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?