Building A Democracy

YOU NEVER KNOW what kind of American history will be taught at your local high school. It could be evangelical Christian American history, written and taught from a purely Christian point of view, it could be conservative history, or, it could be liberal progressive history, which, upon closer scrutiny, turns out to be the most accurate version. It all depends on what state you live in, whether you live in a conservative "red" state or a progressive "blue" state, and, of course, a lot depends upon the politics and religion of your local community. Surely there are certain things, certain facts, upon which all the various and sundry versions can and do agree. Surely, one of these is that the founders of the political system of the United States did not intend to found a democracy, and indeed did not, but rather, a representative republic. They, people like Madison and even to a certan extent Jefferson, among many others, wanted and designed a system in which the people in general, the general population, would be represented by more intelligent, better educated people; namely, wealthy white Christian land owning men. The "better sort" and the "lesser sort" as Madison eloquently put it. The lesser sort, the unwashed masses, would have some limited choice in selecting their representatives, but only a limited amount of choice; these decisions, ultimately, concerning the possession of actual political power, would remain forever in the hands of the wealthy powerful few. And so it remains for us today, where we live not in a true democracy, with real power in the hands of the people in general, but rather, in an oligarchy, a plutocracy, in which real power is possessed by the folks Gore Vidal used to call "our corporate masters". We must bear in mind that until rather recently the very word "democracy" had as much of a negative cannotation as a positivie one. In the eigtheenth and nineteenth centuries the term was associated with mob rule, with political chaos, governance by a huge unruly mob of poorly educated people incapable of governing themselves, let alone a huge nation state. Today we use the word "democracy" with admmiration and veneration; such was not always the case. As we all know all too well, the problem with democracy is that, particularly in a large country, it is unwieldy, messy, cumbersome, ineffecient, and, as we see so clearly today, vulnerable to corruption, especially with money. My father, an attorney, once told me that in his opinion the best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship. Maybe he was right. Even today, there are many among us who prefer forms of government other than democracy, even though in the United States, almost all Americans claim to prefer and cherish democracy. Clearly, many if not most Trump supporters want so strongly to install Trump as president in order to enact their own conservative political agendas that they are perfectly willing to do so undemocratically, even violently, with a violent insurrection. Diversity, Equality and Inclusion are important values with today's progressive community, but not so much the conservative community. Cultural conformity is a consrvative value, but only has limited value; a thriving, healthy human global culture must be diverse, that it not be stagnant. And it must evolve. Human equality (I prefer the word "equality" to "equity") in a comprehensive sense is a modern concept, as is inclusion. But whether these values, including democracy itself, will continue to seek and gain acceptance throughout the world as well as the United States is an ongoing question, still unanswered. Our task is to help answer it.

Teaching the Right Bible

THE REPROBATE REGRESSIVE STATE OF OKLAHOMA hs decided that it needs to buy fifty five thousand Bibles for the state's public schools, to implement recently passed legislation requiring that the Christian bible be taught in public schools, perhaps, high schools primarliy. According to requirements imposed by the leglislature, the Bibles must be the king James version, and must include copies of several seminal founding documents in American history, including the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. I vaguely seem to recal that there was one other..was it the "Gettysburg Address"? Probably not. It turns out that the only avaialbe bible which could supply this many copies and meet the requirements for inclusion of patriotic documents happens, just happens to be...Donald Trump's golden Bible, the one he is peddling, with his autograph on it. One of the main proponents of all this religious zealotry illegally imposed upon the public school system is a state legislator who describes Oklahoma public schools as "atheist indoctrination centers", and described teacher's unions as "terrorist organizations". It is beyond dispute that many if not most far right wing extremist conservative evangelical Christian Trump supporters agree with these descriptions, ardently, to the point of harboring a deep distrust and hatred of American public schools generally. To these unreasonable brainwashees the traditional, sacred seperation of church and state is actually a war against Christianity, and secular schools, or secular anything, is anti-Christian, reprehensible, and dangerous. Proponents of the "Bibles in school" project in Oklahoma ansd other states claim that they are merely acknowledging the reality that the Bible is central and fundamental to human history and culture, and should be taught in schools for that reason. Whereas it is perfectly true that the Bible is of fundamental importance, the most important and influential book in world history, this fact has absolutely nothing to do with the true motives of those religious political conservatives, mainly Republican Trump followers, who want to force the Bible into public schools. They actually want to force their entire religion into public schools. They want to make America's public schools Christian, again. Among these Bible pushers are many "Christian Nationalists", who want to make the entire country a Christian nation, with Christianity the official, mandatory religion of the United States. The true "terrorist organizations" are not teachers unions with educated, progressive members, but rather, regressive reprobates who want to force the Christian religion and the Bible into pubic schools, while prohibiting any mention inside the schools of LGBTQ people, racism, wokism, socialism, or climate change. The "vast right wing conspiracy" as Hillary Clinton so eloquently and accurately put it, is strong as ever and will stop at nothing to impose its unrealistic, delusional agenda on the entire country, by force, if necessary. Climate change, racism, wokism, socialism, atheism, gay people - all actually exist in the real world, and will not go away by playing make believe that they do not. Ironic, that they so fervantly want to force down the throats of America's children that most make believe thing of all - the Christian religion, as revealed in the most popular book of fiction ever written.

