Breaking Promises

A BIT MORE than one month ago, president Trump declared a national emergency, belatedly, and made many promises, rather impressive promises, after the fashion of a hyper emotional demonstrative fear mongering demagogue. He promised a massive, coordinated effort between the government and the private sector to manufacture and distribute urgently needed medical supplies, including Covid 19 testing on a massive scale, including drive thru one stop testing, as well as an assortment of equipment such as face masks, ventilators, protective gowns, and other necessities. one month later,, all these things are still in short supply, for the most part, nowhere to be found. States, communities, and hospitals are involved in a desperate competition for all of them, driving up prices, slowing down distribution. There are as of now no more than half a dozen drive thru testing sites in the U.s.; Walgreens and CVS have made token efforts, but Target and Wal Mart have not been heard from. Virus testing in America is among the lowest rate in the world, and the United States has by far the most deaths from the pandemic, and the most sicknesses, fully one half of the world's supply of both. Trump promises a new website which would provide an enormous amount of relevant information for the American people to use in determining their personal strategy for dealing with the virus; no such website exists, one month after the promise. Now, the president has announced thaqt the U.S. will stop funding the World Health Organization, at the worst possible time; in the middle of a global medical catastrophe. The WHO was founded after World War Two precisely to deal with situations like the current one; Trump, wanting to deflect attention from his administration's chaotic and ineffective policies in dealing with the pandemic, is trying to put the blame on the WHO. This is possibly Trump's most idiotic, petty, criminal act yet, in a long line of them; to defund the world's leading health organization at precisely the time when it is needed most, simply for his own political again, to avoid responsibility for his disastrous handling of the epidemic, which has cost tens of thousands of America lives, with many more thousands to come. Soon enough, we will look back on the Trump administration's litany of criminal behavior, and this will surely head the list.

Reconciling

IN THE NINETEEN EIGHTIES, those of a certain age will recall, there appeared over Antarctica a hole in the ozone layer, which is a layer in the upper atmosphere of oxygen molecules, unattached to hydrogen or any other element, which blocks harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun, making life on earth possible. The conservative community dismissed this as a liberal hoax, true to form, and indicated its intention of doing nothing about it. Two iconic conservative leaders, however, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, came through. They signed an international agreement outlawing the primary cause of ozone depletion, chloroflourocarbons, and over the years since the Earth, as it tends to do if only given the chance, has gradually repaired itself In 1990 the Starkist company, a subsidiary of the Heinz corporation, announced that it was eliminating the methods of tuna fishing which were harmful to dolphins. since then, dolphins and dolphin lovers have been most grateful. These two instances prove that conservative leaders, corporations, and conservatives in general can in fact rise above their usual behavior, and do the right thing. Liberals are well known for sharply criticizing conservatives and their policies, not without justification. It is therefore incumbent upon progressives to give credit where credit is due. I haven't been a big fan of the republican party nor of conservatism since Watergate. Strident, zealous Christianity has repulsed me since I was a child. Political conservatism wed to evangelical Chrisianity, an american original, I find creepy, despicable. But in the age of the killer Corona virus, we suddenly have a powerful new motive for seeking common ground, a reason for all of us to unite, against a microscopic machine. Bt only if we are willing to try.

Being Warned

TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO the skies over London, England were Chocked black with air pollution from factories. In 1852 thousands of people died during a particularly smog choked few days.A few perceptive scientists took notice, and predicted that if the coal dust continued to belch into the atmosphere, that eventually the earth's atmosphere would absorb more heat, causing global warming. We've, at least a few of us, have known about climate change for a long, long time. Einstein, who died in 1955, believed that we should think about deliberately adding carbon to the atmosphere, to produce climate change, and improve agricultural production in a hungry world full of starvation and famine. Even Einstein had some bad ideas. Fifty years ago, in Congress, Senator Paul Tsongas and Representative Al Gore worked on committees which provided warnings of environmental destruction and of global warming due to atmospheric pollution. In 1988. NASA scientist James Hanson warned Congress, the american people, and the world that global warming had already begun, and that it would get much worse if not stopped. We have had plenty of warnings, plenty of opportunity to start doing something, to solve the problem. right now in Antarctica there is an iceberg the size of Manhattan which is on the verge of slitting off the land mass, dropping into the ocean, melting, and raising the sea level by two feet. Another much larger ice berg the size of Ireland is right behind it; if the first one goes so will the second, and scientists now say that is appears inevitable that they will both melt in the ocean and raise the sea level by eleven more feet, putting all the world's coastal cities under water. within the next few decades this is almost inevitable, the raising of the world's sea level by at least a dozen feet, and flooding along all coastlines. We cannot say that we were never warned.

