and our human minds. The basic problem is that if we assume that the laws of nature apply to everything, then they apply to our minds, and our thoughts are therefore the natural result of natural processes, like molten balls of metal and rock cooling into solid planets, with light gases collecting to form an atmosphere and oceans, and then proceeding, over a period of billions of years, to combine elements into sufficiently comples organic chemical compounds to initiate the process of organic reproduction, life itself. Einstein said it best, as he often did. "Either everything is a miracle, or nothing is". This is common sense, when you thing about it, but you never really think about it. A miraculous universe, or one which seems miraculous to us in its entirety, makes far more sense than a universe in which rare miracles occur spontaneously amid an overall process which is not at all miraculous. Why should anything exist at all? Would "God" be lonely in an emptry universe? My comfort is that I am able to ask questions for which I can never get an answer, in a universe which, if nothing else, at least allows me to exist, however briefly.

Rearranging the Earth and Us

I STRONGLY OPPOSE Trunp's attack on Iran, and I hope and assume I would oppose it if a Democratic president had launched it. As usual, I see no problems which could'nt be solved by thought, communication, and agreement. The problem, the complaint the United States has with Iran, under Trump or any other president, is the idea of Iran having atomic bombs,and the ability to deliver to and drop them on distant targets. The real problem, of course, is far larger. The real problem is the fact that not only does Iran have nuclear weapons capabilities, but so do many other countries nine at least, and probably more. My problem is the same one I've had since I was a little kid, back in the 1960s. Namely, a gnawing fear of the prospect, the reality, of nuclear weapons in the hands of irrational, emotional, inherently volatile human beings. Atomic weapons should by nwo have long since been mutually legislated out of existence, by international, global agreement. The answer is simple. like my office mate in graduate school said: "just get rid of the weapons." A class of weapons so terrible, so deadly, that they must never, ever be used. That is what we are confronted with, by our own doing. How long can we continue to live like this, with the ability to destroy ourselves and all life on Earth, arranged as we are into powerful, adversarial nation-states? The doomsday clock has recently been, and still may be, closer to striking midnight than ever before. Midnight, of course, is nuclear war. Most amazing of all is that, considering how long humans have had atomic weapons, nearly a century, and the sheer number of countries, at least nine, which veriably possess a nuclear arsenal, including highly adversarial countries like India and Pakistan,that here has been no further nuclear warfare on Earth since Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945. Thosse bombings still serve as excellent reminders of the nightmarish nature of nuclear warfare. The world has already been irrecoverably polluted with nuceal waste. Our bodies contain radioactive atoms. The human species has perched itself,as itwere,upon an existential precipace. We humans can destroy ourselves,andall live on Earth, in a wide variety of ways. Atomic warfera is only one possibility for self destrucion and extinction. We are the guardians of the Anthropocene, the age of human domination of planet Earth. We are, for better or worse, the caretakers of Earth's ecosystem. Nobody gave us this honor; we assumed it, perhaps unwisely. This is only a very recent, accidental, happenstance phase of the life of this planet.The current indications for the prospects of our long term survival on this planet are not good. Quite the opposite, in fact. We humans appear headed for self extinctions, and towards taking all other life on Earth into oblivion with us. You begin to wonder how many lifeforms on other planets across the universe have evolved, become fearful,mean, and aggressive, and ended up destroying theselves, becoming extinct. More than a few, one might surmise. Perhaps the universe is better off without them them. Maybe the ultimate purpose of life is the self awareness of the universe. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself, said Carl Sagan. Like Goethe said "If thine own value thou wouldst relish, the world with worth thou must embellish." I like to think that my life matters, means something. That's why I like to think that the human species has a long, amazing future in this universe, and is more than a passing, failed experiment of nature. I'll do what I can to help.

Having Faith In History

LAST SUNDAY I attended the small town country Presbyterian church in the dell, along with a total of eleven other people in the building, minister included.The offer of a free ride, the beautiful scenery along this coming Sunday my ntent is to go to the Uniterian Universalist Fellowship, which is my true spiritual home, to the extent that I have one among people.No mattter where I go am am a pantheist,a religiosity which to me seems highly compatible with nearly all other forms of worship. Pantheism is more about admiration, which I prefer to worship. Either way, I cannt lose. the Presbyterians are all friends of mine, they tend towards political liberalism, and the Unitarians are a bunch of egg headed intellectual types, my types, retired professors, graduate students,and the like. I definitely belong there. Their willingness to include any and all forms of religiosity in their system of belief I find extrmely refreshing,intellectually stimulating, a better to approcah religion, a better way to approach the universe and its creator, than mere faith based dogma based upon ancient writings expousing primitive values. Since people of any personal ideology, atheists, Muslims, Hindus, or whichever, are welcome and their religiosities included within the UU worship community,the more the merrier, the more the better.I have attended at least a couple dozen UU services,and haven't heard the name "Jesus" mentioned once, by anyone. And yet, no problem, at least, not with me I am completely, totally, one hundred percent certain that everyone who walks into the UN chapel, or ever has, loves Jesus dearly,loves God equally dearly. I know I do. As for the historical, factual reality of Jess, go read or talk to Bart Ehrman, or anyone of your choosing. Nobody knows for sure whether Joshua ben Joseph actually existed, because there simply are no primary source, direct contact documents or documentation of any sort, attesting to the actual existence of Jesus, like are are, for, say, Abraham Lincoln, et al. The backbone of the historical profession is primary source material, which is nothing other than documents or objects written by or produced by participants in or direct observers of historical events. It is probably safe to assume that most if not nearly all scholars who achieve advanced degrees early Christian history will acknowledge that there is no good evidence, no definitve evidence, of the historical reality of Jesus Christ for whatever, neither he nor any of his thosuands of followers,the people who knew him or saw him or hear him speak, wrote it down. That might strike one as unfortunate at best,tragic and stupid at worst. The Son of God, having come into this world to save humanity, either being illiterate or unconcerned with written documentation of his life, might strike one as strange. Someone makng an extraordinary claim, seemingly quite capable proving proof of this claiem, but choosing not to do so. Why, when establishing a new institution, the most important institution in history, choose to document the event so poorly? It is almost as if Jesus's intention was to sow doubt along with faith, and to make it as difficult as possible for his new procaimed faith to take root and spread. Nothing can boost a new religion than a few well witnessed miracles, and good, verified documentation. The only form of religion which adheres assiduously to the principle of providing proof of all claims of fact is, in point of fact, science, which may or may not be a "religion", depending on one's point of view.

