Regretting

AN HONEST EXAMINATION of American presidential history reveals, perhaps surprisingly, that Hillary Clinton was by far the most qualified presidential candidate in U.S. history, with the possible exception of John Quincy Adams, who was essentially groomed for the job by his president father. Hillary had similar advantages, in terms of preparation. In fact, her preparation, in terms of resume experience, is superior to all other candidates who ever ran for the nation's highest office. Even now I can hear the derisive laughter and dismissive conservative contempt, from people who know little about the American presidency, and have little desire to learn more. A friend and fellow Democrat suggested that Hillary was a poor candidate. If so, only because she was weakened and compromised by decades of smear attacking by the right wing conspiratorial attack machine. the result of all this was that her negatives were a high as her positives; for every supporter she had, she had a hater. After twenty five years of accusations, Hillary remains clean, for now, and probably forever. Those who hate her hater her so desperately that they invent crimes for her to commit, and use their fabrications to justify their hatred, which to a large extent derives from latent misogyny. Had Hillary been elected, it is not difficult to imagine that we would not now be trying to decide whether to remove a president for blackmailing another country, nor would be have at our disposal an enormous litany of lies and deceit, all well documented. The nuclear arms treaty with Iran would be intact, and our relationship with them would be good. We would still be a part of the Paris climate change agreement; leaving it was among Trump's greatest policy follies. With regard to "Ukraine-gate", the position of Trump supporters is no longer that he did nothing wrong, and that he indeed did, but that it was not bad enough to warrant impeachment and removal. Their defense has undergone a considerable evolution, as the evidence against the president becomes proof. Whether or not John Bolton testifies, John Bolton is going to be heard, and if he confirms, as he is expected to, Trump's extortion scheme, we the American people will know, if nothing else, that the Democrats did not fabricate their accusations against him.

Bubbling Together

BY NOW nearly every red blooded aware American realized that in our current culture, we all tend to create and live in our own little fantasy world, along with our firmly held convictions and beliefs. Our own bubble, often formed with the influence of social media, and, of course, our ever present corporate masters. We hear only what we want to hear, and believe only what we want to believe, all evidence to the contrary. The price we usually pay for this is the truth. I heard it from an ostensibly sane source that soon, very soon, a great amount of previously unknown, withheld information is going to come to light, which will put Trump and his administration in a whole new light, perhaps even to the point of explaining or justifying some of its very weird, seemingly unethical behavior. Actually, the only new soon to come to light information will come from Mr. John Bolton, and it most probably will not reflect favorably on the president. At some point, Trump supporters are going to have to give up the ghost, as Hitler and Nixon people did before, albeit many only with great reluctance. Bolton may help a little, if not much. Its easy. Merely proclaim your undying love of God, America, conservatism, and the G.O.P., admit you made a minor mistake, and move on. Eventually, you can claim to never have supported him (Trump) in the first place. Meanwhile, accept a few fundamental facts. Donald Trump was never and still isn't remotely qualified to be president. Climate change is not a Chinese hoax, Nor do windmills cause cancer. Nobody knows whether there is life on other planets, yet. We've developed a rather alarming tendency in America to render absurd assertions with a sense of great certainty, without even the faintest trace of supporting evidence. Shame on us. Let us return to some semblance of fact supported reality. There is no deep state, no government hidden within a government, only about two million poor hapless joe schmoes who go home exhausted every night, and often a bit bewildered. We call them "government workers". Nor is there any cabal of super secret super wealthy elite pulling all of our strings. What there is is a corporate plutocracy, in firm control of the economy and political system, a plutocratic corporate oligarchy, in plain sight, against which we the people can either organize and resist, or which we can ignore in preference to our own little fantasies of some deep state and an extraterrestrial conspiracy, while voting for maniacs like Trump.

