Scary Thoughts

It’s interesting how various social media seem to both follow you, and, sometimes to look like they are forecasting. I note especially on Facebook. Lately, I have been noticing an increasing number of postings from various folks on who has recently died. I turned 90 last December. Since then, I have been observing an increase in the articles about famous folks, or just folks who have died recently.

But then I just noticed a couple of postings about people who are writing about being frightened about death—should we be scared? Are we scared? My reaction is . . . hmmm, should I be frightened about dying? I mean, I am now over 90, and way beyond the age at which everyone in my family cashed in their chips. My mum, my grands, my sis and bro, my aunts and uncles, all cashed it in by their mid-80s. So, what am I waiting for?

And then, there’s that frightened thing. Should I be frightened about the likelihood of dying “soon”? Well, why? I assume if dying included some horrortale—pain, or something awful one had to go through in the act of dying, then I assume one might be frightened of that act. But, short of some nasty disease, the act of dying itself seems to be an empty set. One simply stops being aware. And is the absence of awareness frightening? I am thinking, NO.  I suppose that thinking about the act of dying might produce some nasty thoughts, but the act itself?? Hmmm, I don’t think so,

And so, we go on.

But thinking about nasty thoughts, there is that awful thing coming up on Monday, January 20^th, Inauguration Day. Now that is frightening. Why you might ask? Well, that day ushers in a new era in America—four years of Donald Trump as President. Now that is scary. I know. I lived through four years of him from 2016-2020. Still not sure how we survived that era. But, now, with me being 90, four more years of Donald Trump?

And I think that the nasty thoughts somehow exceed the Trumpie himself. The coming era signals something truly nasty about America. People in America, knowing what we all know about Donald Trump, decided that they wanted him to be their chosen leader. They wanted him to shape our Federal government.  And shape it he will. RFK, Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services??? Seriously? He doesn’t even believe in vaccines for God’s sake.  He may well dismantle FDA. Oh that would be grand, huh? And how could he cope with NIH—brilliant scientists working to define the relationship between human physiology and diseases. Or simply how the human body works? FDR, Jr.?? Really? I assume he is just dumb, but maybe he is also evil. That is the main two characteristics of Trump and his BFFs—ignorance and Evil.

And then, Defense? A drunkard??? Running our military? Seriously?

And being 90, I also have developed a fondness for Social Security, and for Medicare. Yeah, turns out, I like getting a monthly check from our government, one that I have already self-financed through my payments over some 50+ years. And then, health care. Have you ever checked out how you might pay for health care without your Medicare? Yeah, but now I am hearing rumors about how Trumpies want to cut taxes by gutting Social Security and Medicare.

I am unsure  how Trump has managed to become BFFs with such a truly bad set of pseudohumans. Of course, he is getting some help from dudes like Elon Musk.  Yeah, talk about evil dudes. Elon is Right up there at the top of the list.

So, does death make me scared? Well, no, but Donald Trump scares the shit out of me. Does that make me want to commit suicide? Well, no, but it does make me want to migrate to . . . maybe New Zealand, or even next door to Canada. But given my age and absence of readily available cash, I doubt those folks would want me. Would I go were I, say 35? You bet.  Now that is worrisome too. How many of our 35 year old wonders might consider migrating away from America?  Too many I think.  And then there are our grandkids and great grandkids. What have they done to deserve this mess we created? Donald Trump? Seriously?  No, they deserve way more than that. They surely deserve at least the America in which I grew up in, say 1965. Yeah, we had problems. But No, we did not have an idiot-malenfant like Trump at the top of our heap. Now that scares me.

Bye Jimmy

 OK, so Jimmy has departed this Life. He was a good man, although his defeat by that idiot, Reagan might belie that fact.  I worked briefly under Carter and I thought he was great. I was working at The Urban Institute, a non-profit research center, when I received an invitation to join the Carter administration as a working chap in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare to help lead an evaluation office.  Unfortunately, I joined near the end of his brief tenure.  However brief, I loved working under the Carter Administration as a member of our government. And Then Reagan defeated Carter. That was baffling, as Reagan was nobody, despite being a governor in California.

Everything changed after Reagan took over.  The Big change for me was to replace my former boss with a newbie brought in by Reagan. He turned out to be the single dumbest man I had ever worked with or for in my then 24 year working career.  And so that kind of defined my life at DHEW, then DHHS.  I worked for another several years, but then I finally quit and went into business for myself, to avoid becoming brain dead.

