Voting Progress

ON NOVEMBER 14, 1917, several dozen women were demonstrating near the White House for the right of women to vote, were arrested, thrown into prison, and tortured brutally for two weeks. One of them was stripped naked and forced to stand for hours, her hands tied to a metal bar above her head. A court order set them free, and two months later President Woodrow Wilson announced that he had changed his mind, and supported women's right to vote, and the nineteenth amendment. The incident helped sparked more demonstrations which resulted in passage of the nineteenth amendment soon thereafter. In the United States of Antipathy, people are seldom if ever treated fairly unless and until fair treatment is forced upon them by coercive action, usually taking the form of protracted dampaigns, usually accompanied by repeated acts of violence.The USA is not a country which easily and quickly affords people equal justice under law, freedom, liberty, equality, or any of those virtuous ideals about which we Americans are so fond of bragging. In that important sense, the United States of America is a sham. From time to time, just as Jefferson predicted, the tree of liberty, of fundamental decency and fairness, requires teh nourishment of the blood of citizens and tyrants. Equality, true equality for ethnic minorities, women, homosexuals, and disabled people has been fought for fore centuries, and still has not been fully achieved, although we have come closer to its fruition.The old boys network the white male heterosexual christian patriarchy, like kudzu, diminishes and dies only with great exertion, resistance, and difficulty. The fact that it has defending it the formal structure of the Republican party, and the amorphous ambiance of Christian conservatism impedes and delays ist inevitable demise. conservative America fought tooth and nail to prevent women from voting, using various excuses, such as women are not inherently qualified for political participation, women are inferior, women are superior and ought to be above the fray, and so forth. Conservative America opposed civil rights for African-Americans, equal rights for women, gay rights, and universal social equality through legislation. Over the centuries conservative America has changed somewhat, but only through external compulsion, and not nearly enough, and too little, too late.

Embracing Unreality

I JOINED FACEBOOK primarily for two reasons; to promote this website, and to distribute factual and damaging information about the president. as a retired teacher, I have a lot of Facebook friends, mainly former students who wanted to keep in touch. I tell them all that I aint here to chat, but its good to hear from them. Therefore people send me many many messages, links, forwards, articles, the whole gamut, and I hardly have time to look at any of them, much less all of them. What strikes me is the percentage of them which deal with material utterly unrelated to reality. Also, that the people who send them are seemingly unaware that the material they send has no relationship to reality; they seem to consider what they send to be as valid as anything else in science, current events, or historical scholarship. Topics range from alleged extraterrestrial involvement in human affairs, vast and shady conspiracy theories involving political leaders, and rich and powerful people secretly governing the world, and a favorite nowadays is something called the "Antichrist". The simple fact that there isn't the slightest evidence that any of this exists seems to deter no one, and to actually attract many people. Humanity, in its continuing cultural evolution, will likely eventually abandon these strange concepts of "Christ" and "anti-christ" and good riddance. Deep down most people who swear by the bible probably realize that it was written by people, centuries ago, and is a quaint collection of ancient manuscripts loosely base on oral traditions, and nothing else. It may take more decades and centuries to find life anywhere other than on Earth, and all these crazy conspiracy theories, Q-anon and the rest, are symptoms of societal psychological pathology. But, we love to escape, as any good fiction writer can tell you. If we were willing to confine our serious efforts to reality, reality such as climate change, environmental destruction, mass extinctions of millions of species of plants and animals , the things that are really happening, we would find that we have enough on our plates, as we like to say, enough to keep us productively occupied, without resorting to the garbage we seem so absorbed in. We can only escape for so long, before reality hits us hard. Our ability to comprehend and deal with the real world is greater than we think, and we needn't avoid it so strenuously. We have an impressive accumulation of good literary fiction to keep us occupied. surely we can do without all the messages, links, articles flying all over Facebook, talking about aliens in the banking system and whether Donald Trump and his son in law are the anti-christ. I can assure you that they are.

