Trump, As Always, Being Trump

AFTER MORE than three and a half years of Donald Trump's deplorable un presidential behavior and pathological dishonesty, it should not seem surprising that he repeatedly makes the ridiculous claim that children are virtually immune to the virus. His incredible lies should never come as a surprise,  and yet, somehow, they do, because they are so outrageous, so so unrestrained by the fact that they are all heard by millions of people and there are so many of them. Just when we think that he can lower no more morally, he does, every time. More than a quarter million American children have been sickened by Covid 19, and more than a thousand have died from it. surely somebody has told Trump that, but in  his twisted mentally ill pathological state he somehow blocks out the facts, and proceeds with his fantasy world in which he is America's greatest hope, the solver of all its problems, and the horrible epidemic is simply going to go away, probably before the election. the lower trump sinks into immoral depravity, rhe more inexcusable it is for the people who support him to continue to do so, the more they reveal their personal moral bankruptcy and delusional view of the world. that Trump pis a liar, a criminal, and a con man has been known in New York City for decades, and that he is a narcissist of pathological proportions is evidenced by the fact that he has been famous for decades, shoving his face in front of cameras, craving attention in the tabloid media with one trophy wife, bought and paid for, after another. The fact that his strongest base fo support remains the conservative evangelical Christian community, even after three and a half years of diabolical, criminal, immoral behavior as president, clearly exposes the utter hypocrisy, depravity, and twisted thinking of the millions of evangelical Christians in American who purport to worship God, but who obviously worship some malign evil entity of their own imagination whom they choose to consider God, in their unbalanced unhinged thinking. To actually claim that Covid 19 does not impact children, when in fact tens of thousands have been sickened by it, and hundreds have died, and while children spread the disease to their parents and grandparents is the very essence of immoral behavior, on a Hitlerian scale, by an American president. Trump and the people should continue to support him, fortunately dwindling in number, should be sent to the fringes of society, far from the realm of decent, good citizens.

Exploiting

AFTER A CENTURY of exploitation, college athletes are finally realizing their true value, and doing something about it. Since the nineteen twenties, when college football games began attracting tens of thousands of spectators, universities have fully realized the economic potential of intercollegiate athletics. they joined forces with corporate America, to the vast profit of both.With each passing decade, more of that potential has been actualized, especially with television. the attraction is the athletes themselves, young talented people whose best chance for a successful future is education, and for an education, sports. the athletes are the indentured servants, the universities are their plantation masters and owners. the owners make billions of dollars off the workers, and are most reluctant to surrender or share their wealth with the workers, and are especially unwilling to be sidetracked by an epidemic. thus the fall footballs season is scheduled to proceed, somewhat truncated, and only the Ivy League and the U of Connecticut have had the good sense to cancel the entire football season. Only when it becomes apparent that it will be impossible to play football without spreading death and disease, as is soon will, will the money mongers surrender to the inevitable, as they ultimately will. it is often pointed out that college athletes benefit from this arrangement, and indeed they do. They receive room and board, social status, and, to some degree, education. But a college education does not guarantee professional success, and is only a foundation for what is required to be truly well educated; a life time of study. The cash cow is Division I football,which brings in billions, millions per Division I school. Most of the players are black, Most of the coaches and administrators are white. Our modern collegiate plantation system generates huge revenues for for universities, and exorbitant salaries for coaches and administrators, but give no guarantees to the athletes, without whom all this would not be possible. College athletes spend four years with little or no  money in their pockets, usually depending on parents for discretionary spending money. now it is obvious that the wealthy masters are willing and eager to put the health and safety of their indentured servants at risk to preserve their own personal wealth, and the workers are becoming restless, starting to question their treatment and financial arrangements and protections being provided them against the virus. They understand that they have the inherent right to exploit their own talent, rather than leaving the overwhelming share of the benefits to go to others.

