Facebooking

I JOINED FACEBOOK several years ago out of curiosity to see what all the fuss was about. I soon found out.I soon realied that I could use Facebook to promote this website, one way or antoher,and that I had no interest in messaging or making friends online. Or chasing women. I can do all that in person, right here where I live. I have no profile, and I never message anyone, except a rare remark on messanger made to a nice lady I befriended quite by accident. But I get a near constant stream of messages from attractive young women. It amazes me. Always has, still does. I did the math, and calculated that if every man on Facebook receives as many messages from as many atractive young laides as I - and why wouldn't they? - then the average man on Faceboook gets several dozen messages per day from dozens of different attractive young ladies, or, there are literally billions of attractive young ladies on Facebook, messaging men. All of them want to see a picture of me. I reply that there is a picture of me on my website, (this website), and nowhere else. That completely confuses all of them, for some reason. Most of them it angers. They never ask politely for a picture of me; they demand one. "Send pic", is the most common phrase. As if it is my solemn, sacred obligation for me to give everyone who messagess me a picture of me, on demand. As if they have never heard of a "website" before, and have no idea how to access one. As if the phrase "The Truthless Reconciler" is inherently incomprehensible. I honestly explain that I do not know how to take and send a "selfie". They ignore that. Only rearely does a young attractive lady ever actually make it to this website, which is too bad, but, oh well..when they do, they seem to find these essays incomprehensible, or,if nothing else, unworthy of their opinion. I never get the feecback I want. Ever. They uniformly insist that they are looking for their one true love in life, a serious relationship. When they find out that I am sixty eight years old, they almost always seem undeterred. Age is just a number. Often, they ask me "what are you looking for here?" (Facebook). I always give the same one word answer, and its honest every time. I tell them: "nothing". This too seems to thoroughly confuse them. Often they make no response at all, and I never hear from them again. As if anyone who uses Facebook and responds to messgaes from attractive young ladies must be crazy, to not be looking for anything. Only an idiot would want nothing. I realize that I do not have to respond to messages from attractive young ladies. Several reasons why I do. For one thing, courtesy. For another, I joined Facebook for the online experience, and, by god, I am going to have the online experience. And then too, I participate for what I might learn, from a psychological and sociological standpoint. What I think I have learned so so far I do not entirely like. Everyone of these attractive young ladies looking for the love of their lives eventually asks me for money. Every single one of them, and there have been hundreds. Sometimes they try to scam me, although usually its the men who do that. I could have given away a fortune by now,if I were a gillable idiot. This constant money grubbing upsets me; maybe I should just smile, and think of it as normal.

Eclipsing

I HEARD SOME FOLKS EXCITEDLY discussing next month's total eclipse of the sun. "I cannot wait until April 8!", one of them enthusiastically exclaimed. I understand why, but begged to differ. "Yes you can", I wanted to say, but didn't. You can wait for anything and everything, anticipation is indeed the better part of desire, and, well, you have no other choice, but to wait..for everything, including the next moment. One thing I've learned over an increasingly long life is; never hasten the future. Don't wish away your life. Or, as Einstein sagely said: "I never think much about the future. It arrives soon enough". Every old person on the planet will tell you that life goes by like a flash, and there is no reason to hurry it along mentally,emotionally. I too am very excited about the coming eclipse, partly because I luckily live perfectly situated within the path of totally; the eclipse will indeed be total in my neck of the woods, the sun will be completely obliterted, briefly; but, yes, I can wait, and am enjoing the waiting. We are expecting tens of thousands of tourists to descend on our modest little state as the magic day approaches. If its cloudy all will not be lost: for a few magic minutes the day will turn completely dark, like midnight, and we will all freak, clouds or no clouds. Who knows? Maybe new religions will be born, right here in my territory! More likely, the old ones will be dusted off, and intoned, briefly... Doubtless ancient religions were inpsired and shaped by these occasional disappearances of the sun god from the sky in broad daylight. For a few terrifying minutes, the world seems, literally, to be ending. Thank goodness we moderns know better..or do we? I remember an eclipse in, I believe, 1964 or so, when I was a kid. Then, on March 7, 1970, when I was nearly fifteen, a high school friend and I projected the partially eclipsed sun (we were not in the path of totality) onto a viewing screen through a small telescope, and we took a picture of us, standing there together, next to the telescope, the half eaten sun plainly visibie on the projection screen. We were so young. My friend is long dead. I wish I still had that picture. August 21, 2017 seems like yesterday. On that grand solar eclipse day, my neighborhood was given a near total but not total total vanishing of the sun, on a nice clear summer day. I stood in my front yard, my neighbors stood in theirs, of all of gawking and gaping in utter, primitive amazement for about ten minutes or so. I rmember thinking that this would be the last eclipse until April of 2024, and that that was a long way away in the futre, but, really, maybe, not so much...Turns out, it wasn't. The past seven years went by in a flash. How surprising, right? I believe the next eclipse will be in the twenty forties some time, I cannot recall the exact date. Maybe I'll still be alive, maybe I won't be. Either way, I have been blessed. If I'm alive for the next eclipse, I will once again be excited, will pay attention to it, and will be very, very old. And once again, as I have increasingly done as I have aged, I will doubtless reflect once again on how incredibly rapidly it all goes by, almost as if having gotten done too soon.

