Building Battleships, Or Not

WHEN I WAS A TEENAGER, decades ago, I was interested in science and history, and atill am. A friend and I built model battle ships, made of cardboard,plywood,and plastic, duct tape and staples, and floated them on local lakes and streams. We then proceed to attack them with withering firepower,BBguns and rocks, in the heat of some naval engagement from World War One, Two, take your pick. In those days i [robably knew more about military history and weaponry in the dirt beneath my fingernails than I do in my entire aged brain today, my having forgotten more history than I ever thought I knew. Most old people know how that goes. Not that I'm anexpert on naval warfare past, present, or future, or that I know very much about battleships. But one thing I know, or think I know, is that battleships are obsolete,and have been since the inventionand deployment of aircraft carriers, Since nowadays we have the capacity to sink naval ships from nearly ay distance, from anywhere in the world,by land, by sea, or from beneath the sea, battleships, like aircrafitcarriers, are floating,sitting targets for drone attacks. Weprotect our aircraft carriers by surrounding them with their own personal naval flotilla, a sort of aircraft carrier bodyguard,amd, by keeping planes in the sky to surveil the surrounding seas, and by using surveillence drones, radar, and so forth. It isn't worthwhile, militarily, strategically, to go to all this toruble to protect big, bulky battleships, with limited range and firepower; you might as well build more aircraft carriers instead. Battleships were obsolete before World War Two, and the Germans found out in, what, nineteen forty, with the sinking of the legendary allegedly unsinkable battleship, the Bismark.My prediction is that Donald Trump's two titanic proposed battleships, the Trump One and the Trump Two, the first such vessels built by the United States since World War Two - will never be built. Cooler heads will prevail, slowly, gradually, America's top military commanders will come out of hiding and admit that the idea of actually building battleships in twenty thiery is insane, and enough politicians will be convinced of this inconvenient but glaringly blatantly obvious reality to scotch the idiotic Trump idea. This is a classic example of the emporer having no clothes, and everyone associated him is subservient to him, and nobody dares tell the high and mighty king that he is stark naked. If I can figure out that battleships are a total anachronism, utterly obsolete today and forevermore, then so can and so has every naval officer in the navy, and, for that matter, every member of every branch of the United States military. IN modern America,on tis paritcualr issue, we have literally millions of people perfectly capable of telling president Trump that he needs to start wearing clothing. Surely, of the hundreds of high ranking military officiers, and hundreds of members of Congress, somebody, anybody, can and will do precisely that. The idea of re-battleshipping the American navy will die perhaps a slow an dpaiful death, but die it will, for dead certain. If nothing else, teh next president will be sane enough to cancel this latest Trump insanity, just as our court system already has canceled so much of it. What we'll build is nuclear submarines, drones, computers, and lasers, but not battleships or muzzle loading rifles or cannonballs. Our coal and oil loving conservatives have some catching up to do on a number of different fronts.

Trump, Departing

THIS TIME OF YEAR folks're making their predictions for twenty twenty six, along with New Year's resolutions and wish lists, and proclamations of good intent regarding eliminating or reversing long held hard to break personal habits. Inevitably, as is well known,most of this comes crumbling down within a couple of weeks or a few days after teh first day of the year. Thos daly sunrise visits to the fitness center become less and less frequent and by mid February, another ten dollar a month membership goes unused, just as the fitness center owners intend and understand. The large majority of Americans who comprise the anti-Trump movement often express their prediction or desire that President Trump either die, resign,or be impeached and removed, understandably. Impeachmwnt seems the msot likely, with a new and probably Democrat controlled House of Representatives likely to take office a year from now. The Senate, unless the Democrats take control of it, will almost certainly laugh the impeachment charges out of court, as the Trump sycophants did twice before. If Trump haters would take the time to think past their immediate emotions, and to look at the "big picture" they would surely realize, at length, that this scenarion, any scenario by which trump does not complete his presidential term is undesierable, for them. In the first place, although anti-Trumpers for thesot part have doubtless failed to realize this, the first thing that would happen in the event of Trump's death or fored resignation or removal would be that he instantly becomes a martyr among his MAGA cult. There would issue forth from the MAGA mob an avalanche of wailing, gnashing of teeth, and venomous hatred of all liberals and non Trump supporters everywhere. Since Trump supporters tend to be conspiracy theorists, all manner of wisted, deranged accusations would doubtless be hurled against those left wing Democrats which Trump has alternately called "vermin" and scum." Hillary Clinton, as well as Obama dn Biden, would have to hire extra security, which I am told they already do, due to the level of vitriolic hatred the Prevaricator-in-Chief constatnly gins up within his angry minions. There might even be an actual civil war, Trump's MAGA mob, bolstered by white supremacist groups armed to the teeth, roaming the city streets of freedom's land like goons or National Guard, looking to eradicate the libs. Do those of us who despide and revile Trump really want him out of office before 2029? We think we do. But when we think more carefully about the Republican party, wearing and carrying the banner of the martyred Trump like armor, uniting behind the Trump-like J.D. Vance and entering the 2028 election cycle with the fervor of a sacred cause, we think twice. They would be looking to use Trump's memory to keep Vance and the Trump agenda in office fora full eight years, eight more years of Trumpism, an intolerable thought. It is in teh best interests of the great moral majority of Americans who want Trump gone to endure him the rest of his term, while wroking to render him impotent politically, through lack of public support, which continues to erode. ForTrump to leave office prematurely would only strengthen the Trump movement. As it now stands, Trump'sinsane policies are gradually, all to slowly but steadily, eroding his support, as MAGA folk, one by one, give it up. Trump's evident strategy is to regain his popularity by involving the United States in a noble crusade of a foreign war. That si a desperate strategy, directly opposed to Trump's stated agenda of peace. For Trump to champion himself as the architect of peace in conflists all over the world, while involving his own country in such wars,will be a fascinating balancing act for the don of dception. But if anybody call pull it off, he can.

