Controlling my Gag Reflex--Harder and Harder!

I am a man.  I have flirted with women all my life, but never in all that time have I ever had the desire, much less the chutzpah, to touch, fondle, kiss or invade a woman’s space without her mutual consent.  That kind of action is not in my frame of reference.

I can’t think of a time when I have been more disgusted and demoralized by my country than now.  I listened to Nancy Pelosi Sunday on Meet the Press and then listened to Sen. Tim Scott, Republican senator from South Carolina on This Week on ABC.  I have been listening to John Conyers, John Conyers attorney, Senator Al Franken et al, ad nauseum.  I have been listening to the news media who apparently have nothing else to talk about other than the lurid details of all these men’s exploits.

I listen repeatedly to all these politicians dance around this action; try in some way to rationalize it, apologize for it, and completely deny it.  How do they do that?  The press tries to get all these people to take a stand, have an opinion, condemn the people who have committed these acts.  Instead we get Nancy Pelosi mumbling and trying to justify John Conyers as an ‘icon’.  Or we get Tim Scott who won’t offer an opinion on the President’s admitted behavior or commit to an opinion on Roy Moore, but rather wants to ‘let the people of Alabama decide’.  Decide what?—to choose a possible child molester over a Democrat?  Really?

The only one of all these sleazy men with a conscience appears to be Al Franken, but really Al—jamming your tongue in someone’s mouth without an invitation??  Come on!

It is all so disgusting!  What kind of beings are we?  What kind of men are ‘leading’ our country and setting themselves up as role models and icons as the best examples of our society?

It almost makes me want to run for office!  Surely I can be better than them!  Where is the human decency that is supposed to be imbued in all of us?  Why is there so much hypocrisy and lying about not only this, but just about everything!

I keep coming back to the only salvation we seem to have and that is at the ballot box.  Thank God for initiatives being taken by President Obama and Eric Holder to roll back the gerrymandering that the Republicans have been doing for the last 10 years.  Thank God for those people with honor and integrity who don’t give up in the face of the constant assault on our values by the likes of Trump and his dark Republican minions.  I firmly believe we will survive this time in our history, but it will not be without the resolve to honor the truth and those human ideals that founded our nation.

Sinister Creeping Change

I don’t decide to write an opinion blog until something just compels me to express myself.  Today, what is happening behind the scenes of distraction by the Trumpites is so horrifying that I cannot remain silent about it.

While all of us are exhausted by the daily outrages that emerge from Trump’s fingertips in the form of tweets, and other distraction, what his agents of destruction are doing in the meantime is taking apart our democracy piece by piece. 

The latest news about Brett Talley, the unqualified ex-law student who Trump has nominated for a lifelong position for a federal district judgeship, is just the latest symptom of the steady disintegration of the judicial system and rule of law.  Trump has nominated 59+ candidates for the Federal Bench since his inauguration (faster than any recent president’s appointment rate) …..91% white conservative men, four of whom have been rated as “unqualified” by the American Bar Association.  Many of them are right wing advocates that have checkered histories of belonging to organizations that clearly conflict with the need for unbiased judicial deliberation in the conduct of administering the laws in this country. Many are unabashed supporters of the NRA.  Many have published views and made statements that are so far from the mainstream of thought, that the prospect of these people making decisions about how all of us in the majority are going to have to live our lives under their guidance is terrifying.

This is just another example of the raft of unqualified people that the Trump administration is placing in positions of power and leadership whose only goal is to deconstruct pieces of the federal government and bring chaos to parts of the government that were created to make life better for all of us.  How about Sam Clovis for Department of Agriculture as Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics?  Here is a guy who is about as far from Agriculture and science as Pluto is from the Sun!  Rick Perry, Department of Energy Secretary, who didn’t even know when he took the job that this position is responsible for this country’s nuclear arsenal. (Position formerly held by Ernest Moniz, a brilliant nuclear physicist).  Ben Carson, a brain surgeon who is now Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.  Did you see the news clip where he was queried by Rep. Al Green and couldn’t answer any questions Green asked about budget cuts being made to his agency because he simply didn’t know?  Pitiful.  And let's not forget the disintegration of the Department of State under the dubious leadership of Rex Tillerson!

