Are Conservatives That Stupid?

In his public response to the recent win by Democrat Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania, Paul Ryan said Lamb won because he “ran as a Conservative”. Among other things, Ryan said Lamb was “Pro-life”.  He also said that Republicans cannot afford to be “massively outspent as was the case with these two candidates” (a wink to his donor class).

Further, Ryan claimed that had Donald Trump not gone down to “campaign” for the Republican Saccone, the victory for Lamb would have looked more like a landslide. What in the hell is that saying? Does Ryan love Trump that much to so blatantly mislead?

Every Conservative Republican should feel insulted right down to their Don’t Tread on Me bumper stickers.

The fact is that Saccone forces outspent Lamb 2 to 1. If you count just money coming in from sources outside the individual campaigns, Lamb was outspent 5 to 1. Thirteen million dollars was spent by Republicans in that race portraying Lamb as a bleeding heart, Liberal, Nancy Pelosi Democrat. Per Ryan, Conservative Republicans saw through that tsunami of Republican spending to see the “Conservative Champion” that Lamb truly was, instead of voting for the actual Republican…right.

Impressively (as far as I’m concerned), Ryan definitively has given “Pro-life” a new definition for Republicans. 

Conor Lamb openly and actively supported “Pro-choice” and Roe v Wade while also stating his choice, were he a woman, would be not to have an abortion. So let it now be proclaimed that if you oppose abortion personally and want that decision to be freely chosen by you, not by government legislation, then you are Pro-life!

Opening the door to the fact that no woman gets pregnant because she wants to have an abortion would go a long way toward finding middle ground between militant positions. Such would reduce far more abortions than punitive laws and restrictive health care. Everyone wins. Good for you Paul.

The first I heard the talking point that “two Conservative Republicans” had been running in PA’s 18^th Congressional District was on Fox & Friends at 6:15am the morning after the election.  I then saw that talking point popping up among Republican spokesman and politicians everywhere.  Because it is so ludicrous on its face you have to ask the question: what in the blazes is going on? Who’s in charge of what?

If they wanted to avoid the reality that they have an unstable, angry clown in the White House, they could have simply pointed out one fact: that Lamb was a better candidate. Rather than trying to adopt him. The Trump mantra that Republicans will believe and accept anything given to them degrades anyone who believes in legitimate Conservative issues.

When Trump rallies the faithful at one of his tabernacle-style gatherings he is simply saying over and over; you are all my “Mikeys” and you’ll eat anything I feed you. I want to think that’s not true. 

With the prophetic words of a young Loretta Lynn; “I may be dumb, but I ain’t stupid”, perhaps Conservatives will begin to educate themselves and not accept Republican leadership or Fox News treating them like idiots.

Donald is the New Dennis

Once again the reporters of current events are treating Donald Trump like he is President, as opposed to man who is playing President. Nothing says that better than a South Korean delegation on the front lawn of the White House making an announcement about a meeting between Kim Jong-un and Trump (which apparently does not definitively include the South Koreans). An announcement our Secretary of State obviously had no advance warning of.

Yet the analysis I have seen thus far has wallowed in meaningful speculation. Really? How many times can a person be kicked in the ass before it is felt? The only thing meaningful about this announcement is how consistent it is with the lunacy of this Presidency.

The White House has been reduced to that of a giant circus clown car. No matter how many ridiculous, slap stick, or even scary things emerge from it, there always seems to be just one more.

It is understandable why Kim Jong-un might be described as a nut-case, but that, at the very least, would be short sighted. He is the inheritor of a nation of 25 million people which the world has allowed to devolve into a giant cult.  Through decades of indoctrination, he, his father, and his grandfather have been elevated to deity status.  The use of a perplexing and bizarre interpretation of Marxist Communism has essentially been talking points to support their autonomy.

As might be expected, Kim Jong-un is seriously ruthless. His gulags and assassinations are notorious. He appears to judge the condition of his nation’s people by the extent to which his authoritarian rule is sustained.  He is, by all reasonable international standards, a bad dude.

It also appears that he is fascinated or even loves Western culture.  Exposed to the West during his early school years in Switzerland, he is not as blind as the vast majority of North Koreans. Yet I question that he might now view the West as one might a carnival sideshow.  His fascination with Dennis Rodman is a good example.

Not only did he court the attention of Dennis Rodman and allowed Dennis into his inner sanctum, but he also publicly acknowledged their relationship. Why? Could it be because Dennis represented the peculiar extreme of American Sport’s eccentricities?  I think so. I also believe it to be entirely possible that Kim Jong-un sees Donald Trump as the Dennis Rodman of American Governance, maybe even as a kindred spirit.