Giving Good Advice

EASTER SUNDAY, the white House is suggesting that religious services be held in cars on parking lots, at home, online, anywhere but gathered together. Common sense in the time of epidemic, given by a building built by slave labor. This, only weeks after president Trump, showing no semblance of good leadership, ranted that the American economy must be made to get up and run, the nation return to normal- by Easter. Wisdom and common sense, from brick and mortar, from the White House, but not from the incompetent morons within. An honest examination of the time line, of the events, the expert warnings, of whom did what when, of the actions taken and not taken, will clearly reveal, has already clearly revealed, that teh Trump administration has behaved with criminal negligence, in allowing the United States to become the world's most infected country, with the greatest loss of life on the planet. The people who have ignored the epidemic by gathering together, partying, worshiping, defiantly dismissing medical concerns are the Trump supporters, the religious right, the Republicans, not the liberals. On all the conservative right wing radio talk shows, the epidemic has been treated dismissively, and the Trump administration's behavior praised. Behold our conservative pro Covid 19 community, spewing their nonsense about government inflation of the numbers as a pretext to gain more control over the population, to justify big government. Conspiracy theory gangsters, extreme right wing, evangelical, new age alternative paradigm, a motley lot of mentally ill morons, disregarding, as usual, solid, verified science, in favor of their chosen fantasies. may they all be swept by a rising tide of sanity into the trash bin of forgotten history.

Witnessing What?

THEY CALL IT witnessing", which lends credence to it, makes it sound important, respectable, by giving it an air of legitimacy, of legal validity. they would say that they are serving, attesting to, being witnesses to the truth of Christ's gospel, his plan for salvation, the Christian faith, by living according to its principles, thus verifying its eternal verities, and spreading its message to all, among the unsaved. Another way of describing it is that they are witnessing the enhancement of their own self esteem by convincing themselves that of the thousands of religions on earth, of the hundreds of varieties of Christianity, theirs is the true religion, and that they are therefore spiritually superior, and cannot resist demonstrating their moral superiority to others by reminding others of it. Every few months they knock on my door, wanting to improve me, to save me from something, to enhance their sens of superiority and self esteem. My mother, a clever woman, used to tell them that she was Catholic, and would pray for them at mass.I invite them in, offer them refreshments, and proceed to tell them about my religiosity, and to quote Goethe, Einstein, Voltaire, and Jefferson. they want to help me, maybe I should return the favor. Pantheism, baby, Join me? That always seems to confuse them, annoy them, and to ultimately motivate them to write me off as incorrigible, and then to leave, sadly. So zealous are they that they travel not only around their own neighborhoods, but to foreign countries, trying to improve people of different cultural and religious heritages. Invariably, those they try to improve and save are as intelligent, happy, and dedicated to their existing religious beliefs as they are, but, to them, that is of no consequence. The unsaved must be saved by their superior religions. The fact that this is arrogant, insulting, and aggressive, and disrespectful never occurs to the evangelical witness, because, the evangelical witness, attesting to the true religion, the one true religion, is bringing a superior message to the misguided. The witnesses will never understand this, will never respect people whose religiosity differs from their own, for they are incapable of humbling themselves and opening their own minds to this reality. somehow, society survives their onslaught on decency and civilization. Maybe some fine day they will shrink in numbers to nothing, and we will be spared their contempt of us. If one of them tries to tell you that the pandemic is God's wrath for a wicked society which tolerates homosexuality, liberalism, atheism, and other religions, slam the door in their ugly, hateful faces.