Trump, Limping to the Finish Line

IT APPEARS LIKELY that Trump will strike Iran again soon. It almost seems as if he is going to use an occasional missile attack on Iran to demonstrate his power,his macho determiation to back up his threats,or, whatever. He doesn't rally have to declare war on Iran, and launch an all out, devastating attack reducing the country to rubble, and probably arousing the anger of the world, thereby making things much more complicated for him and for the United States He has the option that he has evidently already chosen; that of hitting a specific target, or launching a missile or bomb and then claiming to have hit the intended military target, no matter what it actually hits. The Epstein files not only do not seem to be going away, it looks as of now as though the Democrats are going to milk them for all they're worth. At least, if they're smart they will. And indeed, in this dy and age, if the current president of the United States previously engaged in sexual misconduct of a shockingly criminal nature, no matter how long ago, it must be revealed to us, the people. Kennedy's was not. Nor was that of all the other presidents, most of whom, it seems likely, engaged in sexual misconduct of one sort or another. Its hard to imagine George Washington committing adultery, although in oint of fact he may well have and if so, was not fundamentally different from most other menofwealth and pwer at the time, or any time. It may be that Trump is the worst offender of all forty seven POTUSes. Kennedy, LBJ, and several others were no slouches, so to speak, in their womanizing. Power, fame, and wealth, are the three qualities in men to whom most women seem attracted,as well as your every day physical attraction. No matter how shocking and sordid whatever revelations about Trump eventually are,the best guess is that his fulct followers will ontinue their persistant behavior of minimizing, ignoring, or distorting the facts pertianing to their icon's behavior, find ways of downplaying or justifying it, and continue as cult members.Sixty percent of the American people now oppose Trump, and they not only oppose him, they despise him. Trump is one of those love 'em or hate 'em people; sixty percent of us despise him with a passionate, burning hatred. I for one had never truly been aware of my capacity for hatred, until Trump. Evidently this is a feature of my being which I had preferred to ignore, but no longer can. As has always been the case with me, I reserve my greatest disgust andcontempt not for Trump, but for his followers, all seventy five million of them, or however many there still are in his apparently shrinking support base. Two potential assassins nearly killed Trump. Arguably, it is a miracle he is still alive. His religious supporters can argue wwith confidence that only God's direct intervention, which got him elected in the first place under unlikely circumstances, have kept him alive to this point. You beign to wonder how low his approval rating can sink, or how it could possible change direction and begin to increase. Invariably, when a president loses the appproval and support of we the people, he never getsit back. The election this November seems destined to either dramatically reduce Trump's support in Congress, or to elect a majority congress of Trump opponents. He'll end his term, in the best case scenario, limping along with only fractional support, accomplishing nothing, and, at long last, doing no harm, for probably the first time in his miserable existence.

Trump, Praising Trump, We, Watching

NO MATTER WHO the president is, whether a reprobate or person of moral nd intellectual substance, it is arguabl important to keep track of what he or she does in general, and to listen to the "State of the Union" speeh in particular. Last night I couldn't do it. Couldn't pull the trigger and take the plunge. My personal revulsion is simply too great. I have long since decided that anything it says, no matter what, is worthless if for no other reason than it said it. And, considering ow Trump has acted and what he has said over the past severel decades, this approach is not at all unreasonable. Without Enduring too much Don, which is to say, more than about five minutes per month, my task is to find out what the so called "president" is doing. There's no alternative. Anybody choosing to ignore Trump, anybody refusing to speak his name, view his image or likeness on television or anyehrer else, is quite factually, inserting head in sand ostrich style, pretending, living in a fantasy land. A certain amount of that is understandable, beyond a certain point, it become harmful to the self and to society, as disonesty always is. But I simply cat abide the cretin, so I resorted to letting the media fill me in after the fact. I suspected the Pedophile - in - Chief to blahter endlessly about his alleged "accomplishments" during the first year of his second term, during every moment of his life, and that, evidently, is essentially what he did. He promoted and bragged about his recent past as president, and proclaimed the state of the nation to be excellent, because and only because of his leadership. In all fairness, this is essentially what all president seem to be, as their time in office drags on, seemingly endlessly. If Trump were challenging an incumbant president under these exact circumstances, he would of course declare the nation to be failing, and declare that it has nearly been destroyed, and that only he, if elected, could repair it. He never deviates from the fascist Hitlerian script, in which his leadership is vitally necessary to not only the survival of the United States, but to the prosperity of it, and to the health and stability of the entire planet, wildlife included. I can only assume that his cult bas, the poorly educated thirty eight percent, lapped it all up like puppies sucking down warm milk. At this point the Trump cult appears indestructable, just as a certain percentage of Germans remained loyal to Hitler to the end, and beyond. The amer this duck becomes, ove rthe next three years, the more dangerou, the more desperately he will try to find ways of remaining in power indefinitaley, for life. The godo news is tha he is nearly eighty, and although nobody, probably including his doctors and himself, knows exactly how good his health is, there are signs that it is not altogether good. Still, we msut do more than fret, spew anger, and pray for his death. I unabashadly want Trumpt to die, the sooner the better, and I feel not a shred fo guilt. He's lived long enough, and done enuugh, to mcuh, harm to others, including the wntire country. The Election lie and insurrection merited, and still merits, indictment, trial, conviction, and execution of this traitor president. Treason pure and simple. There will never come a time when it is acceptable to stop talking about this amazingly vile crime. Trump can and will keep glorifying himself, like a HItler, from now on out. Our responsibility as good Americans is to refuse to accept and to actively oppose the MAGA fascist movement, to destroy it by voting it out of existence, and to get rid of Trump, legally, and as soon as possible.