For Trump to elevate Kim Jong-un to that of an international foreign leader is no small deviation from 64 years of American foreign policy. Americans may think that this “bold” move on the part of the Trumpster is just our way of solving the problem of having nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula.  It is far more likely that Kim is playing Donald like the marionette he is.

What is North Korea without nuclear weapons? A blacklisted, third world nation unable to compete in the world, except in displays of synchronize human movement.  More importantly, what is Kim Jong-un without nuclear weapons? Ditto. There is no denuclearization of North Korea on the horizon…period.  Kim’s ride up the escalator at Trump Tower is his first victory. There will likely be more with the great “deal-maker” President we now have in charge.

What makes Trump so predictably a loser? It can be wrapped up in the answer he gave this week to a reporter. When asked what made the apparent moves by Kim Jong-un happen, he answered quickly (for him) a truthful one word answer. He said “me”. He actually believes that bombastic remarks like “fire and fury”, “little rocket man”, and “I’ve got a bigger button” can change the course of international relations.  Someone with a Narcissistic Personality Disorder could not believe differently.

Simply put…Donald Trump is the new Dennis Rodman…minus the piercings.

There is a Forest...Really

We are currently immersed in the glacier pace of evolving political history. It is difficult to sense the motion or be confident of the direction. However, when current events are finally viewed retrospectively, with much of the minutia filtered out, the obvious nature of what is happening will become clear, and likely in stages.

It is easy to see this when applied, for example, to something like slavery.

Slavery was a fully acceptable part of life, chronicled as an ordinary matter of fact in such illustrious publications as The Bible. Yet as society progressed the onerous and detestable nature of slavery was eventually met with anger, then sorrow for its tragedy, then regret that it ever occurred, and finally befuddlement. Today we are generally perplexed on how human beings could have felt and acted as they did.

However slavery is a low bar in illustrating this human peculiarity. The same can be applied to many less obvious things such as child labor or religious freedom. Some things we still are trying to immerge from like racism or torture.

On a less universal level the same could apply to the insane proliferation of firearms in the United States. The manic desire of those who want to maintain this insanity has pushed the response to this behavior well into the ‘anger’ zone.

With slavery this ‘anger zone’ required a horrific Civil War to move it to the sorrow, regret and befuddlement stages. Hopefully that won’t be necessary with guns, but a future generation (already living) will surely look back and say “how were they so damned stupid?”

On an even smaller scale we are currently experiencing the same evolution with the placement of Donald Trump as President of the United States.

We had two Presidential campaigns in which the vast majority of supporters for both candidates and those who like neither assumed the outcome was inevitable.  Of course it wasn’t.  However, that was a single event. Like flipping a light switch, there was an assumption that even though the color or intensity of the light emitted by the Donald was unknown, we would at least be able to see what was going on.

Not so fast. When Trump began his administration by first engaging the Press and Public with extended energy devoted to the size of his inaugural crowd, the near future should have had some clarity. It did not. Trump continued to be considered a blank slate, even by his detractors, so the view of his behavior and policies was served up to intellectual discourse. 

As Southerners engaged the Country 200 years ago in the economics of slavery instead of its repulsive reality, the critics of Donald Trump have willingly cavorted among the trees of American politics unable to see the forest that surrounds them.

Have we even begun to get to the anger stage?

Once in office, Trump began to hire the most unqualified and (as proven evident) incompetent people to assume senior positions in our Government.

He placed his completely unqualified, inexperienced, and (frankly) immature son-in-law to handle personally our Nation’s most sensitive foreign relationships, a fact that would be deemed too ridiculous for a comedy sitcom. His daughter, his caddy, his bodyguard, a cluster of bungling billionaires, and talk show personalities were all given the keys to the castle. Every American should be mouthing the words “are you kidding me?!?!”

Donald Trump campaigned showing a weird attraction to Russia generally and Vladimir Putin specifically, a nation that is careening headlong into authoritarianism. So what does he do? He puts in charge of foreign affairs a man we all saw being pinned by Putin with decorations, as if they were going steady. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

His mentally debilitating narcissism serves up wildly unhinged communications, which much of the Country turns off at the end of the day, as if it were just another reality TV show. The obvious conflicts of interest Trump has tried to make opaque fool nobody. Add to that the long list of resignations, firings, guilty pleas, indictments, foreign intrigue, and one out of every three days spent at a Florida golf club; I have to wonder how the growth of these gnarled trees can be analyzed as if each deserved stand alone scrutiny.

Just step back everyone and look at the forest. It’s really there…it’s big and it’s absurd.

People have not gotten angry enough yet and maybe they need to. It’s the first step. Perhaps that would overwhelmingly reposition Congress such that the insanity can be dealt with. Perhaps the Special Prosecutor will uncover enough indisputable evidence to throw the baggage out. Perhaps the continued meltdown of Trump will cause the rest of the Executive branch to act. Perhaps this is a four year nightmare. As one historian recently put it, regardless of what happens…“it won’t end well”.