Coming Together

RONALD REAGAN, in a rare moment of lucidity, reflected that were the Earth invaded by extraterrestrials, humanity would cease warring among itself, and unite in defense. Given a comparable opportunity, the old ancient acting warmonger declined; he said no when Gorbachev offered to rid the world of nuclear weapons. But Reagan had a point. What humanity needs is a common purpose, a transcendent reason to transcend international borders and conflicts. As a child I thought that space flight would fill the bill. But, alas, we seem to have, at least for several decades, given up on the ideal of exploring space with human beings, and we relegated ourselves to space shuttle redundancy and space probes. Neither has pervasive poverty or disease done the trick. Climate change, for purposes of human unification, still holds promise, but the damned right wing american climate change deniers keep getting in the way. Enter the virus, and for a brief, flickering moment there was a glimmer of hope. Not for the virus, which we'll lick, but for true pan-people cooperative unification. But even as the curve begins to show signs of flattening, even as we can begin to see life beyond Covid 19, life returned to some semblance of normal, we sense that the old animosities, personal, political, international, the old divisiveness which has plagued human kind since homo sapien sapiens evolved on this planet, shall return. We simply cannot seem to get our of our own way. It seems that fundamental human nature is immutable, not prone to mutate and drastically change course like viruses do. maybe, like Einstein and the bible said, as long as there are people, there will be wars. And so it may be that the Gipper, not known for his intellectual stature, had it right after all, that the only possible force great enough to compel humanity into unified behavior is a serious threat from an alien life form from beyond the stars. the fact that such an intelligent species of beings, able to come to Earth and to threaten us, would doubtless easily have the ability to note only defeat us, but to completely exterminate us, in which case, we would be back to exactly where we started from; the beginning.

Infighting

ALL ACROSS AMERICA'S fruited plain, and all around god's green Earth, people are beating up on each other, domestic violence is, as we say, "spiking", by as much as thirty percent. My father, a wise man, always said that a husband should never play meed doubles with his wife. Maybe they shouldn't live with each other either. married couples, even the best of them, seem to be able to stand each other for no more than a few blessed hours per day. It turns out that bowling alleys, poker games, and girls nights out exist for a reason; domestic tranquility. All this hype about sheltering in place with family is much overrated, it seems. Modern marriage is a recent invention. We have grown to expect much too much of our spouses; business partner, best friend, soul mate, mate, all rolled into one. When one domino falls, they all fall. marriage serves a valuable function. It organizes society, protects women and children, and, to a degree, prevents men from behaving like wild animals. marriage is as sacred an institution upon which civilization has ever been built. but it isn't for everybody. Not everyone should get married. In teh United States, about ninety percent of the population gets married. About one half of all married people get divorced. In the U.S., about one half the people are married, one half are not, at any given time. The single life is greatly underrated. We need alternatives. arranged marriages, gay marriages, multiple interlocking marriages, monogamy, polygamy, marriages with a prearranged expiration date, marriage to inanimate objects, interspecies marriages; all should be available as alternatives. Despite religious conservative resistance to progress, social institutions, all of them, evolve, and it is pointless to resist evolution. When chief justice John Roberts cast the deciding vote legalizing gay marriage, conservatives were horrified, predictably, and were left in teh dust, choking on it. People used to ask my mother why her cute, handsome, brilliant, successful con was not married. her answer was always the same: because he's smart.

Leading By idiocy

YOU'LL RECALL that only a couple of weeks ago president Trump, the very stable genius, announced that he wanted the country up and running again by Easter. No more social distancing, quarantining, all that,a roaring return to business as usual in america. Consider also that at least one of trump's former professors in college called Trump the "dumbest sonofabitch i ever had in class". Also bear in mind that the president for weeks has been touting the supposed effectiveness of an unproven, ineffective drug, hydroxychloroquine (sp?) for treatment of Covid 19. Fools who know little often think they know much, as we all know. Dr. Trump. Well, Easter is almost here, the epidemic rages and we all, thankfully, are still wisely social distancing and sheltering in place, at least, those of us with a lick of sense who knows what's good for us. True, the cure can be worse than the illness. but not in this case. Can you imagine the results if all across america churches were full of worshipers on Easter Sunday, and baseball stadiums were full of thousands of fans, and bourbon Street and Broadway were humming and hopping? Te consequences would be disastrous; millions of sick people, hundreds of thousands of dead and dying, a catastrophe. Obviously, shelter in place, shutting down America was the answer, the only answer. Trump was dead serious about Easter. he wa also serious when at the outset he said the whole thing was a big hoax, and everyone need only get a flu shot. Rush Limbaugh and his fans are wondering why we are all required to hunker down - couldn't we just isolate the sick folks, and go about our business as usual? Limbaugh accuses the government of inflating the numbers to gain control over the American public, and suggests that the virus is merely another form of the flu. Idiocy runs deep in conservative America. Despite not wearing a mask, Trump is unlikely to contract the virus. One wonders, however, whether he has already contracted windmill cancer, and whether it might already have spread to his brain.