Climate Change, Converging, On Us

THE HURRICANE, according to the emerging scientific consensus, was a product of climate change, at least in terms of severity. Not that it wouldn't've occured naturally, without any climate change. But it would have been much smaller, and the winds less violent. Helene, or whatever her name was, was a monster in terms of diameter, and in terms of wind velocity and rain amount. The notion that a hurricane could ever seriously impact western North Carolina with extreme flooding and wind damage to this extenst would, until just a few days ago, been thought impossible. Climate change is basic science, basic physics, common sense. If you add a trillion tons of carbon to the atmosphere, the atmosphere traps and stores more heat, and a warmer atmosphere can absorb and retain more water vapor, as water on the surface of the planet evaporates more rapidly. Hence, when it rains, it pours. Not only does climate change exist, it would be impossible, according to the laws of nature, for it not to. Plus, it has arrived, Climate change is here now. A few hundred miles west of the hurricane devastation, where I live, we are in the midst of what is quickly becoming a sever drought. In September, it rained exactly twice, both modest rain showers. No rain so far in October, although its still early. There is no rain prediceted, however, for at least the next ten days. Today it will be nearly ninety degrees today, and tomorrow, Friady, October 4, 2024, the temperature will reach the low nineties. The prediction is for it to reach the lower nineties every day for the next week, without rain. I spent the summer wondering what October would be like, whether it would be like traditional, normal Octobers of teh past, or a month in which the temepratures reaches eighty five degrees daily, a summer month. For about the last fifteen years or so, where I live, October has become a summer month. Summer in my area used to last about three months, weather-wise. Now, its more like five months. It is a virtual certainlty that many hurricanes in the future will also be gigantic monsters, larger in extent and severity by degrees of magnitude that anything we have ever seen. Whether there will be more frequent hurricanes remains uncertain, but indications are that indeed there will be. Most of the roughly one trillion tons of carbon that humanity has dumped into the environment over th past couple hundred years has ended up in the world's oceans. The warming oceans are putting more energy, wind and water, into violent storms and hurricanes. We, humanity, must develop technologies to remove carbon not only from the Earth's atmosphere, but from the oceans as well. The current trend is for the oceans, and all life in them, to die within a few decades as they grow too warm to support life. If and when that happens - and it is happening now - all life on Earth will die, including us. The science of cimate change is so simple that not only can anybody who took chemistry class in high school understands the workings and the reality of it, but so can anyone who attended grade school and paid attention dirung general science class. Climate change should be and must become required curriculum in all public schools at all levels. Instead, in many states dominated by Republicans, laws are being passed prohibiting the teaching about climate change in public schools. One of the core principles of conservatism is climate change denial, which, like conservatism generally, is disastrous for the future, and the present. Our only hope is education.

Debating, Denying, Distorting, Destroying

THE VICE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE, like most debates, could be called a draw. Vance was smooth, solid, steady. Walz was folksy and appealing, and got better and stronger as the affair proceeded, after a shaky beginning. The most outstsnding, incredible aspect of the debate was Vance's persistant refusal to acknowledge reality, on a wide variety of topics. J.D. Vance, with his Ivy League education, best sellling author status, and meteoric political ascesion, simply will not concede that Trump lost the last presidential election, that the presidency was not stolen from him, nor will he acknlowledge that the capitol insurrection was Trump's responsibility. Nor will he, unsurprisingly, admit that he and every other American "citizen" who supports Trump in reality a traitor and criminal, by virtue of supporting, assisting, abetting, enabling, a traitor and criminal; namely,Trump. Continuing to claim that the election was stolen is bad enough, but for J.D. Vance, it gets worse, much worse. He refuses to acknowledge the reality of climate change as well. Climate change deniers are harmful not only in that they do not help fight climate change, but they also they support policies which cause it. Donald Trump is not technically an ardent, fervant, devoted climate change denier. He has often said that he is doubtful, skeptical about it, and believes that it may be a hoax. But as time goes by, he seems to have firmly insinuated himself into the climate change denial community. And because of that, J.D. Vance must do likewise, although he probably would anyway. And, the cherry on top of the ice cream Sundae of right wing reality denial is of course, the one which has recently gone viral, in which Trump, Vance, and presumably all of their MAGA cult followers insist that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are eating dogs and cats. Vance refuses to give up this fantasy, as do, presumably, American conservative evangelical Christian Republicans in general. Any reasonable person might and probably should find it alarming that the two men running for the two highest political offices in the United States, live in an entirely unreal world of their own in which the presidency was stolen from Trump, climate change does not exist, dark skinned immmigrants eat dogs and cats, and the biggest problem with the United States is that it is not controlled by Christians with Christian values and beliefs. More alarming still is that there is a huge percentage of Americans who have exactly the same set of delusional beliefs. Thank the gods that be that it is, indeed a minority. If this "community", which is essentially the Trump MAGA gangster cult, ever returns to power, it could be disastrous, not only for America, but for the world. Harmful though it is for anybody to refuse to acknowledge the reality of climate change, having people in actual positions of power who deny it is a disaster, at this point. We can no longer afford to give them power or enact their insane policies. During the debate, Walz as wise to emphasize the reproductive freedom issue, and Harris and Walz needn't be concerned about the immigration issues, for, as Walz pointed out, it was Trump who prevented the United States from enacting a meaningful, effective immmigration legislation. A majority of Americans want immigation into the U.S. to be organized and orderly, but dont want to harass and persecute undocumented immigrants, as Trump does. And a majority of Americans want American women to have the right to choose. Trump and the Republicans are choosing to deny reality. The Democrats can win by simply acknowledging reality, and telling the truth.