One thing I feel for certain. There will come a time in the not too distant future when people will look back on us, who so passively watched or even supported the Trump deforestation, and ask “…how were they so damned stupid?”

My Job is More Important than Your Life

Be frank. The monologues, the dialogues, the tearful descriptions of victims, the calls for action, the finger pointing, and arguments (among others) have become tediously repetitive. One news outlet, in the wake of this recent Broward County shooting, replayed post-mass shooting comments from Speaker Paul Ryan over the past year that were so identical they actually felt comical due to their redundancy.

Although the bulk of the this unique American tragedy falls squarely on Republican Conservatism, one needs to also reflect on why Progressive Liberals are so inept at making changes to restore to health a society ever more handicapped by a killing disease.

Let me reflect on both, but first the problem.

It has become increasingly presented by domestic and international analysts that when it comes to non-lethal violence, virtual or real, the United States is not an outlier.  Whether it is due to anger, passion, greed, mental illness or whatever, bad shit is contemplated or happens everywhere with only minimal variation of degrees.

The US is a big nation, so raw numbers are also large, but when analysts dig deeper, Americans do not embrace violence uniquely. However, when it comes to mass-shootings (4 or more people killed by an assailant with a gun) the US is off the charts in a category of its own. If you add all shooting deaths, including suicides, then America truly becomes an island.

The reason is ridiculously and painfully obvious. Access to firearms, in particular certain types of firearms, allows violent people to carry out their violence with…you guessed it…shooting.  Aren’t you smart! Moreover, they view it as standard operating procedure.

The ramification of this gun violence is far more harmful than the publicized carnage.

The inability to address the social issue continues to lead the nation down a road of prevention as the sole means of dealing with the problem. Ironically, this direction benefits the advocates (and profiteers) of guns since it calls for even more guns to be distributed within the nation to be put in the hands of “good guys” (notice its “guys” not “gals”). Along with that add physical barriers (lock doors, walls, gates, metal detectors), and “procedures” (shooting drills in school, military style presence, e.g.). You end up with a nation of people more stressed, more angry, more afraid, and with more guns. This is a solution?

Republicans lawmakers and the Republican Party as a whole have fought even the slightest attempts to curb gun availability. To think they have done this out of some patriotic adherence to the Constitution should make anyone with half a brain laugh to the point of tears. They have taking this stand for only one pitiful reason: their “grade” from the NRA. They feel a ‘B’ grade or less from the NRA means their election in the Republican Primary is toast…period. They know because in many cases they used that same standard to defeat an opponent, along with the financial support of the NRA. Deaths of children notwithstanding, to Republicans keeping their job is what counts.

But what of Progressives with all their ‘D’s and ‘F’s from the NRA? I believe they just don’t get it.

The constant refrain we hear from gun control advocates is that we need to stop these mass shootings today. They reference the cause of these shootings as inappropriate weapons too easily acquired.  Their arguments are self-neutralizing because they are so unfeasible. They project the target of their efforts as the next mass shooting.  They cannot bring the problem down to earth. Every time I hear the phrase “…so this will never happen again” I literally want to scream.

It is reasonably estimated that there is a gun for every man, woman, and child in the United States. Nothing is going to stop gun violence in this year, this decade, or this generation. We need gun control laws of all kinds, at all different levels of government, because we need it to be a reflection of how we, as a society, feel about the use of guns to carry out our personal anxieties. That attitude which is reflected elsewhere in the world needs to be replanted here.

Banning the sale of certain weapons, restricting acquisition to certain individuals, and beginning aggressive buy-back programs will go further in the minds of young people because it would create a social imperative. That needs to be the goal, gun ownership be damned. There will always be guns…always.

Politicians need to do this so the next generation, often the young children being killed today, can expect that their peers feel the way they do, and that fear is not the driver of their lives.

A Convenient Amnesia

In early 2016 Lindsey Graham, the thoughtful but doggedly Conservative Senator from South Carolina, described Donald Trump as a “kook” and pointedly wrote that he was “not fit to be President of the United States”. He said this after his own prospects for the Republican nomination had dropped to zero. As Trump secured the nomination, Graham announced that his own Party had gone “batshit crazy”.

Make absolutely no mistake about one undeniable reality: Trump the Presidential candidate is exactly the same as Trump the President. The only difference I can perceive is a marginally increased ability to read a teleprompter. Yet for the past year Lindsey Graham (along with 99.3% of Congressional Republicans) has taken no meaningful overt, public stand to reign in the “batshit crazy” we have witnessed for the past 13 months. Why?