Voting

EVENTUALLY, some fine day, we'll resume hugging, kissing, and shaking hands, but for a time, we'll be paranoid and extremely hygienic. As more corona type viruses infect the future world, the world will, as it has long done with influenza, accept viral pandemics as a way of life, a fact of life, and will develop and encourage vaccinations, and go about our business as usual, as we Americans do with the flu, thirty thousand flu deaths per year be damned. And when we are finished hugging, kissing, and being considerate and kind to each other in celebration of the vanquishing of Covid 19, we will return to our usual, rude, dismissive ways. We will, however, belatedly change the way we vote. We will install a more reasonable, practical system, to mitigate inconvenience and contagion and long lines at the ballot box, but we will do so only over the kicking, screaming, dead bodies of Republicans. We will begin voting by telephone, computer, and snail mail, as we already do to a certain degree. It is the only way to go. It is the future. republicans want fewer people to vote, Democrats want more.Elitism versus egalitarianism. Hamilton versus Jefferson. The fight has already begun, and it will end with an expanded, more inclusive democracy. It will also give greater voice to we the poor people, and might very well, as some republicans have predicted, guarantee that no Republican ever wins a national election again, because, when push come to shove, America is a progressive country, with many more people served by the ideals of Democrats than republicans. Long live the future.

Trump, Stepping Up

AN OLD FRIEND OF MINE, a neighbor kid with whom I played whiffle ball back in the sixties, has a great idea. After decades, we ran into each other on Facebook, and he, like I, sees Donald Trump for the criminal and traitor that he is. The idea? This: President Trump could volunteer to use his various properties, resorts, hotels, what not, as hospitals and recuperation centers for people afflicted with Covid 19! What a wonderful idea, and what a wonderful way for our president to show us the American people just how much he really truly cares for us, as he has ever so sincerely so asserted.Can you imagine that? you can, but only if you have an extremely vivid imagination. Another one of my childhood turned Facebook buddies reminded us that the president is far too busy playing golf at his properties to actually put them to good, magnanimous use. And now, for the bad idea. During times of crisis, we must take the bad with the good, and forge intrepidly forth, in the comfort of our quarantined homes. In such a circumstance, safely sheltered at home, I betook myself to a glance out my living room window,, and there, striding down the quiet street, was a gentleman wearing a face mask. I resisted the temptation to burst upon the scene and tell him that he needn't bother. A cat lay asleep on my lap, and I know well the rules of engagement concerning cat lap napping. In essence, one must not move until one's cat does. Besides, the gentleman was striding along at a very brisk pace, despite the limitations on his air supply. Between him and the closest available human being, me, there must have been an expanse of at least six times sixty feet, well beyond the range of any known viral transmission capability. but, better safe than sorry, as we like to say; he was taking no chances. I can easily imagine that had he been in grade school during the Cuban missile crisis, he would still be crouching beneath his wooden s=desk, in a moldy, abandoned class room, inside a building which is a boarded up, crumbling into a pile of bricks.