Getting Smart

THE IVY LEAGUE is where intelligent people go to college, where intelligent lecturers give intelligent lectures, and apparently, where intelligent administrators make intelligent decisions concerning whether to proceed with football and other fall sports in the midst of a deadly epidemic.Ergo, the ivy League was the first major athletic conference to do the intelligent thing and cancel football and all other sports this fall. The Big Ten and PAC Twelve, with only slightly less academic prestige and intelligence, followed suit soon thereafter,  and the only hold out are the Big Ten, the ACC, and the SEC, all of evidently somewhat less intelligence. One might even anticipate an autumn in which all college football all across America's fruited plain in canceled for 2020, except in the Southeastern conference, firmly ensconced in the south and southern culture. The SEC will try to carry on with blocking, tackling, punting common sense, and spreading disease. In the south, college football is a religion. In the south, funerals and weddings are not on the schedule for Saturdays  in the fall. Surely by now, five full months into the great pandemic, it is apparent that Covid 19 is not going away, now or ever, without deliberate, sustained, intelligent human intervention. that is what has been and continues to be lacking in these United States of Avarice, where we refuse to entirely dispense with fun and freedom for even the comparatively short time it would take to whip the bug. It will be a miracle if there are any complete football seasons this fall, high school, college, pro, or pee wee. And, it would be a miracle if there are any more intelligent decisions made about the matter, if high school and college football and especially pro football is put on hold without a thorough attempt to avoid doing so. wonders, it seems, never cease, one way or the other.

Examining Mueller, Closely

JEFFREY TOOBIN'S recent book "True Crimes and Misdemeanors" examines the Muller report, and finds that whereas it is quite accurate in describing president Trump's behavior as unethical and criminal, the report falls short in that it fails to explicitly condemn it, using the now famous phrase ", "we cannot exonerate the president", which bill Barr, Trump, and Trump supporters twisted to mean that Trump had been exonerated. Mueller clearly stated that his job was not to indict or prosecute the president, that would be left up to congress and the courts but he essentially provided a blueprint for doins so, focusing heavily on the numerous instances the president and his legal team committed obstruction of justice. Problem is, the Mueller report was 448 pages long, and hardly anyone bothered to read the whole thing. That gave Attorney General Barr, acting more like Trump's personal attorney than a representative of teh American people, time to publish a four page summary of Mueller's work. and to thus mislead the American people into thinking that Trump had been excused by Mueller, when in fact just the opposite was true, and still is. You are cordially invited to read the actual Mueller report, which is still very much with us, and to decide for yourself. If you do, it will become obvious to you that the president should not only have been impeached for accepting willingly assistance from the Russians in getting elected, he should have been removed from office.the essence of Mueller's findings is this" that Trump was aware of, accepted, welcomed, and did nothing to stop Russian operatives from putting on a campaign of misinformation in an attempt to help Trump gain support against Clinton in 2016. then, he and his team covered up the crime, and obstructed justice numerous time in so doing. We have largely forgotten the Mueller report now, because of an avalanche of presidential misbehavior since; it has gotten lost, literally, in the shuffle of crime, lies, and unethical behavior i which Trump has engaged since. but it should never be forgotten, and, by discerning, honest citizens and historians, won't be.

Relapsing

ABC NEWS said it perfectly: "Here we go again". Trump's gang is starting the same old B.S. all over again, this time about Kamala Harris. It seems that because both her parents were immigrants, that she may  not have been born properly, and may therefore not be an American citizen, and may be ineligible to be vice president. This, of course, is complete nonsense. Harris was born in 1964, in Oakland, verified. Do we now anticipate that Trump and his gangster associates and supporters will exhume the "birther" conspiracy attack, in to which they subjected Barack Obam throughout his presidency? Get ready. four years, maybe eight, maybe twelve long years of hearing the same old crap from the same old crappy reprobates. You might not recall, but soon after taking office, Trump meekly,. quietly admitted that Obama had in fact been born in Hawaii, and that he, Trump, had known it all along. No apologies, no nothing, just a quiet, quick acknowledgement of reality. Maybe the Harris thing will die out soon, maybe not. Amazing, how irreparably devious, nefarious, and stupid Trump and his extreme right wing extremely piously religious his supporters are. They seem to have never learned. All of this would be nothing but laughable nonsense, if the fools, to paraphrase H.L. Mencken, were not in such deadly earnest. Donald Trump entered politics by spewing his hateful, racist nonsensical lie about Barack Obama and is now rehashing the same tied idiocy against Harris. its all obviously racially based, if indirectly so, and what makes it tragic, especially tragic, is that it starts with Trump, but reaches far beyond him, far beyond his inner circle of sycophants, and extends deep into America's politically conservative evangelical christian demographic. The very same people who most piously embrace "family values", once again, as usual, spew racial hatred in lies oft repeated. But, as we say, its par for the course. The bright side is that this stale tactic has long since run out of steam, and, like the political aspirations of those who promulgate it, is likely to go nowhere.