Insulting Trump With Facts

"NOBODY IS FORTUNATE ENOUGH" said Goethe, "so escape either blame or praise." Boy, howdy. We all try to convince oursleves that we don't give a fig what other people think, and we shouldn't, should we? As for me, I'll take the praise, and pass on the blame. And, like most folks, I've been called a lot of things in my time, and maybe still will be after my time. Frankly, I'd rather be forgotten. But I've never to my knowledge been called "scum" by anybody, unless it was behind my back, which is where most name calling takes place for most of us. Until now, that is. now,I have officially been called "scum" by none other than his reprobateness,the acting presdident of the United States. It was a blanket condemnation. The slanderer-in-chief was talking about everybody who doesn't vote for him, a demographic which has long been accustomed to ignoring Trump's verbal slings and arrows, and returning them in kind. As a friend of mine said when I informed him that he has now been designated "vermin" by our nation's highest office holder, he casually responded "the feeling is mutual". Never in my wildest imaginings would I have thought that the president of the United States would call me "vermin". But of course, never would a I have thought that a person of absolutely no redeeming personal qualities, a complete reprobate and criminal of low morality and intellect, would get elected to the presidency. Of course this is far from the first time Trump has lashed out at his opponents. He has done it constantly since entering politics a decade ago. Gratuitously slandering everyone who disagress with him or does not support him is his primary form of behavior. He seems to thrive on it. I cannot recall ever experiencing a more contemptible human being than Trump. I keep telling myself not to lower myslef to his level, not to hurl curse words and insults, but rather, to fight the fascist bastard with facts, and facts alone. Sometimes it almost seems like Trump opponents forget or don't realize how easy it is to criticize and condemn Trump on facts alone, since his public resume includes numerous felony convictions and a steady stream unethical behavior. If you're aim is to prove that Trump is crazy, poorly educated, or just plain stupid, its easy to pull up his more entertaining quotes, such as the beauty when he warned us that windmills can cause cancer. There area seemingly infinite number from which to choose. I'm glad that Trump told the world that he hates his political opponents, and I am evern more glad that he slanders me and my trump hating fellow citizens with childish epithets. It helps justify my hatred, hatred which I hate having but cannot avoid having, and it motivates me to keep up the assault on all things MAGA. Somehow, presumably by twisting their core values into a pretzel and bending over backwards, Trump's supporters manage to hang on to their cult worship. that is, until they begin to realize that their cult hero'spolicies are hurting their personal bottom line, which to them is the only thing that matters. What I find utterly amazing is how easy it is to despise Donald Trump, as I have never despised anyone before, or, I pray, never will again. Factually, I clearly identify Trump as a liar and a convicted criminal, and his supporters as accessories to, enablers of his reprehensible behavior. But I'll let other Trump haters talk about his hair, his girth, or his wife. The best way to show Trump's stupidty is to merely quote him. The best way to emphasize his immorality and criminality is to leave the gratuitous insults and slanders to our low life president, and to merely state the facts.

Climate Changing Christmases

I HAVE ALWAYS loved Christmas. The decorations, music, parties, good cheer. Awakening early on Christmas Day in early childhood and discovering a pile of beautifully wrapped presents with my name on tham beneath a real, apline smelling Christmas tree all lighted up helps set the tone for an entire lifetime of Christmas love. Now, I no longer have occasion to exchange gifts with anyone. My family members and I agreed to suspend the practice years ago, and everybody is still happy with the decision. When you approach retirement age and realize that you have a house full of at least five times the amount of material things that you really need tends to frighten some seniors into toning things down a bit. I amone of those. I light up my house with colored lights, and it looks good. No tree for me and my cats. Yesterday, Christmas Day, I never left the house, and I enjoyed teh day as much as ever, as much as when I was en years old. I am glad that this indoctrinated love of Christmas has remained with in me, and hope and trust that it will so remain for a few more years. I can remmber onw and only one white Chrstmas during my lifetime, an inch or two of snow falling on Shristmas morning when I was in my early teens in the late sixties, around 1967 or 1968. In those days it snowed several times every winter in my lower midwestern American locale, usually three or four inches which melted within a couple of days, sometimes a rare one ot two foot snow atorm. Now, it rarely snows here, and hasn't for years. Schood age children undoubtedly cannot remember the climate the way it used to be. On Christmas Day our temperature got close to eighty degrees, and never fell below sixty at night. Shirt sleeve weather, suitable for April or May, not late December. Whether I prefer the old or the new cliamte depends on what day you ask me. Spring-like Christmases have a certain appeal for me, but on the other hand, cold weather has never really impeded my outdoor activities; its the sharp winds and ice which really get in the way. The week of December 21-28 most of the United States is enveoped in a big heat wave, except for the ice and snow storm making its way through the north and on back east. The week of unseasonably warm weather, because of its timing and duration, seems weird, somehow unnatural. And, verily, unnatural it is, if you make the philosophical assumption that modern human civilization, with its technology and industry is not necessarily what nature had and has in mind. The president of the United States is actively trying to reduce and slow down the developed of sustainable energy sources, such as wind and solar energy, which the confused old man sees a harmful to the United States, and is trying to reignite the fossil fule industry, almost as if said president is a secret member of some suicidal death cult bent on the extinction of the human species and all life on Earth. The environmental policy of the Trump administration and the entire Republican party, and presumably conservative America generally, consists, for all appearances, in a dogged determination to end all life on Earth. Only twisted minds embracing destructive political policies could actually strive towards this goal,of resisting any and all measures to save ourselves. When one takes a close look at today's conservative environmental ideology, as articulated by the Republican party, human suicide is clearly its predictable result, if not its stated intent. To defeat this culture of denial of reality will require the sustained effort of millions of people wise enough to consider eighty degree Christmases highly alarming, if rather pleasant.

