Elucidating The Facts About Mr. Kavanaugh

BRETT KAVANAUGH quite predictably denies it all, as such men always do, and in his denial is it implicit that a very successful woman with a career as a college professor and an evidently fulfilling family life would somehow be motivated to fabricate a wild tale about his having made a very impressive, concerted effort to rape a young woman in high school, which was long ago in some ways, not so long ago in other ways. her version adds p, in time, place, and various corroborations. She underwent years of therapy, and talked about it with her husband years ago, which eliminates the eleventh hour hit job theory on a Supreme Court nominee by vengeful liberal Democrats and new media conspiratorial types. Sorry, Alex Jones. Too bad, Mr. President. No conspiracy tweets this time please, they would fall too flat. The lady would have kept publicly quite about it for years for all the usual reasons: shame, fear of retaliation and humiliation, the anxiety of standing in the spotlight. The"Me Too" movement, and Kavanaugh's sudden rise to impending national influence motivated her, quite naturally. The victim's behavior since the alleged incident and recently tends to strongly confirm her story, and at least a few members of the Senate Judiciary committee will doubtless agree, and they will slow down the process. Everything we do as humans is characteristic of who we are. Everything we do matters, no matter who long ago we did it; that's why high school matters long after we leave it, and the reunions continue. There is no statute of limitations on the moral implications of our behavior. Maybe it is characteristic of Brett Kavanaugh to commit attempted rape one time while drunk in high school, and to never do so again. Perhaps not. perhaps like so many powerful high status men in America, Brett kavanaugh is a serial sexual predator, like the person who nominated him. Judge Kavanaugh has pursued, and continue to pursue a career in which transparency, the exposure of facts, and the pursuit of equal justice under law are paramount. Now is the time to dig deeper into Mr. Kavanaugh's past, factually, and his character. due deliberation by the United States Senate is mandated. No more rushing his nomination through in haste, no more refusal to submit all facts and documents to thorough scrutiny. presumably even his supporter will accept this simple truth.

Saving Ourselves By Ignoring the Truth

WE RESIST THE TRUTH only because we fear we might perish if we accepted it. That, in so many words, was articulated by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the undisputed prince of European literature. how true it is. If you think otherwise, consider this. Each year thirty five thousand Americans and one million people world wide die in automobile wrecks. To quote Casey Stengal, you could look it up. yet, onward we drive, billions of us, unconcerned. Automotive culture is a life and death lottery. To us, its worth it. Its worth it to lose one million people per year as the price we pay for our cars. Our avoidance of truth consists in the fact that we never admit to that obvious fact. We do not call for an immediate halt to the mass slaughter; we accept it, cooly. Scoff if you wish, or choose not to "look at it that way". It remains true. The truth is, the truth we ignore, is that we the human race is perfectly willing to trade one million innocent dead for the convenience of our cars. To accept that reality would be uncomfortable, so, we "don't look at it that way." Temper your angry disagreement with me; I'm just the messenger boy. We ignore climate change, as a species, except for a lot of hot air, a lot of talk. we really do not care, because it does not impact our daily little lives. The truth is we don't give a damn, and we casually endure our six month summers in Minnesota, ninety degrees in Sweden, daily flooding in Florida, weird weather, because we really don't suffer from it, like our poor descendants will. Let the Marshall islands sink! By the time the planet becomes uninhabitable, we'll all be dead, and Al gore's inconvenient truth will be buried with us. Football season is here in America, and how I, along with millions of other people,love it. So do the players, who are starting to retire earlier to avoid dementia later in life. We resist changing the rules of the game t make it safe, but less violent and exciting. Over half of all former football players suffer from concussion dementia, and the outrage and panic we should be be using to fundamentally change the sport is utterly lacking from our interests. who cares? The truth is easy to ignore. And in America, does nobody really give a tinker's damn about opioid addiction and death, domestic violence, or gun violence, all of which ravages our culture, and bring devastating destruction to millions of lives? Certainly not those among who have not suffered because of it! we are fortunate to have the psychological freedom to ignore the truth when we choose, because Goethe was right; we resist the truth only because we fear we might perish if we accepted it, and we very well might, but, fortunately, we do not have to find out.