I just hope that our republic will survive this deconstruction and that the bottom doesn’t fall out before we rid ourselves of the scourge of Trump.

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And here is a postscript about the Roy Moore affair…is it really possible that human beings in Alabama actually are supporting a child molester?  I listen to some of the interviews with actual people who are willing to ignore the disgusting behavior of this man.  They claim to be religious people and Moore exhorts them to bring God back to government.  The world is upside down!

A Break in the Clouds

The resiliency of the American people is refreshing, isn’t it?  It has taken a full year of living with Trump and his propwash for the body of our politic that is the majority to awaken from their slumber and show their displeasure with the state of our nation.  Tuesday’s election was an across the board repudiation of the hate, the racism, the division that has been the hallmark of the Trump Administration.

Take a look at the faces of the new legislators that will take their seats in Virginia.  Out of 15 state legislature seats that changed parties to Democratic, 11 of them are women replacing men!  Those women won on issues from healthcare to climate change.  Inclusiveness and diversity were the watchwords of these winners as opposed to scare tactics and fear.

I have been certain for the last several years as I watched the slow progression of our politics descend into self-interest and greed that the only way to reverse the trend was to rouse the populace to vote.  Well, it looks like the populace is ‘roused’.  Over the past year we have seen a whole crowd of newly minted activists arise out of somnolescent citizens.  Angry wives, Moms, unlikely politicians at best, they have risen to take their place as active citizens at all levels of government.  I have a friend in the suburbs of Philadelphia who was ecstatic that Democratic candidates he supported at the local school board level had defeated a whole crop of incumbent Republicans.  There is a ‘wave’ that is definitely on the horizon…a redemptive wave that spells the return of American politics to a place where crass and embarrassing politics are repudiated, where insults and division are rejected in favor of compassion and reaching out to help the less fortunate.

The heart and soul of America resides in acceptance of our differences and equality of opportunity for all citizens.  That means that things like healthcare and tax reform are meant to help those in the most need, not just the really wealthy who don’t need the help.  Let’s hope that the wave on the horizon is just the beginning.  Let’s hope that the wave continues to grow as the anger at being led by a narcissist maniac and his minions to the degraded state of perception by the rest of the world increases.

I will say it again:  the true salvation of our society and our way of life rests with the responsibility of each one of us to be aware of the issues and VOTE.

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Let me say it louder:  VOTE!  It is the right that countless thousands of our citizens died for.  It is the salvation of our country.

Is That a Ray of Sunshine?

A lot can happen in a year’s time.  One year ago we imagined Hillary Clinton as our first female President.  Not all of us were thrilled with her, but in hindsight, it is hard not to ask the obvious questions about where our democracy would be relative to where it is today.

There are not many, if any, beyond the rabid base that Trump encourages who would say the country is headed in the right direction.  We have seen an increasing threat to our first amendment freedoms, the dismantling of 50 years of careful societal structuring to give our citizens the cleanest air to breathe, the cleanest water to drink, a constant attack on the 4^th Estate, the normalization of chronic lying and falsehood in our politics, and the disregard by the executive branch of our government for the rule of law.  These are not small annoyances, but instead are frightening disruptions to our American ideals and sense of humanity

We have a leader who is combative at every turn, never apologizes, lies constantly and has no grasp at all on the details of policy, the art of political engagement, the concept of compromise, or even the most rudimentary elements of genuine human empathy.

To survey the American landscape today is to see a republic (for the time being) where less than one third of our populace has somehow grasped the reins of power and has no idea how to use them for the benefit of the most citizens.  Digging deeper we are becoming aware of the long existing nefarious reasons for this condition: obstruction of voting rights, gerrymandering, racism, greed among our legislators, divisiveness at all levels of government and the abuse of power by the rich.