Stopping Trump, Legally

JUST THE OTHER DAY a friend of mine suggested that some people who hate Trump will never ever give him credit for doing anything right, no matter what he does.I allowed as that was the case,and added that I am among those, although it isn't really true. Recently, for example, Trump reclassified marijuana, changing it from a schedule 1 drug,with an addiction and damage severity classification equal to cocaine and heroine,to a schedule 3 drug, a looser, more lenient, more harmlessly recreational status. Marijuana smokers are essentially self medicating, practicing medicine without a license, not comitting some horrible crime worthy of arrest and incarceration. Drug abuse is a medical problem, and should not become a legal one. In fact I applaud not only Trump's rare good deed, and even his harmless ones, both of which are few and far between, as we say. Great though the harm done by Trump is, our federal judicial system, throughout his entire second administration,has been doing its job, stepping in where needed, and saving the nation from Trump's fascist tyranny.It happened, as a matter of fact, twice, yesterday. The Supreme Court, in a six to three vote, ruled that Trump cannot insert the national guard into the city of Chicago without the invitation and consent of its governor; for now. The "for now" part sounds omninous, allowing the court to circumvent its own ruling at a later time. One wonders whether this ruling applies to every city in the United States; the mere fact that it was issued by the SCOTUS, the highest court in the land and whose jurisdiction includes the entire country, would ensure that indeed it does. The very thought of Donald Trump, much less any other president, ordering the national guard or other military units into any American city at will, and occuptying them, is unthinkable. We all know damned good and well that this is precisely what Trump would love to do, but only to heavily Democratic cities. The high court ruled that Trump never demonstrated any need or reason for doing this, and that no president can do so without good cause, and never simply because he or she chooses to do so for political reasons. In its other enlightened rendering, SCOTUS ruled that all federal disaster relief funding must be restored to those states where Trump had recently cut it. As one might guess, Trump had cut disaster funding for states governed by or populated by a majority of Democrats. No, there is no end to this person's cruety and pettiness. Anyone who fails to join MAGA and seig heil Trump, left to die of hunger homelessness after a hurricane or earthquake, apparently the policy of choice of Trump and his supporters. No disaster help for Democrats. Amazingly cruel and petty. Trump supporters might object to this characterization, but cannot dany it with facts. Can you imagine Trump invading our cities with our own citizens every tiem the notion strikes him? Perish the thought. He had the sheer audacity and criminality to whimsically re-appropriate federal funds duly authorized and designated by Congress, based entirely on personal loyalty, or lack thereof, to him. A flagrant disregard for the law, in evident pursuit of dictatorial powers. Arguably, the federal coursts are not only saving our democracy, they are doing so directly on behalf of the people. Tyrants, especially when they become desperate, inevitably end up ignoring the court system, often attacking it, as Trump does, and destroying it, as Trump will probably try to do. Ultimately preserving our democracy and defending it against fascism is our responsibility, and to do this the courts are only one of the tools at our disposal. For our own sake we had better use them well, and use them all.

Trump, Going Overboard

THE LETTERS ON THE MESSAGE SIGN said,at the convenience store, clearly: "Free gas on days Trump says nothing stupid". That seems like a generous offer, and maybe a bit risky, untio you consider the following: On any given day, as well Americans know all too well, Trump is extremely highly likely to say soemthing stupid.He rarely misses an opportunity. The odds of him missing even a single day of dumb-speak are, by all reasonable reckoning, vanishingly small. Even on days when he is relatively quiet, which are of course few and far between, he somehow always seems to utter at least one inanity,making a "Trupm stupid statement of the day" tear off calendar a very real possibility. Surely they already exist, and are available. I want one. It there are nonoe, or are not being heavily marketed, somebody is missing a helluva a business opportunity. Then too, everything Trump says can be interpreted, with a little bit of imagination,as "stupid". Stupid is as stupid does, we know. It seems safe to assume that the day will never come when a day of free gas will actually take place. But with Trump,its not just all talk. On a daily basis, America's Prevaricator in Chief manages to not only say but to actually do at least one stupid thing, and quite often, more than that, sometimes, many more. Yesterday, for example. In a single eigt hour work day, Trump managed to steer the navy and the United States military policy in the wrong direction, and to initiate a process which has no bneficial potential, but can only harm American relationshps with several of its closest allies. Other than that, its all good, as we say. Trump announced that construction will begin on two huge new old fashioned "battleships", completion in theory scheduled for the early thenty thirties. A pair of World War Two style ships, on steroids. The question is: why? Why, when the modern aircraft carrier supplanted the traditional battle ship as the most potent mainstay in the United States navy, rendering batleships functionally obsolete. Cariers can do everything battleships can do, and much much more. Why not simply build more of them? Another trillion or two tacked on to the burgeoning out of control national debt, for obsolete weapons. The nation's military leaders doubtless know full well how stupid this idea is, but cannot say so. Stupid thing number town has to do with Trump's long standing and evidently quite serious desire and goal of adding, believe it or not, Greenland to these United States. A quick look at a map or globe and it almost seems to make sense. A land rich resource rich land mass of an island jsut off America's norther coast, kind of, awaiting, in theory, only people and financial investment to become a fully developed engine of yet more American prosperity, The one percent, our illustrious infamous corporate elite ownership class, would doubtless go for this scheme whole hog, as it were. Can you imagine the real eestate feeding frenzy the Trump family is demonstably capable of and doubtless chomping at the bit to initiate? Two brand spanking new warhips, The USS Donald Trump and the USS Donald Trump II at port in America's fifty first state, The State of Trump, guarding against possible perfidy by either Denmark or the tiny Greenlandian population, which, by the way, wants independence from Denmark, but overwhelmingly wants nothing to do with the United States, if you can imagine such a thing. What's not to like about daily mass murders in metropolitan war zones, rampant poverty and violence, and a culture at war with and within itself?