Disproving the Lie

THE MOST BLATANT LIE ever told was Trump's big election lie. Nothing has ever been more obvious than its falsehood. He and his followers are to be commended on the effectiveness of their deliberate self delusional brainwashing. Weeks before the election, Trump told his daughter Ivanka about his election theft plan. On election night, the moment he famously lied, its falsehood was instantly obvious. For some strange reason Democrats and people of reason have been trying to think of ways to convince the Trump mob that the election was not stolen from them. Nothing has worked. Nothing ever will work. That has been obvious for a very long time. For years, observers have been pointing out to the election deniers that there is not a shred of evidence supporting Trump's election lie. They continue to do so to this day, ineffectively. Any run of the mill Trump supporter, when challenged, can instantly spew forth one conspiracy theory after another, one sensational example of voter fraud after another...all, of course, fabricated. In every swing state, the votes were counted three times, by Republicans, and each time, Biden won, you try to tell them. Again, no impact. It becomes pointelss to even try. However, people keep trying. Trump and the Republicans engaged people to search out and find election fraud in the 2020 eelction. One of them was Ken Block, a data specialist Trump hired in November 2020 to dig deep and either find or fabricate proof, or even evidence, of election fraud. He spent months indeed digging deep,assessing an avalanche of fraud claims, going through records at local precincts, studying every aspect of the momentous election. The entire experience he wrote about in a newly released book with a title longer than the election controvery itself: "Disproven: My Unbiased Search For Voter Fraud For the Trump Campaign,the Data That Shows Why He Lost, and How We Can Improve Our Elections."...The Title says it all, summarizes the book. Step by step, Block show exactly how the election took place, what happened, and that Trump lost, just exactly as officially noted. This book is as persuasive as all the state vote recounts and court trials, sixty of them affirming the election results, lost by Trump. But, unfortunately, that isn't the point. None of it matters. Facts and proof and reason will never persuade Trump's election deniers to abandon their election lie,and come clean. They're too deeply invested, dug in too deep. During his work Ken Block came to realize that the American election system does indeed need reform, an overhaul of sorts. There are simply far too many unnecessary inefficiencies, errors, honest mistakes,and actual instances of fraud to tolerate, when fixes are easily achievable. Block lays out exactly what's wrong and how to fix it, which is this important book's, main value. Election deniers will try to use this reality to claim that election fraud and a stolen election was not only possible, but factual. But they won't be able to, because Block clearly shows that all these flaws in the election system, while very real, could not possibly have had more than a tiny, insignificant impact on the actual election. That won't matter to them either.

Being Human(e)

JUST TO BE CLEAR, I am non anti-Semitic. I am not anti-anybody, race, ethnic group, religion, whatever. If anything, I am anti-human, across the board. An equal opportunity human detractor. Bertolt Brecht said it best, in his poem "Concerning Poor B.B.":..."I make friends with people...and I wear a derby on my head as others do . I say: 'they are strangely stinking animals'. And I say: 'no matter,I am too'"... No, my problem is not anti-Semitism. My problem is human history, past and present. The impending destruction of all life on Earth. The constant wars, violence, and needless suffering, inflicted by ourselves upon ourselves. With regard to the thousands of religions in the world, I don't like any of them, including Judaism. For me, my own religion, which I invented, will do just fine. I have never been a big fan of the modern nation os Israel, for geo-political rather than religious or ethnic racial reasons. A close, historical examination of the precise manner in which it was founded in 1948 clearly revels that its founding was accomplished only with extreme suffering on the part of the Palestinians, and only as a result of western imperialism, i.e., British and American. Arguably, the world would have been and would be a far better place now had European powers and the North American power refrained from meddling in the rest of the world, trying to control it, for hundred of years. Arguably, the people now living in the area now occupied by the nation of Israel and the surrounding areas where Palestininas live in large numbers would be far more stable, peaceful and happy had nothing changed in 1948. Either that, or the "two state solution" should have implemented in 1948, at the founding of mmodern Israel. That Netanyahu and Israel's conseratives oppose this is reason enough why they should not be governing Israel now, why elections should be held soon. The nightmarish carnage and bloodshed now being visited upon the Palestinian people by the Israeli "defense forces" is the direct result of the horribly mismanaged birth of Israel in 1948. It is not yet "genocide", but it could fast become gnocide; more than thirty thousand murdered civilians, mostly women and children, qualifies as a good start to genocide. Let's call it "mass murder". It is certainly not standard warfare, in any sense understood by history or the international community. It is barbaric, inhumane, and the international community must stop it. It is obvious that Netanyahu will not. The Israeli government under Neyanhayu has turned the nation of Israel into a criminal, terrorist organization, no better than their terrorist enemy Hamas. The nation has lowered itself to that level. In America, it seems to be the progressives who are expressing outrage at this wanton slaughter of innocent civilians by Israeli forces. From American conservatives, not so much. It is not too late to greatly improve the situation by implementing a plan for nationhood for Palestine, a plan more than seventy five years late. And, just to be clear, what Israel is doing now has nothing to do with "defending itself".

