America At Its End

Apparently there are no longer any consequences for political actions.  We note this especially when we view republicans . And it is not that Democrats are without fault. No, but something different has occurred since Trump became their glory leader. Somehow, it is as though he erased all normal standards of human behavior, and, as a result, a different class of republicans emerged. I mean, look at the list – Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Josh Hawley, George Santos, Matt Gaetz. And now this total cretin Mike Johnson, newly christened Speaker of the House. How is he even possible? He seems to violate every principle of ordinary citizenry. Mainly, I guess, it is his devotion to Christian Autocracy that stands out. But it is almost as though he has no functioning brain.

And now, when we need intelligent leadership at all levels, it has evaporated among republicans. And they continue to make light of Joe Biden. Yet Joe Biden keeps on trying to maintain a course of decency. He continues to make every effort to promote democracy at home, and has managed to create an economy that exceeds anything we have seen in years.  Biden continues to support Ukraine against an ongoing murderous Russian invasion.  And with the Hamas killings against Israel, Biden continues to support Israel, however difficult Bibi makes such support.  As awful as it seems, the Arab militants seem to have created a Nazi-like figure in Bibi. I know, I know, that is an awful thing to say, but Bibi seems to be a different kind of Israeli—way more manic in his zeal to destroy his Arab opposition.  But, to be fair, the Arabs seem to relish in their own zeal to deal stupidly and murderously with Israel.

But Joe Biden, has continued to perform reasonably in the face of this increasingly global insanity.

He could use some help from his republican colleagues. Instead, the republican party has simply gone off the deep end into some new kind of political craziness.  I don’t understand when sanity will return to Republican Land, but maybe never, and that could begin to define the end of America. Seriously, were I 30 rather than 88, I might well now be preparing to move with my family to another Land—anyone for New Zealand? Only if the republican party begins to regain its sanity by removing Johnson and bringing back a new core of civil intelligence would I change my mind.  And removing Johnson is but the first step. Greene, Boebert, Santos, et al need to be removed also.  But that might require the assistance of the American voting public. And perhaps that is a feat beyond American capability. Anyone for New Zealand???

Endings 101

Recently, three of my friends have departed, and by that I mean they have died. But see our language and our imagination prevent us from saying simply “they died”.  Instead, we have invented this massive tale about what happens after we die. I guess, depending on how far away from reality we live in our minds, we believe different things. Many, many folks say, after someone dies, that they are now watching us from up above, that is, the person is now sitting on a cloud somewhere up above us and observing us.  Now that is just too weird, but it remains fairly common.

I have now reached a magic age—88+. In December, I will reach 89 years.  Yes, I climbed aboard this thing we call life on December 17^th, in the year 1934. Until recently, I was just cruising along like everyone else.  Then one day I realized that I had already surpassed in life years everyone of whom I am aware in my immediate family. That is, no one known to me as family has ever made it this many years.  A few came close, i.e., 85 years, but none, to my knowledge hit the upper 80s, or even 90.

And so, I am now looking at “life” a little differently. I understand that I may make it til 90, or, hopefully, even higher in years.  But I also understand that each day is special, a gift if you will.  And when a friend passes on, ceases to exist, I am saddened and sometimes shocked.  Recently, an especially close friend, George Stiles, died—bang out of the blue. We had just been trying to call him because we had not seen him in a while and he often stayed with us a day or two enroute to one of his kids.  And we failed to make contact by phone. So we thought maybe we just had an old telephone number, so I looked him up on the Internet, and what to my wondering eyes did appear but, “An Obituary for George Stiles”.  First, I thought, “no, it’s someone else”. But then I looked at the picture and, Yep, it was our dear friend George.

It was a shock. We could no longer speak with George. And then another reality came into my brain. George no longer exists. That is, his brain has ceased functioning, and so he no longer exists. And we can’t use these terms like, “he is gone”, or “George has departed”, or “oh my George has left us”.  And why can I not think those thoughts? Well, because, the reality of death is that the person who dies actually ceases to exist, because his brain stops functioning.  He is “dead” but he does not know he is dead, because he does not any longer “know” anything.