Heartbreaking

AH, FONDLY i remember March, 1973, when senioritis began to kick in, and simultaneously i couldn't wait for my senior year to end and to graduate from high school, and i dreaded the thought, knowing that it would be final, the end of a vital part of my life, gone forever, friends I would never see again. Everyone's been through it, except of course for the drop out G.E.D. crowd. And so it came to pass; the summer of seventy three, the Watergate hearings, and then college, and so on, my high school friends growing more distant with the years and decades, but still important; I have been to every high school reunion, and will probably attend number fifty, three years hence, lord willing, and the creek don't rise. Oh heavens I feel sorry for the class of twenty twenty, their senior year truncated by teh virus, just as the bittersweet feelings of senioritis were kicking in. they'll never know the pleasurable pain of those final few weeks and days, those drunken last few nights with friends soon to be parted forever.. prom, graduation night, the whole shootin' match. In every grade level there are unique situations which make for unique lifetme memories, and so many of those will be shattered or twisted beyond recognition. it must be weird to be a student right now, and i feel sorry for them all. But we must persevere. We must make more sacrifices, not fewer. At my age, every football seasonlost is one I will never get back. For college and high school football players, families, and fans, every cancelled game and season is lost forever. Again, to be a high school or college senior, and missing that last precious football season forever, must be heartbreaking. But we must do it. We must make more sacrifices, not fewer. Our unwilllingness to make personal sacrifices is at the root of our problem; with sufficient sacrifice months ago, we would not now be in this dreadful situation, with the virus more out of control every day; we've no one to blame but ourselves. We must take heart by remembering that all generations of Americans have had to make sacrifices, that all great people everywhere have done it, and that when we make necessary sacrifices in the present for a better future, the price we pay pays off. As Goethe said: "One does not always lose when one must do without". What he meant, of course, is what we all know; that when we do without now for something worth waiting for, the wait is always rewarded in the end. Just think' that next football season is really going to be a good one.

Exposing Crime

A NEW EXPOSITORY GENRE  has emerged; that of former Republican insiders abandoning the party under Trump, and writing tell all books explaining why. Examples are David Brock and Stuart Stevens. (see previous article). These, combined with the revelatory works by people such as Mary Trump, John Bolton, and others, combine to make for a substantial and reliable anti-Trump body of primary source material. They all share similarities and common themes. Donald Trump is wholly unfit to serve as president because of his personal character and temperament, ks a person of low morality, wholly has committed multiple crimes before and since his election, and should be removed from office as soon as possible. He was elected by the electoral college with a minority of American votes by an angry right wing white conservative evangelical Christian constituency, people who fear that traditional American values are being undermined by societal acceptance of homosexuals, transgenders, non christian, minorities, and immigrants. They want to establish a theocratic America, in which the Christian religion is official, and progressive values are eliminated. To achieve this, Trump's supporters were willing to abandon traditional conservative and Republican values such as fiscal restraint and family values, and to elect a person they saw as strong, a person whose strength is conspicuously based on low moral character, a bullying personality, and a tendency to seek revenge on all opponents, a true demagogue. They simply ignore Trump's obvious traitorous criminality because, well, he is pro life, supposedly, and he is not a liberal. The conservative evangelical community has also abandoned all Christian values in supporting Trump, while piously pretending not to. What is it about Donald Trump that is imitative of Jesus Christ? The women, the sexual predatory history? the greed and constant striving for personal wealth? the pathological dishonesty? the vicious insults and bullying towards those who disagree with him? Their pathetic excuse is that, biblically is is not necessary to be a Christian to fight for the Christian faith, that God often appoints unlikely champions for his purposes. This pathetic justification for supporting an criminal and an traitor is no more sensible that the rest of their twisted, diabolical thought and behavior. Not only has Trump exposed his own criminality and traitorous character, so have the Republican party, the conservative community, and the conservative evangelical Christian base which reveals its hypocrisy and fundamental evil on a daily basis, and which will never fully recover any semblance of decency or credibility.