Reaching the End, Finally

THERE ARE EXACTLY FIVE WEEKS until election day, and, according to the polls, the presidential election is a dead heat, dead even. That means that either candidate could win, both have about a fifty percent chance. Voting has begun, and from now until election day, more and more people will be voting early, by mail, or in person. There are two things for which we all ought to be grateful. One, Biden isn't running. And two, soon, it will all be over, one way or another. I would have been worried about Biden during the entirety of his second term, as would I suspect many other people, and am grateful to be spared that. Whether he would have survived an entire second term is, of course, highly questionable. If Trump wins there is enormous turmoil dead ahead, because Trump and his people, MAGA Republicans and their seventy five million members, will be pushing their radical, ultra conservative agenda, hard. And a majoritiy of Americans will be opposing it with equal vigor, in the media, in Congress, and every everywhere else, and neither side will surrender. If Trump loses, we'll go through all the election denial drama, again, in some way, shape, and form. I must assume, though I may be wrong, that the drama will be less intense than before, and that Trump will have fewer gangsters on his side, claiming that the election was stolen. There won't be nearly as potent an uprising this time. Again, I may be wrong. This time, maybe MAGA will ctually succeed in overthrowing teh government, preventing the electoral college from being certified, replacing Harris electors with Trump flunkies, stealing the presidency for Trump, and, suddenly having a didtatorship in America, like Germany, 1933, under Hitler. One thing we now know is this: this scenario is not impossible. In fact, it seems to be far more possible than neraly anyone could have possibly imagined a few short years ago. Never before in American history have so many Americans engaged in organized, traitorous treason, and this includes the Civil War as the seventy five millino member MAGA movement, and their heinous, infamous, traitorous, treasonous attemptt to violently overthrow the American government. Worst of all, they, the traitorous MAGA gangsters of Trump, are for the most part still very much with us and among us. The thought that this loathsome rabble might actually succeed in getting Trump elected in five weeks, this stark reality, is so horrible to contemplate as to be nearly beyond contemplation. Much, of course, depends onw hich party controls Congress, or whether each party controls one of the two legislative bodies.Republican congressional control, with Trump as president, would embolden the MAGA movement so greatly that it wouls seek to implement every item mentioned in the infamous, utterly reprehensible "Project 2025" agenda, including replacement of the governemnt with Trump loyalists, and installation of the Christian Nationalist agenda, abortion bans, book bans, persecution of LGBTQ people and immigrant minorities, to which Trump would gladly accede. He doesn't give a damn one way or another, about any issue, inclduding religion and reproductive rights; he only cares about maintaining his status as a wildy popular cult leader. When Trump first entered politics, comparisons of his MAGA supporters to Hitler's NAZI movement, which some percipient people presented, I dismissed as overwrought, distorted, exaggerated. I no longer do. Our best hope is that there are indications that Kamala Harris is going to win the election, unless Trump eeks ot narrow victories in all the "swing" states. Either way, fasten your seat belts.

Evolving

IN CHURCH YESTERDAY there were ten people, including the substitute minister and the organist, who also plays the piano, which he alternates beautifully before, during, and after the worship service. I have been attending this church for several months now, I like it, and intend to continue. What concerns me, however, is the question of how long the church will continue to exist. Interestingly, its a nearly two hundred year old church, a beautiful nineteenth century brick and wood building, with a nice stained glass window and a church bell on top, which I have been permitted the honor of ringing each Sunday morning, just before nine thirty, when the service begins. If you pull the rope hard, with strength, the bell rings loudly, singing our across the tiny town in the Ozarks. I ring it five times, and I always initiate at least one ring which is insufficiently loud, on account of my lack of effort. Its embarassing, but correctible, and I know how to correct it. During the service I sit each Sunday in the same place, about half way back on the left side, near an elderly couple who are friends of mine. At least the lady is. The gentleman,a conservative, is not especially happy with my expressed opinion of evangelical Christians who support Trump, and thus treats me rather coldy, but, so be it. My opinion adheres. I'm not the youngest congregant, but close to it, and that also alarms me. How long will this ancient church last? I am told that one hundred years ago teh weekly congregation was somewhere around one hundred, and that thirty or forty years ago there were still thirty or forty attendees, normally. This somehow seems indicative to me of the generalvdecline in membership of the Christian religion throughout Europe and North America, ongoing. I am sixty nine years old, and I vaguely suspect that I will outlive this litle church in the woods. If it can survive four more years, until the year twenty twenty eight, it wll be able to celebrate its two hundreth birthday. This would be an amazing accomplishment, and I think there is a good chance of it happening, and of my participating in it. Beyond that, who knows? What I like about the Christian religion is the loving, kind, compassionate side of Jesus. What I disike is the theological dogma. Like a good songwriter once wrote in a song lyric, "You an keep the cross, just give us Jesus". Its worth bering in mind that one can be a buddhist, and also be a believer in any other religion on the planet, all four thousand two hundred of them, or however many there are. Buddhism and Christianity go beautifully together, arguably. Perhaps the best idea for the expansive, intellectually and spiritually ambitious person is to embrace every religion on Earth, to embrace their fundamental beauty, widsom, and truth, while strictly adhering to and limiting one's self to none of them. Arguably, all religions are human made,all are partly true, none of them are entirely or exclusively true, from any particulare viewpoint. If you put all our human religions together into one, big Earthly religion, it might, in total, represent no more than one trillionth of the religious wisdom in the universe, scattered among all the various intelligent, religious species of beings which must surely be out there, worshipping, praying, advancing beyond religion, as we here on Earth appear to be on the verge of being ready to do. As Goethe said: "Behold the phenomena, for they are the doctrine."