Mourning

THE MORE WE LEARN about the other seven crashees, the more obvious it becomes that they were every bit as beautiful and wonderful as Kobe and Gianna, and that's goin' some. Makes it even worse, if that's possible. We have, however, learned about them a bit too slowly, because we put celebrity first, blowing fame out of all proportion, so typical of us. Our American culture is addicted to celebrity. We build statues and shrines to those deceased who entertained us sufficiently well, which, arguably, is a bit sick. Toning all this down even a tiny tad might help ameliorate our obsession a mite, in terms of evolving and upgrading American cultural values. Amid all the Kobe family stuff, his long ago comment that he thought she had given her consent, buried but not deeply enough to completely hide, is the trademark of every rapist. They all thought they had permission, as if the word "no" is suddenly indecipherable. Oh heavens, if only we could totally forget... But..wait! This is America! We can! Welcome to the biggest fun house on earth...Then too, there's the helicopter angle. Everyone who drives a car everyday half way expects to have car trouble every blue moon. Seldom does a sudden, self inflicted car stoppage kill you. You just pull over, call or walk for help, or show your legs, as the case may be. But when a helicopter quits, it crashes, and you with it. Do we want an elite jet setting copter class flying the friendly skies? Should we all take to the air? We have enormous transportation questions to answer, in finally arriving at a workable system for this vital necessity. We can all agree that one million car deaths per year don't cut it, except my mother, rest her sweet soul, who once told me that "we already have too many people". For now, maybe the chopper set should be limited to police and the military, but, what do I know? There is something about having our celebrity - gods hovering us that somehow seems comfortable, and familiar...

Fighting Over Cock Fighting

PUERTO RICO, like the rest of the western hemisphere, was conquered and brutalized by Europeans, in this case the Spaniards, in the sixteenth century. Their purpose was to get rich, and as a secondary goal to force Spanish culture down the throats of the stone age natives, again, as per European usual. This effort centered around two powerful institutions: Catholicism, and cock fighting, in no particular order. The effort was glowingly successful, and both become deeply embedded in Puerto Rican society and culture over the centuries. In 1898 the United States, hungry for land, wealth, and world power, fabricated a complaint against Spain, started a war, won, and forced Spain to give the U.S. Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Philippines, and what not. The Americans killed over a million people, a million Philippinos alone, but got the job done, got control of the resources each tiny country had to offer, the Dole Pineapple company ruling supreme in the pacific. the usual corporate American foreign policy. Although cock fighting was legal and popular throughout the U.S., the U.S. outlawed it in Puerto Rico, perhaps horrified at its popularity and wanting to improve America's image, and predictably, the brutal fighting simply went into hiding. It was legalized again in 1933, as political circumstances allowed. In recent years its popularity has been resurgent, until once again, the sport was outlawed, about ten years ago. The argument which took place before and after Congress voted to outlawed cock fighting in all its overseas possessions, as it had longs since done in the fabulous nifty fifty, was, in a word, maniacal, heated, insane. People, dudes, were threatening to fight to the death for their birds, for their sacred, inalienable right to keep and fight and kill with them. Cock fighting was a sacred cultural tradition, they argued, a basic part of Puerto Rican culture and economy, like a religion, and, in any event, the roosters were cared for tenderly and lovingly, they loved their human masters, and their human masters loved them. A vicious sport, nothing but blood and death, and a fine cultural tradition, beyond reproach. Like I said, the arguments got crazy. Very much like rump supporters: inventing increasingly cray arguments to defend the increasingly indefensible. Trump only walked into the miss universe dressing room to spread the lord's gospel; cock fighting is sacred, beautiful, and a tribute to human kind and the glory of the lord and western culture. The good news is that the civilized world is doing just fine without cock fighting, and soon, lord willing, it will do even better without Donald J. Trump and his supporters, who will, we can hope, have moved on to better hobbies.