It’s too easy to simply discount the negligent ambivalence on the part of Republican lawmakers as self-interest. The desire to retain power by securing seats in Congress has always been a significant modus operandi regardless of Party. Yet the reality that the Public interest is often their best interest as well, could, like olive oil over vinegar, still occasionally float to the surface.

Now, something has changed, yet Donald Trump, with all his mental incapacities, is not the cause. He is merely the tumor caused by this Nation’s long time exposure to a social carcinogen.

The great schism of the 21^st century began with Barack Obama. As a society we are closer to 1860 than we ever have been over the last 100 years.

Obama would likely have never become President had George W. Bush not been the second worst President in modern history. Obama rose to office on a populous wave that was made possible by his own talents and intelligence.  He was not a flaming Liberal and he proved that as President, a fact which would undermine the Democrats in the 2010 election. As a center-left President you would think he could govern as Bill Clinton had, with reasonable support from the loyal opposition. Of course, that did not happen.

 Before the music had faded from the inauguration balls, the famed Tea Party was gearing up to oppose his Presidency. Not oppose what he did, mind you. Rather simply to oppose him. Under the guise of being an army of fiscally responsible patriots, they organized a certain large sub-set of Americans with the classic use of fear…fear of people who were not them.

The laughable hypocrisy of their “fiscal responsibility” has been made obvious by their conspicuous absence during the Republican’s 2017-2018 continuing assault on our National Debt.

No, forget the excuses. The biggest problem with Obama for the Tea Party and their minions was that he was black…and the Republicans knew it. When McConnell stated that the primary job of the Republicans in Congress was to remove Obama from office, he was feeding fish to the seals.

The fears that have pervaded and handicapped America since the mid 1800s, have divided the Nation between White America and Black America, or as Chris Hayes has put it; a Nation and a Colony within that Nation.  We have over the decades chipped away at that division successfully, until the moral imperative to eliminate discrimination became more or less accepted…in theory.

In practice however, those latent fears of losing security (physical, financial, and egotistical) surfaced with a vengeance in 2009, even in the midst of a historic economic crisis. The dark side of American White Supremacy erupted like the angry creature that shot from the space traveler’s chest in the movie ‘Aliens’. An apt analogy indeed, considering that all types of non-European, alien minorities have been combined with African-Americans as outliers in the “Patriotic” White America.

 The Republican’s spent 7 years stoking the fears of their constituencies. They did it by systematically undercutting every move Obama made to affect legislation.  Obama, with his painfully professorial approach to governing, would not or could not rise sufficiently to confront his opposition. In plain language, the lesser educated, Conservative, white males could not stomach the idea that a black man was President, and Republican Conservatism did everything it could to make them feel justified.

This is Trump’s core support and the Republican’s Frankenstein’s monster.

Too many times I would hear reasonably intelligent men state that Obama was the worst President in the history of this Nation. What?!? Pulling us from fiscal collapse, eight years of increasing economic prosperity, ending a disastrous war, leading the world in ecological efforts, leading the world in curbing Iranian nuclear proliferation, and on and on makes their conclusion about Obama as illogical and non-sensical as their support for Donald Trump.

The Republican Party and American Conservatism now operate on pure emotion, as does Trump TV (aka Fox News). You can check your brain at the door when entering the RNC; conspiracies in every branch of Government, roaming gangs of bloodthirsty aliens in little towns everywhere, unending lies from every information source except Conservative talk radio and Fox News, herds of feminists looking to destroy good people and murder unborn babies, Gestapo Liberals ready to enter your home, empty your gun closet, and force you into third world health care, and the underprivileged not knowing their place.

I believe most of Trump’s supporters don’t love the guy, they’re just scared shitless by the alternative…made all too real by the election of a black man as President.

When Republican lawmakers and leadership are asked the question ‘why’- why Donald Trump, why the passive support, why the acceptance – they get a convenient amnesia. They didn’t know, they hadn’t heard, they are unaware, they don’t recall.  They may never remember how they used the darkest part of American society to split that society in two.   

If It Were Only Just Lies

“…can you call it Treason?  Sure… why not.” So Donald Trump described the Democrats and others during his State of the Union speech when they did not applaud during what he thought were universally good pronouncements. 

Forget that Treason is a serious crime that can be punishable by death in this Country. Forget that he doesn’t have even minimally useful mental firepower to understand that the Opposition Party does not credit him with many economic positives (especially those that involve minorities).  Forget that the use of labeling your opponent as “un-American” or “Treasonous” is classic authoritarian rhetoric.

It was inflammatory, ignorant, insulting…and absurd. But it was also telling.  

All these things that involve viewing Trump through a microscope of intellectual analysis continue to miss the point. I find it so frustrating day after day to listen to both opposing and supporting pundits review the behavior of this man. 