And, although I knew that, suddenly, with George, that reality set into my brain. Yeah, when I die, I will no longer know anything, including that I am dead. I will simply go dark, but I will not even know that everything just went dark.  No, but what will that be like? Well, nothing. Yeah, when life ceases, we do not know that life has just ceased. And that isn’t like anything that we have known throughout our long lives.

So, now, daily, I am aware of life and life things differently. When I look at a lantana flower or an hibiscus flower and then observe some critter on that flower, I watch it carefully. That life form is special because I am observing it. And it isn’t that I am now depressed thinking about life terminating. Oh I know it will and I have at least a dim understanding about cessation, but one can only dimly understand this end of life thing. Mainly, because there is nothing to understand. You are aware one second and the next you are not aware. And that is it. There is nothing else to understand.  Now we could, I assume argue about whether my conclusion is accurate, but such arguments are pointless, because we can never shed any light through evidence on the subject. So, you are free to believe the cloud thing, and I am free to believe the ending thing.  Why anyone argues about such things is quite beyond my comprehension, unless one belief gives someone control over another by that belief. Oh and that would be called religion, huh? OK, believe on folks. It’s all up to you. Whatever turns you on.

The Beginning of the End?

I wonder how one knows that one’s country has begun to fail. And also, what happens to a country that fails? I assume that some financial things would begin happening, maybe banks beginning to move their assets to another country, or an increase in the number of industrial or commercial companies that begin failing.  Maybe larger numbers of people would be taking steps to move to a different country, although there are only a few countries that seem logical places to move.   I assume it is still possible that we might “fail” as we did in the 1920s, when the stock markets collapsed and people were forced out of their jobs and millions went looking for work and money.

We normally just assume that all of our safeguards will always remain in place. The various levels of government will remain and continue to do things like fix roads, keep electricity flowing, catch bad guys who are out robbing and killing folks, and protect us against insurrectionists (like Trump) or foreign powers (like Russia). Yet, all of those various levels of protective government require both financial and spoken support. Folks still need to believe in the various institutions of government. And that is what seems to be somehow wearing thin these days.

Ever since Trump was elected and all the right wing racists, misogynists, anti-everything crowd emerged from their respective closets, America has been on a downhill slide. I find it very difficult to understand how anyone could have voted for idiots the like of Marjorie Taylor Greene, and now Ron DeSantis. DeSantis???? He is regarded as a serious candidate for President of America??? Seriously? Whatever happened to the Republican Party of old?  I know that, Yes, Republicans have long toyed at the edges of Fascism. Reagan perhaps began this long trek to failure, but he has had lots of help along the way. But whatever one thinks of, say Ronald Reagan, or George Bush (aka Shrub)  . . . Trump??? How could anyone in their right mind waste their vote on Donald Trump? And then the movement continues downhill.

And consider if you will, all of the legislative battles fought by Republicans to not only ban abortion (thank you Trump SCOTUS), but ban books for God’s sake.  They have banned abortion pills, and then went on to try to ban contraception. Seriously?? You want to ban contraceptive measures so that . . . what? You would have more unwanted pregnancies???

And now their ongoing battles against Gays, Transgender folks, anyone associated with the LGBTQ people. Why? Why would you care about such folks, who have enough problems in life without Republicans stepping in to make their lives even more unhappy.

And then, think Ethics. We have a Supreme Court Justice, Clarence by name, who seems to imagine that he is immune to ethical considerations of any kind. He imagines it is really ok to accept bribes from super-rich associates without any consequences.  A Justice of the Supreme Court?? And these are the folks we rely on to make final decisions on any and all matters of legal, social and ethical concerns?  Note please that SCOTUS as a whole has been entirely silent on Clarence’s trials and tribulations. Not a word from the holy ones. So, Kavenaugh, Barrett, et al, nothing??? You think that crap is none of our business? Amazing. Truly, and a very large sign that our Nation is failing and nobody seems to care, certainly not any of the Republican “holier-than-thou” crew.

And that is what I find most disturbing. That a very large percentage of our Nation’s population can continue to go on as though nothing has happened. Donald Trump? No, he’s a great candidate.  It’s those nasty books on racism that is the problem. We need to ban more books, maybe take our public education and get rid of it, replaced by a private system. We know they’re better, right?