Moving From Right To Left

FIFTY YEARS AGO it was illegal to be homosexual in America. it was punishable b incarceration in a single occupancy prison cell. During my childhood, the nineteen sixties, if you really wanted to insult someone, you called him a "queer" or in our neighborhood "queer bait". I swear I had no idea what they were talking about until I was swell into my teens. It was all incomprehensible to me. I knew only that these words meant something that you most definitely did not want to be. Now, not only is homosexuality legal, gays and lesbians are out of the closet and standing at the alter, exchanging wedding vows with the blessing of the state if not the church. Societal attitudes about homosexuality have demonstrably liberalized. When social security was created in 1935, America's conservative community warned of a communist takeover, and accused FDR of taking orders from Moscow. Now, conservative seniors gladly deposit their monthly social security checks, just like the rest of us, and social security has properly been given with practically eliminating poverty among America's elderly. Once upon a time marijuana was associated with "reefer madness", was demonized and criminalized. now its once again legal in most of the country, and since the nineteen sixties generations have grown accustomed to using it, as many as forty million Americans use it regularly, with no proven ill effects, other than fast food weight gain, giggles, and maybe some cloudy memory loss, temporary. societal attitudes about marijuana have liberalized. These few examples are but a few of many which follow the same pattern; movement from conservative to liberal values, from right to left, from traditional to a more progressive culture. Compare women's clothing fashions over the past one hundred years or so. In the nineteen twenties women waded into the swimming pool fully clothed, from shoulders to ankles. The bikinis of the sixties were fr from revealing. now, the ladies show tits and ass cheeks galore, at the public pool, without consequences other than a stare or two here and there. it was in the nineteen twenties that dresses started being made to conform to a woman's curves, rather than baggily showing no contours. Now, the cat is entirely out of the sartorial sack. Skin is in, has been for a long time, and so will remain. there are, of course, conservative reactionary cultural backlashes, but these are inevitably temporary.Culture, and history moves from right to left, from traditional to progressive change in values, as new traditions supplant the old. if you are a traditionalist, you are by definition fighting a losing battle. Its a battle worth losing.

Being Bad Asses, Again

DONALD J. TRUMP wants to be a bad ass at the border, but its too late for that. The proverbial cow is out of the barn, the eleven million and counting are already here, just as its too late to enact strict gun control in a country which over three hundred million firearms are already in private hands. But, I digress. For decades millions of Mexicans have crossed the border, largely with impunity, just as many Americana regularly go back and forth, unhampered, for various nefarious reasons, including running drugs, running guns, fleeing justice, fleeing child support payments, and the like. The Mexicans, many of them claim, and their claim is quite correct, are merely reentering the occupied territories, the land stolen by James K. Polk in 1846-1848, one of america's quaint wars of aggression and acquisition. Every few decades some American president fancying himself a bad ass and strict border enforcement guy, makes a show of driving some illegals back across the Rio. Roosevelt did it in the nineteen thirties, Eisenhower did it in the nineteen fifties, and now, its Trump's turn to look, act, and feel bad. Trump is not a racist, be damned sure of that, because he says he isn't, when he informs us that three thousand Puerto Ricans did not actually die in their devastating hurricane, the number was more like twelve, because that's what they told him when he landed, then quickly took off down there. The three thousand bit is another Democratic party hoax, intended only to make our leader look bad. This incredible chief executive twitter tweet in itself is sufficient to warrant confinement in a mental institution for the president, with extensive therapy and medication. His (Trump's) assertion that the illegal Mexicans are disproportionately criminals and rapists might, to give the president the benefit of the doubt, be neither racist nor psychotic, but it certainly qualifies as identity confusion, in which the president thinks he is talking about Mexican criminals, but in fact is talking about himself. Projection, I believe its called. Zero tolerance no longer involves kidnapping children, so we the American people may breathe a sigh of relief that we are no longer accomplices to a monstrously immoral federal government policy, a policy no less monstrous than Indian removal, slavery, or torture of P.O.W.s.. Zero tolerance now seems to mean something perfunctory, impotent, and purely theatrical; detaining apprehended border crossers for two days, and subjecting them to cue card interrogation and giving them a strict lecture on the impropriety of trespassing. Give America credit, bless its little schizophrenic heart; if it isn't doing something monstrous, it at least is doing something of a meaningless, token nature, and, all things considered, we are much better off as a nation, morally and geopolitically, as well as economically, when we choose to take the tokenism approach.