Now there seems to be a not so subtle shift at the edges of the Republican Party to call out the administration for all the egregious things it has done in the last year.  Obviously long overdue.  Will it have any effect?  Probably not, since it is clear that the current crop of Republicans have no ethical compass.  They allow Trump to debase the country because on some level they believe condoning his behavior is okay as long as they get what they want policy-wise.  That is a true deal with the devil, because the end result will be the corruption of our 241-year experiment with democracy.  We can only hope there is a 'break in the clouds'.

The 2018 election will be the next fulcrum point that will indicate whether the other 2/3rds of our countrymen have what it takes to save the republic.  The dark cloud on the horizon for that event is the movement being created by Steve Bannon.  Should he succeed in replacing elements of the current  Republican majority with Trump supplicants like “Judge” Roy Moore, the two party system as we know it will cease to exist.

So, the single ray of sunshine I see now is the dawning awareness of our Republican legislators that their bargain with the Satan of Trumpism is much more dangerous than they realized.  Until those Republicans become concerned with us as citizens rather than opportunities for personal aggrandizement, nothing will change enough to make a real difference until new elections.

And Now for Something a Little More Depressing......

Every day is now filled with journalists openly criticizing and bad mouthing President Trump.  No one has any respect for the guy, and of course, all of the scorn is so richly deserved.  There has never been an electoral mistake like this one.  We have finally gotten the President we deserved.  My only hope is that the damage that is well on its way to manifesting terrible consequences for our country can be mitigated by whatever those of us who are rational can do to slow it down.

The net result of all this is disheartening.  Our children growing up during this period will accept as normal the role model presented by the disgusting behavior of a man who is only concerned about himself.  He is the worst kind of role model for impressionable minds.  The long-term result of exposure to that kind of person as a leader is unknown, but can’t be a good thing.

Watching and listening to him deal with the disasters and crises of our time makes me more fearful every day that the chaos described by the retiring Senator Bob Corker is ever closer to being our reality.  To listen to the voices of our ‘leaders’ on the right is to realize that our country is truly an ostrich with its head in the sand—everything from health care to climate change to foreign policy decisions to environmental decisions to abortion to budgeting to defense to white supremacy to gun control—all these things are in the hands of hypocritical morons with no humanity or morals.

Tom Friedman wrote yesterday that the only action left for those of us who feel left behind or shut out is to mobilize at the ballot box: get people who are like minded to run for office at ALL levels.  It is true.  If we are still a democracy, then we can do that. (notwithstanding efforts to gerrymander, deprive voting rights, intimidate minority voters, etc.)  In fact it may be our only hope. 

Even if by some “Act of God” Trump is disposed of, that would leave us with Pence, who is potentially worse than Trump.  Pence, who knows how to operate the Washington levers of power, might take us in a direction that only his warped sense of morality is comfortable with. 

The downside of Mr. Friedman’s path is that it will take time, an entire generation in fact, to turn it around.  Perhaps that is our destiny as Baby Boomers—to have grown up in the 50s, 60s and 70s to taste the excesses of personal freedom, only to have them ripped away by misguided fools who don’t read and have bad dental work.  Hillary was right.  The world is now controlled by the deplorables, and God help those who are not deplorable along with them.

Maybe these are truly the “End Times”.

I see more and more people on Facebook who say they have given up watching TV and listening to the news.  It is just too disturbing.  I can relate to that.  I used to hang on every word that came from the lips of Rachel Madow because I thought to myself, “here is a person who is intelligent and really has a grip on what is going on….and therefore will somehow persuade someone with some power that we have to do something to save ourselves”. 

I was a fool. 

No one can save us, so I have started to contract my universe of awareness to focus on only those who are dear to me, and ways that I can get the most out of my life here on Earth.  Growing globally and expanding my consciousness is less important today than loving my family and helping those less fortunate that I can have an impact on.

I would urge all of you who feel the despair that I am describing to look inward and become aware of your close communities.  Be the best you can be in a smaller universe.

The larger scene will take care of itself…..or it won’t.  It almost doesn’t matter.  If the buffoons and blowhards destroy the planet, it certainly won’t matter. 

All of us long for an America that is synonymous with hope and goodness.  I am afraid that is a myth my friends…and it will remain a myth until the scourge of idiocy that now rules our land finally wears itself out.