Trump, Running Out the Clock

I MUST CONFESS that my interest in the "Epstein Affair" has never been especially pronounced. National Enquirer stuff, normal for Trump. Whether I ever know the actual truth about all this sordid stuff, I will forever regard Trump as a reprobate and sexual miscreant, if for no other reason than his reputation, an abundance of anecdotal material, and his own ill considered utterances, such as the one in which he expressed an attraction to his daughter. I despised the man long before he entered politics as a candidate, for his obvious lack of moral decency and intellect. Towards the Epstein "scandal" I have a somewhat "ho hum so what" attitude, and have no doubt whatsoever that Trump is a pedophile, and that he has engaged in a veritable plethora of illegal and immoral sexual conduct. It may be that paying prostitutes is the most honest, honorable thing he has ever done. Trump has never been documented to have done anything kind or generous for anybody. Everything he does is based, quite obviously, on his own personal interest. I also have no doubt that the Epstein files are full of highly incriminating information on Trump, having to do with inappropriate sexual contact with underage girls. No doubt at all. Its just that there are only so many times that you can convict someone of a crime and send him or her to prison. You can indict, try, and convict incessantly,but if the criminal can delay infefinitely or avoid jail althogether through the machinations of law and politics, what good does it do? The relevant question is: what sentence would any ordinary, competant, honest judge and jury normally hand down to a defendant found guilty of thirty four felonies? Also relevant is the question of what will become of Trump in the criminal justice system after he leaves the presidency, assuming that he lives through it or doesn't crown himself president for life? Will the wheels of justice, having been placed on hold for four years, finally begin turning again, leading to more indictments, trials, and convictions? And if so, will the then eighty two year old Trump see the inside of a prison cell? The answer to that seems to be "no". Somewhat fondly, in a strange sort of way, I recall the Nixon Watergate scandal, which at the time seemed so serious and shockingly criminal, but now, by today's standards seems far less severe. The entire country, Republicans included, rose up in outrage against "Trickie Dick", making his resignation necessary. Otherwise he would likely been tried, convicted, and incarcerated if not pardoned. Arguably, unpopular as it was at the time, the pardon Nixon got from President Ford was, in retrospect, perhaps the best way of getting the country through this constitutional crisis relatively unscathed. If Trump's successor is a republican, you can bank on him or her granting Trump a full pardon. If a Democrat, the wheels of justice will probably resume, with the Trump legal team probably able to delay the process sufficiently to allow Trump to live out the rest of his life without further felony convictions or any jail time. I don't care one way or the other. To my way of thinking, the damage has already been done, the presidency has been sullied, the nation stained by Trump, and our only true recousre is to now gently allow the infamous Trump phenomenon to slide away ignominiously into the proverbial dust bin of history. Hell,having sex with underage girls is but one of many disgusting parts of Trump's sahdy, sordid life. The most disgusting of all is what he has done to everyone else.

Trump, Renaming Everything Trump

IT SHOULDN'T BE surprising that Donald Trump has decided, unilaterally, to rename the iconic Kennedy Performing Arts Center after himself. It would be different, maybe, if, for instance, a veritable tens of millions of members mob were strongly advocating for the name change, staging mass protests in the streets, spray painting the name "Trump" on every city street and public building in America, carrying placards bearing the message "Rename Everything "Trump"". Is it now the "Kennedy-Trump Center"?, the "Trump-Kennedy Center", or simply the "Trump Center"? Are we scrubbing the memory of JFK from our national consciousness, and chiseling Trump into them in stone? Perhaps MAGA folk encouraged the renaming. Most likely, the idea came entirely from a single demented pathologically narcissistic mind. Its time to hold on to our sacred traditions for dear life. How long until we walk up the steps looking up at the image of an obese orange haired man gazing uotward from his chair at the "Lincoln-Trump Memorial"? Our Washington Monument obelisk formally designated, by an act of Congress, the Washington-Trump Memorial"? In fact, an act of Congress is required to change the name of anything federal, including the Kennedy Center. So yes, once again, as is seemingly constantly the case, Mr. Trump is breaking the law. When I was about nine or ten years old my mother gave me a cool present. It was a plastic machine shaped roughly like a handgun. You could use it to print out words and names on plastic strips by pushing the right letters on a small keyboard,and the plastic strip had a sticky side with which you could attack your name to an object. I loved the device, and stated printing out all kinds of words and names, until my mom reminded me that the spply of plastic was limited, and should be used wisely. That neraly, but not quite spoiled the fun. I decided I wanted to put my name on everything I owned,including my radio. Eventuayll, i figured, I would get to all the clothing in my closet, which was a considerable amount. Mom sht downthat project too, and gave me a quick lesson on the difference between things you should put yor nae one, and things you shouldn't, or didn't need to. I would never lose my radio and want it back, and nobody would ever steal it out of my bedroom. At my favorite university man of the buildings are named after the welahy benefactors who helped pay for their construction, appropriately so. This included the football stadium and basketball arena. Like all fans, I love our nice, modern, attractive athletic facilities. It makes going to the game much more pleasant. And of course I am grateful to the generous billionaires who ade it all possible. But I can'thelp but wish that they were instead named after the teams that play in them, after the university rather than the generous billionaire benefactor. When I consider the sheer number of places and things that are named in honor of people like Washington and Jefferson and Madison, and then extrapolate a bit, flashing forward to now, the mere thought of the word "Trump" adorning and sullying public places in our beloved United States frankly horrifies me. Thank God we have not yet added a sculpted visage of Roonald Reagan to Mt. Rushmore, and, it seems now, never will. We sure thought about it. With Trump,we may be spared. His administration may sink to such great depths of infamy that the mere mention of it will be instantly ridiculed and dismissed. That requires faith in our powers of discernment, sadly.

