Growing Funny

Retirement Home Calendar The Contilia  Retirement Group in Essen, Germany, made what is  probably the best calendar ever with a few of their seniors. According  to German press, 5000 calendars were printed.  And they were given out to  residents of the Senior Centre, along with relatives and staff. The calendar models were interviewed about the project and said it was a ton of fun to dress up as their favorite actors. The  shoot was done with professional stylists and photographers to make sure everything looked as cool as possible. The  oldest senior involved with the calendar was 98 years OLD! JANUARY James  Bond Wilhelm Buiting, 89   FEBRUARY Breakfast  at Tiffany's Marianne Brunsbach, 86 MARCH Titanic Erna Rütt, 86, and Alfred Kelbch, 81 APRIL Rocky Erwin J von der Heiden, 80 MAY Mary  Poppins Erna Schenk, 78 JUNE The  Seven Year Itch Ingeborg Giolbass, 84, and Erich Endlein, 88 JULY Blues  Brothers Lothar Wischnewski, 76 and Margarete Schmidt, 77 AUGUST Cabaret Martha Bajohr, 77 SEPTEMBER Giant Joanna Trachenberg, 81 and Horst Krischat, 78 OCTOBER Saturday Night Fever Irmgard Alt, 79 and Siegfried Gallasch, 87 NOVEMBER Dirty  Dancing Johann Liedtke, 92 and Marianne Pape, 79 DECEMBER Easy  Rider Walter Loeser, 98 and Kurt Neuhaus, 90 'Growing old' is Mandatory, 'Growing up' is Optional!! AND AS THEY SAY IN THE CLASSICS ... If you haven't grown up by the time you are FIFTY Well then you don't have to!!!!

Stealing Lives

We have been watching another of our host of British mysteries, this one, The Fall. It is all about a sadist who murders young women. In the afterworld, where I actually think, I have been thinking about what someone is doing when they take another person’s life, especially a young person. What are we, after all, but a body of human experience potential? Someone who is, say, 30, has stored within 50, 60, even 70 years of potential experiences, many pleasant, even beautiful ones.  So, taking that person’s life is robbing them of those experiences. At one level, the act of murder is an act of the moment. It arguably gives the perpetrator a moment of pleasure at the act. But, it is really stealing a lifetime of experiences from the person so deprived. But the perpetrator doesn’t even think of the act in those terms—as taking away years of experiences in exchange for a single moment of . . .  of what . . . pleasure?

And then I thought, but what about acts we commit that alter a person’s life in some unpleasant way? We decide to define the world into castes, in which some folks are at the top and some are at the bottom—the throw-aways of our world. What are we doing by such an act? Well, we are forcing the folks so defined as the bottom-dwellers to a lifetime of misery, instead of a lifetime of happiness.  See we actually know that, but we mostly don’t think of our acts in such terms—stealing a person’s lifetime of happy experiences so that we can live better today. That is the actual price of our chosen path.

Similarly, when we embarked on a campaign to enslave people, we were stealing from those people their future lives, some of which would be filled with happy experiences. We stole their lives, much as if we had just killed them.

And then, today, when we smugly deride whole groups of people labeling them as desirable or undesirable, because of the color of their skin, or because they believe in a god different than our God, or because they are of a different gender, we are changing their lives in ways we cannot even predict, but ways likely to be less happy, and more stressful. So, again, we are stealing from those people, something we actually do not own, but can control—the future experiences of those other people.

But do we commit such acts of theft knowing the grotesque effects of the acts we are committing? Not likely. Mainly, we choose not to think, because thinking is difficult, and involves making choices we may not be comfortable making.

Life is but a balancing act. Life requires us to think so as to maintain a balance between good and harm. Some, perhaps many, folks prefer not to think overly much, because thinking requires mental agility, and acting on rote convictions is often more convincing and, just, easier.

So, acts of racism, or bigotry, or misogyny, or simple cruelty can become our preferred lifestyle—thereby defining our own lifetime of experiences.

Kindness could arguably also become a lifestyle. Kindness is less certain than emotional violence (racism), but it might actually spread, because an act of kindness could become contagious. Others might also begin to choose kindness rather than violence, but only those who actually think about life and the consequences of our individual acts.