Safely Learning

IN MEXICO, where the pandemic is a damned panic, plans have been made for school, and school will be online. In Mexico, this gringo virus, it is problem, but the children will be home, safe is school, with no crazy president pushing them out the door and into danger. Many Mexican children will attend school on the internet, like children around the world, which is maybe not best, but much better than nothing. the lessons and the learning will be there. Many areas of Mexico, rural areas, lack internet service. In these places school will be broadcast or cablecast on television, and in areas without television, the remote regions, school will be transmitted by radio, some form of which can reach the entire country. In Mexico, all children will receive their education, if only from the virus free safety of their homes. the Mexican government and people were able to create this solution without partisan acrimony or the fear, anger, and social convulsions of the sort rippling through the United States . Why we in the United States cannot simply reach safe, satisfactory solutions becomes, by comparison, an even greater mystery. In the United States the Trump administration, in its desperation to lesson its responsibility for the rampant epidemic by downplaying its severity, seems intent on forcing America's children into dangerous classrooms, all for political gain. An overwhelming percentage of Americans are dissatisfied with their federal government for not acting decisively against the virus, the American people want a federal face mask mandate a federally ordered two week national quarantine and shelter in place period, and extensive testing, all of which has been and remains opposed by Trump and his ilk. If the American people are intelligent enough to vote trump out of office, this administration will soon be relegated to the dubious category of failed governments which failed to provide much needed national leadership and which failed miserably to provide basic protections for its people.

Lazing

EXACTLY WHY a substantial segment of the American people reject science is subject for speculation and scrutiny. Cultural arrogance, individualism, and educational ignorance explain much of it. As Carl Sagan said, there is no shortage of intelligence in America or anywhere else, only a shortage of education. perhaps high school science should be less elective, more requisite. Science, after all, is the only true religion, the only way we have of knowing reality. As Goethe said: "Behold the phenomena, for they are the doctrine." Science always gets it right, no matter how long it takes, and sometimes it takes a long time. Religion, by contrast, which embraces mythology, is content to linger long in fantasy, without self improvement, without changing itself, without ever getting closer to the truth The way science works, it tries to explain something, to solve problems. Then, it proves its first attempt wrong, every time. time and time again, a million, science gets it wrong. Finally, after a million wrong theories, it finds one that it cannot disprove, no matter how times the theory is tested, and finally, science has it right. for instance, climate change and evolution have been tested time and again, millions of times, by scientists all over the world, and they both come up true, every time. Science always tries to change, to improve itself. Science always gets it right, in the long run, always ends up at the truth, which is why the fact that so man Americans ignore or distrust it is so inexplicable. All Americans, except maybe the Amish, bask in the benefits of science daily, through technology, and wonders like cell pones and modern medicine which make our lives beautiful. Religion and superstition provide nothing tangibly beneficial, and yet people embrace it, while rejecting scientific truth all the while taking full advantage of those truths in their daily lives. People want explanations, because humans are inherently curious creatures. By inventing conspiracy theories and invisible forces and embracing religion people get the explanations they so crave, without having to expend the effort and discipline necessary to understand science, which becomes so complicated that it sometimes seems like deep, dark magic. thus it becomes far easier to simply deny climate change and evolution by natural selection and the efficacy of vaccines than to understand chemistry, physics, and biology. it becomes easier to ascribe self inflicted human suffering to invented abstractions like "evil" and "Satan" than to study the complexities of historical and cultural trends and institutions, and esoteric subjects like sociology and human psychology. sadly, because once one dares to enter the shallow waters of actual science adn reality, it becomes more comfortable, and one is actually tempted to swim in deeper. But, alas, laziness i often the easiest way out.