Serena, Going Off

THE WHOLE WORLD, or the tennis part of it, was watching when Serena Williams, the greatest tennis player in history, melted down emotionally in the worst of all places, the finals of the U.S Open. And the whole world, seemingly,,, had and still ha something to say about it, characteristic of our age of social media. Twitterers will always tweet and retweet. Two camps have emerged, the usual polarization thing, so prevalent in these United States of animosity. There is the pro-Serena anti-establishment camp, and the anti-Serena pro establishment mob, which in this case is in the majority, which is usually the case when anti contends with pro establishment, unless one is talking about populism within the republican, which here we are most certainly not. The, any establishment usually emerges as the prevailing force numerically, if not morally. In this case the establishment appears to have due process and proper jurisprudence on its side, which is certainly not always the case, while the pro Serena anti establishment clique has...raw emotion and righteous indignation. Serena's coach was coaching during the match, a clear violation and tennis nono, and he owned up to it. He said, hell, everyone does it. Great defense, coach. Had Serena simply told him to lay off the coaching, either before or after the umpire did, the entire ugly consequent scene would have been avoided. But, she didn't. She chose instead to take a defensive, righteously outraged approach, lecturing the umpire on her high ethical standards and the umpire's professional responsibilities. (nobody likes to be informed of their own professional responsibilities.) She was duly penalized for arguing too much with a duly empowered authority, which she resented, which resulted in her being further penalized when she threw her racket and calling the ump a "thief". At that point, she and the pro Serena anti-establishment forces took it to a stratospheric level, opening a terrifying can of worms of Pandoran proportions, playing the race and gender card. this would not have happened to a man, and so forth. The world chimed in, and here we are, polarized yet again, over something nonsensical..again. the boorish New York crowd actually booed her sweet twenty year old opponent, to whom Serena has been a life long idol. Way to go, ya schmucks. Social media turned an ugly incident into a feeding frenzy, as usual. Oh, my heavens. If only Princeps, a teenager, had not shot the Arch Duke in 1914. If only Lee Harvey Oswald had missed. If only Bin Laden's boys had been shot down before they got there. And, for the sake of the great sport of tennis and the sacred spirit of good sportsmanship, if only Serena had merely told her coach to knock it off, right off the bat...or, racket...

Exiting The Stage

THE UNITED STATES was destined to be an empire, the continent destined first to be overrun by land hungry Europeans, then to form a European style nation replacing the existing one, and then, to emerge strong, well protected by water and well provided with natural resources, mainly farmable land. having achieve all that, the question is now, and long has been; what to do with it, what to do with this North american based global empire? The American colonials defied their English overlords, and set out across the Appalachians. From that point limitations vanished. The first indication of impending empire was the Monroe doctrine of 1823, which forbade anyone but the U.S. from having anything to do with Latin America. Fat chance. Its bark has always been louder than its bite. Every European nation has, at one time or another, meddled in Latin America, in direct defiance of american bluster; today, its china's turn. There has never been a damned thing we could do about it, then, and now. The Civil War the nation's long term survival in one piece, and ushered in the industrial revolution, necessary for empire formation. the United States now had the resolve and the means to implement its overseas ambitions. James K. Polk had already stolen half of Mexico. Expansion to the pacific presaged overseas conquests. William McKinley got the juggernaut rolling in earnest; provoking a war with declining Spain, and stealing Cuba, and other former Spanish possessions. Teddy Roosevelt reaffirmed our war mongering aggressive tendencies, and the two world wars left the United States the undisputed superpower of the world, with Europe and Russia in ruins, and China yet to emerge. And so here we are, with a decision looming; what, exactly is an empire which for all intents and purposes is bankrupt, to do with itself, in the face of rapidly emerging China, and reemerging Russia? At some point, exactly when is debatable, the U.S. decided it wanted to rule the world. The Teddy Roosevelt administration is a good choice, as is the Truman administration, bent of opposing communism wherever. that's a tall order, and needs imperial backing. Should America try to hold its ground, further expand, or retreat back into a mild mannered republic it was originally intended to be? It is no longer the undisputed most powerful economic nation on earth, and in order to remain so militarily will have to either increase its material production dramatically, or go further into bankrupt debt. There are no easy answers. All empires eventually collapse, mostly from within, which appears to be a very realistic option for the United States.