Would it not be a better world, if we all tried to eliminate hate and inserted kindness instead?

Wow, what a concept . . . kindness instead of hate. What a wonderful world it might be . . .

Can We Be This Bad?

It is becoming difficult to comment intelligently on our increasingly bizarre pseudo-government headed by arguably the most incompetent CEO in the Nation, perhaps even the world.  Every day some new embarrassment occurs, generally triggered by that inept CEO, masquerading as our president.

And what is nearly as bad, it would seem that he—President Stupidhead—has unleashed every whacko and right wing fascist in the country to fill the airwaves with amazing pronouncements. The other day, I was listening to an interview with one of the many anti-abortion folks in the country. The interviewer asked whether she had any doubts about her support for Trump, given his behavior. She said something like, “well, all politicians lie, or say dumb things. I really don‘t care about those things. The only thing I care is about is his support for the anti-abortion movement.” First, he has probably paid for more than one abortion, given his sex history, so he is at best a pretend supporter of anti-abortion. But the lady’s utterance, suggested to me that, had Adolph Hitler espoused support for anti-abortion, this woman would have supported Adolph Hitler.  And the awful part is that I doubt she is actually pro-life (Hitler support aside) at all. Because, I assume that she will do nothing to actually support children once they are born. Instead, I think she is simply anti-sex. She is opposed to women enjoying sex for anything other than to produce babies, a classic evangelical stance.

And then there are the coal miners, who continue to support him because he promised to bring back coal jobs.  Now, when he fails to make coal king again, how will they rationalize their ongoing support? I imagine they will say, “well, he really has been trying, but the opposition democrats will not let him fulfill his promises. It isn’t his fault.”

And then, when his popular support drops inevitably to below, say, 20%, I assume he will go out on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, pull out a gun, shoot someone—anyone at random I assume—then claim that he is trying to defend America against the rapists and murderers allowed into the country by Obama and Hillary Clinton. And then his support will again climb above 20%.  And he will resume eating cheeseburgers in bed and watching Fox News.

Shitholes . . . I imagine all of the shitholes of the world are now marshalling their forces so as to empty their supplies of shit and mail them to Washington, DC, so that we take our place as the Number One Shithole in this poor benighted world. Yes, he will make America Great Again. We are the King of Shitholes!

And his supporters will applaud.

See, many of the commentators in our land still think that support for him will decline once . . . but once what? Everyone in America knows what he is like. We all know all the ghastly details of his awfulness. There are no important surprises left.  His supporters are like members of a religious cult, who, knowing that the cult is a scam, and that the priests are scum, continue to forge strong ties and continue yelling support, and even praying to their non-existent deities, because it is all they have.  There is nowhere for them to go, because all other avenues are closed and barricaded to them. They know everyone agrees that they are a true “basket of deplorables” and they are going to continue acting their respective parts faithfully.

Maybe we should stop calling them deplorable? But that wouldn’t help, because they don’t want forgiveness from the rest of us, or making nice. They like acting this way, supporting an awful narcissistic, sociopath who lies every time he opens his mouth, because, well, he is their narcissistic sociopath.

Will they stop voting for him, the next time around? Probably not. The only hope seems to be to seriously outvote them—like 2 or 3 to 1.  Not just beating him by 3 percentage points, but by 30 percentage points, just so there is no doubt this time around.  Oh, and then he will whine, but eventually he will go back to doing what he knows best—screwing the public out of its money.  And his kids can back to screwing the public out of its money also.

This is all fairly baffling to me. How this nation could have possibly changed so rapidly. I mean, I’ve been around for a while now.  The first presidency of which I was aware was FDR, and I have been paying attention ever since. Whether I agreed or disagreed with the person in power, or with the party in power, I still respected the fact that they seemed to be trying to better the nation. I never actually thought any of them were trying to destroy us as a country, a republic.  And yes, there were changes. I mean, Nixon??? Reagan??? How could we seriously elect such people? But neither seemed aimed at our utter destruction.