Making Trump Harmless

I WON'T BE WATCHING the state of the union speech tonight. I am convinced that it will consist primarly and nearly exclusive of propaganda,a long list lf alleged achievements by Trump, a self aggrandizing litany of outright lies. With everybody free to fashion hiso or her own reality and live in it, Trumpers will find a way to find the ranting gibberish inspiring and beautful, profound and true, and the rest of us, America's politically and emotionally sane, will be astonished, outraged, and disgusted with the brazeness and sheer number of lies and wil, unsubstantiated claims of fact. One wouldn't be the least bit surprised to hear the good news that wereeas the war in Europe rages on, the number of casualites has been significantly reduced on both sides - because of Presdent Trump's direct intervention, or whatever. Horse manure of that nature is what we're going to hear. Everybody has a presence in real space and time, most of us have one online. Trumpers love his simplistic English and juvenile reasoning capabilities, for it matches their own. I still haven't started saying what I want to say to Trump supporters generally, what I fully intend to start staying That you, my fellow citizen, are in my opinion doing preciesly the appropriate thing is supporting Trump, because mentally, intellecaully, and morally, you remind me of Trump,and in fact you and he are, in terms of personality characteristcs, nearly identical. Especialy intellectually, in terms of educational and intellectual level. And if some sensitive and perceptive Trumper, a rare breed, happens, like a blind squirrel finding an acorn, happens to dimly preceive that this remark is not only not a complement but indeed is intended to be an insult, cleverly, deceitfully couched like a compliment and is angered by it, that's their problem. If you tell somebody that they remind you of their hero, or favorite politician, shey should feel complimented, shouldn't they?I fully intend to make this point with increasingly frequency over the next three years, and see what happens. "You should support Trump, because not only do you support his policies, but you are nearly identical to him, morally and intellectually". I thought you would and should be flatterd by that, and if you're not, why not?" I intend to find out what I come up with if I tpe in "stupid remarks made by Trump". There must be a sit where all fo the "George Washington capruring airports" type of stuff is stored, and there is a lot of it. Rather than sweepit under a rug, or allowed to lie dormant and ignored in the corner, it should be dusted off, all of it, including the breatest hits, and paraded around. Why? Because Trump's windmill cancer kind of remarks are many, there is an impressive collection of them needing to be preserved for posterior, and becaue they are not flukes, not isolated instances of gagffes. They are mainstreamn, normal, typical Trump, astonishingly. Trump's verbal inanities are no less consistant and persistant those those of Yogi and Caesy Stengal, but far less charming, far less endearing, funny, but in a twisted, unhealthy rather than a charming, funny way. I will, anfer the fact, find out essentially what Trump said. Of course its important. Even a mad tyrant merits attention, arguably, more than anyone. Trum must be vigorously opposed, not ignored. Those who support him are dwindling in number, and keep doins so. The sooner the better, the more lame duck he becomes. Trying to replace him before the elctions is a hopeless pipe dream, not necessarily desirable. At ths point, reducing Trump to harmless irrrelevance is the best we can hope for.

Trump, Going Rogue, Hanging On

THE SUPREME COURT made the obvious ruling, the only ruling which would have made sense. Only Congress has the power, according to the constitution, to make tariff policy. The president does not. And its as simple as that. No matter how heavily the Republicans pack SCOTUS with sycophantic far right wing Trump supporters, even an extremist, skewed right wing court has the good sense to abide by the constitution. They could put nine John Birchers or nine Anthony Scalia's on the court, and some of the decisions, like this one, would still come out the same. And of course Trump, with typical very young childish mentality and emotional immaturity, lashed out at the high court, dirtying up the situation with his usual vitriolic spew. The constitution is so clear that tariff policy, like interstate commerce, is strictly under the control of Congress, that, as usual, there shouldn't even be any discussion of it. It should be, and is, a slam dunk, as they say. Trump trying to usurp the power of Congress and gather unto himself powers of government which properly, clearly belong in the hands of others, has been a Trump pattern of behavior from the very beginning, from the very first day of his administration, when, as you might recall, he began the day by issuing an illegal executive order changing the constiturion, rescinding birthright citizenship, which was instituted by constitutional amendment in 1866. Arbitrarily, unilateraly making laws out of whole cloth, declaring emergenies for no reason other than to grab power illegally, ignoring any laws which threaten to impede implementation of his agenda; all these behaviors are straight out of the fascist handbook, purely the stuff of Hitler and all authoritarian tyrants. As always, the even greater tragedy is that the majority Republican Congress,as is nearly always the case, seems poised to step aside and allow Trump to behave like and become a petty tyrannical dictator, to rule by decree, with their tacit approval. But surely there is a limit to this. Trump's approval rating nationally has suck to a new low, below sixty percent, and if current trends continue, he will soon be attempting to govern in his autocratic way with only a small minority of support from the American people. Congressional resistance and opposition to Der Fuhrer is growing, even among Republicans. Either Trump was purposely testing the waters, seeking the extent of his potential power, or he and his legal advisors harbor seriously distorted notions of what, precisely, the limits of presidential power really are. Probably a litle bit of both. Despite their tendency to rubber stamp all of Trump's misguided agenda, they, the Republicans, have shown a willingness, when forced into it, to distance themselves from Trump's more irrational actions, to draw the line before Trump gets totally out of hand. The Epstein files process is going to be played out. The public wants the entire sordid affair to be fully, publicly revealed. Besides making grand pronouncements about alien beings and attacking Iran, Trump, we must rest assured, has a whole host of actions at the ready for the only purpose of preserving and protecting his power. But he cannot make the Epstein files vanish. Its too late for that. The less puopular he becomes, the stronger his oposition at home and overseas, the more desperate he will become, and the more willing to take extreme, irrational action. He will not go down without his flaming martyrdom, and when he does, he will try to take as many of us as he can with him, including the entire country.