Changing Course

Catherine Coldstream did not grow up wanting and planning to become a nun. Far from it. She was raised by intelligent parents and given all possible educational opportunities, and she chose music. Her intllectual creativity and unique mindset led her towards experimental forms of music. She lived in Paris for a time, where whe took full advantage of the cultural advantages offered by the city. Then, when she was twenty four, her father, the guiding light of her life, died suddenly. She was utterly devasted, to the point of not having any motivation to continue her dirdection in life. She new she needed a drastic change, of some kind. In dealing with her grief, she turned to religion and philosophy, and came to believe that her life needed to take a religious turn, and be devoted to the faith. She entered a nunnery, and stayed for several years. She adjusted repidly to monastic life, knowing what to expect, having been aware of some of its characteristics in advance. But,she never really fit in, and the nun's life,though she rigorously adhered to its strict regimen, never really suited her. Over time, she came to realize this. At one point she actually ran away, but returned, then, later, left permanently by pursuing the established, appropriate, proper process. She wrote a fascinating book about the whole experience, titled "Cloistered: My Years As A Nun". Coldstream is an excellent, talented writer, and would make a great literary novelist. Her narrative of daily life among the nuns, monotonous and austere, and uneventful though it was, she renders fscinating, especally in describing her inner, emotional reactions to the circumstances of her radically different life. She grew to appreciate the materially simple life, to value silence and introspection, as well as self discipline, service, and duty. She sensed her growth as a person. But ultimately the spartan life became burdensome, too bereft of creativity or artistic expression, intellectually stifling. She said that during all this, she felt as if her artistic talent and intellectual gifts were being shunned, overlooked, unappraciated. Life in the nunnery had been one of cold impersonal contact and near complete silence, deprived of all normal human warmth and love. She missed that, and felt herself withering, emotionally. One must assume that before entering the nunnery, Ms.Colsdtream had given thought to the probability that she would not be entering a world replete with song, dance, art, and individual creativity, where her talents would be celebrated, appreciated, and encouraged. After she left, her adjustment back into the mainstream world was a bit difficult. She had grown so accustomed to her nun's life that the outside world seemed unbearably noisy, chaotic, nervous, and mainstream culture seemed frivolous, crass, and blashpemous. Her renewed freedom of movement, routine, and activity she soon became pleasantly reaccustomed to, however. And, although for a long time she tended to avoid conversations or relationships with people, this too gradually returned to pre-nun normal, overtime. She had not been cured of religion, however. She entered college, and studied theology. Nearly everyone could probably benefit from spending a small protion of hie or her life in a monastic setting and lifestyle. But only for a time. To devote one's entire life to it would deprive anyone of too much life, culture, and humanity, and would not give enough in return.

Paying the Price For Telling the Truth, Part II

IT IS WIDELY BELIEVED that if elections were held in Israel right now, With Netanyahu running against a good, strong, bona fide solid opposing candidate, that Benjamin would lose badly. He is, by all accounts and measurements,supremely unpopular among the general populace, and not just the progressives. Like Trump, Netanyahu is embrolied in a number of legal difficulties, charged with various forms of serious financial and political corruption. His legal proceedings are proceeding, slowly. Many Israeli citizens are concerned about this, with justification. Also, his recent apparently failed attempt to greatly disempower the Israeli judiciary,paricularly their Supreme Court, and to transfer much of their traditional power to the executive branch, i.e. himself, not only was poorly received througout the electorate, but all across the country, as massive, sometimes violent protests made the people's viewpoint perfectly clear. Perhaps the most immediate factor in his decline in popularity is the Public's decreasing approval for the war against Hamas, aka Palestine. Many Israelis believe that their government and military should have been prepared for and prevented the vicious attack by Hamas on October 7. And make no mistake; this war is not merely against Hamas, it is now full blown against the Palenstinian people, women and children civilians included. Israel is not due to have a presidential eleciton for some time, but Sanator Shcuk Schumer recently exprssed what many people are thinking, and agree with: that Iarael should have an election as soon as possible, and a new president should be elected. Netanyahu has been in office longer than any other Israeli leader in history, is awash in scandal and controversy; it is time for him to go. Predictably, the conservative Christian Repubican party,its leaders in particular, rose up in righteous indignation agaisnt Schumer. How dare he criticize our close ally, and presume to meddle in their internal affairs! Republicans, phony as usual. Certainly an American, any American, including a political leader, has the right to express an opinion about a country whose very existence and strength has often depended on American support, and still does. President Biden, among millions of other people, has observed that killing more than thirty thousand Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, not only does not help defeat Hamas, but actually harms Israel more than helps it, by making Israel a scorned pariah internationally, by reminding people of history's most brutal massacres and wars. The American government, American electorate, and all other nations on Earth sould exert the strongest possible pressure on Israel to cease and desist civilian massacres, and to help innocent Palestinians avoid starvation, rather than being the cause of it. Surely Netanyahu is aware that as long as there is a Palestine which hates Israel, not without good reason, there will be a formal, if illegal Palestinian military organization, Hamas or no Hamas, armed, resolute, and dedicated to Israel's destruction. Israel is making new enemies much faster than it is defeating and destroying old ones. Keep talking, Mr. Schumer. We hear you.