So, I was lucky enough to have a chance encounter with one of our world’s good men—Jimmy Carter—and then one of our truly awful men—Ronald Reagan.  The problem I have now is, how can I say that about Reagan, when we now have Donald Trump? I mean, how is Trump even possible after folks like Carter and Reagan?  Americans elected all three people?  Now, to be fair, Americans elected Trump to avoid electing a woman. Apparently we might have voted for Adolph Hitler to avoid electing a woman?  I mean, Kamala was bright, ethical, knowledgeable, except . . . she was a woman. I mean, America can’t elect a woman . . . right???

So what have we become as a Nation?

From Jimmy Carter to Donald Trump.  Wow, what a ride on the road to Hell.  Think of it. In my lifetime:

FDR, Truman, Eisenhower,  Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush II (ugh), Obama, Trump, Biden, Trump (aaarrrggghhh). Of that group, Trump makes a mockery of the Presidency. And it is not merely Republican-Democrat politics. I mean, Ike, Ford, Bush I were ok. Now Nixon, Reagan, Bush II were all bad news for America and the world. But Donald Trump really makes all of them look great by comparison.

So, Jimmy, Rest in Peace. You will always look good by comparison with the latest idiot-malenfant elected by Americans who wish to destroy America. Bye bye Jimmy. Bye bye America. And folks, Be Careful What You Wish For.

Becoming 90

 So, this 90 thing is getting complicated. First of all, sleeping ain’t what it used to be. I imagine I’ve gone from getting 8-10 hours a night, to getting 3-4 hours a night on a reasonable night.  Yeah, such fun.

And then, I keep seeing postings on FB or even my e-mails about people I know, either personally, or through TV/movies life, and it turns out they just croaked.  And most of them are younger than me.  Of course, I still have my role model, a young lady who lived with us as the wife of one of my colleagues when we lived in India, during the mid 1960s. She is now 103, living alone and still observing nature, in Rhode Island.  Yep, she’s a champ.

But then, I am also a 90-year old observer. I still have memories of me at maybe age 5-6, sitting in my Front Room in the early 1940s, in our midtown Manhattan railroad flat, listening to the radio—yeah, that thing. I listened to The Shadow, and others of that ilk. But I also remember listening to FDR tell us about Pearl Harbor, and then tell us about Nazi Germany, and our role in ridding the world of those evils.  And this is what troubles me perhaps the most about being 90. The Humans killing other Humans.  I read often about that Christian belief in the power of humans to resolve issues, mainly all by being nice to one another. Except humans mostly are not nice to one another.  It seems to me that I have almost never stopped reading about someplace in our world where humans are gunning down the folks who live in their world. First it was that Second World War thing. Then it was Korea, then Vietnam, and then the Middle East. Yeah ever since 1947, folks in the Middle East have been killing one another. First they were killing Jews in Israel, but then they just started killing one another, without of course, ever stopping their killing of Jews.

But it seems, every time I turn around someone is killing their neighbors so they can assert power in whatever sad part of our globe on which they live.  Yeah, life on Earth seems to involve killing as a routine.

OK, so I’m turning 90. What that means is that I have somehow escaped the killing machines.  Now, to be Fair, Life itself is a killing machine. Yeah, apparently we are created so we can eventually die. And we are supposed to do something so as to be remembered. But that something often revolves around the death machine of life.   You know . . . the Martin Luther Kings of our world who existed briefly to show us how to be civilized and stop that White on Black killing machine. You know, -- Be Civilized toward one another. That’s not too hard is it?

But then Donald Trump happened, and he said, “Yeah that is too hard. We weren’t made by God to be nice to one another. We were made to be nice to ourselves, That’s it, folks. Donald’s Central Principle of Life = Be Nice to Me. You don’t matter.  And, so as I age from 90 to 94, I will have to watch Donald Trump destroy America. Ah, well, such is Life. Maybe Life will finally get The Donald and put him out of his misery, and then the World can resume trying to become civilized. That would be nice. Huh?

Understanding America

 I guess I just do not understand. It seems less than a mystery to me. Donald Trump experienced six bankruptcies. Now what does that mean exactly? Well, he started in or took over six different commercial entities. He ran them for some period, and then gradually ran out of money to continue them, so he had to close them and declare bankruptcy.  Here is the fact check on his bankruptcies:

“Let’s do some fact checking about how many times Donald Trump has filed for bankruptcy protection and why  there is some debate over this number.  During the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton correctly pointed out that Donald Trump had filed bankruptcy 6 times. Here is a quick breakdown of the six Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings by companies owned by Donald Trump.  All six of Donald Trump’s bankruptcy filings were prior to him becoming our current U.S. President.