But now, we seem to have normalized bizarre behavior.  He lies; he is a serial sexual predator; he refuses to pay people who do work for him; he operates true fraudulent enterprises, without apparent penalty; he (allegedly) colludes with hostile foreign governments; he seems completely ignorant of any of the policies, programs and entities over which he rules; he makes formal pronouncements, ignorant ones at that, via Twitter, a braindead social media system. He has a cabinet that he apparently ignores. He taunts dangerous foreign powers, opening the possibility of nuclear disaster.  We could go on, but I am tiring.  All of the above are known to all of us. Yet, we continue allowing him to sit in the Oval Office as our CEO, making us the laughing stock of the world. We seemingly no longer care how idiotic we appear to everyone around the globe, from friends to foes.

And we just continue going on, making believe we can somehow survive and prosper again as a free nation.  It all makes me wonder just what the Germans thought somewhere in the 1940s.

I continue awaiting the adults to appear. Maybe we have none left. Perhaps they have all gone to bed, sucking their thumbs.

Later dudes and dudettes.

Happy New Year

 And so we close out another year in our now weird normality. Yeah, weird is the new normal. I guess I really do not understand America any longer. I mean, you would think, after existing here for some 83 years, I would have some reasonable understanding of this place I call home.   I used to imagine that I was pretty much one of several norms here. Now, I believe I am on the outer fringe of a new planet called Exo-Amerika.

A crap star of a crappy TV series about no-talents, in which the crap star gets to fire the no-talents on the show is now President—tell me again why anyone on this planet watched that show? And he overcame all of the relatively experienced politicians in our land to become our President?  And he daily demonstrates his incapacity for even the most minor chores of that job.   He doesn’t understand even the most trivial parts of the Presidency, mainly, I assume, because he apparently cannot read. And because he cannot read, he is abysmally ignorant.

He uses Twitter because it is a techno-vehicle designed for people who can neither read nor write. It’s almost as though Twitter was designed expressly for Donald Trump. And that seems to be his sole communications vehicle.  When he gets up in front of an audience to speak, he just babbles incoherently.

He embarrasses us almost every hour of every day, to the point where our various news and pseudo-news (Fox & Friends) people no longer know how/whether to cover him. But because he is a “reality-TV star”, he demands daily/hourly TV coverage.  It’s all he really wants, so he keeps doing and saying monumentally stupid things to get their attention.

And he won’t/can’t change, because it is who he is.  He could get worse over time, say depressed when he begins to understand that even his pseudo-News folks think he’s an idiot. Then he will likely up the ante—say bomb someplace he doesn’t like (North Korea anyone??). It’s what we have to look forward to folks. How inspiring, how uplifting.

But on the positive side, we now understand the good Christian folks out there in EvangeLand.  There is no longer any surprises there. They clearly are telling us that they have no moral or ethical principles at all. They are in love with The Donald and he is as completely amoral as anyone on the planet. So their love affair tells us everything we need to know about them.  Nothing here folks; time to move on.

Perhaps as an antidote, I have begun reading an interesting book about the evolution of the mind. It is called  From Bacteria to Bach and Back by Daniel Dennett. It is a bit of a challenge in that it is no ordinary text about evolution. The author takes issue with almost everyone. Part of the challenge of the book is that he takes issue, or sides with various “others” while in the act of explaining his theses. So far, I have not yet advanced enough to summarize his main argument (I think actually he has too many arguments for me to ever summarize). So far, I am beginning to imagine that humans are simply one of millions of entities that are slowly adapting and, in some cases disappearing over millennia. We are rocks, or moss, or fish, or bacteria, or . . . We think we are more significant than we are, because it is us.  One reviewer concludes his analysis of the book with this:

“Civilisation, he reminds us, is a work in progress. It may die, returning the planet to the bacteria, or, if human sociality can transcend our current problems, it can thrive. The future is open.”

So, when I think about The Donald and his minions, I am drawn back to bacteria.  Everyone is trying to survive, even if at the expense of everything else on this planet.  Whether we survive as a species may well depend on our ability to transcend. But before we can transcend, we must comprehend. And that Sherlock is our current problem.

Happy New Year Everyone.

See you in 2018 . . . hopefully.