Paying the Price for Telling the Truth Part I

SOME IF NOT MANY will remember Christine Blase Ford, who testified before Congress in the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. In a thin, weak,emotion laden little voice, she testified that while in high school, Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her, raisin quit a stink on netional television for htis shocking narrative. the conservative Republians quite predctably and naturally immediately pounced like a pack of vultures, attacking Ms. Ford, who is a distinguished professor of psychology and other esoteric things at several major universities. They pulled out all the stop, these Republicans Senators, in discrediting her tsteimony, her integrity, her everything, is their desperate perceived necessity of getting Kavanaugh on the court, no matter what, no matter how foul and criminal his background. It was a disgusting demonstration of raw power being used brutally, to destroy a good person. In other words,normal far right wing behavior. After years of torment and indecision, Christine Ford has finally releaed abook on her entire experience, titled "One Way Out". Her decision to suppress the rape over the years emotionally damaged her as much as the rape itself, and the agony of deciding whether to come forward when Kavanaugh was nominated to the high court, more terrifying still. In the end, she had to do it. I wil never forget her timind, shaky little girl voice which she seems to have kept. And I can never forget the disgusting aggression with which the Republican reprobates attacked her, relentlessly,dishonestly, ceaselessly. The death threats from the conservative community started coming in immediately.She wsa beseiged with them. All from Trump spporters. MAGA nation, up in arms, angry, violent, like January 6th. She and her family had to move from place to place, hotel to hotel, under tight securty,to stay alive. And she still does, to this day. She still receives death threats by the basket,still has tight security, and still lives a life of hyper vigilance and hiding. Perhaps she always will. And make no mistake, this is the work of the entire conservative community, not merely a sfew deranged people, or a hate group. It is a big as the Republican party, and bigger. It is the way that normal,mainstream American conservatives deal with women who claim to have been sexually abused by consrvative men seeking high office. Deny and ignore the claims of abuse. Attack the accusor. Don't even consider the accustions, despite the confirmed fact that instances of women fabricating such claims are rather rare. Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh are now "serving" on the U.S. Supreme Court despite the high probability that they are both sex offenders. and if you dont think this is normal for conservatives, to support conservative leaders who are also sex offenders, simply consider Donald Trump.Trump is a verified, convicted sex offender, and a sex offender by his own, well known, documented admission. You hear his words, bragging about being one. Millions of people heard it. His supporters, including most conservatives, most Republicans and evangelical Christians in this country, simply don't care. Instead of accepting the inconvenient truth and ridding themselves of Trump,they demonize his victims, and they reward him by making him an icon, a cult leader,sent by God and Christ. Their agenda is that important to them. Methods and morality do not matter. That shows you precisely how moral and decent mainstream American conservatives are, which is, not at all.

The Never Changing Trump

IF YOU DIDN'T KNOW BETTER, you would swear that Donald Trump is trying to self "destruct". However, you know better. And indeed, were he among normal, decent people, he would be politically destroyed. But he isn't. He is not preaching and screeching to mainstream, decent America. He is preaching to the proverbial choir, to his MAGA hard core supporters, the kind who attend his hate-fest campaign rallies. Far right wing extremists, of the most dangerous kind. And since he always doubles and triples down, and never tries to hide his true self, its easy to undrertand his point of view, impossible though it remains to comprehend how any half way decent human being could ever embrace such insane evil nonsense. He seems to be holding on to his fanatic base, but its hard to imagine that he could still attract more new voters, and expand it. Trump's base is a reflection of Trump himself; the same angry, hateful bigoted,political and religious extremists. At a recent such event, spewing his usual hateful rhetoric, Trump called undocumented immigrants "animals", "less than human", "vermin". This he often does. Poisoning our white American blood. His MAGA audience applauded and screamend with approvoval. Referring to the currently incarcerated criminals who were duly convicted in courts of law of violent insurrection and other crimes in connetion with the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection, he called them "political hostages", and once again pledged to pardon them if he, heaven forbid, is elected president. Again, approval from his adoring mob of red capped sycophants. If he loses the election, he promises, there will be a bloodbath in America. This too he has done numerous times. Approval from the mob. Later he tried to weasel out of it by claiming that he was talking about bloodbath in the economy. His violent rhetoric we have heard many times before, and we have seen his willingness to assemble a violent mob and send it to do violence,To defend the insurrectionist is as traitorous as the insurrection itself, which was entirely Trump's idea. Trump and his supporters are increasingly willing to use violence to achieve their political aims. This is evident on surveys. The racism, of Trump and of those who support him, is glaringly obvious. The entire Trump movement is about restoring white supremacy to America, which is being lost amid an increase of non-white Americans, and a decrase in the percantage of racistwhite crackers in the general population. The Trmp movement, from the beginning, was destined and remains destined to crash and burn. The only remaining question is; ow much more damage will it do on its way down? Ancient Chinese proverb say that an evil tyrant will burn down his own country to rule over the ashes. the Trumpmovement has already cleary demonstrated that it is willing to abandon democracy and utilize election fraud and mob violence to achieve its purposes. Alarmingly, this proves that MAGA will not go down without a fight, and will probably not stop fighting until they are utterly defeated, or the country is in ruins. The rest of us, the decent America, must strive to prevent them from taking down the entire country with them as they perish in political defeat.