Trump, UFOs, Epstein, and Us

PRESIDENT TRUMP, with his finger always on the pulse of American mainstream culture, wisely decided to finally put to an end perhaps the most mysterious and intriguing controversy and mystery in modern America: does the American government have evidence or proof that UFOS not only exist, but are actually spaceships bringing intelligent life forms to Earth, visiting, or perhaps paving the way for future conquest and colonization? And wny not? Why not talk UFOs? This seems lke a good move for Trump. After all, who but the most honest, sincere, transparent president would even consider making this profound knowledge known to the American people, instead of only by a select few presidents and military personnel, and maybe Elon Musk? So Trump decided to finally reveal what the government knows, and it turns out, perhaps disappointingly, that there is nothing to see, nothing to show, no aliens nor indications of the existence of any. I don't don't knw for sure what in reality was made public, if anything, how many UFO files were released or will be realeased by the administration. So far, the media seems to be rather quiet and disinterested in it. From the beginning, the overwhelming probability has been that the government has nothing secretly hidden, no bodies, no mangled or intact spacecraft from other planets, no tangible evidence of any kind. The probable reason for this is that there isn't any, that there aren't any alien beings visiting Earth, either observaing it and us from concealment, or living among us, disguised as humans, doing whatever they came here to do, study us, take control of us, exterminate us, whatever. Over the past fifty years, the evolution of the UFO phenomenon has led to a fully developed UFO culture, with a huge capitalistic component and a large and devoted interested public to which to market. If and when you courageously try to tell true believers that, when push comes to shove, at the end of the day, what it comes down to is that there simply isn't even a single scrap of good evidence for the existence of inetellligent life in spaceships in the Earth's atmosphere or anywhere near Earth. And yet, the UFO fad, hobby, industry, craze, or whatever it is, abides, unabated. Of course by now it has long since fallen into the nefarious clutches of the American marketing industry, and Madison Avenue is humming right along, exploiting a new sucker every minute. UFOlogy has become embedded within the far larger alternative cosmic paradigm community, fad,industry, whichever, which includes radio programs heard around the world, big time book publishing, all of it. It may be that Trump, by announcing what he did when he did, misplayed the whole scenario, lost out on a golden opportunity. Maybe. Better, perhaps, to initiate drama in which Trump is being stonewalled by the military or other government organs and agencies, and has to engage in a great struggle against "the deep state" to get permission and gain admission to and get to the bottom of the whole UFO question, confronts and defeats a deeply entreched government secrecy conspiracy - and prevails as Trump the hero in the end, assuring the American people that, indeed, we've nothing to fear, for they do not exist, or if they do, are not here. He could go even farther,and some chosen whistle blower could come forth with stolen government documents, exposing an alien presence and threat which was destroyed by Trump alone, out of the public spotlight, but a titanic struggle nonetheless. And if you don't think that Trump would or will go to such lengths to distract from the Epstein files, think again. After all, he appears to be perfectly willing to get the United States into a war to use as a distraction from the Epstein files..

Applying Tariffs Properly, (Not Trumpically)

THE GOOD NEWS that SCOTUS had rear ended POTUS, had struck down El Trumpo's idiotic, precipitously and capriciously applied, unwisely conceived and implemented tariffs, filled me with great joy, as it must certainly have many others. All tariff policy should be carefully thought out, with constant and copious advice and guidance from experts, implemeted only with the greatest due considertaion, and targeted, very specifically, at specific industries and countries, for very real, expedient purposes, for economically beneficial reasons. They should not be implemented at the delusional whim of a mad petty tyrant throwing darts at a styrofoam target while admiring his orange hairpiece and thumbing through "Playboy". For some idiotic reason, contemporary American conservatism has taken up with the extremist, insane notion that there is no such thing as experts or expertise, that one citizen's answers are as good as any other conservative citizen's. Intellectual populism. Education level means nothing, and in fact only gets in the way of good, clear, conservative thinking by cluttering up the mind with a bunch of pseudo intellectul elitest nonsense. This attitude is a sort of warped, twisted, misguided understanding of what, precisely, "Populism" actually is. Populism, in a nutshell, is nothing other than the sacred principle that everybody has a right to participate in the public, town square conversation, to have and freely share his or her own thoughts, ideas, and imput, and to be listened to respectfully, if nothing else, if not with actual agreement. Populism is democracy from the ground up, not from the top down. We the people, the teeming masses of the land of economic exploitation of everything, are given, by our own insistence, the awesome responsibility of governing ourselves. Populism is no more intended as a declaration that all ideals and beliefs are created equal than deomocracy is meant to imply that all citizens, regardless of personal character or talent, are equally qualified to participate in popular goverment or to assume positions of political leadership. Herr Trump, with the full approval of SCOTUS, Congressional Republicans, and about half of the American people, has packed like sardines the U.S. Supreme Court with three hard right wing extremist conservatives, for the intended purpose of remaking the American legal in the image of far right wing conservative extremist ideologues. A pure neoliberal capitalist economic system, excluding all governent regulation. Christian nationalism. Mass deportations of the working dark colored working class. Unspoken but glaring, obviously implied: an American society which reverts to traditional but currently fading white Christian supremacy. Packing the high (on drugs?) Court, as well as the entire federal jusiciary, with flaming far right ideologues fashioned in the image of Rush Limbaugh's ghost, is a very real conspiracy, (see: Newt Gingrich, David Brock) dating back to the horror, shock, and outrage of Republicans when Obama was elected, an event which precipitated a secret gathering of the political right leadership in 2009. What they came up with was a strategy of fierce, unrelenting aggression. Obams's ascension scared American conservatism straight into the arms of the John Birch society, within whose comforting grasp it yet remains. Maybe sometime soon the Democrats will figure out that Ali beat Foreman not by rope-a-doping the entire fight, but rather, by coming out and fighting just about the time when Foreman, exhausted from his on savage attacks, was beginning to wear down.