Tax Bills We Have Known

So, now, the infamous Republican Tax Bill has passed and will become law. We know President Stupidhead will sign it, because it benefits him and his family, and because he cares not one whiffle about anyone else. He does not care, nor has he ever cared.  But when Senator Chuck Grassley from Iowa writes this view, we know no one in that party of kleptocrats cares:

“I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing… as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”

Many people are speculating what this disastrous tax bill will do for the future of the Republican Party.  It is said that the rich owners of the party would not allow their politicians to escape without gifting this bit of largesse to the owners, and that they would withdraw support, should the party leaders fail to obey their orders.

But what of ordinary folks? How will they respond once they see what is actually in this pile of horseshit? Well, it is said that the supporters of our disaster called a President will continue supporting anything this creature proposes. There is something of a religion about this relationship between Trump and his supporters. They ignore any and all facts.

• He is a compleat narcissist. We don’t care.
• He is a sexual predator. We don’t care.
• He is a businessman. Yes, we love him for that.
• But he is almost completely unsuccessful as a businessman. We don’t care. 
• He knows nothing. We don’t care.
• He has failed at his marriages. We don’t care.

And the list goes on and on. The Evangelicals love him, warts and all. They are revealed to have no ethical or moral standards at all.  

How did this happen, though? Have his supporters always lacked moral or ethical standards? Or is this like the Catholic Church scandals, where we all knew, but no one was allowed to speak of it? Bad form, don’t you know. It’s called compartmentalization.

It is said that the issue of ethics or morality is not really the point. That his supporters really just hate (take your pick):

• ·         Government
• ·         Democrats
• ·         Women
• ·         Poor people
• ·         Gays/Lesbians
• ·         Young people
• ·         Old people
• ·         Blacks (or more to the point, anyone not “white”)
• ·         Hispanics
• ·         Asians
• ·         Anyone not within their church (community, neighborhood, state, whatever)

In particular, his supporters appear to think that Government really is the enemy of their particular group, and that Government gives their hard-earned tax dollars to those wastrel peasants, who are sitting at home drinking booze instead of working hard at their jobs, like they are (or like they want to be).

There is a class consciousness at work in this country, promoted, I think, by the wealthy right-wing, asserting that they, the very wealthy, are the ones who built (or sustain, or create) the Nation and that there are millions who simply sit on their asses and collect Government largesse, and that it is now time that should end.  They declare that welfare should end, government supported health care should end. Abortions should be illegal. Immigration should be stopped, except for the folks who come from (name your country).

Government should get out of their lives, except for:

• ·         Army
• ·         Police
• ·         Garbage Men
•        Well, maybe the firemen too. Wouldn’t want my estate house to burn down, would we?

So, what does that have to do with Trump and his supporters? Well, Trump basically said that Government sucks and that he would get that awful creature off their backs.  He never said how he would do that, mainly because he hasn’t a clue how to do anything.  He simply mouths crap that he thinks will draw applause.  Then he goes on to the next applause line.  He has never actually had to do anything, well aside from having sex with his various female partners, so as to produce his offspring.  Aside from those acts, someone else has always had to “DO” things for him. I still imagine someone else attending class for him, in his name. Maybe that didn’t actually happen, but it seems right to me . . . maybe the only way I can imagine him actually obtaining a college degree—well, even a high school diploma.

See, he doesn’t ever actually mean anything he says. He just says things, as I say, to draw applause.

So, when he says he wants to “make America great again”, he doesn’t know what that means. I wonder what he would say were he to be asked, “when was America last GREAT, Donald?”

But his followers seem not to notice that he doesn’t actually know how to do anything.  Perhaps they don’t care. So long as he stops whoever they see as “The Government” from operating (screwing them). And if were to be pointed out that the folks doing the screwing are actually The Donald, his banker friends, and his other monied buddies, they would yell and scream NO.  They “compartmentalize”.