Living, Loving, Leaving...

THERE ARE FEW IF ANY groups of people, or "communities" which I despise more than I depise white evangelical conservative Christians. Not as human beings, but rather, as political and religious activists and influencers. Several reasons. First, I despise strict, inflexible religious dogma, belief, canon. I much prefer the self correcting, self improving, ever changing nature of science to the unchanging, faith based rigidity of religion, all religion. Anybody who says that I am going to hell; after you. More importantly, I despise them (right wing evangelicals) because more than eighty percent of them still support Trump, despite everything.That horrifies and disgusts me, as it does many people. Approximately fourteen percent of Americans are white conservative evangelicals, down from twenty five percent only a generation ago. The kingdom is shrinking. A higher percentage of Americans are "noners' "none of the above" folks, non religious people with no religious beliefs of any kind, than are white conservative evangelicals. That's comforting and encouraging to some. Young people tend to reject the faith more often than the aged; the younger the person, the more the rejection. Thousands of evangelicals are leaving the faith,so many so that there is a noticeable, definite commmunity of former believers, which has been named, cleverly: "Exvangelicals"... The exodus from the church, the Exvangelical movement, is gathering momentum and growing. A new book,titled "Exvangelicals: Living, Loving, and Leaving the White Evangelical church", by National Public Radio journalist Sarah McCammon, herself a former evangelical, elucidates the exvangelical movement, using her own life as the focus,in a fascinating, revealing narrative of personal growth and evolution, within he context of broader social trends. Ms. McCmamon was raised in a strict evangelical community and family, in which the Bible was literally true, their faith was the one true faith in a sinful fallen world,and their mission was to spread the true faith far and wide. Dancing, drinking, and dating were forbidden, as were nealy all forms and manifestations of secular eulture. National Public Radio was referred to as "National Perverted Radio" by her father, for its secular, intellectual liberal slant. From kindergarten through college she attended only Christian schools,where she was further indoctrinated. McCammon entered adulthood fully indoctrinated, totally on baord with evangelical fundamentalism. However, she had gotten an education, and this, like is does so many others, doomed her ability to continue her embrace of narrow religion at the expense of all else, at the expsnse of the world of science, and scientific reality. Zealous religiosity is the enemy of broad, liberal, education, and vice versa. Among evangelicals, a broad minded education is not only not valued, but feared, for the very good reason that people who become educated, the more educated people become, the greater their tendency to reject tradtional, dogmatic, primitive religions, like evangelical Christianity. It can be argued that strict, blind obeedience to religion is a mental illness. If nothing else, such blind devotion tends to stifle creative thinking and the inherent willingness and desire of the human mind to grow, expand,and learn. The less educated the general population, the more religious it is, and the less capable of governing itself, and the more easily it can be controlled by the powerful few. No wonder it is still widely considered a civic virtue to swallow the opiate, and to be deeply,immovably religious.