Turning Up the Pressure On Trump

SOMEWHERE I SAW, or somebody told me, that Trump's approval rating had fallen to twenty seven percent. I hope that's true, but am skeptical. It seems certain thaqt it has indeed declined from its traditional forty two perent or so, which is the number, possibly inflate, that has most often been given during his two disaster fests. Beyond doubt, this is the time to tur opposition to Trump up to a fever pitch, to get over the hump, to hammer teh nails into the coffin of his political career, the MAGA movement, this current strain of fudamentalist evaangelical Christianity married to and making strange bedfellows with far right wing political conservatism.Like Barry Goldwater and Billy Graham both emphatically said, we don't want a strong powerful right wing Republican party married to asssociated with dominated or influenced by evangelical fudamentalist Protestant Christianity. No only do the atheistic far left wing lunatic scum not want this, neither do all good Christian conservative Americans, whether they know it or not, if they are patriotic, truly love their country, and want what's best for America. You sure as hell don't want the Christian religion to formally, legally be made teh official state religion of these United States. Period. Trump's recent, recycled proclaamation of his Christian faith rings more hilariously hypocritical than ever. The thing to do is to mockingly laugh, sneer at, and ridicule it, sarcastically, as viciously as possible, in public, on social media, everywhere. This is precisely what the Prevaricaotor - Chief deserves, and really, needs, other than lifetiem incarceration. What I am telling my fellow anti-Trumpers is that now is the time to swoop in like eagles for the kill and vultures for bone picking, then maggots for final consumation. To merely present such widespread popular, media and political-legislative oppostion to trump, including the Democrats winning the midterms, decisively, is the corrrect formula, just what the doctor ordered for he preservation of democracy in America. It can be surmised that every anti-Trumper, bearing in mind that sixty percent of the American are in that category, not only opposes Trump, but does so vehemently, vociferously, strongly, not merely causually. The anti-Trump movement has a lot of substance and strength, and is formidable, which is the reason why Trump is already resorting to desperate measures, attempting to cling to his shrinking base of support, and indeed, the presidency. With each day it look slike pressure is growing to release the complete Epstein files, fully, compleely, unabridged, unredacted. The ANTIFA movement, which is another name for the anti-Trump movement, is strengthening sufficiently to shut down the Trump agenda, in its entirety. When you consider that the judicial system has essentially already shut it down, our duty is to fully support the judiacary as fundamental to any patriotic American, even as it uses sound legal reasoning to point out the unconstitutionality of all the Trump tyranical insanity by decree that it has alredy relgated to the garbage sack. My ultimate dream, that the Trump administration will become aware of me personally, and will consider me a sufficient threat to its poer and existence that it starts trying to and maybe kills me or tries to discredit me somehow still seems far away, probably unachievable, beyond my grasp, an impossible dream. But, you never know. A journey of a thousand miles, etc. Whatever you're doing to oppose or even get rid of Trump, keep doing it, and do more of it.

Damning With Faint Praise

DONALD TRUMP"S remarks about Jesse Jackson were, unsurprisingly, a perfect example of "damning with faint praise". He knew that for the sake of appearances alone he had to say something, anything free of his usual acidic vitriole and rampant, but subtle implicit racism. He almost made it seem as if the two of them drank beer together,palled around a bit, shared a golf cart.Two peas in a perfecty harmonious pod, Donnie and Jesse. Two galant crusaders for racial and economic justice. A firm, enduring frienship based on mutual respect and admiration."Quite a character. Quite a character, that Jesse. A good guy." Gotta give Trump credit. I was certain that he would remain silent, would have nothing to say. I was wrong. How and why I would expect Trump to remain on the sidelines and out of the spotlight by missing such a golden opportunity to redirct the spotlight towards himself is beyond my comprehension. A momentary lapse of good judegment is my excuse. And, as always, it probably would have been better had he had the good sense to say nothing, but that,of course, is far beyond his capabilities. Donnie always has to weigh in, always has to find a way to make something which has nothing to do with him about, and only about, his glorious, shining, stinking self. Drawing atention to himself at every opportunity is a narcissist's stock in trade, and its what makes Trump Trump. "He shines and stinks like dead mackeral by moonlight", as one founding father said of another, and as I can't seem to stop quoting. The quote is just too good to let lie. But in the midst of his usual self aggrandizement, he found a way to mention Jesse Jackson, and I'll give him that.And he didn't utter a single syllable about shit hole counries in Africa, didn't use the "N" word, at least not unless it was "redacted", as we say these days, edited out. You can never be too sure. In private conservation, Trump never fails to refer to African-Americans as "niggers". That, according to everyone who has ever written a book about him using primary source material. I never in amillion years would have know precisely how close the two menwere, and how much Trumpofa boost Donald gave to Jackson's career. What, the civil rights leader spent a night of two in Trump Tower,and in the Lincoln bedroom, correct? Probably included room service. Trump's obsession with being on the winning team at all costs impels him inmany instances to dwell among his emenies,and to break bread with them. The next step is the announcement of the itinerary for Jackson's funeral,time, place, guest list, and so forth. You can bet your bottom dollar that Donald Trump will be seated in the front row, amidst a sea of black faces the sort of which he has long held in abject contempt, looking all pious, deep in mourning. He's not half bad at feigning emotion, like any good politician. And so I surrrender, with feigned dignity but very real revulsion and disgust, to the inevitable reality that, after all, everything in the currrent incarnation of this parallel political universe is all about and only about Donald J.Trump. Like John Adams said to his wife when Thomas Jefferson stole the election of 1800 and the presidency from her husband "My darling, if he wants it that badly, let him have it." I repeat that story ad nauseum too. i just can't seem to let it go. So let Trump have his moment of vainglorious stolen glory in the sunshine of his own refleced light. We are free to turn away in disgust. Jesse Jackson shall live forever, in our hearts and minds. Trump will sink beneath the cess pool of his own igmoinous, perfidious making, relegated to history's hall of scum and shame. Jesse Jackson will shine on forever as a beacon of social, economic, and racial justice, far from the dark but mercifully short shadow cast by Donald Trump's rotting, stinking dead indecency.

Speaking Trumpese

DONALD TRUMP was explicit, to the degree that he ever can be.No bones about it. He is the greatest current president in American history. This, objectively, is beyond dispute. Unmentioned is that he is also the worst current president in American history, and perhaps most fortunate of all, the only current president in American history. That's just the way he talks. When George H.W. Bush proudly proclaimed the United States of America the greatest nation in the entire country, we scratched our heads, read between the lines, consulted our dictionairies of modern American Bushisms, and finally, perhaps somewhat miraculously, got his point.That's what we are forced into doing with our modern Republican presidents. The eloquence of the self educated Abraham Lincoln is a relic of bygone days. People in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had good penmanship, they spelled correctly, andwhen they wrote and spoke, they made some semblance of good sense.That's what happens when paper is dearly expensive,andinorderto put pen to paper it isnecessary to dip pen in ink,over and over again.You make the msot of what you have. We seem to have reached the point, in all our affluent surplus, where we can afford to make the least. Donald Trump would be eligible for membership in the Yogi Berra association of butchered verbal expression, were it not for the fact that Yogi was a genuinely good guy, irresistably loveable,and of the highest moral quality, the precise opposite of the reprobate who dares think of himself, laughably, as a great leader.When you repeat Yogi-isms, you smile with love and admiration. When you look to Bush - either one will do - you roll your eyes, and wonder why and what if. When you think about Ronald Reagan, another master at the art of English language butchery, you cntempate his mental decline in his second term, much like that of Joe Biden during his first. But there is something far more sinister and lesss endaring about the way Trump's makes a mockery of coherent self expression. It aint over till its over, it gets late early at Yankee Stadium. Nobody ever eats at that restaurant because its always crowded. These are the stuff of beloved,lengendary linguistic abusers. Both Bushes had their sometimes charming style of spoken idiocy. Trump's word salads are of a different order and magnitude altogether. For one thing, they seem to go on endlessly, like a minor league outfielder kicking the ball all over the left center field gap while runners circle the bases in droves. They go on, and on, extended beyond mere phrases, sentences, or paragraphs. Like a fumble that nobody seems to want to recover, or a loose basketball rolling in slow motion, going out of bounds while ten tall people scramble and dive like gophers into holes, canceling each other out in abject futility. Trump does more than merely innocently, humorously torching good grammer and usage. He garbles volumes. You can, and it has been done,put a Bush quote of the day on a tear off calander, and help people to a mmorning giggle over coffee and donuts. With Trump the temptations tends more toward a head shake and sigh of resignation.True, his gaffs are humorous. All the basics are there. But when you sort out the substance,what there is of it, from the flotsam and jetsome, you go away feeling hollow, somehow cheated. We sole conolation is remindful of what my sister says about her cooking: "It aint good,but there's a lot of it". And, one might assume, a lot more to come.