Exactly how and why folks became able to so compartmentalize their thinking remains a bit of a mystery to me. Sherlock, where are you, we need you now desperately. Perhaps it is simply the thinking process of lazy people. They want simple answers, even when there are no simple answers.  I wrote a while ago about the need to achieve balance in the world. I said:

  I.       In economic matters, extremes do not work. Under Bush, we shifted dangerously in the direction of a fascist state—that is, a state in which private owners of businesses dictate government policies. The inevitable result is Enron, et al, as well as the collapsed financial system. We have been drifting in that direction for quite some time now, even under Clinton. Everyone has been so concerned with government regulation that they failed to notice that unregulated business is as dangerous as unchecked government. One gives you fascism; the other socialism. Private business interests must always be checked to assure that the public is protected. So too must government overseers. Balance in everything is the answer. But balance requires mental agility. The public has little patience—they want the world to operate on autopilot. They need to be convinced that a world in which competing interests are balanced is both an efficient world, and a world that is worthy.

2.                We need to pay for what we need. The Republican Party has been, almost as a matter of policy, fiscally irresponsible. They practice “charge and spend” politics. We will now have to pay for their profligacy. The public—the thinking public—needs to understand that we cannot continue on the course they charted and followed. Mainly the rest of the world will not allow us to continue on this course. They will simply stop buying our debt and then it will end, badly. Taxes are the way we pay for our policies.  Taxes are neither good nor bad, in the abstract. They represent the price of operating our country, or, perhaps, the glue of a civilized society.

3.             We must pursue policies that are aimed at preserving the Earth. We need to conserve. We need to pursue alternative energy policies. We need to use economic forces to create a demand for energy-efficiency and energy independence. Under Bush and Cheney, we have pursued policies promoting wasteful energy consumption, mainly because he and his advisers represent the extractive industries. We need to tax wasteful energy consumption, so as to encourage wiser use of Earth’s limited resources.

4.            We must pursue a policy of economic independence for all our citizens. During my career, I worked for seven organizations over a 45 year career. For 20 of those years, I worked for several large and small companies that contributed nothing beyond Social Security for my retirement. Bush and his republican allies have attempted on numerous occasions to threaten that reserve. If indeed we wish to get rid of Social Security, we do not need to “privatize” it. We need to pass legislation that forces every economic entity in the country to pay into a portable retirement system. TIAA-CREF comes to mind—the system used by most universities and non-profits. If the private sector would begin to live up to its responsibilities by a mandatory contribution system, we would not need Social Security. Take the system used by universities and non-profits and replicate it throughout the whole of the private sector. Do not allow companies to wriggle out by use of part-time workers. If they employ part-time workers, they still pay full retirement benefits. Otherwise, leave Social security alone.

5.                Republicans, continue in their zeal to scuttle public education. We need to begin working with the states to repair the currently deplorable state of public education. In our area of North Carolina, they seem comfortable with a dropout rate of 35%.  Think of that. We can do better. Indeed, we are losing ground to the rest of the world, and we are at risk of becoming a country of stupid people. Charter schools, especially for-profit charter schools, and worse, fake private schools that are on-line, are not an answer.

6.              We must examine carefully the structure of government. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security was an absurd idea—a solution in search of a problem. Think of it. The CIA and the FBI wouldn’t communicate and were demonstrably inept, so we forced the Coast Guard, FEMA, and the rest to become one entity. An idea only a truly stupid person could embrace.  Structure is not the answer when the problem is an absence of thoughtful consideration of available evidence. 

There were a few other points that need not be repeated here. What we continue to need is watchful citizens—citizens who are willing to question both private commercial interests and public government interests. Corruption is a problem that will always be with us, so long as we have serious economic imbalances and so long as we have citizens who are basically dishonest—remember both the corrupters and the corruptees are dishonest.  Both need to be exposed and punished. It is why, by the way, that we continue to need whistle-blowers.  Transparency is key here, and we definitely do not have transparent systems in either the public or private realms (thanks again Supremes).

We all need to stand up and be counted. And that means we need to vote, regardless of the efforts by the GOP to prevent folks from voting.  If you don’t vote, you will get the government you deserve.

Suppose . . .

I have begun thinking lately about a world without religion. Recently, my wife and I watched Spotlight, the devastating film about the role of the Catholic Church in the priestly pedophile scandal. It seemed clear at the time, and the film makes it very clear, that the entire Catholic Church, all the way to the top, knew of its priestly criminal behavior, and not only did nothing, but actively worked to cover up the scandalous behavior.  And I came away thinking, why is this basically immoral institution still in existence? Of course, I realize one might say the same thing about virtually every global bank on the planet, but still, the Church stands out for chutzpah.