Vesuvius Erupting

SEC OF STATE "Pompeii" Pompeo recently erupted volcanically, spewing a torrent of livid linguistic lava at an interviewer to whom he had just finished giving vacuous, evasive non responses to tough, perfectly reasonable questions, like, "what was your involvement in Trump's attempt to shake down the Ukraine"? He summoned her into his personal quarters, and, humiliated, and thinking himself off the record, lambasted her with a flurry of "F" words. Quite the diplomat, the Secretary of State, behaving like a typical Trumper, dishonestly, viciously, reprehensibly. The NPR journalist, perfectly to do so, told the rest of us about Pompeo's harassing outburst, which made him even angrier. Trump, having driven most of his original cabinet members to distraction and resignation, now victimizes us with this fellow gangster of a pseudo diplomat. An illegitimate president, with a circle of thugs surrounding him. A sweet lady, one of my family members, said: "I don't like Trump, but he's still my president." My question" At what point does a president, while becoming a tyrant, stop being "my president"? When he tries to extort personal political assistance from a foreign government by withholding vital military assistance until the dirt is delivered? When he becomes injurious to the security of a free state, including the one he was elected to govern? When his gang of sycophantic thugs start smashing windows and destroying property, lives, and businesses? When he incarcerates political opponents, ignites gas chambers, or separates children from their parents and locks them in cages merely because they are desperate, hungry, and looking for opportunity?Do we stand in opposition to a leader who spews racial hatred, speaks thousands of outrageous lies? When does the difference between Hitler and Trump begin to alarm us, and inspire opposition rather than loyalty? It is the sacred right of the governed to remove and replace a government injurious to the public welfare. There is a legal, established, constitutional for overturning the results of an election, of removing an abusive tyrant from office. we are currently engaged in it. James Madison made it quite clear that the American people are incapable of governing themselves, and he designed the United States constitution to prevent them from doing so. It works well in keeping power out of the hands of what Madison called "the lesser sort". Ironically, the electoral system was designed to prevent incompetent demagogues like Donald Trump from gaining power. obviously, the system failed, because the electors refused to do their job. Now, we teh people, acting through our republican representatives, must act, and are trying to do so. Again, our masters seem to be about to fail us.

Loving Blindly

"ONE DOES NOT LOVE, who does not regard the faults of the beloved as virtues" (Goethe). Goethe, as always, was correct. Love blinds us to reality. Whether the object of our affection is our children, our favorite baseball team, our country, or our political leader, love blinds us to their faults, and inspires us to only see the good. Even when we criticize the performance of our favorite football team, we do so with a blind eye, with a steadfast conviction that the object of our criticism is an aberration, or, in our parlance of the day, an "outlier". Our team is basically the epitome of virtue and glory; if only we could replace that under performing, mistake prone right fielder or quarterback. Our bumper stickers read: "proud parents of a child who is perpetually on the honor roll". And so it is with Trump supporters. they conveniently omit mention of the more than fifteen thousand blatant lies with which the pathologically dishonest president has tried, to the derision of objective observers, has tried to con the American people. Among trump supporters, the fact that their man is a self proclaimed sexual predator goes unmentioned. Trump's vicious attacks on American heroes like John McCain and others whose only crime was disagreeing with Trump, Trump supporters ignore. Goethe said: "We are never deceived. We only deceive ourselves". Among Trumpers, any comment made in the news media unfavorable to the president, no matter how well supported by fact, is regarded as fake news, a sure indication that the news media is in the hands of a gang of unpatriotic liberals. So ubiquitous is the self deception of Trump supporters that eighty percent of the conservative Christian evangelical community still support him, even after years of barbaric behavior and policies, promulgated in plan sight, in public, available for all to scrutinize. The more devoutly religious the American voter, the more extreme right wing politically, and Trump, the very antithesis of Christian values, fills the bill. After all, say the enraptured Christian fundamentalists; we all sin. they fail to mention that one is forgiven for one's sines when one confesses them, repents of them, and atones for them, none of which their sin ridden icon has shown the slightest inclination to do. Contrary, Trump seems to take pride in his vicious, immoral, criminal behavior, and the more of it he displays, the greater the loyalty of his sanctimonious sycophants. When Trump is gone, driven form office finally by the majority of Americans who remain reasonable in the face of the lunacy of the Trump base, the Trump base of support will likely quietly vanish like frightened mice into the concealment of anonymity, where they properly long, in ignominious obscurity, harmless at long last. If nothing else, they can say that they have known, if only briefly, true love.

Conservatives, Massing, Taking Aim

THE CREME de la Creme OF THE CROP of America's conservative community congregated on MLK day in Richmond, VA., the capital of the Confederacy, which embraced many of the same values. There is the suspicion that promotion of racism was a part of the reason for the gathering together of the far right gun advocates. The primary purpose was to demonstrate opposition to pending gun control legislation being promulgated by Democrats, which the gun enthusiasts see as potentially lethal to the American way, which, history indicates, is violent. White supremacists and racists were abundantly present, ironically, since MLK was assassinated by a racist, using a rifle he legally owned, because he had theretofore been a good citizen. James Earl Ray's hateful attitude towards African-Americans is exemplified widely among today's legal gun owners. Most gun murders are self inflicted, enabled by easy access to guns. Most gun murders murders involve domestic disputes, acts of anger and desperation, alienation. Many involve disputes over money. That Donald Trump has emboldened racists in America with his often thinly disguised racist rhetoric is indisputable. Many white supremacists themselves give him credit for their inspiration, inspiration which too often results in mass murder. The widely disseminated argument that putting guns in the hands of "good people" deters gun violence is repudiated by verified research, both in the United States, where gun ownership is rampant, and gun violence widespread, and in England and Australia, where severe restrictions on gun ownership enacted within the past twenty years have resulted in a huge decrease in gun violence. It is evident that the solution to gun violence is the same as the solution to numerous other societal maladies; the defeat and elimination of the far right as a political force.