Teaching Trouble

YEARS AGO I made the mistake of telling a high school American history class that Thomas Jefferson was an atheist, which he technically was not, but actually was, he having been a "deist", for whom the terms "God", "nature", and "universe" are essentially synonymous. Jefferson, I said, truthfully, believed in science, and considered all religion to be, as he put it "superstition." The good Christian kids got of the bus after school with an attitude, ran home to mommy, and told the unfortunate lady that their weird old improper teacher was an atheist, and was trying to convert the entire class to godlessness, using of all people one of our great founding fathers as a role model, without his (Jefferson's) or the principle's permission. This happened in Arkansas. Yes, the principle called me in, and asked i I had really said all that, and why. I suggested that he take a wild guess, which I sense did not please him. So much for my tenure at that particular high school. I got out of town just in time, just ahead of a white clad righteous mob. Then, there was the time when I was teaching western civ at a junior college, again in Arkansas, and lecturing on European intellectual history, in particular Copernicus and Galileo. I described how they both got in trouble for telling the truth, that the Earth revolves around the sun, not vice versa. Yes, Christ lived on Earth, but, alas that fact does not cause the sun to orbit the Earth. Copernicus was smart enough to withhold publication until his death in 1543, thus escaping the wrath of Rome. Galileo wasn't. He stood ecumenical trial, was convicted of blasphemy, forced to take it all back, and placed under house arrest in Italy, close enough to the Vatican to be closely monitored. He may have even been forced to wear an ankle bracelet; (just kidding). Supposedly, as he left the building after receiving sentence, he muttered something to the effect: "I still know what I saw". For the sake of the sacred spirit of resistance to unreasoning religious tyranny, let's hope he said those exact words, but we'll never know. I once had a tennis buddy, a good friend who liked to go around the country digging for dinosaur bones for the purpose of proving, somehow, that the actual age of the Earth is not four point five billion years, but rather six thousand, four years, three months, two weeks, three days, and a few hours, give or take several several minutes and seconds. The exact details of his methodology eluded me then, as they do now. He still teaches at a bible college, if that tells you anything, which it certainly should. I was able to restrain myself, when this happened forty years ago, from suggesting to him that the very act of looking for dinosaur bones would seem to be an attempt to defeat his own purpose, unless he was hoping that by not finding any his method of calculating the exact age of the earth, presumably by adding up days and events in the Bible, would be vindicated. Its anyone's guess. These days, most Christian conservative republican types consider two alleged, presumed realities to be liberal hoaxes; man made climate change, and evolution by natural selection. So, things really haven't changed that much. Fast forwarding back to the recent past, in my Juco western civ class, I suggested, rather strongly, that the Christian, in particular the Roman Catholic church for centuries stymied the progress of science by refusing to allow science to progress or even engage in any meaningful research, which would seem to be self evident, a fact almost universally accepted in academia, except, I suppose, at Bible colleges. I lectured on this topic emphatically, stalking around the classroom while pounding my right fist repeatedly into my left palm, for emphasis, lamenting the baleful effect of dogma on human progress. The thirty students all had their laptops up and open on their little plastic desks, and were gazing at their screens and furiously hunting and pecking, seemingly oblivious to my behavior, or even to my presence among them. Someone, however, must have been listening, because the next day i got a few too many emails, all stating in no uncertain terms that it should be possible to teach a history class factually accurately and appropriately without showing personal bias against religion, or denigrating that most important pillar of western civilization, which, as you might guess, is the Christian faith. I replied that this is indeed so, but that, well, facts are facts, and its not as if the christian has been a traditional bulwark of uninhibited free inquiry. Nowadays, however, the Roman Catholic church owns and operates several large telescopes all over the world, and does exactly that; does research, perhaps as a way of doing penance for past crimes against the spirit of free inquiry, perhaps as a way of digging up dinosaur bones, figuratively speaking, to prove that modern astronomy is all wrong, a secular hoax, and that the Earth's sky, like the Bible strongly hints, is the full extent of the universe, with the earth being surrounded by a solid dome, through which the light of God shineth through those numerous little holes we like to call "stars". for the sake of truth and knowledge, I'll go with the penance for past crimes against the spirit of intellectual inquiry theory, bu, as they say, who knows? All I know is this; in the future if I ever teach again, I shall strenuously avoid making mention of either Thomas Jefferson's religiosity, Copernicus, Galileo, or even imply that there are any serious flaws with traditional religious beliefs. Whether I like it or not (not), I still live in a nation of bone digging, science bashing Christian conservatives, for whom the universe is quite young, and quite small.