Jesse Jackson, Making Me Better

I SAW JESSE JACKSON speak on a college campus in 1991, where I was teaching. My girlfriend and I attended together, and, I confess, I was much more excited about my date than about Jesse Jackson. Go figure, as we say. In an arena seating about nine thousand people, there were probably half that many people in attendance, and my date and I were among the very few "white" people there, sprinkled throughout the sea of black faces. I recall being a bit nervous, hoping we would be accepted, not regarded as posers, wearing some feigned, prominently displayed racial equality on our sleeves for appearances only. In retrospect, I needn't have worried. I must assume that when Jackson appeared on campuses up north, the crackers came out in much greater numbers. But in the deep south, whitie boy stayed home, probably sulking. Only the radical liberals dared venture forth to listen to an uppity N word griping about some imaginary racial inequality. My mother, who was born in 1920, was raised around racists, and hated racism passionately. She had more influence over me than my overtly racist father, thank heaven, who was brilliant, but should have known better, and knew better. When Jesse walked through the door and into the basketball arena, he was flanked by no fewer than a dozen very large, young, athletic looking African-American men, all wearing suits and ties. Jesse wasn't going to take any chances, play any games, or cater to anyone's misplaced sensitivities. He meant business, which was immediately evident. The most handsome group of men I had or still have ever seen, except perhaps when Elvis Presley or Neil Diamond appeared on stage alone. Jackson lost no time getting to the point. The theme of his speech was, and its title should have been and maybe was "they work every day." By this time the reverend had long since abandoned his attacks on racism only, and had expanded his repertoire to the working class, all pigmentations included. He had come to realize that the root problem is more comprehensive than mere racism, that it exrended to the entire working class, the exploited, largely forgotten part of the American people who do the actual work. Paraphrased, he said: "Tonight, when we finish here, we will all go back to our comfortable homes, our comfortable, well paying jobs, and we will carry on with our comfortable, privileged lives". He well good and well that he was speaking about a class of Americans to which a select, chosen few people of color had been admitted, by reason of some talent, some ability to entertain, or by sheer chance of birth or marriage. He knew his audience, the sons and daughters of the upper midddle class of white privilege. The well educated class. Nobdoy there was dressed in the clothing of the working class. No thread bare coveralls, no brown uniforms. "That's when they, the workers, will take our place here in this arena, which will need a good cleaning. And they will clean up our mess, and noody will know or care about what they did. We won't even bother to imagine what this beautiful building would look like, what it would become, without their deovted, crucial assistance. They alone make our presence here possible." He said more than this, but he needn't have. He had made his point, and we, the privileged few, got the point. We left the arena that night changed,somehow. I for one have never been the same. That was the end of my date. My date and I had done enough, heard enough.. I grew that night, in ways that even the reverend Jackson would never fully know or understand. I became a better person because of what he said to me, what he did for me. As Goethe said; "Confronted with great merit, the only resistance is love". The night I listened to Jesse jackson, I became a better person, and for that, I shall always be grateful.

Doing Something

"FASHION IS A THING I CARE mighty little about, except when it happens to run just exactly according to my own notion, and I was mighty nigh sending out my book without any preface at all, until a notion struck me, that perhaps it was necessary to explain a litle why and wherefore I had written it. Most of authors seek fame, but I seek for justice."... When writer's block, which is a very real affliction, afflicts one, one recourse is to quote the first sentence in the autobiography of David Crockett, American hero. The historian who wrote the introduction to this quaint classic American treasure pointed out that heroes are made, they are not born. Quite correct. At the Unitarian church I attend, the pre service disussion group, which always chooses something interesting to discuss, centered around "heroes"; what one is, what characterizes one, etc. When the topic turned to female heroes, I nominated Abagail Adams, a personal hero of mine, who among other acts of heroism wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson after he in effect stole the presidency from her husband, in which she said: "I still love you, but once upon a time I respected you."...You go, girl. I left the discussion exhilarated, proud of myself for having, for the fist time, contributed something. I try to write and publish at least one page of nonfiction prose on this website daily. Sometimes I fail. When that happens I feel useless, idiotically guilty (guilt, I believe, like jealousy, is bullshit). I write and publish an essay, (a good essay I hope) nearly every day for more than fourteen years,six thousand essays, I miss one day in a blue moon, and I feel guilty?! As we say: "gimme a break!"...Forgiving one's self can be the most difficult and is the most important form of forgiving of all. So stop with the emotioal garbage nonsense, I exhort myself. There comse a time when you simply have to get your ass up off the couch, and go get some exercise. Just do it, as Nike tells us. Blame nobody, expect nothing, do something. Get up, get out, get better. Goethe, my main man as anybody who knows me knows, said: "There is no better way to blunt a resolution than to keep talking about it." Thus this essay becomes an exercise in stream of consciousness, guilt free. The page is filling up with words, and I am, I was the one who put them there. Well, and then, so be it. If nothing else,I will have done something, will have broken the chains of my self inflicted paralysis of mind and soul, and can at least say: "I did something, I produced something" In my favorite televsion ad, Michael Jordan is walking sullenly into the locker room, all black leather, carrying a gym bag. He is talking to himself. He says: "During my lifetime I have lost three hundred basketball games. I have missed more than nine thousand shots. Seventy five times my teammates have relied on me to make the game winning shot, and twenty five times I missed the shot. During my lifetime, I have failed, over, and over, and over again. And that is why I succeed....And so this page is filling up with words. Only a few minutes ago I thought I had "writer's block",and indeed I did, but only because I thought I did. I have no idea whether these words will benefit anyone, other thanas a sort of mental laxative for myself. I'm gald I contributed something, however meager, to the discussion group at church. And I am gladder that I wrote this essay, inadequate though it likely is. Verbal garbage though it may be, a lost game, a missed shot, I took the shot, and can do nothing more than that.