I now start almost every weekday watching 30 minutes of recorded Morning Joe and 30 minutes of recorded Fox and Friends (not a healthy activity). I read articles to a fault from every perspective I can find.  I feel at a gut level the chaos that is beyond articulation.

Attempting to stand back and view the dialogue as a whole tells me one important thing: the foundation of the pundit’s, “expert’s”, and politician’s observations and opinions is wrong. They want to apply logic, often in the absence of truth, to try and explain what is happening.

As I have stated at length on several posts to this Blog (starting well before Trump was elected President), the explanation is simple, and you might even say organic (if that term pleases you more). Donald J. Trump suffers from a relatively rare mental condition known as a Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). That fact explains EV-ER-Y-THING!! It is the only logic remaining after the dust settles at the end of each day.

Narcissism is a spectrum we all fall on to different degrees. Someone with NPD falls so high on the spectrum that certain behaviors become almost hard-wired and predictable.  It doesn’t necessarily negate other abilities or talents, and, in fact, can enhance some personal traits we often find attractive, such as confidence, enthusiasm, or congeniality.

To dismiss the fact that Trump has a NPD because such a pronouncement requires professional counseling with the President is sadly misinformed. Not only will a sufferer of NPD not submit to counseling because they cannot accept the possibility of the condition, but also because Trump’s public persona provides more observational data than any psychologist could hope to extract from a one on one meeting with an ordinary patient.

Trump’s detractors label him as a liar. Make that a colossal liar. The Washington Post recently tallied Trump’s “lies” during his first year in the thousands. Politifact has quantified him as the most untruthful individual (of those with a significant volume of entries) in the history of their publication. We have all seen it with our own eyes and ears and now routinely accept it as a new normal. The dogmatic Trump supporters don’t even consider his untruths as anything more than grunts and cheers.

I don’t believe Trump is a liar, not to say he hasn’t used deception from time to time, as many do. The reason I don’t is important. In order to lie, you must believe there is a exterior truth. Truth is not something that exists for someone with a NPD. If you can understand that reality, then Donald Trump begins to become understandable and possibly even predictable.

For an individual with a Narcissistic Personality Disorder truth or facts are not concepts that are exterior to themselves.  As they view both their actions and their thoughts they are forced to refashion external reality to coincide with the conclusions they already arrived at. When actual facts are presented to them contradicting their conclusions they naturally view those facts as incorrect, and even view those presenting the truth as conspiratorially opposing them.

When you think about Trump's use of “fake news”, or his inability to admit a mistake, or refusing to apologize it all begins to make sense.

It should be of no surprise to anyone that the most vulnerable people to Trump’s mental handicap are those, who by necessity, must surround and advise an American President. They must perform a daily kabuki dance of explaining to him he’s wrong by simultaneously telling him he’s right. Ergo the exodus that has left the White House, and continues unabated.

There is one irrefutable reality. A person with a Narcissistic Personality Disorder should not be President of the United States. 

I had a relationship through most of my life with a person suffering from a NPD and I saw how it evolved.  I experienced, first hand, the irrationality and paranoia that overtook that individual.  The need to remove Trump from office is far greater than you may have considered in November of 2016. At the very least…the very least…his power needs to be neutered by a significant change in Congress. Just watching cannot be an option.

Un-Ringing the Bell

Donald Trump is winning, or at least it feels that way. With every page of the daily calendar ripped away I have found myself with a new issue to share on this blog. Yet before I even start to collect my thoughts another horrendous or confounding event is revealed, perpetrated by Trump or one of his minions or the Republican Party as a whole.

I imagine myself standing in political surf. Each Trumpian wave that hits me is unique, but because one follows the other relentlessly my overall experience is just one of saturation…each wave just leveling out on the shore to undermine another sandcastle. I can’t keep track.

How many blog posts have I failed to write due to the flood of incompetent, offensive, and neurotic behavior displayed by the leader of my Country? How do I reconcile the Republican members of Congress who so willingly debase themselves in some self-serving quest to retain power?

Here are some topics I have forgone (among many):

• The ignorant weakening of free trade.
• The abandonment of Science generally and Climate Change specifically.
• The further gross concentration of wealth and its negative impact.
• The forced bleeding of Obamacare with nothing to improve or replace it.
• The commercialization of public lands and waters.
• The embarrassingly public demonstration of racism in the White House
• The abandonment of Puerto Rican US citizens.
• The ludicrous assumption that Trump has impacted the US Economy.
• The politicizing of charitable contributions.
• The winks and nods to misogyny.
• The use of people’s lives (such as with DACA and CHIP) for political gain.
• The criminal disregard of foreign cyber attacks.
• The debasement of both the US Judiciary and Dept of Justice.
• The fostering of White Supremacy by manufactured fears.
• The authoritarian manipulation of Truth.
• The reckless and juvenile use of American military power.
• The sins of omission by Republican Congressmen.
• The harmful spin by Fox News and Talk Radio.
• The neglect and forsaking of the US Foreign Service.
• The US going from admired (under Obama) to reviled by the rest of the world.
• The unaddressed reality that Donald Trump has a Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

When Trump described Haiti and African countries as “shitholes” I heard in both public and private venues tryingly familiar responses; “this is it”, “this will do him in”, “he can’t dodge this”, “he won’t get away with it”, “this proves what he is”, “Republicans will have to abandon him”, and so on and so on. I no longer pay attention.