Warring Culture

THE CULTURE WAR is a phrase that has gained much meaning and use over the last couple of decades or so. Arguably, there is always and eternally some form of culture war or other in any vibrant,thriving, society. Different cultural values, artistically, philosophically, religiously, forever circulate through the population, creating controversy and choices. And, like every other aspect of human existence and culture, the intensity of these conflicting patterns of thought comes and goes in cycles. In America, for instance, the immediate post World War Two era, historically, seems to have been a time of relatively little cultural warfare, when the shared prosperity of the post war American economy helped create widespread contentment, and a fair amount of uniformity of agreement in cultural concerns and endeavors. The first time I personally noticed any cultural warfare in my idyllic life in the land of opportunity was during the Viet Nam War. Funny how winning an obviously virtuous war for national survival, freedom, and democracy against an evil tyrant unites and inspires a whole population, while losing a needless war for corporate power and capitalism results in a divided, angry country, fighting among itself. American military patriotism, such as the type which motivated the civilian population all throughout World War Two, never materialized around Viet Nam, even at the beginning of the Viet Nam war, which from the beginning seemed far away, mysterious, udefined in terms of American values, other than to weakly, rhetorically claim that we were over there fighting for freedom, democracy, and the American way, for...somebody or other. It is duobtful whether anybody ever really believed such nonsense, instead of the reality that Viet Nam was an extension of the nineteen fifties policy of containment of communism, Russia, and China. Making the world safe for American corporte capitalism. But by 1967 the country was culturally divided, majorly, and not just politically. The hippie movement arose among the nation's young adults, and the most popular music of the day, rock n roll, turned radical, became protest music. Even Johhny Cash was against Viet Nam, and sang about it. Our current seriously divided Amerian body politic can be seen as a comprhenisve culture war, the apparent fruition of decades of public policy and response to it. A brief overview reveals that on one side we have the conservatives, and on the other, the progessives. Conservatism is aligned with the Christian religion, capitalism, nationalism, and cultural, sexual conformity and uniformity. Liberalism, now called "progressivism", is associated with socialism, secularism, religious freedom and diversity, and cultural and sexual diversity and noncomformity. Here's the "bottom line": the cultural war is being won by and will ultimately be won by the progressives. Religion is declining in importance, and has been for a long time. All religions, uncluding our current ones, live and die. Capitalism is doomed to forever live with regulation, restraint, some degree of democratic government oversight and control. No holds barred free market capitalism will not be allowed to endure in the future. We must cooperate, economiclly. We have too many people, and we are too interconnected. And, of course, change, which is the nature of progress(ive) culture, will always accelerate, while tradition, the basis of conservatism, gives way to change and innovation. And this is good.

Renaming, Politically Correctly

THE U.S.S. JOHN C. STENNIS, a huge, nuclear powered, fully loaded Nimitz class aircraft carrier, is going to get a name change. The vessel is halfway through its estimated, planned fifty year life. Considering the billions of dollars it took to build it, one might hope that its lifespan can eventually be extended, given high quality TLC, beyond expectations, assuming the United States navy still exists twenty five years from now. These days, one can assume nothing. Considering that it costs at least a million dollars a day to operate it and most other giant aircraft carriers, perhaps its seemiingly relatively short life span is a blessing, if in disguise. The Stennis was commissioned in 1998, and named after the long serving, venerable Democratic Senator from Mississippi, who is credited for having promulgated and pushed through Congress much of the legislation which greatly increased the size and firepower of the American navy in the ninteen sixties. Senator Stennis was and is indeed considered among the "fathers" or the modern U.S. Navy. So, the ship's name is appropriate, in a very relevant way. In anohter very relevant way it name is singularly innapropriate, a way which was not being considered as recently as the late nineteen ninietiesand the turn of the millennium. Namely, despite his ong an generally distinguished career in teh Senate Joehn C. Stennis was, nonetheless,a strict, staunch racial segregationist. He firmly believed that white people and black people should live and work in the same country, but in different neighborhoods, schools, and businesses, completely separate from eath other. His reasoning was essentially the same tired, pedestrian logic of most modern racists: whether white is superior to black in any way, shape, or form is irrelevant. The fundamental cultural and racial dfferences between the two races are so profound and irreconcilable that to attempt to integrate them is pointless, doomed to failure after much needless blood, sweat, tears, striving, and suffering. To many people of his generation, this reasoning was sound and solid, borne out by history and current events, dead raist wrong that we now know it to have been and to still be. At the root, Stennis and all crackers and honkies who embrace(d) this nonsense were and are white supremicists, although they do not enphasize that aspect of their biased character. The white supremacy part they have cleverly replaced with "separate but equal", which is itself of course bogus, a cover story for racial hatred. I don't think the U.S.S. Stennis's new name has yet been decided or revealed. Perhaps it will be renamed after some heroic African-American social reformer-crusader or military hero. This has been a growing trend of late. The best way would be for the American peple to dceide by voting on it, but that'll never happen. For one thing, it would be too much fun, and for another, the Republcians would doubtless vigorously oppose it, perhaps by trying to either steal the election, or by organizing another violent mob,including the January 6th Insurrection veterans who are not yet in prison, and once again, as they are doing in so many venues and ways, and have done so many times already, thwart democracy.