Believing In Something, Strongly

IF YOU BELIEVE IN SOMETHING strongly enough, if your cause is good and true and just, spare no effort fighting for it, never give up, be willing to sacrifice everything. So goes the oft articulated wisdom, wisdom of the ages, century after century, unchanging. So, it must be true. But you get tired of trying, and not failing, but not succeeding. What frustrates me is my seeming inability to successfully complete my own personal crusade, my seeming inability to convince even a single American that whereas the U.S. has been a at war in the middle east for nearly thirty years, continuously, that so being has been a matter of choice, a mere option, a deliberate decision by the U.S., and that the results have been tragic, and that the war was begun by the U.S. deliberately, for nefarious reasons, using a most evil form of deception. The never ending war in Iraq and Afghanistan is neither necessary, nor forced upon America, nor even remotely desirable. it is a complete scam, a mere imperialistic act of aggression, intended, like most American foreign policy, to do nothing other than further enrich the already rich corporate community of these United State of Aggression. Everyone knows about the thirty year war, assuming non residency on Mars. that part is easy of which to convince folks. Unless, of of course, you'r a millennial, and too young to care, or, as mentioned above, residing on Mars. the hard part is getting people to understand the real reasons. Here's what I always do: I tell people to type into google the April Glaspie, then scroll down to where it says "conversation with Saddam", click on it, and read.Its that simple. I never have any trouble getting people to do that, unless they promise to do it later, and later never comes. After doing this, the person inevitably does nothing. nothing other than getting up from the computer, stretching legs, and going on about business, sometimes after saying to me something like"good to see you." What everybody should do, after completing this simple task, is turn red, scream and curse violently, and start tearing up the immediate environment, a good target being the actual computer upon which the material appeared. Oh, I remember a librarian, a middle aged portly woman of mediocre intellect, who did the reading, which doesn't take long, then growled a little bit while walking away. I was proud of her; she's the only person who ever even came close to behaving properly, reacting appropriately. Later, however, she banned me fro her library for talking too much left wing politics and particularly for making many negative comments about the Christian religion in public, so, so much for her. She's one of them. But at least she cared, if only a little bit. She understood. hell, everybody understands. Its that easy. but why nobody seems to throw a tantrum afterwards is utterly, completely beyond me. Even my sister, a retired high ranking pentagon D.O.D. big shot, made nary a sound. Maybe she was trying to cover the backs of her own kind, or something. She damned well understood, alright, but...did nothing. these other people I can't control, and it does not good to other than chastise them behind their ass covered backs. But I confess to be especially disappointed in my sweet sister. She should know better.

Turning The Sahara Green

THE SAHARA DESERT, which comprises the northern half of Africa, is not only huge, its growing. As climate change progresses, the frequency, severity, and length of droughts increase worldwide,e and kill what little vegetation lurks in and on the edges of the largest desert in the world. When the green disappears, the exposed soil beneath dries and bleaches, and its lighter color reflects more light back into the atmosphere, warming the air currents above, desiccating them, resulting in less rainfall for the already parched Sahara. This vicious cycle is expanding the desert with sufficient rapidity that within a century, if not checked, the desertification will encompass most of Africa. For planet earth, for us all, for future generations, this would be disastrous. there is, however, a solution, which is known to at least one scientist, and presumably all of them. It would be desirable to convert much if not most of the Sahara into grassland, forest, and farmland, some of each. The solution is solar energy, vast arrays of solar panels spread out over vast areas to absorb rather than reflect the sunlight, convert it to usable energy, enough, in fact, to power the entire planet and operate enough desalination plants to water the land, and begin the process of growth, renewal, and prosperity, for humankind, and for the rest of the plant and animal kingdom. Furthermore, the Sahara is a windy place, a perfect place to generate wind power. A few wind turbines here and there might even serve to spruce up the barren appearance of the landscape. if future generations of humans and all other species are going to be able to live on a sustainable, harmonious ecosystem, we the current generation must set about the task of terraforming the earth immediately, so that our descendants can complete it and reap the benefits therefrom. No, this planet is not Mars or the moon, but yes, considering the sorry state into which we have allowed the ecosystem to descend, nothing less than a comprehensive terraforming is expedient. May we have the political will to begin the great task ahead.