Again and again each horrific behavior or pronouncement has rung like the Liberty Bell on steroids. Yet each time the impossible seems to occur; the ring is stuffed back into the bell. “I swear I heard it”, I might say to myself. But no matter, before I can lament the loss, the bell is rung again.

The media (other than Trump TV and the conspiracy profiteers) has yet to figure out how to deal with the pounding waves.  They are hopelessly bogged down trying to analyze Trump's behavior like it had rational political purpose, even as they decry his behavior and personality.  They happily wallow in sensationalism at the expense of the big picture.

For example, the huge focus on his recent use of profanity allowed the underlying divisive attack on immigration to pass with little notice.  Ultimately, it will be his use of language that the anger will devolve to, just as his use of the word “pussy” overshadowed his overt acceptance of sexual assault (regardless whether he engaged in it or not).

Nothing’s changed. Less than six months ago Trump applied his Haiti style broad brush to New Hampshire, describing it publically as a “drug-infested den”. You can bet in private he likely called it a drug-infested cesspool.  That particular ring was quickly stuffed back in the bell.

I don’t want to listen any more. I’m hearing bells even before I put on the news in the evening. I think about Robert Muller like Sleeping Beauty must have reflected on Prince Charming, and I wonder if it’s just another fairy tale.

I am resigning myself to three more years of Trump, but not without hope. The only sure thing that can possibly neutralize the damage that Trump is doing to our Nation (and my psyche) is only ten months away.  If the Democrats win both the House and the Senate we will be able to take a collective sigh of relief. This would be something Democrats, Independents, and Republicans should want to see happen. It is worth working toward.

The only thing left will be to control his use of the military and strategic weapons. That would be one ring we can’t undo.

Holy War, Part II

On July 17, 2016 I posted an essay on this blog entitled “Holy War?” (see:  http://pennyfound.blogspot.com/2016/07/holy-war.html).  It referenced then candidate Donald Trump’s rather ineptly stated desire to eliminate the tax law otherwise known as the Johnson Amendment. This rule within our Tax Code has been accepted law by both Democrats and Republicans alike for 63 years, and for good reason.

The idea of ending this law was presented to Trump by one of his earliest supporters, Jerry Falwell, Jr. a big potential beneficiary of the change.  I question to this day whether Trump understands the law, but he did understand the positive result of gaining the support of the Christian Right, especially with all his unethical baggage. Everyone was eager to participate in this Faustian deal.

Now a Republican Congress has decided to include in their proposed Tax Bill the removal of this provision from the US Tax Code. Did they do this to appease Trump? If so…why would they? There is nothing about this change in the law that does any good. Its primary effect will be to allow the wealthy to extend their influence over Government at the expense of ordinary taxpayers. Oh yeah…maybe that’s it.

I’d be surprised if one out of fifty people have any idea of what this obscure change, (which comprises only a few lines of a 400+ page Tax Bill) will make to their everyday lives or what their tax dollars are being spent on. I am disappointed and mystified why the Media has been unable to explain this to the general population. 

I am also disgusted that Republicans have so arbitrarily decided to embrace it when they should know better. The Republican Party has become a cancer on this Nation’s well being.

The change will allow 501(c)(3) organizations to openly and proactively support political candidates and political issues. Currently if a such an organization (which includes churches) did such they would lose their 501(c)(3) status. That would mean individuals making contributions to that organization would not be able to deduct those contributions from their individual (or corporate) income taxes.

The result of this change will have the potential of turning every such charitable organization or church into a political lobby. Churches, which are not hard to create in the first place, will come into existence specifically to support a political agenda or candidate. Money will pour into televangelist Churches because of their ability to reach large and vulnerable audiences.

“Jesus forgives his sinners and wants you to vote for Roy Moore. Send us your tax deductable prayer gift of $20 and help us get Roy to the promise land…hallelujah!!”

The salt in the wound is that every such deduction is a reduction of Government revenue. Therefore, a portion of your taxes will essentially be rerouted to support a candidate or issue you may despise or disagree with. For example: Donald Trump, Jr. gives $1000 to the Roy Moore Ministry of Blessed Virgins, but it only costs him $600, since his taxes will be reduced by $400. That’s lost revenue that would have been yours, the American Citizen.