Fighting Delusion

IT BEARS REPEATING: Trump's supporters overwhelmingly embrace Trump's big election lie, and the lie that all of his legal difficulties, all the dozens of felony charges with which the former president is soon to stand trial, are nothing more than a witch hunt, a conspiracy to destroy Trump. Yes, they really believe all that, shockingly. I contend that they really don't,that,deep down, they know its all lies, but that they have sufficiently brain washed themselves to suppress, for the time being, this inconveneint fact. "Honest Don" was probably a joke by Trump, but one he would gladly embrace seriously. The more seriously they embrace this ironic, laughable moniker, which they surely will not dare to, the more hilarious and damning a joke Trump's opponents, including me, can make of it, the more fun we can have with it. It also bears repeating that when Trump announced, on election night, before the votes had been counted, that "actually, we won the election", and then double-billion downed on it to this day, he committed a very serious crime, one for which he should, if there is justice in the universe, pay dearly. In any reasonable system of justice, such a lie, and the ensuing insurrection would be and are punishable by death, or in the event that the death penalty is banned, by life in prison without parole. That's what makes continued support of Trump so egregeious, arguably, effectively aiding and abetting criminal activity. I encounter Trump supports daily. Most of them are strangers, but several are good friends of mine, perhaps because we do not discuss politics. As the election approaches that may change. If it does, I will stick with my main theme, my main message, that, no matter who you are, you are much too good to support a person like Trump. I will mention the untter inevitability of the necessity of finally, at long last, abandoning him. Its never too late, although at this point, it sure as hell is later than it should be. The racism which so obviously underscores and partially explains Christian conservative support for Trump they also supress and deny, even to the point where they want to prohibit teaching it,indeed forbid its mere mention in public schools, in an attempt to not only erase it from their own awareness, but everyone else's, society's. The Trump agenda includes outlawing being gay, punishable by incarceration or death, deporting or imprisoning all illegal immigrants, banning abortion, denying climate change and bringing back coal, and establishing Christianity as official. One cannot imagine a more frightening, horrible agenda, but that is precisely what not only the "far right", but mainsstream Christian conservatism advocates. To achieve it, they are willing, indeed eager to eect a criminally insane criminal to the presidency, then, give him unlimited power. That is what we face, as a nation. I intend to mention all this to anyone who will listen, most especially Trump supporters. I also intend to remind people thath Biden's State of the Union speech proved, conclusively, that he has plenty of energy,and plenty of healthy intelligence. No, I do not plan to start converstations about Trump with Trumpers. But casually mentioning that "We all know that Biden won the election" will suffice.

Banning and Burning Books by the Bushel

THE PROBLEM with banning and burning books is that, when you get started, it becomes hard to stop. The smallest spark becomes a fire, then becomes a raging wildfire, consuming thousands of acres or books. A book censuring, banning, burning crusade (they are all differeng degrees of the same thing) is never content to merely rid the public a a few,certainly, definitely innapropriate or valueless books,few and far between though they actually are(all books tend to have value, if only limited). Whenever the advocate(s) recommend a particular book be banned, whoever the authorities are who decide which books are banned,once a single book has been banned, the experience of power becomes attractive to all involved, contagious, then, tragically, addictive. Nobody ever stops at banning a single book or a few books. The fire ultimately, inevitably consumes whole libraries, genres, authors, or topics. It happened in the ancient world, and in the modern. It is now happening in these United States of America. The spark has long been lit, the fire is yet small, but spreading rapidly, with plenty of advocates (oppononets of certain books,authors, topics, or genres) and authorities to fuel it into the far future. Book banning in America is a product, as nearly all social ills seem to be these days, of the far, extremist,evangelical Christian right wing, the very people the reverend Billy Graham warned us about sixty years ago. If these right wing religious fanatics would be content to merly practice their religion and culture in peace, rather than to control the entire country and the entire world, all would be well. But they have long since taken control of the Republican party, and are threatening to take control of the country, which is their stated goal. Their vehicle? Trump! So much for Christian morality. Book banning is becoming highly organized and a major cause for thousands of well organized well funded people, just as the "Moral Majority", in the time of Reagan, organized, grew, and took over the conservative movement and the G.O.P... Committees of religious zealots (Republicans) all across America's fruited plain are organizing at the local level, plotting strategy,voting on long lists of bad books ("bad" being actually "good" books), and presenting their lists to local libraries, including school libraries, and to city councils, school boards; to anyone with power who will listen. It is the Republicans who listen... Over the last couple of years, the number of prohibited, restricted,removed, banned books (its all the same) in these United States has grown exponentially, alarmingly, in both public and academic libraries. Books about LGBTQ people,urging their inclusion, books about racism, past and present, books aobut disastrous human caused climate change - banned. Arguably, indeed obviously, almost all if not all of the books that have already been restricted, prohibited,removed, banned in the U.S. should not be banned, but instead, should be well and widely read. Books like "The Catcher In the Rye", and "To Kill A Mockingbird", and "The Grapes of Wrath", great masterpieces and classics, all, banned. It will reach the point wherein the only books available are hagiographic, religious, insipid books espousing only trditional conservative values. Nothing challenging authority, questioning tradional, accepted beliefs, or presenting revolutionary new ideals and thinking will be permitted. When that happens, 1984 will have finally arrived, and Big Brother will be firmly in control.