Heeding Lord Acton

PEOPLE LOVE A GOOD STORY. Good stories are the foundation of all human culture. People love to embrace them, to make them real, a part of their lives, even to the point of accepting fictitious myths as factual. Sometimes, the opposite is true. sometimes, a factual account seems so unbelievable that it is rejected as fictitious, relegated to the realm of myth. When peace spontaneously broke out in the trenches of World War One, nobody believed that this had actually happened for decades, even though it was confirmed, verified, corroborated, documented by hundreds of documents, mostly personal letters. It all began when a British unit decided to cease firing long enough to enjoy a proper breakfast. Only a few hundred yards away, the Germans decided to do the same. The behavior grew and spread. As Christmas approached, the Germans began placing Christmas tress in front of their trenches, and decorating them, and singing Christmas carols. Soon, thousands of enemy combatants were shaking hands, exchanging gifts, sharing eggnog, and singing Christmas carols together. Safely ensconced behind the lines, the generals on both sides were outraged, at what they considered cowardly, traitorous behavior. They began issuing commands requiring their men to provided tangible proof that teh blood letting had resumed, and the fun was over. This inspiring anecdote lends credence to the popular notion that we the masses are fundamentally peace loving creatures, but placid, passive, willing to easily submit to authority, and easily led astray by ambitious, foolish leaders. Einstein, a pacifist whose views in cold war America often aroused the enmity of right wingers, suggested that if all men in the world of military service age would refuse to participate in military service, war could be ended forever. Lord Acton's famous admonition that power corrupts, and that absolute power corrupts absolutely also seems true. It behooves us the powerless masses to remember our ever present potential for exercising power, regardless of its normally lying dormant.

Making War No More, For Awhile

MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED MILLION people died in combat during the twentieth century, which, ironically, was a far less violent century, according to measurements involving deaths per population, than previous centuries. Statistically, humanity is becoming more peaceful, a fact which defies our perceptions, so violent is our present world. Since recorded history began, there have been only a handful of years during which there was no war anywhere raging. There is an iconic photograph of Albert Einstein, late in his life, sitting at a desk wearing a dark sweat shirt, with an ink pen tucked into it just below his chin, with Einstein, with his halo of unkempt white hair, looking up at the camera, with an expression of great solemnity, but with his head lowered, his eyes exuding sadness. he has just responded to a question: "do you think there will ever be an end to war"? No, said teh father of relativity, as long as there are people, there will be war. we are, nonetheless, currently taking a bit of a time out from our organized violence. all over the world, in hot spots such as Syria, Afghanistan, and across Latin America and Africa, various ongoing wars have settled down into unplanned truces, actual cessations of hostilities, in apparent reaction to the global pandemic. we have, at least for a short time, laid down our arms to care for our sick, dead, and dying. how long this will last is anyone's guess; your best bet is that as soon as the war against the Covid 19 virus starts to become successful, the human against human wars will flare up once again, and normalcy will resume. I grew up with the Viet Nam War in the news every day. the casualty numbers were placed on the black and white grainy television screen like a baseball scoreboard, while Walter Cronkite informed up of teh most recent combat action. The Americans, as I recall, lost about two hundred soldiers a week, the South Vietnamese about a thousand, and the enemy about two thousand. I was seduced into thinking that my side would win, through attrition, until February of 1968, when I finally figured out, with Cronkite's help, that the North Vietnamese would pursue the war no matter what their casualty rate, because they h ad only to wait for the American public to loose patience, and the Americans to go home. Since then, all war has seemed futile to me, as, of course it is. ther are never any winners. As a child, I hoped an e believed that Einstein was wrong. But, alas, he rarely was. Now, I tend to agree with him, that there will always be war. For the moment, however, we have a time out, which, though doubtless short lived, is perhaps the one and only benefit from our global viral nightmare.

Dilly Dallying

THE GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA, a Republican, and Donald Trump, allegedly a Republican, took some time away from work to engage in a playful game of viral "hot potato". Making lemonade of lemons, so to speak. The apparent object was to see who would end up with the responsibility of deciding whether to quarantine or to not quarantine the tens of millions of susceptible people who live in the sunshine state. The winner would evidently be determined by which alleged political leader could evade responsibility the longest. Back and forth went the viral potato, until finally, mercifully, the governor made the decision he should have made weeks ago: to order people to stay home other than leaving home for necessary errands. The timing was convenient for tens of thousands of partying spring breakers, whose march madness on the beaches, large crowds clustered closely together frolicking in the sun, went unhindered and unchecked by mere medical concerns. The college students, and whatever viruses they happened to be carrying with them, were thus free to scatter all across the fruited plain, to go back to their respective college campuses, and spread the contagion. This is in stark contrast to China, where it all began, and where it has ended, the epidemic firmly under control. They nipped it in the bud. they built a huge, new, fully equipped hospital in less than two weeks. In the United States, it is difficult to imagine something like this being done in less than two years. One can scarcely imagine any provincial governor in China passing responsibility back and forth with the central government in Beijing, each claiming the other was responsible. Donald trump and governor Desantis, each abrogating responsibility, each passing the buck, the governor waiting for guidance from Washington, Trump insisting that the states should decide, while tens of thousands of people, not taking the situation seriously, congregated at will spreading and sharing their infections. Another one of those priceless "only in America" situations.