Making America Greta, Again

FIRST COMES THE DROUGHT, every drought seemingly a once in a hundred year event, now become an annual event. Then, the firs start, and ravage the continent, killing a billion animals, turning fire and wind into man made tornadoes. When the firs begin to burn out, leaving a desolate wasteland in their wake, the torrential rains begin, and the flooding, eroding sol into the ocean, leaving farmland barren rock. So goes the current scenario of Austria, as it has gone in California, as it will go increasingly regularly in our climate changed world, in which violent, extreme patterns of weather become the norm. President Trump has given his approval to the global plan to plant one trillion new trees, and it is rumored that is a whispered voice he recently acknowledged the reality of man made climate change, although we might be imagining this. Both Austria and the United States are in the grip of right wing coal mongering governments; our best hope is that they will soon be replace by renewed sanity. A massive investment in solar energy, systems in which sea water in huge quantities is cleansed of salt and used to irrigate the parched land and nourish the trillion saplings, solar collectors on land, at sea, and in Earth orbit, give us an outside chance of ameliorating our nightmare before its too late. The monstrous moronic minions of "make America Great Again" are the nation's, and the world's greatest enemy, the greatest obstacle to our self preservation. Most if not nearly all of them still insists on exploiting fossil fuels for profit, doing nothing about climate change, and destroying life on Earth. Our hope is "Make America Greta Again". Greta Thunberg, the seventeen year old Swedish climate activist who has the audacity to blame the world's leaders for their smug indifference to our impending doom, is our best hope. She manifests the spirit of ecological wisdom which we Americans abandoned about the time Reagan came to power, when he ripped the solar energy system from the roof of the White House. Pensively we remember when President Nixon signed into law the Environmental Protection agency and the Clean Water Act, in the days when even Republicans cared about our planetary health. Make America Greta, again. The monstrous MAGA great hordes must be superseded by a global army of MAGA-Greta activists, including all of us, including, eventually, the monstrous moronic Trumpers themselves.

Defending A Criminal

WE NOW KNOW the president's defense, and its a doozy. The whole thing is a hoax, he didn't do it, and even if he did, it aint illegal. The holes are so large a cognitively challenged fourth grader could drive holes through it, which guarantees that the Republican servants of Trump will accept it. Trump's criminal attorney's fail to mention that impeachment and removal need not stem from any specific violation of statutory law, and that "high crimes and misdemeanors" can refer to a persistent pattern of behavior, such as attempting to blackmail a foreign government into providing damaging information of a political opponent. Impeachment is a political, not a legal process. Suppose President Trump, each morning or middle of the night, were to tweet: "I am a fraud." I was elected only with foreign assistance." And then, later: "I care nothing about making America great, now, again, or ever. Or: "Personal wealth, fame, power, and pretty young women are my only interests." Or: "The evangelicals support me only because they are morally bankrupt idiots." In other words, what if the president suddenly started telling the truth? A near impossibility, admittedly, but possible, in theory. Being crazy is not a crime. Trump has long since proven that. He would immediately be impeached, probably with Republican support, for fraud,among other complaints, such as gross abuse of power and of twitter, and it would be argued at his impeachments hearings that he is mentally unfit to serve, as he is in reality, and should be removed according to the twenty fifth amendment. For the sake of Trump's presidency, the Republican party, the evangelical community drunk with anticipation of the rapture, and the white supremacist racist community, the president had better not suddenly become honest about himself. America's reprobate right wing will be much better off if their orange haired icon keeps right on pathologically lying, to the tune of about twenty two gross falsehoods per day. Trump's sycophants seem to enjoy their little fantasy world in which their leader is a consummate Christian, and sane anti-Trump majority America is either used and inured to it, or no longer gives a damn.