Gender Affirming Care

GENDER AFFIRMING CARE certainly is an innocuous enough term, seemingly implying simple acknowledgment of a person's sex, biological, mental, and social, which unto rather recently had all been widely believed to be essentially the same thing. In fact it seems to be a modern invention, referring to the willingness or requirement that all citizens, presuming equal justice under law, be treated in a manner appropriate to the gender by which people identify themselves. This complicates matters. Anybody is perfectly free under this principle to self identity as any gender of his or or its choosing, and it has become obvious in today's culturally diverse world that folks are quite capable of and willing to designate themselves as any number of different genders, often of their own invention. It remains vague, for example, as to what precisely the term "gender queer" means. It encompasses many more specific sexual orientations than mere "traditioal" homosexuality, we can be certain of that. It would be difficult to imagine any sane, rational person not insisting on gender self identification. Those of you who accept the designations given us at birth are, it turns out, quite fortunate, that our personal preferences are in alignment with choices made by our parents and our society concerning who we really are. Ultimately, we all want to be who we, and not others, say we are. We are now accepting the apparent reality that there is something more than genitalia which determines our gender. Gender identity, it turns out, is a deeplly personal, emotional, spiritual affair. The conservative notion that all human beings are confined to the gender which they are assigned on their birth certificate seems reasonable, until the complications begin. It is difficult for people who do not have gender dysphoria, as we call, it, to imagine what it feels like. What we can take for granted is that it is not pleasant. Stressful, ridden with anxiety, extremely unpleasant. And, as is so often, all too often the case with our modern medical distinctions, the shame and alienation people often experience becaue of having "abnormal" sexual proclivities, these debilitating feelings are magnified, reinforced, and arguably engendered by our intolerant, morally moribund culture. It may be, and probably is, that there are as many possible personal gender identifications and sexual orientations as there are people to self identity, as many personal gendrs as there are religions, which is to say, one per person. Any person who is sufficiently motivated to change gender identification to actually change gendrs physically through surgery must be credit, if nothing else, for sincerity and certainty of purpose. We admire people who choose their own destiny and pursue it unreservedly, right? Don't we ceaselessly admonish people experienced self doubt to "just be yourself?" At least, we say we do. Moral values predicated on traditional religions are highly resistant to change. I once knew a well educated person who said that she believed that all human beings are fundamentally bisexual. That sounds doubious at best, Maybe she is, and thinks everyone else is, or should be. She was, after all, a psychology major... We humans are apparently hard wired to projection. We make a human being out of the universe itself, in our never ending anthropomorphization of nature. We do much the same as infividuals, as if asking ourselves: "How can anyone possibly be different than I?" Answering that question honestly, for once, may well be a key to our continued civilized survival on Earth.