Coming To One's Senses

SOMETIMES people lose their senses, sometimes they come to their senses. among the losers are late life Christian converts, who are always the most fanatical. Radio talk show host Chris Plante was once a progressive, lost his mind, and now rants on the right wing airwaves. David Brock was once in charge of the vast right wind conspiracy, his job being to find or fabricate damaging information about the Clintons. After researching them he came to admire them, and finally converted to a Clinton progressive. his book "Blinded By teh Right" tells his story of conversion to the light and renunciation of the dark side. Stuart Stevens was a long time political operative an campaign strategist, who ran the successful election campaigns of man prominent Republicans. then, along came Trump, and Stevens, like all decent conservatives, jumped ship, became an avid anti-Trump activist, and is even now working with the "Lincoln Project", a group of well funded Republican defectors helping got Joe Biden elected. His new book "It Was All A Lie" discusses his thoughts concerning why the Republican party decided to give its support to an obviously unfit man like Donald Trump, and become the party of Trump. He points out that in order to achieve this, it was necessary for the party to abandon all of its traditional core principles and values, such as fiscal restraint, balanced budgets, family values, and individual integrity and virtue. Stevens calls the G.O.P. a party of cowards, afraid to stand up to a leader they well know is not fit for office, corrupt, a pathological liar. He further asserts that many if not most republicans know full well that Trump is unqualified, and has made a mockery out of the presidency in his disastrous term in the White House. And yet, they remain passive, and silent. The G.O.P. has become the white christian party, the "Christian" part referring to formal religious affiliation, not actually following the message of Jesus.the party lacks any semblance of ethnic or ideological diversity. More than half of the people in American under the age of fifteen are non white; this does not bode wall for the Republican future, which after its second defeat by Obama pledged to become more culturally diverse, but still hasn't. Stevens predicts that over the next few years the Republican party will dwindle into insignificance. sometimes, for the better of society, such predictions come true.

Going Nowhere

GOETHE SAID that when one travels abroad, one learns to appreciate what one has at home. everyone has experienced this. Life becomes hum drum, boring. Get up, go to work, come home, go to bed. Get up, go to work....finally, that long awaited two week vacation rolls around, we pack up the car, and head out to Yellowstone or somewhere for that beautiful but all too brief respite from reality. It runs out that we are exhausted by the time when we get home, and need a vacation to rest up from the vacation. The respite was fun, the trip a success, but when we pull into our old familiar driveway and park, we are first relieved that the house is still standing, and that the pictures of Yellowstone we posted on Facebook didn't result in our possessions being sold on Ebay, and we are super happy to be back on home soil. Everyone has experienced this; glad to get away, glad to get home, and even glad to be back in school or at work. As Goethe said, habit is our only comfort; we dislike doing without those unpleasant things to which we have become accustomed. Psychologists call it "the hedonic treadmill" from the word "hedonism". We build a new house, get a new car, or win the lottery, and the first day we are thrilled, filled with joy. the second day, not quite so much. within weeks or months we have settled down, and even a million dollar home or bank account becomes ho hum, familiar, and we realize; we still have the same back back, the same boring marriage, job, and the same neurotic hang ups in our heads. Only the window dressing, only the packaging has change. the solution is simple, if we utilize it. Learn to appreciate the simple things, learn to appreciate our modest lifestyle, seek no frills, keep up our steady, boring routine and know that we are producing, contributing, and, most of all...throw in a little variety. A two day vacation every few weeks will do just fine. A new friend, a new hobby, something always entering our lives to renew us,and to remind us that the treadmill, the old daily grind, isn't half as bad as we sometimes thin, that in fact our daily  lives our full of adventure and new experiences, within the framework of our old familiar homestead. And, above all; use your disposable income to invest in experiences, not material things with which we will become bored in short order. Great memories are, ultimately, all that we have left.

Dying To Have Fun

MORE THAN a hundred and sixty thousand Americans are dead by the virus, , needlessly. by Christmas, the number will be close to three hundred thousand, needlessly.the United State of america is number in the world, according to most Americans. Number one in covid 19 death and disease, number one, the greatest country on Earth, we like to say, exactly where we want and deserve to be. Two hundred and fifty thousand american gather together at close quarters, without masks, to ride motorcycles together. A sixty three year old woman, a friend of mine, with lupus and diabetes, refuses to wear a mask, damned if the governmentt is going to tell her what to do, and goes flitting off to a casino, to have fun. Fun, after all, trumps public health. Me, having fun, now, and may the devil take the hindmost. In america, we deserve what we get. We deserve a pathological prevaricating gangster president, because we were stupid enough to elect him. We deserve an epidemic, because when it became obvious that an epidemic was imminent, we did little or nothing,our political leaders were inert, and we the american people decided that making the necessary personal sacrifices to stop the spread of disease was just too much to endure, too much an infringement on our freedom and sacred right to have fun, and anyway, nobody is going to tell us what to do, we are so very great. The public schools are open, and already the disease is spreading through them, because we lack the sense and humility to keep our children at home, to learn online. Football practice, without social distancing, is in full swing, tackle football, and the virus is spreading.Voices of sanity are ignored or shouted down as we the American people insist on living our normal, fun filled, self absorbed lives.A seventeen year old student in Georgia, whose school had twelve positive tests in the first week, said she thought most of the kids would be wearing masks and social distancing. She must have forgotten that she lives in the United States of Amnesia, the United States of Arrogance, where we all have our fun, and are number one, in everything that really matters.