Oh, and let’s get rid of those damned students who are voting in elections.  Yeah, so let’s take away their rights to vote, unless they show up at the voting places at home. And even then we should make it more difficult. Can’t have those kids voting. They tend to vote for Democrats for God’s sake. Can’t have that. Maybe Adolph was right in 1936. We need supreme leaders.  That’s the ticket.

And so we continue on this downward slide into oblivion. Is this why those folks like Washington created America out of a British Colony?  So that Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis could complete our slide into 1936 Germany? I don't know folks. We really need to do some hard thinking. And Yes, we need to vote them out of office.  So get on with it folks. Or the End really is Near.

The Beginning of the End???

I guess I really don’t understand. I am so tired of seeing articles, or social media postings about total idiots like Herschel Walker or Marjorie Taylor Greene, or some other fool the republicans are thrusting into our midst via our government.  I mean, I knew such fools existed. Every country has idiots in its midst. I don’t know, what’s your guess . . . the world’s population is made up of 20-25% subhuman idiots, who, in addition to having few active brain cells, are thoroughly nasty, corrupt, dishonest, and even murderous at heart.  Look at Russia, led by that murderous thug, Vladimir Putin.  And Brazil, with their Jair Bolsonaro who seems bent on destroying the entire Amazon Rain Forest.

But, until recently, I thought America was actually different. I know, I know, we had people like Nixon, Shrub, and Reagan, destroyers all. But somehow, they never destroyed our entire society. Nobody spoke of “are we going to have another Civil War” when those dudes were in charge.  It was as though we knew somehow we had made a mistake in electing them and we changed course and then moved on.  But even though we might have disagreed with one another, we never decided to just destroy everything our Nation stands for.

But now, all of a sudden, not only do we seem to disagree among ourselves,  but we have grown to actively hate one another. And, at least republicans, we are now nominating complete idiots to run our government. Why would we do that? Because we hate government??? So, you hate government and then, because of that, you decide you will try to elect the worst people in our Land to run the government you say you hate???? And that would be wise because??

So you want our Congress filled with idiots the like of Herschel Walker, Lauren Boebert, Josh Hawley, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Marco Rubio, and the gang supervised by Donald J Trump?? And that will make our lives happier and more productive?? Really? Or maybe that would just manage to piss off all the Libtards in our country. Well, yes, it would doubtless do exactly that.  And then what?

Well, then we have to contend with at least four years of a fearsome, completely incompetent government. During the Reagan years, an attempt was made to implement “Supply-Side” economics, by reducing taxation in the hopes of spurring economic development. According to one report,

“The triumph of politics and what (David) Stockman called the “fiscal error” that went with it spawned a new monster which would come to occupy center stage in policy debate: the deficit and the Federal debt. Between the beginning and the end of the Reagan presidency, the annual deficit almost tripled.  So did the Gross National Debt—from $995 billion or $2.9 Trillion. Or, as Reagan and Bush administration official Richard Darman put it, “in the Reagan years, more Federal debt was added than in the entire prior history of the United States.” (Reaganomics: excerpt from Commanding Heights by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, 1998 ed., pp. 341-342.

Whatever side you come down on regarding the Reagan experiment with Supply-Side Economics and the “Laffer Curve”, we must at least acknowledge that Reagan was attempting to implement policies he believed would benefit the country, even if in fact they failed at that goal. Whereas today, no such claim can be made for the likes of Donald Trump. And with people like Herschel Walker attempting to gain that center stage, we cannot even be clear regarding anything like “policies” because such people seem to barely speak our language.  Now, when Greene argues that Jewish Space lasers are responsible for our Western forest fires, we are unsure whether she is attempting humor, or she is simply that stupid. And similar, perhaps worse attempts at communicating with us in absurdist language continue to emanate from Walker.

But given someone’s absurd background, like Walker, will the republican voters actually show up to vote for him? He paid for at least several abortions, so will the Evangel anti-abortion crew actually show up to vote for him? Well, the answer seems to be YES, they will. But how can that be??