Enduring Trump's Future Lies

ONE CAN REST ASSURED that when Trump is talking, he's lying. For him to give a speech in primetime on national television is alarming and maybe foreboding. If he tries to start doing that often, which we must hope the networks would not allow, then his fascism will only intensify and, heaven forbid, gain popularity. It might be worth it to google the question "How many lies did Trump tell during his speech last night?" He told two for sure, whoppers both. he said that the economy is doing well, and that all the boats we Americans have bombed and sunk under his leadership were indeed carrying loads of cocaine, enough to cause millions of American deaths, and needed sinking. Close to fifty thousand Americans die every year from Fentanyl overdoeses, not millions. Grossly inflating these numbers, a typical Trump tactic, is an extremely fascistic technique which only increases the epidemic of misinformation afflicitng our capacity for reasoned decision making. That is, of course, precisely what Trummp's agenda requires to maintain even a remote chance of being fully implemented. The best antidote to our current case of "Trump's Disease" is a well educated, well informed electorate, which, arguably, these United States are not even close to possessing, and never have been. His assessment of the health of the American economy would have been hilarious in its imaginative dishonesty, were it not for the tragedy of our economic reality, and its tragic impact on us very real people. In Trump's great American fun house unemployment is nearly nonexistant, wages and salaries for workers are increasing, and inflation is a thing of the remote pre Trump past. He inherited a mess of an economy,and is diligently going about the business of repairng the horrible damage done by Biden. Quite the opposite is true, of course. Biden steered the economy onto a prosperous path with his policies, Trump inherited the benefits of a sound economy, and began promptly and has proceeded unhesitatingly to destroy it. The verifiable, demonstrated difference between Trump's description of matters and reality would be humorous were it not so serious, harmful, and very real. The reality is that the economic health of the nation is not good, and getting worse, fast, through sheer neglect. The job creation and loss statistics kept by the government, Trump's government, reveal an entirely different, far less desirable situation. It almost seems strange that we the people are seemingly making such a fuss about inflation. Those of a certain age can recall the early 1970s,when inflation rates of ten percent and more lingered for years, rates which by today;s standards would seem utterly out of control today. But in today's economy our comparitively low inflation rate is driving us close to and over the edge, because we live closer to the edge than ever. For this reason Trump'slies are deadlier and less tolerable each passing day. We must be told the truth so we can respond by taking well informed, well reasoned measures to reverse our declining course. Fact checkers and outspoken Trump opponents are beginning to do a better job of calling out Trump's constant lies. Since Trump, in obvious mental and physical decline, can only be expected to lie ever more steadily and egregiously, our national truth detectors must likewise turn up the level of intensity. Enduring and exposing Trump's innumerable future lies will require dogged persistance. The next three years will be an endurance contest, between two powerful forces: Trump's constant lies, and the American capacity for surviving them.

Equalizing Power and Wealth

SEVEN HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE live on two dollars a day or less, according to studies. The top one one percent of the world's population owns twenty percent of the world's wealth, and the top twenty percent owns eighty percent of it. Statistics like this are of course everywhere. If not always precisely accurate, they are always highly indicative. Combined, they paint a picture of a troubled planetary civilization, struggling under the burden of highly inefficient economic and management systems. It doesn't have to be like that. For a few humdred billion dollars a year, a mere fraction of the global production, our existing systems could be altered to accomodate all of us, rather than an elite few. Humans are of course not the only species of animal whose members tend to seek to accumulate a surplus of resources as a precaution against future deprivation. Squirrels, rats, and mice come to mind, among others. We humans, we'll have to admit, do take it to an extreme. If all the wealth in the world were equally distributed every person might be able to live at least a working class lifestyle, if not lower middle or middle class. Elon Musk is evidently enriching himself so rapidly that soon his personal wealth will equal that of the lower fifty percent of the rest of humanity. That's shocking and obscene, most folks will agree. Maybe some day all the world's wealth, money, land, and personal property, will be in the hands of a single individual, who, assuming he or she is a normal human being, will leverage the wealth to enslave the human race. Absolute economic equality, rigorously enforced by law, might not be desirable, but by the same token, extreme inequality, extreme concnetration of wealth is much less desirable. Even the most fervant neoliberal free market capitalist will likely concede that there is a limit to which concentration of wealth can be tolerated in a free democratic society. The problem is that in a free society, money is equal to political power, and in a democracy, at least supposedly, all citizens possess equal political power, and the leaders are mere representatives of the power of society. Justice Brandeis was dead on when he remakred that we can have a country where everyone has equal wealth, or we can live in a society in whcih everybody has equal political power, but we cannot live in a society in which everyone has both. The main free market benefit to greater if not absolute economic equality consists in the reality that as the aggregate wealth of the poorest class increases, so does consumer spending, as income and disposable income grow. Trickle down economics is fine, if the downward flow of wealth is steady and substantial, and is reinvested. The point is that there is plenty of wealth to go around, plenty of food, for example, to feed everyone. Hunger, starvation, famine anywhere on Earth is unnecessary, arguably immoral, revealing inefficient systems of distribution. Obviously, there is a limit somewhere to human population growth, unless the universe fill uo with people. the same goes for our material possessions. There must, at some point, arrive an end to capitalism, as John Maynard Keynes adroitly pointed out. For us a good first step would be to sever the conncection between personal wealth and political power. Like Truman said, anybody who gets rich in politics is a crook. Wealthy people and corporations should not be allowed to purchase political power or to even influence public policy with money. We are currently embarked on an opposite course, towards ever great political and financial corruption. Our success in reversing this trend will determine our success in mass poverty, extreme concentration of wealth, and ultimately, unbridled political power in the hans of a single corrupted tyrant.