Putting A Klan Man's Plan In the Can

A MAN, who in my humble but unimpeachable opinion belongs in the Klan (he often uses the "N" word, and insists that Abraham Lincoln is the "sorriest" president in American history), if he isn't already in the klan, looked at me, menacingly, and said: "You might wanna think about layin' off organized religion. You're pissing people off". Or did he say "people are going to get pissed off"? Memory fails me; all these right wing idiots, and their racist rhetoric, from the White House, and on the news and what not, become confusing, interchangeable. Either way, it was a threat, thinly veiled, and I will not tolerate it. I immediately conjured up an image of a horde of righteously indignant church ladies, led by the sword wielding klan man, descending upon me, spitting venom. People, even sanctimonious intolerant religious, racist people, are always responsible for their own anger, not me. Besides, I suspect that only he is pissed off, and probably for reasons having to do more with his own failure in life than anything online. Religion and racism, handy mutual American handmaidens. So, Klan boy, own it, and get over it, as your fellow Trump supporters are saying concerning presidential high crimes and misdemeanors. And of course, as every literate American knows, we all have the legal right to talk about, and to criticize religion, and just about everything else. Or should all religion be above all criticism by anyone, all the time? Not! Should it be illegal in America to criticize the Christian religion, or any other religion? Of course not. My entire life, since I was a child, Christians, one after the other, beginning with my grandmothers, have told me in no uncertain terms that my religious beliefs are wrong, that I would be better off if I became a Christian, and that a horrible fate awaited me if I failed to do so. Their religion was right, and mine was wrong, wrong for me, wrong for them, wrong for God, whom they evidently know intimately. My religion, similar to that of Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein, is perfect for me, thank you. I do not try to force my beliefs on others, ever. I respect people enough to assume they can decide for themselves, without my assistance. Why are Christians often so self righteous that not only do they try to foist their beliefs upon the unsaved, but also issue threats, as in the case of klan man, against anyone who dares criticize their religion? Christians have been insulting me with their aggressive behavior my entire life; I certainly can and will offer criticisms and responses, in writing, on my website. My sincere hope is that klan man comes to his senses, becomes tolerant and loving, like Jesus, before its too late, and he finds himself in a very dark very hot place, for a very long time. I'll pray for him, whether or not it does any good.

Depressing

THE LADY is in her early forties, a divorced mother of three. She is a climate scientist with a plethora of advanced degrees in sundry related sciences from among the world's most prestigious universities. She spends a considerable amount of time scuba diving among coral reefs, taking measurements, analyzing, calculating. She measures the rate at which coral reefs are vanishing, and the percentage already vanished. She measures the amount of plastic in the world's oceans, in fish, and in the human body, and like all climate scientists, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. She can often feel tears running down her cheeks beneath her goggles beneath the waves. Very soon the aggregate weight of the plastic in the ocean will exceed that of fish. Jet fuel has been detected in human breast milk. Each day most people consume an amount of plastic equal to that contained in a credit card, and the credit is long overdrawn. Eighty five percent of the world's coral reefs have died. She has seen it happen, up close and personal noting the slow but inexorable death over the lonely months and years in her twenty years observing the demise with futility and despair. Often, when she finishes her work for the day, when she completes the measuring and the calculating, she goes home exhausted, exhausted and deeply depressed. Her depression impacts her children, and her family and social life, but it cannot be avoided. Lately the depression has worsened considerably, has become a deep and abiding dreadful torment within her. She refuses medication, for she knows the exact cause of her malady, and the cure for it, a cure which she dares not accept, because it would require her abandoning her work, which she deems critical, and her profession, for which she has prepared her entire life. She knows firsthand, almost more than anyone, the awful unthinkable truth: that the world is dying, and that it may already be too late to save it. She knows that species of plants and animals are becoming extinct at an unprecedented rate. And she knows that there exists throughout the world a vast lack of concern, a moribund apathy, as if today's living, knowing that their own lives will soon end anyway, have decided that there is nothing they can do to help protect the future generations, which are on their own. She also knows that in many countries there has come power a right wing corporate power structure which cares only about immediate profit, at any expense, at the expense of the environment, and the future of life on earth. She is a voice crying in the wilderness, and she knows it, and she goes home every night, depressed.