Trump, Solving Problems

WITH EVIDENT PRIDE AND JOY, President Trump announced that with the rising stock market the 401Ks of American military personnel were appreciating quite well. This, despite the inconvenient fact that the American military does not offer 401Ks to service members. Oops. Faux pas. Not to worry. There is nothing at all unusual about this. Our president is an old pro at this game,in which he says something idiotic, then either denies having said it, or claims that somebody else did. The self absorbed addlepated chief executive routinely fabricates a seperate, alternative reality, for whatever demented reason, usually one in which he escapes laughable ignominy only to emerge as the heroic protagonist, in his own mind if nowhere else. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that he sincerely if mistakenly believes that he authored, sponsored, and skillfully maneuvered through Congress and signed into law a provision extending 401K benefits to all members of the military. Or that he knows he did no such thing, but likes to think he did, or prefers to pretend that he did. Sort of like one of his election fantasy things with which we are all so painfully familiar. Its anyone's guess, as always. Whatever the sordid case may be, five'll get you ten that his cult followers, no less delusional than he, duly impressed by his "achievement", imaginary or not, will tout it as undeniable proof that the Donald deserves a third term, all constitutional considerations aside, the founding document be damned. He may or may not be seriously mentally ill, but you can bet your bottom dollar that He is utterly corrupt, capable of anything, as is well known. He shines and stinks like dead mackerel by moonlight, as one founding father said of another. Our luminous president's precarious perspicacity is demonstrably not limited to merely imaginary pension programs. His expertise, we now learn, extends to geology. This reminds me of a friend of mine, who has a degree in marketing, who swore that cliamte change is a hoax, and said that he knows this becasue he is a geologist. I still haven't made that connection.I hope and assume I never shall. But, I digress...You'll recall Mr. Trump's optimistically assesing rising sea levels as nature's way of providing new opportunities for developing ocean front property. (as always, you can't make this stuff up). He now proposes that what with hundreds of active volcanoes distributed all over God's green Earth, it would be expedient to dump tons of cement straight down into their hollow cones, filling them with hardening concrete, plugging them up,thereby trapping all future lava while the molten mess has a chance to cool down, and reconsider doing damage to people and property. Don the Con's impressive resume' of problem solving includes his forthcoming cure for windmill cancer, Covid 19 treatments and cures which include drinking bleach and using ultraviolent radiation in a suppository,and his greatest prescription of all; simply letting the virus spread without medical resistance, culling the weak from the stong while the flu like symptoms run their course. If only all this were no more than a dystopian science fiction novel, and perhaps it should be, but it isn't. Bear in mind that we have nearly three more years of solutions by Trump. Einstein allegedly said that there are two things that are infinite, human stupidity and the universe, but that he wasn't sure about the universe. We know for certain that Friedrich Schiller said that against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. True enough, and our silver lining is that this reality takes the heat off of us for our pathetic inability to do a damned thing about it ourselves.

Denying Science, At Great Peril

IN HIS SEMINAL book "The Demon Haunted World", published just before his death in 1995, the late Carl Sagan provides a compelling examination of the modern preoccupation with pseudo science. In our increasingly well educated era, a not insignificant segment of the population,is apparently unable or unwilling to understand and come to terms with the revealed, verified realities of the world and the universe. Sagan points out that there is no shortage of intelligence among the masses. There is, however, a shortage of scientifically well educated students. In this regard our education system has failed us. We have turned out more than a mere few generations of poorly educated citizens. When a charismatic leader openly proclaims his love of the poorly educated, sycophantic cult like followers eagerly assemble at his throne of willful, lazy ignorance, their choice to eschew education in favor of cheap entertainment fully reinforced and vindicated. Maybe science classes, particularly chemistry and physices, should be required courses, not elective. Maybe pseudo science is perceived, albeit incorrecly, as being more fun, more exciting. It is of course neither, but it is simplistic, easy to comprehend and digest, and embrace. The poorly educated, who have become a celebrated demographic in the United States of Avoicance, take the lazy way, the easy way out. Its cool to be dumb. Simply spout a few conspiracy theories laced with pseudo science and you have the making of a best seller or rapt audience on the A.M radio stations which market, under the cover of night, this garbage like they market far right wing dispensers of hatred and lies by day. The money hungry media, which relies on the steady income of abloated,over priced advertising industry, happily spoon feeds a credulous, gullible public the precise intellectual opiate it so desperately craves: pseudo science fiction and fantasy, attractively packaged and presented as credible information. Certainly it is far easier and more immediately emotionally fulfilling to immerse a lay mind in the salve of escape entertainment rather than slogging our way through the hours of lectures, textbooks, and examinations necesary to put one's self on a firm footing with the ostensibly enormously complex universe as it really is. Imagine the shattering experience of conversing, or trying to have an intelligent conversation with a climate change denier, as he moves the downward facing open palm of his hand in an undulating roller coaster motion in front of your face, signifying that climate change is cyclical, and that the cycles recycle according to their own natural causes, without any human intervention or influence. The message is tragically clear,the product of an opaque mentality. Imagination him telling you, with a condescending smirk, in all seriuosness, without a trace of doubt, that teh Earth'sclimate is alwasy changeing, and has always changed, and alwasys will, regardless of human activity. One trillion tons of carbon, injected into the atmosphere by humans, thus becomes irrelevant, even imaginary, or worse, a hoax, a conspiracy among the world's radical liberals, a pretext to take control of government,destroy all economic freedom, and to sustain the enormous corporate profits generated by the fossil fuel industry. Ironically, it is the conservative capitalists, not the socialistic tree hugging liberals who seek to sustain forever their sacred corporate money making machine. No, the Earth is not so huge, and we humans are not so weak and small as to make any impact by us on the world's ecosystem impossible. we burn down huge forests, turn rivers into lakes, and our cities can be seen from outer space. There shall remain of our cities but the wind that blew through them. Astray within their hollow cement shells,our descendants will marvel at the stupidity of their ancestors, for truly, against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.