And then I began thinking . . . suppose, just suppose, that this scandal so rocked the world of organized religion that the entire edifice came crashing down, bringing with it not only the Catholic Church, but all religious entities everywhere. That people worldwide saw this as evidence that the rulers of organized religion everywhere were simply amoral scoundrels, and they should be cast aside.

Suppose . . .

Then what would follow?

Would the world suddenly become moral and highly principled? One could make a case for that scenario I assume. People globally, would begin to understand that morality and human kindness must after all begin with them, individually. That they must now begin operating according to commonly understood standards of decency.

It could happen. After all, many people do that right now, without the aid of a churchly admonition.

Then I thought, but on the other hand . . .

Suppose, just suppose, one removed the threat of eternal damnation from the world of ordinary humans. That all humans everywhere finally understood the likely truth, that there would be no eternal anything, either damnation or heavenly rewards.  That the mostly likely scenario for death is this:

You are still alert, but your breathing becomes shallow, slows, and your awareness begins to drift off. You now only vaguely sense that you are still in the world. Then, suddenly, your heart stops beating, and your brain is deprived of oxygen. So, after a very brief time, your brain loses awareness. And then, it is over, this thing we call LIFE. And we do not know it’s over, because we have no awareness. We do not see a light off in the distance. We do not “see” anything. Because our brain no longer functions.  We do not awaken to find ourselves on a bus, or a train to heaven, or even to hell.  We do not do or perceive anything, because, again, our brain no longer functions.  And, as it turns out, there is no brain substitute or alternative called the Soul.  So, nothing follows. No journey, no arrival at the gates of heaven or the gates of hell.  Nothing.  We simply stop “Being”.  And, again, we are unaware that we have stopped Being. And we are never again aware of anything.

Then of course, the rot sets in, but we are unaware of that also. And whether our earthly remains are buried in a nice casket, or burned into ashes, we remain unaware, because we are no longer anywhere. It is difficult to describe what being dead is all about. Mainly, because we are here and aware, it is difficult, perhaps not possible, to conceive being unaware. I know I have great difficulty. I will simply stop “Being” some day, and I will not know I have stopped “Being”.

But that is where my mind has taken me, however uneasy such a condition makes me.

Now, having reached such a terrible conclusion, how does that change my being, my ability to interact with other human beings?

Well, it seems not to change anything for me. I react with kindness toward others when kindness seems appropriate. I react with hostility when that seems appropriate. And the fact that I will go neither to heaven nor to hell, seems an irrelevancy to me.

But how would such an awareness be greeted by others?

Well, we have the greedy humans, the Donald Trumps of the world .. . the global bankers, the mob bosses, the authoritarians like Vlad the Impaler, or Duterte. Such a realization doubtless would not compel them to become more awful towards other humans, because “more awful” seems not possible.  Mostly, I imagine, such humans have no personal basis for acting kindly, or fairly towards other humans. They act the way they do, because their personalities condition them to act the way they do. So, for them, I would expect no change.

And for the Haters around the world, those who despise others they deem “less worthy”, i.e., racists, or misogynists, or anti-semitic, or anti-any of dozens of human characterizations, they might not change either. They might instead, feel a bit more secure, knowing that their hatreds would not in any ultimate sense, matter.

But then we have the rest of humanity, just ordinary folks, who now attend some church, or not, but who might be occasionally guided by a sense that what they do, or how they act today, will matter in the ultimate sense.  That their actions will/may push them upwards or downwards after it is all over. 

Will they now change, and always act to benefit themselves, even if their actions may hurt others? Aye, there’s the rub . . . they might change, or they might not, depending on how their belief system predetermines their daily behavior.  And that is what gives me pause in wishing that organized religion would simply disappear because it is more evil than good.

I am not sure.  Not that my relative certainty matters, because largely whatever I speculate here is almost wholly irrelevant to the future of humankind.  Maybe the inherent design of the human being is simply a flawed creation, and maybe it is the best evidence for evolution, rather than intelligent design. For surely, no superhuman, a God, could possibly design this thing we call humankind so flawed.