1.      1991: Trump’s Taj Mahal

2.      1992: First of two Atlantic City casinos owned by Donald Trump.

3.      1992: Second of two Atlantic City casinos owned by Donald Trump.

4.      1992:  Trump’s Plaza Hotel in New York City

5.      2004:  Trump’s Hotels and Casinos Resorts

6.      2009:  Trump’s Entertainment Resorts

Since each bankruptcy case is assigned a unique case number and takes on it’s own life, there should be little disconnect between the number of filings related to any one person or entity. So Hillary Clinton claimed that Donald Trump filed for bankruptcy relief six times, while Mr. Trump rebutted with the number of four such filings.  One possible reason for such a disconnect is whether Donald Trump recognizes his 1992 Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings as one, two, or three.  The correct number of Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings related to Donald Trump in 1992 would be three, while Mr. Trump may perceive them as one larger event.”

So, The Donald was in bankruptcy six times, which defines just how incompetent he is as a businessman. And it’s curious. I commented recently on Facebook that Trump had experienced bankruptcy six times, and one person remarked that I obviously did not understand business. He remarked. . . . “ six bankruptcies out of how many businesses?”  It was as though, it was OK if Trump had created, say, 20 businesses and ONLY experienced bankruptcy six times.  Well, sport, that is not OK. To me, it is pretty obvious that Trump is completely incompetent at running businesses. So, why should we expect him to be able to lead our Nation as President? Is that LESS COMPLEX?

So, we know he is incompetent as a manager. Well, then, what is it he is good at that might resemble the Presidency? Oh, but before that, we also know he has failed at the marriage game two times and maybe even three times, depending on your view of his marriage to Melania.  Now, to me, that strongly suggests he is also lousy at managing personal relationships.

So remind me again why he might make a good President? Or is it the case that the folks who voted for him were actually unaware that he is incompetent as a businessman and incompetent as a husband? They didn’t know? Really? But it seems that everyone on the planet knows, just not American voters?

Well, is there something else that recommends him to be President? Well, he was good at acting out The Apprentice, right? Well, that depends on whether you ever watched it.

Oh, but then he was actually President once before right?   The Pew research Center wrote a piece examining Trumps’ first Presidency. See -- How America Changed During Trump’s Presidency | Pew Research Center. It would seem his first go was not a marvel of the universe. His presidency ended as the most unpopular in our history, Partly, I suppose, his complete incompetence at managing that nasty COVID attack that emerged in China and then arrived to kill thousands of Americans, at least in part because of Trump’s incompetence at overseeing and directing a National response.  Did he actually tell Americans to drink bleach? Well, Yes and No. Here's what he said:

"A question that probably some of you are thinking of if you’re totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposedly we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. (To Bryan) And I think you said you’re going to test that, too. Sounds interesting, right?"

He continued.

"And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful."

Classic Trump.

But thousands of Americans died as a result of the incompetence of his Administration’s response.

So, he ended his first attempt at being President with a massive Public Health crisis wherein thousands died.

He had other questionable approaches during his Presidency, but little that he said or did should have encouraged folks to vote for him.

So, now he is appointing people to run our government who seem completely incompetent and maybe even simply dangerous—Gaetz as Attorney General springs to mind, although Rober Kennedy, Jr. seems as potentially dangerous at managing our Health Care Structure and systems.   Also, his promises to fire thousands of Federal career civil servants to replace them with Trump loyalists seems to me to be autocratic to the point that I now wonder whether he sees himself as King, rather than President.

So, that is why I keep looking at places to retreat—New Zealand anyone?  See. But I am way too old to move to New Zealand. At 90, I ain’t going anywhere. But trust me, were I 30, I would now be actively looking to move my citizenship to someplace more civilized and intelligent.

But I guess I will have to sit back and watch America disappear as a civilized society.

And if you disagree with me, well, good on you. But don’t just sit there in your comfy chair with a nice cold beer. Get off your ass and do something to defend our Democracy. Maybe impeach him??? Sure, why not?

By by . . .

Trump?

I no longer know what to say. Given what we know of Trump, that anyone actually voted for him is a total mystery. But that millions voted for him goes beyond the notion of a mystery. I wish I could blame this event on Kamala or maybe on Joe. But really, Kamala ran a pretty good campaign. She is intelligent, ethical, experienced and altogether a good candidate for the first woman president. I had really high hopes. But instead, we now have one of the worst individuals I could imagine as our next, 47^th President. His campaign was also one of the worst. At the end, he was actually threatening the life of one of his opposition folks—Liz Cheney.