Knowing

IN TERMS OF RELIGION, the world's most honest people are agnostics. Agnostics honestly admit that they do not know. We should all be agnostic, in terms of honesty, because nobody knows, although most of us pretend otherwise. I believe in god, because I want to and I choose to, not because I have any factual reason to, because there exists no factual reason to either believe or not believe in God. Atheists are no better than those who believe fervently in God, because atheists assert a certain certitude, where none exists. how can anyone possibly be certain that there is no god, or that there is? No one can, but everyone is. Everyone is a self deceiving liar, except for agnostics. We humans have a remarkable capacity for refusing to accept our ignorance, and for replacing it with fabricated false facts, mythology, superstition, religion.And the invented facts we fabricate are mot imaginative, as befits an imaginative, creative species. In one version, a quirky, playful collection of gods and goddesses frolics atop Mt. Olympus, often descending to Earth to make mischief and inspire mythology. Nobody knows fer certain the location of mt. Pylmpus, which makes no difference, because if anyone ever pinpointed it, no one would dare ascend it for some empirical, observational godly confirmation. One must never, under any circumstance, risk disproving the existence of one's gods, nor dare one even contemplate seizing an opportunity to do so. In another version, God chooses his favorite people, and, still attracted to high places, descends upon Mt. Sinai impersonating a bush on fire, and indoctrinates a future killer, Moses. Later, the sacred law goes into an ornate box, and must be obeyed, though never seen. then there's the scenario in which God becomes mere man, updates the instruction manual, then tortures himself to death to compensate for the bad behavior of beings to whom he gives the motivation and means, thus repaying himself for his own questionable judgment and trouble. Creative accounting, we would call it now. it is nearly worth the price of admission to stick long enough to see what we the progenitors of human culture come up with next.

'Splainin'

A DECENT RESPECT to the opinions of mankind, to quote Jefferson, requires that an explanation be given to the question of why the essays published here are so often critical of politically conservative evangelical Christians. when you despise a cultural group as much as this website despises right wing evangelical Christians, an explanation is in order. The catalyst is in the combination, politically and religiously. Separately, they are intolerable enough. together, they are insufferable. The essential message of Jesus, render unto Caesar, give unto the poor, according to all four gospels, is progressive, left wing, socialistic, despite all vociferous arguments, twisted arguments posed by those who object to this notion, and who see Jesus as a conservative politically.The wealthy enter not into heaven. Jesus was voluntarily poor. He uttered not a word about working hard to acquire personal wealth, nor the profit motive. An evangelical Christian, for ideological integrity, should be a socialist, a hard core advocate of the redistribution of wealth through all means necessary, as Jesus was, not a card carrying free market capitalist, as in conservatism. People who profess allegiance to both Trump and Jesus Christ might consider asking why. the reason, of course, is that both the christian faith and the political conservative viewpoint represent tradition, and in that sense, they go together. Beyond that, the compatibility ends. Trump, everyone knows, embodies the opposite of the message of Jesus. Trump is merely the mechanism by which evangelicals vent their hostility towards modern progressive culture, which accept homosexuals as people with equal rights, and so forth. To embrace traditional values while rejecting Trump''s moral depravity and the moral depravity and lunacy of modern political conservatism is the solution. When conservatism tells you to reject the advice of government and science to wear face masks, for instance, because you must reject arbitrary secular authority which tries to control you, remind yourself that you do not have to submit to any unreasonable authority, that you are free and independent, and make your own decisions, and then decide to follow the actual teachings of Jesus, not the right wing Jesus, put on your face mask, and do not fear that somebody is trying to control you or impose secular authority upon you, simply because they want you to keep a virus from entering your mouth or nose.