Well, apparently republican voters have changed over the last several years. They used to have standards of ethics and morality. They used to at least pretend to follow facts and The Truth. Now, somehow, that is all gone. If someone is running on a republican ticket, the voters no longer care about reality. They will vote YES for that person. I am now beginning to sense what 1936 Germany must have been like. Because, whether we are engaged at the beginning of an actual second Civil War or not, we are certainly in the early stages of an effort to destroy our Nation’s entire system of governance.  We may be moving into a Nation like Iran, with an autocratic leader and a thoroughly corrupt religious order that will govern us.

It is entirely unclear to me how we arrived at this awful juncture.  But here we are.  And the question that remains in my mind is, ”Is there any reasonable solution?”  Well, I always assume that voting is our solution of choice.  But given our choices on the ballot, I begin to wonder. Suppose 1936 Germany had whatever is on your Democratic Ballot, vs. Hitler and his Nazi colleagues. And, I know, I know, all republican candidates are not Nazi’s. But they do seem to have no standards of ethics or morality. I mean, Herschel Walker??? Marjorie Taylor Greene??? Donald Trump??? And republican voters will actually cast their votes for these cretins.  I see no movement within that party to rebel against these terminally awful candidates.  Remember those long-gone days??? Dwight Eisenhower v. Adlai Stevenson.  Sigh . . . Will they ever come again? Or are we headed into an American version of the Ayatollah’s Iran?? We’ll see. The ball is now in your hands American voters.

Endings

Yesterday evening we participated in yet another ZOOM meeting/call. This call was for a family and friend tribute to the mom of our son-in-law, who just passed at the tender age of 92. Terry Manning lived a nice long life, well, long relative to many other folks. She experienced personal and artistic success, as a model, because she was beautiful, and as an artist in her own right, creating in different art forms, but stone sculpting seemed a favorite. Terry also succeeded in life by becoming married to a man of good virtue and then remaining happily married for many decades.  Terry’s marriage to Larry led to two children, Ken and Sandy, both of whom adored Terry.

Happily, Ken married our eldest daughter and they produced kids and those wondrous creatures called grandkids. And Terry thrived on loving her grandkids. And so when her good life came to an end, her family, kids, grandkids and close friends were asked to gather and provide tribute to Terry’s fine and loving life. We attended from afar, along with several dozen or so others, but that is the nice thing about this tech invention called ZOOM. People can now attend such events from afar, and still feel as though you really did attend.

And so another life, happily lived, came to an end.  And I am drawn back in time to others who have left my life. Because life is a series of encounters with people, places and things. And we all get so many encounters, each of us different from one another, and then we leave.  My first actual encounter with a “departure” was my Scottish grandma, Elizabeth Inglis.  GM Inglis came to the US with her husband somewhere in the vicinity of 1890, maybe even the mid 1890’s.  They both came from Edinburgh, Scotland, having decided that Scotland was not delivering to them a life quality they imagined they deserved.  And so they decided to migrate to America.  Because they, like many thousands of their immigrant colleagues, lacked any advanced education or training, GP Inglis had to rely on his basic carpentry skills to carve out a sort of economic life in Brooklyn.  They were married and so they created some children, my Mother included.  Because the early 20^th century in America was filled with  cataclysms, Wars, a pandemic flu, a stock market chaos, the Inglis’ never made it into the solidly middle class.  But they lived, and their kids lived, and their kids married and produced their own kids.  And so I was created, one of three to my Mother.

But finally their lack of economic success caught up with them and the couple simply ran out of money.  Eventually, GP Inglis succumbed and then Grandma was forced to live out her life with us, my mum and siblings.  And then, when she was about the age at which I now find myself, GM started failing physically. I found myself, at the age of 16, alone in our little house with her, when she began failing badly. I applied an oxygen mask to her, and then held her, but she simply stopped breathing. And I cried a bit, but then I had to move on. I called a doctor to come to us, and then I called others, starting with my mum. GM Inglis had left us.

And see, I too keep using this language of a trip. My GM left us—she “departed” for some other place. But all we know really, is that folks at some stage of their lives, simply cease being. They stop breathing, and then, apparently, their brain function ceases, and then they cease to exist as humans.  Good Christians have invented this fairy tale that people who die, simply move upstairs to a place called heaven, and then they begin looking down upon us living folks.  How long they continue looking down before becoming terminally bored one cannot say.  I suppose when they really do become bored, they then turn their attention to God(dess?), or maybe to Shakespeare? Only they know of course.