Admiring God

"MY RELIGIOSITY consists in humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit which reveals itself in what little we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. I cannot conceive of a personal God who would sit in judgment over creatures of his own creation. Morality is of the highest importance for mankind, but not for God." (Albert Einstein.). And also: "Everyone who seriously pursues science becomes convinced that a spirit, infinitely superior to mankind, is manifest in the laws of the universe" ----- These quotes describe my religion. In fact, many scientists are atheists, but I, like Einstein am not. Like Einstein, I believe in a supreme creative spirit manifest in nature, beyond human understanding, beyond human religion. Many scientists are in fact atheists, but Nonetheless the point Einstein was making bears truth... I, like Einstein, do not worship God, I admire God. I admire the surpassingly magnificent creation of the universe, and it creator, for which the three letter word "God" hardly seems adequate. Einstein used phrases like "the ancient one", and "the old eternal genius who built the world". It is not necessary to be religious to believe in God and to admire its work. It is not necessary, and indeed seems wholly inadequate to fabricate a formal, organized religion, replete with mythology and dogma for the purpose of venerating nature. Nor is it necessary to grovel in supine obeisant, obsequiousness on bent knee to acknowledge one's admiration. Worship is hyper melodramatic, showy, fearful flattery, unworthy of intelligent beings. As Goethe said: "Behold the phenomena, for they are the doctrine." I can neither accept, respect, nor nor admire a contrived who would mandate violence by his created creatures, and require a blood sacrifice to himself to atone for it. By giving beings "free will", while establishing immutable laws of nature, freedom of actin, free will, is strictly limited. God by design creates a world of violent, suffering beings, then, according to Christianity, requires further violence as atonement. Archibald MacLeish said of the biblical God: "If God is God, God is not good. If God is good, God is not God." Again, Goethe: "It is beyond me how anyone can believe that God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal itself to us, and if our hearts do not tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we will most certainly not learn these things from books, which at best are designed to give names to our mistakes." We can love and admire god's work through our love and admiration of nature, and of each other. Mark twain said: "The Bible contains some noble poetry, clever fables, a vast quantity of obscenity, and no fewer than one thousand outright lies." I couldn't've said it better.

Rudy Going Rogue

RUDY GIULIANI, personal attorney to the gangster in chief, knows a thing or two about political corruption and organized crime. He led a successful assault on it while mayor of New York City. Now, an ever increasing abundance of evidence seems to indicate that he is involved in some of it himself. The facts are well known, available to all. Sworn testimony before Congress by at least a dozen inside members of the Trump administration demonstrated clearly that the president, with Giuliani's direct assistance, orchestrated a plan to blackmail the Ukraine into producing damaging information on his personal political rival, Joe Biden, by withholding military assistance until such time as said information was provided. The military assistance was delivered, without the damaging information, only when the now famous whistle blower told us about the scheme. Hence, the president was impeached. Documentation is mounting. Giuliani sent an email, uncovered just the other day, saying "I am very powerful, because I can intimidate the entire Ukrainian government". Then, another hand written note from a Giuliani associate: "be sure to get the info on Biden from Ukraine". Then too, one of Giuliani's attorneys now declares in no uncertain terms that both Giuliani and the president were completely informed, from the beginning, about the blackmail scheme. It appears that during the one month delay in beginning the impeachment trial, valuable new information enhances the case against the president. The testimony of Giuliani, Bolton, Mulvaney, and others now becomes vitally necessary,for these people can either exonerate or convict the president. And still, Trump, his supporter in the Senate, and his millions of American citizen supporters refuse to accept the irrefutable testimony, the indisputable evidence, and the unavoidable conclusion that Trump is guilty of obstruction of justice and abuse of power. They refuse to allow direct witnesses to be heard, and they defend the president's crimes with absurd accusations of their own; as if inside members of the Trump administration have conspired or suborned to conspire by Democratic operatives, the media, or perhaps the Chinese, or the gay community. H.L. Mencken allegedly said: "The fools would be humorous were they not in such deadly earnest." He was referring to devout Christians who go to great lengths to try to apply ancient biblical prophecy to modern events. He might as well have been referring to Trump supporters.