The Sex Fascists, Closing In

I WAS SHOCKED to learn recently that in twenty six states, gender affirming medical care for people under eighteen is illegal, prohbited. Presumably, it remains legal for those over eighteen, but, I confess ignorance on that matter. Obviously the people who caused it to be banned for children would prefer that it be banned for all. Hell, from what I can tell, the people, mostly extreme conservative evangelical Christians, who have brought about and are bringing about these horrible bans would actually prefer that LGTBQ people simply vanish from the Earth, or better yet, convert to straight heterosexuality, and find Christ, if they haven't already found him. The proponents of banning medical health care for people by rejecting their status as transgender,and insisting on pretending that transgender people have not truly changed genders, are basing their beliefs and actions on conservative religious nonsensical doctrine. They are denying simple reality,in preference for their fantasy. Both conservatism in general and the Christian religion in particular are strongly antithetical to homosexuality, to gay people, and to all LGBTQ people. This hostility to this large, outspoken gay minority is harmful to everyone, to society in general, and to the religious conservatives who espouse this malevolant tenet, (though of course they don't realize it). It is estimated that in the twenty six "red" conservative states in which the ban is in place, there live approximately one hundred and ten thousand transgender human beings. Evidently, somebody counts them, for some reason, some reason hopefully having to do with advocating for their inclusion in, and acceptance by society, by everyone. The hardships imposed on them and their families by these henious prohibitions are innumerable. They must travel out of state for normal, basic medical care. Transgender people, like gay people, not only exist, but they are genuine, natural, made the way they are by the Almighty Christian God, and their sexual and gender orientations do not make them sick, evil, or sinful, or possessed by demons. The belief that it is somehow "wrong" or "bad" or "sinful" or "sick" or "unnatural" be to be gay or transgender is exclusively a conservative Christian belief. Secular liberals, atheists, and agnostics, overwhelmihgly, do not judge gays and transgenders, but rather, accept them as equal human beings. This tolerance and acceptance by progressives is often used by conservatives as evidence that the moral standards of liberals are low. Actually, quite the opposite is true. Prejudice, hatred of gays and transgenders, or hatred of their "lifestyle", is proof of low moral standards and decency. Conservatives often claim that the gender affirming medical care bans are not designed to harm LGTBQ people, but rather, to protect children. This argument is, qite obviously, completely bogus, a complete lie. Hatred of gays and transgenders is indeed exactly what the bans are all about,just as hatred of gays and transgenders is exactly what conservatism espouses. Ironic, but not really surprising, that he people who profess the greatest allegiene to Jesus Christ, conservative evangelical Christians, are the people who most blatantly ignore the teachings of Christ, teachings about loving everyone and judging no one.

Book Banning

BOOKS HAVE POWER, which is why people fight over them. Until the Protestant Reformation, the Bible was printed only in Latin, according to the doctrine of the Catholic church. This served at least two purposes; to keep power in the hands of the church clerical hierarchy, and to accentuate the biblical divinity by forbidding its publication in "inferior" languages. Most people during the middle ages were illiterate; the few literate folks usually were literate only in their vernacular, the local version of French, German, Spanish, whichever. If only the clergy could read the holy bible, the clergy possesses all power within the church, particularly the pope and cardinals and bishops. Controlling books today is, of course, quite different. It has been estimated that approximately ten thousands books have been "banned" over the last few years in the United States, removed from public school and public libraries. To date, the book banning disease has not spread to higher education in the United States, but that doesn't mean that it can't or wont't in the future. The people, mostly Christian conservatives, who facilitate and support book banning are quick to argue that what they advocate and what they do is not really "banning" books, since the books they ban remain available practically anywhere. This is true. What the book banners are doing is merely removing selected books from libraries and from school classroom curricula. (curriculi?). Definitely, different. There is no almighty power or political or religious ruling overlord decreeing absolutely that any books must no longer exist. There are, however, thousands of local school boards all over America which are dominated and controlled by right wing Christian conservative extremists, who are voting to remove books from public school libraries and curricula. This, in essence, is book banning. Its essentially the same thing, or too close for compfort as they say, and, it should and will be called "book banning". It is perhaps the most malignant, the most vile ane evil component, manifestation of the entire malignant, vile consrvative agenda in America today,along with hatred of LGBTQ people and hatred of dark skinned immigrants. Banning books is always horrible, harmful policy. The book banners are never the good guys, as the saying goes. But the way it is currently happening in the United States is especially egregious, because the books being banned are for the most part, in fact almost nvariably, literary classics, literary masterpieces, great, brilliant books. If only the morons would ban garbage, but they don't. Book banning in America is entirely a right wing ideal. The progressive community has no interest in banning books, and is willing to accept and tolerate libraries which contain books by, for example, Glen Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Wm. F. Buckley, etc. What the Christian conservative censorship fanatics are trying to do is to eliminate all vestiges of progressive thought, including racial equality and discussion of racism, LGBTQ acceptance, democratic socialism, climate chnge, Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion, wokism, etc. Falsely claiming that including such topics in public schools is "indoctrination", the Christian right is trying to indoctrinate America's public schools, and America, with its extremist agenda precisely by eliminating any alternatives. In Oklahoma, the state legislature is forcing the Bible into public school classrooms, and keeping literary masterpieces such as "Of Mice And Men", "To Kill A Mockingibrd", and "Fahrenheit 451" out. And unless we the remaining sane step up and stop it, its only going to get worse. American Christian conservatism, with its representative entity the Republican party, has become a fascist movement, spearheaded by Trump and MAGA, determined to turn America into an authoritarian, right wing Christian theocracy. As part of this, they want to brainwash America's children with right wing extremist dogma, to ensure a conservative Christian future for our once secular democracy. These fascists would actually burn books, like Hitler, but they are smart enough to know it wouldn't do them any good.