Cleaning Up

THE GANGES RIVER, which arises high in the Himalayas and flows for hundreds of miles along the border separating India and Pakistan, is among the world's largest, longest, and most polluted waterways. Garbage and sewage is cast into the waters upstream, where swimming is possible but inadvisable, partly due to strong, unpredictable currents, deep parts, and whirlpools. As the river makes its way to its ultimate destination it become ever more polluted, as the millions of people crowded into filthy cities lining its shores almost casually toss their waste material into its sacred waters. You could almost walk across it, without a bridge. (Those of a certain age might remember when Lake Eerie caught fire.) China's Yangtze river suffers a similar afflication. It is debatable as to which nation on Earth is most guilty of failing to protect the delicate ecosystem of planet Earth, and which layer of it has been and is being the most abused by humans; Earth, air, or water. Any bet placed on any of the above would beat the odds in Vega. The United States is certainly a front running candidate. As to which of the world's great rivers endures teh msot mistreatment, again, your pick is as good a anyone's, although generally much progress has been made in cleaning up rivers, lakes, and oceans,but not nearly enough. We shouldn't have to be doing the cleaning up. We the people of planet Earth hould have had the common sense to never have defecated where we dine, so to speak. We have plenty of places and opportunities to properly dispose of our wretched refuse on the planet where harm done would either be ameliorated or eliminated altogether, but we have only one planet to pollute. Even nuclear waste can be buried deep beneath the surface of the Earth, where its deadly harm can at least be mitigated or ignored if we prefer. Long before we were fully aware of atmospheric carbon pollution and resulting climate change we were well aware of the, harm being done by plastic grocery sacks, toxic waste dumps, inadequae sweage systems. Amazing, the amount of damage to our planetary nesting place we do by producing more than eight billion of us, with many more to come, and by giving ourselves a blank check to do with our thrown away materials whatever our whimsical nature impels us to do. We have known better all along. Whatever is most convenient. We know that we are threatening to bring about the extinction of the human species, and that we are already causing the extincion of thousands of other species of aninals. We have until recently been relatively unconcered with the mess we have made and continue to make. Our recently enhanced awareness of our own folly is an encouraging sign, a sign of our dawning awareness of the absolute necessity keeping the kitchen and the latrine separated. (Even George Washington had to be taught this.) High schol "ecology clubs" used to pick up garbage in public places on weekends for extra credit. Now, they and the rest of us must do much more. Hysterical warnings about our behavior and the future of the planet are, of course, a dime a dozen, but are worth every penny, and then some. We can never give ourselves sufficient warnings, take too many proactive measures to protect the environment, or write too many books and essays on this subject. Like Issac Asimov and Frederick Pohl warned in their 1991 book "Our Angry Earth", the alarms are sounding, the red warning lights are flashing. And yes, time is running out, and no matter how many times we repeat this redundantly, it becomes more urgently true by the day. All the damage we have done can be undone. High school environmental protection clubs are a good start. The end game will consist of our decision to begin treating the Earth like a home, rather than a waste dump.

Losing our Religion; The Twilight of the Gods

THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION, said Goethe, began as an abortive political revolution which turned moral. The uprising was against Roman power and suppression. It failed for the usual reasons; lack of organization, weapons, and suficient political will. All turned out well for the faith, in that it spread around the world and to this day illuminates the lives of more than two billion people. Its actual origins are deeper in history than that, dating back, in fact, to the dawn of history itself. All religions, approximately four thousand of them, have the same genesis; in the human imagination and ability to reimagine an incomprehensible universe in anthrophmorphic, all too human terms, in the image of humanity. God becomes a superhuman entity, and we his chosen children of the light. All religions begin with their votaries calling their invented beliefs "the light", or "the truth". The sun is the center, the focal point of all religion. God has many names. This is illustrated by a science fiction short story by Arther C. Clarke "The Nine Billion Names of God". When the last, final name of the last god is spoken, the universe, satisfied that it now knows itself, willingly, mercifullly dies. There is almost always a "messiah". Our ancient ancestors correctly perceived their own fragility, and the fragile, makeshift nature of human existence. The anthropomorphic deities were nonetheless somewhat emotionally fragile themselves, taking after their inventors, and required their own nourishment of the soul, in the form of human formalized adoration, worship, an exprssion of which isinherit in every ceremony ever held by every society which ever feared and failed to understand the essential harmony of nature, and in most cases harmlessness of thunder and lightening. We invent superior beings and set them atop Mount Olympus where we can relegate them to the status of observers who once upon a time intervened directly and constantly in human affairs, but gradually withdrew from our daily lives as our understanding of them grew and perhaps made them fearful that their fraudulant nature would be exposed, and their power over us, purely psychological, would dissipate and vanish altogether. Religion inspires and comforts people, the only real reasons for its existence. We are now in the twilight of our gods. Having largely outgrown them, we simply do not need them anymore. Though many people still cling to traditional religious beliefs, the sweeping growth of science, with our attendant advance in our knowledge of the universe, is inexorably reducing our pantheon of gods, for they have become relics of a benighted past, and we simply do not need them anymore. We should celebrate and not lament the passing of our ancient omnipotent, omnipresent heavenly benefactors. Thomas Jefferson,two hundred years ago, called relgious belief "our modern superstition". He understood that humanity's capacity to understand the world through our own faculties was freeing us from the need to assuage our fears and ignorance-based beliefs about the world, by replacing them with explanations for phenomena which are coherent, observable, verifiable, and ultimately far more comforting and satisfying than our previous reliance on fabricated narratives. As a species we are growing up, outgrowing our need for the comforting crutches of religious superstition. We are entering the twilight of the gods, and giving birth to a newand better way of understanding our world and ourselves. Childhood's end. We are yet unsure precisely how to adopt to and evolve with our new found freedom from the mental bondage of our inferior prior beliefs. For better or for worse, we will think of something.