Now that the American people have spoken, I wonder who he will select as his cabinet. So many people, military officials especially, spoke out against him that he may have difficulty finding intelligent people to serve under him.  On the other hand, he has promised to appoint Kennedy, Jr. as his head of the health sector. Imagine that, RFK, jr. who seems to believe in or understand almost nothing about the health sector will now run that sector.

I don’t really understand what to say. I feel like maybe moving to New Zealand is the only sensible course of action, but I’m pushing 90, and have almost no spare money.

But, seriously, how could any thinking creature actually vote for him? He lies every time he opens his mouth and words come tumbling out. He is incompetent as six bankruptcies and three failed marriages will attest.  We even know what he will be like as President, since we experienced four years of a Trump presidency.  He succeeded in overseeing the deaths of some 400,000 Americans as a result of a mismanaged COVID response.

And we now face at least two foreign crises—in Ukraine and Palestine.  Now, since Trump is favored by Vlad Putin, we can only guess what will happen in Ukraine. Putin is largely now free to do whatever he wants.  And the Middle East is a mess. HAMAS began the killing, but Bibi will oversee the final stages of killing.  He seems disinclined to cease, and there is no serious effort being made by anyone to force an ending there. HAMAS is disinclined to act ethically, and so Bibi sees his only alternative as more killing.

Trump says he will end the mess in those two places, but he has no intelligent positions to play. So the killing messes may well simply continue.

And then there is our own in-migration situation. Trump has been railing about the folks who have been arriving on our shores from afar, especially from Latin and African places.  He speaks of them all as gangsters, murderers, rapists, etc.  And he promises to deport them all.  Once again, he will build his wall, which he failed to do during his first term, But he has never really succeeded in doing anything worthwhile.

But I find myself, cringing in terror at the thought of him returning to our presidency, but no longer having any serious idea of what he may elect to actually do. I am guessing that he may well do things such as impose his tariffs, which could be awful economically, or introduce the ideas in that Project 2025 proposal, which could result in destroying the fabric of our government.

And unlike almost every other political administration I have been here to observe, I can find no room for positive thinking.  Whatever I thought of Reagan, or Nixon, or Shrub, they were not uniformly awful. Trump may well be uniformly awful. He is that incompetent. I assume his Administration will result from the ideas and proposals of the people who he allows to spin his web,  people like Elon. So we should now be looking to who he begins to include in his inner circle for ideas on how he will set about destroying America.

Ah, and folks?? Should you find yourself hoping his age and dementia state may relieve us at some early stage? Remember, JD Vance is, if anything, potentially worse than Trump. So, be careful what you wish for.

Absurd

I have been paying attention to US elections since the 1950s, having actually voted in 1956.  And my candidates won some (Ike, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama, Biden) and lost some (Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Trump). I actually voted once for a republican – Ike. How could you not vote for Ike, even though his opponent, Adlai Stevenson was pretty good? Republicans, on average, have been crappy presidents and, on average, not the brightest lights on the planet, although many would argue the reverse.  I was working in government, when Reagan beat out Carter. Reagan brought in as my political boss, the dumbest man I had ever worked with or for. I was running a program evaluation office, and this dude knew almost literally nothing about the subject. Nixon was not dumb, but he bordered on being evil. Given the times, dumb or evil could have resulted in missiles flying and the world ending. I well remember retreating with some frequency, with my Tech buddies at Lockheed to a local pub and discussing where we should go when the missiles began flying—the coast or the mountains?

And then it all calmed down, and we all began growing old.

So, now I’m pushing up against 90, and we face the prospect of Donald Trump.  How did I get here for God’s sake? Well, we survived four years of Donald Trump—an inept Presidential administration such as I have never witnessed.  Happily, before he was able to destroy us, he ran out of time, and was replaced by Joe Biden.  Now, he helped to organize the January 6^th insurrection which led to the deaths of several – “According to the bipartisan House select committee that investigated the incident, the attack was the culmination of a seven-part plan by Trump to overturn the election. Within 36 hours, six people died: one was shot by Capitol Police, another died of a drug overdose, three died of natural causes, and a police officer died after being assaulted by rioters. Many people were injured, including 174 police officers. Four officers who responded to the attack died by suicide within seven months. Damage caused by attackers exceeded $2.7 million.”