Saving the Planet, Picking Up Trash

WHEN I WAS a freshman in high school in 1969, I joined an organization called "The Ecology Club". We had more than a thousand students in our high school, and as I recall quite a few student clubs and organizations. Nowadays, the term ecology" almost seems a bit outdated; don't we call it "environmental science" now? We met once a week before school in a classroom. The group included a couple of upper classmen and a teacher sponser. We talked, maybe about the bad things in the environement, of which in those days there were many, just like these days. In those days lakes and rivers were on fire, and Los Angeles was rarely visible from the ground. The sponsoring teacher suggested projects, one of which was to clean up the garbage in one of our town's public parks, near teh netracne of a cave,as I recall. The amount of trash was considerable, mostly cups, bottles, cans and cigarette butts, and the work was hard and took awhile. Nowadays I notice, though I almost wish I didn't, that everywhere I the moment I lave the city and limits nd enter rurul country, the scenery is littered with all this garbage along the roads and highways. A lot of plastic items and cardboard boxes too. We Americans need to do more than to put "Don't Be A Litterbug" ads on TV. (I'm not even sure whether we do that anynore). We need to do more than send out brigades of black and white striped or orange clad prisoners to pick up the trash. Wat we need to do, I'm sure all will agree, is to pick it up ourselves, or better yet, to stop tossing it out our car windows in the first place.In this regard, as in any others, we Americans need to be more like Europeans, who keep their highways clean. Itmay well be that for the most part, all across America's fruited plain, from sea to shining sea, our landscape is slicker than a whistle, garbage wise. But not where I live, in the lower midwest. Where I live, we have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to doin the atmosphere and oceans as well, work which, by all indications, is starting to get done. Much of it, including plastic pollution in our brains, bodies, oceans, and soil, masss extinctions and so forth, might indeed be irreversible. But maybe not. Sometimes it almost seems as if the human species is a plague upon an otherwise pristine planet. I think of all the plastic I have used and failed to recycle for lack of any opportunity to do so. The purely ornamental packaging we smugly rip apart and throw away into our bursting land fills. The waste. There are indications that we the human race can indeed develop and deploy the technologies necessary to cleanse our brains, bodies, and bloodstreams of plastic and other toxins, can rid the Earth's oceans of them, and the soil as well. Also, indications that we can implement the carbon sequestration process that will finally clean the carbon out of the atmosphere, end global warming, which in 1969 we hadn't even heard of yet, and restore the good health of the entire planetary ecosystem. But we all know that we nust hurry, which is why the utter lack of any environmental policies on the part of the Trump administration is absolutely disastrous, and must be reversed immediately. At seventy, I still stoop to grab a handful of somebody else's garbage, from time to time. My fourteen year old self, back in nineteen sixty nine saving the planet with my classmates would probably have been amazed to learn that he would still be doing the same thing, by necessity, more than half a century later in a very distant, imperfect and disappointing future.

Praying For my Eternal soul

MY RELIGIOUS CONVICTIONS, pantheism with a twist of deism, have been at least cursorily articulated on this website. I love Einstein's quote: "My religiosity consists in humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit which reveals itself in what lttle 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 ofthe utmost importance, for mankind,but not for God." That, in a nut shell, is me. My religious role model is, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, Einstein. Problem is, people keep praying for my eternal soul, even though I deny having one. Currently there are only two people doing this, but that is more than enough, two people more than enough. Culprit number one is the ninety year old church lady who plays the piano for our Monday morning goepel singing group at the senior center. Seems ironic, in a way. As they say, go figure. The second is my dear cousin on my father's side Tommy, a well educated retired sales person for a large corporation, a world class pianist with a Steinway in his front room, and he is also, I fear, a devout Baptist. Funny thing is, neither of them ever confronts me directly with this allegedly altruitic endeavor. Never a word to my face about my eternal soul, nor much of anything else. This arouse within me suspicions that what they are not so altruistic after all, that their real consern has nothing to do with my eternal soul, but rather, with their self esteem. By saving my soul, they can either elevate me, magnanimously, to their level of spiritual attainemnt, or by failing to save it, take condescending pity me as I languish at their blood washed feet. The way I was raised, whatever you say about others, be willing to say it to their face. And no, with a topic of such immediacy and importance,they shouldn't have to be asked. If you really think my eternal soul is in grave danger, which you don't, tell me to my face. At least give me a chance to do something about it, since you seem to believe that I'm not already aware of my dire peril, which indeed I am not, because there is none. This, I would bewilling to tell either of them or anybody else, I consider presumptuous, arrogant, narrow minded, condescending, and insulting, among other bad things. Aside from my continued amazement that anybodoy would be gulllible enough to believe that God speaks to us in books and stories, to believe in this perfect, bucolic, enternally unchanging heavenly paradise I find no less amazing. Amazing, but entirely under-standable. (Can you even imagine how boring that would become?) We are the only species of animla who is aware of and fully comprehends the implacations of our own mortality, so we are told by modern science. Fair enough. Lucky cats and dogs. We rare afraid to die, again, quite understanddable. To assuage somewhat our fears, we invent religion,we invnet our various and sundry sky gods, we we write "scripture" giving us gods rules, and we invent the loveliest possible place for us to inhabit not merely after death, but to inhabit eternally, rent free, as they say. Its that simple, and you'll have to show me some astronomy and phsyics books explaining to me exacly how heaven and hell are written into the fabric of the universe. If you haven't done the math, or if our modern science hasn't yet reached the point of being able to prove a negative, that heaven is sheer fantasy, I can wait. I'll have a long wait, an eternal one, because nobody can prove a negative,and nobody ever will. As some Arab said to Peer O'toole said in "Lawrence of Arabia", "It is written", written into the fabric of irreversible logic, that you cannot prove that something does not exist, but only that it does. I'll go on attending my Presbyterian church and Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, on alternate Sundays, loving every minute of both. My Baptist friends and family memvers will keep playing their instruments, at vastly different levels of proficiency, Both will, I assume, keep praying for my eternal soul, while I bask in the afterglow of my beloved cosmic big bang spirit god, pitying them for their folly, fearing only their intolerance.