Getting To Know Judge Parker, and Ourselves

THERE IS MUCH ABOUT HISTORY in general, and the late nineteenth century american western frontier in particular, about which many people, myself included, are misinformed, due to popular culture. The roman empire didn't so much "fall" precipitously, as it slowly declined and evolved into something else, due to shrinking resources and over extension among other factors, into modern Rome, Italy, and Europe. The wild west was not quite as wild as we like to make it out to be, at least in terms of standing, facing, and staring at the enemy prior to a quick draw gun fight. Gunfights in fact were quite rare, and in most western frontier towns guns were forbidden. they had to be turned in at the sheriff's office, or left outside the city limits. And above all, the most popular misconception, that history somehow "repeats itself', though its sounds nice and tidy, is simply not true. No amount of effort can turn Tuesday January second into Monday January first, no matter how similar they seem. I had been given to believe that "hanging judge" Isaac Parker, of frontier fame, who held court in Ft. Smith, Arkansas from 1878 to 1894, was something of a madman, a vindictive, angry lunatic who meted out summary justice and capital punishment at the drop of a hat, the borrowing of a horse. i was dead wrong. It turns out that the hangin' judge was a a compassionate, wise, and highly principled person. although he sentenced over one hundred and sixty people, including four women, to death by hanging, fewer than half of them, including none of the women, met that fate, but were instead resentenced to lesser punishments. The judge himself did not believe in the death penalty, and always reminded condemned criminals: "it is not I who condemns you, it is the law." Parker was also an early and strong advocate for women's suffrage, and believed in improving living conditions for incarcerated criminals, especially those awaiting trial. he believed that it was not the severity of punishment, but the certainty of it, which deterred crime. It turns out that when we more thoroughly scrutinize the lives of people, living and dead, we are often surprised, often pleasantly so, sometimes disappointingly so. often those whom we had held in the highest esteem become more flawed than we want them to be, and the supposed scoundrels turn out to have redeeming qualities after all. It may be that the lesson we should derive from history,and from our own lives, is that no one is worthy of unqualified veneration, and no one is deserving of unrelenting scorn. As with our opinions and emotions, the truth is usually somewhere in the middle.

Inventing

AMONG THOSE THINGS WHICH ACTUALLY DO NOT EXIST, but are convenient constructs of the human mind, are money, a perfect vacuum, the free market, and race. There are others, too numerous to mention. they all serve essentially the same purpose, to allow the human mind to impose order on a world of infinite complexity, too complex to comprehend with our weak and transient understanding. Our illusions give us comfort, helping us to make sense, however arbitrarily, of a complex world. They serve the further purpose of adding justification to what we fervently wish to believe. The price we pay for our intellectual liberties is, alas, truth. Science has long known that in every square meter of supposedly "empty" space, there adheres at least one subatomic particle, if nothing else. Matter spreads out, puts distance between itself and its cohorts, like to have its own space. Race? Every human being on Earth has a unique skin pigmentation, no matter how closely we think ours resembles somebody else's. The number of skin colors is exactly equal to the number of people on the planet, no more, no less. Place your forearm next to that of anyone else; you'll never have a match. Race is a convenient categorization, made popular only in modern times. With regard to money and the free market, there was a time when money very nearly existed. I once carried folded green paper in my billfold, and a few loose coins in my pocket, but no more. Money was invented as a convenient substitute for hard to carry cattle and grain, and it has value only because we agree that it does, even if its made of gold and silver, metals whose practical value is quite limited. now, money is nothing but a flow of electrons. it doesn't really exist at all, except in our fertile imaginations. The free market is much like our supposed vacuum; a convenient concept. A truly free, unimpeded, undistorted market has never existed, and will never exist, because of what economists call "externalities". Externalities are unpredictable factors which manifest in every capitalist economy and distort the perfect process of supply and demand, however slightly. These factors can be weather, an unexpected flood of refugees unbalancing the labor market, crop failure, monopolies, technical innovations which create monopolies, or a nearly infinite number of other manifestations. They are always with us. Racism, money, and perfect vacuums are also always with us, even though they really don't exist.