Who's Blaming Who?

FOR MANY YEARS it has been widely known that the fossil fuel industry, especially the big oil companies, (which should be called "fuel" companies), were lying about the impact of carbon emissions on the atmosphere, concealing their own research from the world which indicated that climate change due to atmospheric carbon increase was indeed a reality. These big companies knew about climate change very early, possibly as early as the sixties, seventies, and eighties, but kept it quiet. Legal processes have resulted in their change of behavior, and their acknowledgement of not only climate change, but also their role of causing it, and in concealing early evidence of it. Now they are trying to rebuild their tarnished reputations by advertising themselves as new champions of environmental restoration and health, while selling plenty of gasoline. We'll see. Smart busines practice demands that they lead the way in fighting cliamte chang by converting to clean energy, while finding a way to remain in business. The governor of California, Gavin Newsome, who might one day be an attractive candidate for president for the Democrats, has now had the utter audacity to file a lawsuit, in the name of his great state of California, against the Exxon-Mobile fuel company, in federal court. Quite a match up; a gargantuan, gigantic state government, versus a corporate mega giant. A titanic struggle of goliaths. Right wing pro Trump capitalistic anti-government extremists will doubtless be rootng for the poor oppressed unfairly attacked business, versus, big, bureaucratic, activist, out of control government. Statism, collectivism, run amok. Meanwhile, we left wing socialist types will be pulling for Governor Gavin and his team, crusading to rectify the wrongs wrought by corporate perfidy, on behalf of we the people. Only this time the lawsuit isn't about climate change from burning fossil fuels, responsibility for it, and deliberately concealing it. Its about plastic, the less notorious less publicized but every bit as huge branch of the fossile fuel insustry. For may years, including in the present moment, the plastic industry has been telling us that their plastic products can be and are being recycled, when in fact about ninety five percent of them are, evidently, not. Precisely how Exxon-Mobil is involved in the plastic industry is uncelar, most probably in every way conceivable, including selling oil to companies which turn it into plastic of various shapes and sizes,and direct ownership of plastic products facilities. One can imagine that a lawsuit of this sort could list hundreds of businesses as defendants, charging them with illegally misleading the public concerning plastic recycling. The question is; precisely who really is responsible for the consumption by the human race of fossil fuels in such things as cars, and precisely who is responsible for climate change? Exxon - Mobile, among many others, dug the oil out of the ground, turned it into petroleum, and sold it to billions of car owners, decade after decade. They still do. Meanwhile, billions of car owners in the United Staes and in every country in the world, have for decades been happily, willingly obtaining automobiles, filling them with gas, and cruising around town and country. Any lawsuits that anybody files against anybody for lying about climate change, and for causing climate change, should, arguably, be filed by all of us against all of us. Hell, the fuel companies certainly aren't the only ones lying about climate change and its causes, or about plastic, and our enormous problem with it. We lie to ourselves, mostly. AS Goethe said: WE are never deceived, we only deceive ourselves". Still, I'm rooting for Governor Gavin...