Color Blinding

ISABELLE WILKERSON, African-American reporter for the new York Times, had arranged to interview a gentleman for a research project, and she was excited about doing the important interview. She arrived at the restaurant early, sat down, and waited. The gentleman arrived late, but when he did, she introduced herself, and invited him to join her at her table. He said he was there to do an important interview, gave her a weird look, and asked to see some identification, like a Times business card. she responded that she didn't have any on her, but assured him that she was the reporter, because she had shown up at the right time and place. He told her there must be some mistake, and that he didn't have time to stay. he left....African-American agricultural scientist George Washington Carver was working for the state agricultural extension agency. A lady called the agency, and reported that she was having a problem with her peach trees; they were infested with a peculiar kind of ubg, and were looking sick  Carver's supervisor said he would send out a scientist to try to help her. when Carver got to h er house and knocked, dressed in overalls, work clothes, she answered the door and said, "If you're looking for work, the front lawn needs mowing. The lawn mower is in the tool shed." Carver shrugged his shoulders, went to the shed, got out the lawn mower, and cut her grass. Then, he went back and knocked on her door again, When she answered, she handed him a dollar, and he said: "I'm a scientist from the agricultural extension service. Could I perhaps take a look at your peach trees now?" True stories, both. they raise the question, how would the scenarios have been different had Wilkerson and Carver both been European-american, white, rather than African-American, black? We were once told that the solution is to be "color blind". But being blind to anything is nothing other than ignorance, will ignorance, and since people can see each other plainly, color blindness is nothing but a pretense, a form of dishonesty. so now in our modern age of enlightenment, we have abandoned color blindness in favor of...what...black lives matter? The problem here is the cliche "all lives matter". In Africa, and most civilized countries, nobody is black, and nobody is white. People are categorized by a broad range of ethnic traits, such as language, and so forth. the black and white bi polar paradigm is uniquely American. Only in America, as they say. Put your forearm next to that of any other human being, and it becomes obvious; nobody is "black", nobody is "white", and we all have different skin colors, if only slightly. Maybe we Americans are simply too busy being racists to notice.

Contributing

IN EVERY COMMUNITY, members want to seem valuable, to ensure their social status and enhance their survival chances through contributing to the community and gaining the respect of other members. A young attractive woman gives birth, a young healthy man provides labor and builds wealth. leadership and advice giving are left to the elderly. The various professions provide essential services. Others add communal value by providing new knowledge to the community. Entertainers entertain with narratives and stories, shaping cultural heritage. President Trump, says president Trump, has done more for African-Americans than any other president or anyone else in American history, with the possible but highly improbable exception of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, like Trump, was a racist, but, arguably, did a bit more than trump to assist black folk. In our age of alternative realities and conspiracy theories, if our president can invent his, we can invent ours.What better way to achieve self esteem, social status, and influence than to construct, from disparate sources, a comprehensive alternative cosmic paradigm, and to present it to as many willing acolytes as possible, as gospel. Thus one can seek status as the leader of a cult, with or without the cult.The most dangerous cult leader with the largest cult became president of the United States, with his narrative of hatred of immigrants, of the media of all things progressive; a right wing wish list of fabricated enemies of the people. The multi dimensional, extraterrestrial conspiratorial, hollow earth hidden civilization crowd is emboldened by, and embraces Trump,a fellow purveyor of false but alluring narratives and realities. In this ilk, whatever is most obviously real and extant is denied, whatever is pure fantasy is embraced as gospel fact, and the fun house becomes the best of all places to which to escape the world.