Nope, not possible. And the winner is . . . EVOLUTION. Yay!!!!!

The Drumpf as one of Life's SemiColons

Gotta hand it to the Drumpf. He certainly causes folks to think. For example, a record number of people are now thinking of leaving the USA for some other country.  I assume we would be also thinking of leaving, except we are really old, so it isn’t a serious option. Iceland anyone??

But even beyond deciding to depart, his very presence in our daily lives causes me to think about life differently. I have in the past characterized my life as something sandwiched between bookends.  At the one side, at the beginning, is immense stupidity--the great depression, brought about by bankers and stockbrokers acting stupidly, as they are wont to do.  That great event brought about great change in the world. Many people just gave up and leaped off tall buildings. Some, like my folks and grandfolks, just quietly gave into despair. Grandma and grandpa Inglis, having migrated from Scotland to the US of A at the turn of the century in order to build a better life, now just went broke, like several million others. But that, in any case constituted the start of my life.  Then a Democrat named Franklin Delano Roosevelt took over from the do-nothing republican Herbert Hoover and began rebuilding America. Republicans don’t seem too good at this nation-building thing.  Mainly, I guess, their focus is on building their own stock portfolios and their own bank accounts, which is fine, I guess if you’re a rich republican.

And then came that second Great War, our second “War to end all Wars”.  Although I was still pretty little when it began, it seemed even to me, that life had acquired a different and more powerful meaning. And that there were more good guys than bad guys in charge of America.  I assume the “meaning” attached to the simple fact that we were battling classic evil. The fascists, defined by Hitler, his Nazi henchmen and the ignorant tyrant Benito Mussolini were so clearly evil that it gave new force to all of our actions. People in America united themselves in opposition to this evil. It had to be defeated and by God, everyone was going to assist in that endeavor.

Then I grew up and the detritus of that Great War lingered and helped to define my era.  We were still more or less united against the forces of evil defined now by the Soviet Union in that great replacement for the war, now called the Cold War.

That Cold War, though, introduced complexity and ambiguity into our lives. Our world began dividing itself into competing, if not warring factions—East and West, with the West defining the “good guys”.   Partly, the divisions focused on competing economic models—“capitalism” vs.  “communism”.  But eventually nationalism began playing a role that stretched beyond these competing economic models. And nationalism gives way easily to authoritarianism (see Germany in the 1930s).  Joe McCarthy paved a path of ugliness, showing us the worst, most destructive form of nationalism.

But McCarthy clearly was not alone in his ugliness.  Perhaps there is something inherent in humans that moves from insecurity to dominance to murderous.  The Cold War gave us a lot of murder. We only let a few years pass after WW II before we re-engaged, this time in Korea—can’t let those commie bastards take over Korea. But there we learned a new lesson. We stopped short of total annihilation and simply gave into a compromise—an armistice if you will. But that allowed us to remain on guard, with claws fully outstretched. And then, barely a few years thereafter, we succumbed again to the battle, when Ike, the victor in WW II, began supporting the French in their zeal to regain their colonial empire in south Asia. I guess it was just irresistible.  Happily, we ignored Britain’s post-war colonialism and so we stayed out of India.

And so we engaged in a twenty-year warlike effort in Vietnam, first French-inspired, but then wholly American.  And there, in Vietnam, I believe we sowed the seeds of our current colonial outlook, now focused in the Middle East.

We now seem to have no clue what we are doing, beyond simply killing Muslims.  We were attacked, to be sure, with 911 sounding the clarion call, “To Horse . . . To Arms . . .” But where, and against whom? Ahhh, there’s the rub.

So, one president after another sought to achieve dominance, partly still out of that old Cold War spirit (we must surely be better than those old Soviets and their Chinese buddies), and partly because we seem to need the dominance thing. If we aren’t dominant, after all, then we would be subservient to someone, and that we cannot tolerate.

So began this never-ending war that now consumes our lives, one that we cannot win, but dare not lose.

And the wars that seem to bounce from one country to another seem also to confuse our leaders, to the point that they no longer lead. Instead, they simply talk a lot, or, some of them, yell a lot.