But we are then faced with the job of getting on with this thing we call life.  We are expected to continue living, almost as though nothing significant has occurred. And  we really need to do exactly that, because otherwise, our own lives might begin to lose meaning.  And since the whole idea of Life, apparently, is to keep on breathing and creating –something . . . anything—we need to recreate our lives without the someone who has left us, but with the memory of their wonder embedded within our subconscious.

Now, as we age, we move through this end-of-life process numerous times, with parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, even siblings, and, of course, close friends.  I have now reached an age at which I have outlived my parents, grandparents, all aunts and uncles, and both siblings. Many other friends have also “departed”.   And each time some human “leaves” us, or ceases to exist, some part of us suffers, at least a little. And the closer is that human, the greater will be our suffering.  But what survives is a set of memory clips of each of those someone’s.  And those memory clips become part of us. Our brains are composed of integrated memory clips of all kinds of things, past lives included. So, the folks who have “left” us actually remain within us, in our brains, in the form of these memory clips. To that extent, we each “live on” in the brains of those who have known us.

So, what is LIFE after all?  We arrive as a new creature, entirely untouched by humankind. And then we begin acquiring memories—we also call that “learning”.  And we forge attachments, close memory links to others, some so close and so profound that we will enter into combat to preserve those links.  The attachments seem to define us most profoundly, although many folks would suggest that our creations really are what defines us. But who is to know?  We have people who love and are loved. And some of those people leave behind creations that will define who they were when they were alive. Some of the creations are other humans, and some of the creations are physical entities that will touch other humans by their presence—artistic creations, surely Shakespearean writings have touched many well after William left his stage. Some folks create and leave behind physical entities, like buildings, or institutions, like centers of learning, or other physical buildings that will house other humans for generations.

And then there are the negatives left behind.  Many mighty rulers are still remembered because of the chaos they created and the lives they destroyed. History books are filled with their stories, and, I wonder whether those mighty rulers ever thought about the long-lived negative memories they were creating, and that they would always be remembered for chaos. I think of someone like Hitler, for example.  He lived a high life for only a couple of decades, but his memory fragments that he left behind will always be ones of death and evil. But perhaps he would not have cared.  Most of humanity would care, I would hope.

So, to live our lives perhaps we need to at least be aware that every day we are creating memory fragments within the brains of other humans with whom we come into contact. And those fragments are perhaps the only things we can fully control. We can choose to leave fragments that will make others smile, or make others frown.  So maybe that is really all that life is about.  Choose your pathways and your memory fragments carefully. Leaving smiles seems infinitely more desirable than anything else we can do.

And so Terry, you apparently lived the good life. I detect many smiles that you purposefully left along the way.  So thanks to you Terry. That is called a life well lived.

Endings

I may just be becoming more aware of my age. Yeah, as you speed into your 80s, it’s like you’re cruising. But then, at some stage, you understand that you are now really close to the end. . So, maybe it’s that. I just have this feeling each day that I’m waiting for something to end, so that, I can get on with things—life and all that.

But maybe it isn’t just my own ending that I sense daily. Maybe it’s a bigger ending . . . the ending of everything I have known over these now 80+ plus years of life.

I remember back into the 1930’s . . . yeah I really do.  FDR and his fireside chats. Then Fiorella LaGuardia reading the Sunday comics over the radio.  Then that War thingie, you know, with Pearl Harbor, as I was turning seven.  And my uncle Billy, serving in the Seabees in the South Pacific, building air strips and buildings for our fighting troops.

And I remember vividly most of our Presidents: just think FDR, Truman, Ike, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan (ugh), Clinton, Shrub (double ugh), Barrie, and then . . . and then . . . the end. However much I really did not like Nixon and thought he really was a crook, or Reagan, who made it ok again to be a racist, most of them had some character and some moral values. Most seemed to believe in American values, especially the values conveyed in our Constitution. Some seemed to prefer blowing up things, to talking and trying to figure out how to live peacefully. The Dalai Llama keeps wandering the globe, looking for leaders who are willing to try peace, but he apparently hasn't found any yet. 