Recovering the Past

WITH BUT FEW EXCEPTIONS, people do not enjoy being enslaved, or, to quote Jefferson, "reduced under tyranny". During the 246 years of slavery in these United States, the notion that kidnapping people in Africa, chaining them below decks, and selling them into bondage across the ocean was beneficial to them was widely propagated, the reasoning being that the enslaved were being liberated from savagery, given the benefits of Christianity, fed, clothed, housed, and provided gainful employment with meaningful labor. The Bible, which justifies slavery in no fewer than two hundred scriptural God given passages, afforded the plantation owners cover. In fact, the slaves in America were almost constantly in revolt, and Thomas Jefferson, among many other slave owners, feared a general uprising. On several occasions, most notably in 1831 led by Nat Turner, their fears materialized. From the end of the Civil War through the nineteen sixties, with reverberations today, the treatment of African-Americans, who, it can be argued were never really freed, has inspired countless acts of rebellion. Noteworthy are the Atlanta riot of 1907 and the Tulsa municipal civil war of 1921, about which much has been written, but only recently. Invariably these violent events were precipitated by a young black man looking at a young white woman, and were ignored in history, or revised to become unprovoked riots whose blame belonged exclusively to the black community. In Wilmington, North Carolina, the situation was different. There, in 1898, the majority population was African-American, and African-Americans were a majority in the city government, holing most of the elective offices, and were prominent in the business and social community. Until the great coup of 1898, detailed thoroughly by journalist-historian David Zucchino, in his seminal new monograph "Wilimington's Lie". It was a premeditated, overtly racist plot to steal the city from all African-american influence, and put it in the hands of white supremacists. Before 1898 fifty six percent of Wilmington's population was black; today, sixteen percent is. We repeat the mistakes of teh past when we fail to learn history, and we fail to learn history when a white supremacist culture conceals it, white washes it, and refuses to impart it to future generations. Thanks to scholars like Zucchino, it is becoming a bit more difficult to do so.

Marrying Racism and Religion

SHE WAS A BEAUTIFUL GIRL, newly married, and I really liked her husband, a sports fan with a great personality. I had met her through her older brother, a dear friend and high school classmate of mine. The moved into a pleasant, unassuming apartment in an attractive apartment complex, and he worked as a delivery driver for Coca Cola, while she stayed home, an "apartment wife". She might have been a bit bored during the day, so she called me, nearly every day, and invited me over. She often fixed lunch, and we went swimming at the apartment pool. Her one piece swimsuit was worth far more than the price of admission. She was affectionate, our thighs rubbing as we watched television. When she asked me "have you ever had an affair with a married woman"?, my moral values, I confess, had less to do with my "never have, never will" response than fear. I really liked her husband, and wanted to ensure his friendship. She was a devout, fundamentalist, evangelical Christian, and upon several occasions I attended church with her. Though not religious, I try to be open minded, and I enjoyed her company. She was a racist, hard core. The fact that the year was 1980 was to my thinking no excuse, then or now. Nor was the fact that we lived in a mid sized southernish town with a long history of segregation. She made me cringe. She never used any description other than the "N" word, and derided their "grotesque features". Well, whatever. I believe they called it "The United negro College Fund", and advertised on television. A mind is a terrible thing to waste, they told us. True enough, but my lady friend thought it utterly preposterous that anyone would give a fig about the development of the African-American mind. Well, whatever. This appalling attitude was not enough to keep me from coming to her house - the friendship seemed valuable enough to overlook her downside - but it was sufficient to discourage me from inviting them to my house. I guess we will, in one way or another, find a way to make our feelings known, if only indirectly. After a wonderful summer of friendship, she stopped calling me, and I suspect my failure to reciprocate might have had something to do with it. Well, whatever. And well, at length, three's company. I did reciprocate. I wrote a beautiful essay for her "Why I want to become a nurse", which assisted her acceptance to a nursing program, and launched her career, which morphed into a career as a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company. Her first husband was neither ambitious nor wealthy enough for her, and three marriages later, she lives today in the Rocky mountains high atop a high in a gorgeous mansion, with an obviously quite successful hubby. ironically, she lives only a few miles from where I once lived. I sometimes wonder, but assume that she has long since matured, and forsaken her racism. She is, however, evidently still quite conservative. Racism, religion, and conservatism go hand in had, notwithstanding indignant denials. I added her to my friend list on Facebook, and she probably received much of the avalanche of anti-Trump material I post and share. S well then, to hell wit he must have, and she must be a Trumper. She unfriended me. Well, to hell with her.