And our growing population grows ever more confused, and ever more seeking of that dominance thing. If we aren’t dominant, then we are pathetic. And so, one pseudo-leader gives way to the next, with nary a Roosevelt anywhere in sight.  When I worked briefly for the Federal government, from 1979 to 1986, Carter, a decent man but not a leader, gave way to Ronald Reagan, St. Ronald we called him. And St. Ronald played the game well. He was an ignorant man, but he knew how to play to the crowd, especially the crowd of disaffected yearning to be mighty. He actually made it ok again to be a racist, that long smothered trait that was also yearning to be free. 

And St. Ronnie yielded to Poppie Bush, who yielded to the Clinton clan, who in turn yielded to Shrub the clueless. Shrub didn’t understand much, but his gang of thugs knew how to throw armies around.  And so our never-ending war began.

But the real change occurred when we elected a multiracial man, an intelligent, decent, thoughtful man. And that was apparently more than our closeted racists could stand—see St. Ronald had opened the closet door, but largely the racists remained within. Now, with Obama at the helm, the Tea Party could no longer control itself and emerged in full battle armor.  And then we arrived at 2016, and I had entered my 8^th decade.  Now I was old, by any definition. And, instead of looking forward to inspired leaders pointing the way to greatness, I observed our nation deteriorating into hordes of fools yelling about greatness, but having no idea what that meant.

Greatness. Imagine that. Greatness being defined by a man who had failed at virtually everything he had ever attempted. Think of his record. Three marriages. Six corporate bankruptcies. A man so steeped in corruption and spiteful behavior that he refused to pay people who did work for him. He bragged about his corrupt behavior with women. He lied every time he opened his mouth and words came tumbling out. He had no clue how anything operated, since he never learned to operate anything himself.  And yet, somehow, through the power of TV, he emerged as the winner, via another apparently corrupt process called the Electoral College. But that’s an argument for another time.  Many people learned of his record, deleted the bad parts and hooked onto the fake parts—he was a successful businessman, ergo surely he could run a better government and bring us back to more Greatness than that Black man from Kenya.  And so they voted him into office.  They did not know that businessmen operate on different standards than public policy leaders, so a “successful businessman” (which he was not) had no relevance and might well be counterproductive as a government leader.

And their ability to ignore the well-publicized reality of Donald Trump and support him anyway began to make me wonder what country I now lived in. Were I 30, like my grandparents of olde, I too might well depart this land for another. For ending this life with an idiot at the helm, and gun-toting racists running wild all around us is looking like a dismal way to end life. I had hoped for more. I even expected more. I thought somehow, we might really grow into this global leadership thing. Instead, we seem to be sinking into some abyss of awfulness.  The inferiors have invaded our land and now claim ownership.

And I have been wondering why.

And I have begun imagining that the ability of my countrymen to believe in the Drumpf, is not materially different than the ability of the hordes to believe in a bearded old man sitting on a cloud up in the sky, directing everything while still pretending that he has given us free will, so he isn’t to blame for our asinine behavior. Daily, this concept gains strength, as the 36% supporters (his core) continue to mouth their unbelievable views that the Drumpf is not the corrupt loser he actually seems to be. How else can I explain it, this “suspension of disbelief” thing? Imagine we are all watching a Shakespearean tragedy unfolding. Oh, that makes me wonder whether this other belief from folks like Elon Musk that our entire universe is merely a simulation in someone’s grand computer—a staged play-- might be correct.  Maybe aliens (Gods??) are watching us perform and are daily amazed and amused at our ability to continue carrying out these really, really stupid acts.

And so my slowly fading life continues to be defined, the final set of bookends to match that other 1930s beginning bookends. Maybe depression is the definition of life.  Maybe we stage happy chapters like the giggle of a baby, or the warmth of a kiss from a loved one to give meaning to this depression that seems to define so many lives.  

Well, maybe I need to reinvent my bookends. Maybe I need to stage new bookends consisting of beautiful sunsets, falling on my darling wife’s smile.  Have another glass of wine Richard, and ignore the destructive fat bastard who occupies the current White House. Hopefully, he will fade into oblivion, along with his sneering children. Drink on, me hearty. Life will end, but perhaps we should not let The Drumpf define its end quite so completely. Let’s make him a semicolon in life.