Drowning In Plastic

I HAVE ABOUT A TON OF PLASTIC in my house, it seems. Everything seems to be made out of the stuff. In my kitchen alone I have an assortment of plastic containers and lids, all scattered about, scratched, torn, mismatched, bent, stained, utterly disorganized. I have no idea what to do with the heap of plastic, other than to throw it away, to contriubte it to the local land fill, my legacy, forever. It will never break down into carbon, at least, not for thousands of years. It is almost impossible to recycle plastic, economically. Only about five percent of plastic is ever recycled. Millions of tones more are being manufactured every year, due to consumer demand. The world is filling up with plastic. War spurs invention and technology. and technology. Plastic, like so many other inventions, emerged from the desperate efforts to invent weapons during World War Two. An awareness that the substance would eventually inundate the world, including us and our bodies, drowning us in it, poisoning the ecosystem, emerged somewhat later, gradually, belatedly. We are killing ourselves with fossil fuels in more ways than one. Demand fore energy is currently increasing, thanks in large part, evidently, believe it or not, not to any increase in manufacturing production or consumer demand or population growth, but rather, because of Data centers, energy demands for artificial intelligence projects and crypto currency. How ironic, all this high technological advance, exacerbating our greatest problem; how to produce sufficient amounts of clean energy. The high tech crowd operating these data centers assure us they seek energy from sustainable, "green" sources. Nuclear power plants are being refurbished and restarted after having lain inactive for years. Technology got us into this climate change and plastic pollution mess, and it will have to be technology which gets us out. Nuclear energy idneed releases no carbon based heat absorbing gases into the atmosphere, contributes nothing to climate change, but nuclear waste presents its own special problem; namely, whre do you put it? Hiding it from ourselves under some mountain in New Mexico is only a temproary solution. Digging ultra heavy radioactive metals from deep out of the ground, or for that matter out of shallow groudnd - is only a temmporary expedient to solving the problem of power. We have learned over the decades that coal, oil, and natural gas lie undergound, beneath the surface of probably every square inch of land and water on the planet. What we have removed, great though it is, is probably ony a tiny fraction of what remains, and what will have to be left exactly where it is and belongs. Removing billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere, through the use of technology, will prove to be a simple matter, child's play, compared to cleaning up the plastic pollution with which we now know the Earth and our bodies are inundated, saturated. Large installations are now being built, one such by Exxon in Texas, to capture and remove carbon from the atmosphere. The technology, in primitive, inefficient form, exists. The task is to improve it, make it work on a much larger scale, and get it into operation. Precisely how to remove billions of tons of plastic from the world's oceans, from landfills, from the soil all over the world, and last but not least our own gorgeous sexy bodies is quite another matter. Plastic, it seems, is everywhere. Plastic atoms and molecules break down into their smallest components and lodge themselves in our body's fat and muscle tissue, in our blood stream, and, probably, in our bones and brains. There they can remain forever, never decomposing, never bio degrading, and thus, eternal. We are living in the "Anthropocene", the age of human beings. We are now the architects of this planet, and thus, responsible for its health. It is not impossible to imagine carbon sequestration facilities cleaning enough carbon out of the atmosphere to restore normal climatic conditions. But it is very hard to imagine cleaning all the toxic plastic and heavy metals out of our environment, water, soil, air and bodies. Our bodies contain not only plastic, but radioactive metals, in trace amounts, which can be detected, traced,and measured. Nobody escapes all this. We have waited long to begin doing something about it. Have we waited too long?

Pentecostal Piano Playing

I'VE JUST ABOUT DECIDED, the more I think about it, that I could probably be happy immersed in any religion in the world. Of the several thousand religions in the world, I could embrace any of them. I'm just guesing that most other people are the same way, whether or not they know and admit it. The sense of community would be similar or the same among them all, and the comfort and inspiration which derives from religious devotion would be present in any religion, I assume. One of the benefits of my religiosity, the "pantheism" of Spinoza and Einstein is that, I have discovered, it leaves one free to embrace any religion one chooses,one religion, or perhaps more than one, perchance, all of them. Whether it is logically or cognitively possible to simultaneously embrace more than one religion is, well, an entirely different matter...Thus my weekly participation in gospel singing, despite my relative antipathy towards the Christian religion. Whether there are about four thousand religions in the word or more, Christianity would probably be among the last I would choose, among the more difficult for me to embrace. A spiritual, religious philospohical tradition, like Buddhism, is more to my liking. I have heard it suggested that one can be a buddhist and simultaneously embrace any other religion in the world. One can be a buddhist and a Christian at the same time, so goes the ideal, an ideal which might appeal more to liberal buddhists than right wing pentecostals. So when I arrived at gospel singing Monday morning and found out that our piano player was in the hospital I was dismayed, but also intrigued when I also found out that a replacement had been found. A guest piano player player at gospel singing kind of messes things up, makes it a bit difficult to sing with a different style pianist, but, at the same time, gives us a new experience, a change of pace, and interesting variety. Our regular pianist is going to be fine. An eighty eight year old lady in good nealth, she was experiencing a bit of heart fib, and was having it corrected in the hospital. Piece of cake. She'll be back at the keyboard in a jiffy. The replacement lady walked in to the senior center all ebullient, in her ankle length nineteenth century dress and hair bun atop head, with thick rimmed glasses. This, I thougt, is a real, dyed in the wool church lady. And indeed so it seemed to turn out. Her piano playing style was pure pentecostal, if there is such a sytle, which there is.. Fast, and loud. I am told that our hymnal, which after three years of gospel singing I am beginning to become familair with, is a baptist hymnal. I wouldn't know one kind from another, of course. The church I attend, a Presbyterian church, uses a much larger hymnal, with totally different songs, all foreign to me. That's all I know. I mean this pentecostal lady played hard, loud, and fast, and those baptist hymns moved along at double time, with a renewed vigor. We all sang loud, and fast. I could get used to it that way. The lady, who from the back looked like Aunt Bea sitting on the bench, was on the verge of bouncing up and down in rhythm with the music, I swear, just as Bea Taylor did in that famous episode when she and the other church ladies got smashed on the Colonel's magic elixor. I started to imagine what it might be like to actually attend a pentecostal church service. Do they actually have a lot of shouting, screaming, and speaking in tongues? Do people really get healed by the holy spirit in front of the congregation, with passion and weeping and shouting for joy? Well, as they say, I guess there's only one way to find out for sure...