Trump, Lowering To Every Occasion

JOE BIDEN is not the most articulate presidential candidate in american history; that distinction belongs to Thomas Jefferson,with John Quincy Adams and Abraham Lincoln placing and showing. Biden's good fortune is that his opponent is teh least articulate ever, even including bushes one and two, a considerable lack of verbal skills. Biden blundered through a comment that whereas there is considerable cultural diversity among Latin-American Americans, there is much less among African-Americans, since Latinos come from all over  Latin America, and African-Americans were almost all born here in the U.S.. Blacks, he said, are far more homogeneous, with some exceptions. an arguable contention, but certainly not overly insulting nor racist.Suddenly Donald Trump, with his extensively documented history of making blatantly racist remarks, becomes highly sensitive and politically correct, and  objects strenuously, or pretends to. Trump, the highly sensitive politically correct defender of politeness and human dignity. The words "hypocrite", "phony", and audacious" do not do justice to Trump.The temerity only intensifies. the Russians, we are again warned, having assisted Trump's election, are at it again, trying to help him get reelected. the Chinese and Iranians are supporting Biden. Trump denies the Russians are doing this, since they have no reason to and every reason not to, since he, Trump, has been tougher and more resistant to Russian bad behavior than any president in American history, Even Kennedy, who stood up to the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis, and Reagan, who helped end the cold war with his stalwart opposition to Soviet schemes and his build up of the american military, pale in comparison to the bold actions of trump in defending America against Russian aggression. Evidently, the obvious fact that Trump has spent his entire presidency licking Putin's boots is but a mere distraction from his lion hearted bravery in dealing decisively and firmly with the Russian bear. Trump's temerity is nearly boundless, nearly as much so as his pathological, delusional dishonesty.

Purchasing Justice

THE WORDS "discrimination, "Segregation:, and "racism' do not adequately describe the ethnic, socio-economic, and racial parameters of american society, according to Isabelle Wilkerson, for mer reporter for the new York times, in her seminal new monograph "Caste". she argues that American society as a whole, and within the African-american community, is structured quite similarly to that in India, the notorious caste system, in which a person's position within society, from birth until death, is predetermined by a rigid traditional set of traditional values, handed down from generation to generation. White anglo-Saxon protestant wealthy aristocrats sit at the top of the social hierarchy, beneath which layers of white America, middle class, working class, and poor, all stand above African-Americans, who remain rigidly ensconced at the bottom, pigment precluding any possibility of rising, regardless of personal achievement or wealth. A black american, whether Lebron James or not, is still black, and of his caste, untouchable. The NBA, seventy five percent of whose players are are multi-millionaire untouchables, is establishing a three hundred million dollar fund to promote racial equality and justice in America, and to end systemic racism. Many of the players are wearing "black lives matte" T shirt in place of their names, and kneeling before the anthem, symbolically. how do they propose to accomplish a fundamental transformation of deeply entrenched american culture with money, by paying for it? By bribing racists to reconsider? Educational initiatives, presumably. Education must begin early and often, because the broader society  has proven most conservative, resistant to change.  Then too, reason tells us the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions of well indoctrinated people, an entire entrenched culture, cannot be bought and paid for.

Learning, The Hard Way

IN CONSERVATIVE STATES, where schools are being forced to open despite better judgment and against the wishes of most teachers by politicians and school administrators whoe either won't, don't, or can't comprehend simple microbiology, classrooms are crowded, hallways are crowded, and some students wear masks, and some do not.America seems to prefer hastening her return to normalcy to taking sufficient precautions to avoid millions more sick and tens of thousands more dead. Every teenager in America has a smart phone, and one community oriented high school student whipped his out in the hallway, took a pic of the crowd jammed together, and shared it on social media. Not a hint of social distancing was to be seen., but only a mass of young life, at risk. the school administrators, preferring secrecy, censorship, and concealment of its corruption to  truth telling, had strictly forbidden this, after the fashion of the Waffen SS or the Catholic clerical hierarchy. the young potential photo journalist was summarily banished from the herd, for daring to tell the truth rather then conceal it. it brought to mind my high school in 1970, when the index of forbidden books included "The Catcher In the Rye", of which every one had a copy of the small red hard cover salacious masterpiece in his or her locker, hidden inside a hollowed out Bible. Positive tests ofr teh coronavirus are already increasing in America's schools, as allegedly virtually immune prove not to be so virtually immune, and virtual immunity, which could be achieved by virtual learning from the sanctity of the home, lurks in the background, a forgotten but reasonable alternative to insanity . these politicians and administrators herding children into hallways with free floating viruses loitering - are they perhaps trump supporters, convinced that a little time, Lysol for lunch, and hydroxychloroquine will bring a hundred and sixty thousand people back to life, and prevent the same amount more from dying before Christmas? If only conservative America would awaken to the reality that the virus is real, and that real virtual immunity will require real virtual learning. bBut don't hold your breath.