Loving Trees

I LOVE TREES. Presumbaly most people do, like music and food. I planted about fifty saplings nineteen years ago on my property where my newly built house stood,in a vast barren construction landscape, with only crabgrass and rocks. Through the years I have lovingly watched them grow, and am richly rewarded today and for the rest of my life by living in a beautiful, home grown forest. I am tolerant, nay, accepting of volunteer growth,, brush and tree. Only if necessary do I intervene. Two or three years ago a volutneer tree was growing beautifully, seven feet tall already, but much too close to my house. It needed to be moved. I tried to, a neighbor tree - lover and I transplanted it, but failed. It immediately looked droopy, and never recovered, despite my best, desperate attempts to save it. Despondently I watched it dying little by little, every day, as my heart broke and sank. I wrote an essay about it; "Loving A Dying Tree", published on this site. At the dawn of human neolithic civilization it is estimated that there were roughly seven trillion trees on planet Earth. Now, we humans have cut that number in half. WE need to reverse this trend, and indeed are beginning to do so. Large reforestation projects all over the world are taking root, so to speak. Of the millions of tree lovers on Earth, among the most fervant is Daniel Lewis, whose new book "Twelve Trees: The Deep Roots of Our Future", will inspire you and warm your heart. Lewis himself is a bibliophile librarian researcher who has travelled all over the world visiting, admiring, and researching trees of every conceivable variety. Latest estimates are that there are roughly seventy three thousand "varieties" or species, of trees in the world. Obviously there are still undiscovered species, and the exact number is far from being known.It is to be hoped that humanity will at length develop an accurate, comprehensive knowledge of all species of trees, past and present, before and rather than exterminating all life on Earth. Science is still learning much about trees, how they live, function, and reproduce, among other questions. It turns out that we know far less about trees than we thought, like most areas of knowledge. In "Twelve Trees", Daniel Lewis focuses on twelve specific species of trees, including a species that is extinct on its native Easter Island, but is alive in captivity in zoololigical preserves. Attempts are being made to reintroduce it into its native island habitat, without much success so far. Then, he has chapters on several varieties of oak and pine tree, among others. Each tree was selected for the book because of some dramatic aspect of its existence, and because the problems and circumstances for them is highly indicative of and symbolic of circumstances and threats facing trees all over the world. Weaving together these twelve chapters on twelve different tree species into a narrative which includes the whole world and every tree in it, Lewis educates us about what we know, what we need to learn, and how we can save the planet by reforesting it. Trees have personalities, communities, and communication. Any day now we're likely to find out that they have churches and baseball teams. Two of the best pieces of advice you'll get all day are: read this book, and plant a tree. At least one.

Tolerating Crazy, With Benefits

I DON"T HIDE, from anyone, the reality that I have "issues" as we say today, with my local senior center, which I visit daily, for lunch, and to socialize with my many friends there, including gospel singing every Monday morning. I am generally popular, with some doubters and nay sayers. Oh well. You can't please all of the people all of the time, as a famous American politician said. My "problem" is with some of the beliefs and attitudes of some, if not many of its members. Primary among these is the fact that many, indeed most of them seem to support Donald Trump. That, particularly post insurrection, is a big problem for me. Extreme right wing Christianity angers me, Christians who support Trump disgust me. The reasons to abandon Trump politically, for all decent Americans, for everybody, are simply too compelling and obvious to ignore or enumerate. Trumpers need to and should move on, to new, better people for their leaders. Then too there are the truly sadistic crazies, religious fanatics, who believe that because I am not "saved", not a votary of their particular religion, that I am at great risk for and indeed probably will spend an eternity in the flaming pits of hell, in eternal torment, unless, of course, I repent, accept Jeuse Christ not only as a good person and great philosopher, but as God himself, and worship him. No can do. If you choose to believe that you yourself will go to hell, or are risking it, fine. But how dare you presume such a horrible fate for me, based on your beliefs, and not mine? I get along well with all these people, including the Trumpers. I simply do not broach and discuss politics or religion. I do not, however, withhold my opinons and beliefs if asked to provide them. I never am. That's fine with me. I can very easily find someone's religious and political beliefs disgusting and stupid and get along very well with them, and even become good friends with such folk. My approach to people with disgusting religious and political beliefs, and my treatment of those who embrace them, make my life better, make me more popular, and generally happy. I love going to the senior center, and I love the people there. It a great place not only to socialize, but also to get good advice,help, and emotional support. Its mid March, and the grass is starting to grow. I broke out my lawn mower from its winter hiberation, started it up with no problem, and cut some grass. A couple of days later I did the same thing,only this time the danged thing would not start. Over and over I tried. It never started. So, I went to the senior center and asked around about local lawn mower repair opportunities, if there might ba a place to get it tuned up, ready for the summer. What ended up happening is that the Director of the center, the lady in charge of the whole thing, came by my house, picked up my mower in her truck, took it to her house, repaired it and tuned it up, then brought it back to my house. No, I'm not making this up, incredible though it sounds that anyone would be so wonderful to do such a thing. Incredible. So why shouldn't I go to the senior center, despite the Trumpers and hell fire fanatics? Other than that, they really aint so bad.