Going Out of Style

IT IS WELLKNOWN that white Christian Americans, as a percentage of the general population, are declining in number. Two reasons. Immigration, and encroaching secularism. And, to name a third, white Christian Americans just aren't reproducing like they used to. This fact of white Christian decline explains nearly every aspect of the current virulence of the white conservative evangelical Christian pro Trump movement; the perception that white Christianity is declining, or, as its frightened adherents often put it; that white heterosexual Christianity is under assault of some sort.What's really happening, obviously, is that millions of Latin Americans, immersed in the grinding poverty precipitated largely by decades of exploitative corporate United States foreign policy, and their hope of its alleviation, are desperately seeking asylum in the U.S., and are often being met with the usual racist hatred so prevalent among white Christian conservative America. Then too, Americans in general are losing their religion. Americans who self identify as Christian are at a percentage of sixty five percent, down from eighty five percent a generation ago. One half of millennials have no religious identification. White Christians, essentially, are being outnumbered. They are reacting to this bey becoming panicky, angry, and by electing to office angry gangster demagogues like Donald J. Trump. The phenomenon is similar, sociologically, to the behavior of Germans in the nineteen thirties, reacting to the perceived takeover of German society by Jews, socialists, and communists. Studies indicate that caucasians are less tolerant of minorities, as minorities, including gays, become more prominent in American society.As the Hispanic percentage of the population increases,, a decreasing proportion of the white demographic is willing to think of Hispanic people as being "white". It is as if a privileged club with an elite membership is trying to further contract its exclusive membership, to achieve an ever greater elitism, which is a counter intuitive process. One might expect that, as the white demographic declines in numbers, it might seek adopt a more inclusive definition of"whiteness", to expand its numbers, but, that is not the case. As the inevitable discrediting and collapse of Trumpism and resentment base white supremacy proceeds, it may eventuate that the movement contracts into a hardened core of its former self, like the NAZI movement in the final days of World War Two, defending itself and its values to the bitter end, while history moves on, without it.

Admiring

MY RELIGION, to the extent that I have one, is science. I worship nothing, I admire everything, merely because its exists. It is beyond dispute that science is humankind's best, and perhaps only tool for understanding the world. Applied science, which is science translated into practical applications, called technology, has transformed human life for the better, as attested by modern medicine and machinery, provides more than ample proof of this. It will be science, not religion, which will give us the answer to eradicating the current pandemic, and all future pandemics. Ironically, all major religions are actually contributing to the spread of the current virus, by insisting on gathering their votaries together in large numbers for purposes of prayer, creating results contrary to their actual purpose. The sense of comfort and inspiration derived from religion can be much more tangibly delivered by science, without the senseless and misleading dogma and superstition. At universities like Harvard and Princeton, a sizable number of students who enter doctoral programs in religious studies begin as devout, fundamentalist, evangelical Christians, and graduate as agnostics and atheists. At good universities religion, like everything else, is taught from a factual, critical, scientific, historical perspective, rather than a devotional one. There are no presumptions.all religious doctrine, including the bible, is studied without preconception or bias. Each student is free to decide for herself whether biblical scripture is the word of God, or of many different human authors. Graduates complete their doctorates fully aware of the thousands of contradictions and errors of fact in the scriptures. Religion, for the properly educated, is a purely human affair, replete with human limitations and foibles. And this is how it should be. After all, aren't we all better off using our god given abilities to examine, explore, and explain the world for ourselves, rather than settling for and relying on books and explanations written thousands of years ago by people with less knowledge and means of discovery than we?Science does no harm to religion, other than disproving it. People are always free to believe whatever they wish. Religion, however, has done and continues to do inestimable harm to science and truth, if only by encouraging people to reject it.Graduates from the Harvard and Princetono schools of divinity always have good jobs awaiting them at highly prized pulpits. And anyway, they always expediently preach to their new congregations exactly what their parishioners want to hear, with tongue in cheek, and good job security.