Jerry Falwell, Jr. will be having a multi-week, extended orgasm this Christmas as he contemplates the New Year with his new ability to attract (in essence) political donations for both his televangelist ministry and his Liberty University.  As if this Nation wasn’t divided enough, we might as well start painting our churches red or blue so as not to cause confusion during the “offering”.

Republicans need to be held accountable.

FOLLOW UP - Dec 15

It should be happily noted that in the final reconciliation the Senate removed the provision to repeal the "Johnson Amendment" from the 2017 Tax Bill. Are we seeing some admission by Republicans that the Emperor is bare-assed naked?

When No Answer is the Answer

Three days after the Las Vegas shooting, a father was interviewed on NPR because his daughter had been at the targeted concert.  His daughter was wounded, but I suspect his interview was broadcast because his description of what he experienced, through the texts he shared with his daughter during the shooting and his frantic journey after, was sensitive and articulate.  In it he voluntarily added, without a question from the reporter, that he was a believer in the “second amendment”, owned guns himself, and saw nothing in his experience to challenge those beliefs.  He said wasn’t mad at the shooter, he blamed a “godless society”.

There is currently a national law enforcement and news frenzy over why Stephen Paddock did what he did. To date they have no answer. At this point, after thousands of man hours devoted to this search without conclusion it should be obvious that any possible answer that might be uncovered will be weak or inconclusive at best. Yet the search remains under full steam without the least consideration as to what will be gained by the public or the victims.

The twisted mystery of Stephen Paddock’s mind may have been his intention all along, to do something of horrific magnitude just to leave the world with a confusion forever attached to his name.  It’s as good a reason as any and equally as useless to those he wanted to devastate. However if that reason is correct, perhaps the actions of Paddock will have a greater effect than even the more shocking murder of twenty 6 and 7 year olds, which couldn’t make a blip on the Nation’s EKG.

The issue is not and never has been security, and it’s clearly not criminality either. The problem is social. As a nation unique in the world we simply have a tolerance for violence perpetrated through the use of firearms. Despite the increasingly common gross demonstrations of this violence, we take no serious steps to address that social condition, which is manifest every day, not just with random displays of carnage.

 I believe most every leader this Country has produced has mouthed the words “..so this will never happen again” as if gun violence was a spigot you could turn off with the right idea. It is a black hole of leadership.

We are more like an overweight individual who constantly snacks then is suddenly shocked that after some huge binge he has gained so much weight. That’s right my NRA friends, the problem is not the food…it’s the eater, but the answer to his obesity is not to keep nibbling.

The reason for gun control laws and regulations is not make you safe. Current estimates of guns in America are at 300 million.  Passing laws or restrictions will not make the guns go away. What such efforts would accomplish would begin a social recognition that solving individual problems, anxieties, angers, or no good reason at all (especially for the deranged) is not acceptably accomplished through the use of a gun, even if one is available.

Laws are primarily society’s attempt to externalize ethics.  Just because a law is passed doesn’t immediately change attitude.  The great example of that is this Nation’s long journey to eliminate or at least minimize racism, a journey as yet incomplete. 

Gun control laws are in desperate need of enacting, not to stop a Las Vegas shooting, but for society as whole to take the stand that this is not who we are.  Not to affect this generation, but perhaps for the next or the one after that.  That our Nation’s leaders, Conservative Republicans in particular, do not have the courage to face constituents who have been marinated in fear that their guns are going to be taken away and thus left defenseless is the real tragedy that is occurring year after year.

As a result the use of guns continues to be an acceptable outlet for solving personal problems, and for the lunatic fringe that outlet might look like the compiling unnoticed an arsenal of weapons in a large, popular hotel for the purpose of…who knows…what does it matter?

The father, whose daughter was shot as he watched the events on TV and flew to be with her, then felt it important to express to a National audience that he was “still a Second Amendment person” is the issue encapsulated.  That, with his daughter lying with a bullet in her, he needed to express that unsolicited opinion at all is the problem we face.

He blamed it on a “godless society”. How could someone so wrong, be so right? Call it a godless society if you like, but the fear he retains that his life would be so severely compromised if his unfettered access to guns was modified is the godless part.  The society part is the daughter left lying in a Las Vegas hospital bed.

My Solar Experience

“Dear God, if you want America to impeach Trump, please give us a sign…like blot out the sun from one end of the Country to the other”…

…so someone had posted on Facebook. I swear that was not the reason I decided to head off to South Carolina on Sunday (8/20) just to see if God was listening.  It would have been reason enough. However, I went as a pilgrimage, to view a solar eclipse in its totality…and I wasn’t alone.