So we know for a fact that Trump is capable and willing to sow disorder and even destruction leading to deaths. But if one is paying attention, especially over the past 3-4 months, Trump seems to be sinking into both a world of senile dementia (he is 78 after all) and a world of 1930s Nazi Fascism. And that latter is not an exaggeration.  His normal brain seems to drift into the world of Fascism with some frequency. He talks about gathering crowds of immigrants and either locking them up or kicking them out.  But he also talks about killing his enemies, who include his political opponents, Harris, Pelosi, et al.

Maybe it is the increasing dementia, but he seems to be sinking into some world of 1930s evil.  Partly, he has a manual of almost pure evil, in the form of that Project 2025.  Common Cause outlines the document thusly:

“The extremist “Project 2025” is a blueprint for dismantling democracy on day one of a Trump presidency. It’s a nearly 1,000-page scheme that spells out the end of democracy as we know it:

·         Criminalizing voters: cracking down on simple voting mistakes using a so-called “Election Crimes Branch” – which has never been done by any president from any political party.

·         Installing partisan loyalists: Immediately firing thousands of qualified civil servants at every level of government and replacing them with ideologues willing to push a political agenda.

·         Stripping away our rights: Deploying the National Guard to crack down on protests, robbing us of fair representation by rigging the U.S. Census, and dramatically increasing the President’s power to act without Congressional oversight.

And this isn’t just talk. It’s an organized, coordinated plot concocted by the Heritage Foundation, and backed by over 80 extremist groups and hundreds of millions of dollars – much of it coming from donors who are giving this money in total secrecy.”

So, this Trump is in almost every way, different from any past presidential candidate we have ever seen in America. He resembles fascist dictators, and it is not an exaggeration to see some resemblance to Hitler, I realize that is extreme, but Trump is definitely heading in that direction.

In short, having voted in every election since 1956, and paying attention to our array of presidents and presidential hopefuls, I have never even seen anyone remotely close to Trump.  Whatever you thought of folks like Nixon, Reagan, or Bush, they were all at least American in their thinking. Trump seems some form of demented-fascist. And yet . . . and yet, the election seems close. How could that be? Why is the race not 90-10 in favor of Harris-Walz? This is what I do not understand. Americans, even undereducated Americans, want Trump as their President? Seriously?  I realize that Harris is both a woman and a woman of color. Oh, and she seems to have some Asian heritage also. But she is bright, ethical, and well educated. She is also experienced in the world of American presidential political government.  But people, you want instead this ignorant, stupid racist as your president? Surely Americans are not this stupid. Surely. Folks, Surely VOTE Harris-Walz. PLEASE!. Otherwise, America, literally, may not survive.

Climate Changing

With this last storm that battered the NC mountains, especially Asheville, I now think maybe we have passed a point of no return on Cataclysmic Climate Change. So maybe we are all looking at the end of our earthly existence. Humankind could be at its end, mainly because 50+ years ago, we ignored the signs of global climate change. And having ignored those warning signs, as Humans are wont to do, we now may be out of options to fix anything. 

I know, I know, this Administration and others past and present continue to pretend that we can still act so as to preserve the Earth. But I wonder if that moment is past.  I am not sure how close to that precipice we are, or whether we are, in fact, already over the cliff and now sailing towards our last crash. I also have no information on what steps other Nations are taking to work on this issue. This is not, after all, an American problem. It is a Global Earthly problem, and every human on the planet is or will be affected. Therefore, all Humans are involved in any solutions, to the extent any remain.

Perhaps we now need an examination of our Global status, and the probability of any solutions fixing the problem. Are we in fact, beyond solving the problem? If so, what should we be doing to ease the coming increased deaths from Climate Catastrophes?

I think maybe this topic should be Number One in any political discussion, and Number One on any upcoming United Nations summit discussions.  If this world is heading into cataclysm, then this goes well beyond America, Canada and the European advanced nations.  We need all nations participating, because all nations are affected.

And maybe this climate mess in which we find ourselves might lead the Humans of this World to at least stop killing one another in Wars of one kind or another. Thinking back to my earliest memories, when I was maybe 5 or 6, War and humans killing humans for whatever reasons seems to dominate my memories.  Maybe we should stop killing one another in order to gain some territory. Instead, we need to put our guns aside and begin thinking about our Global welfare. How can we best keep one another alive, regardless of what language we speak, or what color is our skin?  We are all Earthlings, under attack from within our own planet, but not by other Humans. We --ALL HUMANS--need to make peace with one another, and begin working seriously on solving, to the extent we can, this Global catastrophe. 

Please folks. Stop shooting one another. We need to get together and begin working in common to resolve this issue, before IT resolves us.

We are almost out of time.