Naked Blackmailing

I JOINED FACEBOOK LATE, probably no more than seven years ago, if memory serves. I knew going in that I was not interested in meeting people, making friends, or chasing women, because I had had experience doing that back at the turn of the century when America On Line ruled the internet, and people were flyng all over the country to hook up. I had decided, between the years 2000 and 2005 on AOL that living one's social life online, vicariously, was, as they say, "for the birds". Yes, it can work. But crazy as the real world is, its still saner than the internet. (That's very frightening, or should be). Women flew in from all over the country, I did a little traveling myself, but nothing ever really worked out. However, no regrets. All experiences have value. On Facebook, I would confine my concerns to promoting this website, and to politics, specifically, strenuously opposing conservatism, and Trump. Yes, my "career" on Facebook was inspired, at least in part, by Donald J. Trump. It isn't easy to admit that. I can honestly say that both the website promotional and the conservative and Trump oppostion aspects have gone extremely well, and pretty much as expected, mostly a lot of self satisfying preaching to the choir on my part, but at the other components, friendship formation and the pursuit of women, both of which I had resolved to assiduously avoid, not so much. Indeed over the seven or so years I have not made many, if any, Facebook friends, even though I have the maximum limit of five thousand on my friends list. Most of these were and remain actual strangers, if political fellow soldiers in progressive arms. Its the women which, or who became the problem, a big problem. I habitually spent about an hour on Facebook a day, posting ads for this website and sharing and commenting on anti-conservative anti-Trump posts. The more time went by,the more my Facebook feed became unindated with anti-Stu posts, alogn with scenicbeaut, cats, and sports. The great Artificial Intellgence God nows exactly what we all like, who we are,everything about us. We may as well accept it. I wanted as many "friends" a possible to be on my list, to increase the impact of my advertising, so, I accept any and all friendship requests, including those from strangers, which almost all are. At one point is began to seem as if every friend request I received, whether from a male or female, was a scammer, and it still does. I managed, through careful selection,to accumalte a five thousnad member list of Facebook friends, almost all of whom are politically progressive political animals. I have built my own little liberal bubble around,and I safely, happily live in it. The attractive young women who messaged, and continue to message me I continue to resposd to, but I do not add them permanently to my friend list: I don't see them being beneficial by helping to defeat Trump and conservatism. But I did talk to them, as sort of sociolgical pyschological reaearch, to find out what they want. Invariably, they want money, and like cyber prostitutes..most of them dangle a subtle indirect offer of sex for money. They kept getting angry with me for not having the ability to take a selfie and sending it to them. I often explained thea I had no itneret in selfies,which perplexes most people, but, eventually, quite by accident,I learned how to take one. By and by some of the picutres came naked. Resonding to pressure,I started sending naked pictures of myself to qualified ladies, most of whom expressed gret gratitude and admiration, flatteringly. I need to curtail that, though, because one bitch who got mad at me threatened to distribute my naked self far and wide. Then, she turned nasty, and demanded money. Oh well. Hell, If I think about it, I really dont care at this point who sees me naked. I should be flattered that anybody even wants to.

Counting Votes By Hand

THE GREAT STATE of Georgia is solid purple, with black Democrats in Atlanta giving the state a chance to become, in a better, future world, progressive. Often, however, it fails to be progressive these days, due to entrenched Republican control of vital state offices. The state election commission, totally red, evident Trump supporters and thus unhinged with 2020 election fraud conspiracy theories, has decided that all votes in the forthcoming election in Georgia must be counted by hand. Whether a higher, saner Georgia state or federal court will overturn this nonsense remains to be seen, but, there isn't much time left to do it. Since about five million votes are likely to be cast in the presidential election in Georgia, the final count will not, under this system, be complete until days, maybe many days, after election day. Thus, the entire nation, we the American people will quite possibly not know the final outcome of the Harris -Trump war, not only late on election, but not the next day, or the next, or the next. It could drag on for weeks, the undecided national presidential election hanging in the balance, as human beings steadily but very slowly count one..vote...at..a..time in Georgia..This could be the last straw. This could be the final jolt which rips America apart, the final jolt into civil and chaos and anarchy, as mobs of Trump supporters from all over the country descend on Georgia, waving swastikas and confederate battle flags, offering to help count the votes. The media would have a field day, or a field week or month, stirring the pot with rumor speculaton and analysis endlessly, in- terminably. The idiots who voted to hand count the votes fail to understand that human beings are far more innacurate, less efficient than computers, and that therefore human vote counting will actually make the final vote totals less reliable, less accurate, than merely letting the computers do it. Or perhaps they do realize this and want it this way, to give Trump and his gangster MAGA support mob a chance to mess with the vote tally. With Trump, there is no conspiracy theory too outrageous to be true, Trump and his mob will try to install Trump as president again, beginning very soon, regardless of the actual vote count nationally, regardless of the electoral college results, regardless of the election outcome. Since the big Trump election lie of election night, twenty twenty, Republicans have been attacking and trying to change the electoral system in red states all across America's fruited plain, suppressing the voter turn out, making it far more difficult and tedious to vote, all contray to the principles of democracy and America, all in the false name of improving vote count accuracy, of eliminating fraud, which, it has been proven, is largely nonextant in U.S. elections. Trump supporters, Republicans, conservatives, evangelical Christians, all know that Trump lost the last election,and that their crusade to install him in office was immoral and illegal, but they do not care. To join the MAGA gangster mob is to forfeit all claim to morality and decency, and patriotism. The tens of millions of people who support their convicted felon former president are no more concerned about moral principles and democratic due process now than they were four four years ago. If anything they are less so... The tragedy fo millions of Americans abandoning moralit and democracy in desperation to implement their unpopular agenda poses a dire threat to the nation, and that threat only grows as electon day approaches.