Avoiding Dancing

AT THE SENIOR CENTER, an attractive lady asked me to dance. She had a few years on her facially, like we all do, but a hot bod. Ben Franklin's kind of girl; older,, and as he reminds us in his famous essay on the virtues of older women, they age from the top down, and, as the old saying goes, they don't yell, they don't tell, and they're grateful as hell. I was afraid to dance with her. I knew she wouldn't ask me twice. I can't dance, and I don't like the kind of music we have at the center; hillbilly country, fiddle included. So I engaged her in conversation, briefly. She began by mentioning that she had recently taken up dancing, that she found it to be good exercise, and therapeutic to boot. I just had to turn it intellectual. I asked her opinion as to the greatest dancers of all time. I gave her my list. Among the men, I named Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Michael Jackson, and Prince. I offered ginger Rogers, Lisa Minnelli, Judy garland and Shirley MacLaine for the ladies, and left it at that. I would have started to name ballet dancers, but decided they didn't count. The attractive lady looked nonplussed. I waited, for her to speak. When she did, I was disappointed. She said she had never really thought about it much, that she was really more interested in actually dancing than naming dancers, and that, well, she really didn't spend much time studying on it. the truth was obvious; she had never heard of any of these people. and that, in itself, was just about enough to scare me off. My standards are not particularly high, but I have them. A friend once told me that he would never date a woman unless she could name the Vice President of the Untied States, and to me, that seems reasonable, and not not really too much to expect. if you've never heard of Fred Astaire, or Prince, don't bother to ask me to dance. I'm already looking for an excuse not to.

Praising Science and Socialism, Our Twin Saviors

BECAUSE OF SCIENCE, we have airplanes, cars, computers, heart surgery, television, radio, and several million other wonderful life enhancers, far too many to mention. (Technology is applied science, science in action in service to humanity). Some might argue that humans were happier in a prescientific age of primitive, stone age life, like the native Americans; perhaps in some instances this is true, probably not, overall. Science,, upon which our better quality of life is predicated, exists not because of religion, but in spite of it, and would have improved our lives and saved many lives had its progress not been impeded by religious superstition. None of these scientific marvels resulted from religion every benefit ever bestowed by religion could have been provided by other means, using truth rather than fantasy, mythology, and dogma. Science is superior to religion, because it yields far more truth. the spirituality inherent in a scientific understanding of nature is far more spiritually advanced than any put forth by any religion. Because of socialism, we have police protection, fire protection, streets and highways, public schools and universities, social security, and several million other life enhancers, fundamental, absolutely essential government services, too numerous to mention. Socialism is government, which in a liberal democracy is cooperation by popular participation. Consider whether you would prefer your local police department by privately owned, and operated on a for profit basis, with the cost of police protection subject to the fluctuations of the free market. The same hold true of fire protection. What if every street and highway you needed to use were controlled by private, profit seeking interests? Good luck getting there without being ht hard in the pocket book. Capitalism was defined and described bets by Adam Smith in "The Wealth of Nations", the bible of capitalism. it is not widely known that Smith stipulated that properly functioning free market should result in economic equality between workers and owners,a nd that if it didn't, something was awry in the market, and should be corrected by government action to assist the poor, but never the wealthy. Obviously, our modern capitalist system has gone far astray of what Adam Smith intended. religion began as a well intentioned, honest effort among primitive, ignorant people to explain, understand, and gain some measure of control over the frightening world in which they lived. When emotion took over and dogma replaced reason and inquiry, religion went far astray, where it remains today, moored to false beliefs and damaging dogmas. religion has its place as a means to revere the wonders of nature, and capitalism has its place as a means to produce wealth and prosperity, but religion must at some point be directed by science, and capitalism must be heavily regulated by government and socialism, as it already is in every economically successful country in the world. Future human success will depend on reason, not mythology, and cooperation and planning, not blindly functioning free markets.