So, my life has seen periods of peace, and many periods of horror, when you thought it might never end.

But always, I believed that we were intrinsically a good people, and that somehow our leaders would find some way to make the horror end, and goodness to return. And that is what has now vanished.

This creature now inhabiting the Presidency (I would say the White House, but he seems to be spending more time at MaraLago golfing than he does in the White House governing) is pretending to be a real president. He may not drink, but he loves partying. He just knows nothing about being a president.

First and foremost, it is him. He is truly a one-man horror show. We spoke of him earlier as a Carnival Barker, a circus con-man. And he is that, but those terms really insult all carnie barkers. They may be conning you, but their cons are harmless, and even fun. Trump’s cons are deadly. They will kill people. They will destroy people in many ways.

And, unlike most of his predecessors, he actually seems not to care about the results of his words and his actions. He seems literally not to care who winds up hurt, or dead, so long as it isn’t him, or his deadly tribe.

For a while, during the election, he was a joke, and we all laughed at him. But now the joke is on us. It is said that his support is now down to 40% or less. He has many people running scared. And scared they should be, because his supporters, will soon lose their insurance and be back to no health care. And many, who thought he would bring back jobs, will learn that he has no tricks to bring back jobs in dead industries.  And that their lives are in or soon will be in the toilet . . . and that the President for whom they voted, does not care.

But it brings me to the 40% who still support him. How could that be? I can imagine that maybe 10% of the population is either so wealthy or so stupid that they really do not care either what he does. The Koch’s really don’t care whether the coal miners get new jobs. They don’t care whether you lose your health care, because they will always be able to buy theirs.

And Trump’s republican supporters who currently rule Congress? Well, guess what? They don’t care either. The republican party of Eisenhower is officially dead. In its place, you have either brain-dead creatures like Mitch McConnell, or not very smart and completely amoral fascists/anarchists of the Paul Ryan sort. He thinks he’s being oh so clever when he proposes to implement systems that throw 30 million people off health insurance, or (in his dreams) to gut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Oh and let’s not forget the destruction of the American public school system in favor of vouchers.  Yeah, that’ll get us quality education—all those charter schools that do whatever the hell they like and pretend it’s education.

Where oh where, I keep asking is the republican intelligentsia?  Are they all gone fish’n? Is George Will really dead?  Where is the outrage at such terminally awful behavior, and such absurdist proposals at both state and federal levels of government (and remember, the state governments are home to some of the most awful proposals ever seen in the land).  Any thought of just relaxing and giving Trump some space seems, to me, inconceivable. And for his next trick, ladies and gentlemen, he will nuke San Francisco, just because he can.  See, it is no longer about something called “policies”.  No, now it is about sanity, and about the preservation of the American democratic system of government, and about our constitutional system of rights, none of which he seems to understand, because he cannot and will not read.  Apparently, he has never been able to read, which makes me wonder whether he ever actually attended school . . . or did daddy pay someone to show up in his name and pretend to be Donald Trump.

And I also wonder, well suppose he does something completely and obviously illegal (like he is doing now with his emoluments thing) and they actually impeach him. Well, then we get Mike Pence. Is he any better? Well, they say he is at least predictable. Yeah, and so was Hitler.  How'd that work out?

And the days go on and on, each day surpassing the last in stupid gestures out of the Drumpf, and lately, out of his republican buddies, Ryan & Co. The entire tribe is a threat to the existence of this nation.

I can only hope that groups like Indivisible, #Resist, and other such activist resistance groups will begin to swing the entire nation back to sanity. But I’m pushing on into 83, and I am no longer certain I will see that happen.

Beware America, he is just beginning to operate. He has failed at almost everything he has ever done. We are next. Pay attention. It is your life too.

The only possible path back is for everyone who is eligible to register and to VOTE. VOTE the bastards out of office. Find sane, thinking people to run for office in opposition to the creeps now in power. Remember, the Republican Party is now officially DEAD. The cretins pretending to be republican are fakes. They mean you harm. VOTE them out. There is no other plausible solution.