Making Trump, Breaking America

OVER THE PAST NINE YEARS, ever since Donald Trump's dramatic entrance into politics at the bottom of a golden escalator, more books have been written about Trump than any other human being in recorded history, more than Lincoln, Jesus, and Napoleon combined. At least, it seems that way. Generally, as more and more books, especially biographies, are written about famous people as the years go by beyond their death, the books get better. Latter day scholars have the advantage of hindsight, historical perspective, and of course, they have access access to all the ressearch and writing others have done before on the same subject. Usually, the more recent the scholarahip and book, the better it is. The most recent book about Donald Trump is a good example of this. "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America" by renowned journalist Maggie Haberman fills the bill. It is arguably the best, most authentic, best researched monograph about Trump to date. Doubtless better ones await us in the future...Haberman has been keeping tabs of and writing about Donald Trump for decades, and knows her subject thoroughly. Over the years Trump has repeatedly slandered Habam as "an unprofessional herhack", and worse, but has given her numerous interviews, probably well aware that her reporting on him would likely not be postivie. This is an example of Donald Trump's insatiable lust for attention, especially in the media, and that for him negative publicity is much better than no publicity. Half of this lenghty book discusses Trump's life prior to his presidency, and digs deep into the roots of his influences, influences which helped make him the complicated, volatile, treacherous character he is. His influences include Rudi Gilliani, George Steinbrenner, and Roy Cohn, among other infamous, highly ambitious success mongers. Trump learned early in life that the world is dog eat dog, always hit back twice as hard,and everything is a transaction, a deal, everything is for sale. Haberman's book makes Donald Trump much more understandable. He begins to seem less some crazy, incomprehensible deranged entity, but rather, the product of very real influences, circumstances, and people. Haberman shares one important characteristic in common with nearly all of the other writers who write about Donald Trump; she doesn't seem to like him very much. I started reading books about Trump as soon as they started coming out; almost immediately after his inauguration. The more journalists, former associates, and his own family members know and find out about Trump, the less they like him. With every book that I read about him, the les I like him, indeed, the more I despise him. True, Trump, like the rest of us, is to a certain extent a product of his environment, forged in the environment in which he was raised. But merely by observing many different people, the way they were raised, and the decisions that they made, by studying history and today's society, one can tell that no matter how a person is raised, no matter what his or her background is, he or she has every opportunity to make choices which largely determine the direction of his or her own life. Ultimately, we are all self made, regardless of environmental factors. What Donald Trump made himself into and how he has influenced the entire country by his choices, Maggie Haberman elucidates with great clarity. It is difficult for anyone to read this brilliant book without being convinced of its authenticity and accuracy, and convinced that Donald Trump, on the whole, is a great tragedy, for himself, and for us all.

Against, Stupidity, Contending..

I HAVE BEEN ATTENDING my local senior center in my small town for nine years now, and I have truly enjoyed it, have made some meaningful friendships there. After spending years in the classroom with young people, very young people, I was ready to retire and hang with some older humans. It has been good for me. And, I have found that senior citizens possess indeed a great store of down home, homespun wisdom, garnered over decades of life experience, regardless fo their level of formal educational attainment. One needn't have a doctorate in anything to have wisdom; a goodly number of years spent on this planet simply paying attention will do the trick. But for stupidity and willful ignorance I have no tolerance. For, example, if and when I hear some older person warn that we in the United States must never ever allow this to become a socialist country, must not allow socialism anywhere in America - who hasn't heard that tired old conservative lament? - I want to approach the person, suggest that he or she stop receiving Social Security, and inform the idiot, in no uncertain terms, that Social security is nothing other than socialism, socialism in essentially its purest form, here, in America. Anyone old enough to receive Social Security, itseems to me, should be old enough, should have learned enough, it now that Social Security is socialism. The senior center I attend, nearly daily, for lunch and other activities, is full of Trump supporters, I believe. That amazes me, because many of them are ostensibly intelligent, moral, discerning citizens. The more religious the senior, the more likely to be a Trump supporter, which I find telling. The same is true, I am led to believe, across all age groups in America. Deep religious faith and political, economic, and social conseratism go together, despite the obvious fact that the essential message of Jesus Christ, of extreme charity, voluntary poverty, wide distribution of wealth...is straight out of the liberal socialist hand book. Jesus, if anything, was a raving left wing liberal socialist. Raving, because he was an apocalyptic preacher, who constantly warned the end of the world as people knew it was soon coming to an end, that a representative of God would soon arrive on Earth, the "Son Of Man", or whomever, and bring about extreme change, usher in in the kingdom of God. Well, Jesus as dead wrong about that. But he did emphatically instruct people to behave economically like socialists, not capitalists, a demonstrable fact which evangelical conservative Christians will argue against, fatuously, without relent. The most devout segment of the Christian faithful should not be politically conservative, but rather, politically liberal. There are evangelical Chrsitians who understand this, and have defected from Trump. There are even progressive liberal evangelical Christians, though not nearly enough of them. If there were more of them, the Christian religion would stand a much better chance of actually being, on balance, a net force for good in the world, rather than the divisive, controntational, intolerant, stifling, rigid, dogmatic, anti-science behemoth that it has always been, and remains. Trump supporters delude themslves into believing that Trump's criminal convictions are actually a plot agianst him by a politicized judicial system, an insane notion, about as insane that believing in an anthropomorphic deity which concerns himself with human morality and prefers Republicans to Democrats.