Escaping by Inventing

IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA, inescapably ensconced in a world Einstein accurately described as a "madhouse" we seek escape, a luxury facilitated  by our comfortable lives, which require neither confronting nor tending, being on autopilot. A political hoax, and social sham, the great American fun house of perpetual free market deceit invites us to fabricate and invent and construct, and to dwell in our self constructed lives of illusion. Only the rare Diogenes declines the invitation. We choose to envision ourselves as the lonely Cassandra or Christ; nobody believes us yet, although we have the truth, but there will come a time when everyone will, when impending events unfold precisely as we foretell them, I, the neglected prophet. There are many species of intelligent life in "our" galaxy, genetically related to us. this, I and I alone know. I can educate concerning their identities and behaviors. This information comes from me, and I get it from many sources; there are many ways of knowing things. An exclusive cabal rules the word, without anyone's knowledge, save mine. People who wear face masks are sheep, sheepishly submitting to rule by the deep state, choking themselves on their own carbon dioxide. they listen to the fake news hoax of microbiological science, ignoring the real experts, Trump and the MAGA masses. The should listen to those who are saved, those who can read between biblical lines. Or, one can invest heavily in biblical based conspiracies, involving extraterrestrials and the giants who once walked the Earth. Revelation, which Jefferson called "the rantings of a lunatic" holds the truth for all to see, all who are willing. I invent my own world, devoid of scientific fact, discarding the science which gave us nuclear physics and evolution by natural selection, in preference to my own world of fantasy and magic  And this world of wonder and mystery I know well, and I share it with all who are open minded, because I choose to dwell in a world of my creation, not the world of reality around me which has turned its back on me, and I  have turned my back on it.

Dividing the Racist Church

THERE ARE THOUSANDS, of religions in the world, arguably billions, since,as Goethe said: "everyone invents his own religion". Thousands more are extinct, the ultimate fate of all religions. There are hundreds of varieties of the christian religion, inviting the question: why? Isn't there just one God, and one  Christ? Do all Christians assume that their denomination has exclusive possession of the truth? If they do, how do they manage to deceive themselves that God is a Methodist, or a baptist, or whatever, other than by being delusional, mentally ill? Goethe also said: "We are never deceived, we only deceive ourselves". In 1845 the american Baptist church split into two factions, north and south, and the southern Baptist was born, adding one more to the long list of separated Christian factions. Every other mainstream christian denomination in America did the same; Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, among many others. The divisive issue was slavery, which the christian religion, in the bible, clearly condones. All antebellum plantation slave owners defended slavery, with good reason, based on its acceptance in scripture. religion comes in handy, economically. The bible mentions slavery many times, never condemns,it, and provides advice on how slavers should treat their masters. The Christian church in America has a nearly unbroken record of and history of racial segregation and white supremacy, which continues today.Today, there exists a white Baptist church, and a black one.All this is detailed in a new book by Robert P. Jones: "White Too Long" The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity"...Among white Americans, Christians are far more likely to deny the very existence of racism in modern American culture, society as well as law enforcement, than non religious whites, and are far less likely than white atheists to acknowledge the confederate flag as a symbol of racism and black oppression. they tend to see it as simply expressing pride in southern heritage, or whatever. this is indisputable, having been confirmed by verified research.After more than a hundred fifty years of supporting white supremacy, the various Christian denominations apologized for it, the southern Baptists in 1995. Ironically yet predictably, white supremacy persists today, deeply rooted in American Christianity.Witness their support of Trump. As we like to say, talk's cheap.

Trump, tweeting Yet Again

AS DR. FREUD could've told us, we are what we tweet. Examine the total opus of Trump's, or anyone's tweets, and you have your ma. In our latest installment, the president twittered that maybe, just maybe the election should be postponed.This is certainly in keeping with his well established pattern of sensational narcissism. Unless our scavengers failed to assiduously sift through this latest bullshit, Trump didn't say for how long it should be delayed, presumably long enough for the pandemic to subside, the economy to recover, and for Joe Biden to live out his life span. You might think that for the president of the USA to have the temerity to suggest that he remain in office indefinitely would be sufficient material in one tweet evern for a world class narcissist, and you would be wrong in this case. Too much, and never enough. Trump trumpeted his sacred intent to protect and defend the structural integrity of America's suburbs against the ravages of a potential Biden administration by which he implicitly means that he will go to any length necessary to keep upper middle and upper class lily white evangelical 'hoods upper middle class lily white Christian, cultural diversity be damned. he certainly has the experience necessary, back in the seventies when he and his father kept blacks out of Trump apartment buildings until the feds swooped down on them and ruined all the racist fun. No more unseemly encroachment by what James Madison genteely called "the lesser sorts", meaning those with the wrong religiosity, skin pigment, or socio-economic stratum. Trump will keep out the riff raff, Biden will not, is the upshot of the tweet.having long since flown from America's inner cities , the whites on the right shall never be forced to take flight again. Be sure that if working class Catholic Biden is elected, he will reverse decades of federal racist housing policies and force low income housing into the realm of the wealthy. Diversity will rule, and WASP purity sullied. The gene pool will be polluted by lord knows what; Muslims, blacks, browns, working poor. Trump hasn't had much success fighting the viral infection; be damned sure he will do better fighting the human one.

Kneeling. Patriotically

ITS WORTH MENTIONING that people who kneel during the national anthem are showing disrespect for neither the anthem or the flag. They are showing disrespect for something much larger and more important than mere superficial symbols: American, history, culture, and society. The anthem and flag are merely symbols, vehicles to attract attention to the protesters, and their cause,. the elimination of racial injustice, and its persistent existence. This is what symbols are for; to attract attention to whatever they symbolize, for those  whovenerate that which is being symbolized. What is interesting is that the ostentatiously patriotic people who object most strenuously to showing disrespect for symbols never utter a word of indignation or complaint about the real object of disrespect; history, culture, and societal norms, specifically racism. If "America the Beautiful", or "Stars and Stripes Forever", or We Shall Overcome', or "Hey Jude" were the national anthem, the kneelers wouldn't care, they would simply kneel. They would knee to whatever song or whatever flag was being used as the symbol. The Star Spangled Banner, an old English song set to improvised lyrics by Francis Scott Key, became the national anthem in the nineteen thirties. Over the course of American history, no fewer than forty versions of the flag have symbolized the nation. Songs and flags come and go. But the fundamental evils with which American society is and always has been infected are more enduring, stubborn, resistant to reform. All solutions to all problems begin with the identification of the problem, and that is the necessary service rendered by those who kneel. Those who hate the kneelers actually hate their own shame and cowardice for failing to help reform society, for accepting its evils. They hate those who remind them of their own shame and shortcomings. Notice how the piously patriotic hide from the shameful truth about themselves behind a flag and a song, mere symbols, and how they hate those who kneel  for disrespecting symbols, but never express hatred of the kneelers for their disrespect of their country's history, culture, and society, and never express any disrespect of their own for their nation's corrupt history, culture, and society. It is they who deserve disrespect.

Regressing, Again

THE ROLLER COASTER consists in our oft renewed hope that the president will, and has perhaps begun the long and arduous ascent to lucidity, only the fall back down the mountain, in Sisyphus  fashion, back into the normal quagmire of depravity. he simply cannot seem to drain his own internal swamp, let alone the nations's capitol's. He had lately worn a face mask, in public, twice, after months of vain refusal. he had actually admitted that there exists an epidemic, and that something might need to be done about it. then, just the other night, in the wee hours, he got back on twitter tweet. he doesn't drink, so  mark of that tempting excuse. Presumably the twitter masters have considered banning him; petitions have circulated encouraging this. On tweet, he once again hyped the delusion that a malarial treatment, hydroxychloroquine, would cure everyone of Covid 19, that face masks are a hoax, and that Dr. Anthony Fauci is a snake oil salesman. He can't resist playing to his base, and convincing everyone else, the other sixty five percent, that he is in fact ridden with mental illness. then there was teh Yankee thing. After Dr. Fauci threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the Washington nationals home opener against the Yankees, throwing the ball forty five feet before it tailed off towards the home dug out and rolled gently to a stop, petulant Donny got jealous, and announced that he intended to throw out the first pith at Yankee Stadium August 15, before the Yankees play the Boston Red Sox. Then, he announced that he had to cancel out, because he was too busy fighting the virus with everything at his disposal, including snake oil. Upon questioning, the Yankee's executive brass shoulder shrugged, and admitted no knowledge of having ever invited the president to do any such thing. The president reminds one of a third grader, telling his classmates that his father is an astronaut. Severe case of paranoid social rejection syndrome, obviously. Meanwhile, Sec. Of Edu DeVoss alarms us that if American students do not reenter school buildings in huge numbers, and soon, they will be irreparably damaged, emotionally and intellectually. they wouldn't be. If every student in the U.S. spent this entire school year at home with a computer, nobody would be damaged in any way, all would be well, only nobody would get sick and die from Covid 19, kinda like would happen if everyone would wear a face mask when leaving the house. the simplest solutions are usually the best, the obvious one, but like Churchill said: One can count on the Americans to do the right thing, when they have exhausted all other options.

Winning

SUCCESS, we probably all agree,  requires hard work. It begins with attitude, the belief that anything is possible, and that we can and will make it happen. Then the other components fall into place, if we allow them. The focus derives from motivation, and the preparation proceeds naturally because we enjoy taking batting practice, hitting a hundred backhands, writing and memorizing the speech which will move millions for concerted, strong action. To govern our own lives requires hard work. And it is always easier to allow someone else to govern us, to do the work, while we passively accept the results, secure in our knowledge that whatever happens, we can avoid responsibility. Franklin warned us that a democratic form of government requires constant upkeep, like a fragile, complicated machine which functions beautifully only when overseen. Autocratic forms of government have endured for centuries, even millennia, but systems in which the people govern themselves never have, and, it may be, never will. In her perceptive new book "Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism" scholar Anne Applebaum warns us that even people long accustomed to governing themselves can grow collectively weary and frustrated with the hard work, and often find it tempting to revert to simpler, more autocratic forms of governance. It happened in ancient Greece and Rome. after the decline of the Roman republic and rise of the Roman empire in the first century before the advent of the Christian religion, western civilization remained content to accept autocracy, to be ruled rather than to rule itself. finally in teh fifteenth and then sixteenth centuries flickers of discontent with oppression swelled into the rebirth of democratic institutions first in the British isles, than the new world. Thus the United States of American has always been seen by the observant as a tenuous experiment. A democracy must constantly reinvent and strengthen itself with exercise and fresh air, having the courage to change its institutions and to improve them as time and circumstance require. That we venerate a two hundred year old constitution rather than changing and improving it would be abhorrent  to Madison and Jefferson, who knew the dangers of stagnation in culture and society. We have grown lazy, content, and are no longer vigilant, and are showing an alarming tendency towards authoritarian rule. Our American democracy, designed as a plutocratic republic to safeguard against mob rule, seems to be slipping into the trap into which Greece and Rome fell long ago. It isn't too late to restore some measure of popular sovereignty, but soon will be, unless we change our direction.

Defining Fascism

THE EPITHET "FASCISM" has become the go to insult right and left level at each other, referring to each other's perceived autocratic tendencies What does it mean? The root word "fasci" is from the ancient Latin, a noun describing a bundle of sticks tied together with a string wrapped around them, a symbol  of various functions of government concentrated in the hands of a single autocrat, concentrated power from previously dispersed power, as in a republican form of government. The symbol and name was first used to describe teh process by which Julius Caesar, a military hero supported by most of the Roman public, personally took on the powers formally hale by teh Roman Senate, consuls,, and tribunes. Thus the Roman republic became the Roman empire, and the republic was gone forever. To date, no form of democratic government has lasted long; they all devolve into autocracy. Democracy is messy and difficult to operate; people always grow tired of it, and turn power over to a strong man, to simplify their lives and give them perceived security. People inevitably prefer security over liberty. In 1922 Benito Mussolini came to power in Italy, and resurrected the term "fascism', and, after the fashion of all right wing autocrats,promised to restore Italy to the glories of its past, in this case, the glory of the ancient Roman empire. Fascism by definition is a conservative ideology, venerates the past, tradition, an imagined glorious time which has slipped away in modern times. Fascist demagogues rise to authoritarian power by seducing a large enough number of people discontent with modern culture and progress to exert political leverage in a fragmented political environment. Like Donald Trump, fascist demagogues attract a minority but a sufficiently potent plurality within the fragmented society to seize and hold power. These charismatic speakers boast of their unique ability to restore their country to a supposedly glorious past, and to solidify their support they constantly invent enemies of the country; other political parties, the media, foreigners, minorities, intellectuals. Once in power, fascist heads of state,, using distortion of fact, exaggeration, lies and myths to strengthen their loyalty and keep their fanatical supporters engaged. If all this doesn't sound familiar to Americans, it should.