I am not a devotee of astronomical physics, even as I am in awe of it. How individuals, even thousands of years ago, could figure these things out is beyond my sixty-seven year old, twenty-first century brain. I am, though, deep into the metaphysics of the Universe, which includes both heavenly phenomenon and loads of people traveling to and congregating at unremarkable places in the pursuit of celestial wonders.

I had made my hotel reservations a month before and picked a final destination which looked to me to be remote yet picturesque.  I thought I could end up being by myself, or nearly so, perfect for a contemplative experience. A small state park on Lake Greenwood, a lake manufactured under Roosevelt’s New Deal, located far away from urban centers, seemed just right.

Figuring on some heavier than usual traffic on major highways, I packed up the Prius (including a disassembled bicycle in the back) and headed off early at a leisurely pace.

My first stop was Charlotte, NC, which was a straight shot down Interstate 85. I think I understand now why they gave that particular name to this highway as there are probably 85 reasons not to travel it during periods of congestion. In the event of an alien attack I suggest you forgo I-85 as an escape route and view it more as a cemetery.

Even after a couple of attempts at detouring I eventually succumbed to my participation in the parade until it mercifully released me at my assigned exit. Giving into my “what…it’s only 7:45” exhaustion, I hit the pillow figuring I’d at least get a really early start in morning, which I did.

Unfortunately, the I-85 parade was still in active celebration.  I don’t believe a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Balloon would have had any problem keeping up with the pack.  I opted out almost immediately and decided to go rogue on country roads. Smart choice…I think.

There is no telling whether traveling the back roads of South Carolina was economical on time or not (probably not), but it was cathartic.  The landscape was strikingly beautiful at times yet peppered with the decay of long standing poverty.  It revealed stories that interstate highways don’t allow you to hear.  Thinking about what had been there before made me wonder what kind of eclipse my memory would retain from this trip.

I made it to the State Park later than I had planned.  I thought it okay as it only meant less waiting time for the eclipse. However, the waiting time I first experienced was a line cars stretching all the way down to the entrance, a distance of three quarters of a mile.  My concern wasn’t so much the line as it was the snail’s pace by which it moved. The participants could have gone green and simply pushed their cars without consequence.

Thank goodness for alternatives.  I decided to simply pull over onto the large shoulder, take out my bike and power past the line, feeling smug and elated, yet still wondering (in the words of the Donald) what the hell is going on?.

The small park was filled, in fact before the eclipse began they would shut down the entrance.  I stopped a man, in his thirties, and asked where he was from. “Oh, from Tampa”, I said, “And why did you decided to come here?” He said CNN had broadcast it as a great place with only $2 parking. What?? What happened to fake news? Thousands and thousands of places along the path of Totality and I pick a CNN promo spot?

I got there at 11am while many of the people had staked out their spaces since 6:00 in the morning! At first glance it had the appearance and energy as one might anticipate from an evangelist floating in on a carnation enveloped barge with a promise to walk on water. I didn’t know what to expect.

It turned out to be just perfect.  The well disbursed participants were spirited and joyful.  Virtually everyone there had a common purpose. Even though they were all sure the eclipse was going to happen, they still held out the slight uncertainty that comes from never having had the experience before. I was one of them.

Many were colorful in their anticipation, with all kinds of paraphernalia for solar watching. There were boxes of all sizes, tripods, duck tape, Pringles cans…you name it.  Sun viewing glasses in every description, many modified with cameras and binoculars. It was wonderful. Everyone was happy to talk about their preparations. This was absolutely not Trump’s America.

The eclipse itself did not fail to meet expectations. In fact, for me and probably most others it exceeded those expectations considerably. The blue skies blessed us all.

You have probably already heard all kinds of descriptions similar to how I might describe the eclipse; the changes the fading light made to the surroundings, the hushed almost reverent sounds (or lack thereof) from the throngs, the pop of the corona at sudden full totality and the flashbulb flash when it ended, and the breathtaking  corona itself. 

I will say only this: I went onto Google Images to find a picture for this essay of the eclipse at totality that only a special lens can take. Out of the hundreds provided I couldn’t find one that showed what I saw. I had viewed it at both normal distance and up close with my binoculars.  That I could see something that appears to defy reproduction was and is quite special, indeed. Enough said.

The trip back was made almost entirely without use of interstate highways. Even then I chose certain routes that turned simple stoplights into mile long backups. It didn’t matter much. If that occurred I took even more remote paths to cross the Carolinas and had plenty to see along the way.

The two and a half minute totality of the eclipse and the anticipation that preceded it paid for the journey and more. However, I didn’t expect the dividends of sharing something which all were involuntarily and jointly part of.  I got to see a slice of America in distress and feel a touch of hope at the same time.  Not bad, not bad at all.