Putting Out Fires

AROUND 1910 A SERIES OF WILDFIRES raged across the western United States. Panic followed the conflagrations across the previously fruited plain. The federal government responded by pouring water on anything that flickered, and thus began the era of unburned, overgrown underbrush. When fires are quenched before they ever really start to spread, the countryside becomes choked with highly flammable plant life. Now, in the era of climate change and more severe droughts, hotter and longer summers, this policy of fire suppression is coming back to haunt us, after a century of over protecting our forests and grasslands. Shockingly, the world's worst air pollution in 2018 was not in Beijing, China, or Calcutta India, or Mexico city, or Bombay, India. It was in none other than beautiful Seattle, Washington. The wildfires of 2018 have been the most numerous, most severe, and the largest in U.S. history. cities such as Seattle which are largely surrounded by by forests subject historically to fire suppression have been the hardest hit by smoke; no matter which way the wind blows, air pollution is scattered across the city from all directions, a guaranteed blackened skyline. Although people in Seattle have generally not been wearing gas masks this summer, as they often do in places like Beijing, there have been days during which they might have seriously considered doing so. Respiratory illnesses, especially among the very young and the elderly, have skyrocketed in Seattle. The fire season is growing longer, and all across the west now extends nearly the year round. Folks have been encouraged to stay indoors many days this past summer in Seattle, where the summers are not usually hot enough for people to have air conditioning, which filters the air. Denver is more fortunate, since it is not surrounded by deciduous forests, but nonetheless must contend with nearby prairie fires. I recall visiting Yellowstone park in 1988, just one year before one third of it burned in a massive fire, from which it has only recently recovered. Climate change will only get worse. We had better find better ways of dealing with our burning land.

Writing A new Constitution

OF THE MANY PROBLEMS created by our poorly written, outdated constitution, the most blatant and obvious is the vague, ambiguous second amendment. Does it guarantee the right for an individual to own a weapon only when serving in a militia, or the right to own and carry a gun for personal protection? What kind of guns are covered? Muzzle loaders only, as would be the case in a strictly "originalist" interpretation, or machine guns as well? If you think the answers to these basic questions are obvious and need no discussion, reconsider. Neither the United States Supreme Court nor anyone else has ever been able to make a convincing argument in response to any of these reasonable, obvious questions. In fact, for most of American history, the high court has indeed ruled that only when serving in a regulated militia does the document guarantee the right to bear arms. Throughout its history, American society has been engaged in a continuous dispute over exactly what the second amendment means. In 1977, the National rifle Association, which had therefore been primarily concerned with gun safety and hunting regulation, joined the gun fight, when its leadership was taken over by a group of right wing right wingers, in whose hands the organization remains to this day. previously, ironically, the NRA had for the most part been a staunch advocate of strict, or at least reasonable gun control, the thinking being that such regulation would serve ultimately to protect the second amendment rights of responsible gun owning citizens. In the United States, there has always been gun ownership, and there has always been gun control, to one degree or other. Regulations were rather strict in the early republic, far stricter than now. In the supposedly wild west, guns were very strictly regulated, and for the most part were not allowed to be carried in frontier towns. obviously, America needs some final resolution to the second amendment mess, some clearly written set of laws which reflect modern reality. Since forty three states have constitutional provisions allowing for gun ownership, there is no chance that the federal government will come and take away anyone's weapons. there are numerous other examples of the inadequacy of the two hundred and twenty five year old constitution, too many to mention here. prohibition is enacted, then, a few lines further down, repealed. For purpose of congressional representation, a certain class of people, slaves, are counted as three fifths of a human being. No, I'm not making that up. Surely, a more modern, concise term could be found to replace the archaic term "emoluments". Why not specifically enumerate a right to privacy, and define "privacy" in modern terms, instead of arguing about whether one can be found between the lines in our current document? Why not clearly outlaw discrimination base on gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation? We the people need and deserve a new, improved constitution, as Thomas Jefferson said we inevitably would. And,for teh sake of respect for tradition, the current one would be a very good model upon which to base our better version.