Searching For Answers

THE ENDURING QUESTION, which might not be fully answered until future historians and psychologists and social scientists grapple with it, if it ever is answered, is: why did the great pandemic of 2020 afflict the United States so much harder than anywhere else in the world? With fewer than twenty million confirmed cases of Covid 19 infections throughout the world, and more than four million of them in the U.S. alone, and with a quarter of the world's deaths American, there can be no disputing the fact that the United States is and has always been the epicenter of the pandemic. Assuming that there is no conspiracy to attack the United States virally, and there is no evidence for that, then the answer must lie squarely within the borders of America itself. it has recently been suggested that it is a matter of trust, that the American people do not trust their political leaders nor their science experts, and therefore have disregarded their advice. Arguably, advice from politicians has often been so misguided that it is worthy of disregard. Most of what president Trump has told us about the virus has been outright nonsense, deliberate lies calculated only to enhance and preserve his political career, rather than to help the public. A seemingly more appropriate theory, more in keeping with /american character, is that the general arrogance of the American people and self absorbed nature of Americans tends to motivate them to think in terms of their own convenience and personal satisfaction, rather the public good. Hence the national epidemic of refusal to wear face masks, refusal to social distance, refusal to refrain from gathering together in large number, behaviors we have repeatedly seen over the past few weeks. Joe Biden points out that we need a president who leads by example and who takes responsibility instead of blaming others. In this he is correct. The country needs a number of change, including a new president. we need to restore america's connection to its allies and to the word, repair the diplomatic damage done by the Trump administration, including rejoining the world in fighting climate change and nuclear arms control, and new American leadership needs to restore healthy, intelligent relationships with other world powers, particularly Russia and China. Less pandering to Russia, less hostility towards china, less cozying up to authoritarian right wing populist demagogue tyrants, like Trump himself. Let the repair work begin.

Monumenting

IN 1770, a statue of King George III was erected in new York city. It was the only monument in the thirteen colonies. It didn't last long. six years later, in July of 1776, ablaze with revolutionary fervor, colonists hammered the king's nose,, then toppled the entire statue, melted it down,, and remade the metal into musket balls, which were eventually returned to the British in unfriendly fashion. When George Washington died in 1799, a debate ensued over whether to erect a monument in his honor. Those opposed argued that doing so would be undemocratic, antithetical to the very ideals for which Washington fought, and remindful of King George III. A monument to Washington was erected in the rotunda of the nation's capitol building, depicting a bare chested, muscular Washington seated on a throne like Zeus, conveying a godlike aura. By 1830 a statue of George Washington stood near Boston harbor. This time Washington was standing, clad in a Roman toga. Tourist Davy Crockett, in town to promote his book, said that a man "arter be shown wearing his own clothing", an arguable point. Shortly before the Civil War, construction of the Washington monument was begun, interrupted during the war, and completed afterwards, ending all controversy concerning Washington's personal appearance with the abstract, symbolic monolithic structure we know so well today. People have been building monuments and tearing them down amid political turmoil since the dawn of neolithic civilization. Human nature seems to inspire us to memorialize permanently in stone the people we consider to be our greatest leaders and heroes, as a means perhaps of paying tribute to ourselves. Amid recent social controversies we are beginning to ask ourselves exactly who should be immortalized in monuments. since all people have serious character flaws, it may be that it is never appropriate to elevate anyone to a place of special glory, but better to either memorialize no one, or everyone. maybe a system of temporary monuments could be installed, like Cape Canaveral was renamed "Cape Kennedy" for ten years after teh assassination of President Kennedy. Or better yet, abstract monuments to the human spirit, symbolizing nobody in particular but everybody in general might be the most appropriate form of respect to give ourselves.