Making Law and Money

THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION identifies only three crimes as federal felonies: treason, piracy, and counterfeiting. Treason is defined as an armed insurrection against the government, a military uprising. We interpret treason now somewhat more loosely, to denote any activity deemed to be deliberately harmful to the united States, traitorous behavior intended to either harm or destroy the country. Piracy refers of course to apprehending vessels on the high seas or the great lakes. Counterfeiting,the printing and distrbution of invalid currency, has always been difficult to detect, especially since the advent of paper currency, "greenbacks", during the time of the Civil War. It is now estimated that a substantial part of United States currency currently in circulation is counterfeit. Sheepishly I recall touring the Bureau of Printing and Engraving building in Washington D.C..We were all given a sheet of one dollar bills in two rows of eight, sixteen dollars, all attatched to each other, as souvenirs of our visit. One must presume that most people framed them or kept them as keepsakes. I became more creative, by sheer necessity. Short on beer money, boggged down by the rigors of graduate school but feeling a bit stressed and needing a break from dissertation writing, I,well,took a pair of scissors scissors and carefully, very carefully cut my sheet into sixteen equally proportioned rectangles, and bought two or three six packs of Budweiser. (In those days, beer, like everything else, was cheaper.) It must have worked. I got back on track dissertation wise, wrote a passable description of the intellectuall relationship between Albert Einstein and Neils Bohr, and got the docorate. When I defended it in front of my doctoral commitee, and wisely omitted mention of the boost I had ill gotten by cutting up money for "beer for study", not that they would have cared. I recall being relieved at the time that the liquor store clerk failed to detect any sign of my finanicial perfidy. I still am. I never wonder whether any of my fabricated one dollar bills remainin in circulation; the average life span of a one dollar bill is...what, eighteen months? And, no, I am not proud of this. My question was and remains: Was I guilty of counterfeiting? I am disclined to actually want to know the answer, but can rather readily surmise what it is. Piracy is a crime which the United States committed only a few short days ago; the now famous or infamous hijacking of the oil tanker ship off the coast of poor Venezuela. Poor Venezuela, languishing under the suppression of a brutal dictator, and besieged by the ongoing threat of American naval power, courtesy Trump, and, to a lesser extent, the defunctand always unforecable Monroe Doctrine This one's on Trump, alone. We may also thank Don the Con for our most recent manifestation of treason, but also must give credit to his insurrectionist mob of January 6, 2021. And make no mistake; this was treason, of the highly organized pre planned kind. No, it was not technically a "military" insurrection, but an insurrection it was,and with nearly all the assailants of the Capitol building on that infamous day,was more than sufficiently "militarized" to be so labeled. In other words, close enough. Since 1787 more than forty thousand more crimes have been identified by Congress by legislated statutory law as federal crimes, and the number keeps growing. The purest two acts of treason we Americans ever commited were the Revolution against British rule, and the Civil War. Donald Trump and his MAGA mob are currently in third place, but hey, who's counting? And, after all, as they say, its still early.

Advocating Revolution

IN THE ELECTION OF 1800, Vice President Thomas Jefferson ran against incumbant John Adams. The two men despised each other, and hadn't spoken to each other cordially since the outset of the Washingtion administration. Much later, late in their lives, they would become friends. The two slandered each other mercilessly. Adams accused Jefferson of having the audacity to support the French Revolution, which indeed Jefferson had. In those days it was considered impolite, in poor form for presidential candidates to either slander each other or to taut their own virtues; campaigning was done by proxy. Tha Adams people dug up as much dirt as possible, which was considerable. They portrayed Jefferson as an adulterer and an atheist. Indeed he was the former, but his religion was more deistic than atheistic, although most folks at the time saw little if any difference. Jefferson's slander team headed by the newspaper smear merchant John Calendar, to whom Jefferson had agreed to pay the then hefty sum of fifty dollors for his services. labeled Adams a "tyrant", which to the ultra democratic Jefferson was the worst of all possible insults. We see by this that vicious campaigning is not a modern invention. The close election went to the House of Representatives, and on the seventy sixth ballot, Jefferson preaviled. Adams and his wife Abigail left the Capitol City without either congratulating the winner or attending his inauguration. We see that Donald Trump did not invent bad manners, although he certainly the to a new level. ON he way back to Braintree, Massachusetts, Abagail asked her husband: "My darling, why did you allow him to do this to you?" His reply: "Dearest one, if he wants it that badly, let him have it." Soon after Jefferson movedinto the newly constructed White Hous, while the paint was still drying and the furniture being arranged, John Calander walked into the Oval Office. He wanted his fifty dollars. Jefferson, land wealthy but broke as usual, didn't have the money. When Calendar suggested that he intended to publish in his slander sheet a description of Jefferson's affair with his slave Sally Hemmings, dreamy, high minded Tom suddenly found the money. For this reason,among others, Jefferson has been labeled by some historians as a "scoundrel", and hypocrite. The first description was only party accurate, the second bears more truth. Duringhis presidency, Jefferson alternately favored the French and the English,though much more ofteh the French, since his was a "Francophile". When the two foreign powers were at odds, which was most of the time, he became frustraed and amostpetulanty issued an embargo on imported goods from both, which was a disastrous action for the American economy, which sank almost immediately into a depression. Merchants had nothing to offer for sale except inferior domestic merchandise. By examining the shortcomings of the flawed but brilliant Jefferson, we are reminded, as Bill Clinton once said, that, arguably, nobody is qualified to be president. Maybe nobody ever has been. But, As jefferson himself wrote in the "Declaration of Independence", "when a long train of abuse evinces adesire to reduce us (the colonies) under tyranny"...,strong solutions, even revolution, becomes expedient, indeed necessary. And so we find ourselves once again subjected to unsatisfactory leadership, governed not by a foreign power or a president with limited leadership abilities, but by a demonatrable criminal and tyrant, of severely limited intellectual capabilites, and utter moral depravity. Jefferson said that we would need a revolution and new constitution every generation. Isn